Brentford

“ You will discover as many silly affections, as much foppery and futility, as much inconsistency and low artifice in one as in the other. I never met the mad woman at Brentford decked out in old and new rags, and nice and fantastical in the manner of wearing them, without reflecting on many of the profound scholars and sublime philosophers of our own and of former ages. ”

“ In the early part of the century Brentford was the scene of much rioting and disorder and even bloodshed, and the route from Charing Cross to Brentford was often lined with eager partisans cheering or hooting the freeholders as they made their way to record their votes for or against the man whom the irony of fate had made the champion of the national liberties. ”

“ The two Kings of Brentford.
—Occasionally when there is an expression of ultra-friendship on the part of two persons who were before supposed, their profession to the contrary notwithstanding, to hate each other right heartily, the following comparison is elicited from the bystanders: "They are like the two kings of Brentford smelling at one nosegay." I have sought for the meaning of this profound remark from many denizens of that ancient locality, but hitherto without success; it being, somewhat like the mud of Brentford, impenetrable. ”

“ Surely no county in England has a more untidy and squalid little county town. Its long main street is narrow to the point of danger, so that it has been necessary to construct at great cost a new arterial road which will avoid Brentford altogether; while many of its byways can be dignified by no better word than slums. Yet Brentford in the past was a place of some note in Middlesex, and had its share of history. Indeed, in recent times it has laid claim to be the “ford” where Julius Cæsar crossed on his way to Verulam, a claim which for years was held undisputedly by Cowey Stakes, near Walton. ”

“ It is noteworthy also that the House of Commons ordered that “The Minister of Middlesex and parts of London, do the next fast-day read in their several parish-churches the account of the sufferings of the inhabitants of Old Brentford, on the 12th and 13th of the month by his Majesties forces; and that they do exhort the people to a compassionate consideration of them.” “Compassionate consideration” is good and we may surmise that “Remember Brentford” was used in those days much as the historic phrase “Remember Mitchels-town” was used in our own. ”

“ For one thing, Brentford has a quite remarkable number of old inns, and the great stableyards and courtyards of other old coaching hostelries which themselves have disappeared. This was, in fact, the end of the first stage out of London in the coaching era, and the beginning of the last stage in; and in consequence, as befitted a town on the great highway to the West, had ample accommodation, both for man and beast. ”

“ The professors of the university being informed of our arrival, Dr Stevenson, Dr Reid, and Mr Anderson, breakfasted with us. Mr Anderson accompanied us while Dr Johnson viewed this beautiful city. He had told me, that one day in London, when Dr Adam Smith was boasting of it, he turned to him and said, 'Pray, sir, have you ever seen Brentford?' This was surely a strong instance of his impatience, and spirit of contradiction. ”

“ Within easy reach of Brentford, in the neighbouring parish of Keston, is Oesterley Park, with the famous mansion named after it built by Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange, who more than once entertained Queen Elizabeth in it, and which was later owned by the wealthy London merchant, Sir Thomas Child, whose son Robert added two sumptuously decorated wings to it, and formed the nucleus of a fine collection of pictures by the old masters. ”

“ From Strand-on-the-Green the view of the Thames is no less fascinating than that from Hammersmith and Chiswick Malls, for even at low tide, when gleaming stretches of mud line the banks on either side, the colour effects are charming. Higher up, too, where the little river Brent—that with the Brentford Canal forms part of a great system of inland waterways—flows into the Thames, a touch of poetry still lingers, in spite of the fact that the once beautiful village named after the ancient ford has become one of the most prosaic of the Middlesex suburbs. ”

“ Then, when we have all this delightful testimony as to Brentford’s dirt, comes Shenstone, the melancholy poet who ‘found his warmest welcome at an inn,’ to testify as to the character of its inhabitants. ‘No persons,’ says he, ‘more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. ”

“ The dirty streets are still there, with the confusion in their narrow limits worse confounded by the passing of tramcars, which, over the mile along which Brentford spreads itself, take double the time spent on any other bit of equal distance on their route. Most people have a hazy notion about two kings at Brentford ”

“ The shops were all shut in Brentford, and the road leading to London was lined on each side with crowds of idle spectators. It is impossible for any but those who have witnessed a Middlesex election to conceive the picture it exhibits; it is one continual scene of riot, disorder, and tumult. ”

“ How many men are there in this room who know the respective nature of their votes? And is there a single woman who knows the political worth of her husband's vote? Passing the other day from the Bank of this great metropolis to its suburb called Brentford, journeying as I did the whole way through continuous rows of houses, I found myself at first in a very ancient borough returning four members,—double the usual number,—not because of its population but because it has always been so. ”

“ The neighbouring town of Brentford has a less happy fate, and Ealing doubtless shared to some extent in the events at Brentford. In the year 1016, Ethelred, the King, dying, the country was torn by the rival claims of Edmund Ironside and Canute. London and the parts about it declared for Edmund, the remoter counties ranging themselves with the Danish King. A sharp engagement between the hostile forces gave a temporary victory to Edmund, and the Danes fled across the Thames, many of the Saxons being, in the ardour of the pursuit, drowned in the river near where Kew Bridge now stands. ”

“ Wilkes and George might well be nicknamed the “Two Kings of Brentford.” And for ten years or so New Brentford, as the village was then called, had a firebrand parson who would not commend himself to Mrs. Trimmer. Her future home, indeed, was at Old Brentford, now being swallowed up in Ealing.
The Brentford political parson was John Horne, afterwards better known as Horne Tooke. Son of a London poulterer, whom he styled to his Eton school-fellows “a Turkey merchant,” Horne was not the best man to hold a living which his friends bought for him about the time of the King’s accession. ”

“ At half past eleven the diligence starts from the Place-du-Carrousel for Calais. Make all haste till you arrive at Brentford. I have a little provender here for you to eat in the diligence, as you will not have time for a regular meal. A day-and-night courier should never be without a cracker in his pocket. You will probably leave Brentford in a day or two after your arrival there. Be wary, now, my good friend; heed well, that, if you are caught with these papers on British ground, you will involve both yourself and our Brentford friends in fatal calamities. ”

“ One day, being a little flustered with liquor as he was driving his return chaise through Brentford, he saw just before him another empty carriage, driven by one of his acquaintance; he whipped up his horses, resolving to outstrip the other, and swearing dreadfully that he would be at the Red Lion first—for a pint—"Done!" cried the other, "a wager." Both cut and spurred the poor beasts with the usual fury, as if their credit had been really at stake, or their lives had depended on that foolish contest. ”

“ Sir Denzil Hollis was defeated by the Royalists at Brentford in 1642, and in 1645 a fruitless treaty between Charles I. and the Parliament was concluded at Uxbridge. Brentford had famous election contests in 1768 and 1769. ”

“ Having remained two days in London, and having participated, as far as those two days would allow him, in the general horror occasioned by the wickedness and success of Mr. Daubeny, he started for Dresden.
He found Lord Brentford living in a spacious house, with a huge garden round it, close upon the northern confines of the town. Dresden, taken altogether, is a clean cheerful city, and strikes the stranger on his first entrance as a place in which men are gregarious, busy, full of merriment, and pre-eminently social. ”

“ Still less was Lord Camden solicitous to save Lord Mansfield from danger and odium. The Chancellor went to Bath, and the Duke to Newmarket.
On the 28th of March the election began at Brentford; and while the irresolution of the Court and the carelessness of the Prime Minister, Grafton, caused a neglect of all precautions, the zeal of the populace had heated itself to a pitch of fury. ”

“ The earl compelled Essex to surrender Lostwithiel, and was wounded at both battles of Newbury. But his faculties had begun to decay, and in 1644 he was superseded in his command by Prince Rupert. After visiting Sweden on a mission for Charles II., Brentford died at Dundee on the 2nd of February 1651. He left no sons and his titles became extinct. ”

“ Humble Jacobites, on the other hand, were often mercilessly treated. Ill words spoken of the king brought the hangman’s lash round the loins of the speaker. Half the Whig roguery of London went down to Brentford in May, to see a well-to-do Tory butcher whipped at the cart’s tail from Brentford Bridge round the Market Place. That roguery was very much shocked to see wicked Tory influence at work in favour of the High Church butcher ”

“ Gunnersbury denotes the town, or enclosed habitation, named after Gunylda, the niece of King Canute, who resided here during the Danish occupation of England. Kew was anciently described in documents as Kay-hoo, meaning a quay situated on a hoo, or hoe, the Scandinavian for a spit of land. Brentford signifies the ford over the Brent, a tributary of the Thames that takes its rise near Hendon. Isleworth means a manor beside the water. The first portion of the word comes from the Celtic, Isis, water; the second is Anglo-Saxon for a manor. ”

“ South of Brentford, towards Isleworth, is Sion House, a mansion founded by Lord Protector Somerset in 1547, and rebuilt and enlarged by the 10th earl of Northumberland and Sir Hugh Smithson, afterwards duke of Northumberland, the architects being Inigo Jones and Robert Adam. The gardens are very beautiful. ”

“ On 20 Oct. 1779 he was restored to his degree of LL.D., but was put out of the county commission in 1781. Eventually he fixed himself at Brentford, Middlesex, where ‘his strict attention to the administration of parochial concerns, quick to discern and severe to condemn every species of idleness and imposition, created him many enemies, particularly among the lower orders of people’ (Gent. Mag. vol. lxxiv. pt. ii. p. 1174) . ”

“ Places near London were earliest aflected, as Brentford, Greenwich, Deptford; but in July or August 1665 it was already in Southampton, Sunderland, Newcastle, &c. A wider distribution occurred in the next year. Oxford entirely escaped, though the residence of the court and in constant communication with London. ”

“ Some of his city friends guaranteed him an annuity of 400l. until he should be called; but, though he accepted their promise, he never took the money. In 1773 he resigned his living, but continued to live in the neighbourhood of Brentford, and, besides continuing his legal studies, began to take up philology. ”

“ On the northern side of the ridge which runs from Hampstead to Highgate, birth is given to the Brent, which, springing from a pond in the grounds of Sir Spencer Wells, is pent up in a large reservoir at Hendon, and finally debouches into the Thames at Brentford, where, [Pg 22] from a little spring, which it is at starting, it becomes so far a "fleet" as to allow barges to go up some distance. ”

“ We, in these days, might just as well find romance in the majesty of the beautiful Great Western Express locomotives that speed between Paddington and Penzance, and then turn to the omnibuses that run to Hammersmith, and say, ‘How we hate the ’buses!’
All these suburban stages started from public-houses. There were quite a number which went to Brentford and on to Hounslow, and they set out from such forgotten houses as the ‘New Inn,’ Old Bailey; the ‘Goose and Gridiron,’ St. Paul’s Churchyard; the ‘Old Bell,’ Holborn; the ‘Gloucester Coffee House,’ Piccadilly ”

“ He was appointed a deputy lieutenant of the county of Middlesex, and as such was ordered to receive the money collected for the relief of Brentford against the king (State Papers, Car. I, ccccxciii. 12, 20 Dec. 1642) . On 15 Nov. 1644 he was directed to draw out three hundred men of the trained bands to suppress the rising at Windsor. There is no authority for the statement that he was a regicide. ”

“ In that battle the aldorman Eadric and Ælmær Dyrling gave aid to the army against king Eadmund. And then a third time he gathered a force and went to London, all north of the Thames, and so out through Clayhanger, and saved the townsmen, and drove the army in flight to their ships. And then, two nights after, the king went over at Brentford, and then fought against the army, and put it to flight; and there were drowned a great many of the English folk, by their own carelessness, those who went before the force, and would take booty. ”