Mitton Geraldine Edith
Chelsea
At the extreme corner of Flood Street and Queen’s Road West stood Radnor House, called by Hamilton “Lady Radnor’s House.” In 1660, when still only Lord Robartes, the future Earl of Radnor entertained Charles II. here to supper. Pepys, the indefatigable, has left it on record that he “found it to be the prettiest contrived house” that he ever saw. Lord Cheyne (Viscount Newhaven) married the Dowager Duchess of Radnor, who was at that time living in Radnor House. After the death of the first Earl, the family name is recorded as Roberts in the registers, an instance of the etymological carelessness of the time. In Radnor House was one of the pillared arcades fashionable in the Jacobean period, of which a specimen is still to be seen over the doorway of the dining-room in the Queen’s House. On the first floor was a remarkably fine fireplace, which has been transferred bodily to one of the modern houses in Cheyne Walk. At the back of Radnor House were large nursery-gardens known as “Mr. Watt’s gardens” from the time of Hamilton (1717) until far into the present century. An old hostel adjoining Radnor House was called the Duke’s Head, after the Duke of Cumberland, of whom a large oil-painting hung in the principal room.
From this corner to the west gates of the Hospital was formerly Paradise Row. Here lived the Duchess of Mazarin, sister to the famous Cardinal. She was married to the Duke de la Meilleraie, who adopted her name. It is said that Charles II. when in exile had wished to marry her, but was prevented by her brother, who saw at the time no prospect of a Stuart restoration. The Duchess, after four years of unhappy married life with the husband of her brother’s choice, fled to England. Charles, by this time restored to his throne, received her, and settled £4,000 on her from the secret service funds. She lived in Chelsea in Paradise Row. Tradition asserts very positively that the house was at one end of the row, but at which remains a disputed point. L’Estrange and others have inclined to the belief that it was at the east end, the last of a row of low creeper-covered houses still standing, fronted by gardens and high iron gates. The objection to this is that these are not the last houses in the line, but are followed by one or two of a different style.
The end of all, now a public-house, is on the site of Faulkner’s house, and it is probable that if the Duchess had lived there, he, coming after so comparatively short an interval, would have mentioned the fact; as it is, he never alludes to the exact locality. Even £4,000 a year was quite inadequate to keep up this lady’s extravagant style of living. The gaming at her house ran high; it is reported that the guests left money under their plates to pay for what they had eaten. St. Evremond, poet and man of the world, was frequently there, and he seems to have constituted himself “guide, philosopher, and friend” to the wayward lady. She was only fifty-two when she died in 1699, and the chief records of her life are found in St. Evremond’s writings. He, her faithful admirer to the end, was buried in Westminster Abbey.
A near neighbour of the Duchess’s was Mrs. Mary Astell, one of the early pioneers in the movement for the education for women. She published several volumes in defence of her sex, and proposed to found a ladies’ college. She gave up the project, however, when it was condemned by Bishop Burnet. She was ridiculed by the wits of her time – Swift, Steele, and Addison – but she was undoubtedly a very able woman.
The Duke of St. Albans, Nell Gwynne’s son, also had a house in Paradise Row. The Duke of Ormond lived in Ormond House, two or three doors from the east corner. In 1805 the comedian Suett died in this row. Further down towards the river are enormous new red-brick mansions. Tite Street runs right through from Tedworth Square to the Embankment, being cut almost in half by Queen’s Road West. It is named after Sir W. Tite, M.P. The houses are modern, built in the Queen Anne style, and are mostly of red brick. To this the white house built for Mr. Whistler is an exception; it is a square, unpretentious building faced with white bricks.
At different times the names of many artists have been associated with this street, which is still a favourite one with men of the brush. The great block of studios – the Tower House – rises up to an immense height on the right, almost opposite to the Victoria Hospital for Children. The nucleus of this hospital is ancient Gough House, one of the few old houses still remaining in Chelsea. John Vaughan, third and last Earl of Carbery, built it in the beginning of the eighteenth century. He had been Governor of Jamaica under Charles II., and had left behind him a bad reputation. He did not live long to enjoy his Chelsea home, for Faulkner tells us he died in his coach going to it in 1713. Sir Robert Walpole, whose land adjoined, bought some of the grounds to add to his own.
In 1866 the Victoria Hospital for Children was founded by a number of medical men, chief of whom were Edward Ellis, M.D., and Sydney Hayward, M.D. There was a dispute about the site, which ended in the foundation of two hospitals – this and the Belgrave one. This one was opened first, and consequently earned the distinction of being the first children’s hospital opened after that in Ormond Street. At first only six beds were provided; but there are now seventy-five, and an additional fifty at the convalescent home at Broadstairs, where a branch was established in 1875. The establishment is without any endowment, and is entirely dependent on voluntary subscriptions. From time to time the building has been added to and adapted, so that there is little left to tell that it was once an old house. Only the thickness of the walls between the wards and the old-fashioned contrivances of some of the windows betray the fact that the building is not modern. Children are received at any age up to sixteen; some are mere babies. Across Tite Street, exactly opposite, is a building containing six beds for paying patients in connection with the Victoria Hospital.
Paradise Walk, a very dirty, narrow little passage, runs parallel to Tite Street. In it is a theatre built by the poet Shelley, and now closed. At one time private theatricals were held here, but when money was taken at the door, even though it was in behalf of a charity, the performances were suppressed. Paradise Row opens into Dilke Street, behind the pseudo-ancient block of houses on the Embankment. Some of these are extremely fine. Shelley House is said to have been designed by Lady Shelley. Wentworth House is the last before Swan Walk, in which the name of the Swan Tavern is kept alive. This tavern was well known as a resort by all the gay and thoughtless men who visited Chelsea in the seventeenth century. It is mentioned by Pepys and Dibdin, and is described as standing close to the water’s edge and having overhanging wooden balconies. In 1715 Thomas Doggett, a comedian, instituted a yearly festival, in which the great feature was a race by watermen on the river from “the old Swan near London Bridge to the White Swan at Chelsea.” The prize was a coat, in every pocket of which was a guinea, and also a badge. This race is still rowed annually, Doggett’s Coat and Badge being a well-known river institution.
Adjoining Swan Walk is the Apothecaries’ Garden, the oldest garden of its kind in London. Sir Hans Sloane, whose name is revered in Chelsea and perpetuated in one of the principal streets, is so intimately associated with this garden that it is necessary at this point to give a short account of him. Sir Hans Sloane was born in Ireland, 1660. He began his career undistinguished by any title and without any special advantages. Very early he evinced an ardent love of natural history, and he came over while still a youth to study in London. From this time his career was one long success. When he was only twenty-seven he was selected by the Duke of Albemarle, who had been appointed Governor of Jamaica, to accompany him as his physician. About a year and a half later he returned, bringing with him a wonderful collection of dried plants.
Mr. Sloane was appointed Court physician, and after the accession of George I. he was created a Baronet. He was appointed President of the Royal Society on the death of Sir Isaac Newton in 1727. He will be remembered, however, more especially as being the founder of the British Museum. During the course of a long life he had collected a very valuable assortment of curiosities, and this he left to the nation on the payment by the executors of a sum of £20,000 – less than half of what it had cost him. In 1712 he purchased the Manor of Chelsea, and when the lease of the Apothecaries’ Garden ran out in 1734, he granted it to the Society perpetually on certain conditions, one of which was that they should deliver fifty dried samples of plants every year to the Royal Society until the number reached 2,000. This condition was fulfilled in 1774. Sir Hans Sloane died in 1753.
A marble statue by Rysbach in the centre of the garden commemorates him. It was erected in 1737 at a cost of nearly £300. Mr. Miller, son of a gardener employed by the Apothecaries, wrote a valuable horticultural dictionary, and a new genus of plants was named after him.
Linnæus visited the garden in 1736. Of the four cedars – the first ever brought to England – planted here in 1683, one alone survives.
Returning to the Embankment, we see a few more fine houses in the pseudo-ancient style. Clock House and Old Swan House were built from designs by Norman Shaw, R.A. Standing near is a large monument, with an inscription to the effect: “Chelsea Embankment, opened 1874 by Lt. – Col. Sir J. Macnaghten Hogg, K.C.B. Sir Joseph W. Bazalgette, C.B., engineer.” The Embankment is a magnificent piece of work, extending for nearly a mile, and made of Portland cement concrete, faced with dressed blocks of granite. Somewhere on the site of the row of houses in Cheyne Walk stood what was known as the New Manor House, built by King Henry VIII. as part of the jointure of Queen Catherine Parr, who afterwards lived here with her fourth husband, Thomas Seymour, Lord High Admiral. Here the young Princess Elizabeth came to stay with her stepmother, and also poor little Lady Jane Grey at the age of eleven. The history of the Manor House, of course, coincides with the history of the manor, which has been given at length elsewhere. Lysons, writing in 1795, states that the building was pulled down “many years ago.” It was built in 1536, and thus was probably in existence about 250 years. More than a century after, some time prior to 1663, James, Duke of Hamilton, had built a house adjoining the Manor House on the western side. The palace of the Bishops of Winchester at Southwark had become dilapidated, and the Bishop of that time, George Morley, purchased Hamilton’s new house for £4,250 to be the episcopal residence. From that time until the investment of Bishop Tomline, 1820, eight Bishops lived in the house successively. Of these, Bishop Hoadley, one of the best-known names among them, was the sixth. He was born in 1676, the son of a master of Norwich Grammar School. He was a Fellow of Catherine’s Hall at Cambridge, and wrote several political works which brought him into notice. He passed successively through the sees of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester. He was succeeded by the Hon. Brownlow North, to whom Faulkner dedicated his first edition of “Chelsea.” Lady Tomline, the wife of the Bishop of that name, took a dislike to the house at Chelsea and refused to live there. The great hall was forty feet long by twenty wide, and the three drawing-rooms extended the whole length of the south front. The front stood rather further back than the Manor House, not on a line with it. The palace stood just where Oakley Street now opens into Cheyne Walk. The houses standing on the sites of these palaces are mostly modern. No. 1 has a fine doorway which came from an old house at the other end of the row. In the next Mr. Beerbohm Tree and his wife lived for a short time after their marriage.
No. 4 has had a series of notable inmates. William Dyce, R.A., was the occupant in 1846, and later on Daniel Maclise, R.A. Then came George Eliot, with Mr. Cross, intending to stay in Chelsea for the winter, but three weeks after she caught cold and died in this house. Local historians have mentioned a strange shoot which ran from the top to the bottom of this house; this has disappeared, but on the front-staircase still remain some fresco paintings executed by Sir J. Thornhill, and altered by Maclise. In 1792 a retired jeweller named Neild came to No. 5. The condition of prisoners incarcerated for small debts occupied his thoughts and energies, and he worked to ameliorate it. He left his son James Neild an immense fortune. This eccentric individual, however, was a miser, who scrimped and scraped all his life, and at his death left all his money to Queen Victoria. The gate-piers before this house are very fine, tall, and square, of mellowed red brick, surmounted by vases. These vases superseded the stone balls in fashion at the end of the Jacobean period. Hogarth is said to have been a frequent visitor to this house. In the sixth house Dr. Weedon Butler, father of the Headmaster of Harrow, kept a school, which was very well known for about thirty years. In the next block we have the famous Queen’s House, marked by the little statuette of Mercury on the parapet. It is supposed to have been named after Catherine of Braganza, but beyond some initials – C. R. (Catherine Regina) – in the ironwork of the gate, there seems no fact in support of this. The two Rossettis, Meredith, and Swinburne came here in 1862, but soon parted company, and D. G. Rossetti alone remained. He decorated some of the fireplaces with tiles himself; that in the drawing-room is still inlaid with glazed blue and white Persian tiles of old design. In his time it was called Tudor House, but when the Rev. H. R. Haweis (d. 1901) came to live here, he resumed the older name of Queen’s House. It is supposed to have been built by Wren, and the rooms are beautifully proportioned, panelled, and of great height.
The next house to this on the eastern side was occupied for many years by the artistic family of the Lawsons. Thomas Attwood, a pupil of Mozart and himself a great composer, died there in 1838. The house had formerly a magnificent garden, to the mulberries of which Hazlitt makes allusion in one of his essays. No. 18 was the home of the famous Don Saltero’s museum. This man, correctly Salter, was a servant of Sir Hans Sloane, and his collection was formed from the overflowings of his master’s. Some of the curiosities dispersed by the sale in 1799 are still to be seen in the houses of Chelsea families in the form of petrified seaweed and shells. The museum was to attract people to the building, which was also a coffee-house; this was at that time something of a novelty. It was first opened in 1695. Sir Richard Steele, in the Tatler, says: “When I came into the coffee-house I had not time to salute the company before my eye was diverted by ten thousand gimcracks round the room and on the ceiling.” Catalogues of the curiosities are still extant, and one of them is preserved in the Chelsea Public Library.
Of the remaining houses none have associations. The originals were too small for the requirements of those who wished to live in such an expensive situation, and within the last score of years they have been pulled down and others built on their sites. One of these so destroyed was called the Gothic House; in it lived Count D’Orsay, and it was most beautifully finished both inside and out. The decorative work was executed by Pugin, and has been described by those who remember it as gorgeous. In another there was a beautiful Chippendale staircase, which, it is to be feared, was ruthlessly chopped up. In the last house of all was an elaborate ceiling after the style of Wedgwood. The doorway of this house is now at No. 1.
The garden which lies in front of these houses adds much to their picturesqueness in summer by showing the glimpses of old walls and red brick through curtains of green leaves. In it, opposite to the house where he used to live, there is a gray granite fountain to the memory of Rossetti. It is surmounted by a bronze alto-relievo bust modelled by Mr. F. Madox Brown.
A district old enough to be squalid, but not old enough to be interesting, is enclosed by Smith and Manor Streets, running at right angles to the Embankment. New red-brick mansions at the end of Flood Street indicate that the miserable plaster-fronted houses will not be allowed to have their own way much longer. No street has changed its name so frequently as Flood Street. It was first called Pound Lane, from the parish pound that stood at the south end; it then became Robinson’s Lane; in 1838 it is marked as Queen Street; and in 1865 it was finally turned into Flood Street, from L. T. Flood, a parish benefactor, in whose memory a service is still held every year in St. Luke’s Church.
Oakley Street is very modern. In a map of 1838 there is no trace of it, but only a great open space where Winchester House formerly stood. In No. 32 lives Dr. Phené, who was the first to plant trees in the streets of London. Phené Street, leading into Oakley Crescent, is named after him. The line of houses on the west side of Oakley Street is broken by a garden thickly set with trees. This belongs to Cheyne House, the property of Dr. Phené; the house cannot be seen from the street in summer-time. The oldest part is perhaps Tudor, and the latest in the style of Wren. One wall is decorated with fleurs-de-lys. In the garden was grown the original moss-rose, a freak of Nature, from which all other moss-roses have sprung. In the grounds was discovered a subterranean passage, which Dr. Phené claims fixes the site of Shrewsbury or Alston House. It runs due south, and indicates the site as adjacent to Winchester House on the west side. Faulkner, writing in 1810, says: “The most ancient house now remaining in this parish is situated on the banks of the river, not far from the site of the Manor House built by King Henry VIII., and appears to have been erected about that period. It was for many years the residence of the Shrewsbury family, but little of its ancient splendour now remains.” He describes it as an irregular brick building, forming three sides of a quadrangle. The principal room, which was wainscotted with oak, was 120 feet long, and one of the rooms, supposed to have been an oratory, was painted in imitation of marble. Faulkner mentions the subterranean passage “leading towards Kensington,” which Dr. Phené has opened out.
Shrewsbury House was built in the reign of Henry VIII. by George, Earl of Shrewsbury, who was succeeded in 1538 by his son Francis. The son of Francis, George, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, who succeeded in his turn, was a very wealthy and powerful nobleman. He was high in Queen Elizabeth’s favour, and it was to his care that the captive Mary, Queen of Scots, was entrusted. Though Elizabeth considered he treated the royal prisoner with too much consideration, she afterwards forgave him, and appointed him to see the execution of the death-warrant. He married for his second wife a lady who had already had three husbands, each more wealthy than the last. By the second of these, Sir William Cavendish, she had a large family. Her husband left his house at Chelsea wholly to her. She outlived him seventeen years, and with her immense wealth built the three magnificent mansions of Chatsworth, Oldcotes, and Hardwick, and all these she left to her son William Cavendish, afterwards created Baron Cavendish and Earl of Devonshire. A son of a younger brother was created Marquis of Newcastle, and his daughter and coheiress was Lady Jane, who brought her husband, Charles Cheyne, such a large dower that he was enabled to buy the Manor of Chelsea.
After the death of the Earl of Devonshire, Shrewsbury House became the residence of his widow until her death in 1643. It then was held by the Alstons, from whom it took its secondary name, and was finally in the possession of the Tates, and was the seat of a celebrated wall-paper manufactory. “The manufacture of porcelain acquired great celebrity. It was established near the water-side… Upon the same premises was afterwards established a manufactory of stained paper.” This seems to point to Shrewsbury House as the original home of the celebrated Chelsea china. But, on the other hand, all later writers point authoritatively to Lawrence Street, at the corner of Justice Walk, as the seat of the china manufacture. There seems to be some confusion as to the exact site of the original works, for in “Nollekens and his Times” it is indicated as being at Cremorne House, further westward. One Martin Lister mentions a china manufactory in Chelsea as early as 1698, but the renowned manufactory seems to have been started about fifty years later. The great Dr. Johnson was fired with ambition to try his hand at this delicate art, and he went again and again to the place to master the secret; but he failed, and one can hardly imagine anyone less likely to have succeeded. The china service in the possession of Lord Holland, known as Johnson’s service, was not made by him, but presented to him by the proprietors as a testimony to his painstaking effort. The first proprietor was a Mr. Nicholas Sprimont, and a jug in the British Museum, bearing date “1745 Chelsea,” is supposed to be one of the earliest productions.
The first sale by auction took place in the Haymarket in 1754, when table sets and services, dishes, plates, tureens, and épergnes were sold. These annual sales continued for many years. In 1763 Sprimont attempted to dispose of the business and retire owing to lameness, but it was not until 1769 that he sold out to one Duesbury, who already owned the Derby China Works, and eventually acquired those at Bow also.
The Chelsea china was very beautiful and costly. An old tradition is mentioned in the “Life of Nollekens” that the clay was at first brought as ballast in ships from China, and when the Orientals discovered what use was being made of it, they forbade its exportation, and the Englishmen had to be content with their own native clay. Nollekens says that his father worked at the pottery, and that Sir James Thornhill had furnished designs. The distinctive mark on the china was an anchor, which was slightly varied, and at times entwined with one or two swords. Walpole in 1763 says that he saw a service which was to be given to the Duke of Mecklenburg by the King and Queen, and that it was very beautiful and cost £1,200.
From the corner of Oakley Street to the church, Cheyne Walk faces a second garden, in which there is a statue of Carlyle in bronze, executed by the late Sir Edgar Boehm and unveiled in 1882. This locality is associated with many famous men, though the exact sites of their houses are not known. Here lived Sir Richard Steele and Sir James Northcote, R.A. Somewhere near the spot Woodfall, the printer of the famous “Letters of Junius,” lived and died. A stone at the north-east corner of the church (exterior) commemorates him. In the Chelsea Public Library is preserved the original ledger of the Public Advertiser, showing how immensely the sales increased with the publication of these famous letters.
