by Dr. Doran, F.S.A.
Originally published in St. James's Magazine (W. Kent) vol.1 #1 (Apr 1861).
The bill of the old Ambigu theatre one night tempted me from the well-frequented Boulevard; and I entered that popular house, not only to see "Les Faussaires," but to meekly learn something of the customs and morals of England, as the instruction is vouchsafed by those competent professors, the dramatic authors of France.
They certainly astounded me on this particular occasion. I obtained some knowledge of the habits and manners of my countrymen which were entirely novel to me. I ventured, once, to observe to a very fierce-looking gentleman in the stall on my right hand, that the colouring was a little "loaded," as artists say, and that the tone was surely a trifle exaggerated; but as he, with courtesy very slightly candyed, intimated that I was "perfectly in the error," I became silent, and slightly addicted to doubt whether I had ever been in England.
In "Les Faussaires," or "The Forgers," I found a peer of the realm and a manufacturer of counterfeit money in close partnership! The peer resided in a castle backed by a hill, overlooking a valley, at the convenient distance of two miles from London. From this valley, over the hill, up to the castle gate, the shepherds and shepherdesses, in transparent suits and monster nosegays, trooped merrily, to congratulate the lord's daughter on her saint's-day. The coiner, I discovered living in a wild pass between two mountains, adjacent to a very gloomy-looking stronghold, the whole accompanied by characteristic demoniacal and melo-dramatic music; with a plot and denouement thoroughly to match.
I glanced at my sharp neighbour when the curtain fell on the final tableau, and deferentially inquired if the author of the piece was still living. "If he lives yet!" was the reply, "Always, always!"
Well, I thought,—a man unfortunate enough to live always, may be pardoned for any absurdity he may think proper to commit. "It is really absurd," I nevertheless remarked, "to represent such things as happening in England—in these present times too!" He would not yield the point. "When you shall return in your country," said he, "seek! you shall see if the author says true."
I did return, in a very uncomfortable state of mind. I did seek; many were the weary miles I walked and rode; and numerous were the omnibus drivers whose lives I put in peril from apoplexy, in such unextinguishable laughter did they indulge, when they heard the nature of my voyages of discovery. Perseverance, however, met with its usual reward. If I did not find what the author had in his mind's eye, I came upon localities that answered his description. Just two miles from London, I found the baronial mansion of the Hollands, with Notting Hill behind it, and Acton Vale visible in the distance. Shepherd's Bush, I thought, would supply the pastoral people who went trippingly up the hill to greet the young lady whose sire maintained his state by sharing profits with a coiner!
The retired whereabout of this latter individual caused me infinitely more trouble; but I was not to be baffled; and I think that gentleman may fairly be entered in the next year's Directory. Between the hills formed by Skinner-street and Snow Hill, there are two dreary houses which have been tall ruins as long as I can remember anything in London. As nobody would ever suspect anybody of living there, it would be the most suitable locality that can be imagined for a person with illegal propensities, and a desire, like Mr. Turner's, to be considered as residing anywhere but in the house where he did tabernacle. As I was considering the matter, a brass band of German boys clashed into hideous epigrams on sound;—there was the "symphonie infernale!" As I turned away, I beheld the frowning outline of Newgate stronghold developing itself before me. I could hardly doubt but that I had done the French melo-dramatic author wrong. I had asserted to my neighbour, in the stalls of the Ambigu, that there were no hills in or about London; and now, in the course of my researches, I had not only discovered the very mountains that looked so picturesque in his drama, but that among the many features of our Metropolis might be reckoned its urban hills.
In this respect our Augusta excels Rome herself. The Imperial City sat on as many hills as Iris displayed colours in her bow. But what are seven hills for a seat? I walk over London, and I find her gloriously seated on more than three-times seven. Leigh Hunt first pointed out the fact that in every street in the City there is, at least, one tree. That tree is the survivor or the successor of the many that once covered the hill-sides when Druids and Druidesses were of the "upper ten thousand" in society, and only left the London hills to go and gather mistletoe in Oak-town (or Acton) Vale.
A morning's walk over these eminences may not be so bracing or so fragrant as it used to be in the days of Pre-Roman London. The prospect may not be so extensive; the peril is much the same—differing only in quality. The retrospects are, however, as extensive as the prospects were wont to be; and as for the romantic dangers of the way,—for the robber who met your sire to the face, you have the petty-larceny rascal who strips you quietly in the street, or the more majestic villain, who in the root and branch "banks," on or behind some of these very hills, ruin you and your family.
It is on the old hill-sides I encounter the gracious company with whom I would fain have you consort this April morning. Do you feel reluctant and look incredulous, when we turn to the summit, for instance, of Dowgate Hill? You see all dull, and dreary, and dismal before you; but look through those present mists into the bright past. Ah, now you smile! You recognize that heroic sailor of old who burnt the King of Spain's beard. As he walks away from his house, he waves his hand to the loved faces behind the flowers in the window above. Yes, you are touched, and rightly, as he passes before us, and returns our greeting. Like a sunny spot abiding for ever, is the memory of Drake, on Dowgate Hill.
It is only a step hence to College Hill. The College of St. Spirit and St. Mary is no longer there, but the spirit of Dick—nay, of Sir Richard Whittington, is. He has just laid the first stone; and how happy he looks as he himself pours out the Gascony wine, and asks his friends to pray "God speed!" to the edifice. The College has been transferred to Highgate Hill—no unapt place for Sir Richard to walk in. You point to that amazingly fine gentleman who is lounging in the sun on the west side of the street, humming an air, as he runs a comb through his huge campaign-perriwig! That is the second and last of the Villiers, Dukes of Buckingham. Thus he walks of a morning; and he is worth looking at. How picturesquely he "poses" himself in front of that elegant mansion of his. After all, I cannot say of this George what Reresby said of his father—"He was the finest gentleman, both for person and wit, I think I ever saw."
And now:—Well, I will not insist on your turning up Garlick Hill. It smells, so you fancy, of the old and unpleasant root. Be it so; but mark those bright-eyed maidens who make way for those men laden with faggots. How the eyes flash at the unwelcome gallantry of these fellows! The woodmen are likely fellows too! Why do the light-kilted nymphs so shun, so scorn them? Because the churls are servants of the Pewterers' Company, and that Company holds one or two estates on condition of always finding the faggots wherewith to burn poor heretics. You understand whither the wood is going, and why the sullen wenches scorn the bearers of such ware.
We have other company on Fish Street Hill. There, the Black Prince and his brilliant wife Joan, keep household in a palace worthy of the Arabian Nights. She is, perhaps, a little too weighty for that slight palfrey; but wait till you see her ride from here to find refuge near St. Andrew at Hill. Poor Joan, as she grew in widowhood and great sorrow, grew obese. She was, in truth, puffed up with grief; and when she was last carried, in a litter, from the old home of splendour on Fish Street Hill, no two palfreys could well have stood beneath the weight.
There was a time when other great persons rode from the neighbourhood of the Tower, westward, up and down hill; but it made all the difference in life to them, whether on reaching a certain point they proceeded by Snow and Holborn Hills, or by that of Ludgate. The latter sometimes led to the block in Lincoln's Inn Fields or Westminster Yard; but it more frequently took the wayfarer to Westminster Palace and acceptable greetings,—whereas, by the other hills, a man who was the chief object of interest in a procession from the Tower, seldom went to any other exaltation but that to be had at Tyburn! So went Lord Badlesmere, because his obstinate wife, in his absence, would not surrender his Kentish Castle of Leeds to Queen Isabella. So went, subsequently, Queen Isabella's younger friend, Edmund Mortimer. So went bonny Lady Hungerford—that pretty and petulant Agnes, who in a fit of impatience poisoned her husband Sir Edward, and swung for it, like the ugliest of felons. It would take a volume to tell the names only of all the villains whose passage down Snow and up Holborn Hills was demonstration clear of their having achieved that "greatness" which Fielding has so happily illustrated. Look, through your fingers if you will, at the solemn spectacle! Generally speaking, it had little of solemnity in it. The heroes of the day were often on good terms with the mob, and jokes were exchanged between the men who were going to be hanged and the men who deserved to be. There they pass, from the Tower, or any one of the City prisons to the triangular erection on "Deadly Never-Green." There pass Southwell, the sweet versifier; and Felton, the assassin of Buckingham; and five of the three-score-save-one who signed away the life of Charles I.; and victim after victim of Titus Oates; and John Smith, the burglar of Queen Anne's time, the only unlucky individual who ever really came to life after being duly executed at Tyburn. And there, amid the greetings and clamour of a quarter of a million of people, passes, smilingly, that hideous young murderer Jack Sheppard, whom the brightest talent cannot polish-up into a hero. And there is the doubly hideous Jonathan Wild, uttering Amen as he picks the chaplain's pocket of a corkscrew—if the treacherous coward had enough of the energy of evil left to allow of his committing that last felony. A nobleman follows him, Lord Ferrers, gaily dressed in his wedding-suit; then, a nobleman's servant, who for small pilfering suffered the same penalty that his "betters" did for murder. Lord Harrington's man rode over the London hills to Tyburn, in a frock of blue and gold, with a white cockade in his hat, as a continual assertion of his innocence. That reverend gentleman who succeeds is the very pink of fashionable preachers, Dr. Dodd. He had long lain hid in the house known as Good-enough House, at the corner of Gunnersbury-road and Brentford-lane; and for robbing the Reverend Doctor Bell, the old Princess Amelia's chaplain, in front of that very house, that remarkably handsome young highwayman with sixteen ribands at the knees of his breeches, is going also to "the three-square stilt at Tyburn," whither Dodd followed him.
It is too dreary a matter to register ever so small a number of those who wore the Tyburn tippet, even though they went over the hills applauded by George Selwyn, or accompanied by Boswell, as Hackman was, who murdered Miss Reay, out of too frantic love. Many a man went the same ride because he was too clever to be honest; and many a woman too, beside that bonny Lady Hungerford. For some of these latter a man may reasonably sigh; and a woman may cry, "God ha' mercy!" at seeing the Holy Maid of Kent passing to death up Holborn Hill, or poor Elizabeth Grant, like-doomed for trying to save an innocent man from the same destiny. These Tyburn rides closed for ever on the 7th of November, 1783; and, indeed, Snow and Holborn Hills have better flowers of memory than these. In a garden behind his house, on the latter hill, Gerard the herbalist grew many a rare plant; and near the same locality dwelt and moved more great men than I have space to chronicle. A man, as famous as the most renowned of them all, passed quietly away, on the neighbouring hill, to live for ever in all true men's hearts—namely, Bunyan, who in the year of our Great Revolution, died at the house of his friend Strudwick the grocer, "at 'the Star,' on Snow Hill."
What a graceful carriage has he who pauses on that hill, struck by the beauty of a picture which is exposed for sale. That graceful, cavalier-like gentleman is Van Dyck, and he is in admiration at the work before him. It is by an obscure artist, whom Van Dyck's unselfishness will help to celebrity and fortune. The Fleming has learnt the name of the artist, and he is hastening down the hill to Dobson's poor garret as rapidly as he can advance, in keeping with the gracefulness of carriage which Van Dyck never forgot, on whatever mission he might be bent.
On a hill, not very far from this, another artist died—the English Lantara—who loved the bowl better than the brush, and who, despite nature, his friends, and all happy chances, would not be great. On Eyre-street Hill, in a miserable sponging-house, at little more than the age of forty, died George Moreland, an artist who painted a pig so inimitably well, that when he had to limn a donkey it invariably was marked by some piggish characteristic. I have called him the English Lantara, but he lacked the sentiment that sometimes flashed over the Frenchman—thanks to the self-sacrificing woman who loved, though she could not save him. And Moreland's English Burgundy was only fourpence a quart!
Tower Hill. is, perhaps, the most important of all the eminences of our beloved London. It is a satisfaction to think that at least no fewer great personages have quietly lived than have suddenly and violently died here. That finely-wigged Buckingham, to whom I introduced you on Dowgate Hill, often walked over hither to consult a conjuror—a fellow who, when Felton bought, at the cutler's shop at the top of the hill, for a shilling, the knife with which he killed the Duke's father, was perfectly ignorant whose doom was impending. William Penn was born on this hill, in a house close to London Wall. I question if the place can boast a better name. Of the Tower Olympus, Penn is the Jupiter Maximus. Forty-four years subsequently, that is, in 1685, there was a poet lying dead, of starvation it is said, in an upper room of the tavern called the "Bull." His name was Otway, and at the time of his lying there Betterton, that noble founder of the Stage after the Restoration, was wringing tears from the public, not for the famished poet on Tower Hill, but at his own fictitious griefs in "Venice Preserved."
I will not meddle with the long list of noble and brave sufferers who have encountered death, less because of actual crime deserving such extremity, than for political reasons which could not otherwise receive satisfaction. The first English peer who suffered death on the scaffold was Waltherof, Earl of Northumberland, in the reign of William the Conqueror. The last lord, indeed the last person, beheaded in this country, was Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, in the reign of George II. Between these extremes the noblest example was that given by Strafford, who went to his doom rather like a general advancing to victory than a condemned man about to be dealt with by the headsman.
Of all the semi-grim spectacles exhibited on this Hill, not including the whipping of Oates and Dangerfield, from here to Tyburn and back, the most singular was the semi-sort of execution done yearly on Lord Castlemaine, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Squire Wallop, who had sat among the judges of Charles I., but had not signed his sentence. They were condemned to be imprisoned, and to be taken annually, each in a separate sledge, by Snow Hill and Holborn Hill, to the gallows at Tyburn; after sitting in sight of which for a certain time, they were brought back to the Tower. Such a scene, on each anniversary of the sentencing the King, made a fine popular holiday for the "Commonwealth-men" of the purlieus through which the unlucky gentlemen were dragged.
The most touching reminiscence I can recall to mind, connected with Tower Hill, is furnished by Lady Raleigh. She had been forbidden by James to enter the prison where he kept caged so noble a bird as Raleigh. While the prisoner remained there, she might be seen, with her children, grouped in despair, and hopelessly gazing on the cold, cruel walls beyond the moat.
At the best of times and gayest of seasons, Tower Hill must have been rather a depressing locality. Contrast therewith, Lupgate Hill, joyous with gallant Bowyers, before the pert Mercers drove them out—joyous, but with its saddening aspects too. There was the prison, whither the broken meat was carried from the Corporation table, to support the hungry debtors. What says the "City Madam" to Luke?—
"Did our charity redeem thee out of prison,
When the sheriff's basket and the broken meat
Were your festival's exceedings!"
Extravagance in merchants was the certain road to Ludgate; but Love sometimes found a remedy. When Sir Stephen Forster was begging alms through the grating, of passers-by, the discerning eyes of a rich and sympathizing widow fell on the handsome but honest fellow, and falling, pitied him. She heard his case—one of debt—and asked what sum would free him. It was large, but neither above her means, nor too much for her resolution. She set him free, and left him to woo her, all ready to be won. Fancy what a man should be to a woman who gives him liberty, ennobles him by love, and dowers him like a prince—and such man was Stephen to his Agnes. As long as the prison lasted, the debtors there owed many a boon to the knight and his lady, by whom funds were left for the especial purpose of relieving wants which had their sympathy.
Outside the gate, just at the middle of the hill, the dangerous rebel Wyatt made his last effort to overthrow Queen Mary, and was foiled. He sat down, bewildered, for a few moments, on a stone opposite the Belle Sauvage yard—a spot still distinctly recognizable. The hill was never in greater turmoil than on that day, but the turbulent promoter of it was caught, beheaded, and quartered; and some of his mutilated limbs were set up on another hill, then in a country district, and which still retains its ancient rustic and fragrant name—Hay Hill, near Berkeley Square. This hill belonged to the Crown, and was a rare place for highwaymen.
Let us hie, for a moment, back to the City. We must, at least, glance at Corn Hill. When corn had ceased to be sown and was only sold there, the hill became the very Paradise of tailors, whose happiness was only marred by the intrusiveness of the neighbouring Franciscans, and the impertinence of certain swash-buckler soldiers, to and fro, between the hill and the Tower. The former were sadly exacting of alms from the tailors' wives; and the latter, when not paying compliments to the tailors' pretty daughters, were ever and anon running away with the tailors' apprentices. Do not stop, nor cry Haro! upon that light-limbed young fellow who has just bolted, capless, from his master's shop, for there is the making of a most gallant soldier in him. Europe learned to confess as much; and England may ever be proud at the breaking of his indentures by an aspiring tailor-lad, who has left the enduring name and fame of matchless Sir John Hawkwood. Cornhill may be equally, yet diversely, proud of this notable boy who would not live, and of another who was born and long contented to dwell, there—Gray! Soldier and Poet; with these two celebrities Cornhill may be proudly satisfied; compared with these, the glories of the Tun, the Quintain, the Conduit, and the Standard, sink into insignificance.
Better Cornhill's boast of the poet, alone, than that of Laurence Poultney Hill of possessing honest Dick Glover, that other poet, in whose Leonidas there are, nevertheless, some noble lines. Harvey, however, lived here with his mercantile brothers, Daniel and Eliab, who listened to his stories of Edgehill, which they comprehended more clearly than they did his theory of the circulation of the blood. Do you perceive that woman going in to Laurence Poultney church, to be married to Tom Radford the farrier? The cold February morning of 1633 only brightens the red bloom on the young woman's cheek. She enters, hilarious Nan Clarges; she returns, Mrs. Radford: and as they pass along the hill, unconscious Tom Radford is little aware that he has got for a wife a future Duchess—consort of Monk, Duke of Albemarle. No hill-side church in the country ever sent forth a more robust or uproariously happy couple than the farrier and his wife—thus coupled at Laurence Poultney Hill.
Nearly a century later, there issued from the church of St. Mary-at-Hill, Billingsgate, as stately a pair as Court could have formed and Billingsgate seldom saw. In this case, it was another poet of whom this city hill boasts. It was not the place of his birth, but it compensated for that by being the locality of his marriage. The couple have chosen a May morning of 1731; yet the May of his life is over; he is fifty, certainly, but he is in the May of his fame—the glory of his "Night Thoughts" has even yet to come, for though he has achieved much, his work is yet incomplete. And so, he hands to her coach, his wife, a Colonel's widow, but an Earl's daughter, Lady Elizabeth Lee, daughter of the Earl of Lichfield. The lady?—nay; I must decline that question of age—cross over by Peter's Hill, where the Master of the Revels once held office, to Doctors' Commons, and the desired knowledge may there be gained.
The last of the City hills which remains to be named is the almost obsolete one, as regards the hill, and the not savoury one, as regards the name,—Puddle Dock Hill; but Lucia, in Epsom Wells, declares that she would "rather be Countess of Puddle Dock than Queen of Sussex;" so it may be supposed to have possessed some rare town attractions in by-gone days. It has dignity enough in the fact, that the house which Shakespeare possessed in Blackfriars, abutted on the street leading down the hill to "Puddle Wharf,"—"right against the King's Majesty's Wardrobe." If the house of Archimedes was held sacred at the sacking of Syracuse, shall not Shakespeare's house preserve from disrespect the whole district of Puddle Dock and its hill?
I have called Puddle-dock the last of the City eminences, for Lambeth Hill, near Doctors' Commons, is scarcely deserving the appellation, and is memorable for nothing, save that the ancient Company of Blacksmiths once had a hall there. Beyond the limits of the City I have already noticed Hay Hill. Further west, we come to Constitution Hill, the only elevation of that sort ever ascended by Glover, the poet, beyond the limits of old London Wall. For this slight acquaintance with Nature, Thomson denied the claims of Glover to be considered a poet; but Thomson's own intercourse with Nature was not very extensive. He imagined some of the most picturesque descriptions in his Seasons while gazing through a dull window in a dark London street; and, though so near to Richmond Hill when residing at Kew, seldom went thither; preferring to lounge, lazily, in his own garden, his hands deep sunken in the pockets of his threadbare dressing-gown, from which he did not take them, as he walked up to the ripening peaches on the wall, and bit from them their sunniest sides, leaving hideous wrecks to be devoured by the wasps!
Constitution Hill was once a walk for a King. Charles II. would not be dissuaded therefrom by his brother James, who considered it a perilous place for a solitary monarch; which it never proved to be till such peril was least likely, and assault on a monarch least justifiable. Twenty years have elapsed since the lunatic, Oxford, mad to be famous or infamous, made the disloyal attempt which cost him his life-long liberty.
The suburban hills, over-looking or adjacent to London, are more familiar to most of us than many of those between Temple Bar and Bishopsgate. They only deserve the courtesy of being named. Highgate Hill is not so worthy of reverence, in my opinion, for the hermits who used to sit there and levy toll on horsemen (those Highgate hermits were the licensed fathers of all turnpike-keepers), nor even for Richard Whittington, nor for the good monks of St. Anthony, who tended on the lepers in the Hill hospital, nor for any of the brave men and true who have tabernacled upon it, as it is worthy of respect for the reason that Andrew Marvel there kept his modest home. So, Hampstead Hill has been a "place consecrate," in the minds of many, less because of the "persons of quality" who once disported on its side than for the brotherhood of what was called, in cruel scorn, the "Cockney Poets," who, freshened by the breezes on the hill, turned inspired thoughts into words that shall live for ever. Even Primrose Hill, which uncivil topographers sometimes designate as a "hillock," must have this word of protest against the degradation. Of all the elevations near the capital, it is the least changed since it first grew there, over the honoured bones, perhaps, of some great Keltic king! Except that it is not so remote now as in the days of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey's murder, this little, swelling territory, the property of Eton College, has undergone little variation. All around is changed, to its very foot; but the fair on its sides is as frolicsome a festival as of yore; and that loud preacher, and dark, listening crowd on the summit, might be taken, at a short distance, for an eager puritan and a heeding audience, very well satisfied on the point of Grace.
On the other hand, cross the "country" towards Kensington, and mark what havoc or improvement has been effected upon the hills there. Sir Baptist Hicks would look in vain for the noble avenue of elms which once led from the high road up to the portals of Campden House. Queen Anne might look out from her upper windows as of old, but she would not discern, as she could then, the distant Surrey Hills. Still, Sir Baptist and Her Majesty would know something of their old house. Would it be so with the young Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, before he became King, the third and not the most popular of that name, was Lord of the Manor of Notting Hill? If his Highness could present himself at the "gate" there, he would be sadly perplexed, after paying his toll, and passing through. He might ride down the whole length of his Mons Nodosus, to the farther extremity of the Royal Crescent, but no one would be competent to answer his inquiry as to the whereabout of his once rustic cottage, in which His Highness refreshed himself when he came hither "a hawking." Those were his happy and innocent days, when his heart was as light as the feather in his cap, and its pulses gallopped as merrily as the palfrey which bore him from Tower Royal down to the fields and brakes spreading away towards Harrow and Hampstead. Upon that hill I leave young Richard, the first of its royal lords, and the only one whose memory is associated with old, merry days, with hawk and hound over "Knotting Manor."