Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations

HEATH HOUSE.

It would be doing injustice to a family long known and honoured in this neighbourhood to bid farewell to Hampstead and the Heath, without some special notice of Heath House, the present residence of Lord Glenesk, but in 1790 the home of Samuel Hoare, Esq.

It is a large, square, heavy-looking Georgian house of brown brick, surrounded by trees and shrubs, close to the Broad Walk on one side, and divided by a narrow roadway from Jack Straw’s Castle on the other. It stands upon the highest ridge of the Heath, at the same elevation as the tavern, and the windows command fine views east, west, and north, whilst from the flat, lead-covered roof one may see on a clear day, it is said, six counties.

In 1772 Mr. Hoare had joined the firm of Bland and Barnett, bankers, of 62, Lombard Street, in which his son, grandson, and great-grandsons were afterwards partners, when the bank was known as Barnett, Hoare and Co.

When the first Samuel Hoare moved to Heath House, his family consisted of himself and second wife, whom he had married two years previously; his only son Samuel, a boy seven years old; and a little daughter. The coming of this family to the Heath was an epoch in the social history of Hampstead.

Refined, intellectual, religious in the best sense of the phrase, yet largely liberal, the Quaker banker opened wide his hospitable doors to friends and neighbours, and brought into their midst the men and women then most distinguished in literature, philanthropy, and for high social aims. Nor were the poor forgotten in the ‘beneficent schemes that filled the mind of this benevolent man.’ Whatever could improve the condition, or help the needs of his humble neighbours had his earnest aid. England had been for some time conscience-smitten, and agitated with the wrongs inflicted on the unhappy negro race. Young Clarkson was calling the attention of every man of influence he could get at to their cause, and Wilberforce, one of his earliest converts, had become his eloquent and pertinacious second. It is well known that the first petition for the abolition of the slave trade presented to the House of Commons came from the people called Quakers. To this amiable and unobtrusive sect belongs the honour of having taken the initiative in the crusade against this barbarous traffic, and the young enthusiast Clarkson, who was preparing for the Church, but had chosen a wider platform for the diffusion of his impressions of Christian charity, found in Mr. Hoare, not a disciple, but an apostle already in close sympathy with his purpose, and daily working for its accomplishment.

Here at Heath House these ever-to-be-remembered men discussed with their host their trials, hopes, and disappointments; for during a series of sixteen or seventeen years the Bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which Wilberforce Session after Session presented to the House of Commons, was as constantly thrown out, and two years before the final triumph of their cause (1827) their associate and helper, Samuel Hoare senior, died (1825), aged seventy-five.

I have not seen it mentioned in the History or ‘Records of Hampstead,’ but find in a paragraph of the Lady’s Magazine, December, 1812, that ‘the Lancastrian school which Mr. Hoare, the banker, has erected at his own expense at Hampstead was opened a few days ago with about a hundred children. The establishment is capable of accommodating about one hundred and fifty, and promises to be soon filled up.’

Some years before his father’s death, Samuel Hoare junior had married one of the famous Earlham sisters, Louisa, daughter of John Gurney, banker, of Norwich, and had gone to reside at the Hill, North End (the house a wedding-gift from his father). Later on Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who had married Hannah, another of the Miss Gurneys, also resided for some time at North End, at a house now known as Myrtle Wood, a delightful event for the sisters, their relatives, and friends. It is of Hill House, during the residence of Sir Fowell and Lady Buxton in its near neighbourhood (1820), that the celebrated Severen of Cambridge wrote: ‘More of heaven I never saw than in the two families at Hampstead’ (the Hoares and Buxtons).

Of course, the same circle of friends were received at the houses of both father and son; but when the death of Samuel Hoare senior occurred, though his widow and daughter continued to occupy Heath House, the delightful reunions that have made it memorable ceased.

Like his father and his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Samuel Hoare the second entered heartily into the views of his friends, Clarkson and Wilberforce, and gave their great scheme for the abolition of slavery his steady help and influence. He lived long after the cause they battled for so pertinaciously had been won, and, with his sympathetic wife, inaugurated various projects for bettering the condition of the poor of Hampstead, some of which I am told are still actively beneficial.

There are just two or three old inhabitants of Hampstead who remember the tall figure of the second Samuel Hoare, who used to go down to town on horseback followed by his servant; later on I am told the servant’s place was changed, and he rode very close to—indeed, side by side with—his master, who towards the end of his life was subject to sudden seizures.

This gentleman died December 26, 1846, at the comparatively early age of sixty-four, and Hill House became the property of his son Samuel, who did not live very long to enjoy it, dying in the twenty-sixth year of his age, October 27, 1833. The present Sir Samuel Hoare, Member for Norwich, is the fourth of the name, and the great-grandson of the first Samuel Hoare of Heath House, of which he is the owner, as well as of the Hill, and other property at Hampstead.

Mrs. Hannah Hoare, the second wife and widow of Samuel Hoare of the Heath, continued to reside there with her step-daughter for many years in the near neighbourhood of their relations at the Hill. There is something touchingly suggestive in the fact that they both died in the same year, the widow on January 21, and her step-daughter on October 21, 1833. Mr. Gurney Hoare, son of the second Samuel Hoare, lived at Hill House many years, and died there. The only representatives of this family now at Hampstead (1899) are Mrs. MacEnnis and her sister, Miss Greta Hoare, who reside at Wildwood Avenue.

WENTWORTH PLACE, JOHN STREET.

The now frequented thoroughfare of John Street has been long in coming into its inheritance—namely, the interest it derives from the fact that, after the death of his brother, John Keats resided here for nearly twelve months, and the last month of his life in England was spent here.

Wentworth Place lies on the right side of the road going from St. John’s Chapel (on Downshire Hill) to the station. It consisted of two adjoining houses, one of them occupied by Charles Armitage Brown, the personal friend and sympathetic admirer of the poet; the other by the Dilkes—Charles Wentworth Dilke, the critic, who was afterwards editor and part proprietor of the Athenæum, and his brother William.[299] A lady, born at Hampstead, and who resided there till twenty-two years of age, remembers that a low fence encircled the garden, within which was a hedge of laurustinus and China roses; latterly it was railed round.

I can imagine the road then, with only a few houses bordering it, each in its setting of greensward and evergreens, almost impinging on the green slope of South Hill, and leading round by Sol’s Row, where Wilkie at one time had lodgings, and where a great nobleman and his wife and daughter called upon him with a proposal for him to paint the portrait of one or both the ladies, to which the unsophisticated Scotchman bluntly replied that ‘he would think about it.’

Sol’s Row then looked out upon a wide stretch of meadow-land, beautiful with divisional elms and other trees, and had a fair-sized pond in the foreground.

It was with his friend Brown, as I have before said, that Keats visited Scotland, but had not strength left to attempt it a second season. He occupied the front sitting-room in his friend’s house, and here he wrote the greater part of ‘Hyperion,’ and the Odes to ‘Indolence’ and to ‘Psyche,’ ‘On a Grecian Urn,’ and to ‘A Nightingale.’ Here also he commenced the unfinished ‘Cap and Bells,’ and wrote ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’; and here, at a party given by the Dilkes, he met Miss Brawne, the lady who ‘was not Cleopatra, but was at least Charmian,’ and who, with her fine eyes and fine manners, and her rich Eastern looks, was fated to play so large a part in the inner tragedy of his short life.

The lady whom I have just now alluded to, who knew Miss Brawne till she herself was fifteen years of age, when the latter left England, describes her as a very striking, dignified-looking woman, fair, but pale, with bright dark eyes and light brown hair. She remembers her mother saying that Fanny Brawne was a lovely girl, but that she had lost her colour in an illness she had after her engagement with Keats was broken off—‘that mad boy Keats,’ as they used to call him.

When subsequently the Dilkes moved to Westminster, Mrs. Brawne and her daughter took their house, so that the lovers must have seen each other daily. Keats resided with his friend from 1818 to 1819, when, in order to be near Leigh Hunt, who had left the Vale of Health and was living at Kentish Town, he removed there. Afterwards, when Hunt left England for Italy, Keats made trial of a cheap lodging in College Street, Westminster, where he only remained a week, returning instinctively to Hampstead, where the Brawnes, from womanly compassion, received him (he was then hopelessly ill), and tenderly nursed him in the white bedroom, with the white curtains and white quilt, in which Haydon, the painter, saw him, the bright hectic of his flushed cheeks the only relief to the surrounding wanness. Here he remained a month, the last month of his life in England, and Hampstead and his lady-love possessed it.

If ever a spot of earth could claim as its own one whose charmed gift of poesy has impenetrated and irradiated the whole sphere of intellectual life, surely Hampstead may call Keats her own.

When the Brawnes left Wentworth Place, an actress of some eminence—a Miss Chester, who held the post of Reader to George IV.—took both houses, threw them into one, and called her home Lawn Bank, by which name it continued to be called till inquiries began to be made for Wentworth Place, which readers of the ‘Northern Heights of London’ will remember William Howitt could not find. The name has now been restored.

Upon this house the Society of Arts placed a memorial tablet of terra-cotta, inscribed:

JOHN KEATS,
Poet,
Lived in this House.
Born 1795. Died 1821.

Not a very clearly-expressed inscription, since anyone ignorant of the poet’s history might naturally infer that he had not only lived, but had been born and had died here. However, this is better than barren forgetfulness, and now John Street has its visitors, as Flask Road had in times gone by, but with far livelier interest, for he who lived and wrote some of his most lovely poems within these walls, to paraphrase his own prophecy, ‘lives among the English poets after death.’

Alas! it would seem that even this poor, long-delayed honour, the only one his countrymen have afforded him, was a mere mockery, for I find it stated in the public papers under the date of August 1, 1898, that Wentworth House has been sold on a building lease of ninety-nine years, with a proviso that only houses of a superior class shall be erected on the site.

VANE HOUSE.

It is generally believed that the fine old red-brick mansion to the left of the road as you ascend Rosslyn Hill, now the ‘Home of the Soldiers’ Daughters,’ is the veritable house which the unfortunate Sir Harry Vane built for himself on Hampstead Hill, a place in which he had hoped to pass the declining years of his life in peace.

Of the original house only an old staircase leading to the garden exists, but the interior of the mansion has suffered so many changes, both before and after it became the residence of the celebrated Dr. Butler, that, together with the alterations necessary to fit it for its present use, not one of the original apartments remains.

The south wing of the house has been cut off; the northern half is in good repair, and makes a commodious house. It has received the name of Belmont. When Baines wrote the ‘Records of Hampstead’ this was the home of H. J. Griffiths, Esq. The fine avenue of elms that anciently skirted Vane House, some of which were standing in quite recent years, has wholly disappeared.

The gardens and grounds were very extensive and well laid out, but these have been despoiled, though ‘one ancient mulberry-tree survives.’

When the grand old house was converted to its present use, two-thirds of the garden were taken for the children’s playground, and quite recently half an acre of the kitchen garden has been sold for £5,000!

It seems extraordinary that there should be any question as to the identity of the house. Its original owner was executed on June 14, 1662, just thirty years before the birth of Butler, who was born in 1692. The Bishop, who only lived to be sixty, dying in 1752, appears to have resided here for many years, and ornamented the windows with a quantity of painted glass.

One would imagine that a building of such distinction, so strikingly situated, and tenanted from time to time by important personages—it was afterwards the home of Mr. Thomas Neave and of J. Pilgrim, Esq.—without the tragic story attached to it, was not one to be lost sight of in the annals of the then small village. Its history might, one would think, even without the aid of highway and parish books, be fairly trusted to oral tradition from one generation to another, in a period covered by ninety years, from the date of Sir Harry Vane’s execution till the death of Dr. Butler. The architectural characteristics of the building when intact bore out its claim to have been built in the days of the Commonwealth.

Eliza Meteyard, in her ‘Hallowed Spots of Ancient London,’ a book deserving a better fate than it has met with, tells us that the famous avenue was the scene of Sir Harry’s arrest. Here on the evening of an early day in July, 1660, just as the sun was setting, Sir Harry walked and meditated, as was his wont, till the glowing splendour of the western sky gradually faded, as did the sounds of the cotter children at their play, the barking of a sympathetic dog, or some broken scrap of hymn, and still Sir Harry continued to pace beneath the elm-trees, the sweetness and the stillness deepening with the twilight, when the measured tramp of soldiers on the hill, some of whom marched straight to Vane House, whilst others guarded the exits, struck terror into the hearts of his humble neighbours, who, before night settled fully down, saw Sir Harry taken from his home, a prisoner on his way to the Tower, whence, after two years of torturing uncertainty, and removals from one place of captivity to another, he came forth on another summer’s day, June 14, 1662, to die by the hand of the executioner on Tower Hill, another martyr to the liberties of his country.

Readers will remember Pepys’ hurry to shut up his office that morning, and get off with his friends to see how the great Commonwealth man would comport himself on so public and so trying a platform as the scaffold. He is a witness, amongst others, to the calmness and self-command which the ill-used enthusiast exhibited in parting from mortality.

POND STREET.

Pond Street—evidently the fashionable street in the eighteenth century for the reception of visitors of the class dignified as the ‘quality’—appears to have been in the early years of this, the Harley Street of Hampstead. Here resided Baron Dimsdale, in a house on the left side of the road going down, the physician who inoculated the Empress Catherine of Russia for small-pox. It will be remembered, to the Empress’s credit, that she requested him to leave the country as soon as possible after the operation, as in the event of her death he would be held guilty of it.

Dr. Rodd, Dr. Lond, and various other medical men, lived in Pond Street.

I can remember it with a row of trees on the right-hand side of the way as you entered it from the highroad, and a strip of greensward running down it—a quiet street of formal appearance, with an air of genteel frigidity characteristic of its period.

It was in Pond Street that ‘poor Kirkman,’ as Keats sympathetically calls him, ‘fell amongst thieves,’ who stopped and beat and robbed him of his watch. He had been visiting the poet at Wentworth Place, and left about half-past eight in the evening, and was on his way to the London Road, probably intending to meet the coach there, when he was waylaid, maltreated and robbed. This was in 1818, so that the middle passage between Hampstead and the Metropolis was not even then without its danger.

Keats, writing to his brother some days after the event, tells him he had been to see Kirkman, who had not recovered of his bruises.

A FRAGMENT OF THE FLORA OF HAMPSTEAD.

In the reigns of Elizabeth and James the herbalists appear to have had Hampstead Heath very much to themselves. The laundresses must have had light feet, and children have been comparatively few.

Otherwise they did not wander so far as Bishop’s Wood, or the old Target Bank, where the lilies of the valley grew so plentifully in Johnson’s time. Johnson was the pupil of Gerard, and the editor of a new edition of his master’s work, the ‘Great Herbal.’ To this lover of Nature, an apothecary by profession, is due the honour of having prepared the first catalogue of local plants ever published in England, the locality of these plants being the Heath and the Woods of Hampstead; many of the plants have survived the predatory habits of London flower-vendors, and still flourish in their old habitats.

Of the survivors, we are glad to give the following list from personal acquaintance with them:

March and April.

We look in vain for the primroses which adorned the hedgerows and overspread the woods in Gerard’s time, and the cowslips ankle-deep in the meadows between Kilburn and the Heath. Like the lilies of the valley, the orchids and ophreys, they have long since been exterminated by mendicant root-vendors, or buried under the foundations of modern streets.

May.

June.

July.

August.

To this list I may add a few other plants found on the Heath and its vicinity by Messrs. Bliss, Hunter and others, leaving out those proper to Caen Wood, which is still rich in the plants that flourished on the Heath and in the woods when Gerard wrote:

Only two species of moss were said to grow in a bog to the west of the Heath, and these I found still growing there, viz.: Hypnum stramineum, straw-like feather moss, and Hypnum cuspidatum, pointed bog feather moss. In 1895, the researches of the London Natural History Club added quite a long list to them, and they appear to be as numerous in the bogs and on the Heath as in the strictly preserved precincts of Caen Wood.

BENEFACTORS OF HAMPSTEAD AND THE CHARITIES.

One of the earliest benefactors of Hampstead was Elizabeth, Dowager Viscountess Campden, widow of Sir Baptist Hicks, the donor of Hicks’s Hall to the county of Middlesex, and Lord of the Manor of Hampstead (whose town house, by the way, was Campden House, Kensington), ‘with whom, in all peace and contentment, she lived, his dear consort and wife, for the space of forty-five years.’

She bequeathed by will, dated February 14, 1643, the sum of £200 to trustees for the purchase of land of the clear yearly value of £10, ‘in trust to pay yearly for ever one moiety towards the better relief of the most poor and needy people that be of good name and conversation, inhabitants of the Parish of Hampstead; to be paid to them half yearly at or in the Church porch. The other moiety to put forth annually one poor boy, or more, of the said Parish to apprenticeship.’ To this gift was joined the sum of £40, bequeathed by an unknown but eccentric gentlewoman in the same year, for the purpose of distributing a halfpenny loaf (probably a crossed bun) annually on Good Friday morning to the inhabitants of Hampstead, rich and poor. Mad as a March hare! for what did the rich inhabitants of Hampstead want of a halfpenny loaf on Good Friday, or any other morning, even in the days when a crossed bun was a panacea for almost every ailment? Yet the bequest proved as bread cast upon the waters, and seen after many days; for being joined to Lady Campden’s £200, the whole was laid out in the purchase of fourteen acres of meadow-land at Child’s Hill, in the parish of Hendon, of the clear value of 10s. per acre.

When Park wrote, this estate was rented at £84 per annum; at the present day it must be worth much more, though on inquiry being made on the part of the Vestry into the management of this charity in 1873, it was said that it had not been developed.

Next on the list of Hampstead benefactions, in point of time, but far beyond the Campden charity in its importance, is what is called the Wells Charity, that gift of ‘six acres of waste land lying about and encompassing the Well of Medicinal Water,’ which the Hon. Susanna Noel of the one part, and the grantees of a piece of waste ground on the Heath of the other (on behalf of Baptist, Earl of Gainsborough, her son, then an infant), bestowed with all the improvements of the same in trust to the sole use and benefit of the poor of Hampstead.

On this land stand the houses and chapel in Well Walk, which when Park lived there produced £95 per annum, the trustees having at that period £1,100 stock in the Three per Cents. In 1859 the estate was said to be capable of producing from £2,000 to £3,000 per annum.

This charity is applied—or at least a portion of it—to apprenticing poor children of both sexes. The parents of the children must have been parishioners (not receiving parochial relief) for three years. The boys must be fourteen, the girls twelve years of age; and in order to enter an application it is necessary to obtain a recommendation from one of the trustees.

Appertaining to this charity there is also a fund for charitable distribution. Besides these gifts, certain poor widows and housekeepers were to be maintained and assisted by the benefactions of Elizabeth Shooter, spinster, the possible foundress of one or other of the four almshouses formerly existing at Hampstead, and one of which, being removed from a part of the Heath by Sir Francis Willes, and the site taken into his grounds at North End, was rebuilt by him in the Vale of Health. A Mrs. Mary Arnsted, of Hampstead, widow, assisted in this charity.

Francis Marshall, Esq., of Hampstead, in 1772 left £100 in the Three per Cents., to be distributed to poor housekeepers annually on Easter Day. Besides these, there is another important bequest, known as Stock’s Charity.

One would like to know the ancient whereabouts of the donor, John Stock, Esq., paper-stainer, citizen, draper, and philanthropist, while resident at Hampstead, who, having, as the white marble tablet in the north-east corner of Christ Church, London, tells us, ‘acquired with the strictest integrity considerable wealth, bequeathed the greater part of it at his death, September 21, 1781, for the promotion of religion and virtue ... the advancement of literature and art ... the relief of the decrepit and comfort of the blind.’ He specially bequeathed £1,000 (which, with the dividends that had accrued, and some donations from the trustees, purchased £2,000 in the Three per Cents.) to the minister and gentlemen parishioners of Hampstead for the purpose of clothing, educating, and putting out apprentice ten poor fatherless children of the parish—viz., six boys and four girls, the former to receive £5 as an apprentice-fee, the latter £2. Eight boys and seven girls received the benefit of this fund in 1812, and as it increased a proportionate number have benefited since then.

To these generous and useful charities many a poor widow has been indebted for the training and suitable settling in life of her otherwise destitute children; but for them many a household would have been broken up and scattered, and decently-born children and respectable matrons reduced to the dead-level of the poor-house. But the large compassion of those ancient benefactors of the beautiful village, and the more recent charities of honest John Stock,[302] have enlarged and widened, as it were, with the years and the number of the necessitous, and continue to strengthen the hands and comfort the hearts of the widows and fatherless with timely and efficient aid.

The funds of the Wells Charity have grown out of all proportion to the original intentions of the donor of them, and proposals have been made to utilize them for the benefit of a class above those whom the foundress desired to benefit. But the working classes themselves, or their representatives, have suggested many ways of using them without wresting them from their proper channel, by which not only they themselves, but the whole community, will be advantaged. It has been suggested to build baths and wash-houses, and a working men’s hall and institute; and who can doubt the reciprocal blessings to rich and poor that must spring from cleanliness, temperance, and those mental improvements which come of intelligent association and rational means of amusement?

Other charities exist in the parish—various bequests of small sums, which if amalgamated, like the Campden Fund with the £40 for annually bestowing halfpenny loaves, would create useful stock, and go far to relieve the ratepayers of the parish.

While these lines were being penned, we had the pleasure to see that a memorial to the Attorney-General, with Mr. Gurney Hoare at its head, had been signed to provide a working men’s club and institute at Hampstead with a portion of the revenue of the Wells Charity.

It has also been suggested, in accordance with the necessities of the times, that a larger premium be given with apprentices, to ensure better masters and mistresses. Some persons have even advocated a plan for improving the dwellings of the local poor, and others, again, a middle-class school for poor tradesmen’s children; but, unless the funds are capable of extension to cover the whole of these plans, the middle-class school scarcely seems to come within the scope of the Hon. Susanna Noel’s intentions. It appears the germ of a working men’s unsectarian club has been for some little time in existence, and that the want of class-rooms and other suitable premises has made the members, and the projectors and encouragers of it, actively alive to the prospect so appositely thrown open to them.

Soon, therefore, we may hope that a handsome building will arise—an ornament to the town and a monument to the memory of the foundress of the Wells Charity.

We have already alluded to the practical services rendered by Mr. Perceval and Mr. Montagu during their residence at Hampstead and in its neighbourhood. It would not be difficult to trace the seeds of the present anxiety for mental and social improvement on the part of local working men, and the desire to aid them in their advance on the part of their employers and friends, to the discussions of the Philo-Investigists, and the Sunday and night schools on Rosslyn Hill. Mr. Fearon’s philanthropy took a wider field: it belonged to no party, or time, or class; his efforts were for the freedom of human intellect, and the advancement through education of all. He belongs by right of residence to Hampstead.

There is in the churchyard a monument to two children of the Hon. and Rev. Edward John Tornour, a member of the noble family of that name, the seventh and, at that time, the only child of the Right Hon. Edward Garth Tornour, Earl of Winterton, Viscount Tornour, and Baron Winterton, who had been resident at Green Hill, Hampstead, for several years. Benevolence seems to have been a hereditary virtue of this noble family. Mr. Tornour took Holy Orders for love of the sacred office, and not for the emoluments of the Church; and previous to becoming a permanent resident of London, whither he was obliged to move for the sake of his health, he had accepted the offices of curate, afternoon preacher, and evening lecturer at Hampstead, where he resided till he could no longer bear the sharp air. While there he acted as a county magistrate and guardian of the poor. It is impossible to look at the engraved portrait of him, after a painting by Drummond, without feeling the fine nature of the man; the broad, full, philanthropical forehead, the large, sweet, compassionate eyes and kindly mouth, are full of benignity and goodness, though we are not aware that he benefited the parish he served pecuniarily. He was living there about, or shortly before, the date of Park’s History. The tears and blessings of the poor do not follow the unreal Christian minister, nor the unworthy magistrate, nor the uncompassionate guardian, and from the character given of him on his death, and which may be seen in the pages of the European Magazine, we venture to regard him as one of the Hampstead worthies.

We find the following notice in the columns of the Grub Street Journal:

‘Yesterday [April 16, 1736], of the gout in his stomach, Mr. Andrew Pitt, of Hampstead, one of the most eminent of the people called Quakers.’ After thirty years’ attention to business, he had, in the language of Voltaire, who corresponded with him, ‘the wisdom to prescribe limits to fortune and his desires, and settle in a little solitude at Hampstead.’ Ceasing from business, however, by no means prevented his active occupations in other ways.

At the beginning of this year (1736) all the Nonconformists of England were petitioning against the cruel Test Act, and Tithe Bill, and Mr. Pitt, as the representative of his ‘people,’ waited upon the Prince of Wales to solicit His Highness’s favour in support of the Quakers’ Tithe Bill. Perhaps there is no greater proof of the charm of manner ascribed to the Prince, and the tact with which he could soften even the refusal of a request when so minded, than the fact that, though Mr. Pitt failed, he came away greatly pleased with the Prince’s reply and his excellent notions of liberty.

It is evident that Voltaire had personally known Mr. Pitt.[303] He describes him as hale and ruddy, a perfect stranger to intemperance of any kind, and as never having suffered from sickness.

Another inhabitant who deserves notice was Mr. Thomas Hayes, who as a poor lad began life in the humble and unpromising capacity of a pot-boy at a local public-house, from which post he raised himself, ‘entirely by his own merit,’ to that of a surgeon. He received his knowledge of pharmacy from Collins, whom Park calls ‘the glossarial stalking-horse of Steevens.’ Mr. Hayes died May 7, 1787, beloved and regretted by his friends and neighbours, respected and unenvied. He was laid in his native churchyard in Maiden Lane.

Another inhabitant of Hampstead who has won the right to be remembered in a description of it was Mr. Thomas Mitchell, for twenty of his forty-eight years of life a schoolmaster in the town. He was the real founder of the Sunday-school, ‘and, by great application and attention to its interests, left it supported on a firm basis.’ He appears to have carried out with great earnestness the spirit of his self-made motto, ‘Do all the good you can.’ The poor were special objects of his care, and, without the aid of money, his practical good sense and actively philanthropical nature enabled him to strike out permanent means of assisting them. He was one of the Society of the Philo-Investigists, a society which, as we have elsewhere said, aimed at intellectual improvement, and suggested the benefit society afterwards known as the Flock of the Philo-Investigists. He did not live to see his benevolent scheme in action; but some years after his death, in 1799, it came into effect under the name of the Parochial Benefit Society.

In 1802 Josiah Boydell appears to have taken a very keen interest and an active part in the care of the poor inhabitants of Hampstead, and to have materially aided in procuring better quarters than the old workhouse at Frognal for the superannuants and ailing pensioners of the parish.

THE FATE OF A REFORMER.

I have had occasion to speak of Mr. Abrahams’ pamphlet[304] several times in the course of these pages, a publication that fell like a bomb in an unexpectant place, and aroused among the well-to-do inhabitants of Hampstead anything but gratitude.

This gentleman, who had ‘a way,’ he tells us, ‘of looking into things for himself,’ having become a parishioner of St. John’s, proceeded to act as he had done when resident in St. Luke’s, London, where his scrutiny into parochial transactions had resulted in a saving to Government of upwards of £2,000, and a reduction of the poor rates from 4s. 8d. in the pound to 3s., a result that led to an annual commemoration of the event at Canonbury House.

But the people of Hampstead did not desire to be saved from themselves, and resented this new inhabitant’s interference with indignation. There is something very amusing in Mr. Abrahams’ account of the proceedings.

Provided with a list of the names of the inhabitants, he called on the overseer of the parish and requested he would return it to him with the figures at which they were rated to the poor. Whereupon the irate overseer demanded to know if he came to disturb the harmony that existed among the parishioners in a parish where everything was properly conducted; they wanted no looking after, and therefore he should treat his request and the list accompanying it with the contempt they deserved by setting his pipe alight with the latter. Upon which Mr. Abrahams made no more requests to the courteous official, but possessed himself by other means of the amounts to which the inhabitants were assessed, and drew public attention to the matter by the publication of his pamphlet. It would have been well for parishes generally had they possessed a representative as energetic as this new parishioner of St. John’s, for the ignorance and dishonesty his pamphlet disclosed appears to have been pretty general.

Six years later (1817) we find Sir Walter Scott writing to his friend Mr. Moratt, who had himself written a pamphlet on the subject, ‘Pray let me have your pamphlet on the poor-rates as soon as it is out. It is an Augean stable; it is the very canker in the bosom of the country, and no small claim will he have on the gratitude of England who can suggest a practical remedy.’

But the people of Hampstead, until they had tasted the fruits of Mr. Abrahams’ interference, thought otherwise. At that time they were paying from the inequalities of the rates 4s. 8d. in the pound poor rates, and 1s. 9d. in the pound for lighting, watching, and repairing the roads.

In the happy days which preceded the appearance of this reformer, neither the parson, vestry clerk, nor beadle paid rates, and, as has elsewhere been said, the landlord of the Spaniards Inn enjoyed the same pleasant immunity. The Lady of the Manor (Lady Wilson) was rated at £100 for the Heath, to which the critical Abrahams objects that ‘when the rate was made, and till within the last few years, when so great an impetus had been given to building, sand, that now sold at 4s. 6d. a load, and gravel[305] at 6s. per load, had sold for 2s. 6d. and 4s. 6d.;’ he rated the Heath therefore at five times the sum, £500.

Lord Erskine’s house, garden, pleasure-grounds, stables, coach-house, etc., were also rated at £100, and very few proprietors were rated higher.

The following are the places named in his report: Church Street, Hampstead Hill, the Lower Flask Walk, New End, the Well Walk and thereabouts, the Square, part of the Heath, the Terrace, Nag’s Head side, Frognal, the Heath, and North End, the whole of which produced at that time £21,078, but might, according to Mr. Abrahams’ rating, produce above a fourth more, or £26,788, and reduce the poor rate by 1s. 2d. in the pound. Amongst the land-owners mentioned at this period are the names of Neave, Todd, Milligen, Holford, Hoare, Lord Mansfield; Everett (late Perceval), Belsize House, Haverstock Hill; Lady Watson, Well Park—a list not very different from Carey’s notes of the inhabitants a twelvemonth later, in the fifth edition of his ‘Book of the Road,’ 1812.[306] He is describing the Barnet road, which led up to and skirted Hampstead Heath:

‘On the left of the three-mile stone from St. Giles’s Pound, Pryor, Esq.’ (a name retained in the ‘Pryors,’ the present home of Walter Field, Esq.), ‘whose family have been for some time resident at Hampstead.’ ‘A little further on Belsize House, William Everett, Esq., and C. Todd, Esq., nearly opposite to which is T. Cartright, Esq. Farther on the left Roberts, Esq., and Coke, Esq. An eighth of a mile on the left, Rosslyn House, Mrs. Milligen. On the top of Red Lion Hill, to the right, is T. Gardner, Esq.; opposite is Pilgrim, Esq., adjoining to which is Mrs. Key. On the entrance to the Heath, T. Sheppard, Esq., M.P. for Frome’ (who resided in Steevens’ old house, now the home of the Misses Lister); and ‘across the Heath, S. Hoare, Esq., and a distant view of Caen Wood, with the seats of Charles Bosanquet, Esq., and Lord Erskine.’

He does not mention Edward Coxe, the poet, who was their neighbour the preceding year. ‘On the right is Caen Wood, Earl of Mansfield, and near it Fitzroy Farm, Lord Southampton. Between the Castle (Jack Straw’s) and North End, on the left, Kerney, Esq.; adjoining Ware, Esq., and opposite S. Hoare junior, Esq., Hill House, and James Kesteven, Esq. On the right Robert Ward, Esq., and opposite John Thompson, Esq., The Priory; and beyond the Hoop on Golder’s Green are seats of Henry Woodthorpe, Esq., Beck, Esq., and Amand, Esq.’

Abrahams tells us that in 1811 Church Street (as he calls it) had 25 residences; Flask Walk, 58; New End, 59; the Well Walk and thereabouts, 39; the Square, 20; part of the Heath, 20; the Terrace, 58; Nag’s Head side, 74; the Heath and North End, 38; Heath Street is not mentioned.

In this year it is stated in the Lady’s Magazine:

‘We hear that it is in contemplation to form a new Ranelagh and Vauxhall near Chalk Farm, and a contract has been entered into for forty acres of land to be appropriated to that purpose.’

New Georgia had long gone to increase Lord Mansfield’s demesne and the acreage of Caen Wood. North End Hall and Well had proved a failure; but the people of Hampstead and its neighbourhood still hankered after the flesh-pots of Egypt, and regretted the affluent days of the Wells fashion, and the bankruptcy of Belsize. Nothing, however, appears to have come of the idea, and long years passed before the beautiful meadows in the neighbourhood of Chalk Farm disappeared.

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE HEATH.

As early as 1829 we find the freeholders and copyholders of the Manor of Hampstead meeting at the Assembly Rooms on Holly-bush Hill, to discuss the best means to prevent further damage being done to the Heath, by destruction of the herbage, and digging sand and gravel thereon, as well as to inaugurate a subscription to try by law the right of the Lord of the Manor to so disturb and destroy it, or to build on or enclose any part of it.

Even prior to this date there seems to have subsisted an ill-feeling between the inhabitants of Hampstead and Sir Thomas Wilson. The copyholders claimed the right to improve their own copyholds by building on them, or otherwise, as also to get materials for such purposes off their own land, or from the waste. This matter had been tried between Lady Wilson and Sir Francis Willes, and had gone against the latter, because his removing the herbage had been detrimental to the rights of the other copyholders, who on certain parts of the Heath had a right to turn in their cattle, levant et couchant. Yet from the beginning of the century, as we have seen, the digging of sand and gravel for the benefit of Lady Wilson, and subsequently for the Lord of the Manor, had been going on without stint, and with scarcely any intermission, though in doing so (to quote the phrase of Professor Vaughan of Oxford, a resident near the Heath) they were carting away the climate and the drainage, and therefore the health of the neighbourhood, which depended on the sand and gravel.

But the then Lord of the Manor was not living for posterity, but for himself. In the May previous to the meeting we have mentioned, without even the courtesy of giving the usual notice to the copyholders, Sir Thomas Wilson had brought his Estate Bill before Parliament, by which he sought to abrogate the privileges of the copyholders, and appropriate to himself the power of granting licenses to improve their customary estates, and licenses to get materials for that purpose from their own copyholds, upon payment of 40s. fine to the Lord of the Manor, and £3 3s. fee to the steward for every such license. The Bill also sought power to grant building leases of the Heath, or other wastes of the manor, and to extend the power of granting building leases over certain lands formerly part of the waste, which were granted by the Lord of the Manor to himself, in the name of a trustee, with the consent of the homage, upon the express condition that no buildings should at any time be erected on them.

It was by mere accident, it is said, that the people of Hampstead heard of this Bill being before the House, and only just in time to oppose its being carried through surreptitiously.

No wonder that there were meetings in hot haste, and resolutions passed to defend the rights and privileges of the freeholders and copyholders, and at the same time those of the inhabitants and visitors. The sympathy of the public, as well as of the principal residents in the neighbourhood, was with them. Lord Clifton favoured the opposition. Lord Mansfield headed the subscription, as we have elsewhere said, with a donation of £50.

The inhabitants, well aware how much of their prosperity was due to the natural beauty of the Heath and its surroundings, gave with no niggard hands towards the fund for its protection. But, as we subsequently learn, the £3,000 raised by voluntary contributions was expended with no other result than the prospect of endless litigation.

It was impossible for this state of things to exist without a certain degree of personal ill-feeling being imported into it. Sir Thomas was rich and resolute, but the copyholders had their rights, and determined to hold by them. The years ran on without any radical adjustment of the questions at issue.

Every now and again, not Hampstead only, but the heart of Nature-loving London, was shaken by reports that the Heath was forthwith to be built on, and then would come appeals for further subscriptions, with the hope of purchasing it, appeals headed grandiloquently, but earnestly, ‘Awake! arise! or lose the Heath for ever!’ and thenceforth other meetings would ensue, fresh resolutions be declared, but to little apparent purpose, so far as the assurance of the preservation of the Heath was concerned. Happily, in the meantime, Government had taken up the question of public parks and recreation-grounds for the people, and measures were being adopted for the preservation of the commons at Wandsworth, Wimbledon, Clapham, Tooting, and Putney.

The Hampstead Heath Committee put themselves into communication with the Board of Works, and authorized it to negotiate the purchase of the Heath with the Lord of the Manor of Hampstead.

But though propositions had been made for its purchase in 1856, it was not till the latter end of 1866 that, from information received, the Board imagined that the time had arrived when Sir Thomas Wilson might be willing to negotiate for the sale of his rights in the Heath. Accordingly an interview was arranged between the then Chairman of the Board of Works, Sir John Thwaites, and the Lord of the Manor, upon what proved to be wholly delusive premises. Instead of being willing to listen to overtures on the subject, Sir Thomas was altogether indisposed to entertain any such proposition, or to acquiesce with the Board in any application for the necessary powers to deal with the Heath.

Though himself having only a life-interest in the estate, he insisted on regarding it as building land, and modestly estimated the value of the property at from £5,000 to £10,000 per acre, a prohibitory price, of course, to those who sought the purchase of the Heath.

At the commencement of 1870 there stepped in an unexpected arbitrator, or, as one of the vestrymen expressed it, ‘the hopes of Hampstead people were brightened by the death of Sir Thomas Wilson.’ His brother succeeded to the estate, and once more, and with reason in this instance, it was said that if an offer of £50,000 was made by the Board to the new Lord of the Manor, Sir John Maryon Wilson would be disposed to accept of that sum, and surrender all his rights and interest in the property, comprising an area of about 240 acres.

In consequence of this belief, negotiations were renewed at the suggestion of Mr. Le Breton, the representative of Hampstead at the Metropolitan Board, an honoured name in the neighbourhood from its associations with that of the Aikins family, Mrs. Barbauld’s grand-niece being the wife of Mr. Le Breton.

This gentleman, in conjunction with Mr. Gurney Hoare, and a committee of the influential lease and copy holders, reopened the overtures for the purchase of the Heath, which had so signally fallen through with the late Lord of the Manor (Sir Thomas Wilson), and happily with success.

Sir John Maryon Wilson and his son, Mr. Spencer Wilson, agreed to give up all the rights of the Lord of the Manor of Hampstead in the Heath for the sum of £45,000—costs to solicitors, surveyors, etc., not to exceed £2,000.

The Lord only reserved certain defined portions for the making new roads, which will not affect the enjoyment of the public.

Thus the struggle between the Lord of the Manor and the people of Hampstead—we may say, the people of the Metropolis—came to a final close. The Bill for the Preservation of the Heath passed the Houses of Parliament in the next spring, and the Act by which the ownership of Hampstead Heath was transferred to the Metropolitan Board of Works in trust to maintain it for ever as an unenclosed space for the purpose of health and recreation received the Royal Assent June 29, 1871, a day to be long remembered in the annals of Hampstead.

Very general pleasure and gratification was felt on the occasion by all who knew the lovely suburb, and regarded it as a pleasure spot of the Metropolis; and when the fears which the name of the Board of Works evoked, of straight lines, gravel-paths, and frigid plantations, had spent themselves in deprecating any attempt to make it other than itself, a wild heath, disfigured by turf and gravel-digging, scarred in all directions, and naked in parts, but with sufficient recuperative strength, if let alone, to renew its greensward and gorse and heather, and to restore the vigour of trees and undergrowth, a formal taking possession of it, and dedicating it to the use of the public for ever, was resolved on.

The circuit of its extent was marked out with flags. The officers of the Board of Works and local authorities were to perambulate it. But the free atmosphere of the vagrant Heath seemed to resent the intended formalities, and a downpour of rain put an end to the whole programme. Flags and bands and festive company were out of the question, and the ceremony consisted of a few officials and other gentlemen in close carriages making the partial circuit of the Heath, pausing at certain points where alterations and amendments were to be made, but eventually taking the shortest road to the Flagstaff and Jack Straw’s Castle, where the Vestry were about to entertain the officers of the Board of Works, the local authorities, and other guests at a handsome déjeûner. At the Flagstaff Colonel Hogg, in a brief but graceful speech, proclaimed the fact that Hampstead Heath was dedicated to the free use and recreation of the people for ever, and expressed a hope that it would prove that blessing which had been so long and fondly desired by the great Metropolitan community, the spirit of which speech, no doubt, the hearts of all present echoed.

Having thus far traced the story of this loveliest of London suburbs, we, too, rejoice that its wide views on three sides can never be impeded, but that, as in the days of Defoe, visitors to the Heath may on a clear day distinguish in the north-west Hanslip steeple, which is only eight miles distant from Northampton, and see the Langden Hills in Essex to the east—objects which lie at least sixty-six miles apart. Then there is the prospect of London, and beyond to Banstead Downs, Shooter’s Hill, and Redhill; while on the west the view is uninterrupted to Windsor Castle. But to the north topographers tell us we can see no further than Barnet, which is only six miles distant.

But, unfortunately, there were other troubles to be encountered. The Board of Works were privileged to make grants of some portions of the Heath, a privilege that resolved itself into helping certain influential individuals to enclose some of the loveliest and most interesting portions of it into their own premises. The angle of ground on which stood the famous group of trees, the Nine Elms, was made over to the late Lord Mansfield, with what result we all know. Another gentleman, before a voice could be raised against it, was allowed to enclose the loveliest bit of North End, known for generations as the Lovers’ Walk, in his demesne. And just when a third claimant was bargaining for the historic grove of trees called the Judge’s Walk, the remnant of which recalls a memorable fact, not only in the history of Hampstead, but of England,[307] Mr. Le Breton, who had fortunately heard of the transaction, was enabled to interfere and frustrate it.

A similar piece of good fortune helped the inhabitants to preserve the remains of the Old Avenue at North End from being enclosed in an adjacent demesne. The committee of the Hampstead Heath Protection Society, who now charge themselves with looking after the Heath and maintaining it intact for the people, are resolved on getting back as many of its original acres as possible. When, therefore in the summer of the year 1898 the beautiful estate of Golder’s Hill, the residence of the late Sir Spencer Wells, was to be sold, the inhabitants of Hampstead were naturally disturbed by the report that a syndicate of builders were plotting its purchase, with the intention of covering the charming grounds with streets of houses.

Part of these grounds impinge upon the Heath, and it was said included the Flagstaff Hill, the very crowning point of view upon it, the threatened loss of which affected all the inhabitants, and roused, says my authority, a collective spirit of resistance. A letter from Mrs. Hart, widow of the artist, who had left a sum of money for such contingencies, appeared in some of the London papers, and called popular notice to the threatened vandalism. A committee was formed, and subscriptions were raised, to which the local and London County Councils, as well as many of the inhabitants of Hampstead, generously contributed, till the whole of the purchase-money, £40,500, was in a very short time happily provided.

It is intended to let the house, but the picturesque grounds are to be kept in their integrity and added to the Heath, from which, the new ride now divides them. The cost of the ground purchased averages about £1,000 per acre. This was the price paid to Lord Mansfield for 209 acres of the Heath, while Sir Spencer Wilson received £100,000 for sixty-one acres, making together, with all extra expenses in the purchase of the Heath, £302,000.

Everyone who knows the pleasant suburb must rejoice that a neighbourhood which has delighted the people of successive ages, as well as our own, is reserved to give enjoyment to those who shall come after us, and that henceforth, from generation to generation, each being, we may hope, more able to appreciate its natural beauty than the last, Hampstead will continue to be the scene of unnumbered holidays; the Heath,