devoured me. Still, I exerted myself by every means to do what I thought right, and built my hopes of perfect extrication from all my difficulties when my young and beloved pupil should come of age. But, alas! during this interval, which was not very long, I declare with solemn truth that I never varied from the steady belief of the Christian doctrines. I preached them with all my power, and kept back nothing from my congregations which I thought might tend to their best welfare; and I was very successful in this way during the time. Nor, though I spent in dissipation many hours which I ought not, but to which my connections inevitably led, was I idle during this period; as my Commentary on the Bible,' my 'Sermons to Young Men,' and several

house, inside the gates of Messrs. Elliot's Brewery, between Brewer Street, Pimlico, and York Street, Westminster, lived Richard Heber, some time M.P. for the University of Oxford, and the owner of one of the finest private libraries in the world. Here he kept a portion of his library; a second part occupying an entire house in James Street, Buckingham Gate; a third portion, from kitchen to attics, was at his country seat at Hodnet, in Shropshire; and a fourth at Paris. "Nobody," he used to say, "could do without three copies of a book-one for show at his country house, one for personal use, and the third to lend to his friends." And this library, as we learn from "A Century of Anecdote," had but a small beginning the accidental purchase of a chance volume

FEW, if any, of the suburban districts of the metropolis can lay claim to greater interest, biographical as well as topographical, than the locality upon which we have now entered. In Faulkner's "History of Chelsea," we read that the parish is "bounded on the north by the Fulham Road, which separates it from Kensington; on the east by a rivulet, which divides it from St. George's, Hanover Square, and which enters the Thames near Ranelagh; on the west a brook, which rises near Wormholt Scrubs, and falls into the Thames facing Battersea Church, divides this parish from that of Fulham; and on the south it is bounded by the Thames." Lysons observes that the most ancient record in which he has seen the name of this place mentioned is a charter of Edward the Confessor, in which it is written "Cealchylle."* The name seems to have puzzled the Norman scribes, for in Domesday Book it is written both "Cercehede" and "Chelched;" and in certain documents of a later date it is called "Chelcheth," or "Chelcith." "The word 'Chelsey,'" observes Mr. Norris Brewer, in the "Beauties of England and Wales," "6. was first adopted in the sixteenth century, and the present mode of spelling the name appears to have grown into use about a century back." It may here be remarked that the name of Chelsea has been derived by some writers from "Shelves" of sand, and "ey," or 66 ,"land situated near the water. ea," But Lysons

In

prefers the etymology of Norden, who says that "it is so called from the nature of the place, its strand being like the chesel [ceosel, or cesol], which the sea casteth up of sand and pebble stones, thereof called Chevelsey, briefly Chelsey." like manner it may be added that the beach of pebbles thrown up by the action of the sea outside Weymouth harbour, is styled the Chesil bank. Perhaps it is the same word at bottom as Selsey, the name of a peninsula of pebbles on the Sussex

coast, near Chichester.

As a symbol of infinity, Ben Jonson, in his "Forest," speaks of

"Environs of London," vol. ii, p. 70.

"All the grass that Romney yields,

Or the sands of Chelsey Fields."

Macaulay reminds us that, at the end of the reign of Charles II., Chelsea was a "quiet country village, with about a thousand inhabitants; the baptisms averaging little more than forty in the year." At that time the Thames was sufficiently clear and pure for bathing above Westminster. We are told that, on one occasion, Charles II. was bathing at Chelsea, when the notorious Colonel Blood lay hid among the reeds at Battersea, in order to shoot him. Notwithstanding its remoteness from the metropolis, however, Chelsea does not appear to have escaped the ravages of the "Great Plague," for it raged here as well as in other suburbs of London, as Pepys informs us, in his "Diary," under date of April 9th, 1666"Thinking to have been merry at Chelsey; but, being almost come to the house by coach, near the waterside, a house alone, I think the 'Swan,’ a gentleman walking by called out to us that the house was shut up because of the sickness."

Chelsea Fields must have been quite a rustic spot even to a yet later date, for Gay thus addresses his friend Pulteney :

"When the sweet-breathing spring unfolds the buds,
Love flies the dusty town for shady woods;
Then

Chelsea's meads o'erhear perfidious vows,
And the press'd grass defrauds the grazing cows.

In "Chelsea Fields" was formerly a tavern, known as "The Dwarf's," kept by John Coan, a diminutive manikin from Norfolk. "It seems to have been a place of some attraction," says Mr. Larwood, "since it was honoured by the repeated visits of an Indian king." Thus the Daily AdverCherokee king and his two chiefs were so greatly tiser of July 12, 1762, says: "On Friday last the pleased with the curiosities of the Dwarf's Tavern, in Chelsea Fields, that they were there again on will be there again in a few days." The reputation Sunday, at seven in the evening, to drink tea, and of the tavern, under its pygmean proprietor, was but brief, as the "unparalleled" Coan, as he is styled, died within two years from the above date.

Chelsea.]

51

"Chelsea," observes a writer in the Mirror, in 1833, "though now proverbial for its dulness, was formerly a place of great gaiety. Thousands flocked to Salter's-or, as it was dubbed, 'Don Saltero's '-coffee-house in Cheyne Walk; the Chelsea buns were eaten by princesses; and the public were allowed to walk in thirteen acres of avenues of limes and chestnut-trees in the gardens adjoining the College. This privilege was disallowed in 1806; but within the last few weeks these grounds have been again thrown open to the public." The ground round about Chelsea and its neighbourhood, like that of Bermondsey, and other low-lying districts bordering upon the Thames, is peculiarly adapted for the growth of vegetables, fruits, and flowers; indeed, Chelsea has long been remarkable for its gardens and nurseries. Dr. Mackay, in his " Extraordinary Popular Delusions," tells us that about the time of Her Majesty's accession, there was a gardener in the King's Road, Chelsea, in whose catalogue a single tulip was marked at two hundred guineas -a remnant, perhaps, of the tulip-mania, which, two centuries before, had ruined half of the merchants of Holland, and threatened to prove as disastrous here as the "South Sea Bubble." It may be added, too, that the first red geranium seen in England is said to have been raised by a Mr. Davis here, about the year 1822.

Chelsea, which was once a rustic and retired village, has been gradually absorbed into the metropolis by the advance of the army of bricklayers and mortar-layers, and now forms fairly a portion of London, Pimlico and Belgravia having supplied the connecting link. Environed though it is by the growing suburbs, the place has still an old-fashioned look about it, which the modern, trimly-laid-out flower-gardens on the new embankment only tend to increase. Looked at from the Battersea side of the river, with the barges floating lazily along past the solid red-brick houses, screened by sheltering trees, Chelsea presents such a picture as the old Dutch "masters" would have revelled in, especially as the Thames here widens into a fine "reach," well known to oarsmen for the rough "seas" which they encounter there on those occasions when the wind meets the tide; in fact, the river is wider at this particular spot than anywhere "above bridge." In the reign of Charles II. it was such a fashionable rendezvous

Bowack thus writes, in an account of Chelsea, published in 1705 :-"The situation of it upon the Thames is very pleasant, and standing in a small bay, or angle, made by the meeting of Chelsea and Battersea Reaches, it has a most delightful prospect on that river for near four miles, as far as Vauxhall eastward, and as Wandsworth to the west."

In the last century, Chelsea being, in fact, quite a suburban place, had its own society; "its many honourable and worthy inhabitants,” as we are told by Bowack, "being not more remarkable for their titles, estates, and employments, than for their civility and condescension, and their kind and facetious tempers, living in a perfect amity among themselves, and having a general meeting every day at a coffee-house near the church, well known for a pretty collection of varieties in nature and art, some of which are very curious." The coffee-house here mentioned was the renowned Don Saltero's, of which we shall have more to say in the next chapter.

Mr. Peter Cunningham speaks of Chelsea as "at one time the Islington of the West-end," and thus enumerates the articles for which it has from time to time been famous :-Its manor house, its college, its botanic garden, its hospital, its amusements at Ranelagh, its waterworks, its buns, its china, and its custards.

"About the year 1796," writes Faulkner, in his "History of Chelsea," "I was present at a staghunt in Chelsea. The animal swam across the river from Battersea, and made for Lord Cremorne's grounds. Upon being driven from thence, he ran along the water-side as far as the church, and turning up Church Lane, at last took refuge in Mrs. Hutchins's barn, where he was taken alive."

The connection of Chelsea with Westminster, already stated in our account* of the "Monster" Tavern, Pimlico, is probably of very old standing, for even during the rule of our Norman kings it appears to have been one of the manors belonging to the abbey of St. Peter. Little, however, is known with certainty of the history of this now extensive parish till the time of Henry VII., when the manor was held by Sir Reginald Bray, from whom it descended to Margaret, only child of his next brother, John, who married William, Lord Sandys. From Lord Sandys the manor passed, in exchange for other lands, to that rapacious king, Henry VIII., by whom it was assigned to Katharine

• See above, p. 45.