Chelsea

“ PREFACE OF the making of books about Chelsea, may there never be an end, so rich and unexhausted is our history, so inspiring to those who labour in its service! Every year, as fresh records become accessible, Chelsea is presented to us from some different standpoint, historical, architectural, or frankly human, and there is ever a welcome and a place for each volume as it appears. ”

“ And the greatness of genius still rests upon Chelsea. As we walk slowly through its winding ways, by the edge of its troubled waters, among dark and crooked turns, through curious courts, by old gateways and piles of steepled stone, where flocks of pigeons wheel, and bells chime, and organs peal, and winds sigh, we know that all has been sanctified by their presence. And their spirits abide with us, and the splendid beauty of their visions is about us. For the stones beneath our feet have been hallowed by their tread, and the walls have borne their shadows ”

“ In this peaceful spot, far from the more exciting bohemian atmosphere of Chelsea, fragrant with the sweet odours of lilac and laburnum, and at Houghton, Arundel, his country home, he works patiently, like one of those quaint, keen-eyed, good-natured gnomes he loves to draw and which he in many ways resembles. ”

“ The solid and yet harmonious building designed by Sir Christopher Wren is the nucleus of Chelsea. Indeed, the inhabitants locally call the hospital itself “Chelsea.” In all prints later than the end of the seventeenth century the central cupola rising above the two great wings forms a conspicuous landmark. In the days of William and Mary the gardens sloping down to the Thames were laid out in the stiff, formal Dutch style. Canals, in the shape of a capital L, with the foot reaching to the river, intersected prim gardens, and rows of little limes, pollarded like willows, edged the banks. ”

“ Chelsea, with a conscious effort and a lurking smirk, mirrored the Latin Quarter to the best of its ability.
It did pretty well. There were more exaggerations, more eccentricities, less spontaneity and less work in Chelsea than in the Latin Quarter. Too many of its nomadic denizens were playing a self-conscious part; too few of them possessed the intelligence and training necessary for self-expression in any creative profession. Otherwise, they were as emotional, as casual, as unkempt, as vain, and as improvident as any rapin of the original Latin Quarter. ”

“ Most of the cliques have their being in Chelsea, though Fitzroy Square and the Garden City occasionally put forward claims, and Bedford Park asserts itself. I suspect that the movement is nowadays away from Chelsea. King’s Road grows every day more mercantile; nothing in it recalls the arts except a slight excess of shops which sell artists’ materials. One does meet the Chelsea girl, no longer in a jibbah, but more likely in an eloquent sweater, with her hair cut short and her feet brogued, but then the Chelsea style has crept into many circles. ”

“ Chelsea was the mere village of Chelsea, known from Sir Thomas More's house, where Henry VIII. had walked with his arm round that great statesman's doomed neck; as Holborn was then a country road leading to the pleasant village of St. Giles, and trending on to the way that led to Oxford and to fatal Tyburn, so called from its burn or brook, then well known to patient city anglers. ”

“ The Dowager Viscountess Cremorne, born in Philadelphia in 1740, died at her house in Stanhope Street in 1825, in the 86th year of her age. Her ladyship resided at Chelsea a great portion of the year, and kept a large establishment. She was one of the most kind-hearted residents in the parish. For years it was her custom to entertain annually the children of the parochial and other schools, and she patronized the tradesmen of Chelsea as far as it was practicable, giving special orders to that effect to her household. ”

“ The vogue of Ranelagh lasted many years and only ended when the rotunda was pulled down at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Every now and then one meets pessimistic creatures, usually artists, who shake their heads and say that Chelsea is going to the dogs—by which they mean that all the old studios are being taken by speculators with the intention of converting them into flats.
But the Chelsea of to-day is as charming as it ever was. There are just as many famous inhabitants. ”

“ By-and-by Sir Hans Sloane is wheeled up in his invalid chair and matures his practical plans for breaking up the estate and sending a tide of new building over Chelsea.
Afterwards, when each house had its individual garden, the company that flocked to Cheyne Walk was, in Georgian times, scarcely less distinguished, and in our own day no less interesting: some magnet quality in the very earth surely brings those who are dear and delightful to rest in Chelsea by the river? ”

“ At each end of our walk are the two small rivulets which bounded the old parish east and west; one is now arched over and flows unseen beneath the tread of busy feet; the other serves as a railway cutting and carries rattling trains: so the old-time memories of the place now either flow underground, or are modernised and become part of its daily life.
In the extreme north-eastern corner as we enter Chelsea we find Hans Place, a secluded green oval, built about with old-time two-storied brick houses. ”

“ If much of London is extremely unlovely, much might fairly be called beautiful. The new Chelsea that has arisen on the ashes of the old might well arouse the admiration even of the most exasperated foreigner. ”

“ This is a quarter, however, much in vogue; mighty swells dwell here, and here pose some famous farceurs in art and literature; here, too, work many earnest men and women in all pursuits of life. These latter plentifully people every part of Chelsea, for the sake of the seclusion and the stillness they seek and here find: just as there settled here for the same reasons, two centuries ago and earlier, men of learning and of wealth, scholars and nobles, who kept themselves exclusive by virtue of their birth or their brains. And so this privileged suburb ”

“ He knows how to create the right Chelsea atmosphere and he is most artful in leading his readers on, just as a little dog shows himself every now and then at a decoy and thus draws the inquisitive ducks after him till they drift in with all exit cut off. ”

“ The parish of Chelsea is bounded on the north by the Fulham Road, which separates it from Kensington. On the east at the entrance into Sloane Square, at which place there was an open rivulet, which divided it from St. George’s, Hanover Square, and was said to rise at or near to Hampstead; and, after crossing Hyde Park, where it formed the Serpentine River, and Knightsbridge, flowed behind Cadogan Place (along a portion of Lowndes’ Square) into the Thames, at Ranelagh, which adjoined Chelsea College. ”

“ Mary, relict of the first duke, died here in 1714, at the good old age of 85 years.
It may here be observed that Chelsea, not only in former times, but at the present period, 1869, is admitted to be generally a very healthy parish. This assertion is proved by the weekly reports given to the Vestry by Dr. Barclay, the medical officer of health, and which is confirmed by other gentlemen of the medical profession. The reports read at the meetings of the Chelsea Board of Guardians, also, shew that a great many of the inmates of the workhouse live to a very advanced age ”

“ Most happily, his mind and heart were both rightly directed: in him the conviction of what ought to be was followed by a resolution that it should be; his generous and merciful feelings were not limited to good intentions: he added energy to zeal, and industry to stern resolve; and, in a word, the mighty object has been accomplished. [26a] The Institution, which originated at a small meeting, in a comparatively humble house in “Hans-place, Chelsea,” is now the patronized of the Queen, and the aided of the people; and its power to do good has been marvellously augmented. ”

“ Haweis presides as spiritual director. Chelsea has been made famous as the home of many authors and artists,—above all, as the residence of Carlyle during the greater part of his life. Its population, like that of most respectable suburbs, must belong mainly to the kind of citizens which resembles in many ways the better class,—as we sometimes dare to call it,—of one of our thriving New England towns. ”

“ Only you must, you positively must come to live in Chelsea. It’s the only possible place. Everybody who is worth knowing lives here, including a nice intelligent young couple called Anthony and Janet Gale. ”

“ Luke Thomas Flood, Esq., first resided in Cheyne Walk, but afterwards removed to the spacious house at the western corner of Beaufort Street, fronting the river. He was a very great benefactor to the parish, an active and intelligent magistrate, and interested himself in promoting at all times whatever was conducive to the welfare and improvement of Chelsea. ”

“ Pepys, in his Diary, has recorded a visit he paid to that nobleman. “March 28, 1663. To Chelsea, where we found my lord all alone, with one joint of meat at dinner, and mightily extolling the manner of his retirement, and the goodness of his diet; the mistress of the house hath all things most excellently dressed; amongst other things her cakes admirable, and so good, that my lord’s words were, they were fit to present to Lady Castlemaine . . . ” ”

“ There’s a charm in the sound which nobody shuns,
Of ‘Smoking hot, piping hot, Chelsea buns!’
This bunhouse had become so famous, not only throughout London, but for several miles round it, that not to visit Chelsea on Good Friday, and purchase some of the “rare buns,” was considered as unaccountable amongst a certain class—such as the servants of the nobility and gentry, shopmen, mechanics, and apprentices—as it would have been for them to acknowledge that they had never heard of Greenwich Fair. ”

“ Chelsea, too, was a very picturesque village in old days,—when the "Old Chelsea Bun-House" was a favourite resort of the Court,—when "Ranelagh" and "Vauxhall" flourished in the neighbourhood,—and when the then fashionable race of London's "jolly young watermen" for their annual badge attracted, as the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race does nowadays, crowds of spectators. ”

“ The move to Chelsea closed an epoch. At once Mary found herself in a new and fascinating world. Part of the arrangement with Madame Lemaire was that she should “live in” at Park Street, and have freedom to take a fourpenny ’bus on Sundays to Beaconsfield Villas. This was greatly to Mary’s liking. Chelsea, as she soon discovered, had an air more rarefied than Laxton ”

“ Chelsea is certainly much the most pleasant part of London to live in if one is an ordinary mortal—not a title, I mean. The houses have lots of personality, and make me think of Beacon Hill all the time. ”

“ Yet the tradition is still rife in Chelsea, and is not soon likely to die out. Ormonds, and Granbys, and Admiral Vernons disappear, but Nelly remains, and long may she swing with her favourite lamb in the row or street commemorated for ever in the Chelsea Pensioners of Wilkie!
There were thousands alive when the Hospital was first thought of, who carried about them marks of service in the recent struggle which distracted the three kingdoms, in a way in which, let us hope, they will never again be made to suffer. ”

“ In the 18th and 19th centuries Chelsea, especially the parts about the embankment and Cheyne Walk, was the home of many eminent men, particularly of writers and artists, with whom this pleasant quarter has long been in favour. ”

“ Lysons was told that it was usual for the nobility and others who dined at her house to leave money under their plates to pay for their entertainment. She appears to have been in arrears for the parish rates during the whole time of her residence at Chelsea.
Mrs. Mary Astell resided here the greater part of her life, which was spent in writing for the advancement of learning, religion, and virtue. “The good Christian,” she would say, “only hath reason to be cheerful in this world.” ”

“ The Cambridge set that you represent is as observed in an average specimen, a cross between a Quaker, a Pederast, and a Chelsea artist.—Your Oxford brothers, dating from the Wilde [17] decade, are a stronger body. The Chelsea artists are much less flimsy. The Quakers are powerful rascals. You represent, my Hobson, the dregs of Anglo-Saxon civilization!—There is nothing softer on earth.—Your flabby potion is a mixture of the lees of Liberalism, the poor froth blown off the decadent nineties, the wardrobe—leavings of a vulgar Bohemianism with its head-quarters in Chelsea! ”

“ I fell to thinking how odd it must be to live in such an atmosphere. How is it we never have it in Chelsea? I have never been the less welcome because my host or hostess has as many pounds a week as I have a year. My old friend of my ’prentice days—dear old Tom, the foreman, and Jack Williams, the slinger, they get no colder welcome from us because they live in Hammersmith or Whitechapel. Have we ourselves not seen in our rooms rich and poor, artist and mechanic, writer and [Pg 87] labourer? ”

“ My humble position in life will not in the slightest degree, I feel confident, tend to p. 2depreciate my long-cherished desire—especially as the shades of evening are fast closing the day-light of my earthly life—to add to the information which has already been given respecting a parish to which I am much attached, both by birth and early associations.
The earliest mention of Chelsea is to be found in the Saxon Chronicle, in the year 785; from which record it appears that a Synod was then held in it, and at which period it was the residence of Offa, king of the Mercians. ”