rather a practical character, if the following may be taken as a specimen :-"I am the Lord thy God and Master. Tell I to pay thee five pounds for expenses of thy coming up to London; and he must give thee twenty pounds to relieve the perplexity of thy handmaid and thee, that your thoughts may be free to serve me, the Lord, in the care of my Shiloh." The Lord is made to inform his people somewhere, anxious to go to meet the Shiloh at Manchester, that travelling by the new cut is not expensive. On her death-bed, poor Joanna is reported to have said:" If I have been misled, it has been by some spirit, good or evil." In her last hours, Joanna was attended by Ann Underwood, her secretary; Mr. Tozer, who was called her high-priest; Colonel Harwood, and While vain sages think they know SABINEUS. About three years after the death of Joanna Southcott, a party of her disciples, conceiving themselves directed by God to proclaim the coming of the Shiloh on earth, marched in procession through Temple Bar, and the leader sounded a brazen trumpet, and proclaimed the coming of Shiloh, the Prince of Peace; while his wife shouted, "Wo! wo! to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the coming of Shiloh!" The crowds pelted the fanatics with mud, some disturbance ensued, and some of the disciples had to answer for their conduct before a magistrate. North Bank and South Bank-Rural Aspect of the Neighbourhood Half a Century Ago-Marylebone Park-Taverns and Tea-gardens-The 'Queen's Head and Artichoke"-The "Harp "-The "Farthing Pie House "-The "Yorkshire Stingo"-The Introduction of London Omnibuses by Mr. Shillibeer-Marylebone Baths and Washhouses-Queen Charlotte's Lying in Hospital-The New Road-The Paddington Stage-Coach-A Proposed Boulevard round the Outskirts of London-Dangers of the Road-Lisson Grove-The Philological School-A Favourite Locality for Artists-John Martin, R. A.-Chapel Street-Leigh Hunt-Church Street-The Royal Alfred TheatreMetropolitan Music-Hall-Portman Market-Blandford Square-The Convent of the Sisters of Mercy--Michael Faraday as a BookbinderHarewood Square-Dorset Square-The Original "Lord's" Cricket Ground-Upper Baker Street-Mrs. Siddons' Residence-The Notorious Richard Brothers-Invention of the "Tilbury." THE district through which we are now about to pass lies between Edgware Road and Regent's Park, and the St. John's Wood Road and Marylebone Road. At the beginning of the century, Cowper's lines quoted above might, perhaps, have been more applicable to it than now; but even to this day they are not altogether out of place when applied to those parts lying to the north of Lisson Grove, more especially towards the Park Road, and to the villas known respectively as North Bank and South Bank, the gardens of which slope down towards the Regent's Canal, which passes between them. Here we have "trim gardens," lawns, and shrubs; towering spires, banks clothed with flowers; indeed, all the elegances of the town and all the beauties of the country are at this spot happily commingled. Of the early history of Marylebone, and of that portion of the parish lying on the south side of the Marylebone Road, we have already spoken ;* but we may add here that at the beginning of the eighteenth century the place was a small village, quite surrounded by fields, and nearly a mile distant from any part of the great metropolis. Indeed, down to a much later date-namely, about 1820we have seen an oil-painting, by John Glover, of Primrose Hill and the ornamental water in the Regent's Park, taken from near the top of Upper Baker Street or Clarence Gate, in the front of which are a party of haymakers, sketched from life, and there are only three houses dotted about near the then new parish church of Marylebone. Indeed, at the commencement of the present century Marylebone was a suburban retreat, amid "green fields and babbling brooks." A considerable extent of ground on the north side of what is now called the Marylebone Road, and comprising * See Vol. IV., p. 428 et seq. besides nearly the whole of what is now Regent's Park, was at one time known as Marylebone Park, and was of course attached to the old Manor House, which we have already described.† A reminiscence of the Manor House, with its garden, park, and environs, as they stood in the time of Queen Elizabeth, when her Majesty here entertained the Russian ambassadors with a stag hunt in the said park, is preserved in a drawing made by Gasselin in 1700, and re-published by Mr. J. T. Smith in 1800. Marylebone Park Farm and its cow-sheds, which covered the rising ground almost as far northward as Le Notre's Canal, has now become metamorphosed into a rural city. From 1786 to 1792, the additions and improvements in this neighbourhood were carried into effect in quick succession. Almost all of the Duke of Portland's property in Marylebone, except one farm, was let at that period on building leases, and the new buildings in the north-west part of the parish increased with equal rapidity. The large estates at Lisson Grove, in process of time, all became extensively and, in many instances, tastefully built upon. A correspondent of "Hone's Year-Book" writes, in 1832, with an almost touching tenderness about "Marylebone Park," the memory of which name has long since passed away, confessing that it "holds in his affections a far dearer place than its more splendid but less rural successor "—referring, of course, to the Regent's Park. This, too, is the romantic district through which Mr. Charles Dickens, in the person of his "Uncommercial Traveller," must have descried at a distance in the course of his "various solitary rambles," which he professes to have "taken northward for his retirement," the West-end out of season, "along See Vol. IV., p. 429. Marylebone, North.] THE "QUEEN'S HEAD AND ARTICHOKE.” the awful perspectives of Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and similar frowning districts." But the district in former times was made attractive for the pent-up Londoner by its public teagardens and bowered taverns. Of the last-named we may mention the "Queen's Head and Artichoke," which stood near what is now the southern end of Albany Street, not far from Trinity Church. "At the beginning of this century," says Mr. Jacob Larwood, in his "History of Sign-boards," "when Marylebone consisted of 'green fields, babbling brooks,' and pleasant suburban retreats, there was a small but picturesque house of public entertainment, yclept the 'Queen's Head and Artichoke,' situated ‘in a lane nearly opposite Portland Road, and about 500 yards from the road that leads from Paddington to Finsbury'--now Albany Street. Its attractions chiefly consisted in a long skittle and 'bumble-puppy' ground, shadowy bowers, and abundance of cream, tea, cakes, and other creature comforts. The only memorial now remaining of the original house is an engraving in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1819. The queen was Queen Elizabeth, and the house was reported to have been built by one of her gardeners: whence the strange combination on the sign." Mr. Larwood tells us an anecdote about some other public gardens in this neighbourhood, which is equally new to most readers, and interesting to the topographer and the biographer. "There was," he remarks, "in former times, a house of amusement called the 'Jew's Harp,' with bowery tea-gardens and thickly-foliaged snuggéries, near what now is the top of Portland Place. Mr. Onslow, the Speaker of the House of Commons in the reign of George II., used to resort thither in plain attire when able to escape from his chair of office, and, sitting in the chimney-corner, to join in the humours of the other guests and customers. This he continued to do for some time, until one day he unfortunately happened to be recognised by the landlord, as he was riding, or rather driving, in his carriage of state down to the Houses of Parliament; and, in consequence, he found, on the occasion of his next visit, that his incognito had been betrayed. This broke the charm-for him, at least; and, like the fairies in the legend, he 'never returned there any more again from that day.'" From Ben Jonson's play, The Devil's an Ass, act i., scene 1, it appears that it was formerly the custom to keep in taverns a fool, who, for the edification of customers, used to sit on a stool and play the Jew's harp, or some other humble instrument. The Jew's harp, we may add, was an instrument formerly called jeu trompe, 255 i.e., toy-trumpet. There was another tavern, with tea-gardens, bearing the same sign at Islington, down to the end of last century. Mr. J. T. Smith, in his "Book for a Rainy Day," under date of 1772, gives us the following graphic sketch of this locality at that period :-" My dear mother's declining state of health," he writes, "urged my father to consult Dr. Armstrong, who recommended her to rise early and take milk at the cow-house. I was her companion then; and I well remember that, after we had passed Portland Chapel, there were fields all the way on either side. The highway was irregular, with here and there a bank of separation; and that when we had crossed the New Road, there was a turnstile* at the entrance of a meadow, leading to a little old public-house, the sign of the Queen's Head and Artichoke;' it was much weather-beaten, though, perhaps, once a tolerably good portrait of Queen Elizabeth. . . . A little beyond a nest of small houses contiguous was another turnstile, opening also into fields, over which we walked to the 'Jew's Harp House Tavern and Tea-Gardens.' It consisted of a large upper room, ascended by an outside staircase, for the accommodation of the company on ball nights; and in this room large parties dined. At the south front of these premises was a large semi-circular enclosure with boxes for tea and ale-drinkers, guarded by deal-board soldiers between every box, painted in proper colours. In the centre of this opening were tables and seats placed for the smokers. On the eastern side of the house there was a trapball-ground; the western side served for a tennis-hall; there were also public and private skittle-grounds. Behind this tavern were several small tenements, with a pretty good portion of ground to each. On the south of the teagardens a number of summer-houses and gardens, fitted up in the truest cockney taste; for on many of these castellated edifices wooden cannons were placed; and at the entrance of each domain, of about the twentieth part of an acre, the old inscription of 'Steel-traps and spring-guns all over these grounds,' with an 'N.B.-Dogs trespassing, will be shot.' In these rural retreats the tenant was usually seen on Sunday evening in a bright scarlet waistcoat, ruffled shirt, and silver shoebuckles, comfortably taking his tea with his family, honouring a Seven-Dial friend with a nod on his peregrination to the famed Wells of Kilburn. William's Farm, the extent of my mother's walk, stood at about a quarter of a mile south; and I remember that the room in which she sat to take Called, in an early plan which I have since seen, "The White House." the milk was called 'Queen Elizabeth's Kitchen,' and that there was some stained glass in the windows." At the top of Portland Road, close to the station on the Metropolitan Railway, stands the "Green Man" tavern. It occupies the site of the old "Farthing Pie House "-a sign not uncommon in the suburbs in the early part of the eighteenth century of which we have already given an illustration.* Farther westward along the Marylebone Road, nearly opposite Chapel Street and the entrance to Lisson Grove, is a house bearing the well-known sign of the "Yorkshire Stingo." This tavern is memorable as the house from which the first pair of London omnibuses were started, July 4th, 1829, by the introducer of that conveyance into London, Mr. John Shillibeer, having already, for several months, been adopted in the streets of Paris. They were drawn by three horses abreast, and were such a novelty, that the neighbours used to come out from their houses in order to see them start. They ran to the Bank and back, and were constructed to carry twenty-two passengers, all inside; the fare was a shilling, or sixpence for half the distance, a sum which included the luxury of the use of a newspaper. It is said that the first conductors were the two sons of a British naval officer. It was not till several years afterwards that the outside of omnibuses was made available for passengers, and the "knife-board" along the roof is quite a modern invention. Mr. Shillibeer is widely known in connection with the funeral carriages which bear his name; but the benefits which he conferred on living inside passengers as well ought not to be forgotten. There is "nothing new, however, under the sun," and the omnibus is little more than a modification or improvement of the old Greenwich stage of the time of George IV. Nearly adjoining the "Yorkshire Stingo" on the east are the Baths and Washhouses for the parish of Marylebone, to which we have already had occasion to allude, in our account of Paddington.† These baths and washhouses were among the first of the kind erected in the metropolis; the building, which is a fine structure, was erected from the designs of Mr. Eales. As we learn from Weale's work on "London," these institutions, which have within the last twenty years rapidly increased in London as well as in the country, originated in a public meeting held at the Mansion House, in 1844, when a large subscription was raised to build an establishment to serve as a model for others which it was anticipated would be erected, when it had been proved that the receipts, at the very low rate of charge contemplated, would be sufficient to cover the expenses, and gradually to repay the capital invested. The committee then appointed partially completed the model establishment in Goulston Square, Whitechapel, in 1847, and opened forty baths to the public, the demand for which by the working classes has established beyond doubt the soundness of the principles which actuated the committee; and such was the attention attracted to the subject by its proceedings, that the Government, at the suggestion and instigation of the late Rev. Sir Henry Dukinfield, Bart., the then Rector of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, induced Parliament to pass an Act to enable boroughs and parishes to raise money on the security of the rates, for the purpose of building baths and washhouses in all parts of the country. Near the "Yorkshire Stingo" is Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital, originally established at Bayswater, as we have already stated. The New Road, connecting the corner of Lisson Grove with the village of Islington, was formed in 1757, not without great opposition from the Duke of Bedford, who succeeded in obtaining the insertion of a clause in the Act forbidding any buildings being erected within fifty feet of either side of the roadway. This accounts for the long gardens which extend in front of the rows of houses on either side, many of which have been converted into stonemasons' yards, though some few have been built upon. This thoroughfare was called the New Road, a name which it retained for a century, when the eastern portion was named the Euston Road, and the western part the Marylebone Road. This road, at the commencement of the present century, was the route taken by the Paddington stage-coach, which travelled twice a day to the City and back. Hone, in his "Year-Book," tells us that "it was driven by the proprietor, or rather, dragged tediously along the clayey road from Paddington to the City in the morning, performing its journey in about two hours and a half, 'quick time!' It returned to Paddington in the evening within three hours from its leaving the City; and this was deemed 'fair time,' considering the necessity for precaution against the accidents of night travelling." In order to explain the length of time occupied by the "Paddington stage" on its way into the City, it should be stated that, after winding its way slowly through the miry ruts of the Marylebone Road, New Road, and Gray's Inn Road, it waited an hour or so at the "Blue Posts," Holborn Bars. The route to the Bank by way of the City Road was as yet a thing unthought of; and the driver of the Hampstead or Paddington stage who first achieved that daring feat was regarded with admiration somewhat akin to that bestowed on the man who first "doubled the Cape" on his way to India. 257 will prove. We have already mentioned some instances in our account of Marylebone Gardens ; * and we may add that we read in the papers of the time that "on the 23rd of July, 1763, one Richard Watson, tollman of Marylebone Turnpike, was found barbarously murdered in his toll-house; upon which, and some attempts made on other toll-houses, the trustees of the turnpikes have come to a resolution to increase the number of the tollgatherers, and furnish them with arms, enjoining them not to keep any money at the toll-bars after eight o'clock at night." This allusion to the Paddington stages is curious, in the preface to the Penny Magazine, in 1832 :-"In a book upon the poor, published in 1673, called 'The Grand Concern of England Explained,' we find the following singular proposal :-'That the multitude of stage-coaches and caravans, now travelling upon the roads, may all, or most of them, be suppressed, especially those within forty, fifty, Lisson — or, more properly, Lileston-Grove, or sixty miles of London.' The evil of the stage-occupying the site of what was once Lisson Green, coaches is somewhat difficult to be perceived at is thus mentioned by Lysons, in his "Environs of the present day; but this ingenious author had no London : ""The manor of Lilestone, containing doubt whatever on the matter, 'for,' says he, will five hides (now Lisson Green, in the parish of any man keep a horse for himself, and another Marylebone), is mentioned in Doomsday-book for his man, all the year, for to ride one or two among the lands of Ossulston Hundred, given in journeys, that at pleasure, when he hath occasion, alms. . . This manor became the property can step to any place where his business lies, for of the priory of St. John of Jerusalem; on the two, three, or four shillings, if within twenty miles suppression of which it was granted, anno 1548, of London, and so proportionably into any part of to Thomas Heneage and Lord Willoughby, who England?' We laugh at the lamentation over the conveyed it in the same year to Edward, Duke of evil of stage-coachs, because we daily see or ex- Somerset. On his attainder it reverted to the Crown, perience the benefits of the thousands of public and was granted, anno 1564, to Edward Downing, conveyances carrying forward the personal inter- who conveyed it the same year to John Milner, Esq., course of a busy population, and equally useful then lessee under the Crown. After the death of whether they run from Paddington to the Bank, his descendant, John Milner, Esq., anno 1753, it or from the General Post Office to Edinburgh." passed under his will to William Lloyd, Esq. The manor of Lisson Green (being then the property of Captain Lloyd, of the Guards) was sold in lots, anno 1792. The largest lot, containing the site of the manor, was purchased by John Harcourt, Esq., M.P." Mr. Loudoun, as far back as the reign of George IV., proposed the formation of a promenade or boulevard round what were then the outskirts of London, by combining the New Road westwards along this course to Hyde Park, thence crossing the Serpentine, and coming out opposite Sloane Street; then along this road and part of the King's Road to Vauxhall Bridge, and thence across Lambeth and Southwark to Blackheath, and through Greenwich Park, and on a high viaduct across the Thames; so by the City Road back to the New Road. The "northern boulevard," which it was intended to have planted with trees, was to have been extended westwards from the "Yorkshire Stingo" down the centre of Oxford and Cambridge Terraces; but difficulties intervened, and the road was never carried out according to the original design. Had this great work been carried out in its entirety, it is possible that the outlying districts of London might have been better protected from the depredations of footpads and highwaymen, which at one time would seem to have been the rule rather than the exception. That Marylebone, in the middle of the last century, was one of the worst neighbourhoods in this respect, numerous records In Marylebone Road, at the corner of Lisson Grove, is the Philological School, a handsome Gothic building, of red brick, with stone dressings.. It was founded in 1792, and is now in union with King's College. Education is here afforded, almost free of cost, to a certain number of boys, the sons of professional gentlemen, who have suffered under the blows of fortune. At a lonely public-house at the corner of this street, the tradition is that foot-travellers, at the end of the last century, used to collect their forces and examine their fire-arms before attempting the dangerous crossing of "Lisson Fields." As the streets about were few, and the space to the north was an open field, Lisson Grove was a favourite neighbourhood for artists, especially on account of the excellence of the light. Not far off, along the New Road, lived John Martin, R A., See Vol. IV., p. 435. |