Camden Town

“ Michael’s brief pause was enough to make such an impression of pandemoniac din as almost to drive out his original conception of Kentish Town as a menacing and gruesome suburb. But just as the cab reached the beginning of the Camden Road, he caught sight of a slop-shop where old clothes smothered the entrance with their mucid heaps and, just beyond, of three houses from whose surface the stucco was peeling in great scabs and the damp was oozing in livid arabesques and scrawls of verdigris. ”

“ Painters are always gregarious. They all love to establish distinct quartiers of their own. Wherever you find one you may be sure there are plenty more not far off. They don’t live as single figures, but compose themselves into groups. Hence art colonies are established in various parts of the town; one at Camden Town; one at Pimlico; one at Bayswater; with always the old parent stock near Fitzroy Square; to say nothing of a snug little branch settlement near Langham Church. Crickson was of the Camden Town migration. ”

“ Josiah Camden, king of the Chicago wheat pit, whose carelessly bestowed bounty meant the happy termination of Hillsboro's long and arduous struggles.
The memory of man could not go back to the time when that town had not had a public library. It was the pride of the remote village, lost among the Green Mountains, that long before Carnegie ever left Scotland there had been a collection of books free to all in the wing of Deacon Bradlaugh's house. Then as now the feat was achieved by the united efforts of all inhabitants. ”

“ It is served by the Atlantic Coast Line, the Seaboard Air Line and the Southern railways. Camden is situated about 100 ft. above the river, which is navigable to this point. The town is a winter resort, chiefly for Northerners. Cotton, grain and rice are produced in the vicinity, and there are some manufactories, including cotton mills, a cotton-seed oil mill and planing mills. Camden, first known as Pine Tree Hill, is one of the oldest interior towns of the state, having been settled in 1758; in 1768 the present name was adopted in honour of Lord Chancellor Camden. ”

“ Other towns which figure in petitions to Parliament as “impoverished and desolate of people,” are Ilchester (1407) and Truro (1410) . Camden instances the ancient borough of Wallingford, on the Thames, as having been permanently reduced by the Black Death, although the inhabitants, he says, traced the decay of the town to the diversion of traffic over the new bridges at Abingdon and Dorchester [372] . [Pg 196] Some parts of Cambridge would appear to have borne the traces of the pestilence for a number of years after. ”

“ Finally however the citizens, subdued by hunger, could resist no longer, when men, women, and children were slaughtered by the Saxons in revenge for the severe loss they had sustained. The chronicler adds, that the town was so utterly ruined, it was never afterwards rebuilt; only the bare spot was pointed out to passers-by as the site of a very noble city. Camden deems Newenden the scene of these occurrences, saying, that Andredecester remained thus desolate, till, temp. K. Edward I, certain Carmelite Friars erected there a monastery at the cost of Sir Tho. ”

“ Such a combination [Pg 66] of land and water is seldom embraced within a single coup d'œil. The vision is bounded by those portals of the bay, the Camden range on the south-west, and the heights of Mount Desert in the east. A little north of east is the solitary Blue Hill, with the windings and broad reaches of water by which Castine proper is nearly isolated from the main-land. Turning still northward, and now with your back to the town, you perceive Old Fort Point, where, in 1759 Governor Pownall built a work to command the entrance to the river. ”

“ As overseer of the will of Frances, countess of Sussex, he took part in the inauguration of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In 1590 he founded Christ's Hospital at his native town of Ruthin, for a president, warden, and twelve poor inmates, and in 1595 added to the foundation a grammar school. Camden was always an intimate friend. Goodman assisted him in his ‘Britannia,’ to which he prefixed Latin verses in 1586, and bequeathed to him a gold ring with a turquoise stone. ”

“ I believe you will think the town cannot hold all its inhabitants, so prodigiously the population is augmented." "There will be one street from London to Brentford, ay, and from London to every village ten miles round; lord Camden has just let ground at Kentish-town for building 1,400 houses; nor do I wonder; London is, I am certain, much fuller than ever I saw it. I have twice this spring been going to stop my coach in Piccadilly, to inquire what was the matter, thinking there was a mob ”

“ There are many public-school buildings, a private and a public high school, hospitals, churches, etc. Camden has three national banks and all the adjuncts of a modern city. The rapid growth of the city in recent years is shown by the increase of population from 58,813 in 1890 to 75,935 in 1900. ”

“ Some of these houses have marble steps and white, barn-like shutters, that might withstand a siege. When a funeral takes place in one of these houses, the shutters are tied with strips of mournful, black alpaca for a year and a day. Engineers, dockmen, express-drivers and mechanics largely make up the citizens of Camden. Of course, Camden has its smug corner where prosperous merchants most do congregate: where they play croquet in the front yards, and have window-boxes, and a piano and veranda-chairs and terra-cotta statuary ”

“ The alarm was complete; for, during the whole of the afternoon, every inhabitant, or stranger, who happened to arrive in town from the vicinity of the works, brought in the terrifying intelligence that the ringleaders of the Chartists had been scouring the hills during the whole of the day, in all directions, and compelling, by brute force, all who came within their reach to join their ranks, and that it was highly probable that an attack would be made upon Newport that night. ”

“ At night, soon after ten o’clock, three troops of the 15th Light Dragoons arrived amid the acclamations of the inhabitants, whose hopes and fears had been depicted through the day in every countenance, as reports of the near approach of the soldiery were spread and contradicted. The town was immediately illuminated, and before morning every thing was tolerably quiet; but the rioters were still continuing their depredations in the country. They exhausted the cellars at each place, and received various sums of money to prevent their proceeding to further violence. ”

“ He appeared unmoved at the awfulness of his situation, and his eyes were downcast; a slight hectic tinged his cheeks when the inquisition was read over. The coroner informed him of the verdict against him, and his intention of having all the depositions read over in his hearing; and if he had any remark to make, or had a wish to ask any witness a question, they should be sent for, the town clerk cautioning him at the same time most earnestly not to say anything which might tend to criminate himself. ”

“ The Bell and Crown is very common, and withal is a reasonable combination, for the bell has, from time immemorial, been rung to express the loyalty of the nation on royal entries, whether into the world or into a town, on occasion of royal marriages or deaths, at times of great victories and declarations of peace, and other loyal celebrations. Hence many bells are inscribed with the words, “Fear God, honour the King,” which, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, seems also to have been a common inscription on the sign of the Bell. ”

“ The men of the castle, too, used those houses bearing their master’s arms when they visited the town. It will be readily seen that the name of a favourite tavern would quickly suggest its adoption elsewhere, and in this way the heraldic emblem of a family might be carried where that family was neither known nor feared.
Latterly, however, as all traces of the origin and meaning of these “Arms” have died out, or become removed from the understanding of publicans and brewers, the uses to which the word has been applied are most absurd and ridiculous. ”

“ This Jack of Newbury, alias Winchcombe, alias Smallwoode, “was the most considerable clothier England ever had. He kept an hundred looms in his house, each managed by a man and a boy. He feasted King Henry VIII. and his first Queen Catherine at his own house in Newbury, now divided into sixteen clothiers’ houses. He built the Church of Newbury, from the pulpit westward to the town.” [98] At the battle of Flodden in 1513, he joined the Earl of Surrey with a corps of one hundred men, well equipped at his sole expense, who distinguished themselves greatly in that fight. ”

“ This reminds us of a rather indelicate sign of a mustard shop, formerly in the Rue du Chatel, at Beauvais, but now in the Musée d’Antiquités of that town, representing a fool stirring mustard in a barrel with a large stick, whilst a tall grinning [384] monkey stands just opposite, assisting him in a way we need not describe. ”

“ Ionic columns rise from a rustic basement, and support the superior cornice. These houses are most elegantly finished. All the city is seen from the crescent, and no other spot affords so grand a prospect. Camden Place is an elliptical range of edifices, commanding an extensive view of the valley, with the winding stream of the Avon, and the villages upon its banks. One of the principal features of Bath is its hills and downs, which shelter it on every side. The sides on these downs are very fine, extending for miles, and you see thousands of sheep enjoying the finest possible pasturage. ”

“ Dear Wife,—I learn by yours, I am in danger; but I have another way of escape without fear of being discovered.—You go to a tool-shop, and get a small back saw, as the watch-makers use, the smaller the better, to convey to me: the best way you can get it in will be between some turf, with some black thread; if you can find a better way, do it; but be careful, for all the danger is to get that to me, for I have but one bar to cut, and I am in town by four o’clock in the morning. They will not miss me till eight, when they come to unlock us. ”

“ Sometimes we walked with new work as an object. There were articles about Philadelphia for Our Continent. We called it work—learning Romany—when we both walked with my Uncle up Broad Street to Oakdale Park, and through Camden and beyond to the Reservoir, where the Gypsies camped, and made Camden in my eyes, not the refuge of all in doubt, debt, or despair as its traditions have described it, but a rival in romance of Bagdad or Samarcand. ”

“ It is much larger than either Truro, Redruth, or Penzance, numbering 15,000 inhabitants, most of whom live upon mines, either directly or indirectly. Indeed, many of them live in the mines, and merely come home to sleep. Thus it is that all day long Camborne seems almost a city of the dead. It is a town whose houses, if not squalid, are the most abjectly characterless of any I have ever seen, stony granite affairs, which wear the look of having once upon a time been inhabited—but a very long while ago, and meanwhile having been preserved from decay by some mystic preservative power. ”

“ There do not appear to be any towns deserving of mention in the county of Camden, and its population is small and rural: it is crossed in every direction by steep ridges of hills, which almost always tower upwards like the roof of a house, and where the country is mountainous, meet so close as to leave only a narrow ravine betwixt them.
The adjoining county, which may be next noticed, is that of Argyle, an inland district, not having any front whatever towards the ocean, and lying to the south-westward of the county last described. ”

“ Camden, writing in 1607, says that the north wall "having been repaired by one Joscelin, who was mayor, it put on, as it were, a new face and freshness, but that towards the east and west, though the barons repaired it in their wars of the demolished houses of the Jews, is all ruinous and going to decay. For the Londoners, like the Lacedæmonians of old, do slight fenced cities, as fit for nothing but women to live in, and look upon their own City to be safe, not by the assistance of stones, but by the courage of its inhabitants." ”

“ He was the earliest collector of materials for the history of his county, with the exception of John Rous, and he intended to publish a ‘Perambulation of Warwickshire’ on the model of Lambarde's ‘Perambulation of Kent,’ but did not carry the design into effect. Camden says that he was ‘a man both for parentage and for knowledge of antiquity, very commendable and my special friend; who ... ”

“ He notes under the year 1581, the commencement of his friendship with Brisson, the distinguished French jurist, who, being on an embassy in England, singled out the poor Westminster master, the ‘umbraticus vir et pulvere scholastico obsitus’ (Smith) , for special attention; and still earlier, in 1577, a visit of Abraham Ortelius, the ‘universæ geographiæ vindex et instaurator,’ to England brought the two men together. Camden, urged and encouraged by his new friend, undertook the systematic preparation of the ‘Britannia.’ For this work Camden's labours were enormous. ”

“ Two roads led from Hillsborough to Camden. The westerly route passed through Salisbury and Charlotte, in a long arc of a circle, coming down upon Camden from the northwest. The country through which it passed was fertile, and the inhabitants were mostly Scotch-Irish Whigs. By following this road, the danger of a sudden attack by the enemy would be slight, wholesome food would be obtained in abundance, and in case of defeat it afforded a safe line of retreat. The easterly route formed the chord of this long arc, passing from Hillsborough to Camden almost in a straight line 160 miles in length. ”