POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART Fifth Series ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832 CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS) No. 88.-VOL. II. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1885. WILD-FLOWERS OF OLD LONDON. THE Great Herball of Gerarde, and Parkinson's Theatre of Plants have an interest apart from their quaint descriptions. They outline in flowers the environs of the London of their times; the fields interspersing and surrounding it; the rustic lanes traversing some of the ROW busiest thoroughfares; and the rough solitary ways leading to the scattered villages around. Gerarde addresses his Dedicatory Epistle to Sir William Cecil, Knight, Baron of Burghley, from his house in Holborn by London-a village ancient even in Elizabeth's time, extending from Holborn Bridge to the Bar, where the stream on whose margins it rose, and from which it had its name-the Oldborne, a branchlet of the Fleet-sprang up. A region of gardens and pasture-lands all the way from St Andrew's Church to Chancery Lane; and on the opposite side, between the village and Turnmill Brook, but separated from it by some fields, stood Hatton House and gardens, which had been extorted from their owner, Bishop Cox, in favour of the Lord-keeper, Sir Christopher Hatton. In summer-time, the air of Holborn must ave been redolent of hayfields and flowers. On the slope of the hill, between what is now Cly Place and what was formerly Fleet River, he neighbourhood of the after notorious Field ane, Gerarde had one of his physic gardens, ith more than a thousand specimens of trees id shrubs and flowering-plants in it; while ses were so abundant in the gardens of Hatton ouse, that the ill-used bishop had reserved to mself and his successors the right to gather enty bushels of them yearly. It may be that e originally half-timbered houses, the gabled per stories of which project over the paveent in front of Staple's Inn, made part of the cient village of Holborn, then, as now, a main oroughfare to and from the City. It had been ved on both sides of the way in Henry VIII.'s PRICE 1d. time, and lanterns lighted it in winter. Nearly opposite the Bar, Gray's Inn Lane with a little water-course on one side led between hedgerows over Bradford Bridge to Pancras meadows, and farther on to Battle Bridge. West of Holborn stretched the fields about St Giles's, with that most ancient of social institutions, the pound, for straying cattle, at their junction with Tottenham meadows. Beyond were Maribone Fields, with a few cowherds' cottages scattered through them; in the background, the heights of Hampstead, Highgate, and Hornsey, with lesser slopes rising from Battle Bridge to Islington; and in the valley, the Fleet River ran swiftly on between steep, sometimes clifty banks, from its source in the clay, on the southern side of Hampstead Hill, to its outlet at the foot of Snow Hill, to the Thames.* Whichever way the curious and painful searcher after simples' bent his steps, sweet bits of unspoiled nature lay around him. East, west, north, or south, he was still in the neighbourhood of woods and fields and hedgerows; fields from the Charter House to Clerkenwell, with Finsbury and Moorfields stretching beyond the marsh by Ald or Alders-gate to the woods which lost themselves in Epping Forest. Over London Bridge from Southwark to Lambeth Palace, Lambeth marshes, without a habitation. And St George's Fields and Redriff marshes, a district of solitary farmhouses, cottages, and grazing cattle. All of them happy hunting-grounds for the herbalists. But places nearer home were still so unsophisticated that wild-flowers grew in them. We know how unsullied the air must have been in Chancery Lane, when Gerarde found the earliest blown and most diminutive of our British flora, Draba verna, growing on the bricks of a wall there belonging to the Lord Southampton. But then, the common yellow wallflower sprang up between the tiles of the red steep-roofed houses, and the accredited * Storer and Cromwell's History of Clerkenwell. habitat of the bright flowering stonecrop (Sedum) was the tops of houses almost everywhere.' house near unto.' In this same ditch the waterbuttercup (Ranunculus equatalis) floated its white flowers; and beds of epilobium (willow-herb), and the rigid leaves of the horsetail, covered its banks. herbalist, who found what he calls spotted porcecaria (persicaria) with spikes of pinkishIn Holborn meadows by Gray's Inn, Gerarde white flowers, and large leaves plashed with found the red-flowered clary; and in Gray's hand side of the way between Blackman Street purple, growing in the great ditch on the rightInn Lane itself, mallow and shepherd's purse, and Newington. Enchanter's nightshade grew 'poor man's permacity;' and on the high bank in a ditch-side against the Earl of Sussex's by the footway going down the lane to Brad-garden-wall, at his house in Barnaby (Berford Bridge, the bronzed leaves of the wildmondsey Street) by London, as you go from lettuce spread themselves. We know nothing of the Court which is full of trees unto a farmBradford Bridge; but we can tell from the plants found there how tree-shaded and pretty the lower end of Gray's Inn Lane must have been, especially on the right-hand side of the bridge, with the water-course passing along This so-called 'ditch appears to have been thereby, where the sweet 'woodrofe' nestled, the channel of a little brook, which had its and where the brown blossoms of the wood- source in higher ground at Camberwell, and rush, the blue-flowered bugle, and Paul's betony House, made its way by what was then Kentish running under the garden-wall of Bermondsey Street (now Kent Street) to St Thomas's WaterBehind Gray's Inn, in the meadow where Mrings, the Southwark place of execution, at the Lamb's conduit stood, 'the one with the figure junction of Kent St with the Old Kent Road. of a lamb on it,' the white saxifrage flour- Here there was a little chapel and holy well, ished; and in the next pasture to the con- dedicated to St Thomas, where pilgrims to his duit head behind Gray's Inn, 'the one which shrine were wont to offer prayers for the bringeth water to Mr Lamb's conduit in Hol- safety of their journey. The ditch or stream borne [Mr Lamb had restored the conduit on from the number of aquatic and other plants at this point appears to have been interesting Snow Hill], the sad-coloured leaves of the which grew there; amongst others fit flowers winter-rocket grew plentifully.' The pastures for such precincts-wild rue, the dwale or spreading from this to Pancras, where the old nightshade, and that funeral flower of the church stood solitary in the fields,' appear to old Romans, mallow. In the Lock Fields (a have been, in the language of Parkinson, a boun- hospital for lepers formerly stood there), 'on the tiful 'treasury of nature.' Here grew the great left hand of the highway as you go from the red burnet, 'a gallant herb of the sun, the roots place of execution unto Dedford by London,' the of which steeped in wine quickened the spirits, in the environs of London in those days-grew farge-flowered white saxifrage-a frequent plant refreshed the heart, and yielded a certain grace plentifully. in the drinking.' grew. In the field next the church grew the curious 'strawberry-headed trefoil,' the inflated calyxes of which are so coloured as to resemble the fruit from which it has its trivial name. The lesser hawkweed, yarrow, and all the common meadow flowers had their home here. The By Redriff, on the banks of the Thames, Gerarde found snowflakes-a near relation of the snowdrop-blowing; and in summer, in the same vicinity, the flowering-rush in plenty. Here also the wild angelica flourished; but the whole southern side of the river, Southwark Fields, Lambeth marshes, and St George's Fields, cuckoo-pint grew under the shady hedges leading times-appears to have been a very paradise Battersea meadows-these last till quite recent to Kentish-town, a village by London; and in of simplers and botanists. The marshes themthe same neighbourhood, the wild angelica spread selves, and the watery ditches that divided its umbels of white flowers tinged with pink, them, abounded with moisture-loving plants, and and the yellow gladwyn flourished. On Kentish- hence old Gerarde's frequent references to these town Green-a sadly uncared-for waste, we transpontine places as their local habitat. Here could imagine the melancholy musk-thistle, in the still ditches on the banks of Southwark with solitary drooping purple heads and musky towards St George's Fields, he found the great odour, grew plentifully, with other species of horsetail growing, and with it arrow-head and burr-reed. its tribe; while, by the waysides, the crowfoot ditch-sides, tall cat's-tail typha, and the great In St George's Fields, upon the grew so commonly, that unless one turned his reed-mace, and yellow water-flags, flourished; and head into the hedge, he must see it as he amphibious persicaria, with smooth green spreadwalked. It gives one a vivid notion of the ing leaves, and spikes of handsome rose-coloured rusticity of the City to read that black cresses flowers, shared all the plashy places with watergrew on all the mud-walls about London; buttercup and frogbit. By Thames' side near that mithridate mustard flourished in the High to Lambeth the pretty water-violet abounded. Street, Peckham; and that white dead-nettle Twenty years after Gerarde noticed it, Johnson, known in those days as archangel-grew almost everywhere by ditch and roadside, except in the middle of the street. Ditches appear to have been frequent in the thoroughfares, a state of things extremely convenient for the in his enlarged edition of the Herball, tells us that of water-violets he had not found any such plenty in any one place as in the watery ditches adjoining St George's Fields. Willows grew plentifully in these oozy places, and the large-headed cotton-grass spread its Journal white flocks over wide spaces of the Surrey marshes. Imagine Thames' side then! A few clumsy barges sluggishly stealing up or down with the tide; a few wherries with a pair of oars or sculls ferrying passengers from one stair to another; or gilded and painted pleasure-barges giving life and animation to its surface; and every little point and bend of the shore fringed with osiers, and beds of tall-stemmed willowherb flushing wide spaces with its large rosepink flowers; and yellow lysimachia, which Gerarde prettily calls tree primrose; and the 'long purples' of common loosestrife; and here and there an outer jungle of tall reeds or gray plumed sedges, for ever rustling to the ebbing or flowing tide. The yellow loosestrife grew not only by the river-side, but in the moist meadows as you go from Lambeth to Battersea; and the purple kind lifted its tall spikes of handsome blossoms under the bishop's house-wall at Lambeth near the water of the Thames. 'Ladies' mantle,' or 'parsley piert,' grew plentifully by the mere-stones by Lambeth which divide the liberties of London from Surrey.' The narrow-leaved rocket (rock-cress), a kind of cousin to the cresses, was found in the chinks and crevices of a stone wall as you go from Lambeth Bridge, and under a small bridge that you must pass over hard by the Thames.' It was in a field at Southwark, at the back of the theatre by London'-the Globe, Shakspeare's theatre-that Gerarde found, amongst the glazed and golden cups of crowfoot growing there, one with a double flower. in others, so wet and marshy, that the redrattle covered wide spaces with its bright blossoms and chattering seed-vessels; and fleabane, with button-shaped flowers of a glistering gold colour, and the handsome goat's-beard, with grass-like leaves and purple flowers, made it their home. There, standing against the sun, maudlin-wort or great moon-daisy opened its white-rayed flowers; and the pretty speedwell Paul's betony, and prettier eyebright, Milton's euphrasy, found grassy spots in which to grow. There were plashy places also, in which, as lately as Curtis's time, Polygonium minus specially survived, and nowhere else around London. Even the abbey had its flora, not simply the wall-loving whitlow-grass, sandwort, pellitory, and the inevitable wall-rue-as proper to ancient ecclesiastical edifices in our days, as the wallflower was in Gerarde's, when he tells us it was in the corners of churches everywhere. The latter herbalist has noted that wall-pennywort 'grew on Westminster Abbey over the door that leadeth from Chaucer's tomb to the old palace.' A little lower down the Thames' side, right against the Queen's palace of Whitehall, and in many other places, the graceful trailing moneywort, with smooth shining leaves, of a tender green, and large yellow flowers, fringed its margin. Here, the handsome flowering-rushold Gerarde's 'water gladiole'-a giant in those days, sent up its submerged sword-shaped leaves and stately stalks, from one to six feet high, crowned with corymbs of many rose-coloured flowers. We have the Watergate of York House, the We find, from Tanswell's History of Lambeth, house in which Sir Francis Bacon was born, still that Lambeth marsh was considered, eighty years standing at the bottom of Buckingham Street, ago, a rural retreat. Leading from it were Strand; but it is pleasant to recall the willows pretty walks, with pollard willows on each side fringing the margin of the river near it, and -scions probably of those that grew there when giving freshness and beauty to it. Very near Gerarde and Parkinson lived. At Battersea, the this site, the sea-starwort (Gerarde's blue daisy) marshes became meadows, too recently the haunt grew; and hereabouts, near to old Hungerford of modern botanists to be regarded from an an- Market, it continued to open its fair lilac-rayed tique point of view. We of the present day flowers with yellow centres, amongst balks of have no idea of the little streams and rills that timber imbedded in the ooze, within the memory ran in and out about Old London and its envi- of the writer. Still later, the arrowhead mainrons, occasioning the frequent use of bridges. tained its place by Thames' side. But the Thus, the lesser cat's-tail typha grew by the floating beds of water-ranunculus, and leafy bridge entering into Chelsea Fields as one goeth rafts of frogbit (Morsus rana), crowded with from St James's to Little Chelsea. This was pellucid flowers, white, and almost as delicate probably the field next St James's Wall, where, as snow-crystals-these ceased to beautify the amongst many other grasses, the little quaking- shallow margins of the river about the time when grass, which in Spain is called amourettes, or the water-violets and the pond-lilies (beloved the lovely grass,' flourished. There also grew of swans) withdrew themselves to its upper that persistent weed clown's woundwort, which reaches. set up its square rough stem with narrow dark leaves and spikes of purplish red gaping flowers, speckled with white, in all the fields and pathsides about London. Beyond the abbey, the Westminster side of the river was a mere marshy tract, its margins flowery with water-flags and other aquatic flora, and guarded as it were by tall typhas and sedges, amongst which the water-soldier, and the great burr and mace reed, predominated. Around Westminster Abbey, Tothill Fields, notwithstanding that the Lords Gray and Dacre had their mansions in the neighbourhood, appear to have been an uncared-for waste, in some places so dry and sandy, that the red spurry and the buck's-horn plantain grew there in plenty; In the Tower moat, or ditch, as it was called, these Thames' side aquatic plants concentrated themselves. There they might be found, centuries after the Elizabethan herbalists had noticed their existence in it. Although the water in this ditch was said to be the first to freeze in London, the low temperature apparently did not interfere with their thriving. The yellow charlock brightened the wayside 'going from Houndsditch by Bednall Green to Hackney, a village by London.' Here, between the bushes grew the pretty musk-mallow, which towards evening, in hot weather, emits a faint musky odour. Gerarde knew it as the vervain mallow. Here also, delighting in shade rather than the sunshine, the avens herb benedicite, as it was sometimes called, on account of its remedial qualities, flourished. Faith in these has by no means died out in rustic places, the miners and colliers in what is known as the Black Country eagerly seeking it to make a kind of ale, which is considered excellent in chest affections, and a great purifier of the blood. On either side of the way, in both the wet and dry meadows, ladies' bedstraw, or 'cheeserennet,' abounded. Both avens and the latter plant had their uses in household economy in those days, the one being used for the dairy service its second name suggests; and the root of the other being dried and laid in press amongst linen and garments for the sake of its clove-like scent. In those old times, the cattle pasturing in Goodman's and the Spitalfields cropped cowslips with the vernal grasses; and east-end children found the first primroses and violets in the hedges there. The lesser bugloss was growing on all the drie ditch-banks in Pickedille; and the red dead-nettle continued to survive till Curtis's time on a bank on the right side of the way between Pimlico and Chelsea. Wild roses specially grew on the borders of a pasture as you go from a village by London called Knightsbridge unto Fulham, a village thereby. In the wet, boggy places in the lane going by Tottenham Court towards Hampstead, the rushgrass ripened its brown spikelets of blossoms; and the vervain mallow, with its finely cut leaves and round rose-coloured flowers, which groweth not everywhere,' grew in the ditch on the left hand of the place of execution at Tyburn. But of all these now curious habitats of wild-flowers mentioned by the old herbalists, one of the most curious is that of the common chickweed, which some,' observes Gerarde, call passamum, because it refreshes little birds in cages, especially linnets, when they loathe their meat. The moist kind,' he adds, "is found commonly growing in the gutters of houses'a place suggestive of the habits of our forefathers, and the absence of sanitary commissioners in Old London. A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. GAUNT did not appear again at Eaton Square for two or three days, not, indeed, till after the great event of Frances' history had taken placethe going to court, which had filled her with so many alarms. After all, when she got there, she was not frightened at all, the sense of humour which was latent in her nature getting the mastery at the last moment, and the spectacle, such as it was, taking all her attention from herself. Lady Markham's good taste had selected for Frances as simple a dress as was possible, and her ornaments were the pearls which her aunt had given her, which she had never been able to look at, save uneasily as spoil. Mrs Cavendish, however, condescended, which was a wonderful stretch of good-nature, to come to Eaton Square to see her dressed, which, as everybody knows, is one of the most agreeable parts of the ceremony. Frances had not a number of young friends to fill the house with a chorus of admiration and criticism; but the Miss Montagues thought it almost a duty' to come, and a number of her mother's friends. These ladies filled the drawing-room, and were much more formidable than even the eyes of Majesty, preoccupied with the sight of many toilets, and probably very tired of them, which would have no more than a passing glance for Frances. The spectators at Eaton Square took her to pieces conscientiously, though they agreed, after each had made her little observation, that the ensemble was perfect, and that the power of millinery could no further go. The intelligent reader needs not to be informed that Frances was all white from her feathers to her shoes. Her pretty glow of youthfulness and expectation made the toilet supportable, nay, pretty, even in the glare of day. Markham, who was not afraid to confront all these fair and critical faces, in his uniform, which misbecame, and did not even fit him, and which made his insignificance still more apparent, walked round and round his little sister with the most perfect satisfaction. 'Are you sure you know how to manage that train, little Fan? Do you feel quite up to your curtesy?' he said in a whisper with his chuckle of mirth; but there was a very tender look in the little man's eyes. He might wrong others; but to Frances, nobody could be so kind or considerate. Mrs Cavendish, when she saw him, turned upon her heel and walked off into the back drawing-room, where she stood for some minutes sternly contemplating a picture, and ignoring everybody. Markham did not resent this insult. She can't abide me, Fan,' he went on. 'Poor lady, I don't wonder. I was a little brat when she knew me. As soon as I go away, she will come back. And I am going presently, my dear. I am going to snatch a morsel in the dining-room, to sustain nature. I hope you had your sandwiches, Fan? It will take a great deal of nourishment to keep you up to that curtesy He patted her softly on her white shoulder, with kindness beaming out of his ugly face. 'I call you a most satisfactory production, my dear. Not a beauty, but better-a real nice innocent girl. I should like any fellow to show me a nicer,' he went on with his short laugh. Though he uttered that chuckle, there was something in it that showed Markham's heart was touched. And this was the man whom even his own mother was afraid to trust a young man with! It seemed to Frances that it was impossible such a thing could be true. Mrs Cavendish, as Markham had predicted, came back as he retired. Her contemplation of the dress of the debutante was very critical 'Satin is too heavy for you,' she said. I wonder your mother did not see that silk would have been far more in keeping; but she always liked to overdo. As for my Lord Markham, I am glad he will have to look after your mother, and not you, Frances; for the very look of a man like that contaminates a young girl.-Don't say to me that he is your brother, for he is not your brother. Considering my age and yours, I surely ought to know best.-Turn round a little.-There is a perceptible crease across the middle of your shoulder, and I don't quite like the hang of this skirt. But one thing looks very Sept. 5, 1885.] A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. well, and that is your pearls. They have been 'Mamma insisted I should wear them, and "Yes, I daresay. You have nothing else good enough to go with them, most likely. Lady Markham knows a good thing very well, And when she sees it.-Have you been put through all that you have to do, Frances? Remember to keep your right hand quite free; and take care your train doesn't get in your way.-Oh, why is it that your poor father is not here to see you, to go with you! It would be a very different thing then.' 'Nothing would make papa go, aunt Charlotte. Do you think he would dress himself up like Markham, to be laughed at?' I promise you, nobody would laugh at my brother,' said Mrs Cavendish.-'As for Lord Markham'- But she bit her lip, and forbore. She spoke to none of the other ladies, who swarmed like numerous bees in the room, keeping up a hum in the air. But she made very formal acknowledgments to Lady Markham as she went away. 'I am much obliged to you for letting me come to see Frances dressed. She looks very well on the whole, though, perhaps, I should have adopted a different style, had it been in my hands. My dear Charlotte,' cried Lady Markham, ignoring this ungracious conclusion, 'how can you speak of letting you come? You know we are only too glad to see you whenever you will come. And I hope you liked the effect of your beautiful pearls. What a charming present to give the child; I thought it so kind of you.' 'So long as Frances understands that they are family ornaments,' said Mrs Cavendish stiffly, rejecting all acknowledgments. There was a little murmur and titter when she went away. Is it Medusa in person?' 'It is Mrs Cavendish, the wife of the great Q.C.' 'It is Frances' aunt, and she does not like any remark.'-'It is my dear sister-in-law,' said Lady Markham. 'She does not love me; but she is kind to Frances, which covers a multitude of sins.'-'And very rich,' said another lady, 'which covers a multitude more.' little bitterness into the conversation to Frances This put a standing there in her fine clothes, and not knowing how to interfere; and it was a relief to her when Markham, though she could not blame the whispering girls who called him a guy, came in shuffling and smiling, with a glance and nod of encouragement to his little sister to take the mother down-stairs to her carriage. After that, all was a moving phantasmagoria of colour and novel life, and nothing clear. And it was not until after this great day that Captain Gaunt appeared again. received him with reproaches for his absence. The ladies I expected to see you yesterday at least,' said Lady Markham. You don't care for fine clothes, as we women do; but five o'clock tea, after a Drawing-room, is a fine sight. You have no idea how grand we were, and how much you have lost.' Captain Gaunt responded with a very grave, indeed melancholy smile. He was even more 565 dejected than when he made his first appearance. most; 'leave London! 'Yes; but my month seems to have run away finding Lady Markham's eye upon him, he before it has begun,' he said confusedly. Then, added: 'I mean, things are very different from do myself good by seeing people who might what I expected. My father thought I might push me, he supposed. I am not good at pushing myself,' he said with an abrupt and harsh laugh. is a defect, as well as the reverse one of being friends have been kind enough; but London gravely. I enter into your feelings. You don't couraged look. countenance of unfeigned regret. 'No doubt Mrs he said, with the air of a man who would like 'But there must be a great deal to enjoy,' that is what I should not do.' 'But it would be running away,' said Frances, |