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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44269 ***
+
+FAMOUS HOUSES AND LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SAM. JOHNSON]
+
+
+
+
+  FAMOUS HOUSES AND
+  LITERARY SHRINES
+  OF LONDON
+
+
+  BY A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK
+
+
+  WITH SEVENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
+  BY FREDERICK ADCOCK
+  AND 16 PORTRAITS
+
+
+  LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
+  NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1912
+
+
+
+
+  _All rights reserved_
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+  At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+Nothing could well be deader or emptier than an unoccupied house of whose
+former inhabitants we have no knowledge; and it is impossible to take a
+real interest in a house now occupied by strangers, even though it was
+aforetime the residence of some famous man, unless we are acquainted with
+that man's personality, and know what he thought and did and said whilst
+he was living there. I have attempted to do little more than supply that
+information here as the complement of my brother's drawings, and to this
+end have been less concerned to give my own descriptions and opinions than
+to bring together opinions and descriptions that were written by such
+famous residents themselves or by guests and visitors who saw and knew
+them. As far as possible I have quoted from contemporary Diaries and
+Memoirs, especially from letters that were written in or to these houses,
+or from Journals that their tenants kept whilst they dwelt there,
+supplementing all this with a narrative of incidents and events that might
+help to recreate the life and recapture the atmosphere that belonged to
+such places in the days that have made them memorable. Whenever I have
+adventured into any general biography, or expressed any personal opinion,
+it has been merely with the object of adding so much of history and
+character as would serve to fill in the outline of a man's portrait, give
+it a sufficient fulness and colour of life, and throw into clear relief
+the space of time that he passed in some particular house that can still
+be seen in a London street.
+
+I think I have throughout made due acknowledgment to the authors of
+various volumes of _Recollections_ and _Table Talk_ from which I have
+drawn anecdotes and pen-portraits, and I should like to mention at the
+outset that for biographical facts and much else I have been particularly
+indebted to such books as Elwin and Courthope's edition of the _Poems and
+Letters of Pope_; Austin Dobson's _William Hogarth_, and H. B. Wheatley's
+_Hogarth's London_; Boswell's _Johnson_, of course, and Forster's _Lives
+of Goldsmith_ and of _Dickens_; Gilchrist's _Life of Blake_; Leslie's and
+Holmes's _Lives of Constable_; Arthur B. Chamberlain's _George Romney_;
+Lord Houghton's _Life and Letters of Keats_, and Buxton Forman's _Complete
+Works of John Keats_; Leigh Hunt's _Autobiography_; De Quincey's _English
+Opium Eater_; Hogg's and Peacock's _Memoirs of Shelley_; Carew Hazlitt's
+_Memoirs of Hazlitt_; Blackman's _Life of Day_; Byron's _Journals and
+Letters_, and Lewis Bettany's useful compilation from them, _The
+Confessions of Lord Byron_; Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, and Scott's
+_Journal_; Talfourd's and Ainger's _Lives of Lamb_, and Lamb's _Letters_;
+Walter Jerrold's _Life of Thomas Hood_; Cross's _Life of George Eliot_;
+Sir William Armstrong's _Life of Turner_, and Lewis Hind's _Turner's
+Golden Visions_; Joseph Knight's _Rossetti_; Froude's _Thomas Carlyle_,
+and W. H. Wylie's _Carlyle, The Man and His Books_; Allingham's _Diary_;
+E. R. and J. Pennell's _Life of Whistler_; Trollope's _Thackeray_, and
+Lady Thackeray Ritchie's prefaces to the Centenary Edition of Thackeray's
+works.
+
+A. ST. J. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                     PAGE
+
+     I. SOME CELEBRATED COCKNEYS                               1
+
+    II. SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON                                 10
+
+   III. WHERE POPE STAYED AT BATTERSEA                        26
+
+    IV. HOGARTH                                               36
+
+     V. GOLDSMITH, REYNOLDS, AND SOME OF THEIR CIRCLE         52
+
+    VI. HOMES AND HAUNTS OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL               89
+
+   VII. BLAKE AND FLAXMAN                                    118
+
+  VIII. A HAMPSTEAD GROUP                                    140
+
+    IX. ROUND ABOUT SOHO AGAIN                               167
+
+     X. A PHILOSOPHER, TWO POETS, AND A NOVELIST             187
+
+    XI. CHARLES LAMB                                         207
+
+   XII. ST. JOHN'S WOOD AND WIMBLEDON                        233
+
+  XIII. CHELSEA MEMORIES                                     255
+
+   XIV. THACKERAY                                            296
+
+    XV. DICKENS                                              314
+
+   XVI. CONCLUSION                                           328
+
+
+
+
+PORTRAITS
+
+
+  DR. JOHNSON                                         _Frontispiece_
+    _From an engraving by T. TROTTER after a
+    drawing from life_
+
+  JOHN MILTON                                         _Facing p._ 4
+    _From a miniature by FAITHORNE_
+
+  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE                                     "      16
+    _From an engraving by SCRIVEN after the
+    Chandos portrait_
+
+  ALEXANDER POPE                                          "      33
+    _From an engraving by J. POSSELWHITE after
+    the picture by HUDSON_
+
+  OLIVER GOLDSMITH                                        "      81
+    _After a drawing by SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS_
+
+  SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS                                     "      96
+    _From an engraving after his own portrait_
+
+  JAMES BOSWELL                                           "     102
+    _From an engraving by W. HALL after a sketch
+    by LAWRENCE_
+
+  JOHN KEATS                                              "     144
+    _From a drawing by W. HILTON_
+
+  THOMAS DE QUINCEY                                       "     176
+    _From an engraving by W. H. MOORE_
+
+  LORD BYRON                                              "     193
+    _From a painting by THOMAS PHILLIPS, R.A._
+
+  CHARLES LAMB                                            "     224
+    _From the painting by WILLIAM HAZLITT_
+
+  THOMAS HOOD                                             "     241
+    _From an engraving by W. H. SMITH_
+
+  THOMAS CARLYLE                                          "     280
+    _From a painting by SIR JOHN MILLAIS_
+
+  W. M. THACKERAY                                         "     305
+    _From a pencil sketch by COUNT D'ORSAY_
+
+  CHARLES DICKENS                                         "     320
+    _From a black and white drawing by BAUGHIET, 1858_
+
+  ROBERT BROWNING                                         "     338
+    _From a photograph_
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                            PAGE
+
+  St. Saviour's, Southwark Cathedral                         xvi
+
+  The Gateway, Middle Temple                                   6
+
+  Chaucer's Tomb, Westminster Abbey                            8
+
+  Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey                        11
+
+  St. Olave's Churchyard, Silver Street                       17
+
+  Bartholomew Close, Smithfield                               21
+
+  The Last Bulk Shop, Clare Market                            25
+
+  Pope's House, Battersea                                     29
+
+  Pope, Mawson's Row, Chiswick                                37
+
+  Sir James Thornhill, 75 Dean Street                         42
+
+  Hogarth's House, Chiswick                                   45
+
+  The Bay Window, Hogarth's House                             49
+
+  Sir Isaac Newton's House, St. Martin's Street, W.C.         53
+
+  Sir Joshua Reynolds's House, Great Newport Street           57
+
+  The Staircase, 47 Leicester Square                          59
+
+  Sir Benjamin West's House, Newman Street                    61
+
+  Gainsborough's House, Pall Mall                             65
+
+  Sheridan's House, Savile Row                                69
+
+  Pump Court, Temple                                          73
+
+  Richardson's House, North End, Fulham                       75
+
+  Goldsmith's House, Canonbury                                77
+
+  2 Brick Court, The Temple                                   83
+
+  Stairs up to Second Floor, 2 Brick Court                    85
+
+  Goldsmith's Grave                                           87
+
+  Entrance to Staple Inn                                      91
+
+  Dr. Johnson's House, Gough Square                           99
+
+  Johnson's Corner, "The Cheshire Cheese"                    107
+
+  Where Boswell first met Johnson                            111
+
+  Boswell's House, Great Queen Street                        115
+
+  Blake's House, Soho                                        121
+
+  Blake, 23 Hercules Road                                    125
+
+  Blake's House, South Moulton Street                        127
+
+  Flaxman's House, Buckingham Street, Euston Road            137
+
+  Romney's House, Hampstead                                  141
+
+  Constable, Charlotte Street                                145
+
+  Joanna Baillie, Windmill Hill, Hampstead                   147
+
+  Stanfield's House, Hampstead                               151
+
+  "The Upper Flask," from the Bowling Green                  153
+
+  Keats' House, Hampstead                                    157
+
+  Constable's House, Hampstead                               161
+
+  George du Maurier's Grave, Hampstead                       165
+
+  De Quincey's House, Soho                                   171
+
+  Shelley's House, Poland Street, W.                         175
+
+  Shelley, Marchmont Street                                  179
+
+  Hazlitt's House, Frith Street                              183
+
+  Thomas Day, 36 Wellclose Square                            189
+
+  Byron, 4 Bennet Street, St. James's                        195
+
+  Coleridge, Addison Bridge Place                            201
+
+  Will's Coffee House, Russell Street                        217
+
+  Lamb, Colebrooke Row                                       219
+
+  Lamb's Cottage, Edmonton                                   229
+
+  Tom Hood's House, St. John's Wood                          237
+
+  Charles Dibdin, 34 Arlington Road                          243
+
+  George Eliot, Wimbledon Park                               247
+
+  George Eliot's House, Chelsea                              251
+
+  Queen's House, Cheyne Walk                                 257
+
+  Whistler, 96 Cheyne Walk                                   263
+
+  Turner's House, Cheyne Walk                                269
+
+  Carlyle, Ampton Street                                     277
+
+  Carlyle's House, Cheyne Row                                283
+
+  Leigh Hunt's House, Chelsea                                289
+
+  Leigh Hunt, 16 Rowan Road, Hammersmith                     295
+
+  The Charterhouse, from the Square                          297
+
+  Thackeray's House, Kensington                              301
+
+  Lamb Building, Temple, from the Cloisters                  307
+
+  Dickens, Johnson Street, Camden Town                       315
+
+  Dickens's House, Doughty Street                            319
+
+  Thurloe's Lodgings, 24 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn           329
+
+  Captain Marryat, Duke Street, St. James's                  333
+
+  Benjamin Franklin's House, Craven Street                   335
+
+  Cruikshank, 263 Hampstead Road                             337
+
+  George Morland, "The Bull Inn," Highgate                   339
+
+  Rogers, St. James's Place, from Green Park                 341
+
+  Borrow's House, Hereford Square                            345
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ST. SAVIOUR'S. SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL.]
+
+
+
+
+FAMOUS LONDON HOUSES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOME CELEBRATED COCKNEYS
+
+
+You cannot stir the ground of London anywhere but straightway it flowers
+into romance. Read the inscriptions on the crumbling tombs of our early
+merchant princes and adventurers in some of the old City churches, and it
+glimmers upon you that if ever the history of London's commercial rise and
+progress gets adequately written it will read like a series of stories out
+of the _Arabian Nights_. Think what dashing and magnificent figures, what
+tales of dark plottings, fierce warfare, and glorious heroisms must
+brighten and darken the pages of any political history of London; and even
+more glamorous, more intensely and humanly alive, would be a social
+history of London, beginning perhaps in those days of the fourteenth
+century when Langland was living in Cornhill and writing his _Vision of
+Piers Plowman_, or farther back still, in Richard the First's time, when
+that fine spirit, the first of English demagogues, William Fitzosbert, was
+haranguing the folkmoot in St. Paul's Churchyard, urging them to resist
+the tyrannic taxations of the Lord Mayor and his Court of wealthy
+Aldermen--a passion for justice that brought him into such danger that he
+and certain of his friends had to seek sanctuary, and barricaded
+themselves in Bow Church. The church was fired by order of a bishop who
+had no sympathy with reformers, and Fitzosbert and his friends, breaking
+out through the flames, were stabbed and struck down in Cheapside, hustled
+to the Tower, hastily tried and sentenced, dragged out by the heels
+through the streets, and hanged at Smithfield. I have always thought this
+would make a good, live starting-point, and had I but world enough and
+time I would sooner write that history than anything else.
+
+No need to hunt after topics when you are writing about London; they come
+to you. The air is full of them. The very names of the streets are
+cabalistic words. Once you know London, myriads of great spirits may be
+called from the vasty deep by sight or sound of such names as Fleet
+Street, Strand, Whitehall, Drury Lane, The Temple, Newgate Street,
+Aldersgate, Lombard Street, Cloth Fair, Paternoster Row, Holborn,
+Bishopsgate, and a hundred others. You have only to walk into Whitefriars
+Street and see "Hanging-sword Alley" inscribed on the wall of a court at
+the top of a narrow flight of steps, and all Alsatia rises again around
+you, as Ilion rose like a mist to the music of Apollo's playing. Loiter
+along Cornhill in the right mood and Thomas Archer's house shall rebuild
+itself for you at the corner of Pope's Head Alley, where he started the
+first English newspaper in 1603, and you will wonder why nobody writes a
+full history of London journalism.
+
+As for literary London--every other street you traverse is haunted with
+memories of poets, novelists, and men of letters, and it is some of the
+obscurest of these associations that are the most curiously fascinating. I
+have a vivid, youthful remembrance of a tumble-down, red-tiled shop near
+the end of Leathersellers' Buildings which I satisfied myself was the
+identical place in which Robert Bloomfield worked as a shoemaker's
+assistant; Devereux Court still retains something of the Grecian
+Coffee-house that used to be frequented by Addison and Steele, but I knew
+the Court first, and am still drawn to it most, as the site of that
+vanished Tom's Coffee-house where Akenside often spent his winter
+evenings; and if I had my choice of bringing visibly back out of
+nothingness one of the old Charing Cross houses, it would be the butcher's
+shop that was kept by the uncle who adopted Prior in his boyhood.
+
+Plenty of unpleasant things have been said about London, but never by her
+own children, or such children of her adoption as Johnson and Dickens.
+Says Hobbes, who was born at Malmesbury, "London has a great belly, but no
+palate," and Bishop Stubbs (a native of Knaresborough) more recently
+described it as "always the purse, seldom the head, and never the heart of
+England." Later still an eminent speaker, quoting this fantastic dictum of
+Stubbs's, went a step further and informed his audience that "not many men
+eminent in literature have been born in London"; a statement so
+demonstrably inaccurate that one may safely undertake to show that at
+least as many men eminent in literature, to say nothing of art and
+science, have been born in London as in any other half-dozen towns of the
+kingdom put together.
+
+To begin with, the morning star of our literature, Geoffrey Chaucer, was
+born in Thames Street, not far from the wharf where, after he was married
+and had leased a home for himself in Aldgate, he held office as a
+Comptroller of Customs, and the pen that was presently to write the
+_Canterbury Tales_ "moved over bills of lading." The "poets' poet,"
+Spenser, was born in East Smithfield, by the Tower, and in his
+_Prothalamion_ speaks of his birthplace affectionately as--
+
+  "Merry London, my most kindly nurse,
+   That to me gave this life's first native source,
+   Though from another place I take my name."
+
+Ben Jonson was born in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross; four of his
+contemporary dramatists, Fletcher, Webster, Shirley and Middleton, were
+also Londoners by birth; Sir Thomas Browne, author of the _Religio
+Medici_, was born in the parish of St. Michael-le-Quern, in the very heart
+of the city; and Bread Street, Cheapside, is hallowed by the fact that
+Milton had his birth there.
+
+Dr. Donne, the son of a London merchant, was also born within a stone's
+throw of Cheapside; and his disciple, Cowley, came into the world in Fleet
+Street, at the corner of Chancery Lane. But Cowley was a renegade; he
+acquired an unnatural preference for the country, and not only held that
+"God the first garden made, and the first city Cain," but ended a poem in
+praise of nature and a quiet life with--
+
+              "Methinks I see
+  The monster London laugh at me;
+    I should at thee too, foolish city,
+  If it were fit to laugh at misery;
+    But thy estate I pity.
+  Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,
+  And all the fools that crowd thee so,
+    Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
+  A village less than Islington wilt grow,
+    A solitude almost."
+
+[Illustration: JOHN MILTON]
+
+The daintiest of our lyrists, Herrick, was born over his father's shop in
+Cheapside, and you may take it he was only playing with poetical fancies
+when, in some lines to his friend Endymion Porter, he praised the country
+with its "nut-brown mirth and russet wit," and again when, in a set of
+verses on "The Country Life," he assured his brother he was "thrice and
+above blest," because he could--
+
+  "Leave the city, for exchange, to see
+   The country's sweet simplicity."
+
+If you want to find him in earnest, turn to that enraptured outburst of
+his on "His Return to London"--
+
+  "Ravished in spirit I come, nay more I fly
+   To thee, blessed place of my nativity!...
+   O place! O people! manners framed to please
+   All nations, customs, kindreds, languages!
+   I am a free-born Roman; suffer then
+   That I amongst you live a citizen.
+   London my home is, though by hard fate sent
+   Into a long and irksome banishment;
+   Yet since called back, henceforward let me be,
+   O native country! repossessed by thee;
+   For rather than I'll to the West return,
+   I'll beg of thee first here to have mine urn."
+
+There speaks the true Cockney; he would sooner be dead in London than
+alive in the West of England. Even Lamb's love of London was scarcely
+greater than that.
+
+[Illustration: THE GATEWAY. MIDDLE TEMPLE.]
+
+It was fitting that Pope, essentially a town poet, should be born in
+Lombard Street. In the next thoroughfare, Cornhill, Gray was born; and,
+son of a butcher, Defoe began life in the parish of St. Giles's,
+Cripplegate. Shakespeare was an alien, but Bacon was born at York House,
+in the Strand; which, to my thinking, is the strongest argument in favour
+of the theory that he wrote the plays. Churchill was born at Vine Street,
+Westminster; Keats in Moorfields; and, staunchest and one of the most
+incorrigible Londoners of them all, Charles Lamb in Crown Office Row,
+Temple. He refers, in one of his essays, to Hare Court, in the Temple, and
+says: "It was a gloomy, churchyard-like court, with three trees and a
+pump in it. I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was
+a Rechabite of six years old." The pump is no longer there, only one half
+of Hare Court remains as it was in Lamb's day, and Crown Office Row has
+been rebuilt. His homes in Mitre Court Buildings and Inner Temple Lane
+have vanished also; but the Temple is still rich in reminiscences of him.
+Paper Buildings, King's Bench Walk, Harcourt Buildings, the fountain near
+Garden Court, the old Elizabethan Hall, in which tradition says
+Shakespeare read one of his plays to Queen Elizabeth--these and the
+church, the gardens, the winding lanes and quaint byways of the Temple,
+made up, as he said, his earliest recollections. "I repeat to this day,"
+he writes, "no verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion,
+than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot--
+
+  'There when they came whereas those bricky towers
+   The which on Themmes broad aged back doth ride,
+   Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
+   There whylome wont the Templar knights to bide,
+   Till they decayed through pride.'"
+
+And, "indeed," he adds, "it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis."
+
+[Illustration: CHAUCER'S TOMB. WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
+
+But his letters and essays are full of his love of London. "I don't care
+much," he wrote to Wordsworth, "if I never see a mountain. I have passed
+all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local
+attachments as any of your mountaineers can have done with dead Nature....
+I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy in so much
+life." Again, "Fleet Street and the Strand," he writes to Manning, "are
+better places to live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw." After he
+had removed to Edmonton, on account of his sister's health, it was to
+Wordsworth he wrote, saying how he pined to be back again in London: "In
+dreams I am in Fleet Market, but I wake and cry to sleep again.... Oh,
+never let the lying poets be believed who 'tice men from the cheerful
+haunts of streets.... A garden was the primitive prison, till man, with
+Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. Thence
+followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London.... I would live in London
+shirtless, bookless."
+
+But to get back to our catalogue of birthplaces--Blake was born in Broad
+Street, near Golden Square; Byron in Holles Street; Hood in the Poultry,
+within sight of the Mansion House; Dante and Christina Rossetti were
+Londoners born; so were Swinburne, Browning, Philip Bourke Marston, John
+Stuart Mill, Ruskin, Turner, Holman Hunt, Sir Arthur Sullivan--but if we
+go outside literary Londoners this chapter will end only with the book.
+Moreover, my purpose is not so much to talk of authors and artists who
+were born in London, as to give some record of the still surviving houses
+in which many of them lived; whether they had their birth here or not, the
+majority of them came here to live and work, for, so far as England is
+concerned, there is more than a grain of truth in Lamb's enthusiastic
+boast that "London is the only fostering soil of genius."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON
+
+
+The London that Shakespeare knew has vanished like a dream. The Great Fire
+swept most of it out of existence in a few days of 1666, and the two and a
+half centuries of time since then have made away with nearly all the rest
+of it. The Tower still remains; there are parts of the Temple; a stray
+relic or so, such as the London Stone in Cannon Street, by which
+Shakespeare lays one of the Jack Cade scenes of his _Henry VI._ There are
+the stately water-gates along the Embankment, too; here and there an old
+house or so, such as that above the Inner Temple gateway, those of Staple
+Inn, those in Cloth Fair, and over in the Borough High Street; a few
+ancient Inns, like the Mitre off Ely Place, the Dick Whittington in Cloth
+Fair, the George in Southwark; some dozen of churches, including
+Westminster Abbey (in whose Jerusalem Chamber the translators of the Bible
+held their meetings), St. Saviour's, Southwark, St. Bartholomew the Great
+in Smithfield, St. Andrew Undershaft, St. Ethelburga's and St. Helen's,
+Bishopsgate, in which latter parish it seems probable that Shakespeare was
+for a while a householder; otherwise Elizabethan London has dwindled to
+little but remembered sites of once-famous buildings and streets that have
+changed in everything but their names.
+
+[Illustration: JERUSALEM CHAMBER. WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
+
+Until quite recently none of us knew of any address in London that had
+ever been Shakespeare's; we knew of no house, of no street even, which had
+once numbered him among its tenants, though we know that he passed at
+least twenty of the busiest and most momentous years of his life in the
+metropolis. There is a plausible but vague tradition that during some part
+of that period he had lodgings in Southwark near the Globe Theatre, in
+which he acted, for which he wrote plays, and of which he was one of the
+proprietors. There used to be an inscription: "Here lived William
+Shakespeare," on the face of an old gabled house in Aldersgate Street, but
+there was never a rag of evidence to support the statement. We have no
+letters of Shakespeare, but we have one or two that refer to him, and one
+written to him by Richard Quiney, and I think we may infer from this
+latter that Shakespeare occasionally visited Quiney, who was a vintner,
+dwelling at the sign of the Bell in Carter Lane. Otherwise, except for a
+handful of small-beer chronicles about him that were picked up in
+theatrical circles two or three generations after his death, we had no
+record of any incident in his London life that brought us into actual
+personal touch with him until little more than two years ago. Then an
+American professor, Mr. Charles William Wallace, came over and did what
+our English students do not appear to have had the energy or enterprise to
+do for themselves--he toiled carefully through the dusty piles of
+documents preserved in the Record Office, and succeeded in unearthing one
+of the most interesting Shakespearean discoveries that have ever been
+made--a discovery that gives us vividly intimate glimpses of Shakespeare's
+life in London, and establishes beyond question his place of residence
+here in the years when he was writing some of the greatest of his dramas.
+
+In 1587 the company of the "Queen's Players" made their first appearance
+in Stratford-on-Avon, and it was about this date, so far as can be traced,
+that Shakespeare ran away from home; so you may reasonably play with a
+fancy that he joined this company in some very minor capacity and
+travelled with them to London. At this time, Burbage, who was by
+profession an actor and by trade a carpenter and joiner, was owner and
+manager of "The Theatre," which stood in Shoreditch near the site of the
+present Standard Theatre, and close by was a rival house, "The Curtain"
+(commemorated nowadays by Curtain Road); and according to the legend,
+which has developed into a legend of exact detail, yet rests on nothing
+but the airiest rumour, it was outside one or both of these theatres
+Shakespeare picked up a living on his arrival in London by minding horses
+whilst their owners were inside witnessing a performance.
+
+By 1593 Shakespeare had become known as an actor and as a dramatist. He
+had revised and tinkered at various plays for Burbage's company, and as a
+consequence had been charged with plagiarism by poor Greene, whose
+_Groatsworth of Wit_ (published after he had died miserably in Dowgate)
+pours scorn on the "upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with
+his _Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide_ supposes he is as well able to
+bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute
+_Johannes fac totum_, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a
+countrie." For his acting, Shakespeare appears for the first time in the
+Lord Chamberlain's accounts of 1594 as having taken equal shares with
+William Kemp and Richard Burbage in a sum of twenty pounds "for two
+severall Comedies or Interludes shewed by them" before Queen Elizabeth at
+Christmas 1593.
+
+After the Theatre of Shoreditch was pulled down in 1598, Burbage built the
+Globe Theatre on Bankside, Southwark, on the ground of which part of
+Barclay & Perkins's brewery now stands; and Shakespeare, "being a
+deserveing man," was taken as one of the partners and received a
+"chief-actor's share" of the profits. And it is to this prosperous period
+of his London career that Professor Wallace's recent discoveries belong.
+
+In 1598 there lived in a shop at the corner of Silver Street and Monkwell
+Street a certain Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of wigs and fashionable
+headdresses. He was a Frenchman, born at Cressy, and probably a refugee
+Huguenot. His household consisted of a wife and daughter, an apprentice
+named Stephen Bellott, and one lodger, and this lodger was William
+Shakespeare. Being out of his apprenticeship in 1604, Stephen had six
+pounds from his master and, with this and his own savings, went travelling
+into Spain, but returned towards the end of the year and resumed work
+again at Mountjoy's shop. In his 'prentice days Stephen seems to have
+formed some shy attachment to his master's daughter, Mary, but because of
+his lack of means and prospects, or because he was naturally reticent, he
+had made no attempt to press his suit, and Madame Mountjoy, seeing how the
+young people were affected to each other, followed the fashion of the time
+and persuaded Shakespeare, who had then been living under the same roof
+with them for six years, to act as match-maker between her and the
+hesitating lover. She one day laid the case before Shakespeare and asked
+his good offices, as Professor Wallace has it; she told him that "if he
+could bring the young man to make a proposal of marriage, a dower fitting
+to their station should be settled upon them at marriage. This was the
+sum of fifty pounds in money of that time, or approximately four hundred
+pounds in money of to-day." Shakespeare consented to undertake this
+delicate duty; he spoke with young Bellott, and the outcome of his
+negotiations was that Stephen and Mary were married, as the entry in the
+church register shows, at St. Olave, Silver Street, on the 19th November
+1604.
+
+On the death of Madame Mountjoy in 1606, Stephen and his wife went back to
+live with the father and help him in his business, but they soon fell out
+with him, and became on such bad terms that some six months later they
+left him and took lodgings with George Wilkins, a victualler, who kept an
+inn in the parish of St. Sepulchre's. The quarrel between them culminated
+in Stephen Bellott bringing an action in the Court of Requests in 1612, to
+recover from his father-in-law a promised dower of sixty pounds and to
+ensure that Mountjoy carried out an alleged arrangement to bequeath a sum
+of two hundred pounds to him by his will. At the Record Office Professor
+Wallace found all the legal documents relating to these proceedings, and
+amongst them are the depositions of Shakespeare setting forth to the best
+of his recollection his own share in the arranging of the marriage. From
+these depositions, and from those of other witnesses who make reference to
+him, one gets the first clear and authentic revelation of Shakespeare's
+home life in London.
+
+He lived with the Mountjoys over that shop at the corner of Monkwell
+Street for at least six years, down to the date of the wedding, and there
+is little doubt that he stayed on with them after that. It is more than
+likely, indeed, that he was still boarding there when he appeared as a
+witness in the 1612 lawsuit and stated that he had been intimate with the
+family some "ten years, more or less." Throughout the later of those years
+he was absent on occasional visits to Stratford, and hitherto it has been
+generally assumed (on the negative evidence that no trace of him could be
+found after this date) that he returned and settled down in Stratford
+permanently about 1609.
+
+Taking only the six years we are certain of, however, he wrote between
+1598 and 1604 _Henry V._, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Much Ado About
+Nothing_, _As You Like It_, _Twelfth Night_, _All's Well that Ends Well_,
+_Julius Cæsar_, _Hamlet_, _Measure for Measure_, and _Othello_. In the two
+years following, whilst it is pretty sure he was still dwelling with the
+Mountjoys, he wrote _Macbeth_ and _King Lear_, and the fact that he had
+his home here during the period in which he was writing ten of his
+plays--three of them amongst the greatest he or any man ever wrote--makes
+this corner of Monkwell Street the most glorious literary landmark in the
+world.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE]
+
+The house in which he lodged was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the site
+is occupied now by an old tavern, "The Cooper's Arms." Almost facing it,
+just the other side of Silver Street, is a fragment of the churchyard of
+St. Olave's. The church, in which the apprentice Stephen was married to
+Mary Mountjoy, vanished also in the Great Fire and was not rebuilt, and
+this weedy remnant of the churchyard with its three or four crumbling
+tombs is all that survives of the street as Shakespeare knew it; his
+glance must have rested on that forlorn garden of the dead as often as
+he looked from the windows opposite or came out at Mountjoy's door.
+
+[Illustration: ST. OLAVE'S CHURCHYARD. SILVER STREET.]
+
+Turning to the right when he came out at that door, half a minute's walk
+up Falcon Street would have brought him into Aldersgate Street, so the
+announcement on one of the shops there that he had lived in it may have
+been nothing worse than a perfectly honest mistake; it was known as a fact
+that he lived thereabouts, and tradition settled on the wrong house
+instead of on the right one, that was a hundred yards or so away from it.
+But when Shakespeare issued from Mountjoy's shop you may depend that his
+feet more frequently trod the ground in the opposite direction; he would
+go to the left, along Silver Street, into Wood Street, and down the length
+of that to Cheapside, where, almost fronting the end of Wood Street,
+stood the Mermaid Tavern, and he must needs pass to the right or left of
+it, by way of Friday Street, or Bread Street, across Cannon Street and
+then down Huggin Lane or Little Bread Street Hill to Thames Street,
+whence, from Queenhithe, Puddle Wharf, or Paul's Wharf, he could take boat
+over the Thames to the Globe Theatre on Bankside.
+
+There has been no theatre on Bankside these many years; there is nothing
+there or in that vicinity now that belongs to Shakespeare's age except
+some scattered, ancient, inglorious houses that he may or may not have
+known and the stately cathedral of St. Saviour. This holds still the span
+of ground that has belonged to it since before Chaucer's day. You may
+enter and see there the quaint effigy of Chaucer's contemporary, Gower,
+sleeping on his five-century-old tomb; and here and there about the aisles
+and in the nave are memorials of remembered or forgotten men and women who
+died while Shakespeare was living, and somewhere in it were buried men,
+too, who were intimate with him, though no evidence of their burial there
+remains except in the parish register. In the "monthly accounts" of St.
+Saviour's you come upon these entries concerning two of his contemporary
+dramatists:--
+
+    "1625. _August_ 29th, John Fletcher, a poet, in the church."
+
+    "1638. _March_ 18th, Philip Massinger, stranger, in the church."
+
+the inference being that Fletcher had resided in the parish, and
+Massinger, the "stranger," had not. But earlier than either of these, it
+is on record that on the 31st December 1607, Shakespeare's youngest
+brother, Edmund, "a player," was buried here, and a fee of twenty
+shillings was paid by some one for "a forenoon knell of the great bell."
+
+St. Saviour's, then, the sites of the Globe Theatre and the Mermaid, and
+that corner of Monkwell Street are London's chief Shakespearean shrines.
+The discovery of the Monkwell Street residence emphasises that before Ben
+Jonson founded his Apollo Club at the Devil Tavern by Temple Bar,
+Cheapside and not Fleet Street was the heart of literary London. Whilst
+Shakespeare made his home with the Mountjoys, Ben Jonson and Dekker were
+living near him in Cripplegate, in which district also resided Johnson the
+actor, Anthony Munday, and other of Shakespeare's intimates; nearer still,
+in Aldermanbury, lived Heminges and Condell, his brother actors, who first
+collected and published his plays after his death: and George Wilkins, at
+whose inn near St. Sepulchre's Stephen Bellott and his wife lodged after
+their quarrel with Mountjoy, was a minor dramatist who, besides
+collaborating with Rowley, collaborated with Shakespeare himself in the
+writing of _Pericles_. Coryat, the eccentric author of the _Crudities_,
+lived in Bow Lane; Donne, who was born in Wood Street, wrote his early
+poems there in the house of the good merchant, his father, and was a
+frequenter of the Mermaid.
+
+In 1608 Milton was born in Bread Street (Shakespeare must have passed his
+door many a time in his goings to and fro), and grew up to live and work
+within the City walls in Aldersgate Street, and in Bartholomew Close, and
+just without them in Bunhill Row, and was brought back within them to be
+buried in Cripplegate Church. These, and its earlier and many later
+literary associations, help to halo Cheapside and its environs, and, in
+spite of the sordid commercial aspect and history that have overtaken it,
+to make it for ever a street in the kingdom of romance.
+
+And the chief glory of Cheapside itself is, of course, the Mermaid. One of
+these days a fitting sign will be placed above the spot where it stood,
+and set forth in letters of gold the great names that are inseparable from
+its story, and first among these will be the names of Shakespeare, Ben
+Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Donne, Carew, Fuller, Sir Walter
+Raleigh.
+
+The Mermaid rose on Cheapside with a side entrance in Friday Street, and
+of evenings when no business took him to the theatre, or towards midnight
+when he was on his way home from it, Shakespeare often turned aside into
+this famous meeting-place of the immortals of his generation. Everybody is
+familiar with those rapturous lines in Beaumont's letter to Ben Jonson,
+"written before he and Master Fletcher came to London with two of the
+precedent comedies, then not finished, which deferred their merry meetings
+at the Mermaid;" but one cannot talk of the Mermaid without remembering
+them and quoting from them once again:--
+
+                      "In this warm shine
+  I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine....
+  Methinks the little wit I had is lost
+  Since I saw you: for wit is like a rest
+  Held up at tennis, which men do the best
+  With the best gamesters! What things have we seen
+  Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
+  So nimble and so full of subtile flame
+  As if that every one from whence they came
+  Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
+  And had resolved to live a fool the rest
+  Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown
+  Wit able enough to justify the town
+  For three days past, wit that might warrant be
+  For the whole city to talk foolishly
+  Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone,
+  We left an air behind us which alone
+  Was able to make the next two companies
+  Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise."
+
+[Illustration: BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE. SMITHFIELD.]
+
+Well might Keats ask in a much later day (probably whilst he was tenanting
+the Cheapside rooms over Bird-in-Hand Court in which he wrote the sonnet
+on Chapman's Homer):
+
+  "Souls of poets dead and gone,
+   What Elysium have ye known,
+   Happy field or mossy cavern
+   Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?"
+
+And in our own time, in _Christmas at the Mermaid_, Watts-Dunton has
+recreated that glamorous hostelry and brought together again the fine
+spirits who used to frequent it--brought them together in an imaginary
+winter's night shortly after Shakespeare had departed from them and gone
+back to Stratford for good. Jonson is of that visionary company, and
+Raleigh, Lodge, Dekker, Chapman, Drayton and Heywood, and it is Heywood
+who breaks in, after the tale-telling and reminiscent talk, with--
+
+    "More than all the pictures, Ben,
+      Winter weaves by wood or stream,
+    Christmas loves our London, when
+      Rise thy clouds of wassail-steam:
+    Clouds like these that, curling, take
+    Forms of faces gone, and wake
+  Many a lay from lips we loved, and make
+        London like a dream."
+
+It is because of the memories that sleep within it, like music in a lute
+until a hand that knows touches it, because of all it has been, and
+because it is never more wonderful than when you can so make it like a
+dream, that I give thanks for the fog that comes down upon London at
+intervals, in the grey months, and with silent wizardries conjures it out
+of sight. Look at this same Cheapside on a clear day, and it is simply a
+plain, prosperous, common-place street, but when a fog steals quietly
+through it and spiritualises it to something of the vagueness and grandeur
+and mystery of poetry it is no longer a mere earthly thoroughfare under
+the control of the Corporation; it becomes a dream-street in some
+mist-built city of the clouds, and you feel that at any moment the
+pavements might thin out and shred away and let you through into starry,
+illimitable spaces. Where the brown fog warms to a misty, golden glow you
+know there are shop windows. As you advance the street-lamps twinkle in
+the thick air, as if they were kindled magically at your coming and
+flickered out again directly you were past. The coiling darkness is loud
+with noises of life, but you walk among them with a sense of aloofness and
+solitude, for you can see nothing but flitting shadows all about you and
+know that you are yourself only a shadow to them.
+
+For me, three of the loveliest and most strangely touching sights of
+London are the stars shining very high in the blue and very quietly when
+you look up at them from the roaring depths of a crowded, naphtha-flaring,
+poverty-stricken market street; a sunrise brightening over the Thames
+below London Bridge, while the barges are still asleep with the gleam of
+their lamps showing pale in the dawn; and the blurred lights and ghostly
+buildings of a long city road that is clothed in mystery and transfigured
+by a brooding, dream-haunted fog. Perhaps this is only because of the dim
+feeling one has that the stars and the sunrise are of the things that the
+wasting centuries have not changed; and the fog that blots out to-day
+makes it easier to realise that yesterday and the life of yesterday are
+close about us still, and that we might see them with our waking eyes,
+even as we see them in our dreams, if the darkness would but lift.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST BULK SHOP. CLARE MARKET.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHERE POPE STAYED AT BATTERSEA
+
+
+Coming from Chelsea by way of Battersea Bridge, you go a few yards along
+the Battersea Bridge Road, then turn aside into Church Road, and presently
+you pass a narrow, mean street of small houses, which is Bolingbroke Road,
+and serves to remind you that the Bolingbrokes were once lords of the
+manor of Battersea and proprietors of the ferry that crossed the river
+hereabouts before the first Battersea Bridge was built. A little further
+down Church Road, past squat and grimy houses on the one hand and gaunt
+walls and yawning gateways of mills, distilleries, and miscellaneous
+"works" on the other, and you come to a gloomy gateway that has "To
+Bolingbroke House" painted up on one of its side-walls. Through this
+opening you see a busy, littered yard; straw and scraps of paper and odds
+and ends of waste blow about on its stones; stacks of packing-cases and
+wooden boxes rise up against a drab background of brick buildings, and
+deep in the yard, with a space before it in which men are at work and a
+waggon is loading, you find the forlorn left wing--all that survives--of
+what was once the family seat of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke,
+whose chief title to remembrance now is that he was the friend of
+Alexander Pope.
+
+Worn and dingy with age, its stone porch stained and crumbling, and some
+of its windows broken, the place has a strange, neglected look, though it
+is still used for business purposes, and you have glimpses of clerks
+writing at their desks in the rooms from which Pope used to gaze out on
+very different surroundings.
+
+It is difficult, indeed, to associate such a house and such a
+neighbourhood as this has now become with so fastidious, finicking, and
+modish a poet as Pope. All the adjacent streets are squalid,
+poverty-stricken, noisy; along the main road, almost within hearing, trams
+and motor-buses shuttle continually to and fro: except for a quaint,
+dirty, weary-looking cottage that still stands dreaming here and there
+among its ugly, mid-Victorian neighbours, and for the river that laps
+below the fence at the end of the yard, there is scarcely anything left of
+the quiet, green, rural Battersea village with which he was familiar; even
+the church whose steeple rises near by above the mills, and in which
+Bolingbroke was buried, was rebuilt a few years after his death.
+
+Nevertheless, this weatherbeaten, time-wasted old house down the yard is
+the same house that, when it stood with Bolingbroke's lawn before it and
+his pleasant gardens sloping to the Thames, was the occasional home of
+Pope, and numbered Swift, Thomson, and other of the great men of letters
+of Queen Anne's reign among its visitors. One of the rooms overlooking the
+river, a room lined with cedar, beautifully inlaid, is still known as "Mr.
+Pope's parlour"; it is said to have been used by Pope as his study, and
+that he wrote his _Essay on Man_ in it.
+
+It is therefore the more fitting that Pope should have dedicated _An Essay
+on Man_ to Bolingbroke, whom he addresses in the opening lines with that
+exhortation:--
+
+  "Awake, my St. John, leave all meaner things
+   To low ambition, and the pride of kings!"
+
+He dedicated also one of his Imitations of Horace to--
+
+  "St. John, whose love indulged my labours past,
+   Matures my present, and shall bound my last."
+
+A man of brilliant gifts, both as writer and statesman, Bolingbroke became
+involved in the political intriguings of his day, and in 1715 had to flee
+to Calais to escape arrest for high treason. Eight years later he was
+allowed to return, and his forfeited estates were given back to him. On
+the death of his father he took up his residence at Battersea, and it was
+there that he died of cancer in 1751. "Pope used to speak of him," writes
+Warton, "as a being of a superior order that had condescended to visit
+this lower world;" and he, in his turn, said of Pope, "I never in my life
+knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more
+general friendship for mankind."
+
+[Illustration: POPE'S HOUSE. BATTERSEA.]
+
+And on the whole one feels that this character of Pope was truer than Lady
+Mary Wortley Montagu's presentation of him as "the wicked asp of
+Twickenham"; for if he was viciously cruel to Colley Cibber and the poor
+Grub Street scribblers whom he satirises in _The Dunciad_, he was kindness
+itself to Akenside and other of his younger rivals in reading their
+manuscripts and recommending them to his publishers; and if he retorted
+bitterly upon Addison after he had fallen out with him, he kept unbroken
+to the last his close friendship with Swift, Gay, Garth, Atterbury,
+Bolingbroke, and with Arbuthnot, for whose services in helping him through
+"this long disease, my life" he expressed a touchingly affectionate
+gratitude. If he had been the heartless little monster his enemies painted
+him he could not have felt so tireless and beautiful a love for his father
+and mother and, despite his own feebleness and shattered health, have
+devoted himself so assiduously to the care of his mother in her declining
+years. "O friend," he writes to Arbuthnot, in the Prologue to the
+Satires:--
+
+  "O friend, may each domestic bliss be thine!
+   Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:
+   Me let the tender office long engage
+   To rock the cradle of reposing age,
+   With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
+   Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,
+   Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
+   And keep a while one parent from the sky."
+
+All his life, Pope dwelt in London or on the skirts of it. He was
+twenty-eight when, soon after the death of his father in 1715, he leased
+the famous villa at Twickenham and took his mother to live with him there,
+and it was from there when she died, a very old lady of ninety-three, that
+on the 10th June 1783, he wrote to an artist friend the letter that
+enshrines his sorrow:--
+
+"As I know you and I naturally desire to see one another, I hoped that
+this day our wishes would have met and brought you hither. And this for
+the very reason which possibly might hinder your coming, that my poor
+mother is dead. I thank God her death was easy, as her life was innocent,
+and as it cost her not a groan or even a sigh, there is yet upon her
+countenance such an expression of tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure,
+that, far from horrid, it is even amiable to behold it. It would form the
+finest image of a saint expired that ever painter drew, and it would be
+the greatest obligation art could ever bestow on a friend if you could
+come and sketch it for me. I am sure if there be no prevalent obstacle you
+will leave every common business to do this; and I hope to see you this
+evening as late as you will, or to-morrow morning as early, before this
+winter flower is faded. I will defer her interment till to-morrow night. I
+know you love me or I would not have written this--I could not (at this
+time) have written at all. Adieu. May you die as happily."
+
+From Twickenham Pope made frequent visits to London, where he stayed in
+lodgings, or at the houses of friends; and in the last four or five years
+of his life, after Bolingbroke had settled down at Battersea, he put up as
+often as not at Bolingbroke House. Of his personal appearance at this date
+there are a good many records. One of his numerous lampooners, unkindly
+enough but very graphically, pictures him as--
+
+  "Meagre and wan, and steeple crowned,
+   His visage long, his shoulders round;
+   His crippled corse two spindle pegs
+   Support, instead of human legs;
+   His shrivelled skin's of dusty grain,
+   A cricket's voice, and monkey's brain."
+
+His old enemy, John Dennis, sneering at his hunched and drooping figure,
+described him as "a young, short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the god
+of love." He had to be laced up tightly in bodices made of stiff
+canvas, so that he might hold himself erect, and, says Dr. Johnson, "his
+stature was so low, that to bring him to a level with a common table it
+was necessary to raise his seat. But his face was not displeasing, and his
+eyes were animated and vivid." And here is Sir Joshua Reynolds's
+word-picture of him: "He was about four feet six inches high, very
+hump-backed and deformed. He wore a black coat, and, according to the
+fashion of that time, had on a little sword. He had a large and very fine
+eye, and a long, handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which
+are always found in the mouths of crooked persons, and the muscles which
+run across the cheek were so strongly marked that they seemed like small
+cords."
+
+[Illustration: ALEXANDER POPE]
+
+This is the queer, misshapen, pathetic little shape that haunts that
+old-world house in the yard at Battersea, and you may gather something of
+the life he lived there, and of the writing with which he busied himself
+in the cedar parlour, from these extracts out of two of his letters, both
+of which were written to Warburton:--
+
+    "_January 12, 1743-4._
+
+    "Of the public I can tell you nothing worthy of the reflection of a
+    reasonable man; and of myself only an account that would give you
+    pain; for my asthma has increased every week since you last heard from
+    me to the degree of confining me totally to the fireside; so that I
+    have hardly seen any of my friends but two (Lord and Lady
+    Bolingbroke), who happen to be divided from the world as much as
+    myself, and are constantly retired at Battersea. There I have passed
+    much of my time, and often wished you of the company, as the best I
+    know to make me not regret the loss of others, and to prepare me for a
+    nobler scene than any mortal greatness can open to us. I fear by the
+    account you gave me of the time you design to come this way, one of
+    them (Lord B.) whom I much wish you had a glimpse of (as a being
+    _paullo minus ab angelio_), will be gone again, unless you pass some
+    weeks in London before Mr. Allen arrives there in March. My present
+    indisposition takes up almost all my hours to render a very few of
+    them supportable; yet I go on softly to prepare the great edition of
+    my things with your notes, and as fast as I receive any from you, I
+    add others in order (determining to finish the Epistle to Dr.
+    Arbuthnot and two or three of the best of Horace, particularly that of
+    Augustus, first), which will fall into the same volume with the Essay
+    on Man. I determined to publish a small number of the Essay, and of
+    the other on Criticism, ere now, as a sample of the rest, but Bowyer
+    advised delay, though I now see I was not in the wrong."
+
+
+    _"February 21, 1743-4._
+
+    "I own that the late encroachments on my constitution make me willing
+    to see the end of all further care about me or my works. I would rest
+    from the one in a full resignation of my being to be disposed of by
+    the Father of all mercy, and for the other (though indeed a trifle,
+    yet a trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candour
+    of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every
+    short-sighted and malevolent critic or inadvertent and censorious
+    reader. And no hand can set them in so good a light, or so well turn
+    them best side to the day, as your own. This obliges me to confess I
+    have for some months thought myself going, and that not slowly, down
+    the hill--the rather as every attempt of the physicians, and still the
+    last medicines more forcible in their nature, have utterly failed to
+    serve me. I was at last, about seven days ago, taken with so violent a
+    fit at Battersea, that my friends, Lord Bolingbroke and Lord
+    Marchmont, sent for present help to the surgeon, whose bleeding me, I
+    am persuaded, saved my life by the instantaneous effect it had, and
+    which has continued so much to amend me that I have passed five days
+    without oppression, and recovered, what I have three days wanted, some
+    degree of expectoration and some hours together of sleep. I can now go
+    to Twickenham, to try if the air will not take some part in reviving
+    me, if I can avoid colds, and between that place and Battersea, with
+    my Lord Bolingbroke, I will pass what I have of life while he stays,
+    which I can tell you, to my great satisfaction, will be this fortnight
+    or three weeks yet."
+
+In the year after writing this Pope came to the end of all further care
+about himself and his works; he died at Twickenham, and lies buried under
+the middle aisle of Twickenham Church.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOGARTH
+
+
+Before he took up residence at the Twickenham villa, Pope lived for some
+time with his father in one of the houses of Mawson's Buildings (now
+Mawson Row), Chiswick. So far it has been impossible to decide which of
+these five red-brick houses is the one that was theirs, for the only
+evidence of their tenancy consists of certain letters preserved at the
+British Museum, which are addressed to "Alexr. Pope, Esquire, Mawson's
+Buildings, in Chiswick," and on the backs of these are written portions of
+the original drafts of Pope's translation of the Iliad. James Ralph, the
+unfortunate poetaster whom Pope satirised in his _Dunciad_, was also a
+native of Chiswick, and lies buried in the parish churchyard. One other
+link Pope has with Chiswick--he wrote a rather poor epigram on Thomas
+Wood, who resided there, and who seems to have been connected with the
+Church, for according to the poet--
+
+  "Tom Wood of Chiswick, deep divine,
+   To painter Kent gave all his coin;
+   'Tis the first coin, I'm bold to say,
+   That ever churchman gave away."
+
+This Kent, I take it, was the man of the same name who likewise lived at
+Chiswick in Pope's day, and was more notable as a landscape gardener than
+as a painter.
+
+[Illustration: POPE. MAWSON'S ROW CHISWICK.]
+
+But, to say nothing of William Morris's more recent association with the
+district, the most interesting house in Chiswick is Hogarth's. It is a
+red-brick villa of the Queen Anne style, with a quaint, overhanging bay
+window, and stands in a large, walled garden, not far from the parish
+church. For many years this was Hogarth's summer residence--his
+"villakin," as he called it. His workshop, or studio, that used to be at
+the foot of the garden, has been demolished; otherwise the house remains
+very much as it was when he occupied it.
+
+Hogarth was essentially a town man; he was almost, if not quite, as good a
+Londoner as Lamb. He was born in Bartholomew Close, West Smithfield, that
+storied place where Milton had lived before, and Washington Irving went to
+live after, him; and he spent nearly all his life in the neighbourhood of
+Leicester Square. He was rarely absent from London at all, and never for
+long; even when he was supposed to be passing his summers at his Chiswick
+villa, he made frequent excursions into town, and would put up for a few
+days at his house in Leicester Square--or Leicester Fields, as it then
+was.
+
+In 1712 Hogarth went to serve a six years' apprenticeship to Ellis Gamble,
+a silver-plate engraver, in Cranbourne Alley (now Cranbourne Street), and,
+on the death of his father in 1718, he started business for himself as an
+engraver in what had been his father's house in Long Lane, West
+Smithfield, and later removed to the corner of Cranbourne Alley, leaving
+his mother with his two sisters, who had opened shop as mercers, at the
+old Long Lane address. He engraved for them a shop card, duly setting
+forth that "Mary and Ann Hogarth, from the old Frock Shop, the corner of
+the Long Wall, facing the Cloysters, Removed to ye King's Arms joining to
+ye Little Britain Gate, near Long Walk, Sells ye best and most Fashionable
+Ready Made Frocks, Sutes of Fustian, Ticken, and Holland, Stript Dimity
+and Flanel Waistcoats, blue and canvas Frocks, and bluecoat Boys'
+Dra{rs.}, Likewise Fustians, Tickens, Hollands, white stript Dimitys,
+white and stript Flanels in ye piece, by Wholesale or Retale at Reasonable
+Rates."
+
+Hogarth was very self-satisfied and rather illiterate; his spelling and
+his grammar--as in this shop-card--were continually going wrong. But he
+was kindly, good-hearted, high-minded, and had imagination and an original
+genius that could laugh at the nice, mechanical accomplishments of the
+schoolmaster. It was Nollekens, the sculptor, who said that he frequently
+saw Hogarth sauntering round Leicester Square, playing the nurse, "with
+his master's sickly child hanging its head over his shoulder." That was in
+the early days, when he was still serving his time to Gamble, and not even
+dreaming, I suppose, that he would one day own the big house at the
+south-east corner of the Square, would enjoy some of his highest triumphs
+and sharpest humiliations in it, and die in it at last, leaving behind him
+work that would give him a place among the very first of English painters.
+
+Even before so fastidious a critic as Whistler had declared that Hogarth
+was "the greatest English artist who ever lived," Hazlitt had said much
+the same thing, and paid a glowing tribute to the vitality and dramatic
+life of his pictures; but perhaps no critic has written a finer, more
+incisive criticism on him than Lamb did in his essay on "The Genius and
+Character of Hogarth." Lamb had been familiar with two of Hogarth's series
+of prints--"The Harlot's Progress," and "The Rake's Progress"--since his
+boyhood; and though he was keenly alive to the humour of them, he denied
+that their chief appeal was to the risible faculties. It was their
+profound seriousness, their stern satire, the wonderful creative force
+that underlay them, that most impressed him. "I was pleased," he says,
+"with the reply of a gentleman who, being asked which book he most
+esteemed in his library, answered 'Shakespeare'; being asked which he
+esteemed next best, replied 'Hogarth.' His graphic representations are
+indeed books; they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of
+words. Other pictures we look at; his prints we read." He protests against
+confounding "the painting of subjects in common or vulgar life with the
+being a vulgar artist. The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into
+every picture would alone unvulgarise every subject he might choose. Let
+us take the lowest of his subjects, the print called 'Gin Lane.' Here is
+plenty of poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view; and
+accordingly a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and
+repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it.
+The same persons would, perhaps, have looked with great complacency upon
+Poussin's celebrated picture of the 'Plague of Athens.' Disease and death
+and bewildering terror in Athenian garments are endurable, and come, as
+the delicate critics express it, within the 'limits of pleasurable
+sensation.' But the scenes of their own St. Giles's, delineated by their
+own countryman, are too shocking to think of.... We are for ever deceiving
+ourselves with names and theories. We call one man a great historical
+painter because he has taken for his subjects kings or great men, or
+transactions over which time has thrown a grandeur. We term another the
+painter of common life, and set him down in our minds for an artist of an
+inferior class, without reflecting whether the quantity of thought shown
+by the latter may not much more than level the distinction which their
+mere choice of subjects may seem to place between them; or whether, in
+fact, from that very common life a great artist may not extract as deep an
+interest as another man from that which we are pleased to call history."
+He found that, though many of the pictures had much in them that is ugly
+and repellent, "there is in most of them that sprinkling of the better
+nature which, like holy water, chases away and disperses the contagion of
+the bad. They have this in them besides, that they bring us acquainted
+with the everyday human face." And because of this, of their truth to
+contemporary life, and the vigorous realism of the stories they tell, he
+ranked the work of Hogarth not only high among that of the world's great
+painters, but with the best novels of such men as Smollett and Fielding.
+
+According to a note in his fragmentary autobiography, Hogarth conceived an
+early admiration for the paintings of Sir James Thornhill, and, somewhere
+about 1727, he joined the painting school that Sir James established in
+the Piazza, at the corner of James Street, Covent Garden. And Sir James
+soon seems to have taken a particular interest in his pupil, and had him
+as a frequent visitor to his house at 75 Dean Street, Soho; and on March
+23rd, 1729, he eloped with his teacher's daughter, and they were married
+at old Paddington Church. There are paintings and decorations still to be
+seen on the walls of the Dean Street house, in some of which Hogarth is
+believed to have had a hand.
+
+After his marriage, Hogarth lived for a while at Lambeth; but it was not
+long before he was reconciled to his father-in-law. In 1730 he was
+engaged with Sir James Thornhill on their famous picture of "The House of
+Commons"; and a year later, when he was engraving his series of prints
+"The Harlot's Progress," he and his wife had apparently taken up quarters
+with Sir James in the Piazza.
+
+[Illustration: SIR JAMES THORNHILL. 75 DEAN STREET.]
+
+"The Harlot's Progress," and the issue of "The Rake's Progress" shortly
+afterwards, lifted Hogarth into fame. He began to move in better society,
+and was to be met with at the fashionable as well as at the Bohemian clubs
+of the day. He and Thornhill founded the Arts Club at the Turk's Head, in
+Gerrard Street; and, after the latter's death, he took over Thornhill's
+art school, and transferred it to Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane.
+Occasionally he visited Richardson, the novelist, in Salisbury Court; and
+it was here he first made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson. He struck up a
+friendship with Garrick, too, and painted several portraits of him, for
+one of which he received two hundred pounds; and with Fielding, of whom he
+has given us the only portrait we possess.
+
+By 1733 Hogarth was prosperous enough to take the house in Leicester
+Square that was pulled down, in 1870, to furnish a site for the Archbishop
+Tenison School that has replaced it; and in 1749, "having sacrificed
+enough to his fame and fortune," he purchased the villa at Chiswick as a
+summer holiday home, and became a familiar figure about the Chiswick lanes
+from time to time--"a blue-eyed, intelligent little man, with a scar over
+his right eye, and wearing a fur cap." Allan Cunningham furnishes a more
+vivid description of his personal appearance in his _Lives of the
+Painters_, where he says he was "rather below the middle height; his eye
+was peculiarly bright and piercing; his look shrewd, sarcastic, and
+intelligent; the forehead high and round. He was active in person,
+bustling in manner, and fond of affecting a little state and importance.
+He was of a temper cheerful, joyous, and companionable, fond of mirth and
+good-fellowship." Benjamin West called him a strutting, consequential
+little man; and, one way and another, we know that he was sturdy,
+obstinate, pugnacious, and that once he thrashed a ruffian whom he found
+maltreating the beautiful drummeress that he sketched in his picture of
+Southwark Fair. Possibly that scar over his right eye was a record of this
+chivalrous deed.
+
+There are very few records of his home life, and these are of the
+homeliest, most ordinary sort. He was fond of smoking, and the arm-chair,
+in which he was wont to sit with his pipe, is still preserved at Chiswick.
+He had a favourite dog, a pet cat, and a bullfinch, which he buried in his
+Chiswick garden, commemorating them with tablets that have now vanished
+from the wall, the bird's epitaph being "Alas, poor Dick!" and the dog's,
+"Life to the last enjoyed, here Pompey lies"--which parodies a line in the
+_Candidate_, by that dissipated, brilliant satirist, Charles Churchill:
+"Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies."
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH'S HOUSE. CHISWICK.]
+
+The _Candidate_ was published at the beginning of 1764, and on the 25th
+October of that year Hogarth died. Churchill had been a warm friend of
+his, but before the end had become one of his bitterest enemies--that
+enmity arising in this wise. In 1762 Hogarth published a political print
+called the _Times_, in which he supported the policy of Lord Bute, and
+ridiculed Pitt, Temple, and Wilkes. By way of retaliation, Wilkes wrote a
+scathing attack upon Hogarth in his paper, the _North Briton_, in which he
+made a sneering reference to Mrs. Hogarth. This stirred Hogarth to anger;
+and when Wilkes was presently arrested on a charge of high treason, he sat
+in court and sketched the prisoner, immortalising his villainous squint,
+and accentuating all the worst qualities in his features. On this print
+making its appearance, Churchill, a staunch friend and partisan of Wilkes,
+took up the cudgels, and scarified Hogarth without mercy in _An Epistle to
+William Hogarth_ (1763), praising his art, but pouring contempt upon his
+envy and self-esteem, and affecting to believe that he was in his
+dotage. He can laud the genius, he says, but not the man.
+
+                          "Freely let him wear
+  The wreath which Genius wove and planted there:
+  Foe as I am, should envy tear it down,
+  Myself would labour to replace the crown....
+  Hogarth unrivalled stands, and shall engage
+  Unrivalled praise to the most distant age."
+
+But for the man--
+
+  "Hogarth, stand forth--I dare thee to be tried
+   In that great Court where Conscience must preside;
+   At that most solemn bar hold up thy hand;
+   Think before whom, on what account you stand;
+   Speak, but consider well;--from first to last
+   Review thy life, weigh every action past.
+   Canst thou remember from thy earliest youth,
+   And as thy God must judge thee, speak the truth,
+   A single instance where, self laid aside,
+   And Justice taking place of Fear and Pride,
+   Thou with an equal eye didst Genius view,
+   And give to Merit what was Merit's due?
+   Genius and Merit are a sure offence,
+   And thy soul sickens at the name of sense.
+   Is any one so foolish to succeed?
+   On Envy's altar he is doomed to bleed;
+   Hogarth, a guilty pleasure in his eyes,
+   The place of executioner supplies;
+   See how he gloats, enjoys the sacred feast,
+   And proves himself by cruelty a priest....
+     Oft have I known thee, Hogarth, weak and vain,
+   Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain,
+   Through the dull measure of a summer's day,
+   In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away,
+   Whilst friends with friends all gaping sit, and gaze,
+   To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth's praise....
+     With all the symptoms of assured decay,
+   With age and sickness pinched and worn away,
+   Pale quivering lips, lank cheeks, and faltering tongue,
+   The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung,
+   The body shrivelled up, the dim eyes sunk
+   Within their sockets deep, thy weak hams shrunk,
+   The body's weight unable to sustain,
+   The stream of life scarce trembling through the vein,
+   More than half killed by honest truths which fell,
+   Through thy own fault, from men who wished thee well--
+   Canst thou, e'en thus, thy thoughts to vengeance give
+   And, dead to all things else, to malice live?
+   Hence, dotard, to thy closet; shut thee in;
+   By deep repentance wash away thy sin;
+   From haunts of men to shame and sorrow fly,
+   And, on the verge of death, learn how to die!"
+
+Hurt and deeply mortified, a month later Hogarth satirised Churchill's
+former connection with the Church and present loose living in a caricature
+which represented him as a bear wearing torn clerical bands, with ruffles
+on his paws, in one hand a pot of porter, and in the other a bundle of
+lies and copies of the _North Briton_. Garrick had heard that Churchill
+was making ready to issue that vitriolic satire of his, and hastened to
+beg him, "by the regard you profess to me, that you don't tilt at my
+friend Hogarth before you see me. He is a great and original genius. I
+love him as a man, and reverence him as an artist. I would not for all the
+politics and politicians in the universe that you two should have the
+least cause of ill-will to each other. I am sure you will not publish
+against him if you think twice." One could honour Garrick if it were for
+nothing else but that letter; but it was written in vain, and the
+exasperation and humiliation that Hogarth suffered under Churchill's lash
+are said to have hastened his death. He had been broken in health and
+ailing all through the summer of 1764, but took several plates down to
+his Chiswick villa with him for retouching, and--possibly with some
+foreboding of his own approaching dissolution--drew for a new volume of
+his prints a tailpiece depicting "the end of all things."
+
+[Illustration: THE BAY WINDOW. HOGARTH'S HOUSE.]
+
+But he could not be satisfied to keep away from London, and on 25th
+October was conveyed from Chiswick to his house in Leicester Square, "very
+weak," says Nichols, "but remarkably cheerful, and, receiving an agreeable
+letter from Dr. Franklin" (Benjamin Franklin was, by the way, dwelling at
+this time in Bartholomew Close; he did not remove to 7 Craven Street,
+Strand, until three years later), "he drew up a rough draft of an answer
+to it; but, going to bed, was seized with a vomiting, upon which he rang
+the bell with such violence that he broke it, and expired about two hours
+afterwards in the arms of Mrs. Mary Lewis, who was called up on his being
+suddenly taken ill."
+
+He was buried in Chiswick Churchyard; and in 1771 his friends erected a
+monument over him, the epitaph on which was written by Garrick:--
+
+  "Farewell, great Painter of Mankind,
+     Who reached the noblest point of Art,
+   Whose pictured morals charm the Mind,
+     And through the eye correct the Heart.
+
+   If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay;
+     If Nature touch thee, drop a tear;
+   If neither move thee, turn away,
+     For Hogarth's honoured dust lies here."
+
+Garrick sent his verses to Dr. Johnson, who frankly criticised them, and
+offered him a revised version, the first lines of which were a distinct
+improvement:--
+
+  "The hand of Art here torpid lies
+     That traced the essential form of Grace;
+   Here Death has closed the curious eyes
+     That saw the manners in the face."...
+
+Garrick preferred his own composition, slightly altered, as it now
+appears; but Johnson's was certainly the better effort of the two.
+
+Mrs. Hogarth retained possession of the Leicester Square house until her
+death in 1789, but she resided principally at Chiswick. Sir Richard
+Phillips saw her there, when he was a boy, and had vivid recollections of
+her as a stately old lady, wheeled to the parish church on Sundays in a
+bath-chair, and sailing in up the nave with her raised head-dress, silk
+sacque, black calash, and crutched cane, accompanied by a relative (the
+Mary Lewis who was with Hogarth when he died), and preceded by her
+grey-haired man-servant, Samuel, who carried her prayer-books, and, after
+she was seated, shut the pew door on her.
+
+From 1824 to 1826 the Hogarth villa was inhabited by the Rev. H. F. Cary,
+the translator of Dante, who was one of Charles Lamb's many friends, and
+wrote the feeble epitaph that is on his tomb at Edmonton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GOLDSMITH, REYNOLDS, AND SOME OF THEIR CIRCLE
+
+
+One of Sir James Thornhill's illustrious sitters was Sir Isaac Newton, who
+lived within a stone's throw of Hogarth's London house, just round the
+corner out of Leicester Square, at No. 35 St. Martin's Street. Here Sir
+Isaac made his home from 1720 to 1725. The red brick walls have been
+stuccoed over; and the observatory that the philosopher built for himself
+on the roof, after being turned into a Sunday-school, was removed about
+forty years ago, and helped to supply pews for the Orange Street Chapel
+that stands next door.
+
+The greatest of Newton's work was done before he set up in St. Martin's
+Street, but he told a friend that the happiest years of his life had been
+spent in the observatory there. Though he kept his carriage, lived in some
+style, had half-a-dozen male and female servants, and was always
+hospitable, he was not fond of society, and talked but little in it.
+Johnson once remarked to Sir William Jones that if Newton had flourished
+in ancient Greece, he would have been worshipped as a divinity, but there
+was nothing godlike in his appearance. "He was a man of no very promising
+aspect," says Herne; and Humphrey Newton describes his famous relative as
+of a carriage "meek, sedate, and humble; never seeming angry, of
+profound thought, his countenance mild, pleasant, and comely. He always
+kept close to his studies.... I never knew him to take any recreation or
+pastime, thinking all hours lost that were not spent in his studies."
+There are a good many stories told of his eccentricities and
+absent-mindedness. He would ride through London in his coach with one arm
+out of the window on one side and one out on the other; he would sometimes
+start to get up of a morning and sit down on his bed, absorbed in thought,
+and so remain for hours without dressing himself; and, when his dinner was
+laid, he would walk about the room, forgetting to eat it, and carelessly
+eat it standing when his attention was called to it. On one occasion, when
+he was leading his horse up a hill, he found, when he went to remount on
+reaching the top, that the animal had slipped its bridle and stayed behind
+without his perceiving it, and he had nothing in his hand but some of the
+harness. "When he had friends to entertain," according to Dr. Stukeley,
+"if he went into his study to fetch a bottle of wine, there was danger of
+his forgetting them," and not coming back again. And it is told of this
+same Dr. Stukeley that he called one day to see Newton, and was shown into
+the dining-room, where Sir Isaac's dinner was in readiness. After a long
+wait, feeling hungry as well as impatient, Stukeley ate the cold chicken
+intended for his host, and left nothing but the bones. By-and-by Sir Isaac
+entered, made his greetings and apologies, and, whilst they were talking,
+drew a chair to the table, took off the dish-cover, and at sight of the
+bones merely observed placidly, "How absent we philosophers are! I had
+forgotten that I had dined!"
+
+[Illustration: SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S HOUSE. ST. MARTIN'S STREET. W.C.]
+
+Later, this same house in St. Martin's Street was occupied by Dr. Burney
+and his daughter Fanny, who wrote _Evelina_ here.
+
+Near by, in Leicester Square again, on the opposite side, and almost
+exactly facing Hogarth's residence, was the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
+From 1753 to 1761 Sir Joshua lived at 5 Great Newport Street, which was
+built in Charles II.'s days, and is still standing. It is now and has for
+a century past been occupied by a firm of art dealers; so that it happens
+from time to time that a picture of Reynolds's is here put up for sale,
+"on the very spot where it was painted." But in the crowning years of his
+career--from 1761 till his death, in 1792--Sir Joshua dwelt at 42
+Leicester Square, and what was formerly his studio there has been
+transformed into one of Messrs. Puttick and Simpson's auction rooms. Here
+is Allan Cunningham's description of it, and of the painter's method of
+work: "His study was octagonal, some twenty feet long by sixteen broad,
+and about fifteen feet high. The window was small and square, and the sill
+nine feet from the floor. His sitters' chair moved on castors, and stood
+above the floor about a foot and a half. He held his palette by the
+handle, and the sticks of his brushes were eighteen inches long. He
+wrought standing, and with great celerity. He rose early, breakfasted at
+nine, entered his study at ten, examined designs or touched unfinished
+portraits, till eleven brought him a sitter; painted till four, then
+dressed, and gave the evenings to company."
+
+[Illustration: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS' HOUSE. GREAT NEWPORT STREET.]
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE. 41 LEICESTER SQUARE.]
+
+And to the best of good company too. By day, the chariot of a duke or a
+marchioness might drive to his door, and return later to wait for his
+lordship or her ladyship, who was occupying the sitter's chair, while Sir
+Joshua was busy at his easel; but of an evening he would have such men as
+Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith, Garrick, Burke (who was living close at
+hand, in Gerrard Street) gathered about his dinner-table; for in spite of
+his deafness he was the very soul of sociability. He never got out of his
+naturally careless, Bohemian habits. He was the favourite portrait-painter
+of the fashionable world, but mixed with the aristocracy without apeing
+any of their etiquette. "There was something singular in the style and
+economy of Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and
+good-humour; a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and
+arrangement," according to Courtenay. "A table prepared for seven or
+eight was often compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen. When this
+pressing difficulty was got over, a deficiency of knives, plates, forks,
+and glasses succeeded. The attendance was in the same style; and it was
+absolutely necessary to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that you
+might be supplied with them before the first course was over. He was once
+prevailed on to furnish the table with decanters and glasses at dinner, to
+save time and prevent the tardy manoeuvres of two or three occasional,
+undisciplined domestics. As these accelerating utensils were demolished in
+the course of service, Sir Joshua would never be persuaded to replace
+them. But these trifling embarrassments only served to enhance the
+hilarity and singular pleasure of the entertainment. The wines, cookery,
+and dishes were but little attended to; nor was the fish or venison ever
+talked of or recommended. Amidst this convivial, animated bustle among his
+guests, our host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to what was
+said, never minding what was ate or drunk, but left every one at perfect
+liberty to scramble for himself. Temporal and spiritual peers, physicians,
+lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the motley group, and played their
+parts without dissonance or discord."
+
+[Illustration: SIR BENJAMIN WEST'S HOUSE. NEWMAN STREET.]
+
+He was so imperturbable and easy-natured that Dr. Johnson said if he ever
+quarrelled with him he would find it most difficult to know how to abuse
+him; and even the sharp-tongued Mrs. Thrale praised his peaceful temper,
+and considered that of him "all good should be said, and no harm." He
+shared Hogarth's contempt for the old masters; but, unlike Hogarth, he
+was not loud and aggressive in his objections to them.
+
+  "When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,
+   He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff."
+
+It was on Reynolds's suggestion that he and Johnson founded, in 1763, what
+later became celebrated as the Literary Club. They held their first
+meetings at the Turk's Head (where Hogarth and Thornhill had previously
+established their Art Club), and among the original members were Burke,
+Langton, Beauclerk, Goldsmith, and Sir John Hawkins. The latter, an arrant
+snob, objected to Goldsmith's election on the ground that he was "a mere
+literary drudge," but his protest carried no weight with the rest. Five
+years later, when, under the patronage of the king, Reynolds inaugurated
+the Royal Academy, Johnson was appointed its first Professor of Ancient
+Literature, and Goldsmith its first Professor of History, Reynolds himself
+being its first President--in which office, on his death in 1792, he was
+succeeded by Benjamin West. West was an American, and had won a
+considerable reputation in his own country before he came over and settled
+down in England. He was introduced to Johnson and Reynolds, and was for
+some time a neighbour of Sir Joshua's, in Castle Street, Leicester Square.
+But he is more closely associated with the house that still stands at 14
+Newman Street, Oxford Street, in which he lived and worked for forty-five
+years, and in which he died.
+
+A far greater contemporary painter, who moved on the fringes of Sir
+Joshua's circle, was Gainsborough. That he did not come familiarly into
+the circle, and sometimes make one of the memorable company that gathered
+round Reynolds's dinner-table, was owing to some lack of geniality in
+himself, that kept him from responding to Sir Joshua's friendly advances.
+He came from Bath to London in 1774, when he was forty-seven years of age,
+took a studio at Schonberg House, Pall Mall, and it was not long before
+celebrities and leaders of fashion were flocking to it to sit for their
+portraits, and he was recognised as a successful rival of Reynolds.
+Reynolds was so far from feeling jealousy or resentment that he promptly
+paid his popular rival a visit; but Gainsborough did not trouble himself
+to return the call. No doubt it was to some extent owing to Reynolds, too,
+that in the year of his appearance in London he was elected to the council
+of management of the Royal Academy; but he ignored the honour, did not
+attend any meetings, and sent nothing to the exhibition. Reynolds was
+frankly outspoken in his admiration of Gainsborough's work, and was even
+anxious to have his own portrait painted by him. After some delay
+appointments were fixed, and Sir Joshua duly went to Schonberg House, and
+the painting was commenced. But after the first sitting he was taken ill;
+and when, on his recovery, he wrote to tell Gainsborough that he was ready
+to come again, he received no reply, and the portrait had to remain an
+unfinished sketch.
+
+His coldness to Reynolds is inexplicable, for he was a kindly-disposed
+man, and sociable. He kept almost open house in Pall Mall, and such jovial
+spirits as the Sheridans, Colman, and Garrick were among the constant
+guests at his table.
+
+[Illustration: GAINSBOROUGH'S HOUSE. PALL MALL.]
+
+The year after Gainsborough's coming to London, Sheridan's _Rivals_ was
+produced at the Covent Garden Theatre, to be followed two years after by
+_The School for Scandal_. Before he was out of his twenties Sheridan had
+finished his career as a dramatist, turned to politics, and was one of the
+most brilliant of Parliamentary orators, still remaining principal
+proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre. All his life he was living beyond his
+income, borrowing, getting into debt, and dodging duns and bailiffs with
+the gayest imperturbability. Everybody liked him, and was susceptible to
+his charm. Wherever the wits foregathered, he was the best drinker, the
+best talker, and the wittiest among them. Byron writes of him in his
+_Diary_: "What a wreck that man is! and all from bad pilotage; for no one
+had ever better gales, though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear
+Sherry! I shall never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed
+together; when he talked and we listened, without one yawn, from six till
+one in the morning." In a letter to Moore, Byron records a dinner at which
+Sheridan, Colman, and a large party were present, and at the finish, when
+they were all the worse for drink, "Kinnaird and I had to conduct Sheridan
+down a damned corkscrew staircase, which had certainly been constructed
+before the discovery of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however
+crooked, could possibly accommodate themselves. We deposited him safe at
+home, where his man, evidently used to the business, waited to receive him
+in the hall."
+
+This was in October 1815, and 14 Savile Row is the house at which Sheridan
+was thus deposited by his noble friend. He was then an old man of
+sixty-four, and a year later he died there, five thousand pounds in debt,
+and only saved, by the emphatic intervention of the doctor who was
+attending him, from being arrested by bailiffs as he lay dying, and
+carried off to a sponging-house in his blankets.
+
+The year that brought Gainsborough to London (1774) was also the year of
+Goldsmith's death; and I want to get back to Goldsmith for a little, in
+this chapter, and to say something of Richardson. For it is curiously
+interesting to note how the lives of all these famous men, though there
+was little enough in common between some of them, met at certain points
+and established certain connecting links between them; so that it is
+possible, as Leigh Hunt has said somewhere, to trace a sort of genealogy
+of such acquaintanceships, such notable meetings and touchings of "beamy
+hands," coming down in an unbroken line from Shakespeare to our own day.
+
+Thus, Hogarth first met Johnson in Richardson's parlour at Salisbury
+Court; and, in 1757, Goldsmith was employed by Richardson, and worked on
+his printing premises, in the same court, as reader and corrector to the
+press; and these, and most of the other immortals named in this
+chapter--including Sheridan, though he was then so young a man that he
+outlived them all, and counts among the friends of Lord Byron--have a
+common link in Dr. Johnson, who was so great a Londoner that he must needs
+have a chapter presently to himself, or one that he shall share with none
+but the inevitable Boswell.
+
+Whilst Goldsmith was working as one of his employees, Richardson was
+not only a prosperous printer, he was already the most popular novelist of
+his day. _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_ had
+carried his fame throughout the kingdom and beyond it, and were drawing
+rapturous admiration and tears of sentiment from countless admirers in
+France as well as in England; and, as befitted a man of his means and
+eminence, he had supplemented his house off Fleet Street with a country
+residence at Parson's Green, where he died in 1761. Down to 1754, however,
+his country house was The Grange, at North End, Fulham, then a pretty,
+old-world spot,--"the pleasantest village within ten miles of London." And
+it was here that all his novels were written; for he took The Grange in
+1738, and _Pamela_ appeared in 1740, and _Sir Charles Grandison_ in 1753.
+Here, too, he used to give large literary parties, to which Johnson
+occasionally went with Boswell. But whatever other authors were there, you
+may safely depend that Fielding was never among the guests; for with all
+his high morality Richardson was intolerably self-complacent and vain, and
+never forgave Fielding for burlesquing Pamela as "Shamela," and parodying
+her impossible virtues in _Joseph Andrews_.
+
+[Illustration: SHERIDAN'S HOUSE. SAVILE ROW.]
+
+Boswell gives two good anecdotes illustrative of Richardson's fretful
+vanity and the limits of his conversational powers. "Richardson had little
+conversation," he says Johnson once remarked to him, "except about his own
+works, of which Sir Joshua Reynolds said he was always willing to talk,
+and glad to have them introduced. Johnson, when he carried Mr. Langton to
+see him, professed that he could bring him out in conversation, and used
+this illusive expression: 'Sir, I can make him _rear_.' But he failed; for
+in that interview Richardson said little else than that there lay in the
+room a translation of his _Clarissa_ into German." And in a footnote to
+this Boswell adds: "A literary lady has favoured me with a characteristic
+anecdote of Richardson. One day at his country house at North End, where a
+large company was assembled at dinner, a gentleman who was just returned
+from Paris, willing to please Mr. Richardson, mentioned to him a very
+flattering circumstance--that he had seen his _Clarissa_ lying on the
+king's brother's table. Richardson, observing that part of the company
+were engaged in talking to each other, affected not to attend to it. But
+by-and-by, when there was a general silence, and he thought that the
+flattery might be fully heard, he addressed himself to the gentleman, 'I
+think, sir, you were saying something about--' pausing in a high flutter
+of expectation. The gentleman, provoked at his inordinate vanity, resolved
+not to indulge it, and with an exquisitely sly air of indifference
+remarked, 'A mere trifle, sir, not worth repeating.' The mortification of
+Richardson was visible, and he did not speak ten words more the whole day.
+Dr. Johnson was present, and appeared to enjoy it much."
+
+[Illustration: PUMP COURT. TEMPLE.]
+
+While Fielding was roystering in the wild haunts of Bohemian London,
+gambling at his club, reeling home to his chambers in Pump Court, and
+writing his novels in odds and ends of soberer time, Richardson was
+methodically composing his books at Fulham, getting up early of summer
+mornings, working at his manuscript in the little summer-house that he
+had built in his garden, then reading over breakfast to the worshipping
+members of his family the results of his morning's labour. Wherever he
+went, groups of adoring ladies were sure to gather about him, to chatter
+fervently of their delight in his interminable stories; and he snuffed up
+their incense with a solemn and self-satisfied joy, for he took himself as
+seriously as he was taken by them, and never felt that he was ridiculous,
+even when he looked it. Not infrequently he would sit in his drawing-room
+at The Grange, or in the summer-house, surrounded by a rapt audience of
+feminine believers, who wept as he read aloud to them of the sufferings
+and heroic virtue of Pamela, or the persecutions of the gentle Clarissa.
+You cannot think of it without imagining there, in one of the rooms, the
+comfortable, obese, touchy, rather pompous, double-chinned little
+gentleman, in his fair wig and dark coat, an ink-horn set in the arm of
+his chair with a quill sticking out of it, one hand thrust into the front
+of his waistcoat, the book or manuscript in his hand, reading gravely and
+deliberately his long, minute dissections of character, his elaborate
+descriptions of events and incidents, his formal dialogues, pleased when
+his stilted sentiment or simple sentimentality brought tears to the eyes
+of his listeners, and not ashamed to shed one or two with them.
+
+He drew a word-portrait of himself for Lady Bradshaigh, which is fairly
+well known but is worth repeating, and, judging by the portraits we have
+of him, is a fairly true one. He paints himself as "short, rather plump,
+about five feet five inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom,
+the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat
+that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support when attacked by sudden
+tremors or dizziness, which too frequently attack him, but, thank God! not
+so often as formerly; looking directly forthright, as passers-by would
+imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand of him without moving
+his short neck; hardly ever turning back; of a light-brown complexion,
+teeth not yet failing him; smooth faced, and ruddy cheeked; at some times
+looking to be about sixty-five, at other times much younger; a regular,
+even pace, stealing away the ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey
+eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head; by chance
+lively--very lively it will be, if he have hope of seeing a lady whom he
+loves and honours."
+
+[Illustration: RICHARDSON'S HOUSE. NORTH END FULHAM.]
+
+Richardson's summer-house is long since gone from the garden, and long ago
+now The Grange was divided in two, and in the half that has been
+stucco-fronted Burne-Jones went to live in 1867, dying there in 1898.
+
+Five years after Goldsmith had given up proofreading for Richardson, you
+find him still drudging amid the squalor of Grub Street, still living from
+hand to mouth, writing reviews and prefaces, revising and preparing new
+editions of dull books on dull subjects, for a sum of twenty-one pounds
+compiling a two-volume _History of England_ in the form of a series of
+letters, and generally subduing his heart and mind to the doing of the
+wretched hack-work to which the impecunious literary man in all ages has
+usually been condemned.
+
+His new taskmaster was Mr. Newbery the publisher, and he was living, in
+those days of 1762, in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street; but the publisher
+was not altogether ungenerous, and made arrangements that enabled his poor
+hack to leave town at intervals and work in the fresh air and rural
+environment of Islington. Newbery had chambers of his own there in
+Canonbury Tower, and Goldsmith used to put up at a cottage near by that
+was kept by an elderly Mrs. Fleming, a friend or relative of Newbery's,
+his bills for board and lodging being periodically settled by his
+employer, who deducted the amount of them from whatever fell due to
+Goldsmith from time to time for work done. Fortunately Mrs. Fleming's
+accounts have been preserved, and we get an idea of Goldsmith's wardrobe
+from her washing-lists, and learn from the items she carefully details
+that she now and then lent him small sums in cash--tenpence one day, and
+one and twopence another; that occasionally, when he had a friend to
+dinner, though she duly noted it, she ostentatiously made no charge;
+but when four gentlemen came to take tea with him, she debited him with
+eighteenpence.
+
+[Illustration: GOLDSMITH'S HOUSE. CANONBURY.]
+
+Probably one of those friends who had a free dinner was Hogarth, for he
+travelled out to Islington occasionally on a visit to Goldsmith; and there
+is a painting of his which is known as "Goldsmith's Hostess," and is
+believed to be none other than Mrs. Fleming's portrait.
+
+You remember Boswell's story of how _The Vicar of Wakefield_ saved
+Goldsmith from imprisonment for debt. "I received one morning a letter
+from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress," Johnson told him,
+"and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come
+to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to
+him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that
+his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent
+passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a
+bottle of madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork in the bottle,
+desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which
+he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the
+press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit. I
+told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller,
+sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged
+his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used
+him so ill." Everything points to Mrs. Fleming as that harsh landlady, and
+the lodging in her cottage at Islington as the scene of that famous
+interlude. The presumption is that Goldsmith had incurred a much heavier
+liability to her than was covered by what was accruing to him for his
+services to Newbery, as a result of his giving time to the writing of _The
+Vicar of Wakefield_ that should have been devoted to his usual drudgery;
+and the cautious Newbery declined to make further advances, and advised
+his relative, the landlady, to adopt summary methods for the recovery of
+her debt. Goldsmith never lodged with Mrs. Fleming after that date; but
+later, when Newbery took a lease of Canonbury Tower, he was from time to
+time a guest there, and occupied a room in the turret. During one of these
+visits he wrote _The Traveller_; and in later years Charles Lamb often
+walked across from his Islington home to the Tower to watch the sunset
+from the summit, and to be entertained by the tenant of it in the panelled
+chamber where Goldsmith's poem was written.
+
+It was with the publication of _The Traveller_ that Goldsmith began to
+emerge from Grub Street. Its success was considerable enough to lead to
+the publisher's looking out the manuscript of _The Vicar of Wakefield_,
+and issuing that also; and in 1768, having made five hundred pounds by the
+production and publishing of _The Good-natured Man_, he removed from an
+attic in the Staircase, Inner Temple, and purchased a lease of three rooms
+on the second floor of 2 Brick Court, Temple. Blackstone, the lawyer, then
+working on his _Commentaries_, had chambers immediately below him, and
+complained angrily of the distracting noises--the singing, dancing, and
+playing blind-man's-buff--that went on over his head when Goldsmith was
+entertaining his friends.
+
+[Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH]
+
+Pale, round-faced, plain-featured, with a bulging forehead and an ugly,
+long upper lip, there was more of kindness and geniality than of dignity
+or intellect in Goldsmith's appearance. "His person was short," says
+Boswell, who was jealous of his friendship with Johnson, and never
+realised how great he was, "his countenance was coarse and vulgar, his
+deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. Those
+who were in any way distinguished excited envy in him to so ridiculous an
+excess that the instances of it are hardly credible." But Boswell
+misjudged him because, conceited and petty himself, he easily read those
+qualities into the behaviour of the other, and so misunderstood him.
+Goldsmith may have had some harmless vanity in the matter of dress, when
+he could afford to indulge it; but as for vanity of his achievements, that
+speaking of poetry as
+
+  "My shame in crowds, my solitary pride,"
+
+is the spontaneous confession of a naturally shy and diffident spirit.
+When a man has been buffeted as he had been, has had to slave so hard and
+wait so long for his reward as he had slaved and waited, he accepts the
+fame that comes to him merely as wages well earned, and is not likely to
+grow swollen-headed concerning it. And for his envious character--here is
+what Boswell gives as a specimen of it. Johnson had come from an
+unexpected interview with the king, and a party of friends at Sir Joshua
+Reynolds's house in Leicester Square were gathered about him pressing for
+a full account of what had taken place. During all the time that Johnson
+was employed in this narration, remarks Boswell, "Dr. Goldsmith remained
+unmoved upon a sofa at some distance, affecting not to join in the least
+in the eager curiosity of the company. He assigned as a reason for his
+gloom and seeming inattention that he apprehended Johnson had relinquished
+his purpose of furnishing him with a prologue to his play, with the hopes
+of which he had been flattered; but it was strongly suspected that he was
+fretting with chagrin and envy at the singular honour Dr. Johnson had
+lately enjoyed. At length, the frankness and simplicity of his natural
+character prevailed. He sprung from the sofa, advanced to Johnson, and in
+a kind of flutter from imagining himself in the situation which he had
+just been hearing described, exclaimed, 'Well, you acquitted yourself in
+this conversation better than I should have done; for I should have bowed
+and stammered through the whole of it.'" Naturally this talk with the king
+would not seem such a breathlessly overwhelming honour to such a man as
+Goldsmith as to such a snob as Boswell. It was in keeping with Goldsmith's
+nature that he should sit quietly listening and imagining the whole thing
+as he heard about it, instead of fussing round open-mouthed to pester the
+narrator with trivial questions; but Boswell was incapable of realising
+this.
+
+[Illustration: 2 BRICK COURT. THE TEMPLE.]
+
+When Boswell, in his toadying spirit, was saying that in any conversation
+Johnson was entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority, and
+Goldsmith, with a truer conception of the art and pleasure of social
+intercourse, replied, "Sir, you are for making a monarchy of what should
+be a republic," Boswell took it as another proof of Goldsmith's envy, and
+of his "incessant desire of being conspicuous in company." He goes on
+to say: "He was still more mortified when, talking in a company with
+fluent vivacity and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all who
+were present, a German who sat next to him, and perceived Johnson rolling
+himself as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, 'Stay, stay!
+Toctor Shonson is going to say something!' This was no doubt very
+provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who frequently
+mentioned it with strong expressions of indignation." A vain man would
+not have mentioned it frequently, but a man with Goldsmith's sense of fun
+would be tickled by it, and rejoice to tell it as a joke against himself,
+simulating indignation to heighten the jest. When he heard that jape at
+Sir Joshua's table of taking peas to Hammersmith because that was the way
+to Turn'am Green, and afterwards retelling it muddled the phrase and made
+nonsense of it, Boswell offers it as further evidence that he was a
+blundering fool. But it is more likely that he blundered on purpose,
+merely to raise a laugh, that being his queer, freakish fashion of humour.
+But the Laird of Auchinleck and some of the others were too staid and
+heavy to follow his nimble wits in their grotesque and airy dancings.
+
+[Illustration: STAIRS UP TO SECOND FLOOR. 2 BRICK COURT.]
+
+Why, even the egregious Boswell has to admit that "Goldsmith, however, was
+often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the lists
+with Johnson himself." And once, when Johnson observed, "It is amazing how
+little Goldsmith knows; he seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than
+any one else," Reynolds put in quietly, "Yet there is no man whose company
+is more liked"; and the Doctor promptly admitted that, saying, "When
+people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their
+inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them." But
+that did not fully explain why he was liked, of course; and what Johnson
+added as to "what Goldsmith comically says of himself" shows that Goldie
+knew his own weaknesses, and was amused by them. Lamb would have
+understood him and laughed with him, for he loved to frivol and play the
+fool in the same vein. When he was dead, Johnson said he was "a very
+great man"; and don't you think there is some touch of remorse in that
+later remark of his, that the partiality of Goldsmith's friends was always
+against him, and "it was with difficulty we could give him a hearing"?
+
+[Illustration: GOLDSMITH'S GRAVE.]
+
+When he lay dead in his chambers at 2 Brick Court, as Forster relates, the
+staircase was filled with mourners the reverse of domestic--"women without
+a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had
+come to weep for; outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom
+he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. And he had domestic
+mourners, too. His coffin was reopened at the request of Miss Horneck and
+her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for them), that a
+lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn's possession when she
+died, after nearly seventy years." When Burke was told that Goldsmith was
+dead, he burst into tears; and when the news reached Reynolds in his
+Leicester Square painting-room, he laid his brush aside--a thing he had
+not been known to do even in times of great family distress--left his
+study, and entered it no more that day. A vain and envious fool is not
+mourned in that fashion.
+
+"I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which were his,"
+writes Thackeray, "and passed up the staircase which Johnson and Burke and
+Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith--the
+stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that
+the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak
+door."
+
+No. 2 Brick Court would be memorable enough if it held no other memory;
+but in 1839 Mackworth Praed died in the same house, and for a short time
+in 1855 Thackeray too had chambers in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HOMES AND HAUNTS OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL
+
+
+If we were not quite such a business people, and had not so fully
+satisfied ourselves that the making of money is the chief end of
+existence, we should put up a statue to Dr. Johnson in Fleet Street, even
+if we had to knock down a house or two to find room for it. The statue by
+Mr. Percy Fitzgerald that has been erected in St. Clement Danes
+Churchyard, in the Strand, is better than nothing, but it is too
+insignificant in appearance, and stands in the wrong place. Johnson is
+still so far removed from death that he is more alive to-day than when he
+was living, and Fleet Street, and the courts and alleys opening out of
+Fleet Street, are his proper kingdom. Other great spirits haunt the same
+ground, but he overshadows them all.
+
+At one time or another during the later forty-seven years of his life
+Johnson had sixteen different addresses in London, and six of them were in
+Fleet Street byways. On his first visit to town, in 1737, he had lodgings
+at Exeter Street, Strand, and made some short stay at Greenwich, whence he
+wrote to Cave, the publisher, offering to contribute to his _Gentleman's
+Magazine_. Next year he and his wife finally removed from Lichfield, and
+lodged first in Woodstock Street, Hanover Square, and then in Castle
+Street, Cavendish Square. Presently he flitted to the Strand; to Bow
+Street; to Holborn; to Fetter Lane; to Holborn again; then to Gough
+Square, at the top of Wine Office Court, where he lived for ten years;
+then to Staple Inn; to Gray's Inn; to No. 1 Inner Temple Lane; to No. 7
+Johnson's Court (so named before his time, as Boswell Court was before
+Boswell's); and thence to Bolt Court, where, in 1784, he died.
+
+Of all these homes of Johnson's, only two are now surviving--that in
+Staple Inn, which cannot be identified (we know only that it was one of
+the houses in the square); and that in Gough Square, which, next to the
+Bolt Court house, was the most interesting of his sixteen residences--and
+one is grateful that, mainly owing to the good offices of Mr. Cecil
+Harmsworth, it has been saved from demolition, and is now opened as a
+Johnson museum.
+
+Johnson was still a bookseller's hack and a comparatively unknown man
+when, in 1747, at the age of thirty-eight, he started work on his
+_Dictionary_. He was then living in Holborn; but next year he moved into
+Gough Square, and it was here that most of this colossal work was done.
+And to-day, when you visit that house, you find that all the teeming life
+of the last hundred and sixty years has drained out of it completely, and
+nothing remains in the old rooms but memories of Johnson and his friends.
+He works there for ever now in the study that used to be his, poring
+short-sightedly over books and papers; and in the queer, sloping-ceilinged
+garret above are his six assistants, copying, hunting out references for
+the _Dictionary_, and busy with all the mechanical part of the
+undertaking. You have only to stand there and think of it, and, if you
+have read Boswell and Hawkins, the life of the household as it was in
+those ten years long past refashions itself around you in the magic,
+old-world atmosphere of the place.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO STAPLE INN.]
+
+Five publishers joined in commissioning Johnson to compile the
+_Dictionary_, and arranged to pay him a sum of £1575, out of which he had
+to engage his assistants. "For the mechanical part," writes Boswell, "he
+employed six amanuenses; and let it be remembered by the natives of North
+Britain, to whom he is supposed to have been so hostile, that five of them
+were of that country. There were two Messieurs Macbean; Mr. Shiels; Mr.
+Stewart, son of Mr. George Stewart, bookseller at Edinburgh; and a Mr.
+Maitland. The sixth of these humble assistants was Mr. Peyton, who, I
+believe, taught French, and published some elementary tracts." That upper
+room in Gough Square was fitted up like a counting-house, and each of the
+six workers in it was allotted his separate task. Boswell goes on to
+describe Johnson's method: "The words, partly taken from other
+dictionaries and partly supplied by himself, having been first written
+down with spaces left between them, he delivered in writing their
+etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were
+copied from the books themselves, in which he had marked the passages with
+a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could easily be effaced. I have
+seen several of them in which that trouble had not been taken, so that
+they were just as when used by the copyists. It is remarkable that he was
+so attentive in the choice of the passages in which words were authorised
+that one may read page after page of his _Dictionary_ with improvement
+and pleasure; and it should not pass unobserved that he has quoted no
+author whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and
+morality.... He is now to be considered as 'tugging at his oar,' as
+engaged in a steady, continued course of occupation, sufficient to employ
+all his time for some years, and which was the best preventive of that
+constitutional melancholy which was ever lurking about him, ready to
+trouble his quiet."
+
+In after years, with his natural, large kindness of disposition, Johnson
+retained a sympathetic interest in those six assistants of his. The elder
+of the two Macbeans fell at length into great poverty, and Johnson helped
+him by writing a preface to his _System of Ancient Geography_, and
+afterwards influenced Lord Thurlow in getting him admitted as a Poor
+Brother of the Charterhouse. He had Shiel, who was dying of consumption,
+to help him with his _Lives of the Poets_; and when Peyton died almost
+destitute, it was Johnson who paid his funeral expenses.
+
+Whilst he was "tugging at his oar" and making steady headway with the
+_Dictionary_, Johnson sought recreation in founding one of his many
+literary clubs--an informal little club that met of evenings in Ivy Lane,
+Paternoster Row, and numbered among its members Hawkesworth, who succeeded
+Johnson as compiler of Parliamentary debates for the _Gentleman's
+Magazine_, and later edited and wrote most of a bi-weekly, _The
+Adventurer_; Dr. Bathurst, who with Johnson and Warton contributed to that
+_Adventurer_; and Hawkins, who in due course became one of Johnson's
+executors and biographers. He had published his satire, _London_, eleven
+years before this; but it was whilst he was living in Gough Square, with
+the _Dictionary_ in full progress, that he wrote and published his only
+other great satire, _The Vanity of Human Wishes_, with its references to
+the hope deferred, the hardships of his own life, and the obscurity and
+poverty from which he was but now gradually beginning to emerge:--
+
+  "When first the college rolls receive his name,
+   The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;
+   Resistless burns the fever of renown,
+   Caught from the strong contagion of the gown:
+   O'er Bodley's dome his future labours spread,
+   And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head.
+   Are these thy views? proceed, illustrious youth,
+   And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth!
+   Yet should thy soul indulge the generous heat,
+   Till captive science yields her last retreat;
+   Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray
+   And pour on misty doubt resistless day;
+   Should no false kindness lure to loose delight,
+   Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright;
+   Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain,
+   And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;
+   Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,
+   Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart;
+   Should no disease thy torpid veins invade
+   Nor melancholy's phantom haunt thy shade;
+   Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,
+   Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee:
+   Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
+   And pause awhile from learning to be wise:
+   There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
+   Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
+   See nations slowly wise, and meanly just,
+   To buried merit raise the tardy bust.
+   If dreams yet flatter, yet again attend,
+   Hear Lydiat's life, and Galileo's end."
+
+Had the Gough Square house been memorable only as the birthplace of the
+_Dictionary_, it would have been enough to have given it immortality; for,
+as Carlyle says (and Carlyle once went reverently over these rooms, and
+wrote a record of his visit), "Had Johnson left nothing but his
+_Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine
+man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity,
+honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all
+dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands
+there like a great, solid, square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically
+complete; you judge that a true builder did it." But, still while the
+_Dictionary_ was going on, shortly after the publication of _The Vanity of
+Human Wishes_, which yielded him £15, Garrick produced his tragedy of
+_Irene_ at Drury Lane. It was a failure on the stage; the audience
+shrieked "Murder! murder!" when the bowstring was placed round the
+heroine's neck; but Johnson, feeling that a dramatic author should be more
+gaily dressed than it was his wont to appear, sat in a box on the first
+night in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat,
+and accepted his failure with unruffled calmness; and Dodsley paid him
+£100 for the right to publish the play as a book.
+
+Still while he was in the thick of the _Dictionary_, he set himself, in
+1750, to start _The Rambler_, and you may take it that he was sitting in
+his Gough Square study one night when he wrote that prayer before
+publishing his first number:--
+
+"Almighty God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all labour
+is ineffectual, and without whose grace all wisdom is folly; grant, I
+beseech Thee, that in this undertaking Thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld
+from me, but that I may promote Thy glory, and the salvation of myself and
+others. Grant this, O Lord, for the sake of Thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen."
+
+[Illustration: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS]
+
+His first number was printed on the 20th March 1750, and he issued it
+every Saturday and Tuesday afterwards for two years. "This," as Boswell
+has it, "is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, that 'a
+man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it'; for,
+notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits,
+and his labour in carrying on his _Dictionary_, he answered the stated
+calls of the press twice a week, from the stores of his mind, during all
+that time; having received no assistance, except four billets in No. 10,
+by Miss Mulso, now Mrs. Chapone; No. 30, by Miss Catherine Talbot; No. 97,
+by Mr. Samuel Richardson; and Nos. 44 and 100, by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter."
+He was so pressed for time that he wrote a good many of the essays in such
+haste that he had no opportunity even to read them through again before
+they were printed. One thing that particularly gratified Johnson in
+connection with the _Rambler_ was that his wife said to him, after she had
+read a few numbers, "I thought very well of you before, but I did not
+imagine you could have written anything equal to this."
+
+Gough Square is hallowed, too, with sadder memories of Johnson's wife, for
+she died here in March 1752; and to the end of his days he never forgot
+her or ceased to sorrow for her. She was a plain-featured woman some
+years older than himself, but he always spoke of her with a wonderful
+tenderness and love, and as of one who had been beautiful to look upon.
+How deeply he felt her loss is evident not merely from some of his
+sayings, but from his letters, and from those _Prayers and Meditations_,
+in which he set down his most intimate thoughts and feelings. After his
+death, this written prayer was found among his papers, dated in the month
+after her passing:--
+
+    "_April 26th, 1752, being after 12 at night of the 25th._
+
+    "O Lord! Governor of heaven and earth, in whose hands are embodied and
+    departed spirits, if Thou hast ordained the souls of the dead to
+    minister to the living, and appointed my departed wife to have care of
+    me, grant that I may enjoy the good effects of her attention and
+    ministration, whether exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams, or in
+    any other manner agreeable to Thy government. Forgive my presumption,
+    enlighten my ignorance, and however meaner agents are employed, grant
+    me the blessed influences of Thy Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our
+    Lord. Amen."
+
+[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S HOUSE. GOUGH SQUARE.]
+
+You may stand in the Square to-night, after twelve at night, when all the
+windows of all the other houses are dark, as they were in that night of
+1752, and look up at the window in which the solitary light burned then,
+whilst, within, the grief-stricken Johnson sat alone in his study writing
+down that humble, mournful aspiration, and as you look the same light
+kindles there and glimmers desolately again for all who have eyes to see
+it. Nor was this the only record of his sorrow that was written in that
+room, for you find these notes in his journal a year later:--
+
+"_March 28, 1753._ I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty's death,
+with prayers and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her
+conditionally, if it were lawful."
+
+"_April 23, 1753._ I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain
+longings of affection; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that when
+I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy
+interview, and that in the meantime I am incited by it to piety. I will,
+however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of
+devotion."
+
+Boswell tells us that he preserved her wedding-ring reverently as long as
+he lived, keeping it in "a little round wooden box, in the inside of which
+he pasted a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as
+follows:--
+
+  'Eheu!
+  Eliz. Johnson,
+  Nupta Jul. 9º, 1736,
+  Mortua, eheu!
+  Mart. 17º, 1752.'"
+
+Some thought of her, indeed, rises again and again thereafter in those
+_Prayers and Meditations_ of his, and so makes this house peculiarly
+reminiscent of her. Before Mrs. Johnson's death, Mrs. Anna Williams had
+become a constant visitor at the house here. She was a poetess in a small
+way, daughter of a Welsh physician, and was in London having both her eyes
+treated for cataract. After his wife's death, Johnson gave Mrs. Williams
+accommodation in Gough Square whilst her eyes were operated upon; and,
+the operation failing and complete blindness following it, with his usual
+big-hearted humanity he allowed her an apartment in this and each of his
+subsequent homes; and you remember Boswell's complaint of how his
+fastidious susceptibilities were outraged by the way in which she felt
+round the edges of the cups to see if they were full, when she presided
+over the tea-table. In the same spirit, Johnson gave house-room here also,
+and elsewhere, to that simplest and most kindly of medical practitioners,
+Dr. Robert Levett, on whose death, several years later, he wrote the best
+of his shorter poems.
+
+You get a good idea of his general manner of life in Gough Square from the
+note that Boswell obtained from Francis Barber, Johnson's black servant,
+who wrote that on his wife's death Johnson was "in great affliction. Mrs.
+Williams was then living in his house, which was in Gough Square. He was
+busy with the _Dictionary_. Mr. Shiels and some others of the gentlemen
+who had formerly written for him used to come about the house. He had then
+little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr. Shiels when in
+distress. The friends who visited him at that time were chiefly Dr.
+Bathurst, and Mr. Diamond, an apothecary in Cork Street, Burlington
+Gardens, with whom he and Mrs. Williams generally dined every Sunday.
+There were also Mr. Cave; Dr. Hawkesworth; Mr. Rydal, merchant on Tower
+Hill; Mrs. Masters, the poetess, who lived with Mr. Cave; Mrs. Carter; and
+sometimes Mrs. Macaulay; also Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow-chandler on
+Snow Hill, not in the learned way, but a worthy good woman; Mr. (now Sir
+Joshua) Reynolds; Mr. Miller; Mr. Dodsley; Mr. Bouquet; Mr. Payne, of
+Paternoster Row, bookseller; Mr. Strachan the printer; the Earl of Orrery;
+Lord Southwell; Mr. Garrick."
+
+[Illustration: JAMES BOSWELL]
+
+It was shortly after the conclusion of _The Rambler_ that Johnson first
+made the acquaintance of Bennet Langton. He had taken lodgings in a house
+that was frequently visited by Dr. Levett; and, with Johnson's permission,
+Levett one day brought Langton to Gough Square, and, says Boswell:--
+
+"Mr. Langton was exceedingly surprised when the sage first appeared. He
+had not received the smallest intimation of his figure, dress, or manner.
+From perusing his writings, he fancied he should see a decent,
+well-dressed--in short, a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of
+which, down from his bed-chamber, about noon, came, as newly risen, a huge
+uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head,
+and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich,
+so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so
+congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived
+for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved."
+
+In 1753 Johnson "relieved the drudgery of his _Dictionary_" by writing
+essays for Hawkesworth's _Adventurer_, and in this and the next two years
+did a lot of reviewing and varied hack-work for the magazines and
+miscellanies of his time; and in February 1775 he wrote that nobly
+scathing and touching letter to Lord Chesterfield, that is too well known
+to need reprinting, but must needs be reprinted here, because it was
+written from Gough Square, and would make any house from which it was
+written an honoured and sacred place to all who value the dignity of
+literature and glory in the emancipation of the literary man from the
+condescending benevolence of the private patron:--
+
+    "MY LORD,--I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of _The
+    World_, that two papers in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the
+    public were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an
+    honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great,
+    I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.
+
+    "When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship,
+    I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of
+    your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself
+    _Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_--that I might obtain that
+    regard for which I saw the whole world contending; but I found my
+    attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would
+    suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in
+    public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and
+    uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man
+    is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
+
+    "Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward
+    rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
+    pushing on with my work through difficulties, of which it is useless
+    to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of
+    publication, without one act of assistance, one word of
+    encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not
+    expect, for I never had a patron before.
+
+    "The shepherd in _Virgil_ grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
+    him a native of the rocks.
+
+    "Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+    struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
+    encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
+    take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been
+    delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
+    solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
+    hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where
+    no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
+    should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has
+    enabled me to do for myself.
+
+    "Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
+    favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall
+    conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
+    wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with
+    so much exultation,
+
+      "My lord, your lordship's most humble,
+        "Most obedient servant,
+          "SAM. JOHNSON."
+
+A few months after this the _Dictionary_ was finished. There had been many
+delays; it was long behind the stipulated time, and the patience of the
+publishers was exhausted; but at last Johnson sent the last sheets of the
+great work to Mr. Miller, the Strand bookseller, who was chiefly
+concerned in the venture, and when the messenger returned from Miller's
+shop Johnson asked him, "Well, what did he say?" "Sir," answered the
+messenger, "he said, 'Thank God I have done with him.'" "I am glad,"
+replied Johnson, with a smile, "that he thanks God for anything."
+
+The publication of the _Dictionary_ made him at once the most famous man
+of letters in London; but he had already spent the money that was paid for
+his labour, and had still to work hard with his pen to make "provision for
+the day that was passing over him." In 1757 he took up again a scheme for
+an elaborate edition of Shakespeare with notes, and issued proposals and
+invited subscriptions for it; but it was another nine years before his
+Shakespeare made its appearance. Among his many visitors in 1758, Dr.
+Charles Burney, the father of Fanny Burney, called and "had an interview
+with him in Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea with him, and was
+introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Williams. After dinner, Mr. Johnson
+proposed to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret, which, being
+accepted, he there found about five or six Greek folios, a deal
+writing-desk, and a chair and a half. Johnson, giving his guest the entire
+seat, tottered himself on one with only three legs and one arm. Here he
+gave Mr. Burney Mrs. Williams's history, and showed him some volumes of
+Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he was in earnest." They
+proceeded to criticise Shakespeare's commentators up there, and to discuss
+the controversy then raging between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke in
+connection with an unauthorised publication of certain of Bolingbroke's
+letters to Pope, who was recently dead. And in the April of this same year
+Johnson began to write his essays for _The Idler_.
+
+[Illustration: JOHNSON'S CORNER. THE CHESHIRE CHEESE.]
+
+Here, then, you have a varied and intimate series of pictures, a sort of
+panoramic view of the life that Johnson lived in his Gough Square house,
+and amid his old surroundings are able to recreate him for yourself in all
+his varying circumstances and changing moods--working there at his
+_Dictionary_ and his multifarious writings; sorrowing for his wife;
+entertaining his friends; sallying forth morning and evening to walk along
+Fleet Street to the church of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand, assuming
+that he kept the resolution to do so that is entered at this date in his
+journal; and, almost every Sunday afternoon, coming staidly down the steps
+with Mrs. Williams, and setting out to dine with Mr. Diamond, the
+apothecary of Cork Street; on many evenings strolling along Wine Office
+Court, to forgather with friends in the parlour of the "Cheshire Cheese,"
+where the seat traditionally occupied by him and Goldsmith is still to be
+seen; or going farther to a meeting of his club in Ivy Lane. There is a
+capital story told by Hawkins of how one night at that club a suggestion
+was made that they should celebrate the publication of Mrs. Lennox's first
+novel, _The Life of Harriet Stuart_, with a supper at the Devil Tavern, in
+Fleet Street. Johnson threw himself heart and soul into the proposal, and
+declared that they would honour the event by spending the whole night in
+festivity. On the evening fixed, at about eight o'clock, Mrs. Lennox and
+her husband, and some twenty friends and members of the club, gathered at
+the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, and, by Johnson's orders, a magnificent hot
+apple-pie adorned with bay leaves formed a principal item of the menu. He
+himself crowned Mrs. Lennox with laurel; and, true to his resolve, he kept
+the feast going right through the night. "At 5 A.M.," says Hawkins,
+"Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been
+only lemonade." The day was beginning to dawn when they all partook of a
+"second refreshment of coffee," and it was broad daylight and eight
+o'clock before the party broke up, and Johnson made his way back up Fleet
+Street, round into Gough Square, and to the prosaic resumption of work on
+the _Dictionary_.
+
+Soon after starting _The Idler_, Johnson left Gough Square and took rooms
+in Staple Inn, where he presently wrote _Rasselas_ in the evenings of one
+week, and so raised £100, that "he might defray the expenses of his
+mother's funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left."
+
+All these things had happened, and Johnson had risen into fame and become
+"the great Cham of letters," before Boswell had made his acquaintance. The
+historic meeting between these two did not come about until 1763, and then
+it took place at No. 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden--another famous house
+that is fortunately still in existence. It was then occupied by Thomas
+Davies, the actor, who had retired from the stage and opened a
+bookseller's shop there. He knew Johnson, who frequently visited him, and
+on his invitation Boswell was there several times in hopes of meeting the
+great man; again and again it happened that on the days when he was in
+waiting Johnson failed to appear, but in the end his patience was
+rewarded, and this is his own account of the interview, taken from notes
+he made of it on the very day of its occurrence:--
+
+"At last, on Monday, the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's
+back parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson
+unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies, having perceived him
+through the glass door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing
+towards us, he announced his awful approach to me, somewhat in the manner
+of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the
+appearance of his father's ghost: 'Look, my lord, it comes!' I found that
+I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's figure, from the portrait of him
+painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his
+_Dictionary_, in the attitude of sitting in his easy-chair in deep
+meditation. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me
+to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the
+Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, 'Don't tell where I
+come from.' 'From Scotland,' cried Davies roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson,' said
+I, 'I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' He retorted,
+'That, sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot
+help.' This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I
+felt myself not a little embarrassed and apprehensive of what might come
+next. He then addressed himself to Davies: 'What do you think of Garrick?
+He has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he
+knows the house will be full, and that an order would be worth three
+shillings.' Eager to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I
+ventured to say, 'O sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a
+trifle to you.' 'Sir,' said he, with a stern look, 'I have known David
+Garrick longer than you have done, and I know no right you have to talk to
+me on the subject.' Perhaps I deserved this check; for it was rather
+presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any doubt of the
+justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance and pupil. I now
+felt myself much mortified, and began to think that the hope which I had
+long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was blasted." But he sat on
+resolutely, and was rewarded by hearing some of Johnson's conversation, of
+which he kept notes, that are duly reproduced in the _Life_.
+
+[Illustration: WHERE BOSWELL FIRST MET JOHNSON.]
+
+"I was highly pleased with the extraordinary vigour of his conversation,"
+he concludes his account of the meeting, "and regretted that I was drawn
+away from it by an engagement at another place. I had for a part of the
+evening been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation
+now and then, which he received very civilly; so I was satisfied that,
+though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his
+disposition. Davies followed me to the door; and when I complained to him
+a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly
+took upon him to console me by saying, 'Don't be uneasy; I can see he
+likes you very well.'"
+
+Davies's shop is kept nowadays by a Covent Garden salesman. Instead of
+being lined with books, it is filled with baskets of fruit and sacks of
+potatoes, and the parlour wall and that glass-panelled parlour door are
+thrown down, and parlour and shop are all one. But the upper part of the
+house remains practically unaltered, and with a little imagining you can
+restore the lower to what it was when these walls held the gruff rumbling
+of the Doctor's voice, and looked down on the humiliation of Boswell under
+the roguish eyes of Davies and his pretty wife.
+
+Another house that has glamorous associations with Johnson is No. 5
+Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived, and where he died, in a back room on
+the first floor, in 1779. Two years later Johnson was one of a party that
+dined there with Mrs. Garrick, and one cannot do better than repeat the
+indispensable Boswell's report of the event:--
+
+"On Friday, April 20, I spent with him one of the happiest days that I
+remember to have enjoyed in the whole course of my life. Mrs. Garrick,
+whose grief for the loss of her husband was, I believe, as sincere as
+wounded affection and admiration could produce, had this day, for the
+first time since his death, a select party of his friends to dine with
+her. The company was: Mrs. Hannah More, who lived with her, and whom she
+called her chaplain; Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, Dr. Burney, Dr. Johnson, and myself. We found ourselves very
+elegantly entertained at her house in the Adelphi, where I have passed
+many a pleasing hour with him 'who gladdened life.' She looked well,
+talked of her husband with complacency, and while she cast her eyes on his
+portrait, which hung over the chimney-piece, said that 'death was now the
+most agreeable object to her.'... We were all in fine spirits; and I
+whispered to Mrs. Boscawen, 'I believe this is as much as can be made of
+life.'" After recording the conversation of Johnson and divers of the
+others, Boswell goes on: "He and I walked away together. We stopped a
+little by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to
+him, with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost
+who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick. 'Ay,
+sir,' said he tenderly, 'and two such friends as cannot be supplied.'"
+
+[Illustration: BOSWELL'S HOUSE. GREAT QUEEN STREET.]
+
+In the summer of 1784 Boswell was in London as usual, and saw Johnson,
+then an old man of seventy-five, for the last time. On the 30th June, he
+and Johnson dined with Sir Joshua Reynolds in Leicester Square, and when
+Johnson went home Boswell accompanied him in Sir Joshua's coach to the
+entry of Bolt Court, in Fleet Street, and was so affected at parting that
+he would not accompany him to the house, and they bade each other an
+affectionate adieu in the carriage. Johnson stepped out on to the
+pavement, and, walking briskly, vanished into the yawn of Bolt Court, and,
+for Boswell, into the jaws of death, for he never saw him again. He went
+home to the north two days after, and in December Johnson died.
+
+On his annual visits to London Boswell lived in various lodgings; but in
+or about 1786 he rented the house, still standing, at 56 Great Queen
+Street, and brought his wife to town with him. They occupied this place
+for some two years; and it is evident from his letters to Bishop Percy and
+the Rev. T. W. Temple that, whilst residing there, he wrote most of the
+last seven years of his _Life of Johnson_. Boswell died in London, in
+1795, at No. 122 (formerly 47) Great Portland Street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BLAKE AND FLAXMAN
+
+
+Ten years before Boswell went to live at 56 Great Queen Street, William
+Blake was serving an apprenticeship to James Basire, the well-known
+engraver, whose house was close by at No. 31 in the same street. Basire's
+residence has gone the way of all bricks and mortar; but happily Soho
+still preserves the corner house at No. 28 Broad Street, in which Blake
+was born. He was born there on the 28th November 1857, over his father's
+hosiery shop, and it was there that the first of his strange visions came
+to him; for he used to say that when he was only four years old he one day
+saw the face of God at the window looking in upon him, and the sight set
+him a-screaming. When he was four or five years older, you hear of him
+taking long rambles into the country; and it was on Peckham Rye that other
+visions came to him. Once he saw a tree there "filled with angels, bright
+angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars"; and once, on a summer
+morning, he saw "the haymakers at work, and amid them angelic figures
+walking." In his matter-of-fact fashion he recounted the first of these
+two visions on his return home, and his mother had to intervene to prevent
+the honest hosier and conscientious Nonconformist, his father, from
+thrashing him for telling a lie.
+
+At the age of ten Blake was journeying to and from the house in Broad
+Street to Mr. Paris's academy in the Strand, taking drawing lessons. He
+was already writing poetry, too, and before he was fourteen had written
+one of the most beautiful and glitteringly imaginative of his lyrics:--
+
+  "How sweet I roamed from field to field,
+     And tasted all the summer's pride,
+   Till I the Prince of Love beheld
+     Who in the sunny beams did glide.
+
+   He showed me lilies for my hair,
+     And blushing roses for my brow;
+   He led me through his gardens fair
+     Where all his golden pleasures grow.
+
+   With sweet May-dews my wings were wet,
+     And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;
+   He caught me in his silken net,
+     And shut me in his golden cage.
+
+   He loves to sit and hear me sing,
+     Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
+   Then stretches out my golden wing,
+     And mocks my loss of liberty."
+
+In a preface to his first published volume, the _Poetical Sketches_, which
+contains this lyric, his Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter verses, "My
+Silks and fine Array," and other lovely songs, he says that all the
+contents were "commenced in his twelfth, and occasionally resumed by the
+author till his twentieth year." From fourteen till he was twenty-one
+Blake was living away from home with his master, Basire, the engraver;
+then he went back to his father's, and commenced to study at the recently
+formed Royal Academy, and in 1780 exhibited his first picture there, "The
+Death of Earl Godwin." Marrying in 1782, he set up housekeeping for
+himself at 23 Green Street, Leicester Square, and began to move abroad in
+literary society. Flaxman, already his friend, introduced him to Mrs.
+Mathew, a lady of blue-stocking tendencies, who held a sort of salon at 27
+Rathbone Place; and here, in 1784, "Rainy Day" Smith made his
+acquaintance. "At Mrs. Mathew's most agreeable conversaziones," he says,
+"I first met the late William Blake, to whom she and Mr. Flaxman had been
+truly kind. There I have often heard him read and sing several of his
+poems. He was listened to by the company with profound silence, and
+allowed by most of his listeners to possess original and extraordinary
+merit." He knew nothing of musical technique, but sang some of his verses
+to airs that Smith describes as "singularly beautiful." His republican
+opinions and general unorthodoxy and daring outspokenness, however, did
+not make for social amenity, and it was not long before he dropped out of
+these elegant circles, and withdrew to his mystic dreamings and the
+production of paintings and poetry that the majority could not understand.
+A strangely beautiful and wonderful Bird of Paradise to break from the
+nest over that hosier's shop at the corner of Broad Street, Soho!
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE'S HOUSE. SOHO.]
+
+When his father died, in 1784, Blake's brother James took over and
+continued the business; and in the same year Blake himself opened the shop
+next door (No. 27) as an engraver and printseller, in partnership with
+James Parker, who had been one of his fellow-apprentices under Basire.
+Here he had his younger brother, Robert, with him as a pupil; and he
+used to say that when Robert died, in 1787, he saw his soul ascend through
+the ceiling, "clapping its hands for joy." Falling out with Parker, Blake
+removed, in this year of his brother's death, to 28 Poland Street, near
+by, where he said Robert's spirit remained in communion with him, and
+directed him, "in a nocturnal vision, how to proceed in bringing out poems
+and designs in conjunction"; and the _Songs of Innocence_, published in
+1789, was the result of this inspiration. The method, as Alexander
+Gilchrist has it, "consisted in a species of engraving in relief both
+words and designs. The verse was written, and the designs and marginal
+embellishments outlined on the copper with an impervious liquid. Then all
+the white parts, or lights (the remainder of the plate, that is), were
+eaten away with aquafortis or other acid, so that the outline of letter
+and design was left prominent, as in stereotype. From these plates he
+printed off in any tint required to be the prevailing (or ground) colour
+in his facsimiles; red he used for the letterpress. The page was then
+coloured up by hand in imitation of the original drawing, with more or
+less variety of detail in the local hues." A process of mixing his colours
+with diluted glue was revealed to him by St. Joseph. Mrs. Blake often
+helped him in tinting the designs, and it was her work to bind the books
+in boards. In the same year (1789) he put forth the finest of his long
+mystical poems, _The Book of Thel_.
+
+Leaving Poland Street in 1793, Blake moved across London to Lambeth, and
+made himself a new home at 13 Hercules Buildings. Gilchrist, one of his
+earliest biographers, made a mistake in his identification of this house,
+and until a year or two ago it was believed that Blake's residence in that
+place had been pulled down. On a recent investigation of the Lambeth
+rate-books by the County Council authorities, however, it became clear
+that, instead of being on the west side of the street, as Gilchrist
+supposed, No. 13 was on the east side, next door but one to Hercules Hall
+Yard. Somewhere between 1830 and 1842 the whole road was renumbered, and
+Blake's house had become No. 63, and was in 1890 renumbered again, and
+became, and is still, No. 23 Hercules Road. Whilst he was living here, Mr.
+Thomas Butts, of Fitzroy Square, became his most liberal and most constant
+patron; and on calling at Hercules Buildings one day, Mr. Butts says he
+found Blake and his wife sitting naked in their summer-house. "Come in!"
+Blake greeted him. "It's only Adam and Eve, you know." But Mr. Butts never
+took this as evidence of Blake's madness: he and his wife had simply been
+reciting passages of _Paradise Lost_ in character.
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE. 23 HERCULES ROAD.]
+
+At Hercules Buildings Blake did a large number of paintings and
+engravings, including the 537 coloured drawings for Young's _Night
+Thoughts_, and some of the greatest of his designs, such as the "Job" and
+"Ezekiel" prints; and here, too, he completed certain of his _Prophetic
+Books_, with their incomprehensible imagery and allegory, and what
+Swinburne has called their "sunless and sonorous gulfs." From Hercules
+Buildings also came "Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the
+night," and the rest of the _Songs of Experience_. Then, in 1800, Hayley,
+the poet of the dull and unreadable _Triumphs of Temper_, persuaded him
+to move into the country and settle down in a cottage at Felpham; from
+which, because he said "the visions were angry with me at Felpham," he
+returned to London early in 1804, and took lodgings on the first floor of
+17 South Moulton Street, Oxford Street.
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE'S HOUSE. SOUTH MOULTON ST.]
+
+Nevertheless, at Felpham he must have been working on his _Jerusalem_,
+and on _Milton, A Poem in Two Books_, for these were issued shortly after
+his arrival in South Moulton Street. He writes of _Jerusalem_ in one of
+his letters: "I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve,
+or sometimes twenty or thirty, lines at a time, without premeditation, and
+even against my will"; and in a later letter, speaking of it as "the
+grandest poem that this world contains," he excuses himself by remarking,
+"I may praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the
+secretary--the authors are in eternity." Much of _Jerusalem_ is turgid,
+obscure, chaotic, and so impossible to understand that Mr. Chesterton
+declares that when Blake said "that its authors were in eternity, one can
+only say that nobody is likely to go there to get any more of their work."
+But it is in this poem that Blake introduces those verses "To the Jews,"
+setting forth that Jerusalem once stood in--
+
+  "The fields from Islington to Marybone,
+     To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood,"
+
+and that then--
+
+  "The Divine Vision still was seen,
+     Still was the human form divine;
+   Weeping in weak and mortal clay,
+     O Jesus! still the form was Thine.
+
+   And Thine the human face; and Thine
+     The human hands, and feet, and breath,
+   Entering through the gates of birth,
+     And passing through the gates of death";
+
+and in _Jerusalem_ you have his lines "To the Deists," the first version
+of his ballad of the Grey Monk, with its great ending:--
+
+  "For a tear is an intellectual thing,
+   And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King,
+   And the bitter groan of a martyr's woe
+   Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow."
+
+For my part, I wish it were possible for some of our living poets to go
+again to those authors in eternity and get some more of such stuff as
+this, even if we had to have it embedded in drearier lumps of nonsense
+than you find in _Jerusalem_.
+
+Blake's wife, daughter of a market-gardener, a woman so uneducated that
+she had to sign the marriage register with her mark, was not only an
+excellent housekeeper and domestic drudge, but was in perfect sympathy
+with him in his work, and had the greatest faith in his visions. Moses,
+Julius Cæsar, the Builder of the Pyramids, David, Uriah, Bathsheba,
+Solomon, Mahomet, Joseph, and Mary--these were among Blake's spiritual
+visitants at South Moulton Street. They came and sat to him, and he worked
+at their portraits, "looking up from time to time as though he had a real
+sitter before him." Sometimes he would leave off abruptly, and observe in
+matter-of-fact tones, "I can't go on. It is gone; I must wait till it
+returns"; or, "It has moved; the mouth is gone"; or, "He frowns. He is
+displeased with my portrait of him." If any one criticised and objected to
+the likeness he would reply calmly, "It _must_ be right. I saw it so." In
+all probability he meant no more than that he conjured up these sitters to
+his mind's eye; but his friends took him literally, and he acquiesced in
+their doing so, and has been dubbed a madman in consequence.
+
+Many times his wife would get up in the nights "when he was under his
+very fierce inspirations, which were as if they would tear him asunder,
+while he was yielding himself to the Muse, or whatever else it could be
+called, sketching and writing. And so terrible a task did this seem to be
+that she had to sit motionless and silent, only to stay him mentally,
+without moving hand or foot; this for hours, and night after night." It is
+not easy to realise that this burning, fiery spirit did once live in these
+South Moulton Street rooms, surrounded by his vivid and terrific
+imaginings, and then could pass out of it and leave it looking so dull and
+decorous, so ordinary, so entirely commonplace. But here he indubitably
+lived, so discouraged by neglect and hampered by poverty that he could not
+afford to issue any more large books like the _Jerusalem_, and in 1809
+made a desperate attempt to appeal to the public by holding an exhibition
+of his frescoes and drawings on the first floor of his brother's hosiery
+shop in Broad Street. Very few visitors attended; but among the few was
+Lamb's friend, Crabb Robinson, and when he went he had the room to
+himself. He paid for admission, recognised that these pictures were the
+work of no ordinary artist, and bought four of the catalogues, one of
+which he sent to Lamb; and when, on leaving, he asked the custodian
+whether he might come again free, James Blake, delighted at having a
+visitor, and one, moreover, who had bought something, cried, "Oh yes--free
+as long as you live!" But the exhibition was a failure. The popular
+painters of Blake's day were Reynolds, Gainsborough, and men of their
+schools. Blake was born out of his time, and contemporary society had
+nothing in common with him--no comprehension of his aim or his
+outlook--and dismissed him as an astonishing lunatic. When some drawings
+of his were shown to George III., his Majesty could only gaze at them
+helplessly and ejaculate a testy "Take them away! take them away!" The
+noble designs for Blair's _Grave_, and the frescoes of _The Canterbury
+Pilgrimage_, were among the important works done at South Moulton Street,
+which Blake quitted in 1821, making his last change of residence to 3
+Fountain Court, Strand--a house kept by his brother-in-law, Baines. Here
+he occupied a room on the first floor for some six years, and when he was
+nearing his seventieth year, died, after a short illness, on Sunday, the
+12th August 1827. He lay dying in his plain back room, serene and
+cheerful, singing songs to melodies that were the inspiration of the
+moment; towards evening he fell silent, and passed quietly away, a poor
+woman, a neighbour who had come in to sit with his wife, saying
+afterwards, "I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed
+angel."
+
+You have only to look at the portraits of Blake, at the broad
+forehead--the forehead of a revolutionary, as he himself said--the
+sensitive mouth, the large, intent, vision-haunted eyes, to know that his
+outward appearance fairly adequately revealed the manner of man that he
+really was. He was under five feet six in height and thick-set, but so
+well proportioned that he did not strike people as short. "He had an
+upright carriage," says Gilchrist, "and a good presence; he bore himself
+with dignity, as not unconscious of his natural claims. The head and face
+were strongly stamped with the power and character of the man. There was
+a great volume of brain in that square, massive head, that piled-up brow,
+very full and rounded at the temples, where, according to phrenologists,
+ideality or imagination resides. His eyes were fine ('wonderful eyes,'
+some one calls them), prominently set, but bright, spiritual,
+visionary--not restless or wild, but with a look of clear, heavenly
+exaltation. The eyes of some of the old men in his _Job_ recall his own to
+surviving friends. His nose was insignificant as to size, but had that
+peculiarity which gives to a face an expression of fiery energy, as of a
+high-mettled steed--a little _clenched_ nostril, a nostril that opened as
+far as it could, but was tied down at one end. His mouth was wide, the
+lips not full, but tremulous, and expressive of the great sensibility
+which characterised him. He was short-sighted, as the prominence of his
+eyes indicated--a prominence in keeping with the faculty for languages,
+according to phrenologists again. He wore glasses only occasionally." His
+poverty forced him to study economy in the matter of dress. Indoors he was
+not slovenly, but generally wore a threadbare old suit, the grey trousers
+of which had been rubbed black and shiny in front like a mechanic's. When
+he walked abroad he was more careful, and dressed plainly but well,
+something in the style of an old-fashioned tradesman, in black
+knee-breeches and buckles, black worsted stockings, shoes that tied, and a
+broad-brimmed hat.
+
+But for a memorable description of Blake in his habit as he lived, you
+must read this letter that was written to Gilchrist by Samuel Palmer, who
+knew him intimately in his latter years:--
+
+"Blake, once known, could never be forgotten.... In him you saw at once
+the maker, the inventor; one of the few in any age; a fitting companion
+for Dante. He was a man 'without a mask'; his aim single, his path
+straightforwards, and his wants few; so he was free, noble, and happy. His
+voice and manner were quiet, yet all awake with intellect. Above the
+tricks of littleness, or the least taint of affectation, with a natural
+dignity which few would have dared to affront, he was gentle and
+affectionate, loving to be with little children and talk about them. 'That
+is heaven,' he said to a friend, leading him to a window and pointing to a
+group of them at play.
+
+"Declining, like Socrates, whom in many respects he resembled, the common
+objects of ambition, and pitying the scuffle to obtain them, he thought no
+one could be truly great who had not humbled himself 'even as a little
+child.' This was a subject he loved to dwell upon and to illustrate. His
+eye was the finest I ever saw; brilliant, but not roving, clear and
+intent, yet susceptible; it flashed with genius, or melted in tenderness.
+It could also be terrible.... Nor was the mouth less expressive, the lips
+flexible and quivering with feeling. I can yet recall it when, on one
+occasion, dwelling upon the exquisite beauty of the parable of the
+Prodigal, he began to repeat a part of it; but at the words, 'When he was
+yet a great way off his father saw him,' he could go no further; his voice
+faltered, and he was in tears.
+
+"He was one of the few to be met with in our passage through life who are
+not in some way or other double-minded and inconsistent with themselves;
+one of the very few who cannot be depressed by neglect, and to whose name
+rank and station could add no lustre. Moving apart, in a sphere above the
+attraction of worldly honours, he did not accept greatness, but conferred
+it. He ennobled poverty, and, by his conversation and the influence of his
+genius, made two small rooms in Fountain Court more attractive than the
+threshold of princes."
+
+One of Blake's warmest friends for many years was the great sculptor, John
+Flaxman. With none of Blake's lawless, glowing imagination, Flaxman's
+drawings in his illustrations to Homer, and his designs on some of the
+Wedgwood pottery, have a classical correctness--a cold, exquisite beauty
+of outline--that are more suggestive of the chisel than of the pencil or
+the brush; and it is in the splendid sculptures with which he has
+beautified Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, and many other of our cathedrals
+and churches that his genius found its highest expression. In his work as
+an artist Blake was largely influenced by Flaxman. They and Stothard used
+to meet at Mrs. Mathew's; but there came a day when the friendship between
+these three was broken. Blake thought Flaxman had appropriated one of his
+designs, and there seems no doubt that Stothard did so, on the prompting
+of an unscrupulous picture-dealer; and you have Blake lampooning them
+both, as well as Hayley, with whom he had also fallen out, in epigrams
+that were not always just, and probably represented nothing worse than a
+passing mood, as thus:--
+
+  "My title as a genius thus is proved:
+   Not praised by Hayley, nor by Flaxman loved."
+
+  "I found them blind, I taught them how to see,
+   And now they know neither themselves nor me."
+
+_To Flaxman._
+
+  "You call me mad; 'tis folly to do so,--
+   To seek to turn a madman to a foe.
+   If you think as you speak, you are an ass;
+   If you do not, you are but what you was."
+
+_To the same._
+
+  "I mock thee not, though I by thee am mocked;
+   Thou call'st me madman, but I call thee blockhead."
+
+Flaxman was not, like Blake, a born Londoner, but his family came from
+York, and settled down in London when he was six months old. His father
+had a shop in New Street, Covent Garden, where he made and sold plaster
+casts. Flaxman emerged from a sickly childhood, and developed into a
+sufficiently wiry and energetic man, though he remained feeble in
+appearance, so high-shouldered as to seem almost deformed, with a head too
+large for his body, and a queer sidelong gait in walking. He married in
+1782, and, after living for five years in a very small house at 27 Wardour
+Street, Soho--where he was elected collector of the watch-rate for the
+parish--he and his wife went to Italy, and spent seven years in Rome.
+Whilst he was there he fulfilled a commission for Romney, and collected
+and sent over to England a selection of casts from the antique, that
+Romney required for the use of students in his Hampstead painting-room.
+
+Returning from Italy in 1794, Flaxman took up residence at 17 Buckingham
+Street, Euston Road, and lived here through all his most famous years,
+till he died in 1826. Blake visited him here, and Haydon, and other of his
+artistic circle; for though he went little into society, he was
+unpretentiously hospitable, fond of entertaining his chosen friends,
+greatly esteemed and beloved by his pupils, models, and servants, and the
+poor of the neighbourhood, especially the children. He went about among
+the latter habitually, filling his sketch-book with drawings of them, and
+invariably carrying a pocketful of coppers to drop into the small grubby
+hands that were ready to receive them.
+
+[Illustration: FLAXMAN'S HOUSE. BUCKINGHAM STREET. EUSTON ROAD.]
+
+The district hereabouts has degenerated since Flaxman's day. His house was
+dull, insignificant, rather mean-looking, and now it looks more so than
+ever, amid its grimy surroundings--a pinched, old, dreary little house,
+that is yet transfigured when you remember the glorious visitors who have
+crossed its threshold, and that it was at this same dead door the postman
+knocked one day near the end of September 1800 and delivered this letter
+from Blake, who was then newly gone out of London and had not had time to
+begin to grow tired of his cottage at Felpham:--
+
+    "DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,--We are safe arrived at our cottage, which
+    is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient.... Mr.
+    Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have begun to
+    work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual
+    than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her
+    windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants
+    are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen; and
+    my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are
+    both well, courting Neptune for an embrace....
+
+    "And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is
+    shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well
+    conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and
+    pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before
+    my mortal life; and these works are the delight and study of
+    archangels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches and fame of
+    mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to
+    His divine will, for our good.
+
+    "You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel--my friend and companion
+    from eternity. In the divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back
+    into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days, before
+    this earth appeared in its vegetable mortality to my mortal vegetated
+    eyes. I see our houses of eternity, which can never be separated,
+    though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of
+    heaven from each other.
+
+    "Farewell, my best friend. Remember me and my wife in love and
+    friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to
+    entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold."
+
+Later, when they quarrelled, Flaxman was not an archangel, but a blockhead
+and an ass; but that quarrel is not to be taken too seriously. Their
+houses of eternity were not separated, though their mortal vehicles were
+estranged; and it was on hearing Flaxman was dead that Blake said finely,
+"I can never think of death but as a going out of one room into another."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A HAMPSTEAD GROUP
+
+
+Out at Hampstead you may still visit what was once that studio of Romney's
+to which Flaxman sent his collection of plaster casts from Italy. It had
+been a favourite idea of Romney's, his son tells us, "to form a complete
+Gallery of Casts, and to open it to any youths of respectability," and in
+his closing years, after he had removed to Hampstead, he carried out his
+wish, to some extent, with Flaxman's aid, and had three pupils working in
+his studio there, copying the casts and studying under him. The house he
+occupied from 1796 to 1799 is now the Holly Bush Inn; he bought a piece of
+land at the back of it, and on this built himself a studio and gallery,
+which now form part of the Hampstead Constitutional Club. "It was to
+Hampstead that Hayley's friend Romney, the painter, retired in the decline
+of his life," writes J. T. Smith, in _Nollekens and his Times_, "when he
+built a dining-room close to his kitchen, with a buttery hatch opening
+into it, so that he and his friends might enjoy beef-steaks, hot and hot,
+upon the same plan as the members of the Beef-steak Club are supplied at
+their room in the Lyceum."
+
+[Illustration: ROMNEY'S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Though Romney was then in the decline of his life, he was at the height of
+his fame. He had married at the age of nineteen, and six years later set
+out for London, leaving his wife behind at Kendal. He had no intention of
+deserting her, but in London his genius soon won recognition, he began to
+move in good society, and partly because Sir Joshua Reynolds had once said
+that "marriage spoilt an artist," partly because he became infatuated with
+Nelson's enchantress, Lady Hamilton, he neither brought his wife to
+London, nor visited her, nor ever saw her again until he was dying. On
+April 28, 1799, Hayley called on him for the last time at Hampstead, and
+thought that "increasing weakness of body and mind afforded only a gloomy
+prospect for the residue of his life." Then in July Flaxman saw him, and
+says in one of his letters, "I and my father dined at Mr. Romney's at
+Hampstead last Sunday, by particular invitation, and were received in the
+most cordial manner; but, alas! I was grieved to see so noble a collection
+in a state so confused, so mangled, and prepared, I fear, for worse, and
+not better." Very soon after this Romney left London for ever, and
+returned to Kendal and the wife he had neglected since the days of his
+obscure youth, and early in 1801, by his directions, "the collection of
+castes from the antique, a very fine skeleton, and other artistic
+properties of George Romney, at his late residence, Hollybush Hill,
+Hampstead," were sold by Messrs. Christie.
+
+Meanwhile, his wife had pardoned him and was caring for him. "Old, nearly
+mad, and quite desolate," writes Fitzgerald, "he went back to her, and she
+received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth
+all Romney's pictures!--even as a matter of art, I am sure." It is this
+beautiful devotion of hers that gave Tennyson a subject for one of his
+later poems, _Romney's Remorse_; in which the dying painter, rousing out
+of delirium, says:--
+
+                            "There--you spill
+  The drops upon my forehead. Your hand shakes.
+  I am ashamed. I am a trouble to you,
+  Could kneel for your forgiveness. Are they tears?
+  For me--they do me too much grace--for me?...
+  My curse upon the Master's apothegm,
+  That wife and children drag an artist down!
+  This seemed my lodestar in the Heaven of Art,
+  And lured me from the household fire on earth....
+                            This Art, that harlot-like,
+  Seduced me from you, leaves me harlot-like,
+  Who love her still, and whimper, impotent
+  To win her back before I die--and then--
+  Then in the loud world's bastard judgment day
+  One truth will damn me with the mindless mob,
+  Who feel no touch of my temptation, more
+  Than all the myriad lies that blacken round
+  The corpse of every man that gains a name:
+  'This model husband, this fine artist!' Fool,
+  What matters! Six feet deep of burial mould
+  Will dull their comments! Ay, but when the shout
+  Of His descending peals from Heaven, and throbs
+  Thro' earth and all her graves, if _He_ should ask
+  'Why left you wife and children? for My sake,
+  According to My word?' and I replied,
+  'Nay, Lord, for _Art_,' why, that would sound so mean
+  That all the dead who wait the doom of Hell
+  For bolder sins than mine, adulteries,
+  Wife-murders--nay, the ruthless Mussulman
+  Who flings his bowstrung Harem in the sea,
+  Would turn and glare at me, and point and jeer
+  And gibber at the worm who, living, made
+  The wife of wives a widow-bride, and lost
+  Salvation for a sketch....
+  O let me lean my head upon your breast.
+  'Beat, little heart,' on this fool brain of mine.
+  I once had friends--and many--none like you.
+  I love you more than when we married. Hope!
+  O yes, I hope, or fancy that, perhaps,
+  Human forgiveness touches heaven, and thence--
+  For you forgive me, you are sure of that--
+  Reflected, sends a light on the forgiven."
+
+Another famous artist who is closely associated with Hampstead was John
+Constable. In 1820, writing to his friend, the Rev. John Fisher
+(afterwards Archdeacon Fisher), he says, "I have settled my wife and
+children comfortably at Hampstead"; and a little later he writes, again to
+Fisher, "My picture is getting on, and the frame will be here in three
+weeks or a fortnight.... I now fear (for my family's sake) I shall never
+make a popular artist, _a gentleman and ladies painter_. But I am spared
+making a fool of myself, and your hand stretched forth teaches me to value
+what I possess (if I may say so), and this is of more consequence than
+gentlemen and ladies can well imagine." He was then living at No. 2 Lower
+Terrace, a small house of two storeys, and writes from that address, again
+to Fisher, on the 4th August 1821, "I am as much here as possible with my
+family. My placid and contented companion and her three infants are well.
+I have got a room at a glazier's where is my large picture, and at this
+little place I have many small works going on, for which purpose I have
+cleared a shed in the garden, which held sand, coals, mops and brooms, and
+have made it a workshop. I have done a good deal here." Lower Terrace is
+within a few minutes' walk of the Heath, the scenery of which appears in
+so many of Constable's paintings. He removed presently to Charlotte
+Street, Fitzroy Square; one of his pictures exhibited in the Louvre made
+him famous in France, and his fame was spreading in England when he went
+back to Hampstead in 1826, and after staying for a while at 25 Downshire
+Hill (which has since been rebuilt) was "at length fixed," as he wrote to
+Fisher, "in a comfortable little house at Well Walk, Hampstead.... So
+hateful is moving about to me that I could gladly exclaim, 'Here let me
+take my everlasting rest.' This house is to my wife's heart's content; it
+is situated on an eminence at the back of the spot in which you saw us,
+and our little drawing-room commands a view unsurpassed in Europe from
+Westminster Abbey to Gravesend. The dome of St. Paul's in the air seems to
+realise Michael Angelo's words on seeing the Pantheon--'I will build such
+a thing in the sky.'" In Constable's time the house was not numbered, but
+it has been identified as the present No. 40, and after his wife's death
+he kept it as an occasional residence until he died in 1837. He is buried
+not far from it, in the Hampstead Churchyard.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN KEATS]
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE. CHARLOTTE STREET.]
+
+In the same churchyard is buried Joanna Baillie, who spent the last
+forty-five years of her life at Bolton House, Windmill Hill, opposite the
+Hollybush Inn, and here Wordsworth, Rogers, and Scott were among her
+visitors. Other famous Hampstead residents buried in this churchyard are
+Mrs. Barbauld, who lived in Church Row, then near the foot of Rosslyn
+Hill, and died in John Street; Sir Walter Besant, who died at Frognal End,
+near the top of Frognal Gardens; and George du Maurier, who lived for
+twenty-five years in Church Row and at New Grove House, by Whitestone
+Pond, and dying in 1896, a year after he left Hampstead, was brought back
+here to be buried.
+
+[Illustration: JOANNA BAILLIE. WINDMILL HILL. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+In the house at the corner of Prince Arthur Road and the High Street, that
+is now occupied by the Hampstead Subscription Library, Clarkson Stanfield
+made his home for many years. He did notable work as a landscape and sea
+painter and became a Royal Academician, but was best known and most
+successful as a scenic artist for the theatre, and brought the art of
+scene-painting to a higher level than it had ever reached before. His more
+ambitious pictures are in private collections, however, his stage scenery
+has had its day, and I suppose most of us remember him better as one of
+Dickens's most familiar friends. He painted the scenery for Wilkie
+Collins's play, _The Lighthouse_, when Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mark
+Lemon, and others of their circle produced it at Tavistock House, and for
+other of the plays that Dickens staged there in his "smallest theatre in
+the world"; and Dickens's letters are sown with references to him. Writing
+to an American friend describing the Christmas sports he had been holding
+at his house, Dickens says he has purchased the entire stock-in-trade of a
+conjuror, and that "in those tricks which require a confederate I am
+assisted (by reason of his imperturbable good humour) by Stanfield, who
+always does his part exactly the wrong way, to the unspeakable delight of
+all beholders. We come out on a small scale to-night" (31st December 1842)
+"at Forster's, where we see the old year out and the new one in." On the
+16th January 1844 (putting _Martin Chuzzlewit_ aside) he is writing to
+Forster, "I had written you a line pleading Jonas and Mrs. Gamp, but this
+frosty day tempts me sorely. I am distractingly late; but I look at the
+sky, think of Hampstead, and feel hideously tempted. Don't come with Mac
+and fetch me. I couldn't resist if you did"; and a month later, on the
+18th February, "Stanfield and Mac have come in, and we are going to
+Hampstead to dinner. I leave Betsy Prig as you know, so don't you make a
+scruple about leaving Mrs. Harris. We shall stroll leisurely up to give
+you time to join us, and dinner will be on the table at Jack Straw's at
+four"; and in less than a month, on the 5th March, "Sir, I
+will--he--he--he--he--he--he--I will NOT eat with you, either at your own
+house or the club. But the morning looks bright, and a walk to Hampstead
+would suit me marvellously. If you should present yourself at my gate
+(bringing the R.A.'s along with you) I shall not be sapparised. So no more
+at this writing from poor MR. DICKENS." In June of the same year he sent
+Forster the proof of a preface he had written to a book by a poor
+carpenter named Overs, saying, "I wish you would read this, and give it me
+again when we meet at Stanfield's to-day"; and, still in the same year,
+"Stanny" is one of the friends he wishes Forster to invite to his chambers
+in Lincoln's Inn Fields to hear a reading of _The Chimes_ before it is
+published.
+
+No part of London is richer in literary and artistic associations than
+Hampstead. At the "Upper Flask" tavern, now known as the "Upper Heath,"
+Pope, Addison, Steele, Congreve, Hogarth and the other members of the
+Kit-Kat club used to meet in the eighteenth century, and Hogarth and
+Addison and his friends frequently resorted to the "Bull and Bush" at
+North End. Akenside lived for a while in Hampstead, and after he had left
+it went to stay occasionally with his friend Mr. Dyson at Golder's Hill,
+and was staying there in 1758 when he wrote his _Ode on recovering from a
+fit of sickness in the Country_, beginning:--
+
+  "Thy verdant scenes, O Goulder's Hill,
+   Once more I seek, a languid guest."
+
+Gay often went to Hampstead to drink the waters, at the Pump Room, in Well
+Walk; Dr. Arbuthnot lived in Hampstead, where Swift and Pope were among
+his visitors; Fuseli lodged in Church Row; Dr. Johnson's wife spent some
+of her summer holidays at a cottage near the entrance to the Priory, and
+the Doctor would tear himself away from his loved Fleet Street to pass an
+occasional day or two there with her; and of recent years Robert Louis
+Stevenson stayed with Sidney Colvin at Abernethy House, Mount Vernon, and
+at that time Stevenson, who was then twenty-four, so far conformed to the
+proprieties as to go about in "a frock coat and tall hat, which he had
+once worn at a wedding."
+
+[Illustration: STANFIELD'S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Tennyson's mother had a house in Flask Walk; when Edward Fitzgerald was
+in London, Tennyson introduced him to Dickens, and these three, taking
+Thackeray with them, drove out together to Hampstead Heath. Relics of Dick
+Turpin are preserved at the Spaniards Inn, a quaint, old-world hostelry
+that has in different generations entertained Goldsmith, Gainsborough, Sir
+Joshua Reynolds, Garrick and Constable, as well as Dickens and many of his
+familiars.
+
+[Illustration: THE UPPER FLASK. FROM THE BOWLING GREEN.]
+
+But more intimately than with any other of the immortals Hampstead has
+come to be associated with Keats and Leigh Hunt--with Keats in particular.
+He was born, a good Cockney, in Moorfields, over his father's livery
+stables, and in 1816 went to live with his brother Tom at No. 1 Well Walk,
+next door to the "Green Man," which has been succeeded by the Wells
+Tavern, and in his room here, on the 18th November 1816, when he was
+one-and-twenty, wrote a sonnet _To My Brothers_:--
+
+  "Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals,
+     And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep
+     Like whispers of the household gods that keep
+   A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.
+   And while for rhymes I search around the poles,
+     Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep,
+     Upon the lore so voluble and deep
+   That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
+
+   This is your birthday, Tom, and I rejoice
+     That thus it passes smoothly, quietly:
+   Many such eves of gently whispering noise
+     May we together pass, and calmly try
+   What are this world's true joys--ere the great Voice
+     From its fair face shall bid our spirits fly."
+
+In 1818 Keats moved to another part of Hampstead, and lodged with his
+friend, Charles Armitage Brown, a retired merchant, at Wentworth Place,
+now known as Lawn Bank, in John Street, which was the other day, for no
+sufficient reason, renamed Keats Grove. At that date Wentworth Place was
+divided into two houses, Brown renting one, and Wentworth Dilke occupying
+the other; and when the Dilkes were away from home they left their house
+in the possession of Mrs. Brawne, her son, and two daughters, the elder of
+these daughters being the Fanny Brawne of Keats's piteous love romance.
+Though he finished the writing of it, and wrote the preface to it, on a
+holiday at Teignmouth, _Endymion_ was published, and most of it had been
+written, whilst he was at Wentworth Place, and under this roof also he
+wrote his _Eve of St. Agnes_, _Isabella_, _Hyperion_, and the _Ode to a
+Nightingale_. As every one knows, the publication of _Endymion_ brought
+him little but ridicule and abuse from the reviewers; but, much as this
+must have wounded and mortified his sensitive nature, it was so far from
+being the cause of his death, as some sentimentalists said it was, that,
+as you may gather from his correspondence, it did not even discourage him.
+The _Quarterly_ snubbed him as a copyist of Leigh Hunt, professed to find
+_Endymion_ so tedious as to be almost unreadable, and saw nothing in it
+but "calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy"; _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, referring to his having qualified as a surgeon, sneered "Back
+to the shop, Mr. John, stick to plasters, pills, ointment-boxes;" and the
+majority of critics were equally unappreciative. Byron dubbed him "a
+tadpole of the Lakes," and in divers letters to John Murray says, "There
+is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to
+look at them. No more Keats, I entreat.... Of the praises of the little
+dirty blackguard Keats in the _Edinburgh_ I shall observe, as Johnson did
+when Sheridan the actor got a pension, 'What, has _he_ got a pension? Then
+it is time that I should give up _mine_.' At present, all the men they
+have ever praised are degraded by that insane article. Why don't they
+review and praise _Solomon's Guide to Health_? It is better sense and as
+much poetry as Johnny Keats." After Keats was dead, Byron changed his
+opinions somewhat, and was anxious that his disparagements of him should
+be suppressed. "You know very well," he writes to Murray, "that I did not
+approve of Keats's poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of
+Pope; but as he is dead, omit all that it said about him in any MSS. of
+mine, or publication. His _Hyperion_ is a fine monument, and will keep his
+name"; and he added later, "His fragment of _Hyperion_ seems actually
+inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Æschylus. He is a loss to our
+literature."
+
+Keats was too fully occupied with the writing of other poems, with the
+glowing raptures and black despairs of his passion for Fanny Brawne, and
+the anxieties attendant upon the illness that was already wearing him
+down, to give overmuch of his thoughts to the attacks of his critics;
+moreover, he found consolation in the society and friendship of such men
+as Cowden Clarke, Wentworth Dilke (who founded the _Athenæum_), John
+Hamilton Reynolds, Haydon the painter, and Leigh Hunt, whom he frequently
+visited at that cottage of his in the Vale of Health, which ought never to
+have been demolished. For it was the meeting-place, too, of Keats and
+Shelley, and within it on one occasion, according to Cowden Clarke, Leigh
+Hunt challenged Keats, "then, and there, and to time," to write in
+competition with him a sonnet on _The Grasshopper and the Cricket_, and
+Keats finished his first. Passing a night there when he could not sleep,
+Keats wrote his _Sleep and Poetry_; and the cottage was rich, too, in
+rumours of such guests as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Coleridge.
+
+[Illustration: KEATS' HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Keats was introduced to Coleridge by Leigh Hunt. In 1816, when he was
+trying to cure himself of the opium habit, Coleridge went to live with Mr.
+Gilman, a surgeon, in a house that still stands in The Grove, Highgate,
+and walking with Hunt one day in Millfield Lane, which runs on the
+Highgate side of the Heath, he chanced to meet Keats, and this is his own
+account of the meeting: "A loose, slack, and not well-dressed youth met me
+in a lane near Highgate. It was Keats. He was introduced to me, and stayed
+a minute or so. After he had left us a little way, he ran back and said,
+'Let me carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your hand.'
+'There is death in that hand,' I said when Keats was gone; yet this was, I
+believe, before the consumption showed itself distinctly." But another
+four years were not past when Hone, the author of _The Table Book_, saw
+"poor Keats, the poet of _The Pot of Basil_, sitting and sobbing his dying
+breath into a handkerchief," on a bench at the end of Well Walk,
+overlooking the Heath, "glancing parting looks towards the quiet landscape
+he had delighted in so much."
+
+Perhaps the best descriptions of Keats in the last four years of his life
+are those given by Haydon, the painter, in his _Memoirs_, and by Leigh
+Hunt in his _Autobiography_. "He was below the middle size," according to
+Haydon, "with a low forehead and an eye that had an inward look perfectly
+divine, like a Delphian priestess who saw visions.... Unable to bear the
+sneers of ignorance or the attacks of envy, not having strength of mind
+enough to buckle himself together like a porcupine, and present nothing
+but his prickles to his enemies, he began to despond, flew to dissipation
+as a relief which, after a temporary elevation of spirits, plunged him
+into deeper despondency than ever. For six weeks he was scarcely sober,
+and to show what a man does to gratify his habits, when once they get the
+better of him, he once covered his tongue and throat as far as he could
+reach with cayenne pepper, in order to appreciate the 'delicious coldness
+of claret in all its glory'--his own expression." Leigh Hunt writes, "He
+was under the middle height; and his lower limbs were small in comparison
+with the upper, but neat and well turned. His shoulders were very broad
+for his size: he had a face in which energy and sensibility were
+remarkably mixed up; an eager power, checked and made patient by ill
+health. Every feature was at once strongly cut and delicately alive. If
+there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, which was not
+without something of a character of pugnacity. His face was rather long
+than otherwise; the upper lip projected a little over the under; the chin
+was bold, the cheeks sunken; the eyes mellow and glowing, large, dark, and
+sensitive. At the recital of a noble action, or a beautiful thought, they
+would suffuse with tears and his mouth trembled. In this there was ill
+health as well as imagination, for he did not like these betrayals of
+emotion; and he had great personal as well as moral courage. He once
+chastised a butcher, who had been insolent, by a regular stand-up fight."
+(Tradition says this fight took place in one of the narrow courts out of
+the High Street, Hampstead.) "His hair, of a brown colour, was fine, and
+hung in natural ringlets. The head was a puzzle for the phrenologists,
+being remarkably small in the skull; a singularity he had in common with
+Byron and Shelley, whose hats I could not get on." Add to these a
+description given by one who knew him to Lord Houghton: "His eyes were
+large and blue, his hair auburn; he wore it divided down the centre, and
+it fell in rich masses each side of his face; his mouth was full, and less
+intellectual than his other features. His countenance lives in my mind as
+one of singular beauty and brightness; it had the expression as if it had
+been looking on some glorious sight."
+
+The last two years of his life at Hampstead, with their quiet happiness,
+fierce unrests, passionate hopes and despairs, are all wonderfully
+reflected in his letters of this period. He writes from Wentworth Place to
+John Taylor, the publisher, in 1818, setting forth his poetical creed and
+saying, with a clear perception of its defects, "If _Endymion_ serves me
+as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content.... I have, I am sure, many
+friends who, if I fail, will attribute any change in my life and temper to
+humbleness rather than pride--to a cowering under the wings of great
+poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious
+to get _Endymion_ printed that I may forget it and proceed." There is a
+long letter to his sister in 1819, telling her of the books he has been
+reading, and describing his every-day life, beginning, "The candles are
+burnt down and I am using the wax taper, which has a long snuff on it--the
+fire is at its last click--I am sitting with my back to it, with one foot
+rather askew upon the rug and the other with the heel a little elevated
+from the carpet. I am writing this on _The Maid's Tragedy_, which I have
+read since tea with great pleasure. Besides this volume of Beaumont and
+Fletcher, there are on the table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of
+Tom Moore's called _Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress_--nothing in it."
+Reading this minute little sketch of himself, it is easy to picture him
+sitting late that night in his quiet room in Keats Grove; but it is the
+letters to Fanny Brawne that give this house, which was then two houses,
+its deepest and most living interest.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE'S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+In 1819 he writes to her, whilst he is away holidaying in the Isle of
+Wight and she at Wentworth Place, "I have never known any unalloyed
+happiness for many days together; the death or sickness of some one has
+always spoilt my hours--and now, when none such troubles oppress me, it
+is, you must confess, very hard that another sort of pain should haunt me.
+Ask yourself, my love, whether you are not very cruel to have so
+entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom." And again, "Your letter gave me
+more delight than anything in the world but yourself could do.... I never
+knew before what such love as you have made me feel was; I did not believe
+in it; my fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up." And again,
+"I have been in so irritable a state of health these two or three last
+days, that I did not think I should be able to write this week.... I have
+been, I cannot tell why, in capital spirits this last hour. What reason?
+When I have to take my candle and retire to a lonely room, without the
+thought, as I fall asleep, of seeing you to-morrow morning? or the next
+day, or the next--it takes on the appearance of impossibility and
+eternity. I will say a month--I will say I will see you in a month at
+most, though no one but yourself should see me; if it be but for an hour.
+I should not like to be so near you as London without being continually
+with you; after having once more kissed you, Sweet, I would rather be here
+alone at my task than in the bustle and hateful literary chitchat.
+Meantime you must write to me--as I will every week--for your letters keep
+me alive."
+
+Back in London, making a short stay with Leigh Hunt, then living at
+College Street, Kentish Town, Keats sends to Wentworth Place a letter to
+Fanny Brawne, in the course of which he tells her, "My love has made me
+selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but
+seeing you again--my Life seems to stop there--I see no further. You have
+absorbed me.... My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you." Even
+when he is home again, in his own part of the Wentworth Place house, he is
+writing in February 1820, "They say I must remain confined to this room
+for some time. The consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant
+prison of the house next to yours. You must come and see me frequently:
+this evening without fail"; and again, in the same month, "You will have a
+pleasant walk to-day. I shall see you pass. I shall follow you with my
+eyes over the Heath. Will you come towards evening instead of before
+dinner? When you are gone, 'tis past--if you do not come till the evening
+I have something to look forward to all day. Come round to my window for a
+moment when you have read this."
+
+In September of that year he set out on that voyage to Italy from which he
+was never to return, and whilst the ship was delayed off the Isle of
+Wight, he wrote to his friend, Charles Armitage Brown, at the old
+Hampstead address, "The very thing which I want to live most for will be a
+great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can help it?... I
+daresay you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping--you know
+what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at your
+house. I wish for death every day and night to deliver me from these
+pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy even those
+pains which are better than nothing.... I think, without my mentioning it,
+for my sake, you would be a friend to Miss Brawne when I am dead. You
+think she has many faults--but, for my sake, think she has not one. If
+there is anything you can do for her by word or deed I know you will do
+it.... The thought of leaving Miss Brawne is beyond everything
+horrible--the sense of darkness coming over me--I eternally see her figure
+eternally vanishing. Some of the phrases she was in the habit of using
+during my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring in my ears. Is there
+another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be; we
+cannot be created for this sort of suffering."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE DUMAURIER'S GRAVE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Because of all this, and of the reiterated longings and the heartaches
+that Keats poured out in other letters that he wrote from Italy, and that
+were delivered here to Armitage Brown, I always feel that Wentworth Place
+is the saddest and most sacred of London's literary shrines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ROUND ABOUT SOHO AGAIN
+
+
+As a general thing the literary man is not to be found living in the
+aristocratic quarters of the town until after he has done his best work
+and has begun to make money out of his inferior books. I don't think any
+man of letters has ever rented a house in Park Lane, except Disraeli, and
+he went there as a successful politician; such glorious thoroughfares are
+reserved to more respectable stock-brokers and company-promoters, whilst
+those whom the gods love are driven to seek refuge in the cheap and shabby
+houses of meaner streets. Half the squalid squares and byways of Soho are
+in reality vestibules and aisles of the Temple of Fame. Blake, as we have
+seen in a former chapter, lived in Poland Street; and in the same street
+lived Flaxman, and, later, Shelley. Dryden lived in Gerrard Street, a
+century before Burke made his home there; Hazlitt died in Frith Street;
+Mulready the painter had his studio in Broad Street; and the sculptor,
+James Northcote, resided for over thirty years in Argyll Place. When
+Madame de Stael was in England she stayed at 30 (now 29) Argyll Street,
+and Byron speaks of visiting her there. I have already referred to Sir
+James Thornhill's house in Dean Street; near by, in Soho Square, lived the
+actor, Kemble; and this square has pathetic memories of De Quincey, who
+lodged for a time, under strange circumstances, at the Greek Street corner
+of it.
+
+Left an orphan to the care of guardians who seem to have treated him with
+some harshness, De Quincey ran away from the Manchester Grammar School in
+1802, when he was only seventeen, and after wandering through Wales made
+his way to London. Here for two months he was houseless, and seldom slept
+under a roof, and for upwards of sixteen weeks suffered "the physical
+anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity." He tells you in his
+_Confessions_ how he used to pace "the never-ending terraces" of Oxford
+Street, and at night sleep on some doorstep, and dream, "and wake to the
+captivity of hunger." In Oxford Street he fell in with that most innocent
+and tender-hearted of street-walkers, Ann, whose surname he never knew,
+and to whose compassion and charity he always felt that he owed his life:
+"For many weeks I had walked at nights with this poor friendless girl up
+and down Oxford Street, or had rested with her on steps and under the
+shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old as myself; she told me,
+indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year.... One night when
+we were pacing slowly along Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt
+more than usually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into
+Soho Square. Thither we went, and we sat down on the steps of a house
+which to this hour I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner act
+of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble
+action which she there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse.
+I had been leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I sank from
+her arms and fell backwards on the steps." He was so utterly exhausted
+that he felt he must have died, but with a cry of terror she ran off into
+Oxford Street and returned with port wine and spices which she had paid
+for out of her own pocket, at a time when "she had scarcely the
+wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life;" and this timely
+stimulant served to restore him.
+
+By-and-by, meeting a friend who lent him ten pounds, he travelled down to
+Windsor to see if he could get a certain friend of his family there to
+assist him; but before going he paid Ann something of his debt to her, and
+arranged that three nights from then, and every night after until they
+should meet, she would be at the corner of Titchfield Street, Soho. On his
+return to London he was at the appointed place night after night, but Ann
+never appeared, and though he inquired everywhere and searched the
+neighbourhood for her he was never able to see or hear of her again.
+
+Earlier than this, however, and before he had succeeded in borrowing that
+ten pounds, the coming on of a bitterly inclement winter drove him to seek
+a wretched lodging at 61 (then 38) Greek Street, Soho Square. The house
+was a dirty, neglected, cheerless place, tenanted by a disreputable
+attorney named Brunell-Brown, who had a curious clerk named Pyment, and
+only came and went to and from his office by stealth because he was deep
+in debts and continually dodging the bailiffs. A few weeks of lodging
+miserably here nearly exhausted the little cash De Quincey had brought to
+London with him, and he had to give up his room. But he explained his
+position frankly to Brunell-Brown, and this kindly, reckless rascal, who
+had a genuine knowledge and love of literature, and was interested in the
+young lodger who could talk to him intelligently on such matters, readily
+gave him permission to come to the house nightly and sleep gratis in one
+of its empty rooms, and allowed him, moreover, to eat the scraps from his
+breakfast-table.
+
+The house had an unoccupied look, especially of nights, when the lawyer
+himself was usually absent. "There was no household or establishment in
+it; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I
+found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that the house already
+contained one single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years
+old; but she seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make
+children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that
+she had lived and slept there for some time before I came; and great joy
+the poor creature expressed when she found that I was in future to be her
+companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large, and from the
+want of furniture the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the
+spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and,
+I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more
+(it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her
+protection against all ghosts whatsoever, but, alas! I could offer her no
+other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law
+papers for a pillow, but no other covering than a sort of large horseman's
+cloak; afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old sofa-cover, a
+small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which added a
+little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for warmth and for
+security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than usually ill
+I took her into my arms, so that in general she was tolerably warm, and
+often slept when I could not....
+
+[Illustration: DE QUINCEY'S HOUSE. SOHO.]
+
+"Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and
+very early; sometimes not till ten o'clock; sometimes not at all. He was
+in constant fear of bailiffs. Improving on the plan of Cromwell, every
+night he slept in a different quarter of London; and I observed that he
+never failed to examine through a private window the appearance of those
+who knocked at the door before he would allow it to be opened. He
+breakfasted alone; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of
+his hazarding an invitation to a second person, any more than the quantity
+of esculent _matériel_, which for the most part was little more than a
+roll or a few biscuits which he had bought on his road from the place
+where he had slept. During his breakfast I generally contrived a reason
+for lounging in, and with an air of as much indifference as I could
+assume, took up such fragments as he had left; sometimes, indeed, there
+were none at all.... As to the poor child, she was never admitted into his
+study (if I may give that name to his chief depository of parchments, law
+writings, &c.); that room was to her the Bluebeard room of the house,
+being regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about six o'clock,
+which usually was his final departure for the night. Whether the child
+were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. Brunell-Brown, or only a servant, I
+could not ascertain; she did not herself know; but certainly she was
+treated altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did Mr. Brunell-Brown
+make his appearance than she went below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat,
+&c.; and, except when she was summoned to run an errand, she never emerged
+from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchen, &c. to the upper air until my
+welcome knock at night called up her little trembling footsteps to the
+front door. Of her life during the daytime, however, I knew little but
+what I gathered from her own account at night, for as soon as the hours of
+business commenced I saw that my absence would be acceptable, and in
+general, therefore, I went off and sate in the parks or elsewhere until
+nightfall."
+
+[Illustration: SHELLEY'S HOUSE. POLAND STREET W.]
+
+I have always thought that in all this there is something oddly
+reminiscent of Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness; the poor, half-starved
+little household drudge fits her part almost exactly, but De Quincey makes
+but a depressed and dismal Dick Swiveller; and Mr. Brunell-Brown seems to
+have been a lower type of the rascally lawyer than Sampson Brass was; but
+rascal as he was, one warms to him because of his kindness to his forlorn
+guest. "I must forget everything but that towards me," says De Quincey,
+"he was obliging and, to the extent of his power, generous." He goes on to
+say that in after years, whenever he was in London, he never failed to
+visit that house in Greek Street, and "about ten o'clock this very night,
+August 15, 1821--being my birthday--I turned aside from my evening walk
+down Oxford Street, purposely to take a glance at it; it is now occupied
+by a respectable family, and by the lights in the front drawing-room I
+observed a domestic party assembled, perhaps at tea, and apparently
+cheerful and gay. Marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness,
+cold, silence and desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when
+its nightly occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child.
+Her, by-the-by, in after years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from
+her situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child; she
+was neither pretty nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in
+manners."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS DE QUINCEY]
+
+His London privations ended with a reconciliation between himself and his
+guardians, and he was sent to Oxford--his quarrel with them being that
+they would not allow him to go there.
+
+De Quincey quitted Soho to go to Oxford, and Shelley, when he was expelled
+from Oxford in 1811, came to Soho. He travelled up to London on the coach
+with his friend Hogg. His cousin and sometime schoolfellow, Medwin,
+relates how before dawn on a March morning Shelley and Hogg knocked at his
+door in Garden Court, Temple, and he heard Shelley's cracked voice cry, in
+his well-known pipe, "Medwin, let me in. I am expelled," and after a loud
+sort of half-hysterical laugh repeat, "I am expelled," and add "for
+atheism." After breakfast they went out to look for lodgings, and, says
+Hogg, "never was a young beauty so capricious, so hard to please" as
+Shelley; but the name of Poland Street attracted him because it suggested
+recollections of Thaddeus of Warsaw and freedom, and he declared "we must
+lodge here, should we sleep on the step of a door." A bill advertising
+lodgings to let hung in the window of No. 15, so they knocked and entered
+and inspected them--"a quiet sitting-room, its walls papered with
+trellised vine-leaves and clustering grapes," with a similarly decorated
+bedroom opening out of it, and Shelley whispered, "We must stay here for
+ever."
+
+"For ever" dwindled to something less than a year; but here for that time
+Shelley lived and resumed his interrupted studies, as far as might be, and
+was secretly supported by his sisters, who sent their pocket-money round
+to him by the hand of their schoolfellow, Harriett Westbrook, daughter of
+the retired tavern-keeper, John Westbrook, who was living near Park Lane,
+at 23 Chapel Street (now Aldford Street).
+
+In April 1811 Shelley's father wrote insisting that he should break off
+all relations with Hogg and place himself under a tutor of his father's
+selection, and Shelley replied, from his Poland Street lodgings:--
+
+    "MY DEAR FATHER,--As you do me the honour of requesting to hear the
+    determination of my mind, as the basis of your future actions, I feel
+    it my duty, although it gives me pain to wound 'the sense of duty to
+    your own character, to that of your family, and feelings as a
+    Christian,' decidedly to refuse my assent to both the proposals in
+    your letter, and to affirm that similar refusals will always be the
+    fate of similar requests. With many thanks for your great kindness,--I
+    remain your affectionate, dutiful son,
+
+      "PERCY B. SHELLEY."
+
+His father presently relented so far as to make him an allowance of two
+hundred pounds a year. One evening in August, having arranged a hasty
+elopement with Harriett Westbrook, Shelley walked from Poland Street to a
+small coffee-house in Mount Street, and as Dr. Dowden sets forth in his
+Life of the poet, dispatched a letter thence to Harriett, her father's
+house in Aldford Street being close handy, telling her at what hour he
+would have a hackney coach waiting for her at the door of the
+coffee-house. At the appointed time the coach was there in readiness, and
+a little behind time "Harriett was seen tripping round the corner from
+Chapel Street, and the coach wheels rattled towards the City inn from
+which the northern mails departed."
+
+[Illustration: SHELLEY. MARCHMONT STREET.]
+
+They travelled post-haste to the North, and were married in Edinburgh; and
+in another three years the deserted Harriett had ended her life in the
+Serpentine, and Shelley had gone off with Mary Godwin. Meanwhile, however,
+returning to London after his marriage to Harriett, Shelley stayed for a
+few days at the house of his father-in-law, and then at Cooke's Hotel, in
+Albemarle Street. On another occasion he lodged for a short time at a
+house still standing in Marchmont Street (No. 26), a drab and dingy
+thoroughfare in the neighbourhood of Russell Square.
+
+Hazlitt was a Soho resident for no longer than about six months. In 1830
+he came from his lodgings in Bouverie Street to occupy rooms at No. 6
+Frith Street. He was then already failing in health, separated from his
+wife, harassed financially through the failure of his publishers,
+altogether broken and dispirited. Much disappointment, the thwarting of
+many of his highest personal ambitions, had soured and embittered him.
+Haydon calls him a "singular mixture of friend and fiend, radical and
+critic, metaphysician, poet and painter, on whose word no one could rely,
+on whose heart no one could calculate." A critic of genius, a brilliant
+essayist; with not so great a heart as Lamb's but a finer intellect; he
+has never to this day received his full meed of recognition. He moves in
+spirit among the immortals as apart and unsociable as he moved among them
+in the body. "We are told," wrote P. G. Patmore, "that on the summit of
+one of those columns which form the magnificent ruins of Hadrian's Temple,
+in the plain of Athens, there used to dwell a hermit who scarcely ever
+descended from this strangely-chosen abode, owing his scanty food and
+support to the mingled admiration and curiosity of the peasants who
+inhabited the plain below. Something like this was the position of William
+Hazlitt. Self-banished from the social world, no less by the violence of
+his own passions than by those petty regards of custom and society which
+could not or would not tolerate the trifling aberrations from external
+form and usage engendered by a mind like his, ... he became, as regarded
+himself, personally heedless of all things but the immediate gratification
+of his momentary wishes, careless of personal character, indifferent to
+literary fame, forgetful of the past, reckless of the future, and yet so
+exquisitely alive to the claims and the virtues of all these that the
+abandonment of his birthright in every one of them opened a separate
+canker in his heart, and made his life a living emblem of the early death
+which it foretokened."
+
+Patmore, too, has given a good sketch of his personal appearance. "The
+forehead," he says, "was magnificent; the nose precisely that which
+physiognomists have assigned as evidence of a fine and highly cultivated
+taste; though there was a peculiar character about the nostrils like
+that observable in those of a fiery and unruly horse. His eyes were not
+good. They were never brilliant, and there was a furtive and at times a
+sinister look about them as they glanced suspiciously from under their
+overhanging brows." Other contemporaries have described him as a grave
+man, diffident, almost awkward in manner, of middle size, and with eager,
+expressive eyes. S. C. Hall considered him mean-looking and
+unprepossessing; but though Talfourd speaks of him as slouching, awkward,
+and neglectful in his dress, he credits him with "a handsome, eager
+countenance, worn by sickness and thought."
+
+[Illustration: HAZLITT'S HOUSE. FRITH STREET.]
+
+But he was nearing the end of it all when he came to Frith Street. In
+August he was attacked with a violent sort of cholera, and never rallied
+from it. What was probably his last essay, one on "The Sick Chamber,"
+appeared that same month in the _New Monthly_, picturing his own invalid
+condition and touching gratefully on the consolation and enjoyment he
+could still derive from books. Nearing the close, he begged that his
+mother might be sent for, but she was an old lady of eighty-four living in
+Devonshire and was unable to go to him. "He died so quietly," in the words
+of his grandson, "that his son, who was sitting by his bedside, did not
+know that he was gone till the vital breath had been extinct a moment or
+two. His last words were, 'Well, I've had a happy life.'" The same
+authority adds that he found the following memorandum, in the handwriting
+of his grandmother: "Saturday, 18th September 1830, at about half-past
+four in the afternoon, died at his lodgings, No. 6 Frith Street, Soho,
+William Hazlitt, aged fifty-two years five months and eight days. Mr.
+Lamb, Mr. White, Mr. Hersey, and his own son were with him at the time."
+
+He was buried within a minute's walk of his house, in the churchyard of
+St. Anne's, Soho, and his tombstone removed from its first position,
+stands back against the wall of the church: the stone originally bore a
+curious, somewhat militant inscription, but this has recently been
+obliterated, and replaced by one that offers nothing but his name and a
+record of the dates of his birth and death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A PHILOSOPHER, TWO POETS, AND A NOVELIST
+
+
+Everybody has heard of _Sandford and Merton_, and hardly anybody nowadays
+has read it. I confess with shame that I am one who has not. But I have
+come across so many parodies of it and so many references to it in various
+books and articles that I am finding it more and more difficult to believe
+that I have not actually read the story itself. Mr. Barlow, the boy's
+tutor, lives in my mind as a large and solemn bore, but he was a bore of
+real knowledge; he was heavy with learning; and the boys themselves were
+dreadful little prigs, but underneath their priggishness they were manly
+boys, and there was something fine in their ideals of honour. No doubt
+they were largely modelled on their author, Thomas Day, who when he was a
+schoolboy started a fight with another boy on quite justifiable grounds,
+and soon finding that he completely outmatched his opponent, stopped the
+fight, and insisted on shaking hands with the other and making peace.
+
+That incident, and the queer originality of his whole outlook on life, has
+made me more interested in Day himself than in his one famous book, and
+has made me number 36 Wellclose Square, the house where he was born,
+among the London literary shrines that must not be overlooked.
+
+Wellclose Square is in Shadwell, on the skirts of Whitechapel, and is one
+of those melancholy places that have obviously seen better days. Dreary
+and drab and squalid as you see it now, when Day was born there on the
+22nd June 1748 it must have been a fairly select and superior residential
+quarter. Day's father was a collector of Customs who died a year after his
+son's birth, leaving him a very comfortable fortune of twelve hundred a
+year. The boy was educated at Charterhouse and at Oxford, and one way and
+another acquired lofty Stoic principles and a somewhat original philosophy
+that he lived up to obstinately all his life through, in spite of many
+rebuffs and a good deal of ridicule. He dressed carelessly, was
+indifferent to appearances, and scorned the "admiration of splendour which
+dazzles and enslaves mankind." He preferred the society of his inferiors
+because they were more unconventional, less artificial than the ladies and
+gentlemen of his own rank; he was awkward in the company of women, and
+regarded the sex with doubt as well as with diffidence. As you would
+expect of the man who wrote _Sandford and Merton_, he had no sense of
+humour; and his smallpox-pitted face and unattractive air and manner told
+so much against him that he was rejected emphatically by the first one or
+two women he proposed to. Withal, as was also fitting in the author of
+that fearsomely moral schoolboy-book, he was, in the words of his friend
+Edgeworth, "the most virtuous human being I have ever known."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS DAY. 36 WELLCLOSE SQUARE.]
+
+I suppose he was a pioneer of the "simple life" theory; anyhow, he
+persistently advocated simplicity in dress and living, and was determined
+to find a wife who shared these tastes, who should, moreover, be fond of
+literature and moral philosophy, "simple as a mountain girl in her dress,
+diet, and manners, and fearless and intrepid as the Spartan wives and
+Roman heroines." He was careful to state these requirements to the lady
+before proposing to her, and this seems to have spoilt his chances. The
+difficulty of discovering his ideal wife led to his making an odd
+experiment. He adopted two young girls, one from the Foundling Hospital,
+the other from the Shrewsbury Orphanage, and in deference to the
+proprieties formally bound them apprentice to his friend Edgeworth, and
+gave guarantees to the authorities that within one year he would make a
+decision between the two and pay a premium of a hundred pounds to
+apprentice one to a suitable trade, and send the other to be properly
+educated with the ultimate object of marrying her. The girls were about
+twelve years old. In order that they should not be influenced with wrong
+ideas by the people about them, he took them into France, where, as they
+only understood English, they could talk with nobody but himself; and
+there he proceeded to teach them reading and writing, and by ridicule,
+explanation, and reasoning sought "to imbue them with a deep hatred for
+dress, for luxury, for fine people, for fashion and titles, all of which
+inspired his own mind with such an unconquerable horror." In a letter
+which he wrote home about them he says, "I am not disappointed in one
+respect. I am more attached to and more convinced of the truth of my
+principles than ever. I have made them, in respect of temper, two such
+girls as, I may perhaps say without vanity, you have never seen at the
+same age. They have never given me a moment's trouble throughout the
+voyage, are always contented, and think nothing so agreeable as waiting
+upon me (no moderate convenience for a lazy man)." Nevertheless, in
+France, the girls proved very quarrelsome; he had to nurse them through a
+severe attack of smallpox, and once when they were out boating they both
+fell into the Rhone, and he risked his life to save them.
+
+Within the year, he brought them back to England and had made his choice.
+He apprenticed one, who was "invincibly stupid," to a milliner; and the
+other, Sabrina Sidney, he carried with him to a house he had taken near
+Lichfield and there "resumed his preparations for implanting in her young
+mind the characteristic virtues of Arria, Portia and Cornelia." But she
+disappointed him; he endeavoured in vain to steel her against shrinking
+from pain and the fear of danger. "When he dropped melting sealing-wax on
+her arms she did not endure it heroically; nor when he fired pistols at
+her petticoats which she believed to be charged with balls could she help
+starting aside or suppress her screams." She was not fond of science, and
+was unable to keep a secret satisfactorily; so after a year's trial Day
+sent her away to a boarding-school, and proceeded to pay his addresses to
+a young lady living in the neighbourhood, who first put him on a period of
+probation, and then, after he had made himself ridiculous in trying to
+dress and behave as she wished, rejected him.
+
+[Illustration: LORD BYRON]
+
+Whereupon his thoughts turned again to Sabrina, who had a real affection
+for him; but her failure to obey him in certain small details of dress
+again displeased him, and finally deciding against her, he in the long run
+married a Miss Milnes. His one objection to this lady was that she
+possessed a considerable fortune, and would therefore probably refuse to
+live the simple life; but when he had categorically put his requirements
+to her, and she had consented to dispense with all luxuries, to cut
+herself off from social gaieties, and reside in the country with him,
+restricted in every way to the bare necessaries of existence, working and
+spending for the behoof of the poor and needy, he ventured to make her
+Mrs. Day, and never had occasion to regret it. Sabrina eventually married
+a barrister, but refused to do so until she had Day's consent; and when,
+after writing divers political, economic, and philosophical works that
+nobody hears of now, and _Sandford and Merton_, which nobody reads any
+longer, Day died of a fall from an unmanageable horse which he insisted
+could be controlled by kindness, his wife was inconsolable, and died soon
+after him of a broken heart.
+
+So he must have been a man worth knowing, and, in spite of his
+peculiarities and his oppressive earnestness, more likeable than most of
+us, when you knew him. Anyhow, he thought for himself, and had opinions of
+his own, and was not afraid to act upon them. And such men are so
+uncommonly rare that I think the County Council should put a tablet on the
+face of his birthplace at once, for the encouragement of all men who are
+something more than cheap copies of their neighbours.
+
+Across the other side of London, at 24 (then 16) Holles Street, Cavendish
+Square, Lord Byron was born, on 22nd January 1788--a very different man,
+but also unconventional, though in more conventional ways. But the house
+here has been considerably altered to suit the requirements of the big
+drapery establishment that at present occupies it, and of Byron's various
+residences in London I believe the only one that survives in its original
+condition is that at No. 4 Bennet Street, St. James's. Here he had rooms
+on the first floor in 1813 and the early months of 1814, and it was in
+those rooms that he wrote _The Giaour_, _The Bride of Abydos_, and _The
+Corsair_. Writing to Moore from here on the 28th July 1813, he says, "I am
+training to dine with Sheridan and Rogers this evening"; and in the Diary
+he was keeping at this time he notes, on 16th November 1813, "Read Burns
+to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should have had more
+polish--less force--just as much verse but no immortality--a divorce and
+duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been
+less spirituous, he might have lived as long as Sheridan, and outlived as
+much as poor Brinsley."
+
+From Bennet Street Byron carried on a correspondence with the lady he was
+destined to marry, Miss Anna Isabella Milbanke. "I look upon myself," he
+tells her in one of his letters, "as a very facetious personage, and may
+appeal to most of my acquaintance in proof of my assertion. Nobody laughs
+more, and though your friend Joanna Baillie says somewhere that 'Laughter
+is the child of misery,' I do not believe her (unless indeed a hysteric),
+though I think it is sometimes the parent." In another of the same
+September 1813, evidently replying to one of hers, he protests: "'Gay'
+but not 'content'--very true.... You have detected a laughter 'false to
+the heart'--allowed--yet I have been tolerably sincere with you, and I
+fear sometimes troublesome." In November he writes to her, "I perceive by
+part of your last letter that you are still inclined to believe me a
+gloomy personage. Those who pass so much of their time entirely alone
+can't be always in very high spirits; yet I don't know--though I certainly
+do enjoy society to a certain extent, I never passed two hours in mixed
+company without wishing myself out of it again. Still, I look upon myself
+as a facetious companion, well reputed by all the wits at whose jests I
+readily laugh, and whose repartees I take care never to incur by any kind
+of contest--for which I feel as little qualified as I do for the more
+solid pursuits of demonstration."
+
+[Illustration: BYRON. 4 BENNET STREET. ST. JAMES'S.]
+
+As for his gloom or gaiety, Sir Walter Scott, who lunched with him and
+Charles Mathews at Long's Hotel, in Old Bond Street, in 1815, said, "I
+never saw Byron so full of fun, frolic, wit, and whim: he was as playful
+as a kitten." Again, writing in his Journal, after Byron's death, Sir
+Walter observes, "What I liked about Byron, besides his boundless genius,
+was his generosity of spirit as well as purse, and his utter contempt of
+all affectations of literature, from the school-magisterial style to the
+lackadaisical"; and he relates an anecdote in illustration of Byron's
+extreme sensitiveness: "Like Rousseau, he was apt to be very suspicious,
+and a plain, downright steadiness of manner was the true mode to maintain
+his good opinion. Will Rose told me that once, while sitting with Byron,
+he fixed insensibly his eyes on his feet, one of which, it must be
+remembered, was deformed. Looking up suddenly, he saw Byron regarding him
+with a look of concentrated and deep displeasure, which wore off when he
+observed no consciousness or embarrassment in the countenance of Rose.
+Murray afterwards explained this by telling Rose that Lord Byron was very
+jealous of having this personal imperfection noticed or attended to." He
+goes on to say that Byron was a mischief-maker; he would tell one man the
+unpleasant things that had been privately said of him by another; and he
+loved to mystify people, "to be thought awful, mysterious and gloomy, and
+sometimes hinted at strange causes."
+
+So that if he had no literary affectations he clearly cultivated a pose of
+mysterious misery both in his life and his poetry, and this it was that
+exasperated Carlyle into calling him "the teeth-grinding, glass-eyed, lone
+Caloyer." And the pose was helped out by his handsome and romantic
+appearance. "Byron's countenance is a thing to dream of," Scott told
+Lockhart. "A certain fair lady whose name has been too often mentioned in
+connection with his told a friend of mine that when she first saw Byron it
+was in a crowded room, and she did not know who it was, but her eyes were
+instantly nailed, and she said to herself, 'That pale face is my fate.'
+And, poor soul, if a god-like face and god-like powers could have made
+excuse for devilry, to be sure she had one." He said on the same occasion,
+"As for poets, I have seen, I believe, all the best of our own time and
+country--and, though Burns had the most glorious eyes imaginable, I never
+thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character
+except Byron." Mrs. Opie said, "His voice was such a voice as the devil
+tempted Eve with"; and Charles Mathews once remarked that "he was the only
+man I ever contemplated to whom I felt disposed to apply the word
+beautiful."
+
+Nevertheless, for a while Miss Milbanke was proof against his
+fascinations. In November 1813, about the date of that last letter of his
+to her from which I have quoted, he offered her his hand and was rejected.
+He proposed to another lady in the following September, and was rejected
+again, and almost immediately afterwards he called on Miss Milbanke at her
+father's house, 29 Portland Place, and in the library there passionately
+renewed his suit, and this time was successful. They were married in
+January 1815, and went to live at 13 Piccadilly, and in January of the
+next year, after twelve months of little happiness and much wretchedness,
+separated for good, a month after the birth of their child.
+
+This Piccadilly house has been pulled down. The Albany to which Byron
+removed in 1814, and which he left on his marriage, still remains; and so,
+too, does No. 8 St. James's Street, where he lived in 1809, when his
+_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ took the town by storm, but it has
+undergone so much alteration that it no longer seems so intimately
+reminiscent of Byron as Bennet Street does.
+
+Whilst Byron was residing in St. James's Street, publishing the _English
+Bards_ and writing the first canto of _Childe Harold_, Coleridge was
+living in a house at Portland Place, Hammersmith, that is now known as No.
+7 Addison Bridge Place. Somehow, one does not readily connect Coleridge
+with London, even though he had lodged for many years at Highgate before
+he died there. But one time and another he spent quite a large part of his
+life in the metropolis. He was at school with Lamb, of course, at Christ's
+Hospital; and are not Lamb's letters strewn with yearning remembrances of
+the glorious evenings he and Coleridge and Hazlitt and others passed, in
+later years, in the smoky parlour of "The Salutation and Cat," in Newgate
+Street? At various dates, he lived at Buckingham Street, and at Norfolk
+Street, Strand, in Pall Mall, and in King Street, Covent Garden, when he
+was working on the staff of the _Morning Post_; to say nothing of visits
+to London when he put up at one or another of Lamb's many homes in the
+City; and there is still in one of the courts of Fetter Lane that Newton
+Hall where he delivered a series of lectures in 1818.
+
+By 1810, when he came to London and settled for a period at 7 Addison
+Bridge Place, Coleridge had done all his great work as a poet, and under
+stress of financial difficulties was turning more and more from poetry to
+lecturing and journalism as sources of income. There is a letter of Lamb's
+to Hazlitt, dated 28th November 1810, when Hazlitt was holidaying and
+working at Winterslow, in which he mentions towards the close--"Coleridge
+is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing or going to write in
+the _Courier_ against Cobbett and in favour of paper money." Byron wrote
+to a friend in the succeeding year, "Coleridge is lecturing. 'Many an old
+fool,' said Hannibal to some such lecturer, 'but such as this, never'";
+and to the same friend two days later, "Coleridge has been lecturing
+against Campbell. Rogers was present, and from him I derive the
+information. We are going to make a party to hear this Manichean of
+poesy"; and on the same day to another friend, "Coleridge has attacked the
+_Pleasures of Hope_, and all other pleasures whatsoever. Mr. Rogers was
+present, and heard himself indirectly _rowed_ by the lecturer"; and next
+week, "To-morrow I dine with Rogers, and am to hear Coleridge, who is a
+kind of rage at present."
+
+[Illustration: COLERIDGE. ADDISON BRIDGE PLACE.]
+
+Coleridge was then only thirty-eight, and had another twenty-four years of
+life before him. He was already, and had for long past, been struggling in
+the toils of the opium habit, and his poetical inspiration was leaving
+him, for though _Christabel_ and _Kubla Khan_ were not published until
+1816 they were written nearly ten years before. There are a number of
+minor poems bearing later dates; several in 1809, many long after that,
+but only one dated 1810, which may be supposed to have been written in
+that Hammersmith house, and this is nothing but a respectable translation
+of a passage in Ottfried's metrical paraphrase of the Gospels. But his
+lectures were a wonder and a delight, Byron's disapproval notwithstanding.
+He was always an eloquent preacher, and became a chief among lecturers as
+he did among poets. "Have you ever heard me preach?" he asked Lamb, and
+Lamb replied with his whimsical stammer, "I never heard you do anything
+else!" But you remember that fine essay of Hazlitt's in which he recounts
+his first acquaintance with Coleridge?--how he rose before daylight and
+walked ten miles in the mud to hear him preach. "When I got there, the
+organ was playing the hundredth psalm, and when it was done Mr. Coleridge
+rose and gave out his text, 'And he went up into the mountain to pray,
+HIMSELF, ALONE.' As he gave out his text his voice 'rose like a steam of
+rich distilled perfumes,' and when he came to the two last words, which he
+pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young,
+as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if
+that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe." He
+describes the sermon, and goes on, "I could not have been more delighted
+if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met
+together.... I returned home well satisfied." Then Coleridge called to see
+his father, a dissenting minister in the neighbourhood, and for two hours
+he talked and Hazlitt listened spellbound, and when he went, Hazlitt
+walked with him six miles on the road. "It was a fine morning," he says,
+"in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way." And with what a
+fine generosity he acknowledges what that meeting and this talk of
+Coleridge's had meant to him. "I was stunned, startled with it as from a
+deep sleep.... I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a
+worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but now, bursting the
+deadly bands that bound them--
+
+  'With Styx nine times round them,'
+
+my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes catch the
+golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its original
+bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart,
+shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found nor will it
+ever find a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not
+remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself,
+I owe to Coleridge." That was when Coleridge was twenty-six and Hazlitt
+twenty. These twelve years after that, when Coleridge was lecturing in
+London, his fancy and imagination were as dazzling and as powerful as
+ever, and his voice and language had lost none of their magic. But his
+thoughts were perhaps tending towards that transcendental obscurity that
+reached its worst when he was established in his closing days at Highgate,
+with his little group of worshipping disciples around him, and when
+Carlyle went to hear and to ridicule him. Anyhow, here is an account
+Rogers gives of a visit he paid to him when he had transferred himself
+from Hammersmith to Pall Mall:--
+
+"Coleridge was a marvellous talker. One morning when Hookham Frere also
+breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three hours without
+intermission, about poetry, and so admirably that I wish every word he
+uttered had been written down. But sometimes his harangues were quite
+unintelligible, not only to myself, but to others. Wordsworth and I called
+upon him one afternoon, when he was in a lodging off Pall Mall. He talked
+uninterruptedly for about two hours, during which Wordsworth listened to
+him with profound attention, every now and then nodding his head, as if in
+assent. On quitting the lodgings I said to Wordsworth, 'Well, for my part,
+I could not make head or tail of Coleridge's oration; pray did you
+understand it?' 'Not one syllable of it,' was Wordsworth's reply."
+
+He talked like one inspired, but his looks, except whilst he was talking,
+belied him. "My face," he said justly of himself, "unless when animated by
+immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth and great, indeed almost
+idiotic, good nature. 'Tis a mere carcase of a face, flat, flabby, and
+expressive chiefly of unexpression. Yet I am told that my eye, eyebrows,
+and forehead are physiognomically good." De Quincey says there was a
+peculiar haze or dimness mixed with the light of his eyes; and when he was
+roused to animation Lamb thought he looked like "an archangel a little
+damaged." But whether that haze of his eyes got into his talk, whether his
+thoughts were obscurely uttered, or whether it was they were too high and
+great for his auditors to take in so easily as a listener expects to grasp
+what is said to him is, at least, an open question. It may well be that
+Shelley hit the truth in the _Letter to Maria Gisborne_ that he wrote from
+Leghorn, in 1820:--
+
+  "You will see Coleridge; he who sits obscure
+   In the exceeding lustre and the pure
+   Intense irradiation of a mind
+   Which, with its own internal lightnings blind,
+   Flags wearily through darkness and despair--
+   A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
+   A hooded eagle among blinking owls."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CHARLES LAMB
+
+
+At one of those free-and-easy sociable gatherings in Lamb's rooms, in the
+Temple, which Hazlitt has so happily immortalised, Lamb provoked some
+discussion by asking which of all the English literary men of the past one
+would most wish to have seen and known. Ayrton, who was of the company,
+said he would choose the two greatest names in English literature--Sir
+Isaac Newton and John Locke. "Every one burst out laughing," writes
+Hazlitt, "at the expression of Lamb's face, in which impatience was
+restrained by courtesy. 'Yes, the greatest names,' he stammered out
+hastily, 'but they were not persons--not persons.... There is nothing
+personally interesting in the men.'" It is Lamb's glory that he is both a
+great name and a great and interesting personality; and if his question
+were put again to-day in any company of book-lovers I should not be alone
+in saying at once that the writer of the past I would soonest have seen
+and known is Charles Lamb.
+
+It is difficult to write of him without letting your enthusiasm run away
+with you. Except for a few reviewers of his own day (and the reviewers of
+one's own day count for little or nothing the day after), nobody who knew
+Lamb in his life or has come to know him through his books and the books
+that tell of him has been able to write of him except with warmest
+admiration and affection. Even so testy and difficult a man as Landor, who
+only saw Lamb once, could not touch on his memory without profound
+emotion, and says in some memorial verses:--
+
+  "Of all that ever wore man's form, 'tis thee
+   I first would spring to at the gates of heaven."
+
+And you remember Wordsworth's--
+
+  "O, he was good, if e'er a good man lived!"
+
+There is, too, that well-known anecdote of how Thackeray lifted a volume
+of _Elia_ and held it against his forehead and murmured "St. Charles!" All
+which, and many other utterances of love and reverence for his personal
+character, particularly Wordsworth's reference to him as "Lamb, the frolic
+and the gentle," would have exasperated Lamb himself and moved him to
+angry protest. "I have had the _Anthology_," he wrote to Coleridge in
+1800, "and like only one thing in it, 'Lewti'; but of that the last stanza
+is detestable, the rest most exquisite: the epithet 'enviable' would dash
+the finest poem. For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me
+ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, or do it in
+better verses. It did well enough five years ago when I came to see you,
+and was moral coxcomb enough at the time you wrote the lines to feed upon
+such epithets; but besides that the meaning of 'gentle' is equivocal at
+best, and almost always means poor-spirited, the very quality of
+gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpetings. My sentiment has long
+since vanished. I hope my virtues have done sucking. I can scarce think
+but you meant it in joke. I hope you did, for I should be ashamed to
+believe that you could think to gratify me by such praise, fit only to be
+a cordial to some green-sick sonneteer." The epithet so rankled in his
+recollection that a week later he returned to the topic. "In the next
+edition of the _Anthology_ (which Phoebus avert, and those nine other
+wandering maids also!) please to blot out 'gentle-hearted,' and substitute
+'drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering,' or any
+other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in
+question. And for Charles read Tom, or Bob, or Richard for mere delicacy."
+
+Gentle Lamb certainly was, but the word is not large enough or robustly
+human enough to cover all his character. He wins your regard by his faults
+as well as by his virtues. If he drank a little too much at times, and
+sometimes talked and wrote foolishly and too flippantly to please the
+serious-minded, he far more often talked and wrote wisely, wittily,
+exquisitely, and for thirty-eight years of his life he readily sacrificed
+himself to his sister's well-being, giving up all thought of marriage that
+he might be her constant guardian and attendant, watching dreadfully for
+signs of her recurring fits of insanity, and when they were coming upon
+her going with her to the melancholy gate of the asylum, and directly her
+mind was cleared, returning eagerly to fetch her home again.
+
+He was never in the habit of laying himself out to create a good
+impression on strangers; if they were unsympathetic, or he did not take to
+them, in his freakish fashion he would deliberately say and do things to
+shock and antagonise them, and so it came about that those who did not
+know him or could not appreciate him frequently set him down as "something
+between an imbecile, a brute, and a buffoon." Carlyle formed that sort of
+impression of him; and one can believe there was scarcely any point of
+contact between Carlyle's sombre, deadly earnest, man-with-a-message
+outlook and the tricksy, elvish, quaintly humorous spirit of Lamb, who
+wrote with a delicate fancy and tenderness that are more lasting than
+Carlyle's solid preachings are likely to prove, and who "stuttered his
+quaintness in snatches," says Haydon, "like the fool in _Lear_, and with
+equal beauty."
+
+That is a fine and wonderful glimpse of one side of Lamb given by Leigh
+Hunt when he says he could have imagined him "cracking a joke in the teeth
+of a ghost, and then melting into thin air himself out of sympathy with
+the awful." In describing him, most of his friends emphasise "the bland,
+sweet smile, with a touch of sadness in it." "A light frame, so fragile
+that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it," is Talfourd's picture
+of him, "clad in clerk-like black, and surmounted by a head of form and
+expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about
+an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying
+expression, though the prevalent feeling was sad; and the nose slightly
+curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of
+the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the
+shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and
+shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its quivering
+sweetness, and fix it for ever in words? There are none, alas, to answer
+the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought, striving with humour; the
+lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth; and a smile of painful
+sweetness, present an image to the mind it can as little describe as lose.
+His personal appearance and manner are not unfitly characterised by what
+he himself says in one of his letters to Manning of Braham--'a compound of
+the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel.'" Add to this the sketch that
+Patmore has left of him: "In point of intellectual character and
+expression, a finer face was never seen, nor one more fully, however
+vaguely, corresponding with the mind whose features it interpreted. There
+was the gravity usually engendered by a life passed in book-learning,
+without the slightest tinge of that assumption and affectation which
+almost always attend the gravity so engendered; the intensity and
+elevation of general expression that mark high genius, without any of its
+pretension and its oddity; the sadness waiting on fruitless thoughts and
+baffled aspirations, but no evidence of that spirit of scorning and
+contempt which these are apt to engender. Above all, there was a pervading
+sweetness and gentleness which went straight to the heart of every one who
+looked on it; and not the less so, perhaps, that it bore about it an air,
+a something, seeming to tell that it was not _put on_--for nothing could
+be more unjust than to tax Lamb with assuming anything, even a virtue,
+which he did not possess--but preserved and persevered in, spite of
+opposing and contradictory feelings within that struggled in vain for
+mastery. It was a thing to remind you of that painful smile which bodily
+disease and agony will sometimes put on, to conceal their sufferings from
+the observation of those they love."
+
+It was a look--this look of patient endurance, of smiling resignation, of
+painful cheerfulness--that you could not understand unless you were aware
+of the appalling tragedy that lay in the background of his life, and of
+the haunting dread, the anxious, daily anticipation of disaster, and the
+need of concealing this anxiety from her, that were involved in the
+matter-of-course self-sacrifice with which he devoted himself to the care
+and guardianship of his sister, Mary.
+
+It was in 1796, when Lamb was living with his father and mother and sister
+in lodgings in Little Queen Street, that the tragedy happened which was to
+overshadow all his after years. The father was drifting into second
+childhood, the mother an invalid. Mary Lamb had to attend upon them both,
+with the help of a small servant and, in addition, took in plain sewing;
+Charles was a junior clerk at the India House. Only a little while before
+Lamb had himself suffered a mental breakdown and had been placed under
+temporary restraint ("the six weeks that finished last year," he writes to
+Coleridge, in May 1796, "your very humble servant spent very agreeably in
+a madhouse, at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any
+one. But mad I was"); then, in September 1796, his sister suddenly went
+out of her mind, stabbed her mother to the heart, and in her frenzy threw
+knives at others in the room, and wounded her father before Lamb could
+seize her and get her under control. There are no letters more terrible or
+more pathetic than those he wrote to Coleridge, when the horror and
+heartbreak of this event was fresh upon him.
+
+    "My dearest Friend," he writes on the 27th September 1796, "White, or
+    some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time have informed
+    you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will
+    only give you the outlines. My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of
+    insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only
+    time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in
+    a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God
+    has preserved to me my senses: I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have
+    my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was slightly
+    wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of
+    the Bluecoat School, has been very kind to us, and we have no other
+    friend; but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the
+    best that remains to do. Write as religious a letter as possible, but
+    no mention of what is gone and done with. With me 'the former things
+    are passed away,' and I have something more to do than to feel. God
+    Almighty have us all in His keeping!
+
+      "C. LAMB.
+
+    "Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past
+    vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, publish
+    mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a
+    book, I charge you.
+
+    "Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this
+    yet to your dear wife. You look after your family; I have my reason
+    and strength left to take care of mine. I charge you, don't think of
+    coming to see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty
+    love you and all of us!
+
+      "C. LAMB."
+
+The book he mentions is one that he and Coleridge and Lloyd were arranging
+to publish together. In October there is another letter, replying to one
+from Coleridge, and saying his sister is restored to her senses--a long
+letter from which I shall quote only one or two memorable passages: "God
+be praised, Coleridge! wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been
+otherwise than collected and calm; even on that dreadful day, and in the
+midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquillity which bystanders
+may have construed into indifference--a tranquillity not of despair. Is it
+folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious principle that _most_
+supported me? I allow much to other favourable circumstances. I felt that
+I had something else to do than to regret. On that first evening my aunt
+was lying insensible--to all appearance like one dying; my father, with
+his poor forehead plaistered over from a wound he had received from a
+daughter, dearly loved by him, and who loved him no less dearly; my mother
+a dead and murdered corpse in the next room; yet was I wonderfully
+supported. I closed not my eyes in sleep that night, but lay without
+terrors and without despair. I have lost no sleep since.... One little
+incident may serve to make you understand my way of managing my mind.
+Within a day or two after the fatal one, we dressed for dinner a tongue,
+which we had had salted for some weeks in the house. As I sat down, a
+feeling like remorse struck me: this tongue poor Mary got for me; and can
+I partake of it now, when she is far away? A thought occurred and relieved
+me: if I give in to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an
+object in our rooms, that will not awaken the keenest griefs. I must rise
+above such weaknesses. I hope this was not want of true feeling. I did not
+let this carry me, though, too far. On the very second day (I date from
+the day of horrors), as is usual in such cases, there were a matter of
+twenty people, I do think, supping in our room: they prevailed on me to
+eat _with them_ (for to eat I never refused). They were all making merry
+in the room! Some had come from friendship, some from busy curiosity, and
+some from interest. I was going to partake with them, when my recollection
+came that my poor dead mother was lying in the next room--the very next
+room--a mother who, through life, wished nothing but her children's
+welfare. Indignation, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed
+upon my mind. In an agony of emotion I found my way mechanically to the
+adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking
+forgiveness of Heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting her so soon.
+Tranquillity returned, and it was the only violent emotion that mastered
+me. I think it did me good."
+
+Through all his subsequent letters from time to time there are touching
+little references to his sister's illnesses: she is away, again and again,
+in the asylum, or in charge of nurses, and he is alone and miserable, but
+looking forward to her recovering presently and returning home. Once when
+they are away from London on a visit, she is suddenly taken with one of
+these frenzies, and on the way back to town he has to borrow a waistcoat
+to restrain her violence in the coach. But his love and loyalty were proof
+against it all; nothing would induce him to separate from her or let her
+go out of his charge, except during those intervals when she was so
+deranged as to be a danger to others and to herself.
+
+About the end of 1799 Lamb moved into the Temple and, first at Mitre Court
+Buildings, then in Middle Temple Lane, he resided there, near the house of
+his birth, for some seventeen years in all. In these two places he and his
+sister kept open house every Wednesday evening, and Hazlitt and Talfourd,
+Barry Cornwall, Holcroft, Godwin, and, when they were in town, Wordsworth
+and Coleridge were among their guests. Hazlitt and Talfourd and others
+have told us something of those joyous evenings in the small, dingy rooms,
+comfortable with books and old prints, where cold beef and porter stood
+ready on the sideboard for the visitors to help themselves, and whilst
+whoever chose sat and played at whist the rest fleeted the golden hours in
+jest and conversation.
+
+[Illustration: WILL'S COFFEE HOUSE. RUSSELL STREET.]
+
+Towards the end of 1817 the Lambs took lodgings at 20 Russell Street,
+Covent Garden, a house which was formerly part of Will's famous Coffee
+House, which Dryden used to frequent, having his summer seat by the
+fireside and his winter seat in the balcony, as chief of the wits and men
+of letters who made it their place of resort. In a letter to Dorothy
+Wordsworth, Mary Lamb reports their change of address: "We have left the
+Temple. I think you will be sorry to hear this. I know I have never been
+so well satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal Mount as when I could
+connect the idea of you with your own Grasmere Cottage. Our rooms were
+dirty and out of repair, and the inconvenience of living in chambers
+became every year more irksome, and so, at last, we mustered up resolution
+enough to leave the good old place that so long had sheltered us, and here
+we are living at a brazier's shop, No. 20 Russell Street, Covent Garden, a
+place all alive with noise and bustle; Drury Lane Theatre in sight from
+our front, and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the
+carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least; strange
+that it does not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of
+the window, and listening to the calling up of the carriages, and the
+squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest scene to look
+down upon; I am sure you would be amused with it. It is well I am in a
+cheerful place, or I should have many misgivings about leaving the
+Temple." And on the 21st November 1817, Lamb also writes to Dorothy
+Wordsworth: "Here we are, transplanted from our native soil. I thought we
+never could be torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench, but
+like a tooth, now 'tis out, and I am easy. We never can strike root so
+deep in any other ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of gardener's
+mould, and if they take us up from it, it will cost no blood and groans,
+like mandrakes pulled up. We are in the individual spot I like best in all
+this great city. The theatres, with all their noises. Covent Garden,
+dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of
+the earliest peas and 'sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves are
+examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four-and-twenty
+hours before she saw a thief. She sits at the window working; and casually
+throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way,
+with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These little incidents
+agreeably diversify a female life."
+
+During his residence in Russell Street, from 1817 till 1823, Lamb
+published in two volumes a collection of his miscellaneous writings, and
+contributed the _Essays of Elia_ to the _London Magazine_, which makes
+this Russell Street house, in a sense, the most notable of his various
+London homes. Here he continued his social gatherings, but had no regular
+evening for them, sending forth announcements periodically, such as that
+he sent to Ayrton in 1823: "Cards and cold mutton in Russell Street on
+Friday at 8 & 9. Gin and jokes from 1/2 past that time to 12. Pass this on
+to Mr. Payne, and apprize Martin thereof"--Martin being Martin Burney.
+
+[Illustration: LAMB. COLEBROOKE ROW.]
+
+By the autumn of this year he has flitted from Covent Garden, and on the
+2nd September writes to Bernard Barton: "When you come London-ward you
+will find me no longer in Covent Garden. I have a cottage in Colebrooke
+Row, Islington. A cottage, for it is detached; a white house, with six
+good rooms, the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a
+moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house;
+and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure you), pears,
+strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of
+old Alcinous. You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all
+studded over and rough with old books, and above is a lightsome
+drawing-room, three windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great
+lord, never having had a house before"; and writing at the end of that
+week to invite Allsop to dinner on Sunday he supplies him with these
+directions: "Colebrook Cottage, left hand side, end of Colebrook Row, on
+the western brink of the New River, a detached whitish house." To Barton,
+when he has been nearly three weeks at Islington, he says, "I continue to
+estimate my own roof-comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a
+lodger! My garden thrives (I am told), though I have yet reaped nothing
+but some tiny salad and withered carrots. But a garden's a garden
+anywhere, and twice a garden in London."
+
+Here, in November of that year, happened the accident to George Dyer that
+supplied Lamb with the subject of his whimsical Elian essay, _Amicus
+Redivivus_. Dyer was an odd, eccentric, very absent-minded old bookworm
+who lived in Clifford's Inn; Lamb delighted in his absurdities, and loved
+him, and loved to make merry over his quaint sayings and doings. "You have
+seen our house," he writes to Mrs. Hazlitt, in the week after Dyer's
+adventure. "What I now tell you is literally true. Yesterday week George
+Dyer called upon us at one o'clock (_bright noonday_) on his way to dine
+with Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He sat with Mary about half-an-hour, and
+took leave. The maid saw him go out, from her kitchen window, but suddenly
+losing sight of him, ran up in a fright to Mary. G. D., instead of keeping
+the slip that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff in hand, in broad
+open day, marched into the New River. He had not his spectacles on, and
+you know his absence. Who helped him out they can hardly tell, but between
+'em they got him out, drenched through and through. A mob collected by
+that time, and accompanied him in. 'Send for the Doctor,' they said: and a
+one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was fetched from the public-house at the
+end, where it seems he lurks for the sake of picking up water practice;
+having formerly had a medal from the Humane Society for some rescue. By
+his advice the patient was put between blankets; and when I came home at
+four to dinner, I found G. D. abed and raving, light-headed with the
+brandy and water which the doctor had administered. He sang, laughed,
+whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian angels, would get up and go home;
+but we kept him there by force; and by next morning he departed sober, and
+seems to have received no injury."
+
+Before he left Islington the India Company bestowed upon Lamb the pension
+that at last emancipated him from his "dry drudgery at the desk's dead
+wood," and he communicates the great news exultantly to Wordsworth in a
+letter dated "Colebrook Cottage," 6th April 1825: "Here I am, then, after
+thirty-three years' slavery, sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock this
+finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with £441 a year for the
+remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his
+annuity and starved at ninety: £441, _i.e._ £450, with a deduction of £9
+for a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the pension
+guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c. I came home FOR EVER on Tuesday in
+last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was
+like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three,
+_i.e._ to have three times as much real time (time that is my own) in it!
+I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But the
+tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the
+gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys; their
+conscious fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now,
+when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home in rain or
+shine without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and
+shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master as it has been
+irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure
+feeling that some good has happened to us."
+
+He made use of these experiences in one of the best of his essays, that on
+_The Superannuated Man_, in which also you find echoes of a letter he
+wrote to Bernard Barton just after he had written to Wordsworth:
+
+"I am free, B. B.--free as air.
+
+  'The little bird that wings the sky
+   Knows no such liberty!'
+
+"I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock.
+
+  'I came home for ever!'
+
+"I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to Wordsworth in a
+long letter and don't care to repeat. Take it briefly that for a few days
+I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is becoming daily
+more natural to me. I went and sat among 'em all at my old thirty-three
+years' desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at
+leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads, at leaving
+them in the lurch, fag, fag, fag! The comparison of my own superior
+felicity gave me anything but pleasure. B. B. I would not serve another
+seven years for seven hundred thousand pounds."
+
+From Islington Lamb journeyed over to Highgate every now and then to visit
+Coleridge at Mr. Gilman's; and a-visiting him at Colebrooke Cottage came
+Coleridge, Southey, William Hone, and among many another, Hood, to whom he
+took an especial liking. Coleridge thought he was the author of certain
+Odes that were then appearing in the _London Magazine_, but writing in
+reply Lamb assured him he was mistaken: "The Odes are four-fifths done by
+Hood, a silentish young man you met at Islington one day, an invalid. The
+rest are Reynolds's, whose sister H. has recently married."
+
+During the two years or more after his release from the India House, Lamb
+and his sister spent two or three short holidays lodging with a Mrs.
+Leishman at The Chase, Enfield; in 1827 they rented the house of her, and
+Lamb wrote from that address on the 18th September to Hood, who was then
+living at 2 Robert Street, Adelphi: "Give our kind loves to all at
+Highgate, and tell them we have finally torn ourselves outright away from
+Colebrooke, where I had _no_ health, and are about to domicilate for good
+at Enfield, where I have experienced good.
+
+  'Lord, what good hours do we keep!
+   How quietly we sleep!'...
+
+We have got our books into our new house. I am a dray-horse if I was not
+ashamed of the undigested dirty lumber, as I toppled 'em out of the cart,
+and blest Becky that came with 'em for her having an unstuffed brain with
+such rubbish.... 'Twas with some pain we were evulsed from Colebrook. You
+may find some of our flesh sticking to the doorposts. To change
+habitations is to die to them; and in my time I have died seven deaths.
+But I don't know whether every such change does not bring with it a
+rejuvenescence. 'Tis an enterprise; and shoves back the sense of death's
+approximating which, though not terrible to me, is at all times
+particularly distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical,
+recurring after seven years; but this last is premature by half that time.
+Cut off in the flower of Colebrook!" He mentions that the rent is 10s.
+less than he paid at Islington; that he pays, in fact, £35 a year,
+exclusive of moderate taxes, and thinks himself lucky.
+
+But the worry of moving brought on one of Mary Lamb's "sad, long
+illnesses"; and whilst she was absent, Lamb fled from the loneliness of
+his country home to spend ten days in town. "But Town," he writes to
+Barton, "with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was. The
+streets, the shops are left, but all old friends are gone. And in London I
+was frightfully convinced of this as I past houses and places--empty
+caskets now. I have ceased to care almost about anybody. The bodies I
+cared for are in graves or dispersed. My old Clubs, that lived so long and
+flourished so steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of our
+adopted young friend at Charing Cross, 'twas heavy unfeeling rain and I
+had nowhere to go. Home have I none--and not a sympathising house to
+turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of the heaven pour down on
+a forlorner head. Yet I tried ten days at a sort of friend's house, but it
+was large and straggling--one of the individuals of my long knot of
+friends, card-players, pleasant companions--that have tumbled to pieces
+into dust and other things--and I got home on Thursday convinced that I
+was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in
+my corner. Less than a month, I hope, will bring home Mary. She is at
+Fulham, looking better in her health than ever, but sadly rambling, and
+scarce showing any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come
+again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old
+sorrows over a game of Picquet again. But 'tis a tedious cut out of a life
+of sixty-four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two."
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES LAMB]
+
+The cares of housekeeping, however, sat too heavily on them, and in
+October 1829 they abandoned those responsibilities, gave up their cottage
+on Chase Side, and went to lodge and board with their next-door
+neighbours, an old Mr. and Mrs. Westwood, and in this easier way of living
+their spirits and their health revived. Nevertheless, by January 1830 Lamb
+had lost all his contentment with rural life, and was yearning desperately
+for the remembered joys of London. "And is it a year since we parted from
+you at the steps of Edmonton stage?" he writes to Wordsworth. "There are
+not now the years that there used to be." He frets, he says, like a lion
+in a net, and then goes on to utter that yearning to be back in London
+that I have quoted already in my opening chapter. "Back-looking
+ambition," he continues, "tells me I might still be a Londoner! Well, if
+we ever do move, we have incumbrances the less to impede us; all our
+furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing, like
+the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two
+left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out
+of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless." And to Bernard Barton
+he says, "With fire and candle-light I can dream myself in Holborn....
+Give me old London at Fire and Plague times, rather than these tepid
+gales, healthy country air, and purposeless exercise."
+
+Early in 1833 he removed from Enfield, and his reasons for doing so he
+explains in a letter to Mrs. Hazlitt, on the 31st May of that year: "I am
+driven from house to house by Mary's illness. I took a sudden resolution
+to take my sister to Edmonton, where she was under medical treatment last
+time, and have arranged to board and lodge with the people. Thank God I
+have repudiated Enfield. I have got out of hell, despair of heaven, and
+must sit down contented in a half-way purgatory. Thus ends this strange
+eventful history. But I am nearer to town, and will get up to you somehow
+before long." About the same date he wrote to Wordsworth: "Mary is ill
+again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed
+by two of depression most dreadful. I look back upon her earlier attacks
+with longing--nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed by
+complete restoration--shocking as they were to me then. In short, half her
+life she is dead to me, and the other half is made anxious with fears and
+lookings forward to the next shock. With such prospects it seemed to me
+necessary that she should no longer live with me, and be fluttered with
+continual removals; so I am come to live with her, at a Mr. Walden's, and
+his wife, who take in patients, and have arranged to lodge and board us
+only. They have had the care of her before. I see little of her: alas! I
+too often hear her. _Sunt lachrymæ rerum!_ and you and I must bear it....
+I am about to lose my old and only walk-companion, whose mirthful spirits
+were the 'youth of our house,' Emma Isola. I have her here now for a
+little while, but she is too nervous properly to be under such a roof, so
+she will make short visits--be no more an inmate. With my perfect approval
+and more than concurrence she is to be wedded to Moxon at the end of
+August--so 'perish the roses and the flowers'--how is it? Now to the
+brighter side. I am emancipated from the Westwoods, and I am with
+attentive people and younger. I am three or four miles nearer the great
+city; coaches half-price less and going always, of which I will avail
+myself. I have few friends left there; one or two though, most beloved.
+But London streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, though not one known
+of the latter were remaining."
+
+Emma Isola is "the adopted young friend" referred to by Lamb in a letter
+quoted a few pages back. She was the granddaughter of an Italian refugee;
+her mother was dead; her father was an "Esquire Bedell" of Cambridge, and
+the Lambs met her at the house of a friend when they were visiting that
+town in 1823. She was a charming, brown-faced little girl, and they were
+so taken with her that she was invited to visit them in London during her
+holidays, and they ended by adopting her and calling her their niece. She
+brought a great deal of happiness into their lives; Lamb gives whimsical
+accounts in some of his letters of how he is teaching her Latin, and his
+sister is prompting her in her French lessons. When she was old enough she
+became governess in the family of a Mr. and Mrs. Williams at Bury; fell
+ill and was kindly nursed there; and Lamb tells in one of his most
+delightful letters how he went to fetch her home to Enfield, when she was
+convalescent, and it is good to glimpse how sympathetically amused he is
+at Emma's covert admonitions and anxiety lest he should drink too much, at
+dinner with the Williamses, and so bring disgrace upon himself and her.
+
+His beautiful affection for their young ward shines through all the
+drollery of his several notes to Edward Moxon (the publisher) in which he
+speaks of their engagement; and it has always seemed to me it is this same
+underlying affection for her and wistfulness to see her happy that help to
+make the following letter, written just after the wedding, one of the
+finest and most pathetic things in literature:--
+
+    "_August 1833._
+
+    "DEAR MR. AND MRS. MOXON,--Time very short. I wrote to Miss Fryer, and
+    had the sweetest letter about you, Emma, that ever friendship
+    dictated. 'I am full of good wishes, I am crying with good wishes,'
+    she says; but you shall see it.
+
+    "Dear Moxon, I take your writing most kindly, and shall most kindly
+    your writing from Paris. I want to crowd another letter to Miss Fryer
+    into the little time after dinner, before post time. So with twenty
+    thousand congratulations,--Yours,
+
+      C. L.
+
+    "I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for the reason. I got home from
+    Dover Street, by Evans, _half as sober as a judge_. I am turning over
+    a new leaf, as I hope you will now."
+
+[Illustration: LAMB'S COTTAGE. EDMONTON.]
+
+[_The turn of the leaf presents the following_:--]
+
+    "MY DEAR EMMA AND EDWARD MOXON,--Accept my sincere congratulations,
+    and imagine more good wishes than my weak nerves will let me put into
+    good set words. The dreary blank of _unanswered questions_ which I
+    ventured to ask in vain was cleared up on the wedding day by Mrs. W.
+    taking a glass of wine and, with a total change of countenance,
+    begging leave to drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon's health. It restored me
+    from that moment, as if by an electrical stroke, to the entire
+    possession of my senses. I never felt so calm and quiet after a
+    similar illness as I do now. I feel as if all tears were wiped from my
+    eyes, and all care from my heart.
+
+      MARY LAMB."
+
+
+    "_Wednesday._
+
+    "DEARS AGAIN,--Your letter interrupted a seventh game at picquet which
+    _we_ were having, after walking to Wright's and purchasing shoes. We
+    pass our time in cards, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso soon.
+
+      "C. L.
+
+    "Never was such a calm, or such a recovery. 'Tis her own words
+    undictated."
+
+And it was in this plain, commonplace little cottage in Church Street,
+Edmonton, that Mary Lamb was thus suddenly awakened out of her
+derangement; that Charles Lamb and she wrote, by turns, that letter to the
+Moxons; that the Lambs sat contentedly playing picquet when the letter of
+the bride and bridegroom came to them from Paris. These are the very rooms
+in which these things happened; the stage remains, but the actors are
+departed. Within a stone's throw of the house, in Edmonton Churchyard,
+Lamb and his sister lie buried. His death was the result of an accident.
+He had gone on his accustomed walk along the London Road, one day in
+December, when he stumbled and fell over a stone, slightly injuring his
+face. So trivial did the wound seem that writing to George Dyer's wife on
+the 22nd December 1834, about a book he had lost when he was in
+London--"it was the book I went to fetch from Miss Buffham's while the
+tripe was frying"--he says nothing of anything being the matter with him.
+But erysipelas supervened, and he grew rapidly worse, and died on the
+27th. His sister, who had lapsed into one of her illnesses and was
+unconscious, at the time, of her loss, outlived him by nearly thirteen
+years, and reached the great age of eighty-two.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ST. JOHN'S WOOD AND WIMBLEDON
+
+
+Mary Lamb passed the later years of her life in a sort of nursing home at
+St. John's Wood, and in her happier intervals kept up a pleasant
+acquaintance with some of the notable circle of friends who had gathered
+about her and her brother aforetime; among others, with the Hoods, who
+were then living in the same locality. Crabb Robinson mentions in his
+Diary how he made a call on Mary Lamb, and finding her well over one of
+her periodical attacks, "quite in possession of her faculties and
+recollecting nearly everything," he accompanied her on a visit to the
+Hoods, who were lodging at 17 Elm Tree Road.
+
+Perhaps one of the most graphic pictures we have of Hood's home life, and
+incidentally of Hood himself and his wife and of Charles and Mary Lamb, is
+contained in the account that has been left by Miss Mary Balmanno of an
+evening she spent with the Hoods when they were making their home in
+Robert Street, Adelphi: "Bound in the closest ties of friendship with the
+Hoods, with whom we also were in the habit of continually associating, we
+had the pleasure of meeting Charles Lamb at their house one evening,
+together with his sister, and several other friends.... In outward
+appearance Hood conveyed the idea of a clergyman. His figure slight, and
+invariably dressed in black; his face pallid; the complexion delicate,
+and features regular: his countenance bespeaking sympathy by its sweet
+expression of melancholy and suffering.
+
+"Lamb was of a different mould and aspect. Of middle height, with brown
+and rather ruddy complexion, grey eyes expressive of sense and shrewdness,
+but neither large nor brilliant; his head and features well shaped, and
+the general expression of his countenance quiet, kind, and observant,
+undergoing rapid changes in conversation, as did his manner, variable as
+an April day, particularly to his sister, whose saint-like good humour and
+patience were as remarkable as his strange and whimsical modes of trying
+them. But the brother and sister perfectly understood each other, and
+'Charles,' as she always called him, would not have been the Charles of
+her loving heart without the pranks and oddities which he was continually
+playing off upon her, and which were only outnumbered by the instances of
+affection and evidences of ever-watchful solicitude with which he
+surrounded her.
+
+"Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means looked
+so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather stout and
+comely lady of middle age. Dressed with Quaker-like simplicity in
+dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin
+folded across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the beholder in her
+favour by an aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners were very quiet and
+gentle, and her voice low. She smiled frequently, and seldom laughed,
+partaking of the courtesies and hospitalities of her merry host and
+hostess with all the cheerfulness and grace of a most mild and kindly
+nature. Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring
+disciple; her eyes seldom absent from his face. And when apparently
+engrossed in conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word
+for which he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the
+room, show how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high
+spirits, sauntering about the room with his hands crossed behind his back,
+conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him...."
+
+She goes on to describe how Miss Kelly, the actress, amused them by
+impersonating a character she was taking in a new play, and "Mrs. Hood's
+eyes sparkled with joy, as she saw the effect it had produced upon her
+husband, whose pale face, like an illuminated comic mask, shone with fun
+and good humour. Never was a happier couple than the Hoods; 'mutual
+reliance and fond faith' seemed to be their motto. Mrs. Hood was a most
+amiable woman--of excellent manners, and full of sincerity and goodness.
+She perfectly adored her husband, tending him like a child, whilst he,
+with unbounded affection, seemed to delight to yield himself to her
+guidance. Nevertheless, true to his humorous nature, he loved to tease her
+with jokes and whimsical accusations, which were only responded to by,
+'Hood, Hood, how can you run on so?'
+
+"The evening was concluded by a supper, one of those elegant social
+repasts which Flemish artists delight to paint.... Mr. Lamb oddly walked
+round the table, looking closely at any dish that struck his fancy before
+he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs. Hood that he should by that
+means know how to select some dish that was difficult to carve and take
+the trouble off her hands; accordingly, having jested in this manner, he
+placed himself with great deliberation before a lobster salad, observing
+_that_ was the thing.
+
+"Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and
+his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song of 'If you go to
+France be sure you learn the lingo'; his pensive manner and feeble voice
+making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused
+himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin
+eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered forth a
+long stream of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood
+frequently occurred, we ladies thought it in praise of her. The delivery
+of this speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a gentleman
+who sat next me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me
+that was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster salad!
+Thus, in the gayest of moods, progressed and concluded a truly merry
+little social supper, worthy in all respects of the author of _Whims and
+Oddities_."
+
+But all this, when the Hoods came to St. John's Wood, lay thirteen years
+behind them, and Lamb had been eight years dead. Quitting the Adelphi in
+1829, Hood went to Winchmore Hill, then to Wanstead; then, after some five
+years of residence in Germany and Belgium, he returned to England, and
+made his home for a short time at Camberwell, and thence in 1842 removed
+to St. John's Wood--at first to rooms at 17 Elm Tree Road, and in 1844 to
+a house of his own, "Devonshire Lodge," in the Finchley Road--a house
+that the guide-books all tell us was demolished, but since I started to
+write this chapter the London County Council has identified as "Devonshire
+Lodge" the house that still stands in Finchley Road, immediately adjoining
+the Marlborough Road station of the Metropolitan Railway; and here it was
+that Hood died on the 3rd of May 1845.
+
+[Illustration: TOM HOOD'S HOUSE. ST JOHN'S WOOD.]
+
+The room in which he worked at 17 Elm Tree Road gave him a view of Lord's
+Cricket Ground, and he complained that this was a drawback, because "when
+he was at work he could often see others at play." He caricatured the
+landlady of the house, who had "a large and personal love of flowers," and
+made her the heroine of his _Mrs. Gardiner, A Horticultural Romance_. From
+Elm Tree Road he went to attend the dinner at Greenwich that was given to
+Dickens on his second return from America; and describing this dissipation
+in a letter to a friend he says, "You will be pleased to hear that, in
+spite of my warnings and forebodings, I got better and betterer, till by
+dining, as the physicians did, on turtle soup, white-bait, and champagne,
+I seemed quite well." He was to have been chairman at the dinner, but
+excused himself on the score of ill-health, and Captain Marryat took his
+place. The diners included, in addition to Dickens himself, Moncton
+Milnes, Forster, Clarkson Stanfield, Ainsworth, Landseer (another St.
+John's Wood resident), Cruikshank, Cattermole, "Ingoldsby" Barham, and
+Barry Cornwall. Being called upon for a speech, Hood said he supposed they
+drank his health because he was a notorious invalid, but assured the
+company that the trembling of his hand was neither from palsy nor ague,
+but that their wishes had already so improved his circulation and filled
+him with genial warmth that his hand had a natural inclination to shake
+itself with every one present. Whereupon everybody within reach, and some
+who were not, insisted upon shaking hands with him. "_Very_ gratifying,
+wasn't it?" he finishes his letter. "Though I cannot go quite so far as
+Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserved
+in spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as usual when I go
+out, because I am so domestic and steady, and was down at the door before
+I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his own carriage.
+Poor girl! what _would_ she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame
+one."
+
+Dickens, at that date, lived at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone Road;
+they had probably driven up together from Greenwich, and the carriage had
+come the mile or so further on with Hood after leaving Dickens at his own
+door. Dickens was one of the many visitors who have helped to make Hood's
+St. John's Wood residence memorable; there is a record of his being there,
+with his wife and sister and Daniel Maclise, in December 1842. At Elm Tree
+Road, for all his broken health, Hood worked hard at editing and writing
+for the _New Monthly Magazine_, and, after resigning from that, for
+_Hood's Monthly Magazine_. One letter of his, dated from 17 Elm Tree Road,
+on the 18th July 1843, is headed "From my bed"; for he was frequently
+bedridden for days and weeks at a stretch, but sat propped up with
+pillows, writing and sketching with unabated industry. He was contributing
+also in these days to _Punch_, and to Douglas Jerrold's _Illuminated
+Magazine_. In November 1843 he wrote here, for _Punch_, his grim _Drop of
+Gin_:
+
+  "Gin! Gin! a drop of Gin!
+   What magnified monsters circle therein!
+     Ragged, and stained with filth and mud,
+     Some plague-spotted, and some with blood!
+   Shapes of misery, shame, and sin!
+     Figures that make us loathe and tremble,
+     Creatures scarce human, that more resemble
+   Broods of diabolical kin,
+   Ghost and vampyre, demon and Jin!..."
+
+But a far greater poem than this, _The Song of the Shirt_, was also
+written at Elm Tree Road. "Now mind, Hood, mark my words," said Mrs. Hood,
+when he was putting up the manuscript for the post, "this will tell
+wonderfully. It is one of the best things you ever did." And the results
+justified her. The verses appeared in the Christmas Number of _Punch_ for
+1843, and not only trebled the circulation of that paper, but within a
+very short time had at least doubled Hood's reputation, though _Eugene
+Aram_, _The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_, and _Lycus the Centaur_, had
+long preceded it. Probably no poem ever stirred the national conscience
+more deeply or created a profounder sensation. Shortly after its
+appearance Cowden Clarke met Hood, and has left a vivid description of his
+personal appearance in those last months of his life. His worn, pallid
+look, he says, "strangely belied the effect of jocularity and high spirits
+conveyed by his writings. He punned incessantly, but languidly, almost as
+if unable to think in any other way than in play upon words. His smile was
+attractively sweet; it bespoke the affectionate-natured man which his
+serious verses--those especially addressed to his wife or his
+children--show him to be, and it also revealed the depth of pathos in his
+soul that inspired his _Bridge of Sighs_, _Song of the Shirt_, and _Eugene
+Aram_."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS HOOD]
+
+There are many interesting points of resemblance between Hood and Lamb.
+Both were inveterate punsters; each had known poverty, and had come
+through hard experiences that had left their marks upon them, yet had
+never soured them or warped their sympathies. You may use the same
+epithets for both: they were homely, kindly, gentle, given to freakish
+moods and whimsical jesting; the one was as unselfishly devoted to his
+sister as the other was to his wife and children; and in descriptions of
+Hood, as of Lamb, stress is laid on the peculiar wistfulness and sweetness
+of his smile. But after the East India Company had handsomely pensioned
+him off, Lamb had no further financial anxieties; whilst Hood had to
+suppress his finer gifts, and to the end of his days turn his hand to all
+manner of inferior but more popular work, that would enable him to keep
+the family pot boiling. And he was all the while fighting against disease
+as well as poverty. He could not afford to go into exile, like Stevenson,
+and lengthen his days and foster his wasting strength in a healthfuller
+climate. He was never rich enough to have any choice but to die in the
+place where he had to earn his living, and no man ever worked more
+manfully, or died at his post bravelier or with a more cheery philosophy.
+
+Read the humorous preface he wrote for the volume of _Hood's Own_, whilst
+he lay ill abed there in his St. John's Wood house: it is the sort of
+humour that makes your heart ache, for you cannot forget that he was
+racked with pain and slowly dying whilst he wrote it. He jests about the
+aristocratic, ghastly slenderness of his fingers; his body, he says, may
+cry craven, but luckily his mind has no mind to give in. "'Things may take
+a turn,' as the pig said on the spit.... As to health? it's the weather of
+the body--it rains, it hails, it blows, it snows at present, but it may
+clear up by-and-by"; and in conclusion he mentions that the doctor tells
+him, "anatomically my heart is lower hung than usual, but what of that?
+_The more need to keep it up!_" Raised up in bed, with an improvised desk
+across his knees, he was hard at work, writing prose and verse and
+knocking off grotesque little drawings, and remained, as he said, "a
+lively Hood to get a livelihood," almost to his last hour. When, towards
+the end, his wife was trying to relieve his sufferings by putting a
+poultice on his emaciated body, he laughed up at her quizzically, and
+asked if she didn't think "it seemed a deal of mustard for such a little
+meat." He had moved into Devonshire Lodge, and was within sixteen months
+of his death when he wrote _The Haunted House_, and _The Bridge of Sighs_.
+"I fear that so far as I myself am concerned," he writes to Thackeray in
+August 1844, "King Death will claim me ere many months elapse. However,
+there's a good time coming, if not in this world, most assuredly in the
+next." When he was invited next month to attend a soirée at the Manchester
+Athenæum, he had to decline, and added, "For me all long journeys are over
+save one"; but a couple of months later he had written the _Lay of the
+Labourer_, for his magazine, and writing to Lord Lytton remarked that
+though the doctor had ordered him not to work he was compelled to do so,
+and "so it will be to the end. I must die in harness, like a hero--or a
+horse."
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DIBDIN. 34 ARLINGTON ROAD.]
+
+His dying hours were made easy by the pension of a hundred pounds that Sir
+Robert Peel kindly and tactfully settled on Mrs. Hood, and one of the last
+things he wrote on his lingering deathbed was a valediction that
+breathed all of resignation and hope:
+
+  "Farewell, Life! My senses swim
+   And the world is growing dim;
+   Thronging shadows cloud the light,
+   Like the advent of the night,--
+   Colder, colder, colder still
+   Upwards steals a vapour chill--
+   Strong the earthy odour grows--
+   I smell the Mould above the Rose!
+
+   Welcome, Life! The Spirit strives!
+   Strength returns, and hope revives;
+   Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
+   Fly like shadows at the morn,--
+   O'er the earth there comes a bloom--
+   Sunny light for sullen gloom,
+   Warm perfume for vapour cold--
+   I smell the Rose above the Mould!"
+
+Herbert Spencer lived in St. John's Wood for many years, at 7 Marlborough
+Gardens, 13 Loudon Road, and 64 Avenue Road successively. Within an easy
+walk of Avenue Road, at 34 Arlington Road, Camden Town, Charles Dibdin,
+whose memory survives in _Tom Bowling_, passed the last years of his life.
+And, back in St. John's Wood, at the Priory, 21 North Bank, in one of the
+numerous houses that were swept away when the Great Central Railway came
+to Marylebone, George Eliot lived from 1864 until 1880, when she removed
+to Chelsea. Before that, from 1860 till 1863, lived in a house in
+Blandford Square, which has also been demolished; but for nearly two years
+before going there she resided at Holly Lodge, which still survives, in
+the Wimbledon Park Road.
+
+There is an entry in her Diary dated 6th February 1859: "Yesterday we went
+to take possession of Holly Lodge, which is to be our dwelling, we expect,
+for years to come. It was a deliciously fresh, bright day. I will accept
+the omen. A letter came from Blackwood telling me the result of the
+subscription to _Adam Bede_, which was published on the 1st: 730 copies,
+Mudie having taken 500 on the publisher's terms--10 per cent. off the sale
+price. At first he had stood out for a larger reduction, and would only
+take 50, but at last he came round. In this letter Blackwood tells me the
+first _ab extra_ opinion of the book, which happened to be precisely what
+I most desired. A cabinetmaker (brother to Blackwood's managing clerk) had
+read the sheets, and declared the writer must have been brought up to the
+business, or at least had listened to the workmen in their workshop." She
+wrote that month to Miss Sara Hennell, "We are tolerably settled now,
+except that we have only a temporary servant; and I shall not be quite at
+ease until I have a trustworthy woman who will manage without incessant
+dogging. Our home is very comfortable, with far more vulgar indulgences in
+it than I ever expected to have again; but you must not imagine it a snug
+place, just peeping above the holly bushes. Imagine it rather as a tall
+cake, with a low garnish of holly and laurel. As it is, we are very well
+off, with glorious breezy walks, and wide horizons, well-ventilated rooms,
+and abundant water. If I allowed myself to have any longings beyond what
+is given, they would be for a nook quite in the country, far away from
+palaces--Crystal or otherwise--with an orchard behind me full of old
+trees, and rough grass and hedgerow paths among the endless fields
+where you meet nobody. We talk of such things sometimes, along with old
+age and dim faculties, and a small independence to save us from writing
+drivel for dishonest money."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT. WIMBLEDON PARK.]
+
+The "we" in these entries means, of course, herself and George Henry
+Lewes; they formed an irregular union in 1854, and lived as husband and
+wife until his death in 1878. In George Eliot's Journal and letters are a
+good many other references to her life at Holly Lodge, of which the most
+interesting are perhaps the following:
+
+_April 29th, 1859_ (from the Journal): "Finished a story, _The Lifted
+Veil_, which I began one morning at Richmond as a resource when my head
+was too stupid for more important work. Resumed my new novel" (this was
+_The Mill on the Floss_), "of which I am going to rewrite the two first
+chapters. I shall call it provisionally _The Tullivers_, or perhaps _St.
+Ogg's on the Floss_."
+
+_May 6th_ (from a letter to Major Blackwood): "Yes I _am_ assured now that
+_Adam Bede_ was worth writing--worth living through long years to write.
+But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good
+and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past but not faith in the
+future."
+
+_May 19th_ (from Journal): "A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes
+to give me another £400 at the end of the year, making in all £1200, as an
+acknowledgment of _Adam Bede's_ success."
+
+_June 8th_ (from a letter to Mrs. Congreve): "I want to get rid of this
+house--cut cable and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth, and should think
+with unmitigated regret of our coming here if it were not for you."
+
+_July 21st_ (from the Journal, on returning after a holiday in
+Switzerland): "Found a charming letter from Dickens, and pleasant letters
+from Blackwood--nothing to annoy us."
+
+_November 10th_ (from the Journal): "Dickens dined with us to-day for the
+first time."
+
+_December 15th_ (from the Journal): "Blackwood proposes to give me for
+_The Mill on the Floss_, £2000 for 4000 copies of an edition at 31s. 6d.,
+and afterwards the same rate for any more copies printed at the same
+price; £150 for 1000 at 12s.; and £60 for 1000 at 6s. I have accepted."
+
+_January 3rd, 1860_ (from a letter to John Blackwood): "We are demurring
+about the title. Mr. Lewes is beginning to prefer _The House of Tulliver,
+or Life on the Floss_, to our old notion of _Sister Maggie_. _The
+Tullivers, or Life on the Floss_ has the advantage of slipping easily off
+the lazy English tongue, but it is after too common a fashion (_The
+Newcomes_, _The Bertrams_, &c., &c.). Then there is _The Tulliver Family,
+or Life on the Floss_. Pray meditate and give us your opinion."
+
+_January 16th, 1860_ (from the Journal): "Finished my second volume this
+morning, and am going to send off the MS. of the first volume to-morrow.
+We have decided that the title shall be _The Mill on the Floss_."
+
+_February 23rd_ (from a letter to John Blackwood): "Sir Edward Lytton
+called on us yesterday. The conversation lapsed chiefly into monologue,
+from the difficulty I found in making him hear, but under all
+disadvantages I had an agreeable impression of his kindness and
+sincerity. He thinks the two defects of _Adam Bede_ are the dialect and
+Adam's marriage with Dinah, but of course I would have my teeth drawn
+rather than give up either."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT'S HOUSE. CHELSEA.]
+
+_July 1st_ (from a letter to Madame Bodichon, on returning to Holly Lodge
+after a two months' holiday in Italy): "We are preparing to renounce the
+delights of roving, and to settle down quietly, as old folks should do....
+We have let our present house."
+
+One interesting memorial of the life at Holly Lodge is the MS. of _The
+Mill on the Floss_, on which is inscribed in George Eliot's handwriting:
+"To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third
+book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge,
+South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March 1860."
+
+The publication of _The Mill on the Floss_, and, in the three succeeding
+years, of _Silas Marner_ and _Romola_, carried George Eliot to the height
+of her fame, and by the time she was living in North Bank, St. John's
+Wood, she had her little circle of adoring worshippers, who, like George
+Henry Lewes, took her very seriously indeed. That sort of hero-worship was
+customary in those days, unless the worshipped one had too strong a sense
+of humour to put up with it. There is a passage in the Autobiography of
+Mr. Alfred Austin giving a brief account of a visit he paid to George
+Eliot. "We took the first opportunity," he says, "of going to call on her
+at her request in St. John's Wood. But there I found pervading her house
+an attitude of adoration, not to say an atmosphere almost of awe,
+thoroughly alien to my idea that persons of genius, save in their works,
+should resemble other people as much as possible, and not allow any
+special fuss to be made about them. I do not say the fault lay with her."
+But you find the same circumstance spoken to elsewhere, and the general
+notion you gather is that George Eliot rather enjoyed this being
+pedestalled, and accepted the incense of her reverent little circle with a
+good deal of complacency.
+
+In 1878 Lewes died, and in March 1880 George Eliot was married to John
+Cross. They left St. John's Wood on the 3rd of the following December and
+went to 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where George Eliot died on the 22nd of the
+same month.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+CHELSEA MEMORIES
+
+
+Coming to close quarters with it, I am not sure that, after all, Chelsea
+has not more to offer the literary pilgrim than even Hampstead has.
+Addison, Locke, Smollett, Horace Walpole, are among the illustrious names
+whose local habitations were once there but are no longer to be seen.
+Charles and Henry Kingsley spent their boyhood at their father's rectory
+in Sidney Street; Daniel Maclise lived for ten years at 4 Cheyne Walk,
+where George Eliot died; and "Queen's House," No. 16 Cheyne Walk, is the
+house that, in 1862, Rossetti, Swinburne, William Michael Rossetti, and
+Meredith took as joint-tenants. Meredith soon paid a quarter's rent in
+lieu of notice and withdrew from the arrangement, but Swinburne and
+Rossetti lived on there together for some years, and did much of their
+greatest work there. Swinburne was next to go, and he presently set up
+house with Mr. Watts-Dunton at "The Pines," near the foot of Putney Hill,
+where he lived till his death in 1909. In the early seventies Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti married and removed elsewhere, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti stayed
+on in the Chelsea house alone.
+
+Later, in the gloomy days before he went away to Birchington to die,
+Rossetti suffered terribly from insomnia, was ill and depressed, and a
+prey to morbid imaginings, but in the earlier years of his tenancy of 16
+Cheyne Walk he was absorbed in his art, his house was lively with many
+visitors, and in his lazy, sociable fashion he seems to have been almost
+as happy as a man of his sensitive temperament could be. "Here," writes
+Mr. Joseph Knight, "were held those meetings, prolonged often until the
+early hours of the morning, which to those privileged to be present were
+veritable nights and feasts of gods. Here in the dimly-lighted studio,
+around the blazing fire, used to assemble the men of distinction or
+promise in literature and art whom the magnetism of Rossetti's
+individuality collected around him. Here Rossetti himself used, though
+rarely, to read aloud, with his voice of indescribable power and
+clearness, and with a bell-like utterance that still dwells in the mind,
+passages from the poems he admired; and here, more frequently, some young
+poet, encouraged by his sympathy, which to all earnest effort in art was
+overflowing and inexhaustible, would recite his latest sonnet." He crowded
+his rooms with quaintly-carved oak furniture, and beautiful ornaments; he
+had a wonderful collection of blue china that he sometimes put on the
+table and recklessly used at his dinner-parties. In his garden he had "a
+motley collection of animals, peacocks, armadilloes, the wombat,
+woodchuck, or Canadian marmot, and other outlandish creatures, including
+the famous zebu." This zebu was kept fastened to a tree, and Rossetti
+loved to exhibit it and point out its beauties with his maulstick. Mr.
+Knight goes on to repeat the story that was told concerning this animal by
+Whistler, who was at that time living at what is now 101 Cheyne Walk, and
+was then 7 Lindsey Row. According to Whistler, one day when he and
+Rossetti were alone in the garden, "and Rossetti was contemplating once
+more the admired possession, and pointing out with the objectionable stick
+the points of special beauty, resentment blazed into indignation. By a
+super-bovine exertion the zebu tore up the roots of the tree to which it
+was attached, and chased its tormentor round the garden, which was
+extensive enough to admit of an exciting chase round the trees." The zebu
+was fortunately hampered by the uprooted tree, and Rossetti made good his
+escape, but he would harbour the animal no longer, and as nobody would buy
+it he gave it away.
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN'S HOUSE. CHEYNE WALK.]
+
+You get an illuminating glimpse of Rossetti's home life in these days from
+that useful literary chronicle, Allingham's Diary (Monday, June 27, 1864):
+"Got down to Chelsea by half-past eight to D. G. R.'s. Breakfasted in a
+small, lofty room on first floor with window looking on the garden. Fanny
+in white. Then we went into the garden, and lay on the grass, eating
+strawberries and looking at the peacock. F. went to look at the
+'chicking,' her plural of chicken. Then Swinburne came in and soon began
+to recite--a parody on Browning was one thing; and after him Whistler, who
+talked about his own pictures--Royal Academy--the Chinese painter girl,
+Millais, &c."
+
+Rossetti's wife had died shortly before he went to Cheyne Walk, and it was
+during his residence here that her grave in Highgate Cemetery was opened,
+that the manuscript volume of poems he had buried with her might be
+recovered, and most of its contents included in his first published book
+of original work.
+
+One time and another Whistler occupied four different houses in Cheyne
+Walk, and No. 101 was the first of these. He had been living in lodgings,
+or with his brother-in-law, since he came over from America, but in 1863
+he took the Cheyne Walk house, and his mother went to live there with him.
+It is a three-storey house, and the back room on the first floor was his
+studio; the river lies before it, just across the road, and he could see
+from his front windows old Battersea Bridge, Battersea Church on the other
+side of the Thames, and at night the twinkling lights of boats and barges
+at anchor and the flare and many-coloured glitter of Cremorne Gardens in
+the distance. At the end of Cheyne Walk lived the boatbuilder Greaves. "He
+had worked in Chelsea for years," write Mr. and Mrs. Pennell, in their
+_Life of Whistler_. "He had rowed Turner about on the river, and his two
+sons were to row Whistler. One of the sons, Mr. Walter Greaves, has told
+us that Mrs. Booth, a big, hard, coarse Scotchwoman, was always with
+Turner when he came for a boat. Turner would ask Greaves what kind of a
+day it was going to be, and if Greaves answered 'Fine,' he would get
+Greaves to row them across to Battersea Church, or to the fields, now
+Battersea Park. If Greaves was doubtful, Turner would say, 'Well, Mrs.
+Booth, we won't go far'; and afterwards for the sons--boys at the
+time--Turner in their memory was overshadowed by her." Whistler and the
+Greaves boys were up and down the river at all hours of the day and night
+and in all weathers, painting and sketching, they under his tuition, or
+gathering impressions and studying effects of light and shadow. He was
+frequently in at the Rossettis' house, and they and their friends were as
+frequently visiting him.
+
+In 1867 Whistler moved to what is now 96 Cheyne Walk, and had a
+housewarming on the 5th of February at which the two Rossettis were
+present. Describing the decoration of the walls here, Mr. and Mrs. Pennell
+say its beauty was its simplicity. "Rossetti's house was a museum, an
+antiquity shop, in comparison. The simplicity seemed the more bewildering
+because it was the growth, not of weeks but of years. The drawing-room was
+not painted till the day of Whistler's first dinner-party. In the morning
+he sent for the brothers Greaves to help him. 'It will never be dry in
+time,' they feared. 'What matter?' said Whistler; 'it will be
+beautiful!'... and by evening the walls were flushed with flesh-colour,
+pale yellow and white spread over doors and woodwork, and we have heard
+that gowns and coats too were touched with flesh-colour and yellow before
+the evening was at an end. One Sunday morning Whistler, after he had taken
+his mother to Chelsea Church, as he always did, again sent for his pupils
+and painted a great ship with spreading sails in each of the two panels at
+the end of the hall; the ships are said to be still on the wall, covered
+up. His mother was not so pleased when, on her return, she saw the blue
+and white harmony, for she would have had him put away his brushes on
+Sunday as once she put away his toys."
+
+Solitude was irksome to him, and he welcomed the motley crowd of artists
+and students who came in at all hours to chat with him whilst he worked.
+The Pennells tell a capital story of a man named Barthe, of whom Whistler
+had bought tapestries, and who, not being able to get his account settled,
+called one evening for the money. He was told that Whistler was not in;
+but there was a cab waiting at the door, and he could hear his debtor's
+voice, so he pushed past the maid and, as he afterwards related, "Upstairs
+I find him, before a little picture, painting, and behind him ze bruzzers
+Greaves holding candles. And Vistlaire he say, 'You ze very man I vant:
+hold a candle!' And I hold a candle. And Vistlaire he paint, and he paint,
+and zen he take ze picture, and he go downstairs, and he get in ze cab,
+and he drive off, and we hold ze candle, and I see him no more. Mon Dieu,
+il est terrible, ce Vistlaire!"
+
+His studio here was a back room on the second floor, and up to that
+studio, on many days of 1873, Carlyle climbed to give sittings for the
+portrait which ranks now with the greatest of Whistler's works. The
+portrait of his mother had already been painted in that same small room,
+and hung on the wall there whilst Carlyle was coming to life on the
+canvas. Carlyle was not a patient sitter. Directly he sat down he urged
+Whistler to "fire away," and was evidently anxious to get through with his
+part of the business as quickly as possible. "One day," says Whistler, "he
+told me of others who had painted his portrait. There was Mr. Watts, a mon
+of note. And I went to his studio, and there was much meestification, and
+screens were drawn, and I was not allowed to see anything. And then, at
+last, the screens were put aside and there I was. And I looked. And Mr.
+Watts, a great mon, he said to me, 'How do you like it?' And then I turned
+to Mr. Watts, and I said, 'Mon, I would have ye know I am in the hobit of
+wurin' clean lunen!'" There is a note in Allingham's Diary, dated July 29,
+1873: "Carlyle tells me he is 'sitting' to Whistler. If C. makes signs
+of changing his position W. screams out in an agonised tone, 'For God's
+sake, don't move!' C. afterwards said that all W.'s anxiety seemed to be
+to get the _coat_ painted to ideal perfection; the face went for little.
+He had begun by asking two or three sittings, but managed to get a great
+many. At last C. flatly rebelled. He used to define W. as the most absurd
+creature on the face of the earth."
+
+[Illustration: WHISTLER. 96 CHEYNE WALK.]
+
+Whilst he was at 96 Cheyne Walk, Whistler brought his famous libel action
+against Ruskin, won it, but was awarded only a farthing damages, and had
+to pay his own costs. During the progress of the suit he was having the
+White House built for him in Tite Street, Chelsea, but the payment of his
+law costs so crippled him that he had to sell it before it was ready for
+occupation, and to sell off also the furniture and effects of his Cheyne
+Walk home.
+
+None of these things seem, however, to have affected Whistler with worse
+than a temporary irritation. He wrote jestingly over his door: "Except the
+Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. E. W. Godwin,
+F.S.A., built this one;" turned his back upon the scenes of his recent
+disasters, and went to Venice. After rather more than a year of absence,
+he returned to London in the winter of 1880, stayed with his brother in
+Wimpole Street, put up at divers lodgings, had an exhibition in Bond
+Street, and in May 1881 took a studio at 13 Tite Street, Chelsea, and
+began to be the most talked-of man of the day. "He filled the papers with
+letters," write Mr. and Mrs. Pennell. "London echoed with his laugh. His
+white lock stood up defiantly above his curls; his cane lengthened; a
+series of collars sprang from his long overcoat; his hat had a curlier
+brim, a lower tilt over his eyes; he invented amazing costumes.... He was
+known to pay calls with the long bamboo stick in his hand and pink bows on
+his shoes. He allowed no break in the gossip. The carriages brought
+crowds, but not sitters. Few would sit to him before the trial; after it
+there were fewer. In the seventies it needed courage to be painted by
+Whistler; now it was to risk notoriety and ridicule." When Mr. Pennell
+first saw him at 13 Tite Street, in July 1884, "he was all in white, his
+waistcoat had long sleeves, and every minute it seemed as if he must begin
+to juggle with glasses. For, to be honest, my first impression was of a
+bar-keeper strayed from a Philadelphia saloon into a Chelsea studio. Never
+had I seen such thick, black, curling hair. But in the midst was the white
+lock, and keen, brilliant eyes flashed at me from under the thick, bushy
+eyebrows."
+
+From Tite Street, Whistler presently removed to 454 Fulham Road; thence to
+The Vale, Chelsea, a pleasant quarter which was a year or two ago wiped
+off the face of the earth; and in 1890 he was back again in Cheyne Walk,
+at No. 21. "I remember a striking remark of Whistler's at a garden-party
+in his Chelsea house," says M. Gerard Harry, who was one of Whistler's
+guests at No. 21. "As he caught me observing some incompletely furnished
+rooms and questioning within myself whether he had occupied the house more
+than a fortnight or so: 'You see,' he said, with his short laugh, 'I do
+not care for definitely settling down anywhere. Where there is no more
+space for improvement, or dreaming about improvement, where mystery is in
+perfect shape, it is _finis_--the end--death. There is no hope nor outlook
+left.' I do not vouch for the words, but that was certainly the sense of a
+remark which struck me as offering a key to much of Whistler's philosophy,
+and to one aspect of his original art."
+
+By 1892, in spite of himself and his fantastic and silly posings and
+posturings, the world had learned to take his art seriously instead of
+taking him so, and when he went away that year to live in Paris his
+greatness as a painter had become pretty generally recognised. In 1894 he
+came back to London with his wife, who was dying of cancer, and after her
+death in 1896 he lived with friends or in lodgings, and had no settled
+home, until in 1902 he once again took a house in Cheyne Walk, this time
+No. 74, a house which stands below the street level; its front windows
+overlook the Thames, and it had a large studio at the back. Here Mrs. and
+Miss Birnie Philip went to share house with him, for his health was
+breaking, and he was in need of companionship and attention. But there
+were good intervals, when he was able to work with all his old eagerness
+and energy. "We knew on seeing him when he was not so well," say Mr. and
+Mrs. Pennell, "for his costume of invalid remained original. He clung to a
+fur-lined overcoat worn into shabbiness. In his younger years he had
+objected to a dressing-gown as an unmanly concession; apparently he had
+not outgrown the objection, and on his bad days this shabby, worn-out
+overcoat was its substitute. Nor did the studio seem the most comfortable
+place for a man so ill as he was. It was bare, with little furniture, as
+his studios always were, and he had not used it enough to give it the air
+of a workshop. The whole house showed that illness was reigning there."
+Trays and odds and ends of the sickroom lay about the hall; papers, books,
+and miscellaneous litter made the drawing-room and dining-room look
+disorderly. "When we saw Whistler in his big, shabby overcoat shuffling
+about the huge studio, he struck us as so old, so feeble and fragile, that
+we could imagine no sadder or more tragic figure. It was the more tragic
+because he had always been such a dandy, a word he would have been the
+first to use in reference to himself.... No one would have suspected the
+dandy in this forlorn little old man, wrapped in a worn overcoat, hardly
+able to walk."
+
+He lingered thus for about a year; then the end came suddenly. On the 14th
+July 1903, Mrs. Pennell found him dressed and in his studio. "He seemed
+better, though his face was sunken, and in his eyes was that terrible
+vagueness. Now he talked, and a touch of gallantry was in his greeting, 'I
+wish I felt as well as you look.' He asked about Henley, the news of whose
+death had come a day or two before.... There was a return of vigour in his
+voice when Miss Birnie Philip brought him a cup of chicken broth, and he
+cried, 'Take the damned thing away,' and his old charm was in the apology
+that followed, but, he said, if he ate every half-hour or so, as the
+doctor wanted, how could he be expected to have an appetite for dinner? He
+dozed a little, but woke up quickly with a show of interest in
+everything." But on the evening of the 17th, he suddenly collapsed, and
+was dead before the doctor could be fetched to him.
+
+[Illustration: TURNER'S HOUSE. CHEYNE WALK.]
+
+Turner's last days in this same Cheyne Walk were almost as sad, almost
+as piteous as Whistler's, but there is a haze of mystery about them, as
+there is about some of his paintings, and he had no butterfly past of
+dandyism to contrast painfully with the squalor of his ending. Born over
+the barber's shop kept by his father in Maiden Lane, Strand, he mounted to
+the seats of the immortals without acquiring by the way any taste for
+personal adornment, or for the elegancies or little prettinesses so
+beloved by little artists in his home surroundings. His soul was like a
+star, and could not make its heaven among the dainty chairs and tables and
+nice wall and mantelpiece ornaments of the drawing-room. On Stothard's
+advice (Stothard being one of the customers at the shaving shop) Turner's
+father made him an artist; he studied under Sir Joshua Reynolds, and
+later, Blake was one of his pupils. Growing in reputation, he lived by
+turns in Harley Street, at Hammersmith, at Twickenham, and is described in
+middle age as bluff and rough-mannered, and looking "the very moral of a
+master carpenter, with lobster-red face, twinkling staring grey eyes,
+white tie, blue coat with brass buttons, crab-shell turned-up boots, large
+fluffy hat, and enormous umbrella." From about 1815 onwards, he had a
+house that is no longer standing at 47 Queen Anne Street, Harley Street,
+and here, in 1843, when Turner was sixty-eight, a Mr. Hammersley called on
+him and has described (I quote from Mr. Lewis Hind's _Turner's Golden
+Visions_) how he "heard the shambling, slippered footstep coming down the
+stairs, the cold, cheerless room, the gallery, even less tidy and more
+forlorn, all confusion, mouldiness, and wretched litter; most of the
+pictures covered with uncleanly sheets, and the man! his loose dress, his
+ragged hair, his indifferent quiet--all, indeed, that went to make his
+physique and some of his mind; but above all I saw, felt (and feel still)
+his penetrating grey eye."
+
+Somewhere between 1847 and 1848 Turner strangely disappeared from his
+customary haunts; his Queen Anne Street house was closed, the door kept
+locked, and his old housekeeper, Hannah Danby, could only assure anybody
+who came that he was not there, and that she simply did not know where he
+had gone. For the next four years or so, until he was dying, no one
+succeeded in discovering his hiding-place. Now and then, in the meantime,
+he would appear in a friend's studio, or would be met with at one of the
+Galleries, but he offered no explanation of his curious behaviour, and
+allowed no one to obtain any clue to his whereabouts. He went in 1850 to a
+dinner given by David Roberts, and was in good spirits, and bubbling over
+with laborious jokes. "Turner afterwards, in Roberts's absence, took the
+chair, and, at Stanfield's request, proposed Roberts's health, which he
+did, speaking hurriedly, but soon ran short of words and breath, and
+dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again and
+finishing with a 'Hip, hip, hurrah!'... Turner was the last who left, and
+Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a cab. When the cab drove
+up, he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and asked where he
+should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to be caught, and, with
+a knowing wink, replied, 'Tell him to drive to Oxford Street, and then
+I'll direct him where to go.'"
+
+The fact is he was living at Cremorne Cottage, 119 Cheyne Walk. He was
+living there anonymously; a Mrs. Booth, whom he had known many years
+before when he stayed at her Margate boarding-house, was keeping house for
+him, and he was known in the neighbourhood as Admiral Booth, a rumour
+having got about that he was a retired naval officer fallen on evil days.
+This was the time of which the father of the Greaves boys had spoken to
+Whistler--the days when Mrs. Booth used to come with Turner to the
+waterside and he would row them over to Battersea. Though all his greatest
+work was finished, Turner painted several pictures here; he frequently
+rose at daybreak, and, wrapped in a blanket or a dressing-gown, stood out
+on the roof, leaning over the railing to watch the sunrise and the play of
+light on the river opposite. He used the room on the second floor as his
+studio, and in that room, on the 19th December 1851, he died. Some months
+before his death, he was seen at the Royal Academy's private view; then,
+tardily responding to a letter of friendly reproach that David Roberts had
+addressed to him at Queen Anne Street, he came to Roberts's studio in
+Fitzroy Square. He was "broken and ailing," and had been touched by
+Roberts's appeal, but as for disclosing his residence--"You must not ask
+me," he said; "but whenever I come to town I will always come to see you."
+When Roberts tried to cheer him, he laid his hand on his heart and
+murmured, "No, no! There is something here that is all wrong."
+
+His illness increasing on him, he wrote to Margate for Dr. Price, an old
+acquaintance of his and Mrs. Booth's, and Price, coming up, examined him
+and told him there was no hope of his recovery. "Go downstairs," he urged
+the doctor, "take a glass of sherry, and then look at me again." But a
+second examination only confirmed Dr. Price in his opinion.
+
+It must have been at this juncture that Turner's hiding-place was
+discovered. His Queen Anne Street housekeeper, Hannah Danby, found a
+letter left in the pocket of one of his old coats, and this gave the
+Chelsea address. She went with another woman and made inquiries round
+about Cheyne Walk till it was clear enough to her that the Mr. Booth to
+whom that letter was directed was none other than Turner, and acting on
+her information Mr. Harpur, Turner's executor, journeyed at once to
+Chelsea, and arrived at 119 Cheyne Walk to find Turner sinking fast.
+Towards sunset, on that wintry day of his dying, he asked Mrs. Booth to
+wheel him to the window, and so gazing out on the wonder of the darkening
+sky he passed quietly away with his head on her shoulder.
+
+A certain John Pye, a Chelsea engraver, afterwards interviewed the owner
+of No. 119, and learned from him that Turner and Mrs. Booth had, some four
+or five years before, called and taken the house of him, paying their rent
+in advance because they objected to giving any names or references. Pye
+also saw Mrs. Booth, and says she was a woman of fifty, illiterate, but
+"good-looking and kindly-mannered." Turner had used to call her "old 'un,"
+she said, and she called him "dear"; and she explained that she had first
+got acquainted with him when, more than twenty years ago, "he became her
+lodger near the Custom House at Margate." So small was the shabby little
+house in Cheyne Walk that the undertakers were unable to carry the coffin
+up the narrow staircase, and had to carry the body down to it. Nowadays,
+the house has been enlarged; it and the house next door have been thrown
+into one, otherwise it has undergone little change since Turner knew it.
+
+Whilst Turner was thus passing out of life in Cheyne Walk, Carlyle was
+dwelling near by at No. 24 (then No. 5) Cheyne Row, and had been resident
+there for seventeen years. On first coming to London in 1830, he and his
+wife lodged at 33 Ampton Street, Gray's Inn Road. They spent, he says, "an
+interesting, cheery, and, in spite of poor arrangements, really pleasant
+winter" there; they had a "clean and decent pair of rooms," and their
+landlord's family consisted of "quiet, decent people." He wrote his essay
+on Dr. Johnson whilst he was here, and was making a fruitless search for a
+publisher who would accept _Sartor Resartus_, which he had recently
+completed. Jeffrey called there several times to pass an afternoon with
+him, and John Stuart Mill was one other of the many visitors who found
+their way to the drab, unlovely, rather shabby street to chat with the
+dour, middle-aged Scotch philosopher, who was only just beginning to be
+heard of.
+
+He fixed on the Cheyne Row house in 1834, and, except for occasional
+holidays, never left it until his death forty-seven years afterwards. As
+soon as he was settled here Carlyle wrote to Sir William Hamilton, giving
+him his new address: "Our upholsterers, with all their rubbish and
+clippings, are at length swept handsomely out of doors. I have got my
+little book-press set up, my table fixed firm in its place, and sit here
+awaiting what Time and I, in our questionable wrestle, shall make out
+between us." In another letter of about the same date he writes of it:
+"The street is flag-paved, sunk-storied, iron-railed, all old-fashioned
+and tightly done up, looks out on a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is,
+beheaded) lime trees standing there like giants in tawtie wigs (for the
+new boughs are still young); beyond this a high brick wall; backwards a
+garden, the size of our back one at Comely Bank, with trees, &c., in bad
+culture; beyond this green hayfields and tree avenues, once a bishop's
+pleasure grounds, an unpicturesque but rather cheerful outlook. The house
+itself is eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been
+all new painted and repaired; broadish stair, with massive balustrade (in
+the old style), corniced and as thick as one's thigh; floors thick as
+rock, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanliness,
+and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor. Chelsea is a
+singular heterogeneous kind of spot, very dirty and confused in some
+places, quite beautiful in others, abounding in antiquities and the traces
+of great men--Sir Thomas More, Steele, Smollett, &c. Our Row, which for
+the last three doors or so is a street and none of the noblest, runs out
+upon a Parade (perhaps they call it) running along the shore of the river,
+a broad highway with huge shady trees, boats lying moored, and a smell of
+shipping and tar."
+
+A note in Allingham's Diary (1860) offers you a very clear little picture
+of Carlyle's garden here, as he saw it: "In Carlyle's garden, some twenty
+yards by six; ivy at the end. Three or four lilac bushes; an ash stands on
+your left; a little copper beech on your right gives just an umbrella to
+sit under when the sun is hot; a vine or two on one wall, neighboured
+by a jasmine--one pear tree."
+
+[Illustration: CARLYLE. AMPTON STREET.]
+
+In this Cheyne Row house Carlyle wrote all his books, except _Sartor_ and
+some of the miscellaneous essays; here he entertained, not always very
+willingly or very graciously, most of the great men of his day; quarrelled
+with his neighbours furiously over the crowing of their cocks; was
+pestered by uninvited, admiring callers from all over the world; and had
+his room on the top floor furnished with double-windows that were supposed
+to render it sound-proof, but did not. Charles Boner, visiting 24 Cheyne
+Row in 1862, disturbed Carlyle as he sat in his dressing-gown and slippers
+correcting the proofs of his _Frederick the Great_, whilst Mrs. Carlyle
+remained in attendance, seated on a sofa by the fire.
+
+In 1866 Mrs. Carlyle died suddenly of heart failure, and left him burdened
+with remorse that he had not been kinder to her and made her life happier;
+and after two years of lonely living without her, he writes: "I am very
+idle here, very solitary, which I find to be oftenest less miserable to me
+than the common society that offers. Except Froude almost alone, whom I
+see once a week, there is hardly anybody whose talk, always polite, clear,
+sharp, and sincere, does me any considerable good.... I am too weak, too
+languid, too sad of heart, too unfit for any work, in fact, to care
+sufficiently for any object left me in the world to think of grappling
+round it and coercing it by work. A most sorry dog-kennel it oftenest all
+seems to me, and wise words, if one ever had them, to be only thrown away
+on it. Basta-basta, I for most part say of it, and look with longings
+towards the still country where at last we and our loved ones shall be
+together again."
+
+You will get no better or more intimate glimpses into Carlyle's home life
+than Allingham gives in his Diary. Sometimes they are merely casual and
+scrappy notes, at others fairly full records of his walks and talks with
+him, such as this: "_1873, April 28._--At Carlyle's house about three. He
+spent about fifteen minutes in trying to clear the stem of a long clay
+pipe with a brass wire, and in the end did not succeed. The pipe was new,
+but somehow obstructed. At last he sent for another one and smoked, and we
+got out at last. (I never saw him smoke in public.) He said Emerson had
+called on him on Sunday, and he meant to visit E. to-day at his lodging in
+Down Street. We walked to Hyde Park by Queen's Gate, and westward along
+the broad walk, next to the ride, with the Serpentine a field distant on
+the left hand. This was a favourite route of his. I was well content to
+have the expectation of seeing Emerson again, and, moreover, Emerson and
+Carlyle together. We spoke of Masson's _Life of Milton_, a volume of which
+was on C.'s table. He said Masson's praise of Milton was exaggerated.
+'Milton had a gift in poetry--of a particular kind. _Paradise Lost_ is
+absurd; I never could take to it all--though now and again clouds of
+splendour rolled in upon the scene.'... At Hyde Park Corner, C. stopped
+and looked at the clock. 'You are going to Down Street, sir?' 'No, it's
+too late.' 'The place is close at hand.' 'No, no, it's half-past five.' So
+he headed for Knightsbridge, and soon after I helped him into a Chelsea
+omnibus, banning internally the clay pipe (value a halfpenny farthing)
+through which this chance (perhaps the last, for Emerson is going away
+soon) was lost."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE]
+
+There are numerous entries in the Diary of visits and conversations of
+this sort. On October 18, 1879, Allingham called at Cheyne Row with his
+little son, and they met Carlyle coming out of the door to his carriage.
+On December 4, of the same year: "Helen and I to Cheyne Row. Carlyle's
+eighty-fourth birthday. Mrs. Lecky there. Browning and Ruskin are gone. C.
+on his sofa by the window, warm and quiet, wearing a new purple and gold
+cap. Gifts of flowers on the table...." Some of the swift little
+word-sketches of Carlyle at this date, when he was very old, very feeble,
+and apt to be oppressed with gloom, are piteous and pathetic enough. On
+his eighty-fifth birthday (December 4, 1880) Allingham found him easier
+and more himself; but on Friday, December 24, you read: "To Carlyle's at
+two. He was lying on the sofa in the drawing-room. When I spoke to him he
+held out his hand and shook hands with me, but said nothing. I was not
+sure that he knew me. A stout Scotch servant girl and I lifted him to his
+feet to go to the carriage. In the hall his heavy sealskin coat was put on
+with difficulty, and he was got into the carriage. Alick and I with him.
+We drove twice round Hyde Park. The old man dozed much."
+
+Earlier that year, the two sons of Alexander Munro called at Cheyne Row,
+and in a letter home the elder of them gave a wonderfully poignant and
+living account of their visit. Munro, who was dead, had been one of
+Carlyle's old friends, and the two boys were now at school at the
+Charterhouse. They were conducted upstairs, says the letter, to a
+well-lighted, cheerful apartment, and here "the maid went forward and said
+something to Carlyle, and left the room. He was sitting before a fire in
+an arm-chair, propped up with pillows, with his feet on a stool, and
+looked much older than I had expected. The lower part of his face was
+covered with a rather shaggy beard, almost quite white. His eyes were
+bright blue, but looked filmy from age. He had on a sort of coloured
+nightcap, and a long gown reaching to his ankles, and slippers on his
+feet. A rest attached to the arm of his chair supported a book before him.
+I could not quite see the name, but I think it was Channing's works.
+Leaning against the fireplace was a long clay pipe, and there was a slight
+smell of tobacco in the room. We advanced and shook hands, and he invited
+us to sit down, and began, I think, by asking where we were living. He
+talked of our father affectionately, speaking in a low tone as if to
+himself, and stopping now and then for a moment and sighing.... He went
+on, 'I am near the end of my course, and the sooner the better is my own
+feeling.' He said he still reads a little, but has not many books he cares
+to read now, and is 'continually disturbed by foolish interruptions from
+people who do not know the value of an old man's leisure.' His hands were
+very thin and wasted; he showed us how they shook and trembled unless he
+rested them on something, and said they were failing him from weakness."
+And, at length, closing the interview, "'Well, I'll just bid you
+good-bye.' We shook hands. He asked our names. He could not quite hear
+Henry's at first. 'I am a little deaf, but I can hear well enough
+talking,' or words to that effect. 'I wish you God's blessing;
+good-bye.' We shook hands once more and went away. I was not at all shy.
+He seemed such a venerable old man, and so worn and old-looking, that I
+was very much affected. Our visit was on Tuesday, May 18, 1880, at about 2
+P.M."
+
+[Illustration: CARLYLE'S HOUSE. CHEYNE ROW.]
+
+He died in the following February; after lying motionless and seemingly
+unconscious for hours, he passed quietly soon after eight on the morning
+of February 5, 1881. His bed, says Allingham, had been brought down to the
+drawing-room (the front room on the first floor), and he rarely spoke in
+the last two or three weeks, not so much because he could not as because
+he did not seem to wish to say anything. Newspaper reporters were so
+continually ringing at the door, day and night, that bulletins had to be
+posted outside to prevent this. Now and then he appeared to wander in his
+mind, and when the Scotch maid, Mary, was attending upon him he would
+sometimes murmur, "Poor little woman," as if he mistook her for his
+long-dead Jenny; and once, says Allingham, "he supposed the female hands
+that tended him, lifting his head, perhaps, to be those of his good old
+mother--'Ah, mother, is it you?' he murmured, or some such words. I think
+it was on the day before the last day that Mary heard him saying to
+himself, 'So this is Death: well----'"
+
+But the Cheyne Row house has many happy memories too, and I always think
+one of the happiest is that of how Leigh Hunt called once after a long
+absence, and brought with him word of some unexpected good news that so
+delighted Mrs. Carlyle that she impulsively ran to him and kissed him,
+and he went away to write that charming little rondeau that bids fair to
+outlive all his more ambitious poetry:
+
+  "Jenny kissed me when we met,
+     Jumping from the chair she sat in;
+   Time, you thief, who love to get
+     Sweets into your list, put that in:
+   Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
+     Say that health and wealth have missed me,
+   Say I'm growing old--but add,
+     Jenny kissed me."
+
+Leigh Hunt was turned fifty then, and was Carlyle's neighbour, living at
+No. 10 (then No. 4) Upper Cheyne Row. I have seen it said that Leigh Hunt
+went there in order to be near Carlyle, but his occupancy of that house
+dates from 1833--the year before Carlyle established himself in
+Chelsea--and he remained there until 1840, seven years of poverty and
+worry, when it was literal truth that he was weary and sad, in indifferent
+health, harassed for want of money, and growing old, yet you find him
+never losing hope, and always ready on the smallest excuse to rejoice and
+make light of his troubles. I am afraid Dickens's caricature of Hunt as
+Harold Skimpole, and Byron's contemptuous references to his vanity and
+vulgarity and the squalor of his easy-going home life (his children, said
+Byron, "are dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos," and writing of
+their arrival in Italy as Shelley's guests he observes, "Poor Hunt, with
+his six little blackguards, are coming slowly up; as usual he turned back
+once--was there ever such a kraal out of the Hottentot country?")--I am
+rather afraid these things have tended to wrong Hunt in our imagination of
+him, for you learn on other evidence that there is just enough truth in
+those representations of him to make them seem quite true, and they linger
+in your mind, and affect your regard and admiration of the man in spite of
+yourself. But Dickens, with his keen sense of the absurd, had a habit of
+exaggeration; there was no ill-nature in his laughter--he merely seized on
+certain of Hunt's weaknesses and gave them to a character who has none of
+Hunt's finer qualities, and it is ridiculous in us and unfair to both men
+to take that caricature as a portrait. As for Byron--he could not justly
+appraise Hunt, for he had no means of understanding him. His own way of
+life was made too easy for him from the first; he was not born to Hunt's
+difficulties and disadvantages; his experiences of the world, and
+therefore his sympathies, were too limited. There is no merit in living
+elegantly and playing the gentleman when you simply inherit, as the fruits
+of an ancestor's abilities, all the conveniences and the money that enable
+you to do so. On the whole, if you compare their lives, you will realise
+that Leigh Hunt was by far the greater man of the two, even if Byron was
+the greater poet, and I am more than a little inclined to agree with
+Charles Lamb that even as a poet Byron was "great in so little a way. To
+be a poet is to be the man, not a petty portion of occasional low passion
+worked up in a permanent form of humanity. Shakespeare has thrust such
+rubbishy feelings into a corner--the dark, dusty heart of Don John, in the
+_Much Ado about Nothing_."
+
+Shelley never speaks of Leigh Hunt but in the kindliest terms. He was
+"gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave," writes Shelley; "one of more
+exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more
+free from evil; one of simpler and, in the highest sense of the word,
+purer life and manners, I never knew." He is, he says in the _Letter to
+Maria Gisborne_:
+
+                      "One of those happy souls
+  Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
+  This earth would smell like what it is--a tomb."
+
+Hunt tells in his _Autobiography_ how he came to Chelsea, and gives a
+glowing description of his house there. He left St. John's Wood, and then
+his home in the New Road (now Marylebone Road), because he found the clay
+soil of the one and the lack of quiet around the other affected his
+health, or "perhaps it was only the melancholy state of our fortune" that
+was answerable for that result; anyhow, from the noise and dust of the New
+Road he removed to Upper Cheyne Row--"to a corner in Chelsea," as he says,
+"where the air of the neighbouring river was so refreshing and the quiet
+of the 'no-thoroughfare' so full of repose, that although our fortunes
+were at their worst, and my health almost at a piece with them, I felt for
+some weeks as if I could sit still for ever, embalmed in silence. I got to
+like the very cries in the street, for making me the more aware of it by
+the contrast. I fancied they were unlike the cries in other quarters of
+the suburbs, and that they retained something of the old quaintness and
+melodiousness which procured them the reputation of having been composed
+by Purcell and others.... There was an old seller of fish, in particular,
+whose cry of 'Shrimps as large as prawns' was such a regular, long-drawn,
+and truly pleasing melody that, in spite of his hoarse and, I am
+afraid, drunken voice, I used to wish for it of an evening, and hail it
+when it came....
+
+[Illustration: LEIGH HUNT'S HOUSE. CHELSEA.]
+
+"I know not whether the corner I speak of remains as quiet as it was. I am
+afraid not; for steamboats have carried vicissitude into Chelsea, and
+Belgravia threatens it with her mighty advent. But to complete my sense of
+repose and distance, the house was of that old-fashioned sort which I have
+always loved best, familiar to the eyes of my parents, and associated with
+childhood. It had seats in the windows, a small third room on the first
+floor, of which I made a sanctum, into which no perturbation was to enter,
+except to calm itself with religious and cheerful thoughts; and there were
+a few limes in front which, in their due season, diffused a fragrance. In
+this house we remained seven years; in the course of which, besides
+contributing some articles to the _Edinburgh_ and _Westminster Reviews_,
+and producing a good deal of the book since called _The Town_, I set up
+(in 1834) the _London Journal_, endeavoured to continue the _Monthly
+Repository_, and wrote the poem entitled _Captain Sword and Captain Pen_,
+the _Legend of Florence_, and three other plays. Here also I became
+acquainted with Thomas Carlyle, one of the kindest and best, as well as
+most eloquent of men.... I believe that what Mr. Carlyle loves better than
+his fault-finding, with all its eloquence, is the face of any human
+creature that looks suffering, and loving, and sincere; and I believe
+further that if the fellow-creature were suffering only, and neither
+loving nor sincere, but had come to a pass of agony in this life which put
+him at the mercies of some good man for some last help and consolation
+towards his grave, even at the risk of loss to repute and a sure amount
+of pain and vexation, that man, if the groan reached him in its
+forlornness, would be Thomas Carlyle."
+
+He wrote that from his personal experience of Carlyle, for whilst they
+were neighbours at Chelsea they frequently visited each other; and
+Carlyle, on his part, saw the worst as well as the best of him, from the
+inside, and was too large-minded and too big a man to judge him by his
+faults and follies only. He saw how Hunt worked, all the while haunted by
+pecuniary distresses; unpaid tradesmen knocking at his door and worrying
+for their debts; once an execution in the house; now and then faced with
+the humiliation of having to ask for loans of a few shillings to buy the
+family dinner; his children almost in rags, and himself, as he said
+bitterly, slighted and neglected by editors and the public, and
+"carelessly, over-familiarly, or even superciliously treated, pitied or
+patronised by his inferiors." Carlyle had known poverty and neglect
+himself; he was fitted to judge Hunt understandingly, and he judged him
+justly. "Leigh Hunt was a fine kind of man," he told Allingham in 1868.
+"Some used to talk of him as a frivolous fellow, but when I saw him I
+found he had a face as serious as death." In his Diary he noted, "Hunt is
+always ready to go and walk with me, or sit and talk with me to all
+lengths if I want him. He comes in once a week (when invited, for he is
+very modest), takes a cup of tea, and sits discoursing in his brisk,
+fanciful way till supper time, and then cheerfully eats a cup of porridge
+(to sugar only), which he praises to the skies, and vows he will make his
+supper of it at home."
+
+It was Mrs. Carlyle who was severe about the Hunts' untidy and uncleanly
+household, and complained of the domestic utensils they borrowed and
+failed to return, but Carlyle took the position in a more genial spirit,
+and saw the pity of it and the humour of it also. "Hunt's house," he wrote
+after one of his visits to No. 10 Upper Cheyne Row, "excels all you have
+ever read of--a poetical Tinkerdom without parallel even in literature. In
+his family room, where are a sickly, large wife and a whole school of
+well-conditioned wild children, you will find half-a-dozen old rickety
+chairs gathered from half-a-dozen different hucksters, and all seemingly
+engaged, and just pausing, in a violent hornpipe. On these and around them
+and over the dusty table and ragged carpet lie all kinds of litter--books,
+papers, egg-shells, scissors, and last night when I was there the torn
+heart of a quartern loaf. His own room above stairs, into which alone I
+strive to enter, he keeps cleaner. It has only two chairs, a bookcase, and
+a writing-table; yet the noble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom in the
+spirit of a king, apologises for nothing, places you in the best seat,
+takes a window-sill himself if there is no other, and then folding closer
+his loose-flowing 'muslin cloud' of a printed nightgown in which he always
+writes, commences the liveliest dialogue on philosophy and the prospects
+of man (who is to be beyond measure 'happy' yet); which again he will
+courteously terminate the moment you are bound to go. A most interesting,
+pitiable, lovable man, to be used kindly, but with discretion."
+
+Hunt departed from Chelsea, with all his anxieties, in 1840, and took up
+residence at 32 Edwardes Square, Kensington, where he got through with a
+great deal of work, and one way and another was secured at last above his
+financial embarrassments. Dickens, Jerrold, Forster and some other friends
+raised £900 for him by a benefit performance of _Every Man in his Humour_;
+the Government granted him two sums of £200, and then a Civil List Pension
+of £200 a year, to the obtaining of which Carlyle readily lent all his
+influence. Moreover, the Shelley family settled an annuity of £120 upon
+him. But, with all these material advantages, came the death of his wife
+and one of his sons. "She was as uncomplaining during the worst storms of
+our adversity," Hunt wrote of his wife, reminiscently, "as she was during
+those at sea in our Italian voyage."
+
+He was an old and rather solitary man when he moved from Kensington in
+1853 and went to 7 Cornwall Road, now known as 16 Rowan Road, Hammersmith
+Road, but he had an ample and sure income, and was no longer haunted by
+duns, if he could not indulge in much in the way of luxury. When Nathaniel
+Hawthorne was in England he went to see him at Hammersmith, and found the
+house in Rowan Road plain, small, shabby, Hunt's little study cheaply
+papered, sparely carpeted, and furnished meanly, and Hunt himself "a
+beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress
+coat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the
+gentlest and most naturally courteous manner." At Rowan Road he wrote most
+of his _Old Court Suburb_, in the preface to a recent edition of which Mr.
+Austin Dobson says of the Leigh Hunt of those closing days, "He was still
+the old sensitive, luminous-eyed Leigh Hunt of the wide collar and
+floating printed nightgown, delighted with a flower or a bird or a
+butterfly; but Time had snowed upon his pericranium, and to his breezy
+_robe de chambre_ he had added, or was about to add, a protective cape,
+more or less ample, of faded black silk, which gave him the air (says John
+Forster) of an old French Abbé." He died away from home in 1859, whilst he
+was on a short visit to a relative at Putney.
+
+[Illustration: LEIGH HUNT. 16 ROWAN ROAD. HAMMERSMITH.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THACKERAY
+
+
+No other literary Londoner has taken root as Carlyle did in Cheyne Row and
+remained for nearly half a century without once changing his address.
+Thackeray shifted about from place to place nearly as much as most of
+them. He went to school at the Charterhouse, and for a year or two had
+lodgings over a shop in Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell; in the first years
+after his marriage he lived in Albion Street; he had chambers in the
+Temple, at Hare Court, in Crown Office Row, and at Brick Court. _The Paris
+Sketch Book_ was written whilst he was living at 13 Great Coram Street, in
+1840, and it was there that his wife began to suffer from the sad mental
+disorder that was presently to take her from him for the rest of his days.
+In August 1846 he gave up his lodgings in St. James's Chambers, and drew
+his broken home life together again at 16 Young Street, Kensington. "I am
+beginning to count the days now till you come," he wrote to his mother,
+with whom his two little daughters were staying in Paris; "and I have got
+the rooms all ready in the rough, all but a couple of bedsteads, and a few
+etceteras, which fall into their place in a day or two. As usual, I am
+full of business and racket, working every day, and yet not advancing
+somehow." He was industriously turning out drawings and jokes and
+articles and verses for _Punch_ and _Fraser's Magazine_, and hard at work
+on the great novel that was to make him famous--_Vanity Fair_.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHARTERHOUSE. FROM THE SQUARE.]
+
+"It was not till late in the autumn that we came to live with my father in
+Kensington," writes Lady Ritchie, in one of her delightful prefaces to the
+Centenary Edition of Thackeray's works. "We had been at Paris with our
+grandparents--while he was at work in London. It was a dark, wintry
+evening. The fires were lighted, the servants were engaged, Eliza--what
+family would be complete without its Eliza?--was in waiting to show us our
+rooms. He was away; he had not expected us so early. We saw the
+drawing-room, the empty study; there was the feeling of London--London
+smelt of tobacco, we thought; we stared out through the uncurtained
+windows at the dark garden behind; and then, climbing the stairs, we
+looked in at his bedroom door, and came to our own rooms above it.... Once
+more, after his first happy married years, my father had a home and a
+family--if a house, two young children, three servants, and a little black
+cat can be called a family. My grandmother, who had brought us over to
+England, returned to her husband in Paris; but her mother, an old lady
+wrapped in Indian shawls, presently came to live with us, and divided her
+time between Kensington and the Champs Elysees until 1848, when she died
+at Paris."
+
+Thackeray's first name for _Vanity Fair_ was _Pencil Sketches of English
+Society_. He offered the opening chapters of it under that title to
+Colburn for his _New Monthly Magazine_. Thereafter he seems to have
+reshaped the novel and renamed it, and even then had difficulty to find a
+publisher. At length, Messrs. Bradbury & Evans accepted it, and it was
+arranged that it should be published after the manner that Dickens had
+already rendered popular--in monthly parts; and the first part duly
+appeared on the 1st January 1847, in the familiar yellow wrappers that
+served to distinguish Thackeray's serials from the green-covered serials
+of Dickens. But the sales of the first half-dozen numbers were by no means
+satisfactory.
+
+"I still remember," writes Lady Ritchie, "going along Kensington Gardens
+with my sister and our nursemaid, carrying a parcel of yellow numbers
+which had been given us to take to some friend who lived across the Park;
+and as we walked along, somewhere near the gates of the gardens we met my
+father, who asked us what we were carrying. Then somehow he seemed vexed
+and troubled, told us not to go on, and to take the parcel home. Then he
+changed his mind, saying that if his grandmother wished it, the books had
+best be conveyed; but we guessed, as children do, that something was
+seriously amiss. The sale of _Vanity Fair_ was so small that it was a
+question at the time whether its publication should not be discontinued
+altogether."
+
+[Illustration: THACKERAY'S HOUSE. KENSINGTON.]
+
+At that critical juncture he published _Mrs. Perkins's Ball_, which caught
+on at once, and this and a favourable review in the _Edinburgh_ are
+supposed to have sent the public after the novel, for the sales of _Vanity
+Fair_ rapidly increased, and the monthly numbers were soon selling briskly
+enough to satisfy even the publishers, and so in his thirty-seventh year
+Thackeray found himself famous. James Hannay first saw him when the
+book was still unfinished but its success assured. He says that Thackeray
+pointed out to him the house in Russell Square "where the imaginary
+Sedleys lived," and that when he congratulated him on that scene in
+_Vanity Fair_ in which Becky Sharp cannot help feeling proud of her
+husband whilst he is giving Lord Steyne the thrashing that must ruin all
+her own chances, Thackeray answered frankly, "Well, when I wrote that
+sentence I slapped my fist on the table and said, 'That is a touch of
+genius!'" Which reminds one of the story told by Ticknor Fields of how,
+when he was making a pilgrimage around London with Thackeray in later
+years, and they paused outside 16 Young Street, which was no longer his
+home, the novelist cried with a melodramatic gesture, "Go down on your
+knees, you rogue, for here _Vanity Fair_ was penned, and I will go down
+with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself!"
+
+His letters of 1847 and the early half of 1848 are full of references to
+the strenuous toil with which he is writing his monthly instalments of
+_Vanity Fair_, and in one of them, to Edward Fitzgerald, he mentions that
+he is giving a party: "Mrs. Dickens and Miss Hogarth made me give it, and
+I am in a great fright." Perhaps that was the famous party to which
+Charlotte Brontë, Carlyle and his wife, and other of his great
+contemporaries came, and things went wrong, and he became so uncomfortable
+that he fairly bolted from his guests, and went to spend the rest of the
+evening at the Garrick Club.
+
+_Pendennis_ was written at the Young Street house, and Thackeray put a
+good deal of himself into that hero of his. Pen had chambers at Lamb
+Building, in the Temple, and there is some likeness between his early
+journalistic experiences and Thackeray's own. The opening chapters of
+_Pendennis_, though, were written at Spa. Thackeray had wanted to get away
+to some seaside place where he could set to work on his new book, and had
+asked his mother, who was going to Brighton, if she could not get a house
+for £60 that would have three spare rooms in it for him. "As for the
+dignity, I don't believe it matters a pinch of snuff. Tom Carlyle lives in
+perfect dignity in a little £40 house at Chelsea, with a snuffy Scotch
+maid to open the door, and the best company in England ringing at it. It
+is only the second or third chop great folks who care about show."
+
+In _Pendennis_ there is an allusion to Catherine Hayes, the dreadful
+heroine of Thackeray's _Catherine_, that had been published a few years
+before, and a hot-tempered young Irishman, believing the reference was to
+Miss Catherine Hayes, the Irish vocalist, chivalrously came over to
+England, took lodgings opposite Thackeray's house in Young Street, and
+sent him a warning letter that he was on the watch for him to come out of
+doors, and intended to administer public chastisement by way of avenging
+Miss Hayes's injured honour. After getting through his morning's work,
+Thackeray felt the position was intolerable, so he walked straightway out
+across the road, knocked at the opposite door, and boldly bearded the lion
+in his den. The young Irishman was disposed to bluster and be obstinate,
+but Thackeray explained matters, calmed him, convinced him that he had
+made a mistake, parted from him amicably, and had the satisfaction of
+seeing the young fire-eater come forth on his way back home that evening.
+
+[Illustration: W. M. THACKERAY]
+
+Writing of _Pendennis_, Lady Ritchie says, "I can remember the morning
+Helen died. My father was in his study in Young Street, sitting at the
+table at which he wrote. It stood in the middle of the room, and he used
+to sit facing the door. I was going into the room, but he motioned me
+away. An hour afterwards he came into our schoolroom, half laughing and
+half ashamed, and said to us, 'I do not know what James can have thought
+of me when he came in with the tax-gatherer just after you left and found
+me blubbering over Helen Pendennis's death.'"
+
+At Young Street, Thackeray wrote also his _Lectures on the English
+Humorists_, and having delivered them with gratifying success at Willis's
+Rooms, he journeyed to America in 1852, and was even more successful with
+them there. Meanwhile, he had written _Esmond_, and it was published in
+three volumes just before he left England. "Thackeray I saw for ten
+minutes," Fitzgerald wrote to Frederick Tennyson concerning a flying visit
+he had paid to London; "he was just in the agony of finishing a novel,
+which has arisen out of the reading necessary for his lectures, and
+relates to those times--of Queen Anne, I mean. He will get £1000 for his
+novel; he was wanting to finish it and rush off to the Continent to shake
+off the fumes of it." His two daughters, both now in their teens, were
+sent out to join their grandparents before he sailed for the States, and
+in a letter to Anne (Lady Ritchie) he explains his motive in crossing the
+Atlantic: "I must and will go to America, not because I want to, but
+because it is right I should secure some money against my death for your
+poor mother and you two girls."
+
+There are several drawings made by Thackeray in those Young Street days of
+his daughters and himself, and one of his study at breakfast time, and
+here is a word-picture of the study given by Lady Ritchie in her preface
+to _Esmond_: "The vine shaded the two windows, which looked out upon the
+bit of garden and the medlar-tree, and the Spanish jasmines, of which the
+yellow flowers scented our old brick walls. I can remember the tortoise
+belonging to the boys next door crawling along the top of the wall where
+they had set it, and making its way between the jasmine sprigs.... Our
+garden was not tidy (though on one grand occasion a man came to mow the
+grass), but it was full of sweet things.... Lady Duff Gordon came to stay
+with us once (it was on that occasion that the grass was mowed), and she
+afterwards sent us some doves, which used to hang high up in a wicker cage
+from the windows of the schoolroom. The schoolroom was over my father's
+bedroom, and his bedroom was over the study where he used to write, and
+they all looked to the garden and the sunsets."
+
+On his return from the American lecturing, in 1853, when he had already
+made a beginning of _The Newcomes_, he gave up the Young Street house and
+moved to 36 Onslow Square, South Kensington (or Brompton, as it was called
+at that period); and during the seven years of his residence there he
+finished _The Newcomes_, wrote _The Four Georges_, _The Virginians_, many
+of the _Roundabout Papers_, began the writing of _Philip_, and founded and
+entered upon his duties as editor of the _Cornhill Magazine_. The front
+room on the second floor was his study.
+
+[Illustration: LAMB BUILDING. TEMPLE. FROM THE CLOISTERS.]
+
+It was whilst Thackeray was living here that the quarrel occurred between
+him and Edmund Yates, who had contributed a smart personal article to
+_Town Talk_, on the 12th June 1858, in the course of which he wrote: "Mr.
+Thackeray is forty-six years old, though from the silvery whiteness of his
+hair he appears somewhat older. He is very tall, standing upwards of six
+feet two inches; and as he walks erect his height makes him conspicuous in
+every assembly. His face is bloodless, and not particularly expressive,
+but remarkable for the fracture of the bridge of the nose, the result of
+an accident in youth. He wears a small grey whisker, but otherwise is
+clean shaven. No one meeting him could fail to recognise in him a
+gentleman; his bearing is cold and uninviting, his style of conversation
+either openly cynical, or affectedly good-natured and benevolent; his
+_bonhomie_ is forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched--but his
+appearance is invariably that of the cool, suave, well-bred gentleman who,
+whatever may be rankling within, suffers no surface display of his
+emotion." He went on to discuss Thackeray's work, and said unjustly of his
+lectures that in this country he flattered the aristocracy and in America
+he attacked it, the attacks being contained in _The Four Georges_, which
+"have been dead failures in England, though as literary compositions they
+are most excellent. Our own opinion is that his success is on the wane;
+his writings never were understood or appreciated even by the middle
+classes; the aristocracy have been alienated by his American onslaught on
+their body, and the educated and refined are not sufficiently numerous to
+constitute an audience; moreover, there is a want of heart in all he
+writes which is not to be balanced by the most brilliant sarcasm."
+
+The description of Thackeray's personal appearance here is perhaps rather
+impertinently frank, but it is clever and pictorially good; for the
+rest--we who know now what a generous, kindly, almost too sentimentally
+tender heart throbbed within that husk of cynicism and sarcasm in which he
+protectively enfolded it, know that Yates was writing of what he did not
+understand. Unfortunately, however, Thackeray took him seriously, and
+wrote a letter of dignified but angry protest to him, especially against
+the imputation of insincerity when he spoke good-naturedly in private.
+"Had your remarks been written by a person unknown to me, I should have
+noticed them no more than other calumnies; but as we have shaken hands
+more than once and met hitherto on friendly terms, I am obliged to take
+notice of articles which I consider to be not offensive and unfriendly
+merely, but slanderous and untrue. We meet at a club where, before you
+were born, I believe, I and other gentlemen have been in the habit of
+talking without any idea that our conversation would supply paragraphs for
+professional vendors of 'Literary Talk'; and I don't remember that out of
+the club I have ever exchanged six words with you."
+
+Yates replied, and "rather than have further correspondence with a writer
+of that character," Thackeray put the letters before the committee of the
+Garrick Club, asking them to decide whether the publication of such an
+article as Yates had written was not intolerable in a society of gentlemen
+and fatal to the comfort of the club. The committee resolved that Yates
+must either apologise or resign his membership. Then Dickens, thinking the
+committee were exceeding their powers, intervened on Yates's behalf; wrote
+to Thackeray in a conciliatory strain, and asked if any conference could
+be held between himself, as representing Yates, and some friend who should
+represent Thackeray, with a view to arriving at a friendly settlement of
+the unpleasantness. This apparently well-intentioned interference annoyed
+Thackeray; he curtly replied that he preferred to leave his interests in
+the hands of the club committee, and as a result he and Dickens were
+bitterly estranged. That the friendship between two such men should have
+been broken by such a petty incident was deplorable enough, but happily,
+only a few days before Thackeray's death, they chanced to meet in the
+lobby of the Athenæum, and by a mutual impulse each offered his hand to
+the other, and the breach was healed.
+
+In 1862 Thackeray made his last change of address, and went to No. 2
+Palace Green, Kensington, a large and handsome house that he had built for
+himself. Some of his friends thought that in building it he had spent his
+money recklessly, but he did it in pursuance of the desire, that crops up
+so frequently in his correspondence, to make some provision for the future
+of his children; and when, after his death, it was sold for £2000 more
+than it had cost him, he was sufficiently justified. It was in this house
+that he finished _Philip_, and, having retired from the editing of the
+_Cornhill_, began to write _Denis Duval_, but died on Christmas Eve 1863,
+leaving it little more than well begun. When he was writing _Pendennis_ he
+had been near death's door, and ever since he had suffered from attacks of
+sickness almost every month. He was not well when his valet left him at
+eleven on the night of the 23rd December; about midnight his mother, whose
+bedroom was immediately over his, heard him walking about his room; at
+nine next morning, when his valet went in with his coffee, he saw him
+"lying on his back quite still, with his arms spread over the coverlet,
+but he took no notice, as he was accustomed to see his master thus after
+one of his attacks." Returning later, and finding the coffee untouched on
+the table beside the bed, he felt a sudden apprehension, and was horrified
+to discover that Thackeray was dead.
+
+Yates has told how the rumour of his death ran through the clubs and was
+soon all about the town, and of how, wherever it went, it left a cloud
+over everything that Christmas Eve; and I have just turned up one of my
+old _Cornhill_ volumes to read again what Dickens and Trollope wrote of
+him in the number for February 1864. "I saw him first," says Dickens,
+"nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to be the illustrator of
+my earliest book. I saw him last, shortly before Christmas, at the
+Athenæum Club, when he told me that he had been in bed three days--that
+after these attacks he was troubled with cold shiverings, 'which quite
+took the power of work out of him'--and that he had it in his mind to try
+a new remedy, which he laughingly described. He was very cheerful, and
+looked very bright. In the night of that day week, he died." Dickens goes
+on to give little instances of his kindness, of his great and good nature;
+and then describes how he was found lying dead. "He was only in his
+fifty-third year; so young a man that the mother who blessed him in his
+first sleep blessed him in his last." And says Trollope, no one is
+thinking just then of the greatness of his work--"The fine grey head, the
+dear face with its gentle smile, the sweet, manly voice which we knew so
+well, with its few words of kindest greeting; the gait and manner, the
+personal presence of him whom it so delighted us to encounter in our
+casual comings and goings about the town--it is of these things, and of
+these things lost for ever, that we are now thinking. We think of them as
+treasures which are not only lost, but which can never be replaced. He who
+knew Thackeray will have a vacancy in his heart's inmost casket which must
+remain vacant till he dies. One loved him almost as one loves a woman,
+tenderly and with thoughtfulness--thinking of him when away from him as a
+source of joy which cannot be analysed, but is full of comfort. One who
+loved him, loved him thus because his heart was tender, as is the heart of
+a woman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+DICKENS
+
+
+Thackeray's London was practically bounded on the east by the Temple, or
+perhaps by the Fleet Prison, which lay a little beyond the _Punch_ office;
+it took in the Strand, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and stretched out westward
+round Belgravia, Mayfair, Chiswick, and such selecter quarters of the
+town. But Dickens made the whole of London his province; you cannot go
+into any part of it but he has been there before you; if he did not at one
+time live there himself, some of his characters did. Go north through
+Somers Town and Camden Town: the homes of his boyhood were there in Bayham
+Street, in Little College Street, in the house that still stands at 13
+Johnson Street, from which he walked daily to school at the Wellington
+House Academy in Hampstead Road. He lived in Cleveland Street, Fitzroy
+Square, and in Fitzroy Street, and whilst his father was a prisoner in the
+Marshalsea for debt and he himself was labelling bottles at the blacking
+factory in Hungerford Market, he had lodgings south of London Bridge in
+Lant Street, which were the originals of the lodgings he gave to Bob
+Sawyer in later years when he came to write _Pickwick_. When he was turned
+twenty, and working as a Parliamentary reporter in the House of Commons,
+and beginning to contribute his _Sketches by Boz_ to the _Monthly
+Magazine_, he lived at 18 Bentinck Street, Cavendish Square. For a time he
+had lodgings in Buckingham Street, Strand, and afterwards lodged David
+Copperfield in the same rooms; he put up for a short time at Fulham before
+his marriage at St. Luke's Church, Chelsea, in April 1836, and after a
+brief honeymoon returned with his wife to the chambers in Furnival's Inn
+that he had rented since the previous year. He had three other London
+houses during his more prosperous days; then he quitted the town and went
+to live at Gad's Hill Place, where he died in 1870. But even after he was
+thus settled in Kent, he was continually up and down to the office of
+_Household Words_, in Wellington Street, Strand, and for some part of
+almost every year he occupied a succession of furnished houses round about
+Hyde Park.
+
+[Illustration: DICKENS. JOHNSON STREET. CAMDEN TOWN.]
+
+A few months before his marriage he had started to write _Pickwick_, the
+first monthly part of which appeared in March 1836. Before the end of next
+month, Seymour, the artist who was illustrating that serial, having
+committed suicide, Thackeray went up to the Furnival's Inn chambers with
+specimens of his drawings in the hope of becoming his successor, but
+Dickens rejected him in favour of Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"), who also
+illustrated most of his subsequent books. He had published the _Sketches
+by Boz_ in two volumes, illustrated by Cruikshank, had written two
+dramatic pieces that were very successfully produced at the St. James's
+Theatre, had begun to edit _Bentley's Miscellany_, and was writing _Oliver
+Twist_ for it, before he left Furnival's Inn and established his small
+household of his wife and their first son and his wife's sister, Mary
+Hogarth, at 48 Doughty Street, Mecklenburgh Square.
+
+In later years Sala, who became one of Dickens's principal contributors to
+_Household Words_, used to live in Mecklenburgh Square, and at different
+times Sidney Smith, Shirley Brooks, and Edmund Yates all lived in Doughty
+Street (Shirley Brooks was born there, at No. 52), but Doughty Street's
+chief glory is that for the greater part of three years Dickens was the
+tenant of No. 48. George Henry Lewes called to see him there, and was
+perturbed to find that he had nothing on his bookshelves but three-volume
+novels and presentation copies of books of travel; clearly he was not much
+of a reader, and had never been a haunter of old bookstalls. But presently
+Dickens came in, says Lewes, "and his sunny presence quickly dispelled all
+misgivings. He was then, as to the last, a delightful companion, full of
+sagacity as well as animal spirits; but I came away more impressed with
+the fulness of life and energy than with any sense of distinction."
+
+Mrs. Cowden Clarke, who saw him in his Doughty Street days, speaks of him
+as "genial, bright, lively-spirited, pleasant-toned," and says he "entered
+into conversation with a grace and charm that made it feel perfectly
+natural to be chatting and laughing as if we had known each other from
+childhood." His eyes she describes as "large, dark blue, exquisitely
+shaped, fringed with magnificently long and thick lashes--they now swam in
+liquid, limpid suffusion, when tears started into them from a sense of
+humour or a sense of pathos, and now darted quick flashes of fire when
+some generous indignation at injustice, or some high-wrought feeling of
+admiration at magnanimity, or some sudden emotion of interest and
+excitement touched him. Swift-glancing, appreciative, rapidly observant,
+truly superb orbits they were, worthy of the other features in his manly,
+handsome face. The mouth was singularly mobile, full-lipped, well-shaped,
+and expressive; sensitive, nay restless, in its susceptibility to
+impressions that swayed him, or sentiment that moved him." Which tallies
+sufficiently with Carlyle's well-known description of him a few months
+later: "A fine little fellow, Boz, I think. Clear, blue, intelligent eyes,
+eyebrows that he arches amazingly; large, protrusive, rather loose mouth,
+a face of most extreme mobility which he shuttles about--eyebrows, eyes,
+mouth and all--in a very singular manner while speaking. Surmount this
+with a loose coil of common-coloured hair, and set it on a small, compact
+figure, very small, and dressed _â la_ D'Orsay rather than well--this is
+Pickwick. For the rest, a quiet, shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems
+to guess pretty well what he is and what others are." Forster sketches
+his face at this same period with "the quickness, keenness, and practical
+power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several feature,
+that seemed to tell so little of a student and writer of books, and so
+much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and motion
+flashed from every part of it." "It was as if made of steel," said Mrs.
+Carlyle; and "What a face is his to meet in a drawing-room," wrote Leigh
+Hunt. "It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings."
+
+Dickens's weakness, then and all his life through, was for something too
+dazzling and ornate in the way of personal adornment. We hear of a green
+overcoat with red cuffs. "His dress was florid," says one who met him: "a
+satin cravat of the deepest blue relieved by embroideries, a green
+waistcoat with gold flowers, a dress coat with a velvet collar and satin
+facings, opulence of white cuff, rings in excess, made up a rather
+striking whole." And there is a story of how, when an artist friend of
+both was presented by somebody with a too gaudy length of material, Wilkie
+Collins advised him to "Give it to Dickens--he'll make a waistcoat out of
+it!"
+
+[Illustration: DICKENS' HOUSE. DOUGHTY STREET.]
+
+That jest belongs to a later year, but here you have a sufficiently vivid
+presentment of the man as he was when he could be seen passing in and out
+of the house in Doughty Street. He may have been dandified in appearance,
+but in all his other habits he was a hard and severely methodical worker.
+"His hours and days were spent by rule," we are told. "He rose at a
+certain time, he retired at another, and though no precisian, it was not
+often that his arrangements varied. His hours of writing were between
+breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to be done no
+temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. This order
+and regularity followed him through the day. His mind was essentially
+methodical, and in his long walks, in his recreations, in his labour, he
+was governed by rules laid down by himself, rules well studied beforehand
+and rarely departed from."
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS]
+
+His rise out of poverty and obscurity into affluence and fame makes a more
+wonderful story than that of how Byron woke one morning and found himself
+famous. For Dickens had everything against him. He was indifferently
+educated, had no social advantages, and no influential friends behind him.
+In 1835 he was an unknown young author, writing miscellaneous stories and
+sketches for the papers; by the end of 1836 everybody was reading and
+raving of and laughing over _Pickwick_, and he was the most talked-of
+novelist of the hour. "It sprang into a popularity that each part carried
+higher and higher," says Forster, "until people at this time talked of
+nothing else, tradesmen recommended their goods by using its name, and its
+sale, outstripping at a bound that of all the most famous books of the
+century, had reached an almost fabulous number." Judges, street boys, old
+and young in every class of life, devoured each month's number directly it
+appeared, and looked forward impatiently to the next one. Carlyle told
+Forster that "an archdeacon, with his own venerable lips, repeated to me
+the other night a strange, profane story of a solemn clergyman who had
+been administering ghostly consolation to a sick person; having finished,
+satisfactorily as he thought, and got out of the room, he heard the sick
+person ejaculate: 'Well, thank God, _Pickwick_ will be out in ten days,
+any way!'"
+
+Dickens's favourite recreation in those early years was riding, and
+frequently he would set out with Forster "at eleven in the morning for 'a
+fifteen mile ride out, ditto in, and lunch on the road,' with a wind-up of
+six o'clock dinner in Doughty Street." Other times he would send a note
+round to Forster, who lived at 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and if he could be
+persuaded to come, as generally he could, they would set out for a brisk
+walk to Hampstead and over the Heath, and have "a red-hot chop for dinner
+and a glass of good wine" at Jack Straw's Castle.
+
+His daughter Mamie was born in Doughty Street, and there the first great
+grief of his life completely overwhelmed him for a time, when his wife's
+young sister, Mary Hogarth, died at the age of seventeen. There are
+several letters from that address in 1838 concerning his progress with
+_Oliver Twist_. In one, when he could not work, he says he is "sitting
+patiently at home waiting for Oliver Twist, who has not yet arrived." In
+another he writes, "I worked pretty well last night--very well indeed; but
+although I did eleven close slips before half-past twelve I have four to
+write to close the chapter; and as I foolishly left them till this
+morning, have the steam to get up afresh." "Hard at work still," he writes
+to Forster in August 1838. "Nancy is no more. I showed what I had done to
+Kate last night, who is in an unspeakable '_state_'; from which and my own
+impression I augur well. When I have sent Sykes to the devil I must have
+yours." And "No, no," he wrote again to Forster next month, "don't, don't
+let us ride till to-morrow, not having yet disposed of the Jew, who is
+such an out-and-outer that I don't know what to make of him." Then one
+evening Forster went to Doughty Street and sat in Dickens's study and
+talked over the last chapter of _Oliver Twist_ with him, and remained
+reading there whilst he wrote it.
+
+From Doughty Street Dickens and "Phiz" set out together on that journey
+into Yorkshire to see the notorious school that was to become famous as
+Squeers's, and in due course there are letters from that street telling of
+the progress of _Nicholas Nickleby_. Early in 1839 the letters tell of how
+he is house-hunting, and in the intervals working "at racehorse speed" on
+_Barnaby Rudge_, and near the end of the year he moved to 1 Devonshire
+Terrace, at the corner of Marylebone Road.
+
+The Doughty Street house remains as he left it, but 1 Devonshire Terrace
+has been rather considerably altered. The new residence was such a much
+more imposing one than the other that absurd rumours got about that he was
+lapsing into extravagance and living beyond his income, and "I perfectly
+remember," writes Sala, "when he moved from his modest residence in
+Doughty Street to a much grander but still not very palatial house in
+Devonshire Terrace, an old gentleman calling one day upon my mother and
+telling her, with a grave countenance, that Dickens had pawned his plate,
+and had been waited upon for the last fortnight by bailiffs in livery." It
+was about this time, too, that the _Quarterly_ made its famous prediction
+that in the case of work such as Dickens was doing "an ephemeral
+popularity will be followed by an early oblivion." But there was no ground
+for any of these fears. His life was a triumphal procession; he went
+forward from victory to victory. At Devonshire Terrace he wrote most of
+_Barnaby Rudge_: and the prototype of Grip, Barnaby's raven, the special
+playmate of Dickens's children, died there; from here he went on his first
+visit to America, and on his return, with intervals of holiday at
+Broadstairs, in Cornwall, and in Italy, wrote the _American Notes_,
+_Martin Chuzzlewit_, _The Chimes_, _The Cricket on the Hearth_, _Pictures
+from Italy_, _Dombey and Son_, and commenced the writing of _David
+Copperfield_. Whilst he was here, too, he was for a brief space the first
+editor of the _Daily News_, and in March 1850 opened his Wellington Street
+office and started _Household Words_. Incidentally, he was taking an
+active share in a dozen or more public movements; acting as chairman at
+meetings and dinners, managing and playing in private theatricals, writing
+miscellaneous articles for his new magazine, and attending closely to its
+business organisation. Never was a more strenuous literary worker, or one
+who brought more enthusiasm to whatever he undertook.
+
+In the autumn of 1851, in the flowing and rising tide of his prosperity,
+he removed to the now vanished Tavistock House, in Tavistock Square, and
+in the next six years, before his removal to Gad's Hill, wrote _Bleak
+House_, _Hard Times_, and _Little Dorrit_, to say nothing of the numerous
+short stories and articles he contributed to _Household Words_, and began
+to give those public readings from his books that were in his last decade
+to occupy so much of his time, add so enormously to his income and his
+personal popularity, and play so sinister a part in the breaking down of
+his health and the shortening of his career.
+
+Writing immediately after Dickens's death, Sala said that twenty years ago
+the face and form of Sir Robert Peel were familiar to almost everybody who
+passed him in the street, and "there were as few last week who would have
+been unable to point out the famous novelist, with his thought-lined face,
+his grizzled beard, his wondrous searching eyes, his bluff presence and
+swinging gait as, head aloft, he strode, now through crowded streets,
+looking seemingly neither to the right nor the left, but of a surety
+looking at and into everything--now at the myriad aspects of London life,
+the ever-changing raree-show, the endless roundabout, the infinite
+kaleidoscope of wealth and pauperism, of happiness and misery, of good and
+evil in this Babylon--now over the pleasant meads and breezy downs which
+stretched round his modest Kentish demesne hard by the hoary tower of
+Rochester.... Who had not heard him read, and who had not seen his
+photographs in the shop windows? The omnibus conductors knew him, the
+street boys knew him; and perhaps the locality where his recognition would
+have been least frequent--for all that he was a member of the Athenæum
+Club--was Pall Mall. Elsewhere he would make his appearance in the oddest
+places, and in the most inclement weather: in Ratcliff Highway, on
+Haverstock Hill, on Camberwell Green, in Gray's Inn Lane, in the
+Wandsworth Road, at Hammersmith Broadway, in Norton Folgate, and at Kensal
+New Town.... His carriage was remarkably upright, his mien almost
+aggressive in its confidence--a bronzed, weatherworn, hardy man, with
+somewhat of a seaman's air about him." London folks would draw aside, he
+continues, "as the great writer--who seemed always to be walking a match
+against Thought--strode on, and, looking after him, say, 'There goes
+Charles Dickens!' The towering stature, the snowy locks, the glistening
+spectacles, the listless, slouching port, as that of a tired giant, of
+William Makepeace Thackeray were familiar enough likewise but,
+comparatively speaking, only to a select few. He belonged to Clubland, and
+was only to be seen sauntering there or in West End squares, or on his
+road to his beloved Kensington.... Thackeray in Houndsditch, Thackeray in
+Bethnal Green or at Camden Town, would have appeared anomalous ... but
+Charles Dickens, when in town, was ubiquitous."
+
+There are statues in London of many smaller men, of many who mean little
+or nothing in particular to London, but there is none to Dickens, and
+perhaps he needs none. Little critics may decry him, but it makes no
+difference, it takes nothing from his immortality. "It is fatuous," as
+Trollope said of his work, "to condemn that as deficient in art which has
+been so full of art as to captivate all men." And to the thousands of us
+who know the people and the world that he created he is still ubiquitous
+in London here, even though he has his place for ever, as Swinburne says,
+among the stars and suns that we behold not:
+
+  "Where stars and suns that we behold not burn,
+     Higher even than here, though highest was here thy place,
+       Love sees thy spirit laugh and speak and shine
+   With Shakespeare and the soft bright soul of Sterne,
+     And Fielding's kindliest might and Goldsmith's grace;
+       Scarce one more loved or worthier love than thine."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+When I was writing of what remains to us of the London of Shakespeare, I
+might have mentioned the four-century-old gateway of Lincoln's Inn, in
+Chancery Lane, that Ben Jonson helped to build, and close by which, at 24
+Old Buildings, Cromwell's secretary, John Thurloe, lived in 1654; and
+although in my first chapter I gave a fairly lengthy list of famous
+authors and artists who were Cockneys by birth, I by no means made it so
+long as I could have done. Hablot K. Browne, otherwise "Phiz," the chief
+of Dickens's artists, was born in Kennington, and lived for eight years,
+towards the close of his career, at 99 Ladbroke Grove Road; Lord Lytton,
+whom Tennyson unkindly described as "the padded man that wears the stays,"
+and who was for a time a more popular novelist than either Dickens or
+Thackeray, was born at 31 Baker Street, and lived in after years at 12
+Grosvenor Square, and at 36 Hertford Street; Gibbon was born at Putney,
+and lived for some years at 7 Bentinck Street, which he said was "the best
+house in the world"; John Leech was born over his father's coffee-shop in
+Ludgate Hill, and lived when he had risen to fame at 32 Brunswick Square,
+and passed the last years of his life at 6 The Terrace, Kensington; and
+one who I confess interests me at least as much as any of these,
+Douglas Jerrold, was born in Greek Street, Soho, lived as a boy at Broad
+Court, in the same neighbourhood, and afterwards shifted about into
+half-a-dozen different parts of London, and died in 1857 at Kilburn
+Priory, on the skirts of St. John's Wood. West Lodge, his house at Lower
+Putney Common, still stands much as it was when he occupied it, with his
+mulberry tree still growing in that garden round which, one memorable
+summer afternoon, he and Dickens, Forster, Maclise, and Macready gave each
+other "backs," and played a joyously undignified game of leapfrog. I don't
+know whether anybody reads _Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures_ now, but
+everybody read them and laughed over them when they were new, and
+Jerrold's best jokes and witticisms are much too well known to leave me an
+excuse for repeating any of them here. For all his bitter tongue, he was
+kind, generous, sensitive, afire with a fine scorn of wrong, injustice,
+and every variety of social humbug and snobbery. "A small
+delicately-formed, bent man," is Edmund Yates's recollection of him, "with
+long grey hair combed back from his forehead, with grey eyes deep-set
+under penthouse brows, and a way, just as the inspiration seized him, of
+dangling a double-eyeglass which hung round his neck by a broad black
+ribbon."
+
+[Illustration: THURLOE'S LODGINGS. 24 OLD SQUARE. LINCOLN'S INN.]
+
+Browning, who was born at Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell,
+in 1812, lived at De Vere Gardens, and at 19 Warwick Crescent. Removing
+from 74 Gloucester Place in 1842, Elizabeth Barrett and her autocratic
+father went to 50 Wimpole Street, and calling there with a friend in 1845,
+Robert Browning was introduced to her. It was from and to this house that
+so many of those wonderful love-letters of theirs were written, and little
+more than a year after their first meeting, her father stubbornly refusing
+his consent to their union, she stole out by this sedate and sombre door
+one autumn morning to join her waiting lover, and they were quietly and
+clandestinely married at the old church round the corner in Marylebone
+Road--the same church in which, in the same year, Dickens, then living at
+Devonshire House and within sight of it, married Mr. Dombey, with Captain
+Cuttle looking on at the ceremony from the gallery.
+
+At 82 Wimpole Street Wilkie Collins died; and at 67, lived Henry Hallam,
+the historian, and his son Arthur, the friend of Tennyson, who often
+visited him there, and has enshrined his memory for ever in his _In
+Memoriam_; where, too, he pictures this house and this street:
+
+  "Dark house, by which once more I stand
+     Here in the long unlovely street,
+     Doors, where my heart was used to beat
+   So quickly, waiting for a hand.
+
+   A hand that can be clasped no more--
+     Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
+     And like a guilty thing I creep
+   At earliest morning to the door.
+
+   He is not here; but far away
+     The noise of life begins again,
+     And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
+   On the bald street breaks the blank day."
+
+Theodore Hook, another Cockney, was born in Charlotte Street, Bedford
+Square; Captain Marryat, another, in Great George Street, Westminster,
+and whilst he was writing the most famous of his books he lived at 8 Duke
+Street, St. James's, and at Sussex Lodge, in the Fulham Road. Ruskin, who,
+like Browning, is included in my earlier list of Cockneys, was born at 54
+Hunter Street, and made his home for many years at 163 Denmark Hill, both
+of which houses still survive him.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN MARRYAT. DUKE STREET. ST. JAMES.]
+
+Benjamin Franklin lived at 7 Craven Street, Strand; before he rented a
+house in London after Johnson's death, Boswell had lodgings, on his annual
+visits to town, in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, in Conduit Street, Regent
+Street, and in Old Bond Street; where Sterne dwelt before him and Gibbon
+after him, and at 27A, Harrison Ainsworth, later than them all; but
+Ainsworth's more notable residence, where he lived when he was in the full
+glory of his enormous popularity, is Kensal House, out in the
+no-longer-rural district of Kensal Green.
+
+[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S HOUSE. CRAVEN STREET.]
+
+At 19 Albert Gate, Sloane Street, lived Charles Reade, who was nearly all
+his life quarrelling with his critics and fighting against legal
+injustices with an almost ungovernable fury, and yet David Christie Murray
+said he was one of the four men he had met who were "distinguished by that
+splendid urbanity of manner which was once thought to express the acme of
+high breeding.... A beautiful, stately cordiality commonly marked his
+social manner, but he could be moved to a towering rage by an act of
+meanness, treachery, or oppression; and in his public correspondence he
+was sometimes downright vitriolic." Anthony Trollope died at 34 Welbeck
+Street; and Lord Macaulay at Holly Lodge on Campden Hill. George
+Cruikshank lived in the queer, dull-looking little house that still
+remains at 263 Hampstead Road, and from that address put forth his
+groundless claims to being the originator of Ainsworth's novels, _Jack
+Sheppard_ and _The Miser's Daughter_, and Dickens's _Oliver Twist_.
+Ainsworth was still living, and strenuously denied his assertions; Dickens
+was dead, but there existed a letter of his about the illustrations to his
+book that sufficiently proved that the story was not written round
+Cruickshank's drawings, as the aged artist seemed to have persuaded
+himself it was. A greater artist than Cruickshank (and another Cockney, by
+the way) was born in Cumberland Market, near Regent's Park, and died in a
+sponging-house in Eyre Street Hill, Clerkenwell Road, in 1804. That was
+George Morland. Two years before his death he went with his wife and put
+up at the Bull Inn, at Highgate, which was kept by a former acquaintance
+of his. He is supposed to have utilised as a studio the large room with
+three bay windows that runs above the bar the full width of the building.
+He entertained Gainsborough and Romney and other contemporary artists
+there, but within a few months had had a fierce quarrel with the landlord
+and returned to lodge with his brother in Dean Street, Soho. He was by
+then showing the effects of his reckless dissipations, and looked
+"besotted and squalid and cadaverous; hanging cheeks and pinched nose,
+contracted nostrils, bleared and bloodshot eyes, swelled legs, a palsied
+hand, and tremulous voice bespeaking the ruin of what had once been the
+soundest of frames." Drunk or sober, he worked rapidly and with unfailing
+mastery, but he was generally cheated by those around him of the due
+reward of his labours. Going on a short holiday to Brighton, he wrote
+giving his brother this list of what he had drunk in a single day:
+"Hollands gin, rum and milk--before breakfast. Coffee--for breakfast.
+Hollands, porter, shrub, ale, Hollands, port wine and ginger, bottled
+ale--these before dinner. Port wine at dinner. Porter, bottled porter,
+punch, porter, ale, opium and water. Port wine at supper. Gin, shrub, and
+rum on going to bed." At the bottom of the list he sketched a tombstone
+bearing a skull and crossbones, and by way of epitaph: "Here lies a
+drunken dog." And debts and duns and death in the sponging-house were the
+inevitable end of it.
+
+[Illustration: CRUIKSHANK. 263 HAMPSTEAD ROAD.]
+
+Lady Blessington held her brilliant salon at 8 Seamore Place, Mayfair,
+before in 1836 she removed to the more noted Gore House, Kensington, and
+welcomed to her splendid drawing-rooms Byron, Lytton, Disraeli, Landor,
+Marryat, Dickens, Thackeray, Sydney Smith, Maclise, Hook, and all the
+greatest men of the day in literature, art, politics, and society, till in
+1849 she was overwhelmed with financial embarrassments and fled to Paris,
+where she died the year after. Gore House has vanished from its place
+long since, and the Albert Hall more than covers the site of it. But
+Holland House, which was equally or more celebrated for its magnificent
+social gatherings in the first half of last century and earlier, still
+holds its ground. Addison lived there after his marriage to the Countess
+of Warwick in 1716, and from his bedroom there, in his last hours, sent
+for his dissipated stepson in order that he might see "how a Christian can
+die."
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING]
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE MORLAND. THE "BULL INN" HIGHGATE.]
+
+Perhaps more interesting than either of these, from a literary standpoint,
+is the house of Samuel Rogers, 22 St. James's Place, overlooking the Green
+Park. You can scarcely open the memoirs of any man of letters of his time,
+but you may read some account of a breakfast or a dinner at Rogers's.
+"What a delightful house it is!" says Macaulay. "It looks out on the Green
+Park just at the most pleasant point. The furniture has been selected with
+a delicacy of taste quite unique.... In the drawing-room the
+chimney-pieces are carved by Flaxman into the most beautiful Grecian
+forms. The bookcase is painted by Stothard, in his very best manner, with
+groups from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Boccaccio. The pictures are not
+numerous, but every one is excellent. The most remarkable objects in the
+dining-room are, I think, a cast of Pope, taken after death by Roubiliac;
+a noble model in terra-cotta by Michael Angelo, from which he afterwards
+made one of his finest statues, that of Lorenzo de Medici; and, lastly, a
+mahogany table on which stands an antique vase. When Chantrey dined with
+Rogers some time ago he took particular notice of the vase and the table
+on which it stands, and asked Rogers who made the table. 'A common
+carpenter,' said Rogers. 'Do you remember the making of it?' said
+Chantrey. 'Certainly,' said Rogers, in some surprise; 'I was in the room
+while it was finished with the chisel, and gave the workman directions
+about placing it.' 'Yes,' said Chantrey, 'I was the carpenter.'" Byron,
+who was a guest at Holland House and at Lady Blessington's, was a frequent
+guest at Rogers's table also. It was Rogers who introduced him to Miss
+Milbanke, the unfortunate lady who was to become his wife; and Byron seems
+by turns to have admired him, disliked him, and looked upon him with a
+sort of laughing contempt. "When Sheridan was on his deathbed," he writes,
+"Rogers aided him with purse and person: this was particularly kind in
+Rogers, who always spoke ill of Sheridan (to me, at least); but indeed he
+does that of everybody. Rogers is the reverse of the line 'The best good
+man with the worst-natured Muse,' being 'The worst good man with the
+best-natured Muse.' His Muse being all sentiment and sago, while he
+himself is a venomous talker. I say 'worst good man,' because he is
+(perhaps) a good man--at least he does good now and then, as well he may,
+to purchase himself a shilling's worth of Salvation for his Slanders. They
+are so _little_, too--small talk, and old womanny; and he is malignant
+too, and envious."
+
+[Illustration: ROGERS. ST. JAMES'S PLACE. FROM GREEN PARK.]
+
+Rogers had a fine head, a distinguished manner, a bland, silky way of
+saying the most cutting and cynical things. He was not so much a poet as a
+banker of a poetical temperament. His poetry will presently be forgotten,
+but his breakfasts and his dinners will be remembered because he lived to
+be well over ninety, was a very wealthy man of taste, and had the will and
+the means to play the generous host to some three generations of the
+wisest, wittiest, greatest men of his era, and several of them said
+brighter and better things in his dining and drawing-rooms than he ever
+wrote in his books. He covered such a long span of time that he could
+entertain Sheridan, who was born in 1751, and Dickens, who died in 1870.
+Many of the same glorious company had a meeting-place also until a more
+recent day at Bath House, Mayfair, where Lady Ashburton, the great friend
+of the Carlyles, held famous receptions, of which Carlyle himself and the
+Brookfields have left us reminiscences. And the invaluable Allingham has
+one or two notes about her in his _Diary_; one dated 5th November 1875, in
+which he says Carlyle passed his house "about four to-day. I overtook him
+in the Fulham Road, and walked with him to Lady Ashburton's door at
+Knightsbridge. He said, 'Browning in his young days wore a turn-down shirt
+collar with a ribbon for a necktie, and a green coat. I first met him one
+evening at Leigh Hunt's, a modest youth, with a good strong face and a
+head of dark hair. He said little, but what he said was good.'" Possibly
+the talk fell upon him because Browning was among the guests he was to
+meet that day at Lady Ashburton's.
+
+[Illustration: BORROW'S HOUSE. HEREFORD SQUARE.]
+
+William Morris and Burne Jones lived and worked together at 17 Red Lion
+Square; Steele used to live in Bloomsbury Square, where later Disraeli and
+his father lived, at No. 5. George Borrow lived at 23 Hereford Square,
+South Kensington. Berkeley Square has a peculiar attraction for me, less
+because Horace Walpole had his home at 42, than because Colley Cibber
+dwelt as a very old man at No. 20. In the same way I am not so much drawn
+to Gower Street by the fact that in a greatly altered house there Darwin
+used to live, as I am to that shabby Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road,
+where Albert Smith had a house at which Sala once visited him. Walpole and
+Darwin are, of course, incomparably greater men than Cibber and Albert
+Smith, but these last two have a curious fascination for me. I read
+Smith's _Christopher Tadpole_ and _The Scattergood Family_ when I was a
+boy, and his figure flits elusively in the background of Dickens's
+reputation, wrapped in a very characteristic mid-Victorian bohemianism,
+and, without precisely knowing why, I have taken a sort of liking to him.
+Sala says he was a kind, cheery little man, who when he was at work at
+home wore a blue blouse. "I recall him," he says, "as a sturdy-looking,
+broad-shouldered, short-necked man, with grey eyes and flowing locks of
+light brown, and large side-whiskers; later in life he wore a beard. His
+voice was a high treble." His study in Percy Street was littered always
+with French novels, dolls, pipes, cheap jewellery, cakes of soap made in
+the image of fruit, minature Swiss châlets, fancy costumes, and such a
+miscellany of odds and ends that it had the appearance of an old curiosity
+shop. As for Cibber, I began by feeling contempt for him, because of the
+scorn Pope pours on him in _The Dunciad_, and the character for dulness
+that was imposed upon him by that savage satirist and his host of
+imitators. But when I read some of Cibber's comedies (such as _The
+Careless Husband_, and _Love Makes a Man_) I found them amusing and clever
+in their fashion, certainly not dull, and when I dropped one day into the
+National Portrait Gallery and saw that coloured bust of him under a glass
+case and leering through the glass eyes that have been fitted into his
+head--I succumbed, and acquired a sneaking regard for the gay old coxcomb
+that is not yet beginning to cool. You cannot read his plays and his
+delightful _Apology_ for his Life without getting interested in him; and
+then if you go and look at that bust you will feel that you know the sly,
+witty, shrewd, ruddy-visaged, not over clean, furtive, leery old rascal as
+intimately as if you had been acquainted with him in the flesh.
+
+But if one set out to write of the homes and haunts of these minor
+celebrities this book would be endless; moreover, many amongst them that
+have some peculiar attraction for me might have no interest for any one
+else; and many that for special reasons mean a great deal to you might
+mean nothing at all to me. So, as the wiser course, I have, in the main,
+limited my survey to the houses of men and women who are considerable
+enough to be known, more or less, by every one who has even a nodding
+acquaintance with literature, and to that extent my chronicle is at an
+end.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Addison, Joseph, 3, 28, 150, 339
+
+  Addison Bridge Place, 199, 203
+
+  Adelphi Terrace, 114, 223, 233
+
+  Ainsworth, W. Harrison, 238, 334, 337
+
+  Akenside, Mark, 3, 28, 150
+
+  Albany, The, 199
+
+  Albemarle Street, 181
+
+  Albert Gate, Sloane Street, 334
+
+  Albion Street, 296
+
+  Aldermanbury, 19
+
+  Aldersgate Street, 12, 17, 19
+
+  Aldford Street, 178, 181
+
+  Aldgate, 4
+
+  Allingham, William, 259, 262, 276, 280, 281, 285, 343, 344
+
+  Ampton Street, 275
+
+  Arbuthnot, John, 31, 150
+
+  Archer, Thomas, 2
+
+  Argyll Place, 167
+
+  ---- Street, 167
+
+  Arlington Road, 245
+
+  Ashburton, Lady, 343, 344
+
+  Atterbury, Francis, 31
+
+  Austin, Alfred, 253
+
+  Avenue Road, 245
+
+  Ayrton, William, 207
+
+
+  Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam), 6
+
+  Baillie, Joanna, 145, 194
+
+  Baker Street, 328
+
+  Balmanno, Mary, 233
+
+  Barbauld, Mrs., 146, 220
+
+  Barber, Francis, 102
+
+  Barham, R. H., 238
+
+  Barrett, Elizabeth, 331, 332
+
+  Bartholomew Close, 19, 38, 50
+
+  Barton, Bernard, 219, 222, 226
+
+  Basire, James, 118, 120
+
+  Bath House, Mayfair, 343
+
+  Bathurst, Dr., 94
+
+  Battersea, 26-35, 260
+
+  Bayham Street, 314
+
+  Beauclerk, Topham, 63, 114
+
+  Beaumont, Francis, 20
+
+  Bellott, Stephen, 14, 15, 16
+
+  Bennet Street, 194
+
+  Bentinck Street, 315, 328
+
+  Berkeley Square, 344
+
+  Besant, Sir Walter, 146
+
+  Bird-in-Hand Court, Cheapside, 23
+
+  Bishopsgate, 10
+
+  Blackstone, Sir William, 80
+
+  Blake, William, 9, 118-139, 271
+
+  Blandford Square, 245
+
+  Blessington, Lady, 338
+
+  Bloomfield, Robert, 3
+
+  Bloomsbury Square, 344
+
+  Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, 26-35, 106
+
+  Bolingbroke House, 26-35
+
+  Bolt Court, 90, 117
+
+  Bond Street, 265
+
+  Boner, Charles, 279
+
+  Borrow, George, 344
+
+  Boswell, James, 59, 71, 79, 81, 82, 85, 86, 93-117, 118, 334
+
+  Bouverie Street, 181
+
+  Bow Lane, 19
+
+  ---- Street, 90
+
+  Brawne, Fanny, 154, 156, 160, 163, 164, 165
+
+  Bread Street, Cheapside, 4, 19
+
+  Broad Street, Soho, 9, 118, 119, 130, 167
+
+  Brontë, Charlotte, 303
+
+  Brooks, Shirley, 316
+
+  Brown, Charles Armitage, 154, 164, 166
+
+  Browne, Hablot K. ("Phiz"), 316, 323, 328
+
+  Browne, Sir Thomas, 4
+
+  Browning, Robert, 9, 259, 281, 331, 332, 344
+
+  Brunswick Square, 328
+
+  Buckingham Street, Euston Road, 135
+
+  ---- ---- Strand, 200, 315
+
+  Bunhill Row, 19
+
+  Burbage, Richard, 13
+
+  Burke, Edmund, 59, 88
+
+  Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 76, 344
+
+  Burney, Dr. Charles, 56, 106, 114
+
+  ---- Fanny, 56
+
+  Burns, Robert, 194, 198
+
+  Butts, Thomas, 124
+
+  Byron, Lord, 9, 67, 68, 155, 167, 193-199, 200, 203, 286, 287, 321, 338,
+        340
+
+
+  Cade, Jack, 10
+
+  Camberwell, 236
+
+  Campbell, Thomas, 200
+
+  Campden Hill, 334
+
+  Cannon Street, 10, 18
+
+  Canonbury Tower, 76
+
+  Carew, Thomas, 20
+
+  Carlyle, Mrs., 279, 285, 286, 292, 318
+
+  ---- Thomas, 96, 198, 205, 210, 262, 263, 275-286, 291, 292, 293, 294,
+        296, 303, 304, 317, 321, 343, 344
+
+  Carter Lane, 12
+
+  Cary, Rev. H. F., 51
+
+  Castle Street, Cavendish Square, 89
+
+  ---- ---- Leicester Square, 63
+
+  Cattermole, George, 238
+
+  Cave, Edward, 88, 102
+
+  Chancery Lane, 4, 328
+
+  Charing Cross, 3, 4, 224
+
+  Charlotte Street, 144, 332
+
+  Charterhouse, 94, 188, 281, 296
+
+  Chaucer, Geoffrey, 4
+
+  Cheapside, 2, 4, 5, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24
+
+  Chelsea, 254, 255-293
+
+  Cheshire Cheese, the, 108
+
+  Chesterfield, Lord, 103-105
+
+  Chesterton, G. K., 128
+
+  Cheyne Row, 275-286
+
+  Cheyne Walk, 254, 255, 256-265, 273-275
+
+  Chiswick, 36-51
+
+  Christ's Hospital, 200
+
+  Churchill, Charles, 6, 44, 47, 48
+
+  Cibber, Colley, 28, 344, 347
+
+  Clarke, Cowden, 156, 240
+
+  ---- Mrs. Cowden, 317
+
+  Cleveland Street, 314
+
+  Clifford's Inn, 220
+
+  Cloth Fair, 10
+
+  Cobbett, William, 200
+
+  Colebrook Row, 219, 220, 221, 223, 224
+
+  Coleridge, S. T., 156, 199-206, 208, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 223
+
+  College Street, Kentish Town, 163
+
+  Collins, Wilkie, 146, 318, 332
+
+  Colman, George, 67
+
+  Colvin, Sir Sidney, 150
+
+  Condell, Henry, 19
+
+  Conduit Street, Regent Street, 334
+
+  Congreve, William, 150
+
+  Constable, John, 143-145, 153
+
+  Cornhill, 1, 2, 6
+
+  Cornwall, Barry, 216, 238
+
+  Coryat, Thomas, 19
+
+  Covent Garden, 41, 109, 135, 200, 216, 217, 218
+
+  Cowley, Abraham, 4
+
+  Cranbourne Street, 38
+
+  Craven Street, Strand, 50, 334
+
+  Cripplegate, 6, 19
+
+  Cross, John, 254
+
+  Cruikshank, George, 238, 316, 334, 337
+
+  Cumberland Market, 337
+
+  Cunningham, Allan, 43, 59
+
+
+  Darwin, Charles, 344
+
+  Davies, Thomas, 109, 110, 113
+
+  Day, Thomas, 187-193
+
+  Dean Street, 41, 167, 338
+
+  Defoe, Daniel, 6
+
+  Dekker, Thomas, 19
+
+  Denmark Hill, 334
+
+  Dennis, John, 32, 220
+
+  De Quincey, Thomas, 168-177, 206
+
+  De Stael, Madame, 167
+
+  De Vere Gardens, 331
+
+  Devereux Court, 3
+
+  Devil Tavern, 19, 108
+
+  Devonshire Terrace, 239, 323, 332
+
+  Dibdin, Charles, 245
+
+  Dickens, Charles, 3, 146, 149, 153, 238, 239, 250, 286, 287, 294, 300,
+        311, 312, 313, 314-327, 328, 331, 332, 334, 337, 338, 343, 344
+
+  ---- Mrs., 303, 322
+
+  Dilke, Wentworth, 154, 156
+
+  Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield), 167, 338, 344
+
+  ---- Isaac, 344
+
+  Dobson, Austin, 294
+
+  Dodsley, Robert, 96
+
+  Donne, Dr. John, 4, 19
+
+  Doughty Street, 316, 317, 318, 322, 323
+
+  Dowden, Dr., 181
+
+  Down Street, 280
+
+  Dryden, John, 167
+
+  Duke Street, 333
+
+  Du Maurier, George, 146
+
+  Dyer, George, 220, 232
+
+
+  East Smithfield, 4
+
+  Edmonton, 8, 225, 226-232
+
+  Edwardes Square, 293
+
+  Eliot, George, 245-254, 255
+
+  Elm Tree Road, 233, 236, 238, 239, 240
+
+  Ely Place, 10
+
+  Emerson, R. W., 280, 281
+
+  Enfield, 223, 225, 226
+
+  Exeter Street, 89
+
+
+  Felpham, 127, 136
+
+  Fetter Lane, 90
+
+  Fielding, Henry, 43, 71, 72
+
+  Fields, Ticknor, 303
+
+  Finchley Road, 237, 242
+
+  Fitzgerald, Edward, 142, 153, 303, 305
+
+  ---- Percy, 89
+
+  Fitzosbert, William, 1
+
+  Fitzroy Square, 273
+
+  ---- Street, 314
+
+  Flaxman, John, 120-139, 140, 167
+
+  Fleet Street, 4, 8, 89, 108, 109, 181
+
+  Fleming, Mrs., 76, 79
+
+  Fletcher, John, 4, 18, 20
+
+  Forster, John, 87, 149, 238, 294, 295, 318, 321, 322, 323, 331
+
+  Fountain Court, 131, 134
+
+  Franklin, Benjamin, 49, 334
+
+  Friday Street, 18, 20
+
+  Frith Street, 167, 181, 185
+
+  Froude, J. A., 279
+
+  Fulham Road, 266, 333
+
+  Fuller, Thomas, 20
+
+  Furnival's Inn, 315, 316
+
+
+  Gad's Hill Place, 315, 324
+
+  Gainsborough, Thomas, 64, 67, 130, 153, 337
+
+  Gamble, Ellis, 38, 39
+
+  Garrick, David, 43, 48, 50, 59, 96, 103, 110, 114, 153
+
+  ---- Mrs., 114
+
+  Garth, Sir Samuel, 31
+
+  Gay, John, 31, 150
+
+  Gerrard Street, 42, 59, 167
+
+  Gibbon, Edward, 328
+
+  Gilchrist, Alexander, 123, 124, 131
+
+  Gilman, Mr., 156, 223
+
+  Globe Theatre, 12, 13, 18, 19
+
+  Gloucester Place, 331
+
+  Godwin, Mary, 181
+
+  ---- William, 216
+
+  Goldsmith, Oliver, 59, 63, 68, 71, 76, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88,
+        153
+
+  Gore House, Kensington, 338
+
+  Gough Square, 90, 95-109
+
+  Gower, John, 18
+
+  Gower Street, 344
+
+  Gray, Thomas, 6
+
+  Gray's Inn, 90
+
+  Great Coram Street, 296
+
+  ---- George Street, 333
+
+  ---- Newport Street, 56
+
+  ---- Portland Street, 117
+
+  ---- Queen Street, 117, 118
+
+  Greaves, Walter, 260, 262, 273
+
+  Greek Street, 168-177
+
+  Green Street, 120
+
+  Greene, Robert, 13
+
+  Grosvenor Square, 328
+
+
+  Half Moon Street, 334
+
+  Hall, S. C., 185
+
+  Hallam, Arthur, 332
+
+  ---- Henry, 332
+
+  Hamilton, Lady, 142
+
+  ---- Sir William, 275
+
+  Hammersmith, 200, 271, 294
+
+  Hampstead, 140-166
+
+  Hampstead Road, 314, 334
+
+  Hannay, James, 300
+
+  Harley Street, 271
+
+  Harmsworth, Cecil, 90
+
+  Harry, M. Gerard, 266
+
+  Hawkesworth, Dr. John, 94, 102, 103
+
+  Hawkins, Sir John, 63, 93, 94, 108
+
+  Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 294
+
+  Haydon, Benjamin, 135, 156, 158, 181, 210
+
+  Hayley, William, 124, 134, 140, 142
+
+  Hazlitt, Mrs., 220
+
+  ---- William, 39, 156, 167, 181-186, 200, 203, 204, 205, 207, 216
+
+  Heminge, John, 19
+
+  Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, 123-124
+
+  Hereford Square, 344
+
+  Herrick, Robert, 5
+
+  Hertford Street, 328
+
+  Highgate, 156, 157, 199, 223, 259, 337
+
+  Hind, Lewis, 271
+
+  Hobbes, Thomas, 3
+
+  Hogarth, Mary, 322
+
+  ---- Mrs., 50-51
+
+  ---- William, 36-51, 56, 63, 68, 79, 150
+
+  Hogg, T. J., 177
+
+  Holborn, 90, 226
+
+  Holcroft, Thomas, 216
+
+  Holland House, 339
+
+  Holles Street, 9, 193
+
+  Hone, William, 158, 223
+
+  Hood, Thomas, 9, 223, 233, 235-245
+
+  Hook, Theodore, 332, 338
+
+  Hungerford Market, 314
+
+  Hunt, Holman, 9
+
+  ---- Leigh, 68, 153, 155, 156, 158, 210, 285, 286-295, 318, 344
+
+  Hunter Street, 334
+
+
+  Irving, Washington, 38
+
+  Islington, 76, 79, 219-221
+
+  Isola, Emma, 227, 228, 231
+
+  Ivy Lane, 94, 108
+
+
+  Jeffrey, Francis, 275
+
+  Jerrold, Douglas, 239, 294, 331
+
+  Johnson, Mrs., 97, 98, 101
+
+  ---- Samuel, 3, 33, 43, 50, 52, 59, 60, 63, 68, 71, 72, 79, 81, 82, 86,
+        88, 89-117, 275
+
+  Johnson Street, 314
+
+  Johnson's Court, 90
+
+  Jonson, Ben, 4, 19, 20
+
+
+  Keats, John, 6, 23, 153-166
+
+  Kemble, John, 167
+
+  Kemp, William, 13
+
+  Kensal Green, 334
+
+  Kensington, 293, 296, 299, 303-306, 311, 328, 338, 339
+
+  ---- Gardens, 300
+
+  Kilburn Priory, 331
+
+  King Street, Covent Garden, 200
+
+  Kingsley, Charles, 255
+
+  ---- Henry, 255
+
+  Kit-Kat Club, 150
+
+  Knight, Joseph, 256
+
+
+  Ladbroke Grove Road, 328
+
+  Lamb, Charles, 6, 9, 39, 40, 51, 80, 86, 130, 156, 186, 200, 206,
+        207-232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 240, 241, 287
+
+  ---- Mary, 209, 213, 215, 216, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 231, 233,
+        234
+
+  Landor, Walter Savage, 208, 338
+
+  Landseer, Sir Edwin, 238
+
+  Langland, John, 1
+
+  Langton, Bennet, 63, 72, 103
+
+  Lant Street, 314
+
+  Leathersellers' Buildings, 3
+
+  Lecky, Mrs., 281
+
+  Leech, John, 328
+
+  Leicester Square, 38, 39, 49, 52, 59, 60, 63, 81, 86, 88, 117, 120
+
+  Lennox, Mrs., 108
+
+  Levett, Robert, 102, 103
+
+  Lewes, George Henry, 249, 253, 316
+
+  Lincoln's Inn Fields, 149, 322
+
+  Little College Street, 314
+
+  ---- Queen Street, 212
+
+  Lloyd, Charles, 215
+
+  Locke, John, 207
+
+  Lombard Street, 6
+
+  London Bridge, 24
+
+  ---- Stone, 10
+
+  Loudon Road, 245
+
+  Ludgate Hill, 328
+
+  Lytton, Lord, 242, 250, 328, 338
+
+
+  Macaulay, Lord, 334, 340
+
+  Maclise, Daniel, 149, 239, 255, 331, 338
+
+  Macready, W. C., 331
+
+  Maiden Lane, 271
+
+  Manning, Thomas, 211
+
+  Marchmont Street, 181
+
+  Marryat, Captain, 238, 333, 338
+
+  Marston, Philip Bourke, 9
+
+  Marylebone Road, 288, 323, 332
+
+  Massinger, Philip, 18
+
+  Mathews, Charles, 197
+
+  Matthew, Mrs., 120, 134
+
+  Mawson Row, Chiswick, 36
+
+  Mecklenburgh Square, 316
+
+  Medwin, 177
+
+  Meredith, George, 255
+
+  Mermaid Tavern, 18, 19, 20
+
+  Middleton, Thomas, 4
+
+  Milbanke, Anna Isabella, 194, 197, 199, 340
+
+  Mill, John Stuart, 9, 275
+
+  Milnes, Moncton (Lord Houghton), 238
+
+  Milton, John, 4, 19
+
+  Monkwell Street, 14, 15, 16, 19
+
+  Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 28
+
+  Moore, Thomas, 67, 194
+
+  Moorfields, 6, 153
+
+  More, Hannah, 114
+
+  Morland, George, 337, 338
+
+  Morris, William, 37, 344
+
+  Mount Street, 178
+
+  Mountjoy, Christopher, 14, 15, 16, 17
+
+  Moxon, Edward, 227, 228, 231
+
+  Mulready, William, 167
+
+  Munday, Anthony, 19
+
+  Munro, Alexander, 281
+
+  Murray, David Christie, 334
+
+  ---- John, 198
+
+
+  New Street, 135
+
+  Newgate Street, 200
+
+  Newman Street, Oxford Street, 63
+
+  Newton, Sir Isaac, 52-56, 207
+
+  Nollekens, Joseph, 39, 140
+
+  Norfolk Street, Strand, 200
+
+  North Bank, 245
+
+  ---- End, Fulham, 71, 72, 73
+
+  Northcote, James, 167
+
+
+  Old Bond Street, 197, 334
+
+  Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, 328
+
+  Onslow Square, 306
+
+  Opie, Mrs., 198
+
+  Oxford Street, 168, 169, 174
+
+
+  Palace Green, Kensington, 311
+
+  Pall Mall, 64, 200, 205
+
+  Parson's Green, 71
+
+  Patmore, P. G., 185, 211
+
+  Peckham Rye, 118
+
+  Peel, Sir Robert, 242, 325
+
+  Pennell, Mr. and Mrs. J., 260, 261, 265, 266, 267, 268
+
+  Percy, Bishop, 117
+
+  ---- Street, Tottenham Court Road, 344, 347
+
+  Philip, Mrs. and Miss Birnie, 267, 268
+
+  Phillips, Sir Richard, 51
+
+  Piccadilly, 199, 334
+
+  Poland Street, 123, 167, 177, 178
+
+  Pope, Alexander, 6, 26-35, 36, 106, 150, 155, 347
+
+  Pope's Head Alley, 2
+
+  Poultry, the, 9
+
+  Praed, W. Mackworth, 88
+
+  Prior, Matthew, 3
+
+  Putney, 255, 295, 328, 331
+
+
+  Queen Anne Street, 271, 272, 273, 274
+
+  Quiney, Richard, 12
+
+
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 20
+
+  Ralph, James, 36
+
+  Reade, Charles, 334
+
+  Red Lion Square, 344
+
+  Reynolds, John Hamilton, 156, 223
+
+  ---- Sir Joshua, 33, 56, 59, 60, 63, 64, 67, 81, 86, 88, 103, 110, 114,
+        117, 130, 141, 153, 271
+
+  Richardson, Samuel, 42, 68, 71-75, 97
+
+  Ritchie, Lady Thackeray, 299, 300, 305, 306
+
+  Robert Street, Adelphi, 223, 233
+
+  Roberts, David, 272, 273
+
+  Robinson, Crabb, 130, 233
+
+  Rogers, Samuel, 67, 145, 194, 200, 203, 205, 339-343
+
+  Romney, George, 135, 140-143, 337
+
+  Rossetti, Christina, 9
+
+  ---- Dante Gabriel, 9, 255, 259, 260, 261
+
+  ---- W. M., 255
+
+  Rowan Road, 294
+
+  Rowley, William, 19
+
+  Ruskin, John, 9, 265, 281, 334
+
+  Russell Square, 303
+
+  Russell Street, Covent Garden, 109, 216, 217, 218, 219
+
+
+  St. Andrew Undershaft, 10
+
+  St. Anne's, Soho, 186
+
+  St. Bartholomew the Great, 10
+
+  St. Clement Danes, 89, 108
+
+  St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 10
+
+  St. James's Place, 339
+
+  ---- Street, 199
+
+  St. John's Wood, 233, 236-245, 253, 254, 288, 331
+
+  St. Martin's Street, 52
+
+  St. Olave, Silver Street, 15, 16
+
+  St. Saviour's, Southwark, 10, 19
+
+  Sala, George Augustus, 316, 323, 325, 326, 344, 347
+
+  Salisbury Court, 42
+
+  Savile Row, 68
+
+  Scott, Sir Walter, 145, 197
+
+  Seamore Place, 338
+
+  Selden, John, 20
+
+  Shakespeare, Edmund, 18
+
+  ---- William, 6, 10-24, 106, 328
+
+  Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 156, 167, 177-181, 206, 287, 288, 294
+
+  Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 67, 68, 194, 340, 343
+
+  Shirley, James, 4
+
+  Silver Street, 14, 16, 17
+
+  Smith, Albert, 344, 347
+
+  Smith, J. T. ("Rainy Day"), 120, 140
+
+  Smith, Sidney, 316, 338
+
+  Smollett, Tobias, 255
+
+  Soho, 41, 42, 56, 59, 118-123, 130, 167-186, 338
+
+  Soho Square, 167, 168
+
+  Southampton Street, Camberwell, 331
+
+  South Moulton Street, 127, 129, 131
+
+  Southey, Robert, 223
+
+  Southwark, 10, 11
+
+  Spencer, Herbert, 245
+
+  Spenser, Edmund, 4
+
+  Stanfield, Clarkson, 146, 149, 238, 272
+
+  Staple Inn, 10, 90, 109
+
+  Steele, Richard, 3, 150, 344
+
+  Sterne, Laurence, 334
+
+  Stevenson, Robert Louis, 150, 241
+
+  Stothard, Thomas, 134, 271
+
+  Strand, 6, 7, 8, 90, 105, 131, 315
+
+  Stubbs, Bishop, 3
+
+  Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 9
+
+  Swift, Jonathan, 27, 31, 150
+
+  Swinburne, A. C., 9, 255, 327
+
+
+  Talfourd, T. N., 210, 216
+
+  Tavistock Square, 324
+
+  Taylor, John, 160
+
+  Temple Bar, 19
+
+  Temple, Rev. T. W., 117
+
+  Temple, the, 6, 7, 10, 72, 80, 87, 177, 207, 216, 218, 296, 304
+
+  Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 142, 150, 328, 332
+
+  Terrace, the, Kensington, 328
+
+  Thackeray, W. M., 88, 153, 208, 242, 296-313, 314, 315, 326, 328, 338
+
+  Thames Street, 4, 18
+
+  Thomson, James, 27
+
+  Thornhill, Sir James, 41, 42, 52, 167
+
+  Thrale, Mrs., 63
+
+  Thurloe, John, 328
+
+  Tite Street, 265, 266
+
+  Tower, the, 10
+
+  Trollope, Anthony, 312, 313, 326, 334
+
+  Turk's Head, 42
+
+  Turner, J. M. W., 9, 260, 268-275
+
+  Turpin, Dick, 153
+
+  Twickenham, 31, 32, 35, 271
+
+
+  Upper Cheyne Row, 286, 288, 291-293
+
+
+  Vale, the, Chelsea, 266
+
+  Vine Street, Westminster, 6
+
+
+  Wallace, Charles William, 12, 14, 15
+
+  Walpole, Horace, 255, 344
+
+  Wanstead, 236
+
+  Warburton, William, 33
+
+  Wardour Street, 135
+
+  Warton, Joseph, 28, 94
+
+  Warwick Crescent, 331
+
+  Watts, G. F., 262
+
+  Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 23, 255
+
+  Webster, John, 4
+
+  Welbeck Street, 334
+
+  Wellclose Square, 187
+
+  Wellington Street, Strand, 315, 324
+
+  West, Benjamin, 43, 63
+
+  Westbrook, Harriett, 178, 181
+
+  Westminster, 6, 333
+
+  ---- Abbey, 10, 134
+
+  Whistler, James McNeill, 39, 256, 259-268, 271
+
+  Whitefriars Street, 2
+
+  Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell, 296
+
+  Wilkes, John, 44
+
+  Wilkins, George, 15, 19
+
+  Williams, Anna, 101, 102, 106
+
+  Will's Coffee House, 216
+
+  Wimbledon Park Road, 245-253
+
+  Wimpole Street, 265, 331, 332
+
+  Winchmore Hill, 236
+
+  Wine Office Court, 76, 108
+
+  Wood Street, Cheapside, 17, 19
+
+  Woodstock Street, 89
+
+  Wordsworth, William, 7, 8, 145, 205, 208, 216, 220, 222, 225, 226
+
+
+  Yates, Edmund, 309, 310, 311, 312, 316, 331
+
+  Young Street, Kensington, 296, 299, 303, 304, 305, 306
+
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+  Edinburgh & London.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of
+London, by A. St. John Adcock
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44269 ***
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+      Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London, by A. St. John Adcock&mdash;A Project Gutenberg eBook
+    </title>
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44269 ***</div>
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1><small>FAMOUS HOUSES<br />AND<br />LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON</small></h1>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="SAM. JOHNSON" /></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">FAMOUS HOUSES</span><br />
+<span class="large">AND</span><br />
+<span class="giant">LITERARY SHRINES<br />
+OF LONDON</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><small>BY</small><br />
+<span class="large">A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/printer.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">WITH SEVENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS<br />
+BY FREDERICK ADCOCK<br />
+AND 16 PORTRAITS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">LONDON: J. M. DENT &amp; SONS, LTD.<br />
+NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON &amp; CO. 1912</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson &amp; Co.</span><br />
+At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PREFATORY NOTE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Nothing could well be deader or emptier than an unoccupied house of whose
+former inhabitants we have no knowledge; and it is impossible to take a
+real interest in a house now occupied by strangers, even though it was
+aforetime the residence of some famous man, unless we are acquainted with
+that man’s personality, and know what he thought and did and said whilst
+he was living there. I have attempted to do little more than supply that
+information here as the complement of my brother’s drawings, and to this
+end have been less concerned to give my own descriptions and opinions than
+to bring together opinions and descriptions that were written by such
+famous residents themselves or by guests and visitors who saw and knew
+them. As far as possible I have quoted from contemporary Diaries and
+Memoirs, especially from letters that were written in or to these houses,
+or from Journals that their tenants kept whilst they dwelt there,
+supplementing all this with a narrative of incidents and events that might
+help to recreate the life and recapture the atmosphere that belonged to
+such places in the days that have made them memorable. Whenever I have
+adventured into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> any general biography, or expressed any personal opinion,
+it has been merely with the object of adding so much of history and
+character as would serve to fill in the outline of a man’s portrait, give
+it a sufficient fulness and colour of life, and throw into clear relief
+the space of time that he passed in some particular house that can still
+be seen in a London street.</p>
+
+<p>I think I have throughout made due acknowledgment to the authors of
+various volumes of <i>Recollections</i> and <i>Table Talk</i> from which I have
+drawn anecdotes and pen-portraits, and I should like to mention at the
+outset that for biographical facts and much else I have been particularly
+indebted to such books as Elwin and Courthope’s edition of the <i>Poems and
+Letters of Pope</i>; Austin Dobson’s <i>William Hogarth</i>, and H. B. Wheatley’s
+<i>Hogarth’s London</i>; Boswell’s <i>Johnson</i>, of course, and Forster’s <i>Lives
+of Goldsmith</i> and of <i>Dickens</i>; Gilchrist’s <i>Life of Blake</i>; Leslie’s and
+Holmes’s <i>Lives of Constable</i>; Arthur B. Chamberlain’s <i>George Romney</i>;
+Lord Houghton’s <i>Life and Letters of Keats</i>, and Buxton Forman’s <i>Complete
+Works of John Keats</i>; Leigh Hunt’s <i>Autobiography</i>; De Quincey’s <i>English
+Opium Eater</i>; Hogg’s and Peacock’s <i>Memoirs of Shelley</i>; Carew Hazlitt’s
+<i>Memoirs of Hazlitt</i>; Blackman’s <i>Life of Day</i>; Byron’s <i>Journals and
+Letters</i>, and Lewis Bettany’s useful compilation from them, <i>The
+Confessions of Lord Byron</i>; Lockhart’s <i>Life of Scott</i>, and Scott’s
+<i>Journal</i>; Talfourd’s and Ainger’s <i>Lives of Lamb</i>, and Lamb’s <i>Letters</i>;
+Walter Jerrold’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span> <i>Life of Thomas Hood</i>; Cross’s <i>Life of George Eliot</i>;
+Sir William Armstrong’s <i>Life of Turner</i>, and Lewis Hind’s <i>Turner’s
+Golden Visions</i>; Joseph Knight’s <i>Rossetti</i>; Froude’s <i>Thomas Carlyle</i>,
+and W. H. Wylie’s <i>Carlyle, The Man and His Books</i>; Allingham’s <i>Diary</i>;
+E. R. and J. Pennell’s <i>Life of Whistler</i>; Trollope’s <i>Thackeray</i>, and
+Lady Thackeray Ritchie’s prefaces to the Centenary Edition of Thackeray’s
+works.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">A. St. J. A.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td><small>CHAP.</small></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Some Celebrated Cockneys</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Shakespeare in London</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Where Pope stayed at Battersea</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Hogarth</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Goldsmith, Reynolds, and some of their Circle</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Homes and Haunts of Johnson and Boswell</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Blake and Flaxman</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A Hampstead Group</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Round about Soho again</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A Philosopher, Two Poets, and a Novelist</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">St. John’s Wood and Wimbledon</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Chelsea Memories</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Thackeray</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Dickens</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_314">314</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Conclusion</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_328">328</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PORTRAITS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Dr. Johnson</span></td>
+    <td align="right" colspan="2"><a href="#frontis"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">T. Trotter</span> <i>after a drawing from life</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">John Milton</span></td>
+    <td><i>Facing p.</i></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_5">4</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a miniature by</i> <span class="smcap">Faithorne</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">William Shakespeare</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">Scriven</span> <i>after the Chandos portrait</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">J. Posselwhite</span> <i>after the picture by</i> <span class="smcap">Hudson</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Oliver Goldsmith</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_80">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>After a drawing by</i> <span class="smcap">Sir Joshua Reynolds</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Sir Joshua Reynolds</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_97">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving after his own portrait</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">James Boswell</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_103">102</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">W. Hall</span> <i>after a sketch by</i> <span class="smcap">Lawrence</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">John Keats</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_145">144</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a drawing by</i> <span class="smcap">W. Hilton</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Thomas de Quincey</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_177">176</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">W. H. Moore</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Lord Byron</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_192">193</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a painting by</i> <span class="smcap">Thomas Phillips</span>, R.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span><span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_225">224</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From the painting by</i> <span class="smcap">William Hazlitt</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Thomas Hood</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_240">241</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">W. H. Smith</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Thomas Carlyle</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_281">280</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a painting by</i> <span class="smcap">Sir John Millais</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">W. M. Thackeray</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a pencil sketch by</i> <span class="smcap">Count D’Orsay</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Charles Dickens</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_321">320</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a black and white drawing by</i> <span class="smcap">Baughiet</span>, 1858</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_339">338</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a photograph</i></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td>St. Saviour’s, Southwark Cathedral</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Gateway, Middle Temple</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Chaucer’s Tomb, Westminster Abbey</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_8">8</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>St. Olave’s Churchyard, Silver Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Bartholomew Close, Smithfield</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Last Bulk Shop, Clare Market</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Pope’s House, Battersea</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Pope, Mawson’s Row, Chiswick</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir James Thornhill, 75 Dean Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Hogarth’s House, Chiswick</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Bay Window, Hogarth’s House</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir Isaac Newton’s House, St. Martin’s Street, W.C.</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_54">53</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir Joshua Reynolds’s House, Great Newport Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Staircase, 47 Leicester Square</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir Benjamin West’s House, Newman Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Gainsborough’s House, Pall Mall</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sheridan’s House, Savile Row</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_70">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Pump Court, Temple</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_72">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Richardson’s House, North End, Fulham</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Goldsmith’s House, Canonbury</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>2 Brick Court, The Temple</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Stairs up to Second Floor, 2 Brick Court</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_86">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span>Goldsmith’s Grave</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Entrance to Staple Inn</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Dr. Johnson’s House, Gough Square</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Johnson’s Corner, “The Cheshire Cheese�</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Where Boswell first met Johnson</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Boswell’s House, Great Queen Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Blake’s House, Soho</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Blake, 23 Hercules Road</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Blake’s House, South Moulton Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Flaxman’s House, Buckingham Street, Euston Road</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Romney’s House, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Constable, Charlotte Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Joanna Baillie, Windmill Hill, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Stanfield’s House, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>“The Upper Flask,� from the Bowling Green</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Keats’ House, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Constable’s House, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>George du Maurier’s Grave, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>De Quincey’s House, Soho</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Shelley’s House, Poland Street, W.</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Shelley, Marchmont Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Hazlitt’s House, Frith Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Thomas Day, 36 Wellclose Square</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Byron, 4 Bennet Street, St. James’s</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Coleridge, Addison Bridge Place</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Will’s Coffee House, Russell Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_216">217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Lamb, Colebrooke Row</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Lamb’s Cottage, Edmonton</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Tom Hood’s House, St. John’s Wood</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Charles Dibdin, 34 Arlington Road</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span>George Eliot, Wimbledon Park</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>George Eliot’s House, Chelsea</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Queen’s House, Cheyne Walk</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Whistler, 96 Cheyne Walk</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Turner’s House, Cheyne Walk</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Carlyle, Ampton Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Carlyle’s House, Cheyne Row</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_283">283</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Leigh Hunt’s House, Chelsea</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Leigh Hunt, 16 Rowan Road, Hammersmith</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_295">295</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Charterhouse, from the Square</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Thackeray’s House, Kensington</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Lamb Building, Temple, from the Cloisters</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Dickens, Johnson Street, Camden Town</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Dickens’s House, Doughty Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_319">319</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Thurloe’s Lodgings, 24 Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_330">329</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Captain Marryat, Duke Street, St. James’s</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Benjamin Franklin’s House, Craven Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_335">335</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cruikshank, 263 Hampstead Road</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_338">337</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>George Morland, “The Bull Inn,� Highgate</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Rogers, St. James’s Place, from Green Park</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_342">341</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Borrow’s House, Hereford Square</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img01.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ST. SAVIOUR’S. SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">FAMOUS LONDON HOUSES</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<p class="title">SOME CELEBRATED COCKNEYS</p>
+
+
+<p>You cannot stir the ground of London anywhere but straightway it flowers
+into romance. Read the inscriptions on the crumbling tombs of our early
+merchant princes and adventurers in some of the old City churches, and it
+glimmers upon you that if ever the history of London’s commercial rise and
+progress gets adequately written it will read like a series of stories out
+of the <i>Arabian Nights</i>. Think what dashing and magnificent figures, what
+tales of dark plottings, fierce warfare, and glorious heroisms must
+brighten and darken the pages of any political history of London; and even
+more glamorous, more intensely and humanly alive, would be a social
+history of London, beginning perhaps in those days of the fourteenth
+century when Langland was living in Cornhill and writing his <i>Vision of
+Piers Plowman</i>, or farther back still, in Richard the First’s time, when
+that fine spirit, the first of English demagogues, William Fitzosbert, was
+haranguing the folkmoot in St. Paul’s Churchyard, urging them to resist
+the tyrannic taxations of the Lord Mayor and his Court of wealthy
+Aldermen&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> passion for justice that brought him into such danger that he
+and certain of his friends had to seek sanctuary, and barricaded
+themselves in Bow Church. The church was fired by order of a bishop who
+had no sympathy with reformers, and Fitzosbert and his friends, breaking
+out through the flames, were stabbed and struck down in Cheapside, hustled
+to the Tower, hastily tried and sentenced, dragged out by the heels
+through the streets, and hanged at Smithfield. I have always thought this
+would make a good, live starting-point, and had I but world enough and
+time I would sooner write that history than anything else.</p>
+
+<p>No need to hunt after topics when you are writing about London; they come
+to you. The air is full of them. The very names of the streets are
+cabalistic words. Once you know London, myriads of great spirits may be
+called from the vasty deep by sight or sound of such names as Fleet
+Street, Strand, Whitehall, Drury Lane, The Temple, Newgate Street,
+Aldersgate, Lombard Street, Cloth Fair, Paternoster Row, Holborn,
+Bishopsgate, and a hundred others. You have only to walk into Whitefriars
+Street and see “Hanging-sword Alley� inscribed on the wall of a court at
+the top of a narrow flight of steps, and all Alsatia rises again around
+you, as Ilion rose like a mist to the music of Apollo’s playing. Loiter
+along Cornhill in the right mood and Thomas Archer’s house shall rebuild
+itself for you at the corner of Pope’s Head Alley, where he started the
+first English newspaper in 1603, and you will wonder why nobody writes a
+full history of London journalism.</p>
+
+<p>As for literary London&mdash;every other street you traverse is haunted with
+memories of poets, novelists,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> and men of letters, and it is some of the
+obscurest of these associations that are the most curiously fascinating. I
+have a vivid, youthful remembrance of a tumble-down, red-tiled shop near
+the end of Leathersellers’ Buildings which I satisfied myself was the
+identical place in which Robert Bloomfield worked as a shoemaker’s
+assistant; Devereux Court still retains something of the Grecian
+Coffee-house that used to be frequented by Addison and Steele, but I knew
+the Court first, and am still drawn to it most, as the site of that
+vanished Tom’s Coffee-house where Akenside often spent his winter
+evenings; and if I had my choice of bringing visibly back out of
+nothingness one of the old Charing Cross houses, it would be the butcher’s
+shop that was kept by the uncle who adopted Prior in his boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>Plenty of unpleasant things have been said about London, but never by her
+own children, or such children of her adoption as Johnson and Dickens.
+Says Hobbes, who was born at Malmesbury, “London has a great belly, but no
+palate,� and Bishop Stubbs (a native of Knaresborough) more recently
+described it as “always the purse, seldom the head, and never the heart of
+England.� Later still an eminent speaker, quoting this fantastic dictum of
+Stubbs’s, went a step further and informed his audience that “not many men
+eminent in literature have been born in London�; a statement so
+demonstrably inaccurate that one may safely undertake to show that at
+least as many men eminent in literature, to say nothing of art and
+science, have been born in London as in any other half-dozen towns of the
+kingdom put together.</p>
+
+<p>To begin with, the morning star of our literature,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> Geoffrey Chaucer, was
+born in Thames Street, not far from the wharf where, after he was married
+and had leased a home for himself in Aldgate, he held office as a
+Comptroller of Customs, and the pen that was presently to write the
+<i>Canterbury Tales</i> “moved over bills of lading.� The “poets’ poet,�
+Spenser, was born in East Smithfield, by the Tower, and in his
+<i>Prothalamion</i> speaks of his birthplace affectionately as&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Merry London, my most kindly nurse,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That to me gave this life’s first native source,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Though from another place I take my name.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Ben Jonson was born in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross; four of his
+contemporary dramatists, Fletcher, Webster, Shirley and Middleton, were
+also Londoners by birth; Sir Thomas Browne, author of the <i>Religio
+Medici</i>, was born in the parish of St. Michael-le-Quern, in the very heart
+of the city; and Bread Street, Cheapside, is hallowed by the fact that
+Milton had his birth there.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Donne, the son of a London merchant, was also born within a stone’s
+throw of Cheapside; and his disciple, Cowley, came into the world in Fleet
+Street, at the corner of Chancery Lane. But Cowley was a renegade; he
+acquired an unnatural preference for the country, and not only held that
+“God the first garden made, and the first city Cain,� but ended a poem in
+praise of nature and a quiet life with&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“Methinks I see</span><br />
+The monster London laugh at me;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I should at thee too, foolish city,</span><br />
+If it were fit to laugh at misery;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But thy estate I pity.</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,<br />
+And all the fools that crowd thee so,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,</span><br />
+A village less than Islington wilt grow,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A solitude almost.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img02.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JOHN MILTON</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The daintiest of our lyrists, Herrick, was born over his father’s shop in
+Cheapside, and you may take it he was only playing with poetical fancies
+when, in some lines to his friend Endymion Porter, he praised the country
+with its “nut-brown mirth and russet wit,� and again when, in a set of
+verses on “The Country Life,� he assured his brother he was “thrice and
+above blest,� because he could&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Leave the city, for exchange, to see<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The country’s sweet simplicity.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>If you want to find him in earnest, turn to that enraptured outburst of
+his on “His Return to London�&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Ravished in spirit I come, nay more I fly<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To thee, blessed place of my nativity!...</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O place! O people! manners framed to please</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">All nations, customs, kindreds, languages!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I am a free-born Roman; suffer then</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That I amongst you live a citizen.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">London my home is, though by hard fate sent</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Into a long and irksome banishment;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet since called back, henceforward let me be,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O native country! repossessed by thee;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">For rather than I’ll to the West return,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I’ll beg of thee first here to have mine urn.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>There speaks the true Cockney; he would sooner be dead in London than
+alive in the West of England.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> Even Lamb’s love of London was scarcely
+greater than that.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img03.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE GATEWAY. MIDDLE TEMPLE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It was fitting that Pope, essentially a town poet, should be born in
+Lombard Street. In the next thoroughfare, Cornhill, Gray was born; and,
+son of a butcher, Defoe began life in the parish of St. Giles’s,
+Cripplegate. Shakespeare was an alien, but Bacon was born at York House,
+in the Strand; which, to my thinking, is the strongest argument in favour
+of the theory that he wrote the plays. Churchill was born at Vine Street,
+Westminster; Keats in Moorfields; and, staunchest and one of the most
+incorrigible Londoners of them all, Charles Lamb in Crown Office Row,
+Temple. He refers, in one of his essays, to Hare Court, in the Temple, and
+says:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> “It was a gloomy, churchyard-like court, with three trees and a
+pump in it. I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was
+a Rechabite of six years old.� The pump is no longer there, only one half
+of Hare Court remains as it was in Lamb’s day, and Crown Office Row has
+been rebuilt. His homes in Mitre Court Buildings and Inner Temple Lane
+have vanished also; but the Temple is still rich in reminiscences of him.
+Paper Buildings, King’s Bench Walk, Harcourt Buildings, the fountain near
+Garden Court, the old Elizabethan Hall, in which tradition says
+Shakespeare read one of his plays to Queen Elizabeth&mdash;these and the
+church, the gardens, the winding lanes and quaint byways of the Temple,
+made up, as he said, his earliest recollections. “I repeat to this day,�
+he writes, “no verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion,
+than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">‘There when they came whereas those bricky towers<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The which on Themmes broad aged back doth ride,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">There whylome wont the Templar knights to bide,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Till they decayed through pride.’�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>And, “indeed,� he adds, “it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img04.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CHAUCER’S TOMB. WESTMINSTER ABBEY.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But his letters and essays are full of his love of London. “I don’t care
+much,� he wrote to Wordsworth, “if I never see a mountain. I have passed
+all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local
+attachments as any of your mountaineers can have done with dead Nature....
+I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy in so much
+life.� Again, “Fleet Street and the Strand,� he writes to Manning, “are
+better places to live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw.� After he
+had removed to Edmonton, on account of his sister’s health, it was to
+Wordsworth he wrote, saying how he pined to be back again in London: “In
+dreams I am in Fleet Market, but I wake and cry to sleep again.... Oh,
+never let the lying poets be believed who ’tice men from the cheerful
+haunts of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> streets.... A garden was the primitive prison, till man, with
+Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. Thence
+followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London.... I would live in London
+shirtless, bookless.�</p>
+
+<p>But to get back to our catalogue of birthplaces&mdash;Blake was born in Broad
+Street, near Golden Square; Byron in Holles Street; Hood in the Poultry,
+within sight of the Mansion House; Dante and Christina Rossetti were
+Londoners born; so were Swinburne, Browning, Philip Bourke Marston, John
+Stuart Mill, Ruskin, Turner, Holman Hunt, Sir Arthur Sullivan&mdash;but if we
+go outside literary Londoners this chapter will end only with the book.
+Moreover, my purpose is not so much to talk of authors and artists who
+were born in London, as to give some record of the still surviving houses
+in which many of them lived; whether they had their birth here or not, the
+majority of them came here to live and work, for, so far as England is
+concerned, there is more than a grain of truth in Lamb’s enthusiastic
+boast that “London is the only fostering soil of genius.�</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<p class="title">SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON</p>
+
+
+<p>The London that Shakespeare knew has vanished like a dream. The Great Fire
+swept most of it out of existence in a few days of 1666, and the two and a
+half centuries of time since then have made away with nearly all the rest
+of it. The Tower still remains; there are parts of the Temple; a stray
+relic or so, such as the London Stone in Cannon Street, by which
+Shakespeare lays one of the Jack Cade scenes of his <i>Henry VI.</i> There are
+the stately water-gates along the Embankment, too; here and there an old
+house or so, such as that above the Inner Temple gateway, those of Staple
+Inn, those in Cloth Fair, and over in the Borough High Street; a few
+ancient Inns, like the Mitre off Ely Place, the Dick Whittington in Cloth
+Fair, the George in Southwark; some dozen of churches, including
+Westminster Abbey (in whose Jerusalem Chamber the translators of the Bible
+held their meetings), St. Saviour’s, Southwark, St. Bartholomew the Great
+in Smithfield, St. Andrew Undershaft, St. Ethelburga’s and St. Helen’s,
+Bishopsgate, in which latter parish it seems probable that Shakespeare was
+for a while a householder; otherwise Elizabethan London has dwindled to
+little but remembered sites of once-famous buildings and streets that have
+changed in everything but their names.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img05.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JERUSALEM CHAMBER. WESTMINSTER ABBEY.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Until quite recently none of us knew of any address in London that had
+ever been Shakespeare’s; we knew of no house, of no street even, which had
+once numbered him among its tenants, though we know that he passed at
+least twenty of the busiest and most momentous years of his life in the
+metropolis. There is a plausible but vague tradition that during some part
+of that period he had lodgings in Southwark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> near the Globe Theatre, in
+which he acted, for which he wrote plays, and of which he was one of the
+proprietors. There used to be an inscription: “Here lived William
+Shakespeare,� on the face of an old gabled house in Aldersgate Street, but
+there was never a rag of evidence to support the statement. We have no
+letters of Shakespeare, but we have one or two that refer to him, and one
+written to him by Richard Quiney, and I think we may infer from this
+latter that Shakespeare occasionally visited Quiney, who was a vintner,
+dwelling at the sign of the Bell in Carter Lane. Otherwise, except for a
+handful of small-beer chronicles about him that were picked up in
+theatrical circles two or three generations after his death, we had no
+record of any incident in his London life that brought us into actual
+personal touch with him until little more than two years ago. Then an
+American professor, Mr. Charles William Wallace, came over and did what
+our English students do not appear to have had the energy or enterprise to
+do for themselves&mdash;he toiled carefully through the dusty piles of
+documents preserved in the Record Office, and succeeded in unearthing one
+of the most interesting Shakespearean discoveries that have ever been
+made&mdash;a discovery that gives us vividly intimate glimpses of Shakespeare’s
+life in London, and establishes beyond question his place of residence
+here in the years when he was writing some of the greatest of his dramas.</p>
+
+<p>In 1587 the company of the “Queen’s Players� made their first appearance
+in Stratford-on-Avon, and it was about this date, so far as can be traced,
+that Shakespeare ran away from home; so you may reasonably play with a
+fancy that he joined this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> company in some very minor capacity and
+travelled with them to London. At this time, Burbage, who was by
+profession an actor and by trade a carpenter and joiner, was owner and
+manager of “The Theatre,� which stood in Shoreditch near the site of the
+present Standard Theatre, and close by was a rival house, “The Curtain�
+(commemorated nowadays by Curtain Road); and according to the legend,
+which has developed into a legend of exact detail, yet rests on nothing
+but the airiest rumour, it was outside one or both of these theatres
+Shakespeare picked up a living on his arrival in London by minding horses
+whilst their owners were inside witnessing a performance.</p>
+
+<p>By 1593 Shakespeare had become known as an actor and as a dramatist. He
+had revised and tinkered at various plays for Burbage’s company, and as a
+consequence had been charged with plagiarism by poor Greene, whose
+<i>Groatsworth of Wit</i> (published after he had died miserably in Dowgate)
+pours scorn on the “upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with
+his <i>Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide</i> supposes he is as well able to
+bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute
+<i>Johannes fac totum</i>, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a
+countrie.� For his acting, Shakespeare appears for the first time in the
+Lord Chamberlain’s accounts of 1594 as having taken equal shares with
+William Kemp and Richard Burbage in a sum of twenty pounds “for two
+severall Comedies or Interludes shewed by them� before Queen Elizabeth at
+Christmas 1593.</p>
+
+<p>After the Theatre of Shoreditch was pulled down in 1598, Burbage built the
+Globe Theatre on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> Bankside, Southwark, on the ground of which part of
+Barclay &amp; Perkins’s brewery now stands; and Shakespeare, “being a
+deserveing man,� was taken as one of the partners and received a
+“chief-actor’s share� of the profits. And it is to this prosperous period
+of his London career that Professor Wallace’s recent discoveries belong.</p>
+
+<p>In 1598 there lived in a shop at the corner of Silver Street and Monkwell
+Street a certain Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of wigs and fashionable
+headdresses. He was a Frenchman, born at Cressy, and probably a refugee
+Huguenot. His household consisted of a wife and daughter, an apprentice
+named Stephen Bellott, and one lodger, and this lodger was William
+Shakespeare. Being out of his apprenticeship in 1604, Stephen had six
+pounds from his master and, with this and his own savings, went travelling
+into Spain, but returned towards the end of the year and resumed work
+again at Mountjoy’s shop. In his ’prentice days Stephen seems to have
+formed some shy attachment to his master’s daughter, Mary, but because of
+his lack of means and prospects, or because he was naturally reticent, he
+had made no attempt to press his suit, and Madame Mountjoy, seeing how the
+young people were affected to each other, followed the fashion of the time
+and persuaded Shakespeare, who had then been living under the same roof
+with them for six years, to act as match-maker between her and the
+hesitating lover. She one day laid the case before Shakespeare and asked
+his good offices, as Professor Wallace has it; she told him that “if he
+could bring the young man to make a proposal of marriage, a dower fitting
+to their station should be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> settled upon them at marriage. This was the
+sum of fifty pounds in money of that time, or approximately four hundred
+pounds in money of to-day.� Shakespeare consented to undertake this
+delicate duty; he spoke with young Bellott, and the outcome of his
+negotiations was that Stephen and Mary were married, as the entry in the
+church register shows, at St. Olave, Silver Street, on the 19th November
+1604.</p>
+
+<p>On the death of Madame Mountjoy in 1606, Stephen and his wife went back to
+live with the father and help him in his business, but they soon fell out
+with him, and became on such bad terms that some six months later they
+left him and took lodgings with George Wilkins, a victualler, who kept an
+inn in the parish of St. Sepulchre’s. The quarrel between them culminated
+in Stephen Bellott bringing an action in the Court of Requests in 1612, to
+recover from his father-in-law a promised dower of sixty pounds and to
+ensure that Mountjoy carried out an alleged arrangement to bequeath a sum
+of two hundred pounds to him by his will. At the Record Office Professor
+Wallace found all the legal documents relating to these proceedings, and
+amongst them are the depositions of Shakespeare setting forth to the best
+of his recollection his own share in the arranging of the marriage. From
+these depositions, and from those of other witnesses who make reference to
+him, one gets the first clear and authentic revelation of Shakespeare’s
+home life in London.</p>
+
+<p>He lived with the Mountjoys over that shop at the corner of Monkwell
+Street for at least six years, down to the date of the wedding, and there
+is little doubt that he stayed on with them after that. It is more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> than
+likely, indeed, that he was still boarding there when he appeared as a
+witness in the 1612 lawsuit and stated that he had been intimate with the
+family some “ten years, more or less.� Throughout the later of those years
+he was absent on occasional visits to Stratford, and hitherto it has been
+generally assumed (on the negative evidence that no trace of him could be
+found after this date) that he returned and settled down in Stratford
+permanently about 1609.</p>
+
+<p>Taking only the six years we are certain of, however, he wrote between
+1598 and 1604 <i>Henry V.</i>, <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i>, <i>Much Ado About
+Nothing</i>, <i>As You Like It</i>, <i>Twelfth Night</i>, <i>All’s Well that Ends Well</i>,
+<i>Julius Cæsar</i>, <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>Measure for Measure</i>, and <i>Othello</i>. In the two
+years following, whilst it is pretty sure he was still dwelling with the
+Mountjoys, he wrote <i>Macbeth</i> and <i>King Lear</i>, and the fact that he had
+his home here during the period in which he was writing ten of his
+plays&mdash;three of them amongst the greatest he or any man ever wrote&mdash;makes
+this corner of Monkwell Street the most glorious literary landmark in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img06.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The house in which he lodged was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the site
+is occupied now by an old tavern, “The Cooper’s Arms.� Almost facing it,
+just the other side of Silver Street, is a fragment of the churchyard of
+St. Olave’s. The church, in which the apprentice Stephen was married to
+Mary Mountjoy, vanished also in the Great Fire and was not rebuilt, and
+this weedy remnant of the churchyard with its three or four crumbling
+tombs is all that survives of the street as Shakespeare knew it; his
+glance must have rested on that forlorn garden of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>the dead as often as
+he looked from the windows opposite or came out at Mountjoy’s door.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img07.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ST. OLAVE’S CHURCHYARD. SILVER STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Turning to the right when he came out at that door, half a minute’s walk
+up Falcon Street would have brought him into Aldersgate Street, so the
+announcement on one of the shops there that he had lived in it may have
+been nothing worse than a perfectly honest mistake; it was known as a fact
+that he lived thereabouts, and tradition settled on the wrong house
+instead of on the right one, that was a hundred yards or so away from it.
+But when Shakespeare issued from Mountjoy’s shop you may depend that his
+feet more frequently trod the ground in the opposite direction; he would
+go to the left, along Silver Street, into Wood Street, and down the length
+of that to Cheapside, where, almost fronting the end of Wood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> Street,
+stood the Mermaid Tavern, and he must needs pass to the right or left of
+it, by way of Friday Street, or Bread Street, across Cannon Street and
+then down Huggin Lane or Little Bread Street Hill to Thames Street,
+whence, from Queenhithe, Puddle Wharf, or Paul’s Wharf, he could take boat
+over the Thames to the Globe Theatre on Bankside.</p>
+
+<p>There has been no theatre on Bankside these many years; there is nothing
+there or in that vicinity now that belongs to Shakespeare’s age except
+some scattered, ancient, inglorious houses that he may or may not have
+known and the stately cathedral of St. Saviour. This holds still the span
+of ground that has belonged to it since before Chaucer’s day. You may
+enter and see there the quaint effigy of Chaucer’s contemporary, Gower,
+sleeping on his five-century-old tomb; and here and there about the aisles
+and in the nave are memorials of remembered or forgotten men and women who
+died while Shakespeare was living, and somewhere in it were buried men,
+too, who were intimate with him, though no evidence of their burial there
+remains except in the parish register. In the “monthly accounts� of St.
+Saviour’s you come upon these entries concerning two of his contemporary
+dramatists:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“1625. <i>August</i> 29th, John Fletcher, a poet, in the church.�</p>
+
+<p>“1638. <i>March</i> 18th, Philip Massinger, stranger, in the church.�</p></div>
+
+<p>the inference being that Fletcher had resided in the parish, and
+Massinger, the “stranger,� had not. But earlier than either of these, it
+is on record that on the 31st December 1607, Shakespeare’s youngest
+brother, Edmund, “a player,� was buried here, and a fee of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> twenty
+shillings was paid by some one for “a forenoon knell of the great bell.�</p>
+
+<p>St. Saviour’s, then, the sites of the Globe Theatre and the Mermaid, and
+that corner of Monkwell Street are London’s chief Shakespearean shrines.
+The discovery of the Monkwell Street residence emphasises that before Ben
+Jonson founded his Apollo Club at the Devil Tavern by Temple Bar,
+Cheapside and not Fleet Street was the heart of literary London. Whilst
+Shakespeare made his home with the Mountjoys, Ben Jonson and Dekker were
+living near him in Cripplegate, in which district also resided Johnson the
+actor, Anthony Munday, and other of Shakespeare’s intimates; nearer still,
+in Aldermanbury, lived Heminges and Condell, his brother actors, who first
+collected and published his plays after his death: and George Wilkins, at
+whose inn near St. Sepulchre’s Stephen Bellott and his wife lodged after
+their quarrel with Mountjoy, was a minor dramatist who, besides
+collaborating with Rowley, collaborated with Shakespeare himself in the
+writing of <i>Pericles</i>. Coryat, the eccentric author of the <i>Crudities</i>,
+lived in Bow Lane; Donne, who was born in Wood Street, wrote his early
+poems there in the house of the good merchant, his father, and was a
+frequenter of the Mermaid.</p>
+
+<p>In 1608 Milton was born in Bread Street (Shakespeare must have passed his
+door many a time in his goings to and fro), and grew up to live and work
+within the City walls in Aldersgate Street, and in Bartholomew Close, and
+just without them in Bunhill Row, and was brought back within them to be
+buried in Cripplegate Church. These, and its earlier and many later
+literary associations, help to halo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> Cheapside and its environs, and, in
+spite of the sordid commercial aspect and history that have overtaken it,
+to make it for ever a street in the kingdom of romance.</p>
+
+<p>And the chief glory of Cheapside itself is, of course, the Mermaid. One of
+these days a fitting sign will be placed above the spot where it stood,
+and set forth in letters of gold the great names that are inseparable from
+its story, and first among these will be the names of Shakespeare, Ben
+Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Donne, Carew, Fuller, Sir Walter
+Raleigh.</p>
+
+<p>The Mermaid rose on Cheapside with a side entrance in Friday Street, and
+of evenings when no business took him to the theatre, or towards midnight
+when he was on his way home from it, Shakespeare often turned aside into
+this famous meeting-place of the immortals of his generation. Everybody is
+familiar with those rapturous lines in Beaumont’s letter to Ben Jonson,
+“written before he and Master Fletcher came to London with two of the
+precedent comedies, then not finished, which deferred their merry meetings
+at the Mermaid;� but one cannot talk of the Mermaid without remembering
+them and quoting from them once again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“In this warm shine</span><br />
+I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine....<br />
+Methinks the little wit I had is lost<br />
+Since I saw you: for wit is like a rest<br />
+Held up at tennis, which men do the best<br />
+With the best gamesters! What things have we seen<br />
+Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been<br />
+So nimble and so full of subtile flame<br />
+As if that every one from whence they came<br />
+Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,<br />
+And had resolved to live a fool the rest<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown<br />
+Wit able enough to justify the town<br />
+For three days past, wit that might warrant be<br />
+For the whole city to talk foolishly<br />
+Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone,<br />
+We left an air behind us which alone<br />
+Was able to make the next two companies<br />
+Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise.�</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img08.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE. SMITHFIELD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>Well might Keats ask in a much later day (probably whilst he was tenanting
+the Cheapside rooms over Bird-in-Hand Court in which he wrote the sonnet
+on Chapman’s Homer):</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Souls of poets dead and gone,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What Elysium have ye known,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Happy field or mossy cavern</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>And in our own time, in <i>Christmas at the Mermaid</i>, Watts-Dunton has
+recreated that glamorous hostelry and brought together again the fine
+spirits who used to frequent it&mdash;brought them together in an imaginary
+winter’s night shortly after Shakespeare had departed from them and gone
+back to Stratford for good. Jonson is of that visionary company, and
+Raleigh, Lodge, Dekker, Chapman, Drayton and Heywood, and it is Heywood
+who breaks in, after the tale-telling and reminiscent talk, with&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">“More than all the pictures, Ben,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Winter weaves by wood or stream,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Christmas loves our London, when</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rise thy clouds of wassail-steam:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Clouds like these that, curling, take</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Forms of faces gone, and wake</span><br />
+Many a lay from lips we loved, and make<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">London like a dream.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>It is because of the memories that sleep within it, like music in a lute
+until a hand that knows touches it, because of all it has been, and
+because it is never more wonderful than when you can so make it like a
+dream, that I give thanks for the fog that comes down upon London at
+intervals, in the grey months, and with silent wizardries conjures it out
+of sight. Look at this same Cheapside on a clear day, and it is simply a
+plain, prosperous, common-place street, but when a fog steals quietly
+through it and spiritualises it to something of the vagueness and grandeur
+and mystery of poetry it is no longer a mere earthly thoroughfare under
+the control of the Corporation; it becomes a dream-street in some
+mist-built city of the clouds, and you feel that at any moment the
+pavements might thin out and shred away and let you through into starry,
+illimitable spaces. Where the brown fog warms to a misty, golden glow you
+know there are shop windows. As you advance the street-lamps twinkle in
+the thick air, as if they were kindled magically at your coming and
+flickered out again directly you were past. The coiling darkness is loud
+with noises of life, but you walk among them with a sense of aloofness and
+solitude, for you can see nothing but flitting shadows all about you and
+know that you are yourself only a shadow to them.</p>
+
+<p>For me, three of the loveliest and most strangely touching sights of
+London are the stars shining very high in the blue and very quietly when
+you look up at them from the roaring depths of a crowded, naphtha-flaring,
+poverty-stricken market street; a sunrise brightening over the Thames
+below London Bridge, while the barges are still asleep with the gleam of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+their lamps showing pale in the dawn; and the blurred lights and ghostly
+buildings of a long city road that is clothed in mystery and transfigured
+by a brooding, dream-haunted fog. Perhaps this is only because of the dim
+feeling one has that the stars and the sunrise are of the things that the
+wasting centuries have not changed; and the fog that blots out to-day
+makes it easier to realise that yesterday and the life of yesterday are
+close about us still, and that we might see them with our waking eyes,
+even as we see them in our dreams, if the darkness would but lift.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img09.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE LAST BULK SHOP. CLARE MARKET.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<p class="title">WHERE POPE STAYED AT BATTERSEA</p>
+
+
+<p>Coming from Chelsea by way of Battersea Bridge, you go a few yards along
+the Battersea Bridge Road, then turn aside into Church Road, and presently
+you pass a narrow, mean street of small houses, which is Bolingbroke Road,
+and serves to remind you that the Bolingbrokes were once lords of the
+manor of Battersea and proprietors of the ferry that crossed the river
+hereabouts before the first Battersea Bridge was built. A little further
+down Church Road, past squat and grimy houses on the one hand and gaunt
+walls and yawning gateways of mills, distilleries, and miscellaneous
+“works� on the other, and you come to a gloomy gateway that has “To
+Bolingbroke House� painted up on one of its side-walls. Through this
+opening you see a busy, littered yard; straw and scraps of paper and odds
+and ends of waste blow about on its stones; stacks of packing-cases and
+wooden boxes rise up against a drab background of brick buildings, and
+deep in the yard, with a space before it in which men are at work and a
+waggon is loading, you find the forlorn left wing&mdash;all that survives&mdash;of
+what was once the family seat of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke,
+whose chief title to remembrance now is that he was the friend of
+Alexander Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Worn and dingy with age, its stone porch stained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> and crumbling, and some
+of its windows broken, the place has a strange, neglected look, though it
+is still used for business purposes, and you have glimpses of clerks
+writing at their desks in the rooms from which Pope used to gaze out on
+very different surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult, indeed, to associate such a house and such a
+neighbourhood as this has now become with so fastidious, finicking, and
+modish a poet as Pope. All the adjacent streets are squalid,
+poverty-stricken, noisy; along the main road, almost within hearing, trams
+and motor-buses shuttle continually to and fro: except for a quaint,
+dirty, weary-looking cottage that still stands dreaming here and there
+among its ugly, mid-Victorian neighbours, and for the river that laps
+below the fence at the end of the yard, there is scarcely anything left of
+the quiet, green, rural Battersea village with which he was familiar; even
+the church whose steeple rises near by above the mills, and in which
+Bolingbroke was buried, was rebuilt a few years after his death.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, this weatherbeaten, time-wasted old house down the yard is
+the same house that, when it stood with Bolingbroke’s lawn before it and
+his pleasant gardens sloping to the Thames, was the occasional home of
+Pope, and numbered Swift, Thomson, and other of the great men of letters
+of Queen Anne’s reign among its visitors. One of the rooms overlooking the
+river, a room lined with cedar, beautifully inlaid, is still known as “Mr.
+Pope’s parlour�; it is said to have been used by Pope as his study, and
+that he wrote his <i>Essay on Man</i> in it.</p>
+
+<p>It is therefore the more fitting that Pope should have dedicated <i>An Essay
+on Man</i> to Bolingbroke,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> whom he addresses in the opening lines with that
+exhortation:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Awake, my St. John, leave all meaner things<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To low ambition, and the pride of kings!�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>He dedicated also one of his Imitations of Horace to&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“St. John, whose love indulged my labours past,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Matures my present, and shall bound my last.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>A man of brilliant gifts, both as writer and statesman, Bolingbroke became
+involved in the political intriguings of his day, and in 1715 had to flee
+to Calais to escape arrest for high treason. Eight years later he was
+allowed to return, and his forfeited estates were given back to him. On
+the death of his father he took up his residence at Battersea, and it was
+there that he died of cancer in 1751. “Pope used to speak of him,� writes
+Warton, “as a being of a superior order that had condescended to visit
+this lower world;� and he, in his turn, said of Pope, “I never in my life
+knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more
+general friendship for mankind.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img10.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">POPE’S HOUSE. BATTERSEA.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>And on the whole one feels that this character of Pope was truer than Lady
+Mary Wortley Montagu’s presentation of him as “the wicked asp of
+Twickenham�; for if he was viciously cruel to Colley Cibber and the poor
+Grub Street scribblers whom he satirises in <i>The Dunciad</i>, he was kindness
+itself to Akenside and other of his younger rivals in reading their
+manuscripts and recommending them to his publishers; and if he retorted
+bitterly upon Addison after he had fallen out with him, he kept unbroken
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>to the last his close friendship with Swift, Gay, Garth, Atterbury,
+Bolingbroke, and with Arbuthnot, for whose services in helping him through
+“this long disease, my life� he expressed a touchingly affectionate
+gratitude. If he had been the heartless little monster his enemies painted
+him he could not have felt so tireless and beautiful a love for his father
+and mother and, despite his own feebleness and shattered health, have
+devoted himself so assiduously to the care of his mother in her declining
+years. “O friend,� he writes to Arbuthnot, in the Prologue to the
+Satires:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“O friend, may each domestic bliss be thine!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Me let the tender office long engage</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To rock the cradle of reposing age,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With lenient arts extend a mother’s breath,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And keep a while one parent from the sky.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>All his life, Pope dwelt in London or on the skirts of it. He was
+twenty-eight when, soon after the death of his father in 1715, he leased
+the famous villa at Twickenham and took his mother to live with him there,
+and it was from there when she died, a very old lady of ninety-three, that
+on the 10th June 1783, he wrote to an artist friend the letter that
+enshrines his sorrow:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“As I know you and I naturally desire to see one another, I hoped that
+this day our wishes would have met and brought you hither. And this for
+the very reason which possibly might hinder your coming, that my poor
+mother is dead. I thank God her death was easy, as her life was innocent,
+and as it cost her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> not a groan or even a sigh, there is yet upon her
+countenance such an expression of tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure,
+that, far from horrid, it is even amiable to behold it. It would form the
+finest image of a saint expired that ever painter drew, and it would be
+the greatest obligation art could ever bestow on a friend if you could
+come and sketch it for me. I am sure if there be no prevalent obstacle you
+will leave every common business to do this; and I hope to see you this
+evening as late as you will, or to-morrow morning as early, before this
+winter flower is faded. I will defer her interment till to-morrow night. I
+know you love me or I would not have written this&mdash;I could not (at this
+time) have written at all. Adieu. May you die as happily.�</p>
+
+<p>From Twickenham Pope made frequent visits to London, where he stayed in
+lodgings, or at the houses of friends; and in the last four or five years
+of his life, after Bolingbroke had settled down at Battersea, he put up as
+often as not at Bolingbroke House. Of his personal appearance at this date
+there are a good many records. One of his numerous lampooners, unkindly
+enough but very graphically, pictures him as&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Meagre and wan, and steeple crowned,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">His visage long, his shoulders round;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">His crippled corse two spindle pegs</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Support, instead of human legs;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">His shrivelled skin’s of dusty grain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A cricket’s voice, and monkey’s brain.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>His old enemy, John Dennis, sneering at his hunched and drooping figure,
+described him as “a young, short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the god
+of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>love.� He had to be laced up tightly in bodices made of stiff
+canvas, so that he might hold himself erect, and, says Dr. Johnson, “his
+stature was so low, that to bring him to a level with a common table it
+was necessary to raise his seat. But his face was not displeasing, and his
+eyes were animated and vivid.� And here is Sir Joshua Reynolds’s
+word-picture of him: “He was about four feet six inches high, very
+hump-backed and deformed. He wore a black coat, and, according to the
+fashion of that time, had on a little sword. He had a large and very fine
+eye, and a long, handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which
+are always found in the mouths of crooked persons, and the muscles which
+run across the cheek were so strongly marked that they seemed like small
+cords.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img11.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ALEXANDER POPE</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>This is the queer, misshapen, pathetic little shape that haunts that
+old-world house in the yard at Battersea, and you may gather something of
+the life he lived there, and of the writing with which he busied himself
+in the cedar parlour, from these extracts out of two of his letters, both
+of which were written to Warburton:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="right">“<i>January 12, 1743-4.</i></p>
+
+<p>“Of the public I can tell you nothing worthy of the reflection of a
+reasonable man; and of myself only an account that would give you
+pain; for my asthma has increased every week since you last heard from
+me to the degree of confining me totally to the fireside; so that I
+have hardly seen any of my friends but two (Lord and Lady
+Bolingbroke), who happen to be divided from the world as much as
+myself, and are constantly retired at Battersea. There I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> passed
+much of my time, and often wished you of the company, as the best I
+know to make me not regret the loss of others, and to prepare me for a
+nobler scene than any mortal greatness can open to us. I fear by the
+account you gave me of the time you design to come this way, one of
+them (Lord B.) whom I much wish you had a glimpse of (as a being
+<i>paullo minus ab angelio</i>), will be gone again, unless you pass some
+weeks in London before Mr. Allen arrives there in March. My present
+indisposition takes up almost all my hours to render a very few of
+them supportable; yet I go on softly to prepare the great edition of
+my things with your notes, and as fast as I receive any from you, I
+add others in order (determining to finish the Epistle to Dr.
+Arbuthnot and two or three of the best of Horace, particularly that of
+Augustus, first), which will fall into the same volume with the Essay
+on Man. I determined to publish a small number of the Essay, and of
+the other on Criticism, ere now, as a sample of the rest, but Bowyer
+advised delay, though I now see I was not in the wrong.�</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="right"><i>“February 21, 1743-4.</i></p>
+
+<p>“I own that the late encroachments on my constitution make me willing
+to see the end of all further care about me or my works. I would rest
+from the one in a full resignation of my being to be disposed of by
+the Father of all mercy, and for the other (though indeed a trifle,
+yet a trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candour
+of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every
+short-sighted and malevolent critic or inadvertent and censorious
+reader. And no hand can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> set them in so good a light, or so well turn
+them best side to the day, as your own. This obliges me to confess I
+have for some months thought myself going, and that not slowly, down
+the hill&mdash;the rather as every attempt of the physicians, and still the
+last medicines more forcible in their nature, have utterly failed to
+serve me. I was at last, about seven days ago, taken with so violent a
+fit at Battersea, that my friends, Lord Bolingbroke and Lord
+Marchmont, sent for present help to the surgeon, whose bleeding me, I
+am persuaded, saved my life by the instantaneous effect it had, and
+which has continued so much to amend me that I have passed five days
+without oppression, and recovered, what I have three days wanted, some
+degree of expectoration and some hours together of sleep. I can now go
+to Twickenham, to try if the air will not take some part in reviving
+me, if I can avoid colds, and between that place and Battersea, with
+my Lord Bolingbroke, I will pass what I have of life while he stays,
+which I can tell you, to my great satisfaction, will be this fortnight
+or three weeks yet.�</p></div>
+
+<p>In the year after writing this Pope came to the end of all further care
+about himself and his works; he died at Twickenham, and lies buried under
+the middle aisle of Twickenham Church.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<p class="title">HOGARTH</p>
+
+
+<p>Before he took up residence at the Twickenham villa, Pope lived for some
+time with his father in one of the houses of Mawson’s Buildings (now
+Mawson Row), Chiswick. So far it has been impossible to decide which of
+these five red-brick houses is the one that was theirs, for the only
+evidence of their tenancy consists of certain letters preserved at the
+British Museum, which are addressed to “Alexr. Pope, Esquire, Mawson’s
+Buildings, in Chiswick,� and on the backs of these are written portions of
+the original drafts of Pope’s translation of the Iliad. James Ralph, the
+unfortunate poetaster whom Pope satirised in his <i>Dunciad</i>, was also a
+native of Chiswick, and lies buried in the parish churchyard. One other
+link Pope has with Chiswick&mdash;he wrote a rather poor epigram on Thomas
+Wood, who resided there, and who seems to have been connected with the
+Church, for according to the poet&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Tom Wood of Chiswick, deep divine,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To painter Kent gave all his coin;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">’Tis the first coin, I’m bold to say,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That ever churchman gave away.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>This Kent, I take it, was the man of the same name who likewise lived at
+Chiswick in Pope’s day, and was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> more notable as a landscape gardener than
+as a painter.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img12.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">POPE. MAWSON’S ROW CHISWICK.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But, to say nothing of William Morris’s more recent association with the
+district, the most interesting house in Chiswick is Hogarth’s. It is a
+red-brick villa of the Queen Anne style, with a quaint, overhanging bay
+window, and stands in a large, walled garden, not far from the parish
+church. For many years this was Hogarth’s summer residence&mdash;his
+“villakin,� as he called it. His workshop, or studio, that used to be at
+the foot of the garden, has been demolished; otherwise the house remains
+very much as it was when he occupied it.</p>
+
+<p>Hogarth was essentially a town man; he was almost, if not quite, as good a
+Londoner as Lamb.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> He was born in Bartholomew Close, West Smithfield, that
+storied place where Milton had lived before, and Washington Irving went to
+live after, him; and he spent nearly all his life in the neighbourhood of
+Leicester Square. He was rarely absent from London at all, and never for
+long; even when he was supposed to be passing his summers at his Chiswick
+villa, he made frequent excursions into town, and would put up for a few
+days at his house in Leicester Square&mdash;or Leicester Fields, as it then
+was.</p>
+
+<p>In 1712 Hogarth went to serve a six years’ apprenticeship to Ellis Gamble,
+a silver-plate engraver, in Cranbourne Alley (now Cranbourne Street), and,
+on the death of his father in 1718, he started business for himself as an
+engraver in what had been his father’s house in Long Lane, West
+Smithfield, and later removed to the corner of Cranbourne Alley, leaving
+his mother with his two sisters, who had opened shop as mercers, at the
+old Long Lane address. He engraved for them a shop card, duly setting
+forth that “Mary and Ann Hogarth, from the old Frock Shop, the corner of
+the Long Wall, facing the Cloysters, Removed to ye King’s Arms joining to
+ye Little Britain Gate, near Long Walk, Sells ye best and most Fashionable
+Ready Made Frocks, Sutes of Fustian, Ticken, and Holland, Stript Dimity
+and Flanel Waistcoats, blue and canvas Frocks, and bluecoat Boys’
+Dra<sup>rs.</sup>, Likewise Fustians, Tickens, Hollands, white stript Dimitys,
+white and stript Flanels in ye piece, by Wholesale or Retale at Reasonable
+Rates.�</p>
+
+<p>Hogarth was very self-satisfied and rather illiterate;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> his spelling and
+his grammar&mdash;as in this shop-card&mdash;were continually going wrong. But he
+was kindly, good-hearted, high-minded, and had imagination and an original
+genius that could laugh at the nice, mechanical accomplishments of the
+schoolmaster. It was Nollekens, the sculptor, who said that he frequently
+saw Hogarth sauntering round Leicester Square, playing the nurse, “with
+his master’s sickly child hanging its head over his shoulder.� That was in
+the early days, when he was still serving his time to Gamble, and not even
+dreaming, I suppose, that he would one day own the big house at the
+south-east corner of the Square, would enjoy some of his highest triumphs
+and sharpest humiliations in it, and die in it at last, leaving behind him
+work that would give him a place among the very first of English painters.</p>
+
+<p>Even before so fastidious a critic as Whistler had declared that Hogarth
+was “the greatest English artist who ever lived,� Hazlitt had said much
+the same thing, and paid a glowing tribute to the vitality and dramatic
+life of his pictures; but perhaps no critic has written a finer, more
+incisive criticism on him than Lamb did in his essay on “The Genius and
+Character of Hogarth.� Lamb had been familiar with two of Hogarth’s series
+of prints&mdash;“The Harlot’s Progress,� and “The Rake’s Progress�&mdash;since his
+boyhood; and though he was keenly alive to the humour of them, he denied
+that their chief appeal was to the risible faculties. It was their
+profound seriousness, their stern satire, the wonderful creative force
+that underlay them, that most impressed him. “I was pleased,� he says,
+“with the reply of a gentleman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> who, being asked which book he most
+esteemed in his library, answered ‘Shakespeare’; being asked which he
+esteemed next best, replied ‘Hogarth.’ His graphic representations are
+indeed books; they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of
+words. Other pictures we look at; his prints we read.� He protests against
+confounding “the painting of subjects in common or vulgar life with the
+being a vulgar artist. The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into
+every picture would alone unvulgarise every subject he might choose. Let
+us take the lowest of his subjects, the print called ‘Gin Lane.’ Here is
+plenty of poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view; and
+accordingly a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and
+repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it.
+The same persons would, perhaps, have looked with great complacency upon
+Poussin’s celebrated picture of the ‘Plague of Athens.’ Disease and death
+and bewildering terror in Athenian garments are endurable, and come, as
+the delicate critics express it, within the ‘limits of pleasurable
+sensation.’ But the scenes of their own St. Giles’s, delineated by their
+own countryman, are too shocking to think of.... We are for ever deceiving
+ourselves with names and theories. We call one man a great historical
+painter because he has taken for his subjects kings or great men, or
+transactions over which time has thrown a grandeur. We term another the
+painter of common life, and set him down in our minds for an artist of an
+inferior class, without reflecting whether the quantity of thought shown
+by the latter may not much more than level the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> distinction which their
+mere choice of subjects may seem to place between them; or whether, in
+fact, from that very common life a great artist may not extract as deep an
+interest as another man from that which we are pleased to call history.�
+He found that, though many of the pictures had much in them that is ugly
+and repellent, “there is in most of them that sprinkling of the better
+nature which, like holy water, chases away and disperses the contagion of
+the bad. They have this in them besides, that they bring us acquainted
+with the everyday human face.� And because of this, of their truth to
+contemporary life, and the vigorous realism of the stories they tell, he
+ranked the work of Hogarth not only high among that of the world’s great
+painters, but with the best novels of such men as Smollett and Fielding.</p>
+
+<p>According to a note in his fragmentary autobiography, Hogarth conceived an
+early admiration for the paintings of Sir James Thornhill, and, somewhere
+about 1727, he joined the painting school that Sir James established in
+the Piazza, at the corner of James Street, Covent Garden. And Sir James
+soon seems to have taken a particular interest in his pupil, and had him
+as a frequent visitor to his house at 75 Dean Street, Soho; and on March
+23rd, 1729, he eloped with his teacher’s daughter, and they were married
+at old Paddington Church. There are paintings and decorations still to be
+seen on the walls of the Dean Street house, in some of which Hogarth is
+believed to have had a hand.</p>
+
+<p>After his marriage, Hogarth lived for a while at Lambeth; but it was not
+long before he was reconciled to his father-in-law. In 1730 he was
+engaged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> with Sir James Thornhill on their famous picture of “The House of
+Commons�; and a year later, when he was engraving his series of prints
+“The Harlot’s Progress,� he and his wife had apparently taken up quarters
+with Sir James in the Piazza.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img13.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SIR JAMES THORNHILL. 75 DEAN STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>“The Harlot’s Progress,� and the issue of “The Rake’s Progress� shortly
+afterwards, lifted Hogarth into fame. He began to move in better society,
+and was to be met with at the fashionable as well as at the Bohemian clubs
+of the day. He and Thornhill founded the Arts Club at the Turk’s Head, in
+Gerrard Street; and, after the latter’s death, he took over Thornhill’s
+art school, and transferred it to Peter’s Court, St. Martin’s Lane.
+Occasionally he visited Richardson, the novelist, in Salisbury Court; and
+it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> here he first made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson. He struck up a
+friendship with Garrick, too, and painted several portraits of him, for
+one of which he received two hundred pounds; and with Fielding, of whom he
+has given us the only portrait we possess.</p>
+
+<p>By 1733 Hogarth was prosperous enough to take the house in Leicester
+Square that was pulled down, in 1870, to furnish a site for the Archbishop
+Tenison School that has replaced it; and in 1749, “having sacrificed
+enough to his fame and fortune,� he purchased the villa at Chiswick as a
+summer holiday home, and became a familiar figure about the Chiswick lanes
+from time to time&mdash;“a blue-eyed, intelligent little man, with a scar over
+his right eye, and wearing a fur cap.� Allan Cunningham furnishes a more
+vivid description of his personal appearance in his <i>Lives of the
+Painters</i>, where he says he was “rather below the middle height; his eye
+was peculiarly bright and piercing; his look shrewd, sarcastic, and
+intelligent; the forehead high and round. He was active in person,
+bustling in manner, and fond of affecting a little state and importance.
+He was of a temper cheerful, joyous, and companionable, fond of mirth and
+good-fellowship.� Benjamin West called him a strutting, consequential
+little man; and, one way and another, we know that he was sturdy,
+obstinate, pugnacious, and that once he thrashed a ruffian whom he found
+maltreating the beautiful drummeress that he sketched in his picture of
+Southwark Fair. Possibly that scar over his right eye was a record of this
+chivalrous deed.</p>
+
+<p>There are very few records of his home life, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> these are of the
+homeliest, most ordinary sort. He was fond of smoking, and the arm-chair,
+in which he was wont to sit with his pipe, is still preserved at Chiswick.
+He had a favourite dog, a pet cat, and a bullfinch, which he buried in his
+Chiswick garden, commemorating them with tablets that have now vanished
+from the wall, the bird’s epitaph being “Alas, poor Dick!� and the dog’s,
+“Life to the last enjoyed, here Pompey lies�&mdash;which parodies a line in the
+<i>Candidate</i>, by that dissipated, brilliant satirist, Charles Churchill:
+“Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img14.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">HOGARTH’S HOUSE. CHISWICK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Candidate</i> was published at the beginning of 1764, and on the 25th
+October of that year Hogarth died. Churchill had been a warm friend of
+his, but before the end had become one of his bitterest enemies&mdash;that
+enmity arising in this wise. In 1762 Hogarth published a political print
+called the <i>Times</i>, in which he supported the policy of Lord Bute, and
+ridiculed Pitt, Temple, and Wilkes. By way of retaliation, Wilkes wrote a
+scathing attack upon Hogarth in his paper, the <i>North Briton</i>, in which he
+made a sneering reference to Mrs. Hogarth. This stirred Hogarth to anger;
+and when Wilkes was presently arrested on a charge of high treason, he sat
+in court and sketched the prisoner, immortalising his villainous squint,
+and accentuating all the worst qualities in his features. On this print
+making its appearance, Churchill, a staunch friend and partisan of Wilkes,
+took up the cudgels, and scarified Hogarth without mercy in <i>An Epistle to
+William Hogarth</i> (1763), praising his art, but pouring contempt upon his
+envy and self-esteem, and affecting to believe that he was in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>his
+dotage. He can laud the genius, he says, but not the man.</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">“Freely let him wear</span><br />
+The wreath which Genius wove and planted there:<br />
+Foe as I am, should envy tear it down,<br />
+Myself would labour to replace the crown....<br />
+Hogarth unrivalled stands, and shall engage<br />
+Unrivalled praise to the most distant age.�</p></div>
+
+<p>But for the man&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Hogarth, stand forth&mdash;I dare thee to be tried<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In that great Court where Conscience must preside;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">At that most solemn bar hold up thy hand;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Think before whom, on what account you stand;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Speak, but consider well;&mdash;from first to last</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Review thy life, weigh every action past.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Canst thou remember from thy earliest youth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And as thy God must judge thee, speak the truth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A single instance where, self laid aside,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And Justice taking place of Fear and Pride,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thou with an equal eye didst Genius view,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And give to Merit what was Merit’s due?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Genius and Merit are a sure offence,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And thy soul sickens at the name of sense.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Is any one so foolish to succeed?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">On Envy’s altar he is doomed to bleed;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Hogarth, a guilty pleasure in his eyes,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The place of executioner supplies;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">See how he gloats, enjoys the sacred feast,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And proves himself by cruelty a priest....</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Oft have I known thee, Hogarth, weak and vain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Through the dull measure of a summer’s day,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Whilst friends with friends all gaping sit, and gaze,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth’s praise....</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">With all the symptoms of assured decay,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With age and sickness pinched and worn away,</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Pale quivering lips, lank cheeks, and faltering tongue,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The body shrivelled up, the dim eyes sunk</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Within their sockets deep, thy weak hams shrunk,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The body’s weight unable to sustain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The stream of life scarce trembling through the vein,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">More than half killed by honest truths which fell,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Through thy own fault, from men who wished thee well&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Canst thou, e’en thus, thy thoughts to vengeance give</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And, dead to all things else, to malice live?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Hence, dotard, to thy closet; shut thee in;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">By deep repentance wash away thy sin;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">From haunts of men to shame and sorrow fly,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And, on the verge of death, learn how to die!�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Hurt and deeply mortified, a month later Hogarth satirised Churchill’s
+former connection with the Church and present loose living in a caricature
+which represented him as a bear wearing torn clerical bands, with ruffles
+on his paws, in one hand a pot of porter, and in the other a bundle of
+lies and copies of the <i>North Briton</i>. Garrick had heard that Churchill
+was making ready to issue that vitriolic satire of his, and hastened to
+beg him, “by the regard you profess to me, that you don’t tilt at my
+friend Hogarth before you see me. He is a great and original genius. I
+love him as a man, and reverence him as an artist. I would not for all the
+politics and politicians in the universe that you two should have the
+least cause of ill-will to each other. I am sure you will not publish
+against him if you think twice.� One could honour Garrick if it were for
+nothing else but that letter; but it was written in vain, and the
+exasperation and humiliation that Hogarth suffered under Churchill’s lash
+are said to have hastened his death. He had been broken in health and
+ailing all through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> the summer of 1764, but took several plates down to
+his Chiswick villa with him for retouching, and&mdash;possibly with some
+foreboding of his own approaching dissolution&mdash;drew for a new volume of
+his prints a tailpiece depicting “the end of all things.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img15.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE BAY WINDOW. HOGARTH’S HOUSE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But he could not be satisfied to keep away from London, and on 25th
+October was conveyed from Chiswick to his house in Leicester Square, “very
+weak,� says Nichols, “but remarkably cheerful, and, receiving an agreeable
+letter from Dr. Franklin�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> (Benjamin Franklin was, by the way, dwelling at
+this time in Bartholomew Close; he did not remove to 7 Craven Street,
+Strand, until three years later), “he drew up a rough draft of an answer
+to it; but, going to bed, was seized with a vomiting, upon which he rang
+the bell with such violence that he broke it, and expired about two hours
+afterwards in the arms of Mrs. Mary Lewis, who was called up on his being
+suddenly taken ill.�</p>
+
+<p>He was buried in Chiswick Churchyard; and in 1771 his friends erected a
+monument over him, the epitaph on which was written by Garrick:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Farewell, great Painter of Mankind,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Who reached the noblest point of Art,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Whose pictured morals charm the Mind,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And through the eye correct the Heart.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">If Nature touch thee, drop a tear;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If neither move thee, turn away,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">For Hogarth’s honoured dust lies here.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Garrick sent his verses to Dr. Johnson, who frankly criticised them, and
+offered him a revised version, the first lines of which were a distinct
+improvement:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“The hand of Art here torpid lies<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">That traced the essential form of Grace;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Here Death has closed the curious eyes</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">That saw the manners in the face.�...</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Garrick preferred his own composition, slightly altered, as it now
+appears; but Johnson’s was certainly the better effort of the two.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hogarth retained possession of the Leicester<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> Square house until her
+death in 1789, but she resided principally at Chiswick. Sir Richard
+Phillips saw her there, when he was a boy, and had vivid recollections of
+her as a stately old lady, wheeled to the parish church on Sundays in a
+bath-chair, and sailing in up the nave with her raised head-dress, silk
+sacque, black calash, and crutched cane, accompanied by a relative (the
+Mary Lewis who was with Hogarth when he died), and preceded by her
+grey-haired man-servant, Samuel, who carried her prayer-books, and, after
+she was seated, shut the pew door on her.</p>
+
+<p>From 1824 to 1826 the Hogarth villa was inhabited by the Rev. H. F. Cary,
+the translator of Dante, who was one of Charles Lamb’s many friends, and
+wrote the feeble epitaph that is on his tomb at Edmonton.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<p class="title">GOLDSMITH, REYNOLDS, AND SOME OF THEIR CIRCLE</p>
+
+
+<p>One of Sir James Thornhill’s illustrious sitters was Sir Isaac Newton, who
+lived within a stone’s throw of Hogarth’s London house, just round the
+corner out of Leicester Square, at No. 35 St. Martin’s Street. Here Sir
+Isaac made his home from 1720 to 1725. The red brick walls have been
+stuccoed over; and the observatory that the philosopher built for himself
+on the roof, after being turned into a Sunday-school, was removed about
+forty years ago, and helped to supply pews for the Orange Street Chapel
+that stands next door.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest of Newton’s work was done before he set up in St. Martin’s
+Street, but he told a friend that the happiest years of his life had been
+spent in the observatory there. Though he kept his carriage, lived in some
+style, had half-a-dozen male and female servants, and was always
+hospitable, he was not fond of society, and talked but little in it.
+Johnson once remarked to Sir William Jones that if Newton had flourished
+in ancient Greece, he would have been worshipped as a divinity, but there
+was nothing godlike in his appearance. “He was a man of no very promising
+aspect,� says Herne; and Humphrey Newton describes his famous relative as
+of a carriage “meek, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>sedate, and humble; never seeming angry, of
+profound thought, his countenance mild, pleasant, and comely. He always
+kept close to his studies.... I never knew him to take any recreation or
+pastime, thinking all hours lost that were not spent in his studies.�
+There are a good many stories told of his eccentricities and
+absent-mindedness. He would ride through London in his coach with one arm
+out of the window on one side and one out on the other; he would sometimes
+start to get up of a morning and sit down on his bed, absorbed in thought,
+and so remain for hours without dressing himself; and, when his dinner was
+laid, he would walk about the room, forgetting to eat it, and carelessly
+eat it standing when his attention was called to it. On one occasion, when
+he was leading his horse up a hill, he found, when he went to remount on
+reaching the top, that the animal had slipped its bridle and stayed behind
+without his perceiving it, and he had nothing in his hand but some of the
+harness. “When he had friends to entertain,� according to Dr. Stukeley,
+“if he went into his study to fetch a bottle of wine, there was danger of
+his forgetting them,� and not coming back again. And it is told of this
+same Dr. Stukeley that he called one day to see Newton, and was shown into
+the dining-room, where Sir Isaac’s dinner was in readiness. After a long
+wait, feeling hungry as well as impatient, Stukeley ate the cold chicken
+intended for his host, and left nothing but the bones. By-and-by Sir Isaac
+entered, made his greetings and apologies, and, whilst they were talking,
+drew a chair to the table, took off the dish-cover, and at sight of the
+bones merely observed placidly, “How absent we philosophers are! I had
+forgotten that I had dined!�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img16.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S HOUSE. ST. MARTIN’S STREET. W.C.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>Later, this same house in St. Martin’s Street was occupied by Dr. Burney
+and his daughter Fanny, who wrote <i>Evelina</i> here.</p>
+
+<p>Near by, in Leicester Square again, on the opposite side, and almost
+exactly facing Hogarth’s residence, was the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
+From 1753 to 1761 Sir Joshua lived at 5 Great Newport Street, which was
+built in Charles II.’s days, and is still standing. It is now and has for
+a century past been occupied by a firm of art dealers; so that it happens
+from time to time that a picture of Reynolds’s is here put up for sale,
+“on the very spot where it was painted.� But in the crowning years of his
+career&mdash;from 1761 till his death, in 1792&mdash;Sir Joshua dwelt at 42
+Leicester Square, and what was formerly his studio there has been
+transformed into one of Messrs. Puttick and Simpson’s auction rooms. Here
+is Allan Cunningham’s description of it, and of the painter’s method of
+work: “His study was octagonal, some twenty feet long by sixteen broad,
+and about fifteen feet high. The window was small and square, and the sill
+nine feet from the floor. His sitters’ chair moved on castors, and stood
+above the floor about a foot and a half. He held his palette by the
+handle, and the sticks of his brushes were eighteen inches long. He
+wrought standing, and with great celerity. He rose early, breakfasted at
+nine, entered his study at ten, examined designs or touched unfinished
+portraits, till eleven brought him a sitter; painted till four, then
+dressed, and gave the evenings to company.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img17.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’ HOUSE. GREAT NEWPORT STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img18.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE STAIRCASE. 41 LEICESTER SQUARE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>And to the best of good company too. By day, the chariot of a duke or a
+marchioness might drive to his door, and return later to wait for his
+lordship or her ladyship, who was occupying the sitter’s chair, while Sir
+Joshua was busy at his easel; but of an evening he would have such men as
+Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith, Garrick, Burke (who was living close at
+hand, in Gerrard Street) gathered about his dinner-table; for in spite of
+his deafness he was the very soul of sociability. He never got out of his
+naturally careless, Bohemian habits. He was the favourite portrait-painter
+of the fashionable world, but mixed with the aristocracy without apeing
+any of their etiquette. “There was something singular in the style and
+economy of Sir Joshua’s table that contributed to pleasantry and
+good-humour; a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and
+arrangement,� according to Courtenay. “A table prepared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> for seven or
+eight was often compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen. When this
+pressing difficulty was got over, a deficiency of knives, plates, forks,
+and glasses succeeded. The attendance was in the same style; and it was
+absolutely necessary to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that you
+might be supplied with them before the first course was over. He was once
+prevailed on to furnish the table with decanters and glasses at dinner, to
+save time and prevent the tardy manœuvres of two or three occasional,
+undisciplined domestics. As these accelerating utensils were demolished in
+the course of service, Sir Joshua would never be persuaded to replace
+them. But these trifling embarrassments only served to enhance the
+hilarity and singular pleasure of the entertainment. The wines, cookery,
+and dishes were but little attended to; nor was the fish or venison ever
+talked of or recommended. Amidst this convivial, animated bustle among his
+guests, our host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to what was
+said, never minding what was ate or drunk, but left every one at perfect
+liberty to scramble for himself. Temporal and spiritual peers, physicians,
+lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the motley group, and played their
+parts without dissonance or discord.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img19.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SIR BENJAMIN WEST’S HOUSE. NEWMAN STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>He was so imperturbable and easy-natured that Dr. Johnson said if he ever
+quarrelled with him he would find it most difficult to know how to abuse
+him; and even the sharp-tongued Mrs. Thrale praised his peaceful temper,
+and considered that of him “all good should be said, and no harm.� He
+shared Hogarth’s contempt for the old masters; but, unlike Hogarth, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>he
+was not loud and aggressive in his objections to them.</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>It was on Reynolds’s suggestion that he and Johnson founded, in 1763, what
+later became celebrated as the Literary Club. They held their first
+meetings at the Turk’s Head (where Hogarth and Thornhill had previously
+established their Art Club), and among the original members were Burke,
+Langton, Beauclerk, Goldsmith, and Sir John Hawkins. The latter, an arrant
+snob, objected to Goldsmith’s election on the ground that he was “a mere
+literary drudge,� but his protest carried no weight with the rest. Five
+years later, when, under the patronage of the king, Reynolds inaugurated
+the Royal Academy, Johnson was appointed its first Professor of Ancient
+Literature, and Goldsmith its first Professor of History, Reynolds himself
+being its first President&mdash;in which office, on his death in 1792, he was
+succeeded by Benjamin West. West was an American, and had won a
+considerable reputation in his own country before he came over and settled
+down in England. He was introduced to Johnson and Reynolds, and was for
+some time a neighbour of Sir Joshua’s, in Castle Street, Leicester Square.
+But he is more closely associated with the house that still stands at 14
+Newman Street, Oxford Street, in which he lived and worked for forty-five
+years, and in which he died.</p>
+
+<p>A far greater contemporary painter, who moved on the fringes of Sir
+Joshua’s circle, was Gainsborough. That he did not come familiarly into
+the circle, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> sometimes make one of the memorable company that gathered
+round Reynolds’s dinner-table, was owing to some lack of geniality in
+himself, that kept him from responding to Sir Joshua’s friendly advances.
+He came from Bath to London in 1774, when he was forty-seven years of age,
+took a studio at Schonberg House, Pall Mall, and it was not long before
+celebrities and leaders of fashion were flocking to it to sit for their
+portraits, and he was recognised as a successful rival of Reynolds.
+Reynolds was so far from feeling jealousy or resentment that he promptly
+paid his popular rival a visit; but Gainsborough did not trouble himself
+to return the call. No doubt it was to some extent owing to Reynolds, too,
+that in the year of his appearance in London he was elected to the council
+of management of the Royal Academy; but he ignored the honour, did not
+attend any meetings, and sent nothing to the exhibition. Reynolds was
+frankly outspoken in his admiration of Gainsborough’s work, and was even
+anxious to have his own portrait painted by him. After some delay
+appointments were fixed, and Sir Joshua duly went to Schonberg House, and
+the painting was commenced. But after the first sitting he was taken ill;
+and when, on his recovery, he wrote to tell Gainsborough that he was ready
+to come again, he received no reply, and the portrait had to remain an
+unfinished sketch.</p>
+
+<p>His coldness to Reynolds is inexplicable, for he was a kindly-disposed
+man, and sociable. He kept almost open house in Pall Mall, and such jovial
+spirits as the Sheridans, Colman, and Garrick were among the constant
+guests at his table.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img20.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GAINSBOROUGH’S HOUSE. PALL MALL.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>The year after Gainsborough’s coming to London, Sheridan’s <i>Rivals</i> was
+produced at the Covent Garden Theatre, to be followed two years after by
+<i>The School for Scandal</i>. Before he was out of his twenties Sheridan had
+finished his career as a dramatist, turned to politics, and was one of the
+most brilliant of Parliamentary orators, still remaining principal
+proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre. All his life he was living beyond his
+income, borrowing, getting into debt, and dodging duns and bailiffs with
+the gayest imperturbability. Everybody liked him, and was susceptible to
+his charm. Wherever the wits foregathered, he was the best drinker, the
+best talker, and the wittiest among them. Byron writes of him in his
+<i>Diary</i>: “What a wreck that man is! and all from bad pilotage; for no one
+had ever better gales, though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear
+Sherry! I shall never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed
+together; when he talked and we listened, without one yawn, from six till
+one in the morning.� In a letter to Moore, Byron records a dinner at which
+Sheridan, Colman, and a large party were present, and at the finish, when
+they were all the worse for drink, “Kinnaird and I had to conduct Sheridan
+down a damned corkscrew staircase, which had certainly been constructed
+before the discovery of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however
+crooked, could possibly accommodate themselves. We deposited him safe at
+home, where his man, evidently used to the business, waited to receive him
+in the hall.�</p>
+
+<p>This was in October 1815, and 14 Savile Row is the house at which Sheridan
+was thus deposited by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> his noble friend. He was then an old man of
+sixty-four, and a year later he died there, five thousand pounds in debt,
+and only saved, by the emphatic intervention of the doctor who was
+attending him, from being arrested by bailiffs as he lay dying, and
+carried off to a sponging-house in his blankets.</p>
+
+<p>The year that brought Gainsborough to London (1774) was also the year of
+Goldsmith’s death; and I want to get back to Goldsmith for a little, in
+this chapter, and to say something of Richardson. For it is curiously
+interesting to note how the lives of all these famous men, though there
+was little enough in common between some of them, met at certain points
+and established certain connecting links between them; so that it is
+possible, as Leigh Hunt has said somewhere, to trace a sort of genealogy
+of such acquaintanceships, such notable meetings and touchings of “beamy
+hands,� coming down in an unbroken line from Shakespeare to our own day.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, Hogarth first met Johnson in Richardson’s parlour at Salisbury
+Court; and, in 1757, Goldsmith was employed by Richardson, and worked on
+his printing premises, in the same court, as reader and corrector to the
+press; and these, and most of the other immortals named in this
+chapter&mdash;including Sheridan, though he was then so young a man that he
+outlived them all, and counts among the friends of Lord Byron&mdash;have a
+common link in Dr. Johnson, who was so great a Londoner that he must needs
+have a chapter presently to himself, or one that he shall share with none
+but the inevitable Boswell.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Goldsmith was working as one of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>employees, Richardson was
+not only a prosperous printer, he was already the most popular novelist of
+his day. <i>Pamela</i>, <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>, and <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i> had
+carried his fame throughout the kingdom and beyond it, and were drawing
+rapturous admiration and tears of sentiment from countless admirers in
+France as well as in England; and, as befitted a man of his means and
+eminence, he had supplemented his house off Fleet Street with a country
+residence at Parson’s Green, where he died in 1761. Down to 1754, however,
+his country house was The Grange, at North End, Fulham, then a pretty,
+old-world spot,&mdash;“the pleasantest village within ten miles of London.� And
+it was here that all his novels were written; for he took The Grange in
+1738, and <i>Pamela</i> appeared in 1740, and <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i> in 1753.
+Here, too, he used to give large literary parties, to which Johnson
+occasionally went with Boswell. But whatever other authors were there, you
+may safely depend that Fielding was never among the guests; for with all
+his high morality Richardson was intolerably self-complacent and vain, and
+never forgave Fielding for burlesquing Pamela as “Shamela,� and parodying
+her impossible virtues in <i>Joseph Andrews</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img21.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SHERIDAN’S HOUSE. SAVILE ROW.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Boswell gives two good anecdotes illustrative of Richardson’s fretful
+vanity and the limits of his conversational powers. “Richardson had little
+conversation,� he says Johnson once remarked to him, “except about his own
+works, of which Sir Joshua Reynolds said he was always willing to talk,
+and glad to have them introduced. Johnson, when he carried Mr. Langton to
+see him, professed that he could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> bring him out in conversation, and used
+this illusive expression: ‘Sir, I can make him <i>rear</i>.’ But he failed; for
+in that interview Richardson said little else than that there lay in the
+room a translation of his <i>Clarissa</i> into German.� And in a footnote to
+this Boswell adds: “A literary lady has favoured me with a characteristic
+anecdote of Richardson. One day at his country house at North End, where a
+large company was assembled at dinner, a gentleman who was just returned
+from Paris, willing to please Mr. Richardson, mentioned to him a very
+flattering circumstance&mdash;that he had seen his <i>Clarissa</i> lying on the
+king’s brother’s table. Richardson, observing that part of the company
+were engaged in talking to each other, affected not to attend to it. But
+by-and-by, when there was a general silence, and he thought that the
+flattery might be fully heard, he addressed himself to the gentleman, ‘I
+think, sir, you were saying something about&mdash;’ pausing in a high flutter
+of expectation. The gentleman, provoked at his inordinate vanity, resolved
+not to indulge it, and with an exquisitely sly air of indifference
+remarked, ‘A mere trifle, sir, not worth repeating.’ The mortification of
+Richardson was visible, and he did not speak ten words more the whole day.
+Dr. Johnson was present, and appeared to enjoy it much.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img22.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">PUMP COURT. TEMPLE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>While Fielding was roystering in the wild haunts of Bohemian London,
+gambling at his club, reeling home to his chambers in Pump Court, and
+writing his novels in odds and ends of soberer time, Richardson was
+methodically composing his books at Fulham, getting up early of summer
+mornings, working at his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> manuscript in the little summer-house that he
+had built in his garden, then reading over breakfast to the worshipping
+members of his family the results of his morning’s labour. Wherever he
+went, groups of adoring ladies were sure to gather about him, to chatter
+fervently of their delight in his interminable stories; and he snuffed up
+their incense with a solemn and self-satisfied joy, for he took himself as
+seriously as he was taken by them, and never felt that he was ridiculous,
+even when he looked it. Not infrequently he would sit in his drawing-room
+at The Grange, or in the summer-house, surrounded by a rapt audience of
+feminine believers, who wept as he read aloud to them of the sufferings
+and heroic virtue of Pamela, or the persecutions of the gentle Clarissa.
+You<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> cannot think of it without imagining there, in one of the rooms, the
+comfortable, obese, touchy, rather pompous, double-chinned little
+gentleman, in his fair wig and dark coat, an ink-horn set in the arm of
+his chair with a quill sticking out of it, one hand thrust into the front
+of his waistcoat, the book or manuscript in his hand, reading gravely and
+deliberately his long, minute dissections of character, his elaborate
+descriptions of events and incidents, his formal dialogues, pleased when
+his stilted sentiment or simple sentimentality brought tears to the eyes
+of his listeners, and not ashamed to shed one or two with them.</p>
+
+<p>He drew a word-portrait of himself for Lady Bradshaigh, which is fairly
+well known but is worth repeating, and, judging by the portraits we have
+of him, is a fairly true one. He paints himself as “short, rather plump,
+about five feet five inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom,
+the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat
+that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support when attacked by sudden
+tremors or dizziness, which too frequently attack him, but, thank God! not
+so often as formerly; looking directly forthright, as passers-by would
+imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand of him without moving
+his short neck; hardly ever turning back; of a light-brown complexion,
+teeth not yet failing him; smooth faced, and ruddy cheeked; at some times
+looking to be about sixty-five, at other times much younger; a regular,
+even pace, stealing away the ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey
+eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head; by chance
+lively&mdash;very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> lively it will be, if he have hope of seeing a lady whom he
+loves and honours.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img23.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">RICHARDSON’S HOUSE. NORTH END FULHAM.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Richardson’s summer-house is long since gone from the garden, and long ago
+now The Grange was divided in two, and in the half that has been
+stucco-fronted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> Burne-Jones went to live in 1867, dying there in 1898.</p>
+
+<p>Five years after Goldsmith had given up proofreading for Richardson, you
+find him still drudging amid the squalor of Grub Street, still living from
+hand to mouth, writing reviews and prefaces, revising and preparing new
+editions of dull books on dull subjects, for a sum of twenty-one pounds
+compiling a two-volume <i>History of England</i> in the form of a series of
+letters, and generally subduing his heart and mind to the doing of the
+wretched hack-work to which the impecunious literary man in all ages has
+usually been condemned.</p>
+
+<p>His new taskmaster was Mr. Newbery the publisher, and he was living, in
+those days of 1762, in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street; but the publisher
+was not altogether ungenerous, and made arrangements that enabled his poor
+hack to leave town at intervals and work in the fresh air and rural
+environment of Islington. Newbery had chambers of his own there in
+Canonbury Tower, and Goldsmith used to put up at a cottage near by that
+was kept by an elderly Mrs. Fleming, a friend or relative of Newbery’s,
+his bills for board and lodging being periodically settled by his
+employer, who deducted the amount of them from whatever fell due to
+Goldsmith from time to time for work done. Fortunately Mrs. Fleming’s
+accounts have been preserved, and we get an idea of Goldsmith’s wardrobe
+from her washing-lists, and learn from the items she carefully details
+that she now and then lent him small sums in cash&mdash;tenpence one day, and
+one and twopence another; that occasionally, when he had a friend to
+dinner, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>though she duly noted it, she ostentatiously made no charge;
+but when four gentlemen came to take tea with him, she debited him with
+eighteenpence.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img24.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GOLDSMITH’S HOUSE. CANONBURY.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>Probably one of those friends who had a free dinner was Hogarth, for he
+travelled out to Islington occasionally on a visit to Goldsmith; and there
+is a painting of his which is known as “Goldsmith’s Hostess,� and is
+believed to be none other than Mrs. Fleming’s portrait.</p>
+
+<p>You remember Boswell’s story of how <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i> saved
+Goldsmith from imprisonment for debt. “I received one morning a letter
+from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress,� Johnson told him,
+“and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come
+to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to
+him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that
+his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent
+passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a
+bottle of madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork in the bottle,
+desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which
+he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the
+press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit. I
+told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller,
+sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged
+his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used
+him so ill.� Everything points to Mrs. Fleming as that harsh landlady, and
+the lodging in her cottage at Islington as the scene of that famous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+interlude. The presumption is that Goldsmith had incurred a much heavier
+liability to her than was covered by what was accruing to him for his
+services to Newbery, as a result of his giving time to the writing of <i>The
+Vicar of Wakefield</i> that should have been devoted to his usual drudgery;
+and the cautious Newbery declined to make further advances, and advised
+his relative, the landlady, to adopt summary methods for the recovery of
+her debt. Goldsmith never lodged with Mrs. Fleming after that date; but
+later, when Newbery took a lease of Canonbury Tower, he was from time to
+time a guest there, and occupied a room in the turret. During one of these
+visits he wrote <i>The Traveller</i>; and in later years Charles Lamb often
+walked across from his Islington home to the Tower to watch the sunset
+from the summit, and to be entertained by the tenant of it in the panelled
+chamber where Goldsmith’s poem was written.</p>
+
+<p>It was with the publication of <i>The Traveller</i> that Goldsmith began to
+emerge from Grub Street. Its success was considerable enough to lead to
+the publisher’s looking out the manuscript of <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i>,
+and issuing that also; and in 1768, having made five hundred pounds by the
+production and publishing of <i>The Good-natured Man</i>, he removed from an
+attic in the Staircase, Inner Temple, and purchased a lease of three rooms
+on the second floor of 2 Brick Court, Temple. Blackstone, the lawyer, then
+working on his <i>Commentaries</i>, had chambers immediately below him, and
+complained angrily of the distracting noises&mdash;the singing, dancing, and
+playing blind-man’s-buff&mdash;that went on over his head when Goldsmith was
+entertaining his friends.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img25.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">OLIVER GOLDSMITH</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>Pale, round-faced, plain-featured, with a bulging forehead and an ugly,
+long upper lip, there was more of kindness and geniality than of dignity
+or intellect in Goldsmith’s appearance. “His person was short,� says
+Boswell, who was jealous of his friendship with Johnson, and never
+realised how great he was, “his countenance was coarse and vulgar, his
+deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. Those
+who were in any way distinguished excited envy in him to so ridiculous an
+excess that the instances of it are hardly credible.� But Boswell
+misjudged him because, conceited and petty himself, he easily read those
+qualities into the behaviour of the other, and so misunderstood him.
+Goldsmith may have had some harmless vanity in the matter of dress, when
+he could afford to indulge it; but as for vanity of his achievements, that
+speaking of poetry as</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“My shame in crowds, my solitary pride,�</p></div>
+
+<p>is the spontaneous confession of a naturally shy and diffident spirit.
+When a man has been buffeted as he had been, has had to slave so hard and
+wait so long for his reward as he had slaved and waited, he accepts the
+fame that comes to him merely as wages well earned, and is not likely to
+grow swollen-headed concerning it. And for his envious character&mdash;here is
+what Boswell gives as a specimen of it. Johnson had come from an
+unexpected interview with the king, and a party of friends at Sir Joshua
+Reynolds’s house in Leicester Square were gathered about him pressing for
+a full account of what had taken place. During all the time that Johnson
+was employed in this narration, remarks Boswell, “Dr. Goldsmith remained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+unmoved upon a sofa at some distance, affecting not to join in the least
+in the eager curiosity of the company. He assigned as a reason for his
+gloom and seeming inattention that he apprehended Johnson had relinquished
+his purpose of furnishing him with a prologue to his play, with the hopes
+of which he had been flattered; but it was strongly suspected that he was
+fretting with chagrin and envy at the singular honour Dr. Johnson had
+lately enjoyed. At length, the frankness and simplicity of his natural
+character prevailed. He sprung from the sofa, advanced to Johnson, and in
+a kind of flutter from imagining himself in the situation which he had
+just been hearing described, exclaimed, ‘Well, you acquitted yourself in
+this conversation better than I should have done; for I should have bowed
+and stammered through the whole of it.’� Naturally this talk with the king
+would not seem such a breathlessly overwhelming honour to such a man as
+Goldsmith as to such a snob as Boswell. It was in keeping with Goldsmith’s
+nature that he should sit quietly listening and imagining the whole thing
+as he heard about it, instead of fussing round open-mouthed to pester the
+narrator with trivial questions; but Boswell was incapable of realising
+this.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img26.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">2 BRICK COURT. THE TEMPLE.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>When Boswell, in his toadying spirit, was saying that in any conversation
+Johnson was entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority, and
+Goldsmith, with a truer conception of the art and pleasure of social
+intercourse, replied, “Sir, you are for making a monarchy of what should
+be a republic,� Boswell took it as another proof of Goldsmith’s envy, and
+of his “incessant desire of being conspicuous in company.� He goes on
+to say: “He was still more mortified when, talking in a company with
+fluent vivacity and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all who
+were present, a German who sat next to him, and perceived Johnson rolling
+himself as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, ‘Stay, stay!
+Toctor Shonson is going to say something!’ This was no doubt very
+provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who frequently
+mentioned it with strong expressions of indignation.� A vain man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> would
+not have mentioned it frequently, but a man with Goldsmith’s sense of fun
+would be tickled by it, and rejoice to tell it as a joke against himself,
+simulating indignation to heighten the jest. When he heard that jape at
+Sir Joshua’s table of taking peas to Hammersmith because that was the way
+to Turn’am Green, and afterwards retelling it muddled the phrase and made
+nonsense of it, Boswell offers it as further evidence that he was a
+blundering fool. But it is more likely that he blundered on purpose,
+merely to raise a laugh, that being his queer, freakish fashion of humour.
+But the Laird of Auchinleck and some of the others were too staid and
+heavy to follow his nimble wits in their grotesque and airy dancings.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img27.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">STAIRS UP TO SECOND FLOOR. 2 BRICK COURT.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Why, even the egregious Boswell has to admit that “Goldsmith, however, was
+often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the lists
+with Johnson himself.� And once, when Johnson observed, “It is amazing how
+little Goldsmith knows; he seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than
+any one else,� Reynolds put in quietly, “Yet there is no man whose company
+is more liked�; and the Doctor promptly admitted that, saying, “When
+people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their
+inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them.� But
+that did not fully explain why he was liked, of course; and what Johnson
+added as to “what Goldsmith comically says of himself� shows that Goldie
+knew his own weaknesses, and was amused by them. Lamb would have
+understood him and laughed with him, for he loved to frivol and play the
+fool in the same vein. When he was dead, Johnson said he was “a very
+great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> man�; and don’t you think there is some touch of remorse in that
+later remark of his, that the partiality of Goldsmith’s friends was always
+against him, and “it was with difficulty we could give him a hearing�?</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img28.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GOLDSMITH’S GRAVE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>When he lay dead in his chambers at 2 Brick Court, as Forster relates, the
+staircase was filled with mourners the reverse of domestic&mdash;“women without
+a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had
+come to weep for; outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom
+he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. And he had domestic
+mourners, too. His coffin was reopened at the request of Miss Horneck and
+her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for them), that a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn’s possession when she
+died, after nearly seventy years.� When Burke was told that Goldsmith was
+dead, he burst into tears; and when the news reached Reynolds in his
+Leicester Square painting-room, he laid his brush aside&mdash;a thing he had
+not been known to do even in times of great family distress&mdash;left his
+study, and entered it no more that day. A vain and envious fool is not
+mourned in that fashion.</p>
+
+<p>“I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which were his,�
+writes Thackeray, “and passed up the staircase which Johnson and Burke and
+Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith&mdash;the
+stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that
+the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak
+door.�</p>
+
+<p>No. 2 Brick Court would be memorable enough if it held no other memory;
+but in 1839 Mackworth Praed died in the same house, and for a short time
+in 1855 Thackeray too had chambers in it.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<p class="title">HOMES AND HAUNTS OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL</p>
+
+
+<p>If we were not quite such a business people, and had not so fully
+satisfied ourselves that the making of money is the chief end of
+existence, we should put up a statue to Dr. Johnson in Fleet Street, even
+if we had to knock down a house or two to find room for it. The statue by
+Mr. Percy Fitzgerald that has been erected in St. Clement Danes
+Churchyard, in the Strand, is better than nothing, but it is too
+insignificant in appearance, and stands in the wrong place. Johnson is
+still so far removed from death that he is more alive to-day than when he
+was living, and Fleet Street, and the courts and alleys opening out of
+Fleet Street, are his proper kingdom. Other great spirits haunt the same
+ground, but he overshadows them all.</p>
+
+<p>At one time or another during the later forty-seven years of his life
+Johnson had sixteen different addresses in London, and six of them were in
+Fleet Street byways. On his first visit to town, in 1737, he had lodgings
+at Exeter Street, Strand, and made some short stay at Greenwich, whence he
+wrote to Cave, the publisher, offering to contribute to his <i>Gentleman’s
+Magazine</i>. Next year he and his wife finally removed from Lichfield, and
+lodged first in Woodstock Street, Hanover Square, and then in Castle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+Street, Cavendish Square. Presently he flitted to the Strand; to Bow
+Street; to Holborn; to Fetter Lane; to Holborn again; then to Gough
+Square, at the top of Wine Office Court, where he lived for ten years;
+then to Staple Inn; to Gray’s Inn; to No. 1 Inner Temple Lane; to No. 7
+Johnson’s Court (so named before his time, as Boswell Court was before
+Boswell’s); and thence to Bolt Court, where, in 1784, he died.</p>
+
+<p>Of all these homes of Johnson’s, only two are now surviving&mdash;that in
+Staple Inn, which cannot be identified (we know only that it was one of
+the houses in the square); and that in Gough Square, which, next to the
+Bolt Court house, was the most interesting of his sixteen residences&mdash;and
+one is grateful that, mainly owing to the good offices of Mr. Cecil
+Harmsworth, it has been saved from demolition, and is now opened as a
+Johnson museum.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson was still a bookseller’s hack and a comparatively unknown man
+when, in 1747, at the age of thirty-eight, he started work on his
+<i>Dictionary</i>. He was then living in Holborn; but next year he moved into
+Gough Square, and it was here that most of this colossal work was done.
+And to-day, when you visit that house, you find that all the teeming life
+of the last hundred and sixty years has drained out of it completely, and
+nothing remains in the old rooms but memories of Johnson and his friends.
+He works there for ever now in the study that used to be his, poring
+short-sightedly over books and papers; and in the queer, sloping-ceilinged
+garret above are his six assistants, copying, hunting out references for
+the <i>Dictionary</i>, and busy with all the mechanical part of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> the
+undertaking. You have only to stand there and think of it, and, if you
+have read Boswell and Hawkins, the life of the household as it was in
+those ten years long past refashions itself around you in the magic,
+old-world atmosphere of the place.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img29.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ENTRANCE TO STAPLE INN.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>Five publishers joined in commissioning Johnson to compile the
+<i>Dictionary</i>, and arranged to pay him a sum of £1575, out of which he had
+to engage his assistants. “For the mechanical part,� writes Boswell, “he
+employed six amanuenses; and let it be remembered by the natives of North
+Britain, to whom he is supposed to have been so hostile, that five of them
+were of that country. There were two Messieurs Macbean; Mr. Shiels; Mr.
+Stewart, son of Mr. George Stewart, bookseller at Edinburgh; and a Mr.
+Maitland. The sixth of these humble assistants was Mr. Peyton, who, I
+believe, taught French, and published some elementary tracts.� That upper
+room in Gough Square was fitted up like a counting-house, and each of the
+six workers in it was allotted his separate task. Boswell goes on to
+describe Johnson’s method: “The words, partly taken from other
+dictionaries and partly supplied by himself, having been first written
+down with spaces left between them, he delivered in writing their
+etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were
+copied from the books themselves, in which he had marked the passages with
+a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could easily be effaced. I have
+seen several of them in which that trouble had not been taken, so that
+they were just as when used by the copyists. It is remarkable that he was
+so attentive in the choice of the passages in which words were authorised
+that one may read page<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> after page of his <i>Dictionary</i> with improvement
+and pleasure; and it should not pass unobserved that he has quoted no
+author whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and
+morality.... He is now to be considered as ‘tugging at his oar,’ as
+engaged in a steady, continued course of occupation, sufficient to employ
+all his time for some years, and which was the best preventive of that
+constitutional melancholy which was ever lurking about him, ready to
+trouble his quiet.�</p>
+
+<p>In after years, with his natural, large kindness of disposition, Johnson
+retained a sympathetic interest in those six assistants of his. The elder
+of the two Macbeans fell at length into great poverty, and Johnson helped
+him by writing a preface to his <i>System of Ancient Geography</i>, and
+afterwards influenced Lord Thurlow in getting him admitted as a Poor
+Brother of the Charterhouse. He had Shiel, who was dying of consumption,
+to help him with his <i>Lives of the Poets</i>; and when Peyton died almost
+destitute, it was Johnson who paid his funeral expenses.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst he was “tugging at his oar� and making steady headway with the
+<i>Dictionary</i>, Johnson sought recreation in founding one of his many
+literary clubs&mdash;an informal little club that met of evenings in Ivy Lane,
+Paternoster Row, and numbered among its members Hawkesworth, who succeeded
+Johnson as compiler of Parliamentary debates for the <i>Gentleman’s
+Magazine</i>, and later edited and wrote most of a bi-weekly, <i>The
+Adventurer</i>; Dr. Bathurst, who with Johnson and Warton contributed to that
+<i>Adventurer</i>; and Hawkins, who in due course became one of Johnson’s
+executors and biographers. He had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> published his satire, <i>London</i>, eleven
+years before this; but it was whilst he was living in Gough Square, with
+the <i>Dictionary</i> in full progress, that he wrote and published his only
+other great satire, <i>The Vanity of Human Wishes</i>, with its references to
+the hope deferred, the hardships of his own life, and the obscurity and
+poverty from which he was but now gradually beginning to emerge:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“When first the college rolls receive his name,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Resistless burns the fever of renown,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Caught from the strong contagion of the gown:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O’er Bodley’s dome his future labours spread,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And Bacon’s mansion trembles o’er his head.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Are these thy views? proceed, illustrious youth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet should thy soul indulge the generous heat,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Till captive science yields her last retreat;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And pour on misty doubt resistless day;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Should no false kindness lure to loose delight,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Should no disease thy torpid veins invade</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Nor melancholy’s phantom haunt thy shade;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And pause awhile from learning to be wise:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">See nations slowly wise, and meanly just,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To buried merit raise the tardy bust.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If dreams yet flatter, yet again attend,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Hear Lydiat’s life, and Galileo’s end.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>Had the Gough Square house been memorable only as the birthplace of the
+<i>Dictionary</i>, it would have been enough to have given it immortality; for,
+as Carlyle says (and Carlyle once went reverently over these rooms, and
+wrote a record of his visit), “Had Johnson left nothing but his
+<i>Dictionary</i>, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine
+man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity,
+honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all
+dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands
+there like a great, solid, square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically
+complete; you judge that a true builder did it.� But, still while the
+<i>Dictionary</i> was going on, shortly after the publication of <i>The Vanity of
+Human Wishes</i>, which yielded him £15, Garrick produced his tragedy of
+<i>Irene</i> at Drury Lane. It was a failure on the stage; the audience
+shrieked “Murder! murder!� when the bowstring was placed round the
+heroine’s neck; but Johnson, feeling that a dramatic author should be more
+gaily dressed than it was his wont to appear, sat in a box on the first
+night in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat,
+and accepted his failure with unruffled calmness; and Dodsley paid him
+£100 for the right to publish the play as a book.</p>
+
+<p>Still while he was in the thick of the <i>Dictionary</i>, he set himself, in
+1750, to start <i>The Rambler</i>, and you may take it that he was sitting in
+his Gough Square study one night when he wrote that prayer before
+publishing his first number:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Almighty God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all labour
+is ineffectual, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>without whose grace all wisdom is folly; grant, I
+beseech Thee, that in this undertaking Thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld
+from me, but that I may promote Thy glory, and the salvation of myself and
+others. Grant this, O Lord, for the sake of Thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img30.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His first number was printed on the 20th March 1750, and he issued it
+every Saturday and Tuesday afterwards for two years. “This,� as Boswell
+has it, “is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, that ‘a
+man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it’; for,
+notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits,
+and his labour in carrying on his <i>Dictionary</i>, he answered the stated
+calls of the press twice a week, from the stores of his mind, during all
+that time; having received no assistance, except four billets in No. 10,
+by Miss Mulso, now Mrs. Chapone; No. 30, by Miss Catherine Talbot; No. 97,
+by Mr. Samuel Richardson; and Nos. 44 and 100, by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter.�
+He was so pressed for time that he wrote a good many of the essays in such
+haste that he had no opportunity even to read them through again before
+they were printed. One thing that particularly gratified Johnson in
+connection with the <i>Rambler</i> was that his wife said to him, after she had
+read a few numbers, “I thought very well of you before, but I did not
+imagine you could have written anything equal to this.�</p>
+
+<p>Gough Square is hallowed, too, with sadder memories of Johnson’s wife, for
+she died here in March 1752; and to the end of his days he never forgot
+her or ceased to sorrow for her. She was a plain-featured<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> woman some
+years older than himself, but he always spoke of her with a wonderful
+tenderness and love, and as of one who had been beautiful to look upon.
+How deeply he felt her loss is evident not merely from some of his
+sayings, but from his letters, and from those <i>Prayers and Meditations</i>,
+in which he set down his most intimate thoughts and feelings. After his
+death, this written prayer was found among his papers, dated in the month
+after her passing:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="right">“<i>April 26th, 1752, being after 12 at night of the 25th.</i></p>
+
+<p>“O Lord! Governor of heaven and earth, in whose hands are embodied and
+departed spirits, if Thou hast ordained the souls of the dead to
+minister to the living, and appointed my departed wife to have care of
+me, grant that I may enjoy the good effects of her attention and
+ministration, whether exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams, or in
+any other manner agreeable to Thy government. Forgive my presumption,
+enlighten my ignorance, and however meaner agents are employed, grant
+me the blessed influences of Thy Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our
+Lord. Amen.�</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img31.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">DR. JOHNSON’S HOUSE. GOUGH SQUARE.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>You may stand in the Square to-night, after twelve at night, when all the
+windows of all the other houses are dark, as they were in that night of
+1752, and look up at the window in which the solitary light burned then,
+whilst, within, the grief-stricken Johnson sat alone in his study writing
+down that humble, mournful aspiration, and as you look the same light
+kindles there and glimmers desolately again for all who have eyes to see
+it. Nor was this the only record of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>sorrow that was written in that
+room, for you find these notes in his journal a year later:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“<i>March 28, 1753.</i> I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty’s death,
+with prayers and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her
+conditionally, if it were lawful.�</p>
+
+<p>“<i>April 23, 1753.</i> I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain
+longings of affection; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that when
+I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy
+interview, and that in the meantime I am incited by it to piety. I will,
+however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of
+devotion.�</p>
+
+<p>Boswell tells us that he preserved her wedding-ring reverently as long as
+he lived, keeping it in “a little round wooden box, in the inside of which
+he pasted a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">‘Eheu!<br />
+Eliz. Johnson,<br />
+Nupta Jul. 9º, 1736,<br />
+Mortua, eheu!<br />
+Mart. 17º, 1752.’�</p>
+
+<p>Some thought of her, indeed, rises again and again thereafter in those
+<i>Prayers and Meditations</i> of his, and so makes this house peculiarly
+reminiscent of her. Before Mrs. Johnson’s death, Mrs. Anna Williams had
+become a constant visitor at the house here. She was a poetess in a small
+way, daughter of a Welsh physician, and was in London having both her eyes
+treated for cataract. After his wife’s death, Johnson gave Mrs. Williams
+accommodation in Gough Square<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> whilst her eyes were operated upon; and,
+the operation failing and complete blindness following it, with his usual
+big-hearted humanity he allowed her an apartment in this and each of his
+subsequent homes; and you remember Boswell’s complaint of how his
+fastidious susceptibilities were outraged by the way in which she felt
+round the edges of the cups to see if they were full, when she presided
+over the tea-table. In the same spirit, Johnson gave house-room here also,
+and elsewhere, to that simplest and most kindly of medical practitioners,
+Dr. Robert Levett, on whose death, several years later, he wrote the best
+of his shorter poems.</p>
+
+<p>You get a good idea of his general manner of life in Gough Square from the
+note that Boswell obtained from Francis Barber, Johnson’s black servant,
+who wrote that on his wife’s death Johnson was “in great affliction. Mrs.
+Williams was then living in his house, which was in Gough Square. He was
+busy with the <i>Dictionary</i>. Mr. Shiels and some others of the gentlemen
+who had formerly written for him used to come about the house. He had then
+little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr. Shiels when in
+distress. The friends who visited him at that time were chiefly Dr.
+Bathurst, and Mr. Diamond, an apothecary in Cork Street, Burlington
+Gardens, with whom he and Mrs. Williams generally dined every Sunday.
+There were also Mr. Cave; Dr. Hawkesworth; Mr. Rydal, merchant on Tower
+Hill; Mrs. Masters, the poetess, who lived with Mr. Cave; Mrs. Carter; and
+sometimes Mrs. Macaulay; also Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow-chandler on
+Snow Hill, not in the learned way, but a worthy good woman; Mr. (now Sir
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>Joshua) Reynolds; Mr. Miller; Mr. Dodsley; Mr. Bouquet; Mr. Payne, of
+Paternoster Row, bookseller; Mr. Strachan the printer; the Earl of Orrery;
+Lord Southwell; Mr. Garrick.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img32.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JAMES BOSWELL</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It was shortly after the conclusion of <i>The Rambler</i> that Johnson first
+made the acquaintance of Bennet Langton. He had taken lodgings in a house
+that was frequently visited by Dr. Levett; and, with Johnson’s permission,
+Levett one day brought Langton to Gough Square, and, says Boswell:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Langton was exceedingly surprised when the sage first appeared. He
+had not received the smallest intimation of his figure, dress, or manner.
+From perusing his writings, he fancied he should see a decent,
+well-dressed&mdash;in short, a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of
+which, down from his bed-chamber, about noon, came, as newly risen, a huge
+uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head,
+and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich,
+so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so
+congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived
+for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved.�</p>
+
+<p>In 1753 Johnson “relieved the drudgery of his <i>Dictionary</i>� by writing
+essays for Hawkesworth’s <i>Adventurer</i>, and in this and the next two years
+did a lot of reviewing and varied hack-work for the magazines and
+miscellanies of his time; and in February 1775 he wrote that nobly
+scathing and touching letter to Lord Chesterfield, that is too well known
+to need reprinting, but must needs be reprinted here, because it was
+written from Gough Square, and would make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> any house from which it was
+written an honoured and sacred place to all who value the dignity of
+literature and glory in the emancipation of the literary man from the
+condescending benevolence of the private patron:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My Lord</span>,&mdash;I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of <i>The
+World</i>, that two papers in which my <i>Dictionary</i> is recommended to the
+public were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an
+honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great,
+I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.</p>
+
+<p>“When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship,
+I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of
+your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself
+<i>Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre</i>&mdash;that I might obtain that
+regard for which I saw the whole world contending; but I found my
+attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would
+suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in
+public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and
+uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man
+is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.</p>
+
+<p>“Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward
+rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
+pushing on with my work through difficulties, of which it is useless
+to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of
+publication, without one act of assistance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> one word of
+encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not
+expect, for I never had a patron before.</p>
+
+<p>“The shepherd in <i>Virgil</i> grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
+him a native of the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>“Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
+encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
+take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been
+delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
+solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
+hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where
+no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
+should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has
+enabled me to do for myself.</p>
+
+<p>“Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
+favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall
+conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
+wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with
+so much exultation,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“My lord, your lordship’s most humble,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">“Most obedient servant,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">“<span class="smcap">Sam. Johnson</span>.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>A few months after this the <i>Dictionary</i> was finished. There had been many
+delays; it was long behind the stipulated time, and the patience of the
+publishers was exhausted; but at last Johnson sent the last sheets of the
+great work to Mr. Miller, the Strand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> bookseller, who was chiefly
+concerned in the venture, and when the messenger returned from Miller’s
+shop Johnson asked him, “Well, what did he say?� “Sir,� answered the
+messenger, “he said, ‘Thank God I have done with him.’� “I am glad,�
+replied Johnson, with a smile, “that he thanks God for anything.�</p>
+
+<p>The publication of the <i>Dictionary</i> made him at once the most famous man
+of letters in London; but he had already spent the money that was paid for
+his labour, and had still to work hard with his pen to make “provision for
+the day that was passing over him.� In 1757 he took up again a scheme for
+an elaborate edition of Shakespeare with notes, and issued proposals and
+invited subscriptions for it; but it was another nine years before his
+Shakespeare made its appearance. Among his many visitors in 1758, Dr.
+Charles Burney, the father of Fanny Burney, called and “had an interview
+with him in Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea with him, and was
+introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Williams. After dinner, Mr. Johnson
+proposed to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret, which, being
+accepted, he there found about five or six Greek folios, a deal
+writing-desk, and a chair and a half. Johnson, giving his guest the entire
+seat, tottered himself on one with only three legs and one arm. Here he
+gave Mr. Burney Mrs. Williams’s history, and showed him some volumes of
+Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he was in earnest.� They
+proceeded to criticise Shakespeare’s commentators up there, and to discuss
+the controversy then raging between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke in
+connection with an unauthorised publication of certain of Bolingbroke’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+letters to Pope, who was recently dead. And in the April of this same year
+Johnson began to write his essays for <i>The Idler</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img33.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JOHNSON’S CORNER. THE CHESHIRE CHEESE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, you have a varied and intimate series of pictures, a sort of
+panoramic view of the life that Johnson lived in his Gough Square house,
+and amid his old surroundings are able to recreate him for yourself in all
+his varying circumstances and changing moods&mdash;working there at his
+<i>Dictionary</i> and his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> multifarious writings; sorrowing for his wife;
+entertaining his friends; sallying forth morning and evening to walk along
+Fleet Street to the church of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand, assuming
+that he kept the resolution to do so that is entered at this date in his
+journal; and, almost every Sunday afternoon, coming staidly down the steps
+with Mrs. Williams, and setting out to dine with Mr. Diamond, the
+apothecary of Cork Street; on many evenings strolling along Wine Office
+Court, to forgather with friends in the parlour of the “Cheshire Cheese,�
+where the seat traditionally occupied by him and Goldsmith is still to be
+seen; or going farther to a meeting of his club in Ivy Lane. There is a
+capital story told by Hawkins of how one night at that club a suggestion
+was made that they should celebrate the publication of Mrs. Lennox’s first
+novel, <i>The Life of Harriet Stuart</i>, with a supper at the Devil Tavern, in
+Fleet Street. Johnson threw himself heart and soul into the proposal, and
+declared that they would honour the event by spending the whole night in
+festivity. On the evening fixed, at about eight o’clock, Mrs. Lennox and
+her husband, and some twenty friends and members of the club, gathered at
+the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, and, by Johnson’s orders, a magnificent hot
+apple-pie adorned with bay leaves formed a principal item of the menu. He
+himself crowned Mrs. Lennox with laurel; and, true to his resolve, he kept
+the feast going right through the night. “At 5 <span class="smcaplc">A.M.</span>,� says Hawkins,
+“Johnson’s face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been
+only lemonade.� The day was beginning to dawn when they all partook of a
+“second refreshment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> of coffee,� and it was broad daylight and eight
+o’clock before the party broke up, and Johnson made his way back up Fleet
+Street, round into Gough Square, and to the prosaic resumption of work on
+the <i>Dictionary</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after starting <i>The Idler</i>, Johnson left Gough Square and took rooms
+in Staple Inn, where he presently wrote <i>Rasselas</i> in the evenings of one
+week, and so raised £100, that “he might defray the expenses of his
+mother’s funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left.�</p>
+
+<p>All these things had happened, and Johnson had risen into fame and become
+“the great Cham of letters,� before Boswell had made his acquaintance. The
+historic meeting between these two did not come about until 1763, and then
+it took place at No. 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden&mdash;another famous house
+that is fortunately still in existence. It was then occupied by Thomas
+Davies, the actor, who had retired from the stage and opened a
+bookseller’s shop there. He knew Johnson, who frequently visited him, and
+on his invitation Boswell was there several times in hopes of meeting the
+great man; again and again it happened that on the days when he was in
+waiting Johnson failed to appear, but in the end his patience was
+rewarded, and this is his own account of the interview, taken from notes
+he made of it on the very day of its occurrence:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“At last, on Monday, the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies’s
+back parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson
+unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies, having perceived him
+through the glass door in the room in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> which we were sitting, advancing
+towards us, he announced his awful approach to me, somewhat in the manner
+of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the
+appearance of his father’s ghost: ‘Look, my lord, it comes!’ I found that
+I had a very perfect idea of Johnson’s figure, from the portrait of him
+painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his
+<i>Dictionary</i>, in the attitude of sitting in his easy-chair in deep
+meditation. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me
+to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the
+Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, ‘Don’t tell where I
+come from.’ ‘From Scotland,’ cried Davies roguishly. ‘Mr. Johnson,’ said
+I, ‘I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.’ He retorted,
+‘That, sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot
+help.’ This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I
+felt myself not a little embarrassed and apprehensive of what might come
+next. He then addressed himself to Davies: ‘What do you think of Garrick?
+He has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he
+knows the house will be full, and that an order would be worth three
+shillings.’ Eager to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I
+ventured to say, ‘O sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a
+trifle to you.’ ‘Sir,’ said he, with a stern look, ‘I have known David
+Garrick longer than you have done, and I know no right you have to talk to
+me on the subject.’ Perhaps I deserved this check; for it was rather
+presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any doubt of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance and pupil. I now
+felt myself much mortified, and began to think that the hope which I had
+long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was blasted.� But he sat on
+resolutely, and was rewarded by hearing some of Johnson’s conversation, of
+which he kept notes, that are duly reproduced in the <i>Life</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img34.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">WHERE BOSWELL FIRST MET JOHNSON.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>“I was highly pleased with the extraordinary vigour of his conversation,�
+he concludes his account of the meeting, “and regretted that I was drawn
+away from it by an engagement at another place. I had for a part of the
+evening been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation
+now and then, which he received very civilly; so I was satisfied that,
+though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his
+disposition. Davies followed me to the door; and when I complained to him
+a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly
+took upon him to console me by saying, ‘Don’t be uneasy; I can see he
+likes you very well.’�</p>
+
+<p>Davies’s shop is kept nowadays by a Covent Garden salesman. Instead of
+being lined with books, it is filled with baskets of fruit and sacks of
+potatoes, and the parlour wall and that glass-panelled parlour door are
+thrown down, and parlour and shop are all one. But the upper part of the
+house remains practically unaltered, and with a little imagining you can
+restore the lower to what it was when these walls held the gruff rumbling
+of the Doctor’s voice, and looked down on the humiliation of Boswell under
+the roguish eyes of Davies and his pretty wife.</p>
+
+<p>Another house that has glamorous associations with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> Johnson is No. 5
+Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived, and where he died, in a back room on
+the first floor, in 1779. Two years later Johnson was one of a party that
+dined there with Mrs. Garrick, and one cannot do better than repeat the
+indispensable Boswell’s report of the event:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“On Friday, April 20, I spent with him one of the happiest days that I
+remember to have enjoyed in the whole course of my life. Mrs. Garrick,
+whose grief for the loss of her husband was, I believe, as sincere as
+wounded affection and admiration could produce, had this day, for the
+first time since his death, a select party of his friends to dine with
+her. The company was: Mrs. Hannah More, who lived with her, and whom she
+called her chaplain; Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, Dr. Burney, Dr. Johnson, and myself. We found ourselves very
+elegantly entertained at her house in the Adelphi, where I have passed
+many a pleasing hour with him ‘who gladdened life.’ She looked well,
+talked of her husband with complacency, and while she cast her eyes on his
+portrait, which hung over the chimney-piece, said that ‘death was now the
+most agreeable object to her.’... We were all in fine spirits; and I
+whispered to Mrs. Boscawen, ‘I believe this is as much as can be made of
+life.’� After recording the conversation of Johnson and divers of the
+others, Boswell goes on: “He and I walked away together. We stopped a
+little by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to
+him, with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost
+who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>‘Ay,
+sir,’ said he tenderly, ‘and two such friends as cannot be supplied.’�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img35.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BOSWELL’S HOUSE. GREAT QUEEN STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>In the summer of 1784 Boswell was in London as usual, and saw Johnson,
+then an old man of seventy-five, for the last time. On the 30th June, he
+and Johnson dined with Sir Joshua Reynolds in Leicester Square, and when
+Johnson went home Boswell accompanied him in Sir Joshua’s coach to the
+entry of Bolt Court, in Fleet Street, and was so affected at parting that
+he would not accompany him to the house, and they bade each other an
+affectionate adieu in the carriage. Johnson stepped out on to the
+pavement, and, walking briskly, vanished into the yawn of Bolt Court, and,
+for Boswell, into the jaws of death, for he never saw him again. He went
+home to the north two days after, and in December Johnson died.</p>
+
+<p>On his annual visits to London Boswell lived in various lodgings; but in
+or about 1786 he rented the house, still standing, at 56 Great Queen
+Street, and brought his wife to town with him. They occupied this place
+for some two years; and it is evident from his letters to Bishop Percy and
+the Rev. T. W. Temple that, whilst residing there, he wrote most of the
+last seven years of his <i>Life of Johnson</i>. Boswell died in London, in
+1795, at No. 122 (formerly 47) Great Portland Street.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<p class="title">BLAKE AND FLAXMAN</p>
+
+
+<p>Ten years before Boswell went to live at 56 Great Queen Street, William
+Blake was serving an apprenticeship to James Basire, the well-known
+engraver, whose house was close by at No. 31 in the same street. Basire’s
+residence has gone the way of all bricks and mortar; but happily Soho
+still preserves the corner house at No. 28 Broad Street, in which Blake
+was born. He was born there on the 28th November 1857, over his father’s
+hosiery shop, and it was there that the first of his strange visions came
+to him; for he used to say that when he was only four years old he one day
+saw the face of God at the window looking in upon him, and the sight set
+him a-screaming. When he was four or five years older, you hear of him
+taking long rambles into the country; and it was on Peckham Rye that other
+visions came to him. Once he saw a tree there “filled with angels, bright
+angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars�; and once, on a summer
+morning, he saw “the haymakers at work, and amid them angelic figures
+walking.� In his matter-of-fact fashion he recounted the first of these
+two visions on his return home, and his mother had to intervene to prevent
+the honest hosier and conscientious Nonconformist, his father, from
+thrashing him for telling a lie.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>At the age of ten Blake was journeying to and from the house in Broad
+Street to Mr. Paris’s academy in the Strand, taking drawing lessons. He
+was already writing poetry, too, and before he was fourteen had written
+one of the most beautiful and glitteringly imaginative of his lyrics:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“How sweet I roamed from field to field,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And tasted all the summer’s pride,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Till I the Prince of Love beheld</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Who in the sunny beams did glide.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He showed me lilies for my hair,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And blushing roses for my brow;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He led me through his gardens fair</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Where all his golden pleasures grow.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With sweet May-dews my wings were wet,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He caught me in his silken net,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And shut me in his golden cage.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He loves to sit and hear me sing,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Then stretches out my golden wing,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And mocks my loss of liberty.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>In a preface to his first published volume, the <i>Poetical Sketches</i>, which
+contains this lyric, his Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter verses, “My
+Silks and fine Array,� and other lovely songs, he says that all the
+contents were “commenced in his twelfth, and occasionally resumed by the
+author till his twentieth year.� From fourteen till he was twenty-one
+Blake was living away from home with his master, Basire, the engraver;
+then he went back to his father’s, and commenced to study at the recently
+formed Royal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> Academy, and in 1780 exhibited his first picture there, “The
+Death of Earl Godwin.� Marrying in 1782, he set up housekeeping for
+himself at 23 Green Street, Leicester Square, and began to move abroad in
+literary society. Flaxman, already his friend, introduced him to Mrs.
+Mathew, a lady of blue-stocking tendencies, who held a sort of salon at 27
+Rathbone Place; and here, in 1784, “Rainy Day� Smith made his
+acquaintance. “At Mrs. Mathew’s most agreeable conversaziones,� he says,
+“I first met the late William Blake, to whom she and Mr. Flaxman had been
+truly kind. There I have often heard him read and sing several of his
+poems. He was listened to by the company with profound silence, and
+allowed by most of his listeners to possess original and extraordinary
+merit.� He knew nothing of musical technique, but sang some of his verses
+to airs that Smith describes as “singularly beautiful.� His republican
+opinions and general unorthodoxy and daring outspokenness, however, did
+not make for social amenity, and it was not long before he dropped out of
+these elegant circles, and withdrew to his mystic dreamings and the
+production of paintings and poetry that the majority could not understand.
+A strangely beautiful and wonderful Bird of Paradise to break from the
+nest over that hosier’s shop at the corner of Broad Street, Soho!</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img36.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BLAKE’S HOUSE. SOHO.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>When his father died, in 1784, Blake’s brother James took over and
+continued the business; and in the same year Blake himself opened the shop
+next door (No. 27) as an engraver and printseller, in partnership with
+James Parker, who had been one of his fellow-apprentices under Basire.
+Here he had his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>younger brother, Robert, with him as a pupil; and he
+used to say that when Robert died, in 1787, he saw his soul ascend through
+the ceiling, “clapping its hands for joy.� Falling out with Parker, Blake
+removed, in this year of his brother’s death, to 28 Poland Street, near
+by, where he said Robert’s spirit remained in communion with him, and
+directed him, “in a nocturnal vision, how to proceed in bringing out poems
+and designs in conjunction�; and the <i>Songs of Innocence</i>, published in
+1789, was the result of this inspiration. The method, as Alexander
+Gilchrist has it, “consisted in a species of engraving in relief both
+words and designs. The verse was written, and the designs and marginal
+embellishments outlined on the copper with an impervious liquid. Then all
+the white parts, or lights (the remainder of the plate, that is), were
+eaten away with aquafortis or other acid, so that the outline of letter
+and design was left prominent, as in stereotype. From these plates he
+printed off in any tint required to be the prevailing (or ground) colour
+in his facsimiles; red he used for the letterpress. The page was then
+coloured up by hand in imitation of the original drawing, with more or
+less variety of detail in the local hues.� A process of mixing his colours
+with diluted glue was revealed to him by St. Joseph. Mrs. Blake often
+helped him in tinting the designs, and it was her work to bind the books
+in boards. In the same year (1789) he put forth the finest of his long
+mystical poems, <i>The Book of Thel</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Poland Street in 1793, Blake moved across London to Lambeth, and
+made himself a new home at 13 Hercules Buildings. Gilchrist, one of his
+earliest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> biographers, made a mistake in his identification of this house,
+and until a year or two ago it was believed that Blake’s residence in that
+place had been pulled down. On a recent investigation of the Lambeth
+rate-books by the County Council authorities, however, it became clear
+that, instead of being on the west side of the street, as Gilchrist
+supposed, No. 13 was on the east side, next door but one to Hercules Hall
+Yard. Somewhere between 1830 and 1842 the whole road was renumbered, and
+Blake’s house had become No. 63, and was in 1890 renumbered again, and
+became, and is still, No. 23 Hercules Road. Whilst he was living here, Mr.
+Thomas Butts, of Fitzroy Square, became his most liberal and most constant
+patron; and on calling at Hercules Buildings one day, Mr. Butts says he
+found Blake and his wife sitting naked in their summer-house. “Come in!�
+Blake greeted him. “It’s only Adam and Eve, you know.� But Mr. Butts never
+took this as evidence of Blake’s madness: he and his wife had simply been
+reciting passages of <i>Paradise Lost</i> in character.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img37.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BLAKE. 23 HERCULES ROAD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>At Hercules Buildings Blake did a large number of paintings and
+engravings, including the 537 coloured drawings for Young’s <i>Night
+Thoughts</i>, and some of the greatest of his designs, such as the “Job� and
+“Ezekiel� prints; and here, too, he completed certain of his <i>Prophetic
+Books</i>, with their incomprehensible imagery and allegory, and what
+Swinburne has called their “sunless and sonorous gulfs.� From Hercules
+Buildings also came “Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the
+night,� and the rest of the <i>Songs of Experience</i>. Then, in 1800, Hayley,
+the poet of the dull and unreadable <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span><i>Triumphs of Temper</i>, persuaded him
+to move into the country and settle down in a cottage at Felpham; from
+which, because he said “the visions were angry with me at Felpham,� he
+returned to London early in 1804, and took lodgings on the first floor of
+17 South Moulton Street, Oxford Street.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img38.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BLAKE’S HOUSE. SOUTH MOULTON ST.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, at Felpham he must have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> working on his <i>Jerusalem</i>,
+and on <i>Milton, A Poem in Two Books</i>, for these were issued shortly after
+his arrival in South Moulton Street. He writes of <i>Jerusalem</i> in one of
+his letters: “I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve,
+or sometimes twenty or thirty, lines at a time, without premeditation, and
+even against my will�; and in a later letter, speaking of it as “the
+grandest poem that this world contains,� he excuses himself by remarking,
+“I may praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the
+secretary&mdash;the authors are in eternity.� Much of <i>Jerusalem</i> is turgid,
+obscure, chaotic, and so impossible to understand that Mr. Chesterton
+declares that when Blake said “that its authors were in eternity, one can
+only say that nobody is likely to go there to get any more of their work.�
+But it is in this poem that Blake introduces those verses “To the Jews,�
+setting forth that Jerusalem once stood in&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“The fields from Islington to Marybone,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">To Primrose Hill and Saint John’s Wood,�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>and that then&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“The Divine Vision still was seen,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Still was the human form divine;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Weeping in weak and mortal clay,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">O Jesus! still the form was Thine.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And Thine the human face; and Thine</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The human hands, and feet, and breath,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Entering through the gates of birth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And passing through the gates of death�;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>and in <i>Jerusalem</i> you have his lines “To the Deists,� the first version
+of his ballad of the Grey Monk, with its great ending:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+“For a tear is an intellectual thing,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the bitter groan of a martyr’s woe</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>For my part, I wish it were possible for some of our living poets to go
+again to those authors in eternity and get some more of such stuff as
+
+this, even if we had to have it embedded in drearier lumps of nonsense
+than you find in <i>Jerusalem</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Blake’s wife, daughter of a market-gardener, a woman so uneducated that
+she had to sign the marriage register with her mark, was not only an
+excellent housekeeper and domestic drudge, but was in perfect sympathy
+with him in his work, and had the greatest faith in his visions. Moses,
+Julius Cæsar, the Builder of the Pyramids, David, Uriah, Bathsheba,
+Solomon, Mahomet, Joseph, and Mary&mdash;these were among Blake’s spiritual
+visitants at South Moulton Street. They came and sat to him, and he worked
+at their portraits, “looking up from time to time as though he had a real
+sitter before him.� Sometimes he would leave off abruptly, and observe in
+matter-of-fact tones, “I can’t go on. It is gone; I must wait till it
+returns�; or, “It has moved; the mouth is gone�; or, “He frowns. He is
+displeased with my portrait of him.� If any one criticised and objected to
+the likeness he would reply calmly, “It <i>must</i> be right. I saw it so.� In
+all probability he meant no more than that he conjured up these sitters to
+his mind’s eye; but his friends took him literally, and he acquiesced in
+their doing so, and has been dubbed a madman in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Many times his wife would get up in the nights<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> “when he was under his
+very fierce inspirations, which were as if they would tear him asunder,
+while he was yielding himself to the Muse, or whatever else it could be
+called, sketching and writing. And so terrible a task did this seem to be
+that she had to sit motionless and silent, only to stay him mentally,
+without moving hand or foot; this for hours, and night after night.� It is
+not easy to realise that this burning, fiery spirit did once live in these
+South Moulton Street rooms, surrounded by his vivid and terrific
+imaginings, and then could pass out of it and leave it looking so dull and
+decorous, so ordinary, so entirely commonplace. But here he indubitably
+lived, so discouraged by neglect and hampered by poverty that he could not
+afford to issue any more large books like the <i>Jerusalem</i>, and in 1809
+made a desperate attempt to appeal to the public by holding an exhibition
+of his frescoes and drawings on the first floor of his brother’s hosiery
+shop in Broad Street. Very few visitors attended; but among the few was
+Lamb’s friend, Crabb Robinson, and when he went he had the room to
+himself. He paid for admission, recognised that these pictures were the
+work of no ordinary artist, and bought four of the catalogues, one of
+which he sent to Lamb; and when, on leaving, he asked the custodian
+whether he might come again free, James Blake, delighted at having a
+visitor, and one, moreover, who had bought something, cried, “Oh yes&mdash;free
+as long as you live!� But the exhibition was a failure. The popular
+painters of Blake’s day were Reynolds, Gainsborough, and men of their
+schools. Blake was born out of his time, and contemporary society had
+nothing in common<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> with him&mdash;no comprehension of his aim or his
+outlook&mdash;and dismissed him as an astonishing lunatic. When some drawings
+of his were shown to George III., his Majesty could only gaze at them
+helplessly and ejaculate a testy “Take them away! take them away!� The
+noble designs for Blair’s <i>Grave</i>, and the frescoes of <i>The Canterbury
+Pilgrimage</i>, were among the important works done at South Moulton Street,
+which Blake quitted in 1821, making his last change of residence to 3
+Fountain Court, Strand&mdash;a house kept by his brother-in-law, Baines. Here
+he occupied a room on the first floor for some six years, and when he was
+nearing his seventieth year, died, after a short illness, on Sunday, the
+12th August 1827. He lay dying in his plain back room, serene and
+cheerful, singing songs to melodies that were the inspiration of the
+moment; towards evening he fell silent, and passed quietly away, a poor
+woman, a neighbour who had come in to sit with his wife, saying
+afterwards, “I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed
+angel.�</p>
+
+<p>You have only to look at the portraits of Blake, at the broad
+forehead&mdash;the forehead of a revolutionary, as he himself said&mdash;the
+sensitive mouth, the large, intent, vision-haunted eyes, to know that his
+outward appearance fairly adequately revealed the manner of man that he
+really was. He was under five feet six in height and thick-set, but so
+well proportioned that he did not strike people as short. “He had an
+upright carriage,� says Gilchrist, “and a good presence; he bore himself
+with dignity, as not unconscious of his natural claims. The head and face
+were strongly stamped with the power and character of the man.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> There was
+a great volume of brain in that square, massive head, that piled-up brow,
+very full and rounded at the temples, where, according to phrenologists,
+ideality or imagination resides. His eyes were fine (‘wonderful eyes,’
+some one calls them), prominently set, but bright, spiritual,
+visionary&mdash;not restless or wild, but with a look of clear, heavenly
+exaltation. The eyes of some of the old men in his <i>Job</i> recall his own to
+surviving friends. His nose was insignificant as to size, but had that
+peculiarity which gives to a face an expression of fiery energy, as of a
+high-mettled steed&mdash;a little <i>clenched</i> nostril, a nostril that opened as
+far as it could, but was tied down at one end. His mouth was wide, the
+lips not full, but tremulous, and expressive of the great sensibility
+which characterised him. He was short-sighted, as the prominence of his
+eyes indicated&mdash;a prominence in keeping with the faculty for languages,
+according to phrenologists again. He wore glasses only occasionally.� His
+poverty forced him to study economy in the matter of dress. Indoors he was
+not slovenly, but generally wore a threadbare old suit, the grey trousers
+of which had been rubbed black and shiny in front like a mechanic’s. When
+he walked abroad he was more careful, and dressed plainly but well,
+something in the style of an old-fashioned tradesman, in black
+knee-breeches and buckles, black worsted stockings, shoes that tied, and a
+broad-brimmed hat.</p>
+
+<p>But for a memorable description of Blake in his habit as he lived, you
+must read this letter that was written to Gilchrist by Samuel Palmer, who
+knew him intimately in his latter years:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Blake, once known, could never be forgotten....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> In him you saw at once
+the maker, the inventor; one of the few in any age; a fitting companion
+for Dante. He was a man ‘without a mask’; his aim single, his path
+straightforwards, and his wants few; so he was free, noble, and happy. His
+voice and manner were quiet, yet all awake with intellect. Above the
+tricks of littleness, or the least taint of affectation, with a natural
+dignity which few would have dared to affront, he was gentle and
+affectionate, loving to be with little children and talk about them. ‘That
+is heaven,’ he said to a friend, leading him to a window and pointing to a
+group of them at play.</p>
+
+<p>“Declining, like Socrates, whom in many respects he resembled, the common
+objects of ambition, and pitying the scuffle to obtain them, he thought no
+one could be truly great who had not humbled himself ‘even as a little
+child.’ This was a subject he loved to dwell upon and to illustrate. His
+eye was the finest I ever saw; brilliant, but not roving, clear and
+intent, yet susceptible; it flashed with genius, or melted in tenderness.
+It could also be terrible.... Nor was the mouth less expressive, the lips
+flexible and quivering with feeling. I can yet recall it when, on one
+occasion, dwelling upon the exquisite beauty of the parable of the
+Prodigal, he began to repeat a part of it; but at the words, ‘When he was
+yet a great way off his father saw him,’ he could go no further; his voice
+faltered, and he was in tears.</p>
+
+<p>“He was one of the few to be met with in our passage through life who are
+not in some way or other double-minded and inconsistent with themselves;
+one of the very few who cannot be depressed by neglect, and to whose name
+rank and station could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> add no lustre. Moving apart, in a sphere above the
+attraction of worldly honours, he did not accept greatness, but conferred
+it. He ennobled poverty, and, by his conversation and the influence of his
+genius, made two small rooms in Fountain Court more attractive than the
+threshold of princes.�</p>
+
+<p>One of Blake’s warmest friends for many years was the great sculptor, John
+Flaxman. With none of Blake’s lawless, glowing imagination, Flaxman’s
+drawings in his illustrations to Homer, and his designs on some of the
+Wedgwood pottery, have a classical correctness&mdash;a cold, exquisite beauty
+of outline&mdash;that are more suggestive of the chisel than of the pencil or
+the brush; and it is in the splendid sculptures with which he has
+beautified Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, and many other of our cathedrals
+and churches that his genius found its highest expression. In his work as
+an artist Blake was largely influenced by Flaxman. They and Stothard used
+to meet at Mrs. Mathew’s; but there came a day when the friendship between
+these three was broken. Blake thought Flaxman had appropriated one of his
+designs, and there seems no doubt that Stothard did so, on the prompting
+of an unscrupulous picture-dealer; and you have Blake lampooning them
+both, as well as Hayley, with whom he had also fallen out, in epigrams
+that were not always just, and probably represented nothing worse than a
+passing mood, as thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“My title as a genius thus is proved:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Not praised by Hayley, nor by Flaxman loved.�</span><br />
+<br />
+“I found them blind, I taught them how to see,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And now they know neither themselves nor me.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>To Flaxman.</i></span><br />
+“You call me mad; ’tis folly to do so,&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To seek to turn a madman to a foe.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If you think as you speak, you are an ass;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If you do not, you are but what you was.�</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><i>To the same.</i></span><br />
+“I mock thee not, though I by thee am mocked;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thou call’st me madman, but I call thee blockhead.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Flaxman was not, like Blake, a born Londoner, but his family came from
+York, and settled down in London when he was six months old. His father
+had a shop in New Street, Covent Garden, where he made and sold plaster
+casts. Flaxman emerged from a sickly childhood, and developed into a
+sufficiently wiry and energetic man, though he remained feeble in
+appearance, so high-shouldered as to seem almost deformed, with a head too
+large for his body, and a queer sidelong gait in walking. He married in
+1782, and, after living for five years in a very small house at 27 Wardour
+Street, Soho&mdash;where he was elected collector of the watch-rate for the
+parish&mdash;he and his wife went to Italy, and spent seven years in Rome.
+Whilst he was there he fulfilled a commission for Romney, and collected
+and sent over to England a selection of casts from the antique, that
+Romney required for the use of students in his Hampstead painting-room.</p>
+
+<p>Returning from Italy in 1794, Flaxman took up residence at 17 Buckingham
+Street, Euston Road, and lived here through all his most famous years,
+till he died in 1826. Blake visited him here, and Haydon, and other of his
+artistic circle; for though he went little into society, he was
+unpretentiously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> hospitable, fond of entertaining his chosen friends,
+greatly esteemed and beloved by his pupils, models, and servants, and the
+poor of the neighbourhood, especially the children. He went about among
+the latter habitually, filling his sketch-book with drawings of them, and
+invariably carrying a pocketful of coppers to drop into the small grubby
+hands that were ready to receive them.</p>
+
+<p>The district hereabouts has degenerated since Flaxman’s day. His house was
+dull, insignificant, rather mean-looking, and now it looks more so than
+ever, amid its grimy surroundings&mdash;a pinched, old, dreary little house,
+that is yet transfigured when you remember the glorious visitors who have
+crossed its threshold, and that it was at this same dead door the postman
+knocked one day near the end of September 1800 and delivered this letter
+from Blake, who was then newly gone out of London and had not had time to
+begin to grow tired of his cottage at Felpham:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Sculptor of Eternity</span>,&mdash;We are safe arrived at our cottage, which
+is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient.... Mr.
+Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have begun to
+work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual
+than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her
+windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants
+are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen; and
+my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are
+both well, courting Neptune for an embrace....</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img39.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">FLAXMAN’S HOUSE. BUCKINGHAM STREET. EUSTON ROAD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“And now begins a new life, because another <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>covering of earth is
+shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well
+conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and
+pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before
+my mortal life; and these works are the delight and study of
+archangels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches and fame of
+mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to
+His divine will, for our good.</p>
+
+<p>“You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel&mdash;my friend and companion
+from eternity. In the divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back
+into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days, before
+this earth appeared in its vegetable mortality to my mortal vegetated
+eyes. I see our houses of eternity, which can never be separated,
+though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of
+heaven from each other.</p>
+
+<p>“Farewell, my best friend. Remember me and my wife in love and
+friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to
+entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold.�</p></div>
+
+<p>Later, when they quarrelled, Flaxman was not an archangel, but a blockhead
+and an ass; but that quarrel is not to be taken too seriously. Their
+houses of eternity were not separated, though their mortal vehicles were
+estranged; and it was on hearing Flaxman was dead that Blake said finely,
+“I can never think of death but as a going out of one room into another.�</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<p class="title">A HAMPSTEAD GROUP</p>
+
+
+<p>Out at Hampstead you may still visit what was once that studio of Romney’s
+to which Flaxman sent his collection of plaster casts from Italy. It had
+been a favourite idea of Romney’s, his son tells us, “to form a complete
+Gallery of Casts, and to open it to any youths of respectability,� and in
+his closing years, after he had removed to Hampstead, he carried out his
+wish, to some extent, with Flaxman’s aid, and had three pupils working in
+his studio there, copying the casts and studying under him. The house he
+occupied from 1796 to 1799 is now the Holly Bush Inn; he bought a piece of
+land at the back of it, and on this built himself a studio and gallery,
+which now form part of the Hampstead Constitutional Club. “It was to
+Hampstead that Hayley’s friend Romney, the painter, retired in the decline
+of his life,� writes J. T. Smith, in <i>Nollekens and his Times</i>, “when he
+built a dining-room close to his kitchen, with a buttery hatch opening
+into it, so that he and his friends might enjoy beef-steaks, hot and hot,
+upon the same plan as the members of the Beef-steak Club are supplied at
+their room in the Lyceum.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img40.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ROMNEY’S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Though Romney was then in the decline of his life, he was at the height of
+his fame. He had married at the age of nineteen, and six years later set
+out for London, leaving his wife behind at Kendal. He had no intention of
+deserting her, but in London his genius soon won recognition, he began to
+move in good society, and partly because Sir Joshua Reynolds had once said
+that “marriage spoilt an artist,� partly because he became infatuated with
+Nelson’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> enchantress, Lady Hamilton, he neither brought his wife to
+London, nor visited her, nor ever saw her again until he was dying. On
+April 28, 1799, Hayley called on him for the last time at Hampstead, and
+thought that “increasing weakness of body and mind afforded only a gloomy
+prospect for the residue of his life.� Then in July Flaxman saw him, and
+says in one of his letters, “I and my father dined at Mr. Romney’s at
+Hampstead last Sunday, by particular invitation, and were received in the
+most cordial manner; but, alas! I was grieved to see so noble a collection
+in a state so confused, so mangled, and prepared, I fear, for worse, and
+not better.� Very soon after this Romney left London for ever, and
+returned to Kendal and the wife he had neglected since the days of his
+obscure youth, and early in 1801, by his directions, “the collection of
+castes from the antique, a very fine skeleton, and other artistic
+properties of George Romney, at his late residence, Hollybush Hill,
+Hampstead,� were sold by Messrs. Christie.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, his wife had pardoned him and was caring for him. “Old, nearly
+mad, and quite desolate,� writes Fitzgerald, “he went back to her, and she
+received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth
+all Romney’s pictures!&mdash;even as a matter of art, I am sure.� It is this
+beautiful devotion of hers that gave Tennyson a subject for one of his
+later poems, <i>Romney’s Remorse</i>; in which the dying painter, rousing out
+of delirium, says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">“There&mdash;you spill</span><br />
+The drops upon my forehead. Your hand shakes.<br />
+I am ashamed. I am a trouble to you,<br />
+Could kneel for your forgiveness. Are they tears?<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>For me&mdash;they do me too much grace&mdash;for me?...<br />
+My curse upon the Master’s apothegm,<br />
+That wife and children drag an artist down!<br />
+This seemed my lodestar in the Heaven of Art,<br />
+And lured me from the household fire on earth....<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">This Art, that harlot-like,</span><br />
+Seduced me from you, leaves me harlot-like,<br />
+Who love her still, and whimper, impotent<br />
+To win her back before I die&mdash;and then&mdash;<br />
+Then in the loud world’s bastard judgment day<br />
+One truth will damn me with the mindless mob,<br />
+Who feel no touch of my temptation, more<br />
+Than all the myriad lies that blacken round<br />
+The corpse of every man that gains a name:<br />
+‘This model husband, this fine artist!’ Fool,<br />
+What matters! Six feet deep of burial mould<br />
+Will dull their comments! Ay, but when the shout<br />
+Of His descending peals from Heaven, and throbs<br />
+Thro’ earth and all her graves, if <i>He</i> should ask<br />
+‘Why left you wife and children? for My sake,<br />
+According to My word?’ and I replied,<br />
+‘Nay, Lord, for <i>Art</i>,’ why, that would sound so mean<br />
+That all the dead who wait the doom of Hell<br />
+For bolder sins than mine, adulteries,<br />
+Wife-murders&mdash;nay, the ruthless Mussulman<br />
+Who flings his bowstrung Harem in the sea,<br />
+Would turn and glare at me, and point and jeer<br />
+And gibber at the worm who, living, made<br />
+The wife of wives a widow-bride, and lost<br />
+Salvation for a sketch....<br />
+O let me lean my head upon your breast.<br />
+‘Beat, little heart,’ on this fool brain of mine.<br />
+I once had friends&mdash;and many&mdash;none like you.<br />
+I love you more than when we married. Hope!<br />
+O yes, I hope, or fancy that, perhaps,<br />
+Human forgiveness touches heaven, and thence&mdash;<br />
+For you forgive me, you are sure of that&mdash;<br />
+Reflected, sends a light on the forgiven.�</p></div>
+
+<p>Another famous artist who is closely associated with Hampstead was John
+Constable. In 1820, writing to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> his friend, the Rev. John Fisher
+(afterwards Archdeacon Fisher), he says, “I have settled my wife and
+children comfortably at Hampstead�; and a little later he writes, again to
+Fisher, “My picture is getting on, and the frame will be here in three
+weeks or a fortnight.... I now fear (for my family’s sake) I shall never
+make a popular artist, <i>a gentleman and ladies painter</i>. But I am spared
+making a fool of myself, and your hand stretched forth teaches me to value
+what I possess (if I may say so), and this is of more consequence than
+gentlemen and ladies can well imagine.� He was then living at No. 2 Lower
+Terrace, a small house of two storeys, and writes from that address, again
+to Fisher, on the 4th August 1821, “I am as much here as possible with my
+family. My placid and contented companion and her three infants are well.
+I have got a room at a glazier’s where is my large picture, and at this
+little place I have many small works going on, for which purpose I have
+cleared a shed in the garden, which held sand, coals, mops and brooms, and
+have made it a workshop. I have done a good deal here.� Lower Terrace is
+within a few minutes’ walk of the Heath, the scenery of which appears in
+so many of Constable’s paintings. He removed presently to Charlotte
+Street, Fitzroy Square; one of his pictures exhibited in the Louvre made
+him famous in France, and his fame was spreading in England when he went
+back to Hampstead in 1826, and after staying for a while at 25 Downshire
+Hill (which has since been rebuilt) was “at length fixed,� as he wrote to
+Fisher, “in a comfortable little house at Well Walk, Hampstead.... So
+hateful is moving about to me that I could gladly exclaim, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>‘Here let me
+take my everlasting rest.’ This house is to my wife’s heart’s content; it
+is situated on an eminence at the back of the spot in which you saw us,
+and our little drawing-room commands a view unsurpassed in Europe from
+Westminster Abbey to Gravesend. The dome of St. Paul’s in the air seems to
+realise Michael Angelo’s words on seeing the Pantheon&mdash;‘I will build such
+a thing in the sky.’� In Constable’s time the house was not numbered, but
+it has been identified as the present No. 40, and after his wife’s death
+he kept it as an occasional residence until he died in 1837. He is buried
+not far from it, in the Hampstead Churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img41.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JOHN KEATS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img42.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CONSTABLE. CHARLOTTE STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In the same churchyard is buried Joanna Baillie, who spent the last
+forty-five years of her life at Bolton House, Windmill Hill, opposite the
+Hollybush Inn, and here Wordsworth, Rogers, and Scott were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> among her
+visitors. Other famous Hampstead residents buried in this churchyard are
+Mrs. Barbauld, who lived in Church Row, then near the foot of Rosslyn
+Hill, and died in John Street; Sir Walter Besant, who died at Frognal End,
+near the top of Frognal Gardens; and George du Maurier, who lived for
+twenty-five years in Church Row and at New Grove House, by Whitestone
+Pond, and dying in 1896, a year after he left Hampstead, was brought back
+here to be buried.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img43.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JOANNA BAILLIE. WINDMILL HILL. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>In the house at the corner of Prince Arthur Road and the High Street, that
+is now occupied by the Hampstead Subscription Library, Clarkson Stanfield
+made his home for many years. He did notable work as a landscape and sea
+painter and became a Royal Academician, but was best known and most
+successful as a scenic artist for the theatre, and brought the art of
+scene-painting to a higher level than it had ever reached before. His more
+ambitious pictures are in private collections, however, his stage scenery
+has had its day, and I suppose most of us remember him better as one of
+Dickens’s most familiar friends. He painted the scenery for Wilkie
+Collins’s play, <i>The Lighthouse</i>, when Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mark
+Lemon, and others of their circle produced it at Tavistock House, and for
+other of the plays that Dickens staged there in his “smallest theatre in
+the world�; and Dickens’s letters are sown with references to him. Writing
+to an American friend describing the Christmas sports he had been holding
+at his house, Dickens says he has purchased the entire stock-in-trade of a
+conjuror, and that “in those tricks which require a confederate I am
+assisted (by reason of his imperturbable <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>good humour) by Stanfield, who
+always does his part exactly the wrong way, to the unspeakable delight of
+all beholders. We come out on a small scale to-night� (31st December 1842)
+“at Forster’s, where we see the old year out and the new one in.� On the
+16th January 1844 (putting <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> aside) he is writing to
+Forster, “I had written you a line pleading Jonas and Mrs. Gamp, but this
+frosty day tempts me sorely. I am distractingly late; but I look at the
+sky, think of Hampstead, and feel hideously tempted. Don’t come with Mac
+and fetch me. I couldn’t resist if you did�; and a month later, on the
+18th February, “Stanfield and Mac have come in, and we are going to
+Hampstead to dinner. I leave Betsy Prig as you know, so don’t you make a
+scruple about leaving Mrs. Harris. We shall stroll leisurely up to give
+you time to join us, and dinner will be on the table at Jack Straw’s at
+four�; and in less than a month, on the 5th March, “Sir, I
+will&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;I will <span class="smcaplc">NOT</span> eat with you, either at your own
+house or the club. But the morning looks bright, and a walk to Hampstead
+would suit me marvellously. If you should present yourself at my gate
+(bringing the R.A.’s along with you) I shall not be sapparised. So no more
+at this writing from poor <span class="smcap">Mr. Dickens</span>.� In June of the same year he sent
+Forster the proof of a preface he had written to a book by a poor
+carpenter named Overs, saying, “I wish you would read this, and give it me
+again when we meet at Stanfield’s to-day�; and, still in the same year,
+“Stanny� is one of the friends he wishes Forster to invite to his chambers
+in Lincoln’s Inn Fields<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> to hear a reading of <i>The Chimes</i> before it is
+published.</p>
+
+<p>No part of London is richer in literary and artistic associations than
+Hampstead. At the “Upper Flask� tavern, now known as the “Upper Heath,�
+Pope, Addison, Steele, Congreve, Hogarth and the other members of the
+Kit-Kat club used to meet in the eighteenth century, and Hogarth and
+Addison and his friends frequently resorted to the “Bull and Bush� at
+North End. Akenside lived for a while in Hampstead, and after he had left
+it went to stay occasionally with his friend Mr. Dyson at Golder’s Hill,
+and was staying there in 1758 when he wrote his <i>Ode on recovering from a
+fit of sickness in the Country</i>, beginning:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Thy verdant scenes, O Goulder’s Hill,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Once more I seek, a languid guest.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Gay often went to Hampstead to drink the waters, at the Pump Room, in Well
+Walk; Dr. Arbuthnot lived in Hampstead, where Swift and Pope were among
+his visitors; Fuseli lodged in Church Row; Dr. Johnson’s wife spent some
+of her summer holidays at a cottage near the entrance to the Priory, and
+the Doctor would tear himself away from his loved Fleet Street to pass an
+occasional day or two there with her; and of recent years Robert Louis
+Stevenson stayed with Sidney Colvin at Abernethy House, Mount Vernon, and
+at that time Stevenson, who was then twenty-four, so far conformed to the
+proprieties as to go about in “a frock coat and tall hat, which he had
+once worn at a wedding.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img44.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">STANFIELD’S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Tennyson’s mother had a house in Flask Walk; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>when Edward Fitzgerald was
+in London, Tennyson introduced him to Dickens, and these three, taking
+Thackeray with them, drove out together to Hampstead Heath. Relics of Dick
+Turpin are preserved at the Spaniards Inn, a quaint, old-world hostelry
+that has in different generations entertained Goldsmith, Gainsborough, Sir
+Joshua Reynolds, Garrick and Constable, as well as Dickens and many of his
+familiars.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img45.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE UPPER FLASK. FROM THE BOWLING GREEN.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But more intimately than with any other of the immortals Hampstead has
+come to be associated with Keats and Leigh Hunt&mdash;with Keats in particular.
+He was born, a good Cockney, in Moorfields, over his father’s livery
+stables, and in 1816 went to live with his brother Tom at No. 1 Well Walk,
+next door to the “Green Man,� which has been succeeded by the Wells
+Tavern, and in his room here, on the 18th<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> November 1816, when he was
+one-and-twenty, wrote a sonnet <i>To My Brothers</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And their faint cracklings o’er our silence creep</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Like whispers of the household gods that keep</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A gentle empire o’er fraternal souls.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And while for rhymes I search around the poles,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Upon the lore so voluble and deep</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That aye at fall of night our care condoles.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">This is your birthday, Tom, and I rejoice</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">That thus it passes smoothly, quietly:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Many such eves of gently whispering noise</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">May we together pass, and calmly try</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What are this world’s true joys&mdash;ere the great Voice</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">From its fair face shall bid our spirits fly.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>In 1818 Keats moved to another part of Hampstead, and lodged with his
+friend, Charles Armitage Brown, a retired merchant, at Wentworth Place,
+now known as Lawn Bank, in John Street, which was the other day, for no
+sufficient reason, renamed Keats Grove. At that date Wentworth Place was
+divided into two houses, Brown renting one, and Wentworth Dilke occupying
+the other; and when the Dilkes were away from home they left their house
+in the possession of Mrs. Brawne, her son, and two daughters, the elder of
+these daughters being the Fanny Brawne of Keats’s piteous love romance.
+Though he finished the writing of it, and wrote the preface to it, on a
+holiday at Teignmouth, <i>Endymion</i> was published, and most of it had been
+written, whilst he was at Wentworth Place, and under this roof also he
+wrote his <i>Eve of St. Agnes</i>, <i>Isabella</i>, <i>Hyperion</i>, and the <i>Ode to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+Nightingale</i>. As every one knows, the publication of <i>Endymion</i> brought
+him little but ridicule and abuse from the reviewers; but, much as this
+must have wounded and mortified his sensitive nature, it was so far from
+being the cause of his death, as some sentimentalists said it was, that,
+as you may gather from his correspondence, it did not even discourage him.
+The <i>Quarterly</i> snubbed him as a copyist of Leigh Hunt, professed to find
+<i>Endymion</i> so tedious as to be almost unreadable, and saw nothing in it
+but “calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy�; <i>Blackwood’s
+Magazine</i>, referring to his having qualified as a surgeon, sneered “Back
+to the shop, Mr. John, stick to plasters, pills, ointment-boxes;� and the
+majority of critics were equally unappreciative. Byron dubbed him “a
+tadpole of the Lakes,� and in divers letters to John Murray says, “There
+is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to
+look at them. No more Keats, I entreat.... Of the praises of the little
+dirty blackguard Keats in the <i>Edinburgh</i> I shall observe, as Johnson did
+when Sheridan the actor got a pension, ‘What, has <i>he</i> got a pension? Then
+it is time that I should give up <i>mine</i>.’ At present, all the men they
+have ever praised are degraded by that insane article. Why don’t they
+review and praise <i>Solomon’s Guide to Health</i>? It is better sense and as
+much poetry as Johnny Keats.� After Keats was dead, Byron changed his
+opinions somewhat, and was anxious that his disparagements of him should
+be suppressed. “You know very well,� he writes to Murray, “that I did not
+approve of Keats’s poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of
+Pope; but as he is dead,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> omit all that it said about him in any MSS. of
+mine, or publication. His <i>Hyperion</i> is a fine monument, and will keep his
+name�; and he added later, “His fragment of <i>Hyperion</i> seems actually
+inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Æschylus. He is a loss to our
+literature.�</p>
+
+<p>Keats was too fully occupied with the writing of other poems, with the
+glowing raptures and black despairs of his passion for Fanny Brawne, and
+the anxieties attendant upon the illness that was already wearing him
+down, to give overmuch of his thoughts to the attacks of his critics;
+moreover, he found consolation in the society and friendship of such men
+as Cowden Clarke, Wentworth Dilke (who founded the <i>Athenæum</i>), John
+Hamilton Reynolds, Haydon the painter, and Leigh Hunt, whom he frequently
+visited at that cottage of his in the Vale of Health, which ought never to
+have been demolished. For it was the meeting-place, too, of Keats and
+Shelley, and within it on one occasion, according to Cowden Clarke, Leigh
+Hunt challenged Keats, “then, and there, and to time,� to write in
+competition with him a sonnet on <i>The Grasshopper and the Cricket</i>, and
+Keats finished his first. Passing a night there when he could not sleep,
+Keats wrote his <i>Sleep and Poetry</i>; and the cottage was rich, too, in
+rumours of such guests as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Coleridge.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img46.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">KEATS’ HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Keats was introduced to Coleridge by Leigh Hunt. In 1816, when he was
+trying to cure himself of the opium habit, Coleridge went to live with Mr.
+Gilman, a surgeon, in a house that still stands in The Grove, Highgate,
+and walking with Hunt one day in Millfield Lane, which runs on the
+Highgate side of the Heath, he chanced to meet Keats, and this is his own
+account of the meeting: “A loose, slack, and not well-dressed youth met me
+in a lane near Highgate. It was Keats. He was introduced to me, and stayed
+a minute or so. After he had left us a little way, he ran back and said,
+‘Let me carry away the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your hand.’
+‘There is death in that hand,’ I said when Keats was gone; yet this was, I
+believe, before the consumption showed itself distinctly.� But another
+four years were not past when Hone, the author of <i>The Table Book</i>, saw
+“poor Keats, the poet of <i>The Pot of Basil</i>, sitting and sobbing his dying
+breath into a handkerchief,� on a bench at the end of Well Walk,
+overlooking the Heath, “glancing parting looks towards the quiet landscape
+he had delighted in so much.�</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the best descriptions of Keats in the last four years of his life
+are those given by Haydon, the painter, in his <i>Memoirs</i>, and by Leigh
+Hunt in his <i>Autobiography</i>. “He was below the middle size,� according to
+Haydon, “with a low forehead and an eye that had an inward look perfectly
+divine, like a Delphian priestess who saw visions.... Unable to bear the
+sneers of ignorance or the attacks of envy, not having strength of mind
+enough to buckle himself together like a porcupine, and present nothing
+but his prickles to his enemies, he began to despond, flew to dissipation
+as a relief which, after a temporary elevation of spirits, plunged him
+into deeper despondency than ever. For six weeks he was scarcely sober,
+and to show what a man does to gratify his habits, when once they get the
+better of him, he once covered his tongue and throat as far as he could
+reach with cayenne pepper, in order to appreciate the ‘delicious coldness
+of claret in all its glory’&mdash;his own expression.� Leigh Hunt writes, “He
+was under the middle height; and his lower limbs were small in comparison
+with the upper, but neat and well turned. His shoulders were very broad
+for his size: he had a face<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> in which energy and sensibility were
+remarkably mixed up; an eager power, checked and made patient by ill
+health. Every feature was at once strongly cut and delicately alive. If
+there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, which was not
+without something of a character of pugnacity. His face was rather long
+than otherwise; the upper lip projected a little over the under; the chin
+was bold, the cheeks sunken; the eyes mellow and glowing, large, dark, and
+sensitive. At the recital of a noble action, or a beautiful thought, they
+would suffuse with tears and his mouth trembled. In this there was ill
+health as well as imagination, for he did not like these betrayals of
+emotion; and he had great personal as well as moral courage. He once
+chastised a butcher, who had been insolent, by a regular stand-up fight.�
+(Tradition says this fight took place in one of the narrow courts out of
+the High Street, Hampstead.) “His hair, of a brown colour, was fine, and
+hung in natural ringlets. The head was a puzzle for the phrenologists,
+being remarkably small in the skull; a singularity he had in common with
+Byron and Shelley, whose hats I could not get on.� Add to these a
+description given by one who knew him to Lord Houghton: “His eyes were
+large and blue, his hair auburn; he wore it divided down the centre, and
+it fell in rich masses each side of his face; his mouth was full, and less
+intellectual than his other features. His countenance lives in my mind as
+one of singular beauty and brightness; it had the expression as if it had
+been looking on some glorious sight.�</p>
+
+<p>The last two years of his life at Hampstead, with their quiet happiness,
+fierce unrests, passionate hopes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> and despairs, are all wonderfully
+reflected in his letters of this period. He writes from Wentworth Place to
+John Taylor, the publisher, in 1818, setting forth his poetical creed and
+saying, with a clear perception of its defects, “If <i>Endymion</i> serves me
+as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content.... I have, I am sure, many
+friends who, if I fail, will attribute any change in my life and temper to
+humbleness rather than pride&mdash;to a cowering under the wings of great
+poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious
+to get <i>Endymion</i> printed that I may forget it and proceed.� There is a
+long letter to his sister in 1819, telling her of the books he has been
+reading, and describing his every-day life, beginning, “The candles are
+burnt down and I am using the wax taper, which has a long snuff on it&mdash;the
+fire is at its last click&mdash;I am sitting with my back to it, with one foot
+rather askew upon the rug and the other with the heel a little elevated
+from the carpet. I am writing this on <i>The Maid’s Tragedy</i>, which I have
+read since tea with great pleasure. Besides this volume of Beaumont and
+Fletcher, there are on the table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of
+Tom Moore’s called <i>Tom Cribb’s Memorial to Congress</i>&mdash;nothing in it.�
+Reading this minute little sketch of himself, it is easy to picture him
+sitting late that night in his quiet room in Keats Grove; but it is the
+letters to Fanny Brawne that give this house, which was then two houses,
+its deepest and most living interest.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img47.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CONSTABLE’S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In 1819 he writes to her, whilst he is away holidaying in the Isle of
+Wight and she at Wentworth Place, “I have never known any unalloyed
+happiness for many days together; the death or sickness of some <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>one has
+always spoilt my hours&mdash;and now, when none such troubles oppress me, it
+is, you must confess, very hard that another sort of pain should haunt me.
+Ask yourself, my love, whether you are not very cruel to have so
+entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom.� And again, “Your letter gave me
+more delight than anything in the world but yourself could do.... I never
+knew before what such love as you have made me feel was; I did not believe
+in it; my fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up.� And again,
+“I have been in so irritable a state of health these two or three last
+days, that I did not think I should be able to write this week.... I have
+been, I cannot tell why, in capital spirits this last hour. What reason?
+When I have to take my candle and retire to a lonely room, without the
+thought, as I fall asleep, of seeing you to-morrow morning? or the next
+day, or the next&mdash;it takes on the appearance of impossibility and
+eternity. I will say a month&mdash;I will say I will see you in a month at
+most, though no one but yourself should see me; if it be but for an hour.
+I should not like to be so near you as London without being continually
+with you; after having once more kissed you, Sweet, I would rather be here
+alone at my task than in the bustle and hateful literary chitchat.
+Meantime you must write to me&mdash;as I will every week&mdash;for your letters keep
+me alive.�</p>
+
+<p>Back in London, making a short stay with Leigh Hunt, then living at
+College Street, Kentish Town, Keats sends to Wentworth Place a letter to
+Fanny Brawne, in the course of which he tells her, “My love has made me
+selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but
+seeing you again&mdash;my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> Life seems to stop there&mdash;I see no further. You have
+absorbed me.... My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.� Even
+when he is home again, in his own part of the Wentworth Place house, he is
+writing in February 1820, “They say I must remain confined to this room
+for some time. The consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant
+prison of the house next to yours. You must come and see me frequently:
+this evening without fail�; and again, in the same month, “You will have a
+pleasant walk to-day. I shall see you pass. I shall follow you with my
+eyes over the Heath. Will you come towards evening instead of before
+dinner? When you are gone, ’tis past&mdash;if you do not come till the evening
+I have something to look forward to all day. Come round to my window for a
+moment when you have read this.�</p>
+
+<p>In September of that year he set out on that voyage to Italy from which he
+was never to return, and whilst the ship was delayed off the Isle of
+Wight, he wrote to his friend, Charles Armitage Brown, at the old
+Hampstead address, “The very thing which I want to live most for will be a
+great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can help it?... I
+daresay you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping&mdash;you know
+what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at your
+house. I wish for death every day and night to deliver me from these
+pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy even those
+pains which are better than nothing.... I think, without my mentioning it,
+for my sake, you would be a friend to Miss Brawne when I am dead. You
+think she has many faults&mdash;but, for my sake,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> think she has not one. If
+there is anything you can do for her by word or deed I know you will do
+it.... The thought of leaving Miss Brawne is beyond everything
+horrible&mdash;the sense of darkness coming over me&mdash;I eternally see her figure
+eternally vanishing. Some of the phrases she was in the habit of using
+during my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring in my ears. Is there
+another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be; we
+cannot be created for this sort of suffering.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img48.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GEORGE DUMAURIER’S GRAVE. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>Because of all this, and of the reiterated longings and the heartaches
+that Keats poured out in other letters that he wrote from Italy, and that
+were delivered here to Armitage Brown, I always feel that Wentworth Place
+is the saddest and most sacred of London’s literary shrines.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<p class="title">ROUND ABOUT SOHO AGAIN</p>
+
+
+<p>As a general thing the literary man is not to be found living in the
+aristocratic quarters of the town until after he has done his best work
+and has begun to make money out of his inferior books. I don’t think any
+man of letters has ever rented a house in Park Lane, except Disraeli, and
+he went there as a successful politician; such glorious thoroughfares are
+reserved to more respectable stock-brokers and company-promoters, whilst
+those whom the gods love are driven to seek refuge in the cheap and shabby
+houses of meaner streets. Half the squalid squares and byways of Soho are
+in reality vestibules and aisles of the Temple of Fame. Blake, as we have
+seen in a former chapter, lived in Poland Street; and in the same street
+lived Flaxman, and, later, Shelley. Dryden lived in Gerrard Street, a
+century before Burke made his home there; Hazlitt died in Frith Street;
+Mulready the painter had his studio in Broad Street; and the sculptor,
+James Northcote, resided for over thirty years in Argyll Place. When
+Madame de Stael was in England she stayed at 30 (now 29) Argyll Street,
+and Byron speaks of visiting her there. I have already referred to Sir
+James Thornhill’s house in Dean Street; near by, in Soho Square, lived the
+actor, Kemble; and this square has pathetic memories<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> of De Quincey, who
+lodged for a time, under strange circumstances, at the Greek Street corner
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>Left an orphan to the care of guardians who seem to have treated him with
+some harshness, De Quincey ran away from the Manchester Grammar School in
+1802, when he was only seventeen, and after wandering through Wales made
+his way to London. Here for two months he was houseless, and seldom slept
+under a roof, and for upwards of sixteen weeks suffered “the physical
+anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity.� He tells you in his
+<i>Confessions</i> how he used to pace “the never-ending terraces� of Oxford
+Street, and at night sleep on some doorstep, and dream, “and wake to the
+captivity of hunger.� In Oxford Street he fell in with that most innocent
+and tender-hearted of street-walkers, Ann, whose surname he never knew,
+and to whose compassion and charity he always felt that he owed his life:
+“For many weeks I had walked at nights with this poor friendless girl up
+and down Oxford Street, or had rested with her on steps and under the
+shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old as myself; she told me,
+indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year.... One night when
+we were pacing slowly along Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt
+more than usually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into
+Soho Square. Thither we went, and we sat down on the steps of a house
+which to this hour I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner act
+of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble
+action which she there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse.
+I had been leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I sank from
+her arms and fell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> backwards on the steps.� He was so utterly exhausted
+that he felt he must have died, but with a cry of terror she ran off into
+Oxford Street and returned with port wine and spices which she had paid
+for out of her own pocket, at a time when “she had scarcely the
+wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life;� and this timely
+stimulant served to restore him.</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by, meeting a friend who lent him ten pounds, he travelled down to
+Windsor to see if he could get a certain friend of his family there to
+assist him; but before going he paid Ann something of his debt to her, and
+arranged that three nights from then, and every night after until they
+should meet, she would be at the corner of Titchfield Street, Soho. On his
+return to London he was at the appointed place night after night, but Ann
+never appeared, and though he inquired everywhere and searched the
+neighbourhood for her he was never able to see or hear of her again.</p>
+
+<p>Earlier than this, however, and before he had succeeded in borrowing that
+ten pounds, the coming on of a bitterly inclement winter drove him to seek
+a wretched lodging at 61 (then 38) Greek Street, Soho Square. The house
+was a dirty, neglected, cheerless place, tenanted by a disreputable
+attorney named Brunell-Brown, who had a curious clerk named Pyment, and
+only came and went to and from his office by stealth because he was deep
+in debts and continually dodging the bailiffs. A few weeks of lodging
+miserably here nearly exhausted the little cash De Quincey had brought to
+London with him, and he had to give up his room. But he explained his
+position frankly to Brunell-Brown, and this kindly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> reckless rascal, who
+had a genuine knowledge and love of literature, and was interested in the
+young lodger who could talk to him intelligently on such matters, readily
+gave him permission to come to the house nightly and sleep gratis in one
+of its empty rooms, and allowed him, moreover, to eat the scraps from his
+breakfast-table.</p>
+
+<p>The house had an unoccupied look, especially of nights, when the lawyer
+himself was usually absent. “There was no household or establishment in
+it; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I
+found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that the house already
+contained one single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years
+old; but she seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make
+children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that
+she had lived and slept there for some time before I came; and great joy
+the poor creature expressed when she found that I was in future to be her
+companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large, and from the
+want of furniture the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the
+spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and,
+I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more
+(it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her
+protection against all ghosts whatsoever, but, alas! I could offer her no
+other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law
+papers for a pillow, but no other covering than a sort of large horseman’s
+cloak; afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old sofa-cover, a
+small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which added a
+little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for warmth and for
+security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than usually ill
+I took her into my arms, so that in general she was tolerably warm, and
+often slept when I could not....</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img49.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">DE QUINCEY’S HOUSE. SOHO.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>“Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and
+very early; sometimes not till ten o’clock; sometimes not at all. He was
+in constant fear of bailiffs. Improving on the plan of Cromwell, every
+night he slept in a different quarter of London; and I observed that he
+never failed to examine through a private window the appearance of those
+who knocked at the door before he would allow it to be opened. He
+breakfasted alone; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of
+his hazarding an invitation to a second person, any more than the quantity
+of esculent <i>matériel</i>, which for the most part was little more than a
+roll or a few biscuits which he had bought on his road from the place
+where he had slept. During his breakfast I generally contrived a reason
+for lounging in, and with an air of as much indifference as I could
+assume, took up such fragments as he had left; sometimes, indeed, there
+were none at all.... As to the poor child, she was never admitted into his
+study (if I may give that name to his chief depository of parchments, law
+writings, &amp;c.); that room was to her the Bluebeard room of the house,
+being regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about six o’clock,
+which usually was his final departure for the night. Whether the child
+were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. Brunell-Brown, or only a servant, I
+could not ascertain; she did not herself know; but certainly she was
+treated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did Mr. Brunell-Brown
+make his appearance than she went below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat,
+&amp;c.; and, except when she was summoned to run an errand, she never emerged
+from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchen, &amp;c. to the upper air until my
+welcome knock at night called up her little trembling footsteps to the
+front door. Of her life during the daytime, however, I knew little but
+what I gathered from her own account at night, for as soon as the hours of
+business commenced I saw that my absence would be acceptable, and in
+general, therefore, I went off and sate in the parks or elsewhere until
+nightfall.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img50.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SHELLEY’S HOUSE. POLAND STREET W.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>I have always thought that in all this there is something oddly
+reminiscent of Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness; the poor, half-starved
+little household drudge fits her part almost exactly, but De Quincey makes
+but a depressed and dismal Dick Swiveller; and Mr. Brunell-Brown seems to
+have been a lower type of the rascally lawyer than Sampson Brass was; but
+rascal as he was, one warms to him because of his kindness to his forlorn
+guest. “I must forget everything but that towards me,� says De Quincey,
+“he was obliging and, to the extent of his power, generous.� He goes on to
+say that in after years, whenever he was in London, he never failed to
+visit that house in Greek Street, and “about ten o’clock this very night,
+August 15, 1821&mdash;being my birthday&mdash;I turned aside from my evening walk
+down Oxford Street, purposely to take a glance at it; it is now occupied
+by a respectable family, and by the lights in the front drawing-room I
+observed a domestic party assembled, perhaps at tea, and apparently
+cheerful and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>gay. Marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness,
+cold, silence and desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when
+its nightly occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child.
+Her, by-the-by, in after years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from
+her situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child; she
+was neither pretty nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in
+manners.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img51.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THOMAS DE QUINCEY</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His London privations ended with a reconciliation between himself and his
+guardians, and he was sent to Oxford&mdash;his quarrel with them being that
+they would not allow him to go there.</p>
+
+<p>De Quincey quitted Soho to go to Oxford, and Shelley, when he was expelled
+from Oxford in 1811, came to Soho. He travelled up to London on the coach
+with his friend Hogg. His cousin and sometime schoolfellow, Medwin,
+relates how before dawn on a March morning Shelley and Hogg knocked at his
+door in Garden Court, Temple, and he heard Shelley’s cracked voice cry, in
+his well-known pipe, “Medwin, let me in. I am expelled,� and after a loud
+sort of half-hysterical laugh repeat, “I am expelled,� and add “for
+atheism.� After breakfast they went out to look for lodgings, and, says
+Hogg, “never was a young beauty so capricious, so hard to please� as
+Shelley; but the name of Poland Street attracted him because it suggested
+recollections of Thaddeus of Warsaw and freedom, and he declared “we must
+lodge here, should we sleep on the step of a door.� A bill advertising
+lodgings to let hung in the window of No. 15, so they knocked and entered
+and inspected them&mdash;“a quiet sitting-room, its walls papered with
+trellised vine-leaves and clustering grapes,� with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> similarly decorated
+bedroom opening out of it, and Shelley whispered, “We must stay here for
+ever.�</p>
+
+<p>“For ever� dwindled to something less than a year; but here for that time
+Shelley lived and resumed his interrupted studies, as far as might be, and
+was secretly supported by his sisters, who sent their pocket-money round
+to him by the hand of their schoolfellow, Harriett Westbrook, daughter of
+the retired tavern-keeper, John Westbrook, who was living near Park Lane,
+at 23 Chapel Street (now Aldford Street).</p>
+
+<p>In April 1811 Shelley’s father wrote insisting that he should break off
+all relations with Hogg and place himself under a tutor of his father’s
+selection, and Shelley replied, from his Poland Street lodgings:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Father</span>,&mdash;As you do me the honour of requesting to hear the
+determination of my mind, as the basis of your future actions, I feel
+it my duty, although it gives me pain to wound ‘the sense of duty to
+your own character, to that of your family, and feelings as a
+Christian,’ decidedly to refuse my assent to both the proposals in
+your letter, and to affirm that similar refusals will always be the
+fate of similar requests. With many thanks for your great kindness,&mdash;I
+remain your affectionate, dutiful son,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“<span class="smcap">Percy B. Shelley</span>.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>His father presently relented so far as to make him an allowance of two
+hundred pounds a year. One evening in August, having arranged a hasty
+elopement with Harriett Westbrook, Shelley walked from Poland Street to a
+small coffee-house in Mount Street, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>as Dr. Dowden sets forth in his
+Life of the poet, dispatched a letter thence to Harriett, her father’s
+house in Aldford Street being close handy, telling her at what hour he
+would have a hackney coach waiting for her at the door of the
+coffee-house. At the appointed time the coach was there in readiness, and
+a little behind time “Harriett was seen tripping round the corner from
+Chapel Street, and the coach wheels rattled towards the City inn from
+which the northern mails departed.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img52.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SHELLEY. MARCHMONT STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>They travelled post-haste to the North, and were married in Edinburgh; and
+in another three years the deserted Harriett had ended her life in the
+Serpentine, and Shelley had gone off with Mary Godwin. Meanwhile, however,
+returning to London after his marriage to Harriett, Shelley stayed for a
+few days at the house of his father-in-law, and then at Cooke’s Hotel, in
+Albemarle Street. On another occasion he lodged for a short time at a
+house still standing in Marchmont Street (No. 26), a drab and dingy
+thoroughfare in the neighbourhood of Russell Square.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt was a Soho resident for no longer than about six months. In 1830
+he came from his lodgings in Bouverie Street to occupy rooms at No. 6
+Frith Street. He was then already failing in health, separated from his
+wife, harassed financially through the failure of his publishers,
+altogether broken and dispirited. Much disappointment, the thwarting of
+many of his highest personal ambitions, had soured and embittered him.
+Haydon calls him a “singular mixture of friend and fiend, radical and
+critic, metaphysician, poet and painter, on whose word no one could rely,
+on whose heart no one could calculate.�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> A critic of genius, a brilliant
+essayist; with not so great a heart as Lamb’s but a finer intellect; he
+has never to this day received his full meed of recognition. He moves in
+spirit among the immortals as apart and unsociable as he moved among them
+in the body. “We are told,� wrote P. G. Patmore, “that on the summit of
+one of those columns which form the magnificent ruins of Hadrian’s Temple,
+in the plain of Athens, there used to dwell a hermit who scarcely ever
+descended from this strangely-chosen abode, owing his scanty food and
+support to the mingled admiration and curiosity of the peasants who
+inhabited the plain below. Something like this was the position of William
+Hazlitt. Self-banished from the social world, no less by the violence of
+his own passions than by those petty regards of custom and society which
+could not or would not tolerate the trifling aberrations from external
+form and usage engendered by a mind like his, ... he became, as regarded
+himself, personally heedless of all things but the immediate gratification
+of his momentary wishes, careless of personal character, indifferent to
+literary fame, forgetful of the past, reckless of the future, and yet so
+exquisitely alive to the claims and the virtues of all these that the
+abandonment of his birthright in every one of them opened a separate
+canker in his heart, and made his life a living emblem of the early death
+which it foretokened.�</p>
+
+<p>Patmore, too, has given a good sketch of his personal appearance. “The
+forehead,� he says, “was magnificent; the nose precisely that which
+physiognomists have assigned as evidence of a fine and highly cultivated
+taste; though there was a peculiar <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>character about the nostrils like
+that observable in those of a fiery and unruly horse. His eyes were not
+good. They were never brilliant, and there was a furtive and at times a
+sinister look about them as they glanced suspiciously from under their
+overhanging brows.� Other contemporaries have described him as a grave
+man, diffident, almost awkward in manner, of middle size, and with eager,
+expressive eyes. S. C. Hall considered him mean-looking and
+unprepossessing; but though Talfourd speaks of him as slouching, awkward,
+and neglectful in his dress, he credits him with “a handsome, eager
+countenance, worn by sickness and thought.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img53.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">HAZLITT’S HOUSE. FRITH STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>But he was nearing the end of it all when he came to Frith Street. In
+August he was attacked with a violent sort of cholera, and never rallied
+from it. What was probably his last essay, one on “The Sick Chamber,�
+appeared that same month in the <i>New Monthly</i>, picturing his own invalid
+condition and touching gratefully on the consolation and enjoyment he
+could still derive from books. Nearing the close, he begged that his
+mother might be sent for, but she was an old lady of eighty-four living in
+Devonshire and was unable to go to him. “He died so quietly,� in the words
+of his grandson, “that his son, who was sitting by his bedside, did not
+know that he was gone till the vital breath had been extinct a moment or
+two. His last words were, ‘Well, I’ve had a happy life.’� The same
+authority adds that he found the following memorandum, in the handwriting
+of his grandmother: “Saturday, 18th September 1830, at about half-past
+four in the afternoon, died at his lodgings, No. 6 Frith Street, Soho,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+William Hazlitt, aged fifty-two years five months and eight days. Mr.
+Lamb, Mr. White, Mr. Hersey, and his own son were with him at the time.�</p>
+
+<p>He was buried within a minute’s walk of his house, in the churchyard of
+St. Anne’s, Soho, and his tombstone removed from its first position,
+stands back against the wall of the church: the stone originally bore a
+curious, somewhat militant inscription, but this has recently been
+obliterated, and replaced by one that offers nothing but his name and a
+record of the dates of his birth and death.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<p class="title">A PHILOSOPHER, TWO POETS, AND A NOVELIST</p>
+
+
+<p>Everybody has heard of <i>Sandford and Merton</i>, and hardly anybody nowadays
+has read it. I confess with shame that I am one who has not. But I have
+come across so many parodies of it and so many references to it in various
+books and articles that I am finding it more and more difficult to believe
+that I have not actually read the story itself. Mr. Barlow, the boy’s
+tutor, lives in my mind as a large and solemn bore, but he was a bore of
+real knowledge; he was heavy with learning; and the boys themselves were
+dreadful little prigs, but underneath their priggishness they were manly
+boys, and there was something fine in their ideals of honour. No doubt
+they were largely modelled on their author, Thomas Day, who when he was a
+schoolboy started a fight with another boy on quite justifiable grounds,
+and soon finding that he completely outmatched his opponent, stopped the
+fight, and insisted on shaking hands with the other and making peace.</p>
+
+<p>That incident, and the queer originality of his whole outlook on life, has
+made me more interested in Day himself than in his one famous book, and
+has made me number 36 Wellclose Square, the house<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> where he was born,
+among the London literary shrines that must not be overlooked.</p>
+
+<p>Wellclose Square is in Shadwell, on the skirts of Whitechapel, and is one
+of those melancholy places that have obviously seen better days. Dreary
+and drab and squalid as you see it now, when Day was born there on the
+22nd June 1748 it must have been a fairly select and superior residential
+quarter. Day’s father was a collector of Customs who died a year after his
+son’s birth, leaving him a very comfortable fortune of twelve hundred a
+year. The boy was educated at Charterhouse and at Oxford, and one way and
+another acquired lofty Stoic principles and a somewhat original philosophy
+that he lived up to obstinately all his life through, in spite of many
+rebuffs and a good deal of ridicule. He dressed carelessly, was
+indifferent to appearances, and scorned the “admiration of splendour which
+dazzles and enslaves mankind.� He preferred the society of his inferiors
+because they were more unconventional, less artificial than the ladies and
+gentlemen of his own rank; he was awkward in the company of women, and
+regarded the sex with doubt as well as with diffidence. As you would
+expect of the man who wrote <i>Sandford and Merton</i>, he had no sense of
+humour; and his smallpox-pitted face and unattractive air and manner told
+so much against him that he was rejected emphatically by the first one or
+two women he proposed to. Withal, as was also fitting in the author of
+that fearsomely moral schoolboy-book, he was, in the words of his friend
+Edgeworth, “the most virtuous human being I have ever known.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img54.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THOMAS DAY. 36 WELLCLOSE SQUARE.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>I suppose he was a pioneer of the “simple life� theory; anyhow, he
+persistently advocated simplicity in dress and living, and was determined
+to find a wife who shared these tastes, who should, moreover, be fond of
+literature and moral philosophy, “simple as a mountain girl in her dress,
+diet, and manners, and fearless and intrepid as the Spartan wives and
+Roman heroines.� He was careful to state these requirements to the lady
+before proposing to her, and this seems to have spoilt his chances. The
+difficulty of discovering his ideal wife led to his making an odd
+experiment. He adopted two young girls, one from the Foundling Hospital,
+the other from the Shrewsbury Orphanage, and in deference to the
+proprieties formally bound them apprentice to his friend Edgeworth, and
+gave guarantees to the authorities that within one year he would make a
+decision between the two and pay a premium of a hundred pounds to
+apprentice one to a suitable trade, and send the other to be properly
+educated with the ultimate object of marrying her. The girls were about
+twelve years old. In order that they should not be influenced with wrong
+ideas by the people about them, he took them into France, where, as they
+only understood English, they could talk with nobody but himself; and
+there he proceeded to teach them reading and writing, and by ridicule,
+explanation, and reasoning sought “to imbue them with a deep hatred for
+dress, for luxury, for fine people, for fashion and titles, all of which
+inspired his own mind with such an unconquerable horror.� In a letter
+which he wrote home about them he says, “I am not disappointed in one
+respect. I am more attached to and more convinced of the truth of my
+principles than ever. I have made them, in respect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> of temper, two such
+girls as, I may perhaps say without vanity, you have never seen at the
+same age. They have never given me a moment’s trouble throughout the
+voyage, are always contented, and think nothing so agreeable as waiting
+upon me (no moderate convenience for a lazy man).� Nevertheless, in
+France, the girls proved very quarrelsome; he had to nurse them through a
+severe attack of smallpox, and once when they were out boating they both
+fell into the Rhone, and he risked his life to save them.</p>
+
+<p>Within the year, he brought them back to England and had made his choice.
+He apprenticed one, who was “invincibly stupid,� to a milliner; and the
+other, Sabrina Sidney, he carried with him to a house he had taken near
+Lichfield and there “resumed his preparations for implanting in her young
+mind the characteristic virtues of Arria, Portia and Cornelia.� But she
+disappointed him; he endeavoured in vain to steel her against shrinking
+from pain and the fear of danger. “When he dropped melting sealing-wax on
+her arms she did not endure it heroically; nor when he fired pistols at
+her petticoats which she believed to be charged with balls could she help
+starting aside or suppress her screams.� She was not fond of science, and
+was unable to keep a secret satisfactorily; so after a year’s trial Day
+sent her away to a boarding-school, and proceeded to pay his addresses to
+a young lady living in the neighbourhood, who first put him on a period of
+probation, and then, after he had made himself ridiculous in trying to
+dress and behave as she wished, rejected him.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img55.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LORD BYRON</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon his thoughts turned again to Sabrina, who had a real affection
+for him; but her failure to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>obey him in certain small details of dress
+again displeased him, and finally deciding against her, he in the long run
+married a Miss Milnes. His one objection to this lady was that she
+possessed a considerable fortune, and would therefore probably refuse to
+live the simple life; but when he had categorically put his requirements
+to her, and she had consented to dispense with all luxuries, to cut
+herself off from social gaieties, and reside in the country with him,
+restricted in every way to the bare necessaries of existence, working and
+spending for the behoof of the poor and needy, he ventured to make her
+Mrs. Day, and never had occasion to regret it. Sabrina eventually married
+a barrister, but refused to do so until she had Day’s consent; and when,
+after writing divers political, economic, and philosophical works that
+nobody hears of now, and <i>Sandford and Merton</i>, which nobody reads any
+longer, Day died of a fall from an unmanageable horse which he insisted
+could be controlled by kindness, his wife was inconsolable, and died soon
+after him of a broken heart.</p>
+
+<p>So he must have been a man worth knowing, and, in spite of his
+peculiarities and his oppressive earnestness, more likeable than most of
+us, when you knew him. Anyhow, he thought for himself, and had opinions of
+his own, and was not afraid to act upon them. And such men are so
+uncommonly rare that I think the County Council should put a tablet on the
+face of his birthplace at once, for the encouragement of all men who are
+something more than cheap copies of their neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>Across the other side of London, at 24 (then 16) Holles Street, Cavendish
+Square, Lord Byron was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> born, on 22nd January 1788&mdash;a very different man,
+but also unconventional, though in more conventional ways. But the house
+here has been considerably altered to suit the requirements of the big
+drapery establishment that at present occupies it, and of Byron’s various
+residences in London I believe the only one that survives in its original
+condition is that at No. 4 Bennet Street, St. James’s. Here he had rooms
+on the first floor in 1813 and the early months of 1814, and it was in
+those rooms that he wrote <i>The Giaour</i>, <i>The Bride of Abydos</i>, and <i>The
+Corsair</i>. Writing to Moore from here on the 28th July 1813, he says, “I am
+training to dine with Sheridan and Rogers this evening�; and in the Diary
+he was keeping at this time he notes, on 16th November 1813, “Read Burns
+to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should have had more
+polish&mdash;less force&mdash;just as much verse but no immortality&mdash;a divorce and
+duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been
+less spirituous, he might have lived as long as Sheridan, and outlived as
+much as poor Brinsley.�</p>
+
+<p>From Bennet Street Byron carried on a correspondence with the lady he was
+destined to marry, Miss Anna Isabella Milbanke. “I look upon myself,� he
+tells her in one of his letters, “as a very facetious personage, and may
+appeal to most of my acquaintance in proof of my assertion. Nobody laughs
+more, and though your friend Joanna Baillie says somewhere that ‘Laughter
+is the child of misery,’ I do not believe her (unless indeed a hysteric),
+though I think it is sometimes the parent.� In another of the same
+September 1813, evidently replying to one of hers, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>he protests: “‘Gay’
+but not ‘content’&mdash;very true.... You have detected a laughter ‘false to
+the heart’&mdash;allowed&mdash;yet I have been tolerably sincere with you, and I
+fear sometimes troublesome.� In November he writes to her, “I perceive by
+part of your last letter that you are still inclined to believe me a
+gloomy personage. Those who pass so much of their time entirely alone
+can’t be always in very high spirits; yet I don’t know&mdash;though I certainly
+do enjoy society to a certain extent, I never passed two hours in mixed
+company without wishing myself out of it again. Still, I look upon myself
+as a facetious companion, well reputed by all the wits at whose jests I
+readily laugh, and whose repartees I take care never to incur by any kind
+of contest&mdash;for which I feel as little qualified as I do for the more
+solid pursuits of demonstration.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img56.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BYRON. 4 BENNET STREET. ST. JAMES’S.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>As for his gloom or gaiety, Sir Walter Scott, who lunched with him and
+Charles Mathews at Long’s Hotel, in Old Bond Street, in 1815, said, “I
+never saw Byron so full of fun, frolic, wit, and whim: he was as playful
+as a kitten.� Again, writing in his Journal, after Byron’s death, Sir
+Walter observes, “What I liked about Byron, besides his boundless genius,
+was his generosity of spirit as well as purse, and his utter contempt of
+all affectations of literature, from the school-magisterial style to the
+lackadaisical�; and he relates an anecdote in illustration of Byron’s
+extreme sensitiveness: “Like Rousseau, he was apt to be very suspicious,
+and a plain, downright steadiness of manner was the true mode to maintain
+his good opinion. Will Rose told me that once, while sitting with Byron,
+he fixed insensibly his eyes on his feet,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> one of which, it must be
+remembered, was deformed. Looking up suddenly, he saw Byron regarding him
+with a look of concentrated and deep displeasure, which wore off when he
+observed no consciousness or embarrassment in the countenance of Rose.
+Murray afterwards explained this by telling Rose that Lord Byron was very
+jealous of having this personal imperfection noticed or attended to.� He
+goes on to say that Byron was a mischief-maker; he would tell one man the
+unpleasant things that had been privately said of him by another; and he
+loved to mystify people, “to be thought awful, mysterious and gloomy, and
+sometimes hinted at strange causes.�</p>
+
+<p>So that if he had no literary affectations he clearly cultivated a pose of
+mysterious misery both in his life and his poetry, and this it was that
+exasperated Carlyle into calling him “the teeth-grinding, glass-eyed, lone
+Caloyer.� And the pose was helped out by his handsome and romantic
+appearance. “Byron’s countenance is a thing to dream of,� Scott told
+Lockhart. “A certain fair lady whose name has been too often mentioned in
+connection with his told a friend of mine that when she first saw Byron it
+was in a crowded room, and she did not know who it was, but her eyes were
+instantly nailed, and she said to herself, ‘That pale face is my fate.’
+And, poor soul, if a god-like face and god-like powers could have made
+excuse for devilry, to be sure she had one.� He said on the same occasion,
+“As for poets, I have seen, I believe, all the best of our own time and
+country&mdash;and, though Burns had the most glorious eyes imaginable, I never
+thought any of them would come up to an artist’s notion of the character
+except Byron.� Mrs. Opie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> said, “His voice was such a voice as the devil
+tempted Eve with�; and Charles Mathews once remarked that “he was the only
+man I ever contemplated to whom I felt disposed to apply the word
+beautiful.�</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, for a while Miss Milbanke was proof against his
+fascinations. In November 1813, about the date of that last letter of his
+to her from which I have quoted, he offered her his hand and was rejected.
+He proposed to another lady in the following September, and was rejected
+again, and almost immediately afterwards he called on Miss Milbanke at her
+father’s house, 29 Portland Place, and in the library there passionately
+renewed his suit, and this time was successful. They were married in
+January 1815, and went to live at 13 Piccadilly, and in January of the
+next year, after twelve months of little happiness and much wretchedness,
+separated for good, a month after the birth of their child.</p>
+
+<p>This Piccadilly house has been pulled down. The Albany to which Byron
+removed in 1814, and which he left on his marriage, still remains; and so,
+too, does No. 8 St. James’s Street, where he lived in 1809, when his
+<i>English Bards and Scotch Reviewers</i> took the town by storm, but it has
+undergone so much alteration that it no longer seems so intimately
+reminiscent of Byron as Bennet Street does.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Byron was residing in St. James’s Street, publishing the <i>English
+Bards</i> and writing the first canto of <i>Childe Harold</i>, Coleridge was
+living in a house at Portland Place, Hammersmith, that is now known as No.
+7 Addison Bridge Place. Somehow, one does not readily connect Coleridge
+with London, even though he had lodged for many years at Highgate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> before
+he died there. But one time and another he spent quite a large part of his
+life in the metropolis. He was at school with Lamb, of course, at Christ’s
+Hospital; and are not Lamb’s letters strewn with yearning remembrances of
+the glorious evenings he and Coleridge and Hazlitt and others passed, in
+later years, in the smoky parlour of “The Salutation and Cat,� in Newgate
+Street? At various dates, he lived at Buckingham Street, and at Norfolk
+Street, Strand, in Pall Mall, and in King Street, Covent Garden, when he
+was working on the staff of the <i>Morning Post</i>; to say nothing of visits
+to London when he put up at one or another of Lamb’s many homes in the
+City; and there is still in one of the courts of Fetter Lane that Newton
+Hall where he delivered a series of lectures in 1818.</p>
+
+<p>By 1810, when he came to London and settled for a period at 7 Addison
+Bridge Place, Coleridge had done all his great work as a poet, and under
+stress of financial difficulties was turning more and more from poetry to
+lecturing and journalism as sources of income. There is a letter of Lamb’s
+to Hazlitt, dated 28th November 1810, when Hazlitt was holidaying and
+working at Winterslow, in which he mentions towards the close&mdash;“Coleridge
+is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing or going to write in
+the <i>Courier</i> against Cobbett and in favour of paper money.� Byron wrote
+to a friend in the succeeding year, “Coleridge is lecturing. ‘Many an old
+fool,’ said Hannibal to some such lecturer, ‘but such as this, never’�;
+and to the same friend two days later, “Coleridge has been lecturing
+against Campbell. Rogers was present, and from him I derive the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>information. We are going to make a party to hear this Manichean of
+poesy�; and on the same day to another friend, “Coleridge has attacked the
+<i>Pleasures of Hope</i>, and all other pleasures whatsoever. Mr. Rogers was
+present, and heard himself indirectly <i>rowed</i> by the lecturer�; and next
+week, “To-morrow I dine with Rogers, and am to hear Coleridge, who is a
+kind of rage at present.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img57.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">COLERIDGE. ADDISON BRIDGE PLACE.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>Coleridge was then only thirty-eight, and had another twenty-four years of
+life before him. He was already, and had for long past, been struggling in
+the toils of the opium habit, and his poetical inspiration was leaving
+him, for though <i>Christabel</i> and <i>Kubla Khan</i> were not published until
+1816 they were written nearly ten years before. There are a number of
+minor poems bearing later dates; several in 1809, many long after that,
+but only one dated 1810, which may be supposed to have been written in
+that Hammersmith house, and this is nothing but a respectable translation
+of a passage in Ottfried’s metrical paraphrase of the Gospels. But his
+lectures were a wonder and a delight, Byron’s disapproval notwithstanding.
+He was always an eloquent preacher, and became a chief among lecturers as
+he did among poets. “Have you ever heard me preach?� he asked Lamb, and
+Lamb replied with his whimsical stammer, “I never heard you do anything
+else!� But you remember that fine essay of Hazlitt’s in which he recounts
+his first acquaintance with Coleridge?&mdash;how he rose before daylight and
+walked ten miles in the mud to hear him preach. “When I got there, the
+organ was playing the hundredth psalm, and when it was done Mr. Coleridge
+rose and gave out his text, ‘And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> he went up into the mountain to pray,
+<span class="smcap">Himself, alone</span>.’ As he gave out his text his voice ‘rose like a steam of
+rich distilled perfumes,’ and when he came to the two last words, which he
+pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young,
+as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if
+that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe.� He
+describes the sermon, and goes on, “I could not have been more delighted
+if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met
+together.... I returned home well satisfied.� Then Coleridge called to see
+his father, a dissenting minister in the neighbourhood, and for two hours
+he talked and Hazlitt listened spellbound, and when he went, Hazlitt
+walked with him six miles on the road. “It was a fine morning,� he says,
+“in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way.� And with what a
+fine generosity he acknowledges what that meeting and this talk of
+Coleridge’s had meant to him. “I was stunned, startled with it as from a
+deep sleep.... I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a
+worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but now, bursting the
+deadly bands that bound them&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">‘With Styx nine times round them,’</p></div>
+
+<p>my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes catch the
+golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its original
+bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart,
+shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found nor will it
+ever find a heart to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> speak to; but that my understanding also did not
+remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself,
+I owe to Coleridge.� That was when Coleridge was twenty-six and Hazlitt
+twenty. These twelve years after that, when Coleridge was lecturing in
+London, his fancy and imagination were as dazzling and as powerful as
+ever, and his voice and language had lost none of their magic. But his
+thoughts were perhaps tending towards that transcendental obscurity that
+reached its worst when he was established in his closing days at Highgate,
+with his little group of worshipping disciples around him, and when
+Carlyle went to hear and to ridicule him. Anyhow, here is an account
+Rogers gives of a visit he paid to him when he had transferred himself
+from Hammersmith to Pall Mall:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Coleridge was a marvellous talker. One morning when Hookham Frere also
+breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three hours without
+intermission, about poetry, and so admirably that I wish every word he
+uttered had been written down. But sometimes his harangues were quite
+unintelligible, not only to myself, but to others. Wordsworth and I called
+upon him one afternoon, when he was in a lodging off Pall Mall. He talked
+uninterruptedly for about two hours, during which Wordsworth listened to
+him with profound attention, every now and then nodding his head, as if in
+assent. On quitting the lodgings I said to Wordsworth, ‘Well, for my part,
+I could not make head or tail of Coleridge’s oration; pray did you
+understand it?’ ‘Not one syllable of it,’ was Wordsworth’s reply.�</p>
+
+<p>He talked like one inspired, but his looks, except<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> whilst he was talking,
+belied him. “My face,� he said justly of himself, “unless when animated by
+immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth and great, indeed almost
+idiotic, good nature. ’Tis a mere carcase of a face, flat, flabby, and
+expressive chiefly of unexpression. Yet I am told that my eye, eyebrows,
+and forehead are physiognomically good.� De Quincey says there was a
+peculiar haze or dimness mixed with the light of his eyes; and when he was
+roused to animation Lamb thought he looked like “an archangel a little
+damaged.� But whether that haze of his eyes got into his talk, whether his
+thoughts were obscurely uttered, or whether it was they were too high and
+great for his auditors to take in so easily as a listener expects to grasp
+what is said to him is, at least, an open question. It may well be that
+Shelley hit the truth in the <i>Letter to Maria Gisborne</i> that he wrote from
+Leghorn, in 1820:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“You will see Coleridge; he who sits obscure<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In the exceeding lustre and the pure</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Intense irradiation of a mind</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Which, with its own internal lightnings blind,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Flags wearily through darkness and despair&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A hooded eagle among blinking owls.�</span></p></div>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<p class="title">CHARLES LAMB</p>
+
+
+<p>At one of those free-and-easy sociable gatherings in Lamb’s rooms, in the
+Temple, which Hazlitt has so happily immortalised, Lamb provoked some
+discussion by asking which of all the English literary men of the past one
+would most wish to have seen and known. Ayrton, who was of the company,
+said he would choose the two greatest names in English literature&mdash;Sir
+Isaac Newton and John Locke. “Every one burst out laughing,� writes
+Hazlitt, “at the expression of Lamb’s face, in which impatience was
+restrained by courtesy. ‘Yes, the greatest names,’ he stammered out
+hastily, ‘but they were not persons&mdash;not persons.... There is nothing
+personally interesting in the men.’� It is Lamb’s glory that he is both a
+great name and a great and interesting personality; and if his question
+were put again to-day in any company of book-lovers I should not be alone
+in saying at once that the writer of the past I would soonest have seen
+and known is Charles Lamb.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to write of him without letting your enthusiasm run away
+with you. Except for a few reviewers of his own day (and the reviewers of
+one’s own day count for little or nothing the day after), nobody who knew
+Lamb in his life or has come to know him through his books and the books
+that tell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> of him has been able to write of him except with warmest
+admiration and affection. Even so testy and difficult a man as Landor, who
+only saw Lamb once, could not touch on his memory without profound
+emotion, and says in some memorial verses:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Of all that ever wore man’s form, ’tis thee<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I first would spring to at the gates of heaven.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>And you remember Wordsworth’s&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“O, he was good, if e’er a good man lived!�</p></div>
+
+<p>There is, too, that well-known anecdote of how Thackeray lifted a volume
+of <i>Elia</i> and held it against his forehead and murmured “St. Charles!� All
+which, and many other utterances of love and reverence for his personal
+character, particularly Wordsworth’s reference to him as “Lamb, the frolic
+and the gentle,� would have exasperated Lamb himself and moved him to
+angry protest. “I have had the <i>Anthology</i>,� he wrote to Coleridge in
+1800, “and like only one thing in it, ‘Lewti’; but of that the last stanza
+is detestable, the rest most exquisite: the epithet ‘enviable’ would dash
+the finest poem. For God’s sake (I never was more serious) don’t make me
+ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, or do it in
+better verses. It did well enough five years ago when I came to see you,
+and was moral coxcomb enough at the time you wrote the lines to feed upon
+such epithets; but besides that the meaning of ‘gentle’ is equivocal at
+best, and almost always means poor-spirited, the very quality of
+gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpetings. My sentiment has long
+since vanished. I hope my virtues have done sucking.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> I can scarce think
+but you meant it in joke. I hope you did, for I should be ashamed to
+believe that you could think to gratify me by such praise, fit only to be
+a cordial to some green-sick sonneteer.� The epithet so rankled in his
+recollection that a week later he returned to the topic. “In the next
+edition of the <i>Anthology</i> (which Phœbus avert, and those nine other
+wandering maids also!) please to blot out ‘gentle-hearted,’ and substitute
+‘drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering,’ or any
+other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in
+question. And for Charles read Tom, or Bob, or Richard for mere delicacy.�</p>
+
+<p>Gentle Lamb certainly was, but the word is not large enough or robustly
+human enough to cover all his character. He wins your regard by his faults
+as well as by his virtues. If he drank a little too much at times, and
+sometimes talked and wrote foolishly and too flippantly to please the
+serious-minded, he far more often talked and wrote wisely, wittily,
+exquisitely, and for thirty-eight years of his life he readily sacrificed
+himself to his sister’s well-being, giving up all thought of marriage that
+he might be her constant guardian and attendant, watching dreadfully for
+signs of her recurring fits of insanity, and when they were coming upon
+her going with her to the melancholy gate of the asylum, and directly her
+mind was cleared, returning eagerly to fetch her home again.</p>
+
+<p>He was never in the habit of laying himself out to create a good
+impression on strangers; if they were unsympathetic, or he did not take to
+them, in his freakish fashion he would deliberately say and do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> things to
+shock and antagonise them, and so it came about that those who did not
+know him or could not appreciate him frequently set him down as “something
+between an imbecile, a brute, and a buffoon.� Carlyle formed that sort of
+impression of him; and one can believe there was scarcely any point of
+contact between Carlyle’s sombre, deadly earnest, man-with-a-message
+outlook and the tricksy, elvish, quaintly humorous spirit of Lamb, who
+wrote with a delicate fancy and tenderness that are more lasting than
+Carlyle’s solid preachings are likely to prove, and who “stuttered his
+quaintness in snatches,� says Haydon, “like the fool in <i>Lear</i>, and with
+equal beauty.�</p>
+
+<p>That is a fine and wonderful glimpse of one side of Lamb given by Leigh
+Hunt when he says he could have imagined him “cracking a joke in the teeth
+of a ghost, and then melting into thin air himself out of sympathy with
+the awful.� In describing him, most of his friends emphasise “the bland,
+sweet smile, with a touch of sadness in it.� “A light frame, so fragile
+that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it,� is Talfourd’s picture
+of him, “clad in clerk-like black, and surmounted by a head of form and
+expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about
+an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying
+expression, though the prevalent feeling was sad; and the nose slightly
+curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of
+the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the
+shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and
+shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its quivering
+sweetness, and fix it for ever in words?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> There are none, alas, to answer
+the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought, striving with humour; the
+lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth; and a smile of painful
+sweetness, present an image to the mind it can as little describe as lose.
+His personal appearance and manner are not unfitly characterised by what
+he himself says in one of his letters to Manning of Braham&mdash;‘a compound of
+the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel.’� Add to this the sketch that
+Patmore has left of him: “In point of intellectual character and
+expression, a finer face was never seen, nor one more fully, however
+vaguely, corresponding with the mind whose features it interpreted. There
+was the gravity usually engendered by a life passed in book-learning,
+without the slightest tinge of that assumption and affectation which
+almost always attend the gravity so engendered; the intensity and
+elevation of general expression that mark high genius, without any of its
+pretension and its oddity; the sadness waiting on fruitless thoughts and
+baffled aspirations, but no evidence of that spirit of scorning and
+contempt which these are apt to engender. Above all, there was a pervading
+sweetness and gentleness which went straight to the heart of every one who
+looked on it; and not the less so, perhaps, that it bore about it an air,
+a something, seeming to tell that it was not <i>put on</i>&mdash;for nothing could
+be more unjust than to tax Lamb with assuming anything, even a virtue,
+which he did not possess&mdash;but preserved and persevered in, spite of
+opposing and contradictory feelings within that struggled in vain for
+mastery. It was a thing to remind you of that painful smile which bodily
+disease and agony will sometimes put on, to conceal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> their sufferings from
+the observation of those they love.�</p>
+
+<p>It was a look&mdash;this look of patient endurance, of smiling resignation, of
+painful cheerfulness&mdash;that you could not understand unless you were aware
+of the appalling tragedy that lay in the background of his life, and of
+the haunting dread, the anxious, daily anticipation of disaster, and the
+need of concealing this anxiety from her, that were involved in the
+matter-of-course self-sacrifice with which he devoted himself to the care
+and guardianship of his sister, Mary.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1796, when Lamb was living with his father and mother and sister
+in lodgings in Little Queen Street, that the tragedy happened which was to
+overshadow all his after years. The father was drifting into second
+childhood, the mother an invalid. Mary Lamb had to attend upon them both,
+with the help of a small servant and, in addition, took in plain sewing;
+Charles was a junior clerk at the India House. Only a little while before
+Lamb had himself suffered a mental breakdown and had been placed under
+temporary restraint (“the six weeks that finished last year,� he writes to
+Coleridge, in May 1796, “your very humble servant spent very agreeably in
+a madhouse, at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don’t bite any
+one. But mad I was�); then, in September 1796, his sister suddenly went
+out of her mind, stabbed her mother to the heart, and in her frenzy threw
+knives at others in the room, and wounded her father before Lamb could
+seize her and get her under control. There are no letters more terrible or
+more pathetic than those he wrote to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> Coleridge, when the horror and
+heartbreak of this event was fresh upon him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“My dearest Friend,� he writes on the 27th September 1796, “White, or
+some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time have informed
+you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will
+only give you the outlines. My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of
+insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only
+time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in
+a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God
+has preserved to me my senses: I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have
+my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was slightly
+wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of
+the Bluecoat School, has been very kind to us, and we have no other
+friend; but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the
+best that remains to do. Write as religious a letter as possible, but
+no mention of what is gone and done with. With me ‘the former things
+are passed away,’ and I have something more to do than to feel. God
+Almighty have us all in His keeping!</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“<span class="smcap">C. Lamb.</span></span></p>
+
+<p>“Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past
+vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, publish
+mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a
+book, I charge you.</p>
+
+<p>“Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this
+yet to your dear wife. You look after your family; I have my reason
+and strength <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>left to take care of mine. I charge you, don’t think of
+coming to see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty
+love you and all of us!</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“<span class="smcap">C. Lamb.</span>�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>The book he mentions is one that he and Coleridge and Lloyd were arranging
+to publish together. In October there is another letter, replying to one
+from Coleridge, and saying his sister is restored to her senses&mdash;a long
+letter from which I shall quote only one or two memorable passages: “God
+be praised, Coleridge! wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been
+otherwise than collected and calm; even on that dreadful day, and in the
+midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquillity which bystanders
+may have construed into indifference&mdash;a tranquillity not of despair. Is it
+folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious principle that <i>most</i>
+supported me? I allow much to other favourable circumstances. I felt that
+I had something else to do than to regret. On that first evening my aunt
+was lying insensible&mdash;to all appearance like one dying; my father, with
+his poor forehead plaistered over from a wound he had received from a
+daughter, dearly loved by him, and who loved him no less dearly; my mother
+a dead and murdered corpse in the next room; yet was I wonderfully
+supported. I closed not my eyes in sleep that night, but lay without
+terrors and without despair. I have lost no sleep since.... One little
+incident may serve to make you understand my way of managing my mind.
+Within a day or two after the fatal one, we dressed for dinner a tongue,
+which we had had salted for some weeks in the house. As I sat down, a
+feeling like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> remorse struck me: this tongue poor Mary got for me; and can
+I partake of it now, when she is far away? A thought occurred and relieved
+me: if I give in to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an
+object in our rooms, that will not awaken the keenest griefs. I must rise
+above such weaknesses. I hope this was not want of true feeling. I did not
+let this carry me, though, too far. On the very second day (I date from
+the day of horrors), as is usual in such cases, there were a matter of
+twenty people, I do think, supping in our room: they prevailed on me to
+eat <i>with them</i> (for to eat I never refused). They were all making merry
+in the room! Some had come from friendship, some from busy curiosity, and
+some from interest. I was going to partake with them, when my recollection
+came that my poor dead mother was lying in the next room&mdash;the very next
+room&mdash;a mother who, through life, wished nothing but her children’s
+welfare. Indignation, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed
+upon my mind. In an agony of emotion I found my way mechanically to the
+adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking
+forgiveness of Heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting her so soon.
+Tranquillity returned, and it was the only violent emotion that mastered
+me. I think it did me good.�</p>
+
+<p>Through all his subsequent letters from time to time there are touching
+little references to his sister’s illnesses: she is away, again and again,
+in the asylum, or in charge of nurses, and he is alone and miserable, but
+looking forward to her recovering presently and returning home. Once when
+they are away from London on a visit, she is suddenly taken with one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+these frenzies, and on the way back to town he has to borrow a waistcoat
+to restrain her violence in the coach. But his love and loyalty were proof
+against it all; nothing would induce him to separate from her or let her
+go out of his charge, except during those intervals when she was so
+deranged as to be a danger to others and to herself.</p>
+
+<p>About the end of 1799 Lamb moved into the Temple and, first at Mitre Court
+Buildings, then in Middle Temple Lane, he resided there, near the house of
+his birth, for some seventeen years in all. In these two places he and his
+sister kept open house every Wednesday evening, and Hazlitt and Talfourd,
+Barry Cornwall, Holcroft, Godwin, and, when they were in town, Wordsworth
+and Coleridge were among their guests. Hazlitt and Talfourd and others
+have told us something of those joyous evenings in the small, dingy rooms,
+comfortable with books and old prints, where cold beef and porter stood
+ready on the sideboard for the visitors to help themselves, and whilst
+whoever chose sat and played at whist the rest fleeted the golden hours in
+jest and conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img58.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">WILL’S COFFEE HOUSE. RUSSELL STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of 1817 the Lambs took lodgings at 20 Russell Street,
+Covent Garden, a house which was formerly part of Will’s famous Coffee
+House, which Dryden used to frequent, having his summer seat by the
+fireside and his winter seat in the balcony, as chief of the wits and men
+of letters who made it their place of resort. In a letter to Dorothy
+Wordsworth, Mary Lamb reports their change of address: “We have left the
+Temple. I think you will be sorry to hear this. I know I have never been
+so well satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal Mount as when I could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+connect the idea of you with your own Grasmere Cottage. Our rooms were
+dirty and out of repair, and the inconvenience of living in chambers
+became every year more irksome, and so, at last, we mustered up resolution
+enough to leave the good old place that so long had sheltered us, and here
+we are living at a brazier’s shop, No. 20 Russell Street, Covent Garden, a
+place all alive with noise and bustle; Drury Lane Theatre in sight from
+our front, and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the
+carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least; strange
+that it does not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of
+the window, and listening to the calling up of the carriages, and the
+squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> scene to look
+down upon; I am sure you would be amused with it. It is well I am in a
+cheerful place, or I should have many misgivings about leaving the
+Temple.� And on the 21st November 1817, Lamb also writes to Dorothy
+Wordsworth: “Here we are, transplanted from our native soil. I thought we
+never could be torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench, but
+like a tooth, now ’tis out, and I am easy. We never can strike root so
+deep in any other ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of gardener’s
+mould, and if they take us up from it, it will cost no blood and groans,
+like mandrakes pulled up. We are in the individual spot I like best in all
+this great city. The theatres, with all their noises. Covent Garden,
+dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of
+the earliest peas and ’sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves are
+examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four-and-twenty
+hours before she saw a thief. She sits at the window working; and casually
+throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way,
+with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These little incidents
+agreeably diversify a female life.�</p>
+
+<p>During his residence in Russell Street, from 1817 till 1823, Lamb
+published in two volumes a collection of his miscellaneous writings, and
+contributed the <i>Essays of Elia</i> to the <i>London Magazine</i>, which makes this
+Russell Street house, in a sense, the most notable of his various London
+homes. Here he continued his social gatherings, but had no regular evening
+for them, sending forth announcements periodically, such as that he sent
+to Ayrton in 1823: “Cards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> and cold mutton in Russell Street on Friday at
+8 &amp; 9. Gin and jokes from ½ past that time to 12. Pass this on to Mr.
+Payne, and apprize Martin thereof�&mdash;Martin being Martin Burney.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img59.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LAMB. COLEBROOKE ROW.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>By the autumn of this year he has flitted from Covent Garden, and on the
+2nd September writes to Bernard Barton: “When you come London-ward you
+will find me no longer in Covent Garden. I have a cottage in Colebrooke
+Row, Islington. A cottage, for it is detached; a white house, with six
+good rooms, the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a
+moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house;
+and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure you), pears,
+strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of
+old Alcinous. You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all
+studded over and rough with old books, and above is a lightsome
+drawing-room,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> three windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great
+lord, never having had a house before�; and writing at the end of that
+week to invite Allsop to dinner on Sunday he supplies him with these
+directions: “Colebrook Cottage, left hand side, end of Colebrook Row, on
+the western brink of the New River, a detached whitish house.� To Barton,
+when he has been nearly three weeks at Islington, he says, “I continue to
+estimate my own roof-comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a
+lodger! My garden thrives (I am told), though I have yet reaped nothing
+but some tiny salad and withered carrots. But a garden’s a garden
+anywhere, and twice a garden in London.�</p>
+
+<p>Here, in November of that year, happened the accident to George Dyer that
+supplied Lamb with the subject of his whimsical Elian essay, <i>Amicus
+Redivivus</i>. Dyer was an odd, eccentric, very absent-minded old bookworm
+who lived in Clifford’s Inn; Lamb delighted in his absurdities, and loved
+him, and loved to make merry over his quaint sayings and doings. “You have
+seen our house,� he writes to Mrs. Hazlitt, in the week after Dyer’s
+adventure. “What I now tell you is literally true. Yesterday week George
+Dyer called upon us at one o’clock (<i>bright noonday</i>) on his way to dine
+with Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He sat with Mary about half-an-hour, and
+took leave. The maid saw him go out, from her kitchen window, but suddenly
+losing sight of him, ran up in a fright to Mary. G. D., instead of keeping
+the slip that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff in hand, in broad
+open day, marched into the New River. He had not his spectacles on, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+you know his absence. Who helped him out they can hardly tell, but between
+’em they got him out, drenched through and through. A mob collected by
+that time, and accompanied him in. ‘Send for the Doctor,’ they said: and a
+one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was fetched from the public-house at the
+end, where it seems he lurks for the sake of picking up water practice;
+having formerly had a medal from the Humane Society for some rescue. By
+his advice the patient was put between blankets; and when I came home at
+four to dinner, I found G. D. abed and raving, light-headed with the
+brandy and water which the doctor had administered. He sang, laughed,
+whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian angels, would get up and go home;
+but we kept him there by force; and by next morning he departed sober, and
+seems to have received no injury.�</p>
+
+<p>Before he left Islington the India Company bestowed upon Lamb the pension
+that at last emancipated him from his “dry drudgery at the desk’s dead
+wood,� and he communicates the great news exultantly to Wordsworth in a
+letter dated “Colebrook Cottage,� 6th April 1825: “Here I am, then, after
+thirty-three years’ slavery, sitting in my own room at eleven o’clock this
+finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with £441 a year for the
+remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his
+annuity and starved at ninety: £441, <i>i.e.</i> £450, with a deduction of £9
+for a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the pension
+guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &amp;c. I came home <span class="smcaplc">FOR EVER</span> on Tuesday in
+last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was
+like passing from life into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> eternity. Every year to be as long as three,
+<i>i.e.</i> to have three times as much real time (time that is my own) in it!
+I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But the
+tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the
+gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys; their
+conscious fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now,
+when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home in rain or
+shine without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and
+shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master as it has been
+irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure
+feeling that some good has happened to us.�</p>
+
+<p>He made use of these experiences in one of the best of his essays, that on
+<i>The Superannuated Man</i>, in which also you find echoes of a letter he
+wrote to Bernard Barton just after he had written to Wordsworth:</p>
+
+<p>“I am free, B. B.&mdash;free as air.</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">‘The little bird that wings the sky<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Knows no such liberty!’</span></p></div>
+
+<p>“I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o’clock.</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">‘I came home for ever!’</p></div>
+
+<p>“I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to Wordsworth in a
+long letter and don’t care to repeat. Take it briefly that for a few days
+I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is becoming daily
+more natural to me. I went and sat among ’em all at my old thirty-three
+years’ desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> yearnings at
+leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads, at leaving
+them in the lurch, fag, fag, fag! The comparison of my own superior
+felicity gave me anything but pleasure. B. B. I would not serve another
+seven years for seven hundred thousand pounds.�</p>
+
+<p>From Islington Lamb journeyed over to Highgate every now and then to visit
+Coleridge at Mr. Gilman’s; and a-visiting him at Colebrooke Cottage came
+Coleridge, Southey, William Hone, and among many another, Hood, to whom he
+took an especial liking. Coleridge thought he was the author of certain
+Odes that were then appearing in the <i>London Magazine</i>, but writing in
+reply Lamb assured him he was mistaken: “The Odes are four-fifths done by
+Hood, a silentish young man you met at Islington one day, an invalid. The
+rest are Reynolds’s, whose sister H. has recently married.�</p>
+
+<p>During the two years or more after his release from the India House, Lamb
+and his sister spent two or three short holidays lodging with a Mrs.
+Leishman at The Chase, Enfield; in 1827 they rented the house of her, and
+Lamb wrote from that address on the 18th September to Hood, who was then
+living at 2 Robert Street, Adelphi: “Give our kind loves to all at
+Highgate, and tell them we have finally torn ourselves outright away from
+Colebrooke, where I had <i>no</i> health, and are about to domicilate for good
+at Enfield, where I have experienced good.</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">‘Lord, what good hours do we keep!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">How quietly we sleep!’...</span></p></div>
+
+<p>We have got our books into our new house. I am<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> a dray-horse if I was not
+ashamed of the undigested dirty lumber, as I toppled ’em out of the cart,
+and blest Becky that came with ’em for her having an unstuffed brain with
+such rubbish.... ’Twas with some pain we were evulsed from Colebrook. You
+may find some of our flesh sticking to the doorposts. To change
+habitations is to die to them; and in my time I have died seven deaths.
+But I don’t know whether every such change does not bring with it a
+rejuvenescence. ’Tis an enterprise; and shoves back the sense of death’s
+approximating which, though not terrible to me, is at all times
+particularly distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical,
+recurring after seven years; but this last is premature by half that time.
+Cut off in the flower of Colebrook!� He mentions that the rent is 10s.
+less than he paid at Islington; that he pays, in fact, £35 a year,
+exclusive of moderate taxes, and thinks himself lucky.</p>
+
+<p>But the worry of moving brought on one of Mary Lamb’s “sad, long
+illnesses�; and whilst she was absent, Lamb fled from the loneliness of
+his country home to spend ten days in town. “But Town,� he writes to
+Barton, “with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was. The
+streets, the shops are left, but all old friends are gone. And in London I
+was frightfully convinced of this as I past houses and places&mdash;empty
+caskets now. I have ceased to care almost about anybody. The bodies I
+cared for are in graves or dispersed. My old Clubs, that lived so long and
+flourished so steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of our
+adopted young friend at Charing Cross, ’twas heavy unfeeling rain and I
+had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>nowhere to go. Home have I none&mdash;and not a sympathising house to
+turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of the heaven pour down on
+a forlorner head. Yet I tried ten days at a sort of friend’s house, but it
+was large and straggling&mdash;one of the individuals of my long knot of
+friends, card-players, pleasant companions&mdash;that have tumbled to pieces
+into dust and other things&mdash;and I got home on Thursday convinced that I
+was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in
+my corner. Less than a month, I hope, will bring home Mary. She is at
+Fulham, looking better in her health than ever, but sadly rambling, and
+scarce showing any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come
+again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old
+sorrows over a game of Picquet again. But ’tis a tedious cut out of a life
+of sixty-four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img60.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CHARLES LAMB</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The cares of housekeeping, however, sat too heavily on them, and in
+October 1829 they abandoned those responsibilities, gave up their cottage
+on Chase Side, and went to lodge and board with their next-door
+neighbours, an old Mr. and Mrs. Westwood, and in this easier way of living
+their spirits and their health revived. Nevertheless, by January 1830 Lamb
+had lost all his contentment with rural life, and was yearning desperately
+for the remembered joys of London. “And is it a year since we parted from
+you at the steps of Edmonton stage?� he writes to Wordsworth. “There are
+not now the years that there used to be.� He frets, he says, like a lion
+in a net, and then goes on to utter that yearning to be back in London
+that I have quoted already in my opening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> chapter. “Back-looking
+ambition,� he continues, “tells me I might still be a Londoner! Well, if
+we ever do move, we have incumbrances the less to impede us; all our
+furniture has faded under the auctioneer’s hammer, going for nothing, like
+the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two
+left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out
+of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless.� And to Bernard Barton
+he says, “With fire and candle-light I can dream myself in Holborn....
+Give me old London at Fire and Plague times, rather than these tepid
+gales, healthy country air, and purposeless exercise.�</p>
+
+<p>Early in 1833 he removed from Enfield, and his reasons for doing so he
+explains in a letter to Mrs. Hazlitt, on the 31st May of that year: “I am
+driven from house to house by Mary’s illness. I took a sudden resolution
+to take my sister to Edmonton, where she was under medical treatment last
+time, and have arranged to board and lodge with the people. Thank God I
+have repudiated Enfield. I have got out of hell, despair of heaven, and
+must sit down contented in a half-way purgatory. Thus ends this strange
+eventful history. But I am nearer to town, and will get up to you somehow
+before long.� About the same date he wrote to Wordsworth: “Mary is ill
+again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed
+by two of depression most dreadful. I look back upon her earlier attacks
+with longing&mdash;nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed by
+complete restoration&mdash;shocking as they were to me then. In short, half her
+life she is dead to me, and the other half is made anxious with fears<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> and
+lookings forward to the next shock. With such prospects it seemed to me
+necessary that she should no longer live with me, and be fluttered with
+continual removals; so I am come to live with her, at a Mr. Walden’s, and
+his wife, who take in patients, and have arranged to lodge and board us
+only. They have had the care of her before. I see little of her: alas! I
+too often hear her. <i>Sunt lachrymæ rerum!</i> and you and I must bear it....
+I am about to lose my old and only walk-companion, whose mirthful spirits
+were the ‘youth of our house,’ Emma Isola. I have her here now for a
+little while, but she is too nervous properly to be under such a roof, so
+she will make short visits&mdash;be no more an inmate. With my perfect approval
+and more than concurrence she is to be wedded to Moxon at the end of
+August&mdash;so ‘perish the roses and the flowers’&mdash;how is it? Now to the
+brighter side. I am emancipated from the Westwoods, and I am with
+attentive people and younger. I am three or four miles nearer the great
+city; coaches half-price less and going always, of which I will avail
+myself. I have few friends left there; one or two though, most beloved.
+But London streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, though not one known
+of the latter were remaining.�</p>
+
+<p>Emma Isola is “the adopted young friend� referred to by Lamb in a letter
+quoted a few pages back. She was the granddaughter of an Italian refugee;
+her mother was dead; her father was an “Esquire Bedell� of Cambridge, and
+the Lambs met her at the house of a friend when they were visiting that
+town in 1823. She was a charming, brown-faced little girl, and they were
+so taken with her that she was invited to visit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> them in London during her
+holidays, and they ended by adopting her and calling her their niece. She
+brought a great deal of happiness into their lives; Lamb gives whimsical
+accounts in some of his letters of how he is teaching her Latin, and his
+sister is prompting her in her French lessons. When she was old enough she
+became governess in the family of a Mr. and Mrs. Williams at Bury; fell
+ill and was kindly nursed there; and Lamb tells in one of his most
+delightful letters how he went to fetch her home to Enfield, when she was
+convalescent, and it is good to glimpse how sympathetically amused he is
+at Emma’s covert admonitions and anxiety lest he should drink too much, at
+dinner with the Williamses, and so bring disgrace upon himself and her.</p>
+
+<p>His beautiful affection for their young ward shines through all the
+drollery of his several notes to Edward Moxon (the publisher) in which he
+speaks of their engagement; and it has always seemed to me it is this same
+underlying affection for her and wistfulness to see her happy that help to
+make the following letter, written just after the wedding, one of the
+finest and most pathetic things in literature:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="right">“<i>August 1833.</i></p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. and Mrs. Moxon,</span>&mdash;Time very short. I wrote to Miss Fryer, and
+had the sweetest letter about you, Emma, that ever friendship
+dictated. ‘I am full of good wishes, I am crying with good wishes,’
+she says; but you shall see it.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Moxon, I take your writing most kindly, and shall most kindly
+your writing from Paris. I want to crowd another letter to Miss Fryer
+into the little time after dinner, before post time. So with twenty
+thousand congratulations,&mdash;Yours,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">C. L.</span></p>
+
+<p>“I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for the reason. I got home from
+Dover Street, by Evans, <i>half as sober as a judge</i>. I am turning over
+a new leaf, as I hope you will now.�</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img61.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LAMB’S COTTAGE. EDMONTON.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>[<i>The turn of the leaf presents the following</i>:&mdash;]</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Emma and Edward Moxon,</span>&mdash;Accept my sincere congratulations,
+and imagine more good wishes than my weak nerves will let me put into
+good set words. The dreary blank of <i>unanswered questions</i> which I
+ventured to ask in vain was cleared up on the wedding day by Mrs. W.
+taking a glass of wine and, with a total change of countenance,
+begging leave to drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon’s health. It restored me
+from that moment, as if by an electrical stroke, to the entire
+possession of my senses. I never felt so calm and quiet after a
+similar illness as I do now. I feel as if all tears were wiped from my
+eyes, and all care from my heart.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Mary Lamb.</span>�</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="right">“<i>Wednesday.</i></p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Dears again,</span>&mdash;Your letter interrupted a seventh game at picquet which
+<i>we</i> were having, after walking to Wright’s and purchasing shoes. We
+pass our time in cards, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso soon.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“C. L.</span></p>
+
+<p>“Never was such a calm, or such a recovery. ’Tis her own words
+undictated.�</p></div>
+
+<p>And it was in this plain, commonplace little cottage in Church Street,
+Edmonton, that Mary Lamb was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> thus suddenly awakened out of her
+derangement; that Charles Lamb and she wrote, by turns, that letter to the
+Moxons; that the Lambs sat contentedly playing picquet when the letter of
+the bride and bridegroom came to them from Paris. These are the very rooms
+in which these things happened; the stage remains, but the actors are
+departed. Within a stone’s throw of the house, in Edmonton Churchyard,
+Lamb and his sister lie buried. His death was the result of an accident.
+He had gone on his accustomed walk along the London Road, one day in
+December, when he stumbled and fell over a stone, slightly injuring his
+face. So trivial did the wound seem that writing to George Dyer’s wife on
+the 22nd December 1834, about a book he had lost when he was in
+London&mdash;“it was the book I went to fetch from Miss Buffham’s while the
+tripe was frying�&mdash;he says nothing of anything being the matter with him.
+But erysipelas supervened, and he grew rapidly worse, and died on the
+27th. His sister, who had lapsed into one of her illnesses and was
+unconscious, at the time, of her loss, outlived him by nearly thirteen
+years, and reached the great age of eighty-two.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<p class="title">ST. JOHN’S WOOD AND WIMBLEDON</p>
+
+
+<p>Mary Lamb passed the later years of her life in a sort of nursing home at
+St. John’s Wood, and in her happier intervals kept up a pleasant
+acquaintance with some of the notable circle of friends who had gathered
+about her and her brother aforetime; among others, with the Hoods, who
+were then living in the same locality. Crabb Robinson mentions in his
+Diary how he made a call on Mary Lamb, and finding her well over one of
+her periodical attacks, “quite in possession of her faculties and
+recollecting nearly everything,� he accompanied her on a visit to the
+Hoods, who were lodging at 17 Elm Tree Road.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps one of the most graphic pictures we have of Hood’s home life, and
+incidentally of Hood himself and his wife and of Charles and Mary Lamb, is
+contained in the account that has been left by Miss Mary Balmanno of an
+evening she spent with the Hoods when they were making their home in
+Robert Street, Adelphi: “Bound in the closest ties of friendship with the
+Hoods, with whom we also were in the habit of continually associating, we
+had the pleasure of meeting Charles Lamb at their house one evening,
+together with his sister, and several other friends.... In outward
+appearance Hood conveyed the idea of a clergyman. His figure slight, and
+invariably dressed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> in black; his face pallid; the complexion delicate,
+and features regular: his countenance bespeaking sympathy by its sweet
+expression of melancholy and suffering.</p>
+
+<p>“Lamb was of a different mould and aspect. Of middle height, with brown
+and rather ruddy complexion, grey eyes expressive of sense and shrewdness,
+but neither large nor brilliant; his head and features well shaped, and
+the general expression of his countenance quiet, kind, and observant,
+undergoing rapid changes in conversation, as did his manner, variable as
+an April day, particularly to his sister, whose saint-like good humour and
+patience were as remarkable as his strange and whimsical modes of trying
+them. But the brother and sister perfectly understood each other, and
+‘Charles,’ as she always called him, would not have been the Charles of
+her loving heart without the pranks and oddities which he was continually
+playing off upon her, and which were only outnumbered by the instances of
+affection and evidences of ever-watchful solicitude with which he
+surrounded her.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means looked
+so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather stout and
+comely lady of middle age. Dressed with Quaker-like simplicity in
+dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin
+folded across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the beholder in her
+favour by an aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners were very quiet and
+gentle, and her voice low. She smiled frequently, and seldom laughed,
+partaking of the courtesies and hospitalities of her merry host and
+hostess with all the cheerfulness and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> grace of a most mild and kindly
+nature. Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring
+disciple; her eyes seldom absent from his face. And when apparently
+engrossed in conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word
+for which he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the
+room, show how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high
+spirits, sauntering about the room with his hands crossed behind his back,
+conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him....�</p>
+
+<p>She goes on to describe how Miss Kelly, the actress, amused them by
+impersonating a character she was taking in a new play, and “Mrs. Hood’s
+eyes sparkled with joy, as she saw the effect it had produced upon her
+husband, whose pale face, like an illuminated comic mask, shone with fun
+and good humour. Never was a happier couple than the Hoods; ‘mutual
+reliance and fond faith’ seemed to be their motto. Mrs. Hood was a most
+amiable woman&mdash;of excellent manners, and full of sincerity and goodness.
+She perfectly adored her husband, tending him like a child, whilst he,
+with unbounded affection, seemed to delight to yield himself to her
+guidance. Nevertheless, true to his humorous nature, he loved to tease her
+with jokes and whimsical accusations, which were only responded to by,
+‘Hood, Hood, how can you run on so?’</p>
+
+<p>“The evening was concluded by a supper, one of those elegant social
+repasts which Flemish artists delight to paint.... Mr. Lamb oddly walked
+round the table, looking closely at any dish that struck his fancy before
+he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> Hood that he should by that
+means know how to select some dish that was difficult to carve and take
+the trouble off her hands; accordingly, having jested in this manner, he
+placed himself with great deliberation before a lobster salad, observing
+<i>that</i> was the thing.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and
+his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song of ‘If you go to
+France be sure you learn the lingo’; his pensive manner and feeble voice
+making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused
+himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin
+eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered forth a
+long stream of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood
+frequently occurred, we ladies thought it in praise of her. The delivery
+of this speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a gentleman
+who sat next me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me
+that was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster salad!
+Thus, in the gayest of moods, progressed and concluded a truly merry
+little social supper, worthy in all respects of the author of <i>Whims and
+Oddities</i>.�</p>
+
+<p>But all this, when the Hoods came to St. John’s Wood, lay thirteen years
+behind them, and Lamb had been eight years dead. Quitting the Adelphi in
+1829, Hood went to Winchmore Hill, then to Wanstead; then, after some five
+years of residence in Germany and Belgium, he returned to England, and
+made his home for a short time at Camberwell, and thence in 1842 removed
+to St. John’s Wood&mdash;at first to rooms at 17 Elm Tree Road, and in 1844 to
+a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> house of his own, “Devonshire Lodge,� in the Finchley Road&mdash;a house
+that the guide-books all tell us was demolished, but since I started to
+write this chapter the London County Council has identified as “Devonshire
+Lodge� the house that still stands in Finchley Road, immediately adjoining
+the Marlborough Road station of the Metropolitan Railway; and here it was
+that Hood died on the 3rd of May 1845.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img62.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">TOM HOOD’S HOUSE. ST JOHN’S WOOD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>The room in which he worked at 17 Elm Tree Road gave him a view of Lord’s
+Cricket Ground, and he complained that this was a drawback, because “when
+he was at work he could often see others at play.� He caricatured the
+landlady of the house, who had “a large and personal love of flowers,� and
+made her the heroine of his <i>Mrs. Gardiner, A Horticultural Romance</i>. From
+Elm Tree Road he went to attend the dinner at Greenwich that was given to
+Dickens on his second return from America; and describing this dissipation
+in a letter to a friend he says, “You will be pleased to hear that, in
+spite of my warnings and forebodings, I got better and betterer, till by
+dining, as the physicians did, on turtle soup, white-bait, and champagne,
+I seemed quite well.� He was to have been chairman at the dinner, but
+excused himself on the score of ill-health, and Captain Marryat took his
+place. The diners included, in addition to Dickens himself, Moncton
+Milnes, Forster, Clarkson Stanfield, Ainsworth, Landseer (another St.
+John’s Wood resident), Cruikshank, Cattermole, “Ingoldsby� Barham, and
+Barry Cornwall. Being called upon for a speech, Hood said he supposed they
+drank his health because he was a notorious invalid, but assured the
+company that the trembling of his hand was neither from palsy nor ague,
+but that their wishes had already so improved his circulation and filled
+him with genial warmth that his hand had a natural inclination to shake
+itself with every one present. Whereupon everybody within reach, and some
+who were not, insisted upon shaking hands with him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> “<i>Very</i> gratifying,
+wasn’t it?� he finishes his letter. “Though I cannot go quite so far as
+Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserved
+in spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as usual when I go
+out, because I am so domestic and steady, and was down at the door before
+I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his own carriage.
+Poor girl! what <i>would</i> she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame
+one.�</p>
+
+<p>Dickens, at that date, lived at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone Road;
+they had probably driven up together from Greenwich, and the carriage had
+come the mile or so further on with Hood after leaving Dickens at his own
+door. Dickens was one of the many visitors who have helped to make Hood’s
+St. John’s Wood residence memorable; there is a record of his being there,
+with his wife and sister and Daniel Maclise, in December 1842. At Elm Tree
+Road, for all his broken health, Hood worked hard at editing and writing
+for the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>, and, after resigning from that, for
+<i>Hood’s Monthly Magazine</i>. One letter of his, dated from 17 Elm Tree Road,
+on the 18th July 1843, is headed “From my bed�; for he was frequently
+bedridden for days and weeks at a stretch, but sat propped up with
+pillows, writing and sketching with unabated industry. He was contributing
+also in these days to <i>Punch</i>, and to Douglas Jerrold’s <i>Illuminated
+Magazine</i>. In November 1843 he wrote here, for <i>Punch</i>, his grim <i>Drop of
+Gin</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Gin! Gin! a drop of Gin!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What magnified monsters circle therein!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Ragged, and stained with filth and mud,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Some plague-spotted, and some with blood!</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Shapes of misery, shame, and sin!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Figures that make us loathe and tremble,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Creatures scarce human, that more resemble</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Broods of diabolical kin,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ghost and vampyre, demon and Jin!...�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>But a far greater poem than this, <i>The Song of the Shirt</i>, was also
+written at Elm Tree Road. “Now mind, Hood, mark my words,� said Mrs. Hood,
+when he was putting up the manuscript for the post, “this will tell
+wonderfully. It is one of the best things you ever did.� And the results
+justified her. The verses appeared in the Christmas Number of <i>Punch</i> for
+1843, and not only trebled the circulation of that paper, but within a
+very short time had at least doubled Hood’s reputation, though <i>Eugene
+Aram</i>, <i>The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies</i>, and <i>Lycus the Centaur</i>, had
+long preceded it. Probably no poem ever stirred the national conscience
+more deeply or created a profounder sensation. Shortly after its
+appearance Cowden Clarke met Hood, and has left a vivid description of his
+personal appearance in those last months of his life. His worn, pallid
+look, he says, “strangely belied the effect of jocularity and high spirits
+conveyed by his writings. He punned incessantly, but languidly, almost as
+if unable to think in any other way than in play upon words. His smile was
+attractively sweet; it bespoke the affectionate-natured man which his
+serious verses&mdash;those especially addressed to his wife or his
+children&mdash;show him to be, and it also revealed the depth of pathos in his
+soul that inspired his <i>Bridge of Sighs</i>, <i>Song of the Shirt</i>, and <i>Eugene
+Aram</i>.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img63.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THOMAS HOOD</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>There are many interesting points of resemblance between Hood and Lamb.
+Both were inveterate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> punsters; each had known poverty, and had come
+through hard experiences that had left their marks upon them, yet had
+never soured them or warped their sympathies. You may use the same
+epithets for both: they were homely, kindly, gentle, given to freakish
+moods and whimsical jesting; the one was as unselfishly devoted to his
+sister as the other was to his wife and children; and in descriptions of
+Hood, as of Lamb, stress is laid on the peculiar wistfulness and sweetness
+of his smile. But after the East India Company had handsomely pensioned
+him off, Lamb had no further financial anxieties; whilst Hood had to
+suppress his finer gifts, and to the end of his days turn his hand to all
+manner of inferior but more popular work, that would enable him to keep
+the family pot boiling. And he was all the while fighting against disease
+as well as poverty. He could not afford to go into exile, like Stevenson,
+and lengthen his days and foster his wasting strength in a healthfuller
+climate. He was never rich enough to have any choice but to die in the
+place where he had to earn his living, and no man ever worked more
+manfully, or died at his post bravelier or with a more cheery philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Read the humorous preface he wrote for the volume of <i>Hood’s Own</i>, whilst
+he lay ill abed there in his St. John’s Wood house: it is the sort of
+humour that makes your heart ache, for you cannot forget that he was
+racked with pain and slowly dying whilst he wrote it. He jests about the
+aristocratic, ghastly slenderness of his fingers; his body, he says, may
+cry craven, but luckily his mind has no mind to give in. “‘Things may take
+a turn,’ as the pig said on the spit.... As to health? it’s the weather of
+the body&mdash;it rains, it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> hails, it blows, it snows at present, but it may
+clear up by-and-by�; and in conclusion he mentions that the doctor tells
+him, “anatomically my heart is lower hung than usual, but what of that?
+<i>The more need to keep it up!</i>� Raised up in bed, with an improvised desk
+across his knees, he was hard at work, writing prose and verse and
+knocking off grotesque little drawings, and remained, as he said, “a
+lively Hood to get a livelihood,� almost to his last hour. When, towards
+the end, his wife was trying to relieve his sufferings by putting a
+poultice on his emaciated body, he laughed up at her quizzically, and
+asked if she didn’t think “it seemed a deal of mustard for such a little
+meat.� He had moved into Devonshire Lodge, and was within sixteen months
+of his death when he wrote <i>The Haunted House</i>, and <i>The Bridge of Sighs</i>.
+“I fear that so far as I myself am concerned,� he writes to Thackeray in
+August 1844, “King Death will claim me ere many months elapse. However,
+there’s a good time coming, if not in this world, most assuredly in the
+next.� When he was invited next month to attend a soirée at the Manchester
+Athenæum, he had to decline, and added, “For me all long journeys are over
+save one�; but a couple of months later he had written the <i>Lay of the
+Labourer</i>, for his magazine, and writing to Lord Lytton remarked that
+though the doctor had ordered him not to work he was compelled to do so,
+and “so it will be to the end. I must die in harness, like a hero&mdash;or a
+horse.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img64.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CHARLES DIBDIN. 34 ARLINGTON ROAD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His dying hours were made easy by the pension of a hundred pounds that Sir
+Robert Peel kindly and tactfully settled on Mrs. Hood, and one of the last
+things he wrote on his lingering deathbed was a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>valediction that
+breathed all of resignation and hope:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Farewell, Life! My senses swim<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the world is growing dim;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thronging shadows cloud the light,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Like the advent of the night,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Colder, colder, colder still</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Upwards steals a vapour chill&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Strong the earthy odour grows&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I smell the Mould above the Rose!</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Welcome, Life! The Spirit strives!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Strength returns, and hope revives;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Fly like shadows at the morn,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O’er the earth there comes a bloom&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Sunny light for sullen gloom,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Warm perfume for vapour cold&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I smell the Rose above the Mould!�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Herbert Spencer lived in St. John’s Wood for many years, at 7 Marlborough
+Gardens, 13 Loudon Road, and 64 Avenue Road successively. Within an easy
+walk of Avenue Road, at 34 Arlington Road, Camden Town, Charles Dibdin,
+whose memory survives in <i>Tom Bowling</i>, passed the last years of his life.
+And, back in St. John’s Wood, at the Priory, 21 North Bank, in one of the
+numerous houses that were swept away when the Great Central Railway came
+to Marylebone, George Eliot lived from 1864 until 1880, when she removed
+to Chelsea. Before that, from 1860 till 1863, lived in a house in
+Blandford Square, which has also been demolished; but for nearly two years
+before going there she resided at Holly Lodge, which still survives, in
+the Wimbledon Park Road.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>There is an entry in her Diary dated 6th February 1859: “Yesterday we went
+to take possession of Holly Lodge, which is to be our dwelling, we expect,
+for years to come. It was a deliciously fresh, bright day. I will accept
+the omen. A letter came from Blackwood telling me the result of the
+subscription to <i>Adam Bede</i>, which was published on the 1st: 730 copies,
+Mudie having taken 500 on the publisher’s terms&mdash;10 per cent. off the sale
+price. At first he had stood out for a larger reduction, and would only
+take 50, but at last he came round. In this letter Blackwood tells me the
+first <i>ab extra</i> opinion of the book, which happened to be precisely what
+I most desired. A cabinetmaker (brother to Blackwood’s managing clerk) had
+read the sheets, and declared the writer must have been brought up to the
+business, or at least had listened to the workmen in their workshop.� She
+wrote that month to Miss Sara Hennell, “We are tolerably settled now,
+except that we have only a temporary servant; and I shall not be quite at
+ease until I have a trustworthy woman who will manage without incessant
+dogging. Our home is very comfortable, with far more vulgar indulgences in
+it than I ever expected to have again; but you must not imagine it a snug
+place, just peeping above the holly bushes. Imagine it rather as a tall
+cake, with a low garnish of holly and laurel. As it is, we are very well
+off, with glorious breezy walks, and wide horizons, well-ventilated rooms,
+and abundant water. If I allowed myself to have any longings beyond what
+is given, they would be for a nook quite in the country, far away from
+palaces&mdash;Crystal or otherwise&mdash;with an orchard behind me full of old
+trees, and rough grass <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>and hedgerow paths among the endless fields
+where you meet nobody. We talk of such things sometimes, along with old
+age and dim faculties, and a small independence to save us from writing
+drivel for dishonest money.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img65.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GEORGE ELIOT. WIMBLEDON PARK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>The “we� in these entries means, of course, herself and George Henry
+Lewes; they formed an irregular union in 1854, and lived as husband and
+wife until his death in 1878. In George Eliot’s Journal and letters are a
+good many other references to her life at Holly Lodge, of which the most
+interesting are perhaps the following:</p>
+
+<p><i>April 29th, 1859</i> (from the Journal): “Finished a story, <i>The Lifted
+Veil</i>, which I began one morning at Richmond as a resource when my head
+was too stupid for more important work. Resumed my new novel� (this was
+<i>The Mill on the Floss</i>), “of which I am going to rewrite the two first
+chapters. I shall call it provisionally <i>The Tullivers</i>, or perhaps <i>St.
+Ogg’s on the Floss</i>.�</p>
+
+<p><i>May 6th</i> (from a letter to Major Blackwood): “Yes I <i>am</i> assured now that
+<i>Adam Bede</i> was worth writing&mdash;worth living through long years to write.
+But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good
+and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past but not faith in the
+future.�</p>
+
+<p><i>May 19th</i> (from Journal): “A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes
+to give me another £400 at the end of the year, making in all £1200, as an
+acknowledgment of <i>Adam Bede’s</i> success.�</p>
+
+<p><i>June 8th</i> (from a letter to Mrs. Congreve): “I want to get rid of this
+house&mdash;cut cable and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth, and should think
+with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> unmitigated regret of our coming here if it were not for you.�</p>
+
+<p><i>July 21st</i> (from the Journal, on returning after a holiday in
+Switzerland): “Found a charming letter from Dickens, and pleasant letters
+from Blackwood&mdash;nothing to annoy us.�</p>
+
+<p><i>November 10th</i> (from the Journal): “Dickens dined with us to-day for the
+first time.�</p>
+
+<p><i>December 15th</i> (from the Journal): “Blackwood proposes to give me for
+<i>The Mill on the Floss</i>, £2000 for 4000 copies of an edition at 31s. 6d.,
+and afterwards the same rate for any more copies printed at the same
+price; £150 for 1000 at 12s.; and £60 for 1000 at 6s. I have accepted.�</p>
+
+<p><i>January 3rd, 1860</i> (from a letter to John Blackwood): “We are demurring
+about the title. Mr. Lewes is beginning to prefer <i>The House of Tulliver,
+or Life on the Floss</i>, to our old notion of <i>Sister Maggie</i>. <i>The
+Tullivers, or Life on the Floss</i> has the advantage of slipping easily off
+the lazy English tongue, but it is after too common a fashion (<i>The
+Newcomes</i>, <i>The Bertrams</i>, &amp;c., &amp;c.). Then there is <i>The Tulliver Family,
+or Life on the Floss</i>. Pray meditate and give us your opinion.�</p>
+
+<p><i>January 16th, 1860</i> (from the Journal): “Finished my second volume this
+morning, and am going to send off the MS. of the first volume to-morrow.
+We have decided that the title shall be <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>.�</p>
+
+<p><i>February 23rd</i> (from a letter to John Blackwood): “Sir Edward Lytton
+called on us yesterday. The conversation lapsed chiefly into monologue,
+from the difficulty I found in making him hear, but under all
+disadvantages I had an agreeable impression of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>kindness and
+sincerity. He thinks the two defects of <i>Adam Bede</i> are the dialect and
+Adam’s marriage with Dinah, but of course I would have my teeth drawn
+rather than give up either.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img66.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GEORGE ELIOT’S HOUSE. CHELSEA.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span><i>July 1st</i> (from a letter to Madame Bodichon, on returning to Holly Lodge
+after a two months’ holiday in Italy): “We are preparing to renounce the
+delights of roving, and to settle down quietly, as old folks should do....
+We have let our present house.�</p>
+
+<p>One interesting memorial of the life at Holly Lodge is the MS. of <i>The
+Mill on the Floss</i>, on which is inscribed in George Eliot’s handwriting:
+“To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third
+book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge,
+South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March 1860.�</p>
+
+<p>The publication of <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>, and, in the three succeeding
+years, of <i>Silas Marner</i> and <i>Romola</i>, carried George Eliot to the height
+of her fame, and by the time she was living in North Bank, St. John’s
+Wood, she had her little circle of adoring worshippers, who, like George
+Henry Lewes, took her very seriously indeed. That sort of hero-worship was
+customary in those days, unless the worshipped one had too strong a sense
+of humour to put up with it. There is a passage in the Autobiography of
+Mr. Alfred Austin giving a brief account of a visit he paid to George
+Eliot. “We took the first opportunity,� he says, “of going to call on her
+at her request in St. John’s Wood. But there I found pervading her house
+an attitude of adoration, not to say an atmosphere almost of awe,
+thoroughly alien to my idea that persons of genius, save in their works,
+should resemble other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> people as much as possible, and not allow any
+special fuss to be made about them. I do not say the fault lay with her.�
+But you find the same circumstance spoken to elsewhere, and the general
+notion you gather is that George Eliot rather enjoyed this being
+pedestalled, and accepted the incense of her reverent little circle with a
+good deal of complacency.</p>
+
+<p>In 1878 Lewes died, and in March 1880 George Eliot was married to John
+Cross. They left St. John’s Wood on the 3rd of the following December and
+went to 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where George Eliot died on the 22nd of the
+same month.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<p class="title">CHELSEA MEMORIES</p>
+
+
+<p>Coming to close quarters with it, I am not sure that, after all, Chelsea
+has not more to offer the literary pilgrim than even Hampstead has.
+Addison, Locke, Smollett, Horace Walpole, are among the illustrious names
+whose local habitations were once there but are no longer to be seen.
+Charles and Henry Kingsley spent their boyhood at their father’s rectory
+in Sidney Street; Daniel Maclise lived for ten years at 4 Cheyne Walk,
+where George Eliot died; and “Queen’s House,� No. 16 Cheyne Walk, is the
+house that, in 1862, Rossetti, Swinburne, William Michael Rossetti, and
+Meredith took as joint-tenants. Meredith soon paid a quarter’s rent in
+lieu of notice and withdrew from the arrangement, but Swinburne and
+Rossetti lived on there together for some years, and did much of their
+greatest work there. Swinburne was next to go, and he presently set up
+house with Mr. Watts-Dunton at “The Pines,� near the foot of Putney Hill,
+where he lived till his death in 1909. In the early seventies Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti married and removed elsewhere, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti stayed
+on in the Chelsea house alone.</p>
+
+<p>Later, in the gloomy days before he went away to Birchington to die,
+Rossetti suffered terribly from insomnia, was ill and depressed, and a
+prey to morbid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> imaginings, but in the earlier years of his tenancy of 16
+Cheyne Walk he was absorbed in his art, his house was lively with many
+visitors, and in his lazy, sociable fashion he seems to have been almost
+as happy as a man of his sensitive temperament could be. “Here,� writes
+Mr. Joseph Knight, “were held those meetings, prolonged often until the
+early hours of the morning, which to those privileged to be present were
+veritable nights and feasts of gods. Here in the dimly-lighted studio,
+around the blazing fire, used to assemble the men of distinction or
+promise in literature and art whom the magnetism of Rossetti’s
+individuality collected around him. Here Rossetti himself used, though
+rarely, to read aloud, with his voice of indescribable power and
+clearness, and with a bell-like utterance that still dwells in the mind,
+passages from the poems he admired; and here, more frequently, some young
+poet, encouraged by his sympathy, which to all earnest effort in art was
+overflowing and inexhaustible, would recite his latest sonnet.� He crowded
+his rooms with quaintly-carved oak furniture, and beautiful ornaments; he
+had a wonderful collection of blue china that he sometimes put on the
+table and recklessly used at his dinner-parties. In his garden he had “a
+motley collection of animals, peacocks, armadilloes, the wombat,
+woodchuck, or Canadian marmot, and other outlandish creatures, including
+the famous zebu.� This zebu was kept fastened to a tree, and Rossetti
+loved to exhibit it and point out its beauties with his maulstick. Mr.
+Knight goes on to repeat the story that was told concerning this animal by
+Whistler, who was at that time living at what is now 101 Cheyne Walk, and
+was then 7 Lindsey <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>Row. According to Whistler, one day when he and
+Rossetti were alone in the garden, “and Rossetti was contemplating once
+more the admired possession, and pointing out with the objectionable stick
+the points of special beauty, resentment blazed into indignation. By a
+super-bovine exertion the zebu tore up the roots of the tree to which it
+was attached, and chased its tormentor round the garden, which was
+extensive enough to admit of an exciting chase round the trees.� The zebu
+was fortunately hampered by the uprooted tree, and Rossetti made good his
+escape, but he would harbour the animal no longer, and as nobody would buy
+it he gave it away.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img67.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">QUEEN’S HOUSE. CHEYNE WALK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>You get an illuminating glimpse of Rossetti’s home life in these days from
+that useful literary chronicle, Allingham’s Diary (Monday, June 27, 1864):
+“Got down to Chelsea by half-past eight to D. G. R.’s. Breakfasted in a
+small, lofty room on first floor with window looking on the garden. Fanny
+in white. Then we went into the garden, and lay on the grass, eating
+strawberries and looking at the peacock. F. went to look at the
+‘chicking,’ her plural of chicken. Then Swinburne came in and soon began
+to recite&mdash;a parody on Browning was one thing; and after him Whistler, who
+talked about his own pictures&mdash;Royal Academy&mdash;the Chinese painter girl,
+Millais, &amp;c.�</p>
+
+<p>Rossetti’s wife had died shortly before he went to Cheyne Walk, and it was
+during his residence here that her grave in Highgate Cemetery was opened,
+that the manuscript volume of poems he had buried with her might be
+recovered, and most of its contents included in his first published book
+of original work.</p>
+
+<p>One time and another Whistler occupied four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> different houses in Cheyne
+Walk, and No. 101 was the first of these. He had been living in lodgings,
+or with his brother-in-law, since he came over from America, but in 1863
+he took the Cheyne Walk house, and his mother went to live there with him.
+It is a three-storey house, and the back room on the first floor was his
+studio; the river lies before it, just across the road, and he could see
+from his front windows old Battersea Bridge, Battersea Church on the other
+side of the Thames, and at night the twinkling lights of boats and barges
+at anchor and the flare and many-coloured glitter of Cremorne Gardens in
+the distance. At the end of Cheyne Walk lived the boatbuilder Greaves. “He
+had worked in Chelsea for years,� write Mr. and Mrs. Pennell, in their
+<i>Life of Whistler</i>. “He had rowed Turner about on the river, and his two
+sons were to row Whistler. One of the sons, Mr. Walter Greaves, has told
+us that Mrs. Booth, a big, hard, coarse Scotchwoman, was always with
+Turner when he came for a boat. Turner would ask Greaves what kind of a
+day it was going to be, and if Greaves answered ‘Fine,’ he would get
+Greaves to row them across to Battersea Church, or to the fields, now
+Battersea Park. If Greaves was doubtful, Turner would say, ‘Well, Mrs.
+Booth, we won’t go far’; and afterwards for the sons&mdash;boys at the
+time&mdash;Turner in their memory was overshadowed by her.� Whistler and the
+Greaves boys were up and down the river at all hours of the day and night
+and in all weathers, painting and sketching, they under his tuition, or
+gathering impressions and studying effects of light and shadow. He was
+frequently in at the Rossettis’ house, and they and their friends were as
+frequently visiting him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>In 1867 Whistler moved to what is now 96 Cheyne Walk, and had a
+housewarming on the 5th of February at which the two Rossettis were
+present. Describing the decoration of the walls here, Mr. and Mrs. Pennell
+say its beauty was its simplicity. “Rossetti’s house was a museum, an
+antiquity shop, in comparison. The simplicity seemed the more bewildering
+because it was the growth, not of weeks but of years. The drawing-room was
+not painted till the day of Whistler’s first dinner-party. In the morning
+he sent for the brothers Greaves to help him. ‘It will never be dry in
+time,’ they feared. ‘What matter?’ said Whistler; ‘it will be
+beautiful!’... and by evening the walls were flushed with flesh-colour,
+pale yellow and white spread over doors and woodwork, and we have heard
+that gowns and coats too were touched with flesh-colour and yellow before
+the evening was at an end. One Sunday morning Whistler, after he had taken
+his mother to Chelsea Church, as he always did, again sent for his pupils
+and painted a great ship with spreading sails in each of the two panels at
+the end of the hall; the ships are said to be still on the wall, covered
+up. His mother was not so pleased when, on her return, she saw the blue
+and white harmony, for she would have had him put away his brushes on
+Sunday as once she put away his toys.�</p>
+
+<p>Solitude was irksome to him, and he welcomed the motley crowd of artists
+and students who came in at all hours to chat with him whilst he worked.
+The Pennells tell a capital story of a man named Barthe, of whom Whistler
+had bought tapestries, and who, not being able to get his account settled,
+called one evening for the money. He was told that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> Whistler was not in;
+but there was a cab waiting at the door, and he could hear his debtor’s
+voice, so he pushed past the maid and, as he afterwards related, “Upstairs
+I find him, before a little picture, painting, and behind him ze bruzzers
+Greaves holding candles. And Vistlaire he say, ‘You ze very man I vant:
+hold a candle!’ And I hold a candle. And Vistlaire he paint, and he paint,
+and zen he take ze picture, and he go downstairs, and he get in ze cab,
+and he drive off, and we hold ze candle, and I see him no more. Mon Dieu,
+il est terrible, ce Vistlaire!�</p>
+
+<p>His studio here was a back room on the second floor, and up to that
+studio, on many days of 1873, Carlyle climbed to give sittings for the
+portrait which ranks now with the greatest of Whistler’s works. The
+portrait of his mother had already been painted in that same small room,
+and hung on the wall there whilst Carlyle was coming to life on the
+canvas. Carlyle was not a patient sitter. Directly he sat down he urged
+Whistler to “fire away,� and was evidently anxious to get through with his
+part of the business as quickly as possible. “One day,� says Whistler, “he
+told me of others who had painted his portrait. There was Mr. Watts, a mon
+of note. And I went to his studio, and there was much meestification, and
+screens were drawn, and I was not allowed to see anything. And then, at
+last, the screens were put aside and there I was. And I looked. And Mr.
+Watts, a great mon, he said to me, ‘How do you like it?’ And then I turned
+to Mr. Watts, and I said, ‘Mon, I would have ye know I am in the hobit of
+wurin’ clean lunen!’� There is a note in Allingham’s Diary, dated July 29,
+1873: “Carlyle tells me he is ‘sitting’ <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>to Whistler. If C. makes signs
+of changing his position W. screams out in an agonised tone, ‘For God’s
+sake, don’t move!’ C. afterwards said that all W.’s anxiety seemed to be
+to get the <i>coat</i> painted to ideal perfection; the face went for little.
+He had begun by asking two or three sittings, but managed to get a great
+many. At last C. flatly rebelled. He used to define W. as the most absurd
+creature on the face of the earth.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img68.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">WHISTLER. 96 CHEYNE WALK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>Whilst he was at 96 Cheyne Walk, Whistler brought his famous libel action
+against Ruskin, won it, but was awarded only a farthing damages, and had
+to pay his own costs. During the progress of the suit he was having the
+White House built for him in Tite Street, Chelsea, but the payment of his
+law costs so crippled him that he had to sell it before it was ready for
+occupation, and to sell off also the furniture and effects of his Cheyne
+Walk home.</p>
+
+<p>None of these things seem, however, to have affected Whistler with worse
+than a temporary irritation. He wrote jestingly over his door: “Except the
+Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. E. W. Godwin,
+F.S.A., built this one;� turned his back upon the scenes of his recent
+disasters, and went to Venice. After rather more than a year of absence,
+he returned to London in the winter of 1880, stayed with his brother in
+Wimpole Street, put up at divers lodgings, had an exhibition in Bond
+Street, and in May 1881 took a studio at 13 Tite Street, Chelsea, and
+began to be the most talked-of man of the day. “He filled the papers with
+letters,� write Mr. and Mrs. Pennell. “London echoed with his laugh. His
+white lock stood up defiantly above<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> his curls; his cane lengthened; a
+series of collars sprang from his long overcoat; his hat had a curlier
+brim, a lower tilt over his eyes; he invented amazing costumes.... He was
+known to pay calls with the long bamboo stick in his hand and pink bows on
+his shoes. He allowed no break in the gossip. The carriages brought
+crowds, but not sitters. Few would sit to him before the trial; after it
+there were fewer. In the seventies it needed courage to be painted by
+Whistler; now it was to risk notoriety and ridicule.� When Mr. Pennell
+first saw him at 13 Tite Street, in July 1884, “he was all in white, his
+waistcoat had long sleeves, and every minute it seemed as if he must begin
+to juggle with glasses. For, to be honest, my first impression was of a
+bar-keeper strayed from a Philadelphia saloon into a Chelsea studio. Never
+had I seen such thick, black, curling hair. But in the midst was the white
+lock, and keen, brilliant eyes flashed at me from under the thick, bushy
+eyebrows.�</p>
+
+<p>From Tite Street, Whistler presently removed to 454 Fulham Road; thence to
+The Vale, Chelsea, a pleasant quarter which was a year or two ago wiped
+off the face of the earth; and in 1890 he was back again in Cheyne Walk,
+at No. 21. “I remember a striking remark of Whistler’s at a garden-party
+in his Chelsea house,� says M. Gerard Harry, who was one of Whistler’s
+guests at No. 21. “As he caught me observing some incompletely furnished
+rooms and questioning within myself whether he had occupied the house more
+than a fortnight or so: ‘You see,’ he said, with his short laugh, ‘I do
+not care for definitely settling down anywhere. Where there is no more
+space for improvement, or dreaming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> about improvement, where mystery is in
+perfect shape, it is <i>finis</i>&mdash;the end&mdash;death. There is no hope nor outlook
+left.’ I do not vouch for the words, but that was certainly the sense of a
+remark which struck me as offering a key to much of Whistler’s philosophy,
+and to one aspect of his original art.�</p>
+
+<p>By 1892, in spite of himself and his fantastic and silly posings and
+posturings, the world had learned to take his art seriously instead of
+taking him so, and when he went away that year to live in Paris his
+greatness as a painter had become pretty generally recognised. In 1894 he
+came back to London with his wife, who was dying of cancer, and after her
+death in 1896 he lived with friends or in lodgings, and had no settled
+home, until in 1902 he once again took a house in Cheyne Walk, this time
+No. 74, a house which stands below the street level; its front windows
+overlook the Thames, and it had a large studio at the back. Here Mrs. and
+Miss Birnie Philip went to share house with him, for his health was
+breaking, and he was in need of companionship and attention. But there
+were good intervals, when he was able to work with all his old eagerness
+and energy. “We knew on seeing him when he was not so well,� say Mr. and
+Mrs. Pennell, “for his costume of invalid remained original. He clung to a
+fur-lined overcoat worn into shabbiness. In his younger years he had
+objected to a dressing-gown as an unmanly concession; apparently he had
+not outgrown the objection, and on his bad days this shabby, worn-out
+overcoat was its substitute. Nor did the studio seem the most comfortable
+place for a man so ill as he was. It was bare, with little furniture, as
+his studios always were, and he had not used<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> it enough to give it the air
+of a workshop. The whole house showed that illness was reigning there.�
+Trays and odds and ends of the sickroom lay about the hall; papers, books,
+and miscellaneous litter made the drawing-room and dining-room look
+disorderly. “When we saw Whistler in his big, shabby overcoat shuffling
+about the huge studio, he struck us as so old, so feeble and fragile, that
+we could imagine no sadder or more tragic figure. It was the more tragic
+because he had always been such a dandy, a word he would have been the
+first to use in reference to himself.... No one would have suspected the
+dandy in this forlorn little old man, wrapped in a worn overcoat, hardly
+able to walk.�</p>
+
+<p>He lingered thus for about a year; then the end came suddenly. On the 14th
+July 1903, Mrs. Pennell found him dressed and in his studio. “He seemed
+better, though his face was sunken, and in his eyes was that terrible
+vagueness. Now he talked, and a touch of gallantry was in his greeting, ‘I
+wish I felt as well as you look.’ He asked about Henley, the news of whose
+death had come a day or two before.... There was a return of vigour in his
+voice when Miss Birnie Philip brought him a cup of chicken broth, and he
+cried, ‘Take the damned thing away,’ and his old charm was in the apology
+that followed, but, he said, if he ate every half-hour or so, as the
+doctor wanted, how could he be expected to have an appetite for dinner? He
+dozed a little, but woke up quickly with a show of interest in
+everything.� But on the evening of the 17th, he suddenly collapsed, and
+was dead before the doctor could be fetched to him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img69.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">TURNER’S HOUSE. CHEYNE WALK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Turner’s last days in this same Cheyne Walk were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>almost as sad, almost
+as piteous as Whistler’s, but there is a haze of mystery about them, as
+there is about some of his paintings, and he had no butterfly past of
+dandyism to contrast painfully with the squalor of his ending. Born over
+the barber’s shop kept by his father in Maiden Lane, Strand, he mounted to
+the seats of the immortals without acquiring by the way any taste for
+personal adornment, or for the elegancies or little prettinesses so
+beloved by little artists in his home surroundings. His soul was like a
+star, and could not make its heaven among the dainty chairs and tables and
+nice wall and mantelpiece ornaments of the drawing-room. On Stothard’s
+advice (Stothard being one of the customers at the shaving shop) Turner’s
+father made him an artist; he studied under Sir Joshua Reynolds, and
+later, Blake was one of his pupils. Growing in reputation, he lived by
+turns in Harley Street, at Hammersmith, at Twickenham, and is described in
+middle age as bluff and rough-mannered, and looking “the very moral of a
+master carpenter, with lobster-red face, twinkling staring grey eyes,
+white tie, blue coat with brass buttons, crab-shell turned-up boots, large
+fluffy hat, and enormous umbrella.� From about 1815 onwards, he had a
+house that is no longer standing at 47 Queen Anne Street, Harley Street,
+and here, in 1843, when Turner was sixty-eight, a Mr. Hammersley called on
+him and has described (I quote from Mr. Lewis Hind’s <i>Turner’s Golden
+Visions</i>) how he “heard the shambling, slippered footstep coming down the
+stairs, the cold, cheerless room, the gallery, even less tidy and more
+forlorn, all confusion, mouldiness, and wretched litter; most of the
+pictures covered with uncleanly sheets,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> and the man! his loose dress, his
+ragged hair, his indifferent quiet&mdash;all, indeed, that went to make his
+physique and some of his mind; but above all I saw, felt (and feel still)
+his penetrating grey eye.�</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere between 1847 and 1848 Turner strangely disappeared from his
+customary haunts; his Queen Anne Street house was closed, the door kept
+locked, and his old housekeeper, Hannah Danby, could only assure anybody
+who came that he was not there, and that she simply did not know where he
+had gone. For the next four years or so, until he was dying, no one
+succeeded in discovering his hiding-place. Now and then, in the meantime,
+he would appear in a friend’s studio, or would be met with at one of the
+Galleries, but he offered no explanation of his curious behaviour, and
+allowed no one to obtain any clue to his whereabouts. He went in 1850 to a
+dinner given by David Roberts, and was in good spirits, and bubbling over
+with laborious jokes. “Turner afterwards, in Roberts’s absence, took the
+chair, and, at Stanfield’s request, proposed Roberts’s health, which he
+did, speaking hurriedly, but soon ran short of words and breath, and
+dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again and
+finishing with a ‘Hip, hip, hurrah!’... Turner was the last who left, and
+Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a cab. When the cab drove
+up, he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and asked where he
+should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to be caught, and, with
+a knowing wink, replied, ‘Tell him to drive to Oxford Street, and then
+I’ll direct him where to go.’�</p>
+
+<p>The fact is he was living at Cremorne Cottage,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> 119 Cheyne Walk. He was
+living there anonymously; a Mrs. Booth, whom he had known many years
+before when he stayed at her Margate boarding-house, was keeping house for
+him, and he was known in the neighbourhood as Admiral Booth, a rumour
+having got about that he was a retired naval officer fallen on evil days.
+This was the time of which the father of the Greaves boys had spoken to
+Whistler&mdash;the days when Mrs. Booth used to come with Turner to the
+waterside and he would row them over to Battersea. Though all his greatest
+work was finished, Turner painted several pictures here; he frequently
+rose at daybreak, and, wrapped in a blanket or a dressing-gown, stood out
+on the roof, leaning over the railing to watch the sunrise and the play of
+light on the river opposite. He used the room on the second floor as his
+studio, and in that room, on the 19th December 1851, he died. Some months
+before his death, he was seen at the Royal Academy’s private view; then,
+tardily responding to a letter of friendly reproach that David Roberts had
+addressed to him at Queen Anne Street, he came to Roberts’s studio in
+Fitzroy Square. He was “broken and ailing,� and had been touched by
+Roberts’s appeal, but as for disclosing his residence&mdash;“You must not ask
+me,� he said; “but whenever I come to town I will always come to see you.�
+When Roberts tried to cheer him, he laid his hand on his heart and
+murmured, “No, no! There is something here that is all wrong.�</p>
+
+<p>His illness increasing on him, he wrote to Margate for Dr. Price, an old
+acquaintance of his and Mrs. Booth’s, and Price, coming up, examined him
+and told him there was no hope of his recovery. “Go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> downstairs,� he urged
+the doctor, “take a glass of sherry, and then look at me again.� But a
+second examination only confirmed Dr. Price in his opinion.</p>
+
+<p>It must have been at this juncture that Turner’s hiding-place was
+discovered. His Queen Anne Street housekeeper, Hannah Danby, found a
+letter left in the pocket of one of his old coats, and this gave the
+Chelsea address. She went with another woman and made inquiries round
+about Cheyne Walk till it was clear enough to her that the Mr. Booth to
+whom that letter was directed was none other than Turner, and acting on
+her information Mr. Harpur, Turner’s executor, journeyed at once to
+Chelsea, and arrived at 119 Cheyne Walk to find Turner sinking fast.
+Towards sunset, on that wintry day of his dying, he asked Mrs. Booth to
+wheel him to the window, and so gazing out on the wonder of the darkening
+sky he passed quietly away with his head on her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>A certain John Pye, a Chelsea engraver, afterwards interviewed the owner
+of No. 119, and learned from him that Turner and Mrs. Booth had, some four
+or five years before, called and taken the house of him, paying their rent
+in advance because they objected to giving any names or references. Pye
+also saw Mrs. Booth, and says she was a woman of fifty, illiterate, but
+“good-looking and kindly-mannered.� Turner had used to call her “old ’un,�
+she said, and she called him “dear�; and she explained that she had first
+got acquainted with him when, more than twenty years ago, “he became her
+lodger near the Custom House at Margate.� So small was the shabby little
+house in Cheyne Walk that the undertakers were unable to carry the coffin
+up the narrow staircase, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> had to carry the body down to it. Nowadays,
+the house has been enlarged; it and the house next door have been thrown
+into one, otherwise it has undergone little change since Turner knew it.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Turner was thus passing out of life in Cheyne Walk, Carlyle was
+dwelling near by at No. 24 (then No. 5) Cheyne Row, and had been resident
+there for seventeen years. On first coming to London in 1830, he and his
+wife lodged at 33 Ampton Street, Gray’s Inn Road. They spent, he says, “an
+interesting, cheery, and, in spite of poor arrangements, really pleasant
+winter� there; they had a “clean and decent pair of rooms,� and their
+landlord’s family consisted of “quiet, decent people.� He wrote his essay
+on Dr. Johnson whilst he was here, and was making a fruitless search for a
+publisher who would accept <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, which he had recently
+completed. Jeffrey called there several times to pass an afternoon with
+him, and John Stuart Mill was one other of the many visitors who found
+their way to the drab, unlovely, rather shabby street to chat with the
+dour, middle-aged Scotch philosopher, who was only just beginning to be
+heard of.</p>
+
+<p>He fixed on the Cheyne Row house in 1834, and, except for occasional
+holidays, never left it until his death forty-seven years afterwards. As
+soon as he was settled here Carlyle wrote to Sir William Hamilton, giving
+him his new address: “Our upholsterers, with all their rubbish and
+clippings, are at length swept handsomely out of doors. I have got my
+little book-press set up, my table fixed firm in its place, and sit here
+awaiting what Time and I, in our questionable wrestle, shall make out
+between us.�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> In another letter of about the same date he writes of it:
+“The street is flag-paved, sunk-storied, iron-railed, all old-fashioned
+and tightly done up, looks out on a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is,
+beheaded) lime trees standing there like giants in tawtie wigs (for the
+new boughs are still young); beyond this a high brick wall; backwards a
+garden, the size of our back one at Comely Bank, with trees, &amp;c., in bad
+culture; beyond this green hayfields and tree avenues, once a bishop’s
+pleasure grounds, an unpicturesque but rather cheerful outlook. The house
+itself is eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been
+all new painted and repaired; broadish stair, with massive balustrade (in
+the old style), corniced and as thick as one’s thigh; floors thick as
+rock, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanliness,
+and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor. Chelsea is a
+singular heterogeneous kind of spot, very dirty and confused in some
+places, quite beautiful in others, abounding in antiquities and the traces
+of great men&mdash;Sir Thomas More, Steele, Smollett, &amp;c. Our Row, which for
+the last three doors or so is a street and none of the noblest, runs out
+upon a Parade (perhaps they call it) running along the shore of the river,
+a broad highway with huge shady trees, boats lying moored, and a smell of
+shipping and tar.�</p>
+
+<p>A note in Allingham’s Diary (1860) offers you a very clear little picture
+of Carlyle’s garden here, as he saw it: “In Carlyle’s garden, some twenty
+yards by six; ivy at the end. Three or four lilac bushes; an ash stands on
+your left; a little copper beech on your right gives just an umbrella to
+sit under when the sun is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>hot; a vine or two on one wall, neighboured
+by a jasmine&mdash;one pear tree.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img70.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CARLYLE. AMPTON STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>In this Cheyne Row house Carlyle wrote all his books, except <i>Sartor</i> and
+some of the miscellaneous essays; here he entertained, not always very
+willingly or very graciously, most of the great men of his day; quarrelled
+with his neighbours furiously over the crowing of their cocks; was
+pestered by uninvited, admiring callers from all over the world; and had
+his room on the top floor furnished with double-windows that were supposed
+to render it sound-proof, but did not. Charles Boner, visiting 24 Cheyne
+Row in 1862, disturbed Carlyle as he sat in his dressing-gown and slippers
+correcting the proofs of his <i>Frederick the Great</i>, whilst Mrs. Carlyle
+remained in attendance, seated on a sofa by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>In 1866 Mrs. Carlyle died suddenly of heart failure, and left him burdened
+with remorse that he had not been kinder to her and made her life happier;
+and after two years of lonely living without her, he writes: “I am very
+idle here, very solitary, which I find to be oftenest less miserable to me
+than the common society that offers. Except Froude almost alone, whom I
+see once a week, there is hardly anybody whose talk, always polite, clear,
+sharp, and sincere, does me any considerable good.... I am too weak, too
+languid, too sad of heart, too unfit for any work, in fact, to care
+sufficiently for any object left me in the world to think of grappling
+round it and coercing it by work. A most sorry dog-kennel it oftenest all
+seems to me, and wise words, if one ever had them, to be only thrown away
+on it. Basta-basta, I for most part say of it, and look with longings
+towards the still country where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> at last we and our loved ones shall be
+together again.�</p>
+
+<p>You will get no better or more intimate glimpses into Carlyle’s home life
+than Allingham gives in his Diary. Sometimes they are merely casual and
+scrappy notes, at others fairly full records of his walks and talks with
+him, such as this: “<i>1873, April 28.</i>&mdash;At Carlyle’s house about three. He
+spent about fifteen minutes in trying to clear the stem of a long clay
+pipe with a brass wire, and in the end did not succeed. The pipe was new,
+but somehow obstructed. At last he sent for another one and smoked, and we
+got out at last. (I never saw him smoke in public.) He said Emerson had
+called on him on Sunday, and he meant to visit E. to-day at his lodging in
+Down Street. We walked to Hyde Park by Queen’s Gate, and westward along
+the broad walk, next to the ride, with the Serpentine a field distant on
+the left hand. This was a favourite route of his. I was well content to
+have the expectation of seeing Emerson again, and, moreover, Emerson and
+Carlyle together. We spoke of Masson’s <i>Life of Milton</i>, a volume of which
+was on C.’s table. He said Masson’s praise of Milton was exaggerated.
+‘Milton had a gift in poetry&mdash;of a particular kind. <i>Paradise Lost</i> is
+absurd; I never could take to it all&mdash;though now and again clouds of
+splendour rolled in upon the scene.’... At Hyde Park Corner, C. stopped
+and looked at the clock. ‘You are going to Down Street, sir?’ ‘No, it’s
+too late.’ ‘The place is close at hand.’ ‘No, no, it’s half-past five.’ So
+he headed for Knightsbridge, and soon after I helped him into a Chelsea
+omnibus, banning internally the clay pipe (value a halfpenny <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>farthing)
+through which this chance (perhaps the last, for Emerson is going away
+soon) was lost.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img71.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THOMAS CARLYLE</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>There are numerous entries in the Diary of visits and conversations of
+this sort. On October 18, 1879, Allingham called at Cheyne Row with his
+little son, and they met Carlyle coming out of the door to his carriage.
+On December 4, of the same year: “Helen and I to Cheyne Row. Carlyle’s
+eighty-fourth birthday. Mrs. Lecky there. Browning and Ruskin are gone. C.
+on his sofa by the window, warm and quiet, wearing a new purple and gold
+cap. Gifts of flowers on the table....� Some of the swift little
+word-sketches of Carlyle at this date, when he was very old, very feeble,
+and apt to be oppressed with gloom, are piteous and pathetic enough. On
+his eighty-fifth birthday (December 4, 1880) Allingham found him easier
+and more himself; but on Friday, December 24, you read: “To Carlyle’s at
+two. He was lying on the sofa in the drawing-room. When I spoke to him he
+held out his hand and shook hands with me, but said nothing. I was not
+sure that he knew me. A stout Scotch servant girl and I lifted him to his
+feet to go to the carriage. In the hall his heavy sealskin coat was put on
+with difficulty, and he was got into the carriage. Alick and I with him.
+We drove twice round Hyde Park. The old man dozed much.�</p>
+
+<p>Earlier that year, the two sons of Alexander Munro called at Cheyne Row,
+and in a letter home the elder of them gave a wonderfully poignant and
+living account of their visit. Munro, who was dead, had been one of
+Carlyle’s old friends, and the two boys were now at school at the
+Charterhouse. They were conducted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> upstairs, says the letter, to a
+well-lighted, cheerful apartment, and here “the maid went forward and said
+something to Carlyle, and left the room. He was sitting before a fire in
+an arm-chair, propped up with pillows, with his feet on a stool, and
+looked much older than I had expected. The lower part of his face was
+covered with a rather shaggy beard, almost quite white. His eyes were
+bright blue, but looked filmy from age. He had on a sort of coloured
+nightcap, and a long gown reaching to his ankles, and slippers on his
+feet. A rest attached to the arm of his chair supported a book before him.
+I could not quite see the name, but I think it was Channing’s works.
+Leaning against the fireplace was a long clay pipe, and there was a slight
+smell of tobacco in the room. We advanced and shook hands, and he invited
+us to sit down, and began, I think, by asking where we were living. He
+talked of our father affectionately, speaking in a low tone as if to
+himself, and stopping now and then for a moment and sighing.... He went
+on, ‘I am near the end of my course, and the sooner the better is my own
+feeling.’ He said he still reads a little, but has not many books he cares
+to read now, and is ‘continually disturbed by foolish interruptions from
+people who do not know the value of an old man’s leisure.’ His hands were
+very thin and wasted; he showed us how they shook and trembled unless he
+rested them on something, and said they were failing him from weakness.�
+And, at length, closing the interview, “‘Well, I’ll just bid you
+good-bye.’ We shook hands. He asked our names. He could not quite hear
+Henry’s at first. ‘I am a little deaf, but I can hear well enough
+talking,’ or words to that effect. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>‘I wish you God’s blessing;
+good-bye.’ We shook hands once more and went away. I was not at all shy.
+He seemed such a venerable old man, and so worn and old-looking, that I
+was very much affected. Our visit was on Tuesday, May 18, 1880, at about 2
+<span class="smcaplc">P.M.</span>�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img72.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CARLYLE’S HOUSE. CHEYNE ROW.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>He died in the following February; after lying motionless and seemingly
+unconscious for hours, he passed quietly soon after eight on the morning
+of February 5, 1881. His bed, says Allingham, had been brought down to the
+drawing-room (the front room on the first floor), and he rarely spoke in
+the last two or three weeks, not so much because he could not as because
+he did not seem to wish to say anything. Newspaper reporters were so
+continually ringing at the door, day and night, that bulletins had to be
+posted outside to prevent this. Now and then he appeared to wander in his
+mind, and when the Scotch maid, Mary, was attending upon him he would
+sometimes murmur, “Poor little woman,� as if he mistook her for his
+long-dead Jenny; and once, says Allingham, “he supposed the female hands
+that tended him, lifting his head, perhaps, to be those of his good old
+mother&mdash;‘Ah, mother, is it you?’ he murmured, or some such words. I think
+it was on the day before the last day that Mary heard him saying to
+himself, ‘So this is Death: well&mdash;&mdash;’�</p>
+
+<p>But the Cheyne Row house has many happy memories too, and I always think
+one of the happiest is that of how Leigh Hunt called once after a long
+absence, and brought with him word of some unexpected good news that so
+delighted Mrs. Carlyle that she impulsively ran to him and kissed him,
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> he went away to write that charming little rondeau that bids fair to
+outlive all his more ambitious poetry:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Jenny kissed me when we met,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Jumping from the chair she sat in;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Time, you thief, who love to get</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Sweets into your list, put that in:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Say that health and wealth have missed me,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Say I’m growing old&mdash;but add,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Jenny kissed me.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Leigh Hunt was turned fifty then, and was Carlyle’s neighbour, living at
+No. 10 (then No. 4) Upper Cheyne Row. I have seen it said that Leigh Hunt
+went there in order to be near Carlyle, but his occupancy of that house
+dates from 1833&mdash;the year before Carlyle established himself in
+Chelsea&mdash;and he remained there until 1840, seven years of poverty and
+worry, when it was literal truth that he was weary and sad, in indifferent
+health, harassed for want of money, and growing old, yet you find him
+never losing hope, and always ready on the smallest excuse to rejoice and
+make light of his troubles. I am afraid Dickens’s caricature of Hunt as
+Harold Skimpole, and Byron’s contemptuous references to his vanity and
+vulgarity and the squalor of his easy-going home life (his children, said
+Byron, “are dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos,� and writing of
+their arrival in Italy as Shelley’s guests he observes, “Poor Hunt, with
+his six little blackguards, are coming slowly up; as usual he turned back
+once&mdash;was there ever such a kraal out of the Hottentot country?�)&mdash;I am
+rather afraid these things have tended to wrong Hunt in our imagination of
+him, for you learn on other evidence that there is just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> enough truth in
+those representations of him to make them seem quite true, and they linger
+in your mind, and affect your regard and admiration of the man in spite of
+yourself. But Dickens, with his keen sense of the absurd, had a habit of
+exaggeration; there was no ill-nature in his laughter&mdash;he merely seized on
+certain of Hunt’s weaknesses and gave them to a character who has none of
+Hunt’s finer qualities, and it is ridiculous in us and unfair to both men
+to take that caricature as a portrait. As for Byron&mdash;he could not justly
+appraise Hunt, for he had no means of understanding him. His own way of
+life was made too easy for him from the first; he was not born to Hunt’s
+difficulties and disadvantages; his experiences of the world, and
+therefore his sympathies, were too limited. There is no merit in living
+elegantly and playing the gentleman when you simply inherit, as the fruits
+of an ancestor’s abilities, all the conveniences and the money that enable
+you to do so. On the whole, if you compare their lives, you will realise
+that Leigh Hunt was by far the greater man of the two, even if Byron was
+the greater poet, and I am more than a little inclined to agree with
+Charles Lamb that even as a poet Byron was “great in so little a way. To
+be a poet is to be the man, not a petty portion of occasional low passion
+worked up in a permanent form of humanity. Shakespeare has thrust such
+rubbishy feelings into a corner&mdash;the dark, dusty heart of Don John, in the
+<i>Much Ado about Nothing</i>.�</p>
+
+<p>Shelley never speaks of Leigh Hunt but in the kindliest terms. He was
+“gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave,� writes Shelley; “one of more
+exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> yet himself more
+free from evil; one of simpler and, in the highest sense of the word,
+purer life and manners, I never knew.� He is, he says in the <i>Letter to
+Maria Gisborne</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“One of those happy souls</span><br />
+Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom<br />
+This earth would smell like what it is&mdash;a tomb.�</p></div>
+
+<p>Hunt tells in his <i>Autobiography</i> how he came to Chelsea, and gives a
+glowing description of his house there. He left St. John’s Wood, and then
+his home in the New Road (now Marylebone Road), because he found the clay
+soil of the one and the lack of quiet around the other affected his
+health, or “perhaps it was only the melancholy state of our fortune� that
+was answerable for that result; anyhow, from the noise and dust of the New
+Road he removed to Upper Cheyne Row&mdash;“to a corner in Chelsea,� as he says,
+“where the air of the neighbouring river was so refreshing and the quiet
+of the ‘no-thoroughfare’ so full of repose, that although our fortunes
+were at their worst, and my health almost at a piece with them, I felt for
+some weeks as if I could sit still for ever, embalmed in silence. I got to
+like the very cries in the street, for making me the more aware of it by
+the contrast. I fancied they were unlike the cries in other quarters of
+the suburbs, and that they retained something of the old quaintness and
+melodiousness which procured them the reputation of having been composed
+by Purcell and others.... There was an old seller of fish, in particular,
+whose cry of ‘Shrimps as large as prawns’ was such a regular, long-drawn,
+and truly pleasing melody that, in spite of his hoarse and, I am
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>afraid, drunken voice, I used to wish for it of an evening, and hail it
+when it came....</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img73.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LEIGH HUNT’S HOUSE. CHELSEA.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>“I know not whether the corner I speak of remains as quiet as it was. I am
+afraid not; for steamboats have carried vicissitude into Chelsea, and
+Belgravia threatens it with her mighty advent. But to complete my sense of
+repose and distance, the house was of that old-fashioned sort which I have
+always loved best, familiar to the eyes of my parents, and associated with
+childhood. It had seats in the windows, a small third room on the first
+floor, of which I made a sanctum, into which no perturbation was to enter,
+except to calm itself with religious and cheerful thoughts; and there were
+a few limes in front which, in their due season, diffused a fragrance. In
+this house we remained seven years; in the course of which, besides
+contributing some articles to the <i>Edinburgh</i> and <i>Westminster Reviews</i>,
+and producing a good deal of the book since called <i>The Town</i>, I set up
+(in 1834) the <i>London Journal</i>, endeavoured to continue the <i>Monthly
+Repository</i>, and wrote the poem entitled <i>Captain Sword and Captain Pen</i>,
+the <i>Legend of Florence</i>, and three other plays. Here also I became
+acquainted with Thomas Carlyle, one of the kindest and best, as well as
+most eloquent of men.... I believe that what Mr. Carlyle loves better than
+his fault-finding, with all its eloquence, is the face of any human
+creature that looks suffering, and loving, and sincere; and I believe
+further that if the fellow-creature were suffering only, and neither
+loving nor sincere, but had come to a pass of agony in this life which put
+him at the mercies of some good man for some last help and consolation
+towards his grave, even at the risk of loss to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> repute and a sure amount
+of pain and vexation, that man, if the groan reached him in its
+forlornness, would be Thomas Carlyle.�</p>
+
+<p>He wrote that from his personal experience of Carlyle, for whilst they
+were neighbours at Chelsea they frequently visited each other; and
+Carlyle, on his part, saw the worst as well as the best of him, from the
+inside, and was too large-minded and too big a man to judge him by his
+faults and follies only. He saw how Hunt worked, all the while haunted by
+pecuniary distresses; unpaid tradesmen knocking at his door and worrying
+for their debts; once an execution in the house; now and then faced with
+the humiliation of having to ask for loans of a few shillings to buy the
+family dinner; his children almost in rags, and himself, as he said
+bitterly, slighted and neglected by editors and the public, and
+“carelessly, over-familiarly, or even superciliously treated, pitied or
+patronised by his inferiors.� Carlyle had known poverty and neglect
+himself; he was fitted to judge Hunt understandingly, and he judged him
+justly. “Leigh Hunt was a fine kind of man,� he told Allingham in 1868.
+“Some used to talk of him as a frivolous fellow, but when I saw him I
+found he had a face as serious as death.� In his Diary he noted, “Hunt is
+always ready to go and walk with me, or sit and talk with me to all
+lengths if I want him. He comes in once a week (when invited, for he is
+very modest), takes a cup of tea, and sits discoursing in his brisk,
+fanciful way till supper time, and then cheerfully eats a cup of porridge
+(to sugar only), which he praises to the skies, and vows he will make his
+supper of it at home.�</p>
+
+<p>It was Mrs. Carlyle who was severe about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> Hunts’ untidy and uncleanly
+household, and complained of the domestic utensils they borrowed and
+failed to return, but Carlyle took the position in a more genial spirit,
+and saw the pity of it and the humour of it also. “Hunt’s house,� he wrote
+after one of his visits to No. 10 Upper Cheyne Row, “excels all you have
+ever read of&mdash;a poetical Tinkerdom without parallel even in literature. In
+his family room, where are a sickly, large wife and a whole school of
+well-conditioned wild children, you will find half-a-dozen old rickety
+chairs gathered from half-a-dozen different hucksters, and all seemingly
+engaged, and just pausing, in a violent hornpipe. On these and around them
+and over the dusty table and ragged carpet lie all kinds of litter&mdash;books,
+papers, egg-shells, scissors, and last night when I was there the torn
+heart of a quartern loaf. His own room above stairs, into which alone I
+strive to enter, he keeps cleaner. It has only two chairs, a bookcase, and
+a writing-table; yet the noble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom in the
+spirit of a king, apologises for nothing, places you in the best seat,
+takes a window-sill himself if there is no other, and then folding closer
+his loose-flowing ‘muslin cloud’ of a printed nightgown in which he always
+writes, commences the liveliest dialogue on philosophy and the prospects
+of man (who is to be beyond measure ‘happy’ yet); which again he will
+courteously terminate the moment you are bound to go. A most interesting,
+pitiable, lovable man, to be used kindly, but with discretion.�</p>
+
+<p>Hunt departed from Chelsea, with all his anxieties, in 1840, and took up
+residence at 32 Edwardes Square, Kensington, where he got through with a
+great deal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> of work, and one way and another was secured at last above his
+financial embarrassments. Dickens, Jerrold, Forster and some other friends
+raised £900 for him by a benefit performance of <i>Every Man in his Humour</i>;
+the Government granted him two sums of £200, and then a Civil List Pension
+of £200 a year, to the obtaining of which Carlyle readily lent all his
+influence. Moreover, the Shelley family settled an annuity of £120 upon
+him. But, with all these material advantages, came the death of his wife
+and one of his sons. “She was as uncomplaining during the worst storms of
+our adversity,� Hunt wrote of his wife, reminiscently, “as she was during
+those at sea in our Italian voyage.�</p>
+
+<p>He was an old and rather solitary man when he moved from Kensington in
+1853 and went to 7 Cornwall Road, now known as 16 Rowan Road, Hammersmith
+Road, but he had an ample and sure income, and was no longer haunted by
+duns, if he could not indulge in much in the way of luxury. When Nathaniel
+Hawthorne was in England he went to see him at Hammersmith, and found the
+house in Rowan Road plain, small, shabby, Hunt’s little study cheaply
+papered, sparely carpeted, and furnished meanly, and Hunt himself “a
+beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress
+coat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the
+gentlest and most naturally courteous manner.� At Rowan Road he wrote most
+of his <i>Old Court Suburb</i>, in the preface to a recent edition of which Mr.
+Austin Dobson says of the Leigh Hunt of those closing days, “He was still
+the old sensitive, luminous-eyed Leigh Hunt of the wide collar and
+floating printed nightgown, delighted with a flower or a bird or a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+butterfly; but Time had snowed upon his pericranium, and to his breezy
+<i>robe de chambre</i> he had added, or was about to add, a protective cape,
+more or less ample, of faded black silk, which gave him the air (says John
+Forster) of an old French Abbé.� He died away from home in 1859, whilst he
+was on a short visit to a relative at Putney.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img74.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LEIGH HUNT. 16 ROWAN ROAD. HAMMERSMITH.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<p class="title">THACKERAY</p>
+
+
+<p>No other literary Londoner has taken root as Carlyle did in Cheyne Row and
+remained for nearly half a century without once changing his address.
+Thackeray shifted about from place to place nearly as much as most of
+them. He went to school at the Charterhouse, and for a year or two had
+lodgings over a shop in Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell; in the first years
+after his marriage he lived in Albion Street; he had chambers in the
+Temple, at Hare Court, in Crown Office Row, and at Brick Court. <i>The Paris
+Sketch Book</i> was written whilst he was living at 13 Great Coram Street, in
+1840, and it was there that his wife began to suffer from the sad mental
+disorder that was presently to take her from him for the rest of his days.
+In August 1846 he gave up his lodgings in St. James’s Chambers, and drew
+his broken home life together again at 16 Young Street, Kensington. “I am
+beginning to count the days now till you come,� he wrote to his mother,
+with whom his two little daughters were staying in Paris; “and I have got
+the rooms all ready in the rough, all but a couple of bedsteads, and a few
+etceteras, which fall into their place in a day or two. As usual, I am
+full of business and racket, working every day, and yet not advancing
+somehow.� He was industriously turning out drawings and jokes <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>and
+articles and verses for <i>Punch</i> and <i>Fraser’s Magazine</i>, and hard at work
+on the great novel that was to make him famous&mdash;<i>Vanity Fair</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img75.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE CHARTERHOUSE. FROM THE SQUARE.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>“It was not till late in the autumn that we came to live with my father in
+Kensington,� writes Lady Ritchie, in one of her delightful prefaces to the
+Centenary Edition of Thackeray’s works. “We had been at Paris with our
+grandparents&mdash;while he was at work in London. It was a dark, wintry
+evening. The fires were lighted, the servants were engaged, Eliza&mdash;what
+family would be complete without its Eliza?&mdash;was in waiting to show us our
+rooms. He was away; he had not expected us so early. We saw the
+drawing-room, the empty study; there was the feeling of London&mdash;London
+smelt of tobacco, we thought; we stared out through the uncurtained
+windows at the dark garden behind; and then, climbing the stairs, we
+looked in at his bedroom door, and came to our own rooms above it.... Once
+more, after his first happy married years, my father had a home and a
+family&mdash;if a house, two young children, three servants, and a little black
+cat can be called a family. My grandmother, who had brought us over to
+England, returned to her husband in Paris; but her mother, an old lady
+wrapped in Indian shawls, presently came to live with us, and divided her
+time between Kensington and the Champs Elysees until 1848, when she died
+at Paris.�</p>
+
+<p>Thackeray’s first name for <i>Vanity Fair</i> was <i>Pencil Sketches of English
+Society</i>. He offered the opening chapters of it under that title to
+Colburn for his <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>. Thereafter he seems to have
+reshaped the novel and renamed it, and even then had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> difficulty to find a
+publisher. At length, Messrs. Bradbury &amp; Evans accepted it, and it was
+arranged that it should be published after the manner that Dickens had
+already rendered popular&mdash;in monthly parts; and the first part duly
+appeared on the 1st January 1847, in the familiar yellow wrappers that
+served to distinguish Thackeray’s serials from the green-covered serials
+of Dickens. But the sales of the first half-dozen numbers were by no means
+satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>“I still remember,� writes Lady Ritchie, “going along Kensington Gardens
+with my sister and our nursemaid, carrying a parcel of yellow numbers
+which had been given us to take to some friend who lived across the Park;
+and as we walked along, somewhere near the gates of the gardens we met my
+father, who asked us what we were carrying. Then somehow he seemed vexed
+and troubled, told us not to go on, and to take the parcel home. Then he
+changed his mind, saying that if his grandmother wished it, the books had
+best be conveyed; but we guessed, as children do, that something was
+seriously amiss. The sale of <i>Vanity Fair</i> was so small that it was a
+question at the time whether its publication should not be discontinued
+altogether.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img76.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THACKERAY’S HOUSE. KENSINGTON.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>At that critical juncture he published <i>Mrs. Perkins’s Ball</i>, which caught
+on at once, and this and a favourable review in the <i>Edinburgh</i> are
+supposed to have sent the public after the novel, for the sales of <i>Vanity
+Fair</i> rapidly increased, and the monthly numbers were soon selling briskly
+enough to satisfy even the publishers, and so in his thirty-seventh year
+Thackeray found himself famous. James Hannay <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>first saw him when the
+book was still unfinished but its success assured. He says that Thackeray
+pointed out to him the house in Russell Square “where the imaginary
+Sedleys lived,� and that when he congratulated him on that scene in
+<i>Vanity Fair</i> in which Becky Sharp cannot help feeling proud of her
+husband whilst he is giving Lord Steyne the thrashing that must ruin all
+her own chances, Thackeray answered frankly, “Well, when I wrote that
+sentence I slapped my fist on the table and said, ‘That is a touch of
+genius!’� Which reminds one of the story told by Ticknor Fields of how,
+when he was making a pilgrimage around London with Thackeray in later
+years, and they paused outside 16 Young Street, which was no longer his
+home, the novelist cried with a melodramatic gesture, “Go down on your
+knees, you rogue, for here <i>Vanity Fair</i> was penned, and I will go down
+with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself!�</p>
+
+<p>His letters of 1847 and the early half of 1848 are full of references to
+the strenuous toil with which he is writing his monthly instalments of
+<i>Vanity Fair</i>, and in one of them, to Edward Fitzgerald, he mentions that
+he is giving a party: “Mrs. Dickens and Miss Hogarth made me give it, and
+I am in a great fright.� Perhaps that was the famous party to which
+Charlotte Brontë, Carlyle and his wife, and other of his great
+contemporaries came, and things went wrong, and he became so uncomfortable
+that he fairly bolted from his guests, and went to spend the rest of the
+evening at the Garrick Club.</p>
+
+<p><i>Pendennis</i> was written at the Young Street house, and Thackeray put a
+good deal of himself into that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> hero of his. Pen had chambers at Lamb
+Building, in the Temple, and there is some likeness between his early
+journalistic experiences and Thackeray’s own. The opening chapters of
+<i>Pendennis</i>, though, were written at Spa. Thackeray had wanted to get away
+to some seaside place where he could set to work on his new book, and had
+asked his mother, who was going to Brighton, if she could not get a house
+for £60 that would have three spare rooms in it for him. “As for the
+dignity, I don’t believe it matters a pinch of snuff. Tom Carlyle lives in
+perfect dignity in a little £40 house at Chelsea, with a snuffy Scotch
+maid to open the door, and the best company in England ringing at it. It
+is only the second or third chop great folks who care about show.�</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Pendennis</i> there is an allusion to Catherine Hayes, the dreadful
+heroine of Thackeray’s <i>Catherine</i>, that had been published a few years
+before, and a hot-tempered young Irishman, believing the reference was to
+Miss Catherine Hayes, the Irish vocalist, chivalrously came over to
+England, took lodgings opposite Thackeray’s house in Young Street, and
+sent him a warning letter that he was on the watch for him to come out of
+doors, and intended to administer public chastisement by way of avenging
+Miss Hayes’s injured honour. After getting through his morning’s work,
+Thackeray felt the position was intolerable, so he walked straightway out
+across the road, knocked at the opposite door, and boldly bearded the lion
+in his den. The young Irishman was disposed to bluster and be obstinate,
+but Thackeray explained matters, calmed him, convinced him that he had
+made a mistake, parted from him amicably, and had the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> satisfaction of
+seeing the young fire-eater come forth on his way back home that evening.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img77.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">W. M. THACKERAY</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Writing of <i>Pendennis</i>, Lady Ritchie says, “I can remember the morning
+Helen died. My father was in his study in Young Street, sitting at the
+table at which he wrote. It stood in the middle of the room, and he used
+to sit facing the door. I was going into the room, but he motioned me
+away. An hour afterwards he came into our schoolroom, half laughing and
+half ashamed, and said to us, ‘I do not know what James can have thought
+of me when he came in with the tax-gatherer just after you left and found
+me blubbering over Helen Pendennis’s death.’�</p>
+
+<p>At Young Street, Thackeray wrote also his <i>Lectures on the English
+Humorists</i>, and having delivered them with gratifying success at Willis’s
+Rooms, he journeyed to America in 1852, and was even more successful with
+them there. Meanwhile, he had written <i>Esmond</i>, and it was published in
+three volumes just before he left England. “Thackeray I saw for ten
+minutes,� Fitzgerald wrote to Frederick Tennyson concerning a flying visit
+he had paid to London; “he was just in the agony of finishing a novel,
+which has arisen out of the reading necessary for his lectures, and
+relates to those times&mdash;of Queen Anne, I mean. He will get £1000 for his
+novel; he was wanting to finish it and rush off to the Continent to shake
+off the fumes of it.� His two daughters, both now in their teens, were
+sent out to join their grandparents before he sailed for the States, and
+in a letter to Anne (Lady Ritchie) he explains his motive in crossing the
+Atlantic: “I must and will go to America, not because I want to, but
+because it is right I should secure some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> money against my death for your
+poor mother and you two girls.�</p>
+
+<p>There are several drawings made by Thackeray in those Young Street days of
+his daughters and himself, and one of his study at breakfast time, and
+here is a word-picture of the study given by Lady Ritchie in her preface
+to <i>Esmond</i>: “The vine shaded the two windows, which looked out upon the
+bit of garden and the medlar-tree, and the Spanish jasmines, of which the
+yellow flowers scented our old brick walls. I can remember the tortoise
+belonging to the boys next door crawling along the top of the wall where
+they had set it, and making its way between the jasmine sprigs.... Our
+garden was not tidy (though on one grand occasion a man came to mow the
+grass), but it was full of sweet things.... Lady Duff Gordon came to stay
+with us once (it was on that occasion that the grass was mowed), and she
+afterwards sent us some doves, which used to hang high up in a wicker cage
+from the windows of the schoolroom. The schoolroom was over my father’s
+bedroom, and his bedroom was over the study where he used to write, and
+they all looked to the garden and the sunsets.�</p>
+
+<p>On his return from the American lecturing, in 1853, when he had already
+made a beginning of <i>The Newcomes</i>, he gave up the Young Street house and
+moved to 36 Onslow Square, South Kensington (or Brompton, as it was called
+at that period); and during the seven years of his residence there he
+finished <i>The Newcomes</i>, wrote <i>The Four Georges</i>, <i>The Virginians</i>, many
+of the <i>Roundabout Papers</i>, began the writing of <i>Philip</i>, and founded and
+entered upon his duties as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> editor of the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>. The front
+room on the second floor was his study.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img78.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LAMB BUILDING. TEMPLE. FROM THE CLOISTERS.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>It was whilst Thackeray was living here that the quarrel occurred between
+him and Edmund Yates, who had contributed a smart personal article to
+<i>Town Talk</i>, on the 12th June 1858, in the course of which he wrote: “Mr.
+Thackeray is forty-six years old, though from the silvery whiteness of his
+hair he appears somewhat older. He is very tall, standing upwards of six
+feet two inches; and as he walks erect his height makes him conspicuous in
+every assembly. His face is bloodless, and not particularly expressive,
+but remarkable for the fracture of the bridge of the nose, the result of
+an accident in youth. He wears a small grey whisker, but otherwise is
+clean shaven. No one meeting him could fail to recognise in him a
+gentleman; his bearing is cold and uninviting, his style of conversation
+either openly cynical, or affectedly good-natured and benevolent; his
+<i>bonhomie</i> is forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched&mdash;but his
+appearance is invariably that of the cool, suave, well-bred gentleman who,
+whatever may be rankling within, suffers no surface display of his
+emotion.� He went on to discuss Thackeray’s work, and said unjustly of his
+lectures that in this country he flattered the aristocracy and in America
+he attacked it, the attacks being contained in <i>The Four Georges</i>, which
+“have been dead failures in England, though as literary compositions they
+are most excellent. Our own opinion is that his success is on the wane;
+his writings never were understood or appreciated even by the middle
+classes; the aristocracy have been alienated by his American onslaught<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> on
+their body, and the educated and refined are not sufficiently numerous to
+constitute an audience; moreover, there is a want of heart in all he
+writes which is not to be balanced by the most brilliant sarcasm.�</p>
+
+<p>The description of Thackeray’s personal appearance here is perhaps rather
+impertinently frank, but it is clever and pictorially good; for the
+rest&mdash;we who know now what a generous, kindly, almost too sentimentally
+tender heart throbbed within that husk of cynicism and sarcasm in which he
+protectively enfolded it, know that Yates was writing of what he did not
+understand. Unfortunately, however, Thackeray took him seriously, and
+wrote a letter of dignified but angry protest to him, especially against
+the imputation of insincerity when he spoke good-naturedly in private.
+“Had your remarks been written by a person unknown to me, I should have
+noticed them no more than other calumnies; but as we have shaken hands
+more than once and met hitherto on friendly terms, I am obliged to take
+notice of articles which I consider to be not offensive and unfriendly
+merely, but slanderous and untrue. We meet at a club where, before you
+were born, I believe, I and other gentlemen have been in the habit of
+talking without any idea that our conversation would supply paragraphs for
+professional vendors of ‘Literary Talk’; and I don’t remember that out of
+the club I have ever exchanged six words with you.�</p>
+
+<p>Yates replied, and “rather than have further correspondence with a writer
+of that character,� Thackeray put the letters before the committee of the
+Garrick Club, asking them to decide whether the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> publication of such an
+article as Yates had written was not intolerable in a society of gentlemen
+and fatal to the comfort of the club. The committee resolved that Yates
+must either apologise or resign his membership. Then Dickens, thinking the
+committee were exceeding their powers, intervened on Yates’s behalf; wrote
+to Thackeray in a conciliatory strain, and asked if any conference could
+be held between himself, as representing Yates, and some friend who should
+represent Thackeray, with a view to arriving at a friendly settlement of
+the unpleasantness. This apparently well-intentioned interference annoyed
+Thackeray; he curtly replied that he preferred to leave his interests in
+the hands of the club committee, and as a result he and Dickens were
+bitterly estranged. That the friendship between two such men should have
+been broken by such a petty incident was deplorable enough, but happily,
+only a few days before Thackeray’s death, they chanced to meet in the
+lobby of the Athenæum, and by a mutual impulse each offered his hand to
+the other, and the breach was healed.</p>
+
+<p>In 1862 Thackeray made his last change of address, and went to No. 2
+Palace Green, Kensington, a large and handsome house that he had built for
+himself. Some of his friends thought that in building it he had spent his
+money recklessly, but he did it in pursuance of the desire, that crops up
+so frequently in his correspondence, to make some provision for the future
+of his children; and when, after his death, it was sold for £2000 more
+than it had cost him, he was sufficiently justified. It was in this house
+that he finished <i>Philip</i>, and, having retired from the editing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> of the
+<i>Cornhill</i>, began to write <i>Denis Duval</i>, but died on Christmas Eve 1863,
+leaving it little more than well begun. When he was writing <i>Pendennis</i> he
+had been near death’s door, and ever since he had suffered from attacks of
+sickness almost every month. He was not well when his valet left him at
+eleven on the night of the 23rd December; about midnight his mother, whose
+bedroom was immediately over his, heard him walking about his room; at
+nine next morning, when his valet went in with his coffee, he saw him
+“lying on his back quite still, with his arms spread over the coverlet,
+but he took no notice, as he was accustomed to see his master thus after
+one of his attacks.� Returning later, and finding the coffee untouched on
+the table beside the bed, he felt a sudden apprehension, and was horrified
+to discover that Thackeray was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Yates has told how the rumour of his death ran through the clubs and was
+soon all about the town, and of how, wherever it went, it left a cloud
+over everything that Christmas Eve; and I have just turned up one of my
+old <i>Cornhill</i> volumes to read again what Dickens and Trollope wrote of
+him in the number for February 1864. “I saw him first,� says Dickens,
+“nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to be the illustrator of
+my earliest book. I saw him last, shortly before Christmas, at the
+Athenæum Club, when he told me that he had been in bed three days&mdash;that
+after these attacks he was troubled with cold shiverings, ‘which quite
+took the power of work out of him’&mdash;and that he had it in his mind to try
+a new remedy, which he laughingly described. He was very cheerful, and
+looked very bright. In the night of that day week, he died.�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> Dickens goes
+on to give little instances of his kindness, of his great and good nature;
+and then describes how he was found lying dead. “He was only in his
+fifty-third year; so young a man that the mother who blessed him in his
+first sleep blessed him in his last.� And says Trollope, no one is
+thinking just then of the greatness of his work&mdash;“The fine grey head, the
+dear face with its gentle smile, the sweet, manly voice which we knew so
+well, with its few words of kindest greeting; the gait and manner, the
+personal presence of him whom it so delighted us to encounter in our
+casual comings and goings about the town&mdash;it is of these things, and of
+these things lost for ever, that we are now thinking. We think of them as
+treasures which are not only lost, but which can never be replaced. He who
+knew Thackeray will have a vacancy in his heart’s inmost casket which must
+remain vacant till he dies. One loved him almost as one loves a woman,
+tenderly and with thoughtfulness&mdash;thinking of him when away from him as a
+source of joy which cannot be analysed, but is full of comfort. One who
+loved him, loved him thus because his heart was tender, as is the heart of
+a woman.�</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<p class="title">DICKENS</p>
+
+
+<p>Thackeray’s London was practically bounded on the east by the Temple, or
+perhaps by the Fleet Prison, which lay a little beyond the <i>Punch</i> office;
+it took in the Strand, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and stretched out westward
+round Belgravia, Mayfair, Chiswick, and such selecter quarters of the
+town. But Dickens made the whole of London his province; you cannot go
+into any part of it but he has been there before you; if he did not at one
+time live there himself, some of his characters did. Go north through
+Somers Town and Camden Town: the homes of his boyhood were there in Bayham
+Street, in Little College Street, in the house that still stands at 13
+Johnson Street, from which he walked daily to school at the Wellington
+House Academy in Hampstead Road. He lived in Cleveland Street, Fitzroy
+Square, and in Fitzroy Street, and whilst his father was a prisoner in the
+Marshalsea for debt and he himself was labelling bottles at the blacking
+factory in Hungerford Market, he had lodgings south of London Bridge in
+Lant Street, which were the originals of the lodgings he gave to Bob
+Sawyer in later years when he came to write <i>Pickwick</i>. When he was turned
+twenty, and working as a Parliamentary reporter in the House of Commons,
+and beginning to contribute his <i>Sketches by Boz</i> to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> <i>Monthly
+Magazine</i>, he lived at 18 Bentinck Street, Cavendish Square. For a time he
+had lodgings in Buckingham Street, Strand, and afterwards lodged David
+Copperfield in the same rooms; he put up for a short time at Fulham before
+his marriage at St. Luke’s Church, Chelsea, in April 1836, and after a
+brief honeymoon returned with his wife to the chambers in Furnival’s Inn
+that he had rented since the previous year. He had three other London
+houses during his more prosperous days; then he quitted the town and went
+to live at Gad’s Hill Place, where he died in 1870. But even after he was
+thus settled in Kent, he was continually up and down to the office of
+<i>Household Words</i>, in Wellington Street, Strand, and for some part of
+almost every year he occupied a succession of furnished houses round about
+Hyde Park.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img79.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">DICKENS. JOHNSON STREET. CAMDEN TOWN.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>A few months before his marriage he had started to write <i>Pickwick</i>, the
+first monthly part of which appeared in March 1836. Before the end of next
+month, Seymour, the artist who was illustrating that serial, having
+committed suicide, Thackeray went up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> to the Furnival’s Inn chambers with
+specimens of his drawings in the hope of becoming his successor, but
+Dickens rejected him in favour of Hablot K. Browne (“Phiz�), who also
+illustrated most of his subsequent books. He had published the <i>Sketches
+by Boz</i> in two volumes, illustrated by Cruikshank, had written two
+dramatic pieces that were very successfully produced at the St. James’s
+Theatre, had begun to edit <i>Bentley’s Miscellany</i>, and was writing <i>Oliver
+Twist</i> for it, before he left Furnival’s Inn and established his small
+household of his wife and their first son and his wife’s sister, Mary
+Hogarth, at 48 Doughty Street, Mecklenburgh Square.</p>
+
+<p>In later years Sala, who became one of Dickens’s principal contributors to
+<i>Household Words</i>, used to live in Mecklenburgh Square, and at different
+times Sidney Smith, Shirley Brooks, and Edmund Yates all lived in Doughty
+Street (Shirley Brooks was born there, at No. 52), but Doughty Street’s
+chief glory is that for the greater part of three years Dickens was the
+tenant of No. 48. George Henry Lewes called to see him there, and was
+perturbed to find that he had nothing on his bookshelves but three-volume
+novels and presentation copies of books of travel; clearly he was not much
+of a reader, and had never been a haunter of old bookstalls. But presently
+Dickens came in, says Lewes, “and his sunny presence quickly dispelled all
+misgivings. He was then, as to the last, a delightful companion, full of
+sagacity as well as animal spirits; but I came away more impressed with
+the fulness of life and energy than with any sense of distinction.�</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>Mrs. Cowden Clarke, who saw him in his Doughty Street days, speaks of him
+as “genial, bright, lively-spirited, pleasant-toned,� and says he “entered
+into conversation with a grace and charm that made it feel perfectly
+natural to be chatting and laughing as if we had known each other from
+childhood.� His eyes she describes as “large, dark blue, exquisitely
+shaped, fringed with magnificently long and thick lashes&mdash;they now swam in
+liquid, limpid suffusion, when tears started into them from a sense of
+humour or a sense of pathos, and now darted quick flashes of fire when
+some generous indignation at injustice, or some high-wrought feeling of
+admiration at magnanimity, or some sudden emotion of interest and
+excitement touched him. Swift-glancing, appreciative, rapidly observant,
+truly superb orbits they were, worthy of the other features in his manly,
+handsome face. The mouth was singularly mobile, full-lipped, well-shaped,
+and expressive; sensitive, nay restless, in its susceptibility to
+impressions that swayed him, or sentiment that moved him.� Which tallies
+sufficiently with Carlyle’s well-known description of him a few months
+later: “A fine little fellow, Boz, I think. Clear, blue, intelligent eyes,
+eyebrows that he arches amazingly; large, protrusive, rather loose mouth,
+a face of most extreme mobility which he shuttles about&mdash;eyebrows, eyes,
+mouth and all&mdash;in a very singular manner while speaking. Surmount this
+with a loose coil of common-coloured hair, and set it on a small, compact
+figure, very small, and dressed <i>â la</i> D’Orsay rather than well&mdash;this is
+Pickwick. For the rest, a quiet, shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems
+to guess pretty well what he is and what others are.�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> Forster sketches
+his face at this same period with “the quickness, keenness, and practical
+power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several feature,
+that seemed to tell so little of a student and writer of books, and so
+much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and motion
+flashed from every part of it.� “It was as if made of steel,� said Mrs.
+Carlyle; and “What a face is his to meet in a drawing-room,� wrote Leigh
+Hunt. “It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings.�</p>
+
+<p>Dickens’s weakness, then and all his life through, was for something too
+dazzling and ornate in the way of personal adornment. We hear of a green
+overcoat with red cuffs. “His dress was florid,� says one who met him: “a
+satin cravat of the deepest blue relieved by embroideries, a green
+waistcoat with gold flowers, a dress coat with a velvet collar and satin
+facings, opulence of white cuff, rings in excess, made up a rather
+striking whole.� And there is a story of how, when an artist friend of
+both was presented by somebody with a too gaudy length of material, Wilkie
+Collins advised him to “Give it to Dickens&mdash;he’ll make a waistcoat out of
+it!�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img80.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">DICKENS’ HOUSE. DOUGHTY STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>That jest belongs to a later year, but here you have a sufficiently vivid
+presentment of the man as he was when he could be seen passing in and out
+of the house in Doughty Street. He may have been dandified in appearance,
+but in all his other habits he was a hard and severely methodical worker.
+“His hours and days were spent by rule,� we are told. “He rose at a
+certain time, he retired at another, and though no precisian, it was not
+often that his arrangements <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>varied. His hours of writing were between
+breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to be done no
+temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. This order
+and regularity followed him through the day. His mind was essentially
+methodical, and in his long walks, in his recreations, in his labour, he
+was governed by rules laid down by himself, rules well studied beforehand
+and rarely departed from.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img81.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CHARLES DICKENS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His rise out of poverty and obscurity into affluence and fame makes a more
+wonderful story than that of how Byron woke one morning and found himself
+famous. For Dickens had everything against him. He was indifferently
+educated, had no social advantages, and no influential friends behind him.
+In 1835 he was an unknown young author, writing miscellaneous stories and
+sketches for the papers; by the end of 1836 everybody was reading and
+raving of and laughing over <i>Pickwick</i>, and he was the most talked-of
+novelist of the hour. “It sprang into a popularity that each part carried
+higher and higher,� says Forster, “until people at this time talked of
+nothing else, tradesmen recommended their goods by using its name, and its
+sale, outstripping at a bound that of all the most famous books of the
+century, had reached an almost fabulous number.� Judges, street boys, old
+and young in every class of life, devoured each month’s number directly it
+appeared, and looked forward impatiently to the next one. Carlyle told
+Forster that “an archdeacon, with his own venerable lips, repeated to me
+the other night a strange, profane story of a solemn clergyman who had
+been administering ghostly consolation to a sick person; having finished,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+satisfactorily as he thought, and got out of the room, he heard the sick
+person ejaculate: ‘Well, thank God, <i>Pickwick</i> will be out in ten days,
+any way!’�</p>
+
+<p>Dickens’s favourite recreation in those early years was riding, and
+frequently he would set out with Forster “at eleven in the morning for ‘a
+fifteen mile ride out, ditto in, and lunch on the road,’ with a wind-up of
+six o’clock dinner in Doughty Street.� Other times he would send a note
+round to Forster, who lived at 58 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and if he could be
+persuaded to come, as generally he could, they would set out for a brisk
+walk to Hampstead and over the Heath, and have “a red-hot chop for dinner
+and a glass of good wine� at Jack Straw’s Castle.</p>
+
+<p>His daughter Mamie was born in Doughty Street, and there the first great
+grief of his life completely overwhelmed him for a time, when his wife’s
+young sister, Mary Hogarth, died at the age of seventeen. There are
+several letters from that address in 1838 concerning his progress with
+<i>Oliver Twist</i>. In one, when he could not work, he says he is “sitting
+patiently at home waiting for Oliver Twist, who has not yet arrived.� In
+another he writes, “I worked pretty well last night&mdash;very well indeed; but
+although I did eleven close slips before half-past twelve I have four to
+write to close the chapter; and as I foolishly left them till this
+morning, have the steam to get up afresh.� “Hard at work still,� he writes
+to Forster in August 1838. “Nancy is no more. I showed what I had done to
+Kate last night, who is in an unspeakable ‘<i>state</i>’; from which and my own
+impression<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> I augur well. When I have sent Sykes to the devil I must have
+yours.� And “No, no,� he wrote again to Forster next month, “don’t, don’t
+let us ride till to-morrow, not having yet disposed of the Jew, who is
+such an out-and-outer that I don’t know what to make of him.� Then one
+evening Forster went to Doughty Street and sat in Dickens’s study and
+talked over the last chapter of <i>Oliver Twist</i> with him, and remained
+reading there whilst he wrote it.</p>
+
+<p>From Doughty Street Dickens and “Phiz� set out together on that journey
+into Yorkshire to see the notorious school that was to become famous as
+Squeers’s, and in due course there are letters from that street telling of
+the progress of <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>. Early in 1839 the letters tell of how
+he is house-hunting, and in the intervals working “at racehorse speed� on
+<i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, and near the end of the year he moved to 1 Devonshire
+Terrace, at the corner of Marylebone Road.</p>
+
+<p>The Doughty Street house remains as he left it, but 1 Devonshire Terrace
+has been rather considerably altered. The new residence was such a much
+more imposing one than the other that absurd rumours got about that he was
+lapsing into extravagance and living beyond his income, and “I perfectly
+remember,� writes Sala, “when he moved from his modest residence in
+Doughty Street to a much grander but still not very palatial house in
+Devonshire Terrace, an old gentleman calling one day upon my mother and
+telling her, with a grave countenance, that Dickens had pawned his plate,
+and had been waited upon for the last fortnight by bailiffs in livery.� It
+was about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> this time, too, that the <i>Quarterly</i> made its famous prediction
+that in the case of work such as Dickens was doing “an ephemeral
+popularity will be followed by an early oblivion.� But there was no ground
+for any of these fears. His life was a triumphal procession; he went
+forward from victory to victory. At Devonshire Terrace he wrote most of
+<i>Barnaby Rudge</i>: and the prototype of Grip, Barnaby’s raven, the special
+playmate of Dickens’s children, died there; from here he went on his first
+visit to America, and on his return, with intervals of holiday at
+Broadstairs, in Cornwall, and in Italy, wrote the <i>American Notes</i>,
+<i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, <i>The Chimes</i>, <i>The Cricket on the Hearth</i>, <i>Pictures
+from Italy</i>, <i>Dombey and Son</i>, and commenced the writing of <i>David
+Copperfield</i>. Whilst he was here, too, he was for a brief space the first
+editor of the <i>Daily News</i>, and in March 1850 opened his Wellington Street
+office and started <i>Household Words</i>. Incidentally, he was taking an
+active share in a dozen or more public movements; acting as chairman at
+meetings and dinners, managing and playing in private theatricals, writing
+miscellaneous articles for his new magazine, and attending closely to its
+business organisation. Never was a more strenuous literary worker, or one
+who brought more enthusiasm to whatever he undertook.</p>
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1851, in the flowing and rising tide of his prosperity,
+he removed to the now vanished Tavistock House, in Tavistock Square, and
+in the next six years, before his removal to Gad’s Hill, wrote <i>Bleak
+House</i>, <i>Hard Times</i>, and <i>Little Dorrit</i>, to say nothing of the numerous
+short stories and articles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> he contributed to <i>Household Words</i>, and began
+to give those public readings from his books that were in his last decade
+to occupy so much of his time, add so enormously to his income and his
+personal popularity, and play so sinister a part in the breaking down of
+his health and the shortening of his career.</p>
+
+<p>Writing immediately after Dickens’s death, Sala said that twenty years ago
+the face and form of Sir Robert Peel were familiar to almost everybody who
+passed him in the street, and “there were as few last week who would have
+been unable to point out the famous novelist, with his thought-lined face,
+his grizzled beard, his wondrous searching eyes, his bluff presence and
+swinging gait as, head aloft, he strode, now through crowded streets,
+looking seemingly neither to the right nor the left, but of a surety
+looking at and into everything&mdash;now at the myriad aspects of London life,
+the ever-changing raree-show, the endless roundabout, the infinite
+kaleidoscope of wealth and pauperism, of happiness and misery, of good and
+evil in this Babylon&mdash;now over the pleasant meads and breezy downs which
+stretched round his modest Kentish demesne hard by the hoary tower of
+Rochester.... Who had not heard him read, and who had not seen his
+photographs in the shop windows? The omnibus conductors knew him, the
+street boys knew him; and perhaps the locality where his recognition would
+have been least frequent&mdash;for all that he was a member of the Athenæum
+Club&mdash;was Pall Mall. Elsewhere he would make his appearance in the oddest
+places, and in the most inclement weather: in Ratcliff Highway, on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+Haverstock Hill, on Camberwell Green, in Gray’s Inn Lane, in the
+Wandsworth Road, at Hammersmith Broadway, in Norton Folgate, and at Kensal
+New Town.... His carriage was remarkably upright, his mien almost
+aggressive in its confidence&mdash;a bronzed, weatherworn, hardy man, with
+somewhat of a seaman’s air about him.� London folks would draw aside, he
+continues, “as the great writer&mdash;who seemed always to be walking a match
+against Thought&mdash;strode on, and, looking after him, say, ‘There goes
+Charles Dickens!’ The towering stature, the snowy locks, the glistening
+spectacles, the listless, slouching port, as that of a tired giant, of
+William Makepeace Thackeray were familiar enough likewise but,
+comparatively speaking, only to a select few. He belonged to Clubland, and
+was only to be seen sauntering there or in West End squares, or on his
+road to his beloved Kensington.... Thackeray in Houndsditch, Thackeray in
+Bethnal Green or at Camden Town, would have appeared anomalous ... but
+Charles Dickens, when in town, was ubiquitous.�</p>
+
+<p>There are statues in London of many smaller men, of many who mean little
+or nothing in particular to London, but there is none to Dickens, and
+perhaps he needs none. Little critics may decry him, but it makes no
+difference, it takes nothing from his immortality. “It is fatuous,� as
+Trollope said of his work, “to condemn that as deficient in art which has
+been so full of art as to captivate all men.� And to the thousands of us
+who know the people and the world that he created he is still ubiquitous
+in London here, even though he has his place for ever,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> as Swinburne says,
+among the stars and suns that we behold not:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Where stars and suns that we behold not burn,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Higher even than here, though highest was here thy place,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Love sees thy spirit laugh and speak and shine</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With Shakespeare and the soft bright soul of Sterne,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And Fielding’s kindliest might and Goldsmith’s grace;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Scarce one more loved or worthier love than thine.�</span></p></div>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<p class="title">CONCLUSION</p>
+
+
+<p>When I was writing of what remains to us of the London of Shakespeare, I
+might have mentioned the four-century-old gateway of Lincoln’s Inn, in
+Chancery Lane, that Ben Jonson helped to build, and close by which, at 24
+Old Buildings, Cromwell’s secretary, John Thurloe, lived in 1654; and
+although in my first chapter I gave a fairly lengthy list of famous
+authors and artists who were Cockneys by birth, I by no means made it so
+long as I could have done. Hablot K. Browne, otherwise “Phiz,� the chief
+of Dickens’s artists, was born in Kennington, and lived for eight years,
+towards the close of his career, at 99 Ladbroke Grove Road; Lord Lytton,
+whom Tennyson unkindly described as “the padded man that wears the stays,�
+and who was for a time a more popular novelist than either Dickens or
+Thackeray, was born at 31 Baker Street, and lived in after years at 12
+Grosvenor Square, and at 36 Hertford Street; Gibbon was born at Putney,
+and lived for some years at 7 Bentinck Street, which he said was “the best
+house in the world�; John Leech was born over his father’s coffee-shop in
+Ludgate Hill, and lived when he had risen to fame at 32 Brunswick Square,
+and passed the last years of his life at 6 The Terrace, Kensington; and
+one who I confess interests <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>me at least as much as any of these,
+Douglas Jerrold, was born in Greek Street, Soho, lived as a boy at Broad
+Court, in the same neighbourhood, and afterwards shifted about into
+half-a-dozen different parts of London, and died in 1857 at Kilburn
+Priory, on the skirts of St. John’s Wood. West Lodge, his house at Lower
+Putney Common, still stands much as it was when he occupied it, with his
+mulberry tree still growing in that garden round which, one memorable
+summer afternoon, he and Dickens, Forster, Maclise, and Macready gave each
+other “backs,� and played a joyously undignified game of leapfrog. I don’t
+know whether anybody reads <i>Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures</i> now, but
+everybody read them and laughed over them when they were new, and
+Jerrold’s best jokes and witticisms are much too well known to leave me an
+excuse for repeating any of them here. For all his bitter tongue, he was
+kind, generous, sensitive, afire with a fine scorn of wrong, injustice,
+and every variety of social humbug and snobbery. “A small
+delicately-formed, bent man,� is Edmund Yates’s recollection of him, “with
+long grey hair combed back from his forehead, with grey eyes deep-set
+under penthouse brows, and a way, just as the inspiration seized him, of
+dangling a double-eyeglass which hung round his neck by a broad black
+ribbon.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img82.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THURLOE’S LODGINGS. 24 OLD SQUARE. LINCOLN’S INN.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Browning, who was born at Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell,
+in 1812, lived at De Vere Gardens, and at 19 Warwick Crescent. Removing
+from 74 Gloucester Place in 1842, Elizabeth Barrett and her autocratic
+father went to 50 Wimpole Street, and calling there with a friend in 1845,
+Robert Browning was introduced to her. It was from and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> to this house that
+so many of those wonderful love-letters of theirs were written, and little
+more than a year after their first meeting, her father stubbornly refusing
+his consent to their union, she stole out by this sedate and sombre door
+one autumn morning to join her waiting lover, and they were quietly and
+clandestinely married at the old church round the corner in Marylebone
+Road&mdash;the same church in which, in the same year, Dickens, then living at
+Devonshire House and within sight of it, married Mr. Dombey, with Captain
+Cuttle looking on at the ceremony from the gallery.</p>
+
+<p>At 82 Wimpole Street Wilkie Collins died; and at 67, lived Henry Hallam,
+the historian, and his son Arthur, the friend of Tennyson, who often
+visited him there, and has enshrined his memory for ever in his <i>In
+Memoriam</i>; where, too, he pictures this house and this street:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Dark house, by which once more I stand<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Here in the long unlovely street,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Doors, where my heart was used to beat</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">So quickly, waiting for a hand.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A hand that can be clasped no more&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Behold me, for I cannot sleep,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And like a guilty thing I creep</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">At earliest morning to the door.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He is not here; but far away</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The noise of life begins again,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">On the bald street breaks the blank day.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Theodore Hook, another Cockney, was born in Charlotte Street, Bedford
+Square; Captain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> Marryat, another, in Great George Street, Westminster,
+and whilst he was writing the most famous of his books he lived at 8 Duke
+Street, St. James’s, and at Sussex Lodge, in the Fulham Road. Ruskin, who,
+like Browning, is included in my earlier list of Cockneys, was born at 54
+Hunter Street, and made his home for many years at 163 Denmark Hill, both
+of which houses still survive him.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img83.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CAPTAIN MARRYAT. DUKE STREET. ST. JAMES.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>Benjamin Franklin lived at 7 Craven Street, Strand; before he rented a
+house in London after Johnson’s death, Boswell had lodgings, on his annual
+visits to town, in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, in Conduit Street, Regent
+Street, and in Old Bond Street; where Sterne dwelt before him and Gibbon
+after him, and at 27A, Harrison Ainsworth, later than them all; but
+Ainsworth’s more notable residence, where he lived when he was in the full
+glory of his enormous popularity, is Kensal House, out in the
+no-longer-rural district of Kensal Green.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img84.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S HOUSE. CRAVEN STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>At 19 Albert Gate, Sloane Street, lived Charles Reade, who was nearly all
+his life quarrelling with his critics and fighting against legal
+injustices with an almost ungovernable fury, and yet David Christie Murray
+said he was one of the four men he had met who were “distinguished by that
+splendid urbanity of manner which was once thought to express the acme of
+high breeding.... A beautiful, stately cordiality commonly marked his
+social manner, but he could be moved to a towering rage by an act of
+meanness, treachery, or oppression; and in his public correspondence he
+was sometimes downright vitriolic.� Anthony Trollope died at 34 Welbeck
+Street; and Lord Macaulay at Holly Lodge on Campden Hill. George
+Cruikshank lived in the queer, dull-looking little house that still
+remains at 263 Hampstead Road, and from that address put forth his
+groundless claims to being the originator of Ainsworth’s novels, <i>Jack
+Sheppard</i> and <i>The Miser’s Daughter</i>, and Dickens’s <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span><i>Oliver Twist</i>.
+Ainsworth was still living, and strenuously denied his assertions; Dickens
+was dead, but there existed a letter of his about the illustrations to his
+book that sufficiently proved that the story was not written round
+Cruickshank’s drawings, as the aged artist seemed to have persuaded
+himself it was. A greater artist than Cruickshank (and another Cockney, by
+the way) was born in Cumberland Market, near Regent’s Park, and died in a
+sponging-house in Eyre Street Hill, Clerkenwell Road, in 1804. That was
+George Morland. Two years before his death he went with his wife and put
+up at the Bull Inn, at Highgate, which was kept by a former acquaintance
+of his. He is supposed to have utilised as a studio the large room with
+three bay windows that runs above the bar the full width of the building.
+He entertained Gainsborough and Romney and other contemporary artists
+there, but within a few months had had a fierce quarrel with the landlord
+and returned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> to lodge with his brother in Dean Street, Soho. He was by
+then showing the effects of his reckless dissipations, and looked
+“besotted and squalid and cadaverous; hanging cheeks and pinched nose,
+contracted nostrils, bleared and bloodshot eyes, swelled legs, a palsied
+hand, and tremulous voice bespeaking the ruin of what had once been the
+soundest of frames.� Drunk or sober, he worked rapidly and with unfailing
+mastery, but he was generally cheated by those around him of the due
+reward of his labours. Going on a short holiday to Brighton, he wrote
+giving his brother this list of what he had drunk in a single day:
+“Hollands gin, rum and milk&mdash;before breakfast. Coffee&mdash;for breakfast.
+Hollands, porter, shrub, ale, Hollands, port wine and ginger, bottled
+ale&mdash;these before dinner. Port wine at dinner. Porter, bottled porter,
+punch, porter, ale, opium and water. Port wine at supper. Gin, shrub, and
+rum on going to bed.� At the bottom of the list he sketched a tombstone
+bearing a skull and crossbones, and by way of epitaph: “Here lies a
+drunken dog.� And debts and duns and death in the sponging-house were the
+inevitable end of it.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img85.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CRUIKSHANK. 263 HAMPSTEAD ROAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Lady Blessington held her brilliant salon at 8 Seamore Place, Mayfair,
+before in 1836 she removed to the more noted Gore House, Kensington, and
+welcomed to her splendid drawing-rooms Byron, Lytton, Disraeli, Landor,
+Marryat, Dickens, Thackeray, Sydney Smith, Maclise, Hook, and all the
+greatest men of the day in literature, art, politics, and society, till in
+1849 she was overwhelmed with financial embarrassments and fled to Paris,
+where she died the year after. Gore House has vanished from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>its place
+long since, and the Albert Hall more than covers the site of it. But
+Holland House, which was equally or more celebrated for its magnificent
+social gatherings in the first half of last century and earlier, still
+holds its ground. Addison lived there after his marriage to the Countess
+of Warwick in 1716, and from his bedroom there, in his last hours, sent
+for his dissipated stepson in order that he might see “how a Christian can
+die.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img86.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ROBERT BROWNING</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img87.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GEORGE MORLAND. THE “BULL INN� HIGHGATE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps more interesting than either of these, from a literary standpoint,
+is the house of Samuel Rogers, 22 St. James’s Place, overlooking the Green
+Park. You can scarcely open the memoirs of any man of letters of his time,
+but you may read some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> account of a breakfast or a dinner at Rogers’s.
+“What a delightful house it is!� says Macaulay. “It looks out on the Green
+Park just at the most pleasant point. The furniture has been selected with
+a delicacy of taste quite unique.... In the drawing-room the
+chimney-pieces are carved by Flaxman into the most beautiful Grecian
+forms. The bookcase is painted by Stothard, in his very best manner, with
+groups from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Boccaccio. The pictures are not
+numerous, but every one is excellent. The most remarkable objects in the
+dining-room are, I think, a cast of Pope, taken after death by Roubiliac;
+a noble model in terra-cotta by Michael Angelo, from which he afterwards
+made one of his finest statues, that of Lorenzo de Medici; and, lastly, a
+mahogany table on which stands an antique vase. When Chantrey dined with
+Rogers some time ago he took particular notice of the vase and the table
+on which it stands, and asked Rogers who made the table. ‘A common
+carpenter,’ said Rogers. ‘Do you remember the making of it?’ said
+Chantrey. ‘Certainly,’ said Rogers, in some surprise; ‘I was in the room
+while it was finished with the chisel, and gave the workman directions
+about placing it.’ ‘Yes,’ said Chantrey, ‘I was the carpenter.’� Byron,
+who was a guest at Holland House and at Lady Blessington’s, was a frequent
+guest at Rogers’s table also. It was Rogers who introduced him to Miss
+Milbanke, the unfortunate lady who was to become his wife; and Byron seems
+by turns to have admired him, disliked him, and looked upon him with a
+sort of laughing contempt. “When Sheridan was on his deathbed,� he writes,
+“Rogers aided him with purse and person: <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>this was particularly kind in
+Rogers, who always spoke ill of Sheridan (to me, at least); but indeed he
+does that of everybody. Rogers is the reverse of the line ‘The best good
+man with the worst-natured Muse,’ being ‘The worst good man with the
+best-natured Muse.’ His Muse being all sentiment and sago, while he
+himself is a venomous talker. I say ‘worst good man,’ because he is
+(perhaps) a good man&mdash;at least he does good now and then, as well he may,
+to purchase himself a shilling’s worth of Salvation for his Slanders. They
+are so <i>little</i>, too&mdash;small talk, and old womanny; and he is malignant
+too, and envious.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img88.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ROGERS. ST. JAMES’S PLACE. FROM GREEN PARK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Rogers had a fine head, a distinguished manner, a bland, silky way of
+saying the most cutting and cynical things. He was not so much a poet as a
+banker of a poetical temperament. His poetry will presently be forgotten,
+but his breakfasts and his dinners will be remembered because he lived to
+be well over ninety, was a very wealthy man of taste, and had the will and
+the means to play the generous host to some three generations of the
+wisest, wittiest, greatest men of his era, and several of them said
+brighter and better things in his dining and drawing-rooms than he ever
+wrote in his books. He covered such a long span of time that he could
+entertain Sheridan, who was born in 1751, and Dickens, who died in 1870.
+Many of the same glorious company had a meeting-place also until a more
+recent day at Bath House, Mayfair, where Lady Ashburton, the great friend
+of the Carlyles, held famous receptions, of which Carlyle himself and the
+Brookfields have left us reminiscences. And the invaluable Allingham has
+one or two notes about her in his <i>Diary</i>; one dated 5th November 1875, in
+which he says Carlyle passed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> his house “about four to-day. I overtook him
+in the Fulham Road, and walked with him to Lady Ashburton’s door at
+Knightsbridge. He said, ‘Browning in his young days wore a turn-down shirt
+collar with a ribbon for a necktie, and a green coat. I first met him one
+evening at Leigh Hunt’s, a modest youth, with a good strong face and a
+head of dark hair. He said little, but what he said was good.’� Possibly
+the talk fell upon him because Browning was among the guests he was to
+meet that day at Lady Ashburton’s.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img89.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BORROW’S HOUSE. HEREFORD SQUARE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>William Morris and Burne Jones lived and worked together at 17 Red Lion
+Square; Steele used to live in Bloomsbury Square, where later Disraeli and
+his father lived, at No. 5. George Borrow lived at 23 Hereford Square,
+South Kensington. Berkeley Square has a peculiar attraction for me, less
+because Horace Walpole had his home at 42, than because Colley Cibber
+dwelt as a very old man at No. 20. In the same way I am not so much drawn
+to Gower Street by the fact that in a greatly altered house there Darwin
+used to live, as I am to that shabby Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road,
+where Albert Smith had a house at which Sala once visited him. Walpole and
+Darwin are, of course, incomparably greater men than Cibber and Albert
+Smith, but these last two have a curious fascination for me. I read
+Smith’s <i>Christopher Tadpole</i> and <i>The Scattergood Family</i> when I was a
+boy, and his figure flits elusively in the background of Dickens’s
+reputation, wrapped in a very characteristic mid-Victorian bohemianism,
+and, without precisely knowing why, I have taken a sort of liking to him.
+Sala says he was a kind, cheery little man, who when he was at <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>work at
+home wore a blue blouse. “I recall him,� he says, “as a sturdy-looking,
+broad-shouldered, short-necked man, with grey eyes and flowing locks of
+light brown, and large side-whiskers; later in life he wore a beard. His
+voice was a high treble.� His study in Percy Street was littered always
+with French novels, dolls, pipes, cheap jewellery, cakes of soap made in
+the image of fruit, minature Swiss châlets, fancy costumes, and such a
+miscellany of odds and ends that it had the appearance of an old curiosity
+shop. As for Cibber, I began by feeling contempt for him, because of the
+scorn Pope pours on him in <i>The Dunciad</i>, and the character for dulness
+that was imposed upon him by that savage satirist and his host of
+imitators. But when I read some of Cibber’s comedies (such as <i>The
+Careless Husband</i>, and <i>Love Makes a Man</i>) I found them amusing and clever
+in their fashion, certainly not dull, and when I dropped one day into the
+National Portrait Gallery and saw that coloured bust of him under a glass
+case and leering through the glass eyes that have been fitted into his
+head&mdash;I succumbed, and acquired a sneaking regard for the gay old coxcomb
+that is not yet beginning to cool. You cannot read his plays and his
+delightful <i>Apology</i> for his Life without getting interested in him; and
+then if you go and look at that bust you will feel that you know the sly,
+witty, shrewd, ruddy-visaged, not over clean, furtive, leery old rascal as
+intimately as if you had been acquainted with him in the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>But if one set out to write of the homes and haunts of these minor
+celebrities this book would be endless; moreover, many amongst them that
+have some peculiar attraction for me might have no interest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> for any one
+else; and many that for special reasons mean a great deal to you might
+mean nothing at all to me. So, as the wiser course, I have, in the main,
+limited my survey to the houses of men and women who are considerable
+enough to be known, more or less, by every one who has even a nodding
+acquaintance with literature, and to that extent my chronicle is at an
+end.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+Addison Bridge Place, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+Adelphi Terrace, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Ainsworth, W. Harrison, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+Akenside, Mark, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Albany, The, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
+<br />
+Albemarle Street, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Albert Gate, Sloane Street, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Albion Street, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br />
+<br />
+Aldermanbury, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Aldersgate Street, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Aldford Street, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Aldgate, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Allingham, William, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Ampton Street, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Arbuthnot, John, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Archer, Thomas, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+Argyll Place, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Arlington Road, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Ashburton, Lady, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Atterbury, Francis, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+Austin, Alfred, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+Avenue Road, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Ayrton, William, <a href="#Page_207">207</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam), <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Baillie, Joanna, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
+<br />
+Baker Street, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Balmanno, Mary, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Barbauld, Mrs., <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+Barber, Francis, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br />
+<br />
+Barham, R. H., <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Barrett, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Bartholomew Close, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+Barton, Bernard, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a><br />
+<br />
+Basire, James, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
+<br />
+Bath House, Mayfair, <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br />
+<br />
+Bathurst, Dr., <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
+<br />
+Battersea, <a href="#Page_26">26-35</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a><br />
+<br />
+Bayham Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Beauclerk, Topham, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+Beaumont, Francis, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Bellott, Stephen, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+Bennet Street, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
+<br />
+Bentinck Street, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Berkeley Square, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Besant, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br />
+<br />
+Bird-in-Hand Court, Cheapside, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
+<br />
+Bishopsgate, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Blackstone, Sir William, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
+<br />
+Blake, William, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118-139</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Blandford Square, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Blessington, Lady, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Bloomfield, Robert, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Bloomsbury Square, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, <a href="#Page_26">26-35</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
+<br />
+Bolingbroke House, <a href="#Page_26">26-35</a><br />
+<br />
+Bolt Court, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+<br />
+Bond Street, <a href="#Page_265">265</a><br />
+<br />
+Boner, Charles, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Borrow, George, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Boswell, James, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93-117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Bouverie Street, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Bow Lane, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span><br />
+Brawne, Fanny, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br />
+<br />
+Bread Street, Cheapside, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Broad Street, Soho, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Brontë, Charlotte, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Brooks, Shirley, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br />
+<br />
+Brown, Charles Armitage, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+Browne, Hablot K. (“Phiz�), <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Browne, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Brunswick Square, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Buckingham Street, Euston Road, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; Strand, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a><br />
+<br />
+Bunhill Row, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Burbage, Richard, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Burke, Edmund, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a><br />
+<br />
+Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Burney, Dr. Charles, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Fanny, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
+<br />
+Burns, Robert, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+<br />
+Butts, Thomas, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
+<br />
+Byron, Lord, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193-199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Cade, Jack, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Camberwell, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
+<br />
+Campbell, Thomas, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Campden Hill, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Cannon Street, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Canonbury Tower, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
+<br />
+Carew, Thomas, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Carlyle, Mrs., <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Thomas, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275-286</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Carter Lane, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br />
+<br />
+Cary, Rev. H. F., <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Castle Street, Cavendish Square, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; Leicester Square, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Cattermole, George, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Cave, Edward, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br />
+<br />
+Chancery Lane, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Charing Cross, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
+<br />
+Charlotte Street, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Charterhouse, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br />
+<br />
+Chaucer, Geoffrey, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Cheapside, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+Chelsea, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255-293</a><br />
+<br />
+Cheshire Cheese, the, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Chesterfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_103">103-105</a><br />
+<br />
+Chesterton, G. K., <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
+<br />
+Cheyne Row, <a href="#Page_275">275-286</a><br />
+<br />
+Cheyne Walk, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256-265</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273-275</a><br />
+<br />
+Chiswick, <a href="#Page_36">36-51</a><br />
+<br />
+Christ’s Hospital, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Churchill, Charles, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
+<br />
+Cibber, Colley, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Clarke, Cowden, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mrs. Cowden, <a href="#Page_317">317</a><br />
+<br />
+Cleveland Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Clifford’s Inn, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+Cloth Fair, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Cobbett, William, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Colebrook Row, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
+<br />
+Coleridge, S. T., <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199-206</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+College Street, Kentish Town, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
+<br />
+Collins, Wilkie, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Colman, George, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
+<br />
+Colvin, Sir Sidney, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Condell, Henry, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Conduit Street, Regent Street, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Congreve, William, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Constable, John, <a href="#Page_143">143-145</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+Cornhill, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Cornwall, Barry, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span><br />
+Coryat, Thomas, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Covent Garden, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<br />
+Cowley, Abraham, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Cranbourne Street, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+Craven Street, Strand, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Cripplegate, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Cross, John, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
+<br />
+Cruikshank, George, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+Cumberland Market, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+Cunningham, Allan, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Darwin, Charles, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Davies, Thomas, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br />
+<br />
+Day, Thomas, <a href="#Page_187">187-193</a><br />
+<br />
+Dean Street, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Defoe, Daniel, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Dekker, Thomas, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Denmark Hill, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Dennis, John, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+De Quincey, Thomas, <a href="#Page_168">168-177</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+De Stael, Madame, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+De Vere Gardens, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Devereux Court, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Devil Tavern, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Devonshire Terrace, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Dibdin, Charles, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Dickens, Charles, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314-327</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mrs., <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+Dilke, Wentworth, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br />
+<br />
+Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield), <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Isaac, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Dobson, Austin, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Dodsley, Robert, <a href="#Page_96">96</a><br />
+<br />
+Donne, Dr. John, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Doughty Street, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+Dowden, Dr., <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Down Street, <a href="#Page_280">280</a><br />
+<br />
+Dryden, John, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Duke Street, <a href="#Page_333">333</a><br />
+<br />
+Du Maurier, George, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br />
+<br />
+Dyer, George, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+East Smithfield, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Edmonton, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226-232</a><br />
+<br />
+Edwardes Square, <a href="#Page_293">293</a><br />
+<br />
+Eliot, George, <a href="#Page_245">245-254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Elm Tree Road, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a><br />
+<br />
+Ely Place, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Emerson, R. W., <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br />
+<br />
+Enfield, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a><br />
+<br />
+Exeter Street, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Felpham, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
+<br />
+Fetter Lane, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Fielding, Henry, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+<br />
+Fields, Ticknor, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Finchley Road, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br />
+<br />
+Fitzgerald, Edward, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Percy, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+Fitzosbert, William, <a href="#Page_1">1</a><br />
+<br />
+Fitzroy Square, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Flaxman, John, <a href="#Page_120">120-139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Fleet Street, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Fleming, Mrs., <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br />
+<br />
+Fletcher, John, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Forster, John, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Fountain Court, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Franklin, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Friday Street, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Frith Street, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
+<br />
+Froude, J. A., <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Fulham Road, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a><br />
+<br />
+Fuller, Thomas, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Furnival’s Inn, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Gad’s Hill Place, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br />
+<br />
+Gainsborough, Thomas, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span><br />
+Gamble, Ellis, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+Garrick, David, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mrs., <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+Garth, Sir Samuel, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+Gay, John, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Gerrard Street, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Gibbon, Edward, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Gilchrist, Alexander, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br />
+<br />
+Gilman, Mr., <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+Globe Theatre, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Gloucester Place, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Godwin, Mary, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; William, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Goldsmith, Oliver, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+Gore House, Kensington, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Gough Square, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95-109</a><br />
+<br />
+Gower, John, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Gower Street, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Gray, Thomas, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Gray’s Inn, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Great Coram Street, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; George Street, <a href="#Page_333">333</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Newport Street, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Portland Street, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Queen Street, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br />
+<br />
+Greaves, Walter, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br />
+<br />
+Greek Street, <a href="#Page_168">168-177</a><br />
+<br />
+Green Street, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
+<br />
+Greene, Robert, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Grosvenor Square, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Half Moon Street, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Hall, S. C., <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
+<br />
+Hallam, Arthur, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Henry, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Hamilton, Lady, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Sir William, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Hammersmith, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Hampstead, <a href="#Page_140">140-166</a><br />
+<br />
+Hampstead Road, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Hannay, James, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+Harley Street, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Harmsworth, Cecil, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Harry, M. Gerard, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Hawkesworth, Dr. John, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
+<br />
+Hawkins, Sir John, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Hawthorne, Nathaniel, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Haydon, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br />
+<br />
+Hayley, William, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br />
+<br />
+Hazlitt, Mrs., <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; William, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181-186</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Heminge, John, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, <a href="#Page_123">123-124</a><br />
+<br />
+Hereford Square, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Herrick, Robert, <a href="#Page_5">5</a><br />
+<br />
+Hertford Street, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Highgate, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+Hind, Lewis, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Hobbes, Thomas, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Hogarth, Mary, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mrs., <a href="#Page_50">50-51</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; William, <a href="#Page_36">36-51</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Hogg, T. J., <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+Holborn, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a><br />
+<br />
+Holcroft, Thomas, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Holland House, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+Holles Street, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br />
+<br />
+Hone, William, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+Hood, Thomas, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235-245</a><br />
+<br />
+Hook, Theodore, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Hungerford Market, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Hunt, Holman, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Leigh, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286-295</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Hunter Street, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Irving, Washington, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+Islington, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219-221</a><br />
+<br />
+Isola, Emma, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Ivy Lane, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Jeffrey, Francis, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Jerrold, Douglas, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Johnson, Mrs., <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Samuel, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89-117</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Johnson Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Johnson’s Court, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Jonson, Ben, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Keats, John, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153-166</a><br />
+<br />
+Kemble, John, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Kemp, William, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Kensal Green, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Kensington, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303-306</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Gardens, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+Kilburn Priory, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+King Street, Covent Garden, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Kingsley, Charles, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Henry, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Kit-Kat Club, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Knight, Joseph, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ladbroke Grove Road, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207-232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mary, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
+<br />
+Landor, Walter Savage, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Landseer, Sir Edwin, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Langland, John, <a href="#Page_1">1</a><br />
+<br />
+Langton, Bennet, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
+<br />
+Lant Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Leathersellers’ Buildings, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Lecky, Mrs., <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br />
+<br />
+Leech, John, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Leicester Square, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
+<br />
+Lennox, Mrs., <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Levett, Robert, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
+<br />
+Lewes, George Henry, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br />
+<br />
+Lincoln’s Inn Fields, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+Little College Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Queen Street, <a href="#Page_212">212</a><br />
+<br />
+Lloyd, Charles, <a href="#Page_215">215</a><br />
+<br />
+Locke, John, <a href="#Page_207">207</a><br />
+<br />
+Lombard Street, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+London Bridge, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Stone, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Loudon Road, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Ludgate Hill, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Lytton, Lord, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Macaulay, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+Maclise, Daniel, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Macready, W. C., <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Maiden Lane, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Manning, Thomas, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br />
+<br />
+Marchmont Street, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Marryat, Captain, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Marston, Philip Bourke, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+Marylebone Road, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Massinger, Philip, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Mathews, Charles, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+Matthew, Mrs., <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Mawson Row, Chiswick, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Mecklenburgh Square, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br />
+<br />
+Medwin, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Mermaid Tavern, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Middleton, Thomas, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Milbanke, Anna Isabella, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+Mill, John Stuart, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Milnes, Moncton (Lord Houghton), <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Milton, John, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Monkwell Street, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
+<br />
+Moore, Thomas, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
+<br />
+Moorfields, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+More, Hannah, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+Morland, George, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Morris, William, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Mount Street, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span><br />
+Mountjoy, Christopher, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+<br />
+Moxon, Edward, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Mulready, William, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Munday, Anthony, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Munro, Alexander, <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br />
+<br />
+Murray, David Christie, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; John, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+New Street, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><br />
+<br />
+Newgate Street, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Newman Street, Oxford Street, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Newton, Sir Isaac, <a href="#Page_52">52-56</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a><br />
+<br />
+Nollekens, Joseph, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br />
+<br />
+Norfolk Street, Strand, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+North Bank, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; End, Fulham, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
+<br />
+Northcote, James, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Old Bond Street, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Old Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Onslow Square, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br />
+<br />
+Opie, Mrs., <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+<br />
+Oxford Street, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Palace Green, Kensington, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br />
+<br />
+Pall Mall, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
+<br />
+Parson’s Green, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br />
+<br />
+Patmore, P. G., <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br />
+<br />
+Peckham Rye, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br />
+<br />
+Peel, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a><br />
+<br />
+Pennell, Mr. and Mrs. J., <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a><br />
+<br />
+Percy, Bishop, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, Tottenham Court Road, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Philip, Mrs. and Miss Birnie, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a><br />
+<br />
+Phillips, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Piccadilly, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Poland Street, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
+<br />
+Pope, Alexander, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26-35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Pope’s Head Alley, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+Poultry, the, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+Praed, W. Mackworth, <a href="#Page_88">88</a><br />
+<br />
+Prior, Matthew, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Putney, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Queen Anne Street, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br />
+<br />
+Quiney, Richard, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Ralph, James, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Reade, Charles, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Red Lion Square, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Reynolds, John Hamilton, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Sir Joshua, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Richardson, Samuel, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71-75</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
+<br />
+Ritchie, Lady Thackeray, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br />
+<br />
+Robert Street, Adelphi, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Roberts, David, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br />
+<br />
+Robinson, Crabb, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Rogers, Samuel, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339-343</a><br />
+<br />
+Romney, George, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140-143</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+Rossetti, Christina, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Dante Gabriel, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; W. M., <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Rowan Road, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Rowley, William, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Ruskin, John, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Russell Square, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Russell Street, Covent Garden, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+St. Andrew Undershaft, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Anne’s, Soho, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Bartholomew the Great, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Clement Danes, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+St. James’s Place, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span><br />
+St. John’s Wood, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236-245</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Martin’s Street, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Olave, Silver Street, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Saviour’s, Southwark, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Sala, George Augustus, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Salisbury Court, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+Savile Row, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
+<br />
+Scott, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+Seamore Place, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Selden, John, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Shakespeare, Edmund, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; William, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10-24</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177-181</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br />
+<br />
+Shirley, James, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Silver Street, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, Albert, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, J. T. (“Rainy Day�), <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, Sidney, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Smollett, Tobias, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Soho, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118-123</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167-186</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Soho Square, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
+<br />
+Southampton Street, Camberwell, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+South Moulton Street, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br />
+<br />
+Southey, Robert, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+Southwark, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a><br />
+<br />
+Spencer, Herbert, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Stanfield, Clarkson, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a><br />
+<br />
+Staple Inn, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+Steele, Richard, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Sterne, Laurence, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Stevenson, Robert Louis, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br />
+<br />
+Stothard, Thomas, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Strand, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a><br />
+<br />
+Stubbs, Bishop, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Sullivan, Sir Arthur, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+Swift, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Swinburne, A. C., <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Talfourd, T. N., <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Tavistock Square, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br />
+<br />
+Taylor, John, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br />
+<br />
+Temple Bar, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Temple, Rev. T. W., <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+<br />
+Temple, the, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a><br />
+<br />
+Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Terrace, the, Kensington, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Thackeray, W. M., <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296-313</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Thames Street, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Thomson, James, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
+<br />
+Thornhill, Sir James, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Thrale, Mrs., <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Thurloe, John, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Tite Street, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Tower, the, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Trollope, Anthony, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Turk’s Head, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+Turner, J. M. W., <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268-275</a><br />
+<br />
+Turpin, Dick, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+Twickenham, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Upper Cheyne Row, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291-293</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Vale, the, Chelsea, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Vine Street, Westminster, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Wallace, Charles William, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
+<br />
+Walpole, Horace, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Wanstead, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
+<br />
+Warburton, William, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
+<br />
+Wardour Street, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><br />
+<br />
+Warton, Joseph, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
+<br />
+Warwick Crescent, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span><br />
+Watts, G. F., <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Watts-Dunton, Theodore, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Webster, John, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Welbeck Street, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Wellclose Square, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
+<br />
+Wellington Street, Strand, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br />
+<br />
+West, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Westbrook, Harriett, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Westminster, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Abbey, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Whistler, James McNeill, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259-268</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Whitefriars Street, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilkes, John, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilkins, George, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Williams, Anna, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
+<br />
+Will’s Coffee House, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Wimbledon Park Road, <a href="#Page_245">245-253</a><br />
+<br />
+Wimpole Street, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Winchmore Hill, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
+<br />
+Wine Office Court, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Wood Street, Cheapside, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Woodstock Street, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+Wordsworth, William, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Yates, Edmund, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Young Street, Kensington, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson &amp; Co</span>.<br />
+Edinburgh &amp; London.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44269 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
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diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #44269 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44269)
diff --git a/old/44269-8.txt b/old/44269-8.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London, by 
+A. St. John Adcock
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London
+
+Author: A. St. John Adcock
+
+Illustrator: Frederick Adcock
+
+Release Date: November 24, 2013 [EBook #44269]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS HOUSES, LITERARY SHRINES, LONDON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FAMOUS HOUSES AND LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SAM. JOHNSON]
+
+
+
+
+  FAMOUS HOUSES AND
+  LITERARY SHRINES
+  OF LONDON
+
+
+  BY A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK
+
+
+  WITH SEVENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
+  BY FREDERICK ADCOCK
+  AND 16 PORTRAITS
+
+
+  LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
+  NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1912
+
+
+
+
+  _All rights reserved_
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+  At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+Nothing could well be deader or emptier than an unoccupied house of whose
+former inhabitants we have no knowledge; and it is impossible to take a
+real interest in a house now occupied by strangers, even though it was
+aforetime the residence of some famous man, unless we are acquainted with
+that man's personality, and know what he thought and did and said whilst
+he was living there. I have attempted to do little more than supply that
+information here as the complement of my brother's drawings, and to this
+end have been less concerned to give my own descriptions and opinions than
+to bring together opinions and descriptions that were written by such
+famous residents themselves or by guests and visitors who saw and knew
+them. As far as possible I have quoted from contemporary Diaries and
+Memoirs, especially from letters that were written in or to these houses,
+or from Journals that their tenants kept whilst they dwelt there,
+supplementing all this with a narrative of incidents and events that might
+help to recreate the life and recapture the atmosphere that belonged to
+such places in the days that have made them memorable. Whenever I have
+adventured into any general biography, or expressed any personal opinion,
+it has been merely with the object of adding so much of history and
+character as would serve to fill in the outline of a man's portrait, give
+it a sufficient fulness and colour of life, and throw into clear relief
+the space of time that he passed in some particular house that can still
+be seen in a London street.
+
+I think I have throughout made due acknowledgment to the authors of
+various volumes of _Recollections_ and _Table Talk_ from which I have
+drawn anecdotes and pen-portraits, and I should like to mention at the
+outset that for biographical facts and much else I have been particularly
+indebted to such books as Elwin and Courthope's edition of the _Poems and
+Letters of Pope_; Austin Dobson's _William Hogarth_, and H. B. Wheatley's
+_Hogarth's London_; Boswell's _Johnson_, of course, and Forster's _Lives
+of Goldsmith_ and of _Dickens_; Gilchrist's _Life of Blake_; Leslie's and
+Holmes's _Lives of Constable_; Arthur B. Chamberlain's _George Romney_;
+Lord Houghton's _Life and Letters of Keats_, and Buxton Forman's _Complete
+Works of John Keats_; Leigh Hunt's _Autobiography_; De Quincey's _English
+Opium Eater_; Hogg's and Peacock's _Memoirs of Shelley_; Carew Hazlitt's
+_Memoirs of Hazlitt_; Blackman's _Life of Day_; Byron's _Journals and
+Letters_, and Lewis Bettany's useful compilation from them, _The
+Confessions of Lord Byron_; Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, and Scott's
+_Journal_; Talfourd's and Ainger's _Lives of Lamb_, and Lamb's _Letters_;
+Walter Jerrold's _Life of Thomas Hood_; Cross's _Life of George Eliot_;
+Sir William Armstrong's _Life of Turner_, and Lewis Hind's _Turner's
+Golden Visions_; Joseph Knight's _Rossetti_; Froude's _Thomas Carlyle_,
+and W. H. Wylie's _Carlyle, The Man and His Books_; Allingham's _Diary_;
+E. R. and J. Pennell's _Life of Whistler_; Trollope's _Thackeray_, and
+Lady Thackeray Ritchie's prefaces to the Centenary Edition of Thackeray's
+works.
+
+A. ST. J. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                     PAGE
+
+     I. SOME CELEBRATED COCKNEYS                               1
+
+    II. SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON                                 10
+
+   III. WHERE POPE STAYED AT BATTERSEA                        26
+
+    IV. HOGARTH                                               36
+
+     V. GOLDSMITH, REYNOLDS, AND SOME OF THEIR CIRCLE         52
+
+    VI. HOMES AND HAUNTS OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL               89
+
+   VII. BLAKE AND FLAXMAN                                    118
+
+  VIII. A HAMPSTEAD GROUP                                    140
+
+    IX. ROUND ABOUT SOHO AGAIN                               167
+
+     X. A PHILOSOPHER, TWO POETS, AND A NOVELIST             187
+
+    XI. CHARLES LAMB                                         207
+
+   XII. ST. JOHN'S WOOD AND WIMBLEDON                        233
+
+  XIII. CHELSEA MEMORIES                                     255
+
+   XIV. THACKERAY                                            296
+
+    XV. DICKENS                                              314
+
+   XVI. CONCLUSION                                           328
+
+
+
+
+PORTRAITS
+
+
+  DR. JOHNSON                                         _Frontispiece_
+    _From an engraving by T. TROTTER after a
+    drawing from life_
+
+  JOHN MILTON                                         _Facing p._ 4
+    _From a miniature by FAITHORNE_
+
+  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE                                     "      16
+    _From an engraving by SCRIVEN after the
+    Chandos portrait_
+
+  ALEXANDER POPE                                          "      33
+    _From an engraving by J. POSSELWHITE after
+    the picture by HUDSON_
+
+  OLIVER GOLDSMITH                                        "      81
+    _After a drawing by SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS_
+
+  SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS                                     "      96
+    _From an engraving after his own portrait_
+
+  JAMES BOSWELL                                           "     102
+    _From an engraving by W. HALL after a sketch
+    by LAWRENCE_
+
+  JOHN KEATS                                              "     144
+    _From a drawing by W. HILTON_
+
+  THOMAS DE QUINCEY                                       "     176
+    _From an engraving by W. H. MOORE_
+
+  LORD BYRON                                              "     193
+    _From a painting by THOMAS PHILLIPS, R.A._
+
+  CHARLES LAMB                                            "     224
+    _From the painting by WILLIAM HAZLITT_
+
+  THOMAS HOOD                                             "     241
+    _From an engraving by W. H. SMITH_
+
+  THOMAS CARLYLE                                          "     280
+    _From a painting by SIR JOHN MILLAIS_
+
+  W. M. THACKERAY                                         "     305
+    _From a pencil sketch by COUNT D'ORSAY_
+
+  CHARLES DICKENS                                         "     320
+    _From a black and white drawing by BAUGHIET, 1858_
+
+  ROBERT BROWNING                                         "     338
+    _From a photograph_
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                            PAGE
+
+  St. Saviour's, Southwark Cathedral                         xvi
+
+  The Gateway, Middle Temple                                   6
+
+  Chaucer's Tomb, Westminster Abbey                            8
+
+  Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey                        11
+
+  St. Olave's Churchyard, Silver Street                       17
+
+  Bartholomew Close, Smithfield                               21
+
+  The Last Bulk Shop, Clare Market                            25
+
+  Pope's House, Battersea                                     29
+
+  Pope, Mawson's Row, Chiswick                                37
+
+  Sir James Thornhill, 75 Dean Street                         42
+
+  Hogarth's House, Chiswick                                   45
+
+  The Bay Window, Hogarth's House                             49
+
+  Sir Isaac Newton's House, St. Martin's Street, W.C.         53
+
+  Sir Joshua Reynolds's House, Great Newport Street           57
+
+  The Staircase, 47 Leicester Square                          59
+
+  Sir Benjamin West's House, Newman Street                    61
+
+  Gainsborough's House, Pall Mall                             65
+
+  Sheridan's House, Savile Row                                69
+
+  Pump Court, Temple                                          73
+
+  Richardson's House, North End, Fulham                       75
+
+  Goldsmith's House, Canonbury                                77
+
+  2 Brick Court, The Temple                                   83
+
+  Stairs up to Second Floor, 2 Brick Court                    85
+
+  Goldsmith's Grave                                           87
+
+  Entrance to Staple Inn                                      91
+
+  Dr. Johnson's House, Gough Square                           99
+
+  Johnson's Corner, "The Cheshire Cheese"                    107
+
+  Where Boswell first met Johnson                            111
+
+  Boswell's House, Great Queen Street                        115
+
+  Blake's House, Soho                                        121
+
+  Blake, 23 Hercules Road                                    125
+
+  Blake's House, South Moulton Street                        127
+
+  Flaxman's House, Buckingham Street, Euston Road            137
+
+  Romney's House, Hampstead                                  141
+
+  Constable, Charlotte Street                                145
+
+  Joanna Baillie, Windmill Hill, Hampstead                   147
+
+  Stanfield's House, Hampstead                               151
+
+  "The Upper Flask," from the Bowling Green                  153
+
+  Keats' House, Hampstead                                    157
+
+  Constable's House, Hampstead                               161
+
+  George du Maurier's Grave, Hampstead                       165
+
+  De Quincey's House, Soho                                   171
+
+  Shelley's House, Poland Street, W.                         175
+
+  Shelley, Marchmont Street                                  179
+
+  Hazlitt's House, Frith Street                              183
+
+  Thomas Day, 36 Wellclose Square                            189
+
+  Byron, 4 Bennet Street, St. James's                        195
+
+  Coleridge, Addison Bridge Place                            201
+
+  Will's Coffee House, Russell Street                        217
+
+  Lamb, Colebrooke Row                                       219
+
+  Lamb's Cottage, Edmonton                                   229
+
+  Tom Hood's House, St. John's Wood                          237
+
+  Charles Dibdin, 34 Arlington Road                          243
+
+  George Eliot, Wimbledon Park                               247
+
+  George Eliot's House, Chelsea                              251
+
+  Queen's House, Cheyne Walk                                 257
+
+  Whistler, 96 Cheyne Walk                                   263
+
+  Turner's House, Cheyne Walk                                269
+
+  Carlyle, Ampton Street                                     277
+
+  Carlyle's House, Cheyne Row                                283
+
+  Leigh Hunt's House, Chelsea                                289
+
+  Leigh Hunt, 16 Rowan Road, Hammersmith                     295
+
+  The Charterhouse, from the Square                          297
+
+  Thackeray's House, Kensington                              301
+
+  Lamb Building, Temple, from the Cloisters                  307
+
+  Dickens, Johnson Street, Camden Town                       315
+
+  Dickens's House, Doughty Street                            319
+
+  Thurloe's Lodgings, 24 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn           329
+
+  Captain Marryat, Duke Street, St. James's                  333
+
+  Benjamin Franklin's House, Craven Street                   335
+
+  Cruikshank, 263 Hampstead Road                             337
+
+  George Morland, "The Bull Inn," Highgate                   339
+
+  Rogers, St. James's Place, from Green Park                 341
+
+  Borrow's House, Hereford Square                            345
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ST. SAVIOUR'S. SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL.]
+
+
+
+
+FAMOUS LONDON HOUSES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOME CELEBRATED COCKNEYS
+
+
+You cannot stir the ground of London anywhere but straightway it flowers
+into romance. Read the inscriptions on the crumbling tombs of our early
+merchant princes and adventurers in some of the old City churches, and it
+glimmers upon you that if ever the history of London's commercial rise and
+progress gets adequately written it will read like a series of stories out
+of the _Arabian Nights_. Think what dashing and magnificent figures, what
+tales of dark plottings, fierce warfare, and glorious heroisms must
+brighten and darken the pages of any political history of London; and even
+more glamorous, more intensely and humanly alive, would be a social
+history of London, beginning perhaps in those days of the fourteenth
+century when Langland was living in Cornhill and writing his _Vision of
+Piers Plowman_, or farther back still, in Richard the First's time, when
+that fine spirit, the first of English demagogues, William Fitzosbert, was
+haranguing the folkmoot in St. Paul's Churchyard, urging them to resist
+the tyrannic taxations of the Lord Mayor and his Court of wealthy
+Aldermen--a passion for justice that brought him into such danger that he
+and certain of his friends had to seek sanctuary, and barricaded
+themselves in Bow Church. The church was fired by order of a bishop who
+had no sympathy with reformers, and Fitzosbert and his friends, breaking
+out through the flames, were stabbed and struck down in Cheapside, hustled
+to the Tower, hastily tried and sentenced, dragged out by the heels
+through the streets, and hanged at Smithfield. I have always thought this
+would make a good, live starting-point, and had I but world enough and
+time I would sooner write that history than anything else.
+
+No need to hunt after topics when you are writing about London; they come
+to you. The air is full of them. The very names of the streets are
+cabalistic words. Once you know London, myriads of great spirits may be
+called from the vasty deep by sight or sound of such names as Fleet
+Street, Strand, Whitehall, Drury Lane, The Temple, Newgate Street,
+Aldersgate, Lombard Street, Cloth Fair, Paternoster Row, Holborn,
+Bishopsgate, and a hundred others. You have only to walk into Whitefriars
+Street and see "Hanging-sword Alley" inscribed on the wall of a court at
+the top of a narrow flight of steps, and all Alsatia rises again around
+you, as Ilion rose like a mist to the music of Apollo's playing. Loiter
+along Cornhill in the right mood and Thomas Archer's house shall rebuild
+itself for you at the corner of Pope's Head Alley, where he started the
+first English newspaper in 1603, and you will wonder why nobody writes a
+full history of London journalism.
+
+As for literary London--every other street you traverse is haunted with
+memories of poets, novelists, and men of letters, and it is some of the
+obscurest of these associations that are the most curiously fascinating. I
+have a vivid, youthful remembrance of a tumble-down, red-tiled shop near
+the end of Leathersellers' Buildings which I satisfied myself was the
+identical place in which Robert Bloomfield worked as a shoemaker's
+assistant; Devereux Court still retains something of the Grecian
+Coffee-house that used to be frequented by Addison and Steele, but I knew
+the Court first, and am still drawn to it most, as the site of that
+vanished Tom's Coffee-house where Akenside often spent his winter
+evenings; and if I had my choice of bringing visibly back out of
+nothingness one of the old Charing Cross houses, it would be the butcher's
+shop that was kept by the uncle who adopted Prior in his boyhood.
+
+Plenty of unpleasant things have been said about London, but never by her
+own children, or such children of her adoption as Johnson and Dickens.
+Says Hobbes, who was born at Malmesbury, "London has a great belly, but no
+palate," and Bishop Stubbs (a native of Knaresborough) more recently
+described it as "always the purse, seldom the head, and never the heart of
+England." Later still an eminent speaker, quoting this fantastic dictum of
+Stubbs's, went a step further and informed his audience that "not many men
+eminent in literature have been born in London"; a statement so
+demonstrably inaccurate that one may safely undertake to show that at
+least as many men eminent in literature, to say nothing of art and
+science, have been born in London as in any other half-dozen towns of the
+kingdom put together.
+
+To begin with, the morning star of our literature, Geoffrey Chaucer, was
+born in Thames Street, not far from the wharf where, after he was married
+and had leased a home for himself in Aldgate, he held office as a
+Comptroller of Customs, and the pen that was presently to write the
+_Canterbury Tales_ "moved over bills of lading." The "poets' poet,"
+Spenser, was born in East Smithfield, by the Tower, and in his
+_Prothalamion_ speaks of his birthplace affectionately as--
+
+  "Merry London, my most kindly nurse,
+   That to me gave this life's first native source,
+   Though from another place I take my name."
+
+Ben Jonson was born in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross; four of his
+contemporary dramatists, Fletcher, Webster, Shirley and Middleton, were
+also Londoners by birth; Sir Thomas Browne, author of the _Religio
+Medici_, was born in the parish of St. Michael-le-Quern, in the very heart
+of the city; and Bread Street, Cheapside, is hallowed by the fact that
+Milton had his birth there.
+
+Dr. Donne, the son of a London merchant, was also born within a stone's
+throw of Cheapside; and his disciple, Cowley, came into the world in Fleet
+Street, at the corner of Chancery Lane. But Cowley was a renegade; he
+acquired an unnatural preference for the country, and not only held that
+"God the first garden made, and the first city Cain," but ended a poem in
+praise of nature and a quiet life with--
+
+              "Methinks I see
+  The monster London laugh at me;
+    I should at thee too, foolish city,
+  If it were fit to laugh at misery;
+    But thy estate I pity.
+  Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,
+  And all the fools that crowd thee so,
+    Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
+  A village less than Islington wilt grow,
+    A solitude almost."
+
+[Illustration: JOHN MILTON]
+
+The daintiest of our lyrists, Herrick, was born over his father's shop in
+Cheapside, and you may take it he was only playing with poetical fancies
+when, in some lines to his friend Endymion Porter, he praised the country
+with its "nut-brown mirth and russet wit," and again when, in a set of
+verses on "The Country Life," he assured his brother he was "thrice and
+above blest," because he could--
+
+  "Leave the city, for exchange, to see
+   The country's sweet simplicity."
+
+If you want to find him in earnest, turn to that enraptured outburst of
+his on "His Return to London"--
+
+  "Ravished in spirit I come, nay more I fly
+   To thee, blessed place of my nativity!...
+   O place! O people! manners framed to please
+   All nations, customs, kindreds, languages!
+   I am a free-born Roman; suffer then
+   That I amongst you live a citizen.
+   London my home is, though by hard fate sent
+   Into a long and irksome banishment;
+   Yet since called back, henceforward let me be,
+   O native country! repossessed by thee;
+   For rather than I'll to the West return,
+   I'll beg of thee first here to have mine urn."
+
+There speaks the true Cockney; he would sooner be dead in London than
+alive in the West of England. Even Lamb's love of London was scarcely
+greater than that.
+
+[Illustration: THE GATEWAY. MIDDLE TEMPLE.]
+
+It was fitting that Pope, essentially a town poet, should be born in
+Lombard Street. In the next thoroughfare, Cornhill, Gray was born; and,
+son of a butcher, Defoe began life in the parish of St. Giles's,
+Cripplegate. Shakespeare was an alien, but Bacon was born at York House,
+in the Strand; which, to my thinking, is the strongest argument in favour
+of the theory that he wrote the plays. Churchill was born at Vine Street,
+Westminster; Keats in Moorfields; and, staunchest and one of the most
+incorrigible Londoners of them all, Charles Lamb in Crown Office Row,
+Temple. He refers, in one of his essays, to Hare Court, in the Temple, and
+says: "It was a gloomy, churchyard-like court, with three trees and a
+pump in it. I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was
+a Rechabite of six years old." The pump is no longer there, only one half
+of Hare Court remains as it was in Lamb's day, and Crown Office Row has
+been rebuilt. His homes in Mitre Court Buildings and Inner Temple Lane
+have vanished also; but the Temple is still rich in reminiscences of him.
+Paper Buildings, King's Bench Walk, Harcourt Buildings, the fountain near
+Garden Court, the old Elizabethan Hall, in which tradition says
+Shakespeare read one of his plays to Queen Elizabeth--these and the
+church, the gardens, the winding lanes and quaint byways of the Temple,
+made up, as he said, his earliest recollections. "I repeat to this day,"
+he writes, "no verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion,
+than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot--
+
+  'There when they came whereas those bricky towers
+   The which on Themmes broad aged back doth ride,
+   Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
+   There whylome wont the Templar knights to bide,
+   Till they decayed through pride.'"
+
+And, "indeed," he adds, "it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis."
+
+[Illustration: CHAUCER'S TOMB. WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
+
+But his letters and essays are full of his love of London. "I don't care
+much," he wrote to Wordsworth, "if I never see a mountain. I have passed
+all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local
+attachments as any of your mountaineers can have done with dead Nature....
+I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy in so much
+life." Again, "Fleet Street and the Strand," he writes to Manning, "are
+better places to live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw." After he
+had removed to Edmonton, on account of his sister's health, it was to
+Wordsworth he wrote, saying how he pined to be back again in London: "In
+dreams I am in Fleet Market, but I wake and cry to sleep again.... Oh,
+never let the lying poets be believed who 'tice men from the cheerful
+haunts of streets.... A garden was the primitive prison, till man, with
+Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. Thence
+followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London.... I would live in London
+shirtless, bookless."
+
+But to get back to our catalogue of birthplaces--Blake was born in Broad
+Street, near Golden Square; Byron in Holles Street; Hood in the Poultry,
+within sight of the Mansion House; Dante and Christina Rossetti were
+Londoners born; so were Swinburne, Browning, Philip Bourke Marston, John
+Stuart Mill, Ruskin, Turner, Holman Hunt, Sir Arthur Sullivan--but if we
+go outside literary Londoners this chapter will end only with the book.
+Moreover, my purpose is not so much to talk of authors and artists who
+were born in London, as to give some record of the still surviving houses
+in which many of them lived; whether they had their birth here or not, the
+majority of them came here to live and work, for, so far as England is
+concerned, there is more than a grain of truth in Lamb's enthusiastic
+boast that "London is the only fostering soil of genius."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON
+
+
+The London that Shakespeare knew has vanished like a dream. The Great Fire
+swept most of it out of existence in a few days of 1666, and the two and a
+half centuries of time since then have made away with nearly all the rest
+of it. The Tower still remains; there are parts of the Temple; a stray
+relic or so, such as the London Stone in Cannon Street, by which
+Shakespeare lays one of the Jack Cade scenes of his _Henry VI._ There are
+the stately water-gates along the Embankment, too; here and there an old
+house or so, such as that above the Inner Temple gateway, those of Staple
+Inn, those in Cloth Fair, and over in the Borough High Street; a few
+ancient Inns, like the Mitre off Ely Place, the Dick Whittington in Cloth
+Fair, the George in Southwark; some dozen of churches, including
+Westminster Abbey (in whose Jerusalem Chamber the translators of the Bible
+held their meetings), St. Saviour's, Southwark, St. Bartholomew the Great
+in Smithfield, St. Andrew Undershaft, St. Ethelburga's and St. Helen's,
+Bishopsgate, in which latter parish it seems probable that Shakespeare was
+for a while a householder; otherwise Elizabethan London has dwindled to
+little but remembered sites of once-famous buildings and streets that have
+changed in everything but their names.
+
+[Illustration: JERUSALEM CHAMBER. WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
+
+Until quite recently none of us knew of any address in London that had
+ever been Shakespeare's; we knew of no house, of no street even, which had
+once numbered him among its tenants, though we know that he passed at
+least twenty of the busiest and most momentous years of his life in the
+metropolis. There is a plausible but vague tradition that during some part
+of that period he had lodgings in Southwark near the Globe Theatre, in
+which he acted, for which he wrote plays, and of which he was one of the
+proprietors. There used to be an inscription: "Here lived William
+Shakespeare," on the face of an old gabled house in Aldersgate Street, but
+there was never a rag of evidence to support the statement. We have no
+letters of Shakespeare, but we have one or two that refer to him, and one
+written to him by Richard Quiney, and I think we may infer from this
+latter that Shakespeare occasionally visited Quiney, who was a vintner,
+dwelling at the sign of the Bell in Carter Lane. Otherwise, except for a
+handful of small-beer chronicles about him that were picked up in
+theatrical circles two or three generations after his death, we had no
+record of any incident in his London life that brought us into actual
+personal touch with him until little more than two years ago. Then an
+American professor, Mr. Charles William Wallace, came over and did what
+our English students do not appear to have had the energy or enterprise to
+do for themselves--he toiled carefully through the dusty piles of
+documents preserved in the Record Office, and succeeded in unearthing one
+of the most interesting Shakespearean discoveries that have ever been
+made--a discovery that gives us vividly intimate glimpses of Shakespeare's
+life in London, and establishes beyond question his place of residence
+here in the years when he was writing some of the greatest of his dramas.
+
+In 1587 the company of the "Queen's Players" made their first appearance
+in Stratford-on-Avon, and it was about this date, so far as can be traced,
+that Shakespeare ran away from home; so you may reasonably play with a
+fancy that he joined this company in some very minor capacity and
+travelled with them to London. At this time, Burbage, who was by
+profession an actor and by trade a carpenter and joiner, was owner and
+manager of "The Theatre," which stood in Shoreditch near the site of the
+present Standard Theatre, and close by was a rival house, "The Curtain"
+(commemorated nowadays by Curtain Road); and according to the legend,
+which has developed into a legend of exact detail, yet rests on nothing
+but the airiest rumour, it was outside one or both of these theatres
+Shakespeare picked up a living on his arrival in London by minding horses
+whilst their owners were inside witnessing a performance.
+
+By 1593 Shakespeare had become known as an actor and as a dramatist. He
+had revised and tinkered at various plays for Burbage's company, and as a
+consequence had been charged with plagiarism by poor Greene, whose
+_Groatsworth of Wit_ (published after he had died miserably in Dowgate)
+pours scorn on the "upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with
+his _Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide_ supposes he is as well able to
+bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute
+_Johannes fac totum_, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a
+countrie." For his acting, Shakespeare appears for the first time in the
+Lord Chamberlain's accounts of 1594 as having taken equal shares with
+William Kemp and Richard Burbage in a sum of twenty pounds "for two
+severall Comedies or Interludes shewed by them" before Queen Elizabeth at
+Christmas 1593.
+
+After the Theatre of Shoreditch was pulled down in 1598, Burbage built the
+Globe Theatre on Bankside, Southwark, on the ground of which part of
+Barclay & Perkins's brewery now stands; and Shakespeare, "being a
+deserveing man," was taken as one of the partners and received a
+"chief-actor's share" of the profits. And it is to this prosperous period
+of his London career that Professor Wallace's recent discoveries belong.
+
+In 1598 there lived in a shop at the corner of Silver Street and Monkwell
+Street a certain Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of wigs and fashionable
+headdresses. He was a Frenchman, born at Cressy, and probably a refugee
+Huguenot. His household consisted of a wife and daughter, an apprentice
+named Stephen Bellott, and one lodger, and this lodger was William
+Shakespeare. Being out of his apprenticeship in 1604, Stephen had six
+pounds from his master and, with this and his own savings, went travelling
+into Spain, but returned towards the end of the year and resumed work
+again at Mountjoy's shop. In his 'prentice days Stephen seems to have
+formed some shy attachment to his master's daughter, Mary, but because of
+his lack of means and prospects, or because he was naturally reticent, he
+had made no attempt to press his suit, and Madame Mountjoy, seeing how the
+young people were affected to each other, followed the fashion of the time
+and persuaded Shakespeare, who had then been living under the same roof
+with them for six years, to act as match-maker between her and the
+hesitating lover. She one day laid the case before Shakespeare and asked
+his good offices, as Professor Wallace has it; she told him that "if he
+could bring the young man to make a proposal of marriage, a dower fitting
+to their station should be settled upon them at marriage. This was the
+sum of fifty pounds in money of that time, or approximately four hundred
+pounds in money of to-day." Shakespeare consented to undertake this
+delicate duty; he spoke with young Bellott, and the outcome of his
+negotiations was that Stephen and Mary were married, as the entry in the
+church register shows, at St. Olave, Silver Street, on the 19th November
+1604.
+
+On the death of Madame Mountjoy in 1606, Stephen and his wife went back to
+live with the father and help him in his business, but they soon fell out
+with him, and became on such bad terms that some six months later they
+left him and took lodgings with George Wilkins, a victualler, who kept an
+inn in the parish of St. Sepulchre's. The quarrel between them culminated
+in Stephen Bellott bringing an action in the Court of Requests in 1612, to
+recover from his father-in-law a promised dower of sixty pounds and to
+ensure that Mountjoy carried out an alleged arrangement to bequeath a sum
+of two hundred pounds to him by his will. At the Record Office Professor
+Wallace found all the legal documents relating to these proceedings, and
+amongst them are the depositions of Shakespeare setting forth to the best
+of his recollection his own share in the arranging of the marriage. From
+these depositions, and from those of other witnesses who make reference to
+him, one gets the first clear and authentic revelation of Shakespeare's
+home life in London.
+
+He lived with the Mountjoys over that shop at the corner of Monkwell
+Street for at least six years, down to the date of the wedding, and there
+is little doubt that he stayed on with them after that. It is more than
+likely, indeed, that he was still boarding there when he appeared as a
+witness in the 1612 lawsuit and stated that he had been intimate with the
+family some "ten years, more or less." Throughout the later of those years
+he was absent on occasional visits to Stratford, and hitherto it has been
+generally assumed (on the negative evidence that no trace of him could be
+found after this date) that he returned and settled down in Stratford
+permanently about 1609.
+
+Taking only the six years we are certain of, however, he wrote between
+1598 and 1604 _Henry V._, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Much Ado About
+Nothing_, _As You Like It_, _Twelfth Night_, _All's Well that Ends Well_,
+_Julius Cæsar_, _Hamlet_, _Measure for Measure_, and _Othello_. In the two
+years following, whilst it is pretty sure he was still dwelling with the
+Mountjoys, he wrote _Macbeth_ and _King Lear_, and the fact that he had
+his home here during the period in which he was writing ten of his
+plays--three of them amongst the greatest he or any man ever wrote--makes
+this corner of Monkwell Street the most glorious literary landmark in the
+world.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE]
+
+The house in which he lodged was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the site
+is occupied now by an old tavern, "The Cooper's Arms." Almost facing it,
+just the other side of Silver Street, is a fragment of the churchyard of
+St. Olave's. The church, in which the apprentice Stephen was married to
+Mary Mountjoy, vanished also in the Great Fire and was not rebuilt, and
+this weedy remnant of the churchyard with its three or four crumbling
+tombs is all that survives of the street as Shakespeare knew it; his
+glance must have rested on that forlorn garden of the dead as often as
+he looked from the windows opposite or came out at Mountjoy's door.
+
+[Illustration: ST. OLAVE'S CHURCHYARD. SILVER STREET.]
+
+Turning to the right when he came out at that door, half a minute's walk
+up Falcon Street would have brought him into Aldersgate Street, so the
+announcement on one of the shops there that he had lived in it may have
+been nothing worse than a perfectly honest mistake; it was known as a fact
+that he lived thereabouts, and tradition settled on the wrong house
+instead of on the right one, that was a hundred yards or so away from it.
+But when Shakespeare issued from Mountjoy's shop you may depend that his
+feet more frequently trod the ground in the opposite direction; he would
+go to the left, along Silver Street, into Wood Street, and down the length
+of that to Cheapside, where, almost fronting the end of Wood Street,
+stood the Mermaid Tavern, and he must needs pass to the right or left of
+it, by way of Friday Street, or Bread Street, across Cannon Street and
+then down Huggin Lane or Little Bread Street Hill to Thames Street,
+whence, from Queenhithe, Puddle Wharf, or Paul's Wharf, he could take boat
+over the Thames to the Globe Theatre on Bankside.
+
+There has been no theatre on Bankside these many years; there is nothing
+there or in that vicinity now that belongs to Shakespeare's age except
+some scattered, ancient, inglorious houses that he may or may not have
+known and the stately cathedral of St. Saviour. This holds still the span
+of ground that has belonged to it since before Chaucer's day. You may
+enter and see there the quaint effigy of Chaucer's contemporary, Gower,
+sleeping on his five-century-old tomb; and here and there about the aisles
+and in the nave are memorials of remembered or forgotten men and women who
+died while Shakespeare was living, and somewhere in it were buried men,
+too, who were intimate with him, though no evidence of their burial there
+remains except in the parish register. In the "monthly accounts" of St.
+Saviour's you come upon these entries concerning two of his contemporary
+dramatists:--
+
+    "1625. _August_ 29th, John Fletcher, a poet, in the church."
+
+    "1638. _March_ 18th, Philip Massinger, stranger, in the church."
+
+the inference being that Fletcher had resided in the parish, and
+Massinger, the "stranger," had not. But earlier than either of these, it
+is on record that on the 31st December 1607, Shakespeare's youngest
+brother, Edmund, "a player," was buried here, and a fee of twenty
+shillings was paid by some one for "a forenoon knell of the great bell."
+
+St. Saviour's, then, the sites of the Globe Theatre and the Mermaid, and
+that corner of Monkwell Street are London's chief Shakespearean shrines.
+The discovery of the Monkwell Street residence emphasises that before Ben
+Jonson founded his Apollo Club at the Devil Tavern by Temple Bar,
+Cheapside and not Fleet Street was the heart of literary London. Whilst
+Shakespeare made his home with the Mountjoys, Ben Jonson and Dekker were
+living near him in Cripplegate, in which district also resided Johnson the
+actor, Anthony Munday, and other of Shakespeare's intimates; nearer still,
+in Aldermanbury, lived Heminges and Condell, his brother actors, who first
+collected and published his plays after his death: and George Wilkins, at
+whose inn near St. Sepulchre's Stephen Bellott and his wife lodged after
+their quarrel with Mountjoy, was a minor dramatist who, besides
+collaborating with Rowley, collaborated with Shakespeare himself in the
+writing of _Pericles_. Coryat, the eccentric author of the _Crudities_,
+lived in Bow Lane; Donne, who was born in Wood Street, wrote his early
+poems there in the house of the good merchant, his father, and was a
+frequenter of the Mermaid.
+
+In 1608 Milton was born in Bread Street (Shakespeare must have passed his
+door many a time in his goings to and fro), and grew up to live and work
+within the City walls in Aldersgate Street, and in Bartholomew Close, and
+just without them in Bunhill Row, and was brought back within them to be
+buried in Cripplegate Church. These, and its earlier and many later
+literary associations, help to halo Cheapside and its environs, and, in
+spite of the sordid commercial aspect and history that have overtaken it,
+to make it for ever a street in the kingdom of romance.
+
+And the chief glory of Cheapside itself is, of course, the Mermaid. One of
+these days a fitting sign will be placed above the spot where it stood,
+and set forth in letters of gold the great names that are inseparable from
+its story, and first among these will be the names of Shakespeare, Ben
+Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Donne, Carew, Fuller, Sir Walter
+Raleigh.
+
+The Mermaid rose on Cheapside with a side entrance in Friday Street, and
+of evenings when no business took him to the theatre, or towards midnight
+when he was on his way home from it, Shakespeare often turned aside into
+this famous meeting-place of the immortals of his generation. Everybody is
+familiar with those rapturous lines in Beaumont's letter to Ben Jonson,
+"written before he and Master Fletcher came to London with two of the
+precedent comedies, then not finished, which deferred their merry meetings
+at the Mermaid;" but one cannot talk of the Mermaid without remembering
+them and quoting from them once again:--
+
+                      "In this warm shine
+  I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine....
+  Methinks the little wit I had is lost
+  Since I saw you: for wit is like a rest
+  Held up at tennis, which men do the best
+  With the best gamesters! What things have we seen
+  Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
+  So nimble and so full of subtile flame
+  As if that every one from whence they came
+  Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
+  And had resolved to live a fool the rest
+  Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown
+  Wit able enough to justify the town
+  For three days past, wit that might warrant be
+  For the whole city to talk foolishly
+  Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone,
+  We left an air behind us which alone
+  Was able to make the next two companies
+  Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise."
+
+[Illustration: BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE. SMITHFIELD.]
+
+Well might Keats ask in a much later day (probably whilst he was tenanting
+the Cheapside rooms over Bird-in-Hand Court in which he wrote the sonnet
+on Chapman's Homer):
+
+  "Souls of poets dead and gone,
+   What Elysium have ye known,
+   Happy field or mossy cavern
+   Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?"
+
+And in our own time, in _Christmas at the Mermaid_, Watts-Dunton has
+recreated that glamorous hostelry and brought together again the fine
+spirits who used to frequent it--brought them together in an imaginary
+winter's night shortly after Shakespeare had departed from them and gone
+back to Stratford for good. Jonson is of that visionary company, and
+Raleigh, Lodge, Dekker, Chapman, Drayton and Heywood, and it is Heywood
+who breaks in, after the tale-telling and reminiscent talk, with--
+
+    "More than all the pictures, Ben,
+      Winter weaves by wood or stream,
+    Christmas loves our London, when
+      Rise thy clouds of wassail-steam:
+    Clouds like these that, curling, take
+    Forms of faces gone, and wake
+  Many a lay from lips we loved, and make
+        London like a dream."
+
+It is because of the memories that sleep within it, like music in a lute
+until a hand that knows touches it, because of all it has been, and
+because it is never more wonderful than when you can so make it like a
+dream, that I give thanks for the fog that comes down upon London at
+intervals, in the grey months, and with silent wizardries conjures it out
+of sight. Look at this same Cheapside on a clear day, and it is simply a
+plain, prosperous, common-place street, but when a fog steals quietly
+through it and spiritualises it to something of the vagueness and grandeur
+and mystery of poetry it is no longer a mere earthly thoroughfare under
+the control of the Corporation; it becomes a dream-street in some
+mist-built city of the clouds, and you feel that at any moment the
+pavements might thin out and shred away and let you through into starry,
+illimitable spaces. Where the brown fog warms to a misty, golden glow you
+know there are shop windows. As you advance the street-lamps twinkle in
+the thick air, as if they were kindled magically at your coming and
+flickered out again directly you were past. The coiling darkness is loud
+with noises of life, but you walk among them with a sense of aloofness and
+solitude, for you can see nothing but flitting shadows all about you and
+know that you are yourself only a shadow to them.
+
+For me, three of the loveliest and most strangely touching sights of
+London are the stars shining very high in the blue and very quietly when
+you look up at them from the roaring depths of a crowded, naphtha-flaring,
+poverty-stricken market street; a sunrise brightening over the Thames
+below London Bridge, while the barges are still asleep with the gleam of
+their lamps showing pale in the dawn; and the blurred lights and ghostly
+buildings of a long city road that is clothed in mystery and transfigured
+by a brooding, dream-haunted fog. Perhaps this is only because of the dim
+feeling one has that the stars and the sunrise are of the things that the
+wasting centuries have not changed; and the fog that blots out to-day
+makes it easier to realise that yesterday and the life of yesterday are
+close about us still, and that we might see them with our waking eyes,
+even as we see them in our dreams, if the darkness would but lift.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST BULK SHOP. CLARE MARKET.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHERE POPE STAYED AT BATTERSEA
+
+
+Coming from Chelsea by way of Battersea Bridge, you go a few yards along
+the Battersea Bridge Road, then turn aside into Church Road, and presently
+you pass a narrow, mean street of small houses, which is Bolingbroke Road,
+and serves to remind you that the Bolingbrokes were once lords of the
+manor of Battersea and proprietors of the ferry that crossed the river
+hereabouts before the first Battersea Bridge was built. A little further
+down Church Road, past squat and grimy houses on the one hand and gaunt
+walls and yawning gateways of mills, distilleries, and miscellaneous
+"works" on the other, and you come to a gloomy gateway that has "To
+Bolingbroke House" painted up on one of its side-walls. Through this
+opening you see a busy, littered yard; straw and scraps of paper and odds
+and ends of waste blow about on its stones; stacks of packing-cases and
+wooden boxes rise up against a drab background of brick buildings, and
+deep in the yard, with a space before it in which men are at work and a
+waggon is loading, you find the forlorn left wing--all that survives--of
+what was once the family seat of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke,
+whose chief title to remembrance now is that he was the friend of
+Alexander Pope.
+
+Worn and dingy with age, its stone porch stained and crumbling, and some
+of its windows broken, the place has a strange, neglected look, though it
+is still used for business purposes, and you have glimpses of clerks
+writing at their desks in the rooms from which Pope used to gaze out on
+very different surroundings.
+
+It is difficult, indeed, to associate such a house and such a
+neighbourhood as this has now become with so fastidious, finicking, and
+modish a poet as Pope. All the adjacent streets are squalid,
+poverty-stricken, noisy; along the main road, almost within hearing, trams
+and motor-buses shuttle continually to and fro: except for a quaint,
+dirty, weary-looking cottage that still stands dreaming here and there
+among its ugly, mid-Victorian neighbours, and for the river that laps
+below the fence at the end of the yard, there is scarcely anything left of
+the quiet, green, rural Battersea village with which he was familiar; even
+the church whose steeple rises near by above the mills, and in which
+Bolingbroke was buried, was rebuilt a few years after his death.
+
+Nevertheless, this weatherbeaten, time-wasted old house down the yard is
+the same house that, when it stood with Bolingbroke's lawn before it and
+his pleasant gardens sloping to the Thames, was the occasional home of
+Pope, and numbered Swift, Thomson, and other of the great men of letters
+of Queen Anne's reign among its visitors. One of the rooms overlooking the
+river, a room lined with cedar, beautifully inlaid, is still known as "Mr.
+Pope's parlour"; it is said to have been used by Pope as his study, and
+that he wrote his _Essay on Man_ in it.
+
+It is therefore the more fitting that Pope should have dedicated _An Essay
+on Man_ to Bolingbroke, whom he addresses in the opening lines with that
+exhortation:--
+
+  "Awake, my St. John, leave all meaner things
+   To low ambition, and the pride of kings!"
+
+He dedicated also one of his Imitations of Horace to--
+
+  "St. John, whose love indulged my labours past,
+   Matures my present, and shall bound my last."
+
+A man of brilliant gifts, both as writer and statesman, Bolingbroke became
+involved in the political intriguings of his day, and in 1715 had to flee
+to Calais to escape arrest for high treason. Eight years later he was
+allowed to return, and his forfeited estates were given back to him. On
+the death of his father he took up his residence at Battersea, and it was
+there that he died of cancer in 1751. "Pope used to speak of him," writes
+Warton, "as a being of a superior order that had condescended to visit
+this lower world;" and he, in his turn, said of Pope, "I never in my life
+knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more
+general friendship for mankind."
+
+[Illustration: POPE'S HOUSE. BATTERSEA.]
+
+And on the whole one feels that this character of Pope was truer than Lady
+Mary Wortley Montagu's presentation of him as "the wicked asp of
+Twickenham"; for if he was viciously cruel to Colley Cibber and the poor
+Grub Street scribblers whom he satirises in _The Dunciad_, he was kindness
+itself to Akenside and other of his younger rivals in reading their
+manuscripts and recommending them to his publishers; and if he retorted
+bitterly upon Addison after he had fallen out with him, he kept unbroken
+to the last his close friendship with Swift, Gay, Garth, Atterbury,
+Bolingbroke, and with Arbuthnot, for whose services in helping him through
+"this long disease, my life" he expressed a touchingly affectionate
+gratitude. If he had been the heartless little monster his enemies painted
+him he could not have felt so tireless and beautiful a love for his father
+and mother and, despite his own feebleness and shattered health, have
+devoted himself so assiduously to the care of his mother in her declining
+years. "O friend," he writes to Arbuthnot, in the Prologue to the
+Satires:--
+
+  "O friend, may each domestic bliss be thine!
+   Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:
+   Me let the tender office long engage
+   To rock the cradle of reposing age,
+   With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
+   Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,
+   Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
+   And keep a while one parent from the sky."
+
+All his life, Pope dwelt in London or on the skirts of it. He was
+twenty-eight when, soon after the death of his father in 1715, he leased
+the famous villa at Twickenham and took his mother to live with him there,
+and it was from there when she died, a very old lady of ninety-three, that
+on the 10th June 1783, he wrote to an artist friend the letter that
+enshrines his sorrow:--
+
+"As I know you and I naturally desire to see one another, I hoped that
+this day our wishes would have met and brought you hither. And this for
+the very reason which possibly might hinder your coming, that my poor
+mother is dead. I thank God her death was easy, as her life was innocent,
+and as it cost her not a groan or even a sigh, there is yet upon her
+countenance such an expression of tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure,
+that, far from horrid, it is even amiable to behold it. It would form the
+finest image of a saint expired that ever painter drew, and it would be
+the greatest obligation art could ever bestow on a friend if you could
+come and sketch it for me. I am sure if there be no prevalent obstacle you
+will leave every common business to do this; and I hope to see you this
+evening as late as you will, or to-morrow morning as early, before this
+winter flower is faded. I will defer her interment till to-morrow night. I
+know you love me or I would not have written this--I could not (at this
+time) have written at all. Adieu. May you die as happily."
+
+From Twickenham Pope made frequent visits to London, where he stayed in
+lodgings, or at the houses of friends; and in the last four or five years
+of his life, after Bolingbroke had settled down at Battersea, he put up as
+often as not at Bolingbroke House. Of his personal appearance at this date
+there are a good many records. One of his numerous lampooners, unkindly
+enough but very graphically, pictures him as--
+
+  "Meagre and wan, and steeple crowned,
+   His visage long, his shoulders round;
+   His crippled corse two spindle pegs
+   Support, instead of human legs;
+   His shrivelled skin's of dusty grain,
+   A cricket's voice, and monkey's brain."
+
+His old enemy, John Dennis, sneering at his hunched and drooping figure,
+described him as "a young, short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the god
+of love." He had to be laced up tightly in bodices made of stiff
+canvas, so that he might hold himself erect, and, says Dr. Johnson, "his
+stature was so low, that to bring him to a level with a common table it
+was necessary to raise his seat. But his face was not displeasing, and his
+eyes were animated and vivid." And here is Sir Joshua Reynolds's
+word-picture of him: "He was about four feet six inches high, very
+hump-backed and deformed. He wore a black coat, and, according to the
+fashion of that time, had on a little sword. He had a large and very fine
+eye, and a long, handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which
+are always found in the mouths of crooked persons, and the muscles which
+run across the cheek were so strongly marked that they seemed like small
+cords."
+
+[Illustration: ALEXANDER POPE]
+
+This is the queer, misshapen, pathetic little shape that haunts that
+old-world house in the yard at Battersea, and you may gather something of
+the life he lived there, and of the writing with which he busied himself
+in the cedar parlour, from these extracts out of two of his letters, both
+of which were written to Warburton:--
+
+    "_January 12, 1743-4._
+
+    "Of the public I can tell you nothing worthy of the reflection of a
+    reasonable man; and of myself only an account that would give you
+    pain; for my asthma has increased every week since you last heard from
+    me to the degree of confining me totally to the fireside; so that I
+    have hardly seen any of my friends but two (Lord and Lady
+    Bolingbroke), who happen to be divided from the world as much as
+    myself, and are constantly retired at Battersea. There I have passed
+    much of my time, and often wished you of the company, as the best I
+    know to make me not regret the loss of others, and to prepare me for a
+    nobler scene than any mortal greatness can open to us. I fear by the
+    account you gave me of the time you design to come this way, one of
+    them (Lord B.) whom I much wish you had a glimpse of (as a being
+    _paullo minus ab angelio_), will be gone again, unless you pass some
+    weeks in London before Mr. Allen arrives there in March. My present
+    indisposition takes up almost all my hours to render a very few of
+    them supportable; yet I go on softly to prepare the great edition of
+    my things with your notes, and as fast as I receive any from you, I
+    add others in order (determining to finish the Epistle to Dr.
+    Arbuthnot and two or three of the best of Horace, particularly that of
+    Augustus, first), which will fall into the same volume with the Essay
+    on Man. I determined to publish a small number of the Essay, and of
+    the other on Criticism, ere now, as a sample of the rest, but Bowyer
+    advised delay, though I now see I was not in the wrong."
+
+
+    _"February 21, 1743-4._
+
+    "I own that the late encroachments on my constitution make me willing
+    to see the end of all further care about me or my works. I would rest
+    from the one in a full resignation of my being to be disposed of by
+    the Father of all mercy, and for the other (though indeed a trifle,
+    yet a trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candour
+    of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every
+    short-sighted and malevolent critic or inadvertent and censorious
+    reader. And no hand can set them in so good a light, or so well turn
+    them best side to the day, as your own. This obliges me to confess I
+    have for some months thought myself going, and that not slowly, down
+    the hill--the rather as every attempt of the physicians, and still the
+    last medicines more forcible in their nature, have utterly failed to
+    serve me. I was at last, about seven days ago, taken with so violent a
+    fit at Battersea, that my friends, Lord Bolingbroke and Lord
+    Marchmont, sent for present help to the surgeon, whose bleeding me, I
+    am persuaded, saved my life by the instantaneous effect it had, and
+    which has continued so much to amend me that I have passed five days
+    without oppression, and recovered, what I have three days wanted, some
+    degree of expectoration and some hours together of sleep. I can now go
+    to Twickenham, to try if the air will not take some part in reviving
+    me, if I can avoid colds, and between that place and Battersea, with
+    my Lord Bolingbroke, I will pass what I have of life while he stays,
+    which I can tell you, to my great satisfaction, will be this fortnight
+    or three weeks yet."
+
+In the year after writing this Pope came to the end of all further care
+about himself and his works; he died at Twickenham, and lies buried under
+the middle aisle of Twickenham Church.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOGARTH
+
+
+Before he took up residence at the Twickenham villa, Pope lived for some
+time with his father in one of the houses of Mawson's Buildings (now
+Mawson Row), Chiswick. So far it has been impossible to decide which of
+these five red-brick houses is the one that was theirs, for the only
+evidence of their tenancy consists of certain letters preserved at the
+British Museum, which are addressed to "Alexr. Pope, Esquire, Mawson's
+Buildings, in Chiswick," and on the backs of these are written portions of
+the original drafts of Pope's translation of the Iliad. James Ralph, the
+unfortunate poetaster whom Pope satirised in his _Dunciad_, was also a
+native of Chiswick, and lies buried in the parish churchyard. One other
+link Pope has with Chiswick--he wrote a rather poor epigram on Thomas
+Wood, who resided there, and who seems to have been connected with the
+Church, for according to the poet--
+
+  "Tom Wood of Chiswick, deep divine,
+   To painter Kent gave all his coin;
+   'Tis the first coin, I'm bold to say,
+   That ever churchman gave away."
+
+This Kent, I take it, was the man of the same name who likewise lived at
+Chiswick in Pope's day, and was more notable as a landscape gardener than
+as a painter.
+
+[Illustration: POPE. MAWSON'S ROW CHISWICK.]
+
+But, to say nothing of William Morris's more recent association with the
+district, the most interesting house in Chiswick is Hogarth's. It is a
+red-brick villa of the Queen Anne style, with a quaint, overhanging bay
+window, and stands in a large, walled garden, not far from the parish
+church. For many years this was Hogarth's summer residence--his
+"villakin," as he called it. His workshop, or studio, that used to be at
+the foot of the garden, has been demolished; otherwise the house remains
+very much as it was when he occupied it.
+
+Hogarth was essentially a town man; he was almost, if not quite, as good a
+Londoner as Lamb. He was born in Bartholomew Close, West Smithfield, that
+storied place where Milton had lived before, and Washington Irving went to
+live after, him; and he spent nearly all his life in the neighbourhood of
+Leicester Square. He was rarely absent from London at all, and never for
+long; even when he was supposed to be passing his summers at his Chiswick
+villa, he made frequent excursions into town, and would put up for a few
+days at his house in Leicester Square--or Leicester Fields, as it then
+was.
+
+In 1712 Hogarth went to serve a six years' apprenticeship to Ellis Gamble,
+a silver-plate engraver, in Cranbourne Alley (now Cranbourne Street), and,
+on the death of his father in 1718, he started business for himself as an
+engraver in what had been his father's house in Long Lane, West
+Smithfield, and later removed to the corner of Cranbourne Alley, leaving
+his mother with his two sisters, who had opened shop as mercers, at the
+old Long Lane address. He engraved for them a shop card, duly setting
+forth that "Mary and Ann Hogarth, from the old Frock Shop, the corner of
+the Long Wall, facing the Cloysters, Removed to ye King's Arms joining to
+ye Little Britain Gate, near Long Walk, Sells ye best and most Fashionable
+Ready Made Frocks, Sutes of Fustian, Ticken, and Holland, Stript Dimity
+and Flanel Waistcoats, blue and canvas Frocks, and bluecoat Boys'
+Dra{rs.}, Likewise Fustians, Tickens, Hollands, white stript Dimitys,
+white and stript Flanels in ye piece, by Wholesale or Retale at Reasonable
+Rates."
+
+Hogarth was very self-satisfied and rather illiterate; his spelling and
+his grammar--as in this shop-card--were continually going wrong. But he
+was kindly, good-hearted, high-minded, and had imagination and an original
+genius that could laugh at the nice, mechanical accomplishments of the
+schoolmaster. It was Nollekens, the sculptor, who said that he frequently
+saw Hogarth sauntering round Leicester Square, playing the nurse, "with
+his master's sickly child hanging its head over his shoulder." That was in
+the early days, when he was still serving his time to Gamble, and not even
+dreaming, I suppose, that he would one day own the big house at the
+south-east corner of the Square, would enjoy some of his highest triumphs
+and sharpest humiliations in it, and die in it at last, leaving behind him
+work that would give him a place among the very first of English painters.
+
+Even before so fastidious a critic as Whistler had declared that Hogarth
+was "the greatest English artist who ever lived," Hazlitt had said much
+the same thing, and paid a glowing tribute to the vitality and dramatic
+life of his pictures; but perhaps no critic has written a finer, more
+incisive criticism on him than Lamb did in his essay on "The Genius and
+Character of Hogarth." Lamb had been familiar with two of Hogarth's series
+of prints--"The Harlot's Progress," and "The Rake's Progress"--since his
+boyhood; and though he was keenly alive to the humour of them, he denied
+that their chief appeal was to the risible faculties. It was their
+profound seriousness, their stern satire, the wonderful creative force
+that underlay them, that most impressed him. "I was pleased," he says,
+"with the reply of a gentleman who, being asked which book he most
+esteemed in his library, answered 'Shakespeare'; being asked which he
+esteemed next best, replied 'Hogarth.' His graphic representations are
+indeed books; they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of
+words. Other pictures we look at; his prints we read." He protests against
+confounding "the painting of subjects in common or vulgar life with the
+being a vulgar artist. The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into
+every picture would alone unvulgarise every subject he might choose. Let
+us take the lowest of his subjects, the print called 'Gin Lane.' Here is
+plenty of poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view; and
+accordingly a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and
+repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it.
+The same persons would, perhaps, have looked with great complacency upon
+Poussin's celebrated picture of the 'Plague of Athens.' Disease and death
+and bewildering terror in Athenian garments are endurable, and come, as
+the delicate critics express it, within the 'limits of pleasurable
+sensation.' But the scenes of their own St. Giles's, delineated by their
+own countryman, are too shocking to think of.... We are for ever deceiving
+ourselves with names and theories. We call one man a great historical
+painter because he has taken for his subjects kings or great men, or
+transactions over which time has thrown a grandeur. We term another the
+painter of common life, and set him down in our minds for an artist of an
+inferior class, without reflecting whether the quantity of thought shown
+by the latter may not much more than level the distinction which their
+mere choice of subjects may seem to place between them; or whether, in
+fact, from that very common life a great artist may not extract as deep an
+interest as another man from that which we are pleased to call history."
+He found that, though many of the pictures had much in them that is ugly
+and repellent, "there is in most of them that sprinkling of the better
+nature which, like holy water, chases away and disperses the contagion of
+the bad. They have this in them besides, that they bring us acquainted
+with the everyday human face." And because of this, of their truth to
+contemporary life, and the vigorous realism of the stories they tell, he
+ranked the work of Hogarth not only high among that of the world's great
+painters, but with the best novels of such men as Smollett and Fielding.
+
+According to a note in his fragmentary autobiography, Hogarth conceived an
+early admiration for the paintings of Sir James Thornhill, and, somewhere
+about 1727, he joined the painting school that Sir James established in
+the Piazza, at the corner of James Street, Covent Garden. And Sir James
+soon seems to have taken a particular interest in his pupil, and had him
+as a frequent visitor to his house at 75 Dean Street, Soho; and on March
+23rd, 1729, he eloped with his teacher's daughter, and they were married
+at old Paddington Church. There are paintings and decorations still to be
+seen on the walls of the Dean Street house, in some of which Hogarth is
+believed to have had a hand.
+
+After his marriage, Hogarth lived for a while at Lambeth; but it was not
+long before he was reconciled to his father-in-law. In 1730 he was
+engaged with Sir James Thornhill on their famous picture of "The House of
+Commons"; and a year later, when he was engraving his series of prints
+"The Harlot's Progress," he and his wife had apparently taken up quarters
+with Sir James in the Piazza.
+
+[Illustration: SIR JAMES THORNHILL. 75 DEAN STREET.]
+
+"The Harlot's Progress," and the issue of "The Rake's Progress" shortly
+afterwards, lifted Hogarth into fame. He began to move in better society,
+and was to be met with at the fashionable as well as at the Bohemian clubs
+of the day. He and Thornhill founded the Arts Club at the Turk's Head, in
+Gerrard Street; and, after the latter's death, he took over Thornhill's
+art school, and transferred it to Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane.
+Occasionally he visited Richardson, the novelist, in Salisbury Court; and
+it was here he first made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson. He struck up a
+friendship with Garrick, too, and painted several portraits of him, for
+one of which he received two hundred pounds; and with Fielding, of whom he
+has given us the only portrait we possess.
+
+By 1733 Hogarth was prosperous enough to take the house in Leicester
+Square that was pulled down, in 1870, to furnish a site for the Archbishop
+Tenison School that has replaced it; and in 1749, "having sacrificed
+enough to his fame and fortune," he purchased the villa at Chiswick as a
+summer holiday home, and became a familiar figure about the Chiswick lanes
+from time to time--"a blue-eyed, intelligent little man, with a scar over
+his right eye, and wearing a fur cap." Allan Cunningham furnishes a more
+vivid description of his personal appearance in his _Lives of the
+Painters_, where he says he was "rather below the middle height; his eye
+was peculiarly bright and piercing; his look shrewd, sarcastic, and
+intelligent; the forehead high and round. He was active in person,
+bustling in manner, and fond of affecting a little state and importance.
+He was of a temper cheerful, joyous, and companionable, fond of mirth and
+good-fellowship." Benjamin West called him a strutting, consequential
+little man; and, one way and another, we know that he was sturdy,
+obstinate, pugnacious, and that once he thrashed a ruffian whom he found
+maltreating the beautiful drummeress that he sketched in his picture of
+Southwark Fair. Possibly that scar over his right eye was a record of this
+chivalrous deed.
+
+There are very few records of his home life, and these are of the
+homeliest, most ordinary sort. He was fond of smoking, and the arm-chair,
+in which he was wont to sit with his pipe, is still preserved at Chiswick.
+He had a favourite dog, a pet cat, and a bullfinch, which he buried in his
+Chiswick garden, commemorating them with tablets that have now vanished
+from the wall, the bird's epitaph being "Alas, poor Dick!" and the dog's,
+"Life to the last enjoyed, here Pompey lies"--which parodies a line in the
+_Candidate_, by that dissipated, brilliant satirist, Charles Churchill:
+"Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies."
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH'S HOUSE. CHISWICK.]
+
+The _Candidate_ was published at the beginning of 1764, and on the 25th
+October of that year Hogarth died. Churchill had been a warm friend of
+his, but before the end had become one of his bitterest enemies--that
+enmity arising in this wise. In 1762 Hogarth published a political print
+called the _Times_, in which he supported the policy of Lord Bute, and
+ridiculed Pitt, Temple, and Wilkes. By way of retaliation, Wilkes wrote a
+scathing attack upon Hogarth in his paper, the _North Briton_, in which he
+made a sneering reference to Mrs. Hogarth. This stirred Hogarth to anger;
+and when Wilkes was presently arrested on a charge of high treason, he sat
+in court and sketched the prisoner, immortalising his villainous squint,
+and accentuating all the worst qualities in his features. On this print
+making its appearance, Churchill, a staunch friend and partisan of Wilkes,
+took up the cudgels, and scarified Hogarth without mercy in _An Epistle to
+William Hogarth_ (1763), praising his art, but pouring contempt upon his
+envy and self-esteem, and affecting to believe that he was in his
+dotage. He can laud the genius, he says, but not the man.
+
+                          "Freely let him wear
+  The wreath which Genius wove and planted there:
+  Foe as I am, should envy tear it down,
+  Myself would labour to replace the crown....
+  Hogarth unrivalled stands, and shall engage
+  Unrivalled praise to the most distant age."
+
+But for the man--
+
+  "Hogarth, stand forth--I dare thee to be tried
+   In that great Court where Conscience must preside;
+   At that most solemn bar hold up thy hand;
+   Think before whom, on what account you stand;
+   Speak, but consider well;--from first to last
+   Review thy life, weigh every action past.
+   Canst thou remember from thy earliest youth,
+   And as thy God must judge thee, speak the truth,
+   A single instance where, self laid aside,
+   And Justice taking place of Fear and Pride,
+   Thou with an equal eye didst Genius view,
+   And give to Merit what was Merit's due?
+   Genius and Merit are a sure offence,
+   And thy soul sickens at the name of sense.
+   Is any one so foolish to succeed?
+   On Envy's altar he is doomed to bleed;
+   Hogarth, a guilty pleasure in his eyes,
+   The place of executioner supplies;
+   See how he gloats, enjoys the sacred feast,
+   And proves himself by cruelty a priest....
+     Oft have I known thee, Hogarth, weak and vain,
+   Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain,
+   Through the dull measure of a summer's day,
+   In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away,
+   Whilst friends with friends all gaping sit, and gaze,
+   To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth's praise....
+     With all the symptoms of assured decay,
+   With age and sickness pinched and worn away,
+   Pale quivering lips, lank cheeks, and faltering tongue,
+   The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung,
+   The body shrivelled up, the dim eyes sunk
+   Within their sockets deep, thy weak hams shrunk,
+   The body's weight unable to sustain,
+   The stream of life scarce trembling through the vein,
+   More than half killed by honest truths which fell,
+   Through thy own fault, from men who wished thee well--
+   Canst thou, e'en thus, thy thoughts to vengeance give
+   And, dead to all things else, to malice live?
+   Hence, dotard, to thy closet; shut thee in;
+   By deep repentance wash away thy sin;
+   From haunts of men to shame and sorrow fly,
+   And, on the verge of death, learn how to die!"
+
+Hurt and deeply mortified, a month later Hogarth satirised Churchill's
+former connection with the Church and present loose living in a caricature
+which represented him as a bear wearing torn clerical bands, with ruffles
+on his paws, in one hand a pot of porter, and in the other a bundle of
+lies and copies of the _North Briton_. Garrick had heard that Churchill
+was making ready to issue that vitriolic satire of his, and hastened to
+beg him, "by the regard you profess to me, that you don't tilt at my
+friend Hogarth before you see me. He is a great and original genius. I
+love him as a man, and reverence him as an artist. I would not for all the
+politics and politicians in the universe that you two should have the
+least cause of ill-will to each other. I am sure you will not publish
+against him if you think twice." One could honour Garrick if it were for
+nothing else but that letter; but it was written in vain, and the
+exasperation and humiliation that Hogarth suffered under Churchill's lash
+are said to have hastened his death. He had been broken in health and
+ailing all through the summer of 1764, but took several plates down to
+his Chiswick villa with him for retouching, and--possibly with some
+foreboding of his own approaching dissolution--drew for a new volume of
+his prints a tailpiece depicting "the end of all things."
+
+[Illustration: THE BAY WINDOW. HOGARTH'S HOUSE.]
+
+But he could not be satisfied to keep away from London, and on 25th
+October was conveyed from Chiswick to his house in Leicester Square, "very
+weak," says Nichols, "but remarkably cheerful, and, receiving an agreeable
+letter from Dr. Franklin" (Benjamin Franklin was, by the way, dwelling at
+this time in Bartholomew Close; he did not remove to 7 Craven Street,
+Strand, until three years later), "he drew up a rough draft of an answer
+to it; but, going to bed, was seized with a vomiting, upon which he rang
+the bell with such violence that he broke it, and expired about two hours
+afterwards in the arms of Mrs. Mary Lewis, who was called up on his being
+suddenly taken ill."
+
+He was buried in Chiswick Churchyard; and in 1771 his friends erected a
+monument over him, the epitaph on which was written by Garrick:--
+
+  "Farewell, great Painter of Mankind,
+     Who reached the noblest point of Art,
+   Whose pictured morals charm the Mind,
+     And through the eye correct the Heart.
+
+   If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay;
+     If Nature touch thee, drop a tear;
+   If neither move thee, turn away,
+     For Hogarth's honoured dust lies here."
+
+Garrick sent his verses to Dr. Johnson, who frankly criticised them, and
+offered him a revised version, the first lines of which were a distinct
+improvement:--
+
+  "The hand of Art here torpid lies
+     That traced the essential form of Grace;
+   Here Death has closed the curious eyes
+     That saw the manners in the face."...
+
+Garrick preferred his own composition, slightly altered, as it now
+appears; but Johnson's was certainly the better effort of the two.
+
+Mrs. Hogarth retained possession of the Leicester Square house until her
+death in 1789, but she resided principally at Chiswick. Sir Richard
+Phillips saw her there, when he was a boy, and had vivid recollections of
+her as a stately old lady, wheeled to the parish church on Sundays in a
+bath-chair, and sailing in up the nave with her raised head-dress, silk
+sacque, black calash, and crutched cane, accompanied by a relative (the
+Mary Lewis who was with Hogarth when he died), and preceded by her
+grey-haired man-servant, Samuel, who carried her prayer-books, and, after
+she was seated, shut the pew door on her.
+
+From 1824 to 1826 the Hogarth villa was inhabited by the Rev. H. F. Cary,
+the translator of Dante, who was one of Charles Lamb's many friends, and
+wrote the feeble epitaph that is on his tomb at Edmonton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GOLDSMITH, REYNOLDS, AND SOME OF THEIR CIRCLE
+
+
+One of Sir James Thornhill's illustrious sitters was Sir Isaac Newton, who
+lived within a stone's throw of Hogarth's London house, just round the
+corner out of Leicester Square, at No. 35 St. Martin's Street. Here Sir
+Isaac made his home from 1720 to 1725. The red brick walls have been
+stuccoed over; and the observatory that the philosopher built for himself
+on the roof, after being turned into a Sunday-school, was removed about
+forty years ago, and helped to supply pews for the Orange Street Chapel
+that stands next door.
+
+The greatest of Newton's work was done before he set up in St. Martin's
+Street, but he told a friend that the happiest years of his life had been
+spent in the observatory there. Though he kept his carriage, lived in some
+style, had half-a-dozen male and female servants, and was always
+hospitable, he was not fond of society, and talked but little in it.
+Johnson once remarked to Sir William Jones that if Newton had flourished
+in ancient Greece, he would have been worshipped as a divinity, but there
+was nothing godlike in his appearance. "He was a man of no very promising
+aspect," says Herne; and Humphrey Newton describes his famous relative as
+of a carriage "meek, sedate, and humble; never seeming angry, of
+profound thought, his countenance mild, pleasant, and comely. He always
+kept close to his studies.... I never knew him to take any recreation or
+pastime, thinking all hours lost that were not spent in his studies."
+There are a good many stories told of his eccentricities and
+absent-mindedness. He would ride through London in his coach with one arm
+out of the window on one side and one out on the other; he would sometimes
+start to get up of a morning and sit down on his bed, absorbed in thought,
+and so remain for hours without dressing himself; and, when his dinner was
+laid, he would walk about the room, forgetting to eat it, and carelessly
+eat it standing when his attention was called to it. On one occasion, when
+he was leading his horse up a hill, he found, when he went to remount on
+reaching the top, that the animal had slipped its bridle and stayed behind
+without his perceiving it, and he had nothing in his hand but some of the
+harness. "When he had friends to entertain," according to Dr. Stukeley,
+"if he went into his study to fetch a bottle of wine, there was danger of
+his forgetting them," and not coming back again. And it is told of this
+same Dr. Stukeley that he called one day to see Newton, and was shown into
+the dining-room, where Sir Isaac's dinner was in readiness. After a long
+wait, feeling hungry as well as impatient, Stukeley ate the cold chicken
+intended for his host, and left nothing but the bones. By-and-by Sir Isaac
+entered, made his greetings and apologies, and, whilst they were talking,
+drew a chair to the table, took off the dish-cover, and at sight of the
+bones merely observed placidly, "How absent we philosophers are! I had
+forgotten that I had dined!"
+
+[Illustration: SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S HOUSE. ST. MARTIN'S STREET. W.C.]
+
+Later, this same house in St. Martin's Street was occupied by Dr. Burney
+and his daughter Fanny, who wrote _Evelina_ here.
+
+Near by, in Leicester Square again, on the opposite side, and almost
+exactly facing Hogarth's residence, was the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
+From 1753 to 1761 Sir Joshua lived at 5 Great Newport Street, which was
+built in Charles II.'s days, and is still standing. It is now and has for
+a century past been occupied by a firm of art dealers; so that it happens
+from time to time that a picture of Reynolds's is here put up for sale,
+"on the very spot where it was painted." But in the crowning years of his
+career--from 1761 till his death, in 1792--Sir Joshua dwelt at 42
+Leicester Square, and what was formerly his studio there has been
+transformed into one of Messrs. Puttick and Simpson's auction rooms. Here
+is Allan Cunningham's description of it, and of the painter's method of
+work: "His study was octagonal, some twenty feet long by sixteen broad,
+and about fifteen feet high. The window was small and square, and the sill
+nine feet from the floor. His sitters' chair moved on castors, and stood
+above the floor about a foot and a half. He held his palette by the
+handle, and the sticks of his brushes were eighteen inches long. He
+wrought standing, and with great celerity. He rose early, breakfasted at
+nine, entered his study at ten, examined designs or touched unfinished
+portraits, till eleven brought him a sitter; painted till four, then
+dressed, and gave the evenings to company."
+
+[Illustration: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS' HOUSE. GREAT NEWPORT STREET.]
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE. 41 LEICESTER SQUARE.]
+
+And to the best of good company too. By day, the chariot of a duke or a
+marchioness might drive to his door, and return later to wait for his
+lordship or her ladyship, who was occupying the sitter's chair, while Sir
+Joshua was busy at his easel; but of an evening he would have such men as
+Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith, Garrick, Burke (who was living close at
+hand, in Gerrard Street) gathered about his dinner-table; for in spite of
+his deafness he was the very soul of sociability. He never got out of his
+naturally careless, Bohemian habits. He was the favourite portrait-painter
+of the fashionable world, but mixed with the aristocracy without apeing
+any of their etiquette. "There was something singular in the style and
+economy of Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and
+good-humour; a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and
+arrangement," according to Courtenay. "A table prepared for seven or
+eight was often compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen. When this
+pressing difficulty was got over, a deficiency of knives, plates, forks,
+and glasses succeeded. The attendance was in the same style; and it was
+absolutely necessary to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that you
+might be supplied with them before the first course was over. He was once
+prevailed on to furnish the table with decanters and glasses at dinner, to
+save time and prevent the tardy manoeuvres of two or three occasional,
+undisciplined domestics. As these accelerating utensils were demolished in
+the course of service, Sir Joshua would never be persuaded to replace
+them. But these trifling embarrassments only served to enhance the
+hilarity and singular pleasure of the entertainment. The wines, cookery,
+and dishes were but little attended to; nor was the fish or venison ever
+talked of or recommended. Amidst this convivial, animated bustle among his
+guests, our host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to what was
+said, never minding what was ate or drunk, but left every one at perfect
+liberty to scramble for himself. Temporal and spiritual peers, physicians,
+lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the motley group, and played their
+parts without dissonance or discord."
+
+[Illustration: SIR BENJAMIN WEST'S HOUSE. NEWMAN STREET.]
+
+He was so imperturbable and easy-natured that Dr. Johnson said if he ever
+quarrelled with him he would find it most difficult to know how to abuse
+him; and even the sharp-tongued Mrs. Thrale praised his peaceful temper,
+and considered that of him "all good should be said, and no harm." He
+shared Hogarth's contempt for the old masters; but, unlike Hogarth, he
+was not loud and aggressive in his objections to them.
+
+  "When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,
+   He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff."
+
+It was on Reynolds's suggestion that he and Johnson founded, in 1763, what
+later became celebrated as the Literary Club. They held their first
+meetings at the Turk's Head (where Hogarth and Thornhill had previously
+established their Art Club), and among the original members were Burke,
+Langton, Beauclerk, Goldsmith, and Sir John Hawkins. The latter, an arrant
+snob, objected to Goldsmith's election on the ground that he was "a mere
+literary drudge," but his protest carried no weight with the rest. Five
+years later, when, under the patronage of the king, Reynolds inaugurated
+the Royal Academy, Johnson was appointed its first Professor of Ancient
+Literature, and Goldsmith its first Professor of History, Reynolds himself
+being its first President--in which office, on his death in 1792, he was
+succeeded by Benjamin West. West was an American, and had won a
+considerable reputation in his own country before he came over and settled
+down in England. He was introduced to Johnson and Reynolds, and was for
+some time a neighbour of Sir Joshua's, in Castle Street, Leicester Square.
+But he is more closely associated with the house that still stands at 14
+Newman Street, Oxford Street, in which he lived and worked for forty-five
+years, and in which he died.
+
+A far greater contemporary painter, who moved on the fringes of Sir
+Joshua's circle, was Gainsborough. That he did not come familiarly into
+the circle, and sometimes make one of the memorable company that gathered
+round Reynolds's dinner-table, was owing to some lack of geniality in
+himself, that kept him from responding to Sir Joshua's friendly advances.
+He came from Bath to London in 1774, when he was forty-seven years of age,
+took a studio at Schonberg House, Pall Mall, and it was not long before
+celebrities and leaders of fashion were flocking to it to sit for their
+portraits, and he was recognised as a successful rival of Reynolds.
+Reynolds was so far from feeling jealousy or resentment that he promptly
+paid his popular rival a visit; but Gainsborough did not trouble himself
+to return the call. No doubt it was to some extent owing to Reynolds, too,
+that in the year of his appearance in London he was elected to the council
+of management of the Royal Academy; but he ignored the honour, did not
+attend any meetings, and sent nothing to the exhibition. Reynolds was
+frankly outspoken in his admiration of Gainsborough's work, and was even
+anxious to have his own portrait painted by him. After some delay
+appointments were fixed, and Sir Joshua duly went to Schonberg House, and
+the painting was commenced. But after the first sitting he was taken ill;
+and when, on his recovery, he wrote to tell Gainsborough that he was ready
+to come again, he received no reply, and the portrait had to remain an
+unfinished sketch.
+
+His coldness to Reynolds is inexplicable, for he was a kindly-disposed
+man, and sociable. He kept almost open house in Pall Mall, and such jovial
+spirits as the Sheridans, Colman, and Garrick were among the constant
+guests at his table.
+
+[Illustration: GAINSBOROUGH'S HOUSE. PALL MALL.]
+
+The year after Gainsborough's coming to London, Sheridan's _Rivals_ was
+produced at the Covent Garden Theatre, to be followed two years after by
+_The School for Scandal_. Before he was out of his twenties Sheridan had
+finished his career as a dramatist, turned to politics, and was one of the
+most brilliant of Parliamentary orators, still remaining principal
+proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre. All his life he was living beyond his
+income, borrowing, getting into debt, and dodging duns and bailiffs with
+the gayest imperturbability. Everybody liked him, and was susceptible to
+his charm. Wherever the wits foregathered, he was the best drinker, the
+best talker, and the wittiest among them. Byron writes of him in his
+_Diary_: "What a wreck that man is! and all from bad pilotage; for no one
+had ever better gales, though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear
+Sherry! I shall never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed
+together; when he talked and we listened, without one yawn, from six till
+one in the morning." In a letter to Moore, Byron records a dinner at which
+Sheridan, Colman, and a large party were present, and at the finish, when
+they were all the worse for drink, "Kinnaird and I had to conduct Sheridan
+down a damned corkscrew staircase, which had certainly been constructed
+before the discovery of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however
+crooked, could possibly accommodate themselves. We deposited him safe at
+home, where his man, evidently used to the business, waited to receive him
+in the hall."
+
+This was in October 1815, and 14 Savile Row is the house at which Sheridan
+was thus deposited by his noble friend. He was then an old man of
+sixty-four, and a year later he died there, five thousand pounds in debt,
+and only saved, by the emphatic intervention of the doctor who was
+attending him, from being arrested by bailiffs as he lay dying, and
+carried off to a sponging-house in his blankets.
+
+The year that brought Gainsborough to London (1774) was also the year of
+Goldsmith's death; and I want to get back to Goldsmith for a little, in
+this chapter, and to say something of Richardson. For it is curiously
+interesting to note how the lives of all these famous men, though there
+was little enough in common between some of them, met at certain points
+and established certain connecting links between them; so that it is
+possible, as Leigh Hunt has said somewhere, to trace a sort of genealogy
+of such acquaintanceships, such notable meetings and touchings of "beamy
+hands," coming down in an unbroken line from Shakespeare to our own day.
+
+Thus, Hogarth first met Johnson in Richardson's parlour at Salisbury
+Court; and, in 1757, Goldsmith was employed by Richardson, and worked on
+his printing premises, in the same court, as reader and corrector to the
+press; and these, and most of the other immortals named in this
+chapter--including Sheridan, though he was then so young a man that he
+outlived them all, and counts among the friends of Lord Byron--have a
+common link in Dr. Johnson, who was so great a Londoner that he must needs
+have a chapter presently to himself, or one that he shall share with none
+but the inevitable Boswell.
+
+Whilst Goldsmith was working as one of his employees, Richardson was
+not only a prosperous printer, he was already the most popular novelist of
+his day. _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_ had
+carried his fame throughout the kingdom and beyond it, and were drawing
+rapturous admiration and tears of sentiment from countless admirers in
+France as well as in England; and, as befitted a man of his means and
+eminence, he had supplemented his house off Fleet Street with a country
+residence at Parson's Green, where he died in 1761. Down to 1754, however,
+his country house was The Grange, at North End, Fulham, then a pretty,
+old-world spot,--"the pleasantest village within ten miles of London." And
+it was here that all his novels were written; for he took The Grange in
+1738, and _Pamela_ appeared in 1740, and _Sir Charles Grandison_ in 1753.
+Here, too, he used to give large literary parties, to which Johnson
+occasionally went with Boswell. But whatever other authors were there, you
+may safely depend that Fielding was never among the guests; for with all
+his high morality Richardson was intolerably self-complacent and vain, and
+never forgave Fielding for burlesquing Pamela as "Shamela," and parodying
+her impossible virtues in _Joseph Andrews_.
+
+[Illustration: SHERIDAN'S HOUSE. SAVILE ROW.]
+
+Boswell gives two good anecdotes illustrative of Richardson's fretful
+vanity and the limits of his conversational powers. "Richardson had little
+conversation," he says Johnson once remarked to him, "except about his own
+works, of which Sir Joshua Reynolds said he was always willing to talk,
+and glad to have them introduced. Johnson, when he carried Mr. Langton to
+see him, professed that he could bring him out in conversation, and used
+this illusive expression: 'Sir, I can make him _rear_.' But he failed; for
+in that interview Richardson said little else than that there lay in the
+room a translation of his _Clarissa_ into German." And in a footnote to
+this Boswell adds: "A literary lady has favoured me with a characteristic
+anecdote of Richardson. One day at his country house at North End, where a
+large company was assembled at dinner, a gentleman who was just returned
+from Paris, willing to please Mr. Richardson, mentioned to him a very
+flattering circumstance--that he had seen his _Clarissa_ lying on the
+king's brother's table. Richardson, observing that part of the company
+were engaged in talking to each other, affected not to attend to it. But
+by-and-by, when there was a general silence, and he thought that the
+flattery might be fully heard, he addressed himself to the gentleman, 'I
+think, sir, you were saying something about--' pausing in a high flutter
+of expectation. The gentleman, provoked at his inordinate vanity, resolved
+not to indulge it, and with an exquisitely sly air of indifference
+remarked, 'A mere trifle, sir, not worth repeating.' The mortification of
+Richardson was visible, and he did not speak ten words more the whole day.
+Dr. Johnson was present, and appeared to enjoy it much."
+
+[Illustration: PUMP COURT. TEMPLE.]
+
+While Fielding was roystering in the wild haunts of Bohemian London,
+gambling at his club, reeling home to his chambers in Pump Court, and
+writing his novels in odds and ends of soberer time, Richardson was
+methodically composing his books at Fulham, getting up early of summer
+mornings, working at his manuscript in the little summer-house that he
+had built in his garden, then reading over breakfast to the worshipping
+members of his family the results of his morning's labour. Wherever he
+went, groups of adoring ladies were sure to gather about him, to chatter
+fervently of their delight in his interminable stories; and he snuffed up
+their incense with a solemn and self-satisfied joy, for he took himself as
+seriously as he was taken by them, and never felt that he was ridiculous,
+even when he looked it. Not infrequently he would sit in his drawing-room
+at The Grange, or in the summer-house, surrounded by a rapt audience of
+feminine believers, who wept as he read aloud to them of the sufferings
+and heroic virtue of Pamela, or the persecutions of the gentle Clarissa.
+You cannot think of it without imagining there, in one of the rooms, the
+comfortable, obese, touchy, rather pompous, double-chinned little
+gentleman, in his fair wig and dark coat, an ink-horn set in the arm of
+his chair with a quill sticking out of it, one hand thrust into the front
+of his waistcoat, the book or manuscript in his hand, reading gravely and
+deliberately his long, minute dissections of character, his elaborate
+descriptions of events and incidents, his formal dialogues, pleased when
+his stilted sentiment or simple sentimentality brought tears to the eyes
+of his listeners, and not ashamed to shed one or two with them.
+
+He drew a word-portrait of himself for Lady Bradshaigh, which is fairly
+well known but is worth repeating, and, judging by the portraits we have
+of him, is a fairly true one. He paints himself as "short, rather plump,
+about five feet five inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom,
+the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat
+that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support when attacked by sudden
+tremors or dizziness, which too frequently attack him, but, thank God! not
+so often as formerly; looking directly forthright, as passers-by would
+imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand of him without moving
+his short neck; hardly ever turning back; of a light-brown complexion,
+teeth not yet failing him; smooth faced, and ruddy cheeked; at some times
+looking to be about sixty-five, at other times much younger; a regular,
+even pace, stealing away the ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey
+eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head; by chance
+lively--very lively it will be, if he have hope of seeing a lady whom he
+loves and honours."
+
+[Illustration: RICHARDSON'S HOUSE. NORTH END FULHAM.]
+
+Richardson's summer-house is long since gone from the garden, and long ago
+now The Grange was divided in two, and in the half that has been
+stucco-fronted Burne-Jones went to live in 1867, dying there in 1898.
+
+Five years after Goldsmith had given up proofreading for Richardson, you
+find him still drudging amid the squalor of Grub Street, still living from
+hand to mouth, writing reviews and prefaces, revising and preparing new
+editions of dull books on dull subjects, for a sum of twenty-one pounds
+compiling a two-volume _History of England_ in the form of a series of
+letters, and generally subduing his heart and mind to the doing of the
+wretched hack-work to which the impecunious literary man in all ages has
+usually been condemned.
+
+His new taskmaster was Mr. Newbery the publisher, and he was living, in
+those days of 1762, in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street; but the publisher
+was not altogether ungenerous, and made arrangements that enabled his poor
+hack to leave town at intervals and work in the fresh air and rural
+environment of Islington. Newbery had chambers of his own there in
+Canonbury Tower, and Goldsmith used to put up at a cottage near by that
+was kept by an elderly Mrs. Fleming, a friend or relative of Newbery's,
+his bills for board and lodging being periodically settled by his
+employer, who deducted the amount of them from whatever fell due to
+Goldsmith from time to time for work done. Fortunately Mrs. Fleming's
+accounts have been preserved, and we get an idea of Goldsmith's wardrobe
+from her washing-lists, and learn from the items she carefully details
+that she now and then lent him small sums in cash--tenpence one day, and
+one and twopence another; that occasionally, when he had a friend to
+dinner, though she duly noted it, she ostentatiously made no charge;
+but when four gentlemen came to take tea with him, she debited him with
+eighteenpence.
+
+[Illustration: GOLDSMITH'S HOUSE. CANONBURY.]
+
+Probably one of those friends who had a free dinner was Hogarth, for he
+travelled out to Islington occasionally on a visit to Goldsmith; and there
+is a painting of his which is known as "Goldsmith's Hostess," and is
+believed to be none other than Mrs. Fleming's portrait.
+
+You remember Boswell's story of how _The Vicar of Wakefield_ saved
+Goldsmith from imprisonment for debt. "I received one morning a letter
+from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress," Johnson told him,
+"and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come
+to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to
+him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that
+his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent
+passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a
+bottle of madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork in the bottle,
+desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which
+he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the
+press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit. I
+told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller,
+sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged
+his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used
+him so ill." Everything points to Mrs. Fleming as that harsh landlady, and
+the lodging in her cottage at Islington as the scene of that famous
+interlude. The presumption is that Goldsmith had incurred a much heavier
+liability to her than was covered by what was accruing to him for his
+services to Newbery, as a result of his giving time to the writing of _The
+Vicar of Wakefield_ that should have been devoted to his usual drudgery;
+and the cautious Newbery declined to make further advances, and advised
+his relative, the landlady, to adopt summary methods for the recovery of
+her debt. Goldsmith never lodged with Mrs. Fleming after that date; but
+later, when Newbery took a lease of Canonbury Tower, he was from time to
+time a guest there, and occupied a room in the turret. During one of these
+visits he wrote _The Traveller_; and in later years Charles Lamb often
+walked across from his Islington home to the Tower to watch the sunset
+from the summit, and to be entertained by the tenant of it in the panelled
+chamber where Goldsmith's poem was written.
+
+It was with the publication of _The Traveller_ that Goldsmith began to
+emerge from Grub Street. Its success was considerable enough to lead to
+the publisher's looking out the manuscript of _The Vicar of Wakefield_,
+and issuing that also; and in 1768, having made five hundred pounds by the
+production and publishing of _The Good-natured Man_, he removed from an
+attic in the Staircase, Inner Temple, and purchased a lease of three rooms
+on the second floor of 2 Brick Court, Temple. Blackstone, the lawyer, then
+working on his _Commentaries_, had chambers immediately below him, and
+complained angrily of the distracting noises--the singing, dancing, and
+playing blind-man's-buff--that went on over his head when Goldsmith was
+entertaining his friends.
+
+[Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH]
+
+Pale, round-faced, plain-featured, with a bulging forehead and an ugly,
+long upper lip, there was more of kindness and geniality than of dignity
+or intellect in Goldsmith's appearance. "His person was short," says
+Boswell, who was jealous of his friendship with Johnson, and never
+realised how great he was, "his countenance was coarse and vulgar, his
+deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. Those
+who were in any way distinguished excited envy in him to so ridiculous an
+excess that the instances of it are hardly credible." But Boswell
+misjudged him because, conceited and petty himself, he easily read those
+qualities into the behaviour of the other, and so misunderstood him.
+Goldsmith may have had some harmless vanity in the matter of dress, when
+he could afford to indulge it; but as for vanity of his achievements, that
+speaking of poetry as
+
+  "My shame in crowds, my solitary pride,"
+
+is the spontaneous confession of a naturally shy and diffident spirit.
+When a man has been buffeted as he had been, has had to slave so hard and
+wait so long for his reward as he had slaved and waited, he accepts the
+fame that comes to him merely as wages well earned, and is not likely to
+grow swollen-headed concerning it. And for his envious character--here is
+what Boswell gives as a specimen of it. Johnson had come from an
+unexpected interview with the king, and a party of friends at Sir Joshua
+Reynolds's house in Leicester Square were gathered about him pressing for
+a full account of what had taken place. During all the time that Johnson
+was employed in this narration, remarks Boswell, "Dr. Goldsmith remained
+unmoved upon a sofa at some distance, affecting not to join in the least
+in the eager curiosity of the company. He assigned as a reason for his
+gloom and seeming inattention that he apprehended Johnson had relinquished
+his purpose of furnishing him with a prologue to his play, with the hopes
+of which he had been flattered; but it was strongly suspected that he was
+fretting with chagrin and envy at the singular honour Dr. Johnson had
+lately enjoyed. At length, the frankness and simplicity of his natural
+character prevailed. He sprung from the sofa, advanced to Johnson, and in
+a kind of flutter from imagining himself in the situation which he had
+just been hearing described, exclaimed, 'Well, you acquitted yourself in
+this conversation better than I should have done; for I should have bowed
+and stammered through the whole of it.'" Naturally this talk with the king
+would not seem such a breathlessly overwhelming honour to such a man as
+Goldsmith as to such a snob as Boswell. It was in keeping with Goldsmith's
+nature that he should sit quietly listening and imagining the whole thing
+as he heard about it, instead of fussing round open-mouthed to pester the
+narrator with trivial questions; but Boswell was incapable of realising
+this.
+
+[Illustration: 2 BRICK COURT. THE TEMPLE.]
+
+When Boswell, in his toadying spirit, was saying that in any conversation
+Johnson was entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority, and
+Goldsmith, with a truer conception of the art and pleasure of social
+intercourse, replied, "Sir, you are for making a monarchy of what should
+be a republic," Boswell took it as another proof of Goldsmith's envy, and
+of his "incessant desire of being conspicuous in company." He goes on
+to say: "He was still more mortified when, talking in a company with
+fluent vivacity and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all who
+were present, a German who sat next to him, and perceived Johnson rolling
+himself as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, 'Stay, stay!
+Toctor Shonson is going to say something!' This was no doubt very
+provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who frequently
+mentioned it with strong expressions of indignation." A vain man would
+not have mentioned it frequently, but a man with Goldsmith's sense of fun
+would be tickled by it, and rejoice to tell it as a joke against himself,
+simulating indignation to heighten the jest. When he heard that jape at
+Sir Joshua's table of taking peas to Hammersmith because that was the way
+to Turn'am Green, and afterwards retelling it muddled the phrase and made
+nonsense of it, Boswell offers it as further evidence that he was a
+blundering fool. But it is more likely that he blundered on purpose,
+merely to raise a laugh, that being his queer, freakish fashion of humour.
+But the Laird of Auchinleck and some of the others were too staid and
+heavy to follow his nimble wits in their grotesque and airy dancings.
+
+[Illustration: STAIRS UP TO SECOND FLOOR. 2 BRICK COURT.]
+
+Why, even the egregious Boswell has to admit that "Goldsmith, however, was
+often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the lists
+with Johnson himself." And once, when Johnson observed, "It is amazing how
+little Goldsmith knows; he seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than
+any one else," Reynolds put in quietly, "Yet there is no man whose company
+is more liked"; and the Doctor promptly admitted that, saying, "When
+people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their
+inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them." But
+that did not fully explain why he was liked, of course; and what Johnson
+added as to "what Goldsmith comically says of himself" shows that Goldie
+knew his own weaknesses, and was amused by them. Lamb would have
+understood him and laughed with him, for he loved to frivol and play the
+fool in the same vein. When he was dead, Johnson said he was "a very
+great man"; and don't you think there is some touch of remorse in that
+later remark of his, that the partiality of Goldsmith's friends was always
+against him, and "it was with difficulty we could give him a hearing"?
+
+[Illustration: GOLDSMITH'S GRAVE.]
+
+When he lay dead in his chambers at 2 Brick Court, as Forster relates, the
+staircase was filled with mourners the reverse of domestic--"women without
+a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had
+come to weep for; outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom
+he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. And he had domestic
+mourners, too. His coffin was reopened at the request of Miss Horneck and
+her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for them), that a
+lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn's possession when she
+died, after nearly seventy years." When Burke was told that Goldsmith was
+dead, he burst into tears; and when the news reached Reynolds in his
+Leicester Square painting-room, he laid his brush aside--a thing he had
+not been known to do even in times of great family distress--left his
+study, and entered it no more that day. A vain and envious fool is not
+mourned in that fashion.
+
+"I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which were his,"
+writes Thackeray, "and passed up the staircase which Johnson and Burke and
+Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith--the
+stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that
+the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak
+door."
+
+No. 2 Brick Court would be memorable enough if it held no other memory;
+but in 1839 Mackworth Praed died in the same house, and for a short time
+in 1855 Thackeray too had chambers in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HOMES AND HAUNTS OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL
+
+
+If we were not quite such a business people, and had not so fully
+satisfied ourselves that the making of money is the chief end of
+existence, we should put up a statue to Dr. Johnson in Fleet Street, even
+if we had to knock down a house or two to find room for it. The statue by
+Mr. Percy Fitzgerald that has been erected in St. Clement Danes
+Churchyard, in the Strand, is better than nothing, but it is too
+insignificant in appearance, and stands in the wrong place. Johnson is
+still so far removed from death that he is more alive to-day than when he
+was living, and Fleet Street, and the courts and alleys opening out of
+Fleet Street, are his proper kingdom. Other great spirits haunt the same
+ground, but he overshadows them all.
+
+At one time or another during the later forty-seven years of his life
+Johnson had sixteen different addresses in London, and six of them were in
+Fleet Street byways. On his first visit to town, in 1737, he had lodgings
+at Exeter Street, Strand, and made some short stay at Greenwich, whence he
+wrote to Cave, the publisher, offering to contribute to his _Gentleman's
+Magazine_. Next year he and his wife finally removed from Lichfield, and
+lodged first in Woodstock Street, Hanover Square, and then in Castle
+Street, Cavendish Square. Presently he flitted to the Strand; to Bow
+Street; to Holborn; to Fetter Lane; to Holborn again; then to Gough
+Square, at the top of Wine Office Court, where he lived for ten years;
+then to Staple Inn; to Gray's Inn; to No. 1 Inner Temple Lane; to No. 7
+Johnson's Court (so named before his time, as Boswell Court was before
+Boswell's); and thence to Bolt Court, where, in 1784, he died.
+
+Of all these homes of Johnson's, only two are now surviving--that in
+Staple Inn, which cannot be identified (we know only that it was one of
+the houses in the square); and that in Gough Square, which, next to the
+Bolt Court house, was the most interesting of his sixteen residences--and
+one is grateful that, mainly owing to the good offices of Mr. Cecil
+Harmsworth, it has been saved from demolition, and is now opened as a
+Johnson museum.
+
+Johnson was still a bookseller's hack and a comparatively unknown man
+when, in 1747, at the age of thirty-eight, he started work on his
+_Dictionary_. He was then living in Holborn; but next year he moved into
+Gough Square, and it was here that most of this colossal work was done.
+And to-day, when you visit that house, you find that all the teeming life
+of the last hundred and sixty years has drained out of it completely, and
+nothing remains in the old rooms but memories of Johnson and his friends.
+He works there for ever now in the study that used to be his, poring
+short-sightedly over books and papers; and in the queer, sloping-ceilinged
+garret above are his six assistants, copying, hunting out references for
+the _Dictionary_, and busy with all the mechanical part of the
+undertaking. You have only to stand there and think of it, and, if you
+have read Boswell and Hawkins, the life of the household as it was in
+those ten years long past refashions itself around you in the magic,
+old-world atmosphere of the place.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO STAPLE INN.]
+
+Five publishers joined in commissioning Johnson to compile the
+_Dictionary_, and arranged to pay him a sum of £1575, out of which he had
+to engage his assistants. "For the mechanical part," writes Boswell, "he
+employed six amanuenses; and let it be remembered by the natives of North
+Britain, to whom he is supposed to have been so hostile, that five of them
+were of that country. There were two Messieurs Macbean; Mr. Shiels; Mr.
+Stewart, son of Mr. George Stewart, bookseller at Edinburgh; and a Mr.
+Maitland. The sixth of these humble assistants was Mr. Peyton, who, I
+believe, taught French, and published some elementary tracts." That upper
+room in Gough Square was fitted up like a counting-house, and each of the
+six workers in it was allotted his separate task. Boswell goes on to
+describe Johnson's method: "The words, partly taken from other
+dictionaries and partly supplied by himself, having been first written
+down with spaces left between them, he delivered in writing their
+etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were
+copied from the books themselves, in which he had marked the passages with
+a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could easily be effaced. I have
+seen several of them in which that trouble had not been taken, so that
+they were just as when used by the copyists. It is remarkable that he was
+so attentive in the choice of the passages in which words were authorised
+that one may read page after page of his _Dictionary_ with improvement
+and pleasure; and it should not pass unobserved that he has quoted no
+author whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and
+morality.... He is now to be considered as 'tugging at his oar,' as
+engaged in a steady, continued course of occupation, sufficient to employ
+all his time for some years, and which was the best preventive of that
+constitutional melancholy which was ever lurking about him, ready to
+trouble his quiet."
+
+In after years, with his natural, large kindness of disposition, Johnson
+retained a sympathetic interest in those six assistants of his. The elder
+of the two Macbeans fell at length into great poverty, and Johnson helped
+him by writing a preface to his _System of Ancient Geography_, and
+afterwards influenced Lord Thurlow in getting him admitted as a Poor
+Brother of the Charterhouse. He had Shiel, who was dying of consumption,
+to help him with his _Lives of the Poets_; and when Peyton died almost
+destitute, it was Johnson who paid his funeral expenses.
+
+Whilst he was "tugging at his oar" and making steady headway with the
+_Dictionary_, Johnson sought recreation in founding one of his many
+literary clubs--an informal little club that met of evenings in Ivy Lane,
+Paternoster Row, and numbered among its members Hawkesworth, who succeeded
+Johnson as compiler of Parliamentary debates for the _Gentleman's
+Magazine_, and later edited and wrote most of a bi-weekly, _The
+Adventurer_; Dr. Bathurst, who with Johnson and Warton contributed to that
+_Adventurer_; and Hawkins, who in due course became one of Johnson's
+executors and biographers. He had published his satire, _London_, eleven
+years before this; but it was whilst he was living in Gough Square, with
+the _Dictionary_ in full progress, that he wrote and published his only
+other great satire, _The Vanity of Human Wishes_, with its references to
+the hope deferred, the hardships of his own life, and the obscurity and
+poverty from which he was but now gradually beginning to emerge:--
+
+  "When first the college rolls receive his name,
+   The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;
+   Resistless burns the fever of renown,
+   Caught from the strong contagion of the gown:
+   O'er Bodley's dome his future labours spread,
+   And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head.
+   Are these thy views? proceed, illustrious youth,
+   And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth!
+   Yet should thy soul indulge the generous heat,
+   Till captive science yields her last retreat;
+   Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray
+   And pour on misty doubt resistless day;
+   Should no false kindness lure to loose delight,
+   Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright;
+   Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain,
+   And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;
+   Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,
+   Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart;
+   Should no disease thy torpid veins invade
+   Nor melancholy's phantom haunt thy shade;
+   Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,
+   Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee:
+   Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
+   And pause awhile from learning to be wise:
+   There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
+   Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
+   See nations slowly wise, and meanly just,
+   To buried merit raise the tardy bust.
+   If dreams yet flatter, yet again attend,
+   Hear Lydiat's life, and Galileo's end."
+
+Had the Gough Square house been memorable only as the birthplace of the
+_Dictionary_, it would have been enough to have given it immortality; for,
+as Carlyle says (and Carlyle once went reverently over these rooms, and
+wrote a record of his visit), "Had Johnson left nothing but his
+_Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine
+man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity,
+honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all
+dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands
+there like a great, solid, square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically
+complete; you judge that a true builder did it." But, still while the
+_Dictionary_ was going on, shortly after the publication of _The Vanity of
+Human Wishes_, which yielded him £15, Garrick produced his tragedy of
+_Irene_ at Drury Lane. It was a failure on the stage; the audience
+shrieked "Murder! murder!" when the bowstring was placed round the
+heroine's neck; but Johnson, feeling that a dramatic author should be more
+gaily dressed than it was his wont to appear, sat in a box on the first
+night in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat,
+and accepted his failure with unruffled calmness; and Dodsley paid him
+£100 for the right to publish the play as a book.
+
+Still while he was in the thick of the _Dictionary_, he set himself, in
+1750, to start _The Rambler_, and you may take it that he was sitting in
+his Gough Square study one night when he wrote that prayer before
+publishing his first number:--
+
+"Almighty God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all labour
+is ineffectual, and without whose grace all wisdom is folly; grant, I
+beseech Thee, that in this undertaking Thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld
+from me, but that I may promote Thy glory, and the salvation of myself and
+others. Grant this, O Lord, for the sake of Thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen."
+
+[Illustration: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS]
+
+His first number was printed on the 20th March 1750, and he issued it
+every Saturday and Tuesday afterwards for two years. "This," as Boswell
+has it, "is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, that 'a
+man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it'; for,
+notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits,
+and his labour in carrying on his _Dictionary_, he answered the stated
+calls of the press twice a week, from the stores of his mind, during all
+that time; having received no assistance, except four billets in No. 10,
+by Miss Mulso, now Mrs. Chapone; No. 30, by Miss Catherine Talbot; No. 97,
+by Mr. Samuel Richardson; and Nos. 44 and 100, by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter."
+He was so pressed for time that he wrote a good many of the essays in such
+haste that he had no opportunity even to read them through again before
+they were printed. One thing that particularly gratified Johnson in
+connection with the _Rambler_ was that his wife said to him, after she had
+read a few numbers, "I thought very well of you before, but I did not
+imagine you could have written anything equal to this."
+
+Gough Square is hallowed, too, with sadder memories of Johnson's wife, for
+she died here in March 1752; and to the end of his days he never forgot
+her or ceased to sorrow for her. She was a plain-featured woman some
+years older than himself, but he always spoke of her with a wonderful
+tenderness and love, and as of one who had been beautiful to look upon.
+How deeply he felt her loss is evident not merely from some of his
+sayings, but from his letters, and from those _Prayers and Meditations_,
+in which he set down his most intimate thoughts and feelings. After his
+death, this written prayer was found among his papers, dated in the month
+after her passing:--
+
+    "_April 26th, 1752, being after 12 at night of the 25th._
+
+    "O Lord! Governor of heaven and earth, in whose hands are embodied and
+    departed spirits, if Thou hast ordained the souls of the dead to
+    minister to the living, and appointed my departed wife to have care of
+    me, grant that I may enjoy the good effects of her attention and
+    ministration, whether exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams, or in
+    any other manner agreeable to Thy government. Forgive my presumption,
+    enlighten my ignorance, and however meaner agents are employed, grant
+    me the blessed influences of Thy Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our
+    Lord. Amen."
+
+[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S HOUSE. GOUGH SQUARE.]
+
+You may stand in the Square to-night, after twelve at night, when all the
+windows of all the other houses are dark, as they were in that night of
+1752, and look up at the window in which the solitary light burned then,
+whilst, within, the grief-stricken Johnson sat alone in his study writing
+down that humble, mournful aspiration, and as you look the same light
+kindles there and glimmers desolately again for all who have eyes to see
+it. Nor was this the only record of his sorrow that was written in that
+room, for you find these notes in his journal a year later:--
+
+"_March 28, 1753._ I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty's death,
+with prayers and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her
+conditionally, if it were lawful."
+
+"_April 23, 1753._ I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain
+longings of affection; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that when
+I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy
+interview, and that in the meantime I am incited by it to piety. I will,
+however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of
+devotion."
+
+Boswell tells us that he preserved her wedding-ring reverently as long as
+he lived, keeping it in "a little round wooden box, in the inside of which
+he pasted a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as
+follows:--
+
+  'Eheu!
+  Eliz. Johnson,
+  Nupta Jul. 9º, 1736,
+  Mortua, eheu!
+  Mart. 17º, 1752.'"
+
+Some thought of her, indeed, rises again and again thereafter in those
+_Prayers and Meditations_ of his, and so makes this house peculiarly
+reminiscent of her. Before Mrs. Johnson's death, Mrs. Anna Williams had
+become a constant visitor at the house here. She was a poetess in a small
+way, daughter of a Welsh physician, and was in London having both her eyes
+treated for cataract. After his wife's death, Johnson gave Mrs. Williams
+accommodation in Gough Square whilst her eyes were operated upon; and,
+the operation failing and complete blindness following it, with his usual
+big-hearted humanity he allowed her an apartment in this and each of his
+subsequent homes; and you remember Boswell's complaint of how his
+fastidious susceptibilities were outraged by the way in which she felt
+round the edges of the cups to see if they were full, when she presided
+over the tea-table. In the same spirit, Johnson gave house-room here also,
+and elsewhere, to that simplest and most kindly of medical practitioners,
+Dr. Robert Levett, on whose death, several years later, he wrote the best
+of his shorter poems.
+
+You get a good idea of his general manner of life in Gough Square from the
+note that Boswell obtained from Francis Barber, Johnson's black servant,
+who wrote that on his wife's death Johnson was "in great affliction. Mrs.
+Williams was then living in his house, which was in Gough Square. He was
+busy with the _Dictionary_. Mr. Shiels and some others of the gentlemen
+who had formerly written for him used to come about the house. He had then
+little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr. Shiels when in
+distress. The friends who visited him at that time were chiefly Dr.
+Bathurst, and Mr. Diamond, an apothecary in Cork Street, Burlington
+Gardens, with whom he and Mrs. Williams generally dined every Sunday.
+There were also Mr. Cave; Dr. Hawkesworth; Mr. Rydal, merchant on Tower
+Hill; Mrs. Masters, the poetess, who lived with Mr. Cave; Mrs. Carter; and
+sometimes Mrs. Macaulay; also Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow-chandler on
+Snow Hill, not in the learned way, but a worthy good woman; Mr. (now Sir
+Joshua) Reynolds; Mr. Miller; Mr. Dodsley; Mr. Bouquet; Mr. Payne, of
+Paternoster Row, bookseller; Mr. Strachan the printer; the Earl of Orrery;
+Lord Southwell; Mr. Garrick."
+
+[Illustration: JAMES BOSWELL]
+
+It was shortly after the conclusion of _The Rambler_ that Johnson first
+made the acquaintance of Bennet Langton. He had taken lodgings in a house
+that was frequently visited by Dr. Levett; and, with Johnson's permission,
+Levett one day brought Langton to Gough Square, and, says Boswell:--
+
+"Mr. Langton was exceedingly surprised when the sage first appeared. He
+had not received the smallest intimation of his figure, dress, or manner.
+From perusing his writings, he fancied he should see a decent,
+well-dressed--in short, a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of
+which, down from his bed-chamber, about noon, came, as newly risen, a huge
+uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head,
+and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich,
+so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so
+congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived
+for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved."
+
+In 1753 Johnson "relieved the drudgery of his _Dictionary_" by writing
+essays for Hawkesworth's _Adventurer_, and in this and the next two years
+did a lot of reviewing and varied hack-work for the magazines and
+miscellanies of his time; and in February 1775 he wrote that nobly
+scathing and touching letter to Lord Chesterfield, that is too well known
+to need reprinting, but must needs be reprinted here, because it was
+written from Gough Square, and would make any house from which it was
+written an honoured and sacred place to all who value the dignity of
+literature and glory in the emancipation of the literary man from the
+condescending benevolence of the private patron:--
+
+    "MY LORD,--I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of _The
+    World_, that two papers in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the
+    public were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an
+    honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great,
+    I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.
+
+    "When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship,
+    I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of
+    your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself
+    _Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_--that I might obtain that
+    regard for which I saw the whole world contending; but I found my
+    attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would
+    suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in
+    public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and
+    uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man
+    is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
+
+    "Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward
+    rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
+    pushing on with my work through difficulties, of which it is useless
+    to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of
+    publication, without one act of assistance, one word of
+    encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not
+    expect, for I never had a patron before.
+
+    "The shepherd in _Virgil_ grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
+    him a native of the rocks.
+
+    "Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+    struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
+    encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
+    take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been
+    delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
+    solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
+    hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where
+    no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
+    should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has
+    enabled me to do for myself.
+
+    "Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
+    favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall
+    conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
+    wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with
+    so much exultation,
+
+      "My lord, your lordship's most humble,
+        "Most obedient servant,
+          "SAM. JOHNSON."
+
+A few months after this the _Dictionary_ was finished. There had been many
+delays; it was long behind the stipulated time, and the patience of the
+publishers was exhausted; but at last Johnson sent the last sheets of the
+great work to Mr. Miller, the Strand bookseller, who was chiefly
+concerned in the venture, and when the messenger returned from Miller's
+shop Johnson asked him, "Well, what did he say?" "Sir," answered the
+messenger, "he said, 'Thank God I have done with him.'" "I am glad,"
+replied Johnson, with a smile, "that he thanks God for anything."
+
+The publication of the _Dictionary_ made him at once the most famous man
+of letters in London; but he had already spent the money that was paid for
+his labour, and had still to work hard with his pen to make "provision for
+the day that was passing over him." In 1757 he took up again a scheme for
+an elaborate edition of Shakespeare with notes, and issued proposals and
+invited subscriptions for it; but it was another nine years before his
+Shakespeare made its appearance. Among his many visitors in 1758, Dr.
+Charles Burney, the father of Fanny Burney, called and "had an interview
+with him in Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea with him, and was
+introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Williams. After dinner, Mr. Johnson
+proposed to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret, which, being
+accepted, he there found about five or six Greek folios, a deal
+writing-desk, and a chair and a half. Johnson, giving his guest the entire
+seat, tottered himself on one with only three legs and one arm. Here he
+gave Mr. Burney Mrs. Williams's history, and showed him some volumes of
+Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he was in earnest." They
+proceeded to criticise Shakespeare's commentators up there, and to discuss
+the controversy then raging between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke in
+connection with an unauthorised publication of certain of Bolingbroke's
+letters to Pope, who was recently dead. And in the April of this same year
+Johnson began to write his essays for _The Idler_.
+
+[Illustration: JOHNSON'S CORNER. THE CHESHIRE CHEESE.]
+
+Here, then, you have a varied and intimate series of pictures, a sort of
+panoramic view of the life that Johnson lived in his Gough Square house,
+and amid his old surroundings are able to recreate him for yourself in all
+his varying circumstances and changing moods--working there at his
+_Dictionary_ and his multifarious writings; sorrowing for his wife;
+entertaining his friends; sallying forth morning and evening to walk along
+Fleet Street to the church of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand, assuming
+that he kept the resolution to do so that is entered at this date in his
+journal; and, almost every Sunday afternoon, coming staidly down the steps
+with Mrs. Williams, and setting out to dine with Mr. Diamond, the
+apothecary of Cork Street; on many evenings strolling along Wine Office
+Court, to forgather with friends in the parlour of the "Cheshire Cheese,"
+where the seat traditionally occupied by him and Goldsmith is still to be
+seen; or going farther to a meeting of his club in Ivy Lane. There is a
+capital story told by Hawkins of how one night at that club a suggestion
+was made that they should celebrate the publication of Mrs. Lennox's first
+novel, _The Life of Harriet Stuart_, with a supper at the Devil Tavern, in
+Fleet Street. Johnson threw himself heart and soul into the proposal, and
+declared that they would honour the event by spending the whole night in
+festivity. On the evening fixed, at about eight o'clock, Mrs. Lennox and
+her husband, and some twenty friends and members of the club, gathered at
+the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, and, by Johnson's orders, a magnificent hot
+apple-pie adorned with bay leaves formed a principal item of the menu. He
+himself crowned Mrs. Lennox with laurel; and, true to his resolve, he kept
+the feast going right through the night. "At 5 A.M.," says Hawkins,
+"Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been
+only lemonade." The day was beginning to dawn when they all partook of a
+"second refreshment of coffee," and it was broad daylight and eight
+o'clock before the party broke up, and Johnson made his way back up Fleet
+Street, round into Gough Square, and to the prosaic resumption of work on
+the _Dictionary_.
+
+Soon after starting _The Idler_, Johnson left Gough Square and took rooms
+in Staple Inn, where he presently wrote _Rasselas_ in the evenings of one
+week, and so raised £100, that "he might defray the expenses of his
+mother's funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left."
+
+All these things had happened, and Johnson had risen into fame and become
+"the great Cham of letters," before Boswell had made his acquaintance. The
+historic meeting between these two did not come about until 1763, and then
+it took place at No. 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden--another famous house
+that is fortunately still in existence. It was then occupied by Thomas
+Davies, the actor, who had retired from the stage and opened a
+bookseller's shop there. He knew Johnson, who frequently visited him, and
+on his invitation Boswell was there several times in hopes of meeting the
+great man; again and again it happened that on the days when he was in
+waiting Johnson failed to appear, but in the end his patience was
+rewarded, and this is his own account of the interview, taken from notes
+he made of it on the very day of its occurrence:--
+
+"At last, on Monday, the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's
+back parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson
+unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies, having perceived him
+through the glass door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing
+towards us, he announced his awful approach to me, somewhat in the manner
+of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the
+appearance of his father's ghost: 'Look, my lord, it comes!' I found that
+I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's figure, from the portrait of him
+painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his
+_Dictionary_, in the attitude of sitting in his easy-chair in deep
+meditation. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me
+to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the
+Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, 'Don't tell where I
+come from.' 'From Scotland,' cried Davies roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson,' said
+I, 'I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' He retorted,
+'That, sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot
+help.' This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I
+felt myself not a little embarrassed and apprehensive of what might come
+next. He then addressed himself to Davies: 'What do you think of Garrick?
+He has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he
+knows the house will be full, and that an order would be worth three
+shillings.' Eager to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I
+ventured to say, 'O sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a
+trifle to you.' 'Sir,' said he, with a stern look, 'I have known David
+Garrick longer than you have done, and I know no right you have to talk to
+me on the subject.' Perhaps I deserved this check; for it was rather
+presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any doubt of the
+justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance and pupil. I now
+felt myself much mortified, and began to think that the hope which I had
+long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was blasted." But he sat on
+resolutely, and was rewarded by hearing some of Johnson's conversation, of
+which he kept notes, that are duly reproduced in the _Life_.
+
+[Illustration: WHERE BOSWELL FIRST MET JOHNSON.]
+
+"I was highly pleased with the extraordinary vigour of his conversation,"
+he concludes his account of the meeting, "and regretted that I was drawn
+away from it by an engagement at another place. I had for a part of the
+evening been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation
+now and then, which he received very civilly; so I was satisfied that,
+though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his
+disposition. Davies followed me to the door; and when I complained to him
+a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly
+took upon him to console me by saying, 'Don't be uneasy; I can see he
+likes you very well.'"
+
+Davies's shop is kept nowadays by a Covent Garden salesman. Instead of
+being lined with books, it is filled with baskets of fruit and sacks of
+potatoes, and the parlour wall and that glass-panelled parlour door are
+thrown down, and parlour and shop are all one. But the upper part of the
+house remains practically unaltered, and with a little imagining you can
+restore the lower to what it was when these walls held the gruff rumbling
+of the Doctor's voice, and looked down on the humiliation of Boswell under
+the roguish eyes of Davies and his pretty wife.
+
+Another house that has glamorous associations with Johnson is No. 5
+Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived, and where he died, in a back room on
+the first floor, in 1779. Two years later Johnson was one of a party that
+dined there with Mrs. Garrick, and one cannot do better than repeat the
+indispensable Boswell's report of the event:--
+
+"On Friday, April 20, I spent with him one of the happiest days that I
+remember to have enjoyed in the whole course of my life. Mrs. Garrick,
+whose grief for the loss of her husband was, I believe, as sincere as
+wounded affection and admiration could produce, had this day, for the
+first time since his death, a select party of his friends to dine with
+her. The company was: Mrs. Hannah More, who lived with her, and whom she
+called her chaplain; Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, Dr. Burney, Dr. Johnson, and myself. We found ourselves very
+elegantly entertained at her house in the Adelphi, where I have passed
+many a pleasing hour with him 'who gladdened life.' She looked well,
+talked of her husband with complacency, and while she cast her eyes on his
+portrait, which hung over the chimney-piece, said that 'death was now the
+most agreeable object to her.'... We were all in fine spirits; and I
+whispered to Mrs. Boscawen, 'I believe this is as much as can be made of
+life.'" After recording the conversation of Johnson and divers of the
+others, Boswell goes on: "He and I walked away together. We stopped a
+little by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to
+him, with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost
+who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick. 'Ay,
+sir,' said he tenderly, 'and two such friends as cannot be supplied.'"
+
+[Illustration: BOSWELL'S HOUSE. GREAT QUEEN STREET.]
+
+In the summer of 1784 Boswell was in London as usual, and saw Johnson,
+then an old man of seventy-five, for the last time. On the 30th June, he
+and Johnson dined with Sir Joshua Reynolds in Leicester Square, and when
+Johnson went home Boswell accompanied him in Sir Joshua's coach to the
+entry of Bolt Court, in Fleet Street, and was so affected at parting that
+he would not accompany him to the house, and they bade each other an
+affectionate adieu in the carriage. Johnson stepped out on to the
+pavement, and, walking briskly, vanished into the yawn of Bolt Court, and,
+for Boswell, into the jaws of death, for he never saw him again. He went
+home to the north two days after, and in December Johnson died.
+
+On his annual visits to London Boswell lived in various lodgings; but in
+or about 1786 he rented the house, still standing, at 56 Great Queen
+Street, and brought his wife to town with him. They occupied this place
+for some two years; and it is evident from his letters to Bishop Percy and
+the Rev. T. W. Temple that, whilst residing there, he wrote most of the
+last seven years of his _Life of Johnson_. Boswell died in London, in
+1795, at No. 122 (formerly 47) Great Portland Street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BLAKE AND FLAXMAN
+
+
+Ten years before Boswell went to live at 56 Great Queen Street, William
+Blake was serving an apprenticeship to James Basire, the well-known
+engraver, whose house was close by at No. 31 in the same street. Basire's
+residence has gone the way of all bricks and mortar; but happily Soho
+still preserves the corner house at No. 28 Broad Street, in which Blake
+was born. He was born there on the 28th November 1857, over his father's
+hosiery shop, and it was there that the first of his strange visions came
+to him; for he used to say that when he was only four years old he one day
+saw the face of God at the window looking in upon him, and the sight set
+him a-screaming. When he was four or five years older, you hear of him
+taking long rambles into the country; and it was on Peckham Rye that other
+visions came to him. Once he saw a tree there "filled with angels, bright
+angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars"; and once, on a summer
+morning, he saw "the haymakers at work, and amid them angelic figures
+walking." In his matter-of-fact fashion he recounted the first of these
+two visions on his return home, and his mother had to intervene to prevent
+the honest hosier and conscientious Nonconformist, his father, from
+thrashing him for telling a lie.
+
+At the age of ten Blake was journeying to and from the house in Broad
+Street to Mr. Paris's academy in the Strand, taking drawing lessons. He
+was already writing poetry, too, and before he was fourteen had written
+one of the most beautiful and glitteringly imaginative of his lyrics:--
+
+  "How sweet I roamed from field to field,
+     And tasted all the summer's pride,
+   Till I the Prince of Love beheld
+     Who in the sunny beams did glide.
+
+   He showed me lilies for my hair,
+     And blushing roses for my brow;
+   He led me through his gardens fair
+     Where all his golden pleasures grow.
+
+   With sweet May-dews my wings were wet,
+     And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;
+   He caught me in his silken net,
+     And shut me in his golden cage.
+
+   He loves to sit and hear me sing,
+     Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
+   Then stretches out my golden wing,
+     And mocks my loss of liberty."
+
+In a preface to his first published volume, the _Poetical Sketches_, which
+contains this lyric, his Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter verses, "My
+Silks and fine Array," and other lovely songs, he says that all the
+contents were "commenced in his twelfth, and occasionally resumed by the
+author till his twentieth year." From fourteen till he was twenty-one
+Blake was living away from home with his master, Basire, the engraver;
+then he went back to his father's, and commenced to study at the recently
+formed Royal Academy, and in 1780 exhibited his first picture there, "The
+Death of Earl Godwin." Marrying in 1782, he set up housekeeping for
+himself at 23 Green Street, Leicester Square, and began to move abroad in
+literary society. Flaxman, already his friend, introduced him to Mrs.
+Mathew, a lady of blue-stocking tendencies, who held a sort of salon at 27
+Rathbone Place; and here, in 1784, "Rainy Day" Smith made his
+acquaintance. "At Mrs. Mathew's most agreeable conversaziones," he says,
+"I first met the late William Blake, to whom she and Mr. Flaxman had been
+truly kind. There I have often heard him read and sing several of his
+poems. He was listened to by the company with profound silence, and
+allowed by most of his listeners to possess original and extraordinary
+merit." He knew nothing of musical technique, but sang some of his verses
+to airs that Smith describes as "singularly beautiful." His republican
+opinions and general unorthodoxy and daring outspokenness, however, did
+not make for social amenity, and it was not long before he dropped out of
+these elegant circles, and withdrew to his mystic dreamings and the
+production of paintings and poetry that the majority could not understand.
+A strangely beautiful and wonderful Bird of Paradise to break from the
+nest over that hosier's shop at the corner of Broad Street, Soho!
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE'S HOUSE. SOHO.]
+
+When his father died, in 1784, Blake's brother James took over and
+continued the business; and in the same year Blake himself opened the shop
+next door (No. 27) as an engraver and printseller, in partnership with
+James Parker, who had been one of his fellow-apprentices under Basire.
+Here he had his younger brother, Robert, with him as a pupil; and he
+used to say that when Robert died, in 1787, he saw his soul ascend through
+the ceiling, "clapping its hands for joy." Falling out with Parker, Blake
+removed, in this year of his brother's death, to 28 Poland Street, near
+by, where he said Robert's spirit remained in communion with him, and
+directed him, "in a nocturnal vision, how to proceed in bringing out poems
+and designs in conjunction"; and the _Songs of Innocence_, published in
+1789, was the result of this inspiration. The method, as Alexander
+Gilchrist has it, "consisted in a species of engraving in relief both
+words and designs. The verse was written, and the designs and marginal
+embellishments outlined on the copper with an impervious liquid. Then all
+the white parts, or lights (the remainder of the plate, that is), were
+eaten away with aquafortis or other acid, so that the outline of letter
+and design was left prominent, as in stereotype. From these plates he
+printed off in any tint required to be the prevailing (or ground) colour
+in his facsimiles; red he used for the letterpress. The page was then
+coloured up by hand in imitation of the original drawing, with more or
+less variety of detail in the local hues." A process of mixing his colours
+with diluted glue was revealed to him by St. Joseph. Mrs. Blake often
+helped him in tinting the designs, and it was her work to bind the books
+in boards. In the same year (1789) he put forth the finest of his long
+mystical poems, _The Book of Thel_.
+
+Leaving Poland Street in 1793, Blake moved across London to Lambeth, and
+made himself a new home at 13 Hercules Buildings. Gilchrist, one of his
+earliest biographers, made a mistake in his identification of this house,
+and until a year or two ago it was believed that Blake's residence in that
+place had been pulled down. On a recent investigation of the Lambeth
+rate-books by the County Council authorities, however, it became clear
+that, instead of being on the west side of the street, as Gilchrist
+supposed, No. 13 was on the east side, next door but one to Hercules Hall
+Yard. Somewhere between 1830 and 1842 the whole road was renumbered, and
+Blake's house had become No. 63, and was in 1890 renumbered again, and
+became, and is still, No. 23 Hercules Road. Whilst he was living here, Mr.
+Thomas Butts, of Fitzroy Square, became his most liberal and most constant
+patron; and on calling at Hercules Buildings one day, Mr. Butts says he
+found Blake and his wife sitting naked in their summer-house. "Come in!"
+Blake greeted him. "It's only Adam and Eve, you know." But Mr. Butts never
+took this as evidence of Blake's madness: he and his wife had simply been
+reciting passages of _Paradise Lost_ in character.
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE. 23 HERCULES ROAD.]
+
+At Hercules Buildings Blake did a large number of paintings and
+engravings, including the 537 coloured drawings for Young's _Night
+Thoughts_, and some of the greatest of his designs, such as the "Job" and
+"Ezekiel" prints; and here, too, he completed certain of his _Prophetic
+Books_, with their incomprehensible imagery and allegory, and what
+Swinburne has called their "sunless and sonorous gulfs." From Hercules
+Buildings also came "Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the
+night," and the rest of the _Songs of Experience_. Then, in 1800, Hayley,
+the poet of the dull and unreadable _Triumphs of Temper_, persuaded him
+to move into the country and settle down in a cottage at Felpham; from
+which, because he said "the visions were angry with me at Felpham," he
+returned to London early in 1804, and took lodgings on the first floor of
+17 South Moulton Street, Oxford Street.
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE'S HOUSE. SOUTH MOULTON ST.]
+
+Nevertheless, at Felpham he must have been working on his _Jerusalem_,
+and on _Milton, A Poem in Two Books_, for these were issued shortly after
+his arrival in South Moulton Street. He writes of _Jerusalem_ in one of
+his letters: "I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve,
+or sometimes twenty or thirty, lines at a time, without premeditation, and
+even against my will"; and in a later letter, speaking of it as "the
+grandest poem that this world contains," he excuses himself by remarking,
+"I may praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the
+secretary--the authors are in eternity." Much of _Jerusalem_ is turgid,
+obscure, chaotic, and so impossible to understand that Mr. Chesterton
+declares that when Blake said "that its authors were in eternity, one can
+only say that nobody is likely to go there to get any more of their work."
+But it is in this poem that Blake introduces those verses "To the Jews,"
+setting forth that Jerusalem once stood in--
+
+  "The fields from Islington to Marybone,
+     To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood,"
+
+and that then--
+
+  "The Divine Vision still was seen,
+     Still was the human form divine;
+   Weeping in weak and mortal clay,
+     O Jesus! still the form was Thine.
+
+   And Thine the human face; and Thine
+     The human hands, and feet, and breath,
+   Entering through the gates of birth,
+     And passing through the gates of death";
+
+and in _Jerusalem_ you have his lines "To the Deists," the first version
+of his ballad of the Grey Monk, with its great ending:--
+
+  "For a tear is an intellectual thing,
+   And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King,
+   And the bitter groan of a martyr's woe
+   Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow."
+
+For my part, I wish it were possible for some of our living poets to go
+again to those authors in eternity and get some more of such stuff as
+this, even if we had to have it embedded in drearier lumps of nonsense
+than you find in _Jerusalem_.
+
+Blake's wife, daughter of a market-gardener, a woman so uneducated that
+she had to sign the marriage register with her mark, was not only an
+excellent housekeeper and domestic drudge, but was in perfect sympathy
+with him in his work, and had the greatest faith in his visions. Moses,
+Julius Cæsar, the Builder of the Pyramids, David, Uriah, Bathsheba,
+Solomon, Mahomet, Joseph, and Mary--these were among Blake's spiritual
+visitants at South Moulton Street. They came and sat to him, and he worked
+at their portraits, "looking up from time to time as though he had a real
+sitter before him." Sometimes he would leave off abruptly, and observe in
+matter-of-fact tones, "I can't go on. It is gone; I must wait till it
+returns"; or, "It has moved; the mouth is gone"; or, "He frowns. He is
+displeased with my portrait of him." If any one criticised and objected to
+the likeness he would reply calmly, "It _must_ be right. I saw it so." In
+all probability he meant no more than that he conjured up these sitters to
+his mind's eye; but his friends took him literally, and he acquiesced in
+their doing so, and has been dubbed a madman in consequence.
+
+Many times his wife would get up in the nights "when he was under his
+very fierce inspirations, which were as if they would tear him asunder,
+while he was yielding himself to the Muse, or whatever else it could be
+called, sketching and writing. And so terrible a task did this seem to be
+that she had to sit motionless and silent, only to stay him mentally,
+without moving hand or foot; this for hours, and night after night." It is
+not easy to realise that this burning, fiery spirit did once live in these
+South Moulton Street rooms, surrounded by his vivid and terrific
+imaginings, and then could pass out of it and leave it looking so dull and
+decorous, so ordinary, so entirely commonplace. But here he indubitably
+lived, so discouraged by neglect and hampered by poverty that he could not
+afford to issue any more large books like the _Jerusalem_, and in 1809
+made a desperate attempt to appeal to the public by holding an exhibition
+of his frescoes and drawings on the first floor of his brother's hosiery
+shop in Broad Street. Very few visitors attended; but among the few was
+Lamb's friend, Crabb Robinson, and when he went he had the room to
+himself. He paid for admission, recognised that these pictures were the
+work of no ordinary artist, and bought four of the catalogues, one of
+which he sent to Lamb; and when, on leaving, he asked the custodian
+whether he might come again free, James Blake, delighted at having a
+visitor, and one, moreover, who had bought something, cried, "Oh yes--free
+as long as you live!" But the exhibition was a failure. The popular
+painters of Blake's day were Reynolds, Gainsborough, and men of their
+schools. Blake was born out of his time, and contemporary society had
+nothing in common with him--no comprehension of his aim or his
+outlook--and dismissed him as an astonishing lunatic. When some drawings
+of his were shown to George III., his Majesty could only gaze at them
+helplessly and ejaculate a testy "Take them away! take them away!" The
+noble designs for Blair's _Grave_, and the frescoes of _The Canterbury
+Pilgrimage_, were among the important works done at South Moulton Street,
+which Blake quitted in 1821, making his last change of residence to 3
+Fountain Court, Strand--a house kept by his brother-in-law, Baines. Here
+he occupied a room on the first floor for some six years, and when he was
+nearing his seventieth year, died, after a short illness, on Sunday, the
+12th August 1827. He lay dying in his plain back room, serene and
+cheerful, singing songs to melodies that were the inspiration of the
+moment; towards evening he fell silent, and passed quietly away, a poor
+woman, a neighbour who had come in to sit with his wife, saying
+afterwards, "I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed
+angel."
+
+You have only to look at the portraits of Blake, at the broad
+forehead--the forehead of a revolutionary, as he himself said--the
+sensitive mouth, the large, intent, vision-haunted eyes, to know that his
+outward appearance fairly adequately revealed the manner of man that he
+really was. He was under five feet six in height and thick-set, but so
+well proportioned that he did not strike people as short. "He had an
+upright carriage," says Gilchrist, "and a good presence; he bore himself
+with dignity, as not unconscious of his natural claims. The head and face
+were strongly stamped with the power and character of the man. There was
+a great volume of brain in that square, massive head, that piled-up brow,
+very full and rounded at the temples, where, according to phrenologists,
+ideality or imagination resides. His eyes were fine ('wonderful eyes,'
+some one calls them), prominently set, but bright, spiritual,
+visionary--not restless or wild, but with a look of clear, heavenly
+exaltation. The eyes of some of the old men in his _Job_ recall his own to
+surviving friends. His nose was insignificant as to size, but had that
+peculiarity which gives to a face an expression of fiery energy, as of a
+high-mettled steed--a little _clenched_ nostril, a nostril that opened as
+far as it could, but was tied down at one end. His mouth was wide, the
+lips not full, but tremulous, and expressive of the great sensibility
+which characterised him. He was short-sighted, as the prominence of his
+eyes indicated--a prominence in keeping with the faculty for languages,
+according to phrenologists again. He wore glasses only occasionally." His
+poverty forced him to study economy in the matter of dress. Indoors he was
+not slovenly, but generally wore a threadbare old suit, the grey trousers
+of which had been rubbed black and shiny in front like a mechanic's. When
+he walked abroad he was more careful, and dressed plainly but well,
+something in the style of an old-fashioned tradesman, in black
+knee-breeches and buckles, black worsted stockings, shoes that tied, and a
+broad-brimmed hat.
+
+But for a memorable description of Blake in his habit as he lived, you
+must read this letter that was written to Gilchrist by Samuel Palmer, who
+knew him intimately in his latter years:--
+
+"Blake, once known, could never be forgotten.... In him you saw at once
+the maker, the inventor; one of the few in any age; a fitting companion
+for Dante. He was a man 'without a mask'; his aim single, his path
+straightforwards, and his wants few; so he was free, noble, and happy. His
+voice and manner were quiet, yet all awake with intellect. Above the
+tricks of littleness, or the least taint of affectation, with a natural
+dignity which few would have dared to affront, he was gentle and
+affectionate, loving to be with little children and talk about them. 'That
+is heaven,' he said to a friend, leading him to a window and pointing to a
+group of them at play.
+
+"Declining, like Socrates, whom in many respects he resembled, the common
+objects of ambition, and pitying the scuffle to obtain them, he thought no
+one could be truly great who had not humbled himself 'even as a little
+child.' This was a subject he loved to dwell upon and to illustrate. His
+eye was the finest I ever saw; brilliant, but not roving, clear and
+intent, yet susceptible; it flashed with genius, or melted in tenderness.
+It could also be terrible.... Nor was the mouth less expressive, the lips
+flexible and quivering with feeling. I can yet recall it when, on one
+occasion, dwelling upon the exquisite beauty of the parable of the
+Prodigal, he began to repeat a part of it; but at the words, 'When he was
+yet a great way off his father saw him,' he could go no further; his voice
+faltered, and he was in tears.
+
+"He was one of the few to be met with in our passage through life who are
+not in some way or other double-minded and inconsistent with themselves;
+one of the very few who cannot be depressed by neglect, and to whose name
+rank and station could add no lustre. Moving apart, in a sphere above the
+attraction of worldly honours, he did not accept greatness, but conferred
+it. He ennobled poverty, and, by his conversation and the influence of his
+genius, made two small rooms in Fountain Court more attractive than the
+threshold of princes."
+
+One of Blake's warmest friends for many years was the great sculptor, John
+Flaxman. With none of Blake's lawless, glowing imagination, Flaxman's
+drawings in his illustrations to Homer, and his designs on some of the
+Wedgwood pottery, have a classical correctness--a cold, exquisite beauty
+of outline--that are more suggestive of the chisel than of the pencil or
+the brush; and it is in the splendid sculptures with which he has
+beautified Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, and many other of our cathedrals
+and churches that his genius found its highest expression. In his work as
+an artist Blake was largely influenced by Flaxman. They and Stothard used
+to meet at Mrs. Mathew's; but there came a day when the friendship between
+these three was broken. Blake thought Flaxman had appropriated one of his
+designs, and there seems no doubt that Stothard did so, on the prompting
+of an unscrupulous picture-dealer; and you have Blake lampooning them
+both, as well as Hayley, with whom he had also fallen out, in epigrams
+that were not always just, and probably represented nothing worse than a
+passing mood, as thus:--
+
+  "My title as a genius thus is proved:
+   Not praised by Hayley, nor by Flaxman loved."
+
+  "I found them blind, I taught them how to see,
+   And now they know neither themselves nor me."
+
+_To Flaxman._
+
+  "You call me mad; 'tis folly to do so,--
+   To seek to turn a madman to a foe.
+   If you think as you speak, you are an ass;
+   If you do not, you are but what you was."
+
+_To the same._
+
+  "I mock thee not, though I by thee am mocked;
+   Thou call'st me madman, but I call thee blockhead."
+
+Flaxman was not, like Blake, a born Londoner, but his family came from
+York, and settled down in London when he was six months old. His father
+had a shop in New Street, Covent Garden, where he made and sold plaster
+casts. Flaxman emerged from a sickly childhood, and developed into a
+sufficiently wiry and energetic man, though he remained feeble in
+appearance, so high-shouldered as to seem almost deformed, with a head too
+large for his body, and a queer sidelong gait in walking. He married in
+1782, and, after living for five years in a very small house at 27 Wardour
+Street, Soho--where he was elected collector of the watch-rate for the
+parish--he and his wife went to Italy, and spent seven years in Rome.
+Whilst he was there he fulfilled a commission for Romney, and collected
+and sent over to England a selection of casts from the antique, that
+Romney required for the use of students in his Hampstead painting-room.
+
+Returning from Italy in 1794, Flaxman took up residence at 17 Buckingham
+Street, Euston Road, and lived here through all his most famous years,
+till he died in 1826. Blake visited him here, and Haydon, and other of his
+artistic circle; for though he went little into society, he was
+unpretentiously hospitable, fond of entertaining his chosen friends,
+greatly esteemed and beloved by his pupils, models, and servants, and the
+poor of the neighbourhood, especially the children. He went about among
+the latter habitually, filling his sketch-book with drawings of them, and
+invariably carrying a pocketful of coppers to drop into the small grubby
+hands that were ready to receive them.
+
+[Illustration: FLAXMAN'S HOUSE. BUCKINGHAM STREET. EUSTON ROAD.]
+
+The district hereabouts has degenerated since Flaxman's day. His house was
+dull, insignificant, rather mean-looking, and now it looks more so than
+ever, amid its grimy surroundings--a pinched, old, dreary little house,
+that is yet transfigured when you remember the glorious visitors who have
+crossed its threshold, and that it was at this same dead door the postman
+knocked one day near the end of September 1800 and delivered this letter
+from Blake, who was then newly gone out of London and had not had time to
+begin to grow tired of his cottage at Felpham:--
+
+    "DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,--We are safe arrived at our cottage, which
+    is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient.... Mr.
+    Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have begun to
+    work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual
+    than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her
+    windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants
+    are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen; and
+    my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are
+    both well, courting Neptune for an embrace....
+
+    "And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is
+    shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well
+    conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and
+    pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before
+    my mortal life; and these works are the delight and study of
+    archangels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches and fame of
+    mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to
+    His divine will, for our good.
+
+    "You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel--my friend and companion
+    from eternity. In the divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back
+    into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days, before
+    this earth appeared in its vegetable mortality to my mortal vegetated
+    eyes. I see our houses of eternity, which can never be separated,
+    though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of
+    heaven from each other.
+
+    "Farewell, my best friend. Remember me and my wife in love and
+    friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to
+    entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold."
+
+Later, when they quarrelled, Flaxman was not an archangel, but a blockhead
+and an ass; but that quarrel is not to be taken too seriously. Their
+houses of eternity were not separated, though their mortal vehicles were
+estranged; and it was on hearing Flaxman was dead that Blake said finely,
+"I can never think of death but as a going out of one room into another."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A HAMPSTEAD GROUP
+
+
+Out at Hampstead you may still visit what was once that studio of Romney's
+to which Flaxman sent his collection of plaster casts from Italy. It had
+been a favourite idea of Romney's, his son tells us, "to form a complete
+Gallery of Casts, and to open it to any youths of respectability," and in
+his closing years, after he had removed to Hampstead, he carried out his
+wish, to some extent, with Flaxman's aid, and had three pupils working in
+his studio there, copying the casts and studying under him. The house he
+occupied from 1796 to 1799 is now the Holly Bush Inn; he bought a piece of
+land at the back of it, and on this built himself a studio and gallery,
+which now form part of the Hampstead Constitutional Club. "It was to
+Hampstead that Hayley's friend Romney, the painter, retired in the decline
+of his life," writes J. T. Smith, in _Nollekens and his Times_, "when he
+built a dining-room close to his kitchen, with a buttery hatch opening
+into it, so that he and his friends might enjoy beef-steaks, hot and hot,
+upon the same plan as the members of the Beef-steak Club are supplied at
+their room in the Lyceum."
+
+[Illustration: ROMNEY'S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Though Romney was then in the decline of his life, he was at the height of
+his fame. He had married at the age of nineteen, and six years later set
+out for London, leaving his wife behind at Kendal. He had no intention of
+deserting her, but in London his genius soon won recognition, he began to
+move in good society, and partly because Sir Joshua Reynolds had once said
+that "marriage spoilt an artist," partly because he became infatuated with
+Nelson's enchantress, Lady Hamilton, he neither brought his wife to
+London, nor visited her, nor ever saw her again until he was dying. On
+April 28, 1799, Hayley called on him for the last time at Hampstead, and
+thought that "increasing weakness of body and mind afforded only a gloomy
+prospect for the residue of his life." Then in July Flaxman saw him, and
+says in one of his letters, "I and my father dined at Mr. Romney's at
+Hampstead last Sunday, by particular invitation, and were received in the
+most cordial manner; but, alas! I was grieved to see so noble a collection
+in a state so confused, so mangled, and prepared, I fear, for worse, and
+not better." Very soon after this Romney left London for ever, and
+returned to Kendal and the wife he had neglected since the days of his
+obscure youth, and early in 1801, by his directions, "the collection of
+castes from the antique, a very fine skeleton, and other artistic
+properties of George Romney, at his late residence, Hollybush Hill,
+Hampstead," were sold by Messrs. Christie.
+
+Meanwhile, his wife had pardoned him and was caring for him. "Old, nearly
+mad, and quite desolate," writes Fitzgerald, "he went back to her, and she
+received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth
+all Romney's pictures!--even as a matter of art, I am sure." It is this
+beautiful devotion of hers that gave Tennyson a subject for one of his
+later poems, _Romney's Remorse_; in which the dying painter, rousing out
+of delirium, says:--
+
+                            "There--you spill
+  The drops upon my forehead. Your hand shakes.
+  I am ashamed. I am a trouble to you,
+  Could kneel for your forgiveness. Are they tears?
+  For me--they do me too much grace--for me?...
+  My curse upon the Master's apothegm,
+  That wife and children drag an artist down!
+  This seemed my lodestar in the Heaven of Art,
+  And lured me from the household fire on earth....
+                            This Art, that harlot-like,
+  Seduced me from you, leaves me harlot-like,
+  Who love her still, and whimper, impotent
+  To win her back before I die--and then--
+  Then in the loud world's bastard judgment day
+  One truth will damn me with the mindless mob,
+  Who feel no touch of my temptation, more
+  Than all the myriad lies that blacken round
+  The corpse of every man that gains a name:
+  'This model husband, this fine artist!' Fool,
+  What matters! Six feet deep of burial mould
+  Will dull their comments! Ay, but when the shout
+  Of His descending peals from Heaven, and throbs
+  Thro' earth and all her graves, if _He_ should ask
+  'Why left you wife and children? for My sake,
+  According to My word?' and I replied,
+  'Nay, Lord, for _Art_,' why, that would sound so mean
+  That all the dead who wait the doom of Hell
+  For bolder sins than mine, adulteries,
+  Wife-murders--nay, the ruthless Mussulman
+  Who flings his bowstrung Harem in the sea,
+  Would turn and glare at me, and point and jeer
+  And gibber at the worm who, living, made
+  The wife of wives a widow-bride, and lost
+  Salvation for a sketch....
+  O let me lean my head upon your breast.
+  'Beat, little heart,' on this fool brain of mine.
+  I once had friends--and many--none like you.
+  I love you more than when we married. Hope!
+  O yes, I hope, or fancy that, perhaps,
+  Human forgiveness touches heaven, and thence--
+  For you forgive me, you are sure of that--
+  Reflected, sends a light on the forgiven."
+
+Another famous artist who is closely associated with Hampstead was John
+Constable. In 1820, writing to his friend, the Rev. John Fisher
+(afterwards Archdeacon Fisher), he says, "I have settled my wife and
+children comfortably at Hampstead"; and a little later he writes, again to
+Fisher, "My picture is getting on, and the frame will be here in three
+weeks or a fortnight.... I now fear (for my family's sake) I shall never
+make a popular artist, _a gentleman and ladies painter_. But I am spared
+making a fool of myself, and your hand stretched forth teaches me to value
+what I possess (if I may say so), and this is of more consequence than
+gentlemen and ladies can well imagine." He was then living at No. 2 Lower
+Terrace, a small house of two storeys, and writes from that address, again
+to Fisher, on the 4th August 1821, "I am as much here as possible with my
+family. My placid and contented companion and her three infants are well.
+I have got a room at a glazier's where is my large picture, and at this
+little place I have many small works going on, for which purpose I have
+cleared a shed in the garden, which held sand, coals, mops and brooms, and
+have made it a workshop. I have done a good deal here." Lower Terrace is
+within a few minutes' walk of the Heath, the scenery of which appears in
+so many of Constable's paintings. He removed presently to Charlotte
+Street, Fitzroy Square; one of his pictures exhibited in the Louvre made
+him famous in France, and his fame was spreading in England when he went
+back to Hampstead in 1826, and after staying for a while at 25 Downshire
+Hill (which has since been rebuilt) was "at length fixed," as he wrote to
+Fisher, "in a comfortable little house at Well Walk, Hampstead.... So
+hateful is moving about to me that I could gladly exclaim, 'Here let me
+take my everlasting rest.' This house is to my wife's heart's content; it
+is situated on an eminence at the back of the spot in which you saw us,
+and our little drawing-room commands a view unsurpassed in Europe from
+Westminster Abbey to Gravesend. The dome of St. Paul's in the air seems to
+realise Michael Angelo's words on seeing the Pantheon--'I will build such
+a thing in the sky.'" In Constable's time the house was not numbered, but
+it has been identified as the present No. 40, and after his wife's death
+he kept it as an occasional residence until he died in 1837. He is buried
+not far from it, in the Hampstead Churchyard.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN KEATS]
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE. CHARLOTTE STREET.]
+
+In the same churchyard is buried Joanna Baillie, who spent the last
+forty-five years of her life at Bolton House, Windmill Hill, opposite the
+Hollybush Inn, and here Wordsworth, Rogers, and Scott were among her
+visitors. Other famous Hampstead residents buried in this churchyard are
+Mrs. Barbauld, who lived in Church Row, then near the foot of Rosslyn
+Hill, and died in John Street; Sir Walter Besant, who died at Frognal End,
+near the top of Frognal Gardens; and George du Maurier, who lived for
+twenty-five years in Church Row and at New Grove House, by Whitestone
+Pond, and dying in 1896, a year after he left Hampstead, was brought back
+here to be buried.
+
+[Illustration: JOANNA BAILLIE. WINDMILL HILL. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+In the house at the corner of Prince Arthur Road and the High Street, that
+is now occupied by the Hampstead Subscription Library, Clarkson Stanfield
+made his home for many years. He did notable work as a landscape and sea
+painter and became a Royal Academician, but was best known and most
+successful as a scenic artist for the theatre, and brought the art of
+scene-painting to a higher level than it had ever reached before. His more
+ambitious pictures are in private collections, however, his stage scenery
+has had its day, and I suppose most of us remember him better as one of
+Dickens's most familiar friends. He painted the scenery for Wilkie
+Collins's play, _The Lighthouse_, when Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mark
+Lemon, and others of their circle produced it at Tavistock House, and for
+other of the plays that Dickens staged there in his "smallest theatre in
+the world"; and Dickens's letters are sown with references to him. Writing
+to an American friend describing the Christmas sports he had been holding
+at his house, Dickens says he has purchased the entire stock-in-trade of a
+conjuror, and that "in those tricks which require a confederate I am
+assisted (by reason of his imperturbable good humour) by Stanfield, who
+always does his part exactly the wrong way, to the unspeakable delight of
+all beholders. We come out on a small scale to-night" (31st December 1842)
+"at Forster's, where we see the old year out and the new one in." On the
+16th January 1844 (putting _Martin Chuzzlewit_ aside) he is writing to
+Forster, "I had written you a line pleading Jonas and Mrs. Gamp, but this
+frosty day tempts me sorely. I am distractingly late; but I look at the
+sky, think of Hampstead, and feel hideously tempted. Don't come with Mac
+and fetch me. I couldn't resist if you did"; and a month later, on the
+18th February, "Stanfield and Mac have come in, and we are going to
+Hampstead to dinner. I leave Betsy Prig as you know, so don't you make a
+scruple about leaving Mrs. Harris. We shall stroll leisurely up to give
+you time to join us, and dinner will be on the table at Jack Straw's at
+four"; and in less than a month, on the 5th March, "Sir, I
+will--he--he--he--he--he--he--I will NOT eat with you, either at your own
+house or the club. But the morning looks bright, and a walk to Hampstead
+would suit me marvellously. If you should present yourself at my gate
+(bringing the R.A.'s along with you) I shall not be sapparised. So no more
+at this writing from poor MR. DICKENS." In June of the same year he sent
+Forster the proof of a preface he had written to a book by a poor
+carpenter named Overs, saying, "I wish you would read this, and give it me
+again when we meet at Stanfield's to-day"; and, still in the same year,
+"Stanny" is one of the friends he wishes Forster to invite to his chambers
+in Lincoln's Inn Fields to hear a reading of _The Chimes_ before it is
+published.
+
+No part of London is richer in literary and artistic associations than
+Hampstead. At the "Upper Flask" tavern, now known as the "Upper Heath,"
+Pope, Addison, Steele, Congreve, Hogarth and the other members of the
+Kit-Kat club used to meet in the eighteenth century, and Hogarth and
+Addison and his friends frequently resorted to the "Bull and Bush" at
+North End. Akenside lived for a while in Hampstead, and after he had left
+it went to stay occasionally with his friend Mr. Dyson at Golder's Hill,
+and was staying there in 1758 when he wrote his _Ode on recovering from a
+fit of sickness in the Country_, beginning:--
+
+  "Thy verdant scenes, O Goulder's Hill,
+   Once more I seek, a languid guest."
+
+Gay often went to Hampstead to drink the waters, at the Pump Room, in Well
+Walk; Dr. Arbuthnot lived in Hampstead, where Swift and Pope were among
+his visitors; Fuseli lodged in Church Row; Dr. Johnson's wife spent some
+of her summer holidays at a cottage near the entrance to the Priory, and
+the Doctor would tear himself away from his loved Fleet Street to pass an
+occasional day or two there with her; and of recent years Robert Louis
+Stevenson stayed with Sidney Colvin at Abernethy House, Mount Vernon, and
+at that time Stevenson, who was then twenty-four, so far conformed to the
+proprieties as to go about in "a frock coat and tall hat, which he had
+once worn at a wedding."
+
+[Illustration: STANFIELD'S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Tennyson's mother had a house in Flask Walk; when Edward Fitzgerald was
+in London, Tennyson introduced him to Dickens, and these three, taking
+Thackeray with them, drove out together to Hampstead Heath. Relics of Dick
+Turpin are preserved at the Spaniards Inn, a quaint, old-world hostelry
+that has in different generations entertained Goldsmith, Gainsborough, Sir
+Joshua Reynolds, Garrick and Constable, as well as Dickens and many of his
+familiars.
+
+[Illustration: THE UPPER FLASK. FROM THE BOWLING GREEN.]
+
+But more intimately than with any other of the immortals Hampstead has
+come to be associated with Keats and Leigh Hunt--with Keats in particular.
+He was born, a good Cockney, in Moorfields, over his father's livery
+stables, and in 1816 went to live with his brother Tom at No. 1 Well Walk,
+next door to the "Green Man," which has been succeeded by the Wells
+Tavern, and in his room here, on the 18th November 1816, when he was
+one-and-twenty, wrote a sonnet _To My Brothers_:--
+
+  "Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals,
+     And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep
+     Like whispers of the household gods that keep
+   A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.
+   And while for rhymes I search around the poles,
+     Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep,
+     Upon the lore so voluble and deep
+   That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
+
+   This is your birthday, Tom, and I rejoice
+     That thus it passes smoothly, quietly:
+   Many such eves of gently whispering noise
+     May we together pass, and calmly try
+   What are this world's true joys--ere the great Voice
+     From its fair face shall bid our spirits fly."
+
+In 1818 Keats moved to another part of Hampstead, and lodged with his
+friend, Charles Armitage Brown, a retired merchant, at Wentworth Place,
+now known as Lawn Bank, in John Street, which was the other day, for no
+sufficient reason, renamed Keats Grove. At that date Wentworth Place was
+divided into two houses, Brown renting one, and Wentworth Dilke occupying
+the other; and when the Dilkes were away from home they left their house
+in the possession of Mrs. Brawne, her son, and two daughters, the elder of
+these daughters being the Fanny Brawne of Keats's piteous love romance.
+Though he finished the writing of it, and wrote the preface to it, on a
+holiday at Teignmouth, _Endymion_ was published, and most of it had been
+written, whilst he was at Wentworth Place, and under this roof also he
+wrote his _Eve of St. Agnes_, _Isabella_, _Hyperion_, and the _Ode to a
+Nightingale_. As every one knows, the publication of _Endymion_ brought
+him little but ridicule and abuse from the reviewers; but, much as this
+must have wounded and mortified his sensitive nature, it was so far from
+being the cause of his death, as some sentimentalists said it was, that,
+as you may gather from his correspondence, it did not even discourage him.
+The _Quarterly_ snubbed him as a copyist of Leigh Hunt, professed to find
+_Endymion_ so tedious as to be almost unreadable, and saw nothing in it
+but "calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy"; _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, referring to his having qualified as a surgeon, sneered "Back
+to the shop, Mr. John, stick to plasters, pills, ointment-boxes;" and the
+majority of critics were equally unappreciative. Byron dubbed him "a
+tadpole of the Lakes," and in divers letters to John Murray says, "There
+is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to
+look at them. No more Keats, I entreat.... Of the praises of the little
+dirty blackguard Keats in the _Edinburgh_ I shall observe, as Johnson did
+when Sheridan the actor got a pension, 'What, has _he_ got a pension? Then
+it is time that I should give up _mine_.' At present, all the men they
+have ever praised are degraded by that insane article. Why don't they
+review and praise _Solomon's Guide to Health_? It is better sense and as
+much poetry as Johnny Keats." After Keats was dead, Byron changed his
+opinions somewhat, and was anxious that his disparagements of him should
+be suppressed. "You know very well," he writes to Murray, "that I did not
+approve of Keats's poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of
+Pope; but as he is dead, omit all that it said about him in any MSS. of
+mine, or publication. His _Hyperion_ is a fine monument, and will keep his
+name"; and he added later, "His fragment of _Hyperion_ seems actually
+inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Æschylus. He is a loss to our
+literature."
+
+Keats was too fully occupied with the writing of other poems, with the
+glowing raptures and black despairs of his passion for Fanny Brawne, and
+the anxieties attendant upon the illness that was already wearing him
+down, to give overmuch of his thoughts to the attacks of his critics;
+moreover, he found consolation in the society and friendship of such men
+as Cowden Clarke, Wentworth Dilke (who founded the _Athenæum_), John
+Hamilton Reynolds, Haydon the painter, and Leigh Hunt, whom he frequently
+visited at that cottage of his in the Vale of Health, which ought never to
+have been demolished. For it was the meeting-place, too, of Keats and
+Shelley, and within it on one occasion, according to Cowden Clarke, Leigh
+Hunt challenged Keats, "then, and there, and to time," to write in
+competition with him a sonnet on _The Grasshopper and the Cricket_, and
+Keats finished his first. Passing a night there when he could not sleep,
+Keats wrote his _Sleep and Poetry_; and the cottage was rich, too, in
+rumours of such guests as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Coleridge.
+
+[Illustration: KEATS' HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Keats was introduced to Coleridge by Leigh Hunt. In 1816, when he was
+trying to cure himself of the opium habit, Coleridge went to live with Mr.
+Gilman, a surgeon, in a house that still stands in The Grove, Highgate,
+and walking with Hunt one day in Millfield Lane, which runs on the
+Highgate side of the Heath, he chanced to meet Keats, and this is his own
+account of the meeting: "A loose, slack, and not well-dressed youth met me
+in a lane near Highgate. It was Keats. He was introduced to me, and stayed
+a minute or so. After he had left us a little way, he ran back and said,
+'Let me carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your hand.'
+'There is death in that hand,' I said when Keats was gone; yet this was, I
+believe, before the consumption showed itself distinctly." But another
+four years were not past when Hone, the author of _The Table Book_, saw
+"poor Keats, the poet of _The Pot of Basil_, sitting and sobbing his dying
+breath into a handkerchief," on a bench at the end of Well Walk,
+overlooking the Heath, "glancing parting looks towards the quiet landscape
+he had delighted in so much."
+
+Perhaps the best descriptions of Keats in the last four years of his life
+are those given by Haydon, the painter, in his _Memoirs_, and by Leigh
+Hunt in his _Autobiography_. "He was below the middle size," according to
+Haydon, "with a low forehead and an eye that had an inward look perfectly
+divine, like a Delphian priestess who saw visions.... Unable to bear the
+sneers of ignorance or the attacks of envy, not having strength of mind
+enough to buckle himself together like a porcupine, and present nothing
+but his prickles to his enemies, he began to despond, flew to dissipation
+as a relief which, after a temporary elevation of spirits, plunged him
+into deeper despondency than ever. For six weeks he was scarcely sober,
+and to show what a man does to gratify his habits, when once they get the
+better of him, he once covered his tongue and throat as far as he could
+reach with cayenne pepper, in order to appreciate the 'delicious coldness
+of claret in all its glory'--his own expression." Leigh Hunt writes, "He
+was under the middle height; and his lower limbs were small in comparison
+with the upper, but neat and well turned. His shoulders were very broad
+for his size: he had a face in which energy and sensibility were
+remarkably mixed up; an eager power, checked and made patient by ill
+health. Every feature was at once strongly cut and delicately alive. If
+there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, which was not
+without something of a character of pugnacity. His face was rather long
+than otherwise; the upper lip projected a little over the under; the chin
+was bold, the cheeks sunken; the eyes mellow and glowing, large, dark, and
+sensitive. At the recital of a noble action, or a beautiful thought, they
+would suffuse with tears and his mouth trembled. In this there was ill
+health as well as imagination, for he did not like these betrayals of
+emotion; and he had great personal as well as moral courage. He once
+chastised a butcher, who had been insolent, by a regular stand-up fight."
+(Tradition says this fight took place in one of the narrow courts out of
+the High Street, Hampstead.) "His hair, of a brown colour, was fine, and
+hung in natural ringlets. The head was a puzzle for the phrenologists,
+being remarkably small in the skull; a singularity he had in common with
+Byron and Shelley, whose hats I could not get on." Add to these a
+description given by one who knew him to Lord Houghton: "His eyes were
+large and blue, his hair auburn; he wore it divided down the centre, and
+it fell in rich masses each side of his face; his mouth was full, and less
+intellectual than his other features. His countenance lives in my mind as
+one of singular beauty and brightness; it had the expression as if it had
+been looking on some glorious sight."
+
+The last two years of his life at Hampstead, with their quiet happiness,
+fierce unrests, passionate hopes and despairs, are all wonderfully
+reflected in his letters of this period. He writes from Wentworth Place to
+John Taylor, the publisher, in 1818, setting forth his poetical creed and
+saying, with a clear perception of its defects, "If _Endymion_ serves me
+as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content.... I have, I am sure, many
+friends who, if I fail, will attribute any change in my life and temper to
+humbleness rather than pride--to a cowering under the wings of great
+poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious
+to get _Endymion_ printed that I may forget it and proceed." There is a
+long letter to his sister in 1819, telling her of the books he has been
+reading, and describing his every-day life, beginning, "The candles are
+burnt down and I am using the wax taper, which has a long snuff on it--the
+fire is at its last click--I am sitting with my back to it, with one foot
+rather askew upon the rug and the other with the heel a little elevated
+from the carpet. I am writing this on _The Maid's Tragedy_, which I have
+read since tea with great pleasure. Besides this volume of Beaumont and
+Fletcher, there are on the table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of
+Tom Moore's called _Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress_--nothing in it."
+Reading this minute little sketch of himself, it is easy to picture him
+sitting late that night in his quiet room in Keats Grove; but it is the
+letters to Fanny Brawne that give this house, which was then two houses,
+its deepest and most living interest.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE'S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+In 1819 he writes to her, whilst he is away holidaying in the Isle of
+Wight and she at Wentworth Place, "I have never known any unalloyed
+happiness for many days together; the death or sickness of some one has
+always spoilt my hours--and now, when none such troubles oppress me, it
+is, you must confess, very hard that another sort of pain should haunt me.
+Ask yourself, my love, whether you are not very cruel to have so
+entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom." And again, "Your letter gave me
+more delight than anything in the world but yourself could do.... I never
+knew before what such love as you have made me feel was; I did not believe
+in it; my fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up." And again,
+"I have been in so irritable a state of health these two or three last
+days, that I did not think I should be able to write this week.... I have
+been, I cannot tell why, in capital spirits this last hour. What reason?
+When I have to take my candle and retire to a lonely room, without the
+thought, as I fall asleep, of seeing you to-morrow morning? or the next
+day, or the next--it takes on the appearance of impossibility and
+eternity. I will say a month--I will say I will see you in a month at
+most, though no one but yourself should see me; if it be but for an hour.
+I should not like to be so near you as London without being continually
+with you; after having once more kissed you, Sweet, I would rather be here
+alone at my task than in the bustle and hateful literary chitchat.
+Meantime you must write to me--as I will every week--for your letters keep
+me alive."
+
+Back in London, making a short stay with Leigh Hunt, then living at
+College Street, Kentish Town, Keats sends to Wentworth Place a letter to
+Fanny Brawne, in the course of which he tells her, "My love has made me
+selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but
+seeing you again--my Life seems to stop there--I see no further. You have
+absorbed me.... My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you." Even
+when he is home again, in his own part of the Wentworth Place house, he is
+writing in February 1820, "They say I must remain confined to this room
+for some time. The consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant
+prison of the house next to yours. You must come and see me frequently:
+this evening without fail"; and again, in the same month, "You will have a
+pleasant walk to-day. I shall see you pass. I shall follow you with my
+eyes over the Heath. Will you come towards evening instead of before
+dinner? When you are gone, 'tis past--if you do not come till the evening
+I have something to look forward to all day. Come round to my window for a
+moment when you have read this."
+
+In September of that year he set out on that voyage to Italy from which he
+was never to return, and whilst the ship was delayed off the Isle of
+Wight, he wrote to his friend, Charles Armitage Brown, at the old
+Hampstead address, "The very thing which I want to live most for will be a
+great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can help it?... I
+daresay you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping--you know
+what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at your
+house. I wish for death every day and night to deliver me from these
+pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy even those
+pains which are better than nothing.... I think, without my mentioning it,
+for my sake, you would be a friend to Miss Brawne when I am dead. You
+think she has many faults--but, for my sake, think she has not one. If
+there is anything you can do for her by word or deed I know you will do
+it.... The thought of leaving Miss Brawne is beyond everything
+horrible--the sense of darkness coming over me--I eternally see her figure
+eternally vanishing. Some of the phrases she was in the habit of using
+during my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring in my ears. Is there
+another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be; we
+cannot be created for this sort of suffering."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE DUMAURIER'S GRAVE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Because of all this, and of the reiterated longings and the heartaches
+that Keats poured out in other letters that he wrote from Italy, and that
+were delivered here to Armitage Brown, I always feel that Wentworth Place
+is the saddest and most sacred of London's literary shrines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ROUND ABOUT SOHO AGAIN
+
+
+As a general thing the literary man is not to be found living in the
+aristocratic quarters of the town until after he has done his best work
+and has begun to make money out of his inferior books. I don't think any
+man of letters has ever rented a house in Park Lane, except Disraeli, and
+he went there as a successful politician; such glorious thoroughfares are
+reserved to more respectable stock-brokers and company-promoters, whilst
+those whom the gods love are driven to seek refuge in the cheap and shabby
+houses of meaner streets. Half the squalid squares and byways of Soho are
+in reality vestibules and aisles of the Temple of Fame. Blake, as we have
+seen in a former chapter, lived in Poland Street; and in the same street
+lived Flaxman, and, later, Shelley. Dryden lived in Gerrard Street, a
+century before Burke made his home there; Hazlitt died in Frith Street;
+Mulready the painter had his studio in Broad Street; and the sculptor,
+James Northcote, resided for over thirty years in Argyll Place. When
+Madame de Stael was in England she stayed at 30 (now 29) Argyll Street,
+and Byron speaks of visiting her there. I have already referred to Sir
+James Thornhill's house in Dean Street; near by, in Soho Square, lived the
+actor, Kemble; and this square has pathetic memories of De Quincey, who
+lodged for a time, under strange circumstances, at the Greek Street corner
+of it.
+
+Left an orphan to the care of guardians who seem to have treated him with
+some harshness, De Quincey ran away from the Manchester Grammar School in
+1802, when he was only seventeen, and after wandering through Wales made
+his way to London. Here for two months he was houseless, and seldom slept
+under a roof, and for upwards of sixteen weeks suffered "the physical
+anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity." He tells you in his
+_Confessions_ how he used to pace "the never-ending terraces" of Oxford
+Street, and at night sleep on some doorstep, and dream, "and wake to the
+captivity of hunger." In Oxford Street he fell in with that most innocent
+and tender-hearted of street-walkers, Ann, whose surname he never knew,
+and to whose compassion and charity he always felt that he owed his life:
+"For many weeks I had walked at nights with this poor friendless girl up
+and down Oxford Street, or had rested with her on steps and under the
+shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old as myself; she told me,
+indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year.... One night when
+we were pacing slowly along Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt
+more than usually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into
+Soho Square. Thither we went, and we sat down on the steps of a house
+which to this hour I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner act
+of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble
+action which she there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse.
+I had been leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I sank from
+her arms and fell backwards on the steps." He was so utterly exhausted
+that he felt he must have died, but with a cry of terror she ran off into
+Oxford Street and returned with port wine and spices which she had paid
+for out of her own pocket, at a time when "she had scarcely the
+wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life;" and this timely
+stimulant served to restore him.
+
+By-and-by, meeting a friend who lent him ten pounds, he travelled down to
+Windsor to see if he could get a certain friend of his family there to
+assist him; but before going he paid Ann something of his debt to her, and
+arranged that three nights from then, and every night after until they
+should meet, she would be at the corner of Titchfield Street, Soho. On his
+return to London he was at the appointed place night after night, but Ann
+never appeared, and though he inquired everywhere and searched the
+neighbourhood for her he was never able to see or hear of her again.
+
+Earlier than this, however, and before he had succeeded in borrowing that
+ten pounds, the coming on of a bitterly inclement winter drove him to seek
+a wretched lodging at 61 (then 38) Greek Street, Soho Square. The house
+was a dirty, neglected, cheerless place, tenanted by a disreputable
+attorney named Brunell-Brown, who had a curious clerk named Pyment, and
+only came and went to and from his office by stealth because he was deep
+in debts and continually dodging the bailiffs. A few weeks of lodging
+miserably here nearly exhausted the little cash De Quincey had brought to
+London with him, and he had to give up his room. But he explained his
+position frankly to Brunell-Brown, and this kindly, reckless rascal, who
+had a genuine knowledge and love of literature, and was interested in the
+young lodger who could talk to him intelligently on such matters, readily
+gave him permission to come to the house nightly and sleep gratis in one
+of its empty rooms, and allowed him, moreover, to eat the scraps from his
+breakfast-table.
+
+The house had an unoccupied look, especially of nights, when the lawyer
+himself was usually absent. "There was no household or establishment in
+it; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I
+found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that the house already
+contained one single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years
+old; but she seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make
+children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that
+she had lived and slept there for some time before I came; and great joy
+the poor creature expressed when she found that I was in future to be her
+companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large, and from the
+want of furniture the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the
+spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and,
+I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more
+(it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her
+protection against all ghosts whatsoever, but, alas! I could offer her no
+other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law
+papers for a pillow, but no other covering than a sort of large horseman's
+cloak; afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old sofa-cover, a
+small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which added a
+little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for warmth and for
+security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than usually ill
+I took her into my arms, so that in general she was tolerably warm, and
+often slept when I could not....
+
+[Illustration: DE QUINCEY'S HOUSE. SOHO.]
+
+"Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and
+very early; sometimes not till ten o'clock; sometimes not at all. He was
+in constant fear of bailiffs. Improving on the plan of Cromwell, every
+night he slept in a different quarter of London; and I observed that he
+never failed to examine through a private window the appearance of those
+who knocked at the door before he would allow it to be opened. He
+breakfasted alone; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of
+his hazarding an invitation to a second person, any more than the quantity
+of esculent _matériel_, which for the most part was little more than a
+roll or a few biscuits which he had bought on his road from the place
+where he had slept. During his breakfast I generally contrived a reason
+for lounging in, and with an air of as much indifference as I could
+assume, took up such fragments as he had left; sometimes, indeed, there
+were none at all.... As to the poor child, she was never admitted into his
+study (if I may give that name to his chief depository of parchments, law
+writings, &c.); that room was to her the Bluebeard room of the house,
+being regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about six o'clock,
+which usually was his final departure for the night. Whether the child
+were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. Brunell-Brown, or only a servant, I
+could not ascertain; she did not herself know; but certainly she was
+treated altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did Mr. Brunell-Brown
+make his appearance than she went below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat,
+&c.; and, except when she was summoned to run an errand, she never emerged
+from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchen, &c. to the upper air until my
+welcome knock at night called up her little trembling footsteps to the
+front door. Of her life during the daytime, however, I knew little but
+what I gathered from her own account at night, for as soon as the hours of
+business commenced I saw that my absence would be acceptable, and in
+general, therefore, I went off and sate in the parks or elsewhere until
+nightfall."
+
+[Illustration: SHELLEY'S HOUSE. POLAND STREET W.]
+
+I have always thought that in all this there is something oddly
+reminiscent of Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness; the poor, half-starved
+little household drudge fits her part almost exactly, but De Quincey makes
+but a depressed and dismal Dick Swiveller; and Mr. Brunell-Brown seems to
+have been a lower type of the rascally lawyer than Sampson Brass was; but
+rascal as he was, one warms to him because of his kindness to his forlorn
+guest. "I must forget everything but that towards me," says De Quincey,
+"he was obliging and, to the extent of his power, generous." He goes on to
+say that in after years, whenever he was in London, he never failed to
+visit that house in Greek Street, and "about ten o'clock this very night,
+August 15, 1821--being my birthday--I turned aside from my evening walk
+down Oxford Street, purposely to take a glance at it; it is now occupied
+by a respectable family, and by the lights in the front drawing-room I
+observed a domestic party assembled, perhaps at tea, and apparently
+cheerful and gay. Marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness,
+cold, silence and desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when
+its nightly occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child.
+Her, by-the-by, in after years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from
+her situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child; she
+was neither pretty nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in
+manners."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS DE QUINCEY]
+
+His London privations ended with a reconciliation between himself and his
+guardians, and he was sent to Oxford--his quarrel with them being that
+they would not allow him to go there.
+
+De Quincey quitted Soho to go to Oxford, and Shelley, when he was expelled
+from Oxford in 1811, came to Soho. He travelled up to London on the coach
+with his friend Hogg. His cousin and sometime schoolfellow, Medwin,
+relates how before dawn on a March morning Shelley and Hogg knocked at his
+door in Garden Court, Temple, and he heard Shelley's cracked voice cry, in
+his well-known pipe, "Medwin, let me in. I am expelled," and after a loud
+sort of half-hysterical laugh repeat, "I am expelled," and add "for
+atheism." After breakfast they went out to look for lodgings, and, says
+Hogg, "never was a young beauty so capricious, so hard to please" as
+Shelley; but the name of Poland Street attracted him because it suggested
+recollections of Thaddeus of Warsaw and freedom, and he declared "we must
+lodge here, should we sleep on the step of a door." A bill advertising
+lodgings to let hung in the window of No. 15, so they knocked and entered
+and inspected them--"a quiet sitting-room, its walls papered with
+trellised vine-leaves and clustering grapes," with a similarly decorated
+bedroom opening out of it, and Shelley whispered, "We must stay here for
+ever."
+
+"For ever" dwindled to something less than a year; but here for that time
+Shelley lived and resumed his interrupted studies, as far as might be, and
+was secretly supported by his sisters, who sent their pocket-money round
+to him by the hand of their schoolfellow, Harriett Westbrook, daughter of
+the retired tavern-keeper, John Westbrook, who was living near Park Lane,
+at 23 Chapel Street (now Aldford Street).
+
+In April 1811 Shelley's father wrote insisting that he should break off
+all relations with Hogg and place himself under a tutor of his father's
+selection, and Shelley replied, from his Poland Street lodgings:--
+
+    "MY DEAR FATHER,--As you do me the honour of requesting to hear the
+    determination of my mind, as the basis of your future actions, I feel
+    it my duty, although it gives me pain to wound 'the sense of duty to
+    your own character, to that of your family, and feelings as a
+    Christian,' decidedly to refuse my assent to both the proposals in
+    your letter, and to affirm that similar refusals will always be the
+    fate of similar requests. With many thanks for your great kindness,--I
+    remain your affectionate, dutiful son,
+
+      "PERCY B. SHELLEY."
+
+His father presently relented so far as to make him an allowance of two
+hundred pounds a year. One evening in August, having arranged a hasty
+elopement with Harriett Westbrook, Shelley walked from Poland Street to a
+small coffee-house in Mount Street, and as Dr. Dowden sets forth in his
+Life of the poet, dispatched a letter thence to Harriett, her father's
+house in Aldford Street being close handy, telling her at what hour he
+would have a hackney coach waiting for her at the door of the
+coffee-house. At the appointed time the coach was there in readiness, and
+a little behind time "Harriett was seen tripping round the corner from
+Chapel Street, and the coach wheels rattled towards the City inn from
+which the northern mails departed."
+
+[Illustration: SHELLEY. MARCHMONT STREET.]
+
+They travelled post-haste to the North, and were married in Edinburgh; and
+in another three years the deserted Harriett had ended her life in the
+Serpentine, and Shelley had gone off with Mary Godwin. Meanwhile, however,
+returning to London after his marriage to Harriett, Shelley stayed for a
+few days at the house of his father-in-law, and then at Cooke's Hotel, in
+Albemarle Street. On another occasion he lodged for a short time at a
+house still standing in Marchmont Street (No. 26), a drab and dingy
+thoroughfare in the neighbourhood of Russell Square.
+
+Hazlitt was a Soho resident for no longer than about six months. In 1830
+he came from his lodgings in Bouverie Street to occupy rooms at No. 6
+Frith Street. He was then already failing in health, separated from his
+wife, harassed financially through the failure of his publishers,
+altogether broken and dispirited. Much disappointment, the thwarting of
+many of his highest personal ambitions, had soured and embittered him.
+Haydon calls him a "singular mixture of friend and fiend, radical and
+critic, metaphysician, poet and painter, on whose word no one could rely,
+on whose heart no one could calculate." A critic of genius, a brilliant
+essayist; with not so great a heart as Lamb's but a finer intellect; he
+has never to this day received his full meed of recognition. He moves in
+spirit among the immortals as apart and unsociable as he moved among them
+in the body. "We are told," wrote P. G. Patmore, "that on the summit of
+one of those columns which form the magnificent ruins of Hadrian's Temple,
+in the plain of Athens, there used to dwell a hermit who scarcely ever
+descended from this strangely-chosen abode, owing his scanty food and
+support to the mingled admiration and curiosity of the peasants who
+inhabited the plain below. Something like this was the position of William
+Hazlitt. Self-banished from the social world, no less by the violence of
+his own passions than by those petty regards of custom and society which
+could not or would not tolerate the trifling aberrations from external
+form and usage engendered by a mind like his, ... he became, as regarded
+himself, personally heedless of all things but the immediate gratification
+of his momentary wishes, careless of personal character, indifferent to
+literary fame, forgetful of the past, reckless of the future, and yet so
+exquisitely alive to the claims and the virtues of all these that the
+abandonment of his birthright in every one of them opened a separate
+canker in his heart, and made his life a living emblem of the early death
+which it foretokened."
+
+Patmore, too, has given a good sketch of his personal appearance. "The
+forehead," he says, "was magnificent; the nose precisely that which
+physiognomists have assigned as evidence of a fine and highly cultivated
+taste; though there was a peculiar character about the nostrils like
+that observable in those of a fiery and unruly horse. His eyes were not
+good. They were never brilliant, and there was a furtive and at times a
+sinister look about them as they glanced suspiciously from under their
+overhanging brows." Other contemporaries have described him as a grave
+man, diffident, almost awkward in manner, of middle size, and with eager,
+expressive eyes. S. C. Hall considered him mean-looking and
+unprepossessing; but though Talfourd speaks of him as slouching, awkward,
+and neglectful in his dress, he credits him with "a handsome, eager
+countenance, worn by sickness and thought."
+
+[Illustration: HAZLITT'S HOUSE. FRITH STREET.]
+
+But he was nearing the end of it all when he came to Frith Street. In
+August he was attacked with a violent sort of cholera, and never rallied
+from it. What was probably his last essay, one on "The Sick Chamber,"
+appeared that same month in the _New Monthly_, picturing his own invalid
+condition and touching gratefully on the consolation and enjoyment he
+could still derive from books. Nearing the close, he begged that his
+mother might be sent for, but she was an old lady of eighty-four living in
+Devonshire and was unable to go to him. "He died so quietly," in the words
+of his grandson, "that his son, who was sitting by his bedside, did not
+know that he was gone till the vital breath had been extinct a moment or
+two. His last words were, 'Well, I've had a happy life.'" The same
+authority adds that he found the following memorandum, in the handwriting
+of his grandmother: "Saturday, 18th September 1830, at about half-past
+four in the afternoon, died at his lodgings, No. 6 Frith Street, Soho,
+William Hazlitt, aged fifty-two years five months and eight days. Mr.
+Lamb, Mr. White, Mr. Hersey, and his own son were with him at the time."
+
+He was buried within a minute's walk of his house, in the churchyard of
+St. Anne's, Soho, and his tombstone removed from its first position,
+stands back against the wall of the church: the stone originally bore a
+curious, somewhat militant inscription, but this has recently been
+obliterated, and replaced by one that offers nothing but his name and a
+record of the dates of his birth and death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A PHILOSOPHER, TWO POETS, AND A NOVELIST
+
+
+Everybody has heard of _Sandford and Merton_, and hardly anybody nowadays
+has read it. I confess with shame that I am one who has not. But I have
+come across so many parodies of it and so many references to it in various
+books and articles that I am finding it more and more difficult to believe
+that I have not actually read the story itself. Mr. Barlow, the boy's
+tutor, lives in my mind as a large and solemn bore, but he was a bore of
+real knowledge; he was heavy with learning; and the boys themselves were
+dreadful little prigs, but underneath their priggishness they were manly
+boys, and there was something fine in their ideals of honour. No doubt
+they were largely modelled on their author, Thomas Day, who when he was a
+schoolboy started a fight with another boy on quite justifiable grounds,
+and soon finding that he completely outmatched his opponent, stopped the
+fight, and insisted on shaking hands with the other and making peace.
+
+That incident, and the queer originality of his whole outlook on life, has
+made me more interested in Day himself than in his one famous book, and
+has made me number 36 Wellclose Square, the house where he was born,
+among the London literary shrines that must not be overlooked.
+
+Wellclose Square is in Shadwell, on the skirts of Whitechapel, and is one
+of those melancholy places that have obviously seen better days. Dreary
+and drab and squalid as you see it now, when Day was born there on the
+22nd June 1748 it must have been a fairly select and superior residential
+quarter. Day's father was a collector of Customs who died a year after his
+son's birth, leaving him a very comfortable fortune of twelve hundred a
+year. The boy was educated at Charterhouse and at Oxford, and one way and
+another acquired lofty Stoic principles and a somewhat original philosophy
+that he lived up to obstinately all his life through, in spite of many
+rebuffs and a good deal of ridicule. He dressed carelessly, was
+indifferent to appearances, and scorned the "admiration of splendour which
+dazzles and enslaves mankind." He preferred the society of his inferiors
+because they were more unconventional, less artificial than the ladies and
+gentlemen of his own rank; he was awkward in the company of women, and
+regarded the sex with doubt as well as with diffidence. As you would
+expect of the man who wrote _Sandford and Merton_, he had no sense of
+humour; and his smallpox-pitted face and unattractive air and manner told
+so much against him that he was rejected emphatically by the first one or
+two women he proposed to. Withal, as was also fitting in the author of
+that fearsomely moral schoolboy-book, he was, in the words of his friend
+Edgeworth, "the most virtuous human being I have ever known."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS DAY. 36 WELLCLOSE SQUARE.]
+
+I suppose he was a pioneer of the "simple life" theory; anyhow, he
+persistently advocated simplicity in dress and living, and was determined
+to find a wife who shared these tastes, who should, moreover, be fond of
+literature and moral philosophy, "simple as a mountain girl in her dress,
+diet, and manners, and fearless and intrepid as the Spartan wives and
+Roman heroines." He was careful to state these requirements to the lady
+before proposing to her, and this seems to have spoilt his chances. The
+difficulty of discovering his ideal wife led to his making an odd
+experiment. He adopted two young girls, one from the Foundling Hospital,
+the other from the Shrewsbury Orphanage, and in deference to the
+proprieties formally bound them apprentice to his friend Edgeworth, and
+gave guarantees to the authorities that within one year he would make a
+decision between the two and pay a premium of a hundred pounds to
+apprentice one to a suitable trade, and send the other to be properly
+educated with the ultimate object of marrying her. The girls were about
+twelve years old. In order that they should not be influenced with wrong
+ideas by the people about them, he took them into France, where, as they
+only understood English, they could talk with nobody but himself; and
+there he proceeded to teach them reading and writing, and by ridicule,
+explanation, and reasoning sought "to imbue them with a deep hatred for
+dress, for luxury, for fine people, for fashion and titles, all of which
+inspired his own mind with such an unconquerable horror." In a letter
+which he wrote home about them he says, "I am not disappointed in one
+respect. I am more attached to and more convinced of the truth of my
+principles than ever. I have made them, in respect of temper, two such
+girls as, I may perhaps say without vanity, you have never seen at the
+same age. They have never given me a moment's trouble throughout the
+voyage, are always contented, and think nothing so agreeable as waiting
+upon me (no moderate convenience for a lazy man)." Nevertheless, in
+France, the girls proved very quarrelsome; he had to nurse them through a
+severe attack of smallpox, and once when they were out boating they both
+fell into the Rhone, and he risked his life to save them.
+
+Within the year, he brought them back to England and had made his choice.
+He apprenticed one, who was "invincibly stupid," to a milliner; and the
+other, Sabrina Sidney, he carried with him to a house he had taken near
+Lichfield and there "resumed his preparations for implanting in her young
+mind the characteristic virtues of Arria, Portia and Cornelia." But she
+disappointed him; he endeavoured in vain to steel her against shrinking
+from pain and the fear of danger. "When he dropped melting sealing-wax on
+her arms she did not endure it heroically; nor when he fired pistols at
+her petticoats which she believed to be charged with balls could she help
+starting aside or suppress her screams." She was not fond of science, and
+was unable to keep a secret satisfactorily; so after a year's trial Day
+sent her away to a boarding-school, and proceeded to pay his addresses to
+a young lady living in the neighbourhood, who first put him on a period of
+probation, and then, after he had made himself ridiculous in trying to
+dress and behave as she wished, rejected him.
+
+[Illustration: LORD BYRON]
+
+Whereupon his thoughts turned again to Sabrina, who had a real affection
+for him; but her failure to obey him in certain small details of dress
+again displeased him, and finally deciding against her, he in the long run
+married a Miss Milnes. His one objection to this lady was that she
+possessed a considerable fortune, and would therefore probably refuse to
+live the simple life; but when he had categorically put his requirements
+to her, and she had consented to dispense with all luxuries, to cut
+herself off from social gaieties, and reside in the country with him,
+restricted in every way to the bare necessaries of existence, working and
+spending for the behoof of the poor and needy, he ventured to make her
+Mrs. Day, and never had occasion to regret it. Sabrina eventually married
+a barrister, but refused to do so until she had Day's consent; and when,
+after writing divers political, economic, and philosophical works that
+nobody hears of now, and _Sandford and Merton_, which nobody reads any
+longer, Day died of a fall from an unmanageable horse which he insisted
+could be controlled by kindness, his wife was inconsolable, and died soon
+after him of a broken heart.
+
+So he must have been a man worth knowing, and, in spite of his
+peculiarities and his oppressive earnestness, more likeable than most of
+us, when you knew him. Anyhow, he thought for himself, and had opinions of
+his own, and was not afraid to act upon them. And such men are so
+uncommonly rare that I think the County Council should put a tablet on the
+face of his birthplace at once, for the encouragement of all men who are
+something more than cheap copies of their neighbours.
+
+Across the other side of London, at 24 (then 16) Holles Street, Cavendish
+Square, Lord Byron was born, on 22nd January 1788--a very different man,
+but also unconventional, though in more conventional ways. But the house
+here has been considerably altered to suit the requirements of the big
+drapery establishment that at present occupies it, and of Byron's various
+residences in London I believe the only one that survives in its original
+condition is that at No. 4 Bennet Street, St. James's. Here he had rooms
+on the first floor in 1813 and the early months of 1814, and it was in
+those rooms that he wrote _The Giaour_, _The Bride of Abydos_, and _The
+Corsair_. Writing to Moore from here on the 28th July 1813, he says, "I am
+training to dine with Sheridan and Rogers this evening"; and in the Diary
+he was keeping at this time he notes, on 16th November 1813, "Read Burns
+to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should have had more
+polish--less force--just as much verse but no immortality--a divorce and
+duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been
+less spirituous, he might have lived as long as Sheridan, and outlived as
+much as poor Brinsley."
+
+From Bennet Street Byron carried on a correspondence with the lady he was
+destined to marry, Miss Anna Isabella Milbanke. "I look upon myself," he
+tells her in one of his letters, "as a very facetious personage, and may
+appeal to most of my acquaintance in proof of my assertion. Nobody laughs
+more, and though your friend Joanna Baillie says somewhere that 'Laughter
+is the child of misery,' I do not believe her (unless indeed a hysteric),
+though I think it is sometimes the parent." In another of the same
+September 1813, evidently replying to one of hers, he protests: "'Gay'
+but not 'content'--very true.... You have detected a laughter 'false to
+the heart'--allowed--yet I have been tolerably sincere with you, and I
+fear sometimes troublesome." In November he writes to her, "I perceive by
+part of your last letter that you are still inclined to believe me a
+gloomy personage. Those who pass so much of their time entirely alone
+can't be always in very high spirits; yet I don't know--though I certainly
+do enjoy society to a certain extent, I never passed two hours in mixed
+company without wishing myself out of it again. Still, I look upon myself
+as a facetious companion, well reputed by all the wits at whose jests I
+readily laugh, and whose repartees I take care never to incur by any kind
+of contest--for which I feel as little qualified as I do for the more
+solid pursuits of demonstration."
+
+[Illustration: BYRON. 4 BENNET STREET. ST. JAMES'S.]
+
+As for his gloom or gaiety, Sir Walter Scott, who lunched with him and
+Charles Mathews at Long's Hotel, in Old Bond Street, in 1815, said, "I
+never saw Byron so full of fun, frolic, wit, and whim: he was as playful
+as a kitten." Again, writing in his Journal, after Byron's death, Sir
+Walter observes, "What I liked about Byron, besides his boundless genius,
+was his generosity of spirit as well as purse, and his utter contempt of
+all affectations of literature, from the school-magisterial style to the
+lackadaisical"; and he relates an anecdote in illustration of Byron's
+extreme sensitiveness: "Like Rousseau, he was apt to be very suspicious,
+and a plain, downright steadiness of manner was the true mode to maintain
+his good opinion. Will Rose told me that once, while sitting with Byron,
+he fixed insensibly his eyes on his feet, one of which, it must be
+remembered, was deformed. Looking up suddenly, he saw Byron regarding him
+with a look of concentrated and deep displeasure, which wore off when he
+observed no consciousness or embarrassment in the countenance of Rose.
+Murray afterwards explained this by telling Rose that Lord Byron was very
+jealous of having this personal imperfection noticed or attended to." He
+goes on to say that Byron was a mischief-maker; he would tell one man the
+unpleasant things that had been privately said of him by another; and he
+loved to mystify people, "to be thought awful, mysterious and gloomy, and
+sometimes hinted at strange causes."
+
+So that if he had no literary affectations he clearly cultivated a pose of
+mysterious misery both in his life and his poetry, and this it was that
+exasperated Carlyle into calling him "the teeth-grinding, glass-eyed, lone
+Caloyer." And the pose was helped out by his handsome and romantic
+appearance. "Byron's countenance is a thing to dream of," Scott told
+Lockhart. "A certain fair lady whose name has been too often mentioned in
+connection with his told a friend of mine that when she first saw Byron it
+was in a crowded room, and she did not know who it was, but her eyes were
+instantly nailed, and she said to herself, 'That pale face is my fate.'
+And, poor soul, if a god-like face and god-like powers could have made
+excuse for devilry, to be sure she had one." He said on the same occasion,
+"As for poets, I have seen, I believe, all the best of our own time and
+country--and, though Burns had the most glorious eyes imaginable, I never
+thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character
+except Byron." Mrs. Opie said, "His voice was such a voice as the devil
+tempted Eve with"; and Charles Mathews once remarked that "he was the only
+man I ever contemplated to whom I felt disposed to apply the word
+beautiful."
+
+Nevertheless, for a while Miss Milbanke was proof against his
+fascinations. In November 1813, about the date of that last letter of his
+to her from which I have quoted, he offered her his hand and was rejected.
+He proposed to another lady in the following September, and was rejected
+again, and almost immediately afterwards he called on Miss Milbanke at her
+father's house, 29 Portland Place, and in the library there passionately
+renewed his suit, and this time was successful. They were married in
+January 1815, and went to live at 13 Piccadilly, and in January of the
+next year, after twelve months of little happiness and much wretchedness,
+separated for good, a month after the birth of their child.
+
+This Piccadilly house has been pulled down. The Albany to which Byron
+removed in 1814, and which he left on his marriage, still remains; and so,
+too, does No. 8 St. James's Street, where he lived in 1809, when his
+_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ took the town by storm, but it has
+undergone so much alteration that it no longer seems so intimately
+reminiscent of Byron as Bennet Street does.
+
+Whilst Byron was residing in St. James's Street, publishing the _English
+Bards_ and writing the first canto of _Childe Harold_, Coleridge was
+living in a house at Portland Place, Hammersmith, that is now known as No.
+7 Addison Bridge Place. Somehow, one does not readily connect Coleridge
+with London, even though he had lodged for many years at Highgate before
+he died there. But one time and another he spent quite a large part of his
+life in the metropolis. He was at school with Lamb, of course, at Christ's
+Hospital; and are not Lamb's letters strewn with yearning remembrances of
+the glorious evenings he and Coleridge and Hazlitt and others passed, in
+later years, in the smoky parlour of "The Salutation and Cat," in Newgate
+Street? At various dates, he lived at Buckingham Street, and at Norfolk
+Street, Strand, in Pall Mall, and in King Street, Covent Garden, when he
+was working on the staff of the _Morning Post_; to say nothing of visits
+to London when he put up at one or another of Lamb's many homes in the
+City; and there is still in one of the courts of Fetter Lane that Newton
+Hall where he delivered a series of lectures in 1818.
+
+By 1810, when he came to London and settled for a period at 7 Addison
+Bridge Place, Coleridge had done all his great work as a poet, and under
+stress of financial difficulties was turning more and more from poetry to
+lecturing and journalism as sources of income. There is a letter of Lamb's
+to Hazlitt, dated 28th November 1810, when Hazlitt was holidaying and
+working at Winterslow, in which he mentions towards the close--"Coleridge
+is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing or going to write in
+the _Courier_ against Cobbett and in favour of paper money." Byron wrote
+to a friend in the succeeding year, "Coleridge is lecturing. 'Many an old
+fool,' said Hannibal to some such lecturer, 'but such as this, never'";
+and to the same friend two days later, "Coleridge has been lecturing
+against Campbell. Rogers was present, and from him I derive the
+information. We are going to make a party to hear this Manichean of
+poesy"; and on the same day to another friend, "Coleridge has attacked the
+_Pleasures of Hope_, and all other pleasures whatsoever. Mr. Rogers was
+present, and heard himself indirectly _rowed_ by the lecturer"; and next
+week, "To-morrow I dine with Rogers, and am to hear Coleridge, who is a
+kind of rage at present."
+
+[Illustration: COLERIDGE. ADDISON BRIDGE PLACE.]
+
+Coleridge was then only thirty-eight, and had another twenty-four years of
+life before him. He was already, and had for long past, been struggling in
+the toils of the opium habit, and his poetical inspiration was leaving
+him, for though _Christabel_ and _Kubla Khan_ were not published until
+1816 they were written nearly ten years before. There are a number of
+minor poems bearing later dates; several in 1809, many long after that,
+but only one dated 1810, which may be supposed to have been written in
+that Hammersmith house, and this is nothing but a respectable translation
+of a passage in Ottfried's metrical paraphrase of the Gospels. But his
+lectures were a wonder and a delight, Byron's disapproval notwithstanding.
+He was always an eloquent preacher, and became a chief among lecturers as
+he did among poets. "Have you ever heard me preach?" he asked Lamb, and
+Lamb replied with his whimsical stammer, "I never heard you do anything
+else!" But you remember that fine essay of Hazlitt's in which he recounts
+his first acquaintance with Coleridge?--how he rose before daylight and
+walked ten miles in the mud to hear him preach. "When I got there, the
+organ was playing the hundredth psalm, and when it was done Mr. Coleridge
+rose and gave out his text, 'And he went up into the mountain to pray,
+HIMSELF, ALONE.' As he gave out his text his voice 'rose like a steam of
+rich distilled perfumes,' and when he came to the two last words, which he
+pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young,
+as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if
+that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe." He
+describes the sermon, and goes on, "I could not have been more delighted
+if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met
+together.... I returned home well satisfied." Then Coleridge called to see
+his father, a dissenting minister in the neighbourhood, and for two hours
+he talked and Hazlitt listened spellbound, and when he went, Hazlitt
+walked with him six miles on the road. "It was a fine morning," he says,
+"in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way." And with what a
+fine generosity he acknowledges what that meeting and this talk of
+Coleridge's had meant to him. "I was stunned, startled with it as from a
+deep sleep.... I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a
+worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but now, bursting the
+deadly bands that bound them--
+
+  'With Styx nine times round them,'
+
+my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes catch the
+golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its original
+bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart,
+shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found nor will it
+ever find a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not
+remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself,
+I owe to Coleridge." That was when Coleridge was twenty-six and Hazlitt
+twenty. These twelve years after that, when Coleridge was lecturing in
+London, his fancy and imagination were as dazzling and as powerful as
+ever, and his voice and language had lost none of their magic. But his
+thoughts were perhaps tending towards that transcendental obscurity that
+reached its worst when he was established in his closing days at Highgate,
+with his little group of worshipping disciples around him, and when
+Carlyle went to hear and to ridicule him. Anyhow, here is an account
+Rogers gives of a visit he paid to him when he had transferred himself
+from Hammersmith to Pall Mall:--
+
+"Coleridge was a marvellous talker. One morning when Hookham Frere also
+breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three hours without
+intermission, about poetry, and so admirably that I wish every word he
+uttered had been written down. But sometimes his harangues were quite
+unintelligible, not only to myself, but to others. Wordsworth and I called
+upon him one afternoon, when he was in a lodging off Pall Mall. He talked
+uninterruptedly for about two hours, during which Wordsworth listened to
+him with profound attention, every now and then nodding his head, as if in
+assent. On quitting the lodgings I said to Wordsworth, 'Well, for my part,
+I could not make head or tail of Coleridge's oration; pray did you
+understand it?' 'Not one syllable of it,' was Wordsworth's reply."
+
+He talked like one inspired, but his looks, except whilst he was talking,
+belied him. "My face," he said justly of himself, "unless when animated by
+immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth and great, indeed almost
+idiotic, good nature. 'Tis a mere carcase of a face, flat, flabby, and
+expressive chiefly of unexpression. Yet I am told that my eye, eyebrows,
+and forehead are physiognomically good." De Quincey says there was a
+peculiar haze or dimness mixed with the light of his eyes; and when he was
+roused to animation Lamb thought he looked like "an archangel a little
+damaged." But whether that haze of his eyes got into his talk, whether his
+thoughts were obscurely uttered, or whether it was they were too high and
+great for his auditors to take in so easily as a listener expects to grasp
+what is said to him is, at least, an open question. It may well be that
+Shelley hit the truth in the _Letter to Maria Gisborne_ that he wrote from
+Leghorn, in 1820:--
+
+  "You will see Coleridge; he who sits obscure
+   In the exceeding lustre and the pure
+   Intense irradiation of a mind
+   Which, with its own internal lightnings blind,
+   Flags wearily through darkness and despair--
+   A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
+   A hooded eagle among blinking owls."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CHARLES LAMB
+
+
+At one of those free-and-easy sociable gatherings in Lamb's rooms, in the
+Temple, which Hazlitt has so happily immortalised, Lamb provoked some
+discussion by asking which of all the English literary men of the past one
+would most wish to have seen and known. Ayrton, who was of the company,
+said he would choose the two greatest names in English literature--Sir
+Isaac Newton and John Locke. "Every one burst out laughing," writes
+Hazlitt, "at the expression of Lamb's face, in which impatience was
+restrained by courtesy. 'Yes, the greatest names,' he stammered out
+hastily, 'but they were not persons--not persons.... There is nothing
+personally interesting in the men.'" It is Lamb's glory that he is both a
+great name and a great and interesting personality; and if his question
+were put again to-day in any company of book-lovers I should not be alone
+in saying at once that the writer of the past I would soonest have seen
+and known is Charles Lamb.
+
+It is difficult to write of him without letting your enthusiasm run away
+with you. Except for a few reviewers of his own day (and the reviewers of
+one's own day count for little or nothing the day after), nobody who knew
+Lamb in his life or has come to know him through his books and the books
+that tell of him has been able to write of him except with warmest
+admiration and affection. Even so testy and difficult a man as Landor, who
+only saw Lamb once, could not touch on his memory without profound
+emotion, and says in some memorial verses:--
+
+  "Of all that ever wore man's form, 'tis thee
+   I first would spring to at the gates of heaven."
+
+And you remember Wordsworth's--
+
+  "O, he was good, if e'er a good man lived!"
+
+There is, too, that well-known anecdote of how Thackeray lifted a volume
+of _Elia_ and held it against his forehead and murmured "St. Charles!" All
+which, and many other utterances of love and reverence for his personal
+character, particularly Wordsworth's reference to him as "Lamb, the frolic
+and the gentle," would have exasperated Lamb himself and moved him to
+angry protest. "I have had the _Anthology_," he wrote to Coleridge in
+1800, "and like only one thing in it, 'Lewti'; but of that the last stanza
+is detestable, the rest most exquisite: the epithet 'enviable' would dash
+the finest poem. For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me
+ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, or do it in
+better verses. It did well enough five years ago when I came to see you,
+and was moral coxcomb enough at the time you wrote the lines to feed upon
+such epithets; but besides that the meaning of 'gentle' is equivocal at
+best, and almost always means poor-spirited, the very quality of
+gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpetings. My sentiment has long
+since vanished. I hope my virtues have done sucking. I can scarce think
+but you meant it in joke. I hope you did, for I should be ashamed to
+believe that you could think to gratify me by such praise, fit only to be
+a cordial to some green-sick sonneteer." The epithet so rankled in his
+recollection that a week later he returned to the topic. "In the next
+edition of the _Anthology_ (which Phoebus avert, and those nine other
+wandering maids also!) please to blot out 'gentle-hearted,' and substitute
+'drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering,' or any
+other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in
+question. And for Charles read Tom, or Bob, or Richard for mere delicacy."
+
+Gentle Lamb certainly was, but the word is not large enough or robustly
+human enough to cover all his character. He wins your regard by his faults
+as well as by his virtues. If he drank a little too much at times, and
+sometimes talked and wrote foolishly and too flippantly to please the
+serious-minded, he far more often talked and wrote wisely, wittily,
+exquisitely, and for thirty-eight years of his life he readily sacrificed
+himself to his sister's well-being, giving up all thought of marriage that
+he might be her constant guardian and attendant, watching dreadfully for
+signs of her recurring fits of insanity, and when they were coming upon
+her going with her to the melancholy gate of the asylum, and directly her
+mind was cleared, returning eagerly to fetch her home again.
+
+He was never in the habit of laying himself out to create a good
+impression on strangers; if they were unsympathetic, or he did not take to
+them, in his freakish fashion he would deliberately say and do things to
+shock and antagonise them, and so it came about that those who did not
+know him or could not appreciate him frequently set him down as "something
+between an imbecile, a brute, and a buffoon." Carlyle formed that sort of
+impression of him; and one can believe there was scarcely any point of
+contact between Carlyle's sombre, deadly earnest, man-with-a-message
+outlook and the tricksy, elvish, quaintly humorous spirit of Lamb, who
+wrote with a delicate fancy and tenderness that are more lasting than
+Carlyle's solid preachings are likely to prove, and who "stuttered his
+quaintness in snatches," says Haydon, "like the fool in _Lear_, and with
+equal beauty."
+
+That is a fine and wonderful glimpse of one side of Lamb given by Leigh
+Hunt when he says he could have imagined him "cracking a joke in the teeth
+of a ghost, and then melting into thin air himself out of sympathy with
+the awful." In describing him, most of his friends emphasise "the bland,
+sweet smile, with a touch of sadness in it." "A light frame, so fragile
+that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it," is Talfourd's picture
+of him, "clad in clerk-like black, and surmounted by a head of form and
+expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about
+an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying
+expression, though the prevalent feeling was sad; and the nose slightly
+curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of
+the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the
+shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and
+shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its quivering
+sweetness, and fix it for ever in words? There are none, alas, to answer
+the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought, striving with humour; the
+lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth; and a smile of painful
+sweetness, present an image to the mind it can as little describe as lose.
+His personal appearance and manner are not unfitly characterised by what
+he himself says in one of his letters to Manning of Braham--'a compound of
+the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel.'" Add to this the sketch that
+Patmore has left of him: "In point of intellectual character and
+expression, a finer face was never seen, nor one more fully, however
+vaguely, corresponding with the mind whose features it interpreted. There
+was the gravity usually engendered by a life passed in book-learning,
+without the slightest tinge of that assumption and affectation which
+almost always attend the gravity so engendered; the intensity and
+elevation of general expression that mark high genius, without any of its
+pretension and its oddity; the sadness waiting on fruitless thoughts and
+baffled aspirations, but no evidence of that spirit of scorning and
+contempt which these are apt to engender. Above all, there was a pervading
+sweetness and gentleness which went straight to the heart of every one who
+looked on it; and not the less so, perhaps, that it bore about it an air,
+a something, seeming to tell that it was not _put on_--for nothing could
+be more unjust than to tax Lamb with assuming anything, even a virtue,
+which he did not possess--but preserved and persevered in, spite of
+opposing and contradictory feelings within that struggled in vain for
+mastery. It was a thing to remind you of that painful smile which bodily
+disease and agony will sometimes put on, to conceal their sufferings from
+the observation of those they love."
+
+It was a look--this look of patient endurance, of smiling resignation, of
+painful cheerfulness--that you could not understand unless you were aware
+of the appalling tragedy that lay in the background of his life, and of
+the haunting dread, the anxious, daily anticipation of disaster, and the
+need of concealing this anxiety from her, that were involved in the
+matter-of-course self-sacrifice with which he devoted himself to the care
+and guardianship of his sister, Mary.
+
+It was in 1796, when Lamb was living with his father and mother and sister
+in lodgings in Little Queen Street, that the tragedy happened which was to
+overshadow all his after years. The father was drifting into second
+childhood, the mother an invalid. Mary Lamb had to attend upon them both,
+with the help of a small servant and, in addition, took in plain sewing;
+Charles was a junior clerk at the India House. Only a little while before
+Lamb had himself suffered a mental breakdown and had been placed under
+temporary restraint ("the six weeks that finished last year," he writes to
+Coleridge, in May 1796, "your very humble servant spent very agreeably in
+a madhouse, at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any
+one. But mad I was"); then, in September 1796, his sister suddenly went
+out of her mind, stabbed her mother to the heart, and in her frenzy threw
+knives at others in the room, and wounded her father before Lamb could
+seize her and get her under control. There are no letters more terrible or
+more pathetic than those he wrote to Coleridge, when the horror and
+heartbreak of this event was fresh upon him.
+
+    "My dearest Friend," he writes on the 27th September 1796, "White, or
+    some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time have informed
+    you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will
+    only give you the outlines. My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of
+    insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only
+    time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in
+    a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God
+    has preserved to me my senses: I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have
+    my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was slightly
+    wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of
+    the Bluecoat School, has been very kind to us, and we have no other
+    friend; but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the
+    best that remains to do. Write as religious a letter as possible, but
+    no mention of what is gone and done with. With me 'the former things
+    are passed away,' and I have something more to do than to feel. God
+    Almighty have us all in His keeping!
+
+      "C. LAMB.
+
+    "Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past
+    vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, publish
+    mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a
+    book, I charge you.
+
+    "Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this
+    yet to your dear wife. You look after your family; I have my reason
+    and strength left to take care of mine. I charge you, don't think of
+    coming to see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty
+    love you and all of us!
+
+      "C. LAMB."
+
+The book he mentions is one that he and Coleridge and Lloyd were arranging
+to publish together. In October there is another letter, replying to one
+from Coleridge, and saying his sister is restored to her senses--a long
+letter from which I shall quote only one or two memorable passages: "God
+be praised, Coleridge! wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been
+otherwise than collected and calm; even on that dreadful day, and in the
+midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquillity which bystanders
+may have construed into indifference--a tranquillity not of despair. Is it
+folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious principle that _most_
+supported me? I allow much to other favourable circumstances. I felt that
+I had something else to do than to regret. On that first evening my aunt
+was lying insensible--to all appearance like one dying; my father, with
+his poor forehead plaistered over from a wound he had received from a
+daughter, dearly loved by him, and who loved him no less dearly; my mother
+a dead and murdered corpse in the next room; yet was I wonderfully
+supported. I closed not my eyes in sleep that night, but lay without
+terrors and without despair. I have lost no sleep since.... One little
+incident may serve to make you understand my way of managing my mind.
+Within a day or two after the fatal one, we dressed for dinner a tongue,
+which we had had salted for some weeks in the house. As I sat down, a
+feeling like remorse struck me: this tongue poor Mary got for me; and can
+I partake of it now, when she is far away? A thought occurred and relieved
+me: if I give in to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an
+object in our rooms, that will not awaken the keenest griefs. I must rise
+above such weaknesses. I hope this was not want of true feeling. I did not
+let this carry me, though, too far. On the very second day (I date from
+the day of horrors), as is usual in such cases, there were a matter of
+twenty people, I do think, supping in our room: they prevailed on me to
+eat _with them_ (for to eat I never refused). They were all making merry
+in the room! Some had come from friendship, some from busy curiosity, and
+some from interest. I was going to partake with them, when my recollection
+came that my poor dead mother was lying in the next room--the very next
+room--a mother who, through life, wished nothing but her children's
+welfare. Indignation, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed
+upon my mind. In an agony of emotion I found my way mechanically to the
+adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking
+forgiveness of Heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting her so soon.
+Tranquillity returned, and it was the only violent emotion that mastered
+me. I think it did me good."
+
+Through all his subsequent letters from time to time there are touching
+little references to his sister's illnesses: she is away, again and again,
+in the asylum, or in charge of nurses, and he is alone and miserable, but
+looking forward to her recovering presently and returning home. Once when
+they are away from London on a visit, she is suddenly taken with one of
+these frenzies, and on the way back to town he has to borrow a waistcoat
+to restrain her violence in the coach. But his love and loyalty were proof
+against it all; nothing would induce him to separate from her or let her
+go out of his charge, except during those intervals when she was so
+deranged as to be a danger to others and to herself.
+
+About the end of 1799 Lamb moved into the Temple and, first at Mitre Court
+Buildings, then in Middle Temple Lane, he resided there, near the house of
+his birth, for some seventeen years in all. In these two places he and his
+sister kept open house every Wednesday evening, and Hazlitt and Talfourd,
+Barry Cornwall, Holcroft, Godwin, and, when they were in town, Wordsworth
+and Coleridge were among their guests. Hazlitt and Talfourd and others
+have told us something of those joyous evenings in the small, dingy rooms,
+comfortable with books and old prints, where cold beef and porter stood
+ready on the sideboard for the visitors to help themselves, and whilst
+whoever chose sat and played at whist the rest fleeted the golden hours in
+jest and conversation.
+
+[Illustration: WILL'S COFFEE HOUSE. RUSSELL STREET.]
+
+Towards the end of 1817 the Lambs took lodgings at 20 Russell Street,
+Covent Garden, a house which was formerly part of Will's famous Coffee
+House, which Dryden used to frequent, having his summer seat by the
+fireside and his winter seat in the balcony, as chief of the wits and men
+of letters who made it their place of resort. In a letter to Dorothy
+Wordsworth, Mary Lamb reports their change of address: "We have left the
+Temple. I think you will be sorry to hear this. I know I have never been
+so well satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal Mount as when I could
+connect the idea of you with your own Grasmere Cottage. Our rooms were
+dirty and out of repair, and the inconvenience of living in chambers
+became every year more irksome, and so, at last, we mustered up resolution
+enough to leave the good old place that so long had sheltered us, and here
+we are living at a brazier's shop, No. 20 Russell Street, Covent Garden, a
+place all alive with noise and bustle; Drury Lane Theatre in sight from
+our front, and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the
+carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least; strange
+that it does not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of
+the window, and listening to the calling up of the carriages, and the
+squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest scene to look
+down upon; I am sure you would be amused with it. It is well I am in a
+cheerful place, or I should have many misgivings about leaving the
+Temple." And on the 21st November 1817, Lamb also writes to Dorothy
+Wordsworth: "Here we are, transplanted from our native soil. I thought we
+never could be torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench, but
+like a tooth, now 'tis out, and I am easy. We never can strike root so
+deep in any other ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of gardener's
+mould, and if they take us up from it, it will cost no blood and groans,
+like mandrakes pulled up. We are in the individual spot I like best in all
+this great city. The theatres, with all their noises. Covent Garden,
+dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of
+the earliest peas and 'sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves are
+examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four-and-twenty
+hours before she saw a thief. She sits at the window working; and casually
+throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way,
+with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These little incidents
+agreeably diversify a female life."
+
+During his residence in Russell Street, from 1817 till 1823, Lamb
+published in two volumes a collection of his miscellaneous writings, and
+contributed the _Essays of Elia_ to the _London Magazine_, which makes
+this Russell Street house, in a sense, the most notable of his various
+London homes. Here he continued his social gatherings, but had no regular
+evening for them, sending forth announcements periodically, such as that
+he sent to Ayrton in 1823: "Cards and cold mutton in Russell Street on
+Friday at 8 & 9. Gin and jokes from 1/2 past that time to 12. Pass this on
+to Mr. Payne, and apprize Martin thereof"--Martin being Martin Burney.
+
+[Illustration: LAMB. COLEBROOKE ROW.]
+
+By the autumn of this year he has flitted from Covent Garden, and on the
+2nd September writes to Bernard Barton: "When you come London-ward you
+will find me no longer in Covent Garden. I have a cottage in Colebrooke
+Row, Islington. A cottage, for it is detached; a white house, with six
+good rooms, the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a
+moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house;
+and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure you), pears,
+strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of
+old Alcinous. You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all
+studded over and rough with old books, and above is a lightsome
+drawing-room, three windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great
+lord, never having had a house before"; and writing at the end of that
+week to invite Allsop to dinner on Sunday he supplies him with these
+directions: "Colebrook Cottage, left hand side, end of Colebrook Row, on
+the western brink of the New River, a detached whitish house." To Barton,
+when he has been nearly three weeks at Islington, he says, "I continue to
+estimate my own roof-comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a
+lodger! My garden thrives (I am told), though I have yet reaped nothing
+but some tiny salad and withered carrots. But a garden's a garden
+anywhere, and twice a garden in London."
+
+Here, in November of that year, happened the accident to George Dyer that
+supplied Lamb with the subject of his whimsical Elian essay, _Amicus
+Redivivus_. Dyer was an odd, eccentric, very absent-minded old bookworm
+who lived in Clifford's Inn; Lamb delighted in his absurdities, and loved
+him, and loved to make merry over his quaint sayings and doings. "You have
+seen our house," he writes to Mrs. Hazlitt, in the week after Dyer's
+adventure. "What I now tell you is literally true. Yesterday week George
+Dyer called upon us at one o'clock (_bright noonday_) on his way to dine
+with Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He sat with Mary about half-an-hour, and
+took leave. The maid saw him go out, from her kitchen window, but suddenly
+losing sight of him, ran up in a fright to Mary. G. D., instead of keeping
+the slip that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff in hand, in broad
+open day, marched into the New River. He had not his spectacles on, and
+you know his absence. Who helped him out they can hardly tell, but between
+'em they got him out, drenched through and through. A mob collected by
+that time, and accompanied him in. 'Send for the Doctor,' they said: and a
+one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was fetched from the public-house at the
+end, where it seems he lurks for the sake of picking up water practice;
+having formerly had a medal from the Humane Society for some rescue. By
+his advice the patient was put between blankets; and when I came home at
+four to dinner, I found G. D. abed and raving, light-headed with the
+brandy and water which the doctor had administered. He sang, laughed,
+whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian angels, would get up and go home;
+but we kept him there by force; and by next morning he departed sober, and
+seems to have received no injury."
+
+Before he left Islington the India Company bestowed upon Lamb the pension
+that at last emancipated him from his "dry drudgery at the desk's dead
+wood," and he communicates the great news exultantly to Wordsworth in a
+letter dated "Colebrook Cottage," 6th April 1825: "Here I am, then, after
+thirty-three years' slavery, sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock this
+finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with £441 a year for the
+remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his
+annuity and starved at ninety: £441, _i.e._ £450, with a deduction of £9
+for a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the pension
+guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c. I came home FOR EVER on Tuesday in
+last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was
+like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three,
+_i.e._ to have three times as much real time (time that is my own) in it!
+I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But the
+tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the
+gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys; their
+conscious fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now,
+when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home in rain or
+shine without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and
+shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master as it has been
+irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure
+feeling that some good has happened to us."
+
+He made use of these experiences in one of the best of his essays, that on
+_The Superannuated Man_, in which also you find echoes of a letter he
+wrote to Bernard Barton just after he had written to Wordsworth:
+
+"I am free, B. B.--free as air.
+
+  'The little bird that wings the sky
+   Knows no such liberty!'
+
+"I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock.
+
+  'I came home for ever!'
+
+"I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to Wordsworth in a
+long letter and don't care to repeat. Take it briefly that for a few days
+I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is becoming daily
+more natural to me. I went and sat among 'em all at my old thirty-three
+years' desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at
+leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads, at leaving
+them in the lurch, fag, fag, fag! The comparison of my own superior
+felicity gave me anything but pleasure. B. B. I would not serve another
+seven years for seven hundred thousand pounds."
+
+From Islington Lamb journeyed over to Highgate every now and then to visit
+Coleridge at Mr. Gilman's; and a-visiting him at Colebrooke Cottage came
+Coleridge, Southey, William Hone, and among many another, Hood, to whom he
+took an especial liking. Coleridge thought he was the author of certain
+Odes that were then appearing in the _London Magazine_, but writing in
+reply Lamb assured him he was mistaken: "The Odes are four-fifths done by
+Hood, a silentish young man you met at Islington one day, an invalid. The
+rest are Reynolds's, whose sister H. has recently married."
+
+During the two years or more after his release from the India House, Lamb
+and his sister spent two or three short holidays lodging with a Mrs.
+Leishman at The Chase, Enfield; in 1827 they rented the house of her, and
+Lamb wrote from that address on the 18th September to Hood, who was then
+living at 2 Robert Street, Adelphi: "Give our kind loves to all at
+Highgate, and tell them we have finally torn ourselves outright away from
+Colebrooke, where I had _no_ health, and are about to domicilate for good
+at Enfield, where I have experienced good.
+
+  'Lord, what good hours do we keep!
+   How quietly we sleep!'...
+
+We have got our books into our new house. I am a dray-horse if I was not
+ashamed of the undigested dirty lumber, as I toppled 'em out of the cart,
+and blest Becky that came with 'em for her having an unstuffed brain with
+such rubbish.... 'Twas with some pain we were evulsed from Colebrook. You
+may find some of our flesh sticking to the doorposts. To change
+habitations is to die to them; and in my time I have died seven deaths.
+But I don't know whether every such change does not bring with it a
+rejuvenescence. 'Tis an enterprise; and shoves back the sense of death's
+approximating which, though not terrible to me, is at all times
+particularly distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical,
+recurring after seven years; but this last is premature by half that time.
+Cut off in the flower of Colebrook!" He mentions that the rent is 10s.
+less than he paid at Islington; that he pays, in fact, £35 a year,
+exclusive of moderate taxes, and thinks himself lucky.
+
+But the worry of moving brought on one of Mary Lamb's "sad, long
+illnesses"; and whilst she was absent, Lamb fled from the loneliness of
+his country home to spend ten days in town. "But Town," he writes to
+Barton, "with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was. The
+streets, the shops are left, but all old friends are gone. And in London I
+was frightfully convinced of this as I past houses and places--empty
+caskets now. I have ceased to care almost about anybody. The bodies I
+cared for are in graves or dispersed. My old Clubs, that lived so long and
+flourished so steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of our
+adopted young friend at Charing Cross, 'twas heavy unfeeling rain and I
+had nowhere to go. Home have I none--and not a sympathising house to
+turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of the heaven pour down on
+a forlorner head. Yet I tried ten days at a sort of friend's house, but it
+was large and straggling--one of the individuals of my long knot of
+friends, card-players, pleasant companions--that have tumbled to pieces
+into dust and other things--and I got home on Thursday convinced that I
+was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in
+my corner. Less than a month, I hope, will bring home Mary. She is at
+Fulham, looking better in her health than ever, but sadly rambling, and
+scarce showing any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come
+again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old
+sorrows over a game of Picquet again. But 'tis a tedious cut out of a life
+of sixty-four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two."
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES LAMB]
+
+The cares of housekeeping, however, sat too heavily on them, and in
+October 1829 they abandoned those responsibilities, gave up their cottage
+on Chase Side, and went to lodge and board with their next-door
+neighbours, an old Mr. and Mrs. Westwood, and in this easier way of living
+their spirits and their health revived. Nevertheless, by January 1830 Lamb
+had lost all his contentment with rural life, and was yearning desperately
+for the remembered joys of London. "And is it a year since we parted from
+you at the steps of Edmonton stage?" he writes to Wordsworth. "There are
+not now the years that there used to be." He frets, he says, like a lion
+in a net, and then goes on to utter that yearning to be back in London
+that I have quoted already in my opening chapter. "Back-looking
+ambition," he continues, "tells me I might still be a Londoner! Well, if
+we ever do move, we have incumbrances the less to impede us; all our
+furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing, like
+the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two
+left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out
+of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless." And to Bernard Barton
+he says, "With fire and candle-light I can dream myself in Holborn....
+Give me old London at Fire and Plague times, rather than these tepid
+gales, healthy country air, and purposeless exercise."
+
+Early in 1833 he removed from Enfield, and his reasons for doing so he
+explains in a letter to Mrs. Hazlitt, on the 31st May of that year: "I am
+driven from house to house by Mary's illness. I took a sudden resolution
+to take my sister to Edmonton, where she was under medical treatment last
+time, and have arranged to board and lodge with the people. Thank God I
+have repudiated Enfield. I have got out of hell, despair of heaven, and
+must sit down contented in a half-way purgatory. Thus ends this strange
+eventful history. But I am nearer to town, and will get up to you somehow
+before long." About the same date he wrote to Wordsworth: "Mary is ill
+again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed
+by two of depression most dreadful. I look back upon her earlier attacks
+with longing--nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed by
+complete restoration--shocking as they were to me then. In short, half her
+life she is dead to me, and the other half is made anxious with fears and
+lookings forward to the next shock. With such prospects it seemed to me
+necessary that she should no longer live with me, and be fluttered with
+continual removals; so I am come to live with her, at a Mr. Walden's, and
+his wife, who take in patients, and have arranged to lodge and board us
+only. They have had the care of her before. I see little of her: alas! I
+too often hear her. _Sunt lachrymæ rerum!_ and you and I must bear it....
+I am about to lose my old and only walk-companion, whose mirthful spirits
+were the 'youth of our house,' Emma Isola. I have her here now for a
+little while, but she is too nervous properly to be under such a roof, so
+she will make short visits--be no more an inmate. With my perfect approval
+and more than concurrence she is to be wedded to Moxon at the end of
+August--so 'perish the roses and the flowers'--how is it? Now to the
+brighter side. I am emancipated from the Westwoods, and I am with
+attentive people and younger. I am three or four miles nearer the great
+city; coaches half-price less and going always, of which I will avail
+myself. I have few friends left there; one or two though, most beloved.
+But London streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, though not one known
+of the latter were remaining."
+
+Emma Isola is "the adopted young friend" referred to by Lamb in a letter
+quoted a few pages back. She was the granddaughter of an Italian refugee;
+her mother was dead; her father was an "Esquire Bedell" of Cambridge, and
+the Lambs met her at the house of a friend when they were visiting that
+town in 1823. She was a charming, brown-faced little girl, and they were
+so taken with her that she was invited to visit them in London during her
+holidays, and they ended by adopting her and calling her their niece. She
+brought a great deal of happiness into their lives; Lamb gives whimsical
+accounts in some of his letters of how he is teaching her Latin, and his
+sister is prompting her in her French lessons. When she was old enough she
+became governess in the family of a Mr. and Mrs. Williams at Bury; fell
+ill and was kindly nursed there; and Lamb tells in one of his most
+delightful letters how he went to fetch her home to Enfield, when she was
+convalescent, and it is good to glimpse how sympathetically amused he is
+at Emma's covert admonitions and anxiety lest he should drink too much, at
+dinner with the Williamses, and so bring disgrace upon himself and her.
+
+His beautiful affection for their young ward shines through all the
+drollery of his several notes to Edward Moxon (the publisher) in which he
+speaks of their engagement; and it has always seemed to me it is this same
+underlying affection for her and wistfulness to see her happy that help to
+make the following letter, written just after the wedding, one of the
+finest and most pathetic things in literature:--
+
+    "_August 1833._
+
+    "DEAR MR. AND MRS. MOXON,--Time very short. I wrote to Miss Fryer, and
+    had the sweetest letter about you, Emma, that ever friendship
+    dictated. 'I am full of good wishes, I am crying with good wishes,'
+    she says; but you shall see it.
+
+    "Dear Moxon, I take your writing most kindly, and shall most kindly
+    your writing from Paris. I want to crowd another letter to Miss Fryer
+    into the little time after dinner, before post time. So with twenty
+    thousand congratulations,--Yours,
+
+      C. L.
+
+    "I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for the reason. I got home from
+    Dover Street, by Evans, _half as sober as a judge_. I am turning over
+    a new leaf, as I hope you will now."
+
+[Illustration: LAMB'S COTTAGE. EDMONTON.]
+
+[_The turn of the leaf presents the following_:--]
+
+    "MY DEAR EMMA AND EDWARD MOXON,--Accept my sincere congratulations,
+    and imagine more good wishes than my weak nerves will let me put into
+    good set words. The dreary blank of _unanswered questions_ which I
+    ventured to ask in vain was cleared up on the wedding day by Mrs. W.
+    taking a glass of wine and, with a total change of countenance,
+    begging leave to drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon's health. It restored me
+    from that moment, as if by an electrical stroke, to the entire
+    possession of my senses. I never felt so calm and quiet after a
+    similar illness as I do now. I feel as if all tears were wiped from my
+    eyes, and all care from my heart.
+
+      MARY LAMB."
+
+
+    "_Wednesday._
+
+    "DEARS AGAIN,--Your letter interrupted a seventh game at picquet which
+    _we_ were having, after walking to Wright's and purchasing shoes. We
+    pass our time in cards, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso soon.
+
+      "C. L.
+
+    "Never was such a calm, or such a recovery. 'Tis her own words
+    undictated."
+
+And it was in this plain, commonplace little cottage in Church Street,
+Edmonton, that Mary Lamb was thus suddenly awakened out of her
+derangement; that Charles Lamb and she wrote, by turns, that letter to the
+Moxons; that the Lambs sat contentedly playing picquet when the letter of
+the bride and bridegroom came to them from Paris. These are the very rooms
+in which these things happened; the stage remains, but the actors are
+departed. Within a stone's throw of the house, in Edmonton Churchyard,
+Lamb and his sister lie buried. His death was the result of an accident.
+He had gone on his accustomed walk along the London Road, one day in
+December, when he stumbled and fell over a stone, slightly injuring his
+face. So trivial did the wound seem that writing to George Dyer's wife on
+the 22nd December 1834, about a book he had lost when he was in
+London--"it was the book I went to fetch from Miss Buffham's while the
+tripe was frying"--he says nothing of anything being the matter with him.
+But erysipelas supervened, and he grew rapidly worse, and died on the
+27th. His sister, who had lapsed into one of her illnesses and was
+unconscious, at the time, of her loss, outlived him by nearly thirteen
+years, and reached the great age of eighty-two.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ST. JOHN'S WOOD AND WIMBLEDON
+
+
+Mary Lamb passed the later years of her life in a sort of nursing home at
+St. John's Wood, and in her happier intervals kept up a pleasant
+acquaintance with some of the notable circle of friends who had gathered
+about her and her brother aforetime; among others, with the Hoods, who
+were then living in the same locality. Crabb Robinson mentions in his
+Diary how he made a call on Mary Lamb, and finding her well over one of
+her periodical attacks, "quite in possession of her faculties and
+recollecting nearly everything," he accompanied her on a visit to the
+Hoods, who were lodging at 17 Elm Tree Road.
+
+Perhaps one of the most graphic pictures we have of Hood's home life, and
+incidentally of Hood himself and his wife and of Charles and Mary Lamb, is
+contained in the account that has been left by Miss Mary Balmanno of an
+evening she spent with the Hoods when they were making their home in
+Robert Street, Adelphi: "Bound in the closest ties of friendship with the
+Hoods, with whom we also were in the habit of continually associating, we
+had the pleasure of meeting Charles Lamb at their house one evening,
+together with his sister, and several other friends.... In outward
+appearance Hood conveyed the idea of a clergyman. His figure slight, and
+invariably dressed in black; his face pallid; the complexion delicate,
+and features regular: his countenance bespeaking sympathy by its sweet
+expression of melancholy and suffering.
+
+"Lamb was of a different mould and aspect. Of middle height, with brown
+and rather ruddy complexion, grey eyes expressive of sense and shrewdness,
+but neither large nor brilliant; his head and features well shaped, and
+the general expression of his countenance quiet, kind, and observant,
+undergoing rapid changes in conversation, as did his manner, variable as
+an April day, particularly to his sister, whose saint-like good humour and
+patience were as remarkable as his strange and whimsical modes of trying
+them. But the brother and sister perfectly understood each other, and
+'Charles,' as she always called him, would not have been the Charles of
+her loving heart without the pranks and oddities which he was continually
+playing off upon her, and which were only outnumbered by the instances of
+affection and evidences of ever-watchful solicitude with which he
+surrounded her.
+
+"Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means looked
+so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather stout and
+comely lady of middle age. Dressed with Quaker-like simplicity in
+dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin
+folded across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the beholder in her
+favour by an aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners were very quiet and
+gentle, and her voice low. She smiled frequently, and seldom laughed,
+partaking of the courtesies and hospitalities of her merry host and
+hostess with all the cheerfulness and grace of a most mild and kindly
+nature. Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring
+disciple; her eyes seldom absent from his face. And when apparently
+engrossed in conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word
+for which he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the
+room, show how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high
+spirits, sauntering about the room with his hands crossed behind his back,
+conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him...."
+
+She goes on to describe how Miss Kelly, the actress, amused them by
+impersonating a character she was taking in a new play, and "Mrs. Hood's
+eyes sparkled with joy, as she saw the effect it had produced upon her
+husband, whose pale face, like an illuminated comic mask, shone with fun
+and good humour. Never was a happier couple than the Hoods; 'mutual
+reliance and fond faith' seemed to be their motto. Mrs. Hood was a most
+amiable woman--of excellent manners, and full of sincerity and goodness.
+She perfectly adored her husband, tending him like a child, whilst he,
+with unbounded affection, seemed to delight to yield himself to her
+guidance. Nevertheless, true to his humorous nature, he loved to tease her
+with jokes and whimsical accusations, which were only responded to by,
+'Hood, Hood, how can you run on so?'
+
+"The evening was concluded by a supper, one of those elegant social
+repasts which Flemish artists delight to paint.... Mr. Lamb oddly walked
+round the table, looking closely at any dish that struck his fancy before
+he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs. Hood that he should by that
+means know how to select some dish that was difficult to carve and take
+the trouble off her hands; accordingly, having jested in this manner, he
+placed himself with great deliberation before a lobster salad, observing
+_that_ was the thing.
+
+"Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and
+his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song of 'If you go to
+France be sure you learn the lingo'; his pensive manner and feeble voice
+making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused
+himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin
+eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered forth a
+long stream of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood
+frequently occurred, we ladies thought it in praise of her. The delivery
+of this speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a gentleman
+who sat next me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me
+that was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster salad!
+Thus, in the gayest of moods, progressed and concluded a truly merry
+little social supper, worthy in all respects of the author of _Whims and
+Oddities_."
+
+But all this, when the Hoods came to St. John's Wood, lay thirteen years
+behind them, and Lamb had been eight years dead. Quitting the Adelphi in
+1829, Hood went to Winchmore Hill, then to Wanstead; then, after some five
+years of residence in Germany and Belgium, he returned to England, and
+made his home for a short time at Camberwell, and thence in 1842 removed
+to St. John's Wood--at first to rooms at 17 Elm Tree Road, and in 1844 to
+a house of his own, "Devonshire Lodge," in the Finchley Road--a house
+that the guide-books all tell us was demolished, but since I started to
+write this chapter the London County Council has identified as "Devonshire
+Lodge" the house that still stands in Finchley Road, immediately adjoining
+the Marlborough Road station of the Metropolitan Railway; and here it was
+that Hood died on the 3rd of May 1845.
+
+[Illustration: TOM HOOD'S HOUSE. ST JOHN'S WOOD.]
+
+The room in which he worked at 17 Elm Tree Road gave him a view of Lord's
+Cricket Ground, and he complained that this was a drawback, because "when
+he was at work he could often see others at play." He caricatured the
+landlady of the house, who had "a large and personal love of flowers," and
+made her the heroine of his _Mrs. Gardiner, A Horticultural Romance_. From
+Elm Tree Road he went to attend the dinner at Greenwich that was given to
+Dickens on his second return from America; and describing this dissipation
+in a letter to a friend he says, "You will be pleased to hear that, in
+spite of my warnings and forebodings, I got better and betterer, till by
+dining, as the physicians did, on turtle soup, white-bait, and champagne,
+I seemed quite well." He was to have been chairman at the dinner, but
+excused himself on the score of ill-health, and Captain Marryat took his
+place. The diners included, in addition to Dickens himself, Moncton
+Milnes, Forster, Clarkson Stanfield, Ainsworth, Landseer (another St.
+John's Wood resident), Cruikshank, Cattermole, "Ingoldsby" Barham, and
+Barry Cornwall. Being called upon for a speech, Hood said he supposed they
+drank his health because he was a notorious invalid, but assured the
+company that the trembling of his hand was neither from palsy nor ague,
+but that their wishes had already so improved his circulation and filled
+him with genial warmth that his hand had a natural inclination to shake
+itself with every one present. Whereupon everybody within reach, and some
+who were not, insisted upon shaking hands with him. "_Very_ gratifying,
+wasn't it?" he finishes his letter. "Though I cannot go quite so far as
+Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserved
+in spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as usual when I go
+out, because I am so domestic and steady, and was down at the door before
+I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his own carriage.
+Poor girl! what _would_ she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame
+one."
+
+Dickens, at that date, lived at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone Road;
+they had probably driven up together from Greenwich, and the carriage had
+come the mile or so further on with Hood after leaving Dickens at his own
+door. Dickens was one of the many visitors who have helped to make Hood's
+St. John's Wood residence memorable; there is a record of his being there,
+with his wife and sister and Daniel Maclise, in December 1842. At Elm Tree
+Road, for all his broken health, Hood worked hard at editing and writing
+for the _New Monthly Magazine_, and, after resigning from that, for
+_Hood's Monthly Magazine_. One letter of his, dated from 17 Elm Tree Road,
+on the 18th July 1843, is headed "From my bed"; for he was frequently
+bedridden for days and weeks at a stretch, but sat propped up with
+pillows, writing and sketching with unabated industry. He was contributing
+also in these days to _Punch_, and to Douglas Jerrold's _Illuminated
+Magazine_. In November 1843 he wrote here, for _Punch_, his grim _Drop of
+Gin_:
+
+  "Gin! Gin! a drop of Gin!
+   What magnified monsters circle therein!
+     Ragged, and stained with filth and mud,
+     Some plague-spotted, and some with blood!
+   Shapes of misery, shame, and sin!
+     Figures that make us loathe and tremble,
+     Creatures scarce human, that more resemble
+   Broods of diabolical kin,
+   Ghost and vampyre, demon and Jin!..."
+
+But a far greater poem than this, _The Song of the Shirt_, was also
+written at Elm Tree Road. "Now mind, Hood, mark my words," said Mrs. Hood,
+when he was putting up the manuscript for the post, "this will tell
+wonderfully. It is one of the best things you ever did." And the results
+justified her. The verses appeared in the Christmas Number of _Punch_ for
+1843, and not only trebled the circulation of that paper, but within a
+very short time had at least doubled Hood's reputation, though _Eugene
+Aram_, _The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_, and _Lycus the Centaur_, had
+long preceded it. Probably no poem ever stirred the national conscience
+more deeply or created a profounder sensation. Shortly after its
+appearance Cowden Clarke met Hood, and has left a vivid description of his
+personal appearance in those last months of his life. His worn, pallid
+look, he says, "strangely belied the effect of jocularity and high spirits
+conveyed by his writings. He punned incessantly, but languidly, almost as
+if unable to think in any other way than in play upon words. His smile was
+attractively sweet; it bespoke the affectionate-natured man which his
+serious verses--those especially addressed to his wife or his
+children--show him to be, and it also revealed the depth of pathos in his
+soul that inspired his _Bridge of Sighs_, _Song of the Shirt_, and _Eugene
+Aram_."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS HOOD]
+
+There are many interesting points of resemblance between Hood and Lamb.
+Both were inveterate punsters; each had known poverty, and had come
+through hard experiences that had left their marks upon them, yet had
+never soured them or warped their sympathies. You may use the same
+epithets for both: they were homely, kindly, gentle, given to freakish
+moods and whimsical jesting; the one was as unselfishly devoted to his
+sister as the other was to his wife and children; and in descriptions of
+Hood, as of Lamb, stress is laid on the peculiar wistfulness and sweetness
+of his smile. But after the East India Company had handsomely pensioned
+him off, Lamb had no further financial anxieties; whilst Hood had to
+suppress his finer gifts, and to the end of his days turn his hand to all
+manner of inferior but more popular work, that would enable him to keep
+the family pot boiling. And he was all the while fighting against disease
+as well as poverty. He could not afford to go into exile, like Stevenson,
+and lengthen his days and foster his wasting strength in a healthfuller
+climate. He was never rich enough to have any choice but to die in the
+place where he had to earn his living, and no man ever worked more
+manfully, or died at his post bravelier or with a more cheery philosophy.
+
+Read the humorous preface he wrote for the volume of _Hood's Own_, whilst
+he lay ill abed there in his St. John's Wood house: it is the sort of
+humour that makes your heart ache, for you cannot forget that he was
+racked with pain and slowly dying whilst he wrote it. He jests about the
+aristocratic, ghastly slenderness of his fingers; his body, he says, may
+cry craven, but luckily his mind has no mind to give in. "'Things may take
+a turn,' as the pig said on the spit.... As to health? it's the weather of
+the body--it rains, it hails, it blows, it snows at present, but it may
+clear up by-and-by"; and in conclusion he mentions that the doctor tells
+him, "anatomically my heart is lower hung than usual, but what of that?
+_The more need to keep it up!_" Raised up in bed, with an improvised desk
+across his knees, he was hard at work, writing prose and verse and
+knocking off grotesque little drawings, and remained, as he said, "a
+lively Hood to get a livelihood," almost to his last hour. When, towards
+the end, his wife was trying to relieve his sufferings by putting a
+poultice on his emaciated body, he laughed up at her quizzically, and
+asked if she didn't think "it seemed a deal of mustard for such a little
+meat." He had moved into Devonshire Lodge, and was within sixteen months
+of his death when he wrote _The Haunted House_, and _The Bridge of Sighs_.
+"I fear that so far as I myself am concerned," he writes to Thackeray in
+August 1844, "King Death will claim me ere many months elapse. However,
+there's a good time coming, if not in this world, most assuredly in the
+next." When he was invited next month to attend a soirée at the Manchester
+Athenæum, he had to decline, and added, "For me all long journeys are over
+save one"; but a couple of months later he had written the _Lay of the
+Labourer_, for his magazine, and writing to Lord Lytton remarked that
+though the doctor had ordered him not to work he was compelled to do so,
+and "so it will be to the end. I must die in harness, like a hero--or a
+horse."
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DIBDIN. 34 ARLINGTON ROAD.]
+
+His dying hours were made easy by the pension of a hundred pounds that Sir
+Robert Peel kindly and tactfully settled on Mrs. Hood, and one of the last
+things he wrote on his lingering deathbed was a valediction that
+breathed all of resignation and hope:
+
+  "Farewell, Life! My senses swim
+   And the world is growing dim;
+   Thronging shadows cloud the light,
+   Like the advent of the night,--
+   Colder, colder, colder still
+   Upwards steals a vapour chill--
+   Strong the earthy odour grows--
+   I smell the Mould above the Rose!
+
+   Welcome, Life! The Spirit strives!
+   Strength returns, and hope revives;
+   Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
+   Fly like shadows at the morn,--
+   O'er the earth there comes a bloom--
+   Sunny light for sullen gloom,
+   Warm perfume for vapour cold--
+   I smell the Rose above the Mould!"
+
+Herbert Spencer lived in St. John's Wood for many years, at 7 Marlborough
+Gardens, 13 Loudon Road, and 64 Avenue Road successively. Within an easy
+walk of Avenue Road, at 34 Arlington Road, Camden Town, Charles Dibdin,
+whose memory survives in _Tom Bowling_, passed the last years of his life.
+And, back in St. John's Wood, at the Priory, 21 North Bank, in one of the
+numerous houses that were swept away when the Great Central Railway came
+to Marylebone, George Eliot lived from 1864 until 1880, when she removed
+to Chelsea. Before that, from 1860 till 1863, lived in a house in
+Blandford Square, which has also been demolished; but for nearly two years
+before going there she resided at Holly Lodge, which still survives, in
+the Wimbledon Park Road.
+
+There is an entry in her Diary dated 6th February 1859: "Yesterday we went
+to take possession of Holly Lodge, which is to be our dwelling, we expect,
+for years to come. It was a deliciously fresh, bright day. I will accept
+the omen. A letter came from Blackwood telling me the result of the
+subscription to _Adam Bede_, which was published on the 1st: 730 copies,
+Mudie having taken 500 on the publisher's terms--10 per cent. off the sale
+price. At first he had stood out for a larger reduction, and would only
+take 50, but at last he came round. In this letter Blackwood tells me the
+first _ab extra_ opinion of the book, which happened to be precisely what
+I most desired. A cabinetmaker (brother to Blackwood's managing clerk) had
+read the sheets, and declared the writer must have been brought up to the
+business, or at least had listened to the workmen in their workshop." She
+wrote that month to Miss Sara Hennell, "We are tolerably settled now,
+except that we have only a temporary servant; and I shall not be quite at
+ease until I have a trustworthy woman who will manage without incessant
+dogging. Our home is very comfortable, with far more vulgar indulgences in
+it than I ever expected to have again; but you must not imagine it a snug
+place, just peeping above the holly bushes. Imagine it rather as a tall
+cake, with a low garnish of holly and laurel. As it is, we are very well
+off, with glorious breezy walks, and wide horizons, well-ventilated rooms,
+and abundant water. If I allowed myself to have any longings beyond what
+is given, they would be for a nook quite in the country, far away from
+palaces--Crystal or otherwise--with an orchard behind me full of old
+trees, and rough grass and hedgerow paths among the endless fields
+where you meet nobody. We talk of such things sometimes, along with old
+age and dim faculties, and a small independence to save us from writing
+drivel for dishonest money."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT. WIMBLEDON PARK.]
+
+The "we" in these entries means, of course, herself and George Henry
+Lewes; they formed an irregular union in 1854, and lived as husband and
+wife until his death in 1878. In George Eliot's Journal and letters are a
+good many other references to her life at Holly Lodge, of which the most
+interesting are perhaps the following:
+
+_April 29th, 1859_ (from the Journal): "Finished a story, _The Lifted
+Veil_, which I began one morning at Richmond as a resource when my head
+was too stupid for more important work. Resumed my new novel" (this was
+_The Mill on the Floss_), "of which I am going to rewrite the two first
+chapters. I shall call it provisionally _The Tullivers_, or perhaps _St.
+Ogg's on the Floss_."
+
+_May 6th_ (from a letter to Major Blackwood): "Yes I _am_ assured now that
+_Adam Bede_ was worth writing--worth living through long years to write.
+But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good
+and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past but not faith in the
+future."
+
+_May 19th_ (from Journal): "A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes
+to give me another £400 at the end of the year, making in all £1200, as an
+acknowledgment of _Adam Bede's_ success."
+
+_June 8th_ (from a letter to Mrs. Congreve): "I want to get rid of this
+house--cut cable and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth, and should think
+with unmitigated regret of our coming here if it were not for you."
+
+_July 21st_ (from the Journal, on returning after a holiday in
+Switzerland): "Found a charming letter from Dickens, and pleasant letters
+from Blackwood--nothing to annoy us."
+
+_November 10th_ (from the Journal): "Dickens dined with us to-day for the
+first time."
+
+_December 15th_ (from the Journal): "Blackwood proposes to give me for
+_The Mill on the Floss_, £2000 for 4000 copies of an edition at 31s. 6d.,
+and afterwards the same rate for any more copies printed at the same
+price; £150 for 1000 at 12s.; and £60 for 1000 at 6s. I have accepted."
+
+_January 3rd, 1860_ (from a letter to John Blackwood): "We are demurring
+about the title. Mr. Lewes is beginning to prefer _The House of Tulliver,
+or Life on the Floss_, to our old notion of _Sister Maggie_. _The
+Tullivers, or Life on the Floss_ has the advantage of slipping easily off
+the lazy English tongue, but it is after too common a fashion (_The
+Newcomes_, _The Bertrams_, &c., &c.). Then there is _The Tulliver Family,
+or Life on the Floss_. Pray meditate and give us your opinion."
+
+_January 16th, 1860_ (from the Journal): "Finished my second volume this
+morning, and am going to send off the MS. of the first volume to-morrow.
+We have decided that the title shall be _The Mill on the Floss_."
+
+_February 23rd_ (from a letter to John Blackwood): "Sir Edward Lytton
+called on us yesterday. The conversation lapsed chiefly into monologue,
+from the difficulty I found in making him hear, but under all
+disadvantages I had an agreeable impression of his kindness and
+sincerity. He thinks the two defects of _Adam Bede_ are the dialect and
+Adam's marriage with Dinah, but of course I would have my teeth drawn
+rather than give up either."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT'S HOUSE. CHELSEA.]
+
+_July 1st_ (from a letter to Madame Bodichon, on returning to Holly Lodge
+after a two months' holiday in Italy): "We are preparing to renounce the
+delights of roving, and to settle down quietly, as old folks should do....
+We have let our present house."
+
+One interesting memorial of the life at Holly Lodge is the MS. of _The
+Mill on the Floss_, on which is inscribed in George Eliot's handwriting:
+"To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third
+book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge,
+South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March 1860."
+
+The publication of _The Mill on the Floss_, and, in the three succeeding
+years, of _Silas Marner_ and _Romola_, carried George Eliot to the height
+of her fame, and by the time she was living in North Bank, St. John's
+Wood, she had her little circle of adoring worshippers, who, like George
+Henry Lewes, took her very seriously indeed. That sort of hero-worship was
+customary in those days, unless the worshipped one had too strong a sense
+of humour to put up with it. There is a passage in the Autobiography of
+Mr. Alfred Austin giving a brief account of a visit he paid to George
+Eliot. "We took the first opportunity," he says, "of going to call on her
+at her request in St. John's Wood. But there I found pervading her house
+an attitude of adoration, not to say an atmosphere almost of awe,
+thoroughly alien to my idea that persons of genius, save in their works,
+should resemble other people as much as possible, and not allow any
+special fuss to be made about them. I do not say the fault lay with her."
+But you find the same circumstance spoken to elsewhere, and the general
+notion you gather is that George Eliot rather enjoyed this being
+pedestalled, and accepted the incense of her reverent little circle with a
+good deal of complacency.
+
+In 1878 Lewes died, and in March 1880 George Eliot was married to John
+Cross. They left St. John's Wood on the 3rd of the following December and
+went to 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where George Eliot died on the 22nd of the
+same month.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+CHELSEA MEMORIES
+
+
+Coming to close quarters with it, I am not sure that, after all, Chelsea
+has not more to offer the literary pilgrim than even Hampstead has.
+Addison, Locke, Smollett, Horace Walpole, are among the illustrious names
+whose local habitations were once there but are no longer to be seen.
+Charles and Henry Kingsley spent their boyhood at their father's rectory
+in Sidney Street; Daniel Maclise lived for ten years at 4 Cheyne Walk,
+where George Eliot died; and "Queen's House," No. 16 Cheyne Walk, is the
+house that, in 1862, Rossetti, Swinburne, William Michael Rossetti, and
+Meredith took as joint-tenants. Meredith soon paid a quarter's rent in
+lieu of notice and withdrew from the arrangement, but Swinburne and
+Rossetti lived on there together for some years, and did much of their
+greatest work there. Swinburne was next to go, and he presently set up
+house with Mr. Watts-Dunton at "The Pines," near the foot of Putney Hill,
+where he lived till his death in 1909. In the early seventies Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti married and removed elsewhere, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti stayed
+on in the Chelsea house alone.
+
+Later, in the gloomy days before he went away to Birchington to die,
+Rossetti suffered terribly from insomnia, was ill and depressed, and a
+prey to morbid imaginings, but in the earlier years of his tenancy of 16
+Cheyne Walk he was absorbed in his art, his house was lively with many
+visitors, and in his lazy, sociable fashion he seems to have been almost
+as happy as a man of his sensitive temperament could be. "Here," writes
+Mr. Joseph Knight, "were held those meetings, prolonged often until the
+early hours of the morning, which to those privileged to be present were
+veritable nights and feasts of gods. Here in the dimly-lighted studio,
+around the blazing fire, used to assemble the men of distinction or
+promise in literature and art whom the magnetism of Rossetti's
+individuality collected around him. Here Rossetti himself used, though
+rarely, to read aloud, with his voice of indescribable power and
+clearness, and with a bell-like utterance that still dwells in the mind,
+passages from the poems he admired; and here, more frequently, some young
+poet, encouraged by his sympathy, which to all earnest effort in art was
+overflowing and inexhaustible, would recite his latest sonnet." He crowded
+his rooms with quaintly-carved oak furniture, and beautiful ornaments; he
+had a wonderful collection of blue china that he sometimes put on the
+table and recklessly used at his dinner-parties. In his garden he had "a
+motley collection of animals, peacocks, armadilloes, the wombat,
+woodchuck, or Canadian marmot, and other outlandish creatures, including
+the famous zebu." This zebu was kept fastened to a tree, and Rossetti
+loved to exhibit it and point out its beauties with his maulstick. Mr.
+Knight goes on to repeat the story that was told concerning this animal by
+Whistler, who was at that time living at what is now 101 Cheyne Walk, and
+was then 7 Lindsey Row. According to Whistler, one day when he and
+Rossetti were alone in the garden, "and Rossetti was contemplating once
+more the admired possession, and pointing out with the objectionable stick
+the points of special beauty, resentment blazed into indignation. By a
+super-bovine exertion the zebu tore up the roots of the tree to which it
+was attached, and chased its tormentor round the garden, which was
+extensive enough to admit of an exciting chase round the trees." The zebu
+was fortunately hampered by the uprooted tree, and Rossetti made good his
+escape, but he would harbour the animal no longer, and as nobody would buy
+it he gave it away.
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN'S HOUSE. CHEYNE WALK.]
+
+You get an illuminating glimpse of Rossetti's home life in these days from
+that useful literary chronicle, Allingham's Diary (Monday, June 27, 1864):
+"Got down to Chelsea by half-past eight to D. G. R.'s. Breakfasted in a
+small, lofty room on first floor with window looking on the garden. Fanny
+in white. Then we went into the garden, and lay on the grass, eating
+strawberries and looking at the peacock. F. went to look at the
+'chicking,' her plural of chicken. Then Swinburne came in and soon began
+to recite--a parody on Browning was one thing; and after him Whistler, who
+talked about his own pictures--Royal Academy--the Chinese painter girl,
+Millais, &c."
+
+Rossetti's wife had died shortly before he went to Cheyne Walk, and it was
+during his residence here that her grave in Highgate Cemetery was opened,
+that the manuscript volume of poems he had buried with her might be
+recovered, and most of its contents included in his first published book
+of original work.
+
+One time and another Whistler occupied four different houses in Cheyne
+Walk, and No. 101 was the first of these. He had been living in lodgings,
+or with his brother-in-law, since he came over from America, but in 1863
+he took the Cheyne Walk house, and his mother went to live there with him.
+It is a three-storey house, and the back room on the first floor was his
+studio; the river lies before it, just across the road, and he could see
+from his front windows old Battersea Bridge, Battersea Church on the other
+side of the Thames, and at night the twinkling lights of boats and barges
+at anchor and the flare and many-coloured glitter of Cremorne Gardens in
+the distance. At the end of Cheyne Walk lived the boatbuilder Greaves. "He
+had worked in Chelsea for years," write Mr. and Mrs. Pennell, in their
+_Life of Whistler_. "He had rowed Turner about on the river, and his two
+sons were to row Whistler. One of the sons, Mr. Walter Greaves, has told
+us that Mrs. Booth, a big, hard, coarse Scotchwoman, was always with
+Turner when he came for a boat. Turner would ask Greaves what kind of a
+day it was going to be, and if Greaves answered 'Fine,' he would get
+Greaves to row them across to Battersea Church, or to the fields, now
+Battersea Park. If Greaves was doubtful, Turner would say, 'Well, Mrs.
+Booth, we won't go far'; and afterwards for the sons--boys at the
+time--Turner in their memory was overshadowed by her." Whistler and the
+Greaves boys were up and down the river at all hours of the day and night
+and in all weathers, painting and sketching, they under his tuition, or
+gathering impressions and studying effects of light and shadow. He was
+frequently in at the Rossettis' house, and they and their friends were as
+frequently visiting him.
+
+In 1867 Whistler moved to what is now 96 Cheyne Walk, and had a
+housewarming on the 5th of February at which the two Rossettis were
+present. Describing the decoration of the walls here, Mr. and Mrs. Pennell
+say its beauty was its simplicity. "Rossetti's house was a museum, an
+antiquity shop, in comparison. The simplicity seemed the more bewildering
+because it was the growth, not of weeks but of years. The drawing-room was
+not painted till the day of Whistler's first dinner-party. In the morning
+he sent for the brothers Greaves to help him. 'It will never be dry in
+time,' they feared. 'What matter?' said Whistler; 'it will be
+beautiful!'... and by evening the walls were flushed with flesh-colour,
+pale yellow and white spread over doors and woodwork, and we have heard
+that gowns and coats too were touched with flesh-colour and yellow before
+the evening was at an end. One Sunday morning Whistler, after he had taken
+his mother to Chelsea Church, as he always did, again sent for his pupils
+and painted a great ship with spreading sails in each of the two panels at
+the end of the hall; the ships are said to be still on the wall, covered
+up. His mother was not so pleased when, on her return, she saw the blue
+and white harmony, for she would have had him put away his brushes on
+Sunday as once she put away his toys."
+
+Solitude was irksome to him, and he welcomed the motley crowd of artists
+and students who came in at all hours to chat with him whilst he worked.
+The Pennells tell a capital story of a man named Barthe, of whom Whistler
+had bought tapestries, and who, not being able to get his account settled,
+called one evening for the money. He was told that Whistler was not in;
+but there was a cab waiting at the door, and he could hear his debtor's
+voice, so he pushed past the maid and, as he afterwards related, "Upstairs
+I find him, before a little picture, painting, and behind him ze bruzzers
+Greaves holding candles. And Vistlaire he say, 'You ze very man I vant:
+hold a candle!' And I hold a candle. And Vistlaire he paint, and he paint,
+and zen he take ze picture, and he go downstairs, and he get in ze cab,
+and he drive off, and we hold ze candle, and I see him no more. Mon Dieu,
+il est terrible, ce Vistlaire!"
+
+His studio here was a back room on the second floor, and up to that
+studio, on many days of 1873, Carlyle climbed to give sittings for the
+portrait which ranks now with the greatest of Whistler's works. The
+portrait of his mother had already been painted in that same small room,
+and hung on the wall there whilst Carlyle was coming to life on the
+canvas. Carlyle was not a patient sitter. Directly he sat down he urged
+Whistler to "fire away," and was evidently anxious to get through with his
+part of the business as quickly as possible. "One day," says Whistler, "he
+told me of others who had painted his portrait. There was Mr. Watts, a mon
+of note. And I went to his studio, and there was much meestification, and
+screens were drawn, and I was not allowed to see anything. And then, at
+last, the screens were put aside and there I was. And I looked. And Mr.
+Watts, a great mon, he said to me, 'How do you like it?' And then I turned
+to Mr. Watts, and I said, 'Mon, I would have ye know I am in the hobit of
+wurin' clean lunen!'" There is a note in Allingham's Diary, dated July 29,
+1873: "Carlyle tells me he is 'sitting' to Whistler. If C. makes signs
+of changing his position W. screams out in an agonised tone, 'For God's
+sake, don't move!' C. afterwards said that all W.'s anxiety seemed to be
+to get the _coat_ painted to ideal perfection; the face went for little.
+He had begun by asking two or three sittings, but managed to get a great
+many. At last C. flatly rebelled. He used to define W. as the most absurd
+creature on the face of the earth."
+
+[Illustration: WHISTLER. 96 CHEYNE WALK.]
+
+Whilst he was at 96 Cheyne Walk, Whistler brought his famous libel action
+against Ruskin, won it, but was awarded only a farthing damages, and had
+to pay his own costs. During the progress of the suit he was having the
+White House built for him in Tite Street, Chelsea, but the payment of his
+law costs so crippled him that he had to sell it before it was ready for
+occupation, and to sell off also the furniture and effects of his Cheyne
+Walk home.
+
+None of these things seem, however, to have affected Whistler with worse
+than a temporary irritation. He wrote jestingly over his door: "Except the
+Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. E. W. Godwin,
+F.S.A., built this one;" turned his back upon the scenes of his recent
+disasters, and went to Venice. After rather more than a year of absence,
+he returned to London in the winter of 1880, stayed with his brother in
+Wimpole Street, put up at divers lodgings, had an exhibition in Bond
+Street, and in May 1881 took a studio at 13 Tite Street, Chelsea, and
+began to be the most talked-of man of the day. "He filled the papers with
+letters," write Mr. and Mrs. Pennell. "London echoed with his laugh. His
+white lock stood up defiantly above his curls; his cane lengthened; a
+series of collars sprang from his long overcoat; his hat had a curlier
+brim, a lower tilt over his eyes; he invented amazing costumes.... He was
+known to pay calls with the long bamboo stick in his hand and pink bows on
+his shoes. He allowed no break in the gossip. The carriages brought
+crowds, but not sitters. Few would sit to him before the trial; after it
+there were fewer. In the seventies it needed courage to be painted by
+Whistler; now it was to risk notoriety and ridicule." When Mr. Pennell
+first saw him at 13 Tite Street, in July 1884, "he was all in white, his
+waistcoat had long sleeves, and every minute it seemed as if he must begin
+to juggle with glasses. For, to be honest, my first impression was of a
+bar-keeper strayed from a Philadelphia saloon into a Chelsea studio. Never
+had I seen such thick, black, curling hair. But in the midst was the white
+lock, and keen, brilliant eyes flashed at me from under the thick, bushy
+eyebrows."
+
+From Tite Street, Whistler presently removed to 454 Fulham Road; thence to
+The Vale, Chelsea, a pleasant quarter which was a year or two ago wiped
+off the face of the earth; and in 1890 he was back again in Cheyne Walk,
+at No. 21. "I remember a striking remark of Whistler's at a garden-party
+in his Chelsea house," says M. Gerard Harry, who was one of Whistler's
+guests at No. 21. "As he caught me observing some incompletely furnished
+rooms and questioning within myself whether he had occupied the house more
+than a fortnight or so: 'You see,' he said, with his short laugh, 'I do
+not care for definitely settling down anywhere. Where there is no more
+space for improvement, or dreaming about improvement, where mystery is in
+perfect shape, it is _finis_--the end--death. There is no hope nor outlook
+left.' I do not vouch for the words, but that was certainly the sense of a
+remark which struck me as offering a key to much of Whistler's philosophy,
+and to one aspect of his original art."
+
+By 1892, in spite of himself and his fantastic and silly posings and
+posturings, the world had learned to take his art seriously instead of
+taking him so, and when he went away that year to live in Paris his
+greatness as a painter had become pretty generally recognised. In 1894 he
+came back to London with his wife, who was dying of cancer, and after her
+death in 1896 he lived with friends or in lodgings, and had no settled
+home, until in 1902 he once again took a house in Cheyne Walk, this time
+No. 74, a house which stands below the street level; its front windows
+overlook the Thames, and it had a large studio at the back. Here Mrs. and
+Miss Birnie Philip went to share house with him, for his health was
+breaking, and he was in need of companionship and attention. But there
+were good intervals, when he was able to work with all his old eagerness
+and energy. "We knew on seeing him when he was not so well," say Mr. and
+Mrs. Pennell, "for his costume of invalid remained original. He clung to a
+fur-lined overcoat worn into shabbiness. In his younger years he had
+objected to a dressing-gown as an unmanly concession; apparently he had
+not outgrown the objection, and on his bad days this shabby, worn-out
+overcoat was its substitute. Nor did the studio seem the most comfortable
+place for a man so ill as he was. It was bare, with little furniture, as
+his studios always were, and he had not used it enough to give it the air
+of a workshop. The whole house showed that illness was reigning there."
+Trays and odds and ends of the sickroom lay about the hall; papers, books,
+and miscellaneous litter made the drawing-room and dining-room look
+disorderly. "When we saw Whistler in his big, shabby overcoat shuffling
+about the huge studio, he struck us as so old, so feeble and fragile, that
+we could imagine no sadder or more tragic figure. It was the more tragic
+because he had always been such a dandy, a word he would have been the
+first to use in reference to himself.... No one would have suspected the
+dandy in this forlorn little old man, wrapped in a worn overcoat, hardly
+able to walk."
+
+He lingered thus for about a year; then the end came suddenly. On the 14th
+July 1903, Mrs. Pennell found him dressed and in his studio. "He seemed
+better, though his face was sunken, and in his eyes was that terrible
+vagueness. Now he talked, and a touch of gallantry was in his greeting, 'I
+wish I felt as well as you look.' He asked about Henley, the news of whose
+death had come a day or two before.... There was a return of vigour in his
+voice when Miss Birnie Philip brought him a cup of chicken broth, and he
+cried, 'Take the damned thing away,' and his old charm was in the apology
+that followed, but, he said, if he ate every half-hour or so, as the
+doctor wanted, how could he be expected to have an appetite for dinner? He
+dozed a little, but woke up quickly with a show of interest in
+everything." But on the evening of the 17th, he suddenly collapsed, and
+was dead before the doctor could be fetched to him.
+
+[Illustration: TURNER'S HOUSE. CHEYNE WALK.]
+
+Turner's last days in this same Cheyne Walk were almost as sad, almost
+as piteous as Whistler's, but there is a haze of mystery about them, as
+there is about some of his paintings, and he had no butterfly past of
+dandyism to contrast painfully with the squalor of his ending. Born over
+the barber's shop kept by his father in Maiden Lane, Strand, he mounted to
+the seats of the immortals without acquiring by the way any taste for
+personal adornment, or for the elegancies or little prettinesses so
+beloved by little artists in his home surroundings. His soul was like a
+star, and could not make its heaven among the dainty chairs and tables and
+nice wall and mantelpiece ornaments of the drawing-room. On Stothard's
+advice (Stothard being one of the customers at the shaving shop) Turner's
+father made him an artist; he studied under Sir Joshua Reynolds, and
+later, Blake was one of his pupils. Growing in reputation, he lived by
+turns in Harley Street, at Hammersmith, at Twickenham, and is described in
+middle age as bluff and rough-mannered, and looking "the very moral of a
+master carpenter, with lobster-red face, twinkling staring grey eyes,
+white tie, blue coat with brass buttons, crab-shell turned-up boots, large
+fluffy hat, and enormous umbrella." From about 1815 onwards, he had a
+house that is no longer standing at 47 Queen Anne Street, Harley Street,
+and here, in 1843, when Turner was sixty-eight, a Mr. Hammersley called on
+him and has described (I quote from Mr. Lewis Hind's _Turner's Golden
+Visions_) how he "heard the shambling, slippered footstep coming down the
+stairs, the cold, cheerless room, the gallery, even less tidy and more
+forlorn, all confusion, mouldiness, and wretched litter; most of the
+pictures covered with uncleanly sheets, and the man! his loose dress, his
+ragged hair, his indifferent quiet--all, indeed, that went to make his
+physique and some of his mind; but above all I saw, felt (and feel still)
+his penetrating grey eye."
+
+Somewhere between 1847 and 1848 Turner strangely disappeared from his
+customary haunts; his Queen Anne Street house was closed, the door kept
+locked, and his old housekeeper, Hannah Danby, could only assure anybody
+who came that he was not there, and that she simply did not know where he
+had gone. For the next four years or so, until he was dying, no one
+succeeded in discovering his hiding-place. Now and then, in the meantime,
+he would appear in a friend's studio, or would be met with at one of the
+Galleries, but he offered no explanation of his curious behaviour, and
+allowed no one to obtain any clue to his whereabouts. He went in 1850 to a
+dinner given by David Roberts, and was in good spirits, and bubbling over
+with laborious jokes. "Turner afterwards, in Roberts's absence, took the
+chair, and, at Stanfield's request, proposed Roberts's health, which he
+did, speaking hurriedly, but soon ran short of words and breath, and
+dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again and
+finishing with a 'Hip, hip, hurrah!'... Turner was the last who left, and
+Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a cab. When the cab drove
+up, he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and asked where he
+should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to be caught, and, with
+a knowing wink, replied, 'Tell him to drive to Oxford Street, and then
+I'll direct him where to go.'"
+
+The fact is he was living at Cremorne Cottage, 119 Cheyne Walk. He was
+living there anonymously; a Mrs. Booth, whom he had known many years
+before when he stayed at her Margate boarding-house, was keeping house for
+him, and he was known in the neighbourhood as Admiral Booth, a rumour
+having got about that he was a retired naval officer fallen on evil days.
+This was the time of which the father of the Greaves boys had spoken to
+Whistler--the days when Mrs. Booth used to come with Turner to the
+waterside and he would row them over to Battersea. Though all his greatest
+work was finished, Turner painted several pictures here; he frequently
+rose at daybreak, and, wrapped in a blanket or a dressing-gown, stood out
+on the roof, leaning over the railing to watch the sunrise and the play of
+light on the river opposite. He used the room on the second floor as his
+studio, and in that room, on the 19th December 1851, he died. Some months
+before his death, he was seen at the Royal Academy's private view; then,
+tardily responding to a letter of friendly reproach that David Roberts had
+addressed to him at Queen Anne Street, he came to Roberts's studio in
+Fitzroy Square. He was "broken and ailing," and had been touched by
+Roberts's appeal, but as for disclosing his residence--"You must not ask
+me," he said; "but whenever I come to town I will always come to see you."
+When Roberts tried to cheer him, he laid his hand on his heart and
+murmured, "No, no! There is something here that is all wrong."
+
+His illness increasing on him, he wrote to Margate for Dr. Price, an old
+acquaintance of his and Mrs. Booth's, and Price, coming up, examined him
+and told him there was no hope of his recovery. "Go downstairs," he urged
+the doctor, "take a glass of sherry, and then look at me again." But a
+second examination only confirmed Dr. Price in his opinion.
+
+It must have been at this juncture that Turner's hiding-place was
+discovered. His Queen Anne Street housekeeper, Hannah Danby, found a
+letter left in the pocket of one of his old coats, and this gave the
+Chelsea address. She went with another woman and made inquiries round
+about Cheyne Walk till it was clear enough to her that the Mr. Booth to
+whom that letter was directed was none other than Turner, and acting on
+her information Mr. Harpur, Turner's executor, journeyed at once to
+Chelsea, and arrived at 119 Cheyne Walk to find Turner sinking fast.
+Towards sunset, on that wintry day of his dying, he asked Mrs. Booth to
+wheel him to the window, and so gazing out on the wonder of the darkening
+sky he passed quietly away with his head on her shoulder.
+
+A certain John Pye, a Chelsea engraver, afterwards interviewed the owner
+of No. 119, and learned from him that Turner and Mrs. Booth had, some four
+or five years before, called and taken the house of him, paying their rent
+in advance because they objected to giving any names or references. Pye
+also saw Mrs. Booth, and says she was a woman of fifty, illiterate, but
+"good-looking and kindly-mannered." Turner had used to call her "old 'un,"
+she said, and she called him "dear"; and she explained that she had first
+got acquainted with him when, more than twenty years ago, "he became her
+lodger near the Custom House at Margate." So small was the shabby little
+house in Cheyne Walk that the undertakers were unable to carry the coffin
+up the narrow staircase, and had to carry the body down to it. Nowadays,
+the house has been enlarged; it and the house next door have been thrown
+into one, otherwise it has undergone little change since Turner knew it.
+
+Whilst Turner was thus passing out of life in Cheyne Walk, Carlyle was
+dwelling near by at No. 24 (then No. 5) Cheyne Row, and had been resident
+there for seventeen years. On first coming to London in 1830, he and his
+wife lodged at 33 Ampton Street, Gray's Inn Road. They spent, he says, "an
+interesting, cheery, and, in spite of poor arrangements, really pleasant
+winter" there; they had a "clean and decent pair of rooms," and their
+landlord's family consisted of "quiet, decent people." He wrote his essay
+on Dr. Johnson whilst he was here, and was making a fruitless search for a
+publisher who would accept _Sartor Resartus_, which he had recently
+completed. Jeffrey called there several times to pass an afternoon with
+him, and John Stuart Mill was one other of the many visitors who found
+their way to the drab, unlovely, rather shabby street to chat with the
+dour, middle-aged Scotch philosopher, who was only just beginning to be
+heard of.
+
+He fixed on the Cheyne Row house in 1834, and, except for occasional
+holidays, never left it until his death forty-seven years afterwards. As
+soon as he was settled here Carlyle wrote to Sir William Hamilton, giving
+him his new address: "Our upholsterers, with all their rubbish and
+clippings, are at length swept handsomely out of doors. I have got my
+little book-press set up, my table fixed firm in its place, and sit here
+awaiting what Time and I, in our questionable wrestle, shall make out
+between us." In another letter of about the same date he writes of it:
+"The street is flag-paved, sunk-storied, iron-railed, all old-fashioned
+and tightly done up, looks out on a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is,
+beheaded) lime trees standing there like giants in tawtie wigs (for the
+new boughs are still young); beyond this a high brick wall; backwards a
+garden, the size of our back one at Comely Bank, with trees, &c., in bad
+culture; beyond this green hayfields and tree avenues, once a bishop's
+pleasure grounds, an unpicturesque but rather cheerful outlook. The house
+itself is eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been
+all new painted and repaired; broadish stair, with massive balustrade (in
+the old style), corniced and as thick as one's thigh; floors thick as
+rock, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanliness,
+and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor. Chelsea is a
+singular heterogeneous kind of spot, very dirty and confused in some
+places, quite beautiful in others, abounding in antiquities and the traces
+of great men--Sir Thomas More, Steele, Smollett, &c. Our Row, which for
+the last three doors or so is a street and none of the noblest, runs out
+upon a Parade (perhaps they call it) running along the shore of the river,
+a broad highway with huge shady trees, boats lying moored, and a smell of
+shipping and tar."
+
+A note in Allingham's Diary (1860) offers you a very clear little picture
+of Carlyle's garden here, as he saw it: "In Carlyle's garden, some twenty
+yards by six; ivy at the end. Three or four lilac bushes; an ash stands on
+your left; a little copper beech on your right gives just an umbrella to
+sit under when the sun is hot; a vine or two on one wall, neighboured
+by a jasmine--one pear tree."
+
+[Illustration: CARLYLE. AMPTON STREET.]
+
+In this Cheyne Row house Carlyle wrote all his books, except _Sartor_ and
+some of the miscellaneous essays; here he entertained, not always very
+willingly or very graciously, most of the great men of his day; quarrelled
+with his neighbours furiously over the crowing of their cocks; was
+pestered by uninvited, admiring callers from all over the world; and had
+his room on the top floor furnished with double-windows that were supposed
+to render it sound-proof, but did not. Charles Boner, visiting 24 Cheyne
+Row in 1862, disturbed Carlyle as he sat in his dressing-gown and slippers
+correcting the proofs of his _Frederick the Great_, whilst Mrs. Carlyle
+remained in attendance, seated on a sofa by the fire.
+
+In 1866 Mrs. Carlyle died suddenly of heart failure, and left him burdened
+with remorse that he had not been kinder to her and made her life happier;
+and after two years of lonely living without her, he writes: "I am very
+idle here, very solitary, which I find to be oftenest less miserable to me
+than the common society that offers. Except Froude almost alone, whom I
+see once a week, there is hardly anybody whose talk, always polite, clear,
+sharp, and sincere, does me any considerable good.... I am too weak, too
+languid, too sad of heart, too unfit for any work, in fact, to care
+sufficiently for any object left me in the world to think of grappling
+round it and coercing it by work. A most sorry dog-kennel it oftenest all
+seems to me, and wise words, if one ever had them, to be only thrown away
+on it. Basta-basta, I for most part say of it, and look with longings
+towards the still country where at last we and our loved ones shall be
+together again."
+
+You will get no better or more intimate glimpses into Carlyle's home life
+than Allingham gives in his Diary. Sometimes they are merely casual and
+scrappy notes, at others fairly full records of his walks and talks with
+him, such as this: "_1873, April 28._--At Carlyle's house about three. He
+spent about fifteen minutes in trying to clear the stem of a long clay
+pipe with a brass wire, and in the end did not succeed. The pipe was new,
+but somehow obstructed. At last he sent for another one and smoked, and we
+got out at last. (I never saw him smoke in public.) He said Emerson had
+called on him on Sunday, and he meant to visit E. to-day at his lodging in
+Down Street. We walked to Hyde Park by Queen's Gate, and westward along
+the broad walk, next to the ride, with the Serpentine a field distant on
+the left hand. This was a favourite route of his. I was well content to
+have the expectation of seeing Emerson again, and, moreover, Emerson and
+Carlyle together. We spoke of Masson's _Life of Milton_, a volume of which
+was on C.'s table. He said Masson's praise of Milton was exaggerated.
+'Milton had a gift in poetry--of a particular kind. _Paradise Lost_ is
+absurd; I never could take to it all--though now and again clouds of
+splendour rolled in upon the scene.'... At Hyde Park Corner, C. stopped
+and looked at the clock. 'You are going to Down Street, sir?' 'No, it's
+too late.' 'The place is close at hand.' 'No, no, it's half-past five.' So
+he headed for Knightsbridge, and soon after I helped him into a Chelsea
+omnibus, banning internally the clay pipe (value a halfpenny farthing)
+through which this chance (perhaps the last, for Emerson is going away
+soon) was lost."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE]
+
+There are numerous entries in the Diary of visits and conversations of
+this sort. On October 18, 1879, Allingham called at Cheyne Row with his
+little son, and they met Carlyle coming out of the door to his carriage.
+On December 4, of the same year: "Helen and I to Cheyne Row. Carlyle's
+eighty-fourth birthday. Mrs. Lecky there. Browning and Ruskin are gone. C.
+on his sofa by the window, warm and quiet, wearing a new purple and gold
+cap. Gifts of flowers on the table...." Some of the swift little
+word-sketches of Carlyle at this date, when he was very old, very feeble,
+and apt to be oppressed with gloom, are piteous and pathetic enough. On
+his eighty-fifth birthday (December 4, 1880) Allingham found him easier
+and more himself; but on Friday, December 24, you read: "To Carlyle's at
+two. He was lying on the sofa in the drawing-room. When I spoke to him he
+held out his hand and shook hands with me, but said nothing. I was not
+sure that he knew me. A stout Scotch servant girl and I lifted him to his
+feet to go to the carriage. In the hall his heavy sealskin coat was put on
+with difficulty, and he was got into the carriage. Alick and I with him.
+We drove twice round Hyde Park. The old man dozed much."
+
+Earlier that year, the two sons of Alexander Munro called at Cheyne Row,
+and in a letter home the elder of them gave a wonderfully poignant and
+living account of their visit. Munro, who was dead, had been one of
+Carlyle's old friends, and the two boys were now at school at the
+Charterhouse. They were conducted upstairs, says the letter, to a
+well-lighted, cheerful apartment, and here "the maid went forward and said
+something to Carlyle, and left the room. He was sitting before a fire in
+an arm-chair, propped up with pillows, with his feet on a stool, and
+looked much older than I had expected. The lower part of his face was
+covered with a rather shaggy beard, almost quite white. His eyes were
+bright blue, but looked filmy from age. He had on a sort of coloured
+nightcap, and a long gown reaching to his ankles, and slippers on his
+feet. A rest attached to the arm of his chair supported a book before him.
+I could not quite see the name, but I think it was Channing's works.
+Leaning against the fireplace was a long clay pipe, and there was a slight
+smell of tobacco in the room. We advanced and shook hands, and he invited
+us to sit down, and began, I think, by asking where we were living. He
+talked of our father affectionately, speaking in a low tone as if to
+himself, and stopping now and then for a moment and sighing.... He went
+on, 'I am near the end of my course, and the sooner the better is my own
+feeling.' He said he still reads a little, but has not many books he cares
+to read now, and is 'continually disturbed by foolish interruptions from
+people who do not know the value of an old man's leisure.' His hands were
+very thin and wasted; he showed us how they shook and trembled unless he
+rested them on something, and said they were failing him from weakness."
+And, at length, closing the interview, "'Well, I'll just bid you
+good-bye.' We shook hands. He asked our names. He could not quite hear
+Henry's at first. 'I am a little deaf, but I can hear well enough
+talking,' or words to that effect. 'I wish you God's blessing;
+good-bye.' We shook hands once more and went away. I was not at all shy.
+He seemed such a venerable old man, and so worn and old-looking, that I
+was very much affected. Our visit was on Tuesday, May 18, 1880, at about 2
+P.M."
+
+[Illustration: CARLYLE'S HOUSE. CHEYNE ROW.]
+
+He died in the following February; after lying motionless and seemingly
+unconscious for hours, he passed quietly soon after eight on the morning
+of February 5, 1881. His bed, says Allingham, had been brought down to the
+drawing-room (the front room on the first floor), and he rarely spoke in
+the last two or three weeks, not so much because he could not as because
+he did not seem to wish to say anything. Newspaper reporters were so
+continually ringing at the door, day and night, that bulletins had to be
+posted outside to prevent this. Now and then he appeared to wander in his
+mind, and when the Scotch maid, Mary, was attending upon him he would
+sometimes murmur, "Poor little woman," as if he mistook her for his
+long-dead Jenny; and once, says Allingham, "he supposed the female hands
+that tended him, lifting his head, perhaps, to be those of his good old
+mother--'Ah, mother, is it you?' he murmured, or some such words. I think
+it was on the day before the last day that Mary heard him saying to
+himself, 'So this is Death: well----'"
+
+But the Cheyne Row house has many happy memories too, and I always think
+one of the happiest is that of how Leigh Hunt called once after a long
+absence, and brought with him word of some unexpected good news that so
+delighted Mrs. Carlyle that she impulsively ran to him and kissed him,
+and he went away to write that charming little rondeau that bids fair to
+outlive all his more ambitious poetry:
+
+  "Jenny kissed me when we met,
+     Jumping from the chair she sat in;
+   Time, you thief, who love to get
+     Sweets into your list, put that in:
+   Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
+     Say that health and wealth have missed me,
+   Say I'm growing old--but add,
+     Jenny kissed me."
+
+Leigh Hunt was turned fifty then, and was Carlyle's neighbour, living at
+No. 10 (then No. 4) Upper Cheyne Row. I have seen it said that Leigh Hunt
+went there in order to be near Carlyle, but his occupancy of that house
+dates from 1833--the year before Carlyle established himself in
+Chelsea--and he remained there until 1840, seven years of poverty and
+worry, when it was literal truth that he was weary and sad, in indifferent
+health, harassed for want of money, and growing old, yet you find him
+never losing hope, and always ready on the smallest excuse to rejoice and
+make light of his troubles. I am afraid Dickens's caricature of Hunt as
+Harold Skimpole, and Byron's contemptuous references to his vanity and
+vulgarity and the squalor of his easy-going home life (his children, said
+Byron, "are dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos," and writing of
+their arrival in Italy as Shelley's guests he observes, "Poor Hunt, with
+his six little blackguards, are coming slowly up; as usual he turned back
+once--was there ever such a kraal out of the Hottentot country?")--I am
+rather afraid these things have tended to wrong Hunt in our imagination of
+him, for you learn on other evidence that there is just enough truth in
+those representations of him to make them seem quite true, and they linger
+in your mind, and affect your regard and admiration of the man in spite of
+yourself. But Dickens, with his keen sense of the absurd, had a habit of
+exaggeration; there was no ill-nature in his laughter--he merely seized on
+certain of Hunt's weaknesses and gave them to a character who has none of
+Hunt's finer qualities, and it is ridiculous in us and unfair to both men
+to take that caricature as a portrait. As for Byron--he could not justly
+appraise Hunt, for he had no means of understanding him. His own way of
+life was made too easy for him from the first; he was not born to Hunt's
+difficulties and disadvantages; his experiences of the world, and
+therefore his sympathies, were too limited. There is no merit in living
+elegantly and playing the gentleman when you simply inherit, as the fruits
+of an ancestor's abilities, all the conveniences and the money that enable
+you to do so. On the whole, if you compare their lives, you will realise
+that Leigh Hunt was by far the greater man of the two, even if Byron was
+the greater poet, and I am more than a little inclined to agree with
+Charles Lamb that even as a poet Byron was "great in so little a way. To
+be a poet is to be the man, not a petty portion of occasional low passion
+worked up in a permanent form of humanity. Shakespeare has thrust such
+rubbishy feelings into a corner--the dark, dusty heart of Don John, in the
+_Much Ado about Nothing_."
+
+Shelley never speaks of Leigh Hunt but in the kindliest terms. He was
+"gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave," writes Shelley; "one of more
+exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more
+free from evil; one of simpler and, in the highest sense of the word,
+purer life and manners, I never knew." He is, he says in the _Letter to
+Maria Gisborne_:
+
+                      "One of those happy souls
+  Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
+  This earth would smell like what it is--a tomb."
+
+Hunt tells in his _Autobiography_ how he came to Chelsea, and gives a
+glowing description of his house there. He left St. John's Wood, and then
+his home in the New Road (now Marylebone Road), because he found the clay
+soil of the one and the lack of quiet around the other affected his
+health, or "perhaps it was only the melancholy state of our fortune" that
+was answerable for that result; anyhow, from the noise and dust of the New
+Road he removed to Upper Cheyne Row--"to a corner in Chelsea," as he says,
+"where the air of the neighbouring river was so refreshing and the quiet
+of the 'no-thoroughfare' so full of repose, that although our fortunes
+were at their worst, and my health almost at a piece with them, I felt for
+some weeks as if I could sit still for ever, embalmed in silence. I got to
+like the very cries in the street, for making me the more aware of it by
+the contrast. I fancied they were unlike the cries in other quarters of
+the suburbs, and that they retained something of the old quaintness and
+melodiousness which procured them the reputation of having been composed
+by Purcell and others.... There was an old seller of fish, in particular,
+whose cry of 'Shrimps as large as prawns' was such a regular, long-drawn,
+and truly pleasing melody that, in spite of his hoarse and, I am
+afraid, drunken voice, I used to wish for it of an evening, and hail it
+when it came....
+
+[Illustration: LEIGH HUNT'S HOUSE. CHELSEA.]
+
+"I know not whether the corner I speak of remains as quiet as it was. I am
+afraid not; for steamboats have carried vicissitude into Chelsea, and
+Belgravia threatens it with her mighty advent. But to complete my sense of
+repose and distance, the house was of that old-fashioned sort which I have
+always loved best, familiar to the eyes of my parents, and associated with
+childhood. It had seats in the windows, a small third room on the first
+floor, of which I made a sanctum, into which no perturbation was to enter,
+except to calm itself with religious and cheerful thoughts; and there were
+a few limes in front which, in their due season, diffused a fragrance. In
+this house we remained seven years; in the course of which, besides
+contributing some articles to the _Edinburgh_ and _Westminster Reviews_,
+and producing a good deal of the book since called _The Town_, I set up
+(in 1834) the _London Journal_, endeavoured to continue the _Monthly
+Repository_, and wrote the poem entitled _Captain Sword and Captain Pen_,
+the _Legend of Florence_, and three other plays. Here also I became
+acquainted with Thomas Carlyle, one of the kindest and best, as well as
+most eloquent of men.... I believe that what Mr. Carlyle loves better than
+his fault-finding, with all its eloquence, is the face of any human
+creature that looks suffering, and loving, and sincere; and I believe
+further that if the fellow-creature were suffering only, and neither
+loving nor sincere, but had come to a pass of agony in this life which put
+him at the mercies of some good man for some last help and consolation
+towards his grave, even at the risk of loss to repute and a sure amount
+of pain and vexation, that man, if the groan reached him in its
+forlornness, would be Thomas Carlyle."
+
+He wrote that from his personal experience of Carlyle, for whilst they
+were neighbours at Chelsea they frequently visited each other; and
+Carlyle, on his part, saw the worst as well as the best of him, from the
+inside, and was too large-minded and too big a man to judge him by his
+faults and follies only. He saw how Hunt worked, all the while haunted by
+pecuniary distresses; unpaid tradesmen knocking at his door and worrying
+for their debts; once an execution in the house; now and then faced with
+the humiliation of having to ask for loans of a few shillings to buy the
+family dinner; his children almost in rags, and himself, as he said
+bitterly, slighted and neglected by editors and the public, and
+"carelessly, over-familiarly, or even superciliously treated, pitied or
+patronised by his inferiors." Carlyle had known poverty and neglect
+himself; he was fitted to judge Hunt understandingly, and he judged him
+justly. "Leigh Hunt was a fine kind of man," he told Allingham in 1868.
+"Some used to talk of him as a frivolous fellow, but when I saw him I
+found he had a face as serious as death." In his Diary he noted, "Hunt is
+always ready to go and walk with me, or sit and talk with me to all
+lengths if I want him. He comes in once a week (when invited, for he is
+very modest), takes a cup of tea, and sits discoursing in his brisk,
+fanciful way till supper time, and then cheerfully eats a cup of porridge
+(to sugar only), which he praises to the skies, and vows he will make his
+supper of it at home."
+
+It was Mrs. Carlyle who was severe about the Hunts' untidy and uncleanly
+household, and complained of the domestic utensils they borrowed and
+failed to return, but Carlyle took the position in a more genial spirit,
+and saw the pity of it and the humour of it also. "Hunt's house," he wrote
+after one of his visits to No. 10 Upper Cheyne Row, "excels all you have
+ever read of--a poetical Tinkerdom without parallel even in literature. In
+his family room, where are a sickly, large wife and a whole school of
+well-conditioned wild children, you will find half-a-dozen old rickety
+chairs gathered from half-a-dozen different hucksters, and all seemingly
+engaged, and just pausing, in a violent hornpipe. On these and around them
+and over the dusty table and ragged carpet lie all kinds of litter--books,
+papers, egg-shells, scissors, and last night when I was there the torn
+heart of a quartern loaf. His own room above stairs, into which alone I
+strive to enter, he keeps cleaner. It has only two chairs, a bookcase, and
+a writing-table; yet the noble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom in the
+spirit of a king, apologises for nothing, places you in the best seat,
+takes a window-sill himself if there is no other, and then folding closer
+his loose-flowing 'muslin cloud' of a printed nightgown in which he always
+writes, commences the liveliest dialogue on philosophy and the prospects
+of man (who is to be beyond measure 'happy' yet); which again he will
+courteously terminate the moment you are bound to go. A most interesting,
+pitiable, lovable man, to be used kindly, but with discretion."
+
+Hunt departed from Chelsea, with all his anxieties, in 1840, and took up
+residence at 32 Edwardes Square, Kensington, where he got through with a
+great deal of work, and one way and another was secured at last above his
+financial embarrassments. Dickens, Jerrold, Forster and some other friends
+raised £900 for him by a benefit performance of _Every Man in his Humour_;
+the Government granted him two sums of £200, and then a Civil List Pension
+of £200 a year, to the obtaining of which Carlyle readily lent all his
+influence. Moreover, the Shelley family settled an annuity of £120 upon
+him. But, with all these material advantages, came the death of his wife
+and one of his sons. "She was as uncomplaining during the worst storms of
+our adversity," Hunt wrote of his wife, reminiscently, "as she was during
+those at sea in our Italian voyage."
+
+He was an old and rather solitary man when he moved from Kensington in
+1853 and went to 7 Cornwall Road, now known as 16 Rowan Road, Hammersmith
+Road, but he had an ample and sure income, and was no longer haunted by
+duns, if he could not indulge in much in the way of luxury. When Nathaniel
+Hawthorne was in England he went to see him at Hammersmith, and found the
+house in Rowan Road plain, small, shabby, Hunt's little study cheaply
+papered, sparely carpeted, and furnished meanly, and Hunt himself "a
+beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress
+coat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the
+gentlest and most naturally courteous manner." At Rowan Road he wrote most
+of his _Old Court Suburb_, in the preface to a recent edition of which Mr.
+Austin Dobson says of the Leigh Hunt of those closing days, "He was still
+the old sensitive, luminous-eyed Leigh Hunt of the wide collar and
+floating printed nightgown, delighted with a flower or a bird or a
+butterfly; but Time had snowed upon his pericranium, and to his breezy
+_robe de chambre_ he had added, or was about to add, a protective cape,
+more or less ample, of faded black silk, which gave him the air (says John
+Forster) of an old French Abbé." He died away from home in 1859, whilst he
+was on a short visit to a relative at Putney.
+
+[Illustration: LEIGH HUNT. 16 ROWAN ROAD. HAMMERSMITH.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THACKERAY
+
+
+No other literary Londoner has taken root as Carlyle did in Cheyne Row and
+remained for nearly half a century without once changing his address.
+Thackeray shifted about from place to place nearly as much as most of
+them. He went to school at the Charterhouse, and for a year or two had
+lodgings over a shop in Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell; in the first years
+after his marriage he lived in Albion Street; he had chambers in the
+Temple, at Hare Court, in Crown Office Row, and at Brick Court. _The Paris
+Sketch Book_ was written whilst he was living at 13 Great Coram Street, in
+1840, and it was there that his wife began to suffer from the sad mental
+disorder that was presently to take her from him for the rest of his days.
+In August 1846 he gave up his lodgings in St. James's Chambers, and drew
+his broken home life together again at 16 Young Street, Kensington. "I am
+beginning to count the days now till you come," he wrote to his mother,
+with whom his two little daughters were staying in Paris; "and I have got
+the rooms all ready in the rough, all but a couple of bedsteads, and a few
+etceteras, which fall into their place in a day or two. As usual, I am
+full of business and racket, working every day, and yet not advancing
+somehow." He was industriously turning out drawings and jokes and
+articles and verses for _Punch_ and _Fraser's Magazine_, and hard at work
+on the great novel that was to make him famous--_Vanity Fair_.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHARTERHOUSE. FROM THE SQUARE.]
+
+"It was not till late in the autumn that we came to live with my father in
+Kensington," writes Lady Ritchie, in one of her delightful prefaces to the
+Centenary Edition of Thackeray's works. "We had been at Paris with our
+grandparents--while he was at work in London. It was a dark, wintry
+evening. The fires were lighted, the servants were engaged, Eliza--what
+family would be complete without its Eliza?--was in waiting to show us our
+rooms. He was away; he had not expected us so early. We saw the
+drawing-room, the empty study; there was the feeling of London--London
+smelt of tobacco, we thought; we stared out through the uncurtained
+windows at the dark garden behind; and then, climbing the stairs, we
+looked in at his bedroom door, and came to our own rooms above it.... Once
+more, after his first happy married years, my father had a home and a
+family--if a house, two young children, three servants, and a little black
+cat can be called a family. My grandmother, who had brought us over to
+England, returned to her husband in Paris; but her mother, an old lady
+wrapped in Indian shawls, presently came to live with us, and divided her
+time between Kensington and the Champs Elysees until 1848, when she died
+at Paris."
+
+Thackeray's first name for _Vanity Fair_ was _Pencil Sketches of English
+Society_. He offered the opening chapters of it under that title to
+Colburn for his _New Monthly Magazine_. Thereafter he seems to have
+reshaped the novel and renamed it, and even then had difficulty to find a
+publisher. At length, Messrs. Bradbury & Evans accepted it, and it was
+arranged that it should be published after the manner that Dickens had
+already rendered popular--in monthly parts; and the first part duly
+appeared on the 1st January 1847, in the familiar yellow wrappers that
+served to distinguish Thackeray's serials from the green-covered serials
+of Dickens. But the sales of the first half-dozen numbers were by no means
+satisfactory.
+
+"I still remember," writes Lady Ritchie, "going along Kensington Gardens
+with my sister and our nursemaid, carrying a parcel of yellow numbers
+which had been given us to take to some friend who lived across the Park;
+and as we walked along, somewhere near the gates of the gardens we met my
+father, who asked us what we were carrying. Then somehow he seemed vexed
+and troubled, told us not to go on, and to take the parcel home. Then he
+changed his mind, saying that if his grandmother wished it, the books had
+best be conveyed; but we guessed, as children do, that something was
+seriously amiss. The sale of _Vanity Fair_ was so small that it was a
+question at the time whether its publication should not be discontinued
+altogether."
+
+[Illustration: THACKERAY'S HOUSE. KENSINGTON.]
+
+At that critical juncture he published _Mrs. Perkins's Ball_, which caught
+on at once, and this and a favourable review in the _Edinburgh_ are
+supposed to have sent the public after the novel, for the sales of _Vanity
+Fair_ rapidly increased, and the monthly numbers were soon selling briskly
+enough to satisfy even the publishers, and so in his thirty-seventh year
+Thackeray found himself famous. James Hannay first saw him when the
+book was still unfinished but its success assured. He says that Thackeray
+pointed out to him the house in Russell Square "where the imaginary
+Sedleys lived," and that when he congratulated him on that scene in
+_Vanity Fair_ in which Becky Sharp cannot help feeling proud of her
+husband whilst he is giving Lord Steyne the thrashing that must ruin all
+her own chances, Thackeray answered frankly, "Well, when I wrote that
+sentence I slapped my fist on the table and said, 'That is a touch of
+genius!'" Which reminds one of the story told by Ticknor Fields of how,
+when he was making a pilgrimage around London with Thackeray in later
+years, and they paused outside 16 Young Street, which was no longer his
+home, the novelist cried with a melodramatic gesture, "Go down on your
+knees, you rogue, for here _Vanity Fair_ was penned, and I will go down
+with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself!"
+
+His letters of 1847 and the early half of 1848 are full of references to
+the strenuous toil with which he is writing his monthly instalments of
+_Vanity Fair_, and in one of them, to Edward Fitzgerald, he mentions that
+he is giving a party: "Mrs. Dickens and Miss Hogarth made me give it, and
+I am in a great fright." Perhaps that was the famous party to which
+Charlotte Brontë, Carlyle and his wife, and other of his great
+contemporaries came, and things went wrong, and he became so uncomfortable
+that he fairly bolted from his guests, and went to spend the rest of the
+evening at the Garrick Club.
+
+_Pendennis_ was written at the Young Street house, and Thackeray put a
+good deal of himself into that hero of his. Pen had chambers at Lamb
+Building, in the Temple, and there is some likeness between his early
+journalistic experiences and Thackeray's own. The opening chapters of
+_Pendennis_, though, were written at Spa. Thackeray had wanted to get away
+to some seaside place where he could set to work on his new book, and had
+asked his mother, who was going to Brighton, if she could not get a house
+for £60 that would have three spare rooms in it for him. "As for the
+dignity, I don't believe it matters a pinch of snuff. Tom Carlyle lives in
+perfect dignity in a little £40 house at Chelsea, with a snuffy Scotch
+maid to open the door, and the best company in England ringing at it. It
+is only the second or third chop great folks who care about show."
+
+In _Pendennis_ there is an allusion to Catherine Hayes, the dreadful
+heroine of Thackeray's _Catherine_, that had been published a few years
+before, and a hot-tempered young Irishman, believing the reference was to
+Miss Catherine Hayes, the Irish vocalist, chivalrously came over to
+England, took lodgings opposite Thackeray's house in Young Street, and
+sent him a warning letter that he was on the watch for him to come out of
+doors, and intended to administer public chastisement by way of avenging
+Miss Hayes's injured honour. After getting through his morning's work,
+Thackeray felt the position was intolerable, so he walked straightway out
+across the road, knocked at the opposite door, and boldly bearded the lion
+in his den. The young Irishman was disposed to bluster and be obstinate,
+but Thackeray explained matters, calmed him, convinced him that he had
+made a mistake, parted from him amicably, and had the satisfaction of
+seeing the young fire-eater come forth on his way back home that evening.
+
+[Illustration: W. M. THACKERAY]
+
+Writing of _Pendennis_, Lady Ritchie says, "I can remember the morning
+Helen died. My father was in his study in Young Street, sitting at the
+table at which he wrote. It stood in the middle of the room, and he used
+to sit facing the door. I was going into the room, but he motioned me
+away. An hour afterwards he came into our schoolroom, half laughing and
+half ashamed, and said to us, 'I do not know what James can have thought
+of me when he came in with the tax-gatherer just after you left and found
+me blubbering over Helen Pendennis's death.'"
+
+At Young Street, Thackeray wrote also his _Lectures on the English
+Humorists_, and having delivered them with gratifying success at Willis's
+Rooms, he journeyed to America in 1852, and was even more successful with
+them there. Meanwhile, he had written _Esmond_, and it was published in
+three volumes just before he left England. "Thackeray I saw for ten
+minutes," Fitzgerald wrote to Frederick Tennyson concerning a flying visit
+he had paid to London; "he was just in the agony of finishing a novel,
+which has arisen out of the reading necessary for his lectures, and
+relates to those times--of Queen Anne, I mean. He will get £1000 for his
+novel; he was wanting to finish it and rush off to the Continent to shake
+off the fumes of it." His two daughters, both now in their teens, were
+sent out to join their grandparents before he sailed for the States, and
+in a letter to Anne (Lady Ritchie) he explains his motive in crossing the
+Atlantic: "I must and will go to America, not because I want to, but
+because it is right I should secure some money against my death for your
+poor mother and you two girls."
+
+There are several drawings made by Thackeray in those Young Street days of
+his daughters and himself, and one of his study at breakfast time, and
+here is a word-picture of the study given by Lady Ritchie in her preface
+to _Esmond_: "The vine shaded the two windows, which looked out upon the
+bit of garden and the medlar-tree, and the Spanish jasmines, of which the
+yellow flowers scented our old brick walls. I can remember the tortoise
+belonging to the boys next door crawling along the top of the wall where
+they had set it, and making its way between the jasmine sprigs.... Our
+garden was not tidy (though on one grand occasion a man came to mow the
+grass), but it was full of sweet things.... Lady Duff Gordon came to stay
+with us once (it was on that occasion that the grass was mowed), and she
+afterwards sent us some doves, which used to hang high up in a wicker cage
+from the windows of the schoolroom. The schoolroom was over my father's
+bedroom, and his bedroom was over the study where he used to write, and
+they all looked to the garden and the sunsets."
+
+On his return from the American lecturing, in 1853, when he had already
+made a beginning of _The Newcomes_, he gave up the Young Street house and
+moved to 36 Onslow Square, South Kensington (or Brompton, as it was called
+at that period); and during the seven years of his residence there he
+finished _The Newcomes_, wrote _The Four Georges_, _The Virginians_, many
+of the _Roundabout Papers_, began the writing of _Philip_, and founded and
+entered upon his duties as editor of the _Cornhill Magazine_. The front
+room on the second floor was his study.
+
+[Illustration: LAMB BUILDING. TEMPLE. FROM THE CLOISTERS.]
+
+It was whilst Thackeray was living here that the quarrel occurred between
+him and Edmund Yates, who had contributed a smart personal article to
+_Town Talk_, on the 12th June 1858, in the course of which he wrote: "Mr.
+Thackeray is forty-six years old, though from the silvery whiteness of his
+hair he appears somewhat older. He is very tall, standing upwards of six
+feet two inches; and as he walks erect his height makes him conspicuous in
+every assembly. His face is bloodless, and not particularly expressive,
+but remarkable for the fracture of the bridge of the nose, the result of
+an accident in youth. He wears a small grey whisker, but otherwise is
+clean shaven. No one meeting him could fail to recognise in him a
+gentleman; his bearing is cold and uninviting, his style of conversation
+either openly cynical, or affectedly good-natured and benevolent; his
+_bonhomie_ is forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched--but his
+appearance is invariably that of the cool, suave, well-bred gentleman who,
+whatever may be rankling within, suffers no surface display of his
+emotion." He went on to discuss Thackeray's work, and said unjustly of his
+lectures that in this country he flattered the aristocracy and in America
+he attacked it, the attacks being contained in _The Four Georges_, which
+"have been dead failures in England, though as literary compositions they
+are most excellent. Our own opinion is that his success is on the wane;
+his writings never were understood or appreciated even by the middle
+classes; the aristocracy have been alienated by his American onslaught on
+their body, and the educated and refined are not sufficiently numerous to
+constitute an audience; moreover, there is a want of heart in all he
+writes which is not to be balanced by the most brilliant sarcasm."
+
+The description of Thackeray's personal appearance here is perhaps rather
+impertinently frank, but it is clever and pictorially good; for the
+rest--we who know now what a generous, kindly, almost too sentimentally
+tender heart throbbed within that husk of cynicism and sarcasm in which he
+protectively enfolded it, know that Yates was writing of what he did not
+understand. Unfortunately, however, Thackeray took him seriously, and
+wrote a letter of dignified but angry protest to him, especially against
+the imputation of insincerity when he spoke good-naturedly in private.
+"Had your remarks been written by a person unknown to me, I should have
+noticed them no more than other calumnies; but as we have shaken hands
+more than once and met hitherto on friendly terms, I am obliged to take
+notice of articles which I consider to be not offensive and unfriendly
+merely, but slanderous and untrue. We meet at a club where, before you
+were born, I believe, I and other gentlemen have been in the habit of
+talking without any idea that our conversation would supply paragraphs for
+professional vendors of 'Literary Talk'; and I don't remember that out of
+the club I have ever exchanged six words with you."
+
+Yates replied, and "rather than have further correspondence with a writer
+of that character," Thackeray put the letters before the committee of the
+Garrick Club, asking them to decide whether the publication of such an
+article as Yates had written was not intolerable in a society of gentlemen
+and fatal to the comfort of the club. The committee resolved that Yates
+must either apologise or resign his membership. Then Dickens, thinking the
+committee were exceeding their powers, intervened on Yates's behalf; wrote
+to Thackeray in a conciliatory strain, and asked if any conference could
+be held between himself, as representing Yates, and some friend who should
+represent Thackeray, with a view to arriving at a friendly settlement of
+the unpleasantness. This apparently well-intentioned interference annoyed
+Thackeray; he curtly replied that he preferred to leave his interests in
+the hands of the club committee, and as a result he and Dickens were
+bitterly estranged. That the friendship between two such men should have
+been broken by such a petty incident was deplorable enough, but happily,
+only a few days before Thackeray's death, they chanced to meet in the
+lobby of the Athenæum, and by a mutual impulse each offered his hand to
+the other, and the breach was healed.
+
+In 1862 Thackeray made his last change of address, and went to No. 2
+Palace Green, Kensington, a large and handsome house that he had built for
+himself. Some of his friends thought that in building it he had spent his
+money recklessly, but he did it in pursuance of the desire, that crops up
+so frequently in his correspondence, to make some provision for the future
+of his children; and when, after his death, it was sold for £2000 more
+than it had cost him, he was sufficiently justified. It was in this house
+that he finished _Philip_, and, having retired from the editing of the
+_Cornhill_, began to write _Denis Duval_, but died on Christmas Eve 1863,
+leaving it little more than well begun. When he was writing _Pendennis_ he
+had been near death's door, and ever since he had suffered from attacks of
+sickness almost every month. He was not well when his valet left him at
+eleven on the night of the 23rd December; about midnight his mother, whose
+bedroom was immediately over his, heard him walking about his room; at
+nine next morning, when his valet went in with his coffee, he saw him
+"lying on his back quite still, with his arms spread over the coverlet,
+but he took no notice, as he was accustomed to see his master thus after
+one of his attacks." Returning later, and finding the coffee untouched on
+the table beside the bed, he felt a sudden apprehension, and was horrified
+to discover that Thackeray was dead.
+
+Yates has told how the rumour of his death ran through the clubs and was
+soon all about the town, and of how, wherever it went, it left a cloud
+over everything that Christmas Eve; and I have just turned up one of my
+old _Cornhill_ volumes to read again what Dickens and Trollope wrote of
+him in the number for February 1864. "I saw him first," says Dickens,
+"nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to be the illustrator of
+my earliest book. I saw him last, shortly before Christmas, at the
+Athenæum Club, when he told me that he had been in bed three days--that
+after these attacks he was troubled with cold shiverings, 'which quite
+took the power of work out of him'--and that he had it in his mind to try
+a new remedy, which he laughingly described. He was very cheerful, and
+looked very bright. In the night of that day week, he died." Dickens goes
+on to give little instances of his kindness, of his great and good nature;
+and then describes how he was found lying dead. "He was only in his
+fifty-third year; so young a man that the mother who blessed him in his
+first sleep blessed him in his last." And says Trollope, no one is
+thinking just then of the greatness of his work--"The fine grey head, the
+dear face with its gentle smile, the sweet, manly voice which we knew so
+well, with its few words of kindest greeting; the gait and manner, the
+personal presence of him whom it so delighted us to encounter in our
+casual comings and goings about the town--it is of these things, and of
+these things lost for ever, that we are now thinking. We think of them as
+treasures which are not only lost, but which can never be replaced. He who
+knew Thackeray will have a vacancy in his heart's inmost casket which must
+remain vacant till he dies. One loved him almost as one loves a woman,
+tenderly and with thoughtfulness--thinking of him when away from him as a
+source of joy which cannot be analysed, but is full of comfort. One who
+loved him, loved him thus because his heart was tender, as is the heart of
+a woman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+DICKENS
+
+
+Thackeray's London was practically bounded on the east by the Temple, or
+perhaps by the Fleet Prison, which lay a little beyond the _Punch_ office;
+it took in the Strand, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and stretched out westward
+round Belgravia, Mayfair, Chiswick, and such selecter quarters of the
+town. But Dickens made the whole of London his province; you cannot go
+into any part of it but he has been there before you; if he did not at one
+time live there himself, some of his characters did. Go north through
+Somers Town and Camden Town: the homes of his boyhood were there in Bayham
+Street, in Little College Street, in the house that still stands at 13
+Johnson Street, from which he walked daily to school at the Wellington
+House Academy in Hampstead Road. He lived in Cleveland Street, Fitzroy
+Square, and in Fitzroy Street, and whilst his father was a prisoner in the
+Marshalsea for debt and he himself was labelling bottles at the blacking
+factory in Hungerford Market, he had lodgings south of London Bridge in
+Lant Street, which were the originals of the lodgings he gave to Bob
+Sawyer in later years when he came to write _Pickwick_. When he was turned
+twenty, and working as a Parliamentary reporter in the House of Commons,
+and beginning to contribute his _Sketches by Boz_ to the _Monthly
+Magazine_, he lived at 18 Bentinck Street, Cavendish Square. For a time he
+had lodgings in Buckingham Street, Strand, and afterwards lodged David
+Copperfield in the same rooms; he put up for a short time at Fulham before
+his marriage at St. Luke's Church, Chelsea, in April 1836, and after a
+brief honeymoon returned with his wife to the chambers in Furnival's Inn
+that he had rented since the previous year. He had three other London
+houses during his more prosperous days; then he quitted the town and went
+to live at Gad's Hill Place, where he died in 1870. But even after he was
+thus settled in Kent, he was continually up and down to the office of
+_Household Words_, in Wellington Street, Strand, and for some part of
+almost every year he occupied a succession of furnished houses round about
+Hyde Park.
+
+[Illustration: DICKENS. JOHNSON STREET. CAMDEN TOWN.]
+
+A few months before his marriage he had started to write _Pickwick_, the
+first monthly part of which appeared in March 1836. Before the end of next
+month, Seymour, the artist who was illustrating that serial, having
+committed suicide, Thackeray went up to the Furnival's Inn chambers with
+specimens of his drawings in the hope of becoming his successor, but
+Dickens rejected him in favour of Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"), who also
+illustrated most of his subsequent books. He had published the _Sketches
+by Boz_ in two volumes, illustrated by Cruikshank, had written two
+dramatic pieces that were very successfully produced at the St. James's
+Theatre, had begun to edit _Bentley's Miscellany_, and was writing _Oliver
+Twist_ for it, before he left Furnival's Inn and established his small
+household of his wife and their first son and his wife's sister, Mary
+Hogarth, at 48 Doughty Street, Mecklenburgh Square.
+
+In later years Sala, who became one of Dickens's principal contributors to
+_Household Words_, used to live in Mecklenburgh Square, and at different
+times Sidney Smith, Shirley Brooks, and Edmund Yates all lived in Doughty
+Street (Shirley Brooks was born there, at No. 52), but Doughty Street's
+chief glory is that for the greater part of three years Dickens was the
+tenant of No. 48. George Henry Lewes called to see him there, and was
+perturbed to find that he had nothing on his bookshelves but three-volume
+novels and presentation copies of books of travel; clearly he was not much
+of a reader, and had never been a haunter of old bookstalls. But presently
+Dickens came in, says Lewes, "and his sunny presence quickly dispelled all
+misgivings. He was then, as to the last, a delightful companion, full of
+sagacity as well as animal spirits; but I came away more impressed with
+the fulness of life and energy than with any sense of distinction."
+
+Mrs. Cowden Clarke, who saw him in his Doughty Street days, speaks of him
+as "genial, bright, lively-spirited, pleasant-toned," and says he "entered
+into conversation with a grace and charm that made it feel perfectly
+natural to be chatting and laughing as if we had known each other from
+childhood." His eyes she describes as "large, dark blue, exquisitely
+shaped, fringed with magnificently long and thick lashes--they now swam in
+liquid, limpid suffusion, when tears started into them from a sense of
+humour or a sense of pathos, and now darted quick flashes of fire when
+some generous indignation at injustice, or some high-wrought feeling of
+admiration at magnanimity, or some sudden emotion of interest and
+excitement touched him. Swift-glancing, appreciative, rapidly observant,
+truly superb orbits they were, worthy of the other features in his manly,
+handsome face. The mouth was singularly mobile, full-lipped, well-shaped,
+and expressive; sensitive, nay restless, in its susceptibility to
+impressions that swayed him, or sentiment that moved him." Which tallies
+sufficiently with Carlyle's well-known description of him a few months
+later: "A fine little fellow, Boz, I think. Clear, blue, intelligent eyes,
+eyebrows that he arches amazingly; large, protrusive, rather loose mouth,
+a face of most extreme mobility which he shuttles about--eyebrows, eyes,
+mouth and all--in a very singular manner while speaking. Surmount this
+with a loose coil of common-coloured hair, and set it on a small, compact
+figure, very small, and dressed _â la_ D'Orsay rather than well--this is
+Pickwick. For the rest, a quiet, shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems
+to guess pretty well what he is and what others are." Forster sketches
+his face at this same period with "the quickness, keenness, and practical
+power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several feature,
+that seemed to tell so little of a student and writer of books, and so
+much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and motion
+flashed from every part of it." "It was as if made of steel," said Mrs.
+Carlyle; and "What a face is his to meet in a drawing-room," wrote Leigh
+Hunt. "It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings."
+
+Dickens's weakness, then and all his life through, was for something too
+dazzling and ornate in the way of personal adornment. We hear of a green
+overcoat with red cuffs. "His dress was florid," says one who met him: "a
+satin cravat of the deepest blue relieved by embroideries, a green
+waistcoat with gold flowers, a dress coat with a velvet collar and satin
+facings, opulence of white cuff, rings in excess, made up a rather
+striking whole." And there is a story of how, when an artist friend of
+both was presented by somebody with a too gaudy length of material, Wilkie
+Collins advised him to "Give it to Dickens--he'll make a waistcoat out of
+it!"
+
+[Illustration: DICKENS' HOUSE. DOUGHTY STREET.]
+
+That jest belongs to a later year, but here you have a sufficiently vivid
+presentment of the man as he was when he could be seen passing in and out
+of the house in Doughty Street. He may have been dandified in appearance,
+but in all his other habits he was a hard and severely methodical worker.
+"His hours and days were spent by rule," we are told. "He rose at a
+certain time, he retired at another, and though no precisian, it was not
+often that his arrangements varied. His hours of writing were between
+breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to be done no
+temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. This order
+and regularity followed him through the day. His mind was essentially
+methodical, and in his long walks, in his recreations, in his labour, he
+was governed by rules laid down by himself, rules well studied beforehand
+and rarely departed from."
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS]
+
+His rise out of poverty and obscurity into affluence and fame makes a more
+wonderful story than that of how Byron woke one morning and found himself
+famous. For Dickens had everything against him. He was indifferently
+educated, had no social advantages, and no influential friends behind him.
+In 1835 he was an unknown young author, writing miscellaneous stories and
+sketches for the papers; by the end of 1836 everybody was reading and
+raving of and laughing over _Pickwick_, and he was the most talked-of
+novelist of the hour. "It sprang into a popularity that each part carried
+higher and higher," says Forster, "until people at this time talked of
+nothing else, tradesmen recommended their goods by using its name, and its
+sale, outstripping at a bound that of all the most famous books of the
+century, had reached an almost fabulous number." Judges, street boys, old
+and young in every class of life, devoured each month's number directly it
+appeared, and looked forward impatiently to the next one. Carlyle told
+Forster that "an archdeacon, with his own venerable lips, repeated to me
+the other night a strange, profane story of a solemn clergyman who had
+been administering ghostly consolation to a sick person; having finished,
+satisfactorily as he thought, and got out of the room, he heard the sick
+person ejaculate: 'Well, thank God, _Pickwick_ will be out in ten days,
+any way!'"
+
+Dickens's favourite recreation in those early years was riding, and
+frequently he would set out with Forster "at eleven in the morning for 'a
+fifteen mile ride out, ditto in, and lunch on the road,' with a wind-up of
+six o'clock dinner in Doughty Street." Other times he would send a note
+round to Forster, who lived at 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and if he could be
+persuaded to come, as generally he could, they would set out for a brisk
+walk to Hampstead and over the Heath, and have "a red-hot chop for dinner
+and a glass of good wine" at Jack Straw's Castle.
+
+His daughter Mamie was born in Doughty Street, and there the first great
+grief of his life completely overwhelmed him for a time, when his wife's
+young sister, Mary Hogarth, died at the age of seventeen. There are
+several letters from that address in 1838 concerning his progress with
+_Oliver Twist_. In one, when he could not work, he says he is "sitting
+patiently at home waiting for Oliver Twist, who has not yet arrived." In
+another he writes, "I worked pretty well last night--very well indeed; but
+although I did eleven close slips before half-past twelve I have four to
+write to close the chapter; and as I foolishly left them till this
+morning, have the steam to get up afresh." "Hard at work still," he writes
+to Forster in August 1838. "Nancy is no more. I showed what I had done to
+Kate last night, who is in an unspeakable '_state_'; from which and my own
+impression I augur well. When I have sent Sykes to the devil I must have
+yours." And "No, no," he wrote again to Forster next month, "don't, don't
+let us ride till to-morrow, not having yet disposed of the Jew, who is
+such an out-and-outer that I don't know what to make of him." Then one
+evening Forster went to Doughty Street and sat in Dickens's study and
+talked over the last chapter of _Oliver Twist_ with him, and remained
+reading there whilst he wrote it.
+
+From Doughty Street Dickens and "Phiz" set out together on that journey
+into Yorkshire to see the notorious school that was to become famous as
+Squeers's, and in due course there are letters from that street telling of
+the progress of _Nicholas Nickleby_. Early in 1839 the letters tell of how
+he is house-hunting, and in the intervals working "at racehorse speed" on
+_Barnaby Rudge_, and near the end of the year he moved to 1 Devonshire
+Terrace, at the corner of Marylebone Road.
+
+The Doughty Street house remains as he left it, but 1 Devonshire Terrace
+has been rather considerably altered. The new residence was such a much
+more imposing one than the other that absurd rumours got about that he was
+lapsing into extravagance and living beyond his income, and "I perfectly
+remember," writes Sala, "when he moved from his modest residence in
+Doughty Street to a much grander but still not very palatial house in
+Devonshire Terrace, an old gentleman calling one day upon my mother and
+telling her, with a grave countenance, that Dickens had pawned his plate,
+and had been waited upon for the last fortnight by bailiffs in livery." It
+was about this time, too, that the _Quarterly_ made its famous prediction
+that in the case of work such as Dickens was doing "an ephemeral
+popularity will be followed by an early oblivion." But there was no ground
+for any of these fears. His life was a triumphal procession; he went
+forward from victory to victory. At Devonshire Terrace he wrote most of
+_Barnaby Rudge_: and the prototype of Grip, Barnaby's raven, the special
+playmate of Dickens's children, died there; from here he went on his first
+visit to America, and on his return, with intervals of holiday at
+Broadstairs, in Cornwall, and in Italy, wrote the _American Notes_,
+_Martin Chuzzlewit_, _The Chimes_, _The Cricket on the Hearth_, _Pictures
+from Italy_, _Dombey and Son_, and commenced the writing of _David
+Copperfield_. Whilst he was here, too, he was for a brief space the first
+editor of the _Daily News_, and in March 1850 opened his Wellington Street
+office and started _Household Words_. Incidentally, he was taking an
+active share in a dozen or more public movements; acting as chairman at
+meetings and dinners, managing and playing in private theatricals, writing
+miscellaneous articles for his new magazine, and attending closely to its
+business organisation. Never was a more strenuous literary worker, or one
+who brought more enthusiasm to whatever he undertook.
+
+In the autumn of 1851, in the flowing and rising tide of his prosperity,
+he removed to the now vanished Tavistock House, in Tavistock Square, and
+in the next six years, before his removal to Gad's Hill, wrote _Bleak
+House_, _Hard Times_, and _Little Dorrit_, to say nothing of the numerous
+short stories and articles he contributed to _Household Words_, and began
+to give those public readings from his books that were in his last decade
+to occupy so much of his time, add so enormously to his income and his
+personal popularity, and play so sinister a part in the breaking down of
+his health and the shortening of his career.
+
+Writing immediately after Dickens's death, Sala said that twenty years ago
+the face and form of Sir Robert Peel were familiar to almost everybody who
+passed him in the street, and "there were as few last week who would have
+been unable to point out the famous novelist, with his thought-lined face,
+his grizzled beard, his wondrous searching eyes, his bluff presence and
+swinging gait as, head aloft, he strode, now through crowded streets,
+looking seemingly neither to the right nor the left, but of a surety
+looking at and into everything--now at the myriad aspects of London life,
+the ever-changing raree-show, the endless roundabout, the infinite
+kaleidoscope of wealth and pauperism, of happiness and misery, of good and
+evil in this Babylon--now over the pleasant meads and breezy downs which
+stretched round his modest Kentish demesne hard by the hoary tower of
+Rochester.... Who had not heard him read, and who had not seen his
+photographs in the shop windows? The omnibus conductors knew him, the
+street boys knew him; and perhaps the locality where his recognition would
+have been least frequent--for all that he was a member of the Athenæum
+Club--was Pall Mall. Elsewhere he would make his appearance in the oddest
+places, and in the most inclement weather: in Ratcliff Highway, on
+Haverstock Hill, on Camberwell Green, in Gray's Inn Lane, in the
+Wandsworth Road, at Hammersmith Broadway, in Norton Folgate, and at Kensal
+New Town.... His carriage was remarkably upright, his mien almost
+aggressive in its confidence--a bronzed, weatherworn, hardy man, with
+somewhat of a seaman's air about him." London folks would draw aside, he
+continues, "as the great writer--who seemed always to be walking a match
+against Thought--strode on, and, looking after him, say, 'There goes
+Charles Dickens!' The towering stature, the snowy locks, the glistening
+spectacles, the listless, slouching port, as that of a tired giant, of
+William Makepeace Thackeray were familiar enough likewise but,
+comparatively speaking, only to a select few. He belonged to Clubland, and
+was only to be seen sauntering there or in West End squares, or on his
+road to his beloved Kensington.... Thackeray in Houndsditch, Thackeray in
+Bethnal Green or at Camden Town, would have appeared anomalous ... but
+Charles Dickens, when in town, was ubiquitous."
+
+There are statues in London of many smaller men, of many who mean little
+or nothing in particular to London, but there is none to Dickens, and
+perhaps he needs none. Little critics may decry him, but it makes no
+difference, it takes nothing from his immortality. "It is fatuous," as
+Trollope said of his work, "to condemn that as deficient in art which has
+been so full of art as to captivate all men." And to the thousands of us
+who know the people and the world that he created he is still ubiquitous
+in London here, even though he has his place for ever, as Swinburne says,
+among the stars and suns that we behold not:
+
+  "Where stars and suns that we behold not burn,
+     Higher even than here, though highest was here thy place,
+       Love sees thy spirit laugh and speak and shine
+   With Shakespeare and the soft bright soul of Sterne,
+     And Fielding's kindliest might and Goldsmith's grace;
+       Scarce one more loved or worthier love than thine."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+When I was writing of what remains to us of the London of Shakespeare, I
+might have mentioned the four-century-old gateway of Lincoln's Inn, in
+Chancery Lane, that Ben Jonson helped to build, and close by which, at 24
+Old Buildings, Cromwell's secretary, John Thurloe, lived in 1654; and
+although in my first chapter I gave a fairly lengthy list of famous
+authors and artists who were Cockneys by birth, I by no means made it so
+long as I could have done. Hablot K. Browne, otherwise "Phiz," the chief
+of Dickens's artists, was born in Kennington, and lived for eight years,
+towards the close of his career, at 99 Ladbroke Grove Road; Lord Lytton,
+whom Tennyson unkindly described as "the padded man that wears the stays,"
+and who was for a time a more popular novelist than either Dickens or
+Thackeray, was born at 31 Baker Street, and lived in after years at 12
+Grosvenor Square, and at 36 Hertford Street; Gibbon was born at Putney,
+and lived for some years at 7 Bentinck Street, which he said was "the best
+house in the world"; John Leech was born over his father's coffee-shop in
+Ludgate Hill, and lived when he had risen to fame at 32 Brunswick Square,
+and passed the last years of his life at 6 The Terrace, Kensington; and
+one who I confess interests me at least as much as any of these,
+Douglas Jerrold, was born in Greek Street, Soho, lived as a boy at Broad
+Court, in the same neighbourhood, and afterwards shifted about into
+half-a-dozen different parts of London, and died in 1857 at Kilburn
+Priory, on the skirts of St. John's Wood. West Lodge, his house at Lower
+Putney Common, still stands much as it was when he occupied it, with his
+mulberry tree still growing in that garden round which, one memorable
+summer afternoon, he and Dickens, Forster, Maclise, and Macready gave each
+other "backs," and played a joyously undignified game of leapfrog. I don't
+know whether anybody reads _Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures_ now, but
+everybody read them and laughed over them when they were new, and
+Jerrold's best jokes and witticisms are much too well known to leave me an
+excuse for repeating any of them here. For all his bitter tongue, he was
+kind, generous, sensitive, afire with a fine scorn of wrong, injustice,
+and every variety of social humbug and snobbery. "A small
+delicately-formed, bent man," is Edmund Yates's recollection of him, "with
+long grey hair combed back from his forehead, with grey eyes deep-set
+under penthouse brows, and a way, just as the inspiration seized him, of
+dangling a double-eyeglass which hung round his neck by a broad black
+ribbon."
+
+[Illustration: THURLOE'S LODGINGS. 24 OLD SQUARE. LINCOLN'S INN.]
+
+Browning, who was born at Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell,
+in 1812, lived at De Vere Gardens, and at 19 Warwick Crescent. Removing
+from 74 Gloucester Place in 1842, Elizabeth Barrett and her autocratic
+father went to 50 Wimpole Street, and calling there with a friend in 1845,
+Robert Browning was introduced to her. It was from and to this house that
+so many of those wonderful love-letters of theirs were written, and little
+more than a year after their first meeting, her father stubbornly refusing
+his consent to their union, she stole out by this sedate and sombre door
+one autumn morning to join her waiting lover, and they were quietly and
+clandestinely married at the old church round the corner in Marylebone
+Road--the same church in which, in the same year, Dickens, then living at
+Devonshire House and within sight of it, married Mr. Dombey, with Captain
+Cuttle looking on at the ceremony from the gallery.
+
+At 82 Wimpole Street Wilkie Collins died; and at 67, lived Henry Hallam,
+the historian, and his son Arthur, the friend of Tennyson, who often
+visited him there, and has enshrined his memory for ever in his _In
+Memoriam_; where, too, he pictures this house and this street:
+
+  "Dark house, by which once more I stand
+     Here in the long unlovely street,
+     Doors, where my heart was used to beat
+   So quickly, waiting for a hand.
+
+   A hand that can be clasped no more--
+     Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
+     And like a guilty thing I creep
+   At earliest morning to the door.
+
+   He is not here; but far away
+     The noise of life begins again,
+     And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
+   On the bald street breaks the blank day."
+
+Theodore Hook, another Cockney, was born in Charlotte Street, Bedford
+Square; Captain Marryat, another, in Great George Street, Westminster,
+and whilst he was writing the most famous of his books he lived at 8 Duke
+Street, St. James's, and at Sussex Lodge, in the Fulham Road. Ruskin, who,
+like Browning, is included in my earlier list of Cockneys, was born at 54
+Hunter Street, and made his home for many years at 163 Denmark Hill, both
+of which houses still survive him.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN MARRYAT. DUKE STREET. ST. JAMES.]
+
+Benjamin Franklin lived at 7 Craven Street, Strand; before he rented a
+house in London after Johnson's death, Boswell had lodgings, on his annual
+visits to town, in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, in Conduit Street, Regent
+Street, and in Old Bond Street; where Sterne dwelt before him and Gibbon
+after him, and at 27A, Harrison Ainsworth, later than them all; but
+Ainsworth's more notable residence, where he lived when he was in the full
+glory of his enormous popularity, is Kensal House, out in the
+no-longer-rural district of Kensal Green.
+
+[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S HOUSE. CRAVEN STREET.]
+
+At 19 Albert Gate, Sloane Street, lived Charles Reade, who was nearly all
+his life quarrelling with his critics and fighting against legal
+injustices with an almost ungovernable fury, and yet David Christie Murray
+said he was one of the four men he had met who were "distinguished by that
+splendid urbanity of manner which was once thought to express the acme of
+high breeding.... A beautiful, stately cordiality commonly marked his
+social manner, but he could be moved to a towering rage by an act of
+meanness, treachery, or oppression; and in his public correspondence he
+was sometimes downright vitriolic." Anthony Trollope died at 34 Welbeck
+Street; and Lord Macaulay at Holly Lodge on Campden Hill. George
+Cruikshank lived in the queer, dull-looking little house that still
+remains at 263 Hampstead Road, and from that address put forth his
+groundless claims to being the originator of Ainsworth's novels, _Jack
+Sheppard_ and _The Miser's Daughter_, and Dickens's _Oliver Twist_.
+Ainsworth was still living, and strenuously denied his assertions; Dickens
+was dead, but there existed a letter of his about the illustrations to his
+book that sufficiently proved that the story was not written round
+Cruickshank's drawings, as the aged artist seemed to have persuaded
+himself it was. A greater artist than Cruickshank (and another Cockney, by
+the way) was born in Cumberland Market, near Regent's Park, and died in a
+sponging-house in Eyre Street Hill, Clerkenwell Road, in 1804. That was
+George Morland. Two years before his death he went with his wife and put
+up at the Bull Inn, at Highgate, which was kept by a former acquaintance
+of his. He is supposed to have utilised as a studio the large room with
+three bay windows that runs above the bar the full width of the building.
+He entertained Gainsborough and Romney and other contemporary artists
+there, but within a few months had had a fierce quarrel with the landlord
+and returned to lodge with his brother in Dean Street, Soho. He was by
+then showing the effects of his reckless dissipations, and looked
+"besotted and squalid and cadaverous; hanging cheeks and pinched nose,
+contracted nostrils, bleared and bloodshot eyes, swelled legs, a palsied
+hand, and tremulous voice bespeaking the ruin of what had once been the
+soundest of frames." Drunk or sober, he worked rapidly and with unfailing
+mastery, but he was generally cheated by those around him of the due
+reward of his labours. Going on a short holiday to Brighton, he wrote
+giving his brother this list of what he had drunk in a single day:
+"Hollands gin, rum and milk--before breakfast. Coffee--for breakfast.
+Hollands, porter, shrub, ale, Hollands, port wine and ginger, bottled
+ale--these before dinner. Port wine at dinner. Porter, bottled porter,
+punch, porter, ale, opium and water. Port wine at supper. Gin, shrub, and
+rum on going to bed." At the bottom of the list he sketched a tombstone
+bearing a skull and crossbones, and by way of epitaph: "Here lies a
+drunken dog." And debts and duns and death in the sponging-house were the
+inevitable end of it.
+
+[Illustration: CRUIKSHANK. 263 HAMPSTEAD ROAD.]
+
+Lady Blessington held her brilliant salon at 8 Seamore Place, Mayfair,
+before in 1836 she removed to the more noted Gore House, Kensington, and
+welcomed to her splendid drawing-rooms Byron, Lytton, Disraeli, Landor,
+Marryat, Dickens, Thackeray, Sydney Smith, Maclise, Hook, and all the
+greatest men of the day in literature, art, politics, and society, till in
+1849 she was overwhelmed with financial embarrassments and fled to Paris,
+where she died the year after. Gore House has vanished from its place
+long since, and the Albert Hall more than covers the site of it. But
+Holland House, which was equally or more celebrated for its magnificent
+social gatherings in the first half of last century and earlier, still
+holds its ground. Addison lived there after his marriage to the Countess
+of Warwick in 1716, and from his bedroom there, in his last hours, sent
+for his dissipated stepson in order that he might see "how a Christian can
+die."
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING]
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE MORLAND. THE "BULL INN" HIGHGATE.]
+
+Perhaps more interesting than either of these, from a literary standpoint,
+is the house of Samuel Rogers, 22 St. James's Place, overlooking the Green
+Park. You can scarcely open the memoirs of any man of letters of his time,
+but you may read some account of a breakfast or a dinner at Rogers's.
+"What a delightful house it is!" says Macaulay. "It looks out on the Green
+Park just at the most pleasant point. The furniture has been selected with
+a delicacy of taste quite unique.... In the drawing-room the
+chimney-pieces are carved by Flaxman into the most beautiful Grecian
+forms. The bookcase is painted by Stothard, in his very best manner, with
+groups from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Boccaccio. The pictures are not
+numerous, but every one is excellent. The most remarkable objects in the
+dining-room are, I think, a cast of Pope, taken after death by Roubiliac;
+a noble model in terra-cotta by Michael Angelo, from which he afterwards
+made one of his finest statues, that of Lorenzo de Medici; and, lastly, a
+mahogany table on which stands an antique vase. When Chantrey dined with
+Rogers some time ago he took particular notice of the vase and the table
+on which it stands, and asked Rogers who made the table. 'A common
+carpenter,' said Rogers. 'Do you remember the making of it?' said
+Chantrey. 'Certainly,' said Rogers, in some surprise; 'I was in the room
+while it was finished with the chisel, and gave the workman directions
+about placing it.' 'Yes,' said Chantrey, 'I was the carpenter.'" Byron,
+who was a guest at Holland House and at Lady Blessington's, was a frequent
+guest at Rogers's table also. It was Rogers who introduced him to Miss
+Milbanke, the unfortunate lady who was to become his wife; and Byron seems
+by turns to have admired him, disliked him, and looked upon him with a
+sort of laughing contempt. "When Sheridan was on his deathbed," he writes,
+"Rogers aided him with purse and person: this was particularly kind in
+Rogers, who always spoke ill of Sheridan (to me, at least); but indeed he
+does that of everybody. Rogers is the reverse of the line 'The best good
+man with the worst-natured Muse,' being 'The worst good man with the
+best-natured Muse.' His Muse being all sentiment and sago, while he
+himself is a venomous talker. I say 'worst good man,' because he is
+(perhaps) a good man--at least he does good now and then, as well he may,
+to purchase himself a shilling's worth of Salvation for his Slanders. They
+are so _little_, too--small talk, and old womanny; and he is malignant
+too, and envious."
+
+[Illustration: ROGERS. ST. JAMES'S PLACE. FROM GREEN PARK.]
+
+Rogers had a fine head, a distinguished manner, a bland, silky way of
+saying the most cutting and cynical things. He was not so much a poet as a
+banker of a poetical temperament. His poetry will presently be forgotten,
+but his breakfasts and his dinners will be remembered because he lived to
+be well over ninety, was a very wealthy man of taste, and had the will and
+the means to play the generous host to some three generations of the
+wisest, wittiest, greatest men of his era, and several of them said
+brighter and better things in his dining and drawing-rooms than he ever
+wrote in his books. He covered such a long span of time that he could
+entertain Sheridan, who was born in 1751, and Dickens, who died in 1870.
+Many of the same glorious company had a meeting-place also until a more
+recent day at Bath House, Mayfair, where Lady Ashburton, the great friend
+of the Carlyles, held famous receptions, of which Carlyle himself and the
+Brookfields have left us reminiscences. And the invaluable Allingham has
+one or two notes about her in his _Diary_; one dated 5th November 1875, in
+which he says Carlyle passed his house "about four to-day. I overtook him
+in the Fulham Road, and walked with him to Lady Ashburton's door at
+Knightsbridge. He said, 'Browning in his young days wore a turn-down shirt
+collar with a ribbon for a necktie, and a green coat. I first met him one
+evening at Leigh Hunt's, a modest youth, with a good strong face and a
+head of dark hair. He said little, but what he said was good.'" Possibly
+the talk fell upon him because Browning was among the guests he was to
+meet that day at Lady Ashburton's.
+
+[Illustration: BORROW'S HOUSE. HEREFORD SQUARE.]
+
+William Morris and Burne Jones lived and worked together at 17 Red Lion
+Square; Steele used to live in Bloomsbury Square, where later Disraeli and
+his father lived, at No. 5. George Borrow lived at 23 Hereford Square,
+South Kensington. Berkeley Square has a peculiar attraction for me, less
+because Horace Walpole had his home at 42, than because Colley Cibber
+dwelt as a very old man at No. 20. In the same way I am not so much drawn
+to Gower Street by the fact that in a greatly altered house there Darwin
+used to live, as I am to that shabby Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road,
+where Albert Smith had a house at which Sala once visited him. Walpole and
+Darwin are, of course, incomparably greater men than Cibber and Albert
+Smith, but these last two have a curious fascination for me. I read
+Smith's _Christopher Tadpole_ and _The Scattergood Family_ when I was a
+boy, and his figure flits elusively in the background of Dickens's
+reputation, wrapped in a very characteristic mid-Victorian bohemianism,
+and, without precisely knowing why, I have taken a sort of liking to him.
+Sala says he was a kind, cheery little man, who when he was at work at
+home wore a blue blouse. "I recall him," he says, "as a sturdy-looking,
+broad-shouldered, short-necked man, with grey eyes and flowing locks of
+light brown, and large side-whiskers; later in life he wore a beard. His
+voice was a high treble." His study in Percy Street was littered always
+with French novels, dolls, pipes, cheap jewellery, cakes of soap made in
+the image of fruit, minature Swiss châlets, fancy costumes, and such a
+miscellany of odds and ends that it had the appearance of an old curiosity
+shop. As for Cibber, I began by feeling contempt for him, because of the
+scorn Pope pours on him in _The Dunciad_, and the character for dulness
+that was imposed upon him by that savage satirist and his host of
+imitators. But when I read some of Cibber's comedies (such as _The
+Careless Husband_, and _Love Makes a Man_) I found them amusing and clever
+in their fashion, certainly not dull, and when I dropped one day into the
+National Portrait Gallery and saw that coloured bust of him under a glass
+case and leering through the glass eyes that have been fitted into his
+head--I succumbed, and acquired a sneaking regard for the gay old coxcomb
+that is not yet beginning to cool. You cannot read his plays and his
+delightful _Apology_ for his Life without getting interested in him; and
+then if you go and look at that bust you will feel that you know the sly,
+witty, shrewd, ruddy-visaged, not over clean, furtive, leery old rascal as
+intimately as if you had been acquainted with him in the flesh.
+
+But if one set out to write of the homes and haunts of these minor
+celebrities this book would be endless; moreover, many amongst them that
+have some peculiar attraction for me might have no interest for any one
+else; and many that for special reasons mean a great deal to you might
+mean nothing at all to me. So, as the wiser course, I have, in the main,
+limited my survey to the houses of men and women who are considerable
+enough to be known, more or less, by every one who has even a nodding
+acquaintance with literature, and to that extent my chronicle is at an
+end.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Addison, Joseph, 3, 28, 150, 339
+
+  Addison Bridge Place, 199, 203
+
+  Adelphi Terrace, 114, 223, 233
+
+  Ainsworth, W. Harrison, 238, 334, 337
+
+  Akenside, Mark, 3, 28, 150
+
+  Albany, The, 199
+
+  Albemarle Street, 181
+
+  Albert Gate, Sloane Street, 334
+
+  Albion Street, 296
+
+  Aldermanbury, 19
+
+  Aldersgate Street, 12, 17, 19
+
+  Aldford Street, 178, 181
+
+  Aldgate, 4
+
+  Allingham, William, 259, 262, 276, 280, 281, 285, 343, 344
+
+  Ampton Street, 275
+
+  Arbuthnot, John, 31, 150
+
+  Archer, Thomas, 2
+
+  Argyll Place, 167
+
+  ---- Street, 167
+
+  Arlington Road, 245
+
+  Ashburton, Lady, 343, 344
+
+  Atterbury, Francis, 31
+
+  Austin, Alfred, 253
+
+  Avenue Road, 245
+
+  Ayrton, William, 207
+
+
+  Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam), 6
+
+  Baillie, Joanna, 145, 194
+
+  Baker Street, 328
+
+  Balmanno, Mary, 233
+
+  Barbauld, Mrs., 146, 220
+
+  Barber, Francis, 102
+
+  Barham, R. H., 238
+
+  Barrett, Elizabeth, 331, 332
+
+  Bartholomew Close, 19, 38, 50
+
+  Barton, Bernard, 219, 222, 226
+
+  Basire, James, 118, 120
+
+  Bath House, Mayfair, 343
+
+  Bathurst, Dr., 94
+
+  Battersea, 26-35, 260
+
+  Bayham Street, 314
+
+  Beauclerk, Topham, 63, 114
+
+  Beaumont, Francis, 20
+
+  Bellott, Stephen, 14, 15, 16
+
+  Bennet Street, 194
+
+  Bentinck Street, 315, 328
+
+  Berkeley Square, 344
+
+  Besant, Sir Walter, 146
+
+  Bird-in-Hand Court, Cheapside, 23
+
+  Bishopsgate, 10
+
+  Blackstone, Sir William, 80
+
+  Blake, William, 9, 118-139, 271
+
+  Blandford Square, 245
+
+  Blessington, Lady, 338
+
+  Bloomfield, Robert, 3
+
+  Bloomsbury Square, 344
+
+  Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, 26-35, 106
+
+  Bolingbroke House, 26-35
+
+  Bolt Court, 90, 117
+
+  Bond Street, 265
+
+  Boner, Charles, 279
+
+  Borrow, George, 344
+
+  Boswell, James, 59, 71, 79, 81, 82, 85, 86, 93-117, 118, 334
+
+  Bouverie Street, 181
+
+  Bow Lane, 19
+
+  ---- Street, 90
+
+  Brawne, Fanny, 154, 156, 160, 163, 164, 165
+
+  Bread Street, Cheapside, 4, 19
+
+  Broad Street, Soho, 9, 118, 119, 130, 167
+
+  Brontë, Charlotte, 303
+
+  Brooks, Shirley, 316
+
+  Brown, Charles Armitage, 154, 164, 166
+
+  Browne, Hablot K. ("Phiz"), 316, 323, 328
+
+  Browne, Sir Thomas, 4
+
+  Browning, Robert, 9, 259, 281, 331, 332, 344
+
+  Brunswick Square, 328
+
+  Buckingham Street, Euston Road, 135
+
+  ---- ---- Strand, 200, 315
+
+  Bunhill Row, 19
+
+  Burbage, Richard, 13
+
+  Burke, Edmund, 59, 88
+
+  Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 76, 344
+
+  Burney, Dr. Charles, 56, 106, 114
+
+  ---- Fanny, 56
+
+  Burns, Robert, 194, 198
+
+  Butts, Thomas, 124
+
+  Byron, Lord, 9, 67, 68, 155, 167, 193-199, 200, 203, 286, 287, 321, 338,
+        340
+
+
+  Cade, Jack, 10
+
+  Camberwell, 236
+
+  Campbell, Thomas, 200
+
+  Campden Hill, 334
+
+  Cannon Street, 10, 18
+
+  Canonbury Tower, 76
+
+  Carew, Thomas, 20
+
+  Carlyle, Mrs., 279, 285, 286, 292, 318
+
+  ---- Thomas, 96, 198, 205, 210, 262, 263, 275-286, 291, 292, 293, 294,
+        296, 303, 304, 317, 321, 343, 344
+
+  Carter Lane, 12
+
+  Cary, Rev. H. F., 51
+
+  Castle Street, Cavendish Square, 89
+
+  ---- ---- Leicester Square, 63
+
+  Cattermole, George, 238
+
+  Cave, Edward, 88, 102
+
+  Chancery Lane, 4, 328
+
+  Charing Cross, 3, 4, 224
+
+  Charlotte Street, 144, 332
+
+  Charterhouse, 94, 188, 281, 296
+
+  Chaucer, Geoffrey, 4
+
+  Cheapside, 2, 4, 5, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24
+
+  Chelsea, 254, 255-293
+
+  Cheshire Cheese, the, 108
+
+  Chesterfield, Lord, 103-105
+
+  Chesterton, G. K., 128
+
+  Cheyne Row, 275-286
+
+  Cheyne Walk, 254, 255, 256-265, 273-275
+
+  Chiswick, 36-51
+
+  Christ's Hospital, 200
+
+  Churchill, Charles, 6, 44, 47, 48
+
+  Cibber, Colley, 28, 344, 347
+
+  Clarke, Cowden, 156, 240
+
+  ---- Mrs. Cowden, 317
+
+  Cleveland Street, 314
+
+  Clifford's Inn, 220
+
+  Cloth Fair, 10
+
+  Cobbett, William, 200
+
+  Colebrook Row, 219, 220, 221, 223, 224
+
+  Coleridge, S. T., 156, 199-206, 208, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 223
+
+  College Street, Kentish Town, 163
+
+  Collins, Wilkie, 146, 318, 332
+
+  Colman, George, 67
+
+  Colvin, Sir Sidney, 150
+
+  Condell, Henry, 19
+
+  Conduit Street, Regent Street, 334
+
+  Congreve, William, 150
+
+  Constable, John, 143-145, 153
+
+  Cornhill, 1, 2, 6
+
+  Cornwall, Barry, 216, 238
+
+  Coryat, Thomas, 19
+
+  Covent Garden, 41, 109, 135, 200, 216, 217, 218
+
+  Cowley, Abraham, 4
+
+  Cranbourne Street, 38
+
+  Craven Street, Strand, 50, 334
+
+  Cripplegate, 6, 19
+
+  Cross, John, 254
+
+  Cruikshank, George, 238, 316, 334, 337
+
+  Cumberland Market, 337
+
+  Cunningham, Allan, 43, 59
+
+
+  Darwin, Charles, 344
+
+  Davies, Thomas, 109, 110, 113
+
+  Day, Thomas, 187-193
+
+  Dean Street, 41, 167, 338
+
+  Defoe, Daniel, 6
+
+  Dekker, Thomas, 19
+
+  Denmark Hill, 334
+
+  Dennis, John, 32, 220
+
+  De Quincey, Thomas, 168-177, 206
+
+  De Stael, Madame, 167
+
+  De Vere Gardens, 331
+
+  Devereux Court, 3
+
+  Devil Tavern, 19, 108
+
+  Devonshire Terrace, 239, 323, 332
+
+  Dibdin, Charles, 245
+
+  Dickens, Charles, 3, 146, 149, 153, 238, 239, 250, 286, 287, 294, 300,
+        311, 312, 313, 314-327, 328, 331, 332, 334, 337, 338, 343, 344
+
+  ---- Mrs., 303, 322
+
+  Dilke, Wentworth, 154, 156
+
+  Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield), 167, 338, 344
+
+  ---- Isaac, 344
+
+  Dobson, Austin, 294
+
+  Dodsley, Robert, 96
+
+  Donne, Dr. John, 4, 19
+
+  Doughty Street, 316, 317, 318, 322, 323
+
+  Dowden, Dr., 181
+
+  Down Street, 280
+
+  Dryden, John, 167
+
+  Duke Street, 333
+
+  Du Maurier, George, 146
+
+  Dyer, George, 220, 232
+
+
+  East Smithfield, 4
+
+  Edmonton, 8, 225, 226-232
+
+  Edwardes Square, 293
+
+  Eliot, George, 245-254, 255
+
+  Elm Tree Road, 233, 236, 238, 239, 240
+
+  Ely Place, 10
+
+  Emerson, R. W., 280, 281
+
+  Enfield, 223, 225, 226
+
+  Exeter Street, 89
+
+
+  Felpham, 127, 136
+
+  Fetter Lane, 90
+
+  Fielding, Henry, 43, 71, 72
+
+  Fields, Ticknor, 303
+
+  Finchley Road, 237, 242
+
+  Fitzgerald, Edward, 142, 153, 303, 305
+
+  ---- Percy, 89
+
+  Fitzosbert, William, 1
+
+  Fitzroy Square, 273
+
+  ---- Street, 314
+
+  Flaxman, John, 120-139, 140, 167
+
+  Fleet Street, 4, 8, 89, 108, 109, 181
+
+  Fleming, Mrs., 76, 79
+
+  Fletcher, John, 4, 18, 20
+
+  Forster, John, 87, 149, 238, 294, 295, 318, 321, 322, 323, 331
+
+  Fountain Court, 131, 134
+
+  Franklin, Benjamin, 49, 334
+
+  Friday Street, 18, 20
+
+  Frith Street, 167, 181, 185
+
+  Froude, J. A., 279
+
+  Fulham Road, 266, 333
+
+  Fuller, Thomas, 20
+
+  Furnival's Inn, 315, 316
+
+
+  Gad's Hill Place, 315, 324
+
+  Gainsborough, Thomas, 64, 67, 130, 153, 337
+
+  Gamble, Ellis, 38, 39
+
+  Garrick, David, 43, 48, 50, 59, 96, 103, 110, 114, 153
+
+  ---- Mrs., 114
+
+  Garth, Sir Samuel, 31
+
+  Gay, John, 31, 150
+
+  Gerrard Street, 42, 59, 167
+
+  Gibbon, Edward, 328
+
+  Gilchrist, Alexander, 123, 124, 131
+
+  Gilman, Mr., 156, 223
+
+  Globe Theatre, 12, 13, 18, 19
+
+  Gloucester Place, 331
+
+  Godwin, Mary, 181
+
+  ---- William, 216
+
+  Goldsmith, Oliver, 59, 63, 68, 71, 76, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88,
+        153
+
+  Gore House, Kensington, 338
+
+  Gough Square, 90, 95-109
+
+  Gower, John, 18
+
+  Gower Street, 344
+
+  Gray, Thomas, 6
+
+  Gray's Inn, 90
+
+  Great Coram Street, 296
+
+  ---- George Street, 333
+
+  ---- Newport Street, 56
+
+  ---- Portland Street, 117
+
+  ---- Queen Street, 117, 118
+
+  Greaves, Walter, 260, 262, 273
+
+  Greek Street, 168-177
+
+  Green Street, 120
+
+  Greene, Robert, 13
+
+  Grosvenor Square, 328
+
+
+  Half Moon Street, 334
+
+  Hall, S. C., 185
+
+  Hallam, Arthur, 332
+
+  ---- Henry, 332
+
+  Hamilton, Lady, 142
+
+  ---- Sir William, 275
+
+  Hammersmith, 200, 271, 294
+
+  Hampstead, 140-166
+
+  Hampstead Road, 314, 334
+
+  Hannay, James, 300
+
+  Harley Street, 271
+
+  Harmsworth, Cecil, 90
+
+  Harry, M. Gerard, 266
+
+  Hawkesworth, Dr. John, 94, 102, 103
+
+  Hawkins, Sir John, 63, 93, 94, 108
+
+  Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 294
+
+  Haydon, Benjamin, 135, 156, 158, 181, 210
+
+  Hayley, William, 124, 134, 140, 142
+
+  Hazlitt, Mrs., 220
+
+  ---- William, 39, 156, 167, 181-186, 200, 203, 204, 205, 207, 216
+
+  Heminge, John, 19
+
+  Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, 123-124
+
+  Hereford Square, 344
+
+  Herrick, Robert, 5
+
+  Hertford Street, 328
+
+  Highgate, 156, 157, 199, 223, 259, 337
+
+  Hind, Lewis, 271
+
+  Hobbes, Thomas, 3
+
+  Hogarth, Mary, 322
+
+  ---- Mrs., 50-51
+
+  ---- William, 36-51, 56, 63, 68, 79, 150
+
+  Hogg, T. J., 177
+
+  Holborn, 90, 226
+
+  Holcroft, Thomas, 216
+
+  Holland House, 339
+
+  Holles Street, 9, 193
+
+  Hone, William, 158, 223
+
+  Hood, Thomas, 9, 223, 233, 235-245
+
+  Hook, Theodore, 332, 338
+
+  Hungerford Market, 314
+
+  Hunt, Holman, 9
+
+  ---- Leigh, 68, 153, 155, 156, 158, 210, 285, 286-295, 318, 344
+
+  Hunter Street, 334
+
+
+  Irving, Washington, 38
+
+  Islington, 76, 79, 219-221
+
+  Isola, Emma, 227, 228, 231
+
+  Ivy Lane, 94, 108
+
+
+  Jeffrey, Francis, 275
+
+  Jerrold, Douglas, 239, 294, 331
+
+  Johnson, Mrs., 97, 98, 101
+
+  ---- Samuel, 3, 33, 43, 50, 52, 59, 60, 63, 68, 71, 72, 79, 81, 82, 86,
+        88, 89-117, 275
+
+  Johnson Street, 314
+
+  Johnson's Court, 90
+
+  Jonson, Ben, 4, 19, 20
+
+
+  Keats, John, 6, 23, 153-166
+
+  Kemble, John, 167
+
+  Kemp, William, 13
+
+  Kensal Green, 334
+
+  Kensington, 293, 296, 299, 303-306, 311, 328, 338, 339
+
+  ---- Gardens, 300
+
+  Kilburn Priory, 331
+
+  King Street, Covent Garden, 200
+
+  Kingsley, Charles, 255
+
+  ---- Henry, 255
+
+  Kit-Kat Club, 150
+
+  Knight, Joseph, 256
+
+
+  Ladbroke Grove Road, 328
+
+  Lamb, Charles, 6, 9, 39, 40, 51, 80, 86, 130, 156, 186, 200, 206,
+        207-232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 240, 241, 287
+
+  ---- Mary, 209, 213, 215, 216, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 231, 233,
+        234
+
+  Landor, Walter Savage, 208, 338
+
+  Landseer, Sir Edwin, 238
+
+  Langland, John, 1
+
+  Langton, Bennet, 63, 72, 103
+
+  Lant Street, 314
+
+  Leathersellers' Buildings, 3
+
+  Lecky, Mrs., 281
+
+  Leech, John, 328
+
+  Leicester Square, 38, 39, 49, 52, 59, 60, 63, 81, 86, 88, 117, 120
+
+  Lennox, Mrs., 108
+
+  Levett, Robert, 102, 103
+
+  Lewes, George Henry, 249, 253, 316
+
+  Lincoln's Inn Fields, 149, 322
+
+  Little College Street, 314
+
+  ---- Queen Street, 212
+
+  Lloyd, Charles, 215
+
+  Locke, John, 207
+
+  Lombard Street, 6
+
+  London Bridge, 24
+
+  ---- Stone, 10
+
+  Loudon Road, 245
+
+  Ludgate Hill, 328
+
+  Lytton, Lord, 242, 250, 328, 338
+
+
+  Macaulay, Lord, 334, 340
+
+  Maclise, Daniel, 149, 239, 255, 331, 338
+
+  Macready, W. C., 331
+
+  Maiden Lane, 271
+
+  Manning, Thomas, 211
+
+  Marchmont Street, 181
+
+  Marryat, Captain, 238, 333, 338
+
+  Marston, Philip Bourke, 9
+
+  Marylebone Road, 288, 323, 332
+
+  Massinger, Philip, 18
+
+  Mathews, Charles, 197
+
+  Matthew, Mrs., 120, 134
+
+  Mawson Row, Chiswick, 36
+
+  Mecklenburgh Square, 316
+
+  Medwin, 177
+
+  Meredith, George, 255
+
+  Mermaid Tavern, 18, 19, 20
+
+  Middleton, Thomas, 4
+
+  Milbanke, Anna Isabella, 194, 197, 199, 340
+
+  Mill, John Stuart, 9, 275
+
+  Milnes, Moncton (Lord Houghton), 238
+
+  Milton, John, 4, 19
+
+  Monkwell Street, 14, 15, 16, 19
+
+  Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 28
+
+  Moore, Thomas, 67, 194
+
+  Moorfields, 6, 153
+
+  More, Hannah, 114
+
+  Morland, George, 337, 338
+
+  Morris, William, 37, 344
+
+  Mount Street, 178
+
+  Mountjoy, Christopher, 14, 15, 16, 17
+
+  Moxon, Edward, 227, 228, 231
+
+  Mulready, William, 167
+
+  Munday, Anthony, 19
+
+  Munro, Alexander, 281
+
+  Murray, David Christie, 334
+
+  ---- John, 198
+
+
+  New Street, 135
+
+  Newgate Street, 200
+
+  Newman Street, Oxford Street, 63
+
+  Newton, Sir Isaac, 52-56, 207
+
+  Nollekens, Joseph, 39, 140
+
+  Norfolk Street, Strand, 200
+
+  North Bank, 245
+
+  ---- End, Fulham, 71, 72, 73
+
+  Northcote, James, 167
+
+
+  Old Bond Street, 197, 334
+
+  Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, 328
+
+  Onslow Square, 306
+
+  Opie, Mrs., 198
+
+  Oxford Street, 168, 169, 174
+
+
+  Palace Green, Kensington, 311
+
+  Pall Mall, 64, 200, 205
+
+  Parson's Green, 71
+
+  Patmore, P. G., 185, 211
+
+  Peckham Rye, 118
+
+  Peel, Sir Robert, 242, 325
+
+  Pennell, Mr. and Mrs. J., 260, 261, 265, 266, 267, 268
+
+  Percy, Bishop, 117
+
+  ---- Street, Tottenham Court Road, 344, 347
+
+  Philip, Mrs. and Miss Birnie, 267, 268
+
+  Phillips, Sir Richard, 51
+
+  Piccadilly, 199, 334
+
+  Poland Street, 123, 167, 177, 178
+
+  Pope, Alexander, 6, 26-35, 36, 106, 150, 155, 347
+
+  Pope's Head Alley, 2
+
+  Poultry, the, 9
+
+  Praed, W. Mackworth, 88
+
+  Prior, Matthew, 3
+
+  Putney, 255, 295, 328, 331
+
+
+  Queen Anne Street, 271, 272, 273, 274
+
+  Quiney, Richard, 12
+
+
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 20
+
+  Ralph, James, 36
+
+  Reade, Charles, 334
+
+  Red Lion Square, 344
+
+  Reynolds, John Hamilton, 156, 223
+
+  ---- Sir Joshua, 33, 56, 59, 60, 63, 64, 67, 81, 86, 88, 103, 110, 114,
+        117, 130, 141, 153, 271
+
+  Richardson, Samuel, 42, 68, 71-75, 97
+
+  Ritchie, Lady Thackeray, 299, 300, 305, 306
+
+  Robert Street, Adelphi, 223, 233
+
+  Roberts, David, 272, 273
+
+  Robinson, Crabb, 130, 233
+
+  Rogers, Samuel, 67, 145, 194, 200, 203, 205, 339-343
+
+  Romney, George, 135, 140-143, 337
+
+  Rossetti, Christina, 9
+
+  ---- Dante Gabriel, 9, 255, 259, 260, 261
+
+  ---- W. M., 255
+
+  Rowan Road, 294
+
+  Rowley, William, 19
+
+  Ruskin, John, 9, 265, 281, 334
+
+  Russell Square, 303
+
+  Russell Street, Covent Garden, 109, 216, 217, 218, 219
+
+
+  St. Andrew Undershaft, 10
+
+  St. Anne's, Soho, 186
+
+  St. Bartholomew the Great, 10
+
+  St. Clement Danes, 89, 108
+
+  St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 10
+
+  St. James's Place, 339
+
+  ---- Street, 199
+
+  St. John's Wood, 233, 236-245, 253, 254, 288, 331
+
+  St. Martin's Street, 52
+
+  St. Olave, Silver Street, 15, 16
+
+  St. Saviour's, Southwark, 10, 19
+
+  Sala, George Augustus, 316, 323, 325, 326, 344, 347
+
+  Salisbury Court, 42
+
+  Savile Row, 68
+
+  Scott, Sir Walter, 145, 197
+
+  Seamore Place, 338
+
+  Selden, John, 20
+
+  Shakespeare, Edmund, 18
+
+  ---- William, 6, 10-24, 106, 328
+
+  Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 156, 167, 177-181, 206, 287, 288, 294
+
+  Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 67, 68, 194, 340, 343
+
+  Shirley, James, 4
+
+  Silver Street, 14, 16, 17
+
+  Smith, Albert, 344, 347
+
+  Smith, J. T. ("Rainy Day"), 120, 140
+
+  Smith, Sidney, 316, 338
+
+  Smollett, Tobias, 255
+
+  Soho, 41, 42, 56, 59, 118-123, 130, 167-186, 338
+
+  Soho Square, 167, 168
+
+  Southampton Street, Camberwell, 331
+
+  South Moulton Street, 127, 129, 131
+
+  Southey, Robert, 223
+
+  Southwark, 10, 11
+
+  Spencer, Herbert, 245
+
+  Spenser, Edmund, 4
+
+  Stanfield, Clarkson, 146, 149, 238, 272
+
+  Staple Inn, 10, 90, 109
+
+  Steele, Richard, 3, 150, 344
+
+  Sterne, Laurence, 334
+
+  Stevenson, Robert Louis, 150, 241
+
+  Stothard, Thomas, 134, 271
+
+  Strand, 6, 7, 8, 90, 105, 131, 315
+
+  Stubbs, Bishop, 3
+
+  Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 9
+
+  Swift, Jonathan, 27, 31, 150
+
+  Swinburne, A. C., 9, 255, 327
+
+
+  Talfourd, T. N., 210, 216
+
+  Tavistock Square, 324
+
+  Taylor, John, 160
+
+  Temple Bar, 19
+
+  Temple, Rev. T. W., 117
+
+  Temple, the, 6, 7, 10, 72, 80, 87, 177, 207, 216, 218, 296, 304
+
+  Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 142, 150, 328, 332
+
+  Terrace, the, Kensington, 328
+
+  Thackeray, W. M., 88, 153, 208, 242, 296-313, 314, 315, 326, 328, 338
+
+  Thames Street, 4, 18
+
+  Thomson, James, 27
+
+  Thornhill, Sir James, 41, 42, 52, 167
+
+  Thrale, Mrs., 63
+
+  Thurloe, John, 328
+
+  Tite Street, 265, 266
+
+  Tower, the, 10
+
+  Trollope, Anthony, 312, 313, 326, 334
+
+  Turk's Head, 42
+
+  Turner, J. M. W., 9, 260, 268-275
+
+  Turpin, Dick, 153
+
+  Twickenham, 31, 32, 35, 271
+
+
+  Upper Cheyne Row, 286, 288, 291-293
+
+
+  Vale, the, Chelsea, 266
+
+  Vine Street, Westminster, 6
+
+
+  Wallace, Charles William, 12, 14, 15
+
+  Walpole, Horace, 255, 344
+
+  Wanstead, 236
+
+  Warburton, William, 33
+
+  Wardour Street, 135
+
+  Warton, Joseph, 28, 94
+
+  Warwick Crescent, 331
+
+  Watts, G. F., 262
+
+  Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 23, 255
+
+  Webster, John, 4
+
+  Welbeck Street, 334
+
+  Wellclose Square, 187
+
+  Wellington Street, Strand, 315, 324
+
+  West, Benjamin, 43, 63
+
+  Westbrook, Harriett, 178, 181
+
+  Westminster, 6, 333
+
+  ---- Abbey, 10, 134
+
+  Whistler, James McNeill, 39, 256, 259-268, 271
+
+  Whitefriars Street, 2
+
+  Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell, 296
+
+  Wilkes, John, 44
+
+  Wilkins, George, 15, 19
+
+  Williams, Anna, 101, 102, 106
+
+  Will's Coffee House, 216
+
+  Wimbledon Park Road, 245-253
+
+  Wimpole Street, 265, 331, 332
+
+  Winchmore Hill, 236
+
+  Wine Office Court, 76, 108
+
+  Wood Street, Cheapside, 17, 19
+
+  Woodstock Street, 89
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+  Wordsworth, William, 7, 8, 145, 205, 208, 216, 220, 222, 225, 226
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+  Yates, Edmund, 309, 310, 311, 312, 316, 331
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+  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
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+Transcriber's Notes:
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+    <title>
+      Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London, by A. St. John Adcock&mdash;A Project Gutenberg eBook
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London, by 
+A. St. John Adcock
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London
+
+Author: A. St. John Adcock
+
+Illustrator: Frederick Adcock
+
+Release Date: November 24, 2013 [EBook #44269]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS HOUSES, LITERARY SHRINES, LONDON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1><small>FAMOUS HOUSES<br />AND<br />LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON</small></h1>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p><a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="SAM. JOHNSON" /></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">FAMOUS HOUSES</span><br />
+<span class="large">AND</span><br />
+<span class="giant">LITERARY SHRINES<br />
+OF LONDON</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><small>BY</small><br />
+<span class="large">A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK</span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/printer.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">WITH SEVENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS<br />
+BY FREDERICK ADCOCK<br />
+AND 16 PORTRAITS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">LONDON: J. M. DENT &amp; SONS, LTD.<br />
+NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON &amp; CO. 1912</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson &amp; Co.</span><br />
+At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PREFATORY NOTE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Nothing could well be deader or emptier than an unoccupied house of whose
+former inhabitants we have no knowledge; and it is impossible to take a
+real interest in a house now occupied by strangers, even though it was
+aforetime the residence of some famous man, unless we are acquainted with
+that man’s personality, and know what he thought and did and said whilst
+he was living there. I have attempted to do little more than supply that
+information here as the complement of my brother’s drawings, and to this
+end have been less concerned to give my own descriptions and opinions than
+to bring together opinions and descriptions that were written by such
+famous residents themselves or by guests and visitors who saw and knew
+them. As far as possible I have quoted from contemporary Diaries and
+Memoirs, especially from letters that were written in or to these houses,
+or from Journals that their tenants kept whilst they dwelt there,
+supplementing all this with a narrative of incidents and events that might
+help to recreate the life and recapture the atmosphere that belonged to
+such places in the days that have made them memorable. Whenever I have
+adventured into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> any general biography, or expressed any personal opinion,
+it has been merely with the object of adding so much of history and
+character as would serve to fill in the outline of a man’s portrait, give
+it a sufficient fulness and colour of life, and throw into clear relief
+the space of time that he passed in some particular house that can still
+be seen in a London street.</p>
+
+<p>I think I have throughout made due acknowledgment to the authors of
+various volumes of <i>Recollections</i> and <i>Table Talk</i> from which I have
+drawn anecdotes and pen-portraits, and I should like to mention at the
+outset that for biographical facts and much else I have been particularly
+indebted to such books as Elwin and Courthope’s edition of the <i>Poems and
+Letters of Pope</i>; Austin Dobson’s <i>William Hogarth</i>, and H. B. Wheatley’s
+<i>Hogarth’s London</i>; Boswell’s <i>Johnson</i>, of course, and Forster’s <i>Lives
+of Goldsmith</i> and of <i>Dickens</i>; Gilchrist’s <i>Life of Blake</i>; Leslie’s and
+Holmes’s <i>Lives of Constable</i>; Arthur B. Chamberlain’s <i>George Romney</i>;
+Lord Houghton’s <i>Life and Letters of Keats</i>, and Buxton Forman’s <i>Complete
+Works of John Keats</i>; Leigh Hunt’s <i>Autobiography</i>; De Quincey’s <i>English
+Opium Eater</i>; Hogg’s and Peacock’s <i>Memoirs of Shelley</i>; Carew Hazlitt’s
+<i>Memoirs of Hazlitt</i>; Blackman’s <i>Life of Day</i>; Byron’s <i>Journals and
+Letters</i>, and Lewis Bettany’s useful compilation from them, <i>The
+Confessions of Lord Byron</i>; Lockhart’s <i>Life of Scott</i>, and Scott’s
+<i>Journal</i>; Talfourd’s and Ainger’s <i>Lives of Lamb</i>, and Lamb’s <i>Letters</i>;
+Walter Jerrold’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span> <i>Life of Thomas Hood</i>; Cross’s <i>Life of George Eliot</i>;
+Sir William Armstrong’s <i>Life of Turner</i>, and Lewis Hind’s <i>Turner’s
+Golden Visions</i>; Joseph Knight’s <i>Rossetti</i>; Froude’s <i>Thomas Carlyle</i>,
+and W. H. Wylie’s <i>Carlyle, The Man and His Books</i>; Allingham’s <i>Diary</i>;
+E. R. and J. Pennell’s <i>Life of Whistler</i>; Trollope’s <i>Thackeray</i>, and
+Lady Thackeray Ritchie’s prefaces to the Centenary Edition of Thackeray’s
+works.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">A. St. J. A.</span></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td><small>CHAP.</small></td>
+    <td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Some Celebrated Cockneys</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Shakespeare in London</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Where Pope stayed at Battersea</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Hogarth</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Goldsmith, Reynolds, and some of their Circle</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Homes and Haunts of Johnson and Boswell</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Blake and Flaxman</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A Hampstead Group</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Round about Soho again</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A Philosopher, Two Poets, and a Novelist</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">St. John’s Wood and Wimbledon</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Chelsea Memories</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Thackeray</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Dickens</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_314">314</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Conclusion</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_328">328</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PORTRAITS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Dr. Johnson</span></td>
+    <td align="right" colspan="2"><a href="#frontis"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">T. Trotter</span> <i>after a drawing from life</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">John Milton</span></td>
+    <td><i>Facing p.</i></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_5">4</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a miniature by</i> <span class="smcap">Faithorne</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">William Shakespeare</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">Scriven</span> <i>after the Chandos portrait</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">J. Posselwhite</span> <i>after the picture by</i> <span class="smcap">Hudson</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Oliver Goldsmith</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_80">81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>After a drawing by</i> <span class="smcap">Sir Joshua Reynolds</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Sir Joshua Reynolds</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_97">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving after his own portrait</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">James Boswell</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_103">102</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">W. Hall</span> <i>after a sketch by</i> <span class="smcap">Lawrence</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">John Keats</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_145">144</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a drawing by</i> <span class="smcap">W. Hilton</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Thomas de Quincey</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_177">176</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">W. H. Moore</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Lord Byron</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_192">193</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a painting by</i> <span class="smcap">Thomas Phillips</span>, R.A.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span><span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_225">224</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From the painting by</i> <span class="smcap">William Hazlitt</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Thomas Hood</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_240">241</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From an engraving by</i> <span class="smcap">W. H. Smith</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Thomas Carlyle</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_281">280</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a painting by</i> <span class="smcap">Sir John Millais</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">W. M. Thackeray</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a pencil sketch by</i> <span class="smcap">Count D’Orsay</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Charles Dickens</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_321">320</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a black and white drawing by</i> <span class="smcap">Baughiet</span>, 1858</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span></td>
+    <td align="center">"</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_339">338</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class="dent"><i>From a photograph</i></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td>St. Saviour’s, Southwark Cathedral</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Gateway, Middle Temple</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Chaucer’s Tomb, Westminster Abbey</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_8">8</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>St. Olave’s Churchyard, Silver Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Bartholomew Close, Smithfield</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Last Bulk Shop, Clare Market</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Pope’s House, Battersea</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Pope, Mawson’s Row, Chiswick</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir James Thornhill, 75 Dean Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Hogarth’s House, Chiswick</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Bay Window, Hogarth’s House</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir Isaac Newton’s House, St. Martin’s Street, W.C.</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_54">53</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir Joshua Reynolds’s House, Great Newport Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Staircase, 47 Leicester Square</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sir Benjamin West’s House, Newman Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Gainsborough’s House, Pall Mall</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Sheridan’s House, Savile Row</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_70">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Pump Court, Temple</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_72">73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Richardson’s House, North End, Fulham</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Goldsmith’s House, Canonbury</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>2 Brick Court, The Temple</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_83">83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Stairs up to Second Floor, 2 Brick Court</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_86">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span>Goldsmith’s Grave</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Entrance to Staple Inn</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Dr. Johnson’s House, Gough Square</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Johnson’s Corner, “The Cheshire Cheese�</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Where Boswell first met Johnson</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Boswell’s House, Great Queen Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Blake’s House, Soho</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Blake, 23 Hercules Road</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Blake’s House, South Moulton Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Flaxman’s House, Buckingham Street, Euston Road</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_137">137</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Romney’s House, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Constable, Charlotte Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Joanna Baillie, Windmill Hill, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Stanfield’s House, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>“The Upper Flask,� from the Bowling Green</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Keats’ House, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Constable’s House, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>George du Maurier’s Grave, Hampstead</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>De Quincey’s House, Soho</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Shelley’s House, Poland Street, W.</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Shelley, Marchmont Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Hazlitt’s House, Frith Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Thomas Day, 36 Wellclose Square</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Byron, 4 Bennet Street, St. James’s</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Coleridge, Addison Bridge Place</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Will’s Coffee House, Russell Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_216">217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Lamb, Colebrooke Row</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Lamb’s Cottage, Edmonton</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Tom Hood’s House, St. John’s Wood</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Charles Dibdin, 34 Arlington Road</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span>George Eliot, Wimbledon Park</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>George Eliot’s House, Chelsea</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Queen’s House, Cheyne Walk</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Whistler, 96 Cheyne Walk</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Turner’s House, Cheyne Walk</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Carlyle, Ampton Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Carlyle’s House, Cheyne Row</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_283">283</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Leigh Hunt’s House, Chelsea</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Leigh Hunt, 16 Rowan Road, Hammersmith</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_295">295</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>The Charterhouse, from the Square</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Thackeray’s House, Kensington</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Lamb Building, Temple, from the Cloisters</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Dickens, Johnson Street, Camden Town</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Dickens’s House, Doughty Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_319">319</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Thurloe’s Lodgings, 24 Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_330">329</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Captain Marryat, Duke Street, St. James’s</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Benjamin Franklin’s House, Craven Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_335">335</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cruikshank, 263 Hampstead Road</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_338">337</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>George Morland, “The Bull Inn,� Highgate</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Rogers, St. James’s Place, from Green Park</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_342">341</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Borrow’s House, Hereford Square</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img01.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ST. SAVIOUR’S. SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">FAMOUS LONDON HOUSES</span></p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<p class="title">SOME CELEBRATED COCKNEYS</p>
+
+
+<p>You cannot stir the ground of London anywhere but straightway it flowers
+into romance. Read the inscriptions on the crumbling tombs of our early
+merchant princes and adventurers in some of the old City churches, and it
+glimmers upon you that if ever the history of London’s commercial rise and
+progress gets adequately written it will read like a series of stories out
+of the <i>Arabian Nights</i>. Think what dashing and magnificent figures, what
+tales of dark plottings, fierce warfare, and glorious heroisms must
+brighten and darken the pages of any political history of London; and even
+more glamorous, more intensely and humanly alive, would be a social
+history of London, beginning perhaps in those days of the fourteenth
+century when Langland was living in Cornhill and writing his <i>Vision of
+Piers Plowman</i>, or farther back still, in Richard the First’s time, when
+that fine spirit, the first of English demagogues, William Fitzosbert, was
+haranguing the folkmoot in St. Paul’s Churchyard, urging them to resist
+the tyrannic taxations of the Lord Mayor and his Court of wealthy
+Aldermen&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> passion for justice that brought him into such danger that he
+and certain of his friends had to seek sanctuary, and barricaded
+themselves in Bow Church. The church was fired by order of a bishop who
+had no sympathy with reformers, and Fitzosbert and his friends, breaking
+out through the flames, were stabbed and struck down in Cheapside, hustled
+to the Tower, hastily tried and sentenced, dragged out by the heels
+through the streets, and hanged at Smithfield. I have always thought this
+would make a good, live starting-point, and had I but world enough and
+time I would sooner write that history than anything else.</p>
+
+<p>No need to hunt after topics when you are writing about London; they come
+to you. The air is full of them. The very names of the streets are
+cabalistic words. Once you know London, myriads of great spirits may be
+called from the vasty deep by sight or sound of such names as Fleet
+Street, Strand, Whitehall, Drury Lane, The Temple, Newgate Street,
+Aldersgate, Lombard Street, Cloth Fair, Paternoster Row, Holborn,
+Bishopsgate, and a hundred others. You have only to walk into Whitefriars
+Street and see “Hanging-sword Alley� inscribed on the wall of a court at
+the top of a narrow flight of steps, and all Alsatia rises again around
+you, as Ilion rose like a mist to the music of Apollo’s playing. Loiter
+along Cornhill in the right mood and Thomas Archer’s house shall rebuild
+itself for you at the corner of Pope’s Head Alley, where he started the
+first English newspaper in 1603, and you will wonder why nobody writes a
+full history of London journalism.</p>
+
+<p>As for literary London&mdash;every other street you traverse is haunted with
+memories of poets, novelists,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> and men of letters, and it is some of the
+obscurest of these associations that are the most curiously fascinating. I
+have a vivid, youthful remembrance of a tumble-down, red-tiled shop near
+the end of Leathersellers’ Buildings which I satisfied myself was the
+identical place in which Robert Bloomfield worked as a shoemaker’s
+assistant; Devereux Court still retains something of the Grecian
+Coffee-house that used to be frequented by Addison and Steele, but I knew
+the Court first, and am still drawn to it most, as the site of that
+vanished Tom’s Coffee-house where Akenside often spent his winter
+evenings; and if I had my choice of bringing visibly back out of
+nothingness one of the old Charing Cross houses, it would be the butcher’s
+shop that was kept by the uncle who adopted Prior in his boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>Plenty of unpleasant things have been said about London, but never by her
+own children, or such children of her adoption as Johnson and Dickens.
+Says Hobbes, who was born at Malmesbury, “London has a great belly, but no
+palate,� and Bishop Stubbs (a native of Knaresborough) more recently
+described it as “always the purse, seldom the head, and never the heart of
+England.� Later still an eminent speaker, quoting this fantastic dictum of
+Stubbs’s, went a step further and informed his audience that “not many men
+eminent in literature have been born in London�; a statement so
+demonstrably inaccurate that one may safely undertake to show that at
+least as many men eminent in literature, to say nothing of art and
+science, have been born in London as in any other half-dozen towns of the
+kingdom put together.</p>
+
+<p>To begin with, the morning star of our literature,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> Geoffrey Chaucer, was
+born in Thames Street, not far from the wharf where, after he was married
+and had leased a home for himself in Aldgate, he held office as a
+Comptroller of Customs, and the pen that was presently to write the
+<i>Canterbury Tales</i> “moved over bills of lading.� The “poets’ poet,�
+Spenser, was born in East Smithfield, by the Tower, and in his
+<i>Prothalamion</i> speaks of his birthplace affectionately as&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Merry London, my most kindly nurse,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That to me gave this life’s first native source,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Though from another place I take my name.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Ben Jonson was born in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross; four of his
+contemporary dramatists, Fletcher, Webster, Shirley and Middleton, were
+also Londoners by birth; Sir Thomas Browne, author of the <i>Religio
+Medici</i>, was born in the parish of St. Michael-le-Quern, in the very heart
+of the city; and Bread Street, Cheapside, is hallowed by the fact that
+Milton had his birth there.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Donne, the son of a London merchant, was also born within a stone’s
+throw of Cheapside; and his disciple, Cowley, came into the world in Fleet
+Street, at the corner of Chancery Lane. But Cowley was a renegade; he
+acquired an unnatural preference for the country, and not only held that
+“God the first garden made, and the first city Cain,� but ended a poem in
+praise of nature and a quiet life with&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 5em;">“Methinks I see</span><br />
+The monster London laugh at me;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I should at thee too, foolish city,</span><br />
+If it were fit to laugh at misery;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But thy estate I pity.</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,<br />
+And all the fools that crowd thee so,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,</span><br />
+A village less than Islington wilt grow,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A solitude almost.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img02.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JOHN MILTON</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The daintiest of our lyrists, Herrick, was born over his father’s shop in
+Cheapside, and you may take it he was only playing with poetical fancies
+when, in some lines to his friend Endymion Porter, he praised the country
+with its “nut-brown mirth and russet wit,� and again when, in a set of
+verses on “The Country Life,� he assured his brother he was “thrice and
+above blest,� because he could&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Leave the city, for exchange, to see<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The country’s sweet simplicity.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>If you want to find him in earnest, turn to that enraptured outburst of
+his on “His Return to London�&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Ravished in spirit I come, nay more I fly<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To thee, blessed place of my nativity!...</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O place! O people! manners framed to please</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">All nations, customs, kindreds, languages!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I am a free-born Roman; suffer then</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That I amongst you live a citizen.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">London my home is, though by hard fate sent</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Into a long and irksome banishment;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet since called back, henceforward let me be,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O native country! repossessed by thee;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">For rather than I’ll to the West return,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I’ll beg of thee first here to have mine urn.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>There speaks the true Cockney; he would sooner be dead in London than
+alive in the West of England.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> Even Lamb’s love of London was scarcely
+greater than that.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img03.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE GATEWAY. MIDDLE TEMPLE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It was fitting that Pope, essentially a town poet, should be born in
+Lombard Street. In the next thoroughfare, Cornhill, Gray was born; and,
+son of a butcher, Defoe began life in the parish of St. Giles’s,
+Cripplegate. Shakespeare was an alien, but Bacon was born at York House,
+in the Strand; which, to my thinking, is the strongest argument in favour
+of the theory that he wrote the plays. Churchill was born at Vine Street,
+Westminster; Keats in Moorfields; and, staunchest and one of the most
+incorrigible Londoners of them all, Charles Lamb in Crown Office Row,
+Temple. He refers, in one of his essays, to Hare Court, in the Temple, and
+says:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> “It was a gloomy, churchyard-like court, with three trees and a
+pump in it. I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was
+a Rechabite of six years old.� The pump is no longer there, only one half
+of Hare Court remains as it was in Lamb’s day, and Crown Office Row has
+been rebuilt. His homes in Mitre Court Buildings and Inner Temple Lane
+have vanished also; but the Temple is still rich in reminiscences of him.
+Paper Buildings, King’s Bench Walk, Harcourt Buildings, the fountain near
+Garden Court, the old Elizabethan Hall, in which tradition says
+Shakespeare read one of his plays to Queen Elizabeth&mdash;these and the
+church, the gardens, the winding lanes and quaint byways of the Temple,
+made up, as he said, his earliest recollections. “I repeat to this day,�
+he writes, “no verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion,
+than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">‘There when they came whereas those bricky towers<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The which on Themmes broad aged back doth ride,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">There whylome wont the Templar knights to bide,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Till they decayed through pride.’�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>And, “indeed,� he adds, “it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img04.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CHAUCER’S TOMB. WESTMINSTER ABBEY.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But his letters and essays are full of his love of London. “I don’t care
+much,� he wrote to Wordsworth, “if I never see a mountain. I have passed
+all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local
+attachments as any of your mountaineers can have done with dead Nature....
+I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy in so much
+life.� Again, “Fleet Street and the Strand,� he writes to Manning, “are
+better places to live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw.� After he
+had removed to Edmonton, on account of his sister’s health, it was to
+Wordsworth he wrote, saying how he pined to be back again in London: “In
+dreams I am in Fleet Market, but I wake and cry to sleep again.... Oh,
+never let the lying poets be believed who ’tice men from the cheerful
+haunts of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> streets.... A garden was the primitive prison, till man, with
+Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. Thence
+followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London.... I would live in London
+shirtless, bookless.�</p>
+
+<p>But to get back to our catalogue of birthplaces&mdash;Blake was born in Broad
+Street, near Golden Square; Byron in Holles Street; Hood in the Poultry,
+within sight of the Mansion House; Dante and Christina Rossetti were
+Londoners born; so were Swinburne, Browning, Philip Bourke Marston, John
+Stuart Mill, Ruskin, Turner, Holman Hunt, Sir Arthur Sullivan&mdash;but if we
+go outside literary Londoners this chapter will end only with the book.
+Moreover, my purpose is not so much to talk of authors and artists who
+were born in London, as to give some record of the still surviving houses
+in which many of them lived; whether they had their birth here or not, the
+majority of them came here to live and work, for, so far as England is
+concerned, there is more than a grain of truth in Lamb’s enthusiastic
+boast that “London is the only fostering soil of genius.�</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<p class="title">SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON</p>
+
+
+<p>The London that Shakespeare knew has vanished like a dream. The Great Fire
+swept most of it out of existence in a few days of 1666, and the two and a
+half centuries of time since then have made away with nearly all the rest
+of it. The Tower still remains; there are parts of the Temple; a stray
+relic or so, such as the London Stone in Cannon Street, by which
+Shakespeare lays one of the Jack Cade scenes of his <i>Henry VI.</i> There are
+the stately water-gates along the Embankment, too; here and there an old
+house or so, such as that above the Inner Temple gateway, those of Staple
+Inn, those in Cloth Fair, and over in the Borough High Street; a few
+ancient Inns, like the Mitre off Ely Place, the Dick Whittington in Cloth
+Fair, the George in Southwark; some dozen of churches, including
+Westminster Abbey (in whose Jerusalem Chamber the translators of the Bible
+held their meetings), St. Saviour’s, Southwark, St. Bartholomew the Great
+in Smithfield, St. Andrew Undershaft, St. Ethelburga’s and St. Helen’s,
+Bishopsgate, in which latter parish it seems probable that Shakespeare was
+for a while a householder; otherwise Elizabethan London has dwindled to
+little but remembered sites of once-famous buildings and streets that have
+changed in everything but their names.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img05.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JERUSALEM CHAMBER. WESTMINSTER ABBEY.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Until quite recently none of us knew of any address in London that had
+ever been Shakespeare’s; we knew of no house, of no street even, which had
+once numbered him among its tenants, though we know that he passed at
+least twenty of the busiest and most momentous years of his life in the
+metropolis. There is a plausible but vague tradition that during some part
+of that period he had lodgings in Southwark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> near the Globe Theatre, in
+which he acted, for which he wrote plays, and of which he was one of the
+proprietors. There used to be an inscription: “Here lived William
+Shakespeare,� on the face of an old gabled house in Aldersgate Street, but
+there was never a rag of evidence to support the statement. We have no
+letters of Shakespeare, but we have one or two that refer to him, and one
+written to him by Richard Quiney, and I think we may infer from this
+latter that Shakespeare occasionally visited Quiney, who was a vintner,
+dwelling at the sign of the Bell in Carter Lane. Otherwise, except for a
+handful of small-beer chronicles about him that were picked up in
+theatrical circles two or three generations after his death, we had no
+record of any incident in his London life that brought us into actual
+personal touch with him until little more than two years ago. Then an
+American professor, Mr. Charles William Wallace, came over and did what
+our English students do not appear to have had the energy or enterprise to
+do for themselves&mdash;he toiled carefully through the dusty piles of
+documents preserved in the Record Office, and succeeded in unearthing one
+of the most interesting Shakespearean discoveries that have ever been
+made&mdash;a discovery that gives us vividly intimate glimpses of Shakespeare’s
+life in London, and establishes beyond question his place of residence
+here in the years when he was writing some of the greatest of his dramas.</p>
+
+<p>In 1587 the company of the “Queen’s Players� made their first appearance
+in Stratford-on-Avon, and it was about this date, so far as can be traced,
+that Shakespeare ran away from home; so you may reasonably play with a
+fancy that he joined this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> company in some very minor capacity and
+travelled with them to London. At this time, Burbage, who was by
+profession an actor and by trade a carpenter and joiner, was owner and
+manager of “The Theatre,� which stood in Shoreditch near the site of the
+present Standard Theatre, and close by was a rival house, “The Curtain�
+(commemorated nowadays by Curtain Road); and according to the legend,
+which has developed into a legend of exact detail, yet rests on nothing
+but the airiest rumour, it was outside one or both of these theatres
+Shakespeare picked up a living on his arrival in London by minding horses
+whilst their owners were inside witnessing a performance.</p>
+
+<p>By 1593 Shakespeare had become known as an actor and as a dramatist. He
+had revised and tinkered at various plays for Burbage’s company, and as a
+consequence had been charged with plagiarism by poor Greene, whose
+<i>Groatsworth of Wit</i> (published after he had died miserably in Dowgate)
+pours scorn on the “upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with
+his <i>Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide</i> supposes he is as well able to
+bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute
+<i>Johannes fac totum</i>, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a
+countrie.� For his acting, Shakespeare appears for the first time in the
+Lord Chamberlain’s accounts of 1594 as having taken equal shares with
+William Kemp and Richard Burbage in a sum of twenty pounds “for two
+severall Comedies or Interludes shewed by them� before Queen Elizabeth at
+Christmas 1593.</p>
+
+<p>After the Theatre of Shoreditch was pulled down in 1598, Burbage built the
+Globe Theatre on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> Bankside, Southwark, on the ground of which part of
+Barclay &amp; Perkins’s brewery now stands; and Shakespeare, “being a
+deserveing man,� was taken as one of the partners and received a
+“chief-actor’s share� of the profits. And it is to this prosperous period
+of his London career that Professor Wallace’s recent discoveries belong.</p>
+
+<p>In 1598 there lived in a shop at the corner of Silver Street and Monkwell
+Street a certain Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of wigs and fashionable
+headdresses. He was a Frenchman, born at Cressy, and probably a refugee
+Huguenot. His household consisted of a wife and daughter, an apprentice
+named Stephen Bellott, and one lodger, and this lodger was William
+Shakespeare. Being out of his apprenticeship in 1604, Stephen had six
+pounds from his master and, with this and his own savings, went travelling
+into Spain, but returned towards the end of the year and resumed work
+again at Mountjoy’s shop. In his ’prentice days Stephen seems to have
+formed some shy attachment to his master’s daughter, Mary, but because of
+his lack of means and prospects, or because he was naturally reticent, he
+had made no attempt to press his suit, and Madame Mountjoy, seeing how the
+young people were affected to each other, followed the fashion of the time
+and persuaded Shakespeare, who had then been living under the same roof
+with them for six years, to act as match-maker between her and the
+hesitating lover. She one day laid the case before Shakespeare and asked
+his good offices, as Professor Wallace has it; she told him that “if he
+could bring the young man to make a proposal of marriage, a dower fitting
+to their station should be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> settled upon them at marriage. This was the
+sum of fifty pounds in money of that time, or approximately four hundred
+pounds in money of to-day.� Shakespeare consented to undertake this
+delicate duty; he spoke with young Bellott, and the outcome of his
+negotiations was that Stephen and Mary were married, as the entry in the
+church register shows, at St. Olave, Silver Street, on the 19th November
+1604.</p>
+
+<p>On the death of Madame Mountjoy in 1606, Stephen and his wife went back to
+live with the father and help him in his business, but they soon fell out
+with him, and became on such bad terms that some six months later they
+left him and took lodgings with George Wilkins, a victualler, who kept an
+inn in the parish of St. Sepulchre’s. The quarrel between them culminated
+in Stephen Bellott bringing an action in the Court of Requests in 1612, to
+recover from his father-in-law a promised dower of sixty pounds and to
+ensure that Mountjoy carried out an alleged arrangement to bequeath a sum
+of two hundred pounds to him by his will. At the Record Office Professor
+Wallace found all the legal documents relating to these proceedings, and
+amongst them are the depositions of Shakespeare setting forth to the best
+of his recollection his own share in the arranging of the marriage. From
+these depositions, and from those of other witnesses who make reference to
+him, one gets the first clear and authentic revelation of Shakespeare’s
+home life in London.</p>
+
+<p>He lived with the Mountjoys over that shop at the corner of Monkwell
+Street for at least six years, down to the date of the wedding, and there
+is little doubt that he stayed on with them after that. It is more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> than
+likely, indeed, that he was still boarding there when he appeared as a
+witness in the 1612 lawsuit and stated that he had been intimate with the
+family some “ten years, more or less.� Throughout the later of those years
+he was absent on occasional visits to Stratford, and hitherto it has been
+generally assumed (on the negative evidence that no trace of him could be
+found after this date) that he returned and settled down in Stratford
+permanently about 1609.</p>
+
+<p>Taking only the six years we are certain of, however, he wrote between
+1598 and 1604 <i>Henry V.</i>, <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i>, <i>Much Ado About
+Nothing</i>, <i>As You Like It</i>, <i>Twelfth Night</i>, <i>All’s Well that Ends Well</i>,
+<i>Julius Cæsar</i>, <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>Measure for Measure</i>, and <i>Othello</i>. In the two
+years following, whilst it is pretty sure he was still dwelling with the
+Mountjoys, he wrote <i>Macbeth</i> and <i>King Lear</i>, and the fact that he had
+his home here during the period in which he was writing ten of his
+plays&mdash;three of them amongst the greatest he or any man ever wrote&mdash;makes
+this corner of Monkwell Street the most glorious literary landmark in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img06.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The house in which he lodged was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the site
+is occupied now by an old tavern, “The Cooper’s Arms.� Almost facing it,
+just the other side of Silver Street, is a fragment of the churchyard of
+St. Olave’s. The church, in which the apprentice Stephen was married to
+Mary Mountjoy, vanished also in the Great Fire and was not rebuilt, and
+this weedy remnant of the churchyard with its three or four crumbling
+tombs is all that survives of the street as Shakespeare knew it; his
+glance must have rested on that forlorn garden of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>the dead as often as
+he looked from the windows opposite or came out at Mountjoy’s door.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img07.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ST. OLAVE’S CHURCHYARD. SILVER STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Turning to the right when he came out at that door, half a minute’s walk
+up Falcon Street would have brought him into Aldersgate Street, so the
+announcement on one of the shops there that he had lived in it may have
+been nothing worse than a perfectly honest mistake; it was known as a fact
+that he lived thereabouts, and tradition settled on the wrong house
+instead of on the right one, that was a hundred yards or so away from it.
+But when Shakespeare issued from Mountjoy’s shop you may depend that his
+feet more frequently trod the ground in the opposite direction; he would
+go to the left, along Silver Street, into Wood Street, and down the length
+of that to Cheapside, where, almost fronting the end of Wood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> Street,
+stood the Mermaid Tavern, and he must needs pass to the right or left of
+it, by way of Friday Street, or Bread Street, across Cannon Street and
+then down Huggin Lane or Little Bread Street Hill to Thames Street,
+whence, from Queenhithe, Puddle Wharf, or Paul’s Wharf, he could take boat
+over the Thames to the Globe Theatre on Bankside.</p>
+
+<p>There has been no theatre on Bankside these many years; there is nothing
+there or in that vicinity now that belongs to Shakespeare’s age except
+some scattered, ancient, inglorious houses that he may or may not have
+known and the stately cathedral of St. Saviour. This holds still the span
+of ground that has belonged to it since before Chaucer’s day. You may
+enter and see there the quaint effigy of Chaucer’s contemporary, Gower,
+sleeping on his five-century-old tomb; and here and there about the aisles
+and in the nave are memorials of remembered or forgotten men and women who
+died while Shakespeare was living, and somewhere in it were buried men,
+too, who were intimate with him, though no evidence of their burial there
+remains except in the parish register. In the “monthly accounts� of St.
+Saviour’s you come upon these entries concerning two of his contemporary
+dramatists:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“1625. <i>August</i> 29th, John Fletcher, a poet, in the church.�</p>
+
+<p>“1638. <i>March</i> 18th, Philip Massinger, stranger, in the church.�</p></div>
+
+<p>the inference being that Fletcher had resided in the parish, and
+Massinger, the “stranger,� had not. But earlier than either of these, it
+is on record that on the 31st December 1607, Shakespeare’s youngest
+brother, Edmund, “a player,� was buried here, and a fee of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> twenty
+shillings was paid by some one for “a forenoon knell of the great bell.�</p>
+
+<p>St. Saviour’s, then, the sites of the Globe Theatre and the Mermaid, and
+that corner of Monkwell Street are London’s chief Shakespearean shrines.
+The discovery of the Monkwell Street residence emphasises that before Ben
+Jonson founded his Apollo Club at the Devil Tavern by Temple Bar,
+Cheapside and not Fleet Street was the heart of literary London. Whilst
+Shakespeare made his home with the Mountjoys, Ben Jonson and Dekker were
+living near him in Cripplegate, in which district also resided Johnson the
+actor, Anthony Munday, and other of Shakespeare’s intimates; nearer still,
+in Aldermanbury, lived Heminges and Condell, his brother actors, who first
+collected and published his plays after his death: and George Wilkins, at
+whose inn near St. Sepulchre’s Stephen Bellott and his wife lodged after
+their quarrel with Mountjoy, was a minor dramatist who, besides
+collaborating with Rowley, collaborated with Shakespeare himself in the
+writing of <i>Pericles</i>. Coryat, the eccentric author of the <i>Crudities</i>,
+lived in Bow Lane; Donne, who was born in Wood Street, wrote his early
+poems there in the house of the good merchant, his father, and was a
+frequenter of the Mermaid.</p>
+
+<p>In 1608 Milton was born in Bread Street (Shakespeare must have passed his
+door many a time in his goings to and fro), and grew up to live and work
+within the City walls in Aldersgate Street, and in Bartholomew Close, and
+just without them in Bunhill Row, and was brought back within them to be
+buried in Cripplegate Church. These, and its earlier and many later
+literary associations, help to halo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> Cheapside and its environs, and, in
+spite of the sordid commercial aspect and history that have overtaken it,
+to make it for ever a street in the kingdom of romance.</p>
+
+<p>And the chief glory of Cheapside itself is, of course, the Mermaid. One of
+these days a fitting sign will be placed above the spot where it stood,
+and set forth in letters of gold the great names that are inseparable from
+its story, and first among these will be the names of Shakespeare, Ben
+Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Donne, Carew, Fuller, Sir Walter
+Raleigh.</p>
+
+<p>The Mermaid rose on Cheapside with a side entrance in Friday Street, and
+of evenings when no business took him to the theatre, or towards midnight
+when he was on his way home from it, Shakespeare often turned aside into
+this famous meeting-place of the immortals of his generation. Everybody is
+familiar with those rapturous lines in Beaumont’s letter to Ben Jonson,
+“written before he and Master Fletcher came to London with two of the
+precedent comedies, then not finished, which deferred their merry meetings
+at the Mermaid;� but one cannot talk of the Mermaid without remembering
+them and quoting from them once again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“In this warm shine</span><br />
+I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine....<br />
+Methinks the little wit I had is lost<br />
+Since I saw you: for wit is like a rest<br />
+Held up at tennis, which men do the best<br />
+With the best gamesters! What things have we seen<br />
+Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been<br />
+So nimble and so full of subtile flame<br />
+As if that every one from whence they came<br />
+Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,<br />
+And had resolved to live a fool the rest<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown<br />
+Wit able enough to justify the town<br />
+For three days past, wit that might warrant be<br />
+For the whole city to talk foolishly<br />
+Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone,<br />
+We left an air behind us which alone<br />
+Was able to make the next two companies<br />
+Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise.�</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img08.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE. SMITHFIELD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>Well might Keats ask in a much later day (probably whilst he was tenanting
+the Cheapside rooms over Bird-in-Hand Court in which he wrote the sonnet
+on Chapman’s Homer):</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Souls of poets dead and gone,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What Elysium have ye known,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Happy field or mossy cavern</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>And in our own time, in <i>Christmas at the Mermaid</i>, Watts-Dunton has
+recreated that glamorous hostelry and brought together again the fine
+spirits who used to frequent it&mdash;brought them together in an imaginary
+winter’s night shortly after Shakespeare had departed from them and gone
+back to Stratford for good. Jonson is of that visionary company, and
+Raleigh, Lodge, Dekker, Chapman, Drayton and Heywood, and it is Heywood
+who breaks in, after the tale-telling and reminiscent talk, with&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">“More than all the pictures, Ben,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Winter weaves by wood or stream,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Christmas loves our London, when</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rise thy clouds of wassail-steam:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Clouds like these that, curling, take</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Forms of faces gone, and wake</span><br />
+Many a lay from lips we loved, and make<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">London like a dream.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>It is because of the memories that sleep within it, like music in a lute
+until a hand that knows touches it, because of all it has been, and
+because it is never more wonderful than when you can so make it like a
+dream, that I give thanks for the fog that comes down upon London at
+intervals, in the grey months, and with silent wizardries conjures it out
+of sight. Look at this same Cheapside on a clear day, and it is simply a
+plain, prosperous, common-place street, but when a fog steals quietly
+through it and spiritualises it to something of the vagueness and grandeur
+and mystery of poetry it is no longer a mere earthly thoroughfare under
+the control of the Corporation; it becomes a dream-street in some
+mist-built city of the clouds, and you feel that at any moment the
+pavements might thin out and shred away and let you through into starry,
+illimitable spaces. Where the brown fog warms to a misty, golden glow you
+know there are shop windows. As you advance the street-lamps twinkle in
+the thick air, as if they were kindled magically at your coming and
+flickered out again directly you were past. The coiling darkness is loud
+with noises of life, but you walk among them with a sense of aloofness and
+solitude, for you can see nothing but flitting shadows all about you and
+know that you are yourself only a shadow to them.</p>
+
+<p>For me, three of the loveliest and most strangely touching sights of
+London are the stars shining very high in the blue and very quietly when
+you look up at them from the roaring depths of a crowded, naphtha-flaring,
+poverty-stricken market street; a sunrise brightening over the Thames
+below London Bridge, while the barges are still asleep with the gleam of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+their lamps showing pale in the dawn; and the blurred lights and ghostly
+buildings of a long city road that is clothed in mystery and transfigured
+by a brooding, dream-haunted fog. Perhaps this is only because of the dim
+feeling one has that the stars and the sunrise are of the things that the
+wasting centuries have not changed; and the fog that blots out to-day
+makes it easier to realise that yesterday and the life of yesterday are
+close about us still, and that we might see them with our waking eyes,
+even as we see them in our dreams, if the darkness would but lift.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img09.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE LAST BULK SHOP. CLARE MARKET.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<p class="title">WHERE POPE STAYED AT BATTERSEA</p>
+
+
+<p>Coming from Chelsea by way of Battersea Bridge, you go a few yards along
+the Battersea Bridge Road, then turn aside into Church Road, and presently
+you pass a narrow, mean street of small houses, which is Bolingbroke Road,
+and serves to remind you that the Bolingbrokes were once lords of the
+manor of Battersea and proprietors of the ferry that crossed the river
+hereabouts before the first Battersea Bridge was built. A little further
+down Church Road, past squat and grimy houses on the one hand and gaunt
+walls and yawning gateways of mills, distilleries, and miscellaneous
+“works� on the other, and you come to a gloomy gateway that has “To
+Bolingbroke House� painted up on one of its side-walls. Through this
+opening you see a busy, littered yard; straw and scraps of paper and odds
+and ends of waste blow about on its stones; stacks of packing-cases and
+wooden boxes rise up against a drab background of brick buildings, and
+deep in the yard, with a space before it in which men are at work and a
+waggon is loading, you find the forlorn left wing&mdash;all that survives&mdash;of
+what was once the family seat of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke,
+whose chief title to remembrance now is that he was the friend of
+Alexander Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Worn and dingy with age, its stone porch stained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> and crumbling, and some
+of its windows broken, the place has a strange, neglected look, though it
+is still used for business purposes, and you have glimpses of clerks
+writing at their desks in the rooms from which Pope used to gaze out on
+very different surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult, indeed, to associate such a house and such a
+neighbourhood as this has now become with so fastidious, finicking, and
+modish a poet as Pope. All the adjacent streets are squalid,
+poverty-stricken, noisy; along the main road, almost within hearing, trams
+and motor-buses shuttle continually to and fro: except for a quaint,
+dirty, weary-looking cottage that still stands dreaming here and there
+among its ugly, mid-Victorian neighbours, and for the river that laps
+below the fence at the end of the yard, there is scarcely anything left of
+the quiet, green, rural Battersea village with which he was familiar; even
+the church whose steeple rises near by above the mills, and in which
+Bolingbroke was buried, was rebuilt a few years after his death.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, this weatherbeaten, time-wasted old house down the yard is
+the same house that, when it stood with Bolingbroke’s lawn before it and
+his pleasant gardens sloping to the Thames, was the occasional home of
+Pope, and numbered Swift, Thomson, and other of the great men of letters
+of Queen Anne’s reign among its visitors. One of the rooms overlooking the
+river, a room lined with cedar, beautifully inlaid, is still known as “Mr.
+Pope’s parlour�; it is said to have been used by Pope as his study, and
+that he wrote his <i>Essay on Man</i> in it.</p>
+
+<p>It is therefore the more fitting that Pope should have dedicated <i>An Essay
+on Man</i> to Bolingbroke,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> whom he addresses in the opening lines with that
+exhortation:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Awake, my St. John, leave all meaner things<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To low ambition, and the pride of kings!�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>He dedicated also one of his Imitations of Horace to&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“St. John, whose love indulged my labours past,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Matures my present, and shall bound my last.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>A man of brilliant gifts, both as writer and statesman, Bolingbroke became
+involved in the political intriguings of his day, and in 1715 had to flee
+to Calais to escape arrest for high treason. Eight years later he was
+allowed to return, and his forfeited estates were given back to him. On
+the death of his father he took up his residence at Battersea, and it was
+there that he died of cancer in 1751. “Pope used to speak of him,� writes
+Warton, “as a being of a superior order that had condescended to visit
+this lower world;� and he, in his turn, said of Pope, “I never in my life
+knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more
+general friendship for mankind.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img10.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">POPE’S HOUSE. BATTERSEA.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>And on the whole one feels that this character of Pope was truer than Lady
+Mary Wortley Montagu’s presentation of him as “the wicked asp of
+Twickenham�; for if he was viciously cruel to Colley Cibber and the poor
+Grub Street scribblers whom he satirises in <i>The Dunciad</i>, he was kindness
+itself to Akenside and other of his younger rivals in reading their
+manuscripts and recommending them to his publishers; and if he retorted
+bitterly upon Addison after he had fallen out with him, he kept unbroken
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>to the last his close friendship with Swift, Gay, Garth, Atterbury,
+Bolingbroke, and with Arbuthnot, for whose services in helping him through
+“this long disease, my life� he expressed a touchingly affectionate
+gratitude. If he had been the heartless little monster his enemies painted
+him he could not have felt so tireless and beautiful a love for his father
+and mother and, despite his own feebleness and shattered health, have
+devoted himself so assiduously to the care of his mother in her declining
+years. “O friend,� he writes to Arbuthnot, in the Prologue to the
+Satires:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“O friend, may each domestic bliss be thine!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Me let the tender office long engage</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To rock the cradle of reposing age,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With lenient arts extend a mother’s breath,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And keep a while one parent from the sky.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>All his life, Pope dwelt in London or on the skirts of it. He was
+twenty-eight when, soon after the death of his father in 1715, he leased
+the famous villa at Twickenham and took his mother to live with him there,
+and it was from there when she died, a very old lady of ninety-three, that
+on the 10th June 1783, he wrote to an artist friend the letter that
+enshrines his sorrow:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“As I know you and I naturally desire to see one another, I hoped that
+this day our wishes would have met and brought you hither. And this for
+the very reason which possibly might hinder your coming, that my poor
+mother is dead. I thank God her death was easy, as her life was innocent,
+and as it cost her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> not a groan or even a sigh, there is yet upon her
+countenance such an expression of tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure,
+that, far from horrid, it is even amiable to behold it. It would form the
+finest image of a saint expired that ever painter drew, and it would be
+the greatest obligation art could ever bestow on a friend if you could
+come and sketch it for me. I am sure if there be no prevalent obstacle you
+will leave every common business to do this; and I hope to see you this
+evening as late as you will, or to-morrow morning as early, before this
+winter flower is faded. I will defer her interment till to-morrow night. I
+know you love me or I would not have written this&mdash;I could not (at this
+time) have written at all. Adieu. May you die as happily.�</p>
+
+<p>From Twickenham Pope made frequent visits to London, where he stayed in
+lodgings, or at the houses of friends; and in the last four or five years
+of his life, after Bolingbroke had settled down at Battersea, he put up as
+often as not at Bolingbroke House. Of his personal appearance at this date
+there are a good many records. One of his numerous lampooners, unkindly
+enough but very graphically, pictures him as&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Meagre and wan, and steeple crowned,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">His visage long, his shoulders round;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">His crippled corse two spindle pegs</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Support, instead of human legs;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">His shrivelled skin’s of dusty grain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A cricket’s voice, and monkey’s brain.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>His old enemy, John Dennis, sneering at his hunched and drooping figure,
+described him as “a young, short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the god
+of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>love.� He had to be laced up tightly in bodices made of stiff
+canvas, so that he might hold himself erect, and, says Dr. Johnson, “his
+stature was so low, that to bring him to a level with a common table it
+was necessary to raise his seat. But his face was not displeasing, and his
+eyes were animated and vivid.� And here is Sir Joshua Reynolds’s
+word-picture of him: “He was about four feet six inches high, very
+hump-backed and deformed. He wore a black coat, and, according to the
+fashion of that time, had on a little sword. He had a large and very fine
+eye, and a long, handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which
+are always found in the mouths of crooked persons, and the muscles which
+run across the cheek were so strongly marked that they seemed like small
+cords.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img11.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ALEXANDER POPE</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>This is the queer, misshapen, pathetic little shape that haunts that
+old-world house in the yard at Battersea, and you may gather something of
+the life he lived there, and of the writing with which he busied himself
+in the cedar parlour, from these extracts out of two of his letters, both
+of which were written to Warburton:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="right">“<i>January 12, 1743-4.</i></p>
+
+<p>“Of the public I can tell you nothing worthy of the reflection of a
+reasonable man; and of myself only an account that would give you
+pain; for my asthma has increased every week since you last heard from
+me to the degree of confining me totally to the fireside; so that I
+have hardly seen any of my friends but two (Lord and Lady
+Bolingbroke), who happen to be divided from the world as much as
+myself, and are constantly retired at Battersea. There I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> passed
+much of my time, and often wished you of the company, as the best I
+know to make me not regret the loss of others, and to prepare me for a
+nobler scene than any mortal greatness can open to us. I fear by the
+account you gave me of the time you design to come this way, one of
+them (Lord B.) whom I much wish you had a glimpse of (as a being
+<i>paullo minus ab angelio</i>), will be gone again, unless you pass some
+weeks in London before Mr. Allen arrives there in March. My present
+indisposition takes up almost all my hours to render a very few of
+them supportable; yet I go on softly to prepare the great edition of
+my things with your notes, and as fast as I receive any from you, I
+add others in order (determining to finish the Epistle to Dr.
+Arbuthnot and two or three of the best of Horace, particularly that of
+Augustus, first), which will fall into the same volume with the Essay
+on Man. I determined to publish a small number of the Essay, and of
+the other on Criticism, ere now, as a sample of the rest, but Bowyer
+advised delay, though I now see I was not in the wrong.�</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="right"><i>“February 21, 1743-4.</i></p>
+
+<p>“I own that the late encroachments on my constitution make me willing
+to see the end of all further care about me or my works. I would rest
+from the one in a full resignation of my being to be disposed of by
+the Father of all mercy, and for the other (though indeed a trifle,
+yet a trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candour
+of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every
+short-sighted and malevolent critic or inadvertent and censorious
+reader. And no hand can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> set them in so good a light, or so well turn
+them best side to the day, as your own. This obliges me to confess I
+have for some months thought myself going, and that not slowly, down
+the hill&mdash;the rather as every attempt of the physicians, and still the
+last medicines more forcible in their nature, have utterly failed to
+serve me. I was at last, about seven days ago, taken with so violent a
+fit at Battersea, that my friends, Lord Bolingbroke and Lord
+Marchmont, sent for present help to the surgeon, whose bleeding me, I
+am persuaded, saved my life by the instantaneous effect it had, and
+which has continued so much to amend me that I have passed five days
+without oppression, and recovered, what I have three days wanted, some
+degree of expectoration and some hours together of sleep. I can now go
+to Twickenham, to try if the air will not take some part in reviving
+me, if I can avoid colds, and between that place and Battersea, with
+my Lord Bolingbroke, I will pass what I have of life while he stays,
+which I can tell you, to my great satisfaction, will be this fortnight
+or three weeks yet.�</p></div>
+
+<p>In the year after writing this Pope came to the end of all further care
+about himself and his works; he died at Twickenham, and lies buried under
+the middle aisle of Twickenham Church.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<p class="title">HOGARTH</p>
+
+
+<p>Before he took up residence at the Twickenham villa, Pope lived for some
+time with his father in one of the houses of Mawson’s Buildings (now
+Mawson Row), Chiswick. So far it has been impossible to decide which of
+these five red-brick houses is the one that was theirs, for the only
+evidence of their tenancy consists of certain letters preserved at the
+British Museum, which are addressed to “Alexr. Pope, Esquire, Mawson’s
+Buildings, in Chiswick,� and on the backs of these are written portions of
+the original drafts of Pope’s translation of the Iliad. James Ralph, the
+unfortunate poetaster whom Pope satirised in his <i>Dunciad</i>, was also a
+native of Chiswick, and lies buried in the parish churchyard. One other
+link Pope has with Chiswick&mdash;he wrote a rather poor epigram on Thomas
+Wood, who resided there, and who seems to have been connected with the
+Church, for according to the poet&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Tom Wood of Chiswick, deep divine,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To painter Kent gave all his coin;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">’Tis the first coin, I’m bold to say,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That ever churchman gave away.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>This Kent, I take it, was the man of the same name who likewise lived at
+Chiswick in Pope’s day, and was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> more notable as a landscape gardener than
+as a painter.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img12.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">POPE. MAWSON’S ROW CHISWICK.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But, to say nothing of William Morris’s more recent association with the
+district, the most interesting house in Chiswick is Hogarth’s. It is a
+red-brick villa of the Queen Anne style, with a quaint, overhanging bay
+window, and stands in a large, walled garden, not far from the parish
+church. For many years this was Hogarth’s summer residence&mdash;his
+“villakin,� as he called it. His workshop, or studio, that used to be at
+the foot of the garden, has been demolished; otherwise the house remains
+very much as it was when he occupied it.</p>
+
+<p>Hogarth was essentially a town man; he was almost, if not quite, as good a
+Londoner as Lamb.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> He was born in Bartholomew Close, West Smithfield, that
+storied place where Milton had lived before, and Washington Irving went to
+live after, him; and he spent nearly all his life in the neighbourhood of
+Leicester Square. He was rarely absent from London at all, and never for
+long; even when he was supposed to be passing his summers at his Chiswick
+villa, he made frequent excursions into town, and would put up for a few
+days at his house in Leicester Square&mdash;or Leicester Fields, as it then
+was.</p>
+
+<p>In 1712 Hogarth went to serve a six years’ apprenticeship to Ellis Gamble,
+a silver-plate engraver, in Cranbourne Alley (now Cranbourne Street), and,
+on the death of his father in 1718, he started business for himself as an
+engraver in what had been his father’s house in Long Lane, West
+Smithfield, and later removed to the corner of Cranbourne Alley, leaving
+his mother with his two sisters, who had opened shop as mercers, at the
+old Long Lane address. He engraved for them a shop card, duly setting
+forth that “Mary and Ann Hogarth, from the old Frock Shop, the corner of
+the Long Wall, facing the Cloysters, Removed to ye King’s Arms joining to
+ye Little Britain Gate, near Long Walk, Sells ye best and most Fashionable
+Ready Made Frocks, Sutes of Fustian, Ticken, and Holland, Stript Dimity
+and Flanel Waistcoats, blue and canvas Frocks, and bluecoat Boys’
+Dra<sup>rs.</sup>, Likewise Fustians, Tickens, Hollands, white stript Dimitys,
+white and stript Flanels in ye piece, by Wholesale or Retale at Reasonable
+Rates.�</p>
+
+<p>Hogarth was very self-satisfied and rather illiterate;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> his spelling and
+his grammar&mdash;as in this shop-card&mdash;were continually going wrong. But he
+was kindly, good-hearted, high-minded, and had imagination and an original
+genius that could laugh at the nice, mechanical accomplishments of the
+schoolmaster. It was Nollekens, the sculptor, who said that he frequently
+saw Hogarth sauntering round Leicester Square, playing the nurse, “with
+his master’s sickly child hanging its head over his shoulder.� That was in
+the early days, when he was still serving his time to Gamble, and not even
+dreaming, I suppose, that he would one day own the big house at the
+south-east corner of the Square, would enjoy some of his highest triumphs
+and sharpest humiliations in it, and die in it at last, leaving behind him
+work that would give him a place among the very first of English painters.</p>
+
+<p>Even before so fastidious a critic as Whistler had declared that Hogarth
+was “the greatest English artist who ever lived,� Hazlitt had said much
+the same thing, and paid a glowing tribute to the vitality and dramatic
+life of his pictures; but perhaps no critic has written a finer, more
+incisive criticism on him than Lamb did in his essay on “The Genius and
+Character of Hogarth.� Lamb had been familiar with two of Hogarth’s series
+of prints&mdash;“The Harlot’s Progress,� and “The Rake’s Progress�&mdash;since his
+boyhood; and though he was keenly alive to the humour of them, he denied
+that their chief appeal was to the risible faculties. It was their
+profound seriousness, their stern satire, the wonderful creative force
+that underlay them, that most impressed him. “I was pleased,� he says,
+“with the reply of a gentleman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> who, being asked which book he most
+esteemed in his library, answered ‘Shakespeare’; being asked which he
+esteemed next best, replied ‘Hogarth.’ His graphic representations are
+indeed books; they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of
+words. Other pictures we look at; his prints we read.� He protests against
+confounding “the painting of subjects in common or vulgar life with the
+being a vulgar artist. The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into
+every picture would alone unvulgarise every subject he might choose. Let
+us take the lowest of his subjects, the print called ‘Gin Lane.’ Here is
+plenty of poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view; and
+accordingly a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and
+repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it.
+The same persons would, perhaps, have looked with great complacency upon
+Poussin’s celebrated picture of the ‘Plague of Athens.’ Disease and death
+and bewildering terror in Athenian garments are endurable, and come, as
+the delicate critics express it, within the ‘limits of pleasurable
+sensation.’ But the scenes of their own St. Giles’s, delineated by their
+own countryman, are too shocking to think of.... We are for ever deceiving
+ourselves with names and theories. We call one man a great historical
+painter because he has taken for his subjects kings or great men, or
+transactions over which time has thrown a grandeur. We term another the
+painter of common life, and set him down in our minds for an artist of an
+inferior class, without reflecting whether the quantity of thought shown
+by the latter may not much more than level the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> distinction which their
+mere choice of subjects may seem to place between them; or whether, in
+fact, from that very common life a great artist may not extract as deep an
+interest as another man from that which we are pleased to call history.�
+He found that, though many of the pictures had much in them that is ugly
+and repellent, “there is in most of them that sprinkling of the better
+nature which, like holy water, chases away and disperses the contagion of
+the bad. They have this in them besides, that they bring us acquainted
+with the everyday human face.� And because of this, of their truth to
+contemporary life, and the vigorous realism of the stories they tell, he
+ranked the work of Hogarth not only high among that of the world’s great
+painters, but with the best novels of such men as Smollett and Fielding.</p>
+
+<p>According to a note in his fragmentary autobiography, Hogarth conceived an
+early admiration for the paintings of Sir James Thornhill, and, somewhere
+about 1727, he joined the painting school that Sir James established in
+the Piazza, at the corner of James Street, Covent Garden. And Sir James
+soon seems to have taken a particular interest in his pupil, and had him
+as a frequent visitor to his house at 75 Dean Street, Soho; and on March
+23rd, 1729, he eloped with his teacher’s daughter, and they were married
+at old Paddington Church. There are paintings and decorations still to be
+seen on the walls of the Dean Street house, in some of which Hogarth is
+believed to have had a hand.</p>
+
+<p>After his marriage, Hogarth lived for a while at Lambeth; but it was not
+long before he was reconciled to his father-in-law. In 1730 he was
+engaged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> with Sir James Thornhill on their famous picture of “The House of
+Commons�; and a year later, when he was engraving his series of prints
+“The Harlot’s Progress,� he and his wife had apparently taken up quarters
+with Sir James in the Piazza.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img13.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SIR JAMES THORNHILL. 75 DEAN STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>“The Harlot’s Progress,� and the issue of “The Rake’s Progress� shortly
+afterwards, lifted Hogarth into fame. He began to move in better society,
+and was to be met with at the fashionable as well as at the Bohemian clubs
+of the day. He and Thornhill founded the Arts Club at the Turk’s Head, in
+Gerrard Street; and, after the latter’s death, he took over Thornhill’s
+art school, and transferred it to Peter’s Court, St. Martin’s Lane.
+Occasionally he visited Richardson, the novelist, in Salisbury Court; and
+it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> here he first made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson. He struck up a
+friendship with Garrick, too, and painted several portraits of him, for
+one of which he received two hundred pounds; and with Fielding, of whom he
+has given us the only portrait we possess.</p>
+
+<p>By 1733 Hogarth was prosperous enough to take the house in Leicester
+Square that was pulled down, in 1870, to furnish a site for the Archbishop
+Tenison School that has replaced it; and in 1749, “having sacrificed
+enough to his fame and fortune,� he purchased the villa at Chiswick as a
+summer holiday home, and became a familiar figure about the Chiswick lanes
+from time to time&mdash;“a blue-eyed, intelligent little man, with a scar over
+his right eye, and wearing a fur cap.� Allan Cunningham furnishes a more
+vivid description of his personal appearance in his <i>Lives of the
+Painters</i>, where he says he was “rather below the middle height; his eye
+was peculiarly bright and piercing; his look shrewd, sarcastic, and
+intelligent; the forehead high and round. He was active in person,
+bustling in manner, and fond of affecting a little state and importance.
+He was of a temper cheerful, joyous, and companionable, fond of mirth and
+good-fellowship.� Benjamin West called him a strutting, consequential
+little man; and, one way and another, we know that he was sturdy,
+obstinate, pugnacious, and that once he thrashed a ruffian whom he found
+maltreating the beautiful drummeress that he sketched in his picture of
+Southwark Fair. Possibly that scar over his right eye was a record of this
+chivalrous deed.</p>
+
+<p>There are very few records of his home life, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> these are of the
+homeliest, most ordinary sort. He was fond of smoking, and the arm-chair,
+in which he was wont to sit with his pipe, is still preserved at Chiswick.
+He had a favourite dog, a pet cat, and a bullfinch, which he buried in his
+Chiswick garden, commemorating them with tablets that have now vanished
+from the wall, the bird’s epitaph being “Alas, poor Dick!� and the dog’s,
+“Life to the last enjoyed, here Pompey lies�&mdash;which parodies a line in the
+<i>Candidate</i>, by that dissipated, brilliant satirist, Charles Churchill:
+“Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img14.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">HOGARTH’S HOUSE. CHISWICK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Candidate</i> was published at the beginning of 1764, and on the 25th
+October of that year Hogarth died. Churchill had been a warm friend of
+his, but before the end had become one of his bitterest enemies&mdash;that
+enmity arising in this wise. In 1762 Hogarth published a political print
+called the <i>Times</i>, in which he supported the policy of Lord Bute, and
+ridiculed Pitt, Temple, and Wilkes. By way of retaliation, Wilkes wrote a
+scathing attack upon Hogarth in his paper, the <i>North Briton</i>, in which he
+made a sneering reference to Mrs. Hogarth. This stirred Hogarth to anger;
+and when Wilkes was presently arrested on a charge of high treason, he sat
+in court and sketched the prisoner, immortalising his villainous squint,
+and accentuating all the worst qualities in his features. On this print
+making its appearance, Churchill, a staunch friend and partisan of Wilkes,
+took up the cudgels, and scarified Hogarth without mercy in <i>An Epistle to
+William Hogarth</i> (1763), praising his art, but pouring contempt upon his
+envy and self-esteem, and affecting to believe that he was in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>his
+dotage. He can laud the genius, he says, but not the man.</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">“Freely let him wear</span><br />
+The wreath which Genius wove and planted there:<br />
+Foe as I am, should envy tear it down,<br />
+Myself would labour to replace the crown....<br />
+Hogarth unrivalled stands, and shall engage<br />
+Unrivalled praise to the most distant age.�</p></div>
+
+<p>But for the man&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Hogarth, stand forth&mdash;I dare thee to be tried<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In that great Court where Conscience must preside;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">At that most solemn bar hold up thy hand;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Think before whom, on what account you stand;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Speak, but consider well;&mdash;from first to last</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Review thy life, weigh every action past.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Canst thou remember from thy earliest youth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And as thy God must judge thee, speak the truth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A single instance where, self laid aside,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And Justice taking place of Fear and Pride,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thou with an equal eye didst Genius view,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And give to Merit what was Merit’s due?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Genius and Merit are a sure offence,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And thy soul sickens at the name of sense.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Is any one so foolish to succeed?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">On Envy’s altar he is doomed to bleed;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Hogarth, a guilty pleasure in his eyes,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The place of executioner supplies;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">See how he gloats, enjoys the sacred feast,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And proves himself by cruelty a priest....</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Oft have I known thee, Hogarth, weak and vain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Through the dull measure of a summer’s day,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Whilst friends with friends all gaping sit, and gaze,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth’s praise....</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">With all the symptoms of assured decay,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With age and sickness pinched and worn away,</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Pale quivering lips, lank cheeks, and faltering tongue,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The body shrivelled up, the dim eyes sunk</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Within their sockets deep, thy weak hams shrunk,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The body’s weight unable to sustain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The stream of life scarce trembling through the vein,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">More than half killed by honest truths which fell,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Through thy own fault, from men who wished thee well&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Canst thou, e’en thus, thy thoughts to vengeance give</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And, dead to all things else, to malice live?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Hence, dotard, to thy closet; shut thee in;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">By deep repentance wash away thy sin;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">From haunts of men to shame and sorrow fly,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And, on the verge of death, learn how to die!�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Hurt and deeply mortified, a month later Hogarth satirised Churchill’s
+former connection with the Church and present loose living in a caricature
+which represented him as a bear wearing torn clerical bands, with ruffles
+on his paws, in one hand a pot of porter, and in the other a bundle of
+lies and copies of the <i>North Briton</i>. Garrick had heard that Churchill
+was making ready to issue that vitriolic satire of his, and hastened to
+beg him, “by the regard you profess to me, that you don’t tilt at my
+friend Hogarth before you see me. He is a great and original genius. I
+love him as a man, and reverence him as an artist. I would not for all the
+politics and politicians in the universe that you two should have the
+least cause of ill-will to each other. I am sure you will not publish
+against him if you think twice.� One could honour Garrick if it were for
+nothing else but that letter; but it was written in vain, and the
+exasperation and humiliation that Hogarth suffered under Churchill’s lash
+are said to have hastened his death. He had been broken in health and
+ailing all through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> the summer of 1764, but took several plates down to
+his Chiswick villa with him for retouching, and&mdash;possibly with some
+foreboding of his own approaching dissolution&mdash;drew for a new volume of
+his prints a tailpiece depicting “the end of all things.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img15.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE BAY WINDOW. HOGARTH’S HOUSE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But he could not be satisfied to keep away from London, and on 25th
+October was conveyed from Chiswick to his house in Leicester Square, “very
+weak,� says Nichols, “but remarkably cheerful, and, receiving an agreeable
+letter from Dr. Franklin�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> (Benjamin Franklin was, by the way, dwelling at
+this time in Bartholomew Close; he did not remove to 7 Craven Street,
+Strand, until three years later), “he drew up a rough draft of an answer
+to it; but, going to bed, was seized with a vomiting, upon which he rang
+the bell with such violence that he broke it, and expired about two hours
+afterwards in the arms of Mrs. Mary Lewis, who was called up on his being
+suddenly taken ill.�</p>
+
+<p>He was buried in Chiswick Churchyard; and in 1771 his friends erected a
+monument over him, the epitaph on which was written by Garrick:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Farewell, great Painter of Mankind,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Who reached the noblest point of Art,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Whose pictured morals charm the Mind,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And through the eye correct the Heart.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">If Nature touch thee, drop a tear;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If neither move thee, turn away,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">For Hogarth’s honoured dust lies here.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Garrick sent his verses to Dr. Johnson, who frankly criticised them, and
+offered him a revised version, the first lines of which were a distinct
+improvement:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“The hand of Art here torpid lies<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">That traced the essential form of Grace;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Here Death has closed the curious eyes</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">That saw the manners in the face.�...</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Garrick preferred his own composition, slightly altered, as it now
+appears; but Johnson’s was certainly the better effort of the two.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hogarth retained possession of the Leicester<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> Square house until her
+death in 1789, but she resided principally at Chiswick. Sir Richard
+Phillips saw her there, when he was a boy, and had vivid recollections of
+her as a stately old lady, wheeled to the parish church on Sundays in a
+bath-chair, and sailing in up the nave with her raised head-dress, silk
+sacque, black calash, and crutched cane, accompanied by a relative (the
+Mary Lewis who was with Hogarth when he died), and preceded by her
+grey-haired man-servant, Samuel, who carried her prayer-books, and, after
+she was seated, shut the pew door on her.</p>
+
+<p>From 1824 to 1826 the Hogarth villa was inhabited by the Rev. H. F. Cary,
+the translator of Dante, who was one of Charles Lamb’s many friends, and
+wrote the feeble epitaph that is on his tomb at Edmonton.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<p class="title">GOLDSMITH, REYNOLDS, AND SOME OF THEIR CIRCLE</p>
+
+
+<p>One of Sir James Thornhill’s illustrious sitters was Sir Isaac Newton, who
+lived within a stone’s throw of Hogarth’s London house, just round the
+corner out of Leicester Square, at No. 35 St. Martin’s Street. Here Sir
+Isaac made his home from 1720 to 1725. The red brick walls have been
+stuccoed over; and the observatory that the philosopher built for himself
+on the roof, after being turned into a Sunday-school, was removed about
+forty years ago, and helped to supply pews for the Orange Street Chapel
+that stands next door.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest of Newton’s work was done before he set up in St. Martin’s
+Street, but he told a friend that the happiest years of his life had been
+spent in the observatory there. Though he kept his carriage, lived in some
+style, had half-a-dozen male and female servants, and was always
+hospitable, he was not fond of society, and talked but little in it.
+Johnson once remarked to Sir William Jones that if Newton had flourished
+in ancient Greece, he would have been worshipped as a divinity, but there
+was nothing godlike in his appearance. “He was a man of no very promising
+aspect,� says Herne; and Humphrey Newton describes his famous relative as
+of a carriage “meek, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>sedate, and humble; never seeming angry, of
+profound thought, his countenance mild, pleasant, and comely. He always
+kept close to his studies.... I never knew him to take any recreation or
+pastime, thinking all hours lost that were not spent in his studies.�
+There are a good many stories told of his eccentricities and
+absent-mindedness. He would ride through London in his coach with one arm
+out of the window on one side and one out on the other; he would sometimes
+start to get up of a morning and sit down on his bed, absorbed in thought,
+and so remain for hours without dressing himself; and, when his dinner was
+laid, he would walk about the room, forgetting to eat it, and carelessly
+eat it standing when his attention was called to it. On one occasion, when
+he was leading his horse up a hill, he found, when he went to remount on
+reaching the top, that the animal had slipped its bridle and stayed behind
+without his perceiving it, and he had nothing in his hand but some of the
+harness. “When he had friends to entertain,� according to Dr. Stukeley,
+“if he went into his study to fetch a bottle of wine, there was danger of
+his forgetting them,� and not coming back again. And it is told of this
+same Dr. Stukeley that he called one day to see Newton, and was shown into
+the dining-room, where Sir Isaac’s dinner was in readiness. After a long
+wait, feeling hungry as well as impatient, Stukeley ate the cold chicken
+intended for his host, and left nothing but the bones. By-and-by Sir Isaac
+entered, made his greetings and apologies, and, whilst they were talking,
+drew a chair to the table, took off the dish-cover, and at sight of the
+bones merely observed placidly, “How absent we philosophers are! I had
+forgotten that I had dined!�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img16.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SIR ISAAC NEWTON’S HOUSE. ST. MARTIN’S STREET. W.C.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>Later, this same house in St. Martin’s Street was occupied by Dr. Burney
+and his daughter Fanny, who wrote <i>Evelina</i> here.</p>
+
+<p>Near by, in Leicester Square again, on the opposite side, and almost
+exactly facing Hogarth’s residence, was the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
+From 1753 to 1761 Sir Joshua lived at 5 Great Newport Street, which was
+built in Charles II.’s days, and is still standing. It is now and has for
+a century past been occupied by a firm of art dealers; so that it happens
+from time to time that a picture of Reynolds’s is here put up for sale,
+“on the very spot where it was painted.� But in the crowning years of his
+career&mdash;from 1761 till his death, in 1792&mdash;Sir Joshua dwelt at 42
+Leicester Square, and what was formerly his studio there has been
+transformed into one of Messrs. Puttick and Simpson’s auction rooms. Here
+is Allan Cunningham’s description of it, and of the painter’s method of
+work: “His study was octagonal, some twenty feet long by sixteen broad,
+and about fifteen feet high. The window was small and square, and the sill
+nine feet from the floor. His sitters’ chair moved on castors, and stood
+above the floor about a foot and a half. He held his palette by the
+handle, and the sticks of his brushes were eighteen inches long. He
+wrought standing, and with great celerity. He rose early, breakfasted at
+nine, entered his study at ten, examined designs or touched unfinished
+portraits, till eleven brought him a sitter; painted till four, then
+dressed, and gave the evenings to company.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img17.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’ HOUSE. GREAT NEWPORT STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img18.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE STAIRCASE. 41 LEICESTER SQUARE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>And to the best of good company too. By day, the chariot of a duke or a
+marchioness might drive to his door, and return later to wait for his
+lordship or her ladyship, who was occupying the sitter’s chair, while Sir
+Joshua was busy at his easel; but of an evening he would have such men as
+Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith, Garrick, Burke (who was living close at
+hand, in Gerrard Street) gathered about his dinner-table; for in spite of
+his deafness he was the very soul of sociability. He never got out of his
+naturally careless, Bohemian habits. He was the favourite portrait-painter
+of the fashionable world, but mixed with the aristocracy without apeing
+any of their etiquette. “There was something singular in the style and
+economy of Sir Joshua’s table that contributed to pleasantry and
+good-humour; a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and
+arrangement,� according to Courtenay. “A table prepared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> for seven or
+eight was often compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen. When this
+pressing difficulty was got over, a deficiency of knives, plates, forks,
+and glasses succeeded. The attendance was in the same style; and it was
+absolutely necessary to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that you
+might be supplied with them before the first course was over. He was once
+prevailed on to furnish the table with decanters and glasses at dinner, to
+save time and prevent the tardy manœuvres of two or three occasional,
+undisciplined domestics. As these accelerating utensils were demolished in
+the course of service, Sir Joshua would never be persuaded to replace
+them. But these trifling embarrassments only served to enhance the
+hilarity and singular pleasure of the entertainment. The wines, cookery,
+and dishes were but little attended to; nor was the fish or venison ever
+talked of or recommended. Amidst this convivial, animated bustle among his
+guests, our host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to what was
+said, never minding what was ate or drunk, but left every one at perfect
+liberty to scramble for himself. Temporal and spiritual peers, physicians,
+lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the motley group, and played their
+parts without dissonance or discord.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img19.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SIR BENJAMIN WEST’S HOUSE. NEWMAN STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>He was so imperturbable and easy-natured that Dr. Johnson said if he ever
+quarrelled with him he would find it most difficult to know how to abuse
+him; and even the sharp-tongued Mrs. Thrale praised his peaceful temper,
+and considered that of him “all good should be said, and no harm.� He
+shared Hogarth’s contempt for the old masters; but, unlike Hogarth, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>he
+was not loud and aggressive in his objections to them.</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>It was on Reynolds’s suggestion that he and Johnson founded, in 1763, what
+later became celebrated as the Literary Club. They held their first
+meetings at the Turk’s Head (where Hogarth and Thornhill had previously
+established their Art Club), and among the original members were Burke,
+Langton, Beauclerk, Goldsmith, and Sir John Hawkins. The latter, an arrant
+snob, objected to Goldsmith’s election on the ground that he was “a mere
+literary drudge,� but his protest carried no weight with the rest. Five
+years later, when, under the patronage of the king, Reynolds inaugurated
+the Royal Academy, Johnson was appointed its first Professor of Ancient
+Literature, and Goldsmith its first Professor of History, Reynolds himself
+being its first President&mdash;in which office, on his death in 1792, he was
+succeeded by Benjamin West. West was an American, and had won a
+considerable reputation in his own country before he came over and settled
+down in England. He was introduced to Johnson and Reynolds, and was for
+some time a neighbour of Sir Joshua’s, in Castle Street, Leicester Square.
+But he is more closely associated with the house that still stands at 14
+Newman Street, Oxford Street, in which he lived and worked for forty-five
+years, and in which he died.</p>
+
+<p>A far greater contemporary painter, who moved on the fringes of Sir
+Joshua’s circle, was Gainsborough. That he did not come familiarly into
+the circle, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> sometimes make one of the memorable company that gathered
+round Reynolds’s dinner-table, was owing to some lack of geniality in
+himself, that kept him from responding to Sir Joshua’s friendly advances.
+He came from Bath to London in 1774, when he was forty-seven years of age,
+took a studio at Schonberg House, Pall Mall, and it was not long before
+celebrities and leaders of fashion were flocking to it to sit for their
+portraits, and he was recognised as a successful rival of Reynolds.
+Reynolds was so far from feeling jealousy or resentment that he promptly
+paid his popular rival a visit; but Gainsborough did not trouble himself
+to return the call. No doubt it was to some extent owing to Reynolds, too,
+that in the year of his appearance in London he was elected to the council
+of management of the Royal Academy; but he ignored the honour, did not
+attend any meetings, and sent nothing to the exhibition. Reynolds was
+frankly outspoken in his admiration of Gainsborough’s work, and was even
+anxious to have his own portrait painted by him. After some delay
+appointments were fixed, and Sir Joshua duly went to Schonberg House, and
+the painting was commenced. But after the first sitting he was taken ill;
+and when, on his recovery, he wrote to tell Gainsborough that he was ready
+to come again, he received no reply, and the portrait had to remain an
+unfinished sketch.</p>
+
+<p>His coldness to Reynolds is inexplicable, for he was a kindly-disposed
+man, and sociable. He kept almost open house in Pall Mall, and such jovial
+spirits as the Sheridans, Colman, and Garrick were among the constant
+guests at his table.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img20.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GAINSBOROUGH’S HOUSE. PALL MALL.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>The year after Gainsborough’s coming to London, Sheridan’s <i>Rivals</i> was
+produced at the Covent Garden Theatre, to be followed two years after by
+<i>The School for Scandal</i>. Before he was out of his twenties Sheridan had
+finished his career as a dramatist, turned to politics, and was one of the
+most brilliant of Parliamentary orators, still remaining principal
+proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre. All his life he was living beyond his
+income, borrowing, getting into debt, and dodging duns and bailiffs with
+the gayest imperturbability. Everybody liked him, and was susceptible to
+his charm. Wherever the wits foregathered, he was the best drinker, the
+best talker, and the wittiest among them. Byron writes of him in his
+<i>Diary</i>: “What a wreck that man is! and all from bad pilotage; for no one
+had ever better gales, though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear
+Sherry! I shall never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed
+together; when he talked and we listened, without one yawn, from six till
+one in the morning.� In a letter to Moore, Byron records a dinner at which
+Sheridan, Colman, and a large party were present, and at the finish, when
+they were all the worse for drink, “Kinnaird and I had to conduct Sheridan
+down a damned corkscrew staircase, which had certainly been constructed
+before the discovery of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however
+crooked, could possibly accommodate themselves. We deposited him safe at
+home, where his man, evidently used to the business, waited to receive him
+in the hall.�</p>
+
+<p>This was in October 1815, and 14 Savile Row is the house at which Sheridan
+was thus deposited by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> his noble friend. He was then an old man of
+sixty-four, and a year later he died there, five thousand pounds in debt,
+and only saved, by the emphatic intervention of the doctor who was
+attending him, from being arrested by bailiffs as he lay dying, and
+carried off to a sponging-house in his blankets.</p>
+
+<p>The year that brought Gainsborough to London (1774) was also the year of
+Goldsmith’s death; and I want to get back to Goldsmith for a little, in
+this chapter, and to say something of Richardson. For it is curiously
+interesting to note how the lives of all these famous men, though there
+was little enough in common between some of them, met at certain points
+and established certain connecting links between them; so that it is
+possible, as Leigh Hunt has said somewhere, to trace a sort of genealogy
+of such acquaintanceships, such notable meetings and touchings of “beamy
+hands,� coming down in an unbroken line from Shakespeare to our own day.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, Hogarth first met Johnson in Richardson’s parlour at Salisbury
+Court; and, in 1757, Goldsmith was employed by Richardson, and worked on
+his printing premises, in the same court, as reader and corrector to the
+press; and these, and most of the other immortals named in this
+chapter&mdash;including Sheridan, though he was then so young a man that he
+outlived them all, and counts among the friends of Lord Byron&mdash;have a
+common link in Dr. Johnson, who was so great a Londoner that he must needs
+have a chapter presently to himself, or one that he shall share with none
+but the inevitable Boswell.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Goldsmith was working as one of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>employees, Richardson was
+not only a prosperous printer, he was already the most popular novelist of
+his day. <i>Pamela</i>, <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>, and <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i> had
+carried his fame throughout the kingdom and beyond it, and were drawing
+rapturous admiration and tears of sentiment from countless admirers in
+France as well as in England; and, as befitted a man of his means and
+eminence, he had supplemented his house off Fleet Street with a country
+residence at Parson’s Green, where he died in 1761. Down to 1754, however,
+his country house was The Grange, at North End, Fulham, then a pretty,
+old-world spot,&mdash;“the pleasantest village within ten miles of London.� And
+it was here that all his novels were written; for he took The Grange in
+1738, and <i>Pamela</i> appeared in 1740, and <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i> in 1753.
+Here, too, he used to give large literary parties, to which Johnson
+occasionally went with Boswell. But whatever other authors were there, you
+may safely depend that Fielding was never among the guests; for with all
+his high morality Richardson was intolerably self-complacent and vain, and
+never forgave Fielding for burlesquing Pamela as “Shamela,� and parodying
+her impossible virtues in <i>Joseph Andrews</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img21.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SHERIDAN’S HOUSE. SAVILE ROW.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Boswell gives two good anecdotes illustrative of Richardson’s fretful
+vanity and the limits of his conversational powers. “Richardson had little
+conversation,� he says Johnson once remarked to him, “except about his own
+works, of which Sir Joshua Reynolds said he was always willing to talk,
+and glad to have them introduced. Johnson, when he carried Mr. Langton to
+see him, professed that he could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> bring him out in conversation, and used
+this illusive expression: ‘Sir, I can make him <i>rear</i>.’ But he failed; for
+in that interview Richardson said little else than that there lay in the
+room a translation of his <i>Clarissa</i> into German.� And in a footnote to
+this Boswell adds: “A literary lady has favoured me with a characteristic
+anecdote of Richardson. One day at his country house at North End, where a
+large company was assembled at dinner, a gentleman who was just returned
+from Paris, willing to please Mr. Richardson, mentioned to him a very
+flattering circumstance&mdash;that he had seen his <i>Clarissa</i> lying on the
+king’s brother’s table. Richardson, observing that part of the company
+were engaged in talking to each other, affected not to attend to it. But
+by-and-by, when there was a general silence, and he thought that the
+flattery might be fully heard, he addressed himself to the gentleman, ‘I
+think, sir, you were saying something about&mdash;’ pausing in a high flutter
+of expectation. The gentleman, provoked at his inordinate vanity, resolved
+not to indulge it, and with an exquisitely sly air of indifference
+remarked, ‘A mere trifle, sir, not worth repeating.’ The mortification of
+Richardson was visible, and he did not speak ten words more the whole day.
+Dr. Johnson was present, and appeared to enjoy it much.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img22.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">PUMP COURT. TEMPLE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>While Fielding was roystering in the wild haunts of Bohemian London,
+gambling at his club, reeling home to his chambers in Pump Court, and
+writing his novels in odds and ends of soberer time, Richardson was
+methodically composing his books at Fulham, getting up early of summer
+mornings, working at his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> manuscript in the little summer-house that he
+had built in his garden, then reading over breakfast to the worshipping
+members of his family the results of his morning’s labour. Wherever he
+went, groups of adoring ladies were sure to gather about him, to chatter
+fervently of their delight in his interminable stories; and he snuffed up
+their incense with a solemn and self-satisfied joy, for he took himself as
+seriously as he was taken by them, and never felt that he was ridiculous,
+even when he looked it. Not infrequently he would sit in his drawing-room
+at The Grange, or in the summer-house, surrounded by a rapt audience of
+feminine believers, who wept as he read aloud to them of the sufferings
+and heroic virtue of Pamela, or the persecutions of the gentle Clarissa.
+You<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> cannot think of it without imagining there, in one of the rooms, the
+comfortable, obese, touchy, rather pompous, double-chinned little
+gentleman, in his fair wig and dark coat, an ink-horn set in the arm of
+his chair with a quill sticking out of it, one hand thrust into the front
+of his waistcoat, the book or manuscript in his hand, reading gravely and
+deliberately his long, minute dissections of character, his elaborate
+descriptions of events and incidents, his formal dialogues, pleased when
+his stilted sentiment or simple sentimentality brought tears to the eyes
+of his listeners, and not ashamed to shed one or two with them.</p>
+
+<p>He drew a word-portrait of himself for Lady Bradshaigh, which is fairly
+well known but is worth repeating, and, judging by the portraits we have
+of him, is a fairly true one. He paints himself as “short, rather plump,
+about five feet five inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom,
+the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat
+that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support when attacked by sudden
+tremors or dizziness, which too frequently attack him, but, thank God! not
+so often as formerly; looking directly forthright, as passers-by would
+imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand of him without moving
+his short neck; hardly ever turning back; of a light-brown complexion,
+teeth not yet failing him; smooth faced, and ruddy cheeked; at some times
+looking to be about sixty-five, at other times much younger; a regular,
+even pace, stealing away the ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey
+eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head; by chance
+lively&mdash;very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> lively it will be, if he have hope of seeing a lady whom he
+loves and honours.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img23.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">RICHARDSON’S HOUSE. NORTH END FULHAM.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Richardson’s summer-house is long since gone from the garden, and long ago
+now The Grange was divided in two, and in the half that has been
+stucco-fronted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> Burne-Jones went to live in 1867, dying there in 1898.</p>
+
+<p>Five years after Goldsmith had given up proofreading for Richardson, you
+find him still drudging amid the squalor of Grub Street, still living from
+hand to mouth, writing reviews and prefaces, revising and preparing new
+editions of dull books on dull subjects, for a sum of twenty-one pounds
+compiling a two-volume <i>History of England</i> in the form of a series of
+letters, and generally subduing his heart and mind to the doing of the
+wretched hack-work to which the impecunious literary man in all ages has
+usually been condemned.</p>
+
+<p>His new taskmaster was Mr. Newbery the publisher, and he was living, in
+those days of 1762, in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street; but the publisher
+was not altogether ungenerous, and made arrangements that enabled his poor
+hack to leave town at intervals and work in the fresh air and rural
+environment of Islington. Newbery had chambers of his own there in
+Canonbury Tower, and Goldsmith used to put up at a cottage near by that
+was kept by an elderly Mrs. Fleming, a friend or relative of Newbery’s,
+his bills for board and lodging being periodically settled by his
+employer, who deducted the amount of them from whatever fell due to
+Goldsmith from time to time for work done. Fortunately Mrs. Fleming’s
+accounts have been preserved, and we get an idea of Goldsmith’s wardrobe
+from her washing-lists, and learn from the items she carefully details
+that she now and then lent him small sums in cash&mdash;tenpence one day, and
+one and twopence another; that occasionally, when he had a friend to
+dinner, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>though she duly noted it, she ostentatiously made no charge;
+but when four gentlemen came to take tea with him, she debited him with
+eighteenpence.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img24.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GOLDSMITH’S HOUSE. CANONBURY.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>Probably one of those friends who had a free dinner was Hogarth, for he
+travelled out to Islington occasionally on a visit to Goldsmith; and there
+is a painting of his which is known as “Goldsmith’s Hostess,� and is
+believed to be none other than Mrs. Fleming’s portrait.</p>
+
+<p>You remember Boswell’s story of how <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i> saved
+Goldsmith from imprisonment for debt. “I received one morning a letter
+from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress,� Johnson told him,
+“and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come
+to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to
+him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that
+his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent
+passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a
+bottle of madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork in the bottle,
+desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which
+he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the
+press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit. I
+told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller,
+sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged
+his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used
+him so ill.� Everything points to Mrs. Fleming as that harsh landlady, and
+the lodging in her cottage at Islington as the scene of that famous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+interlude. The presumption is that Goldsmith had incurred a much heavier
+liability to her than was covered by what was accruing to him for his
+services to Newbery, as a result of his giving time to the writing of <i>The
+Vicar of Wakefield</i> that should have been devoted to his usual drudgery;
+and the cautious Newbery declined to make further advances, and advised
+his relative, the landlady, to adopt summary methods for the recovery of
+her debt. Goldsmith never lodged with Mrs. Fleming after that date; but
+later, when Newbery took a lease of Canonbury Tower, he was from time to
+time a guest there, and occupied a room in the turret. During one of these
+visits he wrote <i>The Traveller</i>; and in later years Charles Lamb often
+walked across from his Islington home to the Tower to watch the sunset
+from the summit, and to be entertained by the tenant of it in the panelled
+chamber where Goldsmith’s poem was written.</p>
+
+<p>It was with the publication of <i>The Traveller</i> that Goldsmith began to
+emerge from Grub Street. Its success was considerable enough to lead to
+the publisher’s looking out the manuscript of <i>The Vicar of Wakefield</i>,
+and issuing that also; and in 1768, having made five hundred pounds by the
+production and publishing of <i>The Good-natured Man</i>, he removed from an
+attic in the Staircase, Inner Temple, and purchased a lease of three rooms
+on the second floor of 2 Brick Court, Temple. Blackstone, the lawyer, then
+working on his <i>Commentaries</i>, had chambers immediately below him, and
+complained angrily of the distracting noises&mdash;the singing, dancing, and
+playing blind-man’s-buff&mdash;that went on over his head when Goldsmith was
+entertaining his friends.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img25.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">OLIVER GOLDSMITH</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>Pale, round-faced, plain-featured, with a bulging forehead and an ugly,
+long upper lip, there was more of kindness and geniality than of dignity
+or intellect in Goldsmith’s appearance. “His person was short,� says
+Boswell, who was jealous of his friendship with Johnson, and never
+realised how great he was, “his countenance was coarse and vulgar, his
+deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. Those
+who were in any way distinguished excited envy in him to so ridiculous an
+excess that the instances of it are hardly credible.� But Boswell
+misjudged him because, conceited and petty himself, he easily read those
+qualities into the behaviour of the other, and so misunderstood him.
+Goldsmith may have had some harmless vanity in the matter of dress, when
+he could afford to indulge it; but as for vanity of his achievements, that
+speaking of poetry as</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“My shame in crowds, my solitary pride,�</p></div>
+
+<p>is the spontaneous confession of a naturally shy and diffident spirit.
+When a man has been buffeted as he had been, has had to slave so hard and
+wait so long for his reward as he had slaved and waited, he accepts the
+fame that comes to him merely as wages well earned, and is not likely to
+grow swollen-headed concerning it. And for his envious character&mdash;here is
+what Boswell gives as a specimen of it. Johnson had come from an
+unexpected interview with the king, and a party of friends at Sir Joshua
+Reynolds’s house in Leicester Square were gathered about him pressing for
+a full account of what had taken place. During all the time that Johnson
+was employed in this narration, remarks Boswell, “Dr. Goldsmith remained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+unmoved upon a sofa at some distance, affecting not to join in the least
+in the eager curiosity of the company. He assigned as a reason for his
+gloom and seeming inattention that he apprehended Johnson had relinquished
+his purpose of furnishing him with a prologue to his play, with the hopes
+of which he had been flattered; but it was strongly suspected that he was
+fretting with chagrin and envy at the singular honour Dr. Johnson had
+lately enjoyed. At length, the frankness and simplicity of his natural
+character prevailed. He sprung from the sofa, advanced to Johnson, and in
+a kind of flutter from imagining himself in the situation which he had
+just been hearing described, exclaimed, ‘Well, you acquitted yourself in
+this conversation better than I should have done; for I should have bowed
+and stammered through the whole of it.’� Naturally this talk with the king
+would not seem such a breathlessly overwhelming honour to such a man as
+Goldsmith as to such a snob as Boswell. It was in keeping with Goldsmith’s
+nature that he should sit quietly listening and imagining the whole thing
+as he heard about it, instead of fussing round open-mouthed to pester the
+narrator with trivial questions; but Boswell was incapable of realising
+this.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img26.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">2 BRICK COURT. THE TEMPLE.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>When Boswell, in his toadying spirit, was saying that in any conversation
+Johnson was entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority, and
+Goldsmith, with a truer conception of the art and pleasure of social
+intercourse, replied, “Sir, you are for making a monarchy of what should
+be a republic,� Boswell took it as another proof of Goldsmith’s envy, and
+of his “incessant desire of being conspicuous in company.� He goes on
+to say: “He was still more mortified when, talking in a company with
+fluent vivacity and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all who
+were present, a German who sat next to him, and perceived Johnson rolling
+himself as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, ‘Stay, stay!
+Toctor Shonson is going to say something!’ This was no doubt very
+provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who frequently
+mentioned it with strong expressions of indignation.� A vain man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> would
+not have mentioned it frequently, but a man with Goldsmith’s sense of fun
+would be tickled by it, and rejoice to tell it as a joke against himself,
+simulating indignation to heighten the jest. When he heard that jape at
+Sir Joshua’s table of taking peas to Hammersmith because that was the way
+to Turn’am Green, and afterwards retelling it muddled the phrase and made
+nonsense of it, Boswell offers it as further evidence that he was a
+blundering fool. But it is more likely that he blundered on purpose,
+merely to raise a laugh, that being his queer, freakish fashion of humour.
+But the Laird of Auchinleck and some of the others were too staid and
+heavy to follow his nimble wits in their grotesque and airy dancings.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img27.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">STAIRS UP TO SECOND FLOOR. 2 BRICK COURT.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Why, even the egregious Boswell has to admit that “Goldsmith, however, was
+often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the lists
+with Johnson himself.� And once, when Johnson observed, “It is amazing how
+little Goldsmith knows; he seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than
+any one else,� Reynolds put in quietly, “Yet there is no man whose company
+is more liked�; and the Doctor promptly admitted that, saying, “When
+people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their
+inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them.� But
+that did not fully explain why he was liked, of course; and what Johnson
+added as to “what Goldsmith comically says of himself� shows that Goldie
+knew his own weaknesses, and was amused by them. Lamb would have
+understood him and laughed with him, for he loved to frivol and play the
+fool in the same vein. When he was dead, Johnson said he was “a very
+great<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> man�; and don’t you think there is some touch of remorse in that
+later remark of his, that the partiality of Goldsmith’s friends was always
+against him, and “it was with difficulty we could give him a hearing�?</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img28.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GOLDSMITH’S GRAVE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>When he lay dead in his chambers at 2 Brick Court, as Forster relates, the
+staircase was filled with mourners the reverse of domestic&mdash;“women without
+a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had
+come to weep for; outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom
+he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. And he had domestic
+mourners, too. His coffin was reopened at the request of Miss Horneck and
+her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for them), that a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn’s possession when she
+died, after nearly seventy years.� When Burke was told that Goldsmith was
+dead, he burst into tears; and when the news reached Reynolds in his
+Leicester Square painting-room, he laid his brush aside&mdash;a thing he had
+not been known to do even in times of great family distress&mdash;left his
+study, and entered it no more that day. A vain and envious fool is not
+mourned in that fashion.</p>
+
+<p>“I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which were his,�
+writes Thackeray, “and passed up the staircase which Johnson and Burke and
+Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith&mdash;the
+stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that
+the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak
+door.�</p>
+
+<p>No. 2 Brick Court would be memorable enough if it held no other memory;
+but in 1839 Mackworth Praed died in the same house, and for a short time
+in 1855 Thackeray too had chambers in it.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<p class="title">HOMES AND HAUNTS OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL</p>
+
+
+<p>If we were not quite such a business people, and had not so fully
+satisfied ourselves that the making of money is the chief end of
+existence, we should put up a statue to Dr. Johnson in Fleet Street, even
+if we had to knock down a house or two to find room for it. The statue by
+Mr. Percy Fitzgerald that has been erected in St. Clement Danes
+Churchyard, in the Strand, is better than nothing, but it is too
+insignificant in appearance, and stands in the wrong place. Johnson is
+still so far removed from death that he is more alive to-day than when he
+was living, and Fleet Street, and the courts and alleys opening out of
+Fleet Street, are his proper kingdom. Other great spirits haunt the same
+ground, but he overshadows them all.</p>
+
+<p>At one time or another during the later forty-seven years of his life
+Johnson had sixteen different addresses in London, and six of them were in
+Fleet Street byways. On his first visit to town, in 1737, he had lodgings
+at Exeter Street, Strand, and made some short stay at Greenwich, whence he
+wrote to Cave, the publisher, offering to contribute to his <i>Gentleman’s
+Magazine</i>. Next year he and his wife finally removed from Lichfield, and
+lodged first in Woodstock Street, Hanover Square, and then in Castle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+Street, Cavendish Square. Presently he flitted to the Strand; to Bow
+Street; to Holborn; to Fetter Lane; to Holborn again; then to Gough
+Square, at the top of Wine Office Court, where he lived for ten years;
+then to Staple Inn; to Gray’s Inn; to No. 1 Inner Temple Lane; to No. 7
+Johnson’s Court (so named before his time, as Boswell Court was before
+Boswell’s); and thence to Bolt Court, where, in 1784, he died.</p>
+
+<p>Of all these homes of Johnson’s, only two are now surviving&mdash;that in
+Staple Inn, which cannot be identified (we know only that it was one of
+the houses in the square); and that in Gough Square, which, next to the
+Bolt Court house, was the most interesting of his sixteen residences&mdash;and
+one is grateful that, mainly owing to the good offices of Mr. Cecil
+Harmsworth, it has been saved from demolition, and is now opened as a
+Johnson museum.</p>
+
+<p>Johnson was still a bookseller’s hack and a comparatively unknown man
+when, in 1747, at the age of thirty-eight, he started work on his
+<i>Dictionary</i>. He was then living in Holborn; but next year he moved into
+Gough Square, and it was here that most of this colossal work was done.
+And to-day, when you visit that house, you find that all the teeming life
+of the last hundred and sixty years has drained out of it completely, and
+nothing remains in the old rooms but memories of Johnson and his friends.
+He works there for ever now in the study that used to be his, poring
+short-sightedly over books and papers; and in the queer, sloping-ceilinged
+garret above are his six assistants, copying, hunting out references for
+the <i>Dictionary</i>, and busy with all the mechanical part of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> the
+undertaking. You have only to stand there and think of it, and, if you
+have read Boswell and Hawkins, the life of the household as it was in
+those ten years long past refashions itself around you in the magic,
+old-world atmosphere of the place.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img29.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ENTRANCE TO STAPLE INN.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>Five publishers joined in commissioning Johnson to compile the
+<i>Dictionary</i>, and arranged to pay him a sum of £1575, out of which he had
+to engage his assistants. “For the mechanical part,� writes Boswell, “he
+employed six amanuenses; and let it be remembered by the natives of North
+Britain, to whom he is supposed to have been so hostile, that five of them
+were of that country. There were two Messieurs Macbean; Mr. Shiels; Mr.
+Stewart, son of Mr. George Stewart, bookseller at Edinburgh; and a Mr.
+Maitland. The sixth of these humble assistants was Mr. Peyton, who, I
+believe, taught French, and published some elementary tracts.� That upper
+room in Gough Square was fitted up like a counting-house, and each of the
+six workers in it was allotted his separate task. Boswell goes on to
+describe Johnson’s method: “The words, partly taken from other
+dictionaries and partly supplied by himself, having been first written
+down with spaces left between them, he delivered in writing their
+etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were
+copied from the books themselves, in which he had marked the passages with
+a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could easily be effaced. I have
+seen several of them in which that trouble had not been taken, so that
+they were just as when used by the copyists. It is remarkable that he was
+so attentive in the choice of the passages in which words were authorised
+that one may read page<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> after page of his <i>Dictionary</i> with improvement
+and pleasure; and it should not pass unobserved that he has quoted no
+author whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and
+morality.... He is now to be considered as ‘tugging at his oar,’ as
+engaged in a steady, continued course of occupation, sufficient to employ
+all his time for some years, and which was the best preventive of that
+constitutional melancholy which was ever lurking about him, ready to
+trouble his quiet.�</p>
+
+<p>In after years, with his natural, large kindness of disposition, Johnson
+retained a sympathetic interest in those six assistants of his. The elder
+of the two Macbeans fell at length into great poverty, and Johnson helped
+him by writing a preface to his <i>System of Ancient Geography</i>, and
+afterwards influenced Lord Thurlow in getting him admitted as a Poor
+Brother of the Charterhouse. He had Shiel, who was dying of consumption,
+to help him with his <i>Lives of the Poets</i>; and when Peyton died almost
+destitute, it was Johnson who paid his funeral expenses.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst he was “tugging at his oar� and making steady headway with the
+<i>Dictionary</i>, Johnson sought recreation in founding one of his many
+literary clubs&mdash;an informal little club that met of evenings in Ivy Lane,
+Paternoster Row, and numbered among its members Hawkesworth, who succeeded
+Johnson as compiler of Parliamentary debates for the <i>Gentleman’s
+Magazine</i>, and later edited and wrote most of a bi-weekly, <i>The
+Adventurer</i>; Dr. Bathurst, who with Johnson and Warton contributed to that
+<i>Adventurer</i>; and Hawkins, who in due course became one of Johnson’s
+executors and biographers. He had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> published his satire, <i>London</i>, eleven
+years before this; but it was whilst he was living in Gough Square, with
+the <i>Dictionary</i> in full progress, that he wrote and published his only
+other great satire, <i>The Vanity of Human Wishes</i>, with its references to
+the hope deferred, the hardships of his own life, and the obscurity and
+poverty from which he was but now gradually beginning to emerge:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“When first the college rolls receive his name,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Resistless burns the fever of renown,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Caught from the strong contagion of the gown:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O’er Bodley’s dome his future labours spread,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And Bacon’s mansion trembles o’er his head.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Are these thy views? proceed, illustrious youth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet should thy soul indulge the generous heat,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Till captive science yields her last retreat;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And pour on misty doubt resistless day;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Should no false kindness lure to loose delight,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Should no disease thy torpid veins invade</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Nor melancholy’s phantom haunt thy shade;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And pause awhile from learning to be wise:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">See nations slowly wise, and meanly just,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To buried merit raise the tardy bust.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If dreams yet flatter, yet again attend,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Hear Lydiat’s life, and Galileo’s end.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>Had the Gough Square house been memorable only as the birthplace of the
+<i>Dictionary</i>, it would have been enough to have given it immortality; for,
+as Carlyle says (and Carlyle once went reverently over these rooms, and
+wrote a record of his visit), “Had Johnson left nothing but his
+<i>Dictionary</i>, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine
+man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity,
+honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all
+dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands
+there like a great, solid, square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically
+complete; you judge that a true builder did it.� But, still while the
+<i>Dictionary</i> was going on, shortly after the publication of <i>The Vanity of
+Human Wishes</i>, which yielded him £15, Garrick produced his tragedy of
+<i>Irene</i> at Drury Lane. It was a failure on the stage; the audience
+shrieked “Murder! murder!� when the bowstring was placed round the
+heroine’s neck; but Johnson, feeling that a dramatic author should be more
+gaily dressed than it was his wont to appear, sat in a box on the first
+night in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat,
+and accepted his failure with unruffled calmness; and Dodsley paid him
+£100 for the right to publish the play as a book.</p>
+
+<p>Still while he was in the thick of the <i>Dictionary</i>, he set himself, in
+1750, to start <i>The Rambler</i>, and you may take it that he was sitting in
+his Gough Square study one night when he wrote that prayer before
+publishing his first number:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Almighty God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all labour
+is ineffectual, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>without whose grace all wisdom is folly; grant, I
+beseech Thee, that in this undertaking Thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld
+from me, but that I may promote Thy glory, and the salvation of myself and
+others. Grant this, O Lord, for the sake of Thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img30.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His first number was printed on the 20th March 1750, and he issued it
+every Saturday and Tuesday afterwards for two years. “This,� as Boswell
+has it, “is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, that ‘a
+man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it’; for,
+notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits,
+and his labour in carrying on his <i>Dictionary</i>, he answered the stated
+calls of the press twice a week, from the stores of his mind, during all
+that time; having received no assistance, except four billets in No. 10,
+by Miss Mulso, now Mrs. Chapone; No. 30, by Miss Catherine Talbot; No. 97,
+by Mr. Samuel Richardson; and Nos. 44 and 100, by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter.�
+He was so pressed for time that he wrote a good many of the essays in such
+haste that he had no opportunity even to read them through again before
+they were printed. One thing that particularly gratified Johnson in
+connection with the <i>Rambler</i> was that his wife said to him, after she had
+read a few numbers, “I thought very well of you before, but I did not
+imagine you could have written anything equal to this.�</p>
+
+<p>Gough Square is hallowed, too, with sadder memories of Johnson’s wife, for
+she died here in March 1752; and to the end of his days he never forgot
+her or ceased to sorrow for her. She was a plain-featured<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> woman some
+years older than himself, but he always spoke of her with a wonderful
+tenderness and love, and as of one who had been beautiful to look upon.
+How deeply he felt her loss is evident not merely from some of his
+sayings, but from his letters, and from those <i>Prayers and Meditations</i>,
+in which he set down his most intimate thoughts and feelings. After his
+death, this written prayer was found among his papers, dated in the month
+after her passing:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="right">“<i>April 26th, 1752, being after 12 at night of the 25th.</i></p>
+
+<p>“O Lord! Governor of heaven and earth, in whose hands are embodied and
+departed spirits, if Thou hast ordained the souls of the dead to
+minister to the living, and appointed my departed wife to have care of
+me, grant that I may enjoy the good effects of her attention and
+ministration, whether exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams, or in
+any other manner agreeable to Thy government. Forgive my presumption,
+enlighten my ignorance, and however meaner agents are employed, grant
+me the blessed influences of Thy Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our
+Lord. Amen.�</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img31.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">DR. JOHNSON’S HOUSE. GOUGH SQUARE.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>You may stand in the Square to-night, after twelve at night, when all the
+windows of all the other houses are dark, as they were in that night of
+1752, and look up at the window in which the solitary light burned then,
+whilst, within, the grief-stricken Johnson sat alone in his study writing
+down that humble, mournful aspiration, and as you look the same light
+kindles there and glimmers desolately again for all who have eyes to see
+it. Nor was this the only record of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>sorrow that was written in that
+room, for you find these notes in his journal a year later:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“<i>March 28, 1753.</i> I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty’s death,
+with prayers and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her
+conditionally, if it were lawful.�</p>
+
+<p>“<i>April 23, 1753.</i> I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain
+longings of affection; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that when
+I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy
+interview, and that in the meantime I am incited by it to piety. I will,
+however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of
+devotion.�</p>
+
+<p>Boswell tells us that he preserved her wedding-ring reverently as long as
+he lived, keeping it in “a little round wooden box, in the inside of which
+he pasted a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as
+follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">‘Eheu!<br />
+Eliz. Johnson,<br />
+Nupta Jul. 9º, 1736,<br />
+Mortua, eheu!<br />
+Mart. 17º, 1752.’�</p>
+
+<p>Some thought of her, indeed, rises again and again thereafter in those
+<i>Prayers and Meditations</i> of his, and so makes this house peculiarly
+reminiscent of her. Before Mrs. Johnson’s death, Mrs. Anna Williams had
+become a constant visitor at the house here. She was a poetess in a small
+way, daughter of a Welsh physician, and was in London having both her eyes
+treated for cataract. After his wife’s death, Johnson gave Mrs. Williams
+accommodation in Gough Square<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> whilst her eyes were operated upon; and,
+the operation failing and complete blindness following it, with his usual
+big-hearted humanity he allowed her an apartment in this and each of his
+subsequent homes; and you remember Boswell’s complaint of how his
+fastidious susceptibilities were outraged by the way in which she felt
+round the edges of the cups to see if they were full, when she presided
+over the tea-table. In the same spirit, Johnson gave house-room here also,
+and elsewhere, to that simplest and most kindly of medical practitioners,
+Dr. Robert Levett, on whose death, several years later, he wrote the best
+of his shorter poems.</p>
+
+<p>You get a good idea of his general manner of life in Gough Square from the
+note that Boswell obtained from Francis Barber, Johnson’s black servant,
+who wrote that on his wife’s death Johnson was “in great affliction. Mrs.
+Williams was then living in his house, which was in Gough Square. He was
+busy with the <i>Dictionary</i>. Mr. Shiels and some others of the gentlemen
+who had formerly written for him used to come about the house. He had then
+little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr. Shiels when in
+distress. The friends who visited him at that time were chiefly Dr.
+Bathurst, and Mr. Diamond, an apothecary in Cork Street, Burlington
+Gardens, with whom he and Mrs. Williams generally dined every Sunday.
+There were also Mr. Cave; Dr. Hawkesworth; Mr. Rydal, merchant on Tower
+Hill; Mrs. Masters, the poetess, who lived with Mr. Cave; Mrs. Carter; and
+sometimes Mrs. Macaulay; also Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow-chandler on
+Snow Hill, not in the learned way, but a worthy good woman; Mr. (now Sir
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>Joshua) Reynolds; Mr. Miller; Mr. Dodsley; Mr. Bouquet; Mr. Payne, of
+Paternoster Row, bookseller; Mr. Strachan the printer; the Earl of Orrery;
+Lord Southwell; Mr. Garrick.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img32.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JAMES BOSWELL</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It was shortly after the conclusion of <i>The Rambler</i> that Johnson first
+made the acquaintance of Bennet Langton. He had taken lodgings in a house
+that was frequently visited by Dr. Levett; and, with Johnson’s permission,
+Levett one day brought Langton to Gough Square, and, says Boswell:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Langton was exceedingly surprised when the sage first appeared. He
+had not received the smallest intimation of his figure, dress, or manner.
+From perusing his writings, he fancied he should see a decent,
+well-dressed&mdash;in short, a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of
+which, down from his bed-chamber, about noon, came, as newly risen, a huge
+uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head,
+and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich,
+so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so
+congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived
+for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved.�</p>
+
+<p>In 1753 Johnson “relieved the drudgery of his <i>Dictionary</i>� by writing
+essays for Hawkesworth’s <i>Adventurer</i>, and in this and the next two years
+did a lot of reviewing and varied hack-work for the magazines and
+miscellanies of his time; and in February 1775 he wrote that nobly
+scathing and touching letter to Lord Chesterfield, that is too well known
+to need reprinting, but must needs be reprinted here, because it was
+written from Gough Square, and would make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> any house from which it was
+written an honoured and sacred place to all who value the dignity of
+literature and glory in the emancipation of the literary man from the
+condescending benevolence of the private patron:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My Lord</span>,&mdash;I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of <i>The
+World</i>, that two papers in which my <i>Dictionary</i> is recommended to the
+public were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an
+honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great,
+I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.</p>
+
+<p>“When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship,
+I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of
+your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself
+<i>Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre</i>&mdash;that I might obtain that
+regard for which I saw the whole world contending; but I found my
+attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would
+suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in
+public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and
+uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man
+is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.</p>
+
+<p>“Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward
+rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
+pushing on with my work through difficulties, of which it is useless
+to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of
+publication, without one act of assistance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> one word of
+encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not
+expect, for I never had a patron before.</p>
+
+<p>“The shepherd in <i>Virgil</i> grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
+him a native of the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>“Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
+encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
+take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been
+delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
+solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
+hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where
+no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
+should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has
+enabled me to do for myself.</p>
+
+<p>“Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
+favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall
+conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
+wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with
+so much exultation,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“My lord, your lordship’s most humble,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">“Most obedient servant,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">“<span class="smcap">Sam. Johnson</span>.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>A few months after this the <i>Dictionary</i> was finished. There had been many
+delays; it was long behind the stipulated time, and the patience of the
+publishers was exhausted; but at last Johnson sent the last sheets of the
+great work to Mr. Miller, the Strand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> bookseller, who was chiefly
+concerned in the venture, and when the messenger returned from Miller’s
+shop Johnson asked him, “Well, what did he say?� “Sir,� answered the
+messenger, “he said, ‘Thank God I have done with him.’� “I am glad,�
+replied Johnson, with a smile, “that he thanks God for anything.�</p>
+
+<p>The publication of the <i>Dictionary</i> made him at once the most famous man
+of letters in London; but he had already spent the money that was paid for
+his labour, and had still to work hard with his pen to make “provision for
+the day that was passing over him.� In 1757 he took up again a scheme for
+an elaborate edition of Shakespeare with notes, and issued proposals and
+invited subscriptions for it; but it was another nine years before his
+Shakespeare made its appearance. Among his many visitors in 1758, Dr.
+Charles Burney, the father of Fanny Burney, called and “had an interview
+with him in Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea with him, and was
+introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Williams. After dinner, Mr. Johnson
+proposed to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret, which, being
+accepted, he there found about five or six Greek folios, a deal
+writing-desk, and a chair and a half. Johnson, giving his guest the entire
+seat, tottered himself on one with only three legs and one arm. Here he
+gave Mr. Burney Mrs. Williams’s history, and showed him some volumes of
+Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he was in earnest.� They
+proceeded to criticise Shakespeare’s commentators up there, and to discuss
+the controversy then raging between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke in
+connection with an unauthorised publication of certain of Bolingbroke’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+letters to Pope, who was recently dead. And in the April of this same year
+Johnson began to write his essays for <i>The Idler</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img33.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JOHNSON’S CORNER. THE CHESHIRE CHEESE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, you have a varied and intimate series of pictures, a sort of
+panoramic view of the life that Johnson lived in his Gough Square house,
+and amid his old surroundings are able to recreate him for yourself in all
+his varying circumstances and changing moods&mdash;working there at his
+<i>Dictionary</i> and his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> multifarious writings; sorrowing for his wife;
+entertaining his friends; sallying forth morning and evening to walk along
+Fleet Street to the church of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand, assuming
+that he kept the resolution to do so that is entered at this date in his
+journal; and, almost every Sunday afternoon, coming staidly down the steps
+with Mrs. Williams, and setting out to dine with Mr. Diamond, the
+apothecary of Cork Street; on many evenings strolling along Wine Office
+Court, to forgather with friends in the parlour of the “Cheshire Cheese,�
+where the seat traditionally occupied by him and Goldsmith is still to be
+seen; or going farther to a meeting of his club in Ivy Lane. There is a
+capital story told by Hawkins of how one night at that club a suggestion
+was made that they should celebrate the publication of Mrs. Lennox’s first
+novel, <i>The Life of Harriet Stuart</i>, with a supper at the Devil Tavern, in
+Fleet Street. Johnson threw himself heart and soul into the proposal, and
+declared that they would honour the event by spending the whole night in
+festivity. On the evening fixed, at about eight o’clock, Mrs. Lennox and
+her husband, and some twenty friends and members of the club, gathered at
+the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, and, by Johnson’s orders, a magnificent hot
+apple-pie adorned with bay leaves formed a principal item of the menu. He
+himself crowned Mrs. Lennox with laurel; and, true to his resolve, he kept
+the feast going right through the night. “At 5 <span class="smcaplc">A.M.</span>,� says Hawkins,
+“Johnson’s face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been
+only lemonade.� The day was beginning to dawn when they all partook of a
+“second refreshment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> of coffee,� and it was broad daylight and eight
+o’clock before the party broke up, and Johnson made his way back up Fleet
+Street, round into Gough Square, and to the prosaic resumption of work on
+the <i>Dictionary</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after starting <i>The Idler</i>, Johnson left Gough Square and took rooms
+in Staple Inn, where he presently wrote <i>Rasselas</i> in the evenings of one
+week, and so raised £100, that “he might defray the expenses of his
+mother’s funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left.�</p>
+
+<p>All these things had happened, and Johnson had risen into fame and become
+“the great Cham of letters,� before Boswell had made his acquaintance. The
+historic meeting between these two did not come about until 1763, and then
+it took place at No. 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden&mdash;another famous house
+that is fortunately still in existence. It was then occupied by Thomas
+Davies, the actor, who had retired from the stage and opened a
+bookseller’s shop there. He knew Johnson, who frequently visited him, and
+on his invitation Boswell was there several times in hopes of meeting the
+great man; again and again it happened that on the days when he was in
+waiting Johnson failed to appear, but in the end his patience was
+rewarded, and this is his own account of the interview, taken from notes
+he made of it on the very day of its occurrence:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“At last, on Monday, the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies’s
+back parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson
+unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies, having perceived him
+through the glass door in the room in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> which we were sitting, advancing
+towards us, he announced his awful approach to me, somewhat in the manner
+of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the
+appearance of his father’s ghost: ‘Look, my lord, it comes!’ I found that
+I had a very perfect idea of Johnson’s figure, from the portrait of him
+painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his
+<i>Dictionary</i>, in the attitude of sitting in his easy-chair in deep
+meditation. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me
+to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the
+Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, ‘Don’t tell where I
+come from.’ ‘From Scotland,’ cried Davies roguishly. ‘Mr. Johnson,’ said
+I, ‘I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.’ He retorted,
+‘That, sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot
+help.’ This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I
+felt myself not a little embarrassed and apprehensive of what might come
+next. He then addressed himself to Davies: ‘What do you think of Garrick?
+He has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he
+knows the house will be full, and that an order would be worth three
+shillings.’ Eager to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I
+ventured to say, ‘O sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a
+trifle to you.’ ‘Sir,’ said he, with a stern look, ‘I have known David
+Garrick longer than you have done, and I know no right you have to talk to
+me on the subject.’ Perhaps I deserved this check; for it was rather
+presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any doubt of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance and pupil. I now
+felt myself much mortified, and began to think that the hope which I had
+long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was blasted.� But he sat on
+resolutely, and was rewarded by hearing some of Johnson’s conversation, of
+which he kept notes, that are duly reproduced in the <i>Life</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img34.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">WHERE BOSWELL FIRST MET JOHNSON.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>“I was highly pleased with the extraordinary vigour of his conversation,�
+he concludes his account of the meeting, “and regretted that I was drawn
+away from it by an engagement at another place. I had for a part of the
+evening been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation
+now and then, which he received very civilly; so I was satisfied that,
+though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his
+disposition. Davies followed me to the door; and when I complained to him
+a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly
+took upon him to console me by saying, ‘Don’t be uneasy; I can see he
+likes you very well.’�</p>
+
+<p>Davies’s shop is kept nowadays by a Covent Garden salesman. Instead of
+being lined with books, it is filled with baskets of fruit and sacks of
+potatoes, and the parlour wall and that glass-panelled parlour door are
+thrown down, and parlour and shop are all one. But the upper part of the
+house remains practically unaltered, and with a little imagining you can
+restore the lower to what it was when these walls held the gruff rumbling
+of the Doctor’s voice, and looked down on the humiliation of Boswell under
+the roguish eyes of Davies and his pretty wife.</p>
+
+<p>Another house that has glamorous associations with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> Johnson is No. 5
+Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived, and where he died, in a back room on
+the first floor, in 1779. Two years later Johnson was one of a party that
+dined there with Mrs. Garrick, and one cannot do better than repeat the
+indispensable Boswell’s report of the event:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“On Friday, April 20, I spent with him one of the happiest days that I
+remember to have enjoyed in the whole course of my life. Mrs. Garrick,
+whose grief for the loss of her husband was, I believe, as sincere as
+wounded affection and admiration could produce, had this day, for the
+first time since his death, a select party of his friends to dine with
+her. The company was: Mrs. Hannah More, who lived with her, and whom she
+called her chaplain; Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, Dr. Burney, Dr. Johnson, and myself. We found ourselves very
+elegantly entertained at her house in the Adelphi, where I have passed
+many a pleasing hour with him ‘who gladdened life.’ She looked well,
+talked of her husband with complacency, and while she cast her eyes on his
+portrait, which hung over the chimney-piece, said that ‘death was now the
+most agreeable object to her.’... We were all in fine spirits; and I
+whispered to Mrs. Boscawen, ‘I believe this is as much as can be made of
+life.’� After recording the conversation of Johnson and divers of the
+others, Boswell goes on: “He and I walked away together. We stopped a
+little by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to
+him, with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost
+who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>‘Ay,
+sir,’ said he tenderly, ‘and two such friends as cannot be supplied.’�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img35.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BOSWELL’S HOUSE. GREAT QUEEN STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>In the summer of 1784 Boswell was in London as usual, and saw Johnson,
+then an old man of seventy-five, for the last time. On the 30th June, he
+and Johnson dined with Sir Joshua Reynolds in Leicester Square, and when
+Johnson went home Boswell accompanied him in Sir Joshua’s coach to the
+entry of Bolt Court, in Fleet Street, and was so affected at parting that
+he would not accompany him to the house, and they bade each other an
+affectionate adieu in the carriage. Johnson stepped out on to the
+pavement, and, walking briskly, vanished into the yawn of Bolt Court, and,
+for Boswell, into the jaws of death, for he never saw him again. He went
+home to the north two days after, and in December Johnson died.</p>
+
+<p>On his annual visits to London Boswell lived in various lodgings; but in
+or about 1786 he rented the house, still standing, at 56 Great Queen
+Street, and brought his wife to town with him. They occupied this place
+for some two years; and it is evident from his letters to Bishop Percy and
+the Rev. T. W. Temple that, whilst residing there, he wrote most of the
+last seven years of his <i>Life of Johnson</i>. Boswell died in London, in
+1795, at No. 122 (formerly 47) Great Portland Street.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<p class="title">BLAKE AND FLAXMAN</p>
+
+
+<p>Ten years before Boswell went to live at 56 Great Queen Street, William
+Blake was serving an apprenticeship to James Basire, the well-known
+engraver, whose house was close by at No. 31 in the same street. Basire’s
+residence has gone the way of all bricks and mortar; but happily Soho
+still preserves the corner house at No. 28 Broad Street, in which Blake
+was born. He was born there on the 28th November 1857, over his father’s
+hosiery shop, and it was there that the first of his strange visions came
+to him; for he used to say that when he was only four years old he one day
+saw the face of God at the window looking in upon him, and the sight set
+him a-screaming. When he was four or five years older, you hear of him
+taking long rambles into the country; and it was on Peckham Rye that other
+visions came to him. Once he saw a tree there “filled with angels, bright
+angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars�; and once, on a summer
+morning, he saw “the haymakers at work, and amid them angelic figures
+walking.� In his matter-of-fact fashion he recounted the first of these
+two visions on his return home, and his mother had to intervene to prevent
+the honest hosier and conscientious Nonconformist, his father, from
+thrashing him for telling a lie.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>At the age of ten Blake was journeying to and from the house in Broad
+Street to Mr. Paris’s academy in the Strand, taking drawing lessons. He
+was already writing poetry, too, and before he was fourteen had written
+one of the most beautiful and glitteringly imaginative of his lyrics:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“How sweet I roamed from field to field,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And tasted all the summer’s pride,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Till I the Prince of Love beheld</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Who in the sunny beams did glide.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He showed me lilies for my hair,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And blushing roses for my brow;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He led me through his gardens fair</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Where all his golden pleasures grow.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With sweet May-dews my wings were wet,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He caught me in his silken net,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And shut me in his golden cage.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He loves to sit and hear me sing,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Then stretches out my golden wing,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And mocks my loss of liberty.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>In a preface to his first published volume, the <i>Poetical Sketches</i>, which
+contains this lyric, his Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter verses, “My
+Silks and fine Array,� and other lovely songs, he says that all the
+contents were “commenced in his twelfth, and occasionally resumed by the
+author till his twentieth year.� From fourteen till he was twenty-one
+Blake was living away from home with his master, Basire, the engraver;
+then he went back to his father’s, and commenced to study at the recently
+formed Royal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> Academy, and in 1780 exhibited his first picture there, “The
+Death of Earl Godwin.� Marrying in 1782, he set up housekeeping for
+himself at 23 Green Street, Leicester Square, and began to move abroad in
+literary society. Flaxman, already his friend, introduced him to Mrs.
+Mathew, a lady of blue-stocking tendencies, who held a sort of salon at 27
+Rathbone Place; and here, in 1784, “Rainy Day� Smith made his
+acquaintance. “At Mrs. Mathew’s most agreeable conversaziones,� he says,
+“I first met the late William Blake, to whom she and Mr. Flaxman had been
+truly kind. There I have often heard him read and sing several of his
+poems. He was listened to by the company with profound silence, and
+allowed by most of his listeners to possess original and extraordinary
+merit.� He knew nothing of musical technique, but sang some of his verses
+to airs that Smith describes as “singularly beautiful.� His republican
+opinions and general unorthodoxy and daring outspokenness, however, did
+not make for social amenity, and it was not long before he dropped out of
+these elegant circles, and withdrew to his mystic dreamings and the
+production of paintings and poetry that the majority could not understand.
+A strangely beautiful and wonderful Bird of Paradise to break from the
+nest over that hosier’s shop at the corner of Broad Street, Soho!</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img36.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BLAKE’S HOUSE. SOHO.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>When his father died, in 1784, Blake’s brother James took over and
+continued the business; and in the same year Blake himself opened the shop
+next door (No. 27) as an engraver and printseller, in partnership with
+James Parker, who had been one of his fellow-apprentices under Basire.
+Here he had his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>younger brother, Robert, with him as a pupil; and he
+used to say that when Robert died, in 1787, he saw his soul ascend through
+the ceiling, “clapping its hands for joy.� Falling out with Parker, Blake
+removed, in this year of his brother’s death, to 28 Poland Street, near
+by, where he said Robert’s spirit remained in communion with him, and
+directed him, “in a nocturnal vision, how to proceed in bringing out poems
+and designs in conjunction�; and the <i>Songs of Innocence</i>, published in
+1789, was the result of this inspiration. The method, as Alexander
+Gilchrist has it, “consisted in a species of engraving in relief both
+words and designs. The verse was written, and the designs and marginal
+embellishments outlined on the copper with an impervious liquid. Then all
+the white parts, or lights (the remainder of the plate, that is), were
+eaten away with aquafortis or other acid, so that the outline of letter
+and design was left prominent, as in stereotype. From these plates he
+printed off in any tint required to be the prevailing (or ground) colour
+in his facsimiles; red he used for the letterpress. The page was then
+coloured up by hand in imitation of the original drawing, with more or
+less variety of detail in the local hues.� A process of mixing his colours
+with diluted glue was revealed to him by St. Joseph. Mrs. Blake often
+helped him in tinting the designs, and it was her work to bind the books
+in boards. In the same year (1789) he put forth the finest of his long
+mystical poems, <i>The Book of Thel</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Poland Street in 1793, Blake moved across London to Lambeth, and
+made himself a new home at 13 Hercules Buildings. Gilchrist, one of his
+earliest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> biographers, made a mistake in his identification of this house,
+and until a year or two ago it was believed that Blake’s residence in that
+place had been pulled down. On a recent investigation of the Lambeth
+rate-books by the County Council authorities, however, it became clear
+that, instead of being on the west side of the street, as Gilchrist
+supposed, No. 13 was on the east side, next door but one to Hercules Hall
+Yard. Somewhere between 1830 and 1842 the whole road was renumbered, and
+Blake’s house had become No. 63, and was in 1890 renumbered again, and
+became, and is still, No. 23 Hercules Road. Whilst he was living here, Mr.
+Thomas Butts, of Fitzroy Square, became his most liberal and most constant
+patron; and on calling at Hercules Buildings one day, Mr. Butts says he
+found Blake and his wife sitting naked in their summer-house. “Come in!�
+Blake greeted him. “It’s only Adam and Eve, you know.� But Mr. Butts never
+took this as evidence of Blake’s madness: he and his wife had simply been
+reciting passages of <i>Paradise Lost</i> in character.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img37.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BLAKE. 23 HERCULES ROAD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>At Hercules Buildings Blake did a large number of paintings and
+engravings, including the 537 coloured drawings for Young’s <i>Night
+Thoughts</i>, and some of the greatest of his designs, such as the “Job� and
+“Ezekiel� prints; and here, too, he completed certain of his <i>Prophetic
+Books</i>, with their incomprehensible imagery and allegory, and what
+Swinburne has called their “sunless and sonorous gulfs.� From Hercules
+Buildings also came “Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the
+night,� and the rest of the <i>Songs of Experience</i>. Then, in 1800, Hayley,
+the poet of the dull and unreadable <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span><i>Triumphs of Temper</i>, persuaded him
+to move into the country and settle down in a cottage at Felpham; from
+which, because he said “the visions were angry with me at Felpham,� he
+returned to London early in 1804, and took lodgings on the first floor of
+17 South Moulton Street, Oxford Street.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img38.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BLAKE’S HOUSE. SOUTH MOULTON ST.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, at Felpham he must have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> working on his <i>Jerusalem</i>,
+and on <i>Milton, A Poem in Two Books</i>, for these were issued shortly after
+his arrival in South Moulton Street. He writes of <i>Jerusalem</i> in one of
+his letters: “I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve,
+or sometimes twenty or thirty, lines at a time, without premeditation, and
+even against my will�; and in a later letter, speaking of it as “the
+grandest poem that this world contains,� he excuses himself by remarking,
+“I may praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the
+secretary&mdash;the authors are in eternity.� Much of <i>Jerusalem</i> is turgid,
+obscure, chaotic, and so impossible to understand that Mr. Chesterton
+declares that when Blake said “that its authors were in eternity, one can
+only say that nobody is likely to go there to get any more of their work.�
+But it is in this poem that Blake introduces those verses “To the Jews,�
+setting forth that Jerusalem once stood in&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“The fields from Islington to Marybone,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">To Primrose Hill and Saint John’s Wood,�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>and that then&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“The Divine Vision still was seen,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Still was the human form divine;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Weeping in weak and mortal clay,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">O Jesus! still the form was Thine.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And Thine the human face; and Thine</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The human hands, and feet, and breath,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Entering through the gates of birth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And passing through the gates of death�;</span></p></div>
+
+<p>and in <i>Jerusalem</i> you have his lines “To the Deists,� the first version
+of his ballad of the Grey Monk, with its great ending:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+“For a tear is an intellectual thing,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the bitter groan of a martyr’s woe</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>For my part, I wish it were possible for some of our living poets to go
+again to those authors in eternity and get some more of such stuff as
+
+this, even if we had to have it embedded in drearier lumps of nonsense
+than you find in <i>Jerusalem</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Blake’s wife, daughter of a market-gardener, a woman so uneducated that
+she had to sign the marriage register with her mark, was not only an
+excellent housekeeper and domestic drudge, but was in perfect sympathy
+with him in his work, and had the greatest faith in his visions. Moses,
+Julius Cæsar, the Builder of the Pyramids, David, Uriah, Bathsheba,
+Solomon, Mahomet, Joseph, and Mary&mdash;these were among Blake’s spiritual
+visitants at South Moulton Street. They came and sat to him, and he worked
+at their portraits, “looking up from time to time as though he had a real
+sitter before him.� Sometimes he would leave off abruptly, and observe in
+matter-of-fact tones, “I can’t go on. It is gone; I must wait till it
+returns�; or, “It has moved; the mouth is gone�; or, “He frowns. He is
+displeased with my portrait of him.� If any one criticised and objected to
+the likeness he would reply calmly, “It <i>must</i> be right. I saw it so.� In
+all probability he meant no more than that he conjured up these sitters to
+his mind’s eye; but his friends took him literally, and he acquiesced in
+their doing so, and has been dubbed a madman in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>Many times his wife would get up in the nights<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> “when he was under his
+very fierce inspirations, which were as if they would tear him asunder,
+while he was yielding himself to the Muse, or whatever else it could be
+called, sketching and writing. And so terrible a task did this seem to be
+that she had to sit motionless and silent, only to stay him mentally,
+without moving hand or foot; this for hours, and night after night.� It is
+not easy to realise that this burning, fiery spirit did once live in these
+South Moulton Street rooms, surrounded by his vivid and terrific
+imaginings, and then could pass out of it and leave it looking so dull and
+decorous, so ordinary, so entirely commonplace. But here he indubitably
+lived, so discouraged by neglect and hampered by poverty that he could not
+afford to issue any more large books like the <i>Jerusalem</i>, and in 1809
+made a desperate attempt to appeal to the public by holding an exhibition
+of his frescoes and drawings on the first floor of his brother’s hosiery
+shop in Broad Street. Very few visitors attended; but among the few was
+Lamb’s friend, Crabb Robinson, and when he went he had the room to
+himself. He paid for admission, recognised that these pictures were the
+work of no ordinary artist, and bought four of the catalogues, one of
+which he sent to Lamb; and when, on leaving, he asked the custodian
+whether he might come again free, James Blake, delighted at having a
+visitor, and one, moreover, who had bought something, cried, “Oh yes&mdash;free
+as long as you live!� But the exhibition was a failure. The popular
+painters of Blake’s day were Reynolds, Gainsborough, and men of their
+schools. Blake was born out of his time, and contemporary society had
+nothing in common<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> with him&mdash;no comprehension of his aim or his
+outlook&mdash;and dismissed him as an astonishing lunatic. When some drawings
+of his were shown to George III., his Majesty could only gaze at them
+helplessly and ejaculate a testy “Take them away! take them away!� The
+noble designs for Blair’s <i>Grave</i>, and the frescoes of <i>The Canterbury
+Pilgrimage</i>, were among the important works done at South Moulton Street,
+which Blake quitted in 1821, making his last change of residence to 3
+Fountain Court, Strand&mdash;a house kept by his brother-in-law, Baines. Here
+he occupied a room on the first floor for some six years, and when he was
+nearing his seventieth year, died, after a short illness, on Sunday, the
+12th August 1827. He lay dying in his plain back room, serene and
+cheerful, singing songs to melodies that were the inspiration of the
+moment; towards evening he fell silent, and passed quietly away, a poor
+woman, a neighbour who had come in to sit with his wife, saying
+afterwards, “I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed
+angel.�</p>
+
+<p>You have only to look at the portraits of Blake, at the broad
+forehead&mdash;the forehead of a revolutionary, as he himself said&mdash;the
+sensitive mouth, the large, intent, vision-haunted eyes, to know that his
+outward appearance fairly adequately revealed the manner of man that he
+really was. He was under five feet six in height and thick-set, but so
+well proportioned that he did not strike people as short. “He had an
+upright carriage,� says Gilchrist, “and a good presence; he bore himself
+with dignity, as not unconscious of his natural claims. The head and face
+were strongly stamped with the power and character of the man.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> There was
+a great volume of brain in that square, massive head, that piled-up brow,
+very full and rounded at the temples, where, according to phrenologists,
+ideality or imagination resides. His eyes were fine (‘wonderful eyes,’
+some one calls them), prominently set, but bright, spiritual,
+visionary&mdash;not restless or wild, but with a look of clear, heavenly
+exaltation. The eyes of some of the old men in his <i>Job</i> recall his own to
+surviving friends. His nose was insignificant as to size, but had that
+peculiarity which gives to a face an expression of fiery energy, as of a
+high-mettled steed&mdash;a little <i>clenched</i> nostril, a nostril that opened as
+far as it could, but was tied down at one end. His mouth was wide, the
+lips not full, but tremulous, and expressive of the great sensibility
+which characterised him. He was short-sighted, as the prominence of his
+eyes indicated&mdash;a prominence in keeping with the faculty for languages,
+according to phrenologists again. He wore glasses only occasionally.� His
+poverty forced him to study economy in the matter of dress. Indoors he was
+not slovenly, but generally wore a threadbare old suit, the grey trousers
+of which had been rubbed black and shiny in front like a mechanic’s. When
+he walked abroad he was more careful, and dressed plainly but well,
+something in the style of an old-fashioned tradesman, in black
+knee-breeches and buckles, black worsted stockings, shoes that tied, and a
+broad-brimmed hat.</p>
+
+<p>But for a memorable description of Blake in his habit as he lived, you
+must read this letter that was written to Gilchrist by Samuel Palmer, who
+knew him intimately in his latter years:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Blake, once known, could never be forgotten....<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> In him you saw at once
+the maker, the inventor; one of the few in any age; a fitting companion
+for Dante. He was a man ‘without a mask’; his aim single, his path
+straightforwards, and his wants few; so he was free, noble, and happy. His
+voice and manner were quiet, yet all awake with intellect. Above the
+tricks of littleness, or the least taint of affectation, with a natural
+dignity which few would have dared to affront, he was gentle and
+affectionate, loving to be with little children and talk about them. ‘That
+is heaven,’ he said to a friend, leading him to a window and pointing to a
+group of them at play.</p>
+
+<p>“Declining, like Socrates, whom in many respects he resembled, the common
+objects of ambition, and pitying the scuffle to obtain them, he thought no
+one could be truly great who had not humbled himself ‘even as a little
+child.’ This was a subject he loved to dwell upon and to illustrate. His
+eye was the finest I ever saw; brilliant, but not roving, clear and
+intent, yet susceptible; it flashed with genius, or melted in tenderness.
+It could also be terrible.... Nor was the mouth less expressive, the lips
+flexible and quivering with feeling. I can yet recall it when, on one
+occasion, dwelling upon the exquisite beauty of the parable of the
+Prodigal, he began to repeat a part of it; but at the words, ‘When he was
+yet a great way off his father saw him,’ he could go no further; his voice
+faltered, and he was in tears.</p>
+
+<p>“He was one of the few to be met with in our passage through life who are
+not in some way or other double-minded and inconsistent with themselves;
+one of the very few who cannot be depressed by neglect, and to whose name
+rank and station could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> add no lustre. Moving apart, in a sphere above the
+attraction of worldly honours, he did not accept greatness, but conferred
+it. He ennobled poverty, and, by his conversation and the influence of his
+genius, made two small rooms in Fountain Court more attractive than the
+threshold of princes.�</p>
+
+<p>One of Blake’s warmest friends for many years was the great sculptor, John
+Flaxman. With none of Blake’s lawless, glowing imagination, Flaxman’s
+drawings in his illustrations to Homer, and his designs on some of the
+Wedgwood pottery, have a classical correctness&mdash;a cold, exquisite beauty
+of outline&mdash;that are more suggestive of the chisel than of the pencil or
+the brush; and it is in the splendid sculptures with which he has
+beautified Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s, and many other of our cathedrals
+and churches that his genius found its highest expression. In his work as
+an artist Blake was largely influenced by Flaxman. They and Stothard used
+to meet at Mrs. Mathew’s; but there came a day when the friendship between
+these three was broken. Blake thought Flaxman had appropriated one of his
+designs, and there seems no doubt that Stothard did so, on the prompting
+of an unscrupulous picture-dealer; and you have Blake lampooning them
+both, as well as Hayley, with whom he had also fallen out, in epigrams
+that were not always just, and probably represented nothing worse than a
+passing mood, as thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“My title as a genius thus is proved:<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Not praised by Hayley, nor by Flaxman loved.�</span><br />
+<br />
+“I found them blind, I taught them how to see,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And now they know neither themselves nor me.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 6em;"><i>To Flaxman.</i></span><br />
+“You call me mad; ’tis folly to do so,&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To seek to turn a madman to a foe.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If you think as you speak, you are an ass;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">If you do not, you are but what you was.�</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><i>To the same.</i></span><br />
+“I mock thee not, though I by thee am mocked;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thou call’st me madman, but I call thee blockhead.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Flaxman was not, like Blake, a born Londoner, but his family came from
+York, and settled down in London when he was six months old. His father
+had a shop in New Street, Covent Garden, where he made and sold plaster
+casts. Flaxman emerged from a sickly childhood, and developed into a
+sufficiently wiry and energetic man, though he remained feeble in
+appearance, so high-shouldered as to seem almost deformed, with a head too
+large for his body, and a queer sidelong gait in walking. He married in
+1782, and, after living for five years in a very small house at 27 Wardour
+Street, Soho&mdash;where he was elected collector of the watch-rate for the
+parish&mdash;he and his wife went to Italy, and spent seven years in Rome.
+Whilst he was there he fulfilled a commission for Romney, and collected
+and sent over to England a selection of casts from the antique, that
+Romney required for the use of students in his Hampstead painting-room.</p>
+
+<p>Returning from Italy in 1794, Flaxman took up residence at 17 Buckingham
+Street, Euston Road, and lived here through all his most famous years,
+till he died in 1826. Blake visited him here, and Haydon, and other of his
+artistic circle; for though he went little into society, he was
+unpretentiously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> hospitable, fond of entertaining his chosen friends,
+greatly esteemed and beloved by his pupils, models, and servants, and the
+poor of the neighbourhood, especially the children. He went about among
+the latter habitually, filling his sketch-book with drawings of them, and
+invariably carrying a pocketful of coppers to drop into the small grubby
+hands that were ready to receive them.</p>
+
+<p>The district hereabouts has degenerated since Flaxman’s day. His house was
+dull, insignificant, rather mean-looking, and now it looks more so than
+ever, amid its grimy surroundings&mdash;a pinched, old, dreary little house,
+that is yet transfigured when you remember the glorious visitors who have
+crossed its threshold, and that it was at this same dead door the postman
+knocked one day near the end of September 1800 and delivered this letter
+from Blake, who was then newly gone out of London and had not had time to
+begin to grow tired of his cottage at Felpham:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Sculptor of Eternity</span>,&mdash;We are safe arrived at our cottage, which
+is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient.... Mr.
+Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have begun to
+work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual
+than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her
+windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants
+are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen; and
+my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are
+both well, courting Neptune for an embrace....</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img39.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">FLAXMAN’S HOUSE. BUCKINGHAM STREET. EUSTON ROAD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“And now begins a new life, because another <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>covering of earth is
+shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well
+conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and
+pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before
+my mortal life; and these works are the delight and study of
+archangels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches and fame of
+mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to
+His divine will, for our good.</p>
+
+<p>“You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel&mdash;my friend and companion
+from eternity. In the divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back
+into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days, before
+this earth appeared in its vegetable mortality to my mortal vegetated
+eyes. I see our houses of eternity, which can never be separated,
+though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of
+heaven from each other.</p>
+
+<p>“Farewell, my best friend. Remember me and my wife in love and
+friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to
+entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold.�</p></div>
+
+<p>Later, when they quarrelled, Flaxman was not an archangel, but a blockhead
+and an ass; but that quarrel is not to be taken too seriously. Their
+houses of eternity were not separated, though their mortal vehicles were
+estranged; and it was on hearing Flaxman was dead that Blake said finely,
+“I can never think of death but as a going out of one room into another.�</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<p class="title">A HAMPSTEAD GROUP</p>
+
+
+<p>Out at Hampstead you may still visit what was once that studio of Romney’s
+to which Flaxman sent his collection of plaster casts from Italy. It had
+been a favourite idea of Romney’s, his son tells us, “to form a complete
+Gallery of Casts, and to open it to any youths of respectability,� and in
+his closing years, after he had removed to Hampstead, he carried out his
+wish, to some extent, with Flaxman’s aid, and had three pupils working in
+his studio there, copying the casts and studying under him. The house he
+occupied from 1796 to 1799 is now the Holly Bush Inn; he bought a piece of
+land at the back of it, and on this built himself a studio and gallery,
+which now form part of the Hampstead Constitutional Club. “It was to
+Hampstead that Hayley’s friend Romney, the painter, retired in the decline
+of his life,� writes J. T. Smith, in <i>Nollekens and his Times</i>, “when he
+built a dining-room close to his kitchen, with a buttery hatch opening
+into it, so that he and his friends might enjoy beef-steaks, hot and hot,
+upon the same plan as the members of the Beef-steak Club are supplied at
+their room in the Lyceum.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img40.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ROMNEY’S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Though Romney was then in the decline of his life, he was at the height of
+his fame. He had married at the age of nineteen, and six years later set
+out for London, leaving his wife behind at Kendal. He had no intention of
+deserting her, but in London his genius soon won recognition, he began to
+move in good society, and partly because Sir Joshua Reynolds had once said
+that “marriage spoilt an artist,� partly because he became infatuated with
+Nelson’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> enchantress, Lady Hamilton, he neither brought his wife to
+London, nor visited her, nor ever saw her again until he was dying. On
+April 28, 1799, Hayley called on him for the last time at Hampstead, and
+thought that “increasing weakness of body and mind afforded only a gloomy
+prospect for the residue of his life.� Then in July Flaxman saw him, and
+says in one of his letters, “I and my father dined at Mr. Romney’s at
+Hampstead last Sunday, by particular invitation, and were received in the
+most cordial manner; but, alas! I was grieved to see so noble a collection
+in a state so confused, so mangled, and prepared, I fear, for worse, and
+not better.� Very soon after this Romney left London for ever, and
+returned to Kendal and the wife he had neglected since the days of his
+obscure youth, and early in 1801, by his directions, “the collection of
+castes from the antique, a very fine skeleton, and other artistic
+properties of George Romney, at his late residence, Hollybush Hill,
+Hampstead,� were sold by Messrs. Christie.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, his wife had pardoned him and was caring for him. “Old, nearly
+mad, and quite desolate,� writes Fitzgerald, “he went back to her, and she
+received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth
+all Romney’s pictures!&mdash;even as a matter of art, I am sure.� It is this
+beautiful devotion of hers that gave Tennyson a subject for one of his
+later poems, <i>Romney’s Remorse</i>; in which the dying painter, rousing out
+of delirium, says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">“There&mdash;you spill</span><br />
+The drops upon my forehead. Your hand shakes.<br />
+I am ashamed. I am a trouble to you,<br />
+Could kneel for your forgiveness. Are they tears?<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>For me&mdash;they do me too much grace&mdash;for me?...<br />
+My curse upon the Master’s apothegm,<br />
+That wife and children drag an artist down!<br />
+This seemed my lodestar in the Heaven of Art,<br />
+And lured me from the household fire on earth....<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 11em;">This Art, that harlot-like,</span><br />
+Seduced me from you, leaves me harlot-like,<br />
+Who love her still, and whimper, impotent<br />
+To win her back before I die&mdash;and then&mdash;<br />
+Then in the loud world’s bastard judgment day<br />
+One truth will damn me with the mindless mob,<br />
+Who feel no touch of my temptation, more<br />
+Than all the myriad lies that blacken round<br />
+The corpse of every man that gains a name:<br />
+‘This model husband, this fine artist!’ Fool,<br />
+What matters! Six feet deep of burial mould<br />
+Will dull their comments! Ay, but when the shout<br />
+Of His descending peals from Heaven, and throbs<br />
+Thro’ earth and all her graves, if <i>He</i> should ask<br />
+‘Why left you wife and children? for My sake,<br />
+According to My word?’ and I replied,<br />
+‘Nay, Lord, for <i>Art</i>,’ why, that would sound so mean<br />
+That all the dead who wait the doom of Hell<br />
+For bolder sins than mine, adulteries,<br />
+Wife-murders&mdash;nay, the ruthless Mussulman<br />
+Who flings his bowstrung Harem in the sea,<br />
+Would turn and glare at me, and point and jeer<br />
+And gibber at the worm who, living, made<br />
+The wife of wives a widow-bride, and lost<br />
+Salvation for a sketch....<br />
+O let me lean my head upon your breast.<br />
+‘Beat, little heart,’ on this fool brain of mine.<br />
+I once had friends&mdash;and many&mdash;none like you.<br />
+I love you more than when we married. Hope!<br />
+O yes, I hope, or fancy that, perhaps,<br />
+Human forgiveness touches heaven, and thence&mdash;<br />
+For you forgive me, you are sure of that&mdash;<br />
+Reflected, sends a light on the forgiven.�</p></div>
+
+<p>Another famous artist who is closely associated with Hampstead was John
+Constable. In 1820, writing to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> his friend, the Rev. John Fisher
+(afterwards Archdeacon Fisher), he says, “I have settled my wife and
+children comfortably at Hampstead�; and a little later he writes, again to
+Fisher, “My picture is getting on, and the frame will be here in three
+weeks or a fortnight.... I now fear (for my family’s sake) I shall never
+make a popular artist, <i>a gentleman and ladies painter</i>. But I am spared
+making a fool of myself, and your hand stretched forth teaches me to value
+what I possess (if I may say so), and this is of more consequence than
+gentlemen and ladies can well imagine.� He was then living at No. 2 Lower
+Terrace, a small house of two storeys, and writes from that address, again
+to Fisher, on the 4th August 1821, “I am as much here as possible with my
+family. My placid and contented companion and her three infants are well.
+I have got a room at a glazier’s where is my large picture, and at this
+little place I have many small works going on, for which purpose I have
+cleared a shed in the garden, which held sand, coals, mops and brooms, and
+have made it a workshop. I have done a good deal here.� Lower Terrace is
+within a few minutes’ walk of the Heath, the scenery of which appears in
+so many of Constable’s paintings. He removed presently to Charlotte
+Street, Fitzroy Square; one of his pictures exhibited in the Louvre made
+him famous in France, and his fame was spreading in England when he went
+back to Hampstead in 1826, and after staying for a while at 25 Downshire
+Hill (which has since been rebuilt) was “at length fixed,� as he wrote to
+Fisher, “in a comfortable little house at Well Walk, Hampstead.... So
+hateful is moving about to me that I could gladly exclaim, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>‘Here let me
+take my everlasting rest.’ This house is to my wife’s heart’s content; it
+is situated on an eminence at the back of the spot in which you saw us,
+and our little drawing-room commands a view unsurpassed in Europe from
+Westminster Abbey to Gravesend. The dome of St. Paul’s in the air seems to
+realise Michael Angelo’s words on seeing the Pantheon&mdash;‘I will build such
+a thing in the sky.’� In Constable’s time the house was not numbered, but
+it has been identified as the present No. 40, and after his wife’s death
+he kept it as an occasional residence until he died in 1837. He is buried
+not far from it, in the Hampstead Churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img41.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JOHN KEATS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img42.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CONSTABLE. CHARLOTTE STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In the same churchyard is buried Joanna Baillie, who spent the last
+forty-five years of her life at Bolton House, Windmill Hill, opposite the
+Hollybush Inn, and here Wordsworth, Rogers, and Scott were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> among her
+visitors. Other famous Hampstead residents buried in this churchyard are
+Mrs. Barbauld, who lived in Church Row, then near the foot of Rosslyn
+Hill, and died in John Street; Sir Walter Besant, who died at Frognal End,
+near the top of Frognal Gardens; and George du Maurier, who lived for
+twenty-five years in Church Row and at New Grove House, by Whitestone
+Pond, and dying in 1896, a year after he left Hampstead, was brought back
+here to be buried.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img43.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">JOANNA BAILLIE. WINDMILL HILL. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>In the house at the corner of Prince Arthur Road and the High Street, that
+is now occupied by the Hampstead Subscription Library, Clarkson Stanfield
+made his home for many years. He did notable work as a landscape and sea
+painter and became a Royal Academician, but was best known and most
+successful as a scenic artist for the theatre, and brought the art of
+scene-painting to a higher level than it had ever reached before. His more
+ambitious pictures are in private collections, however, his stage scenery
+has had its day, and I suppose most of us remember him better as one of
+Dickens’s most familiar friends. He painted the scenery for Wilkie
+Collins’s play, <i>The Lighthouse</i>, when Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mark
+Lemon, and others of their circle produced it at Tavistock House, and for
+other of the plays that Dickens staged there in his “smallest theatre in
+the world�; and Dickens’s letters are sown with references to him. Writing
+to an American friend describing the Christmas sports he had been holding
+at his house, Dickens says he has purchased the entire stock-in-trade of a
+conjuror, and that “in those tricks which require a confederate I am
+assisted (by reason of his imperturbable <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>good humour) by Stanfield, who
+always does his part exactly the wrong way, to the unspeakable delight of
+all beholders. We come out on a small scale to-night� (31st December 1842)
+“at Forster’s, where we see the old year out and the new one in.� On the
+16th January 1844 (putting <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> aside) he is writing to
+Forster, “I had written you a line pleading Jonas and Mrs. Gamp, but this
+frosty day tempts me sorely. I am distractingly late; but I look at the
+sky, think of Hampstead, and feel hideously tempted. Don’t come with Mac
+and fetch me. I couldn’t resist if you did�; and a month later, on the
+18th February, “Stanfield and Mac have come in, and we are going to
+Hampstead to dinner. I leave Betsy Prig as you know, so don’t you make a
+scruple about leaving Mrs. Harris. We shall stroll leisurely up to give
+you time to join us, and dinner will be on the table at Jack Straw’s at
+four�; and in less than a month, on the 5th March, “Sir, I
+will&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;he&mdash;I will <span class="smcaplc">NOT</span> eat with you, either at your own
+house or the club. But the morning looks bright, and a walk to Hampstead
+would suit me marvellously. If you should present yourself at my gate
+(bringing the R.A.’s along with you) I shall not be sapparised. So no more
+at this writing from poor <span class="smcap">Mr. Dickens</span>.� In June of the same year he sent
+Forster the proof of a preface he had written to a book by a poor
+carpenter named Overs, saying, “I wish you would read this, and give it me
+again when we meet at Stanfield’s to-day�; and, still in the same year,
+“Stanny� is one of the friends he wishes Forster to invite to his chambers
+in Lincoln’s Inn Fields<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> to hear a reading of <i>The Chimes</i> before it is
+published.</p>
+
+<p>No part of London is richer in literary and artistic associations than
+Hampstead. At the “Upper Flask� tavern, now known as the “Upper Heath,�
+Pope, Addison, Steele, Congreve, Hogarth and the other members of the
+Kit-Kat club used to meet in the eighteenth century, and Hogarth and
+Addison and his friends frequently resorted to the “Bull and Bush� at
+North End. Akenside lived for a while in Hampstead, and after he had left
+it went to stay occasionally with his friend Mr. Dyson at Golder’s Hill,
+and was staying there in 1758 when he wrote his <i>Ode on recovering from a
+fit of sickness in the Country</i>, beginning:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Thy verdant scenes, O Goulder’s Hill,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Once more I seek, a languid guest.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Gay often went to Hampstead to drink the waters, at the Pump Room, in Well
+Walk; Dr. Arbuthnot lived in Hampstead, where Swift and Pope were among
+his visitors; Fuseli lodged in Church Row; Dr. Johnson’s wife spent some
+of her summer holidays at a cottage near the entrance to the Priory, and
+the Doctor would tear himself away from his loved Fleet Street to pass an
+occasional day or two there with her; and of recent years Robert Louis
+Stevenson stayed with Sidney Colvin at Abernethy House, Mount Vernon, and
+at that time Stevenson, who was then twenty-four, so far conformed to the
+proprieties as to go about in “a frock coat and tall hat, which he had
+once worn at a wedding.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img44.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">STANFIELD’S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Tennyson’s mother had a house in Flask Walk; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>when Edward Fitzgerald was
+in London, Tennyson introduced him to Dickens, and these three, taking
+Thackeray with them, drove out together to Hampstead Heath. Relics of Dick
+Turpin are preserved at the Spaniards Inn, a quaint, old-world hostelry
+that has in different generations entertained Goldsmith, Gainsborough, Sir
+Joshua Reynolds, Garrick and Constable, as well as Dickens and many of his
+familiars.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img45.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE UPPER FLASK. FROM THE BOWLING GREEN.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>But more intimately than with any other of the immortals Hampstead has
+come to be associated with Keats and Leigh Hunt&mdash;with Keats in particular.
+He was born, a good Cockney, in Moorfields, over his father’s livery
+stables, and in 1816 went to live with his brother Tom at No. 1 Well Walk,
+next door to the “Green Man,� which has been succeeded by the Wells
+Tavern, and in his room here, on the 18th<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> November 1816, when he was
+one-and-twenty, wrote a sonnet <i>To My Brothers</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And their faint cracklings o’er our silence creep</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Like whispers of the household gods that keep</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A gentle empire o’er fraternal souls.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And while for rhymes I search around the poles,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Upon the lore so voluble and deep</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That aye at fall of night our care condoles.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">This is your birthday, Tom, and I rejoice</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">That thus it passes smoothly, quietly:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Many such eves of gently whispering noise</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">May we together pass, and calmly try</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What are this world’s true joys&mdash;ere the great Voice</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">From its fair face shall bid our spirits fly.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>In 1818 Keats moved to another part of Hampstead, and lodged with his
+friend, Charles Armitage Brown, a retired merchant, at Wentworth Place,
+now known as Lawn Bank, in John Street, which was the other day, for no
+sufficient reason, renamed Keats Grove. At that date Wentworth Place was
+divided into two houses, Brown renting one, and Wentworth Dilke occupying
+the other; and when the Dilkes were away from home they left their house
+in the possession of Mrs. Brawne, her son, and two daughters, the elder of
+these daughters being the Fanny Brawne of Keats’s piteous love romance.
+Though he finished the writing of it, and wrote the preface to it, on a
+holiday at Teignmouth, <i>Endymion</i> was published, and most of it had been
+written, whilst he was at Wentworth Place, and under this roof also he
+wrote his <i>Eve of St. Agnes</i>, <i>Isabella</i>, <i>Hyperion</i>, and the <i>Ode to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+Nightingale</i>. As every one knows, the publication of <i>Endymion</i> brought
+him little but ridicule and abuse from the reviewers; but, much as this
+must have wounded and mortified his sensitive nature, it was so far from
+being the cause of his death, as some sentimentalists said it was, that,
+as you may gather from his correspondence, it did not even discourage him.
+The <i>Quarterly</i> snubbed him as a copyist of Leigh Hunt, professed to find
+<i>Endymion</i> so tedious as to be almost unreadable, and saw nothing in it
+but “calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy�; <i>Blackwood’s
+Magazine</i>, referring to his having qualified as a surgeon, sneered “Back
+to the shop, Mr. John, stick to plasters, pills, ointment-boxes;� and the
+majority of critics were equally unappreciative. Byron dubbed him “a
+tadpole of the Lakes,� and in divers letters to John Murray says, “There
+is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to
+look at them. No more Keats, I entreat.... Of the praises of the little
+dirty blackguard Keats in the <i>Edinburgh</i> I shall observe, as Johnson did
+when Sheridan the actor got a pension, ‘What, has <i>he</i> got a pension? Then
+it is time that I should give up <i>mine</i>.’ At present, all the men they
+have ever praised are degraded by that insane article. Why don’t they
+review and praise <i>Solomon’s Guide to Health</i>? It is better sense and as
+much poetry as Johnny Keats.� After Keats was dead, Byron changed his
+opinions somewhat, and was anxious that his disparagements of him should
+be suppressed. “You know very well,� he writes to Murray, “that I did not
+approve of Keats’s poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of
+Pope; but as he is dead,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> omit all that it said about him in any MSS. of
+mine, or publication. His <i>Hyperion</i> is a fine monument, and will keep his
+name�; and he added later, “His fragment of <i>Hyperion</i> seems actually
+inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Æschylus. He is a loss to our
+literature.�</p>
+
+<p>Keats was too fully occupied with the writing of other poems, with the
+glowing raptures and black despairs of his passion for Fanny Brawne, and
+the anxieties attendant upon the illness that was already wearing him
+down, to give overmuch of his thoughts to the attacks of his critics;
+moreover, he found consolation in the society and friendship of such men
+as Cowden Clarke, Wentworth Dilke (who founded the <i>Athenæum</i>), John
+Hamilton Reynolds, Haydon the painter, and Leigh Hunt, whom he frequently
+visited at that cottage of his in the Vale of Health, which ought never to
+have been demolished. For it was the meeting-place, too, of Keats and
+Shelley, and within it on one occasion, according to Cowden Clarke, Leigh
+Hunt challenged Keats, “then, and there, and to time,� to write in
+competition with him a sonnet on <i>The Grasshopper and the Cricket</i>, and
+Keats finished his first. Passing a night there when he could not sleep,
+Keats wrote his <i>Sleep and Poetry</i>; and the cottage was rich, too, in
+rumours of such guests as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Coleridge.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img46.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">KEATS’ HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Keats was introduced to Coleridge by Leigh Hunt. In 1816, when he was
+trying to cure himself of the opium habit, Coleridge went to live with Mr.
+Gilman, a surgeon, in a house that still stands in The Grove, Highgate,
+and walking with Hunt one day in Millfield Lane, which runs on the
+Highgate side of the Heath, he chanced to meet Keats, and this is his own
+account of the meeting: “A loose, slack, and not well-dressed youth met me
+in a lane near Highgate. It was Keats. He was introduced to me, and stayed
+a minute or so. After he had left us a little way, he ran back and said,
+‘Let me carry away the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your hand.’
+‘There is death in that hand,’ I said when Keats was gone; yet this was, I
+believe, before the consumption showed itself distinctly.� But another
+four years were not past when Hone, the author of <i>The Table Book</i>, saw
+“poor Keats, the poet of <i>The Pot of Basil</i>, sitting and sobbing his dying
+breath into a handkerchief,� on a bench at the end of Well Walk,
+overlooking the Heath, “glancing parting looks towards the quiet landscape
+he had delighted in so much.�</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the best descriptions of Keats in the last four years of his life
+are those given by Haydon, the painter, in his <i>Memoirs</i>, and by Leigh
+Hunt in his <i>Autobiography</i>. “He was below the middle size,� according to
+Haydon, “with a low forehead and an eye that had an inward look perfectly
+divine, like a Delphian priestess who saw visions.... Unable to bear the
+sneers of ignorance or the attacks of envy, not having strength of mind
+enough to buckle himself together like a porcupine, and present nothing
+but his prickles to his enemies, he began to despond, flew to dissipation
+as a relief which, after a temporary elevation of spirits, plunged him
+into deeper despondency than ever. For six weeks he was scarcely sober,
+and to show what a man does to gratify his habits, when once they get the
+better of him, he once covered his tongue and throat as far as he could
+reach with cayenne pepper, in order to appreciate the ‘delicious coldness
+of claret in all its glory’&mdash;his own expression.� Leigh Hunt writes, “He
+was under the middle height; and his lower limbs were small in comparison
+with the upper, but neat and well turned. His shoulders were very broad
+for his size: he had a face<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> in which energy and sensibility were
+remarkably mixed up; an eager power, checked and made patient by ill
+health. Every feature was at once strongly cut and delicately alive. If
+there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, which was not
+without something of a character of pugnacity. His face was rather long
+than otherwise; the upper lip projected a little over the under; the chin
+was bold, the cheeks sunken; the eyes mellow and glowing, large, dark, and
+sensitive. At the recital of a noble action, or a beautiful thought, they
+would suffuse with tears and his mouth trembled. In this there was ill
+health as well as imagination, for he did not like these betrayals of
+emotion; and he had great personal as well as moral courage. He once
+chastised a butcher, who had been insolent, by a regular stand-up fight.�
+(Tradition says this fight took place in one of the narrow courts out of
+the High Street, Hampstead.) “His hair, of a brown colour, was fine, and
+hung in natural ringlets. The head was a puzzle for the phrenologists,
+being remarkably small in the skull; a singularity he had in common with
+Byron and Shelley, whose hats I could not get on.� Add to these a
+description given by one who knew him to Lord Houghton: “His eyes were
+large and blue, his hair auburn; he wore it divided down the centre, and
+it fell in rich masses each side of his face; his mouth was full, and less
+intellectual than his other features. His countenance lives in my mind as
+one of singular beauty and brightness; it had the expression as if it had
+been looking on some glorious sight.�</p>
+
+<p>The last two years of his life at Hampstead, with their quiet happiness,
+fierce unrests, passionate hopes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> and despairs, are all wonderfully
+reflected in his letters of this period. He writes from Wentworth Place to
+John Taylor, the publisher, in 1818, setting forth his poetical creed and
+saying, with a clear perception of its defects, “If <i>Endymion</i> serves me
+as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content.... I have, I am sure, many
+friends who, if I fail, will attribute any change in my life and temper to
+humbleness rather than pride&mdash;to a cowering under the wings of great
+poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious
+to get <i>Endymion</i> printed that I may forget it and proceed.� There is a
+long letter to his sister in 1819, telling her of the books he has been
+reading, and describing his every-day life, beginning, “The candles are
+burnt down and I am using the wax taper, which has a long snuff on it&mdash;the
+fire is at its last click&mdash;I am sitting with my back to it, with one foot
+rather askew upon the rug and the other with the heel a little elevated
+from the carpet. I am writing this on <i>The Maid’s Tragedy</i>, which I have
+read since tea with great pleasure. Besides this volume of Beaumont and
+Fletcher, there are on the table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of
+Tom Moore’s called <i>Tom Cribb’s Memorial to Congress</i>&mdash;nothing in it.�
+Reading this minute little sketch of himself, it is easy to picture him
+sitting late that night in his quiet room in Keats Grove; but it is the
+letters to Fanny Brawne that give this house, which was then two houses,
+its deepest and most living interest.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img47.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CONSTABLE’S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In 1819 he writes to her, whilst he is away holidaying in the Isle of
+Wight and she at Wentworth Place, “I have never known any unalloyed
+happiness for many days together; the death or sickness of some <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>one has
+always spoilt my hours&mdash;and now, when none such troubles oppress me, it
+is, you must confess, very hard that another sort of pain should haunt me.
+Ask yourself, my love, whether you are not very cruel to have so
+entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom.� And again, “Your letter gave me
+more delight than anything in the world but yourself could do.... I never
+knew before what such love as you have made me feel was; I did not believe
+in it; my fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up.� And again,
+“I have been in so irritable a state of health these two or three last
+days, that I did not think I should be able to write this week.... I have
+been, I cannot tell why, in capital spirits this last hour. What reason?
+When I have to take my candle and retire to a lonely room, without the
+thought, as I fall asleep, of seeing you to-morrow morning? or the next
+day, or the next&mdash;it takes on the appearance of impossibility and
+eternity. I will say a month&mdash;I will say I will see you in a month at
+most, though no one but yourself should see me; if it be but for an hour.
+I should not like to be so near you as London without being continually
+with you; after having once more kissed you, Sweet, I would rather be here
+alone at my task than in the bustle and hateful literary chitchat.
+Meantime you must write to me&mdash;as I will every week&mdash;for your letters keep
+me alive.�</p>
+
+<p>Back in London, making a short stay with Leigh Hunt, then living at
+College Street, Kentish Town, Keats sends to Wentworth Place a letter to
+Fanny Brawne, in the course of which he tells her, “My love has made me
+selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but
+seeing you again&mdash;my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> Life seems to stop there&mdash;I see no further. You have
+absorbed me.... My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.� Even
+when he is home again, in his own part of the Wentworth Place house, he is
+writing in February 1820, “They say I must remain confined to this room
+for some time. The consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant
+prison of the house next to yours. You must come and see me frequently:
+this evening without fail�; and again, in the same month, “You will have a
+pleasant walk to-day. I shall see you pass. I shall follow you with my
+eyes over the Heath. Will you come towards evening instead of before
+dinner? When you are gone, ’tis past&mdash;if you do not come till the evening
+I have something to look forward to all day. Come round to my window for a
+moment when you have read this.�</p>
+
+<p>In September of that year he set out on that voyage to Italy from which he
+was never to return, and whilst the ship was delayed off the Isle of
+Wight, he wrote to his friend, Charles Armitage Brown, at the old
+Hampstead address, “The very thing which I want to live most for will be a
+great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can help it?... I
+daresay you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping&mdash;you know
+what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at your
+house. I wish for death every day and night to deliver me from these
+pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy even those
+pains which are better than nothing.... I think, without my mentioning it,
+for my sake, you would be a friend to Miss Brawne when I am dead. You
+think she has many faults&mdash;but, for my sake,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> think she has not one. If
+there is anything you can do for her by word or deed I know you will do
+it.... The thought of leaving Miss Brawne is beyond everything
+horrible&mdash;the sense of darkness coming over me&mdash;I eternally see her figure
+eternally vanishing. Some of the phrases she was in the habit of using
+during my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring in my ears. Is there
+another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be; we
+cannot be created for this sort of suffering.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img48.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GEORGE DUMAURIER’S GRAVE. HAMPSTEAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>Because of all this, and of the reiterated longings and the heartaches
+that Keats poured out in other letters that he wrote from Italy, and that
+were delivered here to Armitage Brown, I always feel that Wentworth Place
+is the saddest and most sacred of London’s literary shrines.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<p class="title">ROUND ABOUT SOHO AGAIN</p>
+
+
+<p>As a general thing the literary man is not to be found living in the
+aristocratic quarters of the town until after he has done his best work
+and has begun to make money out of his inferior books. I don’t think any
+man of letters has ever rented a house in Park Lane, except Disraeli, and
+he went there as a successful politician; such glorious thoroughfares are
+reserved to more respectable stock-brokers and company-promoters, whilst
+those whom the gods love are driven to seek refuge in the cheap and shabby
+houses of meaner streets. Half the squalid squares and byways of Soho are
+in reality vestibules and aisles of the Temple of Fame. Blake, as we have
+seen in a former chapter, lived in Poland Street; and in the same street
+lived Flaxman, and, later, Shelley. Dryden lived in Gerrard Street, a
+century before Burke made his home there; Hazlitt died in Frith Street;
+Mulready the painter had his studio in Broad Street; and the sculptor,
+James Northcote, resided for over thirty years in Argyll Place. When
+Madame de Stael was in England she stayed at 30 (now 29) Argyll Street,
+and Byron speaks of visiting her there. I have already referred to Sir
+James Thornhill’s house in Dean Street; near by, in Soho Square, lived the
+actor, Kemble; and this square has pathetic memories<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> of De Quincey, who
+lodged for a time, under strange circumstances, at the Greek Street corner
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>Left an orphan to the care of guardians who seem to have treated him with
+some harshness, De Quincey ran away from the Manchester Grammar School in
+1802, when he was only seventeen, and after wandering through Wales made
+his way to London. Here for two months he was houseless, and seldom slept
+under a roof, and for upwards of sixteen weeks suffered “the physical
+anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity.� He tells you in his
+<i>Confessions</i> how he used to pace “the never-ending terraces� of Oxford
+Street, and at night sleep on some doorstep, and dream, “and wake to the
+captivity of hunger.� In Oxford Street he fell in with that most innocent
+and tender-hearted of street-walkers, Ann, whose surname he never knew,
+and to whose compassion and charity he always felt that he owed his life:
+“For many weeks I had walked at nights with this poor friendless girl up
+and down Oxford Street, or had rested with her on steps and under the
+shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old as myself; she told me,
+indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year.... One night when
+we were pacing slowly along Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt
+more than usually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into
+Soho Square. Thither we went, and we sat down on the steps of a house
+which to this hour I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner act
+of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble
+action which she there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse.
+I had been leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I sank from
+her arms and fell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> backwards on the steps.� He was so utterly exhausted
+that he felt he must have died, but with a cry of terror she ran off into
+Oxford Street and returned with port wine and spices which she had paid
+for out of her own pocket, at a time when “she had scarcely the
+wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life;� and this timely
+stimulant served to restore him.</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by, meeting a friend who lent him ten pounds, he travelled down to
+Windsor to see if he could get a certain friend of his family there to
+assist him; but before going he paid Ann something of his debt to her, and
+arranged that three nights from then, and every night after until they
+should meet, she would be at the corner of Titchfield Street, Soho. On his
+return to London he was at the appointed place night after night, but Ann
+never appeared, and though he inquired everywhere and searched the
+neighbourhood for her he was never able to see or hear of her again.</p>
+
+<p>Earlier than this, however, and before he had succeeded in borrowing that
+ten pounds, the coming on of a bitterly inclement winter drove him to seek
+a wretched lodging at 61 (then 38) Greek Street, Soho Square. The house
+was a dirty, neglected, cheerless place, tenanted by a disreputable
+attorney named Brunell-Brown, who had a curious clerk named Pyment, and
+only came and went to and from his office by stealth because he was deep
+in debts and continually dodging the bailiffs. A few weeks of lodging
+miserably here nearly exhausted the little cash De Quincey had brought to
+London with him, and he had to give up his room. But he explained his
+position frankly to Brunell-Brown, and this kindly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> reckless rascal, who
+had a genuine knowledge and love of literature, and was interested in the
+young lodger who could talk to him intelligently on such matters, readily
+gave him permission to come to the house nightly and sleep gratis in one
+of its empty rooms, and allowed him, moreover, to eat the scraps from his
+breakfast-table.</p>
+
+<p>The house had an unoccupied look, especially of nights, when the lawyer
+himself was usually absent. “There was no household or establishment in
+it; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I
+found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that the house already
+contained one single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years
+old; but she seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make
+children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that
+she had lived and slept there for some time before I came; and great joy
+the poor creature expressed when she found that I was in future to be her
+companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large, and from the
+want of furniture the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the
+spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and,
+I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more
+(it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her
+protection against all ghosts whatsoever, but, alas! I could offer her no
+other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law
+papers for a pillow, but no other covering than a sort of large horseman’s
+cloak; afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old sofa-cover, a
+small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which added a
+little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for warmth and for
+security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than usually ill
+I took her into my arms, so that in general she was tolerably warm, and
+often slept when I could not....</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img49.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">DE QUINCEY’S HOUSE. SOHO.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>“Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and
+very early; sometimes not till ten o’clock; sometimes not at all. He was
+in constant fear of bailiffs. Improving on the plan of Cromwell, every
+night he slept in a different quarter of London; and I observed that he
+never failed to examine through a private window the appearance of those
+who knocked at the door before he would allow it to be opened. He
+breakfasted alone; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of
+his hazarding an invitation to a second person, any more than the quantity
+of esculent <i>matériel</i>, which for the most part was little more than a
+roll or a few biscuits which he had bought on his road from the place
+where he had slept. During his breakfast I generally contrived a reason
+for lounging in, and with an air of as much indifference as I could
+assume, took up such fragments as he had left; sometimes, indeed, there
+were none at all.... As to the poor child, she was never admitted into his
+study (if I may give that name to his chief depository of parchments, law
+writings, &amp;c.); that room was to her the Bluebeard room of the house,
+being regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about six o’clock,
+which usually was his final departure for the night. Whether the child
+were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. Brunell-Brown, or only a servant, I
+could not ascertain; she did not herself know; but certainly she was
+treated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did Mr. Brunell-Brown
+make his appearance than she went below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat,
+&amp;c.; and, except when she was summoned to run an errand, she never emerged
+from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchen, &amp;c. to the upper air until my
+welcome knock at night called up her little trembling footsteps to the
+front door. Of her life during the daytime, however, I knew little but
+what I gathered from her own account at night, for as soon as the hours of
+business commenced I saw that my absence would be acceptable, and in
+general, therefore, I went off and sate in the parks or elsewhere until
+nightfall.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img50.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SHELLEY’S HOUSE. POLAND STREET W.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>I have always thought that in all this there is something oddly
+reminiscent of Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness; the poor, half-starved
+little household drudge fits her part almost exactly, but De Quincey makes
+but a depressed and dismal Dick Swiveller; and Mr. Brunell-Brown seems to
+have been a lower type of the rascally lawyer than Sampson Brass was; but
+rascal as he was, one warms to him because of his kindness to his forlorn
+guest. “I must forget everything but that towards me,� says De Quincey,
+“he was obliging and, to the extent of his power, generous.� He goes on to
+say that in after years, whenever he was in London, he never failed to
+visit that house in Greek Street, and “about ten o’clock this very night,
+August 15, 1821&mdash;being my birthday&mdash;I turned aside from my evening walk
+down Oxford Street, purposely to take a glance at it; it is now occupied
+by a respectable family, and by the lights in the front drawing-room I
+observed a domestic party assembled, perhaps at tea, and apparently
+cheerful and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>gay. Marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness,
+cold, silence and desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when
+its nightly occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child.
+Her, by-the-by, in after years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from
+her situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child; she
+was neither pretty nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in
+manners.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img51.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THOMAS DE QUINCEY</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His London privations ended with a reconciliation between himself and his
+guardians, and he was sent to Oxford&mdash;his quarrel with them being that
+they would not allow him to go there.</p>
+
+<p>De Quincey quitted Soho to go to Oxford, and Shelley, when he was expelled
+from Oxford in 1811, came to Soho. He travelled up to London on the coach
+with his friend Hogg. His cousin and sometime schoolfellow, Medwin,
+relates how before dawn on a March morning Shelley and Hogg knocked at his
+door in Garden Court, Temple, and he heard Shelley’s cracked voice cry, in
+his well-known pipe, “Medwin, let me in. I am expelled,� and after a loud
+sort of half-hysterical laugh repeat, “I am expelled,� and add “for
+atheism.� After breakfast they went out to look for lodgings, and, says
+Hogg, “never was a young beauty so capricious, so hard to please� as
+Shelley; but the name of Poland Street attracted him because it suggested
+recollections of Thaddeus of Warsaw and freedom, and he declared “we must
+lodge here, should we sleep on the step of a door.� A bill advertising
+lodgings to let hung in the window of No. 15, so they knocked and entered
+and inspected them&mdash;“a quiet sitting-room, its walls papered with
+trellised vine-leaves and clustering grapes,� with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> similarly decorated
+bedroom opening out of it, and Shelley whispered, “We must stay here for
+ever.�</p>
+
+<p>“For ever� dwindled to something less than a year; but here for that time
+Shelley lived and resumed his interrupted studies, as far as might be, and
+was secretly supported by his sisters, who sent their pocket-money round
+to him by the hand of their schoolfellow, Harriett Westbrook, daughter of
+the retired tavern-keeper, John Westbrook, who was living near Park Lane,
+at 23 Chapel Street (now Aldford Street).</p>
+
+<p>In April 1811 Shelley’s father wrote insisting that he should break off
+all relations with Hogg and place himself under a tutor of his father’s
+selection, and Shelley replied, from his Poland Street lodgings:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Father</span>,&mdash;As you do me the honour of requesting to hear the
+determination of my mind, as the basis of your future actions, I feel
+it my duty, although it gives me pain to wound ‘the sense of duty to
+your own character, to that of your family, and feelings as a
+Christian,’ decidedly to refuse my assent to both the proposals in
+your letter, and to affirm that similar refusals will always be the
+fate of similar requests. With many thanks for your great kindness,&mdash;I
+remain your affectionate, dutiful son,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“<span class="smcap">Percy B. Shelley</span>.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>His father presently relented so far as to make him an allowance of two
+hundred pounds a year. One evening in August, having arranged a hasty
+elopement with Harriett Westbrook, Shelley walked from Poland Street to a
+small coffee-house in Mount Street, and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>as Dr. Dowden sets forth in his
+Life of the poet, dispatched a letter thence to Harriett, her father’s
+house in Aldford Street being close handy, telling her at what hour he
+would have a hackney coach waiting for her at the door of the
+coffee-house. At the appointed time the coach was there in readiness, and
+a little behind time “Harriett was seen tripping round the corner from
+Chapel Street, and the coach wheels rattled towards the City inn from
+which the northern mails departed.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img52.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">SHELLEY. MARCHMONT STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>They travelled post-haste to the North, and were married in Edinburgh; and
+in another three years the deserted Harriett had ended her life in the
+Serpentine, and Shelley had gone off with Mary Godwin. Meanwhile, however,
+returning to London after his marriage to Harriett, Shelley stayed for a
+few days at the house of his father-in-law, and then at Cooke’s Hotel, in
+Albemarle Street. On another occasion he lodged for a short time at a
+house still standing in Marchmont Street (No. 26), a drab and dingy
+thoroughfare in the neighbourhood of Russell Square.</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt was a Soho resident for no longer than about six months. In 1830
+he came from his lodgings in Bouverie Street to occupy rooms at No. 6
+Frith Street. He was then already failing in health, separated from his
+wife, harassed financially through the failure of his publishers,
+altogether broken and dispirited. Much disappointment, the thwarting of
+many of his highest personal ambitions, had soured and embittered him.
+Haydon calls him a “singular mixture of friend and fiend, radical and
+critic, metaphysician, poet and painter, on whose word no one could rely,
+on whose heart no one could calculate.�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> A critic of genius, a brilliant
+essayist; with not so great a heart as Lamb’s but a finer intellect; he
+has never to this day received his full meed of recognition. He moves in
+spirit among the immortals as apart and unsociable as he moved among them
+in the body. “We are told,� wrote P. G. Patmore, “that on the summit of
+one of those columns which form the magnificent ruins of Hadrian’s Temple,
+in the plain of Athens, there used to dwell a hermit who scarcely ever
+descended from this strangely-chosen abode, owing his scanty food and
+support to the mingled admiration and curiosity of the peasants who
+inhabited the plain below. Something like this was the position of William
+Hazlitt. Self-banished from the social world, no less by the violence of
+his own passions than by those petty regards of custom and society which
+could not or would not tolerate the trifling aberrations from external
+form and usage engendered by a mind like his, ... he became, as regarded
+himself, personally heedless of all things but the immediate gratification
+of his momentary wishes, careless of personal character, indifferent to
+literary fame, forgetful of the past, reckless of the future, and yet so
+exquisitely alive to the claims and the virtues of all these that the
+abandonment of his birthright in every one of them opened a separate
+canker in his heart, and made his life a living emblem of the early death
+which it foretokened.�</p>
+
+<p>Patmore, too, has given a good sketch of his personal appearance. “The
+forehead,� he says, “was magnificent; the nose precisely that which
+physiognomists have assigned as evidence of a fine and highly cultivated
+taste; though there was a peculiar <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>character about the nostrils like
+that observable in those of a fiery and unruly horse. His eyes were not
+good. They were never brilliant, and there was a furtive and at times a
+sinister look about them as they glanced suspiciously from under their
+overhanging brows.� Other contemporaries have described him as a grave
+man, diffident, almost awkward in manner, of middle size, and with eager,
+expressive eyes. S. C. Hall considered him mean-looking and
+unprepossessing; but though Talfourd speaks of him as slouching, awkward,
+and neglectful in his dress, he credits him with “a handsome, eager
+countenance, worn by sickness and thought.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img53.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">HAZLITT’S HOUSE. FRITH STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>But he was nearing the end of it all when he came to Frith Street. In
+August he was attacked with a violent sort of cholera, and never rallied
+from it. What was probably his last essay, one on “The Sick Chamber,�
+appeared that same month in the <i>New Monthly</i>, picturing his own invalid
+condition and touching gratefully on the consolation and enjoyment he
+could still derive from books. Nearing the close, he begged that his
+mother might be sent for, but she was an old lady of eighty-four living in
+Devonshire and was unable to go to him. “He died so quietly,� in the words
+of his grandson, “that his son, who was sitting by his bedside, did not
+know that he was gone till the vital breath had been extinct a moment or
+two. His last words were, ‘Well, I’ve had a happy life.’� The same
+authority adds that he found the following memorandum, in the handwriting
+of his grandmother: “Saturday, 18th September 1830, at about half-past
+four in the afternoon, died at his lodgings, No. 6 Frith Street, Soho,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+William Hazlitt, aged fifty-two years five months and eight days. Mr.
+Lamb, Mr. White, Mr. Hersey, and his own son were with him at the time.�</p>
+
+<p>He was buried within a minute’s walk of his house, in the churchyard of
+St. Anne’s, Soho, and his tombstone removed from its first position,
+stands back against the wall of the church: the stone originally bore a
+curious, somewhat militant inscription, but this has recently been
+obliterated, and replaced by one that offers nothing but his name and a
+record of the dates of his birth and death.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<p class="title">A PHILOSOPHER, TWO POETS, AND A NOVELIST</p>
+
+
+<p>Everybody has heard of <i>Sandford and Merton</i>, and hardly anybody nowadays
+has read it. I confess with shame that I am one who has not. But I have
+come across so many parodies of it and so many references to it in various
+books and articles that I am finding it more and more difficult to believe
+that I have not actually read the story itself. Mr. Barlow, the boy’s
+tutor, lives in my mind as a large and solemn bore, but he was a bore of
+real knowledge; he was heavy with learning; and the boys themselves were
+dreadful little prigs, but underneath their priggishness they were manly
+boys, and there was something fine in their ideals of honour. No doubt
+they were largely modelled on their author, Thomas Day, who when he was a
+schoolboy started a fight with another boy on quite justifiable grounds,
+and soon finding that he completely outmatched his opponent, stopped the
+fight, and insisted on shaking hands with the other and making peace.</p>
+
+<p>That incident, and the queer originality of his whole outlook on life, has
+made me more interested in Day himself than in his one famous book, and
+has made me number 36 Wellclose Square, the house<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> where he was born,
+among the London literary shrines that must not be overlooked.</p>
+
+<p>Wellclose Square is in Shadwell, on the skirts of Whitechapel, and is one
+of those melancholy places that have obviously seen better days. Dreary
+and drab and squalid as you see it now, when Day was born there on the
+22nd June 1748 it must have been a fairly select and superior residential
+quarter. Day’s father was a collector of Customs who died a year after his
+son’s birth, leaving him a very comfortable fortune of twelve hundred a
+year. The boy was educated at Charterhouse and at Oxford, and one way and
+another acquired lofty Stoic principles and a somewhat original philosophy
+that he lived up to obstinately all his life through, in spite of many
+rebuffs and a good deal of ridicule. He dressed carelessly, was
+indifferent to appearances, and scorned the “admiration of splendour which
+dazzles and enslaves mankind.� He preferred the society of his inferiors
+because they were more unconventional, less artificial than the ladies and
+gentlemen of his own rank; he was awkward in the company of women, and
+regarded the sex with doubt as well as with diffidence. As you would
+expect of the man who wrote <i>Sandford and Merton</i>, he had no sense of
+humour; and his smallpox-pitted face and unattractive air and manner told
+so much against him that he was rejected emphatically by the first one or
+two women he proposed to. Withal, as was also fitting in the author of
+that fearsomely moral schoolboy-book, he was, in the words of his friend
+Edgeworth, “the most virtuous human being I have ever known.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img54.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THOMAS DAY. 36 WELLCLOSE SQUARE.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>I suppose he was a pioneer of the “simple life� theory; anyhow, he
+persistently advocated simplicity in dress and living, and was determined
+to find a wife who shared these tastes, who should, moreover, be fond of
+literature and moral philosophy, “simple as a mountain girl in her dress,
+diet, and manners, and fearless and intrepid as the Spartan wives and
+Roman heroines.� He was careful to state these requirements to the lady
+before proposing to her, and this seems to have spoilt his chances. The
+difficulty of discovering his ideal wife led to his making an odd
+experiment. He adopted two young girls, one from the Foundling Hospital,
+the other from the Shrewsbury Orphanage, and in deference to the
+proprieties formally bound them apprentice to his friend Edgeworth, and
+gave guarantees to the authorities that within one year he would make a
+decision between the two and pay a premium of a hundred pounds to
+apprentice one to a suitable trade, and send the other to be properly
+educated with the ultimate object of marrying her. The girls were about
+twelve years old. In order that they should not be influenced with wrong
+ideas by the people about them, he took them into France, where, as they
+only understood English, they could talk with nobody but himself; and
+there he proceeded to teach them reading and writing, and by ridicule,
+explanation, and reasoning sought “to imbue them with a deep hatred for
+dress, for luxury, for fine people, for fashion and titles, all of which
+inspired his own mind with such an unconquerable horror.� In a letter
+which he wrote home about them he says, “I am not disappointed in one
+respect. I am more attached to and more convinced of the truth of my
+principles than ever. I have made them, in respect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> of temper, two such
+girls as, I may perhaps say without vanity, you have never seen at the
+same age. They have never given me a moment’s trouble throughout the
+voyage, are always contented, and think nothing so agreeable as waiting
+upon me (no moderate convenience for a lazy man).� Nevertheless, in
+France, the girls proved very quarrelsome; he had to nurse them through a
+severe attack of smallpox, and once when they were out boating they both
+fell into the Rhone, and he risked his life to save them.</p>
+
+<p>Within the year, he brought them back to England and had made his choice.
+He apprenticed one, who was “invincibly stupid,� to a milliner; and the
+other, Sabrina Sidney, he carried with him to a house he had taken near
+Lichfield and there “resumed his preparations for implanting in her young
+mind the characteristic virtues of Arria, Portia and Cornelia.� But she
+disappointed him; he endeavoured in vain to steel her against shrinking
+from pain and the fear of danger. “When he dropped melting sealing-wax on
+her arms she did not endure it heroically; nor when he fired pistols at
+her petticoats which she believed to be charged with balls could she help
+starting aside or suppress her screams.� She was not fond of science, and
+was unable to keep a secret satisfactorily; so after a year’s trial Day
+sent her away to a boarding-school, and proceeded to pay his addresses to
+a young lady living in the neighbourhood, who first put him on a period of
+probation, and then, after he had made himself ridiculous in trying to
+dress and behave as she wished, rejected him.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img55.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LORD BYRON</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Whereupon his thoughts turned again to Sabrina, who had a real affection
+for him; but her failure to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>obey him in certain small details of dress
+again displeased him, and finally deciding against her, he in the long run
+married a Miss Milnes. His one objection to this lady was that she
+possessed a considerable fortune, and would therefore probably refuse to
+live the simple life; but when he had categorically put his requirements
+to her, and she had consented to dispense with all luxuries, to cut
+herself off from social gaieties, and reside in the country with him,
+restricted in every way to the bare necessaries of existence, working and
+spending for the behoof of the poor and needy, he ventured to make her
+Mrs. Day, and never had occasion to regret it. Sabrina eventually married
+a barrister, but refused to do so until she had Day’s consent; and when,
+after writing divers political, economic, and philosophical works that
+nobody hears of now, and <i>Sandford and Merton</i>, which nobody reads any
+longer, Day died of a fall from an unmanageable horse which he insisted
+could be controlled by kindness, his wife was inconsolable, and died soon
+after him of a broken heart.</p>
+
+<p>So he must have been a man worth knowing, and, in spite of his
+peculiarities and his oppressive earnestness, more likeable than most of
+us, when you knew him. Anyhow, he thought for himself, and had opinions of
+his own, and was not afraid to act upon them. And such men are so
+uncommonly rare that I think the County Council should put a tablet on the
+face of his birthplace at once, for the encouragement of all men who are
+something more than cheap copies of their neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>Across the other side of London, at 24 (then 16) Holles Street, Cavendish
+Square, Lord Byron was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> born, on 22nd January 1788&mdash;a very different man,
+but also unconventional, though in more conventional ways. But the house
+here has been considerably altered to suit the requirements of the big
+drapery establishment that at present occupies it, and of Byron’s various
+residences in London I believe the only one that survives in its original
+condition is that at No. 4 Bennet Street, St. James’s. Here he had rooms
+on the first floor in 1813 and the early months of 1814, and it was in
+those rooms that he wrote <i>The Giaour</i>, <i>The Bride of Abydos</i>, and <i>The
+Corsair</i>. Writing to Moore from here on the 28th July 1813, he says, “I am
+training to dine with Sheridan and Rogers this evening�; and in the Diary
+he was keeping at this time he notes, on 16th November 1813, “Read Burns
+to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should have had more
+polish&mdash;less force&mdash;just as much verse but no immortality&mdash;a divorce and
+duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been
+less spirituous, he might have lived as long as Sheridan, and outlived as
+much as poor Brinsley.�</p>
+
+<p>From Bennet Street Byron carried on a correspondence with the lady he was
+destined to marry, Miss Anna Isabella Milbanke. “I look upon myself,� he
+tells her in one of his letters, “as a very facetious personage, and may
+appeal to most of my acquaintance in proof of my assertion. Nobody laughs
+more, and though your friend Joanna Baillie says somewhere that ‘Laughter
+is the child of misery,’ I do not believe her (unless indeed a hysteric),
+though I think it is sometimes the parent.� In another of the same
+September 1813, evidently replying to one of hers, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>he protests: “‘Gay’
+but not ‘content’&mdash;very true.... You have detected a laughter ‘false to
+the heart’&mdash;allowed&mdash;yet I have been tolerably sincere with you, and I
+fear sometimes troublesome.� In November he writes to her, “I perceive by
+part of your last letter that you are still inclined to believe me a
+gloomy personage. Those who pass so much of their time entirely alone
+can’t be always in very high spirits; yet I don’t know&mdash;though I certainly
+do enjoy society to a certain extent, I never passed two hours in mixed
+company without wishing myself out of it again. Still, I look upon myself
+as a facetious companion, well reputed by all the wits at whose jests I
+readily laugh, and whose repartees I take care never to incur by any kind
+of contest&mdash;for which I feel as little qualified as I do for the more
+solid pursuits of demonstration.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img56.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BYRON. 4 BENNET STREET. ST. JAMES’S.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>As for his gloom or gaiety, Sir Walter Scott, who lunched with him and
+Charles Mathews at Long’s Hotel, in Old Bond Street, in 1815, said, “I
+never saw Byron so full of fun, frolic, wit, and whim: he was as playful
+as a kitten.� Again, writing in his Journal, after Byron’s death, Sir
+Walter observes, “What I liked about Byron, besides his boundless genius,
+was his generosity of spirit as well as purse, and his utter contempt of
+all affectations of literature, from the school-magisterial style to the
+lackadaisical�; and he relates an anecdote in illustration of Byron’s
+extreme sensitiveness: “Like Rousseau, he was apt to be very suspicious,
+and a plain, downright steadiness of manner was the true mode to maintain
+his good opinion. Will Rose told me that once, while sitting with Byron,
+he fixed insensibly his eyes on his feet,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> one of which, it must be
+remembered, was deformed. Looking up suddenly, he saw Byron regarding him
+with a look of concentrated and deep displeasure, which wore off when he
+observed no consciousness or embarrassment in the countenance of Rose.
+Murray afterwards explained this by telling Rose that Lord Byron was very
+jealous of having this personal imperfection noticed or attended to.� He
+goes on to say that Byron was a mischief-maker; he would tell one man the
+unpleasant things that had been privately said of him by another; and he
+loved to mystify people, “to be thought awful, mysterious and gloomy, and
+sometimes hinted at strange causes.�</p>
+
+<p>So that if he had no literary affectations he clearly cultivated a pose of
+mysterious misery both in his life and his poetry, and this it was that
+exasperated Carlyle into calling him “the teeth-grinding, glass-eyed, lone
+Caloyer.� And the pose was helped out by his handsome and romantic
+appearance. “Byron’s countenance is a thing to dream of,� Scott told
+Lockhart. “A certain fair lady whose name has been too often mentioned in
+connection with his told a friend of mine that when she first saw Byron it
+was in a crowded room, and she did not know who it was, but her eyes were
+instantly nailed, and she said to herself, ‘That pale face is my fate.’
+And, poor soul, if a god-like face and god-like powers could have made
+excuse for devilry, to be sure she had one.� He said on the same occasion,
+“As for poets, I have seen, I believe, all the best of our own time and
+country&mdash;and, though Burns had the most glorious eyes imaginable, I never
+thought any of them would come up to an artist’s notion of the character
+except Byron.� Mrs. Opie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> said, “His voice was such a voice as the devil
+tempted Eve with�; and Charles Mathews once remarked that “he was the only
+man I ever contemplated to whom I felt disposed to apply the word
+beautiful.�</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, for a while Miss Milbanke was proof against his
+fascinations. In November 1813, about the date of that last letter of his
+to her from which I have quoted, he offered her his hand and was rejected.
+He proposed to another lady in the following September, and was rejected
+again, and almost immediately afterwards he called on Miss Milbanke at her
+father’s house, 29 Portland Place, and in the library there passionately
+renewed his suit, and this time was successful. They were married in
+January 1815, and went to live at 13 Piccadilly, and in January of the
+next year, after twelve months of little happiness and much wretchedness,
+separated for good, a month after the birth of their child.</p>
+
+<p>This Piccadilly house has been pulled down. The Albany to which Byron
+removed in 1814, and which he left on his marriage, still remains; and so,
+too, does No. 8 St. James’s Street, where he lived in 1809, when his
+<i>English Bards and Scotch Reviewers</i> took the town by storm, but it has
+undergone so much alteration that it no longer seems so intimately
+reminiscent of Byron as Bennet Street does.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Byron was residing in St. James’s Street, publishing the <i>English
+Bards</i> and writing the first canto of <i>Childe Harold</i>, Coleridge was
+living in a house at Portland Place, Hammersmith, that is now known as No.
+7 Addison Bridge Place. Somehow, one does not readily connect Coleridge
+with London, even though he had lodged for many years at Highgate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> before
+he died there. But one time and another he spent quite a large part of his
+life in the metropolis. He was at school with Lamb, of course, at Christ’s
+Hospital; and are not Lamb’s letters strewn with yearning remembrances of
+the glorious evenings he and Coleridge and Hazlitt and others passed, in
+later years, in the smoky parlour of “The Salutation and Cat,� in Newgate
+Street? At various dates, he lived at Buckingham Street, and at Norfolk
+Street, Strand, in Pall Mall, and in King Street, Covent Garden, when he
+was working on the staff of the <i>Morning Post</i>; to say nothing of visits
+to London when he put up at one or another of Lamb’s many homes in the
+City; and there is still in one of the courts of Fetter Lane that Newton
+Hall where he delivered a series of lectures in 1818.</p>
+
+<p>By 1810, when he came to London and settled for a period at 7 Addison
+Bridge Place, Coleridge had done all his great work as a poet, and under
+stress of financial difficulties was turning more and more from poetry to
+lecturing and journalism as sources of income. There is a letter of Lamb’s
+to Hazlitt, dated 28th November 1810, when Hazlitt was holidaying and
+working at Winterslow, in which he mentions towards the close&mdash;“Coleridge
+is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing or going to write in
+the <i>Courier</i> against Cobbett and in favour of paper money.� Byron wrote
+to a friend in the succeeding year, “Coleridge is lecturing. ‘Many an old
+fool,’ said Hannibal to some such lecturer, ‘but such as this, never’�;
+and to the same friend two days later, “Coleridge has been lecturing
+against Campbell. Rogers was present, and from him I derive the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>information. We are going to make a party to hear this Manichean of
+poesy�; and on the same day to another friend, “Coleridge has attacked the
+<i>Pleasures of Hope</i>, and all other pleasures whatsoever. Mr. Rogers was
+present, and heard himself indirectly <i>rowed</i> by the lecturer�; and next
+week, “To-morrow I dine with Rogers, and am to hear Coleridge, who is a
+kind of rage at present.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img57.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">COLERIDGE. ADDISON BRIDGE PLACE.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>Coleridge was then only thirty-eight, and had another twenty-four years of
+life before him. He was already, and had for long past, been struggling in
+the toils of the opium habit, and his poetical inspiration was leaving
+him, for though <i>Christabel</i> and <i>Kubla Khan</i> were not published until
+1816 they were written nearly ten years before. There are a number of
+minor poems bearing later dates; several in 1809, many long after that,
+but only one dated 1810, which may be supposed to have been written in
+that Hammersmith house, and this is nothing but a respectable translation
+of a passage in Ottfried’s metrical paraphrase of the Gospels. But his
+lectures were a wonder and a delight, Byron’s disapproval notwithstanding.
+He was always an eloquent preacher, and became a chief among lecturers as
+he did among poets. “Have you ever heard me preach?� he asked Lamb, and
+Lamb replied with his whimsical stammer, “I never heard you do anything
+else!� But you remember that fine essay of Hazlitt’s in which he recounts
+his first acquaintance with Coleridge?&mdash;how he rose before daylight and
+walked ten miles in the mud to hear him preach. “When I got there, the
+organ was playing the hundredth psalm, and when it was done Mr. Coleridge
+rose and gave out his text, ‘And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> he went up into the mountain to pray,
+<span class="smcap">Himself, alone</span>.’ As he gave out his text his voice ‘rose like a steam of
+rich distilled perfumes,’ and when he came to the two last words, which he
+pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young,
+as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if
+that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe.� He
+describes the sermon, and goes on, “I could not have been more delighted
+if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met
+together.... I returned home well satisfied.� Then Coleridge called to see
+his father, a dissenting minister in the neighbourhood, and for two hours
+he talked and Hazlitt listened spellbound, and when he went, Hazlitt
+walked with him six miles on the road. “It was a fine morning,� he says,
+“in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way.� And with what a
+fine generosity he acknowledges what that meeting and this talk of
+Coleridge’s had meant to him. “I was stunned, startled with it as from a
+deep sleep.... I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a
+worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but now, bursting the
+deadly bands that bound them&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">‘With Styx nine times round them,’</p></div>
+
+<p>my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes catch the
+golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its original
+bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart,
+shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found nor will it
+ever find a heart to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> speak to; but that my understanding also did not
+remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself,
+I owe to Coleridge.� That was when Coleridge was twenty-six and Hazlitt
+twenty. These twelve years after that, when Coleridge was lecturing in
+London, his fancy and imagination were as dazzling and as powerful as
+ever, and his voice and language had lost none of their magic. But his
+thoughts were perhaps tending towards that transcendental obscurity that
+reached its worst when he was established in his closing days at Highgate,
+with his little group of worshipping disciples around him, and when
+Carlyle went to hear and to ridicule him. Anyhow, here is an account
+Rogers gives of a visit he paid to him when he had transferred himself
+from Hammersmith to Pall Mall:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Coleridge was a marvellous talker. One morning when Hookham Frere also
+breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three hours without
+intermission, about poetry, and so admirably that I wish every word he
+uttered had been written down. But sometimes his harangues were quite
+unintelligible, not only to myself, but to others. Wordsworth and I called
+upon him one afternoon, when he was in a lodging off Pall Mall. He talked
+uninterruptedly for about two hours, during which Wordsworth listened to
+him with profound attention, every now and then nodding his head, as if in
+assent. On quitting the lodgings I said to Wordsworth, ‘Well, for my part,
+I could not make head or tail of Coleridge’s oration; pray did you
+understand it?’ ‘Not one syllable of it,’ was Wordsworth’s reply.�</p>
+
+<p>He talked like one inspired, but his looks, except<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> whilst he was talking,
+belied him. “My face,� he said justly of himself, “unless when animated by
+immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth and great, indeed almost
+idiotic, good nature. ’Tis a mere carcase of a face, flat, flabby, and
+expressive chiefly of unexpression. Yet I am told that my eye, eyebrows,
+and forehead are physiognomically good.� De Quincey says there was a
+peculiar haze or dimness mixed with the light of his eyes; and when he was
+roused to animation Lamb thought he looked like “an archangel a little
+damaged.� But whether that haze of his eyes got into his talk, whether his
+thoughts were obscurely uttered, or whether it was they were too high and
+great for his auditors to take in so easily as a listener expects to grasp
+what is said to him is, at least, an open question. It may well be that
+Shelley hit the truth in the <i>Letter to Maria Gisborne</i> that he wrote from
+Leghorn, in 1820:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“You will see Coleridge; he who sits obscure<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In the exceeding lustre and the pure</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Intense irradiation of a mind</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Which, with its own internal lightnings blind,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Flags wearily through darkness and despair&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A hooded eagle among blinking owls.�</span></p></div>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<p class="title">CHARLES LAMB</p>
+
+
+<p>At one of those free-and-easy sociable gatherings in Lamb’s rooms, in the
+Temple, which Hazlitt has so happily immortalised, Lamb provoked some
+discussion by asking which of all the English literary men of the past one
+would most wish to have seen and known. Ayrton, who was of the company,
+said he would choose the two greatest names in English literature&mdash;Sir
+Isaac Newton and John Locke. “Every one burst out laughing,� writes
+Hazlitt, “at the expression of Lamb’s face, in which impatience was
+restrained by courtesy. ‘Yes, the greatest names,’ he stammered out
+hastily, ‘but they were not persons&mdash;not persons.... There is nothing
+personally interesting in the men.’� It is Lamb’s glory that he is both a
+great name and a great and interesting personality; and if his question
+were put again to-day in any company of book-lovers I should not be alone
+in saying at once that the writer of the past I would soonest have seen
+and known is Charles Lamb.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult to write of him without letting your enthusiasm run away
+with you. Except for a few reviewers of his own day (and the reviewers of
+one’s own day count for little or nothing the day after), nobody who knew
+Lamb in his life or has come to know him through his books and the books
+that tell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> of him has been able to write of him except with warmest
+admiration and affection. Even so testy and difficult a man as Landor, who
+only saw Lamb once, could not touch on his memory without profound
+emotion, and says in some memorial verses:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Of all that ever wore man’s form, ’tis thee<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I first would spring to at the gates of heaven.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>And you remember Wordsworth’s&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“O, he was good, if e’er a good man lived!�</p></div>
+
+<p>There is, too, that well-known anecdote of how Thackeray lifted a volume
+of <i>Elia</i> and held it against his forehead and murmured “St. Charles!� All
+which, and many other utterances of love and reverence for his personal
+character, particularly Wordsworth’s reference to him as “Lamb, the frolic
+and the gentle,� would have exasperated Lamb himself and moved him to
+angry protest. “I have had the <i>Anthology</i>,� he wrote to Coleridge in
+1800, “and like only one thing in it, ‘Lewti’; but of that the last stanza
+is detestable, the rest most exquisite: the epithet ‘enviable’ would dash
+the finest poem. For God’s sake (I never was more serious) don’t make me
+ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, or do it in
+better verses. It did well enough five years ago when I came to see you,
+and was moral coxcomb enough at the time you wrote the lines to feed upon
+such epithets; but besides that the meaning of ‘gentle’ is equivocal at
+best, and almost always means poor-spirited, the very quality of
+gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpetings. My sentiment has long
+since vanished. I hope my virtues have done sucking.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> I can scarce think
+but you meant it in joke. I hope you did, for I should be ashamed to
+believe that you could think to gratify me by such praise, fit only to be
+a cordial to some green-sick sonneteer.� The epithet so rankled in his
+recollection that a week later he returned to the topic. “In the next
+edition of the <i>Anthology</i> (which Phœbus avert, and those nine other
+wandering maids also!) please to blot out ‘gentle-hearted,’ and substitute
+‘drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering,’ or any
+other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in
+question. And for Charles read Tom, or Bob, or Richard for mere delicacy.�</p>
+
+<p>Gentle Lamb certainly was, but the word is not large enough or robustly
+human enough to cover all his character. He wins your regard by his faults
+as well as by his virtues. If he drank a little too much at times, and
+sometimes talked and wrote foolishly and too flippantly to please the
+serious-minded, he far more often talked and wrote wisely, wittily,
+exquisitely, and for thirty-eight years of his life he readily sacrificed
+himself to his sister’s well-being, giving up all thought of marriage that
+he might be her constant guardian and attendant, watching dreadfully for
+signs of her recurring fits of insanity, and when they were coming upon
+her going with her to the melancholy gate of the asylum, and directly her
+mind was cleared, returning eagerly to fetch her home again.</p>
+
+<p>He was never in the habit of laying himself out to create a good
+impression on strangers; if they were unsympathetic, or he did not take to
+them, in his freakish fashion he would deliberately say and do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> things to
+shock and antagonise them, and so it came about that those who did not
+know him or could not appreciate him frequently set him down as “something
+between an imbecile, a brute, and a buffoon.� Carlyle formed that sort of
+impression of him; and one can believe there was scarcely any point of
+contact between Carlyle’s sombre, deadly earnest, man-with-a-message
+outlook and the tricksy, elvish, quaintly humorous spirit of Lamb, who
+wrote with a delicate fancy and tenderness that are more lasting than
+Carlyle’s solid preachings are likely to prove, and who “stuttered his
+quaintness in snatches,� says Haydon, “like the fool in <i>Lear</i>, and with
+equal beauty.�</p>
+
+<p>That is a fine and wonderful glimpse of one side of Lamb given by Leigh
+Hunt when he says he could have imagined him “cracking a joke in the teeth
+of a ghost, and then melting into thin air himself out of sympathy with
+the awful.� In describing him, most of his friends emphasise “the bland,
+sweet smile, with a touch of sadness in it.� “A light frame, so fragile
+that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it,� is Talfourd’s picture
+of him, “clad in clerk-like black, and surmounted by a head of form and
+expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about
+an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying
+expression, though the prevalent feeling was sad; and the nose slightly
+curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of
+the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the
+shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and
+shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its quivering
+sweetness, and fix it for ever in words?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> There are none, alas, to answer
+the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought, striving with humour; the
+lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth; and a smile of painful
+sweetness, present an image to the mind it can as little describe as lose.
+His personal appearance and manner are not unfitly characterised by what
+he himself says in one of his letters to Manning of Braham&mdash;‘a compound of
+the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel.’� Add to this the sketch that
+Patmore has left of him: “In point of intellectual character and
+expression, a finer face was never seen, nor one more fully, however
+vaguely, corresponding with the mind whose features it interpreted. There
+was the gravity usually engendered by a life passed in book-learning,
+without the slightest tinge of that assumption and affectation which
+almost always attend the gravity so engendered; the intensity and
+elevation of general expression that mark high genius, without any of its
+pretension and its oddity; the sadness waiting on fruitless thoughts and
+baffled aspirations, but no evidence of that spirit of scorning and
+contempt which these are apt to engender. Above all, there was a pervading
+sweetness and gentleness which went straight to the heart of every one who
+looked on it; and not the less so, perhaps, that it bore about it an air,
+a something, seeming to tell that it was not <i>put on</i>&mdash;for nothing could
+be more unjust than to tax Lamb with assuming anything, even a virtue,
+which he did not possess&mdash;but preserved and persevered in, spite of
+opposing and contradictory feelings within that struggled in vain for
+mastery. It was a thing to remind you of that painful smile which bodily
+disease and agony will sometimes put on, to conceal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> their sufferings from
+the observation of those they love.�</p>
+
+<p>It was a look&mdash;this look of patient endurance, of smiling resignation, of
+painful cheerfulness&mdash;that you could not understand unless you were aware
+of the appalling tragedy that lay in the background of his life, and of
+the haunting dread, the anxious, daily anticipation of disaster, and the
+need of concealing this anxiety from her, that were involved in the
+matter-of-course self-sacrifice with which he devoted himself to the care
+and guardianship of his sister, Mary.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1796, when Lamb was living with his father and mother and sister
+in lodgings in Little Queen Street, that the tragedy happened which was to
+overshadow all his after years. The father was drifting into second
+childhood, the mother an invalid. Mary Lamb had to attend upon them both,
+with the help of a small servant and, in addition, took in plain sewing;
+Charles was a junior clerk at the India House. Only a little while before
+Lamb had himself suffered a mental breakdown and had been placed under
+temporary restraint (“the six weeks that finished last year,� he writes to
+Coleridge, in May 1796, “your very humble servant spent very agreeably in
+a madhouse, at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don’t bite any
+one. But mad I was�); then, in September 1796, his sister suddenly went
+out of her mind, stabbed her mother to the heart, and in her frenzy threw
+knives at others in the room, and wounded her father before Lamb could
+seize her and get her under control. There are no letters more terrible or
+more pathetic than those he wrote to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> Coleridge, when the horror and
+heartbreak of this event was fresh upon him.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“My dearest Friend,� he writes on the 27th September 1796, “White, or
+some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time have informed
+you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will
+only give you the outlines. My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of
+insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only
+time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in
+a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God
+has preserved to me my senses: I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have
+my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was slightly
+wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of
+the Bluecoat School, has been very kind to us, and we have no other
+friend; but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the
+best that remains to do. Write as religious a letter as possible, but
+no mention of what is gone and done with. With me ‘the former things
+are passed away,’ and I have something more to do than to feel. God
+Almighty have us all in His keeping!</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“<span class="smcap">C. Lamb.</span></span></p>
+
+<p>“Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past
+vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, publish
+mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a
+book, I charge you.</p>
+
+<p>“Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this
+yet to your dear wife. You look after your family; I have my reason
+and strength <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>left to take care of mine. I charge you, don’t think of
+coming to see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty
+love you and all of us!</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“<span class="smcap">C. Lamb.</span>�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>The book he mentions is one that he and Coleridge and Lloyd were arranging
+to publish together. In October there is another letter, replying to one
+from Coleridge, and saying his sister is restored to her senses&mdash;a long
+letter from which I shall quote only one or two memorable passages: “God
+be praised, Coleridge! wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been
+otherwise than collected and calm; even on that dreadful day, and in the
+midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquillity which bystanders
+may have construed into indifference&mdash;a tranquillity not of despair. Is it
+folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious principle that <i>most</i>
+supported me? I allow much to other favourable circumstances. I felt that
+I had something else to do than to regret. On that first evening my aunt
+was lying insensible&mdash;to all appearance like one dying; my father, with
+his poor forehead plaistered over from a wound he had received from a
+daughter, dearly loved by him, and who loved him no less dearly; my mother
+a dead and murdered corpse in the next room; yet was I wonderfully
+supported. I closed not my eyes in sleep that night, but lay without
+terrors and without despair. I have lost no sleep since.... One little
+incident may serve to make you understand my way of managing my mind.
+Within a day or two after the fatal one, we dressed for dinner a tongue,
+which we had had salted for some weeks in the house. As I sat down, a
+feeling like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> remorse struck me: this tongue poor Mary got for me; and can
+I partake of it now, when she is far away? A thought occurred and relieved
+me: if I give in to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an
+object in our rooms, that will not awaken the keenest griefs. I must rise
+above such weaknesses. I hope this was not want of true feeling. I did not
+let this carry me, though, too far. On the very second day (I date from
+the day of horrors), as is usual in such cases, there were a matter of
+twenty people, I do think, supping in our room: they prevailed on me to
+eat <i>with them</i> (for to eat I never refused). They were all making merry
+in the room! Some had come from friendship, some from busy curiosity, and
+some from interest. I was going to partake with them, when my recollection
+came that my poor dead mother was lying in the next room&mdash;the very next
+room&mdash;a mother who, through life, wished nothing but her children’s
+welfare. Indignation, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed
+upon my mind. In an agony of emotion I found my way mechanically to the
+adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking
+forgiveness of Heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting her so soon.
+Tranquillity returned, and it was the only violent emotion that mastered
+me. I think it did me good.�</p>
+
+<p>Through all his subsequent letters from time to time there are touching
+little references to his sister’s illnesses: she is away, again and again,
+in the asylum, or in charge of nurses, and he is alone and miserable, but
+looking forward to her recovering presently and returning home. Once when
+they are away from London on a visit, she is suddenly taken with one of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+these frenzies, and on the way back to town he has to borrow a waistcoat
+to restrain her violence in the coach. But his love and loyalty were proof
+against it all; nothing would induce him to separate from her or let her
+go out of his charge, except during those intervals when she was so
+deranged as to be a danger to others and to herself.</p>
+
+<p>About the end of 1799 Lamb moved into the Temple and, first at Mitre Court
+Buildings, then in Middle Temple Lane, he resided there, near the house of
+his birth, for some seventeen years in all. In these two places he and his
+sister kept open house every Wednesday evening, and Hazlitt and Talfourd,
+Barry Cornwall, Holcroft, Godwin, and, when they were in town, Wordsworth
+and Coleridge were among their guests. Hazlitt and Talfourd and others
+have told us something of those joyous evenings in the small, dingy rooms,
+comfortable with books and old prints, where cold beef and porter stood
+ready on the sideboard for the visitors to help themselves, and whilst
+whoever chose sat and played at whist the rest fleeted the golden hours in
+jest and conversation.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img58.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">WILL’S COFFEE HOUSE. RUSSELL STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Towards the end of 1817 the Lambs took lodgings at 20 Russell Street,
+Covent Garden, a house which was formerly part of Will’s famous Coffee
+House, which Dryden used to frequent, having his summer seat by the
+fireside and his winter seat in the balcony, as chief of the wits and men
+of letters who made it their place of resort. In a letter to Dorothy
+Wordsworth, Mary Lamb reports their change of address: “We have left the
+Temple. I think you will be sorry to hear this. I know I have never been
+so well satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal Mount as when I could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+connect the idea of you with your own Grasmere Cottage. Our rooms were
+dirty and out of repair, and the inconvenience of living in chambers
+became every year more irksome, and so, at last, we mustered up resolution
+enough to leave the good old place that so long had sheltered us, and here
+we are living at a brazier’s shop, No. 20 Russell Street, Covent Garden, a
+place all alive with noise and bustle; Drury Lane Theatre in sight from
+our front, and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the
+carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least; strange
+that it does not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of
+the window, and listening to the calling up of the carriages, and the
+squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> scene to look
+down upon; I am sure you would be amused with it. It is well I am in a
+cheerful place, or I should have many misgivings about leaving the
+Temple.� And on the 21st November 1817, Lamb also writes to Dorothy
+Wordsworth: “Here we are, transplanted from our native soil. I thought we
+never could be torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench, but
+like a tooth, now ’tis out, and I am easy. We never can strike root so
+deep in any other ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of gardener’s
+mould, and if they take us up from it, it will cost no blood and groans,
+like mandrakes pulled up. We are in the individual spot I like best in all
+this great city. The theatres, with all their noises. Covent Garden,
+dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of
+the earliest peas and ’sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves are
+examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four-and-twenty
+hours before she saw a thief. She sits at the window working; and casually
+throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way,
+with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These little incidents
+agreeably diversify a female life.�</p>
+
+<p>During his residence in Russell Street, from 1817 till 1823, Lamb
+published in two volumes a collection of his miscellaneous writings, and
+contributed the <i>Essays of Elia</i> to the <i>London Magazine</i>, which makes this
+Russell Street house, in a sense, the most notable of his various London
+homes. Here he continued his social gatherings, but had no regular evening
+for them, sending forth announcements periodically, such as that he sent
+to Ayrton in 1823: “Cards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> and cold mutton in Russell Street on Friday at
+8 &amp; 9. Gin and jokes from ½ past that time to 12. Pass this on to Mr.
+Payne, and apprize Martin thereof�&mdash;Martin being Martin Burney.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img59.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LAMB. COLEBROOKE ROW.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>By the autumn of this year he has flitted from Covent Garden, and on the
+2nd September writes to Bernard Barton: “When you come London-ward you
+will find me no longer in Covent Garden. I have a cottage in Colebrooke
+Row, Islington. A cottage, for it is detached; a white house, with six
+good rooms, the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a
+moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house;
+and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure you), pears,
+strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of
+old Alcinous. You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all
+studded over and rough with old books, and above is a lightsome
+drawing-room,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> three windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great
+lord, never having had a house before�; and writing at the end of that
+week to invite Allsop to dinner on Sunday he supplies him with these
+directions: “Colebrook Cottage, left hand side, end of Colebrook Row, on
+the western brink of the New River, a detached whitish house.� To Barton,
+when he has been nearly three weeks at Islington, he says, “I continue to
+estimate my own roof-comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a
+lodger! My garden thrives (I am told), though I have yet reaped nothing
+but some tiny salad and withered carrots. But a garden’s a garden
+anywhere, and twice a garden in London.�</p>
+
+<p>Here, in November of that year, happened the accident to George Dyer that
+supplied Lamb with the subject of his whimsical Elian essay, <i>Amicus
+Redivivus</i>. Dyer was an odd, eccentric, very absent-minded old bookworm
+who lived in Clifford’s Inn; Lamb delighted in his absurdities, and loved
+him, and loved to make merry over his quaint sayings and doings. “You have
+seen our house,� he writes to Mrs. Hazlitt, in the week after Dyer’s
+adventure. “What I now tell you is literally true. Yesterday week George
+Dyer called upon us at one o’clock (<i>bright noonday</i>) on his way to dine
+with Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He sat with Mary about half-an-hour, and
+took leave. The maid saw him go out, from her kitchen window, but suddenly
+losing sight of him, ran up in a fright to Mary. G. D., instead of keeping
+the slip that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff in hand, in broad
+open day, marched into the New River. He had not his spectacles on, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+you know his absence. Who helped him out they can hardly tell, but between
+’em they got him out, drenched through and through. A mob collected by
+that time, and accompanied him in. ‘Send for the Doctor,’ they said: and a
+one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was fetched from the public-house at the
+end, where it seems he lurks for the sake of picking up water practice;
+having formerly had a medal from the Humane Society for some rescue. By
+his advice the patient was put between blankets; and when I came home at
+four to dinner, I found G. D. abed and raving, light-headed with the
+brandy and water which the doctor had administered. He sang, laughed,
+whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian angels, would get up and go home;
+but we kept him there by force; and by next morning he departed sober, and
+seems to have received no injury.�</p>
+
+<p>Before he left Islington the India Company bestowed upon Lamb the pension
+that at last emancipated him from his “dry drudgery at the desk’s dead
+wood,� and he communicates the great news exultantly to Wordsworth in a
+letter dated “Colebrook Cottage,� 6th April 1825: “Here I am, then, after
+thirty-three years’ slavery, sitting in my own room at eleven o’clock this
+finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with £441 a year for the
+remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his
+annuity and starved at ninety: £441, <i>i.e.</i> £450, with a deduction of £9
+for a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the pension
+guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &amp;c. I came home <span class="smcaplc">FOR EVER</span> on Tuesday in
+last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was
+like passing from life into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> eternity. Every year to be as long as three,
+<i>i.e.</i> to have three times as much real time (time that is my own) in it!
+I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But the
+tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the
+gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys; their
+conscious fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now,
+when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home in rain or
+shine without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and
+shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master as it has been
+irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure
+feeling that some good has happened to us.�</p>
+
+<p>He made use of these experiences in one of the best of his essays, that on
+<i>The Superannuated Man</i>, in which also you find echoes of a letter he
+wrote to Bernard Barton just after he had written to Wordsworth:</p>
+
+<p>“I am free, B. B.&mdash;free as air.</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">‘The little bird that wings the sky<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Knows no such liberty!’</span></p></div>
+
+<p>“I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o’clock.</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">‘I came home for ever!’</p></div>
+
+<p>“I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to Wordsworth in a
+long letter and don’t care to repeat. Take it briefly that for a few days
+I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is becoming daily
+more natural to me. I went and sat among ’em all at my old thirty-three
+years’ desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> yearnings at
+leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads, at leaving
+them in the lurch, fag, fag, fag! The comparison of my own superior
+felicity gave me anything but pleasure. B. B. I would not serve another
+seven years for seven hundred thousand pounds.�</p>
+
+<p>From Islington Lamb journeyed over to Highgate every now and then to visit
+Coleridge at Mr. Gilman’s; and a-visiting him at Colebrooke Cottage came
+Coleridge, Southey, William Hone, and among many another, Hood, to whom he
+took an especial liking. Coleridge thought he was the author of certain
+Odes that were then appearing in the <i>London Magazine</i>, but writing in
+reply Lamb assured him he was mistaken: “The Odes are four-fifths done by
+Hood, a silentish young man you met at Islington one day, an invalid. The
+rest are Reynolds’s, whose sister H. has recently married.�</p>
+
+<p>During the two years or more after his release from the India House, Lamb
+and his sister spent two or three short holidays lodging with a Mrs.
+Leishman at The Chase, Enfield; in 1827 they rented the house of her, and
+Lamb wrote from that address on the 18th September to Hood, who was then
+living at 2 Robert Street, Adelphi: “Give our kind loves to all at
+Highgate, and tell them we have finally torn ourselves outright away from
+Colebrooke, where I had <i>no</i> health, and are about to domicilate for good
+at Enfield, where I have experienced good.</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">‘Lord, what good hours do we keep!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">How quietly we sleep!’...</span></p></div>
+
+<p>We have got our books into our new house. I am<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> a dray-horse if I was not
+ashamed of the undigested dirty lumber, as I toppled ’em out of the cart,
+and blest Becky that came with ’em for her having an unstuffed brain with
+such rubbish.... ’Twas with some pain we were evulsed from Colebrook. You
+may find some of our flesh sticking to the doorposts. To change
+habitations is to die to them; and in my time I have died seven deaths.
+But I don’t know whether every such change does not bring with it a
+rejuvenescence. ’Tis an enterprise; and shoves back the sense of death’s
+approximating which, though not terrible to me, is at all times
+particularly distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical,
+recurring after seven years; but this last is premature by half that time.
+Cut off in the flower of Colebrook!� He mentions that the rent is 10s.
+less than he paid at Islington; that he pays, in fact, £35 a year,
+exclusive of moderate taxes, and thinks himself lucky.</p>
+
+<p>But the worry of moving brought on one of Mary Lamb’s “sad, long
+illnesses�; and whilst she was absent, Lamb fled from the loneliness of
+his country home to spend ten days in town. “But Town,� he writes to
+Barton, “with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was. The
+streets, the shops are left, but all old friends are gone. And in London I
+was frightfully convinced of this as I past houses and places&mdash;empty
+caskets now. I have ceased to care almost about anybody. The bodies I
+cared for are in graves or dispersed. My old Clubs, that lived so long and
+flourished so steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of our
+adopted young friend at Charing Cross, ’twas heavy unfeeling rain and I
+had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>nowhere to go. Home have I none&mdash;and not a sympathising house to
+turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of the heaven pour down on
+a forlorner head. Yet I tried ten days at a sort of friend’s house, but it
+was large and straggling&mdash;one of the individuals of my long knot of
+friends, card-players, pleasant companions&mdash;that have tumbled to pieces
+into dust and other things&mdash;and I got home on Thursday convinced that I
+was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in
+my corner. Less than a month, I hope, will bring home Mary. She is at
+Fulham, looking better in her health than ever, but sadly rambling, and
+scarce showing any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come
+again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old
+sorrows over a game of Picquet again. But ’tis a tedious cut out of a life
+of sixty-four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img60.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CHARLES LAMB</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The cares of housekeeping, however, sat too heavily on them, and in
+October 1829 they abandoned those responsibilities, gave up their cottage
+on Chase Side, and went to lodge and board with their next-door
+neighbours, an old Mr. and Mrs. Westwood, and in this easier way of living
+their spirits and their health revived. Nevertheless, by January 1830 Lamb
+had lost all his contentment with rural life, and was yearning desperately
+for the remembered joys of London. “And is it a year since we parted from
+you at the steps of Edmonton stage?� he writes to Wordsworth. “There are
+not now the years that there used to be.� He frets, he says, like a lion
+in a net, and then goes on to utter that yearning to be back in London
+that I have quoted already in my opening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> chapter. “Back-looking
+ambition,� he continues, “tells me I might still be a Londoner! Well, if
+we ever do move, we have incumbrances the less to impede us; all our
+furniture has faded under the auctioneer’s hammer, going for nothing, like
+the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two
+left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out
+of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless.� And to Bernard Barton
+he says, “With fire and candle-light I can dream myself in Holborn....
+Give me old London at Fire and Plague times, rather than these tepid
+gales, healthy country air, and purposeless exercise.�</p>
+
+<p>Early in 1833 he removed from Enfield, and his reasons for doing so he
+explains in a letter to Mrs. Hazlitt, on the 31st May of that year: “I am
+driven from house to house by Mary’s illness. I took a sudden resolution
+to take my sister to Edmonton, where she was under medical treatment last
+time, and have arranged to board and lodge with the people. Thank God I
+have repudiated Enfield. I have got out of hell, despair of heaven, and
+must sit down contented in a half-way purgatory. Thus ends this strange
+eventful history. But I am nearer to town, and will get up to you somehow
+before long.� About the same date he wrote to Wordsworth: “Mary is ill
+again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed
+by two of depression most dreadful. I look back upon her earlier attacks
+with longing&mdash;nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed by
+complete restoration&mdash;shocking as they were to me then. In short, half her
+life she is dead to me, and the other half is made anxious with fears<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> and
+lookings forward to the next shock. With such prospects it seemed to me
+necessary that she should no longer live with me, and be fluttered with
+continual removals; so I am come to live with her, at a Mr. Walden’s, and
+his wife, who take in patients, and have arranged to lodge and board us
+only. They have had the care of her before. I see little of her: alas! I
+too often hear her. <i>Sunt lachrymæ rerum!</i> and you and I must bear it....
+I am about to lose my old and only walk-companion, whose mirthful spirits
+were the ‘youth of our house,’ Emma Isola. I have her here now for a
+little while, but she is too nervous properly to be under such a roof, so
+she will make short visits&mdash;be no more an inmate. With my perfect approval
+and more than concurrence she is to be wedded to Moxon at the end of
+August&mdash;so ‘perish the roses and the flowers’&mdash;how is it? Now to the
+brighter side. I am emancipated from the Westwoods, and I am with
+attentive people and younger. I am three or four miles nearer the great
+city; coaches half-price less and going always, of which I will avail
+myself. I have few friends left there; one or two though, most beloved.
+But London streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, though not one known
+of the latter were remaining.�</p>
+
+<p>Emma Isola is “the adopted young friend� referred to by Lamb in a letter
+quoted a few pages back. She was the granddaughter of an Italian refugee;
+her mother was dead; her father was an “Esquire Bedell� of Cambridge, and
+the Lambs met her at the house of a friend when they were visiting that
+town in 1823. She was a charming, brown-faced little girl, and they were
+so taken with her that she was invited to visit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> them in London during her
+holidays, and they ended by adopting her and calling her their niece. She
+brought a great deal of happiness into their lives; Lamb gives whimsical
+accounts in some of his letters of how he is teaching her Latin, and his
+sister is prompting her in her French lessons. When she was old enough she
+became governess in the family of a Mr. and Mrs. Williams at Bury; fell
+ill and was kindly nursed there; and Lamb tells in one of his most
+delightful letters how he went to fetch her home to Enfield, when she was
+convalescent, and it is good to glimpse how sympathetically amused he is
+at Emma’s covert admonitions and anxiety lest he should drink too much, at
+dinner with the Williamses, and so bring disgrace upon himself and her.</p>
+
+<p>His beautiful affection for their young ward shines through all the
+drollery of his several notes to Edward Moxon (the publisher) in which he
+speaks of their engagement; and it has always seemed to me it is this same
+underlying affection for her and wistfulness to see her happy that help to
+make the following letter, written just after the wedding, one of the
+finest and most pathetic things in literature:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="right">“<i>August 1833.</i></p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Dear Mr. and Mrs. Moxon,</span>&mdash;Time very short. I wrote to Miss Fryer, and
+had the sweetest letter about you, Emma, that ever friendship
+dictated. ‘I am full of good wishes, I am crying with good wishes,’
+she says; but you shall see it.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear Moxon, I take your writing most kindly, and shall most kindly
+your writing from Paris. I want to crowd another letter to Miss Fryer
+into the little time after dinner, before post time. So with twenty
+thousand congratulations,&mdash;Yours,</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">C. L.</span></p>
+
+<p>“I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for the reason. I got home from
+Dover Street, by Evans, <i>half as sober as a judge</i>. I am turning over
+a new leaf, as I hope you will now.�</p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img61.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LAMB’S COTTAGE. EDMONTON.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>[<i>The turn of the leaf presents the following</i>:&mdash;]</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Emma and Edward Moxon,</span>&mdash;Accept my sincere congratulations,
+and imagine more good wishes than my weak nerves will let me put into
+good set words. The dreary blank of <i>unanswered questions</i> which I
+ventured to ask in vain was cleared up on the wedding day by Mrs. W.
+taking a glass of wine and, with a total change of countenance,
+begging leave to drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon’s health. It restored me
+from that moment, as if by an electrical stroke, to the entire
+possession of my senses. I never felt so calm and quiet after a
+similar illness as I do now. I feel as if all tears were wiped from my
+eyes, and all care from my heart.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Mary Lamb.</span>�</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="right">“<i>Wednesday.</i></p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">Dears again,</span>&mdash;Your letter interrupted a seventh game at picquet which
+<i>we</i> were having, after walking to Wright’s and purchasing shoes. We
+pass our time in cards, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso soon.</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">“C. L.</span></p>
+
+<p>“Never was such a calm, or such a recovery. ’Tis her own words
+undictated.�</p></div>
+
+<p>And it was in this plain, commonplace little cottage in Church Street,
+Edmonton, that Mary Lamb was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> thus suddenly awakened out of her
+derangement; that Charles Lamb and she wrote, by turns, that letter to the
+Moxons; that the Lambs sat contentedly playing picquet when the letter of
+the bride and bridegroom came to them from Paris. These are the very rooms
+in which these things happened; the stage remains, but the actors are
+departed. Within a stone’s throw of the house, in Edmonton Churchyard,
+Lamb and his sister lie buried. His death was the result of an accident.
+He had gone on his accustomed walk along the London Road, one day in
+December, when he stumbled and fell over a stone, slightly injuring his
+face. So trivial did the wound seem that writing to George Dyer’s wife on
+the 22nd December 1834, about a book he had lost when he was in
+London&mdash;“it was the book I went to fetch from Miss Buffham’s while the
+tripe was frying�&mdash;he says nothing of anything being the matter with him.
+But erysipelas supervened, and he grew rapidly worse, and died on the
+27th. His sister, who had lapsed into one of her illnesses and was
+unconscious, at the time, of her loss, outlived him by nearly thirteen
+years, and reached the great age of eighty-two.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<p class="title">ST. JOHN’S WOOD AND WIMBLEDON</p>
+
+
+<p>Mary Lamb passed the later years of her life in a sort of nursing home at
+St. John’s Wood, and in her happier intervals kept up a pleasant
+acquaintance with some of the notable circle of friends who had gathered
+about her and her brother aforetime; among others, with the Hoods, who
+were then living in the same locality. Crabb Robinson mentions in his
+Diary how he made a call on Mary Lamb, and finding her well over one of
+her periodical attacks, “quite in possession of her faculties and
+recollecting nearly everything,� he accompanied her on a visit to the
+Hoods, who were lodging at 17 Elm Tree Road.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps one of the most graphic pictures we have of Hood’s home life, and
+incidentally of Hood himself and his wife and of Charles and Mary Lamb, is
+contained in the account that has been left by Miss Mary Balmanno of an
+evening she spent with the Hoods when they were making their home in
+Robert Street, Adelphi: “Bound in the closest ties of friendship with the
+Hoods, with whom we also were in the habit of continually associating, we
+had the pleasure of meeting Charles Lamb at their house one evening,
+together with his sister, and several other friends.... In outward
+appearance Hood conveyed the idea of a clergyman. His figure slight, and
+invariably dressed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> in black; his face pallid; the complexion delicate,
+and features regular: his countenance bespeaking sympathy by its sweet
+expression of melancholy and suffering.</p>
+
+<p>“Lamb was of a different mould and aspect. Of middle height, with brown
+and rather ruddy complexion, grey eyes expressive of sense and shrewdness,
+but neither large nor brilliant; his head and features well shaped, and
+the general expression of his countenance quiet, kind, and observant,
+undergoing rapid changes in conversation, as did his manner, variable as
+an April day, particularly to his sister, whose saint-like good humour and
+patience were as remarkable as his strange and whimsical modes of trying
+them. But the brother and sister perfectly understood each other, and
+‘Charles,’ as she always called him, would not have been the Charles of
+her loving heart without the pranks and oddities which he was continually
+playing off upon her, and which were only outnumbered by the instances of
+affection and evidences of ever-watchful solicitude with which he
+surrounded her.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means looked
+so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather stout and
+comely lady of middle age. Dressed with Quaker-like simplicity in
+dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin
+folded across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the beholder in her
+favour by an aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners were very quiet and
+gentle, and her voice low. She smiled frequently, and seldom laughed,
+partaking of the courtesies and hospitalities of her merry host and
+hostess with all the cheerfulness and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> grace of a most mild and kindly
+nature. Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring
+disciple; her eyes seldom absent from his face. And when apparently
+engrossed in conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word
+for which he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the
+room, show how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high
+spirits, sauntering about the room with his hands crossed behind his back,
+conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him....�</p>
+
+<p>She goes on to describe how Miss Kelly, the actress, amused them by
+impersonating a character she was taking in a new play, and “Mrs. Hood’s
+eyes sparkled with joy, as she saw the effect it had produced upon her
+husband, whose pale face, like an illuminated comic mask, shone with fun
+and good humour. Never was a happier couple than the Hoods; ‘mutual
+reliance and fond faith’ seemed to be their motto. Mrs. Hood was a most
+amiable woman&mdash;of excellent manners, and full of sincerity and goodness.
+She perfectly adored her husband, tending him like a child, whilst he,
+with unbounded affection, seemed to delight to yield himself to her
+guidance. Nevertheless, true to his humorous nature, he loved to tease her
+with jokes and whimsical accusations, which were only responded to by,
+‘Hood, Hood, how can you run on so?’</p>
+
+<p>“The evening was concluded by a supper, one of those elegant social
+repasts which Flemish artists delight to paint.... Mr. Lamb oddly walked
+round the table, looking closely at any dish that struck his fancy before
+he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> Hood that he should by that
+means know how to select some dish that was difficult to carve and take
+the trouble off her hands; accordingly, having jested in this manner, he
+placed himself with great deliberation before a lobster salad, observing
+<i>that</i> was the thing.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and
+his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song of ‘If you go to
+France be sure you learn the lingo’; his pensive manner and feeble voice
+making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused
+himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin
+eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered forth a
+long stream of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood
+frequently occurred, we ladies thought it in praise of her. The delivery
+of this speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a gentleman
+who sat next me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me
+that was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster salad!
+Thus, in the gayest of moods, progressed and concluded a truly merry
+little social supper, worthy in all respects of the author of <i>Whims and
+Oddities</i>.�</p>
+
+<p>But all this, when the Hoods came to St. John’s Wood, lay thirteen years
+behind them, and Lamb had been eight years dead. Quitting the Adelphi in
+1829, Hood went to Winchmore Hill, then to Wanstead; then, after some five
+years of residence in Germany and Belgium, he returned to England, and
+made his home for a short time at Camberwell, and thence in 1842 removed
+to St. John’s Wood&mdash;at first to rooms at 17 Elm Tree Road, and in 1844 to
+a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> house of his own, “Devonshire Lodge,� in the Finchley Road&mdash;a house
+that the guide-books all tell us was demolished, but since I started to
+write this chapter the London County Council has identified as “Devonshire
+Lodge� the house that still stands in Finchley Road, immediately adjoining
+the Marlborough Road station of the Metropolitan Railway; and here it was
+that Hood died on the 3rd of May 1845.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img62.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">TOM HOOD’S HOUSE. ST JOHN’S WOOD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>The room in which he worked at 17 Elm Tree Road gave him a view of Lord’s
+Cricket Ground, and he complained that this was a drawback, because “when
+he was at work he could often see others at play.� He caricatured the
+landlady of the house, who had “a large and personal love of flowers,� and
+made her the heroine of his <i>Mrs. Gardiner, A Horticultural Romance</i>. From
+Elm Tree Road he went to attend the dinner at Greenwich that was given to
+Dickens on his second return from America; and describing this dissipation
+in a letter to a friend he says, “You will be pleased to hear that, in
+spite of my warnings and forebodings, I got better and betterer, till by
+dining, as the physicians did, on turtle soup, white-bait, and champagne,
+I seemed quite well.� He was to have been chairman at the dinner, but
+excused himself on the score of ill-health, and Captain Marryat took his
+place. The diners included, in addition to Dickens himself, Moncton
+Milnes, Forster, Clarkson Stanfield, Ainsworth, Landseer (another St.
+John’s Wood resident), Cruikshank, Cattermole, “Ingoldsby� Barham, and
+Barry Cornwall. Being called upon for a speech, Hood said he supposed they
+drank his health because he was a notorious invalid, but assured the
+company that the trembling of his hand was neither from palsy nor ague,
+but that their wishes had already so improved his circulation and filled
+him with genial warmth that his hand had a natural inclination to shake
+itself with every one present. Whereupon everybody within reach, and some
+who were not, insisted upon shaking hands with him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> “<i>Very</i> gratifying,
+wasn’t it?� he finishes his letter. “Though I cannot go quite so far as
+Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserved
+in spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as usual when I go
+out, because I am so domestic and steady, and was down at the door before
+I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his own carriage.
+Poor girl! what <i>would</i> she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame
+one.�</p>
+
+<p>Dickens, at that date, lived at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone Road;
+they had probably driven up together from Greenwich, and the carriage had
+come the mile or so further on with Hood after leaving Dickens at his own
+door. Dickens was one of the many visitors who have helped to make Hood’s
+St. John’s Wood residence memorable; there is a record of his being there,
+with his wife and sister and Daniel Maclise, in December 1842. At Elm Tree
+Road, for all his broken health, Hood worked hard at editing and writing
+for the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>, and, after resigning from that, for
+<i>Hood’s Monthly Magazine</i>. One letter of his, dated from 17 Elm Tree Road,
+on the 18th July 1843, is headed “From my bed�; for he was frequently
+bedridden for days and weeks at a stretch, but sat propped up with
+pillows, writing and sketching with unabated industry. He was contributing
+also in these days to <i>Punch</i>, and to Douglas Jerrold’s <i>Illuminated
+Magazine</i>. In November 1843 he wrote here, for <i>Punch</i>, his grim <i>Drop of
+Gin</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Gin! Gin! a drop of Gin!<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">What magnified monsters circle therein!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Ragged, and stained with filth and mud,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Some plague-spotted, and some with blood!</span><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Shapes of misery, shame, and sin!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Figures that make us loathe and tremble,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Creatures scarce human, that more resemble</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Broods of diabolical kin,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ghost and vampyre, demon and Jin!...�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>But a far greater poem than this, <i>The Song of the Shirt</i>, was also
+written at Elm Tree Road. “Now mind, Hood, mark my words,� said Mrs. Hood,
+when he was putting up the manuscript for the post, “this will tell
+wonderfully. It is one of the best things you ever did.� And the results
+justified her. The verses appeared in the Christmas Number of <i>Punch</i> for
+1843, and not only trebled the circulation of that paper, but within a
+very short time had at least doubled Hood’s reputation, though <i>Eugene
+Aram</i>, <i>The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies</i>, and <i>Lycus the Centaur</i>, had
+long preceded it. Probably no poem ever stirred the national conscience
+more deeply or created a profounder sensation. Shortly after its
+appearance Cowden Clarke met Hood, and has left a vivid description of his
+personal appearance in those last months of his life. His worn, pallid
+look, he says, “strangely belied the effect of jocularity and high spirits
+conveyed by his writings. He punned incessantly, but languidly, almost as
+if unable to think in any other way than in play upon words. His smile was
+attractively sweet; it bespoke the affectionate-natured man which his
+serious verses&mdash;those especially addressed to his wife or his
+children&mdash;show him to be, and it also revealed the depth of pathos in his
+soul that inspired his <i>Bridge of Sighs</i>, <i>Song of the Shirt</i>, and <i>Eugene
+Aram</i>.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img63.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THOMAS HOOD</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>There are many interesting points of resemblance between Hood and Lamb.
+Both were inveterate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> punsters; each had known poverty, and had come
+through hard experiences that had left their marks upon them, yet had
+never soured them or warped their sympathies. You may use the same
+epithets for both: they were homely, kindly, gentle, given to freakish
+moods and whimsical jesting; the one was as unselfishly devoted to his
+sister as the other was to his wife and children; and in descriptions of
+Hood, as of Lamb, stress is laid on the peculiar wistfulness and sweetness
+of his smile. But after the East India Company had handsomely pensioned
+him off, Lamb had no further financial anxieties; whilst Hood had to
+suppress his finer gifts, and to the end of his days turn his hand to all
+manner of inferior but more popular work, that would enable him to keep
+the family pot boiling. And he was all the while fighting against disease
+as well as poverty. He could not afford to go into exile, like Stevenson,
+and lengthen his days and foster his wasting strength in a healthfuller
+climate. He was never rich enough to have any choice but to die in the
+place where he had to earn his living, and no man ever worked more
+manfully, or died at his post bravelier or with a more cheery philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>Read the humorous preface he wrote for the volume of <i>Hood’s Own</i>, whilst
+he lay ill abed there in his St. John’s Wood house: it is the sort of
+humour that makes your heart ache, for you cannot forget that he was
+racked with pain and slowly dying whilst he wrote it. He jests about the
+aristocratic, ghastly slenderness of his fingers; his body, he says, may
+cry craven, but luckily his mind has no mind to give in. “‘Things may take
+a turn,’ as the pig said on the spit.... As to health? it’s the weather of
+the body&mdash;it rains, it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> hails, it blows, it snows at present, but it may
+clear up by-and-by�; and in conclusion he mentions that the doctor tells
+him, “anatomically my heart is lower hung than usual, but what of that?
+<i>The more need to keep it up!</i>� Raised up in bed, with an improvised desk
+across his knees, he was hard at work, writing prose and verse and
+knocking off grotesque little drawings, and remained, as he said, “a
+lively Hood to get a livelihood,� almost to his last hour. When, towards
+the end, his wife was trying to relieve his sufferings by putting a
+poultice on his emaciated body, he laughed up at her quizzically, and
+asked if she didn’t think “it seemed a deal of mustard for such a little
+meat.� He had moved into Devonshire Lodge, and was within sixteen months
+of his death when he wrote <i>The Haunted House</i>, and <i>The Bridge of Sighs</i>.
+“I fear that so far as I myself am concerned,� he writes to Thackeray in
+August 1844, “King Death will claim me ere many months elapse. However,
+there’s a good time coming, if not in this world, most assuredly in the
+next.� When he was invited next month to attend a soirée at the Manchester
+Athenæum, he had to decline, and added, “For me all long journeys are over
+save one�; but a couple of months later he had written the <i>Lay of the
+Labourer</i>, for his magazine, and writing to Lord Lytton remarked that
+though the doctor had ordered him not to work he was compelled to do so,
+and “so it will be to the end. I must die in harness, like a hero&mdash;or a
+horse.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img64.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CHARLES DIBDIN. 34 ARLINGTON ROAD.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His dying hours were made easy by the pension of a hundred pounds that Sir
+Robert Peel kindly and tactfully settled on Mrs. Hood, and one of the last
+things he wrote on his lingering deathbed was a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>valediction that
+breathed all of resignation and hope:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Farewell, Life! My senses swim<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the world is growing dim;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thronging shadows cloud the light,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Like the advent of the night,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Colder, colder, colder still</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Upwards steals a vapour chill&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Strong the earthy odour grows&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I smell the Mould above the Rose!</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Welcome, Life! The Spirit strives!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Strength returns, and hope revives;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Fly like shadows at the morn,&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O’er the earth there comes a bloom&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Sunny light for sullen gloom,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Warm perfume for vapour cold&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I smell the Rose above the Mould!�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Herbert Spencer lived in St. John’s Wood for many years, at 7 Marlborough
+Gardens, 13 Loudon Road, and 64 Avenue Road successively. Within an easy
+walk of Avenue Road, at 34 Arlington Road, Camden Town, Charles Dibdin,
+whose memory survives in <i>Tom Bowling</i>, passed the last years of his life.
+And, back in St. John’s Wood, at the Priory, 21 North Bank, in one of the
+numerous houses that were swept away when the Great Central Railway came
+to Marylebone, George Eliot lived from 1864 until 1880, when she removed
+to Chelsea. Before that, from 1860 till 1863, lived in a house in
+Blandford Square, which has also been demolished; but for nearly two years
+before going there she resided at Holly Lodge, which still survives, in
+the Wimbledon Park Road.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>There is an entry in her Diary dated 6th February 1859: “Yesterday we went
+to take possession of Holly Lodge, which is to be our dwelling, we expect,
+for years to come. It was a deliciously fresh, bright day. I will accept
+the omen. A letter came from Blackwood telling me the result of the
+subscription to <i>Adam Bede</i>, which was published on the 1st: 730 copies,
+Mudie having taken 500 on the publisher’s terms&mdash;10 per cent. off the sale
+price. At first he had stood out for a larger reduction, and would only
+take 50, but at last he came round. In this letter Blackwood tells me the
+first <i>ab extra</i> opinion of the book, which happened to be precisely what
+I most desired. A cabinetmaker (brother to Blackwood’s managing clerk) had
+read the sheets, and declared the writer must have been brought up to the
+business, or at least had listened to the workmen in their workshop.� She
+wrote that month to Miss Sara Hennell, “We are tolerably settled now,
+except that we have only a temporary servant; and I shall not be quite at
+ease until I have a trustworthy woman who will manage without incessant
+dogging. Our home is very comfortable, with far more vulgar indulgences in
+it than I ever expected to have again; but you must not imagine it a snug
+place, just peeping above the holly bushes. Imagine it rather as a tall
+cake, with a low garnish of holly and laurel. As it is, we are very well
+off, with glorious breezy walks, and wide horizons, well-ventilated rooms,
+and abundant water. If I allowed myself to have any longings beyond what
+is given, they would be for a nook quite in the country, far away from
+palaces&mdash;Crystal or otherwise&mdash;with an orchard behind me full of old
+trees, and rough grass <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>and hedgerow paths among the endless fields
+where you meet nobody. We talk of such things sometimes, along with old
+age and dim faculties, and a small independence to save us from writing
+drivel for dishonest money.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img65.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GEORGE ELIOT. WIMBLEDON PARK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>The “we� in these entries means, of course, herself and George Henry
+Lewes; they formed an irregular union in 1854, and lived as husband and
+wife until his death in 1878. In George Eliot’s Journal and letters are a
+good many other references to her life at Holly Lodge, of which the most
+interesting are perhaps the following:</p>
+
+<p><i>April 29th, 1859</i> (from the Journal): “Finished a story, <i>The Lifted
+Veil</i>, which I began one morning at Richmond as a resource when my head
+was too stupid for more important work. Resumed my new novel� (this was
+<i>The Mill on the Floss</i>), “of which I am going to rewrite the two first
+chapters. I shall call it provisionally <i>The Tullivers</i>, or perhaps <i>St.
+Ogg’s on the Floss</i>.�</p>
+
+<p><i>May 6th</i> (from a letter to Major Blackwood): “Yes I <i>am</i> assured now that
+<i>Adam Bede</i> was worth writing&mdash;worth living through long years to write.
+But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good
+and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past but not faith in the
+future.�</p>
+
+<p><i>May 19th</i> (from Journal): “A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes
+to give me another £400 at the end of the year, making in all £1200, as an
+acknowledgment of <i>Adam Bede’s</i> success.�</p>
+
+<p><i>June 8th</i> (from a letter to Mrs. Congreve): “I want to get rid of this
+house&mdash;cut cable and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth, and should think
+with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> unmitigated regret of our coming here if it were not for you.�</p>
+
+<p><i>July 21st</i> (from the Journal, on returning after a holiday in
+Switzerland): “Found a charming letter from Dickens, and pleasant letters
+from Blackwood&mdash;nothing to annoy us.�</p>
+
+<p><i>November 10th</i> (from the Journal): “Dickens dined with us to-day for the
+first time.�</p>
+
+<p><i>December 15th</i> (from the Journal): “Blackwood proposes to give me for
+<i>The Mill on the Floss</i>, £2000 for 4000 copies of an edition at 31s. 6d.,
+and afterwards the same rate for any more copies printed at the same
+price; £150 for 1000 at 12s.; and £60 for 1000 at 6s. I have accepted.�</p>
+
+<p><i>January 3rd, 1860</i> (from a letter to John Blackwood): “We are demurring
+about the title. Mr. Lewes is beginning to prefer <i>The House of Tulliver,
+or Life on the Floss</i>, to our old notion of <i>Sister Maggie</i>. <i>The
+Tullivers, or Life on the Floss</i> has the advantage of slipping easily off
+the lazy English tongue, but it is after too common a fashion (<i>The
+Newcomes</i>, <i>The Bertrams</i>, &amp;c., &amp;c.). Then there is <i>The Tulliver Family,
+or Life on the Floss</i>. Pray meditate and give us your opinion.�</p>
+
+<p><i>January 16th, 1860</i> (from the Journal): “Finished my second volume this
+morning, and am going to send off the MS. of the first volume to-morrow.
+We have decided that the title shall be <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>.�</p>
+
+<p><i>February 23rd</i> (from a letter to John Blackwood): “Sir Edward Lytton
+called on us yesterday. The conversation lapsed chiefly into monologue,
+from the difficulty I found in making him hear, but under all
+disadvantages I had an agreeable impression of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>kindness and
+sincerity. He thinks the two defects of <i>Adam Bede</i> are the dialect and
+Adam’s marriage with Dinah, but of course I would have my teeth drawn
+rather than give up either.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img66.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GEORGE ELIOT’S HOUSE. CHELSEA.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span><i>July 1st</i> (from a letter to Madame Bodichon, on returning to Holly Lodge
+after a two months’ holiday in Italy): “We are preparing to renounce the
+delights of roving, and to settle down quietly, as old folks should do....
+We have let our present house.�</p>
+
+<p>One interesting memorial of the life at Holly Lodge is the MS. of <i>The
+Mill on the Floss</i>, on which is inscribed in George Eliot’s handwriting:
+“To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third
+book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge,
+South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March 1860.�</p>
+
+<p>The publication of <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>, and, in the three succeeding
+years, of <i>Silas Marner</i> and <i>Romola</i>, carried George Eliot to the height
+of her fame, and by the time she was living in North Bank, St. John’s
+Wood, she had her little circle of adoring worshippers, who, like George
+Henry Lewes, took her very seriously indeed. That sort of hero-worship was
+customary in those days, unless the worshipped one had too strong a sense
+of humour to put up with it. There is a passage in the Autobiography of
+Mr. Alfred Austin giving a brief account of a visit he paid to George
+Eliot. “We took the first opportunity,� he says, “of going to call on her
+at her request in St. John’s Wood. But there I found pervading her house
+an attitude of adoration, not to say an atmosphere almost of awe,
+thoroughly alien to my idea that persons of genius, save in their works,
+should resemble other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> people as much as possible, and not allow any
+special fuss to be made about them. I do not say the fault lay with her.�
+But you find the same circumstance spoken to elsewhere, and the general
+notion you gather is that George Eliot rather enjoyed this being
+pedestalled, and accepted the incense of her reverent little circle with a
+good deal of complacency.</p>
+
+<p>In 1878 Lewes died, and in March 1880 George Eliot was married to John
+Cross. They left St. John’s Wood on the 3rd of the following December and
+went to 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where George Eliot died on the 22nd of the
+same month.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<p class="title">CHELSEA MEMORIES</p>
+
+
+<p>Coming to close quarters with it, I am not sure that, after all, Chelsea
+has not more to offer the literary pilgrim than even Hampstead has.
+Addison, Locke, Smollett, Horace Walpole, are among the illustrious names
+whose local habitations were once there but are no longer to be seen.
+Charles and Henry Kingsley spent their boyhood at their father’s rectory
+in Sidney Street; Daniel Maclise lived for ten years at 4 Cheyne Walk,
+where George Eliot died; and “Queen’s House,� No. 16 Cheyne Walk, is the
+house that, in 1862, Rossetti, Swinburne, William Michael Rossetti, and
+Meredith took as joint-tenants. Meredith soon paid a quarter’s rent in
+lieu of notice and withdrew from the arrangement, but Swinburne and
+Rossetti lived on there together for some years, and did much of their
+greatest work there. Swinburne was next to go, and he presently set up
+house with Mr. Watts-Dunton at “The Pines,� near the foot of Putney Hill,
+where he lived till his death in 1909. In the early seventies Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti married and removed elsewhere, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti stayed
+on in the Chelsea house alone.</p>
+
+<p>Later, in the gloomy days before he went away to Birchington to die,
+Rossetti suffered terribly from insomnia, was ill and depressed, and a
+prey to morbid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> imaginings, but in the earlier years of his tenancy of 16
+Cheyne Walk he was absorbed in his art, his house was lively with many
+visitors, and in his lazy, sociable fashion he seems to have been almost
+as happy as a man of his sensitive temperament could be. “Here,� writes
+Mr. Joseph Knight, “were held those meetings, prolonged often until the
+early hours of the morning, which to those privileged to be present were
+veritable nights and feasts of gods. Here in the dimly-lighted studio,
+around the blazing fire, used to assemble the men of distinction or
+promise in literature and art whom the magnetism of Rossetti’s
+individuality collected around him. Here Rossetti himself used, though
+rarely, to read aloud, with his voice of indescribable power and
+clearness, and with a bell-like utterance that still dwells in the mind,
+passages from the poems he admired; and here, more frequently, some young
+poet, encouraged by his sympathy, which to all earnest effort in art was
+overflowing and inexhaustible, would recite his latest sonnet.� He crowded
+his rooms with quaintly-carved oak furniture, and beautiful ornaments; he
+had a wonderful collection of blue china that he sometimes put on the
+table and recklessly used at his dinner-parties. In his garden he had “a
+motley collection of animals, peacocks, armadilloes, the wombat,
+woodchuck, or Canadian marmot, and other outlandish creatures, including
+the famous zebu.� This zebu was kept fastened to a tree, and Rossetti
+loved to exhibit it and point out its beauties with his maulstick. Mr.
+Knight goes on to repeat the story that was told concerning this animal by
+Whistler, who was at that time living at what is now 101 Cheyne Walk, and
+was then 7 Lindsey <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>Row. According to Whistler, one day when he and
+Rossetti were alone in the garden, “and Rossetti was contemplating once
+more the admired possession, and pointing out with the objectionable stick
+the points of special beauty, resentment blazed into indignation. By a
+super-bovine exertion the zebu tore up the roots of the tree to which it
+was attached, and chased its tormentor round the garden, which was
+extensive enough to admit of an exciting chase round the trees.� The zebu
+was fortunately hampered by the uprooted tree, and Rossetti made good his
+escape, but he would harbour the animal no longer, and as nobody would buy
+it he gave it away.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img67.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">QUEEN’S HOUSE. CHEYNE WALK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>You get an illuminating glimpse of Rossetti’s home life in these days from
+that useful literary chronicle, Allingham’s Diary (Monday, June 27, 1864):
+“Got down to Chelsea by half-past eight to D. G. R.’s. Breakfasted in a
+small, lofty room on first floor with window looking on the garden. Fanny
+in white. Then we went into the garden, and lay on the grass, eating
+strawberries and looking at the peacock. F. went to look at the
+‘chicking,’ her plural of chicken. Then Swinburne came in and soon began
+to recite&mdash;a parody on Browning was one thing; and after him Whistler, who
+talked about his own pictures&mdash;Royal Academy&mdash;the Chinese painter girl,
+Millais, &amp;c.�</p>
+
+<p>Rossetti’s wife had died shortly before he went to Cheyne Walk, and it was
+during his residence here that her grave in Highgate Cemetery was opened,
+that the manuscript volume of poems he had buried with her might be
+recovered, and most of its contents included in his first published book
+of original work.</p>
+
+<p>One time and another Whistler occupied four<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> different houses in Cheyne
+Walk, and No. 101 was the first of these. He had been living in lodgings,
+or with his brother-in-law, since he came over from America, but in 1863
+he took the Cheyne Walk house, and his mother went to live there with him.
+It is a three-storey house, and the back room on the first floor was his
+studio; the river lies before it, just across the road, and he could see
+from his front windows old Battersea Bridge, Battersea Church on the other
+side of the Thames, and at night the twinkling lights of boats and barges
+at anchor and the flare and many-coloured glitter of Cremorne Gardens in
+the distance. At the end of Cheyne Walk lived the boatbuilder Greaves. “He
+had worked in Chelsea for years,� write Mr. and Mrs. Pennell, in their
+<i>Life of Whistler</i>. “He had rowed Turner about on the river, and his two
+sons were to row Whistler. One of the sons, Mr. Walter Greaves, has told
+us that Mrs. Booth, a big, hard, coarse Scotchwoman, was always with
+Turner when he came for a boat. Turner would ask Greaves what kind of a
+day it was going to be, and if Greaves answered ‘Fine,’ he would get
+Greaves to row them across to Battersea Church, or to the fields, now
+Battersea Park. If Greaves was doubtful, Turner would say, ‘Well, Mrs.
+Booth, we won’t go far’; and afterwards for the sons&mdash;boys at the
+time&mdash;Turner in their memory was overshadowed by her.� Whistler and the
+Greaves boys were up and down the river at all hours of the day and night
+and in all weathers, painting and sketching, they under his tuition, or
+gathering impressions and studying effects of light and shadow. He was
+frequently in at the Rossettis’ house, and they and their friends were as
+frequently visiting him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>In 1867 Whistler moved to what is now 96 Cheyne Walk, and had a
+housewarming on the 5th of February at which the two Rossettis were
+present. Describing the decoration of the walls here, Mr. and Mrs. Pennell
+say its beauty was its simplicity. “Rossetti’s house was a museum, an
+antiquity shop, in comparison. The simplicity seemed the more bewildering
+because it was the growth, not of weeks but of years. The drawing-room was
+not painted till the day of Whistler’s first dinner-party. In the morning
+he sent for the brothers Greaves to help him. ‘It will never be dry in
+time,’ they feared. ‘What matter?’ said Whistler; ‘it will be
+beautiful!’... and by evening the walls were flushed with flesh-colour,
+pale yellow and white spread over doors and woodwork, and we have heard
+that gowns and coats too were touched with flesh-colour and yellow before
+the evening was at an end. One Sunday morning Whistler, after he had taken
+his mother to Chelsea Church, as he always did, again sent for his pupils
+and painted a great ship with spreading sails in each of the two panels at
+the end of the hall; the ships are said to be still on the wall, covered
+up. His mother was not so pleased when, on her return, she saw the blue
+and white harmony, for she would have had him put away his brushes on
+Sunday as once she put away his toys.�</p>
+
+<p>Solitude was irksome to him, and he welcomed the motley crowd of artists
+and students who came in at all hours to chat with him whilst he worked.
+The Pennells tell a capital story of a man named Barthe, of whom Whistler
+had bought tapestries, and who, not being able to get his account settled,
+called one evening for the money. He was told that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> Whistler was not in;
+but there was a cab waiting at the door, and he could hear his debtor’s
+voice, so he pushed past the maid and, as he afterwards related, “Upstairs
+I find him, before a little picture, painting, and behind him ze bruzzers
+Greaves holding candles. And Vistlaire he say, ‘You ze very man I vant:
+hold a candle!’ And I hold a candle. And Vistlaire he paint, and he paint,
+and zen he take ze picture, and he go downstairs, and he get in ze cab,
+and he drive off, and we hold ze candle, and I see him no more. Mon Dieu,
+il est terrible, ce Vistlaire!�</p>
+
+<p>His studio here was a back room on the second floor, and up to that
+studio, on many days of 1873, Carlyle climbed to give sittings for the
+portrait which ranks now with the greatest of Whistler’s works. The
+portrait of his mother had already been painted in that same small room,
+and hung on the wall there whilst Carlyle was coming to life on the
+canvas. Carlyle was not a patient sitter. Directly he sat down he urged
+Whistler to “fire away,� and was evidently anxious to get through with his
+part of the business as quickly as possible. “One day,� says Whistler, “he
+told me of others who had painted his portrait. There was Mr. Watts, a mon
+of note. And I went to his studio, and there was much meestification, and
+screens were drawn, and I was not allowed to see anything. And then, at
+last, the screens were put aside and there I was. And I looked. And Mr.
+Watts, a great mon, he said to me, ‘How do you like it?’ And then I turned
+to Mr. Watts, and I said, ‘Mon, I would have ye know I am in the hobit of
+wurin’ clean lunen!’� There is a note in Allingham’s Diary, dated July 29,
+1873: “Carlyle tells me he is ‘sitting’ <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>to Whistler. If C. makes signs
+of changing his position W. screams out in an agonised tone, ‘For God’s
+sake, don’t move!’ C. afterwards said that all W.’s anxiety seemed to be
+to get the <i>coat</i> painted to ideal perfection; the face went for little.
+He had begun by asking two or three sittings, but managed to get a great
+many. At last C. flatly rebelled. He used to define W. as the most absurd
+creature on the face of the earth.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img68.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">WHISTLER. 96 CHEYNE WALK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>Whilst he was at 96 Cheyne Walk, Whistler brought his famous libel action
+against Ruskin, won it, but was awarded only a farthing damages, and had
+to pay his own costs. During the progress of the suit he was having the
+White House built for him in Tite Street, Chelsea, but the payment of his
+law costs so crippled him that he had to sell it before it was ready for
+occupation, and to sell off also the furniture and effects of his Cheyne
+Walk home.</p>
+
+<p>None of these things seem, however, to have affected Whistler with worse
+than a temporary irritation. He wrote jestingly over his door: “Except the
+Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. E. W. Godwin,
+F.S.A., built this one;� turned his back upon the scenes of his recent
+disasters, and went to Venice. After rather more than a year of absence,
+he returned to London in the winter of 1880, stayed with his brother in
+Wimpole Street, put up at divers lodgings, had an exhibition in Bond
+Street, and in May 1881 took a studio at 13 Tite Street, Chelsea, and
+began to be the most talked-of man of the day. “He filled the papers with
+letters,� write Mr. and Mrs. Pennell. “London echoed with his laugh. His
+white lock stood up defiantly above<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> his curls; his cane lengthened; a
+series of collars sprang from his long overcoat; his hat had a curlier
+brim, a lower tilt over his eyes; he invented amazing costumes.... He was
+known to pay calls with the long bamboo stick in his hand and pink bows on
+his shoes. He allowed no break in the gossip. The carriages brought
+crowds, but not sitters. Few would sit to him before the trial; after it
+there were fewer. In the seventies it needed courage to be painted by
+Whistler; now it was to risk notoriety and ridicule.� When Mr. Pennell
+first saw him at 13 Tite Street, in July 1884, “he was all in white, his
+waistcoat had long sleeves, and every minute it seemed as if he must begin
+to juggle with glasses. For, to be honest, my first impression was of a
+bar-keeper strayed from a Philadelphia saloon into a Chelsea studio. Never
+had I seen such thick, black, curling hair. But in the midst was the white
+lock, and keen, brilliant eyes flashed at me from under the thick, bushy
+eyebrows.�</p>
+
+<p>From Tite Street, Whistler presently removed to 454 Fulham Road; thence to
+The Vale, Chelsea, a pleasant quarter which was a year or two ago wiped
+off the face of the earth; and in 1890 he was back again in Cheyne Walk,
+at No. 21. “I remember a striking remark of Whistler’s at a garden-party
+in his Chelsea house,� says M. Gerard Harry, who was one of Whistler’s
+guests at No. 21. “As he caught me observing some incompletely furnished
+rooms and questioning within myself whether he had occupied the house more
+than a fortnight or so: ‘You see,’ he said, with his short laugh, ‘I do
+not care for definitely settling down anywhere. Where there is no more
+space for improvement, or dreaming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> about improvement, where mystery is in
+perfect shape, it is <i>finis</i>&mdash;the end&mdash;death. There is no hope nor outlook
+left.’ I do not vouch for the words, but that was certainly the sense of a
+remark which struck me as offering a key to much of Whistler’s philosophy,
+and to one aspect of his original art.�</p>
+
+<p>By 1892, in spite of himself and his fantastic and silly posings and
+posturings, the world had learned to take his art seriously instead of
+taking him so, and when he went away that year to live in Paris his
+greatness as a painter had become pretty generally recognised. In 1894 he
+came back to London with his wife, who was dying of cancer, and after her
+death in 1896 he lived with friends or in lodgings, and had no settled
+home, until in 1902 he once again took a house in Cheyne Walk, this time
+No. 74, a house which stands below the street level; its front windows
+overlook the Thames, and it had a large studio at the back. Here Mrs. and
+Miss Birnie Philip went to share house with him, for his health was
+breaking, and he was in need of companionship and attention. But there
+were good intervals, when he was able to work with all his old eagerness
+and energy. “We knew on seeing him when he was not so well,� say Mr. and
+Mrs. Pennell, “for his costume of invalid remained original. He clung to a
+fur-lined overcoat worn into shabbiness. In his younger years he had
+objected to a dressing-gown as an unmanly concession; apparently he had
+not outgrown the objection, and on his bad days this shabby, worn-out
+overcoat was its substitute. Nor did the studio seem the most comfortable
+place for a man so ill as he was. It was bare, with little furniture, as
+his studios always were, and he had not used<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> it enough to give it the air
+of a workshop. The whole house showed that illness was reigning there.�
+Trays and odds and ends of the sickroom lay about the hall; papers, books,
+and miscellaneous litter made the drawing-room and dining-room look
+disorderly. “When we saw Whistler in his big, shabby overcoat shuffling
+about the huge studio, he struck us as so old, so feeble and fragile, that
+we could imagine no sadder or more tragic figure. It was the more tragic
+because he had always been such a dandy, a word he would have been the
+first to use in reference to himself.... No one would have suspected the
+dandy in this forlorn little old man, wrapped in a worn overcoat, hardly
+able to walk.�</p>
+
+<p>He lingered thus for about a year; then the end came suddenly. On the 14th
+July 1903, Mrs. Pennell found him dressed and in his studio. “He seemed
+better, though his face was sunken, and in his eyes was that terrible
+vagueness. Now he talked, and a touch of gallantry was in his greeting, ‘I
+wish I felt as well as you look.’ He asked about Henley, the news of whose
+death had come a day or two before.... There was a return of vigour in his
+voice when Miss Birnie Philip brought him a cup of chicken broth, and he
+cried, ‘Take the damned thing away,’ and his old charm was in the apology
+that followed, but, he said, if he ate every half-hour or so, as the
+doctor wanted, how could he be expected to have an appetite for dinner? He
+dozed a little, but woke up quickly with a show of interest in
+everything.� But on the evening of the 17th, he suddenly collapsed, and
+was dead before the doctor could be fetched to him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img69.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">TURNER’S HOUSE. CHEYNE WALK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Turner’s last days in this same Cheyne Walk were <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>almost as sad, almost
+as piteous as Whistler’s, but there is a haze of mystery about them, as
+there is about some of his paintings, and he had no butterfly past of
+dandyism to contrast painfully with the squalor of his ending. Born over
+the barber’s shop kept by his father in Maiden Lane, Strand, he mounted to
+the seats of the immortals without acquiring by the way any taste for
+personal adornment, or for the elegancies or little prettinesses so
+beloved by little artists in his home surroundings. His soul was like a
+star, and could not make its heaven among the dainty chairs and tables and
+nice wall and mantelpiece ornaments of the drawing-room. On Stothard’s
+advice (Stothard being one of the customers at the shaving shop) Turner’s
+father made him an artist; he studied under Sir Joshua Reynolds, and
+later, Blake was one of his pupils. Growing in reputation, he lived by
+turns in Harley Street, at Hammersmith, at Twickenham, and is described in
+middle age as bluff and rough-mannered, and looking “the very moral of a
+master carpenter, with lobster-red face, twinkling staring grey eyes,
+white tie, blue coat with brass buttons, crab-shell turned-up boots, large
+fluffy hat, and enormous umbrella.� From about 1815 onwards, he had a
+house that is no longer standing at 47 Queen Anne Street, Harley Street,
+and here, in 1843, when Turner was sixty-eight, a Mr. Hammersley called on
+him and has described (I quote from Mr. Lewis Hind’s <i>Turner’s Golden
+Visions</i>) how he “heard the shambling, slippered footstep coming down the
+stairs, the cold, cheerless room, the gallery, even less tidy and more
+forlorn, all confusion, mouldiness, and wretched litter; most of the
+pictures covered with uncleanly sheets,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> and the man! his loose dress, his
+ragged hair, his indifferent quiet&mdash;all, indeed, that went to make his
+physique and some of his mind; but above all I saw, felt (and feel still)
+his penetrating grey eye.�</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere between 1847 and 1848 Turner strangely disappeared from his
+customary haunts; his Queen Anne Street house was closed, the door kept
+locked, and his old housekeeper, Hannah Danby, could only assure anybody
+who came that he was not there, and that she simply did not know where he
+had gone. For the next four years or so, until he was dying, no one
+succeeded in discovering his hiding-place. Now and then, in the meantime,
+he would appear in a friend’s studio, or would be met with at one of the
+Galleries, but he offered no explanation of his curious behaviour, and
+allowed no one to obtain any clue to his whereabouts. He went in 1850 to a
+dinner given by David Roberts, and was in good spirits, and bubbling over
+with laborious jokes. “Turner afterwards, in Roberts’s absence, took the
+chair, and, at Stanfield’s request, proposed Roberts’s health, which he
+did, speaking hurriedly, but soon ran short of words and breath, and
+dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again and
+finishing with a ‘Hip, hip, hurrah!’... Turner was the last who left, and
+Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a cab. When the cab drove
+up, he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and asked where he
+should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to be caught, and, with
+a knowing wink, replied, ‘Tell him to drive to Oxford Street, and then
+I’ll direct him where to go.’�</p>
+
+<p>The fact is he was living at Cremorne Cottage,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> 119 Cheyne Walk. He was
+living there anonymously; a Mrs. Booth, whom he had known many years
+before when he stayed at her Margate boarding-house, was keeping house for
+him, and he was known in the neighbourhood as Admiral Booth, a rumour
+having got about that he was a retired naval officer fallen on evil days.
+This was the time of which the father of the Greaves boys had spoken to
+Whistler&mdash;the days when Mrs. Booth used to come with Turner to the
+waterside and he would row them over to Battersea. Though all his greatest
+work was finished, Turner painted several pictures here; he frequently
+rose at daybreak, and, wrapped in a blanket or a dressing-gown, stood out
+on the roof, leaning over the railing to watch the sunrise and the play of
+light on the river opposite. He used the room on the second floor as his
+studio, and in that room, on the 19th December 1851, he died. Some months
+before his death, he was seen at the Royal Academy’s private view; then,
+tardily responding to a letter of friendly reproach that David Roberts had
+addressed to him at Queen Anne Street, he came to Roberts’s studio in
+Fitzroy Square. He was “broken and ailing,� and had been touched by
+Roberts’s appeal, but as for disclosing his residence&mdash;“You must not ask
+me,� he said; “but whenever I come to town I will always come to see you.�
+When Roberts tried to cheer him, he laid his hand on his heart and
+murmured, “No, no! There is something here that is all wrong.�</p>
+
+<p>His illness increasing on him, he wrote to Margate for Dr. Price, an old
+acquaintance of his and Mrs. Booth’s, and Price, coming up, examined him
+and told him there was no hope of his recovery. “Go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> downstairs,� he urged
+the doctor, “take a glass of sherry, and then look at me again.� But a
+second examination only confirmed Dr. Price in his opinion.</p>
+
+<p>It must have been at this juncture that Turner’s hiding-place was
+discovered. His Queen Anne Street housekeeper, Hannah Danby, found a
+letter left in the pocket of one of his old coats, and this gave the
+Chelsea address. She went with another woman and made inquiries round
+about Cheyne Walk till it was clear enough to her that the Mr. Booth to
+whom that letter was directed was none other than Turner, and acting on
+her information Mr. Harpur, Turner’s executor, journeyed at once to
+Chelsea, and arrived at 119 Cheyne Walk to find Turner sinking fast.
+Towards sunset, on that wintry day of his dying, he asked Mrs. Booth to
+wheel him to the window, and so gazing out on the wonder of the darkening
+sky he passed quietly away with his head on her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>A certain John Pye, a Chelsea engraver, afterwards interviewed the owner
+of No. 119, and learned from him that Turner and Mrs. Booth had, some four
+or five years before, called and taken the house of him, paying their rent
+in advance because they objected to giving any names or references. Pye
+also saw Mrs. Booth, and says she was a woman of fifty, illiterate, but
+“good-looking and kindly-mannered.� Turner had used to call her “old ’un,�
+she said, and she called him “dear�; and she explained that she had first
+got acquainted with him when, more than twenty years ago, “he became her
+lodger near the Custom House at Margate.� So small was the shabby little
+house in Cheyne Walk that the undertakers were unable to carry the coffin
+up the narrow staircase, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> had to carry the body down to it. Nowadays,
+the house has been enlarged; it and the house next door have been thrown
+into one, otherwise it has undergone little change since Turner knew it.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Turner was thus passing out of life in Cheyne Walk, Carlyle was
+dwelling near by at No. 24 (then No. 5) Cheyne Row, and had been resident
+there for seventeen years. On first coming to London in 1830, he and his
+wife lodged at 33 Ampton Street, Gray’s Inn Road. They spent, he says, “an
+interesting, cheery, and, in spite of poor arrangements, really pleasant
+winter� there; they had a “clean and decent pair of rooms,� and their
+landlord’s family consisted of “quiet, decent people.� He wrote his essay
+on Dr. Johnson whilst he was here, and was making a fruitless search for a
+publisher who would accept <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, which he had recently
+completed. Jeffrey called there several times to pass an afternoon with
+him, and John Stuart Mill was one other of the many visitors who found
+their way to the drab, unlovely, rather shabby street to chat with the
+dour, middle-aged Scotch philosopher, who was only just beginning to be
+heard of.</p>
+
+<p>He fixed on the Cheyne Row house in 1834, and, except for occasional
+holidays, never left it until his death forty-seven years afterwards. As
+soon as he was settled here Carlyle wrote to Sir William Hamilton, giving
+him his new address: “Our upholsterers, with all their rubbish and
+clippings, are at length swept handsomely out of doors. I have got my
+little book-press set up, my table fixed firm in its place, and sit here
+awaiting what Time and I, in our questionable wrestle, shall make out
+between us.�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> In another letter of about the same date he writes of it:
+“The street is flag-paved, sunk-storied, iron-railed, all old-fashioned
+and tightly done up, looks out on a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is,
+beheaded) lime trees standing there like giants in tawtie wigs (for the
+new boughs are still young); beyond this a high brick wall; backwards a
+garden, the size of our back one at Comely Bank, with trees, &amp;c., in bad
+culture; beyond this green hayfields and tree avenues, once a bishop’s
+pleasure grounds, an unpicturesque but rather cheerful outlook. The house
+itself is eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been
+all new painted and repaired; broadish stair, with massive balustrade (in
+the old style), corniced and as thick as one’s thigh; floors thick as
+rock, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanliness,
+and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor. Chelsea is a
+singular heterogeneous kind of spot, very dirty and confused in some
+places, quite beautiful in others, abounding in antiquities and the traces
+of great men&mdash;Sir Thomas More, Steele, Smollett, &amp;c. Our Row, which for
+the last three doors or so is a street and none of the noblest, runs out
+upon a Parade (perhaps they call it) running along the shore of the river,
+a broad highway with huge shady trees, boats lying moored, and a smell of
+shipping and tar.�</p>
+
+<p>A note in Allingham’s Diary (1860) offers you a very clear little picture
+of Carlyle’s garden here, as he saw it: “In Carlyle’s garden, some twenty
+yards by six; ivy at the end. Three or four lilac bushes; an ash stands on
+your left; a little copper beech on your right gives just an umbrella to
+sit under when the sun is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>hot; a vine or two on one wall, neighboured
+by a jasmine&mdash;one pear tree.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img70.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CARLYLE. AMPTON STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>In this Cheyne Row house Carlyle wrote all his books, except <i>Sartor</i> and
+some of the miscellaneous essays; here he entertained, not always very
+willingly or very graciously, most of the great men of his day; quarrelled
+with his neighbours furiously over the crowing of their cocks; was
+pestered by uninvited, admiring callers from all over the world; and had
+his room on the top floor furnished with double-windows that were supposed
+to render it sound-proof, but did not. Charles Boner, visiting 24 Cheyne
+Row in 1862, disturbed Carlyle as he sat in his dressing-gown and slippers
+correcting the proofs of his <i>Frederick the Great</i>, whilst Mrs. Carlyle
+remained in attendance, seated on a sofa by the fire.</p>
+
+<p>In 1866 Mrs. Carlyle died suddenly of heart failure, and left him burdened
+with remorse that he had not been kinder to her and made her life happier;
+and after two years of lonely living without her, he writes: “I am very
+idle here, very solitary, which I find to be oftenest less miserable to me
+than the common society that offers. Except Froude almost alone, whom I
+see once a week, there is hardly anybody whose talk, always polite, clear,
+sharp, and sincere, does me any considerable good.... I am too weak, too
+languid, too sad of heart, too unfit for any work, in fact, to care
+sufficiently for any object left me in the world to think of grappling
+round it and coercing it by work. A most sorry dog-kennel it oftenest all
+seems to me, and wise words, if one ever had them, to be only thrown away
+on it. Basta-basta, I for most part say of it, and look with longings
+towards the still country where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> at last we and our loved ones shall be
+together again.�</p>
+
+<p>You will get no better or more intimate glimpses into Carlyle’s home life
+than Allingham gives in his Diary. Sometimes they are merely casual and
+scrappy notes, at others fairly full records of his walks and talks with
+him, such as this: “<i>1873, April 28.</i>&mdash;At Carlyle’s house about three. He
+spent about fifteen minutes in trying to clear the stem of a long clay
+pipe with a brass wire, and in the end did not succeed. The pipe was new,
+but somehow obstructed. At last he sent for another one and smoked, and we
+got out at last. (I never saw him smoke in public.) He said Emerson had
+called on him on Sunday, and he meant to visit E. to-day at his lodging in
+Down Street. We walked to Hyde Park by Queen’s Gate, and westward along
+the broad walk, next to the ride, with the Serpentine a field distant on
+the left hand. This was a favourite route of his. I was well content to
+have the expectation of seeing Emerson again, and, moreover, Emerson and
+Carlyle together. We spoke of Masson’s <i>Life of Milton</i>, a volume of which
+was on C.’s table. He said Masson’s praise of Milton was exaggerated.
+‘Milton had a gift in poetry&mdash;of a particular kind. <i>Paradise Lost</i> is
+absurd; I never could take to it all&mdash;though now and again clouds of
+splendour rolled in upon the scene.’... At Hyde Park Corner, C. stopped
+and looked at the clock. ‘You are going to Down Street, sir?’ ‘No, it’s
+too late.’ ‘The place is close at hand.’ ‘No, no, it’s half-past five.’ So
+he headed for Knightsbridge, and soon after I helped him into a Chelsea
+omnibus, banning internally the clay pipe (value a halfpenny <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>farthing)
+through which this chance (perhaps the last, for Emerson is going away
+soon) was lost.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img71.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THOMAS CARLYLE</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>There are numerous entries in the Diary of visits and conversations of
+this sort. On October 18, 1879, Allingham called at Cheyne Row with his
+little son, and they met Carlyle coming out of the door to his carriage.
+On December 4, of the same year: “Helen and I to Cheyne Row. Carlyle’s
+eighty-fourth birthday. Mrs. Lecky there. Browning and Ruskin are gone. C.
+on his sofa by the window, warm and quiet, wearing a new purple and gold
+cap. Gifts of flowers on the table....� Some of the swift little
+word-sketches of Carlyle at this date, when he was very old, very feeble,
+and apt to be oppressed with gloom, are piteous and pathetic enough. On
+his eighty-fifth birthday (December 4, 1880) Allingham found him easier
+and more himself; but on Friday, December 24, you read: “To Carlyle’s at
+two. He was lying on the sofa in the drawing-room. When I spoke to him he
+held out his hand and shook hands with me, but said nothing. I was not
+sure that he knew me. A stout Scotch servant girl and I lifted him to his
+feet to go to the carriage. In the hall his heavy sealskin coat was put on
+with difficulty, and he was got into the carriage. Alick and I with him.
+We drove twice round Hyde Park. The old man dozed much.�</p>
+
+<p>Earlier that year, the two sons of Alexander Munro called at Cheyne Row,
+and in a letter home the elder of them gave a wonderfully poignant and
+living account of their visit. Munro, who was dead, had been one of
+Carlyle’s old friends, and the two boys were now at school at the
+Charterhouse. They were conducted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> upstairs, says the letter, to a
+well-lighted, cheerful apartment, and here “the maid went forward and said
+something to Carlyle, and left the room. He was sitting before a fire in
+an arm-chair, propped up with pillows, with his feet on a stool, and
+looked much older than I had expected. The lower part of his face was
+covered with a rather shaggy beard, almost quite white. His eyes were
+bright blue, but looked filmy from age. He had on a sort of coloured
+nightcap, and a long gown reaching to his ankles, and slippers on his
+feet. A rest attached to the arm of his chair supported a book before him.
+I could not quite see the name, but I think it was Channing’s works.
+Leaning against the fireplace was a long clay pipe, and there was a slight
+smell of tobacco in the room. We advanced and shook hands, and he invited
+us to sit down, and began, I think, by asking where we were living. He
+talked of our father affectionately, speaking in a low tone as if to
+himself, and stopping now and then for a moment and sighing.... He went
+on, ‘I am near the end of my course, and the sooner the better is my own
+feeling.’ He said he still reads a little, but has not many books he cares
+to read now, and is ‘continually disturbed by foolish interruptions from
+people who do not know the value of an old man’s leisure.’ His hands were
+very thin and wasted; he showed us how they shook and trembled unless he
+rested them on something, and said they were failing him from weakness.�
+And, at length, closing the interview, “‘Well, I’ll just bid you
+good-bye.’ We shook hands. He asked our names. He could not quite hear
+Henry’s at first. ‘I am a little deaf, but I can hear well enough
+talking,’ or words to that effect. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>‘I wish you God’s blessing;
+good-bye.’ We shook hands once more and went away. I was not at all shy.
+He seemed such a venerable old man, and so worn and old-looking, that I
+was very much affected. Our visit was on Tuesday, May 18, 1880, at about 2
+<span class="smcaplc">P.M.</span>�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img72.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CARLYLE’S HOUSE. CHEYNE ROW.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>He died in the following February; after lying motionless and seemingly
+unconscious for hours, he passed quietly soon after eight on the morning
+of February 5, 1881. His bed, says Allingham, had been brought down to the
+drawing-room (the front room on the first floor), and he rarely spoke in
+the last two or three weeks, not so much because he could not as because
+he did not seem to wish to say anything. Newspaper reporters were so
+continually ringing at the door, day and night, that bulletins had to be
+posted outside to prevent this. Now and then he appeared to wander in his
+mind, and when the Scotch maid, Mary, was attending upon him he would
+sometimes murmur, “Poor little woman,� as if he mistook her for his
+long-dead Jenny; and once, says Allingham, “he supposed the female hands
+that tended him, lifting his head, perhaps, to be those of his good old
+mother&mdash;‘Ah, mother, is it you?’ he murmured, or some such words. I think
+it was on the day before the last day that Mary heard him saying to
+himself, ‘So this is Death: well&mdash;&mdash;’�</p>
+
+<p>But the Cheyne Row house has many happy memories too, and I always think
+one of the happiest is that of how Leigh Hunt called once after a long
+absence, and brought with him word of some unexpected good news that so
+delighted Mrs. Carlyle that she impulsively ran to him and kissed him,
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> he went away to write that charming little rondeau that bids fair to
+outlive all his more ambitious poetry:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Jenny kissed me when we met,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Jumping from the chair she sat in;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Time, you thief, who love to get</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Sweets into your list, put that in:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Say that health and wealth have missed me,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Say I’m growing old&mdash;but add,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Jenny kissed me.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Leigh Hunt was turned fifty then, and was Carlyle’s neighbour, living at
+No. 10 (then No. 4) Upper Cheyne Row. I have seen it said that Leigh Hunt
+went there in order to be near Carlyle, but his occupancy of that house
+dates from 1833&mdash;the year before Carlyle established himself in
+Chelsea&mdash;and he remained there until 1840, seven years of poverty and
+worry, when it was literal truth that he was weary and sad, in indifferent
+health, harassed for want of money, and growing old, yet you find him
+never losing hope, and always ready on the smallest excuse to rejoice and
+make light of his troubles. I am afraid Dickens’s caricature of Hunt as
+Harold Skimpole, and Byron’s contemptuous references to his vanity and
+vulgarity and the squalor of his easy-going home life (his children, said
+Byron, “are dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos,� and writing of
+their arrival in Italy as Shelley’s guests he observes, “Poor Hunt, with
+his six little blackguards, are coming slowly up; as usual he turned back
+once&mdash;was there ever such a kraal out of the Hottentot country?�)&mdash;I am
+rather afraid these things have tended to wrong Hunt in our imagination of
+him, for you learn on other evidence that there is just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> enough truth in
+those representations of him to make them seem quite true, and they linger
+in your mind, and affect your regard and admiration of the man in spite of
+yourself. But Dickens, with his keen sense of the absurd, had a habit of
+exaggeration; there was no ill-nature in his laughter&mdash;he merely seized on
+certain of Hunt’s weaknesses and gave them to a character who has none of
+Hunt’s finer qualities, and it is ridiculous in us and unfair to both men
+to take that caricature as a portrait. As for Byron&mdash;he could not justly
+appraise Hunt, for he had no means of understanding him. His own way of
+life was made too easy for him from the first; he was not born to Hunt’s
+difficulties and disadvantages; his experiences of the world, and
+therefore his sympathies, were too limited. There is no merit in living
+elegantly and playing the gentleman when you simply inherit, as the fruits
+of an ancestor’s abilities, all the conveniences and the money that enable
+you to do so. On the whole, if you compare their lives, you will realise
+that Leigh Hunt was by far the greater man of the two, even if Byron was
+the greater poet, and I am more than a little inclined to agree with
+Charles Lamb that even as a poet Byron was “great in so little a way. To
+be a poet is to be the man, not a petty portion of occasional low passion
+worked up in a permanent form of humanity. Shakespeare has thrust such
+rubbishy feelings into a corner&mdash;the dark, dusty heart of Don John, in the
+<i>Much Ado about Nothing</i>.�</p>
+
+<p>Shelley never speaks of Leigh Hunt but in the kindliest terms. He was
+“gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave,� writes Shelley; “one of more
+exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> yet himself more
+free from evil; one of simpler and, in the highest sense of the word,
+purer life and manners, I never knew.� He is, he says in the <i>Letter to
+Maria Gisborne</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry"><span style="margin-left: 8em;">“One of those happy souls</span><br />
+Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom<br />
+This earth would smell like what it is&mdash;a tomb.�</p></div>
+
+<p>Hunt tells in his <i>Autobiography</i> how he came to Chelsea, and gives a
+glowing description of his house there. He left St. John’s Wood, and then
+his home in the New Road (now Marylebone Road), because he found the clay
+soil of the one and the lack of quiet around the other affected his
+health, or “perhaps it was only the melancholy state of our fortune� that
+was answerable for that result; anyhow, from the noise and dust of the New
+Road he removed to Upper Cheyne Row&mdash;“to a corner in Chelsea,� as he says,
+“where the air of the neighbouring river was so refreshing and the quiet
+of the ‘no-thoroughfare’ so full of repose, that although our fortunes
+were at their worst, and my health almost at a piece with them, I felt for
+some weeks as if I could sit still for ever, embalmed in silence. I got to
+like the very cries in the street, for making me the more aware of it by
+the contrast. I fancied they were unlike the cries in other quarters of
+the suburbs, and that they retained something of the old quaintness and
+melodiousness which procured them the reputation of having been composed
+by Purcell and others.... There was an old seller of fish, in particular,
+whose cry of ‘Shrimps as large as prawns’ was such a regular, long-drawn,
+and truly pleasing melody that, in spite of his hoarse and, I am
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>afraid, drunken voice, I used to wish for it of an evening, and hail it
+when it came....</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img73.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LEIGH HUNT’S HOUSE. CHELSEA.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>“I know not whether the corner I speak of remains as quiet as it was. I am
+afraid not; for steamboats have carried vicissitude into Chelsea, and
+Belgravia threatens it with her mighty advent. But to complete my sense of
+repose and distance, the house was of that old-fashioned sort which I have
+always loved best, familiar to the eyes of my parents, and associated with
+childhood. It had seats in the windows, a small third room on the first
+floor, of which I made a sanctum, into which no perturbation was to enter,
+except to calm itself with religious and cheerful thoughts; and there were
+a few limes in front which, in their due season, diffused a fragrance. In
+this house we remained seven years; in the course of which, besides
+contributing some articles to the <i>Edinburgh</i> and <i>Westminster Reviews</i>,
+and producing a good deal of the book since called <i>The Town</i>, I set up
+(in 1834) the <i>London Journal</i>, endeavoured to continue the <i>Monthly
+Repository</i>, and wrote the poem entitled <i>Captain Sword and Captain Pen</i>,
+the <i>Legend of Florence</i>, and three other plays. Here also I became
+acquainted with Thomas Carlyle, one of the kindest and best, as well as
+most eloquent of men.... I believe that what Mr. Carlyle loves better than
+his fault-finding, with all its eloquence, is the face of any human
+creature that looks suffering, and loving, and sincere; and I believe
+further that if the fellow-creature were suffering only, and neither
+loving nor sincere, but had come to a pass of agony in this life which put
+him at the mercies of some good man for some last help and consolation
+towards his grave, even at the risk of loss to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> repute and a sure amount
+of pain and vexation, that man, if the groan reached him in its
+forlornness, would be Thomas Carlyle.�</p>
+
+<p>He wrote that from his personal experience of Carlyle, for whilst they
+were neighbours at Chelsea they frequently visited each other; and
+Carlyle, on his part, saw the worst as well as the best of him, from the
+inside, and was too large-minded and too big a man to judge him by his
+faults and follies only. He saw how Hunt worked, all the while haunted by
+pecuniary distresses; unpaid tradesmen knocking at his door and worrying
+for their debts; once an execution in the house; now and then faced with
+the humiliation of having to ask for loans of a few shillings to buy the
+family dinner; his children almost in rags, and himself, as he said
+bitterly, slighted and neglected by editors and the public, and
+“carelessly, over-familiarly, or even superciliously treated, pitied or
+patronised by his inferiors.� Carlyle had known poverty and neglect
+himself; he was fitted to judge Hunt understandingly, and he judged him
+justly. “Leigh Hunt was a fine kind of man,� he told Allingham in 1868.
+“Some used to talk of him as a frivolous fellow, but when I saw him I
+found he had a face as serious as death.� In his Diary he noted, “Hunt is
+always ready to go and walk with me, or sit and talk with me to all
+lengths if I want him. He comes in once a week (when invited, for he is
+very modest), takes a cup of tea, and sits discoursing in his brisk,
+fanciful way till supper time, and then cheerfully eats a cup of porridge
+(to sugar only), which he praises to the skies, and vows he will make his
+supper of it at home.�</p>
+
+<p>It was Mrs. Carlyle who was severe about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> Hunts’ untidy and uncleanly
+household, and complained of the domestic utensils they borrowed and
+failed to return, but Carlyle took the position in a more genial spirit,
+and saw the pity of it and the humour of it also. “Hunt’s house,� he wrote
+after one of his visits to No. 10 Upper Cheyne Row, “excels all you have
+ever read of&mdash;a poetical Tinkerdom without parallel even in literature. In
+his family room, where are a sickly, large wife and a whole school of
+well-conditioned wild children, you will find half-a-dozen old rickety
+chairs gathered from half-a-dozen different hucksters, and all seemingly
+engaged, and just pausing, in a violent hornpipe. On these and around them
+and over the dusty table and ragged carpet lie all kinds of litter&mdash;books,
+papers, egg-shells, scissors, and last night when I was there the torn
+heart of a quartern loaf. His own room above stairs, into which alone I
+strive to enter, he keeps cleaner. It has only two chairs, a bookcase, and
+a writing-table; yet the noble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom in the
+spirit of a king, apologises for nothing, places you in the best seat,
+takes a window-sill himself if there is no other, and then folding closer
+his loose-flowing ‘muslin cloud’ of a printed nightgown in which he always
+writes, commences the liveliest dialogue on philosophy and the prospects
+of man (who is to be beyond measure ‘happy’ yet); which again he will
+courteously terminate the moment you are bound to go. A most interesting,
+pitiable, lovable man, to be used kindly, but with discretion.�</p>
+
+<p>Hunt departed from Chelsea, with all his anxieties, in 1840, and took up
+residence at 32 Edwardes Square, Kensington, where he got through with a
+great deal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> of work, and one way and another was secured at last above his
+financial embarrassments. Dickens, Jerrold, Forster and some other friends
+raised £900 for him by a benefit performance of <i>Every Man in his Humour</i>;
+the Government granted him two sums of £200, and then a Civil List Pension
+of £200 a year, to the obtaining of which Carlyle readily lent all his
+influence. Moreover, the Shelley family settled an annuity of £120 upon
+him. But, with all these material advantages, came the death of his wife
+and one of his sons. “She was as uncomplaining during the worst storms of
+our adversity,� Hunt wrote of his wife, reminiscently, “as she was during
+those at sea in our Italian voyage.�</p>
+
+<p>He was an old and rather solitary man when he moved from Kensington in
+1853 and went to 7 Cornwall Road, now known as 16 Rowan Road, Hammersmith
+Road, but he had an ample and sure income, and was no longer haunted by
+duns, if he could not indulge in much in the way of luxury. When Nathaniel
+Hawthorne was in England he went to see him at Hammersmith, and found the
+house in Rowan Road plain, small, shabby, Hunt’s little study cheaply
+papered, sparely carpeted, and furnished meanly, and Hunt himself “a
+beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress
+coat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the
+gentlest and most naturally courteous manner.� At Rowan Road he wrote most
+of his <i>Old Court Suburb</i>, in the preface to a recent edition of which Mr.
+Austin Dobson says of the Leigh Hunt of those closing days, “He was still
+the old sensitive, luminous-eyed Leigh Hunt of the wide collar and
+floating printed nightgown, delighted with a flower or a bird or a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+butterfly; but Time had snowed upon his pericranium, and to his breezy
+<i>robe de chambre</i> he had added, or was about to add, a protective cape,
+more or less ample, of faded black silk, which gave him the air (says John
+Forster) of an old French Abbé.� He died away from home in 1859, whilst he
+was on a short visit to a relative at Putney.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img74.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LEIGH HUNT. 16 ROWAN ROAD. HAMMERSMITH.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<p class="title">THACKERAY</p>
+
+
+<p>No other literary Londoner has taken root as Carlyle did in Cheyne Row and
+remained for nearly half a century without once changing his address.
+Thackeray shifted about from place to place nearly as much as most of
+them. He went to school at the Charterhouse, and for a year or two had
+lodgings over a shop in Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell; in the first years
+after his marriage he lived in Albion Street; he had chambers in the
+Temple, at Hare Court, in Crown Office Row, and at Brick Court. <i>The Paris
+Sketch Book</i> was written whilst he was living at 13 Great Coram Street, in
+1840, and it was there that his wife began to suffer from the sad mental
+disorder that was presently to take her from him for the rest of his days.
+In August 1846 he gave up his lodgings in St. James’s Chambers, and drew
+his broken home life together again at 16 Young Street, Kensington. “I am
+beginning to count the days now till you come,� he wrote to his mother,
+with whom his two little daughters were staying in Paris; “and I have got
+the rooms all ready in the rough, all but a couple of bedsteads, and a few
+etceteras, which fall into their place in a day or two. As usual, I am
+full of business and racket, working every day, and yet not advancing
+somehow.� He was industriously turning out drawings and jokes <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>and
+articles and verses for <i>Punch</i> and <i>Fraser’s Magazine</i>, and hard at work
+on the great novel that was to make him famous&mdash;<i>Vanity Fair</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img75.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THE CHARTERHOUSE. FROM THE SQUARE.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>“It was not till late in the autumn that we came to live with my father in
+Kensington,� writes Lady Ritchie, in one of her delightful prefaces to the
+Centenary Edition of Thackeray’s works. “We had been at Paris with our
+grandparents&mdash;while he was at work in London. It was a dark, wintry
+evening. The fires were lighted, the servants were engaged, Eliza&mdash;what
+family would be complete without its Eliza?&mdash;was in waiting to show us our
+rooms. He was away; he had not expected us so early. We saw the
+drawing-room, the empty study; there was the feeling of London&mdash;London
+smelt of tobacco, we thought; we stared out through the uncurtained
+windows at the dark garden behind; and then, climbing the stairs, we
+looked in at his bedroom door, and came to our own rooms above it.... Once
+more, after his first happy married years, my father had a home and a
+family&mdash;if a house, two young children, three servants, and a little black
+cat can be called a family. My grandmother, who had brought us over to
+England, returned to her husband in Paris; but her mother, an old lady
+wrapped in Indian shawls, presently came to live with us, and divided her
+time between Kensington and the Champs Elysees until 1848, when she died
+at Paris.�</p>
+
+<p>Thackeray’s first name for <i>Vanity Fair</i> was <i>Pencil Sketches of English
+Society</i>. He offered the opening chapters of it under that title to
+Colburn for his <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>. Thereafter he seems to have
+reshaped the novel and renamed it, and even then had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> difficulty to find a
+publisher. At length, Messrs. Bradbury &amp; Evans accepted it, and it was
+arranged that it should be published after the manner that Dickens had
+already rendered popular&mdash;in monthly parts; and the first part duly
+appeared on the 1st January 1847, in the familiar yellow wrappers that
+served to distinguish Thackeray’s serials from the green-covered serials
+of Dickens. But the sales of the first half-dozen numbers were by no means
+satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p>“I still remember,� writes Lady Ritchie, “going along Kensington Gardens
+with my sister and our nursemaid, carrying a parcel of yellow numbers
+which had been given us to take to some friend who lived across the Park;
+and as we walked along, somewhere near the gates of the gardens we met my
+father, who asked us what we were carrying. Then somehow he seemed vexed
+and troubled, told us not to go on, and to take the parcel home. Then he
+changed his mind, saying that if his grandmother wished it, the books had
+best be conveyed; but we guessed, as children do, that something was
+seriously amiss. The sale of <i>Vanity Fair</i> was so small that it was a
+question at the time whether its publication should not be discontinued
+altogether.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img76.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THACKERAY’S HOUSE. KENSINGTON.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>At that critical juncture he published <i>Mrs. Perkins’s Ball</i>, which caught
+on at once, and this and a favourable review in the <i>Edinburgh</i> are
+supposed to have sent the public after the novel, for the sales of <i>Vanity
+Fair</i> rapidly increased, and the monthly numbers were soon selling briskly
+enough to satisfy even the publishers, and so in his thirty-seventh year
+Thackeray found himself famous. James Hannay <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>first saw him when the
+book was still unfinished but its success assured. He says that Thackeray
+pointed out to him the house in Russell Square “where the imaginary
+Sedleys lived,� and that when he congratulated him on that scene in
+<i>Vanity Fair</i> in which Becky Sharp cannot help feeling proud of her
+husband whilst he is giving Lord Steyne the thrashing that must ruin all
+her own chances, Thackeray answered frankly, “Well, when I wrote that
+sentence I slapped my fist on the table and said, ‘That is a touch of
+genius!’� Which reminds one of the story told by Ticknor Fields of how,
+when he was making a pilgrimage around London with Thackeray in later
+years, and they paused outside 16 Young Street, which was no longer his
+home, the novelist cried with a melodramatic gesture, “Go down on your
+knees, you rogue, for here <i>Vanity Fair</i> was penned, and I will go down
+with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself!�</p>
+
+<p>His letters of 1847 and the early half of 1848 are full of references to
+the strenuous toil with which he is writing his monthly instalments of
+<i>Vanity Fair</i>, and in one of them, to Edward Fitzgerald, he mentions that
+he is giving a party: “Mrs. Dickens and Miss Hogarth made me give it, and
+I am in a great fright.� Perhaps that was the famous party to which
+Charlotte Brontë, Carlyle and his wife, and other of his great
+contemporaries came, and things went wrong, and he became so uncomfortable
+that he fairly bolted from his guests, and went to spend the rest of the
+evening at the Garrick Club.</p>
+
+<p><i>Pendennis</i> was written at the Young Street house, and Thackeray put a
+good deal of himself into that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> hero of his. Pen had chambers at Lamb
+Building, in the Temple, and there is some likeness between his early
+journalistic experiences and Thackeray’s own. The opening chapters of
+<i>Pendennis</i>, though, were written at Spa. Thackeray had wanted to get away
+to some seaside place where he could set to work on his new book, and had
+asked his mother, who was going to Brighton, if she could not get a house
+for £60 that would have three spare rooms in it for him. “As for the
+dignity, I don’t believe it matters a pinch of snuff. Tom Carlyle lives in
+perfect dignity in a little £40 house at Chelsea, with a snuffy Scotch
+maid to open the door, and the best company in England ringing at it. It
+is only the second or third chop great folks who care about show.�</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Pendennis</i> there is an allusion to Catherine Hayes, the dreadful
+heroine of Thackeray’s <i>Catherine</i>, that had been published a few years
+before, and a hot-tempered young Irishman, believing the reference was to
+Miss Catherine Hayes, the Irish vocalist, chivalrously came over to
+England, took lodgings opposite Thackeray’s house in Young Street, and
+sent him a warning letter that he was on the watch for him to come out of
+doors, and intended to administer public chastisement by way of avenging
+Miss Hayes’s injured honour. After getting through his morning’s work,
+Thackeray felt the position was intolerable, so he walked straightway out
+across the road, knocked at the opposite door, and boldly bearded the lion
+in his den. The young Irishman was disposed to bluster and be obstinate,
+but Thackeray explained matters, calmed him, convinced him that he had
+made a mistake, parted from him amicably, and had the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> satisfaction of
+seeing the young fire-eater come forth on his way back home that evening.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img77.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">W. M. THACKERAY</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Writing of <i>Pendennis</i>, Lady Ritchie says, “I can remember the morning
+Helen died. My father was in his study in Young Street, sitting at the
+table at which he wrote. It stood in the middle of the room, and he used
+to sit facing the door. I was going into the room, but he motioned me
+away. An hour afterwards he came into our schoolroom, half laughing and
+half ashamed, and said to us, ‘I do not know what James can have thought
+of me when he came in with the tax-gatherer just after you left and found
+me blubbering over Helen Pendennis’s death.’�</p>
+
+<p>At Young Street, Thackeray wrote also his <i>Lectures on the English
+Humorists</i>, and having delivered them with gratifying success at Willis’s
+Rooms, he journeyed to America in 1852, and was even more successful with
+them there. Meanwhile, he had written <i>Esmond</i>, and it was published in
+three volumes just before he left England. “Thackeray I saw for ten
+minutes,� Fitzgerald wrote to Frederick Tennyson concerning a flying visit
+he had paid to London; “he was just in the agony of finishing a novel,
+which has arisen out of the reading necessary for his lectures, and
+relates to those times&mdash;of Queen Anne, I mean. He will get £1000 for his
+novel; he was wanting to finish it and rush off to the Continent to shake
+off the fumes of it.� His two daughters, both now in their teens, were
+sent out to join their grandparents before he sailed for the States, and
+in a letter to Anne (Lady Ritchie) he explains his motive in crossing the
+Atlantic: “I must and will go to America, not because I want to, but
+because it is right I should secure some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> money against my death for your
+poor mother and you two girls.�</p>
+
+<p>There are several drawings made by Thackeray in those Young Street days of
+his daughters and himself, and one of his study at breakfast time, and
+here is a word-picture of the study given by Lady Ritchie in her preface
+to <i>Esmond</i>: “The vine shaded the two windows, which looked out upon the
+bit of garden and the medlar-tree, and the Spanish jasmines, of which the
+yellow flowers scented our old brick walls. I can remember the tortoise
+belonging to the boys next door crawling along the top of the wall where
+they had set it, and making its way between the jasmine sprigs.... Our
+garden was not tidy (though on one grand occasion a man came to mow the
+grass), but it was full of sweet things.... Lady Duff Gordon came to stay
+with us once (it was on that occasion that the grass was mowed), and she
+afterwards sent us some doves, which used to hang high up in a wicker cage
+from the windows of the schoolroom. The schoolroom was over my father’s
+bedroom, and his bedroom was over the study where he used to write, and
+they all looked to the garden and the sunsets.�</p>
+
+<p>On his return from the American lecturing, in 1853, when he had already
+made a beginning of <i>The Newcomes</i>, he gave up the Young Street house and
+moved to 36 Onslow Square, South Kensington (or Brompton, as it was called
+at that period); and during the seven years of his residence there he
+finished <i>The Newcomes</i>, wrote <i>The Four Georges</i>, <i>The Virginians</i>, many
+of the <i>Roundabout Papers</i>, began the writing of <i>Philip</i>, and founded and
+entered upon his duties as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> editor of the <i>Cornhill Magazine</i>. The front
+room on the second floor was his study.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img78.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">LAMB BUILDING. TEMPLE. FROM THE CLOISTERS.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>It was whilst Thackeray was living here that the quarrel occurred between
+him and Edmund Yates, who had contributed a smart personal article to
+<i>Town Talk</i>, on the 12th June 1858, in the course of which he wrote: “Mr.
+Thackeray is forty-six years old, though from the silvery whiteness of his
+hair he appears somewhat older. He is very tall, standing upwards of six
+feet two inches; and as he walks erect his height makes him conspicuous in
+every assembly. His face is bloodless, and not particularly expressive,
+but remarkable for the fracture of the bridge of the nose, the result of
+an accident in youth. He wears a small grey whisker, but otherwise is
+clean shaven. No one meeting him could fail to recognise in him a
+gentleman; his bearing is cold and uninviting, his style of conversation
+either openly cynical, or affectedly good-natured and benevolent; his
+<i>bonhomie</i> is forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched&mdash;but his
+appearance is invariably that of the cool, suave, well-bred gentleman who,
+whatever may be rankling within, suffers no surface display of his
+emotion.� He went on to discuss Thackeray’s work, and said unjustly of his
+lectures that in this country he flattered the aristocracy and in America
+he attacked it, the attacks being contained in <i>The Four Georges</i>, which
+“have been dead failures in England, though as literary compositions they
+are most excellent. Our own opinion is that his success is on the wane;
+his writings never were understood or appreciated even by the middle
+classes; the aristocracy have been alienated by his American onslaught<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> on
+their body, and the educated and refined are not sufficiently numerous to
+constitute an audience; moreover, there is a want of heart in all he
+writes which is not to be balanced by the most brilliant sarcasm.�</p>
+
+<p>The description of Thackeray’s personal appearance here is perhaps rather
+impertinently frank, but it is clever and pictorially good; for the
+rest&mdash;we who know now what a generous, kindly, almost too sentimentally
+tender heart throbbed within that husk of cynicism and sarcasm in which he
+protectively enfolded it, know that Yates was writing of what he did not
+understand. Unfortunately, however, Thackeray took him seriously, and
+wrote a letter of dignified but angry protest to him, especially against
+the imputation of insincerity when he spoke good-naturedly in private.
+“Had your remarks been written by a person unknown to me, I should have
+noticed them no more than other calumnies; but as we have shaken hands
+more than once and met hitherto on friendly terms, I am obliged to take
+notice of articles which I consider to be not offensive and unfriendly
+merely, but slanderous and untrue. We meet at a club where, before you
+were born, I believe, I and other gentlemen have been in the habit of
+talking without any idea that our conversation would supply paragraphs for
+professional vendors of ‘Literary Talk’; and I don’t remember that out of
+the club I have ever exchanged six words with you.�</p>
+
+<p>Yates replied, and “rather than have further correspondence with a writer
+of that character,� Thackeray put the letters before the committee of the
+Garrick Club, asking them to decide whether the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> publication of such an
+article as Yates had written was not intolerable in a society of gentlemen
+and fatal to the comfort of the club. The committee resolved that Yates
+must either apologise or resign his membership. Then Dickens, thinking the
+committee were exceeding their powers, intervened on Yates’s behalf; wrote
+to Thackeray in a conciliatory strain, and asked if any conference could
+be held between himself, as representing Yates, and some friend who should
+represent Thackeray, with a view to arriving at a friendly settlement of
+the unpleasantness. This apparently well-intentioned interference annoyed
+Thackeray; he curtly replied that he preferred to leave his interests in
+the hands of the club committee, and as a result he and Dickens were
+bitterly estranged. That the friendship between two such men should have
+been broken by such a petty incident was deplorable enough, but happily,
+only a few days before Thackeray’s death, they chanced to meet in the
+lobby of the Athenæum, and by a mutual impulse each offered his hand to
+the other, and the breach was healed.</p>
+
+<p>In 1862 Thackeray made his last change of address, and went to No. 2
+Palace Green, Kensington, a large and handsome house that he had built for
+himself. Some of his friends thought that in building it he had spent his
+money recklessly, but he did it in pursuance of the desire, that crops up
+so frequently in his correspondence, to make some provision for the future
+of his children; and when, after his death, it was sold for £2000 more
+than it had cost him, he was sufficiently justified. It was in this house
+that he finished <i>Philip</i>, and, having retired from the editing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> of the
+<i>Cornhill</i>, began to write <i>Denis Duval</i>, but died on Christmas Eve 1863,
+leaving it little more than well begun. When he was writing <i>Pendennis</i> he
+had been near death’s door, and ever since he had suffered from attacks of
+sickness almost every month. He was not well when his valet left him at
+eleven on the night of the 23rd December; about midnight his mother, whose
+bedroom was immediately over his, heard him walking about his room; at
+nine next morning, when his valet went in with his coffee, he saw him
+“lying on his back quite still, with his arms spread over the coverlet,
+but he took no notice, as he was accustomed to see his master thus after
+one of his attacks.� Returning later, and finding the coffee untouched on
+the table beside the bed, he felt a sudden apprehension, and was horrified
+to discover that Thackeray was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Yates has told how the rumour of his death ran through the clubs and was
+soon all about the town, and of how, wherever it went, it left a cloud
+over everything that Christmas Eve; and I have just turned up one of my
+old <i>Cornhill</i> volumes to read again what Dickens and Trollope wrote of
+him in the number for February 1864. “I saw him first,� says Dickens,
+“nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to be the illustrator of
+my earliest book. I saw him last, shortly before Christmas, at the
+Athenæum Club, when he told me that he had been in bed three days&mdash;that
+after these attacks he was troubled with cold shiverings, ‘which quite
+took the power of work out of him’&mdash;and that he had it in his mind to try
+a new remedy, which he laughingly described. He was very cheerful, and
+looked very bright. In the night of that day week, he died.�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> Dickens goes
+on to give little instances of his kindness, of his great and good nature;
+and then describes how he was found lying dead. “He was only in his
+fifty-third year; so young a man that the mother who blessed him in his
+first sleep blessed him in his last.� And says Trollope, no one is
+thinking just then of the greatness of his work&mdash;“The fine grey head, the
+dear face with its gentle smile, the sweet, manly voice which we knew so
+well, with its few words of kindest greeting; the gait and manner, the
+personal presence of him whom it so delighted us to encounter in our
+casual comings and goings about the town&mdash;it is of these things, and of
+these things lost for ever, that we are now thinking. We think of them as
+treasures which are not only lost, but which can never be replaced. He who
+knew Thackeray will have a vacancy in his heart’s inmost casket which must
+remain vacant till he dies. One loved him almost as one loves a woman,
+tenderly and with thoughtfulness&mdash;thinking of him when away from him as a
+source of joy which cannot be analysed, but is full of comfort. One who
+loved him, loved him thus because his heart was tender, as is the heart of
+a woman.�</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<p class="title">DICKENS</p>
+
+
+<p>Thackeray’s London was practically bounded on the east by the Temple, or
+perhaps by the Fleet Prison, which lay a little beyond the <i>Punch</i> office;
+it took in the Strand, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and stretched out westward
+round Belgravia, Mayfair, Chiswick, and such selecter quarters of the
+town. But Dickens made the whole of London his province; you cannot go
+into any part of it but he has been there before you; if he did not at one
+time live there himself, some of his characters did. Go north through
+Somers Town and Camden Town: the homes of his boyhood were there in Bayham
+Street, in Little College Street, in the house that still stands at 13
+Johnson Street, from which he walked daily to school at the Wellington
+House Academy in Hampstead Road. He lived in Cleveland Street, Fitzroy
+Square, and in Fitzroy Street, and whilst his father was a prisoner in the
+Marshalsea for debt and he himself was labelling bottles at the blacking
+factory in Hungerford Market, he had lodgings south of London Bridge in
+Lant Street, which were the originals of the lodgings he gave to Bob
+Sawyer in later years when he came to write <i>Pickwick</i>. When he was turned
+twenty, and working as a Parliamentary reporter in the House of Commons,
+and beginning to contribute his <i>Sketches by Boz</i> to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> <i>Monthly
+Magazine</i>, he lived at 18 Bentinck Street, Cavendish Square. For a time he
+had lodgings in Buckingham Street, Strand, and afterwards lodged David
+Copperfield in the same rooms; he put up for a short time at Fulham before
+his marriage at St. Luke’s Church, Chelsea, in April 1836, and after a
+brief honeymoon returned with his wife to the chambers in Furnival’s Inn
+that he had rented since the previous year. He had three other London
+houses during his more prosperous days; then he quitted the town and went
+to live at Gad’s Hill Place, where he died in 1870. But even after he was
+thus settled in Kent, he was continually up and down to the office of
+<i>Household Words</i>, in Wellington Street, Strand, and for some part of
+almost every year he occupied a succession of furnished houses round about
+Hyde Park.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img79.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">DICKENS. JOHNSON STREET. CAMDEN TOWN.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>A few months before his marriage he had started to write <i>Pickwick</i>, the
+first monthly part of which appeared in March 1836. Before the end of next
+month, Seymour, the artist who was illustrating that serial, having
+committed suicide, Thackeray went up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> to the Furnival’s Inn chambers with
+specimens of his drawings in the hope of becoming his successor, but
+Dickens rejected him in favour of Hablot K. Browne (“Phiz�), who also
+illustrated most of his subsequent books. He had published the <i>Sketches
+by Boz</i> in two volumes, illustrated by Cruikshank, had written two
+dramatic pieces that were very successfully produced at the St. James’s
+Theatre, had begun to edit <i>Bentley’s Miscellany</i>, and was writing <i>Oliver
+Twist</i> for it, before he left Furnival’s Inn and established his small
+household of his wife and their first son and his wife’s sister, Mary
+Hogarth, at 48 Doughty Street, Mecklenburgh Square.</p>
+
+<p>In later years Sala, who became one of Dickens’s principal contributors to
+<i>Household Words</i>, used to live in Mecklenburgh Square, and at different
+times Sidney Smith, Shirley Brooks, and Edmund Yates all lived in Doughty
+Street (Shirley Brooks was born there, at No. 52), but Doughty Street’s
+chief glory is that for the greater part of three years Dickens was the
+tenant of No. 48. George Henry Lewes called to see him there, and was
+perturbed to find that he had nothing on his bookshelves but three-volume
+novels and presentation copies of books of travel; clearly he was not much
+of a reader, and had never been a haunter of old bookstalls. But presently
+Dickens came in, says Lewes, “and his sunny presence quickly dispelled all
+misgivings. He was then, as to the last, a delightful companion, full of
+sagacity as well as animal spirits; but I came away more impressed with
+the fulness of life and energy than with any sense of distinction.�</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>Mrs. Cowden Clarke, who saw him in his Doughty Street days, speaks of him
+as “genial, bright, lively-spirited, pleasant-toned,� and says he “entered
+into conversation with a grace and charm that made it feel perfectly
+natural to be chatting and laughing as if we had known each other from
+childhood.� His eyes she describes as “large, dark blue, exquisitely
+shaped, fringed with magnificently long and thick lashes&mdash;they now swam in
+liquid, limpid suffusion, when tears started into them from a sense of
+humour or a sense of pathos, and now darted quick flashes of fire when
+some generous indignation at injustice, or some high-wrought feeling of
+admiration at magnanimity, or some sudden emotion of interest and
+excitement touched him. Swift-glancing, appreciative, rapidly observant,
+truly superb orbits they were, worthy of the other features in his manly,
+handsome face. The mouth was singularly mobile, full-lipped, well-shaped,
+and expressive; sensitive, nay restless, in its susceptibility to
+impressions that swayed him, or sentiment that moved him.� Which tallies
+sufficiently with Carlyle’s well-known description of him a few months
+later: “A fine little fellow, Boz, I think. Clear, blue, intelligent eyes,
+eyebrows that he arches amazingly; large, protrusive, rather loose mouth,
+a face of most extreme mobility which he shuttles about&mdash;eyebrows, eyes,
+mouth and all&mdash;in a very singular manner while speaking. Surmount this
+with a loose coil of common-coloured hair, and set it on a small, compact
+figure, very small, and dressed <i>â la</i> D’Orsay rather than well&mdash;this is
+Pickwick. For the rest, a quiet, shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems
+to guess pretty well what he is and what others are.�<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> Forster sketches
+his face at this same period with “the quickness, keenness, and practical
+power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several feature,
+that seemed to tell so little of a student and writer of books, and so
+much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and motion
+flashed from every part of it.� “It was as if made of steel,� said Mrs.
+Carlyle; and “What a face is his to meet in a drawing-room,� wrote Leigh
+Hunt. “It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings.�</p>
+
+<p>Dickens’s weakness, then and all his life through, was for something too
+dazzling and ornate in the way of personal adornment. We hear of a green
+overcoat with red cuffs. “His dress was florid,� says one who met him: “a
+satin cravat of the deepest blue relieved by embroideries, a green
+waistcoat with gold flowers, a dress coat with a velvet collar and satin
+facings, opulence of white cuff, rings in excess, made up a rather
+striking whole.� And there is a story of how, when an artist friend of
+both was presented by somebody with a too gaudy length of material, Wilkie
+Collins advised him to “Give it to Dickens&mdash;he’ll make a waistcoat out of
+it!�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img80.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">DICKENS’ HOUSE. DOUGHTY STREET.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>That jest belongs to a later year, but here you have a sufficiently vivid
+presentment of the man as he was when he could be seen passing in and out
+of the house in Doughty Street. He may have been dandified in appearance,
+but in all his other habits he was a hard and severely methodical worker.
+“His hours and days were spent by rule,� we are told. “He rose at a
+certain time, he retired at another, and though no precisian, it was not
+often that his arrangements <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>varied. His hours of writing were between
+breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to be done no
+temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. This order
+and regularity followed him through the day. His mind was essentially
+methodical, and in his long walks, in his recreations, in his labour, he
+was governed by rules laid down by himself, rules well studied beforehand
+and rarely departed from.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img81.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CHARLES DICKENS</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>His rise out of poverty and obscurity into affluence and fame makes a more
+wonderful story than that of how Byron woke one morning and found himself
+famous. For Dickens had everything against him. He was indifferently
+educated, had no social advantages, and no influential friends behind him.
+In 1835 he was an unknown young author, writing miscellaneous stories and
+sketches for the papers; by the end of 1836 everybody was reading and
+raving of and laughing over <i>Pickwick</i>, and he was the most talked-of
+novelist of the hour. “It sprang into a popularity that each part carried
+higher and higher,� says Forster, “until people at this time talked of
+nothing else, tradesmen recommended their goods by using its name, and its
+sale, outstripping at a bound that of all the most famous books of the
+century, had reached an almost fabulous number.� Judges, street boys, old
+and young in every class of life, devoured each month’s number directly it
+appeared, and looked forward impatiently to the next one. Carlyle told
+Forster that “an archdeacon, with his own venerable lips, repeated to me
+the other night a strange, profane story of a solemn clergyman who had
+been administering ghostly consolation to a sick person; having finished,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+satisfactorily as he thought, and got out of the room, he heard the sick
+person ejaculate: ‘Well, thank God, <i>Pickwick</i> will be out in ten days,
+any way!’�</p>
+
+<p>Dickens’s favourite recreation in those early years was riding, and
+frequently he would set out with Forster “at eleven in the morning for ‘a
+fifteen mile ride out, ditto in, and lunch on the road,’ with a wind-up of
+six o’clock dinner in Doughty Street.� Other times he would send a note
+round to Forster, who lived at 58 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and if he could be
+persuaded to come, as generally he could, they would set out for a brisk
+walk to Hampstead and over the Heath, and have “a red-hot chop for dinner
+and a glass of good wine� at Jack Straw’s Castle.</p>
+
+<p>His daughter Mamie was born in Doughty Street, and there the first great
+grief of his life completely overwhelmed him for a time, when his wife’s
+young sister, Mary Hogarth, died at the age of seventeen. There are
+several letters from that address in 1838 concerning his progress with
+<i>Oliver Twist</i>. In one, when he could not work, he says he is “sitting
+patiently at home waiting for Oliver Twist, who has not yet arrived.� In
+another he writes, “I worked pretty well last night&mdash;very well indeed; but
+although I did eleven close slips before half-past twelve I have four to
+write to close the chapter; and as I foolishly left them till this
+morning, have the steam to get up afresh.� “Hard at work still,� he writes
+to Forster in August 1838. “Nancy is no more. I showed what I had done to
+Kate last night, who is in an unspeakable ‘<i>state</i>’; from which and my own
+impression<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> I augur well. When I have sent Sykes to the devil I must have
+yours.� And “No, no,� he wrote again to Forster next month, “don’t, don’t
+let us ride till to-morrow, not having yet disposed of the Jew, who is
+such an out-and-outer that I don’t know what to make of him.� Then one
+evening Forster went to Doughty Street and sat in Dickens’s study and
+talked over the last chapter of <i>Oliver Twist</i> with him, and remained
+reading there whilst he wrote it.</p>
+
+<p>From Doughty Street Dickens and “Phiz� set out together on that journey
+into Yorkshire to see the notorious school that was to become famous as
+Squeers’s, and in due course there are letters from that street telling of
+the progress of <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>. Early in 1839 the letters tell of how
+he is house-hunting, and in the intervals working “at racehorse speed� on
+<i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, and near the end of the year he moved to 1 Devonshire
+Terrace, at the corner of Marylebone Road.</p>
+
+<p>The Doughty Street house remains as he left it, but 1 Devonshire Terrace
+has been rather considerably altered. The new residence was such a much
+more imposing one than the other that absurd rumours got about that he was
+lapsing into extravagance and living beyond his income, and “I perfectly
+remember,� writes Sala, “when he moved from his modest residence in
+Doughty Street to a much grander but still not very palatial house in
+Devonshire Terrace, an old gentleman calling one day upon my mother and
+telling her, with a grave countenance, that Dickens had pawned his plate,
+and had been waited upon for the last fortnight by bailiffs in livery.� It
+was about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> this time, too, that the <i>Quarterly</i> made its famous prediction
+that in the case of work such as Dickens was doing “an ephemeral
+popularity will be followed by an early oblivion.� But there was no ground
+for any of these fears. His life was a triumphal procession; he went
+forward from victory to victory. At Devonshire Terrace he wrote most of
+<i>Barnaby Rudge</i>: and the prototype of Grip, Barnaby’s raven, the special
+playmate of Dickens’s children, died there; from here he went on his first
+visit to America, and on his return, with intervals of holiday at
+Broadstairs, in Cornwall, and in Italy, wrote the <i>American Notes</i>,
+<i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, <i>The Chimes</i>, <i>The Cricket on the Hearth</i>, <i>Pictures
+from Italy</i>, <i>Dombey and Son</i>, and commenced the writing of <i>David
+Copperfield</i>. Whilst he was here, too, he was for a brief space the first
+editor of the <i>Daily News</i>, and in March 1850 opened his Wellington Street
+office and started <i>Household Words</i>. Incidentally, he was taking an
+active share in a dozen or more public movements; acting as chairman at
+meetings and dinners, managing and playing in private theatricals, writing
+miscellaneous articles for his new magazine, and attending closely to its
+business organisation. Never was a more strenuous literary worker, or one
+who brought more enthusiasm to whatever he undertook.</p>
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1851, in the flowing and rising tide of his prosperity,
+he removed to the now vanished Tavistock House, in Tavistock Square, and
+in the next six years, before his removal to Gad’s Hill, wrote <i>Bleak
+House</i>, <i>Hard Times</i>, and <i>Little Dorrit</i>, to say nothing of the numerous
+short stories and articles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> he contributed to <i>Household Words</i>, and began
+to give those public readings from his books that were in his last decade
+to occupy so much of his time, add so enormously to his income and his
+personal popularity, and play so sinister a part in the breaking down of
+his health and the shortening of his career.</p>
+
+<p>Writing immediately after Dickens’s death, Sala said that twenty years ago
+the face and form of Sir Robert Peel were familiar to almost everybody who
+passed him in the street, and “there were as few last week who would have
+been unable to point out the famous novelist, with his thought-lined face,
+his grizzled beard, his wondrous searching eyes, his bluff presence and
+swinging gait as, head aloft, he strode, now through crowded streets,
+looking seemingly neither to the right nor the left, but of a surety
+looking at and into everything&mdash;now at the myriad aspects of London life,
+the ever-changing raree-show, the endless roundabout, the infinite
+kaleidoscope of wealth and pauperism, of happiness and misery, of good and
+evil in this Babylon&mdash;now over the pleasant meads and breezy downs which
+stretched round his modest Kentish demesne hard by the hoary tower of
+Rochester.... Who had not heard him read, and who had not seen his
+photographs in the shop windows? The omnibus conductors knew him, the
+street boys knew him; and perhaps the locality where his recognition would
+have been least frequent&mdash;for all that he was a member of the Athenæum
+Club&mdash;was Pall Mall. Elsewhere he would make his appearance in the oddest
+places, and in the most inclement weather: in Ratcliff Highway, on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+Haverstock Hill, on Camberwell Green, in Gray’s Inn Lane, in the
+Wandsworth Road, at Hammersmith Broadway, in Norton Folgate, and at Kensal
+New Town.... His carriage was remarkably upright, his mien almost
+aggressive in its confidence&mdash;a bronzed, weatherworn, hardy man, with
+somewhat of a seaman’s air about him.� London folks would draw aside, he
+continues, “as the great writer&mdash;who seemed always to be walking a match
+against Thought&mdash;strode on, and, looking after him, say, ‘There goes
+Charles Dickens!’ The towering stature, the snowy locks, the glistening
+spectacles, the listless, slouching port, as that of a tired giant, of
+William Makepeace Thackeray were familiar enough likewise but,
+comparatively speaking, only to a select few. He belonged to Clubland, and
+was only to be seen sauntering there or in West End squares, or on his
+road to his beloved Kensington.... Thackeray in Houndsditch, Thackeray in
+Bethnal Green or at Camden Town, would have appeared anomalous ... but
+Charles Dickens, when in town, was ubiquitous.�</p>
+
+<p>There are statues in London of many smaller men, of many who mean little
+or nothing in particular to London, but there is none to Dickens, and
+perhaps he needs none. Little critics may decry him, but it makes no
+difference, it takes nothing from his immortality. “It is fatuous,� as
+Trollope said of his work, “to condemn that as deficient in art which has
+been so full of art as to captivate all men.� And to the thousands of us
+who know the people and the world that he created he is still ubiquitous
+in London here, even though he has his place for ever,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> as Swinburne says,
+among the stars and suns that we behold not:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Where stars and suns that we behold not burn,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Higher even than here, though highest was here thy place,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Love sees thy spirit laugh and speak and shine</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With Shakespeare and the soft bright soul of Sterne,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And Fielding’s kindliest might and Goldsmith’s grace;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Scarce one more loved or worthier love than thine.�</span></p></div>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<p class="title">CONCLUSION</p>
+
+
+<p>When I was writing of what remains to us of the London of Shakespeare, I
+might have mentioned the four-century-old gateway of Lincoln’s Inn, in
+Chancery Lane, that Ben Jonson helped to build, and close by which, at 24
+Old Buildings, Cromwell’s secretary, John Thurloe, lived in 1654; and
+although in my first chapter I gave a fairly lengthy list of famous
+authors and artists who were Cockneys by birth, I by no means made it so
+long as I could have done. Hablot K. Browne, otherwise “Phiz,� the chief
+of Dickens’s artists, was born in Kennington, and lived for eight years,
+towards the close of his career, at 99 Ladbroke Grove Road; Lord Lytton,
+whom Tennyson unkindly described as “the padded man that wears the stays,�
+and who was for a time a more popular novelist than either Dickens or
+Thackeray, was born at 31 Baker Street, and lived in after years at 12
+Grosvenor Square, and at 36 Hertford Street; Gibbon was born at Putney,
+and lived for some years at 7 Bentinck Street, which he said was “the best
+house in the world�; John Leech was born over his father’s coffee-shop in
+Ludgate Hill, and lived when he had risen to fame at 32 Brunswick Square,
+and passed the last years of his life at 6 The Terrace, Kensington; and
+one who I confess interests <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>me at least as much as any of these,
+Douglas Jerrold, was born in Greek Street, Soho, lived as a boy at Broad
+Court, in the same neighbourhood, and afterwards shifted about into
+half-a-dozen different parts of London, and died in 1857 at Kilburn
+Priory, on the skirts of St. John’s Wood. West Lodge, his house at Lower
+Putney Common, still stands much as it was when he occupied it, with his
+mulberry tree still growing in that garden round which, one memorable
+summer afternoon, he and Dickens, Forster, Maclise, and Macready gave each
+other “backs,� and played a joyously undignified game of leapfrog. I don’t
+know whether anybody reads <i>Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures</i> now, but
+everybody read them and laughed over them when they were new, and
+Jerrold’s best jokes and witticisms are much too well known to leave me an
+excuse for repeating any of them here. For all his bitter tongue, he was
+kind, generous, sensitive, afire with a fine scorn of wrong, injustice,
+and every variety of social humbug and snobbery. “A small
+delicately-formed, bent man,� is Edmund Yates’s recollection of him, “with
+long grey hair combed back from his forehead, with grey eyes deep-set
+under penthouse brows, and a way, just as the inspiration seized him, of
+dangling a double-eyeglass which hung round his neck by a broad black
+ribbon.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img82.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">THURLOE’S LODGINGS. 24 OLD SQUARE. LINCOLN’S INN.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Browning, who was born at Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell,
+in 1812, lived at De Vere Gardens, and at 19 Warwick Crescent. Removing
+from 74 Gloucester Place in 1842, Elizabeth Barrett and her autocratic
+father went to 50 Wimpole Street, and calling there with a friend in 1845,
+Robert Browning was introduced to her. It was from and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> to this house that
+so many of those wonderful love-letters of theirs were written, and little
+more than a year after their first meeting, her father stubbornly refusing
+his consent to their union, she stole out by this sedate and sombre door
+one autumn morning to join her waiting lover, and they were quietly and
+clandestinely married at the old church round the corner in Marylebone
+Road&mdash;the same church in which, in the same year, Dickens, then living at
+Devonshire House and within sight of it, married Mr. Dombey, with Captain
+Cuttle looking on at the ceremony from the gallery.</p>
+
+<p>At 82 Wimpole Street Wilkie Collins died; and at 67, lived Henry Hallam,
+the historian, and his son Arthur, the friend of Tennyson, who often
+visited him there, and has enshrined his memory for ever in his <i>In
+Memoriam</i>; where, too, he pictures this house and this street:</p>
+
+<div class="container">
+<p class="poetry">“Dark house, by which once more I stand<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Here in the long unlovely street,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Doors, where my heart was used to beat</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">So quickly, waiting for a hand.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A hand that can be clasped no more&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Behold me, for I cannot sleep,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And like a guilty thing I creep</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">At earliest morning to the door.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He is not here; but far away</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The noise of life begins again,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">On the bald street breaks the blank day.�</span></p></div>
+
+<p>Theodore Hook, another Cockney, was born in Charlotte Street, Bedford
+Square; Captain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> Marryat, another, in Great George Street, Westminster,
+and whilst he was writing the most famous of his books he lived at 8 Duke
+Street, St. James’s, and at Sussex Lodge, in the Fulham Road. Ruskin, who,
+like Browning, is included in my earlier list of Cockneys, was born at 54
+Hunter Street, and made his home for many years at 163 Denmark Hill, both
+of which houses still survive him.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img83.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CAPTAIN MARRYAT. DUKE STREET. ST. JAMES.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>Benjamin Franklin lived at 7 Craven Street, Strand; before he rented a
+house in London after Johnson’s death, Boswell had lodgings, on his annual
+visits to town, in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, in Conduit Street, Regent
+Street, and in Old Bond Street; where Sterne dwelt before him and Gibbon
+after him, and at 27A, Harrison Ainsworth, later than them all; but
+Ainsworth’s more notable residence, where he lived when he was in the full
+glory of his enormous popularity, is Kensal House, out in the
+no-longer-rural district of Kensal Green.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img84.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S HOUSE. CRAVEN STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>At 19 Albert Gate, Sloane Street, lived Charles Reade, who was nearly all
+his life quarrelling with his critics and fighting against legal
+injustices with an almost ungovernable fury, and yet David Christie Murray
+said he was one of the four men he had met who were “distinguished by that
+splendid urbanity of manner which was once thought to express the acme of
+high breeding.... A beautiful, stately cordiality commonly marked his
+social manner, but he could be moved to a towering rage by an act of
+meanness, treachery, or oppression; and in his public correspondence he
+was sometimes downright vitriolic.� Anthony Trollope died at 34 Welbeck
+Street; and Lord Macaulay at Holly Lodge on Campden Hill. George
+Cruikshank lived in the queer, dull-looking little house that still
+remains at 263 Hampstead Road, and from that address put forth his
+groundless claims to being the originator of Ainsworth’s novels, <i>Jack
+Sheppard</i> and <i>The Miser’s Daughter</i>, and Dickens’s <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span><i>Oliver Twist</i>.
+Ainsworth was still living, and strenuously denied his assertions; Dickens
+was dead, but there existed a letter of his about the illustrations to his
+book that sufficiently proved that the story was not written round
+Cruickshank’s drawings, as the aged artist seemed to have persuaded
+himself it was. A greater artist than Cruickshank (and another Cockney, by
+the way) was born in Cumberland Market, near Regent’s Park, and died in a
+sponging-house in Eyre Street Hill, Clerkenwell Road, in 1804. That was
+George Morland. Two years before his death he went with his wife and put
+up at the Bull Inn, at Highgate, which was kept by a former acquaintance
+of his. He is supposed to have utilised as a studio the large room with
+three bay windows that runs above the bar the full width of the building.
+He entertained Gainsborough and Romney and other contemporary artists
+there, but within a few months had had a fierce quarrel with the landlord
+and returned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> to lodge with his brother in Dean Street, Soho. He was by
+then showing the effects of his reckless dissipations, and looked
+“besotted and squalid and cadaverous; hanging cheeks and pinched nose,
+contracted nostrils, bleared and bloodshot eyes, swelled legs, a palsied
+hand, and tremulous voice bespeaking the ruin of what had once been the
+soundest of frames.� Drunk or sober, he worked rapidly and with unfailing
+mastery, but he was generally cheated by those around him of the due
+reward of his labours. Going on a short holiday to Brighton, he wrote
+giving his brother this list of what he had drunk in a single day:
+“Hollands gin, rum and milk&mdash;before breakfast. Coffee&mdash;for breakfast.
+Hollands, porter, shrub, ale, Hollands, port wine and ginger, bottled
+ale&mdash;these before dinner. Port wine at dinner. Porter, bottled porter,
+punch, porter, ale, opium and water. Port wine at supper. Gin, shrub, and
+rum on going to bed.� At the bottom of the list he sketched a tombstone
+bearing a skull and crossbones, and by way of epitaph: “Here lies a
+drunken dog.� And debts and duns and death in the sponging-house were the
+inevitable end of it.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img85.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">CRUIKSHANK. 263 HAMPSTEAD ROAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Lady Blessington held her brilliant salon at 8 Seamore Place, Mayfair,
+before in 1836 she removed to the more noted Gore House, Kensington, and
+welcomed to her splendid drawing-rooms Byron, Lytton, Disraeli, Landor,
+Marryat, Dickens, Thackeray, Sydney Smith, Maclise, Hook, and all the
+greatest men of the day in literature, art, politics, and society, till in
+1849 she was overwhelmed with financial embarrassments and fled to Paris,
+where she died the year after. Gore House has vanished from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>its place
+long since, and the Albert Hall more than covers the site of it. But
+Holland House, which was equally or more celebrated for its magnificent
+social gatherings in the first half of last century and earlier, still
+holds its ground. Addison lived there after his marriage to the Countess
+of Warwick in 1716, and from his bedroom there, in his last hours, sent
+for his dissipated stepson in order that he might see “how a Christian can
+die.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img86.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ROBERT BROWNING</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img87.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">GEORGE MORLAND. THE “BULL INN� HIGHGATE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps more interesting than either of these, from a literary standpoint,
+is the house of Samuel Rogers, 22 St. James’s Place, overlooking the Green
+Park. You can scarcely open the memoirs of any man of letters of his time,
+but you may read some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> account of a breakfast or a dinner at Rogers’s.
+“What a delightful house it is!� says Macaulay. “It looks out on the Green
+Park just at the most pleasant point. The furniture has been selected with
+a delicacy of taste quite unique.... In the drawing-room the
+chimney-pieces are carved by Flaxman into the most beautiful Grecian
+forms. The bookcase is painted by Stothard, in his very best manner, with
+groups from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Boccaccio. The pictures are not
+numerous, but every one is excellent. The most remarkable objects in the
+dining-room are, I think, a cast of Pope, taken after death by Roubiliac;
+a noble model in terra-cotta by Michael Angelo, from which he afterwards
+made one of his finest statues, that of Lorenzo de Medici; and, lastly, a
+mahogany table on which stands an antique vase. When Chantrey dined with
+Rogers some time ago he took particular notice of the vase and the table
+on which it stands, and asked Rogers who made the table. ‘A common
+carpenter,’ said Rogers. ‘Do you remember the making of it?’ said
+Chantrey. ‘Certainly,’ said Rogers, in some surprise; ‘I was in the room
+while it was finished with the chisel, and gave the workman directions
+about placing it.’ ‘Yes,’ said Chantrey, ‘I was the carpenter.’� Byron,
+who was a guest at Holland House and at Lady Blessington’s, was a frequent
+guest at Rogers’s table also. It was Rogers who introduced him to Miss
+Milbanke, the unfortunate lady who was to become his wife; and Byron seems
+by turns to have admired him, disliked him, and looked upon him with a
+sort of laughing contempt. “When Sheridan was on his deathbed,� he writes,
+“Rogers aided him with purse and person: <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>this was particularly kind in
+Rogers, who always spoke ill of Sheridan (to me, at least); but indeed he
+does that of everybody. Rogers is the reverse of the line ‘The best good
+man with the worst-natured Muse,’ being ‘The worst good man with the
+best-natured Muse.’ His Muse being all sentiment and sago, while he
+himself is a venomous talker. I say ‘worst good man,’ because he is
+(perhaps) a good man&mdash;at least he does good now and then, as well he may,
+to purchase himself a shilling’s worth of Salvation for his Slanders. They
+are so <i>little</i>, too&mdash;small talk, and old womanny; and he is malignant
+too, and envious.�</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img88.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">ROGERS. ST. JAMES’S PLACE. FROM GREEN PARK.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Rogers had a fine head, a distinguished manner, a bland, silky way of
+saying the most cutting and cynical things. He was not so much a poet as a
+banker of a poetical temperament. His poetry will presently be forgotten,
+but his breakfasts and his dinners will be remembered because he lived to
+be well over ninety, was a very wealthy man of taste, and had the will and
+the means to play the generous host to some three generations of the
+wisest, wittiest, greatest men of his era, and several of them said
+brighter and better things in his dining and drawing-rooms than he ever
+wrote in his books. He covered such a long span of time that he could
+entertain Sheridan, who was born in 1751, and Dickens, who died in 1870.
+Many of the same glorious company had a meeting-place also until a more
+recent day at Bath House, Mayfair, where Lady Ashburton, the great friend
+of the Carlyles, held famous receptions, of which Carlyle himself and the
+Brookfields have left us reminiscences. And the invaluable Allingham has
+one or two notes about her in his <i>Diary</i>; one dated 5th November 1875, in
+which he says Carlyle passed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> his house “about four to-day. I overtook him
+in the Fulham Road, and walked with him to Lady Ashburton’s door at
+Knightsbridge. He said, ‘Browning in his young days wore a turn-down shirt
+collar with a ribbon for a necktie, and a green coat. I first met him one
+evening at Leigh Hunt’s, a modest youth, with a good strong face and a
+head of dark hair. He said little, but what he said was good.’� Possibly
+the talk fell upon him because Browning was among the guests he was to
+meet that day at Lady Ashburton’s.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/img89.jpg" alt="" /></p>
+<p class="caption">BORROW’S HOUSE. HEREFORD SQUARE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>William Morris and Burne Jones lived and worked together at 17 Red Lion
+Square; Steele used to live in Bloomsbury Square, where later Disraeli and
+his father lived, at No. 5. George Borrow lived at 23 Hereford Square,
+South Kensington. Berkeley Square has a peculiar attraction for me, less
+because Horace Walpole had his home at 42, than because Colley Cibber
+dwelt as a very old man at No. 20. In the same way I am not so much drawn
+to Gower Street by the fact that in a greatly altered house there Darwin
+used to live, as I am to that shabby Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road,
+where Albert Smith had a house at which Sala once visited him. Walpole and
+Darwin are, of course, incomparably greater men than Cibber and Albert
+Smith, but these last two have a curious fascination for me. I read
+Smith’s <i>Christopher Tadpole</i> and <i>The Scattergood Family</i> when I was a
+boy, and his figure flits elusively in the background of Dickens’s
+reputation, wrapped in a very characteristic mid-Victorian bohemianism,
+and, without precisely knowing why, I have taken a sort of liking to him.
+Sala says he was a kind, cheery little man, who when he was at <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>work at
+home wore a blue blouse. “I recall him,� he says, “as a sturdy-looking,
+broad-shouldered, short-necked man, with grey eyes and flowing locks of
+light brown, and large side-whiskers; later in life he wore a beard. His
+voice was a high treble.� His study in Percy Street was littered always
+with French novels, dolls, pipes, cheap jewellery, cakes of soap made in
+the image of fruit, minature Swiss châlets, fancy costumes, and such a
+miscellany of odds and ends that it had the appearance of an old curiosity
+shop. As for Cibber, I began by feeling contempt for him, because of the
+scorn Pope pours on him in <i>The Dunciad</i>, and the character for dulness
+that was imposed upon him by that savage satirist and his host of
+imitators. But when I read some of Cibber’s comedies (such as <i>The
+Careless Husband</i>, and <i>Love Makes a Man</i>) I found them amusing and clever
+in their fashion, certainly not dull, and when I dropped one day into the
+National Portrait Gallery and saw that coloured bust of him under a glass
+case and leering through the glass eyes that have been fitted into his
+head&mdash;I succumbed, and acquired a sneaking regard for the gay old coxcomb
+that is not yet beginning to cool. You cannot read his plays and his
+delightful <i>Apology</i> for his Life without getting interested in him; and
+then if you go and look at that bust you will feel that you know the sly,
+witty, shrewd, ruddy-visaged, not over clean, furtive, leery old rascal as
+intimately as if you had been acquainted with him in the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>But if one set out to write of the homes and haunts of these minor
+celebrities this book would be endless; moreover, many amongst them that
+have some peculiar attraction for me might have no interest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> for any one
+else; and many that for special reasons mean a great deal to you might
+mean nothing at all to me. So, as the wiser course, I have, in the main,
+limited my survey to the houses of men and women who are considerable
+enough to be known, more or less, by every one who has even a nodding
+acquaintance with literature, and to that extent my chronicle is at an
+end.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+Addison Bridge Place, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br />
+<br />
+Adelphi Terrace, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Ainsworth, W. Harrison, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+Akenside, Mark, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Albany, The, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
+<br />
+Albemarle Street, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Albert Gate, Sloane Street, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Albion Street, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br />
+<br />
+Aldermanbury, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Aldersgate Street, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Aldford Street, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Aldgate, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Allingham, William, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Ampton Street, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Arbuthnot, John, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Archer, Thomas, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+Argyll Place, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Arlington Road, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Ashburton, Lady, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Atterbury, Francis, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+Austin, Alfred, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+Avenue Road, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Ayrton, William, <a href="#Page_207">207</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam), <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Baillie, Joanna, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
+<br />
+Baker Street, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Balmanno, Mary, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Barbauld, Mrs., <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+Barber, Francis, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br />
+<br />
+Barham, R. H., <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Barrett, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Bartholomew Close, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
+<br />
+Barton, Bernard, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a><br />
+<br />
+Basire, James, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
+<br />
+Bath House, Mayfair, <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br />
+<br />
+Bathurst, Dr., <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
+<br />
+Battersea, <a href="#Page_26">26-35</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a><br />
+<br />
+Bayham Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Beauclerk, Topham, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+Beaumont, Francis, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Bellott, Stephen, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+Bennet Street, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
+<br />
+Bentinck Street, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Berkeley Square, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Besant, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br />
+<br />
+Bird-in-Hand Court, Cheapside, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br />
+<br />
+Bishopsgate, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Blackstone, Sir William, <a href="#Page_80">80</a><br />
+<br />
+Blake, William, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118-139</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Blandford Square, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Blessington, Lady, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Bloomfield, Robert, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Bloomsbury Square, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, <a href="#Page_26">26-35</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
+<br />
+Bolingbroke House, <a href="#Page_26">26-35</a><br />
+<br />
+Bolt Court, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+<br />
+Bond Street, <a href="#Page_265">265</a><br />
+<br />
+Boner, Charles, <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Borrow, George, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Boswell, James, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93-117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Bouverie Street, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Bow Lane, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span><br />
+Brawne, Fanny, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br />
+<br />
+Bread Street, Cheapside, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Broad Street, Soho, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Brontë, Charlotte, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Brooks, Shirley, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br />
+<br />
+Brown, Charles Armitage, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+Browne, Hablot K. (“Phiz�), <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Browne, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Brunswick Square, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Buckingham Street, Euston Road, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; Strand, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a><br />
+<br />
+Bunhill Row, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Burbage, Richard, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Burke, Edmund, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a><br />
+<br />
+Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Burney, Dr. Charles, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Fanny, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
+<br />
+Burns, Robert, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+<br />
+Butts, Thomas, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
+<br />
+Byron, Lord, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193-199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Cade, Jack, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Camberwell, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
+<br />
+Campbell, Thomas, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Campden Hill, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Cannon Street, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Canonbury Tower, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
+<br />
+Carew, Thomas, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Carlyle, Mrs., <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Thomas, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275-286</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Carter Lane, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br />
+<br />
+Cary, Rev. H. F., <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Castle Street, Cavendish Square, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; Leicester Square, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Cattermole, George, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Cave, Edward, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br />
+<br />
+Chancery Lane, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Charing Cross, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
+<br />
+Charlotte Street, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Charterhouse, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br />
+<br />
+Chaucer, Geoffrey, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Cheapside, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+Chelsea, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255-293</a><br />
+<br />
+Cheshire Cheese, the, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Chesterfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_103">103-105</a><br />
+<br />
+Chesterton, G. K., <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
+<br />
+Cheyne Row, <a href="#Page_275">275-286</a><br />
+<br />
+Cheyne Walk, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256-265</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273-275</a><br />
+<br />
+Chiswick, <a href="#Page_36">36-51</a><br />
+<br />
+Christ’s Hospital, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Churchill, Charles, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a><br />
+<br />
+Cibber, Colley, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Clarke, Cowden, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mrs. Cowden, <a href="#Page_317">317</a><br />
+<br />
+Cleveland Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Clifford’s Inn, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+Cloth Fair, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Cobbett, William, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Colebrook Row, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
+<br />
+Coleridge, S. T., <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199-206</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+College Street, Kentish Town, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
+<br />
+Collins, Wilkie, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Colman, George, <a href="#Page_67">67</a><br />
+<br />
+Colvin, Sir Sidney, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Condell, Henry, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Conduit Street, Regent Street, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Congreve, William, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Constable, John, <a href="#Page_143">143-145</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+Cornhill, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Cornwall, Barry, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span><br />
+Coryat, Thomas, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Covent Garden, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<br />
+Cowley, Abraham, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Cranbourne Street, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+Craven Street, Strand, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Cripplegate, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Cross, John, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
+<br />
+Cruikshank, George, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+Cumberland Market, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+Cunningham, Allan, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Darwin, Charles, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Davies, Thomas, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br />
+<br />
+Day, Thomas, <a href="#Page_187">187-193</a><br />
+<br />
+Dean Street, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Defoe, Daniel, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Dekker, Thomas, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Denmark Hill, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Dennis, John, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+De Quincey, Thomas, <a href="#Page_168">168-177</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+De Stael, Madame, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+De Vere Gardens, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Devereux Court, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Devil Tavern, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Devonshire Terrace, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Dibdin, Charles, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Dickens, Charles, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314-327</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mrs., <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+Dilke, Wentworth, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br />
+<br />
+Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield), <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Isaac, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Dobson, Austin, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Dodsley, Robert, <a href="#Page_96">96</a><br />
+<br />
+Donne, Dr. John, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Doughty Street, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a><br />
+<br />
+Dowden, Dr., <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Down Street, <a href="#Page_280">280</a><br />
+<br />
+Dryden, John, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Duke Street, <a href="#Page_333">333</a><br />
+<br />
+Du Maurier, George, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br />
+<br />
+Dyer, George, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+East Smithfield, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Edmonton, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226-232</a><br />
+<br />
+Edwardes Square, <a href="#Page_293">293</a><br />
+<br />
+Eliot, George, <a href="#Page_245">245-254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Elm Tree Road, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a><br />
+<br />
+Ely Place, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Emerson, R. W., <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br />
+<br />
+Enfield, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a><br />
+<br />
+Exeter Street, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Felpham, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
+<br />
+Fetter Lane, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Fielding, Henry, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a><br />
+<br />
+Fields, Ticknor, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Finchley Road, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br />
+<br />
+Fitzgerald, Edward, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Percy, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+Fitzosbert, William, <a href="#Page_1">1</a><br />
+<br />
+Fitzroy Square, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Flaxman, John, <a href="#Page_120">120-139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Fleet Street, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Fleming, Mrs., <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a><br />
+<br />
+Fletcher, John, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Forster, John, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Fountain Court, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Franklin, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Friday Street, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Frith Street, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
+<br />
+Froude, J. A., <a href="#Page_279">279</a><br />
+<br />
+Fulham Road, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a><br />
+<br />
+Fuller, Thomas, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Furnival’s Inn, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Gad’s Hill Place, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br />
+<br />
+Gainsborough, Thomas, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span><br />
+Gamble, Ellis, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br />
+<br />
+Garrick, David, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mrs., <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+Garth, Sir Samuel, <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br />
+<br />
+Gay, John, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Gerrard Street, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Gibbon, Edward, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Gilchrist, Alexander, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br />
+<br />
+Gilman, Mr., <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+Globe Theatre, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Gloucester Place, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Godwin, Mary, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; William, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Goldsmith, Oliver, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+Gore House, Kensington, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Gough Square, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95-109</a><br />
+<br />
+Gower, John, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Gower Street, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Gray, Thomas, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+Gray’s Inn, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Great Coram Street, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; George Street, <a href="#Page_333">333</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Newport Street, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Portland Street, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Queen Street, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br />
+<br />
+Greaves, Walter, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br />
+<br />
+Greek Street, <a href="#Page_168">168-177</a><br />
+<br />
+Green Street, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
+<br />
+Greene, Robert, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Grosvenor Square, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Half Moon Street, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Hall, S. C., <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
+<br />
+Hallam, Arthur, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Henry, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Hamilton, Lady, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Sir William, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Hammersmith, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Hampstead, <a href="#Page_140">140-166</a><br />
+<br />
+Hampstead Road, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Hannay, James, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+Harley Street, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Harmsworth, Cecil, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Harry, M. Gerard, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Hawkesworth, Dr. John, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
+<br />
+Hawkins, Sir John, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Hawthorne, Nathaniel, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Haydon, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br />
+<br />
+Hayley, William, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a><br />
+<br />
+Hazlitt, Mrs., <a href="#Page_220">220</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; William, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181-186</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Heminge, John, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, <a href="#Page_123">123-124</a><br />
+<br />
+Hereford Square, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Herrick, Robert, <a href="#Page_5">5</a><br />
+<br />
+Hertford Street, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Highgate, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+Hind, Lewis, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Hobbes, Thomas, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Hogarth, Mary, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mrs., <a href="#Page_50">50-51</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; William, <a href="#Page_36">36-51</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Hogg, T. J., <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+Holborn, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a><br />
+<br />
+Holcroft, Thomas, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Holland House, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+Holles Street, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br />
+<br />
+Hone, William, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+Hood, Thomas, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235-245</a><br />
+<br />
+Hook, Theodore, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Hungerford Market, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Hunt, Holman, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Leigh, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286-295</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Hunter Street, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Irving, Washington, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+Islington, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219-221</a><br />
+<br />
+Isola, Emma, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Ivy Lane, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Jeffrey, Francis, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Jerrold, Douglas, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Johnson, Mrs., <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Samuel, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89-117</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Johnson Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Johnson’s Court, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Jonson, Ben, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Keats, John, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153-166</a><br />
+<br />
+Kemble, John, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Kemp, William, <a href="#Page_13">13</a><br />
+<br />
+Kensal Green, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Kensington, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303-306</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Gardens, <a href="#Page_300">300</a><br />
+<br />
+Kilburn Priory, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+King Street, Covent Garden, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Kingsley, Charles, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Henry, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Kit-Kat Club, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Knight, Joseph, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ladbroke Grove Road, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207-232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Mary, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
+<br />
+Landor, Walter Savage, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Landseer, Sir Edwin, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Langland, John, <a href="#Page_1">1</a><br />
+<br />
+Langton, Bennet, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
+<br />
+Lant Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+Leathersellers’ Buildings, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Lecky, Mrs., <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br />
+<br />
+Leech, John, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Leicester Square, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
+<br />
+Lennox, Mrs., <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Levett, Robert, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
+<br />
+Lewes, George Henry, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br />
+<br />
+Lincoln’s Inn Fields, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a><br />
+<br />
+Little College Street, <a href="#Page_314">314</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Queen Street, <a href="#Page_212">212</a><br />
+<br />
+Lloyd, Charles, <a href="#Page_215">215</a><br />
+<br />
+Locke, John, <a href="#Page_207">207</a><br />
+<br />
+Lombard Street, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+London Bridge, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Stone, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Loudon Road, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Ludgate Hill, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Lytton, Lord, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Macaulay, Lord, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+Maclise, Daniel, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Macready, W. C., <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Maiden Lane, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Manning, Thomas, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br />
+<br />
+Marchmont Street, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Marryat, Captain, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Marston, Philip Bourke, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+Marylebone Road, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Massinger, Philip, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Mathews, Charles, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+Matthew, Mrs., <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Mawson Row, Chiswick, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Mecklenburgh Square, <a href="#Page_316">316</a><br />
+<br />
+Medwin, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
+<br />
+Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Mermaid Tavern, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Middleton, Thomas, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Milbanke, Anna Isabella, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a><br />
+<br />
+Mill, John Stuart, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a><br />
+<br />
+Milnes, Moncton (Lord Houghton), <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Milton, John, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Monkwell Street, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
+<br />
+Moore, Thomas, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
+<br />
+Moorfields, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+More, Hannah, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br />
+<br />
+Morland, George, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Morris, William, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Mount Street, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span><br />
+Mountjoy, Christopher, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+<br />
+Moxon, Edward, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a><br />
+<br />
+Mulready, William, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Munday, Anthony, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Munro, Alexander, <a href="#Page_281">281</a><br />
+<br />
+Murray, David Christie, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; John, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+New Street, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><br />
+<br />
+Newgate Street, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+Newman Street, Oxford Street, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Newton, Sir Isaac, <a href="#Page_52">52-56</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a><br />
+<br />
+Nollekens, Joseph, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br />
+<br />
+Norfolk Street, Strand, <a href="#Page_200">200</a><br />
+<br />
+North Bank, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; End, Fulham, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
+<br />
+Northcote, James, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Old Bond Street, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Old Buildings, Lincoln’s Inn, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Onslow Square, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br />
+<br />
+Opie, Mrs., <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
+<br />
+Oxford Street, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Palace Green, Kensington, <a href="#Page_311">311</a><br />
+<br />
+Pall Mall, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a><br />
+<br />
+Parson’s Green, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br />
+<br />
+Patmore, P. G., <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a><br />
+<br />
+Peckham Rye, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br />
+<br />
+Peel, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a><br />
+<br />
+Pennell, Mr. and Mrs. J., <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a><br />
+<br />
+Percy, Bishop, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, Tottenham Court Road, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Philip, Mrs. and Miss Birnie, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a><br />
+<br />
+Phillips, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_51">51</a><br />
+<br />
+Piccadilly, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Poland Street, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
+<br />
+Pope, Alexander, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26-35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Pope’s Head Alley, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+Poultry, the, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+Praed, W. Mackworth, <a href="#Page_88">88</a><br />
+<br />
+Prior, Matthew, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Putney, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Queen Anne Street, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><br />
+<br />
+Quiney, Richard, <a href="#Page_12">12</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Ralph, James, <a href="#Page_36">36</a><br />
+<br />
+Reade, Charles, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Red Lion Square, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Reynolds, John Hamilton, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Sir Joshua, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Richardson, Samuel, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71-75</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
+<br />
+Ritchie, Lady Thackeray, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br />
+<br />
+Robert Street, Adelphi, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Roberts, David, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a><br />
+<br />
+Robinson, Crabb, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a><br />
+<br />
+Rogers, Samuel, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339-343</a><br />
+<br />
+Romney, George, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140-143</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a><br />
+<br />
+Rossetti, Christina, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Dante Gabriel, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; W. M., <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Rowan Road, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Rowley, William, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Ruskin, John, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Russell Square, <a href="#Page_303">303</a><br />
+<br />
+Russell Street, Covent Garden, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+St. Andrew Undershaft, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Anne’s, Soho, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Bartholomew the Great, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Clement Danes, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+St. James’s Place, <a href="#Page_339">339</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Street, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span><br />
+St. John’s Wood, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236-245</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Martin’s Street, <a href="#Page_52">52</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Olave, Silver Street, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br />
+<br />
+St. Saviour’s, Southwark, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Sala, George Augustus, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Salisbury Court, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+Savile Row, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
+<br />
+Scott, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+Seamore Place, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Selden, John, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
+<br />
+Shakespeare, Edmund, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; William, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10-24</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177-181</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a><br />
+<br />
+Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a><br />
+<br />
+Shirley, James, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Silver Street, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, Albert, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, J. T. (“Rainy Day�), <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a><br />
+<br />
+Smith, Sidney, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Smollett, Tobias, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Soho, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118-123</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167-186</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Soho Square, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
+<br />
+Southampton Street, Camberwell, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+South Moulton Street, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a><br />
+<br />
+Southey, Robert, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+Southwark, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a><br />
+<br />
+Spencer, Herbert, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
+<br />
+Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Stanfield, Clarkson, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a><br />
+<br />
+Staple Inn, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
+<br />
+Steele, Richard, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Sterne, Laurence, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Stevenson, Robert Louis, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br />
+<br />
+Stothard, Thomas, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Strand, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a><br />
+<br />
+Stubbs, Bishop, <a href="#Page_3">3</a><br />
+<br />
+Sullivan, Sir Arthur, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
+<br />
+Swift, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br />
+<br />
+Swinburne, A. C., <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Talfourd, T. N., <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Tavistock Square, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br />
+<br />
+Taylor, John, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br />
+<br />
+Temple Bar, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Temple, Rev. T. W., <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br />
+<br />
+Temple, the, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a><br />
+<br />
+Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Terrace, the, Kensington, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Thackeray, W. M., <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296-313</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a><br />
+<br />
+Thames Street, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a><br />
+<br />
+Thomson, James, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br />
+<br />
+Thornhill, Sir James, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Thrale, Mrs., <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Thurloe, John, <a href="#Page_328">328</a><br />
+<br />
+Tite Street, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Tower, the, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Trollope, Anthony, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Turk’s Head, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br />
+<br />
+Turner, J. M. W., <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268-275</a><br />
+<br />
+Turpin, Dick, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+Twickenham, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Upper Cheyne Row, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291-293</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Vale, the, Chelsea, <a href="#Page_266">266</a><br />
+<br />
+Vine Street, Westminster, <a href="#Page_6">6</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Wallace, Charles William, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br />
+<br />
+Walpole, Horace, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a><br />
+<br />
+Wanstead, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
+<br />
+Warburton, William, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
+<br />
+Wardour Street, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><br />
+<br />
+Warton, Joseph, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br />
+<br />
+Warwick Crescent, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span><br />
+Watts, G. F., <a href="#Page_262">262</a><br />
+<br />
+Watts-Dunton, Theodore, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a><br />
+<br />
+Webster, John, <a href="#Page_4">4</a><br />
+<br />
+Welbeck Street, <a href="#Page_334">334</a><br />
+<br />
+Wellclose Square, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
+<br />
+Wellington Street, Strand, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a><br />
+<br />
+West, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Westbrook, Harriett, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
+<br />
+Westminster, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_333">333</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Abbey, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Whistler, James McNeill, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259-268</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a><br />
+<br />
+Whitefriars Street, <a href="#Page_2">2</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell, <a href="#Page_296">296</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilkes, John, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+Wilkins, George, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Williams, Anna, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
+<br />
+Will’s Coffee House, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
+<br />
+Wimbledon Park Road, <a href="#Page_245">245-253</a><br />
+<br />
+Wimpole Street, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a><br />
+<br />
+Winchmore Hill, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
+<br />
+Wine Office Court, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
+<br />
+Wood Street, Cheapside, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br />
+<br />
+Woodstock Street, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+Wordsworth, William, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Yates, Edmund, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a><br />
+<br />
+Young Street, Kensington, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson &amp; Co</span>.<br />
+Edinburgh &amp; London.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of
+London, by A. St. John Adcock
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS HOUSES, LITERARY SHRINES, LONDON ***
+
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+
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@@ -0,0 +1,8179 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London, by
+A. St. John Adcock
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of London
+
+Author: A. St. John Adcock
+
+Illustrator: Frederick Adcock
+
+Release Date: November 24, 2013 [EBook #44269]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS HOUSES, LITERARY SHRINES, LONDON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FAMOUS HOUSES AND LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SAM. JOHNSON]
+
+
+
+
+  FAMOUS HOUSES AND
+  LITERARY SHRINES
+  OF LONDON
+
+
+  BY A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK
+
+
+  WITH SEVENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
+  BY FREDERICK ADCOCK
+  AND 16 PORTRAITS
+
+
+  LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
+  NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1912
+
+
+
+
+  _All rights reserved_
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+  At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+Nothing could well be deader or emptier than an unoccupied house of whose
+former inhabitants we have no knowledge; and it is impossible to take a
+real interest in a house now occupied by strangers, even though it was
+aforetime the residence of some famous man, unless we are acquainted with
+that man's personality, and know what he thought and did and said whilst
+he was living there. I have attempted to do little more than supply that
+information here as the complement of my brother's drawings, and to this
+end have been less concerned to give my own descriptions and opinions than
+to bring together opinions and descriptions that were written by such
+famous residents themselves or by guests and visitors who saw and knew
+them. As far as possible I have quoted from contemporary Diaries and
+Memoirs, especially from letters that were written in or to these houses,
+or from Journals that their tenants kept whilst they dwelt there,
+supplementing all this with a narrative of incidents and events that might
+help to recreate the life and recapture the atmosphere that belonged to
+such places in the days that have made them memorable. Whenever I have
+adventured into any general biography, or expressed any personal opinion,
+it has been merely with the object of adding so much of history and
+character as would serve to fill in the outline of a man's portrait, give
+it a sufficient fulness and colour of life, and throw into clear relief
+the space of time that he passed in some particular house that can still
+be seen in a London street.
+
+I think I have throughout made due acknowledgment to the authors of
+various volumes of _Recollections_ and _Table Talk_ from which I have
+drawn anecdotes and pen-portraits, and I should like to mention at the
+outset that for biographical facts and much else I have been particularly
+indebted to such books as Elwin and Courthope's edition of the _Poems and
+Letters of Pope_; Austin Dobson's _William Hogarth_, and H. B. Wheatley's
+_Hogarth's London_; Boswell's _Johnson_, of course, and Forster's _Lives
+of Goldsmith_ and of _Dickens_; Gilchrist's _Life of Blake_; Leslie's and
+Holmes's _Lives of Constable_; Arthur B. Chamberlain's _George Romney_;
+Lord Houghton's _Life and Letters of Keats_, and Buxton Forman's _Complete
+Works of John Keats_; Leigh Hunt's _Autobiography_; De Quincey's _English
+Opium Eater_; Hogg's and Peacock's _Memoirs of Shelley_; Carew Hazlitt's
+_Memoirs of Hazlitt_; Blackman's _Life of Day_; Byron's _Journals and
+Letters_, and Lewis Bettany's useful compilation from them, _The
+Confessions of Lord Byron_; Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, and Scott's
+_Journal_; Talfourd's and Ainger's _Lives of Lamb_, and Lamb's _Letters_;
+Walter Jerrold's _Life of Thomas Hood_; Cross's _Life of George Eliot_;
+Sir William Armstrong's _Life of Turner_, and Lewis Hind's _Turner's
+Golden Visions_; Joseph Knight's _Rossetti_; Froude's _Thomas Carlyle_,
+and W. H. Wylie's _Carlyle, The Man and His Books_; Allingham's _Diary_;
+E. R. and J. Pennell's _Life of Whistler_; Trollope's _Thackeray_, and
+Lady Thackeray Ritchie's prefaces to the Centenary Edition of Thackeray's
+works.
+
+A. ST. J. A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                     PAGE
+
+     I. SOME CELEBRATED COCKNEYS                               1
+
+    II. SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON                                 10
+
+   III. WHERE POPE STAYED AT BATTERSEA                        26
+
+    IV. HOGARTH                                               36
+
+     V. GOLDSMITH, REYNOLDS, AND SOME OF THEIR CIRCLE         52
+
+    VI. HOMES AND HAUNTS OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL               89
+
+   VII. BLAKE AND FLAXMAN                                    118
+
+  VIII. A HAMPSTEAD GROUP                                    140
+
+    IX. ROUND ABOUT SOHO AGAIN                               167
+
+     X. A PHILOSOPHER, TWO POETS, AND A NOVELIST             187
+
+    XI. CHARLES LAMB                                         207
+
+   XII. ST. JOHN'S WOOD AND WIMBLEDON                        233
+
+  XIII. CHELSEA MEMORIES                                     255
+
+   XIV. THACKERAY                                            296
+
+    XV. DICKENS                                              314
+
+   XVI. CONCLUSION                                           328
+
+
+
+
+PORTRAITS
+
+
+  DR. JOHNSON                                         _Frontispiece_
+    _From an engraving by T. TROTTER after a
+    drawing from life_
+
+  JOHN MILTON                                         _Facing p._ 4
+    _From a miniature by FAITHORNE_
+
+  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE                                     "      16
+    _From an engraving by SCRIVEN after the
+    Chandos portrait_
+
+  ALEXANDER POPE                                          "      33
+    _From an engraving by J. POSSELWHITE after
+    the picture by HUDSON_
+
+  OLIVER GOLDSMITH                                        "      81
+    _After a drawing by SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS_
+
+  SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS                                     "      96
+    _From an engraving after his own portrait_
+
+  JAMES BOSWELL                                           "     102
+    _From an engraving by W. HALL after a sketch
+    by LAWRENCE_
+
+  JOHN KEATS                                              "     144
+    _From a drawing by W. HILTON_
+
+  THOMAS DE QUINCEY                                       "     176
+    _From an engraving by W. H. MOORE_
+
+  LORD BYRON                                              "     193
+    _From a painting by THOMAS PHILLIPS, R.A._
+
+  CHARLES LAMB                                            "     224
+    _From the painting by WILLIAM HAZLITT_
+
+  THOMAS HOOD                                             "     241
+    _From an engraving by W. H. SMITH_
+
+  THOMAS CARLYLE                                          "     280
+    _From a painting by SIR JOHN MILLAIS_
+
+  W. M. THACKERAY                                         "     305
+    _From a pencil sketch by COUNT D'ORSAY_
+
+  CHARLES DICKENS                                         "     320
+    _From a black and white drawing by BAUGHIET, 1858_
+
+  ROBERT BROWNING                                         "     338
+    _From a photograph_
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                            PAGE
+
+  St. Saviour's, Southwark Cathedral                         xvi
+
+  The Gateway, Middle Temple                                   6
+
+  Chaucer's Tomb, Westminster Abbey                            8
+
+  Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey                        11
+
+  St. Olave's Churchyard, Silver Street                       17
+
+  Bartholomew Close, Smithfield                               21
+
+  The Last Bulk Shop, Clare Market                            25
+
+  Pope's House, Battersea                                     29
+
+  Pope, Mawson's Row, Chiswick                                37
+
+  Sir James Thornhill, 75 Dean Street                         42
+
+  Hogarth's House, Chiswick                                   45
+
+  The Bay Window, Hogarth's House                             49
+
+  Sir Isaac Newton's House, St. Martin's Street, W.C.         53
+
+  Sir Joshua Reynolds's House, Great Newport Street           57
+
+  The Staircase, 47 Leicester Square                          59
+
+  Sir Benjamin West's House, Newman Street                    61
+
+  Gainsborough's House, Pall Mall                             65
+
+  Sheridan's House, Savile Row                                69
+
+  Pump Court, Temple                                          73
+
+  Richardson's House, North End, Fulham                       75
+
+  Goldsmith's House, Canonbury                                77
+
+  2 Brick Court, The Temple                                   83
+
+  Stairs up to Second Floor, 2 Brick Court                    85
+
+  Goldsmith's Grave                                           87
+
+  Entrance to Staple Inn                                      91
+
+  Dr. Johnson's House, Gough Square                           99
+
+  Johnson's Corner, "The Cheshire Cheese"                    107
+
+  Where Boswell first met Johnson                            111
+
+  Boswell's House, Great Queen Street                        115
+
+  Blake's House, Soho                                        121
+
+  Blake, 23 Hercules Road                                    125
+
+  Blake's House, South Moulton Street                        127
+
+  Flaxman's House, Buckingham Street, Euston Road            137
+
+  Romney's House, Hampstead                                  141
+
+  Constable, Charlotte Street                                145
+
+  Joanna Baillie, Windmill Hill, Hampstead                   147
+
+  Stanfield's House, Hampstead                               151
+
+  "The Upper Flask," from the Bowling Green                  153
+
+  Keats' House, Hampstead                                    157
+
+  Constable's House, Hampstead                               161
+
+  George du Maurier's Grave, Hampstead                       165
+
+  De Quincey's House, Soho                                   171
+
+  Shelley's House, Poland Street, W.                         175
+
+  Shelley, Marchmont Street                                  179
+
+  Hazlitt's House, Frith Street                              183
+
+  Thomas Day, 36 Wellclose Square                            189
+
+  Byron, 4 Bennet Street, St. James's                        195
+
+  Coleridge, Addison Bridge Place                            201
+
+  Will's Coffee House, Russell Street                        217
+
+  Lamb, Colebrooke Row                                       219
+
+  Lamb's Cottage, Edmonton                                   229
+
+  Tom Hood's House, St. John's Wood                          237
+
+  Charles Dibdin, 34 Arlington Road                          243
+
+  George Eliot, Wimbledon Park                               247
+
+  George Eliot's House, Chelsea                              251
+
+  Queen's House, Cheyne Walk                                 257
+
+  Whistler, 96 Cheyne Walk                                   263
+
+  Turner's House, Cheyne Walk                                269
+
+  Carlyle, Ampton Street                                     277
+
+  Carlyle's House, Cheyne Row                                283
+
+  Leigh Hunt's House, Chelsea                                289
+
+  Leigh Hunt, 16 Rowan Road, Hammersmith                     295
+
+  The Charterhouse, from the Square                          297
+
+  Thackeray's House, Kensington                              301
+
+  Lamb Building, Temple, from the Cloisters                  307
+
+  Dickens, Johnson Street, Camden Town                       315
+
+  Dickens's House, Doughty Street                            319
+
+  Thurloe's Lodgings, 24 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn           329
+
+  Captain Marryat, Duke Street, St. James's                  333
+
+  Benjamin Franklin's House, Craven Street                   335
+
+  Cruikshank, 263 Hampstead Road                             337
+
+  George Morland, "The Bull Inn," Highgate                   339
+
+  Rogers, St. James's Place, from Green Park                 341
+
+  Borrow's House, Hereford Square                            345
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ST. SAVIOUR'S. SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL.]
+
+
+
+
+FAMOUS LONDON HOUSES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+SOME CELEBRATED COCKNEYS
+
+
+You cannot stir the ground of London anywhere but straightway it flowers
+into romance. Read the inscriptions on the crumbling tombs of our early
+merchant princes and adventurers in some of the old City churches, and it
+glimmers upon you that if ever the history of London's commercial rise and
+progress gets adequately written it will read like a series of stories out
+of the _Arabian Nights_. Think what dashing and magnificent figures, what
+tales of dark plottings, fierce warfare, and glorious heroisms must
+brighten and darken the pages of any political history of London; and even
+more glamorous, more intensely and humanly alive, would be a social
+history of London, beginning perhaps in those days of the fourteenth
+century when Langland was living in Cornhill and writing his _Vision of
+Piers Plowman_, or farther back still, in Richard the First's time, when
+that fine spirit, the first of English demagogues, William Fitzosbert, was
+haranguing the folkmoot in St. Paul's Churchyard, urging them to resist
+the tyrannic taxations of the Lord Mayor and his Court of wealthy
+Aldermen--a passion for justice that brought him into such danger that he
+and certain of his friends had to seek sanctuary, and barricaded
+themselves in Bow Church. The church was fired by order of a bishop who
+had no sympathy with reformers, and Fitzosbert and his friends, breaking
+out through the flames, were stabbed and struck down in Cheapside, hustled
+to the Tower, hastily tried and sentenced, dragged out by the heels
+through the streets, and hanged at Smithfield. I have always thought this
+would make a good, live starting-point, and had I but world enough and
+time I would sooner write that history than anything else.
+
+No need to hunt after topics when you are writing about London; they come
+to you. The air is full of them. The very names of the streets are
+cabalistic words. Once you know London, myriads of great spirits may be
+called from the vasty deep by sight or sound of such names as Fleet
+Street, Strand, Whitehall, Drury Lane, The Temple, Newgate Street,
+Aldersgate, Lombard Street, Cloth Fair, Paternoster Row, Holborn,
+Bishopsgate, and a hundred others. You have only to walk into Whitefriars
+Street and see "Hanging-sword Alley" inscribed on the wall of a court at
+the top of a narrow flight of steps, and all Alsatia rises again around
+you, as Ilion rose like a mist to the music of Apollo's playing. Loiter
+along Cornhill in the right mood and Thomas Archer's house shall rebuild
+itself for you at the corner of Pope's Head Alley, where he started the
+first English newspaper in 1603, and you will wonder why nobody writes a
+full history of London journalism.
+
+As for literary London--every other street you traverse is haunted with
+memories of poets, novelists, and men of letters, and it is some of the
+obscurest of these associations that are the most curiously fascinating. I
+have a vivid, youthful remembrance of a tumble-down, red-tiled shop near
+the end of Leathersellers' Buildings which I satisfied myself was the
+identical place in which Robert Bloomfield worked as a shoemaker's
+assistant; Devereux Court still retains something of the Grecian
+Coffee-house that used to be frequented by Addison and Steele, but I knew
+the Court first, and am still drawn to it most, as the site of that
+vanished Tom's Coffee-house where Akenside often spent his winter
+evenings; and if I had my choice of bringing visibly back out of
+nothingness one of the old Charing Cross houses, it would be the butcher's
+shop that was kept by the uncle who adopted Prior in his boyhood.
+
+Plenty of unpleasant things have been said about London, but never by her
+own children, or such children of her adoption as Johnson and Dickens.
+Says Hobbes, who was born at Malmesbury, "London has a great belly, but no
+palate," and Bishop Stubbs (a native of Knaresborough) more recently
+described it as "always the purse, seldom the head, and never the heart of
+England." Later still an eminent speaker, quoting this fantastic dictum of
+Stubbs's, went a step further and informed his audience that "not many men
+eminent in literature have been born in London"; a statement so
+demonstrably inaccurate that one may safely undertake to show that at
+least as many men eminent in literature, to say nothing of art and
+science, have been born in London as in any other half-dozen towns of the
+kingdom put together.
+
+To begin with, the morning star of our literature, Geoffrey Chaucer, was
+born in Thames Street, not far from the wharf where, after he was married
+and had leased a home for himself in Aldgate, he held office as a
+Comptroller of Customs, and the pen that was presently to write the
+_Canterbury Tales_ "moved over bills of lading." The "poets' poet,"
+Spenser, was born in East Smithfield, by the Tower, and in his
+_Prothalamion_ speaks of his birthplace affectionately as--
+
+  "Merry London, my most kindly nurse,
+   That to me gave this life's first native source,
+   Though from another place I take my name."
+
+Ben Jonson was born in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross; four of his
+contemporary dramatists, Fletcher, Webster, Shirley and Middleton, were
+also Londoners by birth; Sir Thomas Browne, author of the _Religio
+Medici_, was born in the parish of St. Michael-le-Quern, in the very heart
+of the city; and Bread Street, Cheapside, is hallowed by the fact that
+Milton had his birth there.
+
+Dr. Donne, the son of a London merchant, was also born within a stone's
+throw of Cheapside; and his disciple, Cowley, came into the world in Fleet
+Street, at the corner of Chancery Lane. But Cowley was a renegade; he
+acquired an unnatural preference for the country, and not only held that
+"God the first garden made, and the first city Cain," but ended a poem in
+praise of nature and a quiet life with--
+
+              "Methinks I see
+  The monster London laugh at me;
+    I should at thee too, foolish city,
+  If it were fit to laugh at misery;
+    But thy estate I pity.
+  Let but thy wicked men from out thee go,
+  And all the fools that crowd thee so,
+    Even thou, who dost thy millions boast,
+  A village less than Islington wilt grow,
+    A solitude almost."
+
+[Illustration: JOHN MILTON]
+
+The daintiest of our lyrists, Herrick, was born over his father's shop in
+Cheapside, and you may take it he was only playing with poetical fancies
+when, in some lines to his friend Endymion Porter, he praised the country
+with its "nut-brown mirth and russet wit," and again when, in a set of
+verses on "The Country Life," he assured his brother he was "thrice and
+above blest," because he could--
+
+  "Leave the city, for exchange, to see
+   The country's sweet simplicity."
+
+If you want to find him in earnest, turn to that enraptured outburst of
+his on "His Return to London"--
+
+  "Ravished in spirit I come, nay more I fly
+   To thee, blessed place of my nativity!...
+   O place! O people! manners framed to please
+   All nations, customs, kindreds, languages!
+   I am a free-born Roman; suffer then
+   That I amongst you live a citizen.
+   London my home is, though by hard fate sent
+   Into a long and irksome banishment;
+   Yet since called back, henceforward let me be,
+   O native country! repossessed by thee;
+   For rather than I'll to the West return,
+   I'll beg of thee first here to have mine urn."
+
+There speaks the true Cockney; he would sooner be dead in London than
+alive in the West of England. Even Lamb's love of London was scarcely
+greater than that.
+
+[Illustration: THE GATEWAY. MIDDLE TEMPLE.]
+
+It was fitting that Pope, essentially a town poet, should be born in
+Lombard Street. In the next thoroughfare, Cornhill, Gray was born; and,
+son of a butcher, Defoe began life in the parish of St. Giles's,
+Cripplegate. Shakespeare was an alien, but Bacon was born at York House,
+in the Strand; which, to my thinking, is the strongest argument in favour
+of the theory that he wrote the plays. Churchill was born at Vine Street,
+Westminster; Keats in Moorfields; and, staunchest and one of the most
+incorrigible Londoners of them all, Charles Lamb in Crown Office Row,
+Temple. He refers, in one of his essays, to Hare Court, in the Temple, and
+says: "It was a gloomy, churchyard-like court, with three trees and a
+pump in it. I was born near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was
+a Rechabite of six years old." The pump is no longer there, only one half
+of Hare Court remains as it was in Lamb's day, and Crown Office Row has
+been rebuilt. His homes in Mitre Court Buildings and Inner Temple Lane
+have vanished also; but the Temple is still rich in reminiscences of him.
+Paper Buildings, King's Bench Walk, Harcourt Buildings, the fountain near
+Garden Court, the old Elizabethan Hall, in which tradition says
+Shakespeare read one of his plays to Queen Elizabeth--these and the
+church, the gardens, the winding lanes and quaint byways of the Temple,
+made up, as he said, his earliest recollections. "I repeat to this day,"
+he writes, "no verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion,
+than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot--
+
+  'There when they came whereas those bricky towers
+   The which on Themmes broad aged back doth ride,
+   Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers,
+   There whylome wont the Templar knights to bide,
+   Till they decayed through pride.'"
+
+And, "indeed," he adds, "it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis."
+
+[Illustration: CHAUCER'S TOMB. WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
+
+But his letters and essays are full of his love of London. "I don't care
+much," he wrote to Wordsworth, "if I never see a mountain. I have passed
+all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local
+attachments as any of your mountaineers can have done with dead Nature....
+I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy in so much
+life." Again, "Fleet Street and the Strand," he writes to Manning, "are
+better places to live in for good and all than amidst Skiddaw." After he
+had removed to Edmonton, on account of his sister's health, it was to
+Wordsworth he wrote, saying how he pined to be back again in London: "In
+dreams I am in Fleet Market, but I wake and cry to sleep again.... Oh,
+never let the lying poets be believed who 'tice men from the cheerful
+haunts of streets.... A garden was the primitive prison, till man, with
+Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it. Thence
+followed Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London.... I would live in London
+shirtless, bookless."
+
+But to get back to our catalogue of birthplaces--Blake was born in Broad
+Street, near Golden Square; Byron in Holles Street; Hood in the Poultry,
+within sight of the Mansion House; Dante and Christina Rossetti were
+Londoners born; so were Swinburne, Browning, Philip Bourke Marston, John
+Stuart Mill, Ruskin, Turner, Holman Hunt, Sir Arthur Sullivan--but if we
+go outside literary Londoners this chapter will end only with the book.
+Moreover, my purpose is not so much to talk of authors and artists who
+were born in London, as to give some record of the still surviving houses
+in which many of them lived; whether they had their birth here or not, the
+majority of them came here to live and work, for, so far as England is
+concerned, there is more than a grain of truth in Lamb's enthusiastic
+boast that "London is the only fostering soil of genius."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+SHAKESPEARE IN LONDON
+
+
+The London that Shakespeare knew has vanished like a dream. The Great Fire
+swept most of it out of existence in a few days of 1666, and the two and a
+half centuries of time since then have made away with nearly all the rest
+of it. The Tower still remains; there are parts of the Temple; a stray
+relic or so, such as the London Stone in Cannon Street, by which
+Shakespeare lays one of the Jack Cade scenes of his _Henry VI._ There are
+the stately water-gates along the Embankment, too; here and there an old
+house or so, such as that above the Inner Temple gateway, those of Staple
+Inn, those in Cloth Fair, and over in the Borough High Street; a few
+ancient Inns, like the Mitre off Ely Place, the Dick Whittington in Cloth
+Fair, the George in Southwark; some dozen of churches, including
+Westminster Abbey (in whose Jerusalem Chamber the translators of the Bible
+held their meetings), St. Saviour's, Southwark, St. Bartholomew the Great
+in Smithfield, St. Andrew Undershaft, St. Ethelburga's and St. Helen's,
+Bishopsgate, in which latter parish it seems probable that Shakespeare was
+for a while a householder; otherwise Elizabethan London has dwindled to
+little but remembered sites of once-famous buildings and streets that have
+changed in everything but their names.
+
+[Illustration: JERUSALEM CHAMBER. WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]
+
+Until quite recently none of us knew of any address in London that had
+ever been Shakespeare's; we knew of no house, of no street even, which had
+once numbered him among its tenants, though we know that he passed at
+least twenty of the busiest and most momentous years of his life in the
+metropolis. There is a plausible but vague tradition that during some part
+of that period he had lodgings in Southwark near the Globe Theatre, in
+which he acted, for which he wrote plays, and of which he was one of the
+proprietors. There used to be an inscription: "Here lived William
+Shakespeare," on the face of an old gabled house in Aldersgate Street, but
+there was never a rag of evidence to support the statement. We have no
+letters of Shakespeare, but we have one or two that refer to him, and one
+written to him by Richard Quiney, and I think we may infer from this
+latter that Shakespeare occasionally visited Quiney, who was a vintner,
+dwelling at the sign of the Bell in Carter Lane. Otherwise, except for a
+handful of small-beer chronicles about him that were picked up in
+theatrical circles two or three generations after his death, we had no
+record of any incident in his London life that brought us into actual
+personal touch with him until little more than two years ago. Then an
+American professor, Mr. Charles William Wallace, came over and did what
+our English students do not appear to have had the energy or enterprise to
+do for themselves--he toiled carefully through the dusty piles of
+documents preserved in the Record Office, and succeeded in unearthing one
+of the most interesting Shakespearean discoveries that have ever been
+made--a discovery that gives us vividly intimate glimpses of Shakespeare's
+life in London, and establishes beyond question his place of residence
+here in the years when he was writing some of the greatest of his dramas.
+
+In 1587 the company of the "Queen's Players" made their first appearance
+in Stratford-on-Avon, and it was about this date, so far as can be traced,
+that Shakespeare ran away from home; so you may reasonably play with a
+fancy that he joined this company in some very minor capacity and
+travelled with them to London. At this time, Burbage, who was by
+profession an actor and by trade a carpenter and joiner, was owner and
+manager of "The Theatre," which stood in Shoreditch near the site of the
+present Standard Theatre, and close by was a rival house, "The Curtain"
+(commemorated nowadays by Curtain Road); and according to the legend,
+which has developed into a legend of exact detail, yet rests on nothing
+but the airiest rumour, it was outside one or both of these theatres
+Shakespeare picked up a living on his arrival in London by minding horses
+whilst their owners were inside witnessing a performance.
+
+By 1593 Shakespeare had become known as an actor and as a dramatist. He
+had revised and tinkered at various plays for Burbage's company, and as a
+consequence had been charged with plagiarism by poor Greene, whose
+_Groatsworth of Wit_ (published after he had died miserably in Dowgate)
+pours scorn on the "upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with
+his _Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide_ supposes he is as well able to
+bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute
+_Johannes fac totum_, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a
+countrie." For his acting, Shakespeare appears for the first time in the
+Lord Chamberlain's accounts of 1594 as having taken equal shares with
+William Kemp and Richard Burbage in a sum of twenty pounds "for two
+severall Comedies or Interludes shewed by them" before Queen Elizabeth at
+Christmas 1593.
+
+After the Theatre of Shoreditch was pulled down in 1598, Burbage built the
+Globe Theatre on Bankside, Southwark, on the ground of which part of
+Barclay & Perkins's brewery now stands; and Shakespeare, "being a
+deserveing man," was taken as one of the partners and received a
+"chief-actor's share" of the profits. And it is to this prosperous period
+of his London career that Professor Wallace's recent discoveries belong.
+
+In 1598 there lived in a shop at the corner of Silver Street and Monkwell
+Street a certain Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of wigs and fashionable
+headdresses. He was a Frenchman, born at Cressy, and probably a refugee
+Huguenot. His household consisted of a wife and daughter, an apprentice
+named Stephen Bellott, and one lodger, and this lodger was William
+Shakespeare. Being out of his apprenticeship in 1604, Stephen had six
+pounds from his master and, with this and his own savings, went travelling
+into Spain, but returned towards the end of the year and resumed work
+again at Mountjoy's shop. In his 'prentice days Stephen seems to have
+formed some shy attachment to his master's daughter, Mary, but because of
+his lack of means and prospects, or because he was naturally reticent, he
+had made no attempt to press his suit, and Madame Mountjoy, seeing how the
+young people were affected to each other, followed the fashion of the time
+and persuaded Shakespeare, who had then been living under the same roof
+with them for six years, to act as match-maker between her and the
+hesitating lover. She one day laid the case before Shakespeare and asked
+his good offices, as Professor Wallace has it; she told him that "if he
+could bring the young man to make a proposal of marriage, a dower fitting
+to their station should be settled upon them at marriage. This was the
+sum of fifty pounds in money of that time, or approximately four hundred
+pounds in money of to-day." Shakespeare consented to undertake this
+delicate duty; he spoke with young Bellott, and the outcome of his
+negotiations was that Stephen and Mary were married, as the entry in the
+church register shows, at St. Olave, Silver Street, on the 19th November
+1604.
+
+On the death of Madame Mountjoy in 1606, Stephen and his wife went back to
+live with the father and help him in his business, but they soon fell out
+with him, and became on such bad terms that some six months later they
+left him and took lodgings with George Wilkins, a victualler, who kept an
+inn in the parish of St. Sepulchre's. The quarrel between them culminated
+in Stephen Bellott bringing an action in the Court of Requests in 1612, to
+recover from his father-in-law a promised dower of sixty pounds and to
+ensure that Mountjoy carried out an alleged arrangement to bequeath a sum
+of two hundred pounds to him by his will. At the Record Office Professor
+Wallace found all the legal documents relating to these proceedings, and
+amongst them are the depositions of Shakespeare setting forth to the best
+of his recollection his own share in the arranging of the marriage. From
+these depositions, and from those of other witnesses who make reference to
+him, one gets the first clear and authentic revelation of Shakespeare's
+home life in London.
+
+He lived with the Mountjoys over that shop at the corner of Monkwell
+Street for at least six years, down to the date of the wedding, and there
+is little doubt that he stayed on with them after that. It is more than
+likely, indeed, that he was still boarding there when he appeared as a
+witness in the 1612 lawsuit and stated that he had been intimate with the
+family some "ten years, more or less." Throughout the later of those years
+he was absent on occasional visits to Stratford, and hitherto it has been
+generally assumed (on the negative evidence that no trace of him could be
+found after this date) that he returned and settled down in Stratford
+permanently about 1609.
+
+Taking only the six years we are certain of, however, he wrote between
+1598 and 1604 _Henry V._, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Much Ado About
+Nothing_, _As You Like It_, _Twelfth Night_, _All's Well that Ends Well_,
+_Julius Caesar_, _Hamlet_, _Measure for Measure_, and _Othello_. In the two
+years following, whilst it is pretty sure he was still dwelling with the
+Mountjoys, he wrote _Macbeth_ and _King Lear_, and the fact that he had
+his home here during the period in which he was writing ten of his
+plays--three of them amongst the greatest he or any man ever wrote--makes
+this corner of Monkwell Street the most glorious literary landmark in the
+world.
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE]
+
+The house in which he lodged was destroyed by the Great Fire, and the site
+is occupied now by an old tavern, "The Cooper's Arms." Almost facing it,
+just the other side of Silver Street, is a fragment of the churchyard of
+St. Olave's. The church, in which the apprentice Stephen was married to
+Mary Mountjoy, vanished also in the Great Fire and was not rebuilt, and
+this weedy remnant of the churchyard with its three or four crumbling
+tombs is all that survives of the street as Shakespeare knew it; his
+glance must have rested on that forlorn garden of the dead as often as
+he looked from the windows opposite or came out at Mountjoy's door.
+
+[Illustration: ST. OLAVE'S CHURCHYARD. SILVER STREET.]
+
+Turning to the right when he came out at that door, half a minute's walk
+up Falcon Street would have brought him into Aldersgate Street, so the
+announcement on one of the shops there that he had lived in it may have
+been nothing worse than a perfectly honest mistake; it was known as a fact
+that he lived thereabouts, and tradition settled on the wrong house
+instead of on the right one, that was a hundred yards or so away from it.
+But when Shakespeare issued from Mountjoy's shop you may depend that his
+feet more frequently trod the ground in the opposite direction; he would
+go to the left, along Silver Street, into Wood Street, and down the length
+of that to Cheapside, where, almost fronting the end of Wood Street,
+stood the Mermaid Tavern, and he must needs pass to the right or left of
+it, by way of Friday Street, or Bread Street, across Cannon Street and
+then down Huggin Lane or Little Bread Street Hill to Thames Street,
+whence, from Queenhithe, Puddle Wharf, or Paul's Wharf, he could take boat
+over the Thames to the Globe Theatre on Bankside.
+
+There has been no theatre on Bankside these many years; there is nothing
+there or in that vicinity now that belongs to Shakespeare's age except
+some scattered, ancient, inglorious houses that he may or may not have
+known and the stately cathedral of St. Saviour. This holds still the span
+of ground that has belonged to it since before Chaucer's day. You may
+enter and see there the quaint effigy of Chaucer's contemporary, Gower,
+sleeping on his five-century-old tomb; and here and there about the aisles
+and in the nave are memorials of remembered or forgotten men and women who
+died while Shakespeare was living, and somewhere in it were buried men,
+too, who were intimate with him, though no evidence of their burial there
+remains except in the parish register. In the "monthly accounts" of St.
+Saviour's you come upon these entries concerning two of his contemporary
+dramatists:--
+
+    "1625. _August_ 29th, John Fletcher, a poet, in the church."
+
+    "1638. _March_ 18th, Philip Massinger, stranger, in the church."
+
+the inference being that Fletcher had resided in the parish, and
+Massinger, the "stranger," had not. But earlier than either of these, it
+is on record that on the 31st December 1607, Shakespeare's youngest
+brother, Edmund, "a player," was buried here, and a fee of twenty
+shillings was paid by some one for "a forenoon knell of the great bell."
+
+St. Saviour's, then, the sites of the Globe Theatre and the Mermaid, and
+that corner of Monkwell Street are London's chief Shakespearean shrines.
+The discovery of the Monkwell Street residence emphasises that before Ben
+Jonson founded his Apollo Club at the Devil Tavern by Temple Bar,
+Cheapside and not Fleet Street was the heart of literary London. Whilst
+Shakespeare made his home with the Mountjoys, Ben Jonson and Dekker were
+living near him in Cripplegate, in which district also resided Johnson the
+actor, Anthony Munday, and other of Shakespeare's intimates; nearer still,
+in Aldermanbury, lived Heminges and Condell, his brother actors, who first
+collected and published his plays after his death: and George Wilkins, at
+whose inn near St. Sepulchre's Stephen Bellott and his wife lodged after
+their quarrel with Mountjoy, was a minor dramatist who, besides
+collaborating with Rowley, collaborated with Shakespeare himself in the
+writing of _Pericles_. Coryat, the eccentric author of the _Crudities_,
+lived in Bow Lane; Donne, who was born in Wood Street, wrote his early
+poems there in the house of the good merchant, his father, and was a
+frequenter of the Mermaid.
+
+In 1608 Milton was born in Bread Street (Shakespeare must have passed his
+door many a time in his goings to and fro), and grew up to live and work
+within the City walls in Aldersgate Street, and in Bartholomew Close, and
+just without them in Bunhill Row, and was brought back within them to be
+buried in Cripplegate Church. These, and its earlier and many later
+literary associations, help to halo Cheapside and its environs, and, in
+spite of the sordid commercial aspect and history that have overtaken it,
+to make it for ever a street in the kingdom of romance.
+
+And the chief glory of Cheapside itself is, of course, the Mermaid. One of
+these days a fitting sign will be placed above the spot where it stood,
+and set forth in letters of gold the great names that are inseparable from
+its story, and first among these will be the names of Shakespeare, Ben
+Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Selden, Donne, Carew, Fuller, Sir Walter
+Raleigh.
+
+The Mermaid rose on Cheapside with a side entrance in Friday Street, and
+of evenings when no business took him to the theatre, or towards midnight
+when he was on his way home from it, Shakespeare often turned aside into
+this famous meeting-place of the immortals of his generation. Everybody is
+familiar with those rapturous lines in Beaumont's letter to Ben Jonson,
+"written before he and Master Fletcher came to London with two of the
+precedent comedies, then not finished, which deferred their merry meetings
+at the Mermaid;" but one cannot talk of the Mermaid without remembering
+them and quoting from them once again:--
+
+                      "In this warm shine
+  I lie and dream of your full Mermaid wine....
+  Methinks the little wit I had is lost
+  Since I saw you: for wit is like a rest
+  Held up at tennis, which men do the best
+  With the best gamesters! What things have we seen
+  Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
+  So nimble and so full of subtile flame
+  As if that every one from whence they came
+  Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
+  And had resolved to live a fool the rest
+  Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown
+  Wit able enough to justify the town
+  For three days past, wit that might warrant be
+  For the whole city to talk foolishly
+  Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone,
+  We left an air behind us which alone
+  Was able to make the next two companies
+  Right witty; though but downright fools, mere wise."
+
+[Illustration: BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE. SMITHFIELD.]
+
+Well might Keats ask in a much later day (probably whilst he was tenanting
+the Cheapside rooms over Bird-in-Hand Court in which he wrote the sonnet
+on Chapman's Homer):
+
+  "Souls of poets dead and gone,
+   What Elysium have ye known,
+   Happy field or mossy cavern
+   Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?"
+
+And in our own time, in _Christmas at the Mermaid_, Watts-Dunton has
+recreated that glamorous hostelry and brought together again the fine
+spirits who used to frequent it--brought them together in an imaginary
+winter's night shortly after Shakespeare had departed from them and gone
+back to Stratford for good. Jonson is of that visionary company, and
+Raleigh, Lodge, Dekker, Chapman, Drayton and Heywood, and it is Heywood
+who breaks in, after the tale-telling and reminiscent talk, with--
+
+    "More than all the pictures, Ben,
+      Winter weaves by wood or stream,
+    Christmas loves our London, when
+      Rise thy clouds of wassail-steam:
+    Clouds like these that, curling, take
+    Forms of faces gone, and wake
+  Many a lay from lips we loved, and make
+        London like a dream."
+
+It is because of the memories that sleep within it, like music in a lute
+until a hand that knows touches it, because of all it has been, and
+because it is never more wonderful than when you can so make it like a
+dream, that I give thanks for the fog that comes down upon London at
+intervals, in the grey months, and with silent wizardries conjures it out
+of sight. Look at this same Cheapside on a clear day, and it is simply a
+plain, prosperous, common-place street, but when a fog steals quietly
+through it and spiritualises it to something of the vagueness and grandeur
+and mystery of poetry it is no longer a mere earthly thoroughfare under
+the control of the Corporation; it becomes a dream-street in some
+mist-built city of the clouds, and you feel that at any moment the
+pavements might thin out and shred away and let you through into starry,
+illimitable spaces. Where the brown fog warms to a misty, golden glow you
+know there are shop windows. As you advance the street-lamps twinkle in
+the thick air, as if they were kindled magically at your coming and
+flickered out again directly you were past. The coiling darkness is loud
+with noises of life, but you walk among them with a sense of aloofness and
+solitude, for you can see nothing but flitting shadows all about you and
+know that you are yourself only a shadow to them.
+
+For me, three of the loveliest and most strangely touching sights of
+London are the stars shining very high in the blue and very quietly when
+you look up at them from the roaring depths of a crowded, naphtha-flaring,
+poverty-stricken market street; a sunrise brightening over the Thames
+below London Bridge, while the barges are still asleep with the gleam of
+their lamps showing pale in the dawn; and the blurred lights and ghostly
+buildings of a long city road that is clothed in mystery and transfigured
+by a brooding, dream-haunted fog. Perhaps this is only because of the dim
+feeling one has that the stars and the sunrise are of the things that the
+wasting centuries have not changed; and the fog that blots out to-day
+makes it easier to realise that yesterday and the life of yesterday are
+close about us still, and that we might see them with our waking eyes,
+even as we see them in our dreams, if the darkness would but lift.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST BULK SHOP. CLARE MARKET.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHERE POPE STAYED AT BATTERSEA
+
+
+Coming from Chelsea by way of Battersea Bridge, you go a few yards along
+the Battersea Bridge Road, then turn aside into Church Road, and presently
+you pass a narrow, mean street of small houses, which is Bolingbroke Road,
+and serves to remind you that the Bolingbrokes were once lords of the
+manor of Battersea and proprietors of the ferry that crossed the river
+hereabouts before the first Battersea Bridge was built. A little further
+down Church Road, past squat and grimy houses on the one hand and gaunt
+walls and yawning gateways of mills, distilleries, and miscellaneous
+"works" on the other, and you come to a gloomy gateway that has "To
+Bolingbroke House" painted up on one of its side-walls. Through this
+opening you see a busy, littered yard; straw and scraps of paper and odds
+and ends of waste blow about on its stones; stacks of packing-cases and
+wooden boxes rise up against a drab background of brick buildings, and
+deep in the yard, with a space before it in which men are at work and a
+waggon is loading, you find the forlorn left wing--all that survives--of
+what was once the family seat of Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke,
+whose chief title to remembrance now is that he was the friend of
+Alexander Pope.
+
+Worn and dingy with age, its stone porch stained and crumbling, and some
+of its windows broken, the place has a strange, neglected look, though it
+is still used for business purposes, and you have glimpses of clerks
+writing at their desks in the rooms from which Pope used to gaze out on
+very different surroundings.
+
+It is difficult, indeed, to associate such a house and such a
+neighbourhood as this has now become with so fastidious, finicking, and
+modish a poet as Pope. All the adjacent streets are squalid,
+poverty-stricken, noisy; along the main road, almost within hearing, trams
+and motor-buses shuttle continually to and fro: except for a quaint,
+dirty, weary-looking cottage that still stands dreaming here and there
+among its ugly, mid-Victorian neighbours, and for the river that laps
+below the fence at the end of the yard, there is scarcely anything left of
+the quiet, green, rural Battersea village with which he was familiar; even
+the church whose steeple rises near by above the mills, and in which
+Bolingbroke was buried, was rebuilt a few years after his death.
+
+Nevertheless, this weatherbeaten, time-wasted old house down the yard is
+the same house that, when it stood with Bolingbroke's lawn before it and
+his pleasant gardens sloping to the Thames, was the occasional home of
+Pope, and numbered Swift, Thomson, and other of the great men of letters
+of Queen Anne's reign among its visitors. One of the rooms overlooking the
+river, a room lined with cedar, beautifully inlaid, is still known as "Mr.
+Pope's parlour"; it is said to have been used by Pope as his study, and
+that he wrote his _Essay on Man_ in it.
+
+It is therefore the more fitting that Pope should have dedicated _An Essay
+on Man_ to Bolingbroke, whom he addresses in the opening lines with that
+exhortation:--
+
+  "Awake, my St. John, leave all meaner things
+   To low ambition, and the pride of kings!"
+
+He dedicated also one of his Imitations of Horace to--
+
+  "St. John, whose love indulged my labours past,
+   Matures my present, and shall bound my last."
+
+A man of brilliant gifts, both as writer and statesman, Bolingbroke became
+involved in the political intriguings of his day, and in 1715 had to flee
+to Calais to escape arrest for high treason. Eight years later he was
+allowed to return, and his forfeited estates were given back to him. On
+the death of his father he took up his residence at Battersea, and it was
+there that he died of cancer in 1751. "Pope used to speak of him," writes
+Warton, "as a being of a superior order that had condescended to visit
+this lower world;" and he, in his turn, said of Pope, "I never in my life
+knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more
+general friendship for mankind."
+
+[Illustration: POPE'S HOUSE. BATTERSEA.]
+
+And on the whole one feels that this character of Pope was truer than Lady
+Mary Wortley Montagu's presentation of him as "the wicked asp of
+Twickenham"; for if he was viciously cruel to Colley Cibber and the poor
+Grub Street scribblers whom he satirises in _The Dunciad_, he was kindness
+itself to Akenside and other of his younger rivals in reading their
+manuscripts and recommending them to his publishers; and if he retorted
+bitterly upon Addison after he had fallen out with him, he kept unbroken
+to the last his close friendship with Swift, Gay, Garth, Atterbury,
+Bolingbroke, and with Arbuthnot, for whose services in helping him through
+"this long disease, my life" he expressed a touchingly affectionate
+gratitude. If he had been the heartless little monster his enemies painted
+him he could not have felt so tireless and beautiful a love for his father
+and mother and, despite his own feebleness and shattered health, have
+devoted himself so assiduously to the care of his mother in her declining
+years. "O friend," he writes to Arbuthnot, in the Prologue to the
+Satires:--
+
+  "O friend, may each domestic bliss be thine!
+   Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:
+   Me let the tender office long engage
+   To rock the cradle of reposing age,
+   With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
+   Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,
+   Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
+   And keep a while one parent from the sky."
+
+All his life, Pope dwelt in London or on the skirts of it. He was
+twenty-eight when, soon after the death of his father in 1715, he leased
+the famous villa at Twickenham and took his mother to live with him there,
+and it was from there when she died, a very old lady of ninety-three, that
+on the 10th June 1783, he wrote to an artist friend the letter that
+enshrines his sorrow:--
+
+"As I know you and I naturally desire to see one another, I hoped that
+this day our wishes would have met and brought you hither. And this for
+the very reason which possibly might hinder your coming, that my poor
+mother is dead. I thank God her death was easy, as her life was innocent,
+and as it cost her not a groan or even a sigh, there is yet upon her
+countenance such an expression of tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure,
+that, far from horrid, it is even amiable to behold it. It would form the
+finest image of a saint expired that ever painter drew, and it would be
+the greatest obligation art could ever bestow on a friend if you could
+come and sketch it for me. I am sure if there be no prevalent obstacle you
+will leave every common business to do this; and I hope to see you this
+evening as late as you will, or to-morrow morning as early, before this
+winter flower is faded. I will defer her interment till to-morrow night. I
+know you love me or I would not have written this--I could not (at this
+time) have written at all. Adieu. May you die as happily."
+
+From Twickenham Pope made frequent visits to London, where he stayed in
+lodgings, or at the houses of friends; and in the last four or five years
+of his life, after Bolingbroke had settled down at Battersea, he put up as
+often as not at Bolingbroke House. Of his personal appearance at this date
+there are a good many records. One of his numerous lampooners, unkindly
+enough but very graphically, pictures him as--
+
+  "Meagre and wan, and steeple crowned,
+   His visage long, his shoulders round;
+   His crippled corse two spindle pegs
+   Support, instead of human legs;
+   His shrivelled skin's of dusty grain,
+   A cricket's voice, and monkey's brain."
+
+His old enemy, John Dennis, sneering at his hunched and drooping figure,
+described him as "a young, short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the god
+of love." He had to be laced up tightly in bodices made of stiff
+canvas, so that he might hold himself erect, and, says Dr. Johnson, "his
+stature was so low, that to bring him to a level with a common table it
+was necessary to raise his seat. But his face was not displeasing, and his
+eyes were animated and vivid." And here is Sir Joshua Reynolds's
+word-picture of him: "He was about four feet six inches high, very
+hump-backed and deformed. He wore a black coat, and, according to the
+fashion of that time, had on a little sword. He had a large and very fine
+eye, and a long, handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which
+are always found in the mouths of crooked persons, and the muscles which
+run across the cheek were so strongly marked that they seemed like small
+cords."
+
+[Illustration: ALEXANDER POPE]
+
+This is the queer, misshapen, pathetic little shape that haunts that
+old-world house in the yard at Battersea, and you may gather something of
+the life he lived there, and of the writing with which he busied himself
+in the cedar parlour, from these extracts out of two of his letters, both
+of which were written to Warburton:--
+
+    "_January 12, 1743-4._
+
+    "Of the public I can tell you nothing worthy of the reflection of a
+    reasonable man; and of myself only an account that would give you
+    pain; for my asthma has increased every week since you last heard from
+    me to the degree of confining me totally to the fireside; so that I
+    have hardly seen any of my friends but two (Lord and Lady
+    Bolingbroke), who happen to be divided from the world as much as
+    myself, and are constantly retired at Battersea. There I have passed
+    much of my time, and often wished you of the company, as the best I
+    know to make me not regret the loss of others, and to prepare me for a
+    nobler scene than any mortal greatness can open to us. I fear by the
+    account you gave me of the time you design to come this way, one of
+    them (Lord B.) whom I much wish you had a glimpse of (as a being
+    _paullo minus ab angelio_), will be gone again, unless you pass some
+    weeks in London before Mr. Allen arrives there in March. My present
+    indisposition takes up almost all my hours to render a very few of
+    them supportable; yet I go on softly to prepare the great edition of
+    my things with your notes, and as fast as I receive any from you, I
+    add others in order (determining to finish the Epistle to Dr.
+    Arbuthnot and two or three of the best of Horace, particularly that of
+    Augustus, first), which will fall into the same volume with the Essay
+    on Man. I determined to publish a small number of the Essay, and of
+    the other on Criticism, ere now, as a sample of the rest, but Bowyer
+    advised delay, though I now see I was not in the wrong."
+
+
+    _"February 21, 1743-4._
+
+    "I own that the late encroachments on my constitution make me willing
+    to see the end of all further care about me or my works. I would rest
+    from the one in a full resignation of my being to be disposed of by
+    the Father of all mercy, and for the other (though indeed a trifle,
+    yet a trifle may be some example) I would commit them to the candour
+    of a sensible and reflecting judge, rather than to the malice of every
+    short-sighted and malevolent critic or inadvertent and censorious
+    reader. And no hand can set them in so good a light, or so well turn
+    them best side to the day, as your own. This obliges me to confess I
+    have for some months thought myself going, and that not slowly, down
+    the hill--the rather as every attempt of the physicians, and still the
+    last medicines more forcible in their nature, have utterly failed to
+    serve me. I was at last, about seven days ago, taken with so violent a
+    fit at Battersea, that my friends, Lord Bolingbroke and Lord
+    Marchmont, sent for present help to the surgeon, whose bleeding me, I
+    am persuaded, saved my life by the instantaneous effect it had, and
+    which has continued so much to amend me that I have passed five days
+    without oppression, and recovered, what I have three days wanted, some
+    degree of expectoration and some hours together of sleep. I can now go
+    to Twickenham, to try if the air will not take some part in reviving
+    me, if I can avoid colds, and between that place and Battersea, with
+    my Lord Bolingbroke, I will pass what I have of life while he stays,
+    which I can tell you, to my great satisfaction, will be this fortnight
+    or three weeks yet."
+
+In the year after writing this Pope came to the end of all further care
+about himself and his works; he died at Twickenham, and lies buried under
+the middle aisle of Twickenham Church.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HOGARTH
+
+
+Before he took up residence at the Twickenham villa, Pope lived for some
+time with his father in one of the houses of Mawson's Buildings (now
+Mawson Row), Chiswick. So far it has been impossible to decide which of
+these five red-brick houses is the one that was theirs, for the only
+evidence of their tenancy consists of certain letters preserved at the
+British Museum, which are addressed to "Alexr. Pope, Esquire, Mawson's
+Buildings, in Chiswick," and on the backs of these are written portions of
+the original drafts of Pope's translation of the Iliad. James Ralph, the
+unfortunate poetaster whom Pope satirised in his _Dunciad_, was also a
+native of Chiswick, and lies buried in the parish churchyard. One other
+link Pope has with Chiswick--he wrote a rather poor epigram on Thomas
+Wood, who resided there, and who seems to have been connected with the
+Church, for according to the poet--
+
+  "Tom Wood of Chiswick, deep divine,
+   To painter Kent gave all his coin;
+   'Tis the first coin, I'm bold to say,
+   That ever churchman gave away."
+
+This Kent, I take it, was the man of the same name who likewise lived at
+Chiswick in Pope's day, and was more notable as a landscape gardener than
+as a painter.
+
+[Illustration: POPE. MAWSON'S ROW CHISWICK.]
+
+But, to say nothing of William Morris's more recent association with the
+district, the most interesting house in Chiswick is Hogarth's. It is a
+red-brick villa of the Queen Anne style, with a quaint, overhanging bay
+window, and stands in a large, walled garden, not far from the parish
+church. For many years this was Hogarth's summer residence--his
+"villakin," as he called it. His workshop, or studio, that used to be at
+the foot of the garden, has been demolished; otherwise the house remains
+very much as it was when he occupied it.
+
+Hogarth was essentially a town man; he was almost, if not quite, as good a
+Londoner as Lamb. He was born in Bartholomew Close, West Smithfield, that
+storied place where Milton had lived before, and Washington Irving went to
+live after, him; and he spent nearly all his life in the neighbourhood of
+Leicester Square. He was rarely absent from London at all, and never for
+long; even when he was supposed to be passing his summers at his Chiswick
+villa, he made frequent excursions into town, and would put up for a few
+days at his house in Leicester Square--or Leicester Fields, as it then
+was.
+
+In 1712 Hogarth went to serve a six years' apprenticeship to Ellis Gamble,
+a silver-plate engraver, in Cranbourne Alley (now Cranbourne Street), and,
+on the death of his father in 1718, he started business for himself as an
+engraver in what had been his father's house in Long Lane, West
+Smithfield, and later removed to the corner of Cranbourne Alley, leaving
+his mother with his two sisters, who had opened shop as mercers, at the
+old Long Lane address. He engraved for them a shop card, duly setting
+forth that "Mary and Ann Hogarth, from the old Frock Shop, the corner of
+the Long Wall, facing the Cloysters, Removed to ye King's Arms joining to
+ye Little Britain Gate, near Long Walk, Sells ye best and most Fashionable
+Ready Made Frocks, Sutes of Fustian, Ticken, and Holland, Stript Dimity
+and Flanel Waistcoats, blue and canvas Frocks, and bluecoat Boys'
+Dra{rs.}, Likewise Fustians, Tickens, Hollands, white stript Dimitys,
+white and stript Flanels in ye piece, by Wholesale or Retale at Reasonable
+Rates."
+
+Hogarth was very self-satisfied and rather illiterate; his spelling and
+his grammar--as in this shop-card--were continually going wrong. But he
+was kindly, good-hearted, high-minded, and had imagination and an original
+genius that could laugh at the nice, mechanical accomplishments of the
+schoolmaster. It was Nollekens, the sculptor, who said that he frequently
+saw Hogarth sauntering round Leicester Square, playing the nurse, "with
+his master's sickly child hanging its head over his shoulder." That was in
+the early days, when he was still serving his time to Gamble, and not even
+dreaming, I suppose, that he would one day own the big house at the
+south-east corner of the Square, would enjoy some of his highest triumphs
+and sharpest humiliations in it, and die in it at last, leaving behind him
+work that would give him a place among the very first of English painters.
+
+Even before so fastidious a critic as Whistler had declared that Hogarth
+was "the greatest English artist who ever lived," Hazlitt had said much
+the same thing, and paid a glowing tribute to the vitality and dramatic
+life of his pictures; but perhaps no critic has written a finer, more
+incisive criticism on him than Lamb did in his essay on "The Genius and
+Character of Hogarth." Lamb had been familiar with two of Hogarth's series
+of prints--"The Harlot's Progress," and "The Rake's Progress"--since his
+boyhood; and though he was keenly alive to the humour of them, he denied
+that their chief appeal was to the risible faculties. It was their
+profound seriousness, their stern satire, the wonderful creative force
+that underlay them, that most impressed him. "I was pleased," he says,
+"with the reply of a gentleman who, being asked which book he most
+esteemed in his library, answered 'Shakespeare'; being asked which he
+esteemed next best, replied 'Hogarth.' His graphic representations are
+indeed books; they have the teeming, fruitful, suggestive meaning of
+words. Other pictures we look at; his prints we read." He protests against
+confounding "the painting of subjects in common or vulgar life with the
+being a vulgar artist. The quantity of thought which Hogarth crowds into
+every picture would alone unvulgarise every subject he might choose. Let
+us take the lowest of his subjects, the print called 'Gin Lane.' Here is
+plenty of poverty and low stuff to disgust upon a superficial view; and
+accordingly a cold spectator feels himself immediately disgusted and
+repelled. I have seen many turn away from it, not being able to bear it.
+The same persons would, perhaps, have looked with great complacency upon
+Poussin's celebrated picture of the 'Plague of Athens.' Disease and death
+and bewildering terror in Athenian garments are endurable, and come, as
+the delicate critics express it, within the 'limits of pleasurable
+sensation.' But the scenes of their own St. Giles's, delineated by their
+own countryman, are too shocking to think of.... We are for ever deceiving
+ourselves with names and theories. We call one man a great historical
+painter because he has taken for his subjects kings or great men, or
+transactions over which time has thrown a grandeur. We term another the
+painter of common life, and set him down in our minds for an artist of an
+inferior class, without reflecting whether the quantity of thought shown
+by the latter may not much more than level the distinction which their
+mere choice of subjects may seem to place between them; or whether, in
+fact, from that very common life a great artist may not extract as deep an
+interest as another man from that which we are pleased to call history."
+He found that, though many of the pictures had much in them that is ugly
+and repellent, "there is in most of them that sprinkling of the better
+nature which, like holy water, chases away and disperses the contagion of
+the bad. They have this in them besides, that they bring us acquainted
+with the everyday human face." And because of this, of their truth to
+contemporary life, and the vigorous realism of the stories they tell, he
+ranked the work of Hogarth not only high among that of the world's great
+painters, but with the best novels of such men as Smollett and Fielding.
+
+According to a note in his fragmentary autobiography, Hogarth conceived an
+early admiration for the paintings of Sir James Thornhill, and, somewhere
+about 1727, he joined the painting school that Sir James established in
+the Piazza, at the corner of James Street, Covent Garden. And Sir James
+soon seems to have taken a particular interest in his pupil, and had him
+as a frequent visitor to his house at 75 Dean Street, Soho; and on March
+23rd, 1729, he eloped with his teacher's daughter, and they were married
+at old Paddington Church. There are paintings and decorations still to be
+seen on the walls of the Dean Street house, in some of which Hogarth is
+believed to have had a hand.
+
+After his marriage, Hogarth lived for a while at Lambeth; but it was not
+long before he was reconciled to his father-in-law. In 1730 he was
+engaged with Sir James Thornhill on their famous picture of "The House of
+Commons"; and a year later, when he was engraving his series of prints
+"The Harlot's Progress," he and his wife had apparently taken up quarters
+with Sir James in the Piazza.
+
+[Illustration: SIR JAMES THORNHILL. 75 DEAN STREET.]
+
+"The Harlot's Progress," and the issue of "The Rake's Progress" shortly
+afterwards, lifted Hogarth into fame. He began to move in better society,
+and was to be met with at the fashionable as well as at the Bohemian clubs
+of the day. He and Thornhill founded the Arts Club at the Turk's Head, in
+Gerrard Street; and, after the latter's death, he took over Thornhill's
+art school, and transferred it to Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane.
+Occasionally he visited Richardson, the novelist, in Salisbury Court; and
+it was here he first made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson. He struck up a
+friendship with Garrick, too, and painted several portraits of him, for
+one of which he received two hundred pounds; and with Fielding, of whom he
+has given us the only portrait we possess.
+
+By 1733 Hogarth was prosperous enough to take the house in Leicester
+Square that was pulled down, in 1870, to furnish a site for the Archbishop
+Tenison School that has replaced it; and in 1749, "having sacrificed
+enough to his fame and fortune," he purchased the villa at Chiswick as a
+summer holiday home, and became a familiar figure about the Chiswick lanes
+from time to time--"a blue-eyed, intelligent little man, with a scar over
+his right eye, and wearing a fur cap." Allan Cunningham furnishes a more
+vivid description of his personal appearance in his _Lives of the
+Painters_, where he says he was "rather below the middle height; his eye
+was peculiarly bright and piercing; his look shrewd, sarcastic, and
+intelligent; the forehead high and round. He was active in person,
+bustling in manner, and fond of affecting a little state and importance.
+He was of a temper cheerful, joyous, and companionable, fond of mirth and
+good-fellowship." Benjamin West called him a strutting, consequential
+little man; and, one way and another, we know that he was sturdy,
+obstinate, pugnacious, and that once he thrashed a ruffian whom he found
+maltreating the beautiful drummeress that he sketched in his picture of
+Southwark Fair. Possibly that scar over his right eye was a record of this
+chivalrous deed.
+
+There are very few records of his home life, and these are of the
+homeliest, most ordinary sort. He was fond of smoking, and the arm-chair,
+in which he was wont to sit with his pipe, is still preserved at Chiswick.
+He had a favourite dog, a pet cat, and a bullfinch, which he buried in his
+Chiswick garden, commemorating them with tablets that have now vanished
+from the wall, the bird's epitaph being "Alas, poor Dick!" and the dog's,
+"Life to the last enjoyed, here Pompey lies"--which parodies a line in the
+_Candidate_, by that dissipated, brilliant satirist, Charles Churchill:
+"Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies."
+
+[Illustration: HOGARTH'S HOUSE. CHISWICK.]
+
+The _Candidate_ was published at the beginning of 1764, and on the 25th
+October of that year Hogarth died. Churchill had been a warm friend of
+his, but before the end had become one of his bitterest enemies--that
+enmity arising in this wise. In 1762 Hogarth published a political print
+called the _Times_, in which he supported the policy of Lord Bute, and
+ridiculed Pitt, Temple, and Wilkes. By way of retaliation, Wilkes wrote a
+scathing attack upon Hogarth in his paper, the _North Briton_, in which he
+made a sneering reference to Mrs. Hogarth. This stirred Hogarth to anger;
+and when Wilkes was presently arrested on a charge of high treason, he sat
+in court and sketched the prisoner, immortalising his villainous squint,
+and accentuating all the worst qualities in his features. On this print
+making its appearance, Churchill, a staunch friend and partisan of Wilkes,
+took up the cudgels, and scarified Hogarth without mercy in _An Epistle to
+William Hogarth_ (1763), praising his art, but pouring contempt upon his
+envy and self-esteem, and affecting to believe that he was in his
+dotage. He can laud the genius, he says, but not the man.
+
+                          "Freely let him wear
+  The wreath which Genius wove and planted there:
+  Foe as I am, should envy tear it down,
+  Myself would labour to replace the crown....
+  Hogarth unrivalled stands, and shall engage
+  Unrivalled praise to the most distant age."
+
+But for the man--
+
+  "Hogarth, stand forth--I dare thee to be tried
+   In that great Court where Conscience must preside;
+   At that most solemn bar hold up thy hand;
+   Think before whom, on what account you stand;
+   Speak, but consider well;--from first to last
+   Review thy life, weigh every action past.
+   Canst thou remember from thy earliest youth,
+   And as thy God must judge thee, speak the truth,
+   A single instance where, self laid aside,
+   And Justice taking place of Fear and Pride,
+   Thou with an equal eye didst Genius view,
+   And give to Merit what was Merit's due?
+   Genius and Merit are a sure offence,
+   And thy soul sickens at the name of sense.
+   Is any one so foolish to succeed?
+   On Envy's altar he is doomed to bleed;
+   Hogarth, a guilty pleasure in his eyes,
+   The place of executioner supplies;
+   See how he gloats, enjoys the sacred feast,
+   And proves himself by cruelty a priest....
+     Oft have I known thee, Hogarth, weak and vain,
+   Thyself the idol of thy awkward strain,
+   Through the dull measure of a summer's day,
+   In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away,
+   Whilst friends with friends all gaping sit, and gaze,
+   To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth's praise....
+     With all the symptoms of assured decay,
+   With age and sickness pinched and worn away,
+   Pale quivering lips, lank cheeks, and faltering tongue,
+   The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung,
+   The body shrivelled up, the dim eyes sunk
+   Within their sockets deep, thy weak hams shrunk,
+   The body's weight unable to sustain,
+   The stream of life scarce trembling through the vein,
+   More than half killed by honest truths which fell,
+   Through thy own fault, from men who wished thee well--
+   Canst thou, e'en thus, thy thoughts to vengeance give
+   And, dead to all things else, to malice live?
+   Hence, dotard, to thy closet; shut thee in;
+   By deep repentance wash away thy sin;
+   From haunts of men to shame and sorrow fly,
+   And, on the verge of death, learn how to die!"
+
+Hurt and deeply mortified, a month later Hogarth satirised Churchill's
+former connection with the Church and present loose living in a caricature
+which represented him as a bear wearing torn clerical bands, with ruffles
+on his paws, in one hand a pot of porter, and in the other a bundle of
+lies and copies of the _North Briton_. Garrick had heard that Churchill
+was making ready to issue that vitriolic satire of his, and hastened to
+beg him, "by the regard you profess to me, that you don't tilt at my
+friend Hogarth before you see me. He is a great and original genius. I
+love him as a man, and reverence him as an artist. I would not for all the
+politics and politicians in the universe that you two should have the
+least cause of ill-will to each other. I am sure you will not publish
+against him if you think twice." One could honour Garrick if it were for
+nothing else but that letter; but it was written in vain, and the
+exasperation and humiliation that Hogarth suffered under Churchill's lash
+are said to have hastened his death. He had been broken in health and
+ailing all through the summer of 1764, but took several plates down to
+his Chiswick villa with him for retouching, and--possibly with some
+foreboding of his own approaching dissolution--drew for a new volume of
+his prints a tailpiece depicting "the end of all things."
+
+[Illustration: THE BAY WINDOW. HOGARTH'S HOUSE.]
+
+But he could not be satisfied to keep away from London, and on 25th
+October was conveyed from Chiswick to his house in Leicester Square, "very
+weak," says Nichols, "but remarkably cheerful, and, receiving an agreeable
+letter from Dr. Franklin" (Benjamin Franklin was, by the way, dwelling at
+this time in Bartholomew Close; he did not remove to 7 Craven Street,
+Strand, until three years later), "he drew up a rough draft of an answer
+to it; but, going to bed, was seized with a vomiting, upon which he rang
+the bell with such violence that he broke it, and expired about two hours
+afterwards in the arms of Mrs. Mary Lewis, who was called up on his being
+suddenly taken ill."
+
+He was buried in Chiswick Churchyard; and in 1771 his friends erected a
+monument over him, the epitaph on which was written by Garrick:--
+
+  "Farewell, great Painter of Mankind,
+     Who reached the noblest point of Art,
+   Whose pictured morals charm the Mind,
+     And through the eye correct the Heart.
+
+   If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay;
+     If Nature touch thee, drop a tear;
+   If neither move thee, turn away,
+     For Hogarth's honoured dust lies here."
+
+Garrick sent his verses to Dr. Johnson, who frankly criticised them, and
+offered him a revised version, the first lines of which were a distinct
+improvement:--
+
+  "The hand of Art here torpid lies
+     That traced the essential form of Grace;
+   Here Death has closed the curious eyes
+     That saw the manners in the face."...
+
+Garrick preferred his own composition, slightly altered, as it now
+appears; but Johnson's was certainly the better effort of the two.
+
+Mrs. Hogarth retained possession of the Leicester Square house until her
+death in 1789, but she resided principally at Chiswick. Sir Richard
+Phillips saw her there, when he was a boy, and had vivid recollections of
+her as a stately old lady, wheeled to the parish church on Sundays in a
+bath-chair, and sailing in up the nave with her raised head-dress, silk
+sacque, black calash, and crutched cane, accompanied by a relative (the
+Mary Lewis who was with Hogarth when he died), and preceded by her
+grey-haired man-servant, Samuel, who carried her prayer-books, and, after
+she was seated, shut the pew door on her.
+
+From 1824 to 1826 the Hogarth villa was inhabited by the Rev. H. F. Cary,
+the translator of Dante, who was one of Charles Lamb's many friends, and
+wrote the feeble epitaph that is on his tomb at Edmonton.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+GOLDSMITH, REYNOLDS, AND SOME OF THEIR CIRCLE
+
+
+One of Sir James Thornhill's illustrious sitters was Sir Isaac Newton, who
+lived within a stone's throw of Hogarth's London house, just round the
+corner out of Leicester Square, at No. 35 St. Martin's Street. Here Sir
+Isaac made his home from 1720 to 1725. The red brick walls have been
+stuccoed over; and the observatory that the philosopher built for himself
+on the roof, after being turned into a Sunday-school, was removed about
+forty years ago, and helped to supply pews for the Orange Street Chapel
+that stands next door.
+
+The greatest of Newton's work was done before he set up in St. Martin's
+Street, but he told a friend that the happiest years of his life had been
+spent in the observatory there. Though he kept his carriage, lived in some
+style, had half-a-dozen male and female servants, and was always
+hospitable, he was not fond of society, and talked but little in it.
+Johnson once remarked to Sir William Jones that if Newton had flourished
+in ancient Greece, he would have been worshipped as a divinity, but there
+was nothing godlike in his appearance. "He was a man of no very promising
+aspect," says Herne; and Humphrey Newton describes his famous relative as
+of a carriage "meek, sedate, and humble; never seeming angry, of
+profound thought, his countenance mild, pleasant, and comely. He always
+kept close to his studies.... I never knew him to take any recreation or
+pastime, thinking all hours lost that were not spent in his studies."
+There are a good many stories told of his eccentricities and
+absent-mindedness. He would ride through London in his coach with one arm
+out of the window on one side and one out on the other; he would sometimes
+start to get up of a morning and sit down on his bed, absorbed in thought,
+and so remain for hours without dressing himself; and, when his dinner was
+laid, he would walk about the room, forgetting to eat it, and carelessly
+eat it standing when his attention was called to it. On one occasion, when
+he was leading his horse up a hill, he found, when he went to remount on
+reaching the top, that the animal had slipped its bridle and stayed behind
+without his perceiving it, and he had nothing in his hand but some of the
+harness. "When he had friends to entertain," according to Dr. Stukeley,
+"if he went into his study to fetch a bottle of wine, there was danger of
+his forgetting them," and not coming back again. And it is told of this
+same Dr. Stukeley that he called one day to see Newton, and was shown into
+the dining-room, where Sir Isaac's dinner was in readiness. After a long
+wait, feeling hungry as well as impatient, Stukeley ate the cold chicken
+intended for his host, and left nothing but the bones. By-and-by Sir Isaac
+entered, made his greetings and apologies, and, whilst they were talking,
+drew a chair to the table, took off the dish-cover, and at sight of the
+bones merely observed placidly, "How absent we philosophers are! I had
+forgotten that I had dined!"
+
+[Illustration: SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S HOUSE. ST. MARTIN'S STREET. W.C.]
+
+Later, this same house in St. Martin's Street was occupied by Dr. Burney
+and his daughter Fanny, who wrote _Evelina_ here.
+
+Near by, in Leicester Square again, on the opposite side, and almost
+exactly facing Hogarth's residence, was the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
+From 1753 to 1761 Sir Joshua lived at 5 Great Newport Street, which was
+built in Charles II.'s days, and is still standing. It is now and has for
+a century past been occupied by a firm of art dealers; so that it happens
+from time to time that a picture of Reynolds's is here put up for sale,
+"on the very spot where it was painted." But in the crowning years of his
+career--from 1761 till his death, in 1792--Sir Joshua dwelt at 42
+Leicester Square, and what was formerly his studio there has been
+transformed into one of Messrs. Puttick and Simpson's auction rooms. Here
+is Allan Cunningham's description of it, and of the painter's method of
+work: "His study was octagonal, some twenty feet long by sixteen broad,
+and about fifteen feet high. The window was small and square, and the sill
+nine feet from the floor. His sitters' chair moved on castors, and stood
+above the floor about a foot and a half. He held his palette by the
+handle, and the sticks of his brushes were eighteen inches long. He
+wrought standing, and with great celerity. He rose early, breakfasted at
+nine, entered his study at ten, examined designs or touched unfinished
+portraits, till eleven brought him a sitter; painted till four, then
+dressed, and gave the evenings to company."
+
+[Illustration: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS' HOUSE. GREAT NEWPORT STREET.]
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE. 41 LEICESTER SQUARE.]
+
+And to the best of good company too. By day, the chariot of a duke or a
+marchioness might drive to his door, and return later to wait for his
+lordship or her ladyship, who was occupying the sitter's chair, while Sir
+Joshua was busy at his easel; but of an evening he would have such men as
+Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith, Garrick, Burke (who was living close at
+hand, in Gerrard Street) gathered about his dinner-table; for in spite of
+his deafness he was the very soul of sociability. He never got out of his
+naturally careless, Bohemian habits. He was the favourite portrait-painter
+of the fashionable world, but mixed with the aristocracy without apeing
+any of their etiquette. "There was something singular in the style and
+economy of Sir Joshua's table that contributed to pleasantry and
+good-humour; a coarse, inelegant plenty, without any regard to order and
+arrangement," according to Courtenay. "A table prepared for seven or
+eight was often compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen. When this
+pressing difficulty was got over, a deficiency of knives, plates, forks,
+and glasses succeeded. The attendance was in the same style; and it was
+absolutely necessary to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that you
+might be supplied with them before the first course was over. He was once
+prevailed on to furnish the table with decanters and glasses at dinner, to
+save time and prevent the tardy manoeuvres of two or three occasional,
+undisciplined domestics. As these accelerating utensils were demolished in
+the course of service, Sir Joshua would never be persuaded to replace
+them. But these trifling embarrassments only served to enhance the
+hilarity and singular pleasure of the entertainment. The wines, cookery,
+and dishes were but little attended to; nor was the fish or venison ever
+talked of or recommended. Amidst this convivial, animated bustle among his
+guests, our host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to what was
+said, never minding what was ate or drunk, but left every one at perfect
+liberty to scramble for himself. Temporal and spiritual peers, physicians,
+lawyers, actors, and musicians composed the motley group, and played their
+parts without dissonance or discord."
+
+[Illustration: SIR BENJAMIN WEST'S HOUSE. NEWMAN STREET.]
+
+He was so imperturbable and easy-natured that Dr. Johnson said if he ever
+quarrelled with him he would find it most difficult to know how to abuse
+him; and even the sharp-tongued Mrs. Thrale praised his peaceful temper,
+and considered that of him "all good should be said, and no harm." He
+shared Hogarth's contempt for the old masters; but, unlike Hogarth, he
+was not loud and aggressive in his objections to them.
+
+  "When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff,
+   He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff."
+
+It was on Reynolds's suggestion that he and Johnson founded, in 1763, what
+later became celebrated as the Literary Club. They held their first
+meetings at the Turk's Head (where Hogarth and Thornhill had previously
+established their Art Club), and among the original members were Burke,
+Langton, Beauclerk, Goldsmith, and Sir John Hawkins. The latter, an arrant
+snob, objected to Goldsmith's election on the ground that he was "a mere
+literary drudge," but his protest carried no weight with the rest. Five
+years later, when, under the patronage of the king, Reynolds inaugurated
+the Royal Academy, Johnson was appointed its first Professor of Ancient
+Literature, and Goldsmith its first Professor of History, Reynolds himself
+being its first President--in which office, on his death in 1792, he was
+succeeded by Benjamin West. West was an American, and had won a
+considerable reputation in his own country before he came over and settled
+down in England. He was introduced to Johnson and Reynolds, and was for
+some time a neighbour of Sir Joshua's, in Castle Street, Leicester Square.
+But he is more closely associated with the house that still stands at 14
+Newman Street, Oxford Street, in which he lived and worked for forty-five
+years, and in which he died.
+
+A far greater contemporary painter, who moved on the fringes of Sir
+Joshua's circle, was Gainsborough. That he did not come familiarly into
+the circle, and sometimes make one of the memorable company that gathered
+round Reynolds's dinner-table, was owing to some lack of geniality in
+himself, that kept him from responding to Sir Joshua's friendly advances.
+He came from Bath to London in 1774, when he was forty-seven years of age,
+took a studio at Schonberg House, Pall Mall, and it was not long before
+celebrities and leaders of fashion were flocking to it to sit for their
+portraits, and he was recognised as a successful rival of Reynolds.
+Reynolds was so far from feeling jealousy or resentment that he promptly
+paid his popular rival a visit; but Gainsborough did not trouble himself
+to return the call. No doubt it was to some extent owing to Reynolds, too,
+that in the year of his appearance in London he was elected to the council
+of management of the Royal Academy; but he ignored the honour, did not
+attend any meetings, and sent nothing to the exhibition. Reynolds was
+frankly outspoken in his admiration of Gainsborough's work, and was even
+anxious to have his own portrait painted by him. After some delay
+appointments were fixed, and Sir Joshua duly went to Schonberg House, and
+the painting was commenced. But after the first sitting he was taken ill;
+and when, on his recovery, he wrote to tell Gainsborough that he was ready
+to come again, he received no reply, and the portrait had to remain an
+unfinished sketch.
+
+His coldness to Reynolds is inexplicable, for he was a kindly-disposed
+man, and sociable. He kept almost open house in Pall Mall, and such jovial
+spirits as the Sheridans, Colman, and Garrick were among the constant
+guests at his table.
+
+[Illustration: GAINSBOROUGH'S HOUSE. PALL MALL.]
+
+The year after Gainsborough's coming to London, Sheridan's _Rivals_ was
+produced at the Covent Garden Theatre, to be followed two years after by
+_The School for Scandal_. Before he was out of his twenties Sheridan had
+finished his career as a dramatist, turned to politics, and was one of the
+most brilliant of Parliamentary orators, still remaining principal
+proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre. All his life he was living beyond his
+income, borrowing, getting into debt, and dodging duns and bailiffs with
+the gayest imperturbability. Everybody liked him, and was susceptible to
+his charm. Wherever the wits foregathered, he was the best drinker, the
+best talker, and the wittiest among them. Byron writes of him in his
+_Diary_: "What a wreck that man is! and all from bad pilotage; for no one
+had ever better gales, though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear
+Sherry! I shall never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed
+together; when he talked and we listened, without one yawn, from six till
+one in the morning." In a letter to Moore, Byron records a dinner at which
+Sheridan, Colman, and a large party were present, and at the finish, when
+they were all the worse for drink, "Kinnaird and I had to conduct Sheridan
+down a damned corkscrew staircase, which had certainly been constructed
+before the discovery of fermented liquors, and to which no legs, however
+crooked, could possibly accommodate themselves. We deposited him safe at
+home, where his man, evidently used to the business, waited to receive him
+in the hall."
+
+This was in October 1815, and 14 Savile Row is the house at which Sheridan
+was thus deposited by his noble friend. He was then an old man of
+sixty-four, and a year later he died there, five thousand pounds in debt,
+and only saved, by the emphatic intervention of the doctor who was
+attending him, from being arrested by bailiffs as he lay dying, and
+carried off to a sponging-house in his blankets.
+
+The year that brought Gainsborough to London (1774) was also the year of
+Goldsmith's death; and I want to get back to Goldsmith for a little, in
+this chapter, and to say something of Richardson. For it is curiously
+interesting to note how the lives of all these famous men, though there
+was little enough in common between some of them, met at certain points
+and established certain connecting links between them; so that it is
+possible, as Leigh Hunt has said somewhere, to trace a sort of genealogy
+of such acquaintanceships, such notable meetings and touchings of "beamy
+hands," coming down in an unbroken line from Shakespeare to our own day.
+
+Thus, Hogarth first met Johnson in Richardson's parlour at Salisbury
+Court; and, in 1757, Goldsmith was employed by Richardson, and worked on
+his printing premises, in the same court, as reader and corrector to the
+press; and these, and most of the other immortals named in this
+chapter--including Sheridan, though he was then so young a man that he
+outlived them all, and counts among the friends of Lord Byron--have a
+common link in Dr. Johnson, who was so great a Londoner that he must needs
+have a chapter presently to himself, or one that he shall share with none
+but the inevitable Boswell.
+
+Whilst Goldsmith was working as one of his employees, Richardson was
+not only a prosperous printer, he was already the most popular novelist of
+his day. _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_ had
+carried his fame throughout the kingdom and beyond it, and were drawing
+rapturous admiration and tears of sentiment from countless admirers in
+France as well as in England; and, as befitted a man of his means and
+eminence, he had supplemented his house off Fleet Street with a country
+residence at Parson's Green, where he died in 1761. Down to 1754, however,
+his country house was The Grange, at North End, Fulham, then a pretty,
+old-world spot,--"the pleasantest village within ten miles of London." And
+it was here that all his novels were written; for he took The Grange in
+1738, and _Pamela_ appeared in 1740, and _Sir Charles Grandison_ in 1753.
+Here, too, he used to give large literary parties, to which Johnson
+occasionally went with Boswell. But whatever other authors were there, you
+may safely depend that Fielding was never among the guests; for with all
+his high morality Richardson was intolerably self-complacent and vain, and
+never forgave Fielding for burlesquing Pamela as "Shamela," and parodying
+her impossible virtues in _Joseph Andrews_.
+
+[Illustration: SHERIDAN'S HOUSE. SAVILE ROW.]
+
+Boswell gives two good anecdotes illustrative of Richardson's fretful
+vanity and the limits of his conversational powers. "Richardson had little
+conversation," he says Johnson once remarked to him, "except about his own
+works, of which Sir Joshua Reynolds said he was always willing to talk,
+and glad to have them introduced. Johnson, when he carried Mr. Langton to
+see him, professed that he could bring him out in conversation, and used
+this illusive expression: 'Sir, I can make him _rear_.' But he failed; for
+in that interview Richardson said little else than that there lay in the
+room a translation of his _Clarissa_ into German." And in a footnote to
+this Boswell adds: "A literary lady has favoured me with a characteristic
+anecdote of Richardson. One day at his country house at North End, where a
+large company was assembled at dinner, a gentleman who was just returned
+from Paris, willing to please Mr. Richardson, mentioned to him a very
+flattering circumstance--that he had seen his _Clarissa_ lying on the
+king's brother's table. Richardson, observing that part of the company
+were engaged in talking to each other, affected not to attend to it. But
+by-and-by, when there was a general silence, and he thought that the
+flattery might be fully heard, he addressed himself to the gentleman, 'I
+think, sir, you were saying something about--' pausing in a high flutter
+of expectation. The gentleman, provoked at his inordinate vanity, resolved
+not to indulge it, and with an exquisitely sly air of indifference
+remarked, 'A mere trifle, sir, not worth repeating.' The mortification of
+Richardson was visible, and he did not speak ten words more the whole day.
+Dr. Johnson was present, and appeared to enjoy it much."
+
+[Illustration: PUMP COURT. TEMPLE.]
+
+While Fielding was roystering in the wild haunts of Bohemian London,
+gambling at his club, reeling home to his chambers in Pump Court, and
+writing his novels in odds and ends of soberer time, Richardson was
+methodically composing his books at Fulham, getting up early of summer
+mornings, working at his manuscript in the little summer-house that he
+had built in his garden, then reading over breakfast to the worshipping
+members of his family the results of his morning's labour. Wherever he
+went, groups of adoring ladies were sure to gather about him, to chatter
+fervently of their delight in his interminable stories; and he snuffed up
+their incense with a solemn and self-satisfied joy, for he took himself as
+seriously as he was taken by them, and never felt that he was ridiculous,
+even when he looked it. Not infrequently he would sit in his drawing-room
+at The Grange, or in the summer-house, surrounded by a rapt audience of
+feminine believers, who wept as he read aloud to them of the sufferings
+and heroic virtue of Pamela, or the persecutions of the gentle Clarissa.
+You cannot think of it without imagining there, in one of the rooms, the
+comfortable, obese, touchy, rather pompous, double-chinned little
+gentleman, in his fair wig and dark coat, an ink-horn set in the arm of
+his chair with a quill sticking out of it, one hand thrust into the front
+of his waistcoat, the book or manuscript in his hand, reading gravely and
+deliberately his long, minute dissections of character, his elaborate
+descriptions of events and incidents, his formal dialogues, pleased when
+his stilted sentiment or simple sentimentality brought tears to the eyes
+of his listeners, and not ashamed to shed one or two with them.
+
+He drew a word-portrait of himself for Lady Bradshaigh, which is fairly
+well known but is worth repeating, and, judging by the portraits we have
+of him, is a fairly true one. He paints himself as "short, rather plump,
+about five feet five inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom,
+the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat
+that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support when attacked by sudden
+tremors or dizziness, which too frequently attack him, but, thank God! not
+so often as formerly; looking directly forthright, as passers-by would
+imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand of him without moving
+his short neck; hardly ever turning back; of a light-brown complexion,
+teeth not yet failing him; smooth faced, and ruddy cheeked; at some times
+looking to be about sixty-five, at other times much younger; a regular,
+even pace, stealing away the ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey
+eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head; by chance
+lively--very lively it will be, if he have hope of seeing a lady whom he
+loves and honours."
+
+[Illustration: RICHARDSON'S HOUSE. NORTH END FULHAM.]
+
+Richardson's summer-house is long since gone from the garden, and long ago
+now The Grange was divided in two, and in the half that has been
+stucco-fronted Burne-Jones went to live in 1867, dying there in 1898.
+
+Five years after Goldsmith had given up proofreading for Richardson, you
+find him still drudging amid the squalor of Grub Street, still living from
+hand to mouth, writing reviews and prefaces, revising and preparing new
+editions of dull books on dull subjects, for a sum of twenty-one pounds
+compiling a two-volume _History of England_ in the form of a series of
+letters, and generally subduing his heart and mind to the doing of the
+wretched hack-work to which the impecunious literary man in all ages has
+usually been condemned.
+
+His new taskmaster was Mr. Newbery the publisher, and he was living, in
+those days of 1762, in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street; but the publisher
+was not altogether ungenerous, and made arrangements that enabled his poor
+hack to leave town at intervals and work in the fresh air and rural
+environment of Islington. Newbery had chambers of his own there in
+Canonbury Tower, and Goldsmith used to put up at a cottage near by that
+was kept by an elderly Mrs. Fleming, a friend or relative of Newbery's,
+his bills for board and lodging being periodically settled by his
+employer, who deducted the amount of them from whatever fell due to
+Goldsmith from time to time for work done. Fortunately Mrs. Fleming's
+accounts have been preserved, and we get an idea of Goldsmith's wardrobe
+from her washing-lists, and learn from the items she carefully details
+that she now and then lent him small sums in cash--tenpence one day, and
+one and twopence another; that occasionally, when he had a friend to
+dinner, though she duly noted it, she ostentatiously made no charge;
+but when four gentlemen came to take tea with him, she debited him with
+eighteenpence.
+
+[Illustration: GOLDSMITH'S HOUSE. CANONBURY.]
+
+Probably one of those friends who had a free dinner was Hogarth, for he
+travelled out to Islington occasionally on a visit to Goldsmith; and there
+is a painting of his which is known as "Goldsmith's Hostess," and is
+believed to be none other than Mrs. Fleming's portrait.
+
+You remember Boswell's story of how _The Vicar of Wakefield_ saved
+Goldsmith from imprisonment for debt. "I received one morning a letter
+from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress," Johnson told him,
+"and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come
+to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to
+him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that
+his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent
+passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a
+bottle of madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork in the bottle,
+desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which
+he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the
+press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit. I
+told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller,
+sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged
+his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used
+him so ill." Everything points to Mrs. Fleming as that harsh landlady, and
+the lodging in her cottage at Islington as the scene of that famous
+interlude. The presumption is that Goldsmith had incurred a much heavier
+liability to her than was covered by what was accruing to him for his
+services to Newbery, as a result of his giving time to the writing of _The
+Vicar of Wakefield_ that should have been devoted to his usual drudgery;
+and the cautious Newbery declined to make further advances, and advised
+his relative, the landlady, to adopt summary methods for the recovery of
+her debt. Goldsmith never lodged with Mrs. Fleming after that date; but
+later, when Newbery took a lease of Canonbury Tower, he was from time to
+time a guest there, and occupied a room in the turret. During one of these
+visits he wrote _The Traveller_; and in later years Charles Lamb often
+walked across from his Islington home to the Tower to watch the sunset
+from the summit, and to be entertained by the tenant of it in the panelled
+chamber where Goldsmith's poem was written.
+
+It was with the publication of _The Traveller_ that Goldsmith began to
+emerge from Grub Street. Its success was considerable enough to lead to
+the publisher's looking out the manuscript of _The Vicar of Wakefield_,
+and issuing that also; and in 1768, having made five hundred pounds by the
+production and publishing of _The Good-natured Man_, he removed from an
+attic in the Staircase, Inner Temple, and purchased a lease of three rooms
+on the second floor of 2 Brick Court, Temple. Blackstone, the lawyer, then
+working on his _Commentaries_, had chambers immediately below him, and
+complained angrily of the distracting noises--the singing, dancing, and
+playing blind-man's-buff--that went on over his head when Goldsmith was
+entertaining his friends.
+
+[Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH]
+
+Pale, round-faced, plain-featured, with a bulging forehead and an ugly,
+long upper lip, there was more of kindness and geniality than of dignity
+or intellect in Goldsmith's appearance. "His person was short," says
+Boswell, who was jealous of his friendship with Johnson, and never
+realised how great he was, "his countenance was coarse and vulgar, his
+deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman. Those
+who were in any way distinguished excited envy in him to so ridiculous an
+excess that the instances of it are hardly credible." But Boswell
+misjudged him because, conceited and petty himself, he easily read those
+qualities into the behaviour of the other, and so misunderstood him.
+Goldsmith may have had some harmless vanity in the matter of dress, when
+he could afford to indulge it; but as for vanity of his achievements, that
+speaking of poetry as
+
+  "My shame in crowds, my solitary pride,"
+
+is the spontaneous confession of a naturally shy and diffident spirit.
+When a man has been buffeted as he had been, has had to slave so hard and
+wait so long for his reward as he had slaved and waited, he accepts the
+fame that comes to him merely as wages well earned, and is not likely to
+grow swollen-headed concerning it. And for his envious character--here is
+what Boswell gives as a specimen of it. Johnson had come from an
+unexpected interview with the king, and a party of friends at Sir Joshua
+Reynolds's house in Leicester Square were gathered about him pressing for
+a full account of what had taken place. During all the time that Johnson
+was employed in this narration, remarks Boswell, "Dr. Goldsmith remained
+unmoved upon a sofa at some distance, affecting not to join in the least
+in the eager curiosity of the company. He assigned as a reason for his
+gloom and seeming inattention that he apprehended Johnson had relinquished
+his purpose of furnishing him with a prologue to his play, with the hopes
+of which he had been flattered; but it was strongly suspected that he was
+fretting with chagrin and envy at the singular honour Dr. Johnson had
+lately enjoyed. At length, the frankness and simplicity of his natural
+character prevailed. He sprung from the sofa, advanced to Johnson, and in
+a kind of flutter from imagining himself in the situation which he had
+just been hearing described, exclaimed, 'Well, you acquitted yourself in
+this conversation better than I should have done; for I should have bowed
+and stammered through the whole of it.'" Naturally this talk with the king
+would not seem such a breathlessly overwhelming honour to such a man as
+Goldsmith as to such a snob as Boswell. It was in keeping with Goldsmith's
+nature that he should sit quietly listening and imagining the whole thing
+as he heard about it, instead of fussing round open-mouthed to pester the
+narrator with trivial questions; but Boswell was incapable of realising
+this.
+
+[Illustration: 2 BRICK COURT. THE TEMPLE.]
+
+When Boswell, in his toadying spirit, was saying that in any conversation
+Johnson was entitled to the honour of unquestionable superiority, and
+Goldsmith, with a truer conception of the art and pleasure of social
+intercourse, replied, "Sir, you are for making a monarchy of what should
+be a republic," Boswell took it as another proof of Goldsmith's envy, and
+of his "incessant desire of being conspicuous in company." He goes on
+to say: "He was still more mortified when, talking in a company with
+fluent vivacity and, as he flattered himself, to the admiration of all who
+were present, a German who sat next to him, and perceived Johnson rolling
+himself as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, 'Stay, stay!
+Toctor Shonson is going to say something!' This was no doubt very
+provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who frequently
+mentioned it with strong expressions of indignation." A vain man would
+not have mentioned it frequently, but a man with Goldsmith's sense of fun
+would be tickled by it, and rejoice to tell it as a joke against himself,
+simulating indignation to heighten the jest. When he heard that jape at
+Sir Joshua's table of taking peas to Hammersmith because that was the way
+to Turn'am Green, and afterwards retelling it muddled the phrase and made
+nonsense of it, Boswell offers it as further evidence that he was a
+blundering fool. But it is more likely that he blundered on purpose,
+merely to raise a laugh, that being his queer, freakish fashion of humour.
+But the Laird of Auchinleck and some of the others were too staid and
+heavy to follow his nimble wits in their grotesque and airy dancings.
+
+[Illustration: STAIRS UP TO SECOND FLOOR. 2 BRICK COURT.]
+
+Why, even the egregious Boswell has to admit that "Goldsmith, however, was
+often very fortunate in his witty contests, even when he entered the lists
+with Johnson himself." And once, when Johnson observed, "It is amazing how
+little Goldsmith knows; he seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than
+any one else," Reynolds put in quietly, "Yet there is no man whose company
+is more liked"; and the Doctor promptly admitted that, saying, "When
+people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their
+inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them." But
+that did not fully explain why he was liked, of course; and what Johnson
+added as to "what Goldsmith comically says of himself" shows that Goldie
+knew his own weaknesses, and was amused by them. Lamb would have
+understood him and laughed with him, for he loved to frivol and play the
+fool in the same vein. When he was dead, Johnson said he was "a very
+great man"; and don't you think there is some touch of remorse in that
+later remark of his, that the partiality of Goldsmith's friends was always
+against him, and "it was with difficulty we could give him a hearing"?
+
+[Illustration: GOLDSMITH'S GRAVE.]
+
+When he lay dead in his chambers at 2 Brick Court, as Forster relates, the
+staircase was filled with mourners the reverse of domestic--"women without
+a home, without domesticity of any kind, with no friend but him they had
+come to weep for; outcasts of that great, solitary, wicked city, to whom
+he had never forgotten to be kind and charitable. And he had domestic
+mourners, too. His coffin was reopened at the request of Miss Horneck and
+her sister (such was the regard he was known to have for them), that a
+lock might be cut from his hair. It was in Mrs. Gwyn's possession when she
+died, after nearly seventy years." When Burke was told that Goldsmith was
+dead, he burst into tears; and when the news reached Reynolds in his
+Leicester Square painting-room, he laid his brush aside--a thing he had
+not been known to do even in times of great family distress--left his
+study, and entered it no more that day. A vain and envious fool is not
+mourned in that fashion.
+
+"I have been many a time in the chambers in the Temple which were his,"
+writes Thackeray, "and passed up the staircase which Johnson and Burke and
+Reynolds trod to see their friend, their poet, their kind Goldsmith--the
+stair on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that
+the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak
+door."
+
+No. 2 Brick Court would be memorable enough if it held no other memory;
+but in 1839 Mackworth Praed died in the same house, and for a short time
+in 1855 Thackeray too had chambers in it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HOMES AND HAUNTS OF JOHNSON AND BOSWELL
+
+
+If we were not quite such a business people, and had not so fully
+satisfied ourselves that the making of money is the chief end of
+existence, we should put up a statue to Dr. Johnson in Fleet Street, even
+if we had to knock down a house or two to find room for it. The statue by
+Mr. Percy Fitzgerald that has been erected in St. Clement Danes
+Churchyard, in the Strand, is better than nothing, but it is too
+insignificant in appearance, and stands in the wrong place. Johnson is
+still so far removed from death that he is more alive to-day than when he
+was living, and Fleet Street, and the courts and alleys opening out of
+Fleet Street, are his proper kingdom. Other great spirits haunt the same
+ground, but he overshadows them all.
+
+At one time or another during the later forty-seven years of his life
+Johnson had sixteen different addresses in London, and six of them were in
+Fleet Street byways. On his first visit to town, in 1737, he had lodgings
+at Exeter Street, Strand, and made some short stay at Greenwich, whence he
+wrote to Cave, the publisher, offering to contribute to his _Gentleman's
+Magazine_. Next year he and his wife finally removed from Lichfield, and
+lodged first in Woodstock Street, Hanover Square, and then in Castle
+Street, Cavendish Square. Presently he flitted to the Strand; to Bow
+Street; to Holborn; to Fetter Lane; to Holborn again; then to Gough
+Square, at the top of Wine Office Court, where he lived for ten years;
+then to Staple Inn; to Gray's Inn; to No. 1 Inner Temple Lane; to No. 7
+Johnson's Court (so named before his time, as Boswell Court was before
+Boswell's); and thence to Bolt Court, where, in 1784, he died.
+
+Of all these homes of Johnson's, only two are now surviving--that in
+Staple Inn, which cannot be identified (we know only that it was one of
+the houses in the square); and that in Gough Square, which, next to the
+Bolt Court house, was the most interesting of his sixteen residences--and
+one is grateful that, mainly owing to the good offices of Mr. Cecil
+Harmsworth, it has been saved from demolition, and is now opened as a
+Johnson museum.
+
+Johnson was still a bookseller's hack and a comparatively unknown man
+when, in 1747, at the age of thirty-eight, he started work on his
+_Dictionary_. He was then living in Holborn; but next year he moved into
+Gough Square, and it was here that most of this colossal work was done.
+And to-day, when you visit that house, you find that all the teeming life
+of the last hundred and sixty years has drained out of it completely, and
+nothing remains in the old rooms but memories of Johnson and his friends.
+He works there for ever now in the study that used to be his, poring
+short-sightedly over books and papers; and in the queer, sloping-ceilinged
+garret above are his six assistants, copying, hunting out references for
+the _Dictionary_, and busy with all the mechanical part of the
+undertaking. You have only to stand there and think of it, and, if you
+have read Boswell and Hawkins, the life of the household as it was in
+those ten years long past refashions itself around you in the magic,
+old-world atmosphere of the place.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO STAPLE INN.]
+
+Five publishers joined in commissioning Johnson to compile the
+_Dictionary_, and arranged to pay him a sum of L1575, out of which he had
+to engage his assistants. "For the mechanical part," writes Boswell, "he
+employed six amanuenses; and let it be remembered by the natives of North
+Britain, to whom he is supposed to have been so hostile, that five of them
+were of that country. There were two Messieurs Macbean; Mr. Shiels; Mr.
+Stewart, son of Mr. George Stewart, bookseller at Edinburgh; and a Mr.
+Maitland. The sixth of these humble assistants was Mr. Peyton, who, I
+believe, taught French, and published some elementary tracts." That upper
+room in Gough Square was fitted up like a counting-house, and each of the
+six workers in it was allotted his separate task. Boswell goes on to
+describe Johnson's method: "The words, partly taken from other
+dictionaries and partly supplied by himself, having been first written
+down with spaces left between them, he delivered in writing their
+etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were
+copied from the books themselves, in which he had marked the passages with
+a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could easily be effaced. I have
+seen several of them in which that trouble had not been taken, so that
+they were just as when used by the copyists. It is remarkable that he was
+so attentive in the choice of the passages in which words were authorised
+that one may read page after page of his _Dictionary_ with improvement
+and pleasure; and it should not pass unobserved that he has quoted no
+author whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and
+morality.... He is now to be considered as 'tugging at his oar,' as
+engaged in a steady, continued course of occupation, sufficient to employ
+all his time for some years, and which was the best preventive of that
+constitutional melancholy which was ever lurking about him, ready to
+trouble his quiet."
+
+In after years, with his natural, large kindness of disposition, Johnson
+retained a sympathetic interest in those six assistants of his. The elder
+of the two Macbeans fell at length into great poverty, and Johnson helped
+him by writing a preface to his _System of Ancient Geography_, and
+afterwards influenced Lord Thurlow in getting him admitted as a Poor
+Brother of the Charterhouse. He had Shiel, who was dying of consumption,
+to help him with his _Lives of the Poets_; and when Peyton died almost
+destitute, it was Johnson who paid his funeral expenses.
+
+Whilst he was "tugging at his oar" and making steady headway with the
+_Dictionary_, Johnson sought recreation in founding one of his many
+literary clubs--an informal little club that met of evenings in Ivy Lane,
+Paternoster Row, and numbered among its members Hawkesworth, who succeeded
+Johnson as compiler of Parliamentary debates for the _Gentleman's
+Magazine_, and later edited and wrote most of a bi-weekly, _The
+Adventurer_; Dr. Bathurst, who with Johnson and Warton contributed to that
+_Adventurer_; and Hawkins, who in due course became one of Johnson's
+executors and biographers. He had published his satire, _London_, eleven
+years before this; but it was whilst he was living in Gough Square, with
+the _Dictionary_ in full progress, that he wrote and published his only
+other great satire, _The Vanity of Human Wishes_, with its references to
+the hope deferred, the hardships of his own life, and the obscurity and
+poverty from which he was but now gradually beginning to emerge:--
+
+  "When first the college rolls receive his name,
+   The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;
+   Resistless burns the fever of renown,
+   Caught from the strong contagion of the gown:
+   O'er Bodley's dome his future labours spread,
+   And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head.
+   Are these thy views? proceed, illustrious youth,
+   And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth!
+   Yet should thy soul indulge the generous heat,
+   Till captive science yields her last retreat;
+   Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray
+   And pour on misty doubt resistless day;
+   Should no false kindness lure to loose delight,
+   Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright;
+   Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain,
+   And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;
+   Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,
+   Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart;
+   Should no disease thy torpid veins invade
+   Nor melancholy's phantom haunt thy shade;
+   Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,
+   Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee:
+   Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
+   And pause awhile from learning to be wise:
+   There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
+   Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
+   See nations slowly wise, and meanly just,
+   To buried merit raise the tardy bust.
+   If dreams yet flatter, yet again attend,
+   Hear Lydiat's life, and Galileo's end."
+
+Had the Gough Square house been memorable only as the birthplace of the
+_Dictionary_, it would have been enough to have given it immortality; for,
+as Carlyle says (and Carlyle once went reverently over these rooms, and
+wrote a record of his visit), "Had Johnson left nothing but his
+_Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine
+man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity,
+honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all
+dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands
+there like a great, solid, square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically
+complete; you judge that a true builder did it." But, still while the
+_Dictionary_ was going on, shortly after the publication of _The Vanity of
+Human Wishes_, which yielded him L15, Garrick produced his tragedy of
+_Irene_ at Drury Lane. It was a failure on the stage; the audience
+shrieked "Murder! murder!" when the bowstring was placed round the
+heroine's neck; but Johnson, feeling that a dramatic author should be more
+gaily dressed than it was his wont to appear, sat in a box on the first
+night in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat,
+and accepted his failure with unruffled calmness; and Dodsley paid him
+L100 for the right to publish the play as a book.
+
+Still while he was in the thick of the _Dictionary_, he set himself, in
+1750, to start _The Rambler_, and you may take it that he was sitting in
+his Gough Square study one night when he wrote that prayer before
+publishing his first number:--
+
+"Almighty God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all labour
+is ineffectual, and without whose grace all wisdom is folly; grant, I
+beseech Thee, that in this undertaking Thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld
+from me, but that I may promote Thy glory, and the salvation of myself and
+others. Grant this, O Lord, for the sake of Thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen."
+
+[Illustration: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS]
+
+His first number was printed on the 20th March 1750, and he issued it
+every Saturday and Tuesday afterwards for two years. "This," as Boswell
+has it, "is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, that 'a
+man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it'; for,
+notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits,
+and his labour in carrying on his _Dictionary_, he answered the stated
+calls of the press twice a week, from the stores of his mind, during all
+that time; having received no assistance, except four billets in No. 10,
+by Miss Mulso, now Mrs. Chapone; No. 30, by Miss Catherine Talbot; No. 97,
+by Mr. Samuel Richardson; and Nos. 44 and 100, by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter."
+He was so pressed for time that he wrote a good many of the essays in such
+haste that he had no opportunity even to read them through again before
+they were printed. One thing that particularly gratified Johnson in
+connection with the _Rambler_ was that his wife said to him, after she had
+read a few numbers, "I thought very well of you before, but I did not
+imagine you could have written anything equal to this."
+
+Gough Square is hallowed, too, with sadder memories of Johnson's wife, for
+she died here in March 1752; and to the end of his days he never forgot
+her or ceased to sorrow for her. She was a plain-featured woman some
+years older than himself, but he always spoke of her with a wonderful
+tenderness and love, and as of one who had been beautiful to look upon.
+How deeply he felt her loss is evident not merely from some of his
+sayings, but from his letters, and from those _Prayers and Meditations_,
+in which he set down his most intimate thoughts and feelings. After his
+death, this written prayer was found among his papers, dated in the month
+after her passing:--
+
+    "_April 26th, 1752, being after 12 at night of the 25th._
+
+    "O Lord! Governor of heaven and earth, in whose hands are embodied and
+    departed spirits, if Thou hast ordained the souls of the dead to
+    minister to the living, and appointed my departed wife to have care of
+    me, grant that I may enjoy the good effects of her attention and
+    ministration, whether exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams, or in
+    any other manner agreeable to Thy government. Forgive my presumption,
+    enlighten my ignorance, and however meaner agents are employed, grant
+    me the blessed influences of Thy Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our
+    Lord. Amen."
+
+[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S HOUSE. GOUGH SQUARE.]
+
+You may stand in the Square to-night, after twelve at night, when all the
+windows of all the other houses are dark, as they were in that night of
+1752, and look up at the window in which the solitary light burned then,
+whilst, within, the grief-stricken Johnson sat alone in his study writing
+down that humble, mournful aspiration, and as you look the same light
+kindles there and glimmers desolately again for all who have eyes to see
+it. Nor was this the only record of his sorrow that was written in that
+room, for you find these notes in his journal a year later:--
+
+"_March 28, 1753._ I kept this day as the anniversary of my Tetty's death,
+with prayers and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her
+conditionally, if it were lawful."
+
+"_April 23, 1753._ I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain
+longings of affection; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that when
+I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy
+interview, and that in the meantime I am incited by it to piety. I will,
+however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of
+devotion."
+
+Boswell tells us that he preserved her wedding-ring reverently as long as
+he lived, keeping it in "a little round wooden box, in the inside of which
+he pasted a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in fair characters, as
+follows:--
+
+  'Eheu!
+  Eliz. Johnson,
+  Nupta Jul. 9o, 1736,
+  Mortua, eheu!
+  Mart. 17o, 1752.'"
+
+Some thought of her, indeed, rises again and again thereafter in those
+_Prayers and Meditations_ of his, and so makes this house peculiarly
+reminiscent of her. Before Mrs. Johnson's death, Mrs. Anna Williams had
+become a constant visitor at the house here. She was a poetess in a small
+way, daughter of a Welsh physician, and was in London having both her eyes
+treated for cataract. After his wife's death, Johnson gave Mrs. Williams
+accommodation in Gough Square whilst her eyes were operated upon; and,
+the operation failing and complete blindness following it, with his usual
+big-hearted humanity he allowed her an apartment in this and each of his
+subsequent homes; and you remember Boswell's complaint of how his
+fastidious susceptibilities were outraged by the way in which she felt
+round the edges of the cups to see if they were full, when she presided
+over the tea-table. In the same spirit, Johnson gave house-room here also,
+and elsewhere, to that simplest and most kindly of medical practitioners,
+Dr. Robert Levett, on whose death, several years later, he wrote the best
+of his shorter poems.
+
+You get a good idea of his general manner of life in Gough Square from the
+note that Boswell obtained from Francis Barber, Johnson's black servant,
+who wrote that on his wife's death Johnson was "in great affliction. Mrs.
+Williams was then living in his house, which was in Gough Square. He was
+busy with the _Dictionary_. Mr. Shiels and some others of the gentlemen
+who had formerly written for him used to come about the house. He had then
+little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr. Shiels when in
+distress. The friends who visited him at that time were chiefly Dr.
+Bathurst, and Mr. Diamond, an apothecary in Cork Street, Burlington
+Gardens, with whom he and Mrs. Williams generally dined every Sunday.
+There were also Mr. Cave; Dr. Hawkesworth; Mr. Rydal, merchant on Tower
+Hill; Mrs. Masters, the poetess, who lived with Mr. Cave; Mrs. Carter; and
+sometimes Mrs. Macaulay; also Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow-chandler on
+Snow Hill, not in the learned way, but a worthy good woman; Mr. (now Sir
+Joshua) Reynolds; Mr. Miller; Mr. Dodsley; Mr. Bouquet; Mr. Payne, of
+Paternoster Row, bookseller; Mr. Strachan the printer; the Earl of Orrery;
+Lord Southwell; Mr. Garrick."
+
+[Illustration: JAMES BOSWELL]
+
+It was shortly after the conclusion of _The Rambler_ that Johnson first
+made the acquaintance of Bennet Langton. He had taken lodgings in a house
+that was frequently visited by Dr. Levett; and, with Johnson's permission,
+Levett one day brought Langton to Gough Square, and, says Boswell:--
+
+"Mr. Langton was exceedingly surprised when the sage first appeared. He
+had not received the smallest intimation of his figure, dress, or manner.
+From perusing his writings, he fancied he should see a decent,
+well-dressed--in short, a remarkably decorous philosopher. Instead of
+which, down from his bed-chamber, about noon, came, as newly risen, a huge
+uncouth figure, with a little dark wig which scarcely covered his head,
+and his clothes hanging loose about him. But his conversation was so rich,
+so animated, and so forcible, and his religious and political notions so
+congenial with those in which Langton had been educated, that he conceived
+for him that veneration and attachment which he ever preserved."
+
+In 1753 Johnson "relieved the drudgery of his _Dictionary_" by writing
+essays for Hawkesworth's _Adventurer_, and in this and the next two years
+did a lot of reviewing and varied hack-work for the magazines and
+miscellanies of his time; and in February 1775 he wrote that nobly
+scathing and touching letter to Lord Chesterfield, that is too well known
+to need reprinting, but must needs be reprinted here, because it was
+written from Gough Square, and would make any house from which it was
+written an honoured and sacred place to all who value the dignity of
+literature and glory in the emancipation of the literary man from the
+condescending benevolence of the private patron:--
+
+    "MY LORD,--I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of _The
+    World_, that two papers in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the
+    public were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an
+    honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great,
+    I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.
+
+    "When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship,
+    I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of
+    your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself
+    _Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_--that I might obtain that
+    regard for which I saw the whole world contending; but I found my
+    attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would
+    suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in
+    public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and
+    uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man
+    is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
+
+    "Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward
+    rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
+    pushing on with my work through difficulties, of which it is useless
+    to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of
+    publication, without one act of assistance, one word of
+    encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not
+    expect, for I never had a patron before.
+
+    "The shepherd in _Virgil_ grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
+    him a native of the rocks.
+
+    "Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
+    struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground,
+    encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
+    take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been
+    delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am
+    solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I
+    hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where
+    no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
+    should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has
+    enabled me to do for myself.
+
+    "Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
+    favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall
+    conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long
+    wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with
+    so much exultation,
+
+      "My lord, your lordship's most humble,
+        "Most obedient servant,
+          "SAM. JOHNSON."
+
+A few months after this the _Dictionary_ was finished. There had been many
+delays; it was long behind the stipulated time, and the patience of the
+publishers was exhausted; but at last Johnson sent the last sheets of the
+great work to Mr. Miller, the Strand bookseller, who was chiefly
+concerned in the venture, and when the messenger returned from Miller's
+shop Johnson asked him, "Well, what did he say?" "Sir," answered the
+messenger, "he said, 'Thank God I have done with him.'" "I am glad,"
+replied Johnson, with a smile, "that he thanks God for anything."
+
+The publication of the _Dictionary_ made him at once the most famous man
+of letters in London; but he had already spent the money that was paid for
+his labour, and had still to work hard with his pen to make "provision for
+the day that was passing over him." In 1757 he took up again a scheme for
+an elaborate edition of Shakespeare with notes, and issued proposals and
+invited subscriptions for it; but it was another nine years before his
+Shakespeare made its appearance. Among his many visitors in 1758, Dr.
+Charles Burney, the father of Fanny Burney, called and "had an interview
+with him in Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea with him, and was
+introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Williams. After dinner, Mr. Johnson
+proposed to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret, which, being
+accepted, he there found about five or six Greek folios, a deal
+writing-desk, and a chair and a half. Johnson, giving his guest the entire
+seat, tottered himself on one with only three legs and one arm. Here he
+gave Mr. Burney Mrs. Williams's history, and showed him some volumes of
+Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he was in earnest." They
+proceeded to criticise Shakespeare's commentators up there, and to discuss
+the controversy then raging between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke in
+connection with an unauthorised publication of certain of Bolingbroke's
+letters to Pope, who was recently dead. And in the April of this same year
+Johnson began to write his essays for _The Idler_.
+
+[Illustration: JOHNSON'S CORNER. THE CHESHIRE CHEESE.]
+
+Here, then, you have a varied and intimate series of pictures, a sort of
+panoramic view of the life that Johnson lived in his Gough Square house,
+and amid his old surroundings are able to recreate him for yourself in all
+his varying circumstances and changing moods--working there at his
+_Dictionary_ and his multifarious writings; sorrowing for his wife;
+entertaining his friends; sallying forth morning and evening to walk along
+Fleet Street to the church of St. Clement Danes, in the Strand, assuming
+that he kept the resolution to do so that is entered at this date in his
+journal; and, almost every Sunday afternoon, coming staidly down the steps
+with Mrs. Williams, and setting out to dine with Mr. Diamond, the
+apothecary of Cork Street; on many evenings strolling along Wine Office
+Court, to forgather with friends in the parlour of the "Cheshire Cheese,"
+where the seat traditionally occupied by him and Goldsmith is still to be
+seen; or going farther to a meeting of his club in Ivy Lane. There is a
+capital story told by Hawkins of how one night at that club a suggestion
+was made that they should celebrate the publication of Mrs. Lennox's first
+novel, _The Life of Harriet Stuart_, with a supper at the Devil Tavern, in
+Fleet Street. Johnson threw himself heart and soul into the proposal, and
+declared that they would honour the event by spending the whole night in
+festivity. On the evening fixed, at about eight o'clock, Mrs. Lennox and
+her husband, and some twenty friends and members of the club, gathered at
+the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, and, by Johnson's orders, a magnificent hot
+apple-pie adorned with bay leaves formed a principal item of the menu. He
+himself crowned Mrs. Lennox with laurel; and, true to his resolve, he kept
+the feast going right through the night. "At 5 A.M.," says Hawkins,
+"Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been
+only lemonade." The day was beginning to dawn when they all partook of a
+"second refreshment of coffee," and it was broad daylight and eight
+o'clock before the party broke up, and Johnson made his way back up Fleet
+Street, round into Gough Square, and to the prosaic resumption of work on
+the _Dictionary_.
+
+Soon after starting _The Idler_, Johnson left Gough Square and took rooms
+in Staple Inn, where he presently wrote _Rasselas_ in the evenings of one
+week, and so raised L100, that "he might defray the expenses of his
+mother's funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left."
+
+All these things had happened, and Johnson had risen into fame and become
+"the great Cham of letters," before Boswell had made his acquaintance. The
+historic meeting between these two did not come about until 1763, and then
+it took place at No. 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden--another famous house
+that is fortunately still in existence. It was then occupied by Thomas
+Davies, the actor, who had retired from the stage and opened a
+bookseller's shop there. He knew Johnson, who frequently visited him, and
+on his invitation Boswell was there several times in hopes of meeting the
+great man; again and again it happened that on the days when he was in
+waiting Johnson failed to appear, but in the end his patience was
+rewarded, and this is his own account of the interview, taken from notes
+he made of it on the very day of its occurrence:--
+
+"At last, on Monday, the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's
+back parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson
+unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies, having perceived him
+through the glass door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing
+towards us, he announced his awful approach to me, somewhat in the manner
+of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the
+appearance of his father's ghost: 'Look, my lord, it comes!' I found that
+I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's figure, from the portrait of him
+painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his
+_Dictionary_, in the attitude of sitting in his easy-chair in deep
+meditation. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me
+to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the
+Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, 'Don't tell where I
+come from.' 'From Scotland,' cried Davies roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson,' said
+I, 'I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' He retorted,
+'That, sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot
+help.' This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I
+felt myself not a little embarrassed and apprehensive of what might come
+next. He then addressed himself to Davies: 'What do you think of Garrick?
+He has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he
+knows the house will be full, and that an order would be worth three
+shillings.' Eager to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I
+ventured to say, 'O sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a
+trifle to you.' 'Sir,' said he, with a stern look, 'I have known David
+Garrick longer than you have done, and I know no right you have to talk to
+me on the subject.' Perhaps I deserved this check; for it was rather
+presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any doubt of the
+justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance and pupil. I now
+felt myself much mortified, and began to think that the hope which I had
+long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was blasted." But he sat on
+resolutely, and was rewarded by hearing some of Johnson's conversation, of
+which he kept notes, that are duly reproduced in the _Life_.
+
+[Illustration: WHERE BOSWELL FIRST MET JOHNSON.]
+
+"I was highly pleased with the extraordinary vigour of his conversation,"
+he concludes his account of the meeting, "and regretted that I was drawn
+away from it by an engagement at another place. I had for a part of the
+evening been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation
+now and then, which he received very civilly; so I was satisfied that,
+though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his
+disposition. Davies followed me to the door; and when I complained to him
+a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly
+took upon him to console me by saying, 'Don't be uneasy; I can see he
+likes you very well.'"
+
+Davies's shop is kept nowadays by a Covent Garden salesman. Instead of
+being lined with books, it is filled with baskets of fruit and sacks of
+potatoes, and the parlour wall and that glass-panelled parlour door are
+thrown down, and parlour and shop are all one. But the upper part of the
+house remains practically unaltered, and with a little imagining you can
+restore the lower to what it was when these walls held the gruff rumbling
+of the Doctor's voice, and looked down on the humiliation of Boswell under
+the roguish eyes of Davies and his pretty wife.
+
+Another house that has glamorous associations with Johnson is No. 5
+Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived, and where he died, in a back room on
+the first floor, in 1779. Two years later Johnson was one of a party that
+dined there with Mrs. Garrick, and one cannot do better than repeat the
+indispensable Boswell's report of the event:--
+
+"On Friday, April 20, I spent with him one of the happiest days that I
+remember to have enjoyed in the whole course of my life. Mrs. Garrick,
+whose grief for the loss of her husband was, I believe, as sincere as
+wounded affection and admiration could produce, had this day, for the
+first time since his death, a select party of his friends to dine with
+her. The company was: Mrs. Hannah More, who lived with her, and whom she
+called her chaplain; Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, Dr. Burney, Dr. Johnson, and myself. We found ourselves very
+elegantly entertained at her house in the Adelphi, where I have passed
+many a pleasing hour with him 'who gladdened life.' She looked well,
+talked of her husband with complacency, and while she cast her eyes on his
+portrait, which hung over the chimney-piece, said that 'death was now the
+most agreeable object to her.'... We were all in fine spirits; and I
+whispered to Mrs. Boscawen, 'I believe this is as much as can be made of
+life.'" After recording the conversation of Johnson and divers of the
+others, Boswell goes on: "He and I walked away together. We stopped a
+little by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames, and I said to
+him, with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost
+who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick. 'Ay,
+sir,' said he tenderly, 'and two such friends as cannot be supplied.'"
+
+[Illustration: BOSWELL'S HOUSE. GREAT QUEEN STREET.]
+
+In the summer of 1784 Boswell was in London as usual, and saw Johnson,
+then an old man of seventy-five, for the last time. On the 30th June, he
+and Johnson dined with Sir Joshua Reynolds in Leicester Square, and when
+Johnson went home Boswell accompanied him in Sir Joshua's coach to the
+entry of Bolt Court, in Fleet Street, and was so affected at parting that
+he would not accompany him to the house, and they bade each other an
+affectionate adieu in the carriage. Johnson stepped out on to the
+pavement, and, walking briskly, vanished into the yawn of Bolt Court, and,
+for Boswell, into the jaws of death, for he never saw him again. He went
+home to the north two days after, and in December Johnson died.
+
+On his annual visits to London Boswell lived in various lodgings; but in
+or about 1786 he rented the house, still standing, at 56 Great Queen
+Street, and brought his wife to town with him. They occupied this place
+for some two years; and it is evident from his letters to Bishop Percy and
+the Rev. T. W. Temple that, whilst residing there, he wrote most of the
+last seven years of his _Life of Johnson_. Boswell died in London, in
+1795, at No. 122 (formerly 47) Great Portland Street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BLAKE AND FLAXMAN
+
+
+Ten years before Boswell went to live at 56 Great Queen Street, William
+Blake was serving an apprenticeship to James Basire, the well-known
+engraver, whose house was close by at No. 31 in the same street. Basire's
+residence has gone the way of all bricks and mortar; but happily Soho
+still preserves the corner house at No. 28 Broad Street, in which Blake
+was born. He was born there on the 28th November 1857, over his father's
+hosiery shop, and it was there that the first of his strange visions came
+to him; for he used to say that when he was only four years old he one day
+saw the face of God at the window looking in upon him, and the sight set
+him a-screaming. When he was four or five years older, you hear of him
+taking long rambles into the country; and it was on Peckham Rye that other
+visions came to him. Once he saw a tree there "filled with angels, bright
+angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars"; and once, on a summer
+morning, he saw "the haymakers at work, and amid them angelic figures
+walking." In his matter-of-fact fashion he recounted the first of these
+two visions on his return home, and his mother had to intervene to prevent
+the honest hosier and conscientious Nonconformist, his father, from
+thrashing him for telling a lie.
+
+At the age of ten Blake was journeying to and from the house in Broad
+Street to Mr. Paris's academy in the Strand, taking drawing lessons. He
+was already writing poetry, too, and before he was fourteen had written
+one of the most beautiful and glitteringly imaginative of his lyrics:--
+
+  "How sweet I roamed from field to field,
+     And tasted all the summer's pride,
+   Till I the Prince of Love beheld
+     Who in the sunny beams did glide.
+
+   He showed me lilies for my hair,
+     And blushing roses for my brow;
+   He led me through his gardens fair
+     Where all his golden pleasures grow.
+
+   With sweet May-dews my wings were wet,
+     And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;
+   He caught me in his silken net,
+     And shut me in his golden cage.
+
+   He loves to sit and hear me sing,
+     Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
+   Then stretches out my golden wing,
+     And mocks my loss of liberty."
+
+In a preface to his first published volume, the _Poetical Sketches_, which
+contains this lyric, his Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter verses, "My
+Silks and fine Array," and other lovely songs, he says that all the
+contents were "commenced in his twelfth, and occasionally resumed by the
+author till his twentieth year." From fourteen till he was twenty-one
+Blake was living away from home with his master, Basire, the engraver;
+then he went back to his father's, and commenced to study at the recently
+formed Royal Academy, and in 1780 exhibited his first picture there, "The
+Death of Earl Godwin." Marrying in 1782, he set up housekeeping for
+himself at 23 Green Street, Leicester Square, and began to move abroad in
+literary society. Flaxman, already his friend, introduced him to Mrs.
+Mathew, a lady of blue-stocking tendencies, who held a sort of salon at 27
+Rathbone Place; and here, in 1784, "Rainy Day" Smith made his
+acquaintance. "At Mrs. Mathew's most agreeable conversaziones," he says,
+"I first met the late William Blake, to whom she and Mr. Flaxman had been
+truly kind. There I have often heard him read and sing several of his
+poems. He was listened to by the company with profound silence, and
+allowed by most of his listeners to possess original and extraordinary
+merit." He knew nothing of musical technique, but sang some of his verses
+to airs that Smith describes as "singularly beautiful." His republican
+opinions and general unorthodoxy and daring outspokenness, however, did
+not make for social amenity, and it was not long before he dropped out of
+these elegant circles, and withdrew to his mystic dreamings and the
+production of paintings and poetry that the majority could not understand.
+A strangely beautiful and wonderful Bird of Paradise to break from the
+nest over that hosier's shop at the corner of Broad Street, Soho!
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE'S HOUSE. SOHO.]
+
+When his father died, in 1784, Blake's brother James took over and
+continued the business; and in the same year Blake himself opened the shop
+next door (No. 27) as an engraver and printseller, in partnership with
+James Parker, who had been one of his fellow-apprentices under Basire.
+Here he had his younger brother, Robert, with him as a pupil; and he
+used to say that when Robert died, in 1787, he saw his soul ascend through
+the ceiling, "clapping its hands for joy." Falling out with Parker, Blake
+removed, in this year of his brother's death, to 28 Poland Street, near
+by, where he said Robert's spirit remained in communion with him, and
+directed him, "in a nocturnal vision, how to proceed in bringing out poems
+and designs in conjunction"; and the _Songs of Innocence_, published in
+1789, was the result of this inspiration. The method, as Alexander
+Gilchrist has it, "consisted in a species of engraving in relief both
+words and designs. The verse was written, and the designs and marginal
+embellishments outlined on the copper with an impervious liquid. Then all
+the white parts, or lights (the remainder of the plate, that is), were
+eaten away with aquafortis or other acid, so that the outline of letter
+and design was left prominent, as in stereotype. From these plates he
+printed off in any tint required to be the prevailing (or ground) colour
+in his facsimiles; red he used for the letterpress. The page was then
+coloured up by hand in imitation of the original drawing, with more or
+less variety of detail in the local hues." A process of mixing his colours
+with diluted glue was revealed to him by St. Joseph. Mrs. Blake often
+helped him in tinting the designs, and it was her work to bind the books
+in boards. In the same year (1789) he put forth the finest of his long
+mystical poems, _The Book of Thel_.
+
+Leaving Poland Street in 1793, Blake moved across London to Lambeth, and
+made himself a new home at 13 Hercules Buildings. Gilchrist, one of his
+earliest biographers, made a mistake in his identification of this house,
+and until a year or two ago it was believed that Blake's residence in that
+place had been pulled down. On a recent investigation of the Lambeth
+rate-books by the County Council authorities, however, it became clear
+that, instead of being on the west side of the street, as Gilchrist
+supposed, No. 13 was on the east side, next door but one to Hercules Hall
+Yard. Somewhere between 1830 and 1842 the whole road was renumbered, and
+Blake's house had become No. 63, and was in 1890 renumbered again, and
+became, and is still, No. 23 Hercules Road. Whilst he was living here, Mr.
+Thomas Butts, of Fitzroy Square, became his most liberal and most constant
+patron; and on calling at Hercules Buildings one day, Mr. Butts says he
+found Blake and his wife sitting naked in their summer-house. "Come in!"
+Blake greeted him. "It's only Adam and Eve, you know." But Mr. Butts never
+took this as evidence of Blake's madness: he and his wife had simply been
+reciting passages of _Paradise Lost_ in character.
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE. 23 HERCULES ROAD.]
+
+At Hercules Buildings Blake did a large number of paintings and
+engravings, including the 537 coloured drawings for Young's _Night
+Thoughts_, and some of the greatest of his designs, such as the "Job" and
+"Ezekiel" prints; and here, too, he completed certain of his _Prophetic
+Books_, with their incomprehensible imagery and allegory, and what
+Swinburne has called their "sunless and sonorous gulfs." From Hercules
+Buildings also came "Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the
+night," and the rest of the _Songs of Experience_. Then, in 1800, Hayley,
+the poet of the dull and unreadable _Triumphs of Temper_, persuaded him
+to move into the country and settle down in a cottage at Felpham; from
+which, because he said "the visions were angry with me at Felpham," he
+returned to London early in 1804, and took lodgings on the first floor of
+17 South Moulton Street, Oxford Street.
+
+[Illustration: BLAKE'S HOUSE. SOUTH MOULTON ST.]
+
+Nevertheless, at Felpham he must have been working on his _Jerusalem_,
+and on _Milton, A Poem in Two Books_, for these were issued shortly after
+his arrival in South Moulton Street. He writes of _Jerusalem_ in one of
+his letters: "I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve,
+or sometimes twenty or thirty, lines at a time, without premeditation, and
+even against my will"; and in a later letter, speaking of it as "the
+grandest poem that this world contains," he excuses himself by remarking,
+"I may praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the
+secretary--the authors are in eternity." Much of _Jerusalem_ is turgid,
+obscure, chaotic, and so impossible to understand that Mr. Chesterton
+declares that when Blake said "that its authors were in eternity, one can
+only say that nobody is likely to go there to get any more of their work."
+But it is in this poem that Blake introduces those verses "To the Jews,"
+setting forth that Jerusalem once stood in--
+
+  "The fields from Islington to Marybone,
+     To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood,"
+
+and that then--
+
+  "The Divine Vision still was seen,
+     Still was the human form divine;
+   Weeping in weak and mortal clay,
+     O Jesus! still the form was Thine.
+
+   And Thine the human face; and Thine
+     The human hands, and feet, and breath,
+   Entering through the gates of birth,
+     And passing through the gates of death";
+
+and in _Jerusalem_ you have his lines "To the Deists," the first version
+of his ballad of the Grey Monk, with its great ending:--
+
+  "For a tear is an intellectual thing,
+   And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King,
+   And the bitter groan of a martyr's woe
+   Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow."
+
+For my part, I wish it were possible for some of our living poets to go
+again to those authors in eternity and get some more of such stuff as
+this, even if we had to have it embedded in drearier lumps of nonsense
+than you find in _Jerusalem_.
+
+Blake's wife, daughter of a market-gardener, a woman so uneducated that
+she had to sign the marriage register with her mark, was not only an
+excellent housekeeper and domestic drudge, but was in perfect sympathy
+with him in his work, and had the greatest faith in his visions. Moses,
+Julius Caesar, the Builder of the Pyramids, David, Uriah, Bathsheba,
+Solomon, Mahomet, Joseph, and Mary--these were among Blake's spiritual
+visitants at South Moulton Street. They came and sat to him, and he worked
+at their portraits, "looking up from time to time as though he had a real
+sitter before him." Sometimes he would leave off abruptly, and observe in
+matter-of-fact tones, "I can't go on. It is gone; I must wait till it
+returns"; or, "It has moved; the mouth is gone"; or, "He frowns. He is
+displeased with my portrait of him." If any one criticised and objected to
+the likeness he would reply calmly, "It _must_ be right. I saw it so." In
+all probability he meant no more than that he conjured up these sitters to
+his mind's eye; but his friends took him literally, and he acquiesced in
+their doing so, and has been dubbed a madman in consequence.
+
+Many times his wife would get up in the nights "when he was under his
+very fierce inspirations, which were as if they would tear him asunder,
+while he was yielding himself to the Muse, or whatever else it could be
+called, sketching and writing. And so terrible a task did this seem to be
+that she had to sit motionless and silent, only to stay him mentally,
+without moving hand or foot; this for hours, and night after night." It is
+not easy to realise that this burning, fiery spirit did once live in these
+South Moulton Street rooms, surrounded by his vivid and terrific
+imaginings, and then could pass out of it and leave it looking so dull and
+decorous, so ordinary, so entirely commonplace. But here he indubitably
+lived, so discouraged by neglect and hampered by poverty that he could not
+afford to issue any more large books like the _Jerusalem_, and in 1809
+made a desperate attempt to appeal to the public by holding an exhibition
+of his frescoes and drawings on the first floor of his brother's hosiery
+shop in Broad Street. Very few visitors attended; but among the few was
+Lamb's friend, Crabb Robinson, and when he went he had the room to
+himself. He paid for admission, recognised that these pictures were the
+work of no ordinary artist, and bought four of the catalogues, one of
+which he sent to Lamb; and when, on leaving, he asked the custodian
+whether he might come again free, James Blake, delighted at having a
+visitor, and one, moreover, who had bought something, cried, "Oh yes--free
+as long as you live!" But the exhibition was a failure. The popular
+painters of Blake's day were Reynolds, Gainsborough, and men of their
+schools. Blake was born out of his time, and contemporary society had
+nothing in common with him--no comprehension of his aim or his
+outlook--and dismissed him as an astonishing lunatic. When some drawings
+of his were shown to George III., his Majesty could only gaze at them
+helplessly and ejaculate a testy "Take them away! take them away!" The
+noble designs for Blair's _Grave_, and the frescoes of _The Canterbury
+Pilgrimage_, were among the important works done at South Moulton Street,
+which Blake quitted in 1821, making his last change of residence to 3
+Fountain Court, Strand--a house kept by his brother-in-law, Baines. Here
+he occupied a room on the first floor for some six years, and when he was
+nearing his seventieth year, died, after a short illness, on Sunday, the
+12th August 1827. He lay dying in his plain back room, serene and
+cheerful, singing songs to melodies that were the inspiration of the
+moment; towards evening he fell silent, and passed quietly away, a poor
+woman, a neighbour who had come in to sit with his wife, saying
+afterwards, "I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed
+angel."
+
+You have only to look at the portraits of Blake, at the broad
+forehead--the forehead of a revolutionary, as he himself said--the
+sensitive mouth, the large, intent, vision-haunted eyes, to know that his
+outward appearance fairly adequately revealed the manner of man that he
+really was. He was under five feet six in height and thick-set, but so
+well proportioned that he did not strike people as short. "He had an
+upright carriage," says Gilchrist, "and a good presence; he bore himself
+with dignity, as not unconscious of his natural claims. The head and face
+were strongly stamped with the power and character of the man. There was
+a great volume of brain in that square, massive head, that piled-up brow,
+very full and rounded at the temples, where, according to phrenologists,
+ideality or imagination resides. His eyes were fine ('wonderful eyes,'
+some one calls them), prominently set, but bright, spiritual,
+visionary--not restless or wild, but with a look of clear, heavenly
+exaltation. The eyes of some of the old men in his _Job_ recall his own to
+surviving friends. His nose was insignificant as to size, but had that
+peculiarity which gives to a face an expression of fiery energy, as of a
+high-mettled steed--a little _clenched_ nostril, a nostril that opened as
+far as it could, but was tied down at one end. His mouth was wide, the
+lips not full, but tremulous, and expressive of the great sensibility
+which characterised him. He was short-sighted, as the prominence of his
+eyes indicated--a prominence in keeping with the faculty for languages,
+according to phrenologists again. He wore glasses only occasionally." His
+poverty forced him to study economy in the matter of dress. Indoors he was
+not slovenly, but generally wore a threadbare old suit, the grey trousers
+of which had been rubbed black and shiny in front like a mechanic's. When
+he walked abroad he was more careful, and dressed plainly but well,
+something in the style of an old-fashioned tradesman, in black
+knee-breeches and buckles, black worsted stockings, shoes that tied, and a
+broad-brimmed hat.
+
+But for a memorable description of Blake in his habit as he lived, you
+must read this letter that was written to Gilchrist by Samuel Palmer, who
+knew him intimately in his latter years:--
+
+"Blake, once known, could never be forgotten.... In him you saw at once
+the maker, the inventor; one of the few in any age; a fitting companion
+for Dante. He was a man 'without a mask'; his aim single, his path
+straightforwards, and his wants few; so he was free, noble, and happy. His
+voice and manner were quiet, yet all awake with intellect. Above the
+tricks of littleness, or the least taint of affectation, with a natural
+dignity which few would have dared to affront, he was gentle and
+affectionate, loving to be with little children and talk about them. 'That
+is heaven,' he said to a friend, leading him to a window and pointing to a
+group of them at play.
+
+"Declining, like Socrates, whom in many respects he resembled, the common
+objects of ambition, and pitying the scuffle to obtain them, he thought no
+one could be truly great who had not humbled himself 'even as a little
+child.' This was a subject he loved to dwell upon and to illustrate. His
+eye was the finest I ever saw; brilliant, but not roving, clear and
+intent, yet susceptible; it flashed with genius, or melted in tenderness.
+It could also be terrible.... Nor was the mouth less expressive, the lips
+flexible and quivering with feeling. I can yet recall it when, on one
+occasion, dwelling upon the exquisite beauty of the parable of the
+Prodigal, he began to repeat a part of it; but at the words, 'When he was
+yet a great way off his father saw him,' he could go no further; his voice
+faltered, and he was in tears.
+
+"He was one of the few to be met with in our passage through life who are
+not in some way or other double-minded and inconsistent with themselves;
+one of the very few who cannot be depressed by neglect, and to whose name
+rank and station could add no lustre. Moving apart, in a sphere above the
+attraction of worldly honours, he did not accept greatness, but conferred
+it. He ennobled poverty, and, by his conversation and the influence of his
+genius, made two small rooms in Fountain Court more attractive than the
+threshold of princes."
+
+One of Blake's warmest friends for many years was the great sculptor, John
+Flaxman. With none of Blake's lawless, glowing imagination, Flaxman's
+drawings in his illustrations to Homer, and his designs on some of the
+Wedgwood pottery, have a classical correctness--a cold, exquisite beauty
+of outline--that are more suggestive of the chisel than of the pencil or
+the brush; and it is in the splendid sculptures with which he has
+beautified Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, and many other of our cathedrals
+and churches that his genius found its highest expression. In his work as
+an artist Blake was largely influenced by Flaxman. They and Stothard used
+to meet at Mrs. Mathew's; but there came a day when the friendship between
+these three was broken. Blake thought Flaxman had appropriated one of his
+designs, and there seems no doubt that Stothard did so, on the prompting
+of an unscrupulous picture-dealer; and you have Blake lampooning them
+both, as well as Hayley, with whom he had also fallen out, in epigrams
+that were not always just, and probably represented nothing worse than a
+passing mood, as thus:--
+
+  "My title as a genius thus is proved:
+   Not praised by Hayley, nor by Flaxman loved."
+
+  "I found them blind, I taught them how to see,
+   And now they know neither themselves nor me."
+
+_To Flaxman._
+
+  "You call me mad; 'tis folly to do so,--
+   To seek to turn a madman to a foe.
+   If you think as you speak, you are an ass;
+   If you do not, you are but what you was."
+
+_To the same._
+
+  "I mock thee not, though I by thee am mocked;
+   Thou call'st me madman, but I call thee blockhead."
+
+Flaxman was not, like Blake, a born Londoner, but his family came from
+York, and settled down in London when he was six months old. His father
+had a shop in New Street, Covent Garden, where he made and sold plaster
+casts. Flaxman emerged from a sickly childhood, and developed into a
+sufficiently wiry and energetic man, though he remained feeble in
+appearance, so high-shouldered as to seem almost deformed, with a head too
+large for his body, and a queer sidelong gait in walking. He married in
+1782, and, after living for five years in a very small house at 27 Wardour
+Street, Soho--where he was elected collector of the watch-rate for the
+parish--he and his wife went to Italy, and spent seven years in Rome.
+Whilst he was there he fulfilled a commission for Romney, and collected
+and sent over to England a selection of casts from the antique, that
+Romney required for the use of students in his Hampstead painting-room.
+
+Returning from Italy in 1794, Flaxman took up residence at 17 Buckingham
+Street, Euston Road, and lived here through all his most famous years,
+till he died in 1826. Blake visited him here, and Haydon, and other of his
+artistic circle; for though he went little into society, he was
+unpretentiously hospitable, fond of entertaining his chosen friends,
+greatly esteemed and beloved by his pupils, models, and servants, and the
+poor of the neighbourhood, especially the children. He went about among
+the latter habitually, filling his sketch-book with drawings of them, and
+invariably carrying a pocketful of coppers to drop into the small grubby
+hands that were ready to receive them.
+
+[Illustration: FLAXMAN'S HOUSE. BUCKINGHAM STREET. EUSTON ROAD.]
+
+The district hereabouts has degenerated since Flaxman's day. His house was
+dull, insignificant, rather mean-looking, and now it looks more so than
+ever, amid its grimy surroundings--a pinched, old, dreary little house,
+that is yet transfigured when you remember the glorious visitors who have
+crossed its threshold, and that it was at this same dead door the postman
+knocked one day near the end of September 1800 and delivered this letter
+from Blake, who was then newly gone out of London and had not had time to
+begin to grow tired of his cottage at Felpham:--
+
+    "DEAR SCULPTOR OF ETERNITY,--We are safe arrived at our cottage, which
+    is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient.... Mr.
+    Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have begun to
+    work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual
+    than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her
+    windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants
+    are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen; and
+    my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are
+    both well, courting Neptune for an embrace....
+
+    "And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is
+    shaken off. I am more famed in heaven for my works than I could well
+    conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and
+    pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before
+    my mortal life; and these works are the delight and study of
+    archangels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches and fame of
+    mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to
+    His divine will, for our good.
+
+    "You, O dear Flaxman, are a sublime archangel--my friend and companion
+    from eternity. In the divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back
+    into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days, before
+    this earth appeared in its vegetable mortality to my mortal vegetated
+    eyes. I see our houses of eternity, which can never be separated,
+    though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of
+    heaven from each other.
+
+    "Farewell, my best friend. Remember me and my wife in love and
+    friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to
+    entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold."
+
+Later, when they quarrelled, Flaxman was not an archangel, but a blockhead
+and an ass; but that quarrel is not to be taken too seriously. Their
+houses of eternity were not separated, though their mortal vehicles were
+estranged; and it was on hearing Flaxman was dead that Blake said finely,
+"I can never think of death but as a going out of one room into another."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A HAMPSTEAD GROUP
+
+
+Out at Hampstead you may still visit what was once that studio of Romney's
+to which Flaxman sent his collection of plaster casts from Italy. It had
+been a favourite idea of Romney's, his son tells us, "to form a complete
+Gallery of Casts, and to open it to any youths of respectability," and in
+his closing years, after he had removed to Hampstead, he carried out his
+wish, to some extent, with Flaxman's aid, and had three pupils working in
+his studio there, copying the casts and studying under him. The house he
+occupied from 1796 to 1799 is now the Holly Bush Inn; he bought a piece of
+land at the back of it, and on this built himself a studio and gallery,
+which now form part of the Hampstead Constitutional Club. "It was to
+Hampstead that Hayley's friend Romney, the painter, retired in the decline
+of his life," writes J. T. Smith, in _Nollekens and his Times_, "when he
+built a dining-room close to his kitchen, with a buttery hatch opening
+into it, so that he and his friends might enjoy beef-steaks, hot and hot,
+upon the same plan as the members of the Beef-steak Club are supplied at
+their room in the Lyceum."
+
+[Illustration: ROMNEY'S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Though Romney was then in the decline of his life, he was at the height of
+his fame. He had married at the age of nineteen, and six years later set
+out for London, leaving his wife behind at Kendal. He had no intention of
+deserting her, but in London his genius soon won recognition, he began to
+move in good society, and partly because Sir Joshua Reynolds had once said
+that "marriage spoilt an artist," partly because he became infatuated with
+Nelson's enchantress, Lady Hamilton, he neither brought his wife to
+London, nor visited her, nor ever saw her again until he was dying. On
+April 28, 1799, Hayley called on him for the last time at Hampstead, and
+thought that "increasing weakness of body and mind afforded only a gloomy
+prospect for the residue of his life." Then in July Flaxman saw him, and
+says in one of his letters, "I and my father dined at Mr. Romney's at
+Hampstead last Sunday, by particular invitation, and were received in the
+most cordial manner; but, alas! I was grieved to see so noble a collection
+in a state so confused, so mangled, and prepared, I fear, for worse, and
+not better." Very soon after this Romney left London for ever, and
+returned to Kendal and the wife he had neglected since the days of his
+obscure youth, and early in 1801, by his directions, "the collection of
+castes from the antique, a very fine skeleton, and other artistic
+properties of George Romney, at his late residence, Hollybush Hill,
+Hampstead," were sold by Messrs. Christie.
+
+Meanwhile, his wife had pardoned him and was caring for him. "Old, nearly
+mad, and quite desolate," writes Fitzgerald, "he went back to her, and she
+received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth
+all Romney's pictures!--even as a matter of art, I am sure." It is this
+beautiful devotion of hers that gave Tennyson a subject for one of his
+later poems, _Romney's Remorse_; in which the dying painter, rousing out
+of delirium, says:--
+
+                            "There--you spill
+  The drops upon my forehead. Your hand shakes.
+  I am ashamed. I am a trouble to you,
+  Could kneel for your forgiveness. Are they tears?
+  For me--they do me too much grace--for me?...
+  My curse upon the Master's apothegm,
+  That wife and children drag an artist down!
+  This seemed my lodestar in the Heaven of Art,
+  And lured me from the household fire on earth....
+                            This Art, that harlot-like,
+  Seduced me from you, leaves me harlot-like,
+  Who love her still, and whimper, impotent
+  To win her back before I die--and then--
+  Then in the loud world's bastard judgment day
+  One truth will damn me with the mindless mob,
+  Who feel no touch of my temptation, more
+  Than all the myriad lies that blacken round
+  The corpse of every man that gains a name:
+  'This model husband, this fine artist!' Fool,
+  What matters! Six feet deep of burial mould
+  Will dull their comments! Ay, but when the shout
+  Of His descending peals from Heaven, and throbs
+  Thro' earth and all her graves, if _He_ should ask
+  'Why left you wife and children? for My sake,
+  According to My word?' and I replied,
+  'Nay, Lord, for _Art_,' why, that would sound so mean
+  That all the dead who wait the doom of Hell
+  For bolder sins than mine, adulteries,
+  Wife-murders--nay, the ruthless Mussulman
+  Who flings his bowstrung Harem in the sea,
+  Would turn and glare at me, and point and jeer
+  And gibber at the worm who, living, made
+  The wife of wives a widow-bride, and lost
+  Salvation for a sketch....
+  O let me lean my head upon your breast.
+  'Beat, little heart,' on this fool brain of mine.
+  I once had friends--and many--none like you.
+  I love you more than when we married. Hope!
+  O yes, I hope, or fancy that, perhaps,
+  Human forgiveness touches heaven, and thence--
+  For you forgive me, you are sure of that--
+  Reflected, sends a light on the forgiven."
+
+Another famous artist who is closely associated with Hampstead was John
+Constable. In 1820, writing to his friend, the Rev. John Fisher
+(afterwards Archdeacon Fisher), he says, "I have settled my wife and
+children comfortably at Hampstead"; and a little later he writes, again to
+Fisher, "My picture is getting on, and the frame will be here in three
+weeks or a fortnight.... I now fear (for my family's sake) I shall never
+make a popular artist, _a gentleman and ladies painter_. But I am spared
+making a fool of myself, and your hand stretched forth teaches me to value
+what I possess (if I may say so), and this is of more consequence than
+gentlemen and ladies can well imagine." He was then living at No. 2 Lower
+Terrace, a small house of two storeys, and writes from that address, again
+to Fisher, on the 4th August 1821, "I am as much here as possible with my
+family. My placid and contented companion and her three infants are well.
+I have got a room at a glazier's where is my large picture, and at this
+little place I have many small works going on, for which purpose I have
+cleared a shed in the garden, which held sand, coals, mops and brooms, and
+have made it a workshop. I have done a good deal here." Lower Terrace is
+within a few minutes' walk of the Heath, the scenery of which appears in
+so many of Constable's paintings. He removed presently to Charlotte
+Street, Fitzroy Square; one of his pictures exhibited in the Louvre made
+him famous in France, and his fame was spreading in England when he went
+back to Hampstead in 1826, and after staying for a while at 25 Downshire
+Hill (which has since been rebuilt) was "at length fixed," as he wrote to
+Fisher, "in a comfortable little house at Well Walk, Hampstead.... So
+hateful is moving about to me that I could gladly exclaim, 'Here let me
+take my everlasting rest.' This house is to my wife's heart's content; it
+is situated on an eminence at the back of the spot in which you saw us,
+and our little drawing-room commands a view unsurpassed in Europe from
+Westminster Abbey to Gravesend. The dome of St. Paul's in the air seems to
+realise Michael Angelo's words on seeing the Pantheon--'I will build such
+a thing in the sky.'" In Constable's time the house was not numbered, but
+it has been identified as the present No. 40, and after his wife's death
+he kept it as an occasional residence until he died in 1837. He is buried
+not far from it, in the Hampstead Churchyard.
+
+[Illustration: JOHN KEATS]
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE. CHARLOTTE STREET.]
+
+In the same churchyard is buried Joanna Baillie, who spent the last
+forty-five years of her life at Bolton House, Windmill Hill, opposite the
+Hollybush Inn, and here Wordsworth, Rogers, and Scott were among her
+visitors. Other famous Hampstead residents buried in this churchyard are
+Mrs. Barbauld, who lived in Church Row, then near the foot of Rosslyn
+Hill, and died in John Street; Sir Walter Besant, who died at Frognal End,
+near the top of Frognal Gardens; and George du Maurier, who lived for
+twenty-five years in Church Row and at New Grove House, by Whitestone
+Pond, and dying in 1896, a year after he left Hampstead, was brought back
+here to be buried.
+
+[Illustration: JOANNA BAILLIE. WINDMILL HILL. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+In the house at the corner of Prince Arthur Road and the High Street, that
+is now occupied by the Hampstead Subscription Library, Clarkson Stanfield
+made his home for many years. He did notable work as a landscape and sea
+painter and became a Royal Academician, but was best known and most
+successful as a scenic artist for the theatre, and brought the art of
+scene-painting to a higher level than it had ever reached before. His more
+ambitious pictures are in private collections, however, his stage scenery
+has had its day, and I suppose most of us remember him better as one of
+Dickens's most familiar friends. He painted the scenery for Wilkie
+Collins's play, _The Lighthouse_, when Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mark
+Lemon, and others of their circle produced it at Tavistock House, and for
+other of the plays that Dickens staged there in his "smallest theatre in
+the world"; and Dickens's letters are sown with references to him. Writing
+to an American friend describing the Christmas sports he had been holding
+at his house, Dickens says he has purchased the entire stock-in-trade of a
+conjuror, and that "in those tricks which require a confederate I am
+assisted (by reason of his imperturbable good humour) by Stanfield, who
+always does his part exactly the wrong way, to the unspeakable delight of
+all beholders. We come out on a small scale to-night" (31st December 1842)
+"at Forster's, where we see the old year out and the new one in." On the
+16th January 1844 (putting _Martin Chuzzlewit_ aside) he is writing to
+Forster, "I had written you a line pleading Jonas and Mrs. Gamp, but this
+frosty day tempts me sorely. I am distractingly late; but I look at the
+sky, think of Hampstead, and feel hideously tempted. Don't come with Mac
+and fetch me. I couldn't resist if you did"; and a month later, on the
+18th February, "Stanfield and Mac have come in, and we are going to
+Hampstead to dinner. I leave Betsy Prig as you know, so don't you make a
+scruple about leaving Mrs. Harris. We shall stroll leisurely up to give
+you time to join us, and dinner will be on the table at Jack Straw's at
+four"; and in less than a month, on the 5th March, "Sir, I
+will--he--he--he--he--he--he--I will NOT eat with you, either at your own
+house or the club. But the morning looks bright, and a walk to Hampstead
+would suit me marvellously. If you should present yourself at my gate
+(bringing the R.A.'s along with you) I shall not be sapparised. So no more
+at this writing from poor MR. DICKENS." In June of the same year he sent
+Forster the proof of a preface he had written to a book by a poor
+carpenter named Overs, saying, "I wish you would read this, and give it me
+again when we meet at Stanfield's to-day"; and, still in the same year,
+"Stanny" is one of the friends he wishes Forster to invite to his chambers
+in Lincoln's Inn Fields to hear a reading of _The Chimes_ before it is
+published.
+
+No part of London is richer in literary and artistic associations than
+Hampstead. At the "Upper Flask" tavern, now known as the "Upper Heath,"
+Pope, Addison, Steele, Congreve, Hogarth and the other members of the
+Kit-Kat club used to meet in the eighteenth century, and Hogarth and
+Addison and his friends frequently resorted to the "Bull and Bush" at
+North End. Akenside lived for a while in Hampstead, and after he had left
+it went to stay occasionally with his friend Mr. Dyson at Golder's Hill,
+and was staying there in 1758 when he wrote his _Ode on recovering from a
+fit of sickness in the Country_, beginning:--
+
+  "Thy verdant scenes, O Goulder's Hill,
+   Once more I seek, a languid guest."
+
+Gay often went to Hampstead to drink the waters, at the Pump Room, in Well
+Walk; Dr. Arbuthnot lived in Hampstead, where Swift and Pope were among
+his visitors; Fuseli lodged in Church Row; Dr. Johnson's wife spent some
+of her summer holidays at a cottage near the entrance to the Priory, and
+the Doctor would tear himself away from his loved Fleet Street to pass an
+occasional day or two there with her; and of recent years Robert Louis
+Stevenson stayed with Sidney Colvin at Abernethy House, Mount Vernon, and
+at that time Stevenson, who was then twenty-four, so far conformed to the
+proprieties as to go about in "a frock coat and tall hat, which he had
+once worn at a wedding."
+
+[Illustration: STANFIELD'S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Tennyson's mother had a house in Flask Walk; when Edward Fitzgerald was
+in London, Tennyson introduced him to Dickens, and these three, taking
+Thackeray with them, drove out together to Hampstead Heath. Relics of Dick
+Turpin are preserved at the Spaniards Inn, a quaint, old-world hostelry
+that has in different generations entertained Goldsmith, Gainsborough, Sir
+Joshua Reynolds, Garrick and Constable, as well as Dickens and many of his
+familiars.
+
+[Illustration: THE UPPER FLASK. FROM THE BOWLING GREEN.]
+
+But more intimately than with any other of the immortals Hampstead has
+come to be associated with Keats and Leigh Hunt--with Keats in particular.
+He was born, a good Cockney, in Moorfields, over his father's livery
+stables, and in 1816 went to live with his brother Tom at No. 1 Well Walk,
+next door to the "Green Man," which has been succeeded by the Wells
+Tavern, and in his room here, on the 18th November 1816, when he was
+one-and-twenty, wrote a sonnet _To My Brothers_:--
+
+  "Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals,
+     And their faint cracklings o'er our silence creep
+     Like whispers of the household gods that keep
+   A gentle empire o'er fraternal souls.
+   And while for rhymes I search around the poles,
+     Your eyes are fixed, as in poetic sleep,
+     Upon the lore so voluble and deep
+   That aye at fall of night our care condoles.
+
+   This is your birthday, Tom, and I rejoice
+     That thus it passes smoothly, quietly:
+   Many such eves of gently whispering noise
+     May we together pass, and calmly try
+   What are this world's true joys--ere the great Voice
+     From its fair face shall bid our spirits fly."
+
+In 1818 Keats moved to another part of Hampstead, and lodged with his
+friend, Charles Armitage Brown, a retired merchant, at Wentworth Place,
+now known as Lawn Bank, in John Street, which was the other day, for no
+sufficient reason, renamed Keats Grove. At that date Wentworth Place was
+divided into two houses, Brown renting one, and Wentworth Dilke occupying
+the other; and when the Dilkes were away from home they left their house
+in the possession of Mrs. Brawne, her son, and two daughters, the elder of
+these daughters being the Fanny Brawne of Keats's piteous love romance.
+Though he finished the writing of it, and wrote the preface to it, on a
+holiday at Teignmouth, _Endymion_ was published, and most of it had been
+written, whilst he was at Wentworth Place, and under this roof also he
+wrote his _Eve of St. Agnes_, _Isabella_, _Hyperion_, and the _Ode to a
+Nightingale_. As every one knows, the publication of _Endymion_ brought
+him little but ridicule and abuse from the reviewers; but, much as this
+must have wounded and mortified his sensitive nature, it was so far from
+being the cause of his death, as some sentimentalists said it was, that,
+as you may gather from his correspondence, it did not even discourage him.
+The _Quarterly_ snubbed him as a copyist of Leigh Hunt, professed to find
+_Endymion_ so tedious as to be almost unreadable, and saw nothing in it
+but "calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy"; _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, referring to his having qualified as a surgeon, sneered "Back
+to the shop, Mr. John, stick to plasters, pills, ointment-boxes;" and the
+majority of critics were equally unappreciative. Byron dubbed him "a
+tadpole of the Lakes," and in divers letters to John Murray says, "There
+is such a trash of Keats and the like upon my tables that I am ashamed to
+look at them. No more Keats, I entreat.... Of the praises of the little
+dirty blackguard Keats in the _Edinburgh_ I shall observe, as Johnson did
+when Sheridan the actor got a pension, 'What, has _he_ got a pension? Then
+it is time that I should give up _mine_.' At present, all the men they
+have ever praised are degraded by that insane article. Why don't they
+review and praise _Solomon's Guide to Health_? It is better sense and as
+much poetry as Johnny Keats." After Keats was dead, Byron changed his
+opinions somewhat, and was anxious that his disparagements of him should
+be suppressed. "You know very well," he writes to Murray, "that I did not
+approve of Keats's poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of
+Pope; but as he is dead, omit all that it said about him in any MSS. of
+mine, or publication. His _Hyperion_ is a fine monument, and will keep his
+name"; and he added later, "His fragment of _Hyperion_ seems actually
+inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as AEschylus. He is a loss to our
+literature."
+
+Keats was too fully occupied with the writing of other poems, with the
+glowing raptures and black despairs of his passion for Fanny Brawne, and
+the anxieties attendant upon the illness that was already wearing him
+down, to give overmuch of his thoughts to the attacks of his critics;
+moreover, he found consolation in the society and friendship of such men
+as Cowden Clarke, Wentworth Dilke (who founded the _Athenaeum_), John
+Hamilton Reynolds, Haydon the painter, and Leigh Hunt, whom he frequently
+visited at that cottage of his in the Vale of Health, which ought never to
+have been demolished. For it was the meeting-place, too, of Keats and
+Shelley, and within it on one occasion, according to Cowden Clarke, Leigh
+Hunt challenged Keats, "then, and there, and to time," to write in
+competition with him a sonnet on _The Grasshopper and the Cricket_, and
+Keats finished his first. Passing a night there when he could not sleep,
+Keats wrote his _Sleep and Poetry_; and the cottage was rich, too, in
+rumours of such guests as Lamb, Hazlitt, and Coleridge.
+
+[Illustration: KEATS' HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Keats was introduced to Coleridge by Leigh Hunt. In 1816, when he was
+trying to cure himself of the opium habit, Coleridge went to live with Mr.
+Gilman, a surgeon, in a house that still stands in The Grove, Highgate,
+and walking with Hunt one day in Millfield Lane, which runs on the
+Highgate side of the Heath, he chanced to meet Keats, and this is his own
+account of the meeting: "A loose, slack, and not well-dressed youth met me
+in a lane near Highgate. It was Keats. He was introduced to me, and stayed
+a minute or so. After he had left us a little way, he ran back and said,
+'Let me carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your hand.'
+'There is death in that hand,' I said when Keats was gone; yet this was, I
+believe, before the consumption showed itself distinctly." But another
+four years were not past when Hone, the author of _The Table Book_, saw
+"poor Keats, the poet of _The Pot of Basil_, sitting and sobbing his dying
+breath into a handkerchief," on a bench at the end of Well Walk,
+overlooking the Heath, "glancing parting looks towards the quiet landscape
+he had delighted in so much."
+
+Perhaps the best descriptions of Keats in the last four years of his life
+are those given by Haydon, the painter, in his _Memoirs_, and by Leigh
+Hunt in his _Autobiography_. "He was below the middle size," according to
+Haydon, "with a low forehead and an eye that had an inward look perfectly
+divine, like a Delphian priestess who saw visions.... Unable to bear the
+sneers of ignorance or the attacks of envy, not having strength of mind
+enough to buckle himself together like a porcupine, and present nothing
+but his prickles to his enemies, he began to despond, flew to dissipation
+as a relief which, after a temporary elevation of spirits, plunged him
+into deeper despondency than ever. For six weeks he was scarcely sober,
+and to show what a man does to gratify his habits, when once they get the
+better of him, he once covered his tongue and throat as far as he could
+reach with cayenne pepper, in order to appreciate the 'delicious coldness
+of claret in all its glory'--his own expression." Leigh Hunt writes, "He
+was under the middle height; and his lower limbs were small in comparison
+with the upper, but neat and well turned. His shoulders were very broad
+for his size: he had a face in which energy and sensibility were
+remarkably mixed up; an eager power, checked and made patient by ill
+health. Every feature was at once strongly cut and delicately alive. If
+there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, which was not
+without something of a character of pugnacity. His face was rather long
+than otherwise; the upper lip projected a little over the under; the chin
+was bold, the cheeks sunken; the eyes mellow and glowing, large, dark, and
+sensitive. At the recital of a noble action, or a beautiful thought, they
+would suffuse with tears and his mouth trembled. In this there was ill
+health as well as imagination, for he did not like these betrayals of
+emotion; and he had great personal as well as moral courage. He once
+chastised a butcher, who had been insolent, by a regular stand-up fight."
+(Tradition says this fight took place in one of the narrow courts out of
+the High Street, Hampstead.) "His hair, of a brown colour, was fine, and
+hung in natural ringlets. The head was a puzzle for the phrenologists,
+being remarkably small in the skull; a singularity he had in common with
+Byron and Shelley, whose hats I could not get on." Add to these a
+description given by one who knew him to Lord Houghton: "His eyes were
+large and blue, his hair auburn; he wore it divided down the centre, and
+it fell in rich masses each side of his face; his mouth was full, and less
+intellectual than his other features. His countenance lives in my mind as
+one of singular beauty and brightness; it had the expression as if it had
+been looking on some glorious sight."
+
+The last two years of his life at Hampstead, with their quiet happiness,
+fierce unrests, passionate hopes and despairs, are all wonderfully
+reflected in his letters of this period. He writes from Wentworth Place to
+John Taylor, the publisher, in 1818, setting forth his poetical creed and
+saying, with a clear perception of its defects, "If _Endymion_ serves me
+as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content.... I have, I am sure, many
+friends who, if I fail, will attribute any change in my life and temper to
+humbleness rather than pride--to a cowering under the wings of great
+poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious
+to get _Endymion_ printed that I may forget it and proceed." There is a
+long letter to his sister in 1819, telling her of the books he has been
+reading, and describing his every-day life, beginning, "The candles are
+burnt down and I am using the wax taper, which has a long snuff on it--the
+fire is at its last click--I am sitting with my back to it, with one foot
+rather askew upon the rug and the other with the heel a little elevated
+from the carpet. I am writing this on _The Maid's Tragedy_, which I have
+read since tea with great pleasure. Besides this volume of Beaumont and
+Fletcher, there are on the table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of
+Tom Moore's called _Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress_--nothing in it."
+Reading this minute little sketch of himself, it is easy to picture him
+sitting late that night in his quiet room in Keats Grove; but it is the
+letters to Fanny Brawne that give this house, which was then two houses,
+its deepest and most living interest.
+
+[Illustration: CONSTABLE'S HOUSE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+In 1819 he writes to her, whilst he is away holidaying in the Isle of
+Wight and she at Wentworth Place, "I have never known any unalloyed
+happiness for many days together; the death or sickness of some one has
+always spoilt my hours--and now, when none such troubles oppress me, it
+is, you must confess, very hard that another sort of pain should haunt me.
+Ask yourself, my love, whether you are not very cruel to have so
+entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom." And again, "Your letter gave me
+more delight than anything in the world but yourself could do.... I never
+knew before what such love as you have made me feel was; I did not believe
+in it; my fancy was afraid of it, lest it should burn me up." And again,
+"I have been in so irritable a state of health these two or three last
+days, that I did not think I should be able to write this week.... I have
+been, I cannot tell why, in capital spirits this last hour. What reason?
+When I have to take my candle and retire to a lonely room, without the
+thought, as I fall asleep, of seeing you to-morrow morning? or the next
+day, or the next--it takes on the appearance of impossibility and
+eternity. I will say a month--I will say I will see you in a month at
+most, though no one but yourself should see me; if it be but for an hour.
+I should not like to be so near you as London without being continually
+with you; after having once more kissed you, Sweet, I would rather be here
+alone at my task than in the bustle and hateful literary chitchat.
+Meantime you must write to me--as I will every week--for your letters keep
+me alive."
+
+Back in London, making a short stay with Leigh Hunt, then living at
+College Street, Kentish Town, Keats sends to Wentworth Place a letter to
+Fanny Brawne, in the course of which he tells her, "My love has made me
+selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but
+seeing you again--my Life seems to stop there--I see no further. You have
+absorbed me.... My love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you." Even
+when he is home again, in his own part of the Wentworth Place house, he is
+writing in February 1820, "They say I must remain confined to this room
+for some time. The consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant
+prison of the house next to yours. You must come and see me frequently:
+this evening without fail"; and again, in the same month, "You will have a
+pleasant walk to-day. I shall see you pass. I shall follow you with my
+eyes over the Heath. Will you come towards evening instead of before
+dinner? When you are gone, 'tis past--if you do not come till the evening
+I have something to look forward to all day. Come round to my window for a
+moment when you have read this."
+
+In September of that year he set out on that voyage to Italy from which he
+was never to return, and whilst the ship was delayed off the Isle of
+Wight, he wrote to his friend, Charles Armitage Brown, at the old
+Hampstead address, "The very thing which I want to live most for will be a
+great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can help it?... I
+daresay you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping--you know
+what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at your
+house. I wish for death every day and night to deliver me from these
+pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy even those
+pains which are better than nothing.... I think, without my mentioning it,
+for my sake, you would be a friend to Miss Brawne when I am dead. You
+think she has many faults--but, for my sake, think she has not one. If
+there is anything you can do for her by word or deed I know you will do
+it.... The thought of leaving Miss Brawne is beyond everything
+horrible--the sense of darkness coming over me--I eternally see her figure
+eternally vanishing. Some of the phrases she was in the habit of using
+during my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring in my ears. Is there
+another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be; we
+cannot be created for this sort of suffering."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE DUMAURIER'S GRAVE. HAMPSTEAD.]
+
+Because of all this, and of the reiterated longings and the heartaches
+that Keats poured out in other letters that he wrote from Italy, and that
+were delivered here to Armitage Brown, I always feel that Wentworth Place
+is the saddest and most sacred of London's literary shrines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ROUND ABOUT SOHO AGAIN
+
+
+As a general thing the literary man is not to be found living in the
+aristocratic quarters of the town until after he has done his best work
+and has begun to make money out of his inferior books. I don't think any
+man of letters has ever rented a house in Park Lane, except Disraeli, and
+he went there as a successful politician; such glorious thoroughfares are
+reserved to more respectable stock-brokers and company-promoters, whilst
+those whom the gods love are driven to seek refuge in the cheap and shabby
+houses of meaner streets. Half the squalid squares and byways of Soho are
+in reality vestibules and aisles of the Temple of Fame. Blake, as we have
+seen in a former chapter, lived in Poland Street; and in the same street
+lived Flaxman, and, later, Shelley. Dryden lived in Gerrard Street, a
+century before Burke made his home there; Hazlitt died in Frith Street;
+Mulready the painter had his studio in Broad Street; and the sculptor,
+James Northcote, resided for over thirty years in Argyll Place. When
+Madame de Stael was in England she stayed at 30 (now 29) Argyll Street,
+and Byron speaks of visiting her there. I have already referred to Sir
+James Thornhill's house in Dean Street; near by, in Soho Square, lived the
+actor, Kemble; and this square has pathetic memories of De Quincey, who
+lodged for a time, under strange circumstances, at the Greek Street corner
+of it.
+
+Left an orphan to the care of guardians who seem to have treated him with
+some harshness, De Quincey ran away from the Manchester Grammar School in
+1802, when he was only seventeen, and after wandering through Wales made
+his way to London. Here for two months he was houseless, and seldom slept
+under a roof, and for upwards of sixteen weeks suffered "the physical
+anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity." He tells you in his
+_Confessions_ how he used to pace "the never-ending terraces" of Oxford
+Street, and at night sleep on some doorstep, and dream, "and wake to the
+captivity of hunger." In Oxford Street he fell in with that most innocent
+and tender-hearted of street-walkers, Ann, whose surname he never knew,
+and to whose compassion and charity he always felt that he owed his life:
+"For many weeks I had walked at nights with this poor friendless girl up
+and down Oxford Street, or had rested with her on steps and under the
+shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old as myself; she told me,
+indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth year.... One night when
+we were pacing slowly along Oxford Street, and after a day when I had felt
+more than usually ill and faint, I requested her to turn off with me into
+Soho Square. Thither we went, and we sat down on the steps of a house
+which to this hour I never pass without a pang of grief and an inner act
+of homage to the spirit of that unhappy girl, in memory of the noble
+action which she there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much worse.
+I had been leaning my head against her bosom, and all at once I sank from
+her arms and fell backwards on the steps." He was so utterly exhausted
+that he felt he must have died, but with a cry of terror she ran off into
+Oxford Street and returned with port wine and spices which she had paid
+for out of her own pocket, at a time when "she had scarcely the
+wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries of life;" and this timely
+stimulant served to restore him.
+
+By-and-by, meeting a friend who lent him ten pounds, he travelled down to
+Windsor to see if he could get a certain friend of his family there to
+assist him; but before going he paid Ann something of his debt to her, and
+arranged that three nights from then, and every night after until they
+should meet, she would be at the corner of Titchfield Street, Soho. On his
+return to London he was at the appointed place night after night, but Ann
+never appeared, and though he inquired everywhere and searched the
+neighbourhood for her he was never able to see or hear of her again.
+
+Earlier than this, however, and before he had succeeded in borrowing that
+ten pounds, the coming on of a bitterly inclement winter drove him to seek
+a wretched lodging at 61 (then 38) Greek Street, Soho Square. The house
+was a dirty, neglected, cheerless place, tenanted by a disreputable
+attorney named Brunell-Brown, who had a curious clerk named Pyment, and
+only came and went to and from his office by stealth because he was deep
+in debts and continually dodging the bailiffs. A few weeks of lodging
+miserably here nearly exhausted the little cash De Quincey had brought to
+London with him, and he had to give up his room. But he explained his
+position frankly to Brunell-Brown, and this kindly, reckless rascal, who
+had a genuine knowledge and love of literature, and was interested in the
+young lodger who could talk to him intelligently on such matters, readily
+gave him permission to come to the house nightly and sleep gratis in one
+of its empty rooms, and allowed him, moreover, to eat the scraps from his
+breakfast-table.
+
+The house had an unoccupied look, especially of nights, when the lawyer
+himself was usually absent. "There was no household or establishment in
+it; nor any furniture, indeed, except a table and a few chairs. But I
+found, on taking possession of my new quarters, that the house already
+contained one single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years
+old; but she seemed hunger-bitten, and sufferings of that sort often make
+children look older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned that
+she had lived and slept there for some time before I came; and great joy
+the poor creature expressed when she found that I was in future to be her
+companion through the hours of darkness. The house was large, and from the
+want of furniture the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the
+spacious staircase and hall; and amidst the real fleshly ills of cold and,
+I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure to suffer still more
+(it appeared) from the self-created one of ghosts. I promised her
+protection against all ghosts whatsoever, but, alas! I could offer her no
+other assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of cursed law
+papers for a pillow, but no other covering than a sort of large horseman's
+cloak; afterwards, however, we discovered in a garret an old sofa-cover, a
+small piece of rug, and some fragments of other articles, which added a
+little to our warmth. The poor child crept close to me for warmth and for
+security against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more than usually ill
+I took her into my arms, so that in general she was tolerably warm, and
+often slept when I could not....
+
+[Illustration: DE QUINCEY'S HOUSE. SOHO.]
+
+"Meantime, the master of the house sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and
+very early; sometimes not till ten o'clock; sometimes not at all. He was
+in constant fear of bailiffs. Improving on the plan of Cromwell, every
+night he slept in a different quarter of London; and I observed that he
+never failed to examine through a private window the appearance of those
+who knocked at the door before he would allow it to be opened. He
+breakfasted alone; indeed, his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of
+his hazarding an invitation to a second person, any more than the quantity
+of esculent _materiel_, which for the most part was little more than a
+roll or a few biscuits which he had bought on his road from the place
+where he had slept. During his breakfast I generally contrived a reason
+for lounging in, and with an air of as much indifference as I could
+assume, took up such fragments as he had left; sometimes, indeed, there
+were none at all.... As to the poor child, she was never admitted into his
+study (if I may give that name to his chief depository of parchments, law
+writings, &c.); that room was to her the Bluebeard room of the house,
+being regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about six o'clock,
+which usually was his final departure for the night. Whether the child
+were an illegitimate daughter of Mr. Brunell-Brown, or only a servant, I
+could not ascertain; she did not herself know; but certainly she was
+treated altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did Mr. Brunell-Brown
+make his appearance than she went below stairs, brushed his shoes, coat,
+&c.; and, except when she was summoned to run an errand, she never emerged
+from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchen, &c. to the upper air until my
+welcome knock at night called up her little trembling footsteps to the
+front door. Of her life during the daytime, however, I knew little but
+what I gathered from her own account at night, for as soon as the hours of
+business commenced I saw that my absence would be acceptable, and in
+general, therefore, I went off and sate in the parks or elsewhere until
+nightfall."
+
+[Illustration: SHELLEY'S HOUSE. POLAND STREET W.]
+
+I have always thought that in all this there is something oddly
+reminiscent of Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness; the poor, half-starved
+little household drudge fits her part almost exactly, but De Quincey makes
+but a depressed and dismal Dick Swiveller; and Mr. Brunell-Brown seems to
+have been a lower type of the rascally lawyer than Sampson Brass was; but
+rascal as he was, one warms to him because of his kindness to his forlorn
+guest. "I must forget everything but that towards me," says De Quincey,
+"he was obliging and, to the extent of his power, generous." He goes on to
+say that in after years, whenever he was in London, he never failed to
+visit that house in Greek Street, and "about ten o'clock this very night,
+August 15, 1821--being my birthday--I turned aside from my evening walk
+down Oxford Street, purposely to take a glance at it; it is now occupied
+by a respectable family, and by the lights in the front drawing-room I
+observed a domestic party assembled, perhaps at tea, and apparently
+cheerful and gay. Marvellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness,
+cold, silence and desolation of that same house eighteen years ago, when
+its nightly occupants were one famishing scholar and a neglected child.
+Her, by-the-by, in after years I vainly endeavoured to trace. Apart from
+her situation, she was not what would be called an interesting child; she
+was neither pretty nor quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in
+manners."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS DE QUINCEY]
+
+His London privations ended with a reconciliation between himself and his
+guardians, and he was sent to Oxford--his quarrel with them being that
+they would not allow him to go there.
+
+De Quincey quitted Soho to go to Oxford, and Shelley, when he was expelled
+from Oxford in 1811, came to Soho. He travelled up to London on the coach
+with his friend Hogg. His cousin and sometime schoolfellow, Medwin,
+relates how before dawn on a March morning Shelley and Hogg knocked at his
+door in Garden Court, Temple, and he heard Shelley's cracked voice cry, in
+his well-known pipe, "Medwin, let me in. I am expelled," and after a loud
+sort of half-hysterical laugh repeat, "I am expelled," and add "for
+atheism." After breakfast they went out to look for lodgings, and, says
+Hogg, "never was a young beauty so capricious, so hard to please" as
+Shelley; but the name of Poland Street attracted him because it suggested
+recollections of Thaddeus of Warsaw and freedom, and he declared "we must
+lodge here, should we sleep on the step of a door." A bill advertising
+lodgings to let hung in the window of No. 15, so they knocked and entered
+and inspected them--"a quiet sitting-room, its walls papered with
+trellised vine-leaves and clustering grapes," with a similarly decorated
+bedroom opening out of it, and Shelley whispered, "We must stay here for
+ever."
+
+"For ever" dwindled to something less than a year; but here for that time
+Shelley lived and resumed his interrupted studies, as far as might be, and
+was secretly supported by his sisters, who sent their pocket-money round
+to him by the hand of their schoolfellow, Harriett Westbrook, daughter of
+the retired tavern-keeper, John Westbrook, who was living near Park Lane,
+at 23 Chapel Street (now Aldford Street).
+
+In April 1811 Shelley's father wrote insisting that he should break off
+all relations with Hogg and place himself under a tutor of his father's
+selection, and Shelley replied, from his Poland Street lodgings:--
+
+    "MY DEAR FATHER,--As you do me the honour of requesting to hear the
+    determination of my mind, as the basis of your future actions, I feel
+    it my duty, although it gives me pain to wound 'the sense of duty to
+    your own character, to that of your family, and feelings as a
+    Christian,' decidedly to refuse my assent to both the proposals in
+    your letter, and to affirm that similar refusals will always be the
+    fate of similar requests. With many thanks for your great kindness,--I
+    remain your affectionate, dutiful son,
+
+      "PERCY B. SHELLEY."
+
+His father presently relented so far as to make him an allowance of two
+hundred pounds a year. One evening in August, having arranged a hasty
+elopement with Harriett Westbrook, Shelley walked from Poland Street to a
+small coffee-house in Mount Street, and as Dr. Dowden sets forth in his
+Life of the poet, dispatched a letter thence to Harriett, her father's
+house in Aldford Street being close handy, telling her at what hour he
+would have a hackney coach waiting for her at the door of the
+coffee-house. At the appointed time the coach was there in readiness, and
+a little behind time "Harriett was seen tripping round the corner from
+Chapel Street, and the coach wheels rattled towards the City inn from
+which the northern mails departed."
+
+[Illustration: SHELLEY. MARCHMONT STREET.]
+
+They travelled post-haste to the North, and were married in Edinburgh; and
+in another three years the deserted Harriett had ended her life in the
+Serpentine, and Shelley had gone off with Mary Godwin. Meanwhile, however,
+returning to London after his marriage to Harriett, Shelley stayed for a
+few days at the house of his father-in-law, and then at Cooke's Hotel, in
+Albemarle Street. On another occasion he lodged for a short time at a
+house still standing in Marchmont Street (No. 26), a drab and dingy
+thoroughfare in the neighbourhood of Russell Square.
+
+Hazlitt was a Soho resident for no longer than about six months. In 1830
+he came from his lodgings in Bouverie Street to occupy rooms at No. 6
+Frith Street. He was then already failing in health, separated from his
+wife, harassed financially through the failure of his publishers,
+altogether broken and dispirited. Much disappointment, the thwarting of
+many of his highest personal ambitions, had soured and embittered him.
+Haydon calls him a "singular mixture of friend and fiend, radical and
+critic, metaphysician, poet and painter, on whose word no one could rely,
+on whose heart no one could calculate." A critic of genius, a brilliant
+essayist; with not so great a heart as Lamb's but a finer intellect; he
+has never to this day received his full meed of recognition. He moves in
+spirit among the immortals as apart and unsociable as he moved among them
+in the body. "We are told," wrote P. G. Patmore, "that on the summit of
+one of those columns which form the magnificent ruins of Hadrian's Temple,
+in the plain of Athens, there used to dwell a hermit who scarcely ever
+descended from this strangely-chosen abode, owing his scanty food and
+support to the mingled admiration and curiosity of the peasants who
+inhabited the plain below. Something like this was the position of William
+Hazlitt. Self-banished from the social world, no less by the violence of
+his own passions than by those petty regards of custom and society which
+could not or would not tolerate the trifling aberrations from external
+form and usage engendered by a mind like his, ... he became, as regarded
+himself, personally heedless of all things but the immediate gratification
+of his momentary wishes, careless of personal character, indifferent to
+literary fame, forgetful of the past, reckless of the future, and yet so
+exquisitely alive to the claims and the virtues of all these that the
+abandonment of his birthright in every one of them opened a separate
+canker in his heart, and made his life a living emblem of the early death
+which it foretokened."
+
+Patmore, too, has given a good sketch of his personal appearance. "The
+forehead," he says, "was magnificent; the nose precisely that which
+physiognomists have assigned as evidence of a fine and highly cultivated
+taste; though there was a peculiar character about the nostrils like
+that observable in those of a fiery and unruly horse. His eyes were not
+good. They were never brilliant, and there was a furtive and at times a
+sinister look about them as they glanced suspiciously from under their
+overhanging brows." Other contemporaries have described him as a grave
+man, diffident, almost awkward in manner, of middle size, and with eager,
+expressive eyes. S. C. Hall considered him mean-looking and
+unprepossessing; but though Talfourd speaks of him as slouching, awkward,
+and neglectful in his dress, he credits him with "a handsome, eager
+countenance, worn by sickness and thought."
+
+[Illustration: HAZLITT'S HOUSE. FRITH STREET.]
+
+But he was nearing the end of it all when he came to Frith Street. In
+August he was attacked with a violent sort of cholera, and never rallied
+from it. What was probably his last essay, one on "The Sick Chamber,"
+appeared that same month in the _New Monthly_, picturing his own invalid
+condition and touching gratefully on the consolation and enjoyment he
+could still derive from books. Nearing the close, he begged that his
+mother might be sent for, but she was an old lady of eighty-four living in
+Devonshire and was unable to go to him. "He died so quietly," in the words
+of his grandson, "that his son, who was sitting by his bedside, did not
+know that he was gone till the vital breath had been extinct a moment or
+two. His last words were, 'Well, I've had a happy life.'" The same
+authority adds that he found the following memorandum, in the handwriting
+of his grandmother: "Saturday, 18th September 1830, at about half-past
+four in the afternoon, died at his lodgings, No. 6 Frith Street, Soho,
+William Hazlitt, aged fifty-two years five months and eight days. Mr.
+Lamb, Mr. White, Mr. Hersey, and his own son were with him at the time."
+
+He was buried within a minute's walk of his house, in the churchyard of
+St. Anne's, Soho, and his tombstone removed from its first position,
+stands back against the wall of the church: the stone originally bore a
+curious, somewhat militant inscription, but this has recently been
+obliterated, and replaced by one that offers nothing but his name and a
+record of the dates of his birth and death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A PHILOSOPHER, TWO POETS, AND A NOVELIST
+
+
+Everybody has heard of _Sandford and Merton_, and hardly anybody nowadays
+has read it. I confess with shame that I am one who has not. But I have
+come across so many parodies of it and so many references to it in various
+books and articles that I am finding it more and more difficult to believe
+that I have not actually read the story itself. Mr. Barlow, the boy's
+tutor, lives in my mind as a large and solemn bore, but he was a bore of
+real knowledge; he was heavy with learning; and the boys themselves were
+dreadful little prigs, but underneath their priggishness they were manly
+boys, and there was something fine in their ideals of honour. No doubt
+they were largely modelled on their author, Thomas Day, who when he was a
+schoolboy started a fight with another boy on quite justifiable grounds,
+and soon finding that he completely outmatched his opponent, stopped the
+fight, and insisted on shaking hands with the other and making peace.
+
+That incident, and the queer originality of his whole outlook on life, has
+made me more interested in Day himself than in his one famous book, and
+has made me number 36 Wellclose Square, the house where he was born,
+among the London literary shrines that must not be overlooked.
+
+Wellclose Square is in Shadwell, on the skirts of Whitechapel, and is one
+of those melancholy places that have obviously seen better days. Dreary
+and drab and squalid as you see it now, when Day was born there on the
+22nd June 1748 it must have been a fairly select and superior residential
+quarter. Day's father was a collector of Customs who died a year after his
+son's birth, leaving him a very comfortable fortune of twelve hundred a
+year. The boy was educated at Charterhouse and at Oxford, and one way and
+another acquired lofty Stoic principles and a somewhat original philosophy
+that he lived up to obstinately all his life through, in spite of many
+rebuffs and a good deal of ridicule. He dressed carelessly, was
+indifferent to appearances, and scorned the "admiration of splendour which
+dazzles and enslaves mankind." He preferred the society of his inferiors
+because they were more unconventional, less artificial than the ladies and
+gentlemen of his own rank; he was awkward in the company of women, and
+regarded the sex with doubt as well as with diffidence. As you would
+expect of the man who wrote _Sandford and Merton_, he had no sense of
+humour; and his smallpox-pitted face and unattractive air and manner told
+so much against him that he was rejected emphatically by the first one or
+two women he proposed to. Withal, as was also fitting in the author of
+that fearsomely moral schoolboy-book, he was, in the words of his friend
+Edgeworth, "the most virtuous human being I have ever known."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS DAY. 36 WELLCLOSE SQUARE.]
+
+I suppose he was a pioneer of the "simple life" theory; anyhow, he
+persistently advocated simplicity in dress and living, and was determined
+to find a wife who shared these tastes, who should, moreover, be fond of
+literature and moral philosophy, "simple as a mountain girl in her dress,
+diet, and manners, and fearless and intrepid as the Spartan wives and
+Roman heroines." He was careful to state these requirements to the lady
+before proposing to her, and this seems to have spoilt his chances. The
+difficulty of discovering his ideal wife led to his making an odd
+experiment. He adopted two young girls, one from the Foundling Hospital,
+the other from the Shrewsbury Orphanage, and in deference to the
+proprieties formally bound them apprentice to his friend Edgeworth, and
+gave guarantees to the authorities that within one year he would make a
+decision between the two and pay a premium of a hundred pounds to
+apprentice one to a suitable trade, and send the other to be properly
+educated with the ultimate object of marrying her. The girls were about
+twelve years old. In order that they should not be influenced with wrong
+ideas by the people about them, he took them into France, where, as they
+only understood English, they could talk with nobody but himself; and
+there he proceeded to teach them reading and writing, and by ridicule,
+explanation, and reasoning sought "to imbue them with a deep hatred for
+dress, for luxury, for fine people, for fashion and titles, all of which
+inspired his own mind with such an unconquerable horror." In a letter
+which he wrote home about them he says, "I am not disappointed in one
+respect. I am more attached to and more convinced of the truth of my
+principles than ever. I have made them, in respect of temper, two such
+girls as, I may perhaps say without vanity, you have never seen at the
+same age. They have never given me a moment's trouble throughout the
+voyage, are always contented, and think nothing so agreeable as waiting
+upon me (no moderate convenience for a lazy man)." Nevertheless, in
+France, the girls proved very quarrelsome; he had to nurse them through a
+severe attack of smallpox, and once when they were out boating they both
+fell into the Rhone, and he risked his life to save them.
+
+Within the year, he brought them back to England and had made his choice.
+He apprenticed one, who was "invincibly stupid," to a milliner; and the
+other, Sabrina Sidney, he carried with him to a house he had taken near
+Lichfield and there "resumed his preparations for implanting in her young
+mind the characteristic virtues of Arria, Portia and Cornelia." But she
+disappointed him; he endeavoured in vain to steel her against shrinking
+from pain and the fear of danger. "When he dropped melting sealing-wax on
+her arms she did not endure it heroically; nor when he fired pistols at
+her petticoats which she believed to be charged with balls could she help
+starting aside or suppress her screams." She was not fond of science, and
+was unable to keep a secret satisfactorily; so after a year's trial Day
+sent her away to a boarding-school, and proceeded to pay his addresses to
+a young lady living in the neighbourhood, who first put him on a period of
+probation, and then, after he had made himself ridiculous in trying to
+dress and behave as she wished, rejected him.
+
+[Illustration: LORD BYRON]
+
+Whereupon his thoughts turned again to Sabrina, who had a real affection
+for him; but her failure to obey him in certain small details of dress
+again displeased him, and finally deciding against her, he in the long run
+married a Miss Milnes. His one objection to this lady was that she
+possessed a considerable fortune, and would therefore probably refuse to
+live the simple life; but when he had categorically put his requirements
+to her, and she had consented to dispense with all luxuries, to cut
+herself off from social gaieties, and reside in the country with him,
+restricted in every way to the bare necessaries of existence, working and
+spending for the behoof of the poor and needy, he ventured to make her
+Mrs. Day, and never had occasion to regret it. Sabrina eventually married
+a barrister, but refused to do so until she had Day's consent; and when,
+after writing divers political, economic, and philosophical works that
+nobody hears of now, and _Sandford and Merton_, which nobody reads any
+longer, Day died of a fall from an unmanageable horse which he insisted
+could be controlled by kindness, his wife was inconsolable, and died soon
+after him of a broken heart.
+
+So he must have been a man worth knowing, and, in spite of his
+peculiarities and his oppressive earnestness, more likeable than most of
+us, when you knew him. Anyhow, he thought for himself, and had opinions of
+his own, and was not afraid to act upon them. And such men are so
+uncommonly rare that I think the County Council should put a tablet on the
+face of his birthplace at once, for the encouragement of all men who are
+something more than cheap copies of their neighbours.
+
+Across the other side of London, at 24 (then 16) Holles Street, Cavendish
+Square, Lord Byron was born, on 22nd January 1788--a very different man,
+but also unconventional, though in more conventional ways. But the house
+here has been considerably altered to suit the requirements of the big
+drapery establishment that at present occupies it, and of Byron's various
+residences in London I believe the only one that survives in its original
+condition is that at No. 4 Bennet Street, St. James's. Here he had rooms
+on the first floor in 1813 and the early months of 1814, and it was in
+those rooms that he wrote _The Giaour_, _The Bride of Abydos_, and _The
+Corsair_. Writing to Moore from here on the 28th July 1813, he says, "I am
+training to dine with Sheridan and Rogers this evening"; and in the Diary
+he was keeping at this time he notes, on 16th November 1813, "Read Burns
+to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should have had more
+polish--less force--just as much verse but no immortality--a divorce and
+duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been
+less spirituous, he might have lived as long as Sheridan, and outlived as
+much as poor Brinsley."
+
+From Bennet Street Byron carried on a correspondence with the lady he was
+destined to marry, Miss Anna Isabella Milbanke. "I look upon myself," he
+tells her in one of his letters, "as a very facetious personage, and may
+appeal to most of my acquaintance in proof of my assertion. Nobody laughs
+more, and though your friend Joanna Baillie says somewhere that 'Laughter
+is the child of misery,' I do not believe her (unless indeed a hysteric),
+though I think it is sometimes the parent." In another of the same
+September 1813, evidently replying to one of hers, he protests: "'Gay'
+but not 'content'--very true.... You have detected a laughter 'false to
+the heart'--allowed--yet I have been tolerably sincere with you, and I
+fear sometimes troublesome." In November he writes to her, "I perceive by
+part of your last letter that you are still inclined to believe me a
+gloomy personage. Those who pass so much of their time entirely alone
+can't be always in very high spirits; yet I don't know--though I certainly
+do enjoy society to a certain extent, I never passed two hours in mixed
+company without wishing myself out of it again. Still, I look upon myself
+as a facetious companion, well reputed by all the wits at whose jests I
+readily laugh, and whose repartees I take care never to incur by any kind
+of contest--for which I feel as little qualified as I do for the more
+solid pursuits of demonstration."
+
+[Illustration: BYRON. 4 BENNET STREET. ST. JAMES'S.]
+
+As for his gloom or gaiety, Sir Walter Scott, who lunched with him and
+Charles Mathews at Long's Hotel, in Old Bond Street, in 1815, said, "I
+never saw Byron so full of fun, frolic, wit, and whim: he was as playful
+as a kitten." Again, writing in his Journal, after Byron's death, Sir
+Walter observes, "What I liked about Byron, besides his boundless genius,
+was his generosity of spirit as well as purse, and his utter contempt of
+all affectations of literature, from the school-magisterial style to the
+lackadaisical"; and he relates an anecdote in illustration of Byron's
+extreme sensitiveness: "Like Rousseau, he was apt to be very suspicious,
+and a plain, downright steadiness of manner was the true mode to maintain
+his good opinion. Will Rose told me that once, while sitting with Byron,
+he fixed insensibly his eyes on his feet, one of which, it must be
+remembered, was deformed. Looking up suddenly, he saw Byron regarding him
+with a look of concentrated and deep displeasure, which wore off when he
+observed no consciousness or embarrassment in the countenance of Rose.
+Murray afterwards explained this by telling Rose that Lord Byron was very
+jealous of having this personal imperfection noticed or attended to." He
+goes on to say that Byron was a mischief-maker; he would tell one man the
+unpleasant things that had been privately said of him by another; and he
+loved to mystify people, "to be thought awful, mysterious and gloomy, and
+sometimes hinted at strange causes."
+
+So that if he had no literary affectations he clearly cultivated a pose of
+mysterious misery both in his life and his poetry, and this it was that
+exasperated Carlyle into calling him "the teeth-grinding, glass-eyed, lone
+Caloyer." And the pose was helped out by his handsome and romantic
+appearance. "Byron's countenance is a thing to dream of," Scott told
+Lockhart. "A certain fair lady whose name has been too often mentioned in
+connection with his told a friend of mine that when she first saw Byron it
+was in a crowded room, and she did not know who it was, but her eyes were
+instantly nailed, and she said to herself, 'That pale face is my fate.'
+And, poor soul, if a god-like face and god-like powers could have made
+excuse for devilry, to be sure she had one." He said on the same occasion,
+"As for poets, I have seen, I believe, all the best of our own time and
+country--and, though Burns had the most glorious eyes imaginable, I never
+thought any of them would come up to an artist's notion of the character
+except Byron." Mrs. Opie said, "His voice was such a voice as the devil
+tempted Eve with"; and Charles Mathews once remarked that "he was the only
+man I ever contemplated to whom I felt disposed to apply the word
+beautiful."
+
+Nevertheless, for a while Miss Milbanke was proof against his
+fascinations. In November 1813, about the date of that last letter of his
+to her from which I have quoted, he offered her his hand and was rejected.
+He proposed to another lady in the following September, and was rejected
+again, and almost immediately afterwards he called on Miss Milbanke at her
+father's house, 29 Portland Place, and in the library there passionately
+renewed his suit, and this time was successful. They were married in
+January 1815, and went to live at 13 Piccadilly, and in January of the
+next year, after twelve months of little happiness and much wretchedness,
+separated for good, a month after the birth of their child.
+
+This Piccadilly house has been pulled down. The Albany to which Byron
+removed in 1814, and which he left on his marriage, still remains; and so,
+too, does No. 8 St. James's Street, where he lived in 1809, when his
+_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ took the town by storm, but it has
+undergone so much alteration that it no longer seems so intimately
+reminiscent of Byron as Bennet Street does.
+
+Whilst Byron was residing in St. James's Street, publishing the _English
+Bards_ and writing the first canto of _Childe Harold_, Coleridge was
+living in a house at Portland Place, Hammersmith, that is now known as No.
+7 Addison Bridge Place. Somehow, one does not readily connect Coleridge
+with London, even though he had lodged for many years at Highgate before
+he died there. But one time and another he spent quite a large part of his
+life in the metropolis. He was at school with Lamb, of course, at Christ's
+Hospital; and are not Lamb's letters strewn with yearning remembrances of
+the glorious evenings he and Coleridge and Hazlitt and others passed, in
+later years, in the smoky parlour of "The Salutation and Cat," in Newgate
+Street? At various dates, he lived at Buckingham Street, and at Norfolk
+Street, Strand, in Pall Mall, and in King Street, Covent Garden, when he
+was working on the staff of the _Morning Post_; to say nothing of visits
+to London when he put up at one or another of Lamb's many homes in the
+City; and there is still in one of the courts of Fetter Lane that Newton
+Hall where he delivered a series of lectures in 1818.
+
+By 1810, when he came to London and settled for a period at 7 Addison
+Bridge Place, Coleridge had done all his great work as a poet, and under
+stress of financial difficulties was turning more and more from poetry to
+lecturing and journalism as sources of income. There is a letter of Lamb's
+to Hazlitt, dated 28th November 1810, when Hazlitt was holidaying and
+working at Winterslow, in which he mentions towards the close--"Coleridge
+is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing or going to write in
+the _Courier_ against Cobbett and in favour of paper money." Byron wrote
+to a friend in the succeeding year, "Coleridge is lecturing. 'Many an old
+fool,' said Hannibal to some such lecturer, 'but such as this, never'";
+and to the same friend two days later, "Coleridge has been lecturing
+against Campbell. Rogers was present, and from him I derive the
+information. We are going to make a party to hear this Manichean of
+poesy"; and on the same day to another friend, "Coleridge has attacked the
+_Pleasures of Hope_, and all other pleasures whatsoever. Mr. Rogers was
+present, and heard himself indirectly _rowed_ by the lecturer"; and next
+week, "To-morrow I dine with Rogers, and am to hear Coleridge, who is a
+kind of rage at present."
+
+[Illustration: COLERIDGE. ADDISON BRIDGE PLACE.]
+
+Coleridge was then only thirty-eight, and had another twenty-four years of
+life before him. He was already, and had for long past, been struggling in
+the toils of the opium habit, and his poetical inspiration was leaving
+him, for though _Christabel_ and _Kubla Khan_ were not published until
+1816 they were written nearly ten years before. There are a number of
+minor poems bearing later dates; several in 1809, many long after that,
+but only one dated 1810, which may be supposed to have been written in
+that Hammersmith house, and this is nothing but a respectable translation
+of a passage in Ottfried's metrical paraphrase of the Gospels. But his
+lectures were a wonder and a delight, Byron's disapproval notwithstanding.
+He was always an eloquent preacher, and became a chief among lecturers as
+he did among poets. "Have you ever heard me preach?" he asked Lamb, and
+Lamb replied with his whimsical stammer, "I never heard you do anything
+else!" But you remember that fine essay of Hazlitt's in which he recounts
+his first acquaintance with Coleridge?--how he rose before daylight and
+walked ten miles in the mud to hear him preach. "When I got there, the
+organ was playing the hundredth psalm, and when it was done Mr. Coleridge
+rose and gave out his text, 'And he went up into the mountain to pray,
+HIMSELF, ALONE.' As he gave out his text his voice 'rose like a steam of
+rich distilled perfumes,' and when he came to the two last words, which he
+pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young,
+as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if
+that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through the universe." He
+describes the sermon, and goes on, "I could not have been more delighted
+if I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met
+together.... I returned home well satisfied." Then Coleridge called to see
+his father, a dissenting minister in the neighbourhood, and for two hours
+he talked and Hazlitt listened spellbound, and when he went, Hazlitt
+walked with him six miles on the road. "It was a fine morning," he says,
+"in the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way." And with what a
+fine generosity he acknowledges what that meeting and this talk of
+Coleridge's had meant to him. "I was stunned, startled with it as from a
+deep sleep.... I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a
+worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, lifeless; but now, bursting the
+deadly bands that bound them--
+
+  'With Styx nine times round them,'
+
+my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes catch the
+golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its original
+bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart,
+shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found nor will it
+ever find a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not
+remain dumb and brutish, or at length found a language to express itself,
+I owe to Coleridge." That was when Coleridge was twenty-six and Hazlitt
+twenty. These twelve years after that, when Coleridge was lecturing in
+London, his fancy and imagination were as dazzling and as powerful as
+ever, and his voice and language had lost none of their magic. But his
+thoughts were perhaps tending towards that transcendental obscurity that
+reached its worst when he was established in his closing days at Highgate,
+with his little group of worshipping disciples around him, and when
+Carlyle went to hear and to ridicule him. Anyhow, here is an account
+Rogers gives of a visit he paid to him when he had transferred himself
+from Hammersmith to Pall Mall:--
+
+"Coleridge was a marvellous talker. One morning when Hookham Frere also
+breakfasted with me, Coleridge talked for three hours without
+intermission, about poetry, and so admirably that I wish every word he
+uttered had been written down. But sometimes his harangues were quite
+unintelligible, not only to myself, but to others. Wordsworth and I called
+upon him one afternoon, when he was in a lodging off Pall Mall. He talked
+uninterruptedly for about two hours, during which Wordsworth listened to
+him with profound attention, every now and then nodding his head, as if in
+assent. On quitting the lodgings I said to Wordsworth, 'Well, for my part,
+I could not make head or tail of Coleridge's oration; pray did you
+understand it?' 'Not one syllable of it,' was Wordsworth's reply."
+
+He talked like one inspired, but his looks, except whilst he was talking,
+belied him. "My face," he said justly of himself, "unless when animated by
+immediate eloquence, expresses great sloth and great, indeed almost
+idiotic, good nature. 'Tis a mere carcase of a face, flat, flabby, and
+expressive chiefly of unexpression. Yet I am told that my eye, eyebrows,
+and forehead are physiognomically good." De Quincey says there was a
+peculiar haze or dimness mixed with the light of his eyes; and when he was
+roused to animation Lamb thought he looked like "an archangel a little
+damaged." But whether that haze of his eyes got into his talk, whether his
+thoughts were obscurely uttered, or whether it was they were too high and
+great for his auditors to take in so easily as a listener expects to grasp
+what is said to him is, at least, an open question. It may well be that
+Shelley hit the truth in the _Letter to Maria Gisborne_ that he wrote from
+Leghorn, in 1820:--
+
+  "You will see Coleridge; he who sits obscure
+   In the exceeding lustre and the pure
+   Intense irradiation of a mind
+   Which, with its own internal lightnings blind,
+   Flags wearily through darkness and despair--
+   A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
+   A hooded eagle among blinking owls."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+CHARLES LAMB
+
+
+At one of those free-and-easy sociable gatherings in Lamb's rooms, in the
+Temple, which Hazlitt has so happily immortalised, Lamb provoked some
+discussion by asking which of all the English literary men of the past one
+would most wish to have seen and known. Ayrton, who was of the company,
+said he would choose the two greatest names in English literature--Sir
+Isaac Newton and John Locke. "Every one burst out laughing," writes
+Hazlitt, "at the expression of Lamb's face, in which impatience was
+restrained by courtesy. 'Yes, the greatest names,' he stammered out
+hastily, 'but they were not persons--not persons.... There is nothing
+personally interesting in the men.'" It is Lamb's glory that he is both a
+great name and a great and interesting personality; and if his question
+were put again to-day in any company of book-lovers I should not be alone
+in saying at once that the writer of the past I would soonest have seen
+and known is Charles Lamb.
+
+It is difficult to write of him without letting your enthusiasm run away
+with you. Except for a few reviewers of his own day (and the reviewers of
+one's own day count for little or nothing the day after), nobody who knew
+Lamb in his life or has come to know him through his books and the books
+that tell of him has been able to write of him except with warmest
+admiration and affection. Even so testy and difficult a man as Landor, who
+only saw Lamb once, could not touch on his memory without profound
+emotion, and says in some memorial verses:--
+
+  "Of all that ever wore man's form, 'tis thee
+   I first would spring to at the gates of heaven."
+
+And you remember Wordsworth's--
+
+  "O, he was good, if e'er a good man lived!"
+
+There is, too, that well-known anecdote of how Thackeray lifted a volume
+of _Elia_ and held it against his forehead and murmured "St. Charles!" All
+which, and many other utterances of love and reverence for his personal
+character, particularly Wordsworth's reference to him as "Lamb, the frolic
+and the gentle," would have exasperated Lamb himself and moved him to
+angry protest. "I have had the _Anthology_," he wrote to Coleridge in
+1800, "and like only one thing in it, 'Lewti'; but of that the last stanza
+is detestable, the rest most exquisite: the epithet 'enviable' would dash
+the finest poem. For God's sake (I never was more serious) don't make me
+ridiculous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, or do it in
+better verses. It did well enough five years ago when I came to see you,
+and was moral coxcomb enough at the time you wrote the lines to feed upon
+such epithets; but besides that the meaning of 'gentle' is equivocal at
+best, and almost always means poor-spirited, the very quality of
+gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trumpetings. My sentiment has long
+since vanished. I hope my virtues have done sucking. I can scarce think
+but you meant it in joke. I hope you did, for I should be ashamed to
+believe that you could think to gratify me by such praise, fit only to be
+a cordial to some green-sick sonneteer." The epithet so rankled in his
+recollection that a week later he returned to the topic. "In the next
+edition of the _Anthology_ (which Phoebus avert, and those nine other
+wandering maids also!) please to blot out 'gentle-hearted,' and substitute
+'drunken dog, ragged head, seld-shaven, odd-eyed, stuttering,' or any
+other epithet which truly and properly belongs to the gentleman in
+question. And for Charles read Tom, or Bob, or Richard for mere delicacy."
+
+Gentle Lamb certainly was, but the word is not large enough or robustly
+human enough to cover all his character. He wins your regard by his faults
+as well as by his virtues. If he drank a little too much at times, and
+sometimes talked and wrote foolishly and too flippantly to please the
+serious-minded, he far more often talked and wrote wisely, wittily,
+exquisitely, and for thirty-eight years of his life he readily sacrificed
+himself to his sister's well-being, giving up all thought of marriage that
+he might be her constant guardian and attendant, watching dreadfully for
+signs of her recurring fits of insanity, and when they were coming upon
+her going with her to the melancholy gate of the asylum, and directly her
+mind was cleared, returning eagerly to fetch her home again.
+
+He was never in the habit of laying himself out to create a good
+impression on strangers; if they were unsympathetic, or he did not take to
+them, in his freakish fashion he would deliberately say and do things to
+shock and antagonise them, and so it came about that those who did not
+know him or could not appreciate him frequently set him down as "something
+between an imbecile, a brute, and a buffoon." Carlyle formed that sort of
+impression of him; and one can believe there was scarcely any point of
+contact between Carlyle's sombre, deadly earnest, man-with-a-message
+outlook and the tricksy, elvish, quaintly humorous spirit of Lamb, who
+wrote with a delicate fancy and tenderness that are more lasting than
+Carlyle's solid preachings are likely to prove, and who "stuttered his
+quaintness in snatches," says Haydon, "like the fool in _Lear_, and with
+equal beauty."
+
+That is a fine and wonderful glimpse of one side of Lamb given by Leigh
+Hunt when he says he could have imagined him "cracking a joke in the teeth
+of a ghost, and then melting into thin air himself out of sympathy with
+the awful." In describing him, most of his friends emphasise "the bland,
+sweet smile, with a touch of sadness in it." "A light frame, so fragile
+that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it," is Talfourd's picture
+of him, "clad in clerk-like black, and surmounted by a head of form and
+expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about
+an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying
+expression, though the prevalent feeling was sad; and the nose slightly
+curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of
+the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the
+shoulders, and gave importance and even dignity to a diminutive and
+shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance, catch its quivering
+sweetness, and fix it for ever in words? There are none, alas, to answer
+the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought, striving with humour; the
+lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth; and a smile of painful
+sweetness, present an image to the mind it can as little describe as lose.
+His personal appearance and manner are not unfitly characterised by what
+he himself says in one of his letters to Manning of Braham--'a compound of
+the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel.'" Add to this the sketch that
+Patmore has left of him: "In point of intellectual character and
+expression, a finer face was never seen, nor one more fully, however
+vaguely, corresponding with the mind whose features it interpreted. There
+was the gravity usually engendered by a life passed in book-learning,
+without the slightest tinge of that assumption and affectation which
+almost always attend the gravity so engendered; the intensity and
+elevation of general expression that mark high genius, without any of its
+pretension and its oddity; the sadness waiting on fruitless thoughts and
+baffled aspirations, but no evidence of that spirit of scorning and
+contempt which these are apt to engender. Above all, there was a pervading
+sweetness and gentleness which went straight to the heart of every one who
+looked on it; and not the less so, perhaps, that it bore about it an air,
+a something, seeming to tell that it was not _put on_--for nothing could
+be more unjust than to tax Lamb with assuming anything, even a virtue,
+which he did not possess--but preserved and persevered in, spite of
+opposing and contradictory feelings within that struggled in vain for
+mastery. It was a thing to remind you of that painful smile which bodily
+disease and agony will sometimes put on, to conceal their sufferings from
+the observation of those they love."
+
+It was a look--this look of patient endurance, of smiling resignation, of
+painful cheerfulness--that you could not understand unless you were aware
+of the appalling tragedy that lay in the background of his life, and of
+the haunting dread, the anxious, daily anticipation of disaster, and the
+need of concealing this anxiety from her, that were involved in the
+matter-of-course self-sacrifice with which he devoted himself to the care
+and guardianship of his sister, Mary.
+
+It was in 1796, when Lamb was living with his father and mother and sister
+in lodgings in Little Queen Street, that the tragedy happened which was to
+overshadow all his after years. The father was drifting into second
+childhood, the mother an invalid. Mary Lamb had to attend upon them both,
+with the help of a small servant and, in addition, took in plain sewing;
+Charles was a junior clerk at the India House. Only a little while before
+Lamb had himself suffered a mental breakdown and had been placed under
+temporary restraint ("the six weeks that finished last year," he writes to
+Coleridge, in May 1796, "your very humble servant spent very agreeably in
+a madhouse, at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any
+one. But mad I was"); then, in September 1796, his sister suddenly went
+out of her mind, stabbed her mother to the heart, and in her frenzy threw
+knives at others in the room, and wounded her father before Lamb could
+seize her and get her under control. There are no letters more terrible or
+more pathetic than those he wrote to Coleridge, when the horror and
+heartbreak of this event was fresh upon him.
+
+    "My dearest Friend," he writes on the 27th September 1796, "White, or
+    some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time have informed
+    you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family. I will
+    only give you the outlines. My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of
+    insanity, has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only
+    time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in
+    a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God
+    has preserved to me my senses: I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have
+    my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was slightly
+    wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of
+    the Bluecoat School, has been very kind to us, and we have no other
+    friend; but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the
+    best that remains to do. Write as religious a letter as possible, but
+    no mention of what is gone and done with. With me 'the former things
+    are passed away,' and I have something more to do than to feel. God
+    Almighty have us all in His keeping!
+
+      "C. LAMB.
+
+    "Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past
+    vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, publish
+    mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a
+    book, I charge you.
+
+    "Your own judgment will convince you not to take any notice of this
+    yet to your dear wife. You look after your family; I have my reason
+    and strength left to take care of mine. I charge you, don't think of
+    coming to see me. Write. I will not see you if you come. God Almighty
+    love you and all of us!
+
+      "C. LAMB."
+
+The book he mentions is one that he and Coleridge and Lloyd were arranging
+to publish together. In October there is another letter, replying to one
+from Coleridge, and saying his sister is restored to her senses--a long
+letter from which I shall quote only one or two memorable passages: "God
+be praised, Coleridge! wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been
+otherwise than collected and calm; even on that dreadful day, and in the
+midst of the terrible scene, I preserved a tranquillity which bystanders
+may have construed into indifference--a tranquillity not of despair. Is it
+folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious principle that _most_
+supported me? I allow much to other favourable circumstances. I felt that
+I had something else to do than to regret. On that first evening my aunt
+was lying insensible--to all appearance like one dying; my father, with
+his poor forehead plaistered over from a wound he had received from a
+daughter, dearly loved by him, and who loved him no less dearly; my mother
+a dead and murdered corpse in the next room; yet was I wonderfully
+supported. I closed not my eyes in sleep that night, but lay without
+terrors and without despair. I have lost no sleep since.... One little
+incident may serve to make you understand my way of managing my mind.
+Within a day or two after the fatal one, we dressed for dinner a tongue,
+which we had had salted for some weeks in the house. As I sat down, a
+feeling like remorse struck me: this tongue poor Mary got for me; and can
+I partake of it now, when she is far away? A thought occurred and relieved
+me: if I give in to this way of feeling, there is not a chair, a room, an
+object in our rooms, that will not awaken the keenest griefs. I must rise
+above such weaknesses. I hope this was not want of true feeling. I did not
+let this carry me, though, too far. On the very second day (I date from
+the day of horrors), as is usual in such cases, there were a matter of
+twenty people, I do think, supping in our room: they prevailed on me to
+eat _with them_ (for to eat I never refused). They were all making merry
+in the room! Some had come from friendship, some from busy curiosity, and
+some from interest. I was going to partake with them, when my recollection
+came that my poor dead mother was lying in the next room--the very next
+room--a mother who, through life, wished nothing but her children's
+welfare. Indignation, the rage of grief, something like remorse, rushed
+upon my mind. In an agony of emotion I found my way mechanically to the
+adjoining room, and fell on my knees by the side of her coffin, asking
+forgiveness of Heaven, and sometimes of her, for forgetting her so soon.
+Tranquillity returned, and it was the only violent emotion that mastered
+me. I think it did me good."
+
+Through all his subsequent letters from time to time there are touching
+little references to his sister's illnesses: she is away, again and again,
+in the asylum, or in charge of nurses, and he is alone and miserable, but
+looking forward to her recovering presently and returning home. Once when
+they are away from London on a visit, she is suddenly taken with one of
+these frenzies, and on the way back to town he has to borrow a waistcoat
+to restrain her violence in the coach. But his love and loyalty were proof
+against it all; nothing would induce him to separate from her or let her
+go out of his charge, except during those intervals when she was so
+deranged as to be a danger to others and to herself.
+
+About the end of 1799 Lamb moved into the Temple and, first at Mitre Court
+Buildings, then in Middle Temple Lane, he resided there, near the house of
+his birth, for some seventeen years in all. In these two places he and his
+sister kept open house every Wednesday evening, and Hazlitt and Talfourd,
+Barry Cornwall, Holcroft, Godwin, and, when they were in town, Wordsworth
+and Coleridge were among their guests. Hazlitt and Talfourd and others
+have told us something of those joyous evenings in the small, dingy rooms,
+comfortable with books and old prints, where cold beef and porter stood
+ready on the sideboard for the visitors to help themselves, and whilst
+whoever chose sat and played at whist the rest fleeted the golden hours in
+jest and conversation.
+
+[Illustration: WILL'S COFFEE HOUSE. RUSSELL STREET.]
+
+Towards the end of 1817 the Lambs took lodgings at 20 Russell Street,
+Covent Garden, a house which was formerly part of Will's famous Coffee
+House, which Dryden used to frequent, having his summer seat by the
+fireside and his winter seat in the balcony, as chief of the wits and men
+of letters who made it their place of resort. In a letter to Dorothy
+Wordsworth, Mary Lamb reports their change of address: "We have left the
+Temple. I think you will be sorry to hear this. I know I have never been
+so well satisfied with thinking of you at Rydal Mount as when I could
+connect the idea of you with your own Grasmere Cottage. Our rooms were
+dirty and out of repair, and the inconvenience of living in chambers
+became every year more irksome, and so, at last, we mustered up resolution
+enough to leave the good old place that so long had sheltered us, and here
+we are living at a brazier's shop, No. 20 Russell Street, Covent Garden, a
+place all alive with noise and bustle; Drury Lane Theatre in sight from
+our front, and Covent Garden from our back windows. The hubbub of the
+carriages returning from the play does not annoy me in the least; strange
+that it does not, for it is quite tremendous. I quite enjoy looking out of
+the window, and listening to the calling up of the carriages, and the
+squabbles of the coachmen and linkboys. It is the oddest scene to look
+down upon; I am sure you would be amused with it. It is well I am in a
+cheerful place, or I should have many misgivings about leaving the
+Temple." And on the 21st November 1817, Lamb also writes to Dorothy
+Wordsworth: "Here we are, transplanted from our native soil. I thought we
+never could be torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench, but
+like a tooth, now 'tis out, and I am easy. We never can strike root so
+deep in any other ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of gardener's
+mould, and if they take us up from it, it will cost no blood and groans,
+like mandrakes pulled up. We are in the individual spot I like best in all
+this great city. The theatres, with all their noises. Covent Garden,
+dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of
+the earliest peas and 'sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves are
+examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four-and-twenty
+hours before she saw a thief. She sits at the window working; and casually
+throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way,
+with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These little incidents
+agreeably diversify a female life."
+
+During his residence in Russell Street, from 1817 till 1823, Lamb
+published in two volumes a collection of his miscellaneous writings, and
+contributed the _Essays of Elia_ to the _London Magazine_, which makes
+this Russell Street house, in a sense, the most notable of his various
+London homes. Here he continued his social gatherings, but had no regular
+evening for them, sending forth announcements periodically, such as that
+he sent to Ayrton in 1823: "Cards and cold mutton in Russell Street on
+Friday at 8 & 9. Gin and jokes from 1/2 past that time to 12. Pass this on
+to Mr. Payne, and apprize Martin thereof"--Martin being Martin Burney.
+
+[Illustration: LAMB. COLEBROOKE ROW.]
+
+By the autumn of this year he has flitted from Covent Garden, and on the
+2nd September writes to Bernard Barton: "When you come London-ward you
+will find me no longer in Covent Garden. I have a cottage in Colebrooke
+Row, Islington. A cottage, for it is detached; a white house, with six
+good rooms, the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a
+moderate walking pace can be so termed) close to the foot of the house;
+and behind is a spacious garden, with vines (I assure you), pears,
+strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of
+old Alcinous. You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all
+studded over and rough with old books, and above is a lightsome
+drawing-room, three windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great
+lord, never having had a house before"; and writing at the end of that
+week to invite Allsop to dinner on Sunday he supplies him with these
+directions: "Colebrook Cottage, left hand side, end of Colebrook Row, on
+the western brink of the New River, a detached whitish house." To Barton,
+when he has been nearly three weeks at Islington, he says, "I continue to
+estimate my own roof-comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a
+lodger! My garden thrives (I am told), though I have yet reaped nothing
+but some tiny salad and withered carrots. But a garden's a garden
+anywhere, and twice a garden in London."
+
+Here, in November of that year, happened the accident to George Dyer that
+supplied Lamb with the subject of his whimsical Elian essay, _Amicus
+Redivivus_. Dyer was an odd, eccentric, very absent-minded old bookworm
+who lived in Clifford's Inn; Lamb delighted in his absurdities, and loved
+him, and loved to make merry over his quaint sayings and doings. "You have
+seen our house," he writes to Mrs. Hazlitt, in the week after Dyer's
+adventure. "What I now tell you is literally true. Yesterday week George
+Dyer called upon us at one o'clock (_bright noonday_) on his way to dine
+with Mrs. Barbauld at Newington. He sat with Mary about half-an-hour, and
+took leave. The maid saw him go out, from her kitchen window, but suddenly
+losing sight of him, ran up in a fright to Mary. G. D., instead of keeping
+the slip that leads to the gate, had deliberately, staff in hand, in broad
+open day, marched into the New River. He had not his spectacles on, and
+you know his absence. Who helped him out they can hardly tell, but between
+'em they got him out, drenched through and through. A mob collected by
+that time, and accompanied him in. 'Send for the Doctor,' they said: and a
+one-eyed fellow, dirty and drunk, was fetched from the public-house at the
+end, where it seems he lurks for the sake of picking up water practice;
+having formerly had a medal from the Humane Society for some rescue. By
+his advice the patient was put between blankets; and when I came home at
+four to dinner, I found G. D. abed and raving, light-headed with the
+brandy and water which the doctor had administered. He sang, laughed,
+whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian angels, would get up and go home;
+but we kept him there by force; and by next morning he departed sober, and
+seems to have received no injury."
+
+Before he left Islington the India Company bestowed upon Lamb the pension
+that at last emancipated him from his "dry drudgery at the desk's dead
+wood," and he communicates the great news exultantly to Wordsworth in a
+letter dated "Colebrook Cottage," 6th April 1825: "Here I am, then, after
+thirty-three years' slavery, sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock this
+finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with L441 a year for the
+remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his
+annuity and starved at ninety: L441, _i.e._ L450, with a deduction of L9
+for a provision secured to my sister, she being survivor, the pension
+guaranteed by Act Georgii Tertii, &c. I came home FOR EVER on Tuesday in
+last week. The incomprehensibleness of my condition overwhelmed me. It was
+like passing from life into eternity. Every year to be as long as three,
+_i.e._ to have three times as much real time (time that is my own) in it!
+I wandered about thinking I was happy, but feeling I was not. But the
+tumultuousness is passing off, and I begin to understand the nature of the
+gift. Holydays, even the annual month, were always uneasy joys; their
+conscious fugitiveness; the craving after making the most of them. Now,
+when all is holyday, there are no holydays. I can sit at home in rain or
+shine without a restless impulse for walkings. I am daily steadying, and
+shall soon find it as natural to me to be my own master as it has been
+irksome to have had a master. Mary wakes every morning with an obscure
+feeling that some good has happened to us."
+
+He made use of these experiences in one of the best of his essays, that on
+_The Superannuated Man_, in which also you find echoes of a letter he
+wrote to Bernard Barton just after he had written to Wordsworth:
+
+"I am free, B. B.--free as air.
+
+  'The little bird that wings the sky
+   Knows no such liberty!'
+
+"I was set free on Tuesday in last week at four o'clock.
+
+  'I came home for ever!'
+
+"I have been describing my feelings as well as I can to Wordsworth in a
+long letter and don't care to repeat. Take it briefly that for a few days
+I was painfully oppressed by so mighty a change, but it is becoming daily
+more natural to me. I went and sat among 'em all at my old thirty-three
+years' desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at
+leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry, sociable lads, at leaving
+them in the lurch, fag, fag, fag! The comparison of my own superior
+felicity gave me anything but pleasure. B. B. I would not serve another
+seven years for seven hundred thousand pounds."
+
+From Islington Lamb journeyed over to Highgate every now and then to visit
+Coleridge at Mr. Gilman's; and a-visiting him at Colebrooke Cottage came
+Coleridge, Southey, William Hone, and among many another, Hood, to whom he
+took an especial liking. Coleridge thought he was the author of certain
+Odes that were then appearing in the _London Magazine_, but writing in
+reply Lamb assured him he was mistaken: "The Odes are four-fifths done by
+Hood, a silentish young man you met at Islington one day, an invalid. The
+rest are Reynolds's, whose sister H. has recently married."
+
+During the two years or more after his release from the India House, Lamb
+and his sister spent two or three short holidays lodging with a Mrs.
+Leishman at The Chase, Enfield; in 1827 they rented the house of her, and
+Lamb wrote from that address on the 18th September to Hood, who was then
+living at 2 Robert Street, Adelphi: "Give our kind loves to all at
+Highgate, and tell them we have finally torn ourselves outright away from
+Colebrooke, where I had _no_ health, and are about to domicilate for good
+at Enfield, where I have experienced good.
+
+  'Lord, what good hours do we keep!
+   How quietly we sleep!'...
+
+We have got our books into our new house. I am a dray-horse if I was not
+ashamed of the undigested dirty lumber, as I toppled 'em out of the cart,
+and blest Becky that came with 'em for her having an unstuffed brain with
+such rubbish.... 'Twas with some pain we were evulsed from Colebrook. You
+may find some of our flesh sticking to the doorposts. To change
+habitations is to die to them; and in my time I have died seven deaths.
+But I don't know whether every such change does not bring with it a
+rejuvenescence. 'Tis an enterprise; and shoves back the sense of death's
+approximating which, though not terrible to me, is at all times
+particularly distasteful. My house-deaths have generally been periodical,
+recurring after seven years; but this last is premature by half that time.
+Cut off in the flower of Colebrook!" He mentions that the rent is 10s.
+less than he paid at Islington; that he pays, in fact, L35 a year,
+exclusive of moderate taxes, and thinks himself lucky.
+
+But the worry of moving brought on one of Mary Lamb's "sad, long
+illnesses"; and whilst she was absent, Lamb fled from the loneliness of
+his country home to spend ten days in town. "But Town," he writes to
+Barton, "with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was. The
+streets, the shops are left, but all old friends are gone. And in London I
+was frightfully convinced of this as I past houses and places--empty
+caskets now. I have ceased to care almost about anybody. The bodies I
+cared for are in graves or dispersed. My old Clubs, that lived so long and
+flourished so steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of our
+adopted young friend at Charing Cross, 'twas heavy unfeeling rain and I
+had nowhere to go. Home have I none--and not a sympathising house to
+turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of the heaven pour down on
+a forlorner head. Yet I tried ten days at a sort of friend's house, but it
+was large and straggling--one of the individuals of my long knot of
+friends, card-players, pleasant companions--that have tumbled to pieces
+into dust and other things--and I got home on Thursday convinced that I
+was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in
+my corner. Less than a month, I hope, will bring home Mary. She is at
+Fulham, looking better in her health than ever, but sadly rambling, and
+scarce showing any pleasure in seeing me, or curiosity when I should come
+again. But the old feelings will come back again, and we shall drown old
+sorrows over a game of Picquet again. But 'tis a tedious cut out of a life
+of sixty-four, to lose twelve or thirteen weeks every year or two."
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES LAMB]
+
+The cares of housekeeping, however, sat too heavily on them, and in
+October 1829 they abandoned those responsibilities, gave up their cottage
+on Chase Side, and went to lodge and board with their next-door
+neighbours, an old Mr. and Mrs. Westwood, and in this easier way of living
+their spirits and their health revived. Nevertheless, by January 1830 Lamb
+had lost all his contentment with rural life, and was yearning desperately
+for the remembered joys of London. "And is it a year since we parted from
+you at the steps of Edmonton stage?" he writes to Wordsworth. "There are
+not now the years that there used to be." He frets, he says, like a lion
+in a net, and then goes on to utter that yearning to be back in London
+that I have quoted already in my opening chapter. "Back-looking
+ambition," he continues, "tells me I might still be a Londoner! Well, if
+we ever do move, we have incumbrances the less to impede us; all our
+furniture has faded under the auctioneer's hammer, going for nothing, like
+the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two
+left to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out
+of it. I would live in London shirtless, bookless." And to Bernard Barton
+he says, "With fire and candle-light I can dream myself in Holborn....
+Give me old London at Fire and Plague times, rather than these tepid
+gales, healthy country air, and purposeless exercise."
+
+Early in 1833 he removed from Enfield, and his reasons for doing so he
+explains in a letter to Mrs. Hazlitt, on the 31st May of that year: "I am
+driven from house to house by Mary's illness. I took a sudden resolution
+to take my sister to Edmonton, where she was under medical treatment last
+time, and have arranged to board and lodge with the people. Thank God I
+have repudiated Enfield. I have got out of hell, despair of heaven, and
+must sit down contented in a half-way purgatory. Thus ends this strange
+eventful history. But I am nearer to town, and will get up to you somehow
+before long." About the same date he wrote to Wordsworth: "Mary is ill
+again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed
+by two of depression most dreadful. I look back upon her earlier attacks
+with longing--nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed by
+complete restoration--shocking as they were to me then. In short, half her
+life she is dead to me, and the other half is made anxious with fears and
+lookings forward to the next shock. With such prospects it seemed to me
+necessary that she should no longer live with me, and be fluttered with
+continual removals; so I am come to live with her, at a Mr. Walden's, and
+his wife, who take in patients, and have arranged to lodge and board us
+only. They have had the care of her before. I see little of her: alas! I
+too often hear her. _Sunt lachrymae rerum!_ and you and I must bear it....
+I am about to lose my old and only walk-companion, whose mirthful spirits
+were the 'youth of our house,' Emma Isola. I have her here now for a
+little while, but she is too nervous properly to be under such a roof, so
+she will make short visits--be no more an inmate. With my perfect approval
+and more than concurrence she is to be wedded to Moxon at the end of
+August--so 'perish the roses and the flowers'--how is it? Now to the
+brighter side. I am emancipated from the Westwoods, and I am with
+attentive people and younger. I am three or four miles nearer the great
+city; coaches half-price less and going always, of which I will avail
+myself. I have few friends left there; one or two though, most beloved.
+But London streets and faces cheer me inexpressibly, though not one known
+of the latter were remaining."
+
+Emma Isola is "the adopted young friend" referred to by Lamb in a letter
+quoted a few pages back. She was the granddaughter of an Italian refugee;
+her mother was dead; her father was an "Esquire Bedell" of Cambridge, and
+the Lambs met her at the house of a friend when they were visiting that
+town in 1823. She was a charming, brown-faced little girl, and they were
+so taken with her that she was invited to visit them in London during her
+holidays, and they ended by adopting her and calling her their niece. She
+brought a great deal of happiness into their lives; Lamb gives whimsical
+accounts in some of his letters of how he is teaching her Latin, and his
+sister is prompting her in her French lessons. When she was old enough she
+became governess in the family of a Mr. and Mrs. Williams at Bury; fell
+ill and was kindly nursed there; and Lamb tells in one of his most
+delightful letters how he went to fetch her home to Enfield, when she was
+convalescent, and it is good to glimpse how sympathetically amused he is
+at Emma's covert admonitions and anxiety lest he should drink too much, at
+dinner with the Williamses, and so bring disgrace upon himself and her.
+
+His beautiful affection for their young ward shines through all the
+drollery of his several notes to Edward Moxon (the publisher) in which he
+speaks of their engagement; and it has always seemed to me it is this same
+underlying affection for her and wistfulness to see her happy that help to
+make the following letter, written just after the wedding, one of the
+finest and most pathetic things in literature:--
+
+    "_August 1833._
+
+    "DEAR MR. AND MRS. MOXON,--Time very short. I wrote to Miss Fryer, and
+    had the sweetest letter about you, Emma, that ever friendship
+    dictated. 'I am full of good wishes, I am crying with good wishes,'
+    she says; but you shall see it.
+
+    "Dear Moxon, I take your writing most kindly, and shall most kindly
+    your writing from Paris. I want to crowd another letter to Miss Fryer
+    into the little time after dinner, before post time. So with twenty
+    thousand congratulations,--Yours,
+
+      C. L.
+
+    "I am calm, sober, happy. Turn over for the reason. I got home from
+    Dover Street, by Evans, _half as sober as a judge_. I am turning over
+    a new leaf, as I hope you will now."
+
+[Illustration: LAMB'S COTTAGE. EDMONTON.]
+
+[_The turn of the leaf presents the following_:--]
+
+    "MY DEAR EMMA AND EDWARD MOXON,--Accept my sincere congratulations,
+    and imagine more good wishes than my weak nerves will let me put into
+    good set words. The dreary blank of _unanswered questions_ which I
+    ventured to ask in vain was cleared up on the wedding day by Mrs. W.
+    taking a glass of wine and, with a total change of countenance,
+    begging leave to drink Mr. and Mrs. Moxon's health. It restored me
+    from that moment, as if by an electrical stroke, to the entire
+    possession of my senses. I never felt so calm and quiet after a
+    similar illness as I do now. I feel as if all tears were wiped from my
+    eyes, and all care from my heart.
+
+      MARY LAMB."
+
+
+    "_Wednesday._
+
+    "DEARS AGAIN,--Your letter interrupted a seventh game at picquet which
+    _we_ were having, after walking to Wright's and purchasing shoes. We
+    pass our time in cards, walks, and reading. We attack Tasso soon.
+
+      "C. L.
+
+    "Never was such a calm, or such a recovery. 'Tis her own words
+    undictated."
+
+And it was in this plain, commonplace little cottage in Church Street,
+Edmonton, that Mary Lamb was thus suddenly awakened out of her
+derangement; that Charles Lamb and she wrote, by turns, that letter to the
+Moxons; that the Lambs sat contentedly playing picquet when the letter of
+the bride and bridegroom came to them from Paris. These are the very rooms
+in which these things happened; the stage remains, but the actors are
+departed. Within a stone's throw of the house, in Edmonton Churchyard,
+Lamb and his sister lie buried. His death was the result of an accident.
+He had gone on his accustomed walk along the London Road, one day in
+December, when he stumbled and fell over a stone, slightly injuring his
+face. So trivial did the wound seem that writing to George Dyer's wife on
+the 22nd December 1834, about a book he had lost when he was in
+London--"it was the book I went to fetch from Miss Buffham's while the
+tripe was frying"--he says nothing of anything being the matter with him.
+But erysipelas supervened, and he grew rapidly worse, and died on the
+27th. His sister, who had lapsed into one of her illnesses and was
+unconscious, at the time, of her loss, outlived him by nearly thirteen
+years, and reached the great age of eighty-two.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ST. JOHN'S WOOD AND WIMBLEDON
+
+
+Mary Lamb passed the later years of her life in a sort of nursing home at
+St. John's Wood, and in her happier intervals kept up a pleasant
+acquaintance with some of the notable circle of friends who had gathered
+about her and her brother aforetime; among others, with the Hoods, who
+were then living in the same locality. Crabb Robinson mentions in his
+Diary how he made a call on Mary Lamb, and finding her well over one of
+her periodical attacks, "quite in possession of her faculties and
+recollecting nearly everything," he accompanied her on a visit to the
+Hoods, who were lodging at 17 Elm Tree Road.
+
+Perhaps one of the most graphic pictures we have of Hood's home life, and
+incidentally of Hood himself and his wife and of Charles and Mary Lamb, is
+contained in the account that has been left by Miss Mary Balmanno of an
+evening she spent with the Hoods when they were making their home in
+Robert Street, Adelphi: "Bound in the closest ties of friendship with the
+Hoods, with whom we also were in the habit of continually associating, we
+had the pleasure of meeting Charles Lamb at their house one evening,
+together with his sister, and several other friends.... In outward
+appearance Hood conveyed the idea of a clergyman. His figure slight, and
+invariably dressed in black; his face pallid; the complexion delicate,
+and features regular: his countenance bespeaking sympathy by its sweet
+expression of melancholy and suffering.
+
+"Lamb was of a different mould and aspect. Of middle height, with brown
+and rather ruddy complexion, grey eyes expressive of sense and shrewdness,
+but neither large nor brilliant; his head and features well shaped, and
+the general expression of his countenance quiet, kind, and observant,
+undergoing rapid changes in conversation, as did his manner, variable as
+an April day, particularly to his sister, whose saint-like good humour and
+patience were as remarkable as his strange and whimsical modes of trying
+them. But the brother and sister perfectly understood each other, and
+'Charles,' as she always called him, would not have been the Charles of
+her loving heart without the pranks and oddities which he was continually
+playing off upon her, and which were only outnumbered by the instances of
+affection and evidences of ever-watchful solicitude with which he
+surrounded her.
+
+"Miss Lamb, although many years older than her brother, by no means looked
+so, but presented the pleasant appearance of a mild, rather stout and
+comely lady of middle age. Dressed with Quaker-like simplicity in
+dove-coloured silk, with a transparent kerchief of snow-white muslin
+folded across her bosom, she at once prepossessed the beholder in her
+favour by an aspect of serenity and peace. Her manners were very quiet and
+gentle, and her voice low. She smiled frequently, and seldom laughed,
+partaking of the courtesies and hospitalities of her merry host and
+hostess with all the cheerfulness and grace of a most mild and kindly
+nature. Her behaviour to her brother was like that of an admiring
+disciple; her eyes seldom absent from his face. And when apparently
+engrossed in conversation with others, she would, by supplying some word
+for which he was at a loss, even when talking in a distant part of the
+room, show how closely her mind waited upon his. Mr. Lamb was in high
+spirits, sauntering about the room with his hands crossed behind his back,
+conversing by fits and starts with those most familiarly known to him...."
+
+She goes on to describe how Miss Kelly, the actress, amused them by
+impersonating a character she was taking in a new play, and "Mrs. Hood's
+eyes sparkled with joy, as she saw the effect it had produced upon her
+husband, whose pale face, like an illuminated comic mask, shone with fun
+and good humour. Never was a happier couple than the Hoods; 'mutual
+reliance and fond faith' seemed to be their motto. Mrs. Hood was a most
+amiable woman--of excellent manners, and full of sincerity and goodness.
+She perfectly adored her husband, tending him like a child, whilst he,
+with unbounded affection, seemed to delight to yield himself to her
+guidance. Nevertheless, true to his humorous nature, he loved to tease her
+with jokes and whimsical accusations, which were only responded to by,
+'Hood, Hood, how can you run on so?'
+
+"The evening was concluded by a supper, one of those elegant social
+repasts which Flemish artists delight to paint.... Mr. Lamb oddly walked
+round the table, looking closely at any dish that struck his fancy before
+he would decide where to sit, telling Mrs. Hood that he should by that
+means know how to select some dish that was difficult to carve and take
+the trouble off her hands; accordingly, having jested in this manner, he
+placed himself with great deliberation before a lobster salad, observing
+_that_ was the thing.
+
+"Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and
+his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song of 'If you go to
+France be sure you learn the lingo'; his pensive manner and feeble voice
+making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing, excused
+himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a Latin
+eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered forth a
+long stream of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood
+frequently occurred, we ladies thought it in praise of her. The delivery
+of this speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a gentleman
+who sat next me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he informed me
+that was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the lobster salad!
+Thus, in the gayest of moods, progressed and concluded a truly merry
+little social supper, worthy in all respects of the author of _Whims and
+Oddities_."
+
+But all this, when the Hoods came to St. John's Wood, lay thirteen years
+behind them, and Lamb had been eight years dead. Quitting the Adelphi in
+1829, Hood went to Winchmore Hill, then to Wanstead; then, after some five
+years of residence in Germany and Belgium, he returned to England, and
+made his home for a short time at Camberwell, and thence in 1842 removed
+to St. John's Wood--at first to rooms at 17 Elm Tree Road, and in 1844 to
+a house of his own, "Devonshire Lodge," in the Finchley Road--a house
+that the guide-books all tell us was demolished, but since I started to
+write this chapter the London County Council has identified as "Devonshire
+Lodge" the house that still stands in Finchley Road, immediately adjoining
+the Marlborough Road station of the Metropolitan Railway; and here it was
+that Hood died on the 3rd of May 1845.
+
+[Illustration: TOM HOOD'S HOUSE. ST JOHN'S WOOD.]
+
+The room in which he worked at 17 Elm Tree Road gave him a view of Lord's
+Cricket Ground, and he complained that this was a drawback, because "when
+he was at work he could often see others at play." He caricatured the
+landlady of the house, who had "a large and personal love of flowers," and
+made her the heroine of his _Mrs. Gardiner, A Horticultural Romance_. From
+Elm Tree Road he went to attend the dinner at Greenwich that was given to
+Dickens on his second return from America; and describing this dissipation
+in a letter to a friend he says, "You will be pleased to hear that, in
+spite of my warnings and forebodings, I got better and betterer, till by
+dining, as the physicians did, on turtle soup, white-bait, and champagne,
+I seemed quite well." He was to have been chairman at the dinner, but
+excused himself on the score of ill-health, and Captain Marryat took his
+place. The diners included, in addition to Dickens himself, Moncton
+Milnes, Forster, Clarkson Stanfield, Ainsworth, Landseer (another St.
+John's Wood resident), Cruikshank, Cattermole, "Ingoldsby" Barham, and
+Barry Cornwall. Being called upon for a speech, Hood said he supposed they
+drank his health because he was a notorious invalid, but assured the
+company that the trembling of his hand was neither from palsy nor ague,
+but that their wishes had already so improved his circulation and filled
+him with genial warmth that his hand had a natural inclination to shake
+itself with every one present. Whereupon everybody within reach, and some
+who were not, insisted upon shaking hands with him. "_Very_ gratifying,
+wasn't it?" he finishes his letter. "Though I cannot go quite so far as
+Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserved
+in spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as usual when I go
+out, because I am so domestic and steady, and was down at the door before
+I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his own carriage.
+Poor girl! what _would_ she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame
+one."
+
+Dickens, at that date, lived at 1 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone Road;
+they had probably driven up together from Greenwich, and the carriage had
+come the mile or so further on with Hood after leaving Dickens at his own
+door. Dickens was one of the many visitors who have helped to make Hood's
+St. John's Wood residence memorable; there is a record of his being there,
+with his wife and sister and Daniel Maclise, in December 1842. At Elm Tree
+Road, for all his broken health, Hood worked hard at editing and writing
+for the _New Monthly Magazine_, and, after resigning from that, for
+_Hood's Monthly Magazine_. One letter of his, dated from 17 Elm Tree Road,
+on the 18th July 1843, is headed "From my bed"; for he was frequently
+bedridden for days and weeks at a stretch, but sat propped up with
+pillows, writing and sketching with unabated industry. He was contributing
+also in these days to _Punch_, and to Douglas Jerrold's _Illuminated
+Magazine_. In November 1843 he wrote here, for _Punch_, his grim _Drop of
+Gin_:
+
+  "Gin! Gin! a drop of Gin!
+   What magnified monsters circle therein!
+     Ragged, and stained with filth and mud,
+     Some plague-spotted, and some with blood!
+   Shapes of misery, shame, and sin!
+     Figures that make us loathe and tremble,
+     Creatures scarce human, that more resemble
+   Broods of diabolical kin,
+   Ghost and vampyre, demon and Jin!..."
+
+But a far greater poem than this, _The Song of the Shirt_, was also
+written at Elm Tree Road. "Now mind, Hood, mark my words," said Mrs. Hood,
+when he was putting up the manuscript for the post, "this will tell
+wonderfully. It is one of the best things you ever did." And the results
+justified her. The verses appeared in the Christmas Number of _Punch_ for
+1843, and not only trebled the circulation of that paper, but within a
+very short time had at least doubled Hood's reputation, though _Eugene
+Aram_, _The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_, and _Lycus the Centaur_, had
+long preceded it. Probably no poem ever stirred the national conscience
+more deeply or created a profounder sensation. Shortly after its
+appearance Cowden Clarke met Hood, and has left a vivid description of his
+personal appearance in those last months of his life. His worn, pallid
+look, he says, "strangely belied the effect of jocularity and high spirits
+conveyed by his writings. He punned incessantly, but languidly, almost as
+if unable to think in any other way than in play upon words. His smile was
+attractively sweet; it bespoke the affectionate-natured man which his
+serious verses--those especially addressed to his wife or his
+children--show him to be, and it also revealed the depth of pathos in his
+soul that inspired his _Bridge of Sighs_, _Song of the Shirt_, and _Eugene
+Aram_."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS HOOD]
+
+There are many interesting points of resemblance between Hood and Lamb.
+Both were inveterate punsters; each had known poverty, and had come
+through hard experiences that had left their marks upon them, yet had
+never soured them or warped their sympathies. You may use the same
+epithets for both: they were homely, kindly, gentle, given to freakish
+moods and whimsical jesting; the one was as unselfishly devoted to his
+sister as the other was to his wife and children; and in descriptions of
+Hood, as of Lamb, stress is laid on the peculiar wistfulness and sweetness
+of his smile. But after the East India Company had handsomely pensioned
+him off, Lamb had no further financial anxieties; whilst Hood had to
+suppress his finer gifts, and to the end of his days turn his hand to all
+manner of inferior but more popular work, that would enable him to keep
+the family pot boiling. And he was all the while fighting against disease
+as well as poverty. He could not afford to go into exile, like Stevenson,
+and lengthen his days and foster his wasting strength in a healthfuller
+climate. He was never rich enough to have any choice but to die in the
+place where he had to earn his living, and no man ever worked more
+manfully, or died at his post bravelier or with a more cheery philosophy.
+
+Read the humorous preface he wrote for the volume of _Hood's Own_, whilst
+he lay ill abed there in his St. John's Wood house: it is the sort of
+humour that makes your heart ache, for you cannot forget that he was
+racked with pain and slowly dying whilst he wrote it. He jests about the
+aristocratic, ghastly slenderness of his fingers; his body, he says, may
+cry craven, but luckily his mind has no mind to give in. "'Things may take
+a turn,' as the pig said on the spit.... As to health? it's the weather of
+the body--it rains, it hails, it blows, it snows at present, but it may
+clear up by-and-by"; and in conclusion he mentions that the doctor tells
+him, "anatomically my heart is lower hung than usual, but what of that?
+_The more need to keep it up!_" Raised up in bed, with an improvised desk
+across his knees, he was hard at work, writing prose and verse and
+knocking off grotesque little drawings, and remained, as he said, "a
+lively Hood to get a livelihood," almost to his last hour. When, towards
+the end, his wife was trying to relieve his sufferings by putting a
+poultice on his emaciated body, he laughed up at her quizzically, and
+asked if she didn't think "it seemed a deal of mustard for such a little
+meat." He had moved into Devonshire Lodge, and was within sixteen months
+of his death when he wrote _The Haunted House_, and _The Bridge of Sighs_.
+"I fear that so far as I myself am concerned," he writes to Thackeray in
+August 1844, "King Death will claim me ere many months elapse. However,
+there's a good time coming, if not in this world, most assuredly in the
+next." When he was invited next month to attend a soiree at the Manchester
+Athenaeum, he had to decline, and added, "For me all long journeys are over
+save one"; but a couple of months later he had written the _Lay of the
+Labourer_, for his magazine, and writing to Lord Lytton remarked that
+though the doctor had ordered him not to work he was compelled to do so,
+and "so it will be to the end. I must die in harness, like a hero--or a
+horse."
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DIBDIN. 34 ARLINGTON ROAD.]
+
+His dying hours were made easy by the pension of a hundred pounds that Sir
+Robert Peel kindly and tactfully settled on Mrs. Hood, and one of the last
+things he wrote on his lingering deathbed was a valediction that
+breathed all of resignation and hope:
+
+  "Farewell, Life! My senses swim
+   And the world is growing dim;
+   Thronging shadows cloud the light,
+   Like the advent of the night,--
+   Colder, colder, colder still
+   Upwards steals a vapour chill--
+   Strong the earthy odour grows--
+   I smell the Mould above the Rose!
+
+   Welcome, Life! The Spirit strives!
+   Strength returns, and hope revives;
+   Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
+   Fly like shadows at the morn,--
+   O'er the earth there comes a bloom--
+   Sunny light for sullen gloom,
+   Warm perfume for vapour cold--
+   I smell the Rose above the Mould!"
+
+Herbert Spencer lived in St. John's Wood for many years, at 7 Marlborough
+Gardens, 13 Loudon Road, and 64 Avenue Road successively. Within an easy
+walk of Avenue Road, at 34 Arlington Road, Camden Town, Charles Dibdin,
+whose memory survives in _Tom Bowling_, passed the last years of his life.
+And, back in St. John's Wood, at the Priory, 21 North Bank, in one of the
+numerous houses that were swept away when the Great Central Railway came
+to Marylebone, George Eliot lived from 1864 until 1880, when she removed
+to Chelsea. Before that, from 1860 till 1863, lived in a house in
+Blandford Square, which has also been demolished; but for nearly two years
+before going there she resided at Holly Lodge, which still survives, in
+the Wimbledon Park Road.
+
+There is an entry in her Diary dated 6th February 1859: "Yesterday we went
+to take possession of Holly Lodge, which is to be our dwelling, we expect,
+for years to come. It was a deliciously fresh, bright day. I will accept
+the omen. A letter came from Blackwood telling me the result of the
+subscription to _Adam Bede_, which was published on the 1st: 730 copies,
+Mudie having taken 500 on the publisher's terms--10 per cent. off the sale
+price. At first he had stood out for a larger reduction, and would only
+take 50, but at last he came round. In this letter Blackwood tells me the
+first _ab extra_ opinion of the book, which happened to be precisely what
+I most desired. A cabinetmaker (brother to Blackwood's managing clerk) had
+read the sheets, and declared the writer must have been brought up to the
+business, or at least had listened to the workmen in their workshop." She
+wrote that month to Miss Sara Hennell, "We are tolerably settled now,
+except that we have only a temporary servant; and I shall not be quite at
+ease until I have a trustworthy woman who will manage without incessant
+dogging. Our home is very comfortable, with far more vulgar indulgences in
+it than I ever expected to have again; but you must not imagine it a snug
+place, just peeping above the holly bushes. Imagine it rather as a tall
+cake, with a low garnish of holly and laurel. As it is, we are very well
+off, with glorious breezy walks, and wide horizons, well-ventilated rooms,
+and abundant water. If I allowed myself to have any longings beyond what
+is given, they would be for a nook quite in the country, far away from
+palaces--Crystal or otherwise--with an orchard behind me full of old
+trees, and rough grass and hedgerow paths among the endless fields
+where you meet nobody. We talk of such things sometimes, along with old
+age and dim faculties, and a small independence to save us from writing
+drivel for dishonest money."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT. WIMBLEDON PARK.]
+
+The "we" in these entries means, of course, herself and George Henry
+Lewes; they formed an irregular union in 1854, and lived as husband and
+wife until his death in 1878. In George Eliot's Journal and letters are a
+good many other references to her life at Holly Lodge, of which the most
+interesting are perhaps the following:
+
+_April 29th, 1859_ (from the Journal): "Finished a story, _The Lifted
+Veil_, which I began one morning at Richmond as a resource when my head
+was too stupid for more important work. Resumed my new novel" (this was
+_The Mill on the Floss_), "of which I am going to rewrite the two first
+chapters. I shall call it provisionally _The Tullivers_, or perhaps _St.
+Ogg's on the Floss_."
+
+_May 6th_ (from a letter to Major Blackwood): "Yes I _am_ assured now that
+_Adam Bede_ was worth writing--worth living through long years to write.
+But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good
+and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past but not faith in the
+future."
+
+_May 19th_ (from Journal): "A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes
+to give me another L400 at the end of the year, making in all L1200, as an
+acknowledgment of _Adam Bede's_ success."
+
+_June 8th_ (from a letter to Mrs. Congreve): "I want to get rid of this
+house--cut cable and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth, and should think
+with unmitigated regret of our coming here if it were not for you."
+
+_July 21st_ (from the Journal, on returning after a holiday in
+Switzerland): "Found a charming letter from Dickens, and pleasant letters
+from Blackwood--nothing to annoy us."
+
+_November 10th_ (from the Journal): "Dickens dined with us to-day for the
+first time."
+
+_December 15th_ (from the Journal): "Blackwood proposes to give me for
+_The Mill on the Floss_, L2000 for 4000 copies of an edition at 31s. 6d.,
+and afterwards the same rate for any more copies printed at the same
+price; L150 for 1000 at 12s.; and L60 for 1000 at 6s. I have accepted."
+
+_January 3rd, 1860_ (from a letter to John Blackwood): "We are demurring
+about the title. Mr. Lewes is beginning to prefer _The House of Tulliver,
+or Life on the Floss_, to our old notion of _Sister Maggie_. _The
+Tullivers, or Life on the Floss_ has the advantage of slipping easily off
+the lazy English tongue, but it is after too common a fashion (_The
+Newcomes_, _The Bertrams_, &c., &c.). Then there is _The Tulliver Family,
+or Life on the Floss_. Pray meditate and give us your opinion."
+
+_January 16th, 1860_ (from the Journal): "Finished my second volume this
+morning, and am going to send off the MS. of the first volume to-morrow.
+We have decided that the title shall be _The Mill on the Floss_."
+
+_February 23rd_ (from a letter to John Blackwood): "Sir Edward Lytton
+called on us yesterday. The conversation lapsed chiefly into monologue,
+from the difficulty I found in making him hear, but under all
+disadvantages I had an agreeable impression of his kindness and
+sincerity. He thinks the two defects of _Adam Bede_ are the dialect and
+Adam's marriage with Dinah, but of course I would have my teeth drawn
+rather than give up either."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT'S HOUSE. CHELSEA.]
+
+_July 1st_ (from a letter to Madame Bodichon, on returning to Holly Lodge
+after a two months' holiday in Italy): "We are preparing to renounce the
+delights of roving, and to settle down quietly, as old folks should do....
+We have let our present house."
+
+One interesting memorial of the life at Holly Lodge is the MS. of _The
+Mill on the Floss_, on which is inscribed in George Eliot's handwriting:
+"To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third
+book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge,
+South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March 1860."
+
+The publication of _The Mill on the Floss_, and, in the three succeeding
+years, of _Silas Marner_ and _Romola_, carried George Eliot to the height
+of her fame, and by the time she was living in North Bank, St. John's
+Wood, she had her little circle of adoring worshippers, who, like George
+Henry Lewes, took her very seriously indeed. That sort of hero-worship was
+customary in those days, unless the worshipped one had too strong a sense
+of humour to put up with it. There is a passage in the Autobiography of
+Mr. Alfred Austin giving a brief account of a visit he paid to George
+Eliot. "We took the first opportunity," he says, "of going to call on her
+at her request in St. John's Wood. But there I found pervading her house
+an attitude of adoration, not to say an atmosphere almost of awe,
+thoroughly alien to my idea that persons of genius, save in their works,
+should resemble other people as much as possible, and not allow any
+special fuss to be made about them. I do not say the fault lay with her."
+But you find the same circumstance spoken to elsewhere, and the general
+notion you gather is that George Eliot rather enjoyed this being
+pedestalled, and accepted the incense of her reverent little circle with a
+good deal of complacency.
+
+In 1878 Lewes died, and in March 1880 George Eliot was married to John
+Cross. They left St. John's Wood on the 3rd of the following December and
+went to 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where George Eliot died on the 22nd of the
+same month.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+CHELSEA MEMORIES
+
+
+Coming to close quarters with it, I am not sure that, after all, Chelsea
+has not more to offer the literary pilgrim than even Hampstead has.
+Addison, Locke, Smollett, Horace Walpole, are among the illustrious names
+whose local habitations were once there but are no longer to be seen.
+Charles and Henry Kingsley spent their boyhood at their father's rectory
+in Sidney Street; Daniel Maclise lived for ten years at 4 Cheyne Walk,
+where George Eliot died; and "Queen's House," No. 16 Cheyne Walk, is the
+house that, in 1862, Rossetti, Swinburne, William Michael Rossetti, and
+Meredith took as joint-tenants. Meredith soon paid a quarter's rent in
+lieu of notice and withdrew from the arrangement, but Swinburne and
+Rossetti lived on there together for some years, and did much of their
+greatest work there. Swinburne was next to go, and he presently set up
+house with Mr. Watts-Dunton at "The Pines," near the foot of Putney Hill,
+where he lived till his death in 1909. In the early seventies Mr. W. M.
+Rossetti married and removed elsewhere, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti stayed
+on in the Chelsea house alone.
+
+Later, in the gloomy days before he went away to Birchington to die,
+Rossetti suffered terribly from insomnia, was ill and depressed, and a
+prey to morbid imaginings, but in the earlier years of his tenancy of 16
+Cheyne Walk he was absorbed in his art, his house was lively with many
+visitors, and in his lazy, sociable fashion he seems to have been almost
+as happy as a man of his sensitive temperament could be. "Here," writes
+Mr. Joseph Knight, "were held those meetings, prolonged often until the
+early hours of the morning, which to those privileged to be present were
+veritable nights and feasts of gods. Here in the dimly-lighted studio,
+around the blazing fire, used to assemble the men of distinction or
+promise in literature and art whom the magnetism of Rossetti's
+individuality collected around him. Here Rossetti himself used, though
+rarely, to read aloud, with his voice of indescribable power and
+clearness, and with a bell-like utterance that still dwells in the mind,
+passages from the poems he admired; and here, more frequently, some young
+poet, encouraged by his sympathy, which to all earnest effort in art was
+overflowing and inexhaustible, would recite his latest sonnet." He crowded
+his rooms with quaintly-carved oak furniture, and beautiful ornaments; he
+had a wonderful collection of blue china that he sometimes put on the
+table and recklessly used at his dinner-parties. In his garden he had "a
+motley collection of animals, peacocks, armadilloes, the wombat,
+woodchuck, or Canadian marmot, and other outlandish creatures, including
+the famous zebu." This zebu was kept fastened to a tree, and Rossetti
+loved to exhibit it and point out its beauties with his maulstick. Mr.
+Knight goes on to repeat the story that was told concerning this animal by
+Whistler, who was at that time living at what is now 101 Cheyne Walk, and
+was then 7 Lindsey Row. According to Whistler, one day when he and
+Rossetti were alone in the garden, "and Rossetti was contemplating once
+more the admired possession, and pointing out with the objectionable stick
+the points of special beauty, resentment blazed into indignation. By a
+super-bovine exertion the zebu tore up the roots of the tree to which it
+was attached, and chased its tormentor round the garden, which was
+extensive enough to admit of an exciting chase round the trees." The zebu
+was fortunately hampered by the uprooted tree, and Rossetti made good his
+escape, but he would harbour the animal no longer, and as nobody would buy
+it he gave it away.
+
+[Illustration: QUEEN'S HOUSE. CHEYNE WALK.]
+
+You get an illuminating glimpse of Rossetti's home life in these days from
+that useful literary chronicle, Allingham's Diary (Monday, June 27, 1864):
+"Got down to Chelsea by half-past eight to D. G. R.'s. Breakfasted in a
+small, lofty room on first floor with window looking on the garden. Fanny
+in white. Then we went into the garden, and lay on the grass, eating
+strawberries and looking at the peacock. F. went to look at the
+'chicking,' her plural of chicken. Then Swinburne came in and soon began
+to recite--a parody on Browning was one thing; and after him Whistler, who
+talked about his own pictures--Royal Academy--the Chinese painter girl,
+Millais, &c."
+
+Rossetti's wife had died shortly before he went to Cheyne Walk, and it was
+during his residence here that her grave in Highgate Cemetery was opened,
+that the manuscript volume of poems he had buried with her might be
+recovered, and most of its contents included in his first published book
+of original work.
+
+One time and another Whistler occupied four different houses in Cheyne
+Walk, and No. 101 was the first of these. He had been living in lodgings,
+or with his brother-in-law, since he came over from America, but in 1863
+he took the Cheyne Walk house, and his mother went to live there with him.
+It is a three-storey house, and the back room on the first floor was his
+studio; the river lies before it, just across the road, and he could see
+from his front windows old Battersea Bridge, Battersea Church on the other
+side of the Thames, and at night the twinkling lights of boats and barges
+at anchor and the flare and many-coloured glitter of Cremorne Gardens in
+the distance. At the end of Cheyne Walk lived the boatbuilder Greaves. "He
+had worked in Chelsea for years," write Mr. and Mrs. Pennell, in their
+_Life of Whistler_. "He had rowed Turner about on the river, and his two
+sons were to row Whistler. One of the sons, Mr. Walter Greaves, has told
+us that Mrs. Booth, a big, hard, coarse Scotchwoman, was always with
+Turner when he came for a boat. Turner would ask Greaves what kind of a
+day it was going to be, and if Greaves answered 'Fine,' he would get
+Greaves to row them across to Battersea Church, or to the fields, now
+Battersea Park. If Greaves was doubtful, Turner would say, 'Well, Mrs.
+Booth, we won't go far'; and afterwards for the sons--boys at the
+time--Turner in their memory was overshadowed by her." Whistler and the
+Greaves boys were up and down the river at all hours of the day and night
+and in all weathers, painting and sketching, they under his tuition, or
+gathering impressions and studying effects of light and shadow. He was
+frequently in at the Rossettis' house, and they and their friends were as
+frequently visiting him.
+
+In 1867 Whistler moved to what is now 96 Cheyne Walk, and had a
+housewarming on the 5th of February at which the two Rossettis were
+present. Describing the decoration of the walls here, Mr. and Mrs. Pennell
+say its beauty was its simplicity. "Rossetti's house was a museum, an
+antiquity shop, in comparison. The simplicity seemed the more bewildering
+because it was the growth, not of weeks but of years. The drawing-room was
+not painted till the day of Whistler's first dinner-party. In the morning
+he sent for the brothers Greaves to help him. 'It will never be dry in
+time,' they feared. 'What matter?' said Whistler; 'it will be
+beautiful!'... and by evening the walls were flushed with flesh-colour,
+pale yellow and white spread over doors and woodwork, and we have heard
+that gowns and coats too were touched with flesh-colour and yellow before
+the evening was at an end. One Sunday morning Whistler, after he had taken
+his mother to Chelsea Church, as he always did, again sent for his pupils
+and painted a great ship with spreading sails in each of the two panels at
+the end of the hall; the ships are said to be still on the wall, covered
+up. His mother was not so pleased when, on her return, she saw the blue
+and white harmony, for she would have had him put away his brushes on
+Sunday as once she put away his toys."
+
+Solitude was irksome to him, and he welcomed the motley crowd of artists
+and students who came in at all hours to chat with him whilst he worked.
+The Pennells tell a capital story of a man named Barthe, of whom Whistler
+had bought tapestries, and who, not being able to get his account settled,
+called one evening for the money. He was told that Whistler was not in;
+but there was a cab waiting at the door, and he could hear his debtor's
+voice, so he pushed past the maid and, as he afterwards related, "Upstairs
+I find him, before a little picture, painting, and behind him ze bruzzers
+Greaves holding candles. And Vistlaire he say, 'You ze very man I vant:
+hold a candle!' And I hold a candle. And Vistlaire he paint, and he paint,
+and zen he take ze picture, and he go downstairs, and he get in ze cab,
+and he drive off, and we hold ze candle, and I see him no more. Mon Dieu,
+il est terrible, ce Vistlaire!"
+
+His studio here was a back room on the second floor, and up to that
+studio, on many days of 1873, Carlyle climbed to give sittings for the
+portrait which ranks now with the greatest of Whistler's works. The
+portrait of his mother had already been painted in that same small room,
+and hung on the wall there whilst Carlyle was coming to life on the
+canvas. Carlyle was not a patient sitter. Directly he sat down he urged
+Whistler to "fire away," and was evidently anxious to get through with his
+part of the business as quickly as possible. "One day," says Whistler, "he
+told me of others who had painted his portrait. There was Mr. Watts, a mon
+of note. And I went to his studio, and there was much meestification, and
+screens were drawn, and I was not allowed to see anything. And then, at
+last, the screens were put aside and there I was. And I looked. And Mr.
+Watts, a great mon, he said to me, 'How do you like it?' And then I turned
+to Mr. Watts, and I said, 'Mon, I would have ye know I am in the hobit of
+wurin' clean lunen!'" There is a note in Allingham's Diary, dated July 29,
+1873: "Carlyle tells me he is 'sitting' to Whistler. If C. makes signs
+of changing his position W. screams out in an agonised tone, 'For God's
+sake, don't move!' C. afterwards said that all W.'s anxiety seemed to be
+to get the _coat_ painted to ideal perfection; the face went for little.
+He had begun by asking two or three sittings, but managed to get a great
+many. At last C. flatly rebelled. He used to define W. as the most absurd
+creature on the face of the earth."
+
+[Illustration: WHISTLER. 96 CHEYNE WALK.]
+
+Whilst he was at 96 Cheyne Walk, Whistler brought his famous libel action
+against Ruskin, won it, but was awarded only a farthing damages, and had
+to pay his own costs. During the progress of the suit he was having the
+White House built for him in Tite Street, Chelsea, but the payment of his
+law costs so crippled him that he had to sell it before it was ready for
+occupation, and to sell off also the furniture and effects of his Cheyne
+Walk home.
+
+None of these things seem, however, to have affected Whistler with worse
+than a temporary irritation. He wrote jestingly over his door: "Except the
+Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. E. W. Godwin,
+F.S.A., built this one;" turned his back upon the scenes of his recent
+disasters, and went to Venice. After rather more than a year of absence,
+he returned to London in the winter of 1880, stayed with his brother in
+Wimpole Street, put up at divers lodgings, had an exhibition in Bond
+Street, and in May 1881 took a studio at 13 Tite Street, Chelsea, and
+began to be the most talked-of man of the day. "He filled the papers with
+letters," write Mr. and Mrs. Pennell. "London echoed with his laugh. His
+white lock stood up defiantly above his curls; his cane lengthened; a
+series of collars sprang from his long overcoat; his hat had a curlier
+brim, a lower tilt over his eyes; he invented amazing costumes.... He was
+known to pay calls with the long bamboo stick in his hand and pink bows on
+his shoes. He allowed no break in the gossip. The carriages brought
+crowds, but not sitters. Few would sit to him before the trial; after it
+there were fewer. In the seventies it needed courage to be painted by
+Whistler; now it was to risk notoriety and ridicule." When Mr. Pennell
+first saw him at 13 Tite Street, in July 1884, "he was all in white, his
+waistcoat had long sleeves, and every minute it seemed as if he must begin
+to juggle with glasses. For, to be honest, my first impression was of a
+bar-keeper strayed from a Philadelphia saloon into a Chelsea studio. Never
+had I seen such thick, black, curling hair. But in the midst was the white
+lock, and keen, brilliant eyes flashed at me from under the thick, bushy
+eyebrows."
+
+From Tite Street, Whistler presently removed to 454 Fulham Road; thence to
+The Vale, Chelsea, a pleasant quarter which was a year or two ago wiped
+off the face of the earth; and in 1890 he was back again in Cheyne Walk,
+at No. 21. "I remember a striking remark of Whistler's at a garden-party
+in his Chelsea house," says M. Gerard Harry, who was one of Whistler's
+guests at No. 21. "As he caught me observing some incompletely furnished
+rooms and questioning within myself whether he had occupied the house more
+than a fortnight or so: 'You see,' he said, with his short laugh, 'I do
+not care for definitely settling down anywhere. Where there is no more
+space for improvement, or dreaming about improvement, where mystery is in
+perfect shape, it is _finis_--the end--death. There is no hope nor outlook
+left.' I do not vouch for the words, but that was certainly the sense of a
+remark which struck me as offering a key to much of Whistler's philosophy,
+and to one aspect of his original art."
+
+By 1892, in spite of himself and his fantastic and silly posings and
+posturings, the world had learned to take his art seriously instead of
+taking him so, and when he went away that year to live in Paris his
+greatness as a painter had become pretty generally recognised. In 1894 he
+came back to London with his wife, who was dying of cancer, and after her
+death in 1896 he lived with friends or in lodgings, and had no settled
+home, until in 1902 he once again took a house in Cheyne Walk, this time
+No. 74, a house which stands below the street level; its front windows
+overlook the Thames, and it had a large studio at the back. Here Mrs. and
+Miss Birnie Philip went to share house with him, for his health was
+breaking, and he was in need of companionship and attention. But there
+were good intervals, when he was able to work with all his old eagerness
+and energy. "We knew on seeing him when he was not so well," say Mr. and
+Mrs. Pennell, "for his costume of invalid remained original. He clung to a
+fur-lined overcoat worn into shabbiness. In his younger years he had
+objected to a dressing-gown as an unmanly concession; apparently he had
+not outgrown the objection, and on his bad days this shabby, worn-out
+overcoat was its substitute. Nor did the studio seem the most comfortable
+place for a man so ill as he was. It was bare, with little furniture, as
+his studios always were, and he had not used it enough to give it the air
+of a workshop. The whole house showed that illness was reigning there."
+Trays and odds and ends of the sickroom lay about the hall; papers, books,
+and miscellaneous litter made the drawing-room and dining-room look
+disorderly. "When we saw Whistler in his big, shabby overcoat shuffling
+about the huge studio, he struck us as so old, so feeble and fragile, that
+we could imagine no sadder or more tragic figure. It was the more tragic
+because he had always been such a dandy, a word he would have been the
+first to use in reference to himself.... No one would have suspected the
+dandy in this forlorn little old man, wrapped in a worn overcoat, hardly
+able to walk."
+
+He lingered thus for about a year; then the end came suddenly. On the 14th
+July 1903, Mrs. Pennell found him dressed and in his studio. "He seemed
+better, though his face was sunken, and in his eyes was that terrible
+vagueness. Now he talked, and a touch of gallantry was in his greeting, 'I
+wish I felt as well as you look.' He asked about Henley, the news of whose
+death had come a day or two before.... There was a return of vigour in his
+voice when Miss Birnie Philip brought him a cup of chicken broth, and he
+cried, 'Take the damned thing away,' and his old charm was in the apology
+that followed, but, he said, if he ate every half-hour or so, as the
+doctor wanted, how could he be expected to have an appetite for dinner? He
+dozed a little, but woke up quickly with a show of interest in
+everything." But on the evening of the 17th, he suddenly collapsed, and
+was dead before the doctor could be fetched to him.
+
+[Illustration: TURNER'S HOUSE. CHEYNE WALK.]
+
+Turner's last days in this same Cheyne Walk were almost as sad, almost
+as piteous as Whistler's, but there is a haze of mystery about them, as
+there is about some of his paintings, and he had no butterfly past of
+dandyism to contrast painfully with the squalor of his ending. Born over
+the barber's shop kept by his father in Maiden Lane, Strand, he mounted to
+the seats of the immortals without acquiring by the way any taste for
+personal adornment, or for the elegancies or little prettinesses so
+beloved by little artists in his home surroundings. His soul was like a
+star, and could not make its heaven among the dainty chairs and tables and
+nice wall and mantelpiece ornaments of the drawing-room. On Stothard's
+advice (Stothard being one of the customers at the shaving shop) Turner's
+father made him an artist; he studied under Sir Joshua Reynolds, and
+later, Blake was one of his pupils. Growing in reputation, he lived by
+turns in Harley Street, at Hammersmith, at Twickenham, and is described in
+middle age as bluff and rough-mannered, and looking "the very moral of a
+master carpenter, with lobster-red face, twinkling staring grey eyes,
+white tie, blue coat with brass buttons, crab-shell turned-up boots, large
+fluffy hat, and enormous umbrella." From about 1815 onwards, he had a
+house that is no longer standing at 47 Queen Anne Street, Harley Street,
+and here, in 1843, when Turner was sixty-eight, a Mr. Hammersley called on
+him and has described (I quote from Mr. Lewis Hind's _Turner's Golden
+Visions_) how he "heard the shambling, slippered footstep coming down the
+stairs, the cold, cheerless room, the gallery, even less tidy and more
+forlorn, all confusion, mouldiness, and wretched litter; most of the
+pictures covered with uncleanly sheets, and the man! his loose dress, his
+ragged hair, his indifferent quiet--all, indeed, that went to make his
+physique and some of his mind; but above all I saw, felt (and feel still)
+his penetrating grey eye."
+
+Somewhere between 1847 and 1848 Turner strangely disappeared from his
+customary haunts; his Queen Anne Street house was closed, the door kept
+locked, and his old housekeeper, Hannah Danby, could only assure anybody
+who came that he was not there, and that she simply did not know where he
+had gone. For the next four years or so, until he was dying, no one
+succeeded in discovering his hiding-place. Now and then, in the meantime,
+he would appear in a friend's studio, or would be met with at one of the
+Galleries, but he offered no explanation of his curious behaviour, and
+allowed no one to obtain any clue to his whereabouts. He went in 1850 to a
+dinner given by David Roberts, and was in good spirits, and bubbling over
+with laborious jokes. "Turner afterwards, in Roberts's absence, took the
+chair, and, at Stanfield's request, proposed Roberts's health, which he
+did, speaking hurriedly, but soon ran short of words and breath, and
+dropped down on his chair with a hearty laugh, starting up again and
+finishing with a 'Hip, hip, hurrah!'... Turner was the last who left, and
+Roberts accompanied him along the street to hail a cab. When the cab drove
+up, he assisted Turner to his seat, shut the door, and asked where he
+should tell cabby to take him; but Turner was not to be caught, and, with
+a knowing wink, replied, 'Tell him to drive to Oxford Street, and then
+I'll direct him where to go.'"
+
+The fact is he was living at Cremorne Cottage, 119 Cheyne Walk. He was
+living there anonymously; a Mrs. Booth, whom he had known many years
+before when he stayed at her Margate boarding-house, was keeping house for
+him, and he was known in the neighbourhood as Admiral Booth, a rumour
+having got about that he was a retired naval officer fallen on evil days.
+This was the time of which the father of the Greaves boys had spoken to
+Whistler--the days when Mrs. Booth used to come with Turner to the
+waterside and he would row them over to Battersea. Though all his greatest
+work was finished, Turner painted several pictures here; he frequently
+rose at daybreak, and, wrapped in a blanket or a dressing-gown, stood out
+on the roof, leaning over the railing to watch the sunrise and the play of
+light on the river opposite. He used the room on the second floor as his
+studio, and in that room, on the 19th December 1851, he died. Some months
+before his death, he was seen at the Royal Academy's private view; then,
+tardily responding to a letter of friendly reproach that David Roberts had
+addressed to him at Queen Anne Street, he came to Roberts's studio in
+Fitzroy Square. He was "broken and ailing," and had been touched by
+Roberts's appeal, but as for disclosing his residence--"You must not ask
+me," he said; "but whenever I come to town I will always come to see you."
+When Roberts tried to cheer him, he laid his hand on his heart and
+murmured, "No, no! There is something here that is all wrong."
+
+His illness increasing on him, he wrote to Margate for Dr. Price, an old
+acquaintance of his and Mrs. Booth's, and Price, coming up, examined him
+and told him there was no hope of his recovery. "Go downstairs," he urged
+the doctor, "take a glass of sherry, and then look at me again." But a
+second examination only confirmed Dr. Price in his opinion.
+
+It must have been at this juncture that Turner's hiding-place was
+discovered. His Queen Anne Street housekeeper, Hannah Danby, found a
+letter left in the pocket of one of his old coats, and this gave the
+Chelsea address. She went with another woman and made inquiries round
+about Cheyne Walk till it was clear enough to her that the Mr. Booth to
+whom that letter was directed was none other than Turner, and acting on
+her information Mr. Harpur, Turner's executor, journeyed at once to
+Chelsea, and arrived at 119 Cheyne Walk to find Turner sinking fast.
+Towards sunset, on that wintry day of his dying, he asked Mrs. Booth to
+wheel him to the window, and so gazing out on the wonder of the darkening
+sky he passed quietly away with his head on her shoulder.
+
+A certain John Pye, a Chelsea engraver, afterwards interviewed the owner
+of No. 119, and learned from him that Turner and Mrs. Booth had, some four
+or five years before, called and taken the house of him, paying their rent
+in advance because they objected to giving any names or references. Pye
+also saw Mrs. Booth, and says she was a woman of fifty, illiterate, but
+"good-looking and kindly-mannered." Turner had used to call her "old 'un,"
+she said, and she called him "dear"; and she explained that she had first
+got acquainted with him when, more than twenty years ago, "he became her
+lodger near the Custom House at Margate." So small was the shabby little
+house in Cheyne Walk that the undertakers were unable to carry the coffin
+up the narrow staircase, and had to carry the body down to it. Nowadays,
+the house has been enlarged; it and the house next door have been thrown
+into one, otherwise it has undergone little change since Turner knew it.
+
+Whilst Turner was thus passing out of life in Cheyne Walk, Carlyle was
+dwelling near by at No. 24 (then No. 5) Cheyne Row, and had been resident
+there for seventeen years. On first coming to London in 1830, he and his
+wife lodged at 33 Ampton Street, Gray's Inn Road. They spent, he says, "an
+interesting, cheery, and, in spite of poor arrangements, really pleasant
+winter" there; they had a "clean and decent pair of rooms," and their
+landlord's family consisted of "quiet, decent people." He wrote his essay
+on Dr. Johnson whilst he was here, and was making a fruitless search for a
+publisher who would accept _Sartor Resartus_, which he had recently
+completed. Jeffrey called there several times to pass an afternoon with
+him, and John Stuart Mill was one other of the many visitors who found
+their way to the drab, unlovely, rather shabby street to chat with the
+dour, middle-aged Scotch philosopher, who was only just beginning to be
+heard of.
+
+He fixed on the Cheyne Row house in 1834, and, except for occasional
+holidays, never left it until his death forty-seven years afterwards. As
+soon as he was settled here Carlyle wrote to Sir William Hamilton, giving
+him his new address: "Our upholsterers, with all their rubbish and
+clippings, are at length swept handsomely out of doors. I have got my
+little book-press set up, my table fixed firm in its place, and sit here
+awaiting what Time and I, in our questionable wrestle, shall make out
+between us." In another letter of about the same date he writes of it:
+"The street is flag-paved, sunk-storied, iron-railed, all old-fashioned
+and tightly done up, looks out on a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is,
+beheaded) lime trees standing there like giants in tawtie wigs (for the
+new boughs are still young); beyond this a high brick wall; backwards a
+garden, the size of our back one at Comely Bank, with trees, &c., in bad
+culture; beyond this green hayfields and tree avenues, once a bishop's
+pleasure grounds, an unpicturesque but rather cheerful outlook. The house
+itself is eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been
+all new painted and repaired; broadish stair, with massive balustrade (in
+the old style), corniced and as thick as one's thigh; floors thick as
+rock, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanliness,
+and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor. Chelsea is a
+singular heterogeneous kind of spot, very dirty and confused in some
+places, quite beautiful in others, abounding in antiquities and the traces
+of great men--Sir Thomas More, Steele, Smollett, &c. Our Row, which for
+the last three doors or so is a street and none of the noblest, runs out
+upon a Parade (perhaps they call it) running along the shore of the river,
+a broad highway with huge shady trees, boats lying moored, and a smell of
+shipping and tar."
+
+A note in Allingham's Diary (1860) offers you a very clear little picture
+of Carlyle's garden here, as he saw it: "In Carlyle's garden, some twenty
+yards by six; ivy at the end. Three or four lilac bushes; an ash stands on
+your left; a little copper beech on your right gives just an umbrella to
+sit under when the sun is hot; a vine or two on one wall, neighboured
+by a jasmine--one pear tree."
+
+[Illustration: CARLYLE. AMPTON STREET.]
+
+In this Cheyne Row house Carlyle wrote all his books, except _Sartor_ and
+some of the miscellaneous essays; here he entertained, not always very
+willingly or very graciously, most of the great men of his day; quarrelled
+with his neighbours furiously over the crowing of their cocks; was
+pestered by uninvited, admiring callers from all over the world; and had
+his room on the top floor furnished with double-windows that were supposed
+to render it sound-proof, but did not. Charles Boner, visiting 24 Cheyne
+Row in 1862, disturbed Carlyle as he sat in his dressing-gown and slippers
+correcting the proofs of his _Frederick the Great_, whilst Mrs. Carlyle
+remained in attendance, seated on a sofa by the fire.
+
+In 1866 Mrs. Carlyle died suddenly of heart failure, and left him burdened
+with remorse that he had not been kinder to her and made her life happier;
+and after two years of lonely living without her, he writes: "I am very
+idle here, very solitary, which I find to be oftenest less miserable to me
+than the common society that offers. Except Froude almost alone, whom I
+see once a week, there is hardly anybody whose talk, always polite, clear,
+sharp, and sincere, does me any considerable good.... I am too weak, too
+languid, too sad of heart, too unfit for any work, in fact, to care
+sufficiently for any object left me in the world to think of grappling
+round it and coercing it by work. A most sorry dog-kennel it oftenest all
+seems to me, and wise words, if one ever had them, to be only thrown away
+on it. Basta-basta, I for most part say of it, and look with longings
+towards the still country where at last we and our loved ones shall be
+together again."
+
+You will get no better or more intimate glimpses into Carlyle's home life
+than Allingham gives in his Diary. Sometimes they are merely casual and
+scrappy notes, at others fairly full records of his walks and talks with
+him, such as this: "_1873, April 28._--At Carlyle's house about three. He
+spent about fifteen minutes in trying to clear the stem of a long clay
+pipe with a brass wire, and in the end did not succeed. The pipe was new,
+but somehow obstructed. At last he sent for another one and smoked, and we
+got out at last. (I never saw him smoke in public.) He said Emerson had
+called on him on Sunday, and he meant to visit E. to-day at his lodging in
+Down Street. We walked to Hyde Park by Queen's Gate, and westward along
+the broad walk, next to the ride, with the Serpentine a field distant on
+the left hand. This was a favourite route of his. I was well content to
+have the expectation of seeing Emerson again, and, moreover, Emerson and
+Carlyle together. We spoke of Masson's _Life of Milton_, a volume of which
+was on C.'s table. He said Masson's praise of Milton was exaggerated.
+'Milton had a gift in poetry--of a particular kind. _Paradise Lost_ is
+absurd; I never could take to it all--though now and again clouds of
+splendour rolled in upon the scene.'... At Hyde Park Corner, C. stopped
+and looked at the clock. 'You are going to Down Street, sir?' 'No, it's
+too late.' 'The place is close at hand.' 'No, no, it's half-past five.' So
+he headed for Knightsbridge, and soon after I helped him into a Chelsea
+omnibus, banning internally the clay pipe (value a halfpenny farthing)
+through which this chance (perhaps the last, for Emerson is going away
+soon) was lost."
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE]
+
+There are numerous entries in the Diary of visits and conversations of
+this sort. On October 18, 1879, Allingham called at Cheyne Row with his
+little son, and they met Carlyle coming out of the door to his carriage.
+On December 4, of the same year: "Helen and I to Cheyne Row. Carlyle's
+eighty-fourth birthday. Mrs. Lecky there. Browning and Ruskin are gone. C.
+on his sofa by the window, warm and quiet, wearing a new purple and gold
+cap. Gifts of flowers on the table...." Some of the swift little
+word-sketches of Carlyle at this date, when he was very old, very feeble,
+and apt to be oppressed with gloom, are piteous and pathetic enough. On
+his eighty-fifth birthday (December 4, 1880) Allingham found him easier
+and more himself; but on Friday, December 24, you read: "To Carlyle's at
+two. He was lying on the sofa in the drawing-room. When I spoke to him he
+held out his hand and shook hands with me, but said nothing. I was not
+sure that he knew me. A stout Scotch servant girl and I lifted him to his
+feet to go to the carriage. In the hall his heavy sealskin coat was put on
+with difficulty, and he was got into the carriage. Alick and I with him.
+We drove twice round Hyde Park. The old man dozed much."
+
+Earlier that year, the two sons of Alexander Munro called at Cheyne Row,
+and in a letter home the elder of them gave a wonderfully poignant and
+living account of their visit. Munro, who was dead, had been one of
+Carlyle's old friends, and the two boys were now at school at the
+Charterhouse. They were conducted upstairs, says the letter, to a
+well-lighted, cheerful apartment, and here "the maid went forward and said
+something to Carlyle, and left the room. He was sitting before a fire in
+an arm-chair, propped up with pillows, with his feet on a stool, and
+looked much older than I had expected. The lower part of his face was
+covered with a rather shaggy beard, almost quite white. His eyes were
+bright blue, but looked filmy from age. He had on a sort of coloured
+nightcap, and a long gown reaching to his ankles, and slippers on his
+feet. A rest attached to the arm of his chair supported a book before him.
+I could not quite see the name, but I think it was Channing's works.
+Leaning against the fireplace was a long clay pipe, and there was a slight
+smell of tobacco in the room. We advanced and shook hands, and he invited
+us to sit down, and began, I think, by asking where we were living. He
+talked of our father affectionately, speaking in a low tone as if to
+himself, and stopping now and then for a moment and sighing.... He went
+on, 'I am near the end of my course, and the sooner the better is my own
+feeling.' He said he still reads a little, but has not many books he cares
+to read now, and is 'continually disturbed by foolish interruptions from
+people who do not know the value of an old man's leisure.' His hands were
+very thin and wasted; he showed us how they shook and trembled unless he
+rested them on something, and said they were failing him from weakness."
+And, at length, closing the interview, "'Well, I'll just bid you
+good-bye.' We shook hands. He asked our names. He could not quite hear
+Henry's at first. 'I am a little deaf, but I can hear well enough
+talking,' or words to that effect. 'I wish you God's blessing;
+good-bye.' We shook hands once more and went away. I was not at all shy.
+He seemed such a venerable old man, and so worn and old-looking, that I
+was very much affected. Our visit was on Tuesday, May 18, 1880, at about 2
+P.M."
+
+[Illustration: CARLYLE'S HOUSE. CHEYNE ROW.]
+
+He died in the following February; after lying motionless and seemingly
+unconscious for hours, he passed quietly soon after eight on the morning
+of February 5, 1881. His bed, says Allingham, had been brought down to the
+drawing-room (the front room on the first floor), and he rarely spoke in
+the last two or three weeks, not so much because he could not as because
+he did not seem to wish to say anything. Newspaper reporters were so
+continually ringing at the door, day and night, that bulletins had to be
+posted outside to prevent this. Now and then he appeared to wander in his
+mind, and when the Scotch maid, Mary, was attending upon him he would
+sometimes murmur, "Poor little woman," as if he mistook her for his
+long-dead Jenny; and once, says Allingham, "he supposed the female hands
+that tended him, lifting his head, perhaps, to be those of his good old
+mother--'Ah, mother, is it you?' he murmured, or some such words. I think
+it was on the day before the last day that Mary heard him saying to
+himself, 'So this is Death: well----'"
+
+But the Cheyne Row house has many happy memories too, and I always think
+one of the happiest is that of how Leigh Hunt called once after a long
+absence, and brought with him word of some unexpected good news that so
+delighted Mrs. Carlyle that she impulsively ran to him and kissed him,
+and he went away to write that charming little rondeau that bids fair to
+outlive all his more ambitious poetry:
+
+  "Jenny kissed me when we met,
+     Jumping from the chair she sat in;
+   Time, you thief, who love to get
+     Sweets into your list, put that in:
+   Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
+     Say that health and wealth have missed me,
+   Say I'm growing old--but add,
+     Jenny kissed me."
+
+Leigh Hunt was turned fifty then, and was Carlyle's neighbour, living at
+No. 10 (then No. 4) Upper Cheyne Row. I have seen it said that Leigh Hunt
+went there in order to be near Carlyle, but his occupancy of that house
+dates from 1833--the year before Carlyle established himself in
+Chelsea--and he remained there until 1840, seven years of poverty and
+worry, when it was literal truth that he was weary and sad, in indifferent
+health, harassed for want of money, and growing old, yet you find him
+never losing hope, and always ready on the smallest excuse to rejoice and
+make light of his troubles. I am afraid Dickens's caricature of Hunt as
+Harold Skimpole, and Byron's contemptuous references to his vanity and
+vulgarity and the squalor of his easy-going home life (his children, said
+Byron, "are dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos," and writing of
+their arrival in Italy as Shelley's guests he observes, "Poor Hunt, with
+his six little blackguards, are coming slowly up; as usual he turned back
+once--was there ever such a kraal out of the Hottentot country?")--I am
+rather afraid these things have tended to wrong Hunt in our imagination of
+him, for you learn on other evidence that there is just enough truth in
+those representations of him to make them seem quite true, and they linger
+in your mind, and affect your regard and admiration of the man in spite of
+yourself. But Dickens, with his keen sense of the absurd, had a habit of
+exaggeration; there was no ill-nature in his laughter--he merely seized on
+certain of Hunt's weaknesses and gave them to a character who has none of
+Hunt's finer qualities, and it is ridiculous in us and unfair to both men
+to take that caricature as a portrait. As for Byron--he could not justly
+appraise Hunt, for he had no means of understanding him. His own way of
+life was made too easy for him from the first; he was not born to Hunt's
+difficulties and disadvantages; his experiences of the world, and
+therefore his sympathies, were too limited. There is no merit in living
+elegantly and playing the gentleman when you simply inherit, as the fruits
+of an ancestor's abilities, all the conveniences and the money that enable
+you to do so. On the whole, if you compare their lives, you will realise
+that Leigh Hunt was by far the greater man of the two, even if Byron was
+the greater poet, and I am more than a little inclined to agree with
+Charles Lamb that even as a poet Byron was "great in so little a way. To
+be a poet is to be the man, not a petty portion of occasional low passion
+worked up in a permanent form of humanity. Shakespeare has thrust such
+rubbishy feelings into a corner--the dark, dusty heart of Don John, in the
+_Much Ado about Nothing_."
+
+Shelley never speaks of Leigh Hunt but in the kindliest terms. He was
+"gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave," writes Shelley; "one of more
+exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more
+free from evil; one of simpler and, in the highest sense of the word,
+purer life and manners, I never knew." He is, he says in the _Letter to
+Maria Gisborne_:
+
+                      "One of those happy souls
+  Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
+  This earth would smell like what it is--a tomb."
+
+Hunt tells in his _Autobiography_ how he came to Chelsea, and gives a
+glowing description of his house there. He left St. John's Wood, and then
+his home in the New Road (now Marylebone Road), because he found the clay
+soil of the one and the lack of quiet around the other affected his
+health, or "perhaps it was only the melancholy state of our fortune" that
+was answerable for that result; anyhow, from the noise and dust of the New
+Road he removed to Upper Cheyne Row--"to a corner in Chelsea," as he says,
+"where the air of the neighbouring river was so refreshing and the quiet
+of the 'no-thoroughfare' so full of repose, that although our fortunes
+were at their worst, and my health almost at a piece with them, I felt for
+some weeks as if I could sit still for ever, embalmed in silence. I got to
+like the very cries in the street, for making me the more aware of it by
+the contrast. I fancied they were unlike the cries in other quarters of
+the suburbs, and that they retained something of the old quaintness and
+melodiousness which procured them the reputation of having been composed
+by Purcell and others.... There was an old seller of fish, in particular,
+whose cry of 'Shrimps as large as prawns' was such a regular, long-drawn,
+and truly pleasing melody that, in spite of his hoarse and, I am
+afraid, drunken voice, I used to wish for it of an evening, and hail it
+when it came....
+
+[Illustration: LEIGH HUNT'S HOUSE. CHELSEA.]
+
+"I know not whether the corner I speak of remains as quiet as it was. I am
+afraid not; for steamboats have carried vicissitude into Chelsea, and
+Belgravia threatens it with her mighty advent. But to complete my sense of
+repose and distance, the house was of that old-fashioned sort which I have
+always loved best, familiar to the eyes of my parents, and associated with
+childhood. It had seats in the windows, a small third room on the first
+floor, of which I made a sanctum, into which no perturbation was to enter,
+except to calm itself with religious and cheerful thoughts; and there were
+a few limes in front which, in their due season, diffused a fragrance. In
+this house we remained seven years; in the course of which, besides
+contributing some articles to the _Edinburgh_ and _Westminster Reviews_,
+and producing a good deal of the book since called _The Town_, I set up
+(in 1834) the _London Journal_, endeavoured to continue the _Monthly
+Repository_, and wrote the poem entitled _Captain Sword and Captain Pen_,
+the _Legend of Florence_, and three other plays. Here also I became
+acquainted with Thomas Carlyle, one of the kindest and best, as well as
+most eloquent of men.... I believe that what Mr. Carlyle loves better than
+his fault-finding, with all its eloquence, is the face of any human
+creature that looks suffering, and loving, and sincere; and I believe
+further that if the fellow-creature were suffering only, and neither
+loving nor sincere, but had come to a pass of agony in this life which put
+him at the mercies of some good man for some last help and consolation
+towards his grave, even at the risk of loss to repute and a sure amount
+of pain and vexation, that man, if the groan reached him in its
+forlornness, would be Thomas Carlyle."
+
+He wrote that from his personal experience of Carlyle, for whilst they
+were neighbours at Chelsea they frequently visited each other; and
+Carlyle, on his part, saw the worst as well as the best of him, from the
+inside, and was too large-minded and too big a man to judge him by his
+faults and follies only. He saw how Hunt worked, all the while haunted by
+pecuniary distresses; unpaid tradesmen knocking at his door and worrying
+for their debts; once an execution in the house; now and then faced with
+the humiliation of having to ask for loans of a few shillings to buy the
+family dinner; his children almost in rags, and himself, as he said
+bitterly, slighted and neglected by editors and the public, and
+"carelessly, over-familiarly, or even superciliously treated, pitied or
+patronised by his inferiors." Carlyle had known poverty and neglect
+himself; he was fitted to judge Hunt understandingly, and he judged him
+justly. "Leigh Hunt was a fine kind of man," he told Allingham in 1868.
+"Some used to talk of him as a frivolous fellow, but when I saw him I
+found he had a face as serious as death." In his Diary he noted, "Hunt is
+always ready to go and walk with me, or sit and talk with me to all
+lengths if I want him. He comes in once a week (when invited, for he is
+very modest), takes a cup of tea, and sits discoursing in his brisk,
+fanciful way till supper time, and then cheerfully eats a cup of porridge
+(to sugar only), which he praises to the skies, and vows he will make his
+supper of it at home."
+
+It was Mrs. Carlyle who was severe about the Hunts' untidy and uncleanly
+household, and complained of the domestic utensils they borrowed and
+failed to return, but Carlyle took the position in a more genial spirit,
+and saw the pity of it and the humour of it also. "Hunt's house," he wrote
+after one of his visits to No. 10 Upper Cheyne Row, "excels all you have
+ever read of--a poetical Tinkerdom without parallel even in literature. In
+his family room, where are a sickly, large wife and a whole school of
+well-conditioned wild children, you will find half-a-dozen old rickety
+chairs gathered from half-a-dozen different hucksters, and all seemingly
+engaged, and just pausing, in a violent hornpipe. On these and around them
+and over the dusty table and ragged carpet lie all kinds of litter--books,
+papers, egg-shells, scissors, and last night when I was there the torn
+heart of a quartern loaf. His own room above stairs, into which alone I
+strive to enter, he keeps cleaner. It has only two chairs, a bookcase, and
+a writing-table; yet the noble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom in the
+spirit of a king, apologises for nothing, places you in the best seat,
+takes a window-sill himself if there is no other, and then folding closer
+his loose-flowing 'muslin cloud' of a printed nightgown in which he always
+writes, commences the liveliest dialogue on philosophy and the prospects
+of man (who is to be beyond measure 'happy' yet); which again he will
+courteously terminate the moment you are bound to go. A most interesting,
+pitiable, lovable man, to be used kindly, but with discretion."
+
+Hunt departed from Chelsea, with all his anxieties, in 1840, and took up
+residence at 32 Edwardes Square, Kensington, where he got through with a
+great deal of work, and one way and another was secured at last above his
+financial embarrassments. Dickens, Jerrold, Forster and some other friends
+raised L900 for him by a benefit performance of _Every Man in his Humour_;
+the Government granted him two sums of L200, and then a Civil List Pension
+of L200 a year, to the obtaining of which Carlyle readily lent all his
+influence. Moreover, the Shelley family settled an annuity of L120 upon
+him. But, with all these material advantages, came the death of his wife
+and one of his sons. "She was as uncomplaining during the worst storms of
+our adversity," Hunt wrote of his wife, reminiscently, "as she was during
+those at sea in our Italian voyage."
+
+He was an old and rather solitary man when he moved from Kensington in
+1853 and went to 7 Cornwall Road, now known as 16 Rowan Road, Hammersmith
+Road, but he had an ample and sure income, and was no longer haunted by
+duns, if he could not indulge in much in the way of luxury. When Nathaniel
+Hawthorne was in England he went to see him at Hammersmith, and found the
+house in Rowan Road plain, small, shabby, Hunt's little study cheaply
+papered, sparely carpeted, and furnished meanly, and Hunt himself "a
+beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress
+coat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the
+gentlest and most naturally courteous manner." At Rowan Road he wrote most
+of his _Old Court Suburb_, in the preface to a recent edition of which Mr.
+Austin Dobson says of the Leigh Hunt of those closing days, "He was still
+the old sensitive, luminous-eyed Leigh Hunt of the wide collar and
+floating printed nightgown, delighted with a flower or a bird or a
+butterfly; but Time had snowed upon his pericranium, and to his breezy
+_robe de chambre_ he had added, or was about to add, a protective cape,
+more or less ample, of faded black silk, which gave him the air (says John
+Forster) of an old French Abbe." He died away from home in 1859, whilst he
+was on a short visit to a relative at Putney.
+
+[Illustration: LEIGH HUNT. 16 ROWAN ROAD. HAMMERSMITH.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THACKERAY
+
+
+No other literary Londoner has taken root as Carlyle did in Cheyne Row and
+remained for nearly half a century without once changing his address.
+Thackeray shifted about from place to place nearly as much as most of
+them. He went to school at the Charterhouse, and for a year or two had
+lodgings over a shop in Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell; in the first years
+after his marriage he lived in Albion Street; he had chambers in the
+Temple, at Hare Court, in Crown Office Row, and at Brick Court. _The Paris
+Sketch Book_ was written whilst he was living at 13 Great Coram Street, in
+1840, and it was there that his wife began to suffer from the sad mental
+disorder that was presently to take her from him for the rest of his days.
+In August 1846 he gave up his lodgings in St. James's Chambers, and drew
+his broken home life together again at 16 Young Street, Kensington. "I am
+beginning to count the days now till you come," he wrote to his mother,
+with whom his two little daughters were staying in Paris; "and I have got
+the rooms all ready in the rough, all but a couple of bedsteads, and a few
+etceteras, which fall into their place in a day or two. As usual, I am
+full of business and racket, working every day, and yet not advancing
+somehow." He was industriously turning out drawings and jokes and
+articles and verses for _Punch_ and _Fraser's Magazine_, and hard at work
+on the great novel that was to make him famous--_Vanity Fair_.
+
+[Illustration: THE CHARTERHOUSE. FROM THE SQUARE.]
+
+"It was not till late in the autumn that we came to live with my father in
+Kensington," writes Lady Ritchie, in one of her delightful prefaces to the
+Centenary Edition of Thackeray's works. "We had been at Paris with our
+grandparents--while he was at work in London. It was a dark, wintry
+evening. The fires were lighted, the servants were engaged, Eliza--what
+family would be complete without its Eliza?--was in waiting to show us our
+rooms. He was away; he had not expected us so early. We saw the
+drawing-room, the empty study; there was the feeling of London--London
+smelt of tobacco, we thought; we stared out through the uncurtained
+windows at the dark garden behind; and then, climbing the stairs, we
+looked in at his bedroom door, and came to our own rooms above it.... Once
+more, after his first happy married years, my father had a home and a
+family--if a house, two young children, three servants, and a little black
+cat can be called a family. My grandmother, who had brought us over to
+England, returned to her husband in Paris; but her mother, an old lady
+wrapped in Indian shawls, presently came to live with us, and divided her
+time between Kensington and the Champs Elysees until 1848, when she died
+at Paris."
+
+Thackeray's first name for _Vanity Fair_ was _Pencil Sketches of English
+Society_. He offered the opening chapters of it under that title to
+Colburn for his _New Monthly Magazine_. Thereafter he seems to have
+reshaped the novel and renamed it, and even then had difficulty to find a
+publisher. At length, Messrs. Bradbury & Evans accepted it, and it was
+arranged that it should be published after the manner that Dickens had
+already rendered popular--in monthly parts; and the first part duly
+appeared on the 1st January 1847, in the familiar yellow wrappers that
+served to distinguish Thackeray's serials from the green-covered serials
+of Dickens. But the sales of the first half-dozen numbers were by no means
+satisfactory.
+
+"I still remember," writes Lady Ritchie, "going along Kensington Gardens
+with my sister and our nursemaid, carrying a parcel of yellow numbers
+which had been given us to take to some friend who lived across the Park;
+and as we walked along, somewhere near the gates of the gardens we met my
+father, who asked us what we were carrying. Then somehow he seemed vexed
+and troubled, told us not to go on, and to take the parcel home. Then he
+changed his mind, saying that if his grandmother wished it, the books had
+best be conveyed; but we guessed, as children do, that something was
+seriously amiss. The sale of _Vanity Fair_ was so small that it was a
+question at the time whether its publication should not be discontinued
+altogether."
+
+[Illustration: THACKERAY'S HOUSE. KENSINGTON.]
+
+At that critical juncture he published _Mrs. Perkins's Ball_, which caught
+on at once, and this and a favourable review in the _Edinburgh_ are
+supposed to have sent the public after the novel, for the sales of _Vanity
+Fair_ rapidly increased, and the monthly numbers were soon selling briskly
+enough to satisfy even the publishers, and so in his thirty-seventh year
+Thackeray found himself famous. James Hannay first saw him when the
+book was still unfinished but its success assured. He says that Thackeray
+pointed out to him the house in Russell Square "where the imaginary
+Sedleys lived," and that when he congratulated him on that scene in
+_Vanity Fair_ in which Becky Sharp cannot help feeling proud of her
+husband whilst he is giving Lord Steyne the thrashing that must ruin all
+her own chances, Thackeray answered frankly, "Well, when I wrote that
+sentence I slapped my fist on the table and said, 'That is a touch of
+genius!'" Which reminds one of the story told by Ticknor Fields of how,
+when he was making a pilgrimage around London with Thackeray in later
+years, and they paused outside 16 Young Street, which was no longer his
+home, the novelist cried with a melodramatic gesture, "Go down on your
+knees, you rogue, for here _Vanity Fair_ was penned, and I will go down
+with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself!"
+
+His letters of 1847 and the early half of 1848 are full of references to
+the strenuous toil with which he is writing his monthly instalments of
+_Vanity Fair_, and in one of them, to Edward Fitzgerald, he mentions that
+he is giving a party: "Mrs. Dickens and Miss Hogarth made me give it, and
+I am in a great fright." Perhaps that was the famous party to which
+Charlotte Bronte, Carlyle and his wife, and other of his great
+contemporaries came, and things went wrong, and he became so uncomfortable
+that he fairly bolted from his guests, and went to spend the rest of the
+evening at the Garrick Club.
+
+_Pendennis_ was written at the Young Street house, and Thackeray put a
+good deal of himself into that hero of his. Pen had chambers at Lamb
+Building, in the Temple, and there is some likeness between his early
+journalistic experiences and Thackeray's own. The opening chapters of
+_Pendennis_, though, were written at Spa. Thackeray had wanted to get away
+to some seaside place where he could set to work on his new book, and had
+asked his mother, who was going to Brighton, if she could not get a house
+for L60 that would have three spare rooms in it for him. "As for the
+dignity, I don't believe it matters a pinch of snuff. Tom Carlyle lives in
+perfect dignity in a little L40 house at Chelsea, with a snuffy Scotch
+maid to open the door, and the best company in England ringing at it. It
+is only the second or third chop great folks who care about show."
+
+In _Pendennis_ there is an allusion to Catherine Hayes, the dreadful
+heroine of Thackeray's _Catherine_, that had been published a few years
+before, and a hot-tempered young Irishman, believing the reference was to
+Miss Catherine Hayes, the Irish vocalist, chivalrously came over to
+England, took lodgings opposite Thackeray's house in Young Street, and
+sent him a warning letter that he was on the watch for him to come out of
+doors, and intended to administer public chastisement by way of avenging
+Miss Hayes's injured honour. After getting through his morning's work,
+Thackeray felt the position was intolerable, so he walked straightway out
+across the road, knocked at the opposite door, and boldly bearded the lion
+in his den. The young Irishman was disposed to bluster and be obstinate,
+but Thackeray explained matters, calmed him, convinced him that he had
+made a mistake, parted from him amicably, and had the satisfaction of
+seeing the young fire-eater come forth on his way back home that evening.
+
+[Illustration: W. M. THACKERAY]
+
+Writing of _Pendennis_, Lady Ritchie says, "I can remember the morning
+Helen died. My father was in his study in Young Street, sitting at the
+table at which he wrote. It stood in the middle of the room, and he used
+to sit facing the door. I was going into the room, but he motioned me
+away. An hour afterwards he came into our schoolroom, half laughing and
+half ashamed, and said to us, 'I do not know what James can have thought
+of me when he came in with the tax-gatherer just after you left and found
+me blubbering over Helen Pendennis's death.'"
+
+At Young Street, Thackeray wrote also his _Lectures on the English
+Humorists_, and having delivered them with gratifying success at Willis's
+Rooms, he journeyed to America in 1852, and was even more successful with
+them there. Meanwhile, he had written _Esmond_, and it was published in
+three volumes just before he left England. "Thackeray I saw for ten
+minutes," Fitzgerald wrote to Frederick Tennyson concerning a flying visit
+he had paid to London; "he was just in the agony of finishing a novel,
+which has arisen out of the reading necessary for his lectures, and
+relates to those times--of Queen Anne, I mean. He will get L1000 for his
+novel; he was wanting to finish it and rush off to the Continent to shake
+off the fumes of it." His two daughters, both now in their teens, were
+sent out to join their grandparents before he sailed for the States, and
+in a letter to Anne (Lady Ritchie) he explains his motive in crossing the
+Atlantic: "I must and will go to America, not because I want to, but
+because it is right I should secure some money against my death for your
+poor mother and you two girls."
+
+There are several drawings made by Thackeray in those Young Street days of
+his daughters and himself, and one of his study at breakfast time, and
+here is a word-picture of the study given by Lady Ritchie in her preface
+to _Esmond_: "The vine shaded the two windows, which looked out upon the
+bit of garden and the medlar-tree, and the Spanish jasmines, of which the
+yellow flowers scented our old brick walls. I can remember the tortoise
+belonging to the boys next door crawling along the top of the wall where
+they had set it, and making its way between the jasmine sprigs.... Our
+garden was not tidy (though on one grand occasion a man came to mow the
+grass), but it was full of sweet things.... Lady Duff Gordon came to stay
+with us once (it was on that occasion that the grass was mowed), and she
+afterwards sent us some doves, which used to hang high up in a wicker cage
+from the windows of the schoolroom. The schoolroom was over my father's
+bedroom, and his bedroom was over the study where he used to write, and
+they all looked to the garden and the sunsets."
+
+On his return from the American lecturing, in 1853, when he had already
+made a beginning of _The Newcomes_, he gave up the Young Street house and
+moved to 36 Onslow Square, South Kensington (or Brompton, as it was called
+at that period); and during the seven years of his residence there he
+finished _The Newcomes_, wrote _The Four Georges_, _The Virginians_, many
+of the _Roundabout Papers_, began the writing of _Philip_, and founded and
+entered upon his duties as editor of the _Cornhill Magazine_. The front
+room on the second floor was his study.
+
+[Illustration: LAMB BUILDING. TEMPLE. FROM THE CLOISTERS.]
+
+It was whilst Thackeray was living here that the quarrel occurred between
+him and Edmund Yates, who had contributed a smart personal article to
+_Town Talk_, on the 12th June 1858, in the course of which he wrote: "Mr.
+Thackeray is forty-six years old, though from the silvery whiteness of his
+hair he appears somewhat older. He is very tall, standing upwards of six
+feet two inches; and as he walks erect his height makes him conspicuous in
+every assembly. His face is bloodless, and not particularly expressive,
+but remarkable for the fracture of the bridge of the nose, the result of
+an accident in youth. He wears a small grey whisker, but otherwise is
+clean shaven. No one meeting him could fail to recognise in him a
+gentleman; his bearing is cold and uninviting, his style of conversation
+either openly cynical, or affectedly good-natured and benevolent; his
+_bonhomie_ is forced, his wit biting, his pride easily touched--but his
+appearance is invariably that of the cool, suave, well-bred gentleman who,
+whatever may be rankling within, suffers no surface display of his
+emotion." He went on to discuss Thackeray's work, and said unjustly of his
+lectures that in this country he flattered the aristocracy and in America
+he attacked it, the attacks being contained in _The Four Georges_, which
+"have been dead failures in England, though as literary compositions they
+are most excellent. Our own opinion is that his success is on the wane;
+his writings never were understood or appreciated even by the middle
+classes; the aristocracy have been alienated by his American onslaught on
+their body, and the educated and refined are not sufficiently numerous to
+constitute an audience; moreover, there is a want of heart in all he
+writes which is not to be balanced by the most brilliant sarcasm."
+
+The description of Thackeray's personal appearance here is perhaps rather
+impertinently frank, but it is clever and pictorially good; for the
+rest--we who know now what a generous, kindly, almost too sentimentally
+tender heart throbbed within that husk of cynicism and sarcasm in which he
+protectively enfolded it, know that Yates was writing of what he did not
+understand. Unfortunately, however, Thackeray took him seriously, and
+wrote a letter of dignified but angry protest to him, especially against
+the imputation of insincerity when he spoke good-naturedly in private.
+"Had your remarks been written by a person unknown to me, I should have
+noticed them no more than other calumnies; but as we have shaken hands
+more than once and met hitherto on friendly terms, I am obliged to take
+notice of articles which I consider to be not offensive and unfriendly
+merely, but slanderous and untrue. We meet at a club where, before you
+were born, I believe, I and other gentlemen have been in the habit of
+talking without any idea that our conversation would supply paragraphs for
+professional vendors of 'Literary Talk'; and I don't remember that out of
+the club I have ever exchanged six words with you."
+
+Yates replied, and "rather than have further correspondence with a writer
+of that character," Thackeray put the letters before the committee of the
+Garrick Club, asking them to decide whether the publication of such an
+article as Yates had written was not intolerable in a society of gentlemen
+and fatal to the comfort of the club. The committee resolved that Yates
+must either apologise or resign his membership. Then Dickens, thinking the
+committee were exceeding their powers, intervened on Yates's behalf; wrote
+to Thackeray in a conciliatory strain, and asked if any conference could
+be held between himself, as representing Yates, and some friend who should
+represent Thackeray, with a view to arriving at a friendly settlement of
+the unpleasantness. This apparently well-intentioned interference annoyed
+Thackeray; he curtly replied that he preferred to leave his interests in
+the hands of the club committee, and as a result he and Dickens were
+bitterly estranged. That the friendship between two such men should have
+been broken by such a petty incident was deplorable enough, but happily,
+only a few days before Thackeray's death, they chanced to meet in the
+lobby of the Athenaeum, and by a mutual impulse each offered his hand to
+the other, and the breach was healed.
+
+In 1862 Thackeray made his last change of address, and went to No. 2
+Palace Green, Kensington, a large and handsome house that he had built for
+himself. Some of his friends thought that in building it he had spent his
+money recklessly, but he did it in pursuance of the desire, that crops up
+so frequently in his correspondence, to make some provision for the future
+of his children; and when, after his death, it was sold for L2000 more
+than it had cost him, he was sufficiently justified. It was in this house
+that he finished _Philip_, and, having retired from the editing of the
+_Cornhill_, began to write _Denis Duval_, but died on Christmas Eve 1863,
+leaving it little more than well begun. When he was writing _Pendennis_ he
+had been near death's door, and ever since he had suffered from attacks of
+sickness almost every month. He was not well when his valet left him at
+eleven on the night of the 23rd December; about midnight his mother, whose
+bedroom was immediately over his, heard him walking about his room; at
+nine next morning, when his valet went in with his coffee, he saw him
+"lying on his back quite still, with his arms spread over the coverlet,
+but he took no notice, as he was accustomed to see his master thus after
+one of his attacks." Returning later, and finding the coffee untouched on
+the table beside the bed, he felt a sudden apprehension, and was horrified
+to discover that Thackeray was dead.
+
+Yates has told how the rumour of his death ran through the clubs and was
+soon all about the town, and of how, wherever it went, it left a cloud
+over everything that Christmas Eve; and I have just turned up one of my
+old _Cornhill_ volumes to read again what Dickens and Trollope wrote of
+him in the number for February 1864. "I saw him first," says Dickens,
+"nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to be the illustrator of
+my earliest book. I saw him last, shortly before Christmas, at the
+Athenaeum Club, when he told me that he had been in bed three days--that
+after these attacks he was troubled with cold shiverings, 'which quite
+took the power of work out of him'--and that he had it in his mind to try
+a new remedy, which he laughingly described. He was very cheerful, and
+looked very bright. In the night of that day week, he died." Dickens goes
+on to give little instances of his kindness, of his great and good nature;
+and then describes how he was found lying dead. "He was only in his
+fifty-third year; so young a man that the mother who blessed him in his
+first sleep blessed him in his last." And says Trollope, no one is
+thinking just then of the greatness of his work--"The fine grey head, the
+dear face with its gentle smile, the sweet, manly voice which we knew so
+well, with its few words of kindest greeting; the gait and manner, the
+personal presence of him whom it so delighted us to encounter in our
+casual comings and goings about the town--it is of these things, and of
+these things lost for ever, that we are now thinking. We think of them as
+treasures which are not only lost, but which can never be replaced. He who
+knew Thackeray will have a vacancy in his heart's inmost casket which must
+remain vacant till he dies. One loved him almost as one loves a woman,
+tenderly and with thoughtfulness--thinking of him when away from him as a
+source of joy which cannot be analysed, but is full of comfort. One who
+loved him, loved him thus because his heart was tender, as is the heart of
+a woman."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+DICKENS
+
+
+Thackeray's London was practically bounded on the east by the Temple, or
+perhaps by the Fleet Prison, which lay a little beyond the _Punch_ office;
+it took in the Strand, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and stretched out westward
+round Belgravia, Mayfair, Chiswick, and such selecter quarters of the
+town. But Dickens made the whole of London his province; you cannot go
+into any part of it but he has been there before you; if he did not at one
+time live there himself, some of his characters did. Go north through
+Somers Town and Camden Town: the homes of his boyhood were there in Bayham
+Street, in Little College Street, in the house that still stands at 13
+Johnson Street, from which he walked daily to school at the Wellington
+House Academy in Hampstead Road. He lived in Cleveland Street, Fitzroy
+Square, and in Fitzroy Street, and whilst his father was a prisoner in the
+Marshalsea for debt and he himself was labelling bottles at the blacking
+factory in Hungerford Market, he had lodgings south of London Bridge in
+Lant Street, which were the originals of the lodgings he gave to Bob
+Sawyer in later years when he came to write _Pickwick_. When he was turned
+twenty, and working as a Parliamentary reporter in the House of Commons,
+and beginning to contribute his _Sketches by Boz_ to the _Monthly
+Magazine_, he lived at 18 Bentinck Street, Cavendish Square. For a time he
+had lodgings in Buckingham Street, Strand, and afterwards lodged David
+Copperfield in the same rooms; he put up for a short time at Fulham before
+his marriage at St. Luke's Church, Chelsea, in April 1836, and after a
+brief honeymoon returned with his wife to the chambers in Furnival's Inn
+that he had rented since the previous year. He had three other London
+houses during his more prosperous days; then he quitted the town and went
+to live at Gad's Hill Place, where he died in 1870. But even after he was
+thus settled in Kent, he was continually up and down to the office of
+_Household Words_, in Wellington Street, Strand, and for some part of
+almost every year he occupied a succession of furnished houses round about
+Hyde Park.
+
+[Illustration: DICKENS. JOHNSON STREET. CAMDEN TOWN.]
+
+A few months before his marriage he had started to write _Pickwick_, the
+first monthly part of which appeared in March 1836. Before the end of next
+month, Seymour, the artist who was illustrating that serial, having
+committed suicide, Thackeray went up to the Furnival's Inn chambers with
+specimens of his drawings in the hope of becoming his successor, but
+Dickens rejected him in favour of Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz"), who also
+illustrated most of his subsequent books. He had published the _Sketches
+by Boz_ in two volumes, illustrated by Cruikshank, had written two
+dramatic pieces that were very successfully produced at the St. James's
+Theatre, had begun to edit _Bentley's Miscellany_, and was writing _Oliver
+Twist_ for it, before he left Furnival's Inn and established his small
+household of his wife and their first son and his wife's sister, Mary
+Hogarth, at 48 Doughty Street, Mecklenburgh Square.
+
+In later years Sala, who became one of Dickens's principal contributors to
+_Household Words_, used to live in Mecklenburgh Square, and at different
+times Sidney Smith, Shirley Brooks, and Edmund Yates all lived in Doughty
+Street (Shirley Brooks was born there, at No. 52), but Doughty Street's
+chief glory is that for the greater part of three years Dickens was the
+tenant of No. 48. George Henry Lewes called to see him there, and was
+perturbed to find that he had nothing on his bookshelves but three-volume
+novels and presentation copies of books of travel; clearly he was not much
+of a reader, and had never been a haunter of old bookstalls. But presently
+Dickens came in, says Lewes, "and his sunny presence quickly dispelled all
+misgivings. He was then, as to the last, a delightful companion, full of
+sagacity as well as animal spirits; but I came away more impressed with
+the fulness of life and energy than with any sense of distinction."
+
+Mrs. Cowden Clarke, who saw him in his Doughty Street days, speaks of him
+as "genial, bright, lively-spirited, pleasant-toned," and says he "entered
+into conversation with a grace and charm that made it feel perfectly
+natural to be chatting and laughing as if we had known each other from
+childhood." His eyes she describes as "large, dark blue, exquisitely
+shaped, fringed with magnificently long and thick lashes--they now swam in
+liquid, limpid suffusion, when tears started into them from a sense of
+humour or a sense of pathos, and now darted quick flashes of fire when
+some generous indignation at injustice, or some high-wrought feeling of
+admiration at magnanimity, or some sudden emotion of interest and
+excitement touched him. Swift-glancing, appreciative, rapidly observant,
+truly superb orbits they were, worthy of the other features in his manly,
+handsome face. The mouth was singularly mobile, full-lipped, well-shaped,
+and expressive; sensitive, nay restless, in its susceptibility to
+impressions that swayed him, or sentiment that moved him." Which tallies
+sufficiently with Carlyle's well-known description of him a few months
+later: "A fine little fellow, Boz, I think. Clear, blue, intelligent eyes,
+eyebrows that he arches amazingly; large, protrusive, rather loose mouth,
+a face of most extreme mobility which he shuttles about--eyebrows, eyes,
+mouth and all--in a very singular manner while speaking. Surmount this
+with a loose coil of common-coloured hair, and set it on a small, compact
+figure, very small, and dressed _a la_ D'Orsay rather than well--this is
+Pickwick. For the rest, a quiet, shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems
+to guess pretty well what he is and what others are." Forster sketches
+his face at this same period with "the quickness, keenness, and practical
+power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several feature,
+that seemed to tell so little of a student and writer of books, and so
+much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and motion
+flashed from every part of it." "It was as if made of steel," said Mrs.
+Carlyle; and "What a face is his to meet in a drawing-room," wrote Leigh
+Hunt. "It has the life and soul in it of fifty human beings."
+
+Dickens's weakness, then and all his life through, was for something too
+dazzling and ornate in the way of personal adornment. We hear of a green
+overcoat with red cuffs. "His dress was florid," says one who met him: "a
+satin cravat of the deepest blue relieved by embroideries, a green
+waistcoat with gold flowers, a dress coat with a velvet collar and satin
+facings, opulence of white cuff, rings in excess, made up a rather
+striking whole." And there is a story of how, when an artist friend of
+both was presented by somebody with a too gaudy length of material, Wilkie
+Collins advised him to "Give it to Dickens--he'll make a waistcoat out of
+it!"
+
+[Illustration: DICKENS' HOUSE. DOUGHTY STREET.]
+
+That jest belongs to a later year, but here you have a sufficiently vivid
+presentment of the man as he was when he could be seen passing in and out
+of the house in Doughty Street. He may have been dandified in appearance,
+but in all his other habits he was a hard and severely methodical worker.
+"His hours and days were spent by rule," we are told. "He rose at a
+certain time, he retired at another, and though no precisian, it was not
+often that his arrangements varied. His hours of writing were between
+breakfast and luncheon, and when there was any work to be done no
+temptation was sufficiently strong to cause it to be neglected. This order
+and regularity followed him through the day. His mind was essentially
+methodical, and in his long walks, in his recreations, in his labour, he
+was governed by rules laid down by himself, rules well studied beforehand
+and rarely departed from."
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS]
+
+His rise out of poverty and obscurity into affluence and fame makes a more
+wonderful story than that of how Byron woke one morning and found himself
+famous. For Dickens had everything against him. He was indifferently
+educated, had no social advantages, and no influential friends behind him.
+In 1835 he was an unknown young author, writing miscellaneous stories and
+sketches for the papers; by the end of 1836 everybody was reading and
+raving of and laughing over _Pickwick_, and he was the most talked-of
+novelist of the hour. "It sprang into a popularity that each part carried
+higher and higher," says Forster, "until people at this time talked of
+nothing else, tradesmen recommended their goods by using its name, and its
+sale, outstripping at a bound that of all the most famous books of the
+century, had reached an almost fabulous number." Judges, street boys, old
+and young in every class of life, devoured each month's number directly it
+appeared, and looked forward impatiently to the next one. Carlyle told
+Forster that "an archdeacon, with his own venerable lips, repeated to me
+the other night a strange, profane story of a solemn clergyman who had
+been administering ghostly consolation to a sick person; having finished,
+satisfactorily as he thought, and got out of the room, he heard the sick
+person ejaculate: 'Well, thank God, _Pickwick_ will be out in ten days,
+any way!'"
+
+Dickens's favourite recreation in those early years was riding, and
+frequently he would set out with Forster "at eleven in the morning for 'a
+fifteen mile ride out, ditto in, and lunch on the road,' with a wind-up of
+six o'clock dinner in Doughty Street." Other times he would send a note
+round to Forster, who lived at 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and if he could be
+persuaded to come, as generally he could, they would set out for a brisk
+walk to Hampstead and over the Heath, and have "a red-hot chop for dinner
+and a glass of good wine" at Jack Straw's Castle.
+
+His daughter Mamie was born in Doughty Street, and there the first great
+grief of his life completely overwhelmed him for a time, when his wife's
+young sister, Mary Hogarth, died at the age of seventeen. There are
+several letters from that address in 1838 concerning his progress with
+_Oliver Twist_. In one, when he could not work, he says he is "sitting
+patiently at home waiting for Oliver Twist, who has not yet arrived." In
+another he writes, "I worked pretty well last night--very well indeed; but
+although I did eleven close slips before half-past twelve I have four to
+write to close the chapter; and as I foolishly left them till this
+morning, have the steam to get up afresh." "Hard at work still," he writes
+to Forster in August 1838. "Nancy is no more. I showed what I had done to
+Kate last night, who is in an unspeakable '_state_'; from which and my own
+impression I augur well. When I have sent Sykes to the devil I must have
+yours." And "No, no," he wrote again to Forster next month, "don't, don't
+let us ride till to-morrow, not having yet disposed of the Jew, who is
+such an out-and-outer that I don't know what to make of him." Then one
+evening Forster went to Doughty Street and sat in Dickens's study and
+talked over the last chapter of _Oliver Twist_ with him, and remained
+reading there whilst he wrote it.
+
+From Doughty Street Dickens and "Phiz" set out together on that journey
+into Yorkshire to see the notorious school that was to become famous as
+Squeers's, and in due course there are letters from that street telling of
+the progress of _Nicholas Nickleby_. Early in 1839 the letters tell of how
+he is house-hunting, and in the intervals working "at racehorse speed" on
+_Barnaby Rudge_, and near the end of the year he moved to 1 Devonshire
+Terrace, at the corner of Marylebone Road.
+
+The Doughty Street house remains as he left it, but 1 Devonshire Terrace
+has been rather considerably altered. The new residence was such a much
+more imposing one than the other that absurd rumours got about that he was
+lapsing into extravagance and living beyond his income, and "I perfectly
+remember," writes Sala, "when he moved from his modest residence in
+Doughty Street to a much grander but still not very palatial house in
+Devonshire Terrace, an old gentleman calling one day upon my mother and
+telling her, with a grave countenance, that Dickens had pawned his plate,
+and had been waited upon for the last fortnight by bailiffs in livery." It
+was about this time, too, that the _Quarterly_ made its famous prediction
+that in the case of work such as Dickens was doing "an ephemeral
+popularity will be followed by an early oblivion." But there was no ground
+for any of these fears. His life was a triumphal procession; he went
+forward from victory to victory. At Devonshire Terrace he wrote most of
+_Barnaby Rudge_: and the prototype of Grip, Barnaby's raven, the special
+playmate of Dickens's children, died there; from here he went on his first
+visit to America, and on his return, with intervals of holiday at
+Broadstairs, in Cornwall, and in Italy, wrote the _American Notes_,
+_Martin Chuzzlewit_, _The Chimes_, _The Cricket on the Hearth_, _Pictures
+from Italy_, _Dombey and Son_, and commenced the writing of _David
+Copperfield_. Whilst he was here, too, he was for a brief space the first
+editor of the _Daily News_, and in March 1850 opened his Wellington Street
+office and started _Household Words_. Incidentally, he was taking an
+active share in a dozen or more public movements; acting as chairman at
+meetings and dinners, managing and playing in private theatricals, writing
+miscellaneous articles for his new magazine, and attending closely to its
+business organisation. Never was a more strenuous literary worker, or one
+who brought more enthusiasm to whatever he undertook.
+
+In the autumn of 1851, in the flowing and rising tide of his prosperity,
+he removed to the now vanished Tavistock House, in Tavistock Square, and
+in the next six years, before his removal to Gad's Hill, wrote _Bleak
+House_, _Hard Times_, and _Little Dorrit_, to say nothing of the numerous
+short stories and articles he contributed to _Household Words_, and began
+to give those public readings from his books that were in his last decade
+to occupy so much of his time, add so enormously to his income and his
+personal popularity, and play so sinister a part in the breaking down of
+his health and the shortening of his career.
+
+Writing immediately after Dickens's death, Sala said that twenty years ago
+the face and form of Sir Robert Peel were familiar to almost everybody who
+passed him in the street, and "there were as few last week who would have
+been unable to point out the famous novelist, with his thought-lined face,
+his grizzled beard, his wondrous searching eyes, his bluff presence and
+swinging gait as, head aloft, he strode, now through crowded streets,
+looking seemingly neither to the right nor the left, but of a surety
+looking at and into everything--now at the myriad aspects of London life,
+the ever-changing raree-show, the endless roundabout, the infinite
+kaleidoscope of wealth and pauperism, of happiness and misery, of good and
+evil in this Babylon--now over the pleasant meads and breezy downs which
+stretched round his modest Kentish demesne hard by the hoary tower of
+Rochester.... Who had not heard him read, and who had not seen his
+photographs in the shop windows? The omnibus conductors knew him, the
+street boys knew him; and perhaps the locality where his recognition would
+have been least frequent--for all that he was a member of the Athenaeum
+Club--was Pall Mall. Elsewhere he would make his appearance in the oddest
+places, and in the most inclement weather: in Ratcliff Highway, on
+Haverstock Hill, on Camberwell Green, in Gray's Inn Lane, in the
+Wandsworth Road, at Hammersmith Broadway, in Norton Folgate, and at Kensal
+New Town.... His carriage was remarkably upright, his mien almost
+aggressive in its confidence--a bronzed, weatherworn, hardy man, with
+somewhat of a seaman's air about him." London folks would draw aside, he
+continues, "as the great writer--who seemed always to be walking a match
+against Thought--strode on, and, looking after him, say, 'There goes
+Charles Dickens!' The towering stature, the snowy locks, the glistening
+spectacles, the listless, slouching port, as that of a tired giant, of
+William Makepeace Thackeray were familiar enough likewise but,
+comparatively speaking, only to a select few. He belonged to Clubland, and
+was only to be seen sauntering there or in West End squares, or on his
+road to his beloved Kensington.... Thackeray in Houndsditch, Thackeray in
+Bethnal Green or at Camden Town, would have appeared anomalous ... but
+Charles Dickens, when in town, was ubiquitous."
+
+There are statues in London of many smaller men, of many who mean little
+or nothing in particular to London, but there is none to Dickens, and
+perhaps he needs none. Little critics may decry him, but it makes no
+difference, it takes nothing from his immortality. "It is fatuous," as
+Trollope said of his work, "to condemn that as deficient in art which has
+been so full of art as to captivate all men." And to the thousands of us
+who know the people and the world that he created he is still ubiquitous
+in London here, even though he has his place for ever, as Swinburne says,
+among the stars and suns that we behold not:
+
+  "Where stars and suns that we behold not burn,
+     Higher even than here, though highest was here thy place,
+       Love sees thy spirit laugh and speak and shine
+   With Shakespeare and the soft bright soul of Sterne,
+     And Fielding's kindliest might and Goldsmith's grace;
+       Scarce one more loved or worthier love than thine."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+When I was writing of what remains to us of the London of Shakespeare, I
+might have mentioned the four-century-old gateway of Lincoln's Inn, in
+Chancery Lane, that Ben Jonson helped to build, and close by which, at 24
+Old Buildings, Cromwell's secretary, John Thurloe, lived in 1654; and
+although in my first chapter I gave a fairly lengthy list of famous
+authors and artists who were Cockneys by birth, I by no means made it so
+long as I could have done. Hablot K. Browne, otherwise "Phiz," the chief
+of Dickens's artists, was born in Kennington, and lived for eight years,
+towards the close of his career, at 99 Ladbroke Grove Road; Lord Lytton,
+whom Tennyson unkindly described as "the padded man that wears the stays,"
+and who was for a time a more popular novelist than either Dickens or
+Thackeray, was born at 31 Baker Street, and lived in after years at 12
+Grosvenor Square, and at 36 Hertford Street; Gibbon was born at Putney,
+and lived for some years at 7 Bentinck Street, which he said was "the best
+house in the world"; John Leech was born over his father's coffee-shop in
+Ludgate Hill, and lived when he had risen to fame at 32 Brunswick Square,
+and passed the last years of his life at 6 The Terrace, Kensington; and
+one who I confess interests me at least as much as any of these,
+Douglas Jerrold, was born in Greek Street, Soho, lived as a boy at Broad
+Court, in the same neighbourhood, and afterwards shifted about into
+half-a-dozen different parts of London, and died in 1857 at Kilburn
+Priory, on the skirts of St. John's Wood. West Lodge, his house at Lower
+Putney Common, still stands much as it was when he occupied it, with his
+mulberry tree still growing in that garden round which, one memorable
+summer afternoon, he and Dickens, Forster, Maclise, and Macready gave each
+other "backs," and played a joyously undignified game of leapfrog. I don't
+know whether anybody reads _Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures_ now, but
+everybody read them and laughed over them when they were new, and
+Jerrold's best jokes and witticisms are much too well known to leave me an
+excuse for repeating any of them here. For all his bitter tongue, he was
+kind, generous, sensitive, afire with a fine scorn of wrong, injustice,
+and every variety of social humbug and snobbery. "A small
+delicately-formed, bent man," is Edmund Yates's recollection of him, "with
+long grey hair combed back from his forehead, with grey eyes deep-set
+under penthouse brows, and a way, just as the inspiration seized him, of
+dangling a double-eyeglass which hung round his neck by a broad black
+ribbon."
+
+[Illustration: THURLOE'S LODGINGS. 24 OLD SQUARE. LINCOLN'S INN.]
+
+Browning, who was born at Hanover Cottage, Southampton Street, Camberwell,
+in 1812, lived at De Vere Gardens, and at 19 Warwick Crescent. Removing
+from 74 Gloucester Place in 1842, Elizabeth Barrett and her autocratic
+father went to 50 Wimpole Street, and calling there with a friend in 1845,
+Robert Browning was introduced to her. It was from and to this house that
+so many of those wonderful love-letters of theirs were written, and little
+more than a year after their first meeting, her father stubbornly refusing
+his consent to their union, she stole out by this sedate and sombre door
+one autumn morning to join her waiting lover, and they were quietly and
+clandestinely married at the old church round the corner in Marylebone
+Road--the same church in which, in the same year, Dickens, then living at
+Devonshire House and within sight of it, married Mr. Dombey, with Captain
+Cuttle looking on at the ceremony from the gallery.
+
+At 82 Wimpole Street Wilkie Collins died; and at 67, lived Henry Hallam,
+the historian, and his son Arthur, the friend of Tennyson, who often
+visited him there, and has enshrined his memory for ever in his _In
+Memoriam_; where, too, he pictures this house and this street:
+
+  "Dark house, by which once more I stand
+     Here in the long unlovely street,
+     Doors, where my heart was used to beat
+   So quickly, waiting for a hand.
+
+   A hand that can be clasped no more--
+     Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
+     And like a guilty thing I creep
+   At earliest morning to the door.
+
+   He is not here; but far away
+     The noise of life begins again,
+     And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
+   On the bald street breaks the blank day."
+
+Theodore Hook, another Cockney, was born in Charlotte Street, Bedford
+Square; Captain Marryat, another, in Great George Street, Westminster,
+and whilst he was writing the most famous of his books he lived at 8 Duke
+Street, St. James's, and at Sussex Lodge, in the Fulham Road. Ruskin, who,
+like Browning, is included in my earlier list of Cockneys, was born at 54
+Hunter Street, and made his home for many years at 163 Denmark Hill, both
+of which houses still survive him.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN MARRYAT. DUKE STREET. ST. JAMES.]
+
+Benjamin Franklin lived at 7 Craven Street, Strand; before he rented a
+house in London after Johnson's death, Boswell had lodgings, on his annual
+visits to town, in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, in Conduit Street, Regent
+Street, and in Old Bond Street; where Sterne dwelt before him and Gibbon
+after him, and at 27A, Harrison Ainsworth, later than them all; but
+Ainsworth's more notable residence, where he lived when he was in the full
+glory of his enormous popularity, is Kensal House, out in the
+no-longer-rural district of Kensal Green.
+
+[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S HOUSE. CRAVEN STREET.]
+
+At 19 Albert Gate, Sloane Street, lived Charles Reade, who was nearly all
+his life quarrelling with his critics and fighting against legal
+injustices with an almost ungovernable fury, and yet David Christie Murray
+said he was one of the four men he had met who were "distinguished by that
+splendid urbanity of manner which was once thought to express the acme of
+high breeding.... A beautiful, stately cordiality commonly marked his
+social manner, but he could be moved to a towering rage by an act of
+meanness, treachery, or oppression; and in his public correspondence he
+was sometimes downright vitriolic." Anthony Trollope died at 34 Welbeck
+Street; and Lord Macaulay at Holly Lodge on Campden Hill. George
+Cruikshank lived in the queer, dull-looking little house that still
+remains at 263 Hampstead Road, and from that address put forth his
+groundless claims to being the originator of Ainsworth's novels, _Jack
+Sheppard_ and _The Miser's Daughter_, and Dickens's _Oliver Twist_.
+Ainsworth was still living, and strenuously denied his assertions; Dickens
+was dead, but there existed a letter of his about the illustrations to his
+book that sufficiently proved that the story was not written round
+Cruickshank's drawings, as the aged artist seemed to have persuaded
+himself it was. A greater artist than Cruickshank (and another Cockney, by
+the way) was born in Cumberland Market, near Regent's Park, and died in a
+sponging-house in Eyre Street Hill, Clerkenwell Road, in 1804. That was
+George Morland. Two years before his death he went with his wife and put
+up at the Bull Inn, at Highgate, which was kept by a former acquaintance
+of his. He is supposed to have utilised as a studio the large room with
+three bay windows that runs above the bar the full width of the building.
+He entertained Gainsborough and Romney and other contemporary artists
+there, but within a few months had had a fierce quarrel with the landlord
+and returned to lodge with his brother in Dean Street, Soho. He was by
+then showing the effects of his reckless dissipations, and looked
+"besotted and squalid and cadaverous; hanging cheeks and pinched nose,
+contracted nostrils, bleared and bloodshot eyes, swelled legs, a palsied
+hand, and tremulous voice bespeaking the ruin of what had once been the
+soundest of frames." Drunk or sober, he worked rapidly and with unfailing
+mastery, but he was generally cheated by those around him of the due
+reward of his labours. Going on a short holiday to Brighton, he wrote
+giving his brother this list of what he had drunk in a single day:
+"Hollands gin, rum and milk--before breakfast. Coffee--for breakfast.
+Hollands, porter, shrub, ale, Hollands, port wine and ginger, bottled
+ale--these before dinner. Port wine at dinner. Porter, bottled porter,
+punch, porter, ale, opium and water. Port wine at supper. Gin, shrub, and
+rum on going to bed." At the bottom of the list he sketched a tombstone
+bearing a skull and crossbones, and by way of epitaph: "Here lies a
+drunken dog." And debts and duns and death in the sponging-house were the
+inevitable end of it.
+
+[Illustration: CRUIKSHANK. 263 HAMPSTEAD ROAD.]
+
+Lady Blessington held her brilliant salon at 8 Seamore Place, Mayfair,
+before in 1836 she removed to the more noted Gore House, Kensington, and
+welcomed to her splendid drawing-rooms Byron, Lytton, Disraeli, Landor,
+Marryat, Dickens, Thackeray, Sydney Smith, Maclise, Hook, and all the
+greatest men of the day in literature, art, politics, and society, till in
+1849 she was overwhelmed with financial embarrassments and fled to Paris,
+where she died the year after. Gore House has vanished from its place
+long since, and the Albert Hall more than covers the site of it. But
+Holland House, which was equally or more celebrated for its magnificent
+social gatherings in the first half of last century and earlier, still
+holds its ground. Addison lived there after his marriage to the Countess
+of Warwick in 1716, and from his bedroom there, in his last hours, sent
+for his dissipated stepson in order that he might see "how a Christian can
+die."
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING]
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE MORLAND. THE "BULL INN" HIGHGATE.]
+
+Perhaps more interesting than either of these, from a literary standpoint,
+is the house of Samuel Rogers, 22 St. James's Place, overlooking the Green
+Park. You can scarcely open the memoirs of any man of letters of his time,
+but you may read some account of a breakfast or a dinner at Rogers's.
+"What a delightful house it is!" says Macaulay. "It looks out on the Green
+Park just at the most pleasant point. The furniture has been selected with
+a delicacy of taste quite unique.... In the drawing-room the
+chimney-pieces are carved by Flaxman into the most beautiful Grecian
+forms. The bookcase is painted by Stothard, in his very best manner, with
+groups from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Boccaccio. The pictures are not
+numerous, but every one is excellent. The most remarkable objects in the
+dining-room are, I think, a cast of Pope, taken after death by Roubiliac;
+a noble model in terra-cotta by Michael Angelo, from which he afterwards
+made one of his finest statues, that of Lorenzo de Medici; and, lastly, a
+mahogany table on which stands an antique vase. When Chantrey dined with
+Rogers some time ago he took particular notice of the vase and the table
+on which it stands, and asked Rogers who made the table. 'A common
+carpenter,' said Rogers. 'Do you remember the making of it?' said
+Chantrey. 'Certainly,' said Rogers, in some surprise; 'I was in the room
+while it was finished with the chisel, and gave the workman directions
+about placing it.' 'Yes,' said Chantrey, 'I was the carpenter.'" Byron,
+who was a guest at Holland House and at Lady Blessington's, was a frequent
+guest at Rogers's table also. It was Rogers who introduced him to Miss
+Milbanke, the unfortunate lady who was to become his wife; and Byron seems
+by turns to have admired him, disliked him, and looked upon him with a
+sort of laughing contempt. "When Sheridan was on his deathbed," he writes,
+"Rogers aided him with purse and person: this was particularly kind in
+Rogers, who always spoke ill of Sheridan (to me, at least); but indeed he
+does that of everybody. Rogers is the reverse of the line 'The best good
+man with the worst-natured Muse,' being 'The worst good man with the
+best-natured Muse.' His Muse being all sentiment and sago, while he
+himself is a venomous talker. I say 'worst good man,' because he is
+(perhaps) a good man--at least he does good now and then, as well he may,
+to purchase himself a shilling's worth of Salvation for his Slanders. They
+are so _little_, too--small talk, and old womanny; and he is malignant
+too, and envious."
+
+[Illustration: ROGERS. ST. JAMES'S PLACE. FROM GREEN PARK.]
+
+Rogers had a fine head, a distinguished manner, a bland, silky way of
+saying the most cutting and cynical things. He was not so much a poet as a
+banker of a poetical temperament. His poetry will presently be forgotten,
+but his breakfasts and his dinners will be remembered because he lived to
+be well over ninety, was a very wealthy man of taste, and had the will and
+the means to play the generous host to some three generations of the
+wisest, wittiest, greatest men of his era, and several of them said
+brighter and better things in his dining and drawing-rooms than he ever
+wrote in his books. He covered such a long span of time that he could
+entertain Sheridan, who was born in 1751, and Dickens, who died in 1870.
+Many of the same glorious company had a meeting-place also until a more
+recent day at Bath House, Mayfair, where Lady Ashburton, the great friend
+of the Carlyles, held famous receptions, of which Carlyle himself and the
+Brookfields have left us reminiscences. And the invaluable Allingham has
+one or two notes about her in his _Diary_; one dated 5th November 1875, in
+which he says Carlyle passed his house "about four to-day. I overtook him
+in the Fulham Road, and walked with him to Lady Ashburton's door at
+Knightsbridge. He said, 'Browning in his young days wore a turn-down shirt
+collar with a ribbon for a necktie, and a green coat. I first met him one
+evening at Leigh Hunt's, a modest youth, with a good strong face and a
+head of dark hair. He said little, but what he said was good.'" Possibly
+the talk fell upon him because Browning was among the guests he was to
+meet that day at Lady Ashburton's.
+
+[Illustration: BORROW'S HOUSE. HEREFORD SQUARE.]
+
+William Morris and Burne Jones lived and worked together at 17 Red Lion
+Square; Steele used to live in Bloomsbury Square, where later Disraeli and
+his father lived, at No. 5. George Borrow lived at 23 Hereford Square,
+South Kensington. Berkeley Square has a peculiar attraction for me, less
+because Horace Walpole had his home at 42, than because Colley Cibber
+dwelt as a very old man at No. 20. In the same way I am not so much drawn
+to Gower Street by the fact that in a greatly altered house there Darwin
+used to live, as I am to that shabby Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road,
+where Albert Smith had a house at which Sala once visited him. Walpole and
+Darwin are, of course, incomparably greater men than Cibber and Albert
+Smith, but these last two have a curious fascination for me. I read
+Smith's _Christopher Tadpole_ and _The Scattergood Family_ when I was a
+boy, and his figure flits elusively in the background of Dickens's
+reputation, wrapped in a very characteristic mid-Victorian bohemianism,
+and, without precisely knowing why, I have taken a sort of liking to him.
+Sala says he was a kind, cheery little man, who when he was at work at
+home wore a blue blouse. "I recall him," he says, "as a sturdy-looking,
+broad-shouldered, short-necked man, with grey eyes and flowing locks of
+light brown, and large side-whiskers; later in life he wore a beard. His
+voice was a high treble." His study in Percy Street was littered always
+with French novels, dolls, pipes, cheap jewellery, cakes of soap made in
+the image of fruit, minature Swiss chalets, fancy costumes, and such a
+miscellany of odds and ends that it had the appearance of an old curiosity
+shop. As for Cibber, I began by feeling contempt for him, because of the
+scorn Pope pours on him in _The Dunciad_, and the character for dulness
+that was imposed upon him by that savage satirist and his host of
+imitators. But when I read some of Cibber's comedies (such as _The
+Careless Husband_, and _Love Makes a Man_) I found them amusing and clever
+in their fashion, certainly not dull, and when I dropped one day into the
+National Portrait Gallery and saw that coloured bust of him under a glass
+case and leering through the glass eyes that have been fitted into his
+head--I succumbed, and acquired a sneaking regard for the gay old coxcomb
+that is not yet beginning to cool. You cannot read his plays and his
+delightful _Apology_ for his Life without getting interested in him; and
+then if you go and look at that bust you will feel that you know the sly,
+witty, shrewd, ruddy-visaged, not over clean, furtive, leery old rascal as
+intimately as if you had been acquainted with him in the flesh.
+
+But if one set out to write of the homes and haunts of these minor
+celebrities this book would be endless; moreover, many amongst them that
+have some peculiar attraction for me might have no interest for any one
+else; and many that for special reasons mean a great deal to you might
+mean nothing at all to me. So, as the wiser course, I have, in the main,
+limited my survey to the houses of men and women who are considerable
+enough to be known, more or less, by every one who has even a nodding
+acquaintance with literature, and to that extent my chronicle is at an
+end.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Addison, Joseph, 3, 28, 150, 339
+
+  Addison Bridge Place, 199, 203
+
+  Adelphi Terrace, 114, 223, 233
+
+  Ainsworth, W. Harrison, 238, 334, 337
+
+  Akenside, Mark, 3, 28, 150
+
+  Albany, The, 199
+
+  Albemarle Street, 181
+
+  Albert Gate, Sloane Street, 334
+
+  Albion Street, 296
+
+  Aldermanbury, 19
+
+  Aldersgate Street, 12, 17, 19
+
+  Aldford Street, 178, 181
+
+  Aldgate, 4
+
+  Allingham, William, 259, 262, 276, 280, 281, 285, 343, 344
+
+  Ampton Street, 275
+
+  Arbuthnot, John, 31, 150
+
+  Archer, Thomas, 2
+
+  Argyll Place, 167
+
+  ---- Street, 167
+
+  Arlington Road, 245
+
+  Ashburton, Lady, 343, 344
+
+  Atterbury, Francis, 31
+
+  Austin, Alfred, 253
+
+  Avenue Road, 245
+
+  Ayrton, William, 207
+
+
+  Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam), 6
+
+  Baillie, Joanna, 145, 194
+
+  Baker Street, 328
+
+  Balmanno, Mary, 233
+
+  Barbauld, Mrs., 146, 220
+
+  Barber, Francis, 102
+
+  Barham, R. H., 238
+
+  Barrett, Elizabeth, 331, 332
+
+  Bartholomew Close, 19, 38, 50
+
+  Barton, Bernard, 219, 222, 226
+
+  Basire, James, 118, 120
+
+  Bath House, Mayfair, 343
+
+  Bathurst, Dr., 94
+
+  Battersea, 26-35, 260
+
+  Bayham Street, 314
+
+  Beauclerk, Topham, 63, 114
+
+  Beaumont, Francis, 20
+
+  Bellott, Stephen, 14, 15, 16
+
+  Bennet Street, 194
+
+  Bentinck Street, 315, 328
+
+  Berkeley Square, 344
+
+  Besant, Sir Walter, 146
+
+  Bird-in-Hand Court, Cheapside, 23
+
+  Bishopsgate, 10
+
+  Blackstone, Sir William, 80
+
+  Blake, William, 9, 118-139, 271
+
+  Blandford Square, 245
+
+  Blessington, Lady, 338
+
+  Bloomfield, Robert, 3
+
+  Bloomsbury Square, 344
+
+  Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, 26-35, 106
+
+  Bolingbroke House, 26-35
+
+  Bolt Court, 90, 117
+
+  Bond Street, 265
+
+  Boner, Charles, 279
+
+  Borrow, George, 344
+
+  Boswell, James, 59, 71, 79, 81, 82, 85, 86, 93-117, 118, 334
+
+  Bouverie Street, 181
+
+  Bow Lane, 19
+
+  ---- Street, 90
+
+  Brawne, Fanny, 154, 156, 160, 163, 164, 165
+
+  Bread Street, Cheapside, 4, 19
+
+  Broad Street, Soho, 9, 118, 119, 130, 167
+
+  Bronte, Charlotte, 303
+
+  Brooks, Shirley, 316
+
+  Brown, Charles Armitage, 154, 164, 166
+
+  Browne, Hablot K. ("Phiz"), 316, 323, 328
+
+  Browne, Sir Thomas, 4
+
+  Browning, Robert, 9, 259, 281, 331, 332, 344
+
+  Brunswick Square, 328
+
+  Buckingham Street, Euston Road, 135
+
+  ---- ---- Strand, 200, 315
+
+  Bunhill Row, 19
+
+  Burbage, Richard, 13
+
+  Burke, Edmund, 59, 88
+
+  Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 76, 344
+
+  Burney, Dr. Charles, 56, 106, 114
+
+  ---- Fanny, 56
+
+  Burns, Robert, 194, 198
+
+  Butts, Thomas, 124
+
+  Byron, Lord, 9, 67, 68, 155, 167, 193-199, 200, 203, 286, 287, 321, 338,
+        340
+
+
+  Cade, Jack, 10
+
+  Camberwell, 236
+
+  Campbell, Thomas, 200
+
+  Campden Hill, 334
+
+  Cannon Street, 10, 18
+
+  Canonbury Tower, 76
+
+  Carew, Thomas, 20
+
+  Carlyle, Mrs., 279, 285, 286, 292, 318
+
+  ---- Thomas, 96, 198, 205, 210, 262, 263, 275-286, 291, 292, 293, 294,
+        296, 303, 304, 317, 321, 343, 344
+
+  Carter Lane, 12
+
+  Cary, Rev. H. F., 51
+
+  Castle Street, Cavendish Square, 89
+
+  ---- ---- Leicester Square, 63
+
+  Cattermole, George, 238
+
+  Cave, Edward, 88, 102
+
+  Chancery Lane, 4, 328
+
+  Charing Cross, 3, 4, 224
+
+  Charlotte Street, 144, 332
+
+  Charterhouse, 94, 188, 281, 296
+
+  Chaucer, Geoffrey, 4
+
+  Cheapside, 2, 4, 5, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24
+
+  Chelsea, 254, 255-293
+
+  Cheshire Cheese, the, 108
+
+  Chesterfield, Lord, 103-105
+
+  Chesterton, G. K., 128
+
+  Cheyne Row, 275-286
+
+  Cheyne Walk, 254, 255, 256-265, 273-275
+
+  Chiswick, 36-51
+
+  Christ's Hospital, 200
+
+  Churchill, Charles, 6, 44, 47, 48
+
+  Cibber, Colley, 28, 344, 347
+
+  Clarke, Cowden, 156, 240
+
+  ---- Mrs. Cowden, 317
+
+  Cleveland Street, 314
+
+  Clifford's Inn, 220
+
+  Cloth Fair, 10
+
+  Cobbett, William, 200
+
+  Colebrook Row, 219, 220, 221, 223, 224
+
+  Coleridge, S. T., 156, 199-206, 208, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 223
+
+  College Street, Kentish Town, 163
+
+  Collins, Wilkie, 146, 318, 332
+
+  Colman, George, 67
+
+  Colvin, Sir Sidney, 150
+
+  Condell, Henry, 19
+
+  Conduit Street, Regent Street, 334
+
+  Congreve, William, 150
+
+  Constable, John, 143-145, 153
+
+  Cornhill, 1, 2, 6
+
+  Cornwall, Barry, 216, 238
+
+  Coryat, Thomas, 19
+
+  Covent Garden, 41, 109, 135, 200, 216, 217, 218
+
+  Cowley, Abraham, 4
+
+  Cranbourne Street, 38
+
+  Craven Street, Strand, 50, 334
+
+  Cripplegate, 6, 19
+
+  Cross, John, 254
+
+  Cruikshank, George, 238, 316, 334, 337
+
+  Cumberland Market, 337
+
+  Cunningham, Allan, 43, 59
+
+
+  Darwin, Charles, 344
+
+  Davies, Thomas, 109, 110, 113
+
+  Day, Thomas, 187-193
+
+  Dean Street, 41, 167, 338
+
+  Defoe, Daniel, 6
+
+  Dekker, Thomas, 19
+
+  Denmark Hill, 334
+
+  Dennis, John, 32, 220
+
+  De Quincey, Thomas, 168-177, 206
+
+  De Stael, Madame, 167
+
+  De Vere Gardens, 331
+
+  Devereux Court, 3
+
+  Devil Tavern, 19, 108
+
+  Devonshire Terrace, 239, 323, 332
+
+  Dibdin, Charles, 245
+
+  Dickens, Charles, 3, 146, 149, 153, 238, 239, 250, 286, 287, 294, 300,
+        311, 312, 313, 314-327, 328, 331, 332, 334, 337, 338, 343, 344
+
+  ---- Mrs., 303, 322
+
+  Dilke, Wentworth, 154, 156
+
+  Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield), 167, 338, 344
+
+  ---- Isaac, 344
+
+  Dobson, Austin, 294
+
+  Dodsley, Robert, 96
+
+  Donne, Dr. John, 4, 19
+
+  Doughty Street, 316, 317, 318, 322, 323
+
+  Dowden, Dr., 181
+
+  Down Street, 280
+
+  Dryden, John, 167
+
+  Duke Street, 333
+
+  Du Maurier, George, 146
+
+  Dyer, George, 220, 232
+
+
+  East Smithfield, 4
+
+  Edmonton, 8, 225, 226-232
+
+  Edwardes Square, 293
+
+  Eliot, George, 245-254, 255
+
+  Elm Tree Road, 233, 236, 238, 239, 240
+
+  Ely Place, 10
+
+  Emerson, R. W., 280, 281
+
+  Enfield, 223, 225, 226
+
+  Exeter Street, 89
+
+
+  Felpham, 127, 136
+
+  Fetter Lane, 90
+
+  Fielding, Henry, 43, 71, 72
+
+  Fields, Ticknor, 303
+
+  Finchley Road, 237, 242
+
+  Fitzgerald, Edward, 142, 153, 303, 305
+
+  ---- Percy, 89
+
+  Fitzosbert, William, 1
+
+  Fitzroy Square, 273
+
+  ---- Street, 314
+
+  Flaxman, John, 120-139, 140, 167
+
+  Fleet Street, 4, 8, 89, 108, 109, 181
+
+  Fleming, Mrs., 76, 79
+
+  Fletcher, John, 4, 18, 20
+
+  Forster, John, 87, 149, 238, 294, 295, 318, 321, 322, 323, 331
+
+  Fountain Court, 131, 134
+
+  Franklin, Benjamin, 49, 334
+
+  Friday Street, 18, 20
+
+  Frith Street, 167, 181, 185
+
+  Froude, J. A., 279
+
+  Fulham Road, 266, 333
+
+  Fuller, Thomas, 20
+
+  Furnival's Inn, 315, 316
+
+
+  Gad's Hill Place, 315, 324
+
+  Gainsborough, Thomas, 64, 67, 130, 153, 337
+
+  Gamble, Ellis, 38, 39
+
+  Garrick, David, 43, 48, 50, 59, 96, 103, 110, 114, 153
+
+  ---- Mrs., 114
+
+  Garth, Sir Samuel, 31
+
+  Gay, John, 31, 150
+
+  Gerrard Street, 42, 59, 167
+
+  Gibbon, Edward, 328
+
+  Gilchrist, Alexander, 123, 124, 131
+
+  Gilman, Mr., 156, 223
+
+  Globe Theatre, 12, 13, 18, 19
+
+  Gloucester Place, 331
+
+  Godwin, Mary, 181
+
+  ---- William, 216
+
+  Goldsmith, Oliver, 59, 63, 68, 71, 76, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88,
+        153
+
+  Gore House, Kensington, 338
+
+  Gough Square, 90, 95-109
+
+  Gower, John, 18
+
+  Gower Street, 344
+
+  Gray, Thomas, 6
+
+  Gray's Inn, 90
+
+  Great Coram Street, 296
+
+  ---- George Street, 333
+
+  ---- Newport Street, 56
+
+  ---- Portland Street, 117
+
+  ---- Queen Street, 117, 118
+
+  Greaves, Walter, 260, 262, 273
+
+  Greek Street, 168-177
+
+  Green Street, 120
+
+  Greene, Robert, 13
+
+  Grosvenor Square, 328
+
+
+  Half Moon Street, 334
+
+  Hall, S. C., 185
+
+  Hallam, Arthur, 332
+
+  ---- Henry, 332
+
+  Hamilton, Lady, 142
+
+  ---- Sir William, 275
+
+  Hammersmith, 200, 271, 294
+
+  Hampstead, 140-166
+
+  Hampstead Road, 314, 334
+
+  Hannay, James, 300
+
+  Harley Street, 271
+
+  Harmsworth, Cecil, 90
+
+  Harry, M. Gerard, 266
+
+  Hawkesworth, Dr. John, 94, 102, 103
+
+  Hawkins, Sir John, 63, 93, 94, 108
+
+  Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 294
+
+  Haydon, Benjamin, 135, 156, 158, 181, 210
+
+  Hayley, William, 124, 134, 140, 142
+
+  Hazlitt, Mrs., 220
+
+  ---- William, 39, 156, 167, 181-186, 200, 203, 204, 205, 207, 216
+
+  Heminge, John, 19
+
+  Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, 123-124
+
+  Hereford Square, 344
+
+  Herrick, Robert, 5
+
+  Hertford Street, 328
+
+  Highgate, 156, 157, 199, 223, 259, 337
+
+  Hind, Lewis, 271
+
+  Hobbes, Thomas, 3
+
+  Hogarth, Mary, 322
+
+  ---- Mrs., 50-51
+
+  ---- William, 36-51, 56, 63, 68, 79, 150
+
+  Hogg, T. J., 177
+
+  Holborn, 90, 226
+
+  Holcroft, Thomas, 216
+
+  Holland House, 339
+
+  Holles Street, 9, 193
+
+  Hone, William, 158, 223
+
+  Hood, Thomas, 9, 223, 233, 235-245
+
+  Hook, Theodore, 332, 338
+
+  Hungerford Market, 314
+
+  Hunt, Holman, 9
+
+  ---- Leigh, 68, 153, 155, 156, 158, 210, 285, 286-295, 318, 344
+
+  Hunter Street, 334
+
+
+  Irving, Washington, 38
+
+  Islington, 76, 79, 219-221
+
+  Isola, Emma, 227, 228, 231
+
+  Ivy Lane, 94, 108
+
+
+  Jeffrey, Francis, 275
+
+  Jerrold, Douglas, 239, 294, 331
+
+  Johnson, Mrs., 97, 98, 101
+
+  ---- Samuel, 3, 33, 43, 50, 52, 59, 60, 63, 68, 71, 72, 79, 81, 82, 86,
+        88, 89-117, 275
+
+  Johnson Street, 314
+
+  Johnson's Court, 90
+
+  Jonson, Ben, 4, 19, 20
+
+
+  Keats, John, 6, 23, 153-166
+
+  Kemble, John, 167
+
+  Kemp, William, 13
+
+  Kensal Green, 334
+
+  Kensington, 293, 296, 299, 303-306, 311, 328, 338, 339
+
+  ---- Gardens, 300
+
+  Kilburn Priory, 331
+
+  King Street, Covent Garden, 200
+
+  Kingsley, Charles, 255
+
+  ---- Henry, 255
+
+  Kit-Kat Club, 150
+
+  Knight, Joseph, 256
+
+
+  Ladbroke Grove Road, 328
+
+  Lamb, Charles, 6, 9, 39, 40, 51, 80, 86, 130, 156, 186, 200, 206,
+        207-232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 240, 241, 287
+
+  ---- Mary, 209, 213, 215, 216, 220, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 231, 233,
+        234
+
+  Landor, Walter Savage, 208, 338
+
+  Landseer, Sir Edwin, 238
+
+  Langland, John, 1
+
+  Langton, Bennet, 63, 72, 103
+
+  Lant Street, 314
+
+  Leathersellers' Buildings, 3
+
+  Lecky, Mrs., 281
+
+  Leech, John, 328
+
+  Leicester Square, 38, 39, 49, 52, 59, 60, 63, 81, 86, 88, 117, 120
+
+  Lennox, Mrs., 108
+
+  Levett, Robert, 102, 103
+
+  Lewes, George Henry, 249, 253, 316
+
+  Lincoln's Inn Fields, 149, 322
+
+  Little College Street, 314
+
+  ---- Queen Street, 212
+
+  Lloyd, Charles, 215
+
+  Locke, John, 207
+
+  Lombard Street, 6
+
+  London Bridge, 24
+
+  ---- Stone, 10
+
+  Loudon Road, 245
+
+  Ludgate Hill, 328
+
+  Lytton, Lord, 242, 250, 328, 338
+
+
+  Macaulay, Lord, 334, 340
+
+  Maclise, Daniel, 149, 239, 255, 331, 338
+
+  Macready, W. C., 331
+
+  Maiden Lane, 271
+
+  Manning, Thomas, 211
+
+  Marchmont Street, 181
+
+  Marryat, Captain, 238, 333, 338
+
+  Marston, Philip Bourke, 9
+
+  Marylebone Road, 288, 323, 332
+
+  Massinger, Philip, 18
+
+  Mathews, Charles, 197
+
+  Matthew, Mrs., 120, 134
+
+  Mawson Row, Chiswick, 36
+
+  Mecklenburgh Square, 316
+
+  Medwin, 177
+
+  Meredith, George, 255
+
+  Mermaid Tavern, 18, 19, 20
+
+  Middleton, Thomas, 4
+
+  Milbanke, Anna Isabella, 194, 197, 199, 340
+
+  Mill, John Stuart, 9, 275
+
+  Milnes, Moncton (Lord Houghton), 238
+
+  Milton, John, 4, 19
+
+  Monkwell Street, 14, 15, 16, 19
+
+  Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 28
+
+  Moore, Thomas, 67, 194
+
+  Moorfields, 6, 153
+
+  More, Hannah, 114
+
+  Morland, George, 337, 338
+
+  Morris, William, 37, 344
+
+  Mount Street, 178
+
+  Mountjoy, Christopher, 14, 15, 16, 17
+
+  Moxon, Edward, 227, 228, 231
+
+  Mulready, William, 167
+
+  Munday, Anthony, 19
+
+  Munro, Alexander, 281
+
+  Murray, David Christie, 334
+
+  ---- John, 198
+
+
+  New Street, 135
+
+  Newgate Street, 200
+
+  Newman Street, Oxford Street, 63
+
+  Newton, Sir Isaac, 52-56, 207
+
+  Nollekens, Joseph, 39, 140
+
+  Norfolk Street, Strand, 200
+
+  North Bank, 245
+
+  ---- End, Fulham, 71, 72, 73
+
+  Northcote, James, 167
+
+
+  Old Bond Street, 197, 334
+
+  Old Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, 328
+
+  Onslow Square, 306
+
+  Opie, Mrs., 198
+
+  Oxford Street, 168, 169, 174
+
+
+  Palace Green, Kensington, 311
+
+  Pall Mall, 64, 200, 205
+
+  Parson's Green, 71
+
+  Patmore, P. G., 185, 211
+
+  Peckham Rye, 118
+
+  Peel, Sir Robert, 242, 325
+
+  Pennell, Mr. and Mrs. J., 260, 261, 265, 266, 267, 268
+
+  Percy, Bishop, 117
+
+  ---- Street, Tottenham Court Road, 344, 347
+
+  Philip, Mrs. and Miss Birnie, 267, 268
+
+  Phillips, Sir Richard, 51
+
+  Piccadilly, 199, 334
+
+  Poland Street, 123, 167, 177, 178
+
+  Pope, Alexander, 6, 26-35, 36, 106, 150, 155, 347
+
+  Pope's Head Alley, 2
+
+  Poultry, the, 9
+
+  Praed, W. Mackworth, 88
+
+  Prior, Matthew, 3
+
+  Putney, 255, 295, 328, 331
+
+
+  Queen Anne Street, 271, 272, 273, 274
+
+  Quiney, Richard, 12
+
+
+  Raleigh, Sir Walter, 20
+
+  Ralph, James, 36
+
+  Reade, Charles, 334
+
+  Red Lion Square, 344
+
+  Reynolds, John Hamilton, 156, 223
+
+  ---- Sir Joshua, 33, 56, 59, 60, 63, 64, 67, 81, 86, 88, 103, 110, 114,
+        117, 130, 141, 153, 271
+
+  Richardson, Samuel, 42, 68, 71-75, 97
+
+  Ritchie, Lady Thackeray, 299, 300, 305, 306
+
+  Robert Street, Adelphi, 223, 233
+
+  Roberts, David, 272, 273
+
+  Robinson, Crabb, 130, 233
+
+  Rogers, Samuel, 67, 145, 194, 200, 203, 205, 339-343
+
+  Romney, George, 135, 140-143, 337
+
+  Rossetti, Christina, 9
+
+  ---- Dante Gabriel, 9, 255, 259, 260, 261
+
+  ---- W. M., 255
+
+  Rowan Road, 294
+
+  Rowley, William, 19
+
+  Ruskin, John, 9, 265, 281, 334
+
+  Russell Square, 303
+
+  Russell Street, Covent Garden, 109, 216, 217, 218, 219
+
+
+  St. Andrew Undershaft, 10
+
+  St. Anne's, Soho, 186
+
+  St. Bartholomew the Great, 10
+
+  St. Clement Danes, 89, 108
+
+  St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, 10
+
+  St. James's Place, 339
+
+  ---- Street, 199
+
+  St. John's Wood, 233, 236-245, 253, 254, 288, 331
+
+  St. Martin's Street, 52
+
+  St. Olave, Silver Street, 15, 16
+
+  St. Saviour's, Southwark, 10, 19
+
+  Sala, George Augustus, 316, 323, 325, 326, 344, 347
+
+  Salisbury Court, 42
+
+  Savile Row, 68
+
+  Scott, Sir Walter, 145, 197
+
+  Seamore Place, 338
+
+  Selden, John, 20
+
+  Shakespeare, Edmund, 18
+
+  ---- William, 6, 10-24, 106, 328
+
+  Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 156, 167, 177-181, 206, 287, 288, 294
+
+  Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 67, 68, 194, 340, 343
+
+  Shirley, James, 4
+
+  Silver Street, 14, 16, 17
+
+  Smith, Albert, 344, 347
+
+  Smith, J. T. ("Rainy Day"), 120, 140
+
+  Smith, Sidney, 316, 338
+
+  Smollett, Tobias, 255
+
+  Soho, 41, 42, 56, 59, 118-123, 130, 167-186, 338
+
+  Soho Square, 167, 168
+
+  Southampton Street, Camberwell, 331
+
+  South Moulton Street, 127, 129, 131
+
+  Southey, Robert, 223
+
+  Southwark, 10, 11
+
+  Spencer, Herbert, 245
+
+  Spenser, Edmund, 4
+
+  Stanfield, Clarkson, 146, 149, 238, 272
+
+  Staple Inn, 10, 90, 109
+
+  Steele, Richard, 3, 150, 344
+
+  Sterne, Laurence, 334
+
+  Stevenson, Robert Louis, 150, 241
+
+  Stothard, Thomas, 134, 271
+
+  Strand, 6, 7, 8, 90, 105, 131, 315
+
+  Stubbs, Bishop, 3
+
+  Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 9
+
+  Swift, Jonathan, 27, 31, 150
+
+  Swinburne, A. C., 9, 255, 327
+
+
+  Talfourd, T. N., 210, 216
+
+  Tavistock Square, 324
+
+  Taylor, John, 160
+
+  Temple Bar, 19
+
+  Temple, Rev. T. W., 117
+
+  Temple, the, 6, 7, 10, 72, 80, 87, 177, 207, 216, 218, 296, 304
+
+  Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 142, 150, 328, 332
+
+  Terrace, the, Kensington, 328
+
+  Thackeray, W. M., 88, 153, 208, 242, 296-313, 314, 315, 326, 328, 338
+
+  Thames Street, 4, 18
+
+  Thomson, James, 27
+
+  Thornhill, Sir James, 41, 42, 52, 167
+
+  Thrale, Mrs., 63
+
+  Thurloe, John, 328
+
+  Tite Street, 265, 266
+
+  Tower, the, 10
+
+  Trollope, Anthony, 312, 313, 326, 334
+
+  Turk's Head, 42
+
+  Turner, J. M. W., 9, 260, 268-275
+
+  Turpin, Dick, 153
+
+  Twickenham, 31, 32, 35, 271
+
+
+  Upper Cheyne Row, 286, 288, 291-293
+
+
+  Vale, the, Chelsea, 266
+
+  Vine Street, Westminster, 6
+
+
+  Wallace, Charles William, 12, 14, 15
+
+  Walpole, Horace, 255, 344
+
+  Wanstead, 236
+
+  Warburton, William, 33
+
+  Wardour Street, 135
+
+  Warton, Joseph, 28, 94
+
+  Warwick Crescent, 331
+
+  Watts, G. F., 262
+
+  Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 23, 255
+
+  Webster, John, 4
+
+  Welbeck Street, 334
+
+  Wellclose Square, 187
+
+  Wellington Street, Strand, 315, 324
+
+  West, Benjamin, 43, 63
+
+  Westbrook, Harriett, 178, 181
+
+  Westminster, 6, 333
+
+  ---- Abbey, 10, 134
+
+  Whistler, James McNeill, 39, 256, 259-268, 271
+
+  Whitefriars Street, 2
+
+  Wilderness Row, Clerkenwell, 296
+
+  Wilkes, John, 44
+
+  Wilkins, George, 15, 19
+
+  Williams, Anna, 101, 102, 106
+
+  Will's Coffee House, 216
+
+  Wimbledon Park Road, 245-253
+
+  Wimpole Street, 265, 331, 332
+
+  Winchmore Hill, 236
+
+  Wine Office Court, 76, 108
+
+  Wood Street, Cheapside, 17, 19
+
+  Woodstock Street, 89
+
+  Wordsworth, William, 7, 8, 145, 205, 208, 216, 220, 222, 225, 226
+
+
+  Yates, Edmund, 309, 310, 311, 312, 316, 331
+
+  Young Street, Kensington, 296, 299, 303, 304, 305, 306
+
+
+  Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+  Edinburgh & London.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
+
+Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Famous Houses and Literary Shrines of
+London, by A. St. John Adcock
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMOUS HOUSES, LITERARY SHRINES, LONDON ***
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