Читать книгу The Skirts of the Great City - D'Anvers N. - Страница 4

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Highgate

Perched on a hill that is twenty-five feet higher than the loftiest point of Hampstead Heath, Highgate originally commanded as fine a prospect as it, but unfortunately many of the best points of view are now built over, though from the terrace behind the church, and parts of the cemetery, some idea can still be obtained of the beautiful scene that was the delight of Hogarth and of Morland, of Coleridge and Wordsworth, and many other artists and poets who, at one time or another, resided on the hill.

The name of Highgate is generally supposed to be derived from the Tollgate that used to stand at the entrance to the Bishop of London's park, a two-storied house of red brick, built over an archway that was pulled down in 1769, and to which there are many references in the ancient records of Middlesex. Norden, for instance, in the Speculum Britanniæ bearing date 1593, says: 'Highgate, a hill, over which is a passage, and at the top of the same hill is a gate through which all manner of passengers have their waie; the place taketh the name of this highgate on the hill.... When the waie was turned over the saide hill to leade through the parke of the Bishop of London, there was in regard thereof a toll raised upon such as passed that waie by carriage.'

The Gate House Inn, though considerably modified, still remains to preserve the memory of the building at which the tolls were levied, and in it the quaint ceremony of swearing on the horns was practised until quite late in the nineteenth century. On the subject of this ceremony there has been of late years much learned controversy, but the most plausible explanation of its origin appears to be that the horns—after which, by the way, so many London inns are named—on which the oath was sworn, were merely the symbol of the gatekeeper's right to exact toll from the drovers of the sheep or cattle who passed beneath the archway. The conversion of the custom into an apparently unmeaning farce was probably the result of a harmless frolic indulged in by some gay young travellers that, to use a slang expression, 'took on' with the public, and was gradually expanded into the complex burlesque purporting to give the initiated, by virtue of the oath on the horns, the freedom of Highgate. The ceremony has often been described, and is referred to in the much quoted lines of Byron, who, with a party of friends, once took the oath:—

'Many to the steep hill of Highgate hie,

Ask ye Boeotian shades the reason why:

'Tis to the worship of the solemn horn,

Grasp'd in the holy hand of mystery,

In whose dread name both men and maids are sworn,

And consecrate the oath with draught and dance till morn.'

Until about 1850 it was customary at the inn to stop every stage-coach that passed, and from its passengers select five to whom to administer the oath. These five were led into the principal room, the horns, mounted on a long pole, were produced, and in the presence of a number of witnesses the neophytes were compelled to listen uncovered to the following absurd speech from the landlord:—

'Take notice what I now say ... you must acknowledge me to be your adopted father. I must acknowledge you to be my adopted son. If you will not call me father, you forfeit a bottle of wine. If I do not call you son, I forfeit the same. And now, my good son, if you are travelling through this village of Highgate and you have no money in your pocket, go, call for a bottle of wine at any house you may think proper to enter, and book it to your father's score. If you have any friends with you, you may treat them as well, but if you have any money of your own you must pay for it yourself, for you must not say you have no money when you have.... You must not eat brown bread when you can get white, unless you like brown the best.... You must not kiss the maid while you can kiss the mistress, unless you like the maid best, but sooner than lose a good chance you may kiss them both. And now, my good son, I wish you a safe journey through Highgate and this life. I charge you, my good son, that if you know any in this company who have not taken this oath, you must cause them to take it or make each of them forfeit a bottle of wine.... So now, my son, God bless you; kiss the horns or a pretty girl if you see one here, whichever you like best, and so be free of Highgate.'

The horns or the girl duly kissed as the case might be, and the oath administered, other absurd speeches were made, the farce often ending in somewhat rowdy merriment. Long after the custom was discontinued, too, the crier of Highgate kept a wig and gown in readiness to be donned by any one desirous of obtaining the freedom of Highgate, and the expression 'he has taken the oath' came as time went on to signify he knows how to look after his own interests. In the Gate-House Inn a huge pair of mounted horns is still preserved, and a few years ago a party of enthusiastic local antiquarians amused themselves by going through the ancient farce according to the best authenticated traditions, but whether any of the newly made freemen availed themselves of the privilege of kissing mistress or maid is not recorded.

One of the earliest historical references to Highgate is in the grant made by Edward III. in 1363 to a certain William Phelippe, 'as a reward for his care of the highway between Highgate and Smithfelde, of the privelege of taking customs of all persons using the road for merchandize,' and it has been suggested that this Phelippe may have been one and the same with the 'nameless hermit' who preceded the holy man William Litchfield, to whom in 1386 the Bishop of London gave, to quote his own words, 'the office of the custody of our chapel of Highgate beside our Park of Hareng, and of the house to the same chapel annexed.' This chapel and hermitage were successively occupied by several recluses, the last of whom is supposed to have been a certain William Foote, on whom they were conferred in 1531. The dwelling-house was given in 1577, by Queen Elizabeth, to a favourite protégé of hers named John Farnehame, whose lease was later transferred to the founder of the 'Publique and Free Grammar School of Highgate,' Sir Roger Cholmeley, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench under Edward VI., who fell into disgrace with Queen Mary, and after suffering imprisonment for some years, lived in great retirement at Hornsey. Sir Roger obtained a licence to build a school, and Bishop Grindal gave him the old Hermitage Chapel, with two acres of land, under certain conditions, one being that the people of Highgate as well as the pupils should have the use of the chapel. It was to serve, in fact, as a kind of chapel of ease to Hornsey, an incidental proof that there were already at the time of the agreement a number of inhabitants in the hamlet of the Highgate. Sir Roger Cholmeley died before the projected work was begun, but his wishes were carefully carried out by his trustees, and the first stone of the institution, which was to have such a long career of usefulness, was laid in 1576.

It does not appear quite clear whether the old Hermitage Chapel was pulled down to give place to a new one, or enlarged to meet the needs of the increased congregation, but in any case the school chapel was the only place of worship in Highgate until 1834, when the parish was separated from Hornsey, and the fine Gothic church of St Michael, the lofty spire of which is a landmark for many miles round, was erected. Five years later the cemetery, that is still the most beautiful suburb of the dead near London, was consecrated, and since then many famous men and women have been buried in it, including the philosopher and chemist Michael Faraday; the eloquent writer Henry Crabb Robinson; the lawyers Judge Payne and Lord Lyndhurst; the artists John James Chalon, Sir William Ross, and John George Pinwell; the poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti; the theologian Frederick Maurice; the novelists George Eliot and Mrs. Henry Ward; the pugilist Tom Sayers; and the no less celebrated cricketer John Lillywhite.

For many years the land round the old school chapel had served as a cemetery, and in it was buried in 1534 the poet Samuel Coleridge, who had lived for many years in Highgate, and when a year later the old school chapel was replaced by the present one, a beautiful Gothic building designed by Cockerell, it was wisely decided to erect the latter over the tomb, that is now enclosed in a crypt approached by a flight of steps from the western side of the building. The new schoolhouse, classrooms, etc., completed in 1869, that replace those that had been in use for some four centuries, and in which many men of note were educated, including Nicolas Rowe the dramatist, harmonise well with the chapel, and the institution bids fair long to maintain in the future the reputation it won in the past.

A BIT OF OLD HIGHGATE

Highgate no doubt owed its early prosperity and rapid growth during the last hundred and fifty years to its situation at the junction of the two main roads from London that meet in the High Street, not far from the old village green, in the midst of which there used to be a pond, now filled in and planted with trees, round about which the village lads and lasses were wont to dance, and the elder residents to gather to gossip of a summer evening. Before the Bishop of London consented in 1386 to allow a road to be made through his park, Highgate could only be reached by a narrow lane, by way of Crouch End, Muswell Hill, and Friern Barnet, but the new thoroughfare very quickly became the chief highway to the north, and is associated with many noteworthy events and royal progresses. It remained, indeed, without a rival until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when an Act of Parliament was passed sanctioning a licensed company to make a way from the foot of Highgate Hill to join the main road, a principal feature of which was the piercing of a tunnel seven hundred and sixty-five feet long by twenty-four wide and nineteen high, which, alas, was but poorly engineered, for it fell in with a great crash before it was opened to traffic. The tunnel was then replaced by the present fine archway, spanning the road, that was completed in 1813, and for the use of which a toll was levied until 1876, when it was finally remitted.

Unfortunately the once beautiful village of Highgate has of late years been transformed into a somewhat prosaic suburb, but a few relics remain to bear witness to more picturesque days gone by. At the foot of the ascent, a little above the Archway Tavern, opposite the Dick Whittington public-house, is a railed-in stone supposed to occupy the exact site of the one on which the penniless boy, the future Sir Richard Whittington, rested, weary and worn from his long tramp on foot, and heard the bells ring out: 'Turn again, Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London Town.'

Within sight of this stone are the Whittington Almshouses, that represent those of the ancient foundation of Sir Richard in Paternoster Row, and were built in 1822 by the Mercers Company, as trustees of the Lord Mayor's will made in 1421, bequeathing the funds for erecting and endowing a college of priests and choristers, and building homes for thirteen poor men. With their picturesque chapel and general air of comfort, it must be owned that they contrast favourably with the ancient almshouses not far off in Southwood Lane, that were founded in 1658 by Sir John Wollaston, and added to seventy years later by Edward Pauncefoot.

Within the grounds of Waterlow Park, part of which was given to the public by Sir Sydney Waterlow, is the famous Lauderdale House, built about 1650, that was long the residence of the infamous Viceroy of Scotland under Charles II., the Duke of Lauderdale, who was probably often visited in it by his venial tool, Archbishop Sharp. To Lauderdale House the dissipated king brought the merry-hearted Nell Gwynn, and it was here that she is said to have forced her royal lover to acknowledge himself to be the father of her boy, the future Duke of St. Albans, by threatening to drop the child out of the window if he refused to do so.

Quite close to Lauderdale House, in a cottage that was pulled down in 1869, lived the poet-patriot Andrew Marvell, who was the friend of Milton and the bitter enemy of his fair neighbour Nell Gwynn, who tried in vain to soften his animosity. Opposite to Marvell's cottage, in Cromwell House, now a branch of the Ormond Street Children's Hospital, resided General Ireton and his wife Bridget, the daughter of the Protector; and a little higher up, in what is now called the Bank, was Arundel House, the seat of the Earls of Arundel, supposed to have been at one time the residence of Sir Thomas Cornwallis, and to have been visited by Queen Elizabeth in 1589 and James I. in 1604. It is, however, more famous as having been the death-place of Francis Bacon, who expired in it in 1626, his end having been hastened, it is popularly believed, through an experiment he tried on his way from London with a view to finding out whether flesh could be preserved in snow.

The courageous William Prynne, who was so cruelly maltreated on 30th June 1637, and his fellow-sufferers for conscience' sake, Dr. Bastwick and the Rev. Henry Burton, were often at Highgate; to the house of Sir Thomas Abney, Dr. Watts came more than once; and the famous Jacobite prelate, Bishop Atterbury, was the frequent guest of his brother Dr. Atterbury, when the latter was minister of Highgate chapel. In a house on the Green lived and died Dr. Henry Sacheverel, the leader of the Tory party in the struggle of 1709, and the intimate friend of Addison. Sir Richard Baker, author of the Chronicles of England, who died in the Fleet Prison in great poverty in 1645, wrote much of his valuable work in a house on the Hill. The famous Calvinistic Methodist, Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, who chose the eloquent preacher Whitefield as one of her favourite chaplains, resided for some time in Highgate; and Church House on the Green was long the home of Sir John Hawkins, the author of the Standard History of Music, who used to drive to London every day in a coach and four.

Hogarth, whilst he was apprentice to a silversmith, was fond of going to the still standing but much altered Flask Inn, outside which the Whitsun morris-dancers used to foot it merrily for the 'honour of Holloway,' as described in the popular comedy Jack Dunn's Entertainment, first published in 1601. The great painter is said to have delighted in making sketches of the frequenters of the bar at the Flask Inn, especially of the tipsy brawlers, whose distorted grimaces he hit off to the life. At another well-known hostelry, the Bull Inn, on the Great North Road, looking down upon Finchley, George Morland, an artist of a very different type to Hogarth, was a familiar figure, for he found plenty of congenial subjects near by, and was on friendly terms with the drivers of all the stage-coaches that halted at the tavern. He used, it is said, to settle his score with mine host with sketches which, if they could now be traced, would be worth as many hundreds of pounds as shillings they then represented.

Occupying a commanding position on the west of the Green was the stately mansion Dorchester House, the seat of Henry, Marquis of Dorchester, from whom it was purchased in the reign of Charles II. by the eccentric philanthropist William Blake, who turned it into a school that ceased to exist in 1688. The mansion, after various vicissitudes, was pulled down; and in one of the houses, now No. 3 The Grove, that were built on its site, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived as the paying-guest of a surgeon named Gilman for nineteen years. There he was often visited by Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Henry Crabb Robinson, Edward Irving, Mr. and Mrs. Cowden Clarke—the latter of whom has eloquently described her stay with the poet in her charming book, My Long Life—and Thomas Carlyle, who dwelt enthusiastically on the glorious view from the windows of the house, that is still, by the way, much what it was in Coleridge's time.

The parish church of Highgate, in which there is a tablet with a long inscription to the memory of Coleridge, and part of the cemetery occupy the site of the mansion-house built in 1694 by Sir William Ashurst, then Lord Mayor of London, and the villas of the present Fitzroy Park replace a fine old house erected in 1780 by Lord Southampton, and named after him. In one of the new houses on this beautiful estate lived the well-known sanitary reformer Dr. Southwood Smith, and near to the Park is Dufferin Lodge, the seat of Lord Dufferin, that was the maiden home of the eloquent writer, the Honourable Mrs. Norton, grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

In a little house known as the Hermitage, on West Hill, where a modern terrace now stands, and opposite to which there used to be an ash-tree popularly supposed to have been planted by Nelson when he was a boy, dwelt the notorious gambler Sir Wallis Porter, who was often joined there by the Prince Regent; and it was in it that the forger Henry Fauntleroy is said to have long lain hidden from the officers of the law in search of him. In Millfield Lane, and in the charming little Ivy Cottage, now enlarged and known as Brookfield House, the famous comedian, Charles Mathews, dwelt for many years. Millfield Cottage, next door to it, was for a time a favourite retreat of John Ruskin, and in the same lane, as related by Leigh Hunt in his Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, John Keats presented his brother poet with a volume of his poems, the first of many generous gifts.

West Hill, Highgate, is associated with several interesting memories. It was on it that Queen Victoria, in the year after her accession, was saved from what might have been a very serious accident by the landlord of the neighbouring Fox and Crown Inn, who arrested the frightened horses of the royal carriage, at the risk of his own life, as they were dashing down the steep descent. In West Hill Lodge the poets William and Mary Howitt lived and worked for several years, and not far from their old home is Holly Lodge, once the residence of the Duchess of St. Albans, and long the home of the generous and hospitable Baroness Burdett-Coutts, a worthy successor of her aristocratic predecessor, who built in Swain's Lane hard by a group of model cottages known as Holly Village.

In the picturesque cottage opposite to the chief entrance to the grounds of Holly Lodge the philanthropist Judge Payne died in 1870; David Williams, founder of the Royal Literary Fund, and Dr. Rochemond Barbauld, husband of the authoress, were at different times ministers of the Presbyterian chapel in Southwood Lane; and on the site of the once notorious Black Dog Tavern, on the hill going down to Holloway, are the chapel and home of the Passionist Fathers, from which, instead of the ribald songs of drunken revellers, perpetual prayers now go up for the restoration of England to the mother church of Rome.

Hornsey

Little now remains of the beautiful forests which were for many centuries one of the most distinctive characteristics of the northern heights of London, though there are still some unenclosed portions of the vast estate that belonged to the Bishop of London, such as Highgate and Caen Woods, where it is possible to forget for a time the near neighbourhood of the ever-growing towns of Hampstead and Highgate. Equally rapid has been the transformation of the two mother parishes of Hendon and of Hornsey, that from isolated picturesque villages have grown into suburbs of the great metropolis. The latter especially retains scarcely anything to recall the days when it was a favourite summer retreat of the Bishop of London, who had a palace in the park of Haringay, as it was called, until the time of Elizabeth, on Lodge Hill, on the outskirts of what later became the property of Lord Mansfield. The little forest hamlet of Haringay, in which the bishop's retainers used to live, was probably situated in the heart of the wood, now replaced by Finsbury Park, and its one inn, pulled down so recently as 1866, became in course of time first a noted tea-house, and later a place of resort of the aristocracy, who used to practise pigeon-shooting in its garden.

With Hornsey Park are associated many interesting historic memories. It was, for instance, in it that the discontented nobles used to meet to concert measures against the hated favourite of Richard II., Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford. In its palace the Duchess of Gloucester and her confederates, the astrologer Richard Bolingbroke and the Rev. Canon Southwell, concocted the plot against the life of Henry VI., and it was there that the last-named was accused of invoking at the celebration of mass the blessing of God on the evil enterprise, an incident turned to account by Shakespeare in his play of Henry VI. Through Hornsey and Highgate rode Richard III. when still Duke of Gloucester, after the sudden death of Edward IV., accompanied by the doomed boy-king Edward V., and it was in the outskirts of the park that the royal procession was met by the mayor and corporation of London. Almost on the same spot Henry VII. was later welcomed by the loyal citizens of his capital on his way back from a successful expedition against Scotland, and there is a tradition that after the execution at Smithfield, in 1305, of the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace, his dismembered remains were allowed to rest for a night, on their way north, in the bishop's chapel.

The ivy-clad tower, bearing the arms of Bishops Savage and Warham, who occupied the see of London, the former from 1497 to 1500, the latter from 1500 to 1504, is all that now remains of the ancient church of Hornsey that was founded at the end of the fifteenth century. The new building that was skilfully added on to the tower was begun in 1832, and is said to have been constructed of the materials of the bishop's palace. It contains little of interest except a kneeling effigy of a certain Francis Masters, a boy of about sixteen, and the monument to the Rev. Dr. Atterbury, removed from Highgate Chapel on its demolition, but in the churchyard is the tomb of the poet Samuel Rogers, who died in London in 1855.