A Walk from London to Fulham Part 11

"He was," says the historian, "of great vigour of mind, and newly married to a young and beautiful lady of a very loyal spirit and notable vivacity of wit and humour, who concurred with him in all honourable dedications of himself."

When her husband was arrested and brought to trial in 1658, as a partizan of Charles II., by her contrivance one of the princ.i.p.al witnesses against him was kept out of the way, and his judges, being divided in their opinion of his guilt, he was acquitted only by the casting vote of the President, the notorious John Lisle, who had sat upon the trial of Charles I., by whom he was addressed in the following remarkable strain:-

"And I have now to speak to you Mr. Mordaunt: G.o.d hath appeared in justice, and G.o.d doth appear in mercy, as the Lord is just to them, so the Lord is exceeding merciful to you, and I may say to you that G.o.d appears to you at this time, as he speaks to sinners in Jesus Christ, for Sir, he doth clear sinners in Christ Jesus even when they are guilty, and so G.o.d cleareth you. I will not say you are guilty, but ask your own conscience whether you are or no. Sir, bless G.o.d as long as you live, and bless my Lord Protector, by whose authority you are cleared. Sir, I speak no more, but I beseech you to speak to G.o.d."

The very active part which Lord Mordaunt had taken in effecting the restoration of Charles II., in which service, according to his epitaph, he "encountered a thousand dangers, provoking and also defeating the rage of Cromwell," was not rewarded by any extraordinary marks of distinction or favour, and he seems after that event to have quietly resided on his estate at Parson's Green, where he died in the forty-eighth year of his age, on the 5th June, 1675, and was buried in Fulham Church. The son of Lord Mordaunt, who afterwards received the t.i.tle of Earl of Peterborough, married first, Carey, daughter to Sir Alexander Fraser, of Dover. His second wife was the accomplished singer Anastasia Robinson, who survived him. The earl was visited at Peterborough House by all the wits and literati of his time. Bowack, in 1706, describes the gardens of Peterborough House, as containing twenty acres of ground, and mentions a tulip-tree seventy-six feet in height, and five feet nine inches in girth. Swift, in one of his letters, speaks of Lord Peterborough's gardens as the finest he had ever seen about London.

On the same side of the Green as Peterborough House, stood the residence of Samuel Richardson, who removed to Parson's Green from North End in 1755, and in this house his second wife, who survived him, died in November, 1773, aged seventy-seven. Formerly the same house belonged to Sir Edward Saunders, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench in 1682. A sketch of the house will be found in Chambers' Cyclopaedia of English Literature. Drury Lodge, situated on the King's Road adjoining Parson's Green, and immediately opposite the Malt House, formerly known as Ivy Cottage, was built by Walsh Porter in the Gothic style, and is now the residence of Mr. E. T. Smith, who has called the house after his theatre.

The name of the lane which runs down by the side of Drury Lodge has, however, not been altered to _Drury_ Lane, but still retains its old t.i.tle of Broom Lane.

It is said that on the site of what is now called Drury Lodge, was formerly a house, the residence of Oliver Cromwell, which was called the _Old Red Ivy House_. Part of the old walls of that building form the west side of the present cottage.

Proceeding forward from Purser's Cross on the main Fulham Road, where St.

Peter's Villa may be noticed as the residence of Madame Garcia in 1842, about a quarter of a mile brings us to Munster House, which is supposed to owe its name to Melesina Schulenberg, created by George II., in 1716, d.u.c.h.ess of Munster. [Picture: Munster house (1844)] According to Faulkner, it was also called _Mustow_ House-this was not improbably the d.u.c.h.ess's p.r.o.nunciation; and he adds that tradition makes it a hunting-seat of Charles II., and a.s.serts that an extensive park was attached to it; but Faulkner also tells us that Munster House "was during the greater part of the seventeenth century, the _residence_ and property of Sir William Powell, Bart., who founded the almshouses." How, after this statement, Mr. Faulkner could have admitted the tradition, requires some explanation, as he seems to have followed, without acknowledgment, the particulars supplied to Lysons from authentic doc.u.ments by Mr. Deere, of the Auditor's Office, who appears merely to have informed that gentleman, that among the t.i.tle-deeds of this property there is one of Sir Edward Powell's, dated 1640, and that Sir William Powell's will bears date 1680. According to the same unquestionable records, Munster House came from the Powells into the possession of Sir John Williams, Bart., of Pengethly, Monmouths.h.i.+re.

In 1795, Lysons says that Munster House was "occupied as a school."

Faulkner, in 1813, states that it was "in the occupation of M. Sampayo, a Portuguese merchant." And his successor in the tenancy was John Wilson Croker, Esq., M.P., then secretary of the Admiralty, and afterwards the Right Hon. Mr. Croker, {171} a gentleman who brilliantly retired into private life, but whose character is so well known, and has been so often discussed in political and literary circles, that I shall only venture to remark the local coincidence of three indefatigable secretaries of the Admiralty, during the most critical periods of England's history-namely, Sir Philip Stevens, Sir Evan Nepean, and Mr. Croker-having selected the quietude of Fulham as the most convenient and attractive position in the neighbourhood of London, where they might momentarily relax from the arduous strain of official duties.

[Picture: Marble bust]

About 1820, Mr. Croker resigned Munster House as a residence, after having externally decorated it with various c.o.c.kney embattlements of brick, and collected there many curious works of art, possibly with a view of reconstruction. In the garden were two marble busts, one of which is figured on previous page. The other a female head, not unlike that of Queen Anne.

There was also a fragment of a group, representing a woman with a child at her side, obviously the decoration of a fountain, and a rustic stone seat, conjectured to have been the bed of a formidable piece of ordnance.

[Picture: Woman and child-Rustic stone seat]

A recent tenant of Munster House, the Rev. Stephen Reid Cattley, who is known to the reading public as the editor of an issue of Fox's 'Book of Martyrs,' was unacquainted with the history of the relics in the garden, and can only remember the removal of two composition lions from the gate-piers of Munster House,-not placed there, it must be observed, by Mr. Croker, but which had the popular effect, for some time, of changing the name to _Monster House_. It is now a Lunatic Asylum. Opposite Munster House is Dancer's extensive garden for the supply of the London market, by the side of which a road runs leading by a turning on the left direct back to Parson's Green, or if the straight road is kept, the King's Road is reached opposite Osborn's Nursery; adjoining which nursery is Churchfield House, the residence of Dr. Burch.e.l.l the African traveller.

[Picture: Fulham Lodge] Fulham Lodge stood on the opposite, or south side, of the road from Munster House, on the ground immediately beyond Munster Terrace, which was built a short time prior to its demolition.

This cottage, for it was no more, was a favourite retirement of the late Duke of York. An affecting story is told by George Colman the younger, connected with his own feelings while on a visit here. He had lost sight of an old college friend, the Rev. Robert Lowth, son of the Bishop of London, from the year 1781 to 1822 (one and forty years!), when Colman was surprised and pleased by the receipt of the following letter, written and left upon his table by a gentleman who had called when he was not at home:-

"_August_ 16, 1822.

"DEAR COLMAN,-It may be some five-and-thirty years since we met, and I believe as near forty years as may be since I was promoted from my garret, No. 3 Peckwater, into your _ci-devant_ rooms in the old Quad, on which occasion I bought your things. Of all your household furniture I possess but one article, which I removed with myself to my first house and castle in Ess.e.x, as a very befitting parsonage sideboard, viz., a mahogany table, with two side drawers, and which still 'does the state some service,' though not of plate. But I have an article of yours on a smaller scale, a certain little flat mahogany box, furnished partially, I should say, with cakes of paint, which probably you over-looked, or undervalued as a _vade-mec.u.m_, and left. And, as an exemplification of the great vanity of over-anxious care, and the safe preservation _per contra_, in which an article may possibly be found without any care at all, that paint-box is still _in statu quo_, at this present writing, having run the gauntlet, not merely of my bachelor days, but of the practical cruelties of my thirteen children, all alive and merry, thank G.o.d! albeit as unused and as little disposed to preserve their own playthings or chattels from damage as children usually are, yet it survives! 'The reason why I cannot tell,' unless I kept it 'for the dangers it had pa.s.sed.'

"Though I have been well acquainted with you publicly nearly ever since our Christ Church days, our habits, pursuits, and callings, having cast us into different countries and tracts, we have not, I think met since the date I speak of. I have a house at Chiswick, where I rather think this nine-lived box is, and, whether it is or no, I shall be very glad if you will give me a call to dine, and take a bed, if convenient to you; and if I cannot introduce you to your old acquaintance and recollections, I shall have great pleasure in subst.i.tuting new ones,-Mrs. Lowth and eleven of our baker's dozen of olive-branches, our present complement in the house department, my eldest boy being in the West Indies, and my third having returned to the military college last Sat.u.r.day, his vacation furlough having expired. As the summer begins to borrow now and then an autumn evening, the sooner you will favour me with your company the surer you will be of finding me at Grove House, the expiration of other holidays being the usual signal for weighing anchor and s.h.i.+fting our moorings to parsonage point. I remember you, or David Curson, had among your phrases, _quondam_, one of anything being 'd---d summerly;' I trust, however, having since tasted the delights of the sweet shady side of Pall Mall, that you have worn out that prejudice, and will catch the season before it flies us, or give me a line, naming no distant day, that I may not be elsewhere when you call, and you will much oblige, yours sincerely,

"ROBERT LOWTH."

"P.S.-In your address to me you must not name _Chiswick_, but Grove House, Turnham Green, as otherwise it goes into another postman's walk, who walks it back again to the office, and it does not reach me, per Turnham Green, peripatetic, till the next day, which is _toute autre chose_."

Colman seems to have been sincerely delighted at the receipt of this letter; he answered it immediately, expressing to his old friend how much he had gratified him, and how readily he accepted the invitation.

"After refres.h.i.+ng my friend's memory," says Colman, "by touching on some particulars which have already been mentioned, I informed him that I was of late years in the habit of suburban rustication, and that I had pa.s.sed a considerable part of my summers in a house where I was intimate at Fulham, whither I desired him to direct to me, as much nearer Chiswick than my own abode, being within a few hundred yards of his old family residence, where we last parted. Whenever I was at this place, I told him the avenue and bishop's walk by the river side, the public precincts of the moated episcopal domain, had become my favourite morning and evening lounge. I told him, indeed, merely the fact, omitting all commentary attached to it, for often had I then, and oftener have I since, in a solitary stroll down the avenue, thought of him, regretting the wide chasm in our intercourse, and musing upon human events."

There is a regret expressed by Colman that he kept no copy of his answer, "which," he adds, "was written in the 'flow of soul,' and at the impulse of the moment?" Mr. Lowth wrote in reply to Colman, detailing in a most amusing manner his having, in the pursuit of two c.o.c.kneys, who had made an attack upon a grove of Orleans plum-trees in his grounds, taken cold, which confined him to his room.

"But for this _inter poculum et labra_," continued Mr. Lowth, "it was my intention to have made you my first _post restante_, with, perhaps, a walk down the old avenue, in my way to town, that identical day; and, still hoping to accomplish three miles and back, I have hoped from day to day, but I cannot get in travelling condition, even for so short a journey. Therefore I hope you will send me word by my new Yorks.h.i.+re groom lad, that you will take pot-luck with me on Sunday as the most likely day for you to suburbise."

Colman accepted the invitation, believing from the length of Mr. Lowth's letter (three pages), and the playfulness of his old friend's communication, that nothing more than an ordinary cold was the matter with him. A note, however, which followed from one of Mr. Lowth's daughters, stated that the meeting proposed by her father must be postponed, that he "had become extremely unwell, that bleeding and cupping had been prescribed," and the most perfect quiet enjoined.

On the day after the receipt of this note, Colman sent over to Grove House, Chiswick, to make inquiries as to Mr. Lowth's health, when the reply given by an elderly female at the gate, after considerable delay, was that "her master was no more."

A letter from Dr. Badeley to Colman, dated 22d August, 1822, confirmed the melancholy intelligence, which he had at first hesitated to believe.

It stated that "the decease of Mr. Lowth took place on Sunday evening,"

the very evening appointed by him for their antic.i.p.ated happy reunion; and that his remains were to be interred in the family vault at Fulham on Monday morning at ten o'clock.

"I continued," said Colman, "at Fulham Lodge, which is nearer in a direct line to the church than to the Bishop's Palace and the 'old avenue.' On Monday the adjacent steeple gave early notice of the approaching funeral; religion and sorrow mingled within me while the slow and mournful tolling of the bell smote upon my heart. Selfish feelings, too, though secondary, might now and then obtrude, for they are implanted in our nature. My departed friend was about my own age: we had entered the field nearly at the same time; we had fought, indeed, our chief battles asunder, but in our younger days he had been my comrade, close to me in the ranks: he had fallen, and my own turn might speedily follow."

These are the ideas which George Colman the younger records as having pa.s.sed through his mind while an inmate of Fulham Lodge:-

"My walk next morning," he says, "was to the sepulchre of the Lowths, to indulge in the mournful satisfaction of viewing the depository of my poor friend's remains. It stands in the churchyard, a few paces from the eastern end of the ancient church at Fulham. The surrounding earth, trampled by recent footsteps, and a slab of marble which had been evidently taken out and replaced in the side of the tomb, too plainly presented traces of those rites, which had been performed on the previous day. For several mornings I repeated my walk thither, and no summer has since glided away, except the last, when my sojournment at Fulham was suspended, without my visiting the spot and heaving a sigh to the memory of Robert Lowth."

Theodore Hook's ma.n.u.script Diary contains the following entries with reference to visits made by him at Fulham Lodge:-

"2nd January, 1826.-Called. Mrs. Carey's luncheon.

"Thursday, 5th January.-Drove over to Fulham. Mrs. Carey's din.

Colman, Harris, Mrs. G. Good hits. Mrs. Coutts, 'Julius Caesar,' &c.

Stayed very late, and walked home."

Fulham Park Road is now where Fulham Lodge stood, and the ground is partly built on, the rest is to be let for building.

This walk is exactly three miles and a half from Hyde Park Corner; and what an Irishman would call the iron mile-stone stood exactly opposite to Ivy Lodge, until placed against the brick wall immediately beyond the railings.

Ivy Lodge was for some years the residence of Rudolph Ackermann, a name, as a printseller, known (it is not using too broad a word to say) throughout the world, and whose representatives still carry on this business in Regent Street.

Ackermann was a remarkable man. He was born in 1764, at Stollberg, near Schneeberg, in Saxony; and, having been bred a coach-builder, upon visiting England shortly before the French Revolution, found employment as a carriage-draughtsman, which led to his forming the acquaintance of artists, and becoming a print-publisher in London. The French refugees, whose necessities obliged them to exercise their acquirements and talents as a means of support, found in Mr. Ackermann's shop a repository for the exhibition and sale of decorative articles, which elevated this branch of business to an importance that it had never before a.s.sumed in England.

Ackermann's name stands prominently forward in the early history of gas and lithography in England, and he must be remembered as the introducer of a species of ill.u.s.trated periodicals, by the publication of the 'Forget-Me-Not;' to which, or to similar works, nearly every honoured contemporary name in the whole circle of British literature have contributed, and which have produced a certain, but advantageously a questionable, influence upon the Fine Arts.

After the battle of Leipzig, Mr. Ackermann publicly advocated the cause of the starving population of many districts of Germany, in consequence of the calamities of war, with so much zeal and success, that a parliamentary grant of 100,000 was more than doubled by a public subscription. In the spring of 1830, when residing at Ivy Lodge, he experienced a sudden attack of paralysis; and a change of air was recommended by his medical attendants. This led to Mr. Ackermann's removal to Finchley, where he died on the 30th of March, 1834.

Having now arrived at Fulham, we will in the next chapter accompany the reader in a walk through that ancient village.

[Picture: The Entrance to Fulham (1844)]

CHAPTER V.

FULHAM.

In Faulkner's 'History of Fulham' we learn that the earliest mention of that village occurs in a grant of the manor by Tyrhtilus Bishop of Hereford, to Erkenwald Bishop of London, and his successors, about the year 691; in which grant it is called _Fulanham_. Camden in his 'Britannia' calls it _Fulham_, and derives its name from the Saxon word _Fulanham_, _Volucrum Domus_, the habitation of birds or place of fowls.

Norden agrees with Camden, and adds, "It may also be taken for _Volucrum Amnis_, or the river of fowl; for _Ham_ also in many places signifies _Amnis_, a river, but it is most probable it should be of land fowl, which usually haunt groves and cl.u.s.ters of trees, whereof in this place it seemeth hath been plenty." In Somner's and Lye's Saxon dictionaries it is called Fulanham, or Foulham, supposed from the dirtiness of the place. The earliest historical event relating to Fulham, is the arrival of the Danes there in the year 879. On the right hand side as we enter the village stands Holcrofts' _Hall_ (formerly Holcrofts') built about 1708, which is worthy of mention as belonging to John Laurie, Esq., and as having been the residence of Sir John Burgoyne, where he gave some clever dramatic performances, distinguished not only for the considerable talent displayed by the actors, but remarkable for the scenery and machinery, considering the limited s.p.a.ce, the whole of which was superintended by the Honourable Mr. Wrottesley, son of Lord Wrottesley, who afterwards married Miss Burgoyne, an admirable amateur actress: here it was that the celebrated Madame Vestris died, on the 8th August, 1856, in her 59th year. During the time she lived there it was called Gore Lodge. The house has been since tenanted for a short time by Mr. Charles Mathews and his present wife. Holcroft's Priory, which is opposite, was built upon the site of Claybrooke House, mentioned by Faulkner. In the back lane (Burlington Road) Fulham Almshouses are situated, opposite to Burlington House, formerly Roy's well-known academy, on the ground attached to which is now a Reformatory School, built about four years ago. This lane leads to the termination of the King's Road by the s.h.i.+p Tavern. The Almshouses were originally built and endowed by Sir W.

Powell, Bart., and were rebuilt in 1793. The old workhouse (built 1774) still stands on the left-hand side of the High Street. It has been in a dilapidated condition for many years, and is about to be pulled down.

The Fulham and Hammersmith Union is now in Fulham Fields. Cipriani lived in a house adjoining the workhouse. Further on in Fulham High Street is the Golden Lion Inn. There is a tradition that Bishop Bonner resided in the Old Golden Lion, and that it had a subterranean communication with the palace. The late Mr. Crofton Croker read the following paper at the meeting of the British Archaeological a.s.sociation at Warwick in 1847:-