It would be a very difficult thing to realize now in the suburb of Stoke Newington, the Stoke Newington of Isaac Watts’ day. The mighty city has absorbed it; the lanes, the fields, the woods, the old bridge, the old church, and the very river have vanished. It must have been a very pretty little rural village, comprised in a small cluster of houses; it may even be spoken of as a kind of sequestered hermitage, amidst whose shades those who desired it might find, if the stillness of nature could give it, perfect peace. Even more than forty years after Watts’ death there were only one hundred and ninety-five houses; within the memory of old inhabitants it was still but a village. In Watts’ day it was probably surrounded by trees; a short time before he took up his residence there, there were seventy-seven acres of woodland in demesne, part of the ancient forest of Middlesex, so justifying its name from Stoke, a wood (Stoke Newington, the new little town in the wood). A very pleasant retreat, the like of which we should have to look a long way from any London suburb to discover now. The ancient houses have disappeared from the present vicinity, and two of the last, and those in which Watts passed his early and his later age, the houses of Hartopp and Abney, have only just been pulled down. We have noticed the history of Fleetwood’s house, built in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but tradition assigns to some old houses in the village, called the “Bishop’s Place,” the frequent visits of Henry VIII., and here, on a part of these premises, was born Samuel Rogers, the poet; and it is a singular and noticeable thing, that as the father of the poet died in 1793, and had lived the greater part of his life at Stoke Newington, those who knew the poet talked with a man who was the child of one who had probably not only seen but talked with Isaac Watts. There is a spot in Stoke Newington still called “King Henry’s Walk,” and when the premises supposed to be his retreat were taken down, parts of the old wainscot were found to be richly gilt and ornamented with paintings, although, indeed, almost obliterated.

Stoke Newington, about the period when Watts resided there, was the residence and retreat of many celebrities. Here, as we have seen, Defoe was educated, and for some time resided; and here, a little later, resided another whose name has been a charm over childhood, Thomas Day, the author of “Sandford and Merton.” Watts had only been dead two years when John Howard came to reside in the village. The place seems especially to have been the retreat of retired statesmen or merchants, but all ranks seem to mingle memories in the little village. Queen Elizabeth’s Walk is founded on the tradition that in the Manor House the Princess Elizabeth was concealed during a part of the reign of Queen Mary. London suburbs were wont to retain the flavour of a peculiar kind of society, and not less really than Twickenham retained its literary eminence; not less renowned than Clapham for its “Sect,” was Stoke Newington eminent as the home and haunt of Nonconformist celebrities.[38] The interest of the place, however, gathers greatly round the memories of the houses of the Hartopp and the Abney families, for Watts is the greatest name connected with Stoke Newington, and in both these houses he found his home.

Watts’ biographers have hitherto not nicely discriminated the periods of his residence; reading Southey, it might be supposed he had passed all his life at Stoke Newington; reading Milner, it might be supposed he not only passed the greater part of his life, but closed his days at Theobalds. The truth is, that Thomas Gunston, the brother of Lady Abney, purchased a house and twenty-five acres of land with the Manor of Stoke Newington. He pulled the house down, and commenced the erection of a very large and elegant house on the site of the old one, but he died in 1700, just before the completion of the building. He was a young man, and Watts was young, and between the two there appears to have been a bond of exceedingly close and tender friendship. When Thomas Gunston died he left the house to his sister, then residing at Theobalds with her husband, Sir Thomas Abney, and there Watts resided with them; but many years after, probably when time had softened the stroke which seems to have been felt very keenly, Lady Abney left Theobalds and came to her house in Stoke Newington. Watts came with the family, and in this house were passed the last thirteen years of his life, and there, shortly after the death of her revered friend, Lady Abney died. The house then became the property of the eldest daughter, Miss Elizabeth Abney, who never married, and whose name occurs as a considerable benefactor to the neighbourhood. Upon her death, she directed by her will the lease and estate to be sold, and after the payment of certain legacies, the residue to be distributed to poor Dissenting ministers, to their widows, and other objects of charity; the sale realized £13,000.

This, then, was the spot associated with some of Watts’ earliest, happiest days, and was the scene of their quiet close. His friendship with Thomas Gunston was evidently founded on moral and intellectual relationship, and when he died, he poured out his grief in a long elegy, published in the Lyrics. It is noticeable in the poetry of Watts, and of that day, that so many of the subjects are devoted to the memory of friends. If a friend died, or if any other circumstance happened in life, it seemed necessary to embody the impressions in verse, and we need not, perhaps, regard this as altogether artificial and unnatural; in Watts’ instance, we may be sure it was not so, although many of the expressions sound extravagant; those to which most exception is taken have scarcely more of this characteristic than some of the similar poems of Milton; we may, for instance, remember Lycidas:

And again—

Amidst the exaggerations, however, which a prosaic age may fancy it detects, there is no reason for including expressions which it would certainly be impossible to appropriately use now; the poet calls upon the dusky woods and echoing hills, the flowery vales overgrown with thorns, the brook that runs warbling by, the lowing herd, and the moaning turtle, the curling vine with its amorous folds, and the stately elms, the reverent growth of ancient years, standing tall and naked to the blustering rage of the mad winds. These are images which must have been simply natural and appropriate when the piece was written; all is changed, entirely changed now, unless some exception be made for the elms which are, or were, recently standing. The death of this amiable, excellent, and promising young man stands out as probably the most intense grief of Watts’ life. As there was a community of taste, leisure for the indulgence of the pursuits of the intellect and the heart, and the strong wish to gratify the instincts of a noble nature, it is not wonderful that Watts poured out his feelings in so lengthy a poem.

The young man appears to have come of a high-spirited family; his father, John Gunston, befriended many of the ministers when they fell beneath the arm of persecution; and when the eminent Dr. Manton was imprisoned in the Gate House for refusing the Oxford Oath, the Lady Broughton, his keeper, placing the keys at his disposal, allowed him an opportunity of visiting his friend, Mr. Gunston, at Newington. Thus we have the early and tender connection of Watts with this village. And not long since the old house was standing. An amiable and accomplished man of our time writes, in a letter dated May, 1840: “On my return to town I stopped at Stoke Newington, and paid a promised visit to an old friend and colleague at Abney House, where he has charge of the literary education of some twenty candidates for the ministry. The house—that in which Dr. Watts lived for more than a generation, composed his precious hymns, and at last died—afforded me, in its noble antique apartments, in its still rich embellishments, its surrounding grounds (said to contain the bones of Oliver Cromwell), and, above all, its sacred associations, more delight than I can express.”[39]

On the spot where the house stood, with its beautiful grounds, gardens, and trees extending round, is now laid out the Abney Park Cemetery, amongst whose forests of tombs may be detected innumerable names very dear to the memories of modern Nonconformists: since the closing of Bunhill Fields, Abney Park Cemetery has become what it was, a sort of santa croce, or campo santo of revered and hallowed dust.

Though now within a short walk of the great city, it seemed a sequestered village when Watts resided there. The roads were probably not of the best, and there were no lights upon them. The woods intervening and in the neighbourhood, would furnish shelter for many social annoyances, and even dangers. But it was nearer to London than the more stately and palace-like abode of Theobalds, and, noble as it was, it was altogether a plainer habitation. Watts was probably, after the death of Sir Thomas Abney, very much the modest master of both abodes. Until within a short period of its dissolution the house contained such memories of Watts as adorned the walls of Theobalds. We have seen that he was a painter, and the fashion at that time was to adorn the wainscoting and walls and panels. There were noble rooms in the mansion, and thus were they relieved, mostly by subjects of a classical, mythical, and allegorical character. He painted four characters of Youth and Age, Mirth and Grief, for two of the parlours, “where,” says Dr. Robinson, “they are at this present day.” To the time of its fall the mansion testified to the taste and elegance with which it was fitted up, the painted room displaying costly ornaments, and altogether a fine specimen of the age in which it was arranged; the mouldings gilt, and the whole of the panels and sides painted with subjects from “Ovid,” and on the window-shutters pictorial decorations, supposed to have been the production of the pencil of Watts, emblematical of Death and Grief, and evidently alluding to the decease of Mr. Gunston. The elms, to which reference has been already made, continued to excite attention to the last. Planted long before the building was commenced, they continued to wave their widowed branches after it had passed away. Dr. Robinson mentions a portrait of Watts which long continued in the house, an indifferent portrait of him when a young man, in a blue night-gown, wig and band, and three or four duplicate mezzotinto prints of him when older by G. White, 1727, clerically habited, with a Bible in his right hand, and under him in capitals:

And on the upper corner “To live is Christ, to die is gain.”

Here his last days were passed; Dr. Gibbons does not mention in what year the family left Theobalds to return to Stoke Newington, but it must have been about thirteen years before his death; and during this time, although his life was clouded by many pains and infirmities, he still continued the active operations of his pen, and, as we shall have occasion to see, the active operations of his mind, employing himself especially in attempting to solve what seems to many the insolvable question of the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead. But as he descended towards the closing years it seems that he suffered greatly from some members of his own family. In a letter from the Rev. John Barker to Dr. Doddridge, written nearly two years before Watts’ death, we read: “The behaviour of Dr. Watts and the wretch Buckston towards Dr. Isaac is a most marvellous, infamous, enormous wickedness; Lady Abney, with inimitable steadiness and prudence, keeps our friend in peaceful ignorance, and his enemies at a becoming distance, so that in the midst of the persecution of that righteous man he lives comfortably; and when a friend asks him how he does, answers, ‘Waiting God’s leave to die.’”[40]