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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 48003 ***</div>
<div class="limit">
<div class="sum">
<div class="transnote p4">
<p class="pc large">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE</p>
<p class="ptn">—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.</p>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<p class="pc4 elarge">A ROAD-BOOK TO OLD CHELSEA</p>
<div class="figcenter">
<img src="images/map.jpg" width="450" height="349"
alt=""
title="" />
<div class="caption">
<p class="pc">THE ROADS THAT LEAD TO CHELSEA.</p>
<p class="reduct"><i>Frontispiece.</i></p>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a><br /><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
<h1 class="p4">A ROAD-BOOK TO<br />
OLD CHELSEA</h1>
<p class="pc4 lmid">BY</p>
<p class="pc large">G. B. STUART</p>
<p class=" p4 reduct">“By what means the time is so well-abbreviated I know not,<br />
except weeks be shorter in Chelsey, than in other places!”</p>
<p class="pr6 reduct"><span class="smcap">KATHERYN THE QUEENE.</span></p>
<p class="pi10 reduct">Extract from a letter of Queen Katharine Parr to the<br />
Lord High Admiral Seymour, written from Chelsea, 1547</p>
<p class="pc4 mid">WITH SKETCH MAP AND FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
<p class="pc4 lmid">LONDON</p>
<p class="pc4 large">HUGH REES, LTD.</p>
<p class="pc lmid">5 REGENT STREET, PALL MALL, S.W.</p>
<p class="pc">1914</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a><br /><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<h2 class="p4">PREFACE</h2>
<p class="drop-cap040">OF the making of books about Chelsea, may there
never be an end, so rich and unexhausted is our
history, so inspiring to those who labour in its service!
Every year, as fresh records become accessible, Chelsea is
presented to us from some different standpoint, historical,
architectural, or frankly human, and there is ever a welcome
and a place for each volume as it appears.</p>
<p>They are books full of research and of suggestion,
illustrated by portraits and maps from rare sources, and
clinching hitherto unsolved problems. They quickly become
our library friends and companions, because, though
some of their matter may be familiar, each has, for its own
individual charm, that personal outlook of its author which
expresses, with wider and more resourceful knowledge
than ours, the love we all bear to our home by the
river.</p>
<p>It is because in love of our subject we and the greater
writers are equal, that I dare to put forth a new Guide to
Chelsea; a little foot-page, a link-boy, a caddy if you will,
just to show the way to strangers, to disembarrass them of
unnecessary impedimenta, to point out special places of
interest which may be visited in a summer afternoon,
within that charmed circle of our parish, where every inch
is enchanted ground.</p>
<p class="pr6">G. B. S.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a><br /><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
<div class="sum">
<h2 class="p4">CONTENTS</h2>
<table id="toc" summary="cont">
<tr>
<td class="tdrl"><span class="small">CHAPTER</span></td>
<td> </td>
<td class="tdrl"><span class="small">PAGE</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdrh">I.</td>
<td class="tdli">THE ROAD TO THE CHURCH</td>
<td class="tdrl"><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdrh">II.</td>
<td class="tdli">THE OLD CHURCH: NORTH SIDE AND CHANCEL</td>
<td class="tdrl"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdrh">III.</td>
<td class="tdli">THE OLD CHURCH: SOUTH SIDE AND THE MORE CHAPEL</td>
<td class="tdrl"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdrh">IV.</td>
<td class="tdli">THE OLD CHURCH: THE NAVE AND ITS MONUMENTS</td>
<td class="tdrl"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdrh">V.</td>
<td class="tdli">CHURCH STREET TO QUEEN’S ELM</td>
<td class="tdrl"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdrh">VI.</td>
<td class="tdli">CHEYNE WALK FROM EAST TO WEST</td>
<td class="tdrl"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdrh">VII.</td>
<td class="tdli">SIDE STREETS AND BACK GARDENS</td>
<td class="tdrl"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tdrh">VIII.</td>
<td class="tdli">THE ROAD TO THE ROYAL HOSPITAL</td>
<td class="tdrl"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> </td>
<td class="tdli">L’ENVOI</td>
<td class="tdrl"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a><br /><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<p class="pc4 large">A ROAD-BOOK TO OLD CHELSEA</p>
<h2 class="p2">CHAPTER I</h2>
<p class="pch">Omnibuses for Chelsea—The Mystery House—Dr. Phéné’s garden—Cheyne
House and Tudor Lane—Leigh Hunt’s home—Cheyne
Row and Carlyle—The Tollsey Cottage and James II.—The
Lawrences and Lombards’ Row—The Fieldings and Justice
Walk.</p>
<p class="drop-cap030">PRESUMING, O stranger, that you will reach Chelsea
by motor-bus—either from Kensington by No. 49,
from Piccadilly by No. 19, or from the Strand by No. 11—I
will ask you to alight at Chelsea Town Hall and turn
with me down Oakley Street. As we face the river, there
is always fresh air to meet us, and in summer time, above
the road smell of asphalt and petrol, there floats a soft,
keen savour of growing things and green bushes, hidden
away behind walls; if an old door opens, we catch a
glimpse of gardens and sometimes of a “mulberry-bush,”
grown to forest size, which, planted by the men who fled
from the terror of St. Bartholomew, still fruits and flourishes
to repay Chelsea hospitality.</p>
<p>On the right-hand side, where we turn into Upper
Cheyne Row, stands the much-talked-about “Mystery
House” of the late eccentric Dr. Phéné. It has never
been much of a mystery to its neighbours. Dr. Phéné built
it as a storehouse for his collections—some valuable, others
worthless—and plastered it with the discarded ornaments<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
of the old Horticultural Gardens. The old gentleman was
vastly proud of his design, and loved to plant himself at
the street corner and encourage the remarks of passers-by:
that the work was chaotic, and dropping to pieces before
it was finished, troubled him not at all, and Chelsea forgave
him the architectural monstrosity for the sake of the
garden, which his leisurely building methods preserved.
The wall which encloses it is one of Dr. Phéné’s happiest
“finds,” and is said to be a part of old St. Paul’s—it
certainly bears the carven arms of several London boroughs,
and is not incongruous to its surroundings; behind it
blackbirds, thrushes, and wood-pigeons fancy themselves
in the country, and birds and men alike rejoice that the
complications of the Phéné property still preserve their
shade and shelter untouched.</p>
<p>Cheyne House, which also belonged to Dr. Phéné, was
less highly esteemed by him than his Renaissance effort,
and has been allowed to drop into grievous ruin: it is
the house “of ancient gravity and beauty” of which
Mr. E. V. Lucas writes so affectionately in his <i>Wanderer
in London</i>. It sits back, with its eyes closed, wrapped
in its ancient vine, and no one will ever know its three-hundred-year-old
secrets. For in the old maps it shows
bravely in the centre of its park, and a little narrow walk,
called Tudor Lane, led from it to the river, where possibly
it had its own landing-stage; a beautiful state reception
room at the back had seven windows giving on the terrace.
It is sad and strange that so little is known of its inhabitants
in the past.</p>
<p>No. 4 Upper Cheyne Row is a modern interpolation,
filling up the Tudor Lane aperture; but No. 6 is another
really old house, dating by its leases from 1665, and having
a splendid mulberry tree, which in a document of 1702
is mentioned as “unalienable from the property.”</p>
<p>No. 10 (at that time No. 4) was Leigh Hunt’s home for
seven years from 1833 to 1840, where, as Carlyle wrote, “the
noble Hunt will receive you into his Tinkerdom, in the
spirit of a King.” He was often in absolute want during this
period, yet his belief in the human and the divine was
never shaken by poverty, illness, or distress of mind, and
the beautiful quality of his work was maintained in spite
of perpetual difficulties.</p>
<div class="figcenter">
<img src="images/ill-010.jpg" width="400" height="527"
alt=""
title="" />
<div class="caption"><p class="pi5"><i>Photo by Miss Muriel Johnston.</i></p>
<p class="pc">THOMAS CARLYLE.</p>
<p class="pi5">p. <a href="#Page_10">10</a>]</p>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
<p>The date 1708 on the side wall above Cheyne Cottage
fixes the building of Cheyne Row and the west end of
Upper Cheyne Row; a beautiful old house which was
cleared away in 1894 to make room for the Roman Catholic
Church of the Holy Redeemer was called Orange House,
in political compliment, and its next-door neighbour, York
House, was named after James II. These two were probably
older than the others, and Lord Cheyne, who formed
the Row, built his newer houses into line with those already
existing. Some of the iron work of the balconies, etc.,
and the porticoes, are worth noting.</p>
<p>Carlyle’s House (now No. 24) can be visited every week-day,
between the hours of 10 a.m. and sunset—admission
1<i>s.</i>, Saturdays 6<i>d.</i>—and it speaks for itself. I will only add
a reference to Mrs. N., the old servant who spent years in
Carlyle’s service, and finished her honoured days in ours—her
descriptions of “the Master” writing his <i>Frederick the
Great</i> were about the most intimate revelations that have
yet been made of the Carlyle <i>ménage</i>!</p>
<p>The Master would be so immersed in his subject—maps
and books being spread all over the floor of his room “in
his wrestle with Frederick”—that his lunch would remain
unheeded until, stretching up a vague hand, he plunged it
into the dish of hashed mutton or rice pudding, as the
case might be—regardless of plate, spoon, or decorum.
“It was no cook’s credit to cook for him,” was Mrs. N.’s
verdict, “a cook that respected herself simply couldn’t do
it,” and though she adored Mrs. Carlyle, she left her service
to restore her own self-respect.</p>
<p>Cheyne Cottage was once the Toll Gate for entering
Chelsea Parish at the south-west angle—there was another
Toll Gate, I think, at the Fulham end of Church Street, but
it was probably to this one on the river bank that James
Duke of York, afterwards James II., came one winter night
a few minutes later than the recognised closing time, eight
o’clock. James was unpopular, and the old woman who
kept the gate a staunch Protestant, so that to the outriders’
challenge, “Open to the Duke of York!” she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
shrilled back defiance from her bedroom window, “Be ye
Duke or devil, ye don’t enter by this gate after eight of
the clock!” and so left James and his coach to lumber
on to Whitehall through the bankside mud, as best he
might.</p>
<p>When I first knew Chelsea, the old board with the toll
prices and distances under the Royal arms of Charles II.
was preserved at the cottage, but this has, I believe, been
surrendered to the London Museum.</p>
<p>Lawrence Street, between Cheyne Row and the Old
Church, boasts the sponsorship of the Lawrence family,
goldsmiths and bankers, whose mansion adjoined the
church, and whose business premises leave their name to
the group of very old houses immediately west of Church
Street. These houses, though actually standing in Cheyne
Walk, are called Lombards’ Row in commemoration of the
Lawrences’ banking business.</p>
<p>Fielding, the novelist, and his brother the Justice lived
in the big eighteenth-century house facing Justice Walk,
and Tobias Smollett lived close by, in a house now pulled
down. In the big garden at the back, impecunious
“Sunday men,” whose debts kept them at home on other
days, were entertained every week at a “rare good Sunday
dinner, all being welcome whatever the state of their
coats.”</p>
<p>And the Chelsea China Factory existed also at the
upper end of Lawrence Street for nearly forty years.
Dr. Johnson used to experiment there, having an ambition
to excel in a porcelain paste of his own invention, but his
composition would not stand the baking process—perhaps
he had too weighty a hand in the mixing!—and he gave
up the work in disgust. Chelsea china commands enormous
prices, as its supply was so limited.</p>
<p>So by Justice Walk and a turn to the left down Church
Street, we reach the Old Church, the heart of Old Chelsea;
a still living, warmly beating heart, after eight centuries.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
<p class="not">NOTES</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a><br /><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER II</h2>
<p class="pch">The Old Church—Its origin—The new St. Luke’s—Old dedication
revived—Henry VIII.’s Marriage to Jane Seymour in the
Lawrence Chapel—Princess Elizabeth—The squint and lepers—The
plague at Chelsea—The Hungerford memorial—The
Bray tomb—Anecdotes of the Rev. R. H. Davies’ incumbency.</p>
<p class="drop-cap030">THE Old Church is first mentioned as the Parish Church
of Chelsea in 1290, when the Pope granted “relaxation”
to penitents visiting it on All Saints’ Day. It was
then, as now, dedicated to All Saints, though for 300
years in between it has been known as St. Luke’s (like
the modern Parish Church in Sydney Street). The late
Rev. R. H. Davies, for nearly sixty years known and loved
at the Old Church, has suggested that the nucleus of the
building may have been the Lawrence Chapel, belonging
as library and chapel to the Manor House; it is obviously
the oldest part of the church, and the chancel and nave
have been later added, as the growth of the parish
demanded more church room. Many distinct enlargements
are recorded, and that of 1670 almost doubled its
size and gave it the present square tower.</p>
<p>At that date our riverside village was a fashionable
country place. Mr. Pepys writes of taking boat up to
Chelsea of a Sunday to see the pretty young ladies who
flocked to the church and made very sweet singing. But
presently the tide of fashion ebbed away from the Thames
side, and building and population congregated further
north: in 1824 St. Luke’s, Sydney Street, was consecrated
as the Parish Church, and the mother by the river became
the daughter of the new building.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>
<p>In 1910, after the latest and most sympathetic of
restorations, the dedication to All Saints was revived;
I always regret that the Saxon form, All Hallows’ found
in some old documents, was not chosen, to denote that a
church—if not this actual building—existed here from
<i>before</i> Norman times.</p>
<p>Let us begin our survey at the Lawrence Chapel, on the
north side. Here, tradition says, Henry VIII. was married
to Jane Seymour, in haste and secrecy to secure the bride’s
position, three days after the execution of Anne Boleyn.
The marriage was openly repeated with great ceremony
ten days later: Jane Seymour is said to have been a
damsel who loved delicate eating, and to have been wooed
by Henry with many presents of game and venison from
the King’s Larder, a house for the preparation of royal
dainties on the riverside now demolished.</p>
<p>The altar, before which they were married, stood under
the east window of the Lawrence Chapel, now occupied by
the tomb of Sir John Lawrence; it is good to remember
that of this rather questionable marriage was born
Edward VI., who gave us our prayer book.</p>
<p>Under the little window in the north wall (filled lately
with quite unnecessary modern glass), is the seat assigned
by tradition to Elizabeth, when, as a somewhat neglected
Princess, she lived with her step-mother, “Katheryn the
Queene,” at Chelsea Place.</p>
<p>Some of the original oak pews remain in the Lawrence
Chapel, and a panel with a mitre on it recalls the residence
of the Bishops of Winchester in Chelsea; some queer little
benches for two persons, very narrow and high-backed,
tell of a time and a rule when lounging in church was
unknown!</p>
<p>The north wall is dated 1350, and the fact that its
roofing differs entirely from that of the chancel and other
chapels, supports the suggestion that it had been the
Manor library.</p>
<div class="figcenter">
<img src="images/ill-016.jpg" width="450" height="335"
alt=""
title="" />
<div class="caption"><p class="pi3"><i>Photo by Miss Charlotte Lloyd.</i></p>
<p class="pc">LOMBARDS’ ROW.</p>
<p class="pi3">p. <a href="#Page_16">16</a>]</p>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>
<p>The Lawrence monuments are interesting. Thomas
Lawrence, the banker and goldsmith of Lombards’ Row,
appears with all his Elizabethan family about him. His
epitaph is often quoted:</p>
<p class="ppn4 p1">Thus Thomas Lawrence spekes to Tymes ensuing:<br />
That Death is sure, and Tyme is past renuing!</p>
<p class="p1">He was the father of Mrs. Sara Colvile, whose rising
figure blocks a beautifully carved window—worth seeing
from the vestry side—and of Sir John Lawrence, whose
epitaph begins with the trenchant lines:</p>
<p class="ppn4 p1">When bad men dy, and turn to their last Sleepe,<br />
What Stir, the Poets and Ingravers keepe!</p>
<p class="p1">The Italian triumphal arch, for which the chancel arch
was cut, and the symmetry of the church for ever dislocated,
is to the memory of one Richard Gervaise, 1563,
son of a mercer and sheriff of London, who may have
been a business partner or relative of the Lawrences; the
brasses of Sir Henry and Lady Christina Waver, 1460,
have been stolen from the pavement, where many other
Lawrence names are recorded.</p>
<p>The Lawrence Chapel subsequently became the property
of the Rawlings family, whose crest appears on several of
the pew doors, and in 1894 the Rev. R. H. Davies
succeeded in securing it for the church.</p>
<p>The squint, or hagioscope, shows a glimpse of the altar
in the chancel, and tradition has it that lepers used to
assemble at the little north door (now leading into the
new vestry) or at the north windows to witness the
elevation of the Host, without contaminating the congregation;
for lepers, I hope we may read, sufferers from ague
and marsh-fever, which was a prevailing scourge of the
low lands about the river.</p>
<p>By the by, it is outside the north wall that the plague
victims were buried in a long grave, when the plague
visited Chelsea in 1626, and Lady Danvers, mother of
George Herbert, nursed her stricken neighbours so bravely.
The Chelsea plague-fosse has never been disturbed. A
provincial plague-pit known to me was opened in the
course of new road-making a few years ago, and four
labourers died of a strange, malignant fever. Whether
this was the result of coincidence, or of superstitious fear,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
or of real infection, I cannot say, but we do well, I think,
to leave our Chelsea plague-pit unmeddled with!</p>
<p>The chancel of the Old Church was built in the thirteenth
century, and the nave added much later: the magnificent
roof of oak arched beams, like the ribs of a ship, was
discovered under the plaster in 1910. The altar, a fine
Jacobean table, and the enclosing rails are of Charles I.’s
time, when Archbishop Laud decreed that rails should
encircle the altar; the east window put in, in 1857, to
lessen the glare of light at morning service is fairly harmless,
and harmonises with the shadowy church better than
more brilliant glass would do. The very beautiful cross
and candlesticks were given in 1910, in memory of Charles
Kelly, Esq.</p>
<p>The aumbry, now used as a credence table, was discovered
plastered over in 1855; it was originally intended
for a safe, in which the church plate could be kept, and
the bar and hinge settings can be traced.</p>
<p>To the left of the altar is the Hungerford Memorial slab.
Thomas Hungerford, a knight of Wiltshire, married a
Chelsea heiress, Drusilla Maidenhead, daughter of Lord
Sandys. Hungerford served under four sovereigns; he
was present at the “wining of Bologne,” as he calls the
Siege of Boulogne in Henry VIII.’s reign, and died “at the
adge of seventy yeres.” He was obviously a prophet of
reformed spelling!</p>
<p>The Bray tomb, now crammed under the chancel wall
to clear the approach to the altar, is the oldest of our
monuments. Its brasses have been torn away and its
carving obscured by plaster. The Brays were Lords of
the Manor previous to the Lawrences, and probably the
Lawrence Chapel was originally their property. This tomb
commemorates four generations of Brays, the last being
Sir John Bray, 1557, the order of whose funeral has been
preserved at the College of Arms, and has been reproduced
in modern pageantry. Lately the Bray family,
residing in Surrey, have restored this ancestral tomb. Sir
Reginald Bray, of this family, was the architect of Henry
VII. Chapel at Westminster.</p>
<p>A tiny door in the wall used to lead to the old vestry.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
Here Mr, Davies, for so many years incumbent of the
Old Church, spent much of his time, which was always
at the service of inquiring visitors. He had many excellent
stories to tell of his adventures in the vestry. Once
he was “held up” there for many hours by a bogus
photographer who, pretending to take pictures of the
church, plugged up the vestry door and broke open the
alms boxes. The incumbent sat quietly reading and
writing, secure in the knowledge that he had cleared the
boxes that morning, until he was presently retrieved by his
family, who supposed that he had forgotten the dinner-hour!
Had the thief known where to look, the real parish funds
were at the moment in the vestry itself.</p>
<p>Another time Mr. Davies showed a pair of visitors
round the church and was about to receive a small tip for
his trouble, when he hastened to explain that he was
the parson, not the caretaker, and was delighted to have
been available as guide. A sovereign was substituted for
the intended gratuity, which he gratefully accepted for the
poor of his parish. Later, after the visitors had left, one of
them came hurrying back and explained that they had
inadvertently run short of money for a return journey.
Might they borrow back the sovereign, which should be
posted to Mr. Davies in the course of a few hours? Of
course the money was relinquished—and never heard of
again!</p>
<p>Mr. Davies himself told me these anecdotes, as delightfully
as he always told a story; they seem to have become
part of the history of the church he so dearly loved. A
third—the appearance of Sir Thomas More’s ghost—belongs
to the next chapter, with other More gossip.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a><br /><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
<p class="not">NOTES</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a><br /><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER III</h2>
<p class="pch">The More Chapel—Holbein—Erasmus—Sir Thomas More’s arrest—Mistress
More—The Duchess of Northumberland—The Gorges—The
Stanley tomb—“The Bird and the Baby”—The Dacre
helmet—Sir Thomas More’s ghost.</p>
<p class="drop-cap030">THE More Chapel was built in 1528 (date on the east
pillar) to accommodate the family and retainers of
Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, living in
great state at Beaufort House, but not too proud to act as
“server” at the altar of his Parish Church. The two
pillars evidently guarding the front seat of this family pew
are worth careful inspection; the west pillar is said to
have been carved by Holbein while on a visit to More’s
house—a visit which lasted several years. The east pillar is
less well executed and may be by another hand, but both
bear the symbolic ornament, dear to the spirit of the time,
introducing coats of arms, crest, punning references to
family names and signs, which develop in hieroglyphics
the career of the great Chancellor. More’s tomb, designed
by himself during his imprisonment in the Tower, is in
the south wall of the church, and here we find a curious
surviving reference to his friendship with another celebrated
visitor to Chelsea, Erasmus. In the Latin epitaph cut in
slate, which Sir Thomas prepared for his tomb, a word has
been omitted and a space left. The word is “Hereticks,”
whom he declared he hated implacably, along with “thieves
and murderers”; Erasmus found this too sweeping and
begged him to cross out the word. He took his friend’s
advice but forgot to insert a substitute word, and the space<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
remains, a witness to the tolerance of Erasmus and the
sweet reasonableness of the Chancellor.</p>
<p>Sir Thomas’s favourite motto, “Serve God and be
merrie,” is better known than his pompous Latin inscription,
as it deserves to be.</p>
<p>Tradition makes the More Chapel the scene of Sir
Thomas’s farewell message to his wife. On the morning
of his arrest, she was waiting for him after Mass in the
family pew; he had been acting as “server” at the altar,
and had been hurried from thence straight to the river
and the Tower.</p>
<p>A young groom, by the Chancellor’s orders, went to his
wife with this message, which the varlet was bidden to
repeat exactly in his master’s words:</p>
<p>“Bid Mistress More wait no longer for Master More, for
he hath been led away by the King’s command.” A smart
box on the ear from the insulted lady rewarded the servant
for his literal fulfilment of his lord’s mandate. “What do
you mean, sirrah, to speak of Mistress and Master More
when you name the Chancellor of England and his lady?”
but when the boy persisted in his orders, she began to
perceive her husband’s hidden design and realise that he
had fallen from his high estate, and in this fashion would
break it to her. She was his second wife, and neither
beautiful nor very sweet-tempered, but Sir Thomas ever
treated her with the most courteous consideration, joked at
her shrewishness, and complimented her whenever he could.
Still we cannot help suspecting that on this occasion he
was a little relieved to send the message of his downfall
by the young groom instead of having to deliver it in
person.</p>
<p>The next tomb of interest in the More Chapel is that of
the Duchess of Northumberland, 1555, mother of thirteen
children, of whom Robert Earl of Leicester, Guildford
Dudley, husband of Lady Jane Grey, and Mary, mother of
Sir Philip Sydney, were the most celebrated.</p>
<p>This lovely monument has been barbarously treated:
the spirals were broken off in 1832 to make room for seats
and increase the letting value of the chapel, and its
awkward position suggests that it has been pushed out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
its original setting. Several of the brasses have been
wrenched away. Chaucer’s tomb in Westminster Abbey
is almost a replica of what it must have been when whole,
and is probably by the same designer.</p>
<p>The Duke and Duchess of Northumberland succeeded
Queen Katharine Parr as tenants of the Manor House,
the Tudor palace in Cheyne Walk: the Duke and his son
Guildford both died on Tower Hill, with the “nine days’
Queen,” and it is greatly to the credit of Queen Mary I.
that she interested herself in the bereaved Duchess, and
restored to her part of her confiscated possessions. In
Elizabeth’s reign the family flourished again, and there is
a minute description extant of the Duchess’s gorgeous
funeral at the Old Church.</p>
<p>But the fact that the More Chapel continued to be the
family pew pertaining to Beaufort House suggests that the
Northumberland tomb was originally in a far more conspicuous
position, and was presently pushed aside to make
way for territorial claims. Sir Arthur and Lady Gorges
were at Beaufort House in 1620. He is Spenser’s
“Alcyon,” and the poet’s <i>Daphnaida</i> was an elegy on
Lady Gorges’ death. The younger Arthur, grandson of
this pair of Spenser’s friends, is</p>
<p class="ppn4 p1">He who had all the Gorges’ soules in one.</p>
<p class="pn1">His epitaph is worth spelling out, though it is rather a
back-breaking business, and it is noteworthy that his wife,
who perhaps was much older than himself, and was certainly
very much married, prepared the inscriptions, but
omitted to leave orders for the insertion of her own death-date,
which, after considerable preamble, is left out
altogether.</p>
<p>Under the east window lies the splendidly ornate
monument of the Stanleys. Sir Robert, whose medallion
portrait is supported by the figures of Justice and Fortitude,
married a daughter of Sir Arthur Gorges. The children,
Ferdinand and Henrietta, are dear little people in stiff
Stuart dresses.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
<p>Their epitaph beginning,</p>
<p class="ppn4 p1">The Eagle death, greedy of such sweete prey,<br />
With nimble eyes marked where these children lay—</p>
<p class="pn1">refers to the Stanley family legend of “The Bird and the
Baby,” of which two children-ancestors were the heroes.
An eagle hovers over the tomb.</p>
<p>The helmet hanging incongruously in mid-air has the
Dacre crest, and is not in its proper place here; a helmet
exhibited in church often implies that the wearer fought in
the Crusades, but this probably is part of the heraldic
ornament of the great Dacre memorial in the nave.</p>
<p>The inscription to Sir Robert Stanley is really beautiful
in the stately wording and measured metre of the seventeenth
century, and is worth quoting entire:</p>
<p class="ppn4 p1">To say a Stanley lies here, that alone<br />
Were epitaph enough; noe brass, nor stone,<br />
No glorious Tomb, nor Monumental Hearse,<br />
Noe gilded trophy, nor Lamp-laboured Verse<br />
Can dignify this grave, nor sett it forth,<br />
Like the immortal fame of his owne Worth.<br />
So, Reader, fixe not here, but quit this Room<br />
And fly to Abram’s bosom—there’s his tombe,<br />
There rests his Soule, and for his other parts<br />
They are embalmed and shrined in good men’s hearts—<br />
A nobler Monument of Stone or Lime<br />
Noe Art could raise, for this shall outlast Tyme!</p>
<p class="pn1">“Lamp-laboured verse” is first-rate.</p>
<p>We cannot leave the More Chapel without referring to
the controversy, dear to the antiquarian papers, as to
whether the Chancellor’s body were ever brought from
Tower Hill after the fatal July 6, 1535, to be interred in
the church he loved. All tradition and probability point
to this belief; though his head, exposed on London Bridge,
and rescued by his devoted daughter Margaret Roper,
was consigned by her to the keeping of St. Dunstan’s
Church, Canterbury.</p>
<p>Now for another of Mr. Davies’ anecdotes of the Old
Church.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
<p>Some twenty years ago, a marvellous story ran round
Chelsea that Sir Thomas More’s ghost had been seen to
emerge from the south wall monument and, crossing the
sanctuary, disappear into the opposite wall. The figure
was unquestionably that of the Chancellor, for besides
being quaintly dressed, it was without a head—which
clinched the matter. Lady artists, painting in the body of
the church, had seen the apparition steal across the chancel,
in the gloaming, and spreading the news abroad, soon
brought half London to inquire into the marvel.</p>
<p>Unluckily Mr. Davies was on guard in his beloved
church, and his explanation was crushingly disappointing.
He stationed all would-be ghost seekers halfway down the
middle aisle, and then produced the ghost—himself—passing
from the tiny south door behind the tomb to the
vestry opposite, a shawl drawn over his head and wrapped
about his shoulders, giving the required appearance of
headlessness.</p>
<p>Both south door and vestry door within the chancel are
now done away with, and even newspaper reporters have
heard no more of the ghost.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a><br /><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p>
<p class="not">NOTES</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a><br /><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER IV</h2>
<p class="pch">The Dacre tomb and charities—Lady Jane Cheyne, who gave her
name to Cheyne Walk—The churchwarden’s official seat—The
pulpit where Wesley preached—Dr. Baldwin Hamey and his
servant Fletcher—Church burials and the More descendants—The
chained books—Public Bible-reading in the eighteenth
century—The font and organ—The Queen’s Royal Volunteers—The
Ashburnham bell—Books of authority on Chelsea history.</p>
<p class="drop-cap030">THE most beautiful monument in the church is the
great Dacre tomb. Lady Dacre was a Sackville
and an heiress, and succeeded to the possession of Sir
Thomas More’s Beaufort House. She married Lord Dacre
of the South—a magnificent Elizabethan title—and their
name is still venerated year by year in Chelsea and Westminster
for the gifts and charities to which they devoted
their fortune. They left no family—the poor stiff little
daughter in the very uncomfortably designed cradle beside
them having been their only child—and their estates in
Chelsea, Kensington, and Brompton passed to Lord
Burleigh, with numberless bequests attached for local
objects. Emanuel Hospital, Westminster, is their foundation,
and Chelsea has the right to two annual presentations
conditionally on the tomb being kept clean and in repair.
One is tempted to ask whether the conditions are being
fulfilled, for the colouring of the wonderful canopy could
surely be very much improved by a little knowledgeable
wiping and polishing, and the Elizabethan pair themselves—he
in late heavy armour, she in “French hood,” Mary,
Queen of Scots’ introduction, and ruff—might be reverently
dusted with advantage to their beautiful Renaissance detail.
The tomb originally stood in the More Chapel, which Lady<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
Dacre inherited with Beaufort House, and was moved to
its present position in 1667. It is unfortunately placed
very much askew to the window and the water-gate which
it completely blocks—and this is the more to be regretted
because the south side is deficient in exits, and the restoration
of the water-gate, as seen in an old print, would add
to the beauty and convenience of the church.</p>
<p>In the north wall, and almost opposite the Dacre tomb
(if anything in the Old Church can be accounted to pair with
anything else!), reclines Lady Jane Cheyne, a very heroically
proportioned lady, daughter of the first Duke of
Newcastle, and, like her father, an ardent royalist. As
quite a girl she held Welbeck House, with a slender
garrison, for King Charles, and all her life she devoted her
fortune to the maintenance of the royal cause and support
of her father in exile. She married Lord Cheyne, of a
Buckinghamshire family, and bought the Manor House
and Palace which had been the scene of so much Tudor
history-making, where she lived to see the Restoration of
King Charles II. and to benefit Chelsea by her good deeds
for fourteen years. Cheyne Walk is named after her, to
commemorate her benevolence and exemplary life at the
great house which had sheltered many less admirable
characters; she was a special patroness of the church,
where she directed the renovations of 1667, and possibly it
is to her taste that we owe the unfortunate prominence
of two magnificent monuments which would have gained
so much by being more discreetly located. Lady Jane’s
figure and surroundings are scarcely in proportion, but she
is an aristocrat to her finger tips—those wonderful finger
tips, which seem to have been assured to the royalists of
Vandyke’s day!—and one can imagine her holding a
fortress, or later, writing a manual of elegant devotions,
with equal distinction.</p>
<p>The little three-cornered pew, to the right of Lady
Jane’s tomb, is the dignified sitting intended for the churchwarden;
the mitre which is still found on a panel here
and there tells of the Bishop of Winchester’s residence in
Chelsea during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.</p>
<p>Standing in the middle aisle, the beauty of the pulpit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
carving must strike every lover of oak, and it is inspiring
to think that a broad-minded Chelsea rector, the Hon. and
Rev. W. B. Cadogan, invited John Wesley and Whitfield
to occupy it. The canopy of the pulpit has been lost, but
from wood once part of the “three-decker” structure, the
chairs have been fashioned which stand by the altar; the
font-cover of oak was found in 1910 in a neglected corner
of the tower, and with it two handsome Georgian pewter
alms dishes dated 1754; these have been restored to use
for Sunday collections. Among the hatchments, many
of which remain unidentified, that of Rector Cadogan has
been recognised with its motto “Christ, the Hope of
Glory”; he died in 1797.</p>
<p>On the pillar north of the pulpit hangs the tablet of the
clever and eccentric Dr. Baldwin Hamey, who retired from
medical practice in 1665 and came to live at Chelsea. He
gave liberally to the church restoration fund—perhaps
influenced by Lady Jane Cheyne’s enthusiasm—but as a
scientist he was intolerant of dogma, and used to carry
a leather-bound Virgil to church with him, which passed for
a Testament, and saved him from the tedium of listening
to doctrine to which he did not conform. He was buried,
uncoffined and merely wrapped in a sheet, in the chancel,
and his epitaph is a hopeless one, “When the breath goeth
out of a Man, he returneth to his Earth,” but later, in 1880,
the Royal College of Physicians restored his tablet “in
grateful remembrance of their benefactor,” and in spite
of the declared pessimism of his creed, his good work is
not “interred with his bones,” but lives in the kindly
worded remembrance of his scientific brotherhood.</p>
<p>On the opposite pillar (south side) a tiny figure of
St. Luke, “the doctor’s saint,” stands on a bracket; it
formerly decorated the canopy of the pulpit. It was contributed
by John Fletcher—Dr. Hamey’s servant and
assistant—to the ornamentation of the church at its
restoration in 1667, when the “beloved physician” was still
patron of the parish. No one has ever satisfactorily
explained why, for 300 years, the old dedication to
All Saints was in abeyance, and St. Luke was substituted;
perhaps at the Reformation St. Luke, the man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
of science, was considered a more suitable patron for the
Church of the New Learning.</p>
<p>The stones and inscriptions on the floor of the church
show that many Chelsea people lie beneath. Sometimes
the scrutiny of names leads to considerable enlightenment
of family and local history, but for Chelsea’s visitors this
study has no special attraction, so we will not burden them
with pavement inscriptions. From a corner between the
More Chapel and the nave, nine leaden coffins were
removed about forty years ago, when the heating of the
church necessitated new stove-pipes. These coffins were
supposed to belong to the More family, and may have
enclosed the bodies of Will and Margaret Roper, of
“Mistress More,” the Chancellor’s second wife, and of
Bishop Fisher, but their identification was uncertain.
They were removed to the Parish Church in Sydney
Street and privately re-interred.</p>
<p>The chained books under the south window are a more
cheerful reminder of Tudor times, and of Henry VIII.’s
decree of a Parish Church Bible, though these are not the
original sixteenth-century volumes, but a later set presented
by Sir Hans Sloane. They consist of:</p>
<p>A “Vinegar” Bible (Baskett’s edition, dated 1717).</p>
<p>The Book of Common Prayer, 1723.</p>
<p>The Book of Homilies (2 volumes) formerly belonging
to Trelawny, the great Bishop of Winchester, 1683.</p>
<p>Two volumes (Nos. I. and III.) of Foxe’s <i>Book of
Martyrs</i>. A very fine edition dated 1684.</p>
<p>Tradition connects these two volumes of Foxe with
Charles II., who died in the year 1685. It is possible,
though no history of the books records the fact as certain,
that they were the King’s property, given or lent to his
physician; we love royal tradition in Chelsea, and there is
nothing against our adopting this one.</p>
<p>The volumes themselves are splendidly bound, printed,
and illustrated, but during a careless or too confiding
period, when the oak book-case was open to all comers,
several illustrations and some of the brass clasps and hinges
were carried off as souvenirs, and the case is now strictly
locked. It, and the chains, are comparatively modern.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
<p>I knew an old Chelsea lady who told me that her grandmother
was in the habit of repairing to the church every
Tuesday and reading aloud from the Bible to as many
hearers as cared to listen for an hour, and that the school
children regularly attended the reading. While this links
us curiously with a past when the Bible was still a rarity,
not to be found in everybody’s hands, it makes a suggestion
of supplementary education from which our own century
might profitably learn a lesson.</p>
<p>The font dates from about 1673; the gilding on the cover
is the original work. The ship’s bucket in oak standing
beside it was presented by members of the choir in 1910.
The organ, a very sweet-toned instrument, has been
recently beautifully repaired and enlarged by the Rev.
Malcolm and Mrs. Farmer.</p>
<p>The Colours of the Chelsea Volunteers are the only two
flags remaining of a considerable number which adorned
the church in 1814. The King’s Colour is said to have
been worked by Queen Charlotte and her daughters, and
an old print depicts her presenting it to the regiment of the
“Queen’s Royal Volunteers”; the picture is chiefly remarkable
for the immense amount of cumbrous clothing
worn by the Volunteers, and the very scanty draperies of
Queen Charlotte and her ladies. The corps was raised in
1804, when Bonaparte threatened invasion, and the
Regimental Colour bears a medallion portrait of St. Luke,
and the inscription, “St. Luke, Chelsea.” A board in the
porch chronicles this presentation, but beyond a loyal
willingness to serve, I do not know that the Chelsea
Volunteers were ever called upon to show further fight.
Opposite this board the Ashburnham Bell reposes, a
witness to the legend of 1679, when the Hon. William
Ashburnham, swamped in the mud of Chelsea Reach,
regained his bearings by hearing the church clock strike
nine, and made for the shore by the sound, instead of
plunging further into the tideway.</p>
<p>In gratitude, he presented this bell to be rung at nine
every night from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and left a sum
of money to endow it The bell-ringing ceased in 1822,
when the peal of the old church was broken up to provide<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
new bells for St. Luke’s in Sydney Street, but in memory
of the Ashburnham deliverance and bequest the clock is
illuminated every evening at sunset, and by oil lantern, by
candle, by gas, and now by electricity, tells the story of the
rescue to all who pass by.</p>
<p>I have, for want of space, omitted many smaller tablets
and inscriptions, which, curious enough in their way, and
important in the mosaic of our parish history, are yet little
interesting to the passing visitor, unless he is bent on
following up some special clue of family or local weight.
Should such be his study, I would counsel him to refer to
Mr. Reginald’s Blunt’s <i>Historical Handbook</i>, to Mr. Randall
Davies’ splendid <i>History of the Old Church</i>, or to the Rev.
S. P. T. Prideaux’s <i>Short Account of Chelsea Old Church</i>,
to all of which I am infinitely beholden.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
<p class="not">NOTES</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a><br /><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER V</h2>
<p class="pch">Sir Hans Sloane—His houses and bequests—The gates of Beaufort
House living in Piccadilly—The clock—The restoration of 1910—Church
Lane—The Petyt House—Queen Elizabeth’s Cofferer—Church
Lane and its residents—The Rectory—The King’s
Theatre and the stocks—Upper Church Street and the Queen’s
Elm.</p>
<p class="drop-cap030">THE tomb of Sir Hans Sloane is the chief object of
interest in the little strip of churchyard which
remains to the Old Church. It shows the urn and serpents
of Esculapius, and its epitaph is pleasant reading; we
fancy we see the courtly, kindly, pompous old physician
who lived at Beaufort House and must have been a
familiar figure on the riverside, pacing with dignity, or
being carried in his chair to the Physic Garden which he
presented to the Apothecaries Company and to Chelsea.
His name has been repeated in a score of ways; throughout
the district his daughters and co-heiresses, in their
turn, have stood sponsor to many of our streets. Their
marriages link the Past and Present with names that are,
literally, part of Chelsea. Sir Hans, an Ulsterman by
birth, first lived in Sir Thomas More’s “Great House,”
which he caused to be pulled down—it had fallen into
disrepair, and was overweighted by its grounds and
expensive gardens.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He later removed to the Manor House,
once Henry VIII.’s Palace, which occupied the space now
filled by the houses of Cheyne Walk stretching westward
from the corner of Oakley Street to Manor Street.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
<p>Sir Hans’ collection of natural curiosities and works of
art formed the nucleus of the British Museum: he had
wished that his rarities could have remained and have
been exhibited in the Manor House itself, and that the
adjoining gardens should be opened to the public, but this
was found impracticable; the estate was divided and sold
after Sir Hans’ death, and Cheyne Walk’s separate houses
were built. Many of these show in their basements the
solid remains of Tudor masonry.</p>
<p>Of the thousands who daily pass Devonshire House,
Piccadilly, we wonder how many persons know the history
of the great iron gates which adorn the Duke’s otherwise
forbidding wall? They are the gateway designed by
Inigo Jones for Beaufort House when occupied by the
Earl of Middlesex. Sir Hans, when he demolished the
Chancellor’s beautiful home, gave the gates to the Earl of
Burlington and they were set up for a time at Chiswick; the
late Duke of Devonshire recovered them, and set them up
once more, in front of a great town house. Pope’s funny
little verse to the gates, which he met on the road to
Chiswick in an ignominious cart, is well known—</p>
<p class="ppn4 p1">“O Gate, how cam’st thou hither?”<br />
“I was brought from Chelsea last year<br />
Battered by Wind and Weather!”</p>
<p class="pn1">and often quoted, but few inquire whose gate it was and
where it has gone to.</p>
<p>If time and space allowed, there are a hundred more
points of interest about the Old Church over which we
might linger, but it is impossible to do more than indicate
its chief features in a guide-book of our present dimensions.
Suffice to mention that the tower, replacing an
earlier steeple, was built in 1679; that the clock, made and
presented by Sir Hans Sloane’s gardener, a Quaker and
amateur mechanic, is still keeping good time after more
than 150 years’ work; that the new vestry is built as a
memorial to Mr. Davies’ long incumbency.</p>
<p>The latest restoration of the church in 1910 owes its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
origin to the short but vigorous rule of Mr. Prideaux, who
recognised the necessity and did not allow himself to be
daunted by the immense difficulties of the work required.
Some of our conservative Chelsea hearts dreaded it, as
though the Huns and Vandals were at our church gates,
but the sympathetic manner in which it was carried out
reconciled even the most fearful to the unavoidable
changes.</p>
<p>As we remember the Rev. R. H. Davies very gratefully for
freeing the two chapels from the thrall of private ownership,
so we thank the Rev. S. P. T. Prideaux for so
bravely carrying through the immense work of the
restoration and re-beautifying of 1910.</p>
<p>To his successor, the Rev. M. S. Farmer, we owe the
completion of the organ and the careful and reverent
re-arrangement of the surrounding church garden.</p>
<p>As we leave the church, Cheyne Walk stretches stately
and placid to either side of us, and the river beyond,
which used to lap the churchyard wall when Henry VIII.
was rowed up in his royal barge to visit the beloved
Chancellor (whose head he presently cut off), shows like
silver between the bounds of its magnificent embankment;
all this must have a chapter to itself, and as we are at
Church Street corner, we will take the opportunity of turning
due north and following it, the “Church Lane” of
older days, to its end at Queen’s Elm.</p>
<p>Just above the church lies the Petyt House, erected in
1706 by William Petyt; it has been rebuilt, but its Queen
Anne character has been kept. A grim-faced portrait of
its founder hangs inside, and the house is still used for
Sunday-school and parish purposes, “Church purposes”
being strictly prescribed. It was originally the parish
school, succeeding a parochial school built somewhere near
the same site by Rector Ward, “Cofferer to Queen Elizabeth,”
in 1595. “Cofferer” is a delightful title, and
suggests comfortable resources in the background.</p>
<p>Church Street is now a squalid thoroughfare leading
from Fulham and King’s Road straight to the Embankment
by a short cut that is narrow, crowded, and always
swarming with children. But in the seventeenth and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
eighteenth centuries it was dignified and residential, and
even now if you obliterate in your mind’s eye the ugly,
cheap shop fronts you will find Queen Anne brickwork
behind; generous windows, warmly tiled roofs, and panelled
rooms within. Here in the good Queen’s days lived the
<i>élite</i> of the literary world: Bishop Atterbury schemed for
the Stuarts in a “house on the waterside,” probably opposite
the church; Dean Swift had his lodging a little further
up the lane, where he deplored “confounded coarse sheets
and an awkward bed”; Addison came across the fields from
Sandford Manor House to meet the wits at Don Saltero’s
coffee-house; Dr. Arbuthnot and Sir John Shadwell, the
Queen’s physicians, and many others, scientists and men
of letters, lived in the Church Street houses which to-day
are stables, laundries, offices, and small shops.</p>
<p>Trelawny, Bishop of Winchester, was a force in this
coterie’s earlier days; later Dr. Johnson visited here.
Possibly the existence of great houses and influential
owners of property in and about our Village of Palaces
brought the wits and writers to Chelsea: Shrewsbury
House, Winchester House, Lindsey House, Essex House,
and others were in the possession of noblemen who might
happily count as patrons to launch a new book or a new
enterprise if the authors knew how to play their cards well
and politely.</p>
<p>A few hundred yards above the Petyt House the rectory
wall begins, and one of the most delightful houses and
gardens in London is seen behind it. An older rectory
house existed on much the same site from the early
sixteenth century, and the roll of Chelsea rectors being
complete since 1289, it may well have been earlier still.
But in 1694 we read that Rector John King found the
rectory house so dilapidated that he removed to lodgings
in Church Lane, and it was probably rebuilt shortly afterwards.
Rector Blunt, and our present rector, Archdeacon
Bevan, have done much to beautify and improve it, and
though they have generously given part of its surrounding
land for necessary parish purposes, the garden, with Queen
Elizabeth’s mulberry-tree, still remains a joy and refreshment
to many—an oasis of flowers, and trees, and lovely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
age-old turf in the midst of the busiest commercial quarter
of the parish.</p>
<p>The General Omnibus Company has its office where
once the stage coaches used to rumble in from the Great
North Road; and the King’s House, an unrivalled cinematograph
theatre, faces the corner where, tradition says,
the stocks used to stand for the wholesome punishment of
miscreants and disturbers of the peace. If only the cinema
could reproduce some of the scenes which were enacted on
this spot two hundred years ago, how interesting would
be the revival, and how Suffragettes would tremble!</p>
<p>Upper Church Street, across the King’s Road, was till
recently a pretty countrified street, irregularly set with
charming houses small and big. Here lived Felix
Moscheles, the painter, Mr. De Morgan, the novelist, Mr.
Bernard Partridge, the <i>Punch</i> cartoonist, reflecting and
adding to the effulgence of the Chelsea Arts Club. But
the newly planned Avenue of the Vale, with its antennæ
of new streets in every direction, has cost us Church Street
as we have loved it since childhood; “<i>c’est magnifique</i>,” this
new tasteful suburb of old Chelsea, but it is not the homely
purlieu that we, and Dean Swift, used to know.</p>
<p>Even as I write the hammers of the housebreakers are
busy on the walls of “The Queen’s Elm” public-house, an
ugly structure enough which no one can regret for itself,
though with the passing of its existence as a house of
refreshment one fears its Elizabethan legend may disappear
also. Here under an elm the Queen “stood up”
for shelter in a storm of rain with Lord Burleigh, who
inherited the Dacre property in Chelsea and Brompton,
and was probably conducting her Majesty to one or other
of his newly acquired properties. Elizabeth was fond of
paying surprise visits to her subjects, and on one occasion
when she went to Beaufort House unexpectedly, in
its owner’s absence, she was unrecognised, and refused
admittance. Under the elm at the corner of Church Street
and Fulham Road legend says she and her great minister
talked of umbrellas, which about this time were first
introduced from the East, but were not yet in general—even
in royal—use.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>
<p>As I passed the old public-house, the stucco frontage
of which was falling in clouds of dust to the ground, I saw
for the first time a beautifully pitched and red-tiled roof
disclosed at the back of the building. It, too, may be gone
to-morrow, but I like to think I have just caught a farewell
glimpse of the roof that sheltered Queen Bess.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p>
<p class="not">NOTES</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a><br /><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER VI</h2>
<p class="pch">Cheyne Walk—The King’s Road and the Queen’s—George Eliot—Dr.
Dominiceti’s baths—A French author’s cleverness—“The
Yorkshire Grey”—Cecil Lawson’s pictures—Rossetti, Mr. and
Mrs. H. R. Haweis, and their guests—The Don Saltero—“The
Magpie”—Remains of Shrewsbury House and Mary Queen of
Scots—The Children’s Hospital—Crosby Hall, Lindsey House,
Turner’s House—The way between the Pales.</p>
<p class="drop-cap040">CHEYNE WALK is beautiful at all seasons and
under all aspects; each time that I regard it from
a fresh point, or return to it after a temporary absence, I
think, “Never has it looked so lovely before!”</p>
<p>But for the purposes of historical interest it is well to
walk it from end to end, or rather, to loiter in it, and, for
choice, in early autumn, when the sunshine is as mellow
as the tones of the old brick, and the trees and creepers
are not too heavily green to obscure its gracious lines.</p>
<p>So, if you will see this riverside row of storied houses
aright, turn with me down Flood Street—when you leave
your motor-bus at the Town Hall—and begin at the beginning
of the Walk that will lead you through the drama,
tragic and comic, of at least five centuries.</p>
<p>Until a few years ago the two main thoroughfares from
London to Chelsea were the King’s Road and the Queen’s
Road. In that their juxtaposition recalled an interesting
tradition, I am sorry that Queen’s Road has lately been
altered to Royal Hospital Road.</p>
<p>For in the days of Charles II. the King had a private
road for his coach through the fields to Chelsea, where
dwelt Mistress Elinor Gwynn (at Sandford Manor when
she received the King’s visits, but, report says, in a squalid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
little riverside hovel, not far from Chelsea Barracks, in her
previous chrysalis stage), and Queen Catharine of Braganza,
who also visited at Chelsea, paying less lively duty calls,
as wives must, objected to using her husband’s route lest
a domestic matter, which she preferred to ignore, should
be forced on her attention.</p>
<p>So the King came his road and the Queen hers, following
parallel paths, and poor, stupid Catharine tried to keep
her eyes shut to her consort’s “merry” ways. Had she
tried to make her own a little less stiff, bigoted, and
unintelligent, she might have been happier, for she was
young and pretty enough to charm Charles at first; her
determined adherence to Portuguese manners, dress, and
language was as much to blame for Charles’s neglect, as
his own inconstant nature.</p>
<p>The first two houses in Cheyne Walk are modern, but
then begins the row of beautiful mansions which forms
the Walk, as distinguished from the previous frontage of
great buildings standing detached, in the gardens of the
Manor House. These buildings were pulled down and
the gardens surrendered to the builders in 1717, and housebuilding
on the riverside began apace. In No. 4 George
Eliot (Mrs. Cross) lived for a few weeks only, and died
from the result of a chill in 1880, just as she had begun
to find pleasure in her beautiful view. At No. 5 James
Camden Nield lived a miser’s life, and left a fortune of half
a million pounds to Queen Victoria, whose Uncle Leopold
congratulates her in one of his letters “on having a little
money of her own” in her early married life. At No. 6
Dr. Dominiceti had his famous medicinal baths, a wonder-working
quackery of the eighteenth century of which in
heated argument Dr. Johnson said to an opponent of
differing views:</p>
<p>“Well, sir, go to Dominiceti and get fumigated, and be
sure that the steam be directed to thy head, for that is the
peccant part!”</p>
<p>Between No. 6 and Manor Street some modern houses
have been interpolated. No. 11, I think, is the number
which has been omitted from the sequence in numbering
them, and a clever French novelist has taken advantage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
of this peculiarity to lay the scene of his story in the nonexistent
house, which he can consequently describe with
all the exuberance of his fancy. I have met French
visitors walking round this end of Cheyne Walk in great
perplexity trying to locate their author’s plot: the fact
that larger buildings took the place of humbler ones, and
that the numbers beyond could not be disturbed, account
for the omission.</p>
<p>Some thirty years ago, when the old houses were
demolished, a considerable portion of an underground
passage was laid bare to the right of Manor Street. It
was obviously a section of that subterranean passage which
connected the Chelsea Palace with Kensington. I crept
down it for the space of a yard or two, and rejoiced to
think that the Princess Elizabeth might have done the
same, in one of those romping games with her stepfather,
the Lord High Admiral Seymour, which “Katheryn the
Queene” found too hoydenish for the young lady’s age and
dignity. Nos. 13 and 14, formerly one house, were the
well-known inn “The Yorkshire Grey,” with its own
stairs at the riverside, dear to country visitors from the
north of England.</p>
<p>No. 15, now in the possession of Lord Courtney of
Penwith, was in the seventies the home of the artist family
of William Lawson. Cecil Lawson’s pictures of Chelsea
before the Embankment was built, were exhibited in a one-man
show at Burlington House a few years back, and gave
an exquisite idea of the waterside in its rural days,
Queen’s House, No. 16, was once called Tudor House, and
its basement is said to contain remains of the original
Tudor workmanship of Henry VIII.’s Palace. Whether
this is so or not, it is unquestionably on the site of some
of the old Manor House buildings; the name was changed
by the Rev. H. R. Haweis, who favoured the idea that
many Queens—Katharine Parr, Elizabeth, Anne of Cleves,
Catharine of Braganza—must have occupied the position,
though not the actual mansion.</p>
<p>Mr. Haweis’ tenancy followed on that of Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, who lived here from 1863 to 1882. William
Rossetti, George Meredith, Algernon Swinburne, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
others of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood joined at first
in the <i>ménage</i>; then came Dante Rossetti’s short and
sad married life, and later he lived secluded, spending
much of his time in his garden at the back, where he
tried to acclimatise strange animals, of whose wild ways
exaggerated reports were spread abroad, perhaps to
ensure the poet’s privacy.</p>
<p>Of Rossetti’s later life, I who write can speak as an
eye-witness, for in 1878 we went to live next door, at
No. 17, and found him a quiet, very retiring, but most
polite and obliging neighbour. As our gardens at the
back adjoined we often saw him pacing under his trees
dressed in an old brown dressing-gown like a friar’s
habit. He went nowhere and received little company.
Once we had lost a pet tortoise, which came up from
under the dividing wall on Mr. Rossetti’s side of the
boundary: the poet lifted it gently back and dropped it
over without a word, then scurried away indoors, lest we
might be moved to overwhelm him with thanks. He died
while at Margate for his health, and I remember we had
hardly heard the news, when we saw people (certainly
unauthorised) removing all sorts of parcels and pieces of
furniture from the house to a cab, which was loaded outside
and in, and driven rapidly away.</p>
<p>When his effects came to be examined much of value
had disappeared, but who were the culprits was never
known.</p>
<p>Mr. and Mrs. H. R. Haweis’ tenancy of Queen’s House
was very different. They entertained half London at
their big crushes, which always had a character and a
“go” which made them eagerly sought after and vastly
amusing. Nearly always the party was built round some
lion of the literary or scientific world. Ernest Renan and
Oliver Wendell Holmes happen to be two guests whom
I particularly recall. Renan was big, overblown, with the
rolling gait and merry, round face of Southern France:
Oliver Wendell Holmes was tiny, silver-haired, fragile as
a bright-eyed little field mouse. Mr. Haweis, who did
not know what shyness meant, exploited his visitors with
the utmost vivacity and good nature; he had the social<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
instinct in a high degree, and enjoyed his own parties so
heartily that few of his guests could fail to do the same.</p>
<p>Nos. 17 and 18 were in 1718 the celebrated Don Saltero
Museum and Coffee-house, removed from Danvers Street
to this more eligible situation; the old site is now occupied
by the baker’s shop, 77, Cheyne Walk. “James Salter,
the coffee man,” was at one time valet to Sir Hans Sloane,
and may have formed the idea of his museum from
pickings, let us hope discarded, by this eminent collector.
He was an Irishman who could mix punch, and draw
teeth, play a little on the fiddle, and keep his patrons
amused, though his wonderful curios read like simple
rubbish to-day, and strongly remind us of the bogus
collections which used to be a sideshow at bazaars in the
country. Still, “Forget me not at Salter’s, in thy next
bowl!” said the wits, and a galaxy of wonderful men
must have met at “the Don’s” of an afternoon as
Richard Steele describes it in the <i>Tatler</i>. The famous
collection was sold in 1799, and the coffee-house became
a public-house; in 1867 it was divided into two private
residences.</p>
<p>The houses Nos. 19 to 26 were built about sixty years
later than those we have been considering, when the
last part of the Manor frontage was taken down;
the difference in style is easy to trace—there is a
uniformity of style, which has evidently been aimed at,
and the magnificent ironwork of the earlier date is
wanting.</p>
<p>At No. 24 there are vaults which undoubtedly date
from Tudor times, and tradition says that the gnarled old
wisteria embracing No. 20 is a creeper of the Manor
House garden. All these houses have fine panelling,
staircases and fireplaces, and handrails—some of earlier
fashion than the buildings themselves, which points at their
adaptation from previous mansions.</p>
<p>Modern houses intervene in the curve where stood
Winchester House, the Bishop’s Palace: at No. 27
Mr. and Mrs. Bram Stoker lived, in the palmy days of
the Lyceum Theatre under Sir Henry Irving’s management,
and dispensed delightful Irish hospitality.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
<p>Across Oakley Street, we come to a lately restored
house which bears the old sign of the Magpie and Stump.
The “Magpie Inn,” one of the oldest houses in Chelsea,
was a rendezvous for the supporters of the Stuart cause
in 1715 and 1745; they could slip away by water if in
danger of discovery. Next come, alas! some lamentable
gaps, interspersed with a few odd walls and gables still
remaining, parts of old Shrewsbury House, where Mary
Queen of Scots was held in custody by the Earl of
Shrewsbury. The form of the house cannot be traced,
though an old print gives it as a hollow square standing
back from the present roadway; it was broken up in 1813,
but without doubt parts of it have been built into the
present small houses.</p>
<p>By the by, the Earl of Shrewsbury who had charge of
Queen Mary was also fourth husband of the notorious
Bess of Hardwick, and Queen Elizabeth is reported to
have pitied him for having such intimate acquaintance
with “two she devils.”</p>
<p>No. 48 was once a Quakers’ Meeting House. The
Hospital for Incurable Children, of which Queen Alexandra
is President, nobly fills the site of some very old, tall
houses, in one of which Holman Hunt painted his “Light
of the World”; the old vine was preserved, and still bears
small, sweet grapes in a hot season; the children’s voices
sound merrily as you pass their open windows, and the
saddest inmates are those who, having been sent here as
incurable, are told that they are nearly healed and must
shortly return to their homes.</p>
<p>Beyond Lombards’ Row, already noticed, where the
old Archway House stood to shelter Jacobite plotters, are
some new houses which are surely an anachronism in our
Queen Anne Walk (the original dates hereabouts are
1710-11), but the Copper Door is a fine piece of work, and
a splendid reflector of sunshine.</p>
<p>Across Danvers Street lies the waste land surrounding
the lately erected Crosby Hall, of which I do not suffer
myself to write, so keenly do I resent its importation
into the hallowed precincts of Sir Thomas More’s whilom
garden. Those who wish to inspect it can do so by
inquiring for the custodian and the keys at More’s
Gardens Mansions (entrance corner of Beaufort Street).</p>
<div class="figcenter">
<img src="images/ill-052.jpg" width="450" height="344"
alt=""
title="" />
<div class="caption"><p class="pi3"><i>Photo by Miss Charlotte Lloyd.</i></p>
<p class="pc">LINDSEY HOUSE.</p>
<p class="pi3">p. <a href="#Page_52">52</a>]</p>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
<p>Crossing Beaufort Street, all the houses are gracious
and of good report, and the entire proportions of Lindsey
House can be made out from the pavement on the riverside,
sub-divided as it now is into five or six different
dwellings, and at one gabled end slightly extended.</p>
<p>This was the great house of Sir Theodore de Mayerne,
Court Physician, 1639; of Robert, Earl of Lindsey, Lord
High Chamberlain, 1671; of Count Zinzendorf, the Moravian
Leader, 1750: it occupied a part of the grounds of Beaufort
House, and rose to importance as that great mansion
declined. The Moravian fraternity had their colony and
chapel and burying-ground behind Millman Street, where
members of their persuasion were buried upright, under
small square headstones, with the object, tradition says,
of rising more quickly at the General Resurrection than
other people. Finally, after passing many picturesque
houses and some squalid modern interpolations, we come
to Turner’s house, with the balcony where he watched the
sunrise, and with the south-west window where he died
with the sunset flooding his face in 1851.</p>
<p>Cheyne Walk ends at World’s End Passage, “the way
between the Pales,” as the map of 1717 has it, which led
across the fields and marshes to Kensington.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a><br /><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
<p class="not">NOTES</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a><br /><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER VII</h2>
<p class="pch">Lots Road—Ashburnham House—Sandford Manor—Beaufort House
and a corner of a “fayre garden”—Tudor bricks—Danvers
House and the Herberts—Lord Wharton’s scheme of silk production—Henry
VIII.’s Hunting Lodge in Glebe Place—The
Manor House gardens and those who have walked there.</p>
<p class="drop-cap100">AS WE HAVE reached the western limit of Cheyne Walk
and may not be there again, for the uninteresting
industrial district which begins here is not likely to tempt
us back, we will say a few words about some of the old
names that survive, under very altered conditions, and then
turn our backs on it.</p>
<p>Lots Road, which might easily suggest the dreary desert
tramp of the migrating Patriarch, is so called because it is
built on the site of four lots of pasture-land belonging to
the manor, and the first of the property to be sold. In
1740 this land surrounded Chelsea Farm, the residence
of the Methodist Lady Huntingdon, the friend of Whitfield
and inventor of a “Persuasion” all her own. Then,
in sharp contrast, it became Chelsea Gardens, later opened
as Cremorne, and closed in 1875, when its pretensions to
fashion had been eclipsed in rowdyism.</p>
<p>Further to the north-west lay Ashburnham House,
whither Master William Ashburnham was steering on
the memorable night when he was nearly submerged in
Chelsea Reach: the name has been well preserved in the
handsome church and adjacent block of mansions.</p>
<p>Chelsea Creek was once a much-used waterway to
Kensington, and the old lock-keeper’s cottage used to be
a picturesque object; there was perhaps a back way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
to Sandford Manor House, occupied first by Nell Gwynn,
later by Addison, which gallants and savants used in turn.
The remains of the little old dwelling stand in the yard
of the Gas Company, to the right of the railway, and
accessible from King’s Road at Stanley Bridge; but they
are rather a deplorable relic of two popular historic figures,
and any day may see them swept away. There are some
survivals which even the keenest antiquarian must feel
had better be graciously obliterated if they cannot be
restored to dignity. Addison’s description of his home
as Sandys’ End, written in 1708, scarcely prepares us for
the desolation of its present-day appearance.</p>
<p>Returning eastward, along Cheyne Walk, we naturally
turn up Beaufort Street, and try to realise, while the tram
screams at us from the middle of the road, that Sir Thomas
More’s fair house and gardens lay here on either hand.
The Clock-house entry to the Moravian burial-ground is
perhaps the original north-west corner of these grounds;
on the east they stretch to Danvers Street. Here and
there are still to be found pieces of wall which show the
unmistakable nuggets of Tudor brickwork; and I once
saw the surprising spectacle of a correctly attired clergyman
astride a twelve-foot wall at the back of the old
Pheasantry, trying to detach a brick as a memento of
his visit to the Chancellor’s domain. I regret that I failed
to observe his descent, but I met him later ruefully amused
and very dirty; and he had to confess that the sixteenth-century
builders had been too clever for him, and he had
torn his hands and his clothes for no result. But the
Chancellor’s motto, “Serve God and be merrie,” was certainly
his also; and the fact that he had not been able
to detach one brick seemed to convince him of its undoubted
Tudor-ness!</p>
<p>Those who would read of “the Greatest House in Chelsea,”
and Sir Thomas More’s life there, should get Mr, Randall
Davies’ recently published book and study its complete
record; here we can only briefly relate how after More’s
execution it was granted to the Marquis of Winchester,
inherited by Lady Dacre, bequeathed by her to Lord
Burleigh, and later occupied by Sir Arthur Gorges, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
Dukes of Buckingham, the Dukes of Beaufort, and finally
was bought and pulled down by Sir Hans Sloane, who
seems to have had a mania for demolishing historic great
houses. Perhaps as a physician his sanitary instincts were
more alert than his feelings of sentiment.</p>
<p>There is just one corner of Beaufort Street where a
realisation of the past may really be achieved in a very
delightful and unexpected manner. Turn in at the iron
gateway to Argyle Mansions (at the right-hand side of the
street, where the tramlines end and the King’s Road crosses),
and you will find yourself in an undreamed of survival of
a part of the Chancellor’s garden. You will find some old
trees and a mulberry-bush, and some turf, that is Chelsea, not
London, sward; you will be hard to please or to interest if
you cannot picture a garden scene here: Sir Thomas with
his arm about his “Meg’s” shoulder—Erasmus reading in
the shade—perhaps the King’s Majesty himself, swaggering
condescendingly, and as yet uncrossed in his desires and
uncontradicted in his supremacy.</p>
<p>It is but a scrap of green, but it is genuine Chelsea
history—far more so than the intrusive Crosby Hall,
which hunches its shoulder to the garden a few hundred
yards further on and whose connection with Sir Thomas is
remote and with Chelsea is nil.</p>
<p>Danvers Street with its tablet, “This is Danvers Street,
begun in ye year 1696 by Benjamin Stallwood,” commemorates
the older Danvers House, home of the versatile
Sir John Danvers, a courtier, a regicide, and then a
courtier again as the whirligig of time carried him along.
His wife was the pious and beautiful Lady Herbert,
mother by her first marriage of Lord Herbert of Cherbury
and of George Herbert, the sweet singer; the Herbert
family was constant at church, and it is pleasant to think
that some of the poet’s “Church Porch” thoughts may
have come to him in the calm seclusion of the Old Church.
Lord Wharton, who later lived at Danvers House and was
the author of the famous Whig song “Lillibulero” to which
Purcell wrote the music, tried to introduce the silk industry
into Chelsea, for the employment of the French Huguenots
who had a colony hereabouts. Two thousand mulberry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
trees were planted along the north of King’s Road, on
the Elm Park estate, and in other large gardens, but
unluckily a mulberry was chosen which did not approve
itself to English silkworms, and after a specimen petticoat
had been presented to Queen Caroline, we hear no
more of the venture.</p>
<p>But this doubtless accounts for the many odd-corner
mulberry trees in our various back-gardens: Queen
Elizabeth has been associated with several of them, and
without hesitation we believe that she planted the Rectory
garden tree—but for the rest, we credit Lord Wharton.</p>
<p>A little intricate turn, opposite the new County School
buildings, into Glebe Place brings us, at the south-east
corner, to Henry VIII.’s Hunting Lodge, a tiny dwelling,
with beautiful fish-scale tiling, and so narrow a doorway
that our ordinary conception of King Hal’s figure seems
to give the lie to this tradition. But Henry was doubtless
of slenderer build when he came to shoot bernagle
on the riverside, and incidentally to court Mistress Jane
Seymour; it is worth asking the present occupier of the
little house for permission to see the ladder stairway to the
floor above. Again we are amazed to think how Henry ever
mounted it; the Lodge, as it is called still, must have
been very convenient in old days to that Tudor Lane
which divided Upper Cheyne Row and ran straight to
the Thames side, where in the reeds of the Battersea
shore wild geese were plentiful.</p>
<p>The gardens at the back of the Cheyne Walk houses
east of Oakley Street are all hallowed ground, for here
without a doubt stretched the lawns and glades of the
royal pleasaunce, where “Katheryn the Queene” waited
so anxiously for the Lord High Admiral—her fourth
husband, it is true, but her first love; where she bade
him play with romance, at the little gate in the fields, in
the letter which he told her not to write but which she
could not resist writing.</p>
<div class="figcenter">
<img src="images/ill-060.jpg" width="450" height="334"
alt=""
title="" />
<div class="caption"><p class="pi3"><i>Photo by Miss Muriel Johnston.</i></p>
<p class="pc">HENRY VIII.’S HUNTING LODGE.</p>
<p class="pi3">p. <a href="#Page_60">60</a>]</p>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span></p>
<p>Presently, Elizabeth the hoyden was romping and flirting
with her stepfather in these very precincts, and poor
Queen Katharine was sadly disillusioned and crept away
to Sudeley to die. Anne of Cleves may have paced here
in sedate Dutch fashion, debating whether she should invite
her whilom husband to tea, which she certainly did and
found it quite entertainment enough. Lady Jane Grey
visited here, and as Guildford Dudley lived hard by,
perhaps conducted her priggish courtship under these very
trees. By-and-by Sir Hans Sloane is wheeled up in his
invalid chair and matures his practical plans for breaking
up the estate and sending a tide of new building over
Chelsea.</p>
<p>Afterwards, when each house had its individual garden,
the company that flocked to Cheyne Walk was, in Georgian
times, scarcely less distinguished, and in our own day
no less interesting: some magnet quality in the very earth
surely brings those who are dear and delightful to rest
in Chelsea by the river?</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a><br /><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
<p class="not">NOTES</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a><br /><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<h2 class="p4">CHAPTER VIII</h2>
<p class="pch">Carlyle’s and Rossetti’s monuments—Paradise Row as it used to be—Hortense
de Mazarin—Whistler’s White House and the Victoria
Hospital—The Physick Garden—Swan Walk and Doggett’s race
for the “Coat and Badge”—The Royal Hospital—Poor, pretty
Nelly’s pleasure house—The Chapel—The Hall—An American
offer—A French Eagle—Walpole House and a Queen at dinner—Ranelagh
and its Rotunda—The Pensioners’ Gardens.</p>
<p class="drop-cap030">IN the Embankment Gardens, facing Cheyne Row and
Queen’s House respectively, are the statue of Carlyle
by Boehm and the Drinking Fountain Memorial to
Rossetti, with a portrait in relief by his friend, Ford Madox
Brown. Both are excellent likenesses, though Carlyle’s
is a peaceful presentment, and Rossetti’s mournful and
rather repellent.</p>
<p>Passing through the gardens, I have often been reminded
of the Greek painter and the birds who pecked at his
grapes, for the children often stop to finger the pile of
books under Carlyle’s chair. “They’m real books, ain’t
they, missus, wat the old genelman wrote?” Thus we talk
of Carlyle still, a stone’s throw from his study windows.
It is interesting to know that the annual number of visitors
to the Carlyle House increases steadily, and the custodian
assures us that the knowledge of his works—intelligent,
not merely curious—increases also, though among Colonials
and Americans he is better known than among ordinary
English people. And for “Colonials” read Scotch, or
Scotch extracted.</p>
<p>Leaving Cheyne Walk behind and walking eastward, we
pass blocks of new flats and modern houses where once was
Queen’s Road and beautiful Paradise Row—a terrace of
houses that three hundred years ago was a centre of life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
and fashion. Here lived Hortense Duchesse de Mazarin,
who dared not marry Charles II. in his days of exile, but
flirted with him extensively later, and accepted a pension from
him of £4,000 a year, which she spent on riotous entertainments
rather than on paying her just rates and debts.
Charles, Duke of St. Albans, son of Nell Gwynn and the
Merry Monarch, lived here, and so did Mary Astell, the
Suffragette of her times, whose advanced views found little
favour with the wits at the Don Saltero or the fashionables
of the Court, though serious John Evelyn sees fit to
commend her. Dukes and earls and “smart” bishops
jostled each other in Paradise Row in the gay Stuart days,
then artists, physicians, scientists, and schoolmasters succeeded
to the fine old houses with their stately forecourts,
and Elizabeth Fry established her “School of Discipline”
for homeless and vagabond girls at the corner in 1828.
Finally, in 1908 it was swept away, and re-created to meet
modern requirements as Royal Hospital Road.</p>
<p>Tite Street turns off towards the river, and holds two
buildings of note: Mr. Whistler’s White House, which looks
as if it had strayed out of its way from Constantinople, and
the Victoria Hospital for Children, a splendid new building,
embracing, as its nucleus, Gough House, built by the
Earl of Carberry in Charles II.’s time. Sir Richard Gough,
who succeeded the Earl, gave it its name. The hospital is
an unspeakable boon to the poor of the district; it has
seventy beds, and a very extensive out-patients’ department,
as well as a convalescent home at Broadstairs.
Visitors can visit it daily between 2 and 4 p.m., and
all parents must owe it their gratitude for its devotion to
the cause of all children in illness.</p>
<p>The Physick Garden entrance faces Swan Walk, and a
ring at the resounding bell in the wall will bring an
answering gardener, who will admit the inquiring visitor;
but it is generally understood that such visits are made for
reasons of botanical or scientific research.</p>
<p>There is no fee, but visitors sign their names in the
register, and, if I am not mistaken, enter the object of their
special study. The garden, presented by Sir Hans Sloane
to the Apothecaries Company, is mainly designed for the
use and assistance of students of medicine and botany. All
the plants grown in it have their medicinal value. Only
one of the Lebanon cedars planted in 1683 remains.</p>
<div class="figcenter">
<img src="images/ill-066.jpg" width="400" height="517"
alt=""
title="" />
<div class="caption"><p class="pi5"><i>Photo by Miss Charlotte Lloyd.</i></p>
<p class="pc">SIR HANS SLOANE.</p>
<p class="pi5">p. <a href="#Page_66">66</a>]</p>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p>
<p>Linnæus, Sir Joseph Banks, Mrs. Elizabeth Blackwell
(the “better horse” of the luckless Alexander Blackwell,
who dwelt in Swan Walk and would never have written
his <i>Herbal</i> without “the grey mare’s” clever assistance),
Philip Miller, of the <i>Gardeners’ Dictionary</i>, all loved the
Physick Garden, and used it as Sir Hans intended.</p>
<p>The old houses in Swan Walk—four or five in number—are
all beautiful in their stately proportions and mellow
colouring.</p>
<p>The “Old Swan Inn,” a hostel for country junketings
in Pepys’s time, stood on the waterside till the Embankment
came to Chelsea. It was the goal for Doggett’s
watermen’s race, still rowed on August 1 in commemoration
of the Protestant Succession. This year, 1914, it
will celebrate its 200th anniversary. The “Coat and
Badge” (the latter the silver token of the White Horse of
Hanover) were annually held by the victor, and a couple
of guineas accrued to him as well from the loyal Irish
Orangemen’s pockets. Wentworth House, on the Embankment,
now occupies the site, and the “Old Paradise
Wharf and Stairs” were just beyond.</p>
<p>And now, whether we walk by the Embankment or by
the parallel road, we reach the grounds of the Royal
Hospital—that most perfect work of Sir Christopher
Wren, which, oddly enough, Chelsea people still persist
in calling “Controversy College,” Archbishop Laud’s name
for it when James I. tried to coax it into a sort of theological
academy. If you ask your way to the Royal
Hospital, you will invariably be corrected, and “the
College” substituted, and why the name remains is a
Chelsea mystery.</p>
<p>Nell Gwynn’s part in its foundation as an asylum for
old soldiers may be a myth, but is as certain to live as
the Hospital to stand. “What is this? King Charles’s
Hospital?” and its pretty rejoinder, “And Nelly’s pleasure
house,” was almost the most popular quotation of our
Chelsea Pageant in June 1908.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
<p>Every 29th of May King Charles’s statue is wreathed
with oak, and the pensioners get double rations of beef and
plum pudding, and if you fall into conversation with one of
the red-coated old soldiers in the hospital gardens, where
they love to saunter and watch the nursemaids and the
children and the emancipated terriers of a morning, you
will find that he is well up in the legend of “poor, pretty
Nelly,” and proud of his connection with an institution
which is in no sense a charity.</p>
<p>It is impossible here to describe all that is to be seen at
Chelsea Hospital, but there is no difficulty in going over
it—either with a guide from the secretary’s office on
application, or informally by presenting oneself at service
at the Chapel on Sundays (11 a.m. and 6.30 p.m.) and
glancing into the hall and the kitchens as one passes
out through the beautiful colonnade, which gives upon
the garden side. The old pensioners are courteous to
visitors and love to show all they can. The great staircases
leading to the rooms above are worth noticing, and so are
the doorways, and the wonderful balance and proportion
of the long lines of windows. Restrictions are few, and one
is struck by the ease and freedom of the place, as compared
with similar institutions in other countries.</p>
<p>In the chapel, the wonderful collection of flags taken
in action is worth studying, with the official handbook;
perhaps as interesting a study is that of the faces and
expressions of the ranks of old soldiers as they sit in
orderly rows. The service is not long, though when the
preacher allows himself an extra five minutes’ law, I have
seen a hand steal tentatively to a coat-pocket, and a
before-dinner pipe stealthily prepared under shelter of the
pew ledge.</p>
<p>The Communion plate—silver-gilt and presented by
James I. to his theologians—is magnificent. An American
visitor once offered the existing chaplain an exact replica
of all the articles, and a thousand pounds for himself, if
he would permit the set to be copied, and “no questions
asked.” The transatlantic enthusiast went away with a
very poor idea of English business capacity.</p>
<p>In the hall, which is now the pensioners’ recreation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
room, there are numberless objects of interest. We can
only instance the case of unclaimed medals, and the
“Black Jack” leather kegs used in the canteen of the
Army in Flanders in Marlborough’s campaigns.</p>
<p>In the hall the Duke of Wellington’s coffin lay in
state November 1852, and during the crowd and excitement
of the two days’ ceremony, one of the French Eagles
taken at Waterloo was stolen—re-captured, it is supposed,
by French visitors.</p>
<p>The sittings in the chapel are allotted to the officers
and staff of the hospital (note the <i>Whitster’s</i> Pew, where
sits the head of the laundry), but visitors can generally
find accommodation if they present themselves at the
Sunday services.</p>
<p>Walpole House, now the Infirmary, was once the residence
of the great Whig Minister, and in his garden
George II. and Caroline the Illustrious, when Prince and
Princess of Wales, sometimes sat down to dinner, while
Chelsea people stared at them through the adjacent railings.
A special permission is necessary to view the
Infirmary.</p>
<p>One other Royal remembrance, and I must close this
inadequate account of the Royal Hospital treasures.
There is a fine bust of Queen Victoria executed especially
for the hall, and paid for by every man in the hospital
giving his pay for one day—that day being the great
Jubilee of 1887. It shows the great Queen at her noblest
and best, as her soldiers love to remember her.</p>
<p>East of the hospital lie Ranelagh Gardens, beautiful in
their placid old age, and reminiscent in their glades and
winding walks of a gay and frivolous past. The huge
Rotunda, where nearly three thousand persons could
circulate with ease, went out of fashion about 1750.
Balloon ascents and fireworks ceased to attract, and in
1804 the big building was pulled down, and the gardens
incorporated in the hospital grounds.</p>
<p>To-day the pensioners’ little plots of garden, to the
north of Ranelagh, are fuller of interest than this flimsy
spectre of past gaiety. Some of the old men are ingenious
gardeners; each one expresses himself in his allotted space,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
and builds a rockery, an arbour, or a fountain as his fancy
directs, and will gladly sell a nosegay of old-fashioned
flowers to a passing stranger.</p>
<p>Truly Nell Gwynn and Sir Christopher Wren have
given the old soldiers a goodly heritage in the Royal
Hospital.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>
<p class="not">NOTES</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a><br /><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>
<div class="break">
<h2 class="p4">L’ENVOI</h2>
<p class="drop-cap100">AND SO WE come to the boundary of Chelsea on the
east, for at Sloane Square (and strictly speaking in
a corner house, half of which stands in the parish and
half outside) the “bounds” used to be “beaten,” and a
young boy received a birching which was supposed to
write the exact line of parish demarcation on his memory,
for transmission to the next generation. I suppose he was
adequately rewarded, and I never heard that the assault
was made a cause for complaint. Whether a Chelsea boy
of to-day would still suffer it, is questionable.</p>
<p>Old Chelsea, with its queer ways and its originality in
thought and action, is fading day by day. The Bun-house
has gone from Union Street, and Box Farm from King’s
Road. Who thinks of the “callous murder of an Oriental”
when they cut through Turk’s Row? Even the Duke of
York’s School, founded in 1801, has carried its little “sons
of the brave” off to Dover, where we hope they still say,
as they ought, “God bless the Regent and the Duke of
York!” but where the object-lesson of the Royal Hospital
will not be a part of their education, as it was in Chelsea.</p>
<p>And with these changes thick and fast upon us, can you,
O stranger, cousin from America, or brother from Greater
Britain overseas, wonder that we of the old village by
the river cling fast to our legends and traditions of the
past, setting them, childish as some may deem them, in
that Light of Romance “that never was on sea or land.”
How it gilds the simplest deed, lights up the dimmest
corner; how it shows certain figures of the past, more real
to us than any neighbours of to-day!</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>
<p>Here in a Chelsea backwater where the children have
spread a “grotto,” and cry for your “remembrance” of
the Holy Sepulchre that they symbolise so unwitting, we
too may realise that we have been on pilgrimage back
to Tudor days, and the stately times of great Elizabeth,
and the Court of merry Charles.</p>
<p>And if the Road-book has served you, as an afternoon’s
guide, to make you love and see Chelsea, then, by my
halidom! two of us are well pleased!</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
<div class="sum">
<p class="pc4 elarge"><b>PERCY T. HARRIS,</b> <span class="smcap small">M.P.S.</span></p>
<p class="pc reduct"><i>Silver Medallist in Chemistry & Physics</i></p>
<p class="pc1 mid">DISPENSING STORE CHEMIST</p>
<p class="pc1 large"><b>183a, King’s Road, Chelsea</b></p>
<p class="pc1 reduct"><i>Tel.</i>: 3029 Western.</p>
<p class="p1 lmid">All Prescriptions and Medicines Skilfully prepared
from materials of the best quality only. Absolute
accuracy of detail, early delivery, and moderate charges
characterise this old-established but up-to-date business,
which affords a choice of the largest Stock of Chemists’
Sundries, Photographic Materials, and Patent Medicines
in Chelsea.</p>
<hr class="full" />
<p class="pc xlarge">RODWELL BROS.</p>
<p class="pc reduct">for</p>
<p class="pc large">AFTERNOON TEAS</p>
<p class="pc large"><b>235 King’s Road, Chelsea</b></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="pc large">BAKERS, CONFECTIONERS<br />
AND CATERERS, ETC.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="pc">All Orders carried out under Personal Supervision</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
<p class="pc"><i>FOR PARTICULARS OF CHARACTERISTIC</i></p>
<div class="figcenter">
<img src="images/ad1.jpg" width="400" height="90"
alt=""
title="" />
</div>
<p class="pc mid">TO BUY OR RENT, APPLY</p>
<p class="pc xlarge"><span class="u"><b>WHEELER <span class="smcap">Bros.</span></b></span></p>
<p class="pc reduct">Chartered Surveyors and Auctioneers</p>
<p class="pc mid">1, SYDNEY STREET, FULHAM RD.,</p>
<p class="pr6">CHELSEA</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Telephone: Kensington 1687</span></p>
<hr class="full" />
<p class="pc xlarge"><span class="u"><b>Tuberculin Dispensary</b></span></p>
<p class="drop-cap030">The Old Chelsea Dispensary has been reopened
by the Tuberculin Dispensary League,
and Patients are treated at 1, Manor Street,
Chelsea (next to the Town Hall). Letters of recommendation
are unnecessary.</p>
<p>Subscriptions will be gratefully received by the
Hon. Treasurer,</p>
<p class="mid">RANDALL DAVIES, <span class="smcap">Esq.</span>,</p>
<p class="pi4 mid">1, CHEYNE GARDENS, CHELSEA,</p>
<p class="pn1">or by the London & South Western Bank, 140,
King’s Road, S.W.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
<p class="pc4 mid"><b>ESTABLISHED AT COOK’S GROUND, CHELSEA,
OVER 100 YEARS</b></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="nar">The Farm, being but a few yards away from
Carlyle’s House in Cheyne Row, two goats were
kept at it specially to supply him with milk.</p>
<p class="pn">TELEPHONE:<br />
WESTERN<br />
1782</p>
<hr class="full1" />
<p class="pc giant"><b>WRIGHT’S DAIRY</b></p>
<hr class="full2" />
<p class="pr6 lmid"><i>Chief Office<br />
and Dairies</i>:</p>
<p class="pr6 mid">38, 44, 46, 48, Church Street,</p>
<p class="pr6 large">CHELSEA.</p>
<p class="pr6"><i>Branch Offices</i>: 69, KING’S ROAD, CHELSEA, <span class="smcap">and</span><br />
3, WESTBOURNE STREET, SLOANE SQUARE.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="pc mid"><i>DAIRY FARMS</i>:</p>
<p class="pc large">FARINGDON, BERKS :: TETBURY, GLOS.</p>
<p>Under Medical, Veterinary, and Sanitary Inspection.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="pc large">SPECIALITY—</p>
<p class="pc elarge"><b>Nursery Milk for Infants & Invalids</b></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="pc">HAS SUPPLIED THE CHEYNE HOSPITAL FOR
CHILDREN FOR OVER THIRTY-FIVE YEARS.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
<div class="figcenter">
<img src="images/ad2.jpg" width="300" height="300"
alt=""
title="" />
</div>
<hr class="full" />
<p class="pc giant">“The Good Intent”</p>
<p class="pr6">Restaurant and Tea Rooms</p>
<p class="pc large">12, Vale Terrace, King’s Road, Chelsea</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<table id="tad" summary="ad">
<tr>
<td><span class="mid"><b><i>Lunches</i></b></span></td>
<td class="tdc"><i>(2 courses), 12.30 to 2 p.m.</i></td>
<td class="tdr"><span class="mid"><b><i>1/3</i></b></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="mid"><b><i>Teas</i></b></span></td>
<td class="tdls">----</td>
<td class="tdr"><span class="mid"><b><i>6d.</i></b></span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><span class="mid"><b><i>Dinners</i></b></span></td>
<td class="tdc"><i>(3 courses), 6.45 to 9 p.m.</i></td>
<td class="tdr"><span class="mid"><b><i>1/6</i></b></span></td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr class="chap" />
<p>“‘<span class="smcap mid">The Good Intent</span>’ did not indeed require that last resort of
the apologist—to be credited with good intentions; and I used
sometimes to think that here was a possible successor to the beloved
Don Saltero who used to gather together the Chelsea celebrities
for the purpose of refreshing their wits and their bodies.”</p>
<p class="pr6"><i>From “The Architectural Review,” November, 1912</i></p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
<p class="p4">The...</p>
<p class="pc elarge"><b>Animals’ Hospital & Institute</b></p>
<p class="pc large">75, KINNERTON STREET,</p>
<p class="pr6">WILTON PLACE, S.W.</p>
<table id="tad2" summary="ad2">
<tr>
<td><span class="reduct">Telephone 317 Victoria.</span></td>
<td class="tdr"><span class="reduct">Established 1888.</span></td>
</tr>
</table>
<p class="pc1 large">TO PROVIDE TREATMENT<br />
FOR SUFFERING ANIMALS</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="pc">All information will be given on application to—</p>
<p class="pr6">WALTER BETTS, <i>Secretary</i>.</p>
</div>
<div class="sum">
<p class="pc4 elarge">FOOTNOTE:</p>
<div class="footnotes p1">
<p class="pfn4"><span class="ln1"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a></span>
See Mr. Randall Davies’ <i>Greatest House in Chelsea</i>.</p>
</div></div>
</div>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 48003 ***</div>
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