Show WAKEMANS wanderings LONDON JULY 29 1893 the vastness of londona Lon dons population is less felt in its impressiveness from meeting it face to face in london thoroughfares than from even the still inadequate comprehension securable through seeing some of its comp component onen t parts part in its various holiday resorts for summer outings in the first instance if one could severally confront its four or five million inhabitants along its seven thousand miles of streets the monotony of the experience would detract perception of its t tremendous remen dous import but when when you might pass an entire month indeed perhaps an entire summer without being able to visit with the most careful disposition ot time any large proportion of its immediate resorts finding binding at ache outing crowds numbering from hundreds to almost hundreds of thousands thousand av the immensity or the totality of those who are outers bouters ou and those who are not begins to dawn upon the observant mind there are more than one hundred populous resorts from thirty minutes to two and a half hours distance frona from the strand beginning at bournemouth Bourne mouth and following the south coast with a circle of the isle isie of wight to the east coast including those of the north and south shores of the lower thames and thence up along the channel to great yarmouth on every pleasant saturday half holiday on sunny sundays and on bank holiday and other full summer holidays every one of these places it is thronged thron ged the rich the d do idlers and the families of comfortable tradesmen are found in these I 1 believe a qua quarter arter of a million of outers bouters ou of all classes are at the same time afloat upon or lounging beside the thames from margate to windsor As an experiment in scein seeing london outing crowds in one days travel I 1 found perhaps 30 people in greenwich park as many more at brighton at least overflowing royal kew gardens fully in hyde park where it seemed that all the open air speakers of england were haranguing harangue i crowds upon every conceivable social so if political and religious subject brodt to on and about gnp stead heath and from to tao 9 ol di sporting themselves in the sun and shade of ancient epping forest on this one day I 1 secured at least glimpses of crowds that in all foils of holiday making must have numbered more than three quarters of a million souls unquestionably the two greatest resorts tor for the london middle classes classed and 1 the lowly are hampstead heath ands and epping forest it is but a pleasant walk from the heart of london to hampstead heath for its farthest reaches can be no farther than six miles from the strand while an epping forest to and return fare is but one shilling and the myriad london costermongers and other possessors of tidy carts and traps find it an easy jog to their donkeys or screws to either ot of these recreation grounds the result is that in both of these resorts you invariably find hordes of the common people filled to the brim with horseplay horse play four ale and good cheer they are vigorous in their merrymaking merry making as children loosed from school they are grudgingly but good natu fierce in the utilization of every moment of the holiday in some sort of rugged diversion and altogether they furnish scenes of the heartiest easiest provoked most and vociferous holiday enjoyment to be found in all the world but who can properly describe this hampstead heath and its quaint and picturesque surroundings or fitly tell its weird and pleasant memories the heath is a trifle west of north of the heart of london it is not more than or acres in extent but as it comprises the highest and wildest hills rising out of the valley of the thamis thames the railways have had to stop at its edge and leave the region for the people almost as nature fashioned it the high street of old hampstead town winding up the last las t steep of the first hill which has stood as a rampart against london encroachment gives charming views of ancient houses old streets which have held their old names old courts and avenues of limes and elm so 0 old that the midday light beneath them is like the gloaming of eventide there is a pensive hush in these streets and lanes suggestive of splendid antiquity and gentle loving decay it would be a glorious outing in itself to saunter and dream in these lovely avenues and courts with here and there their shadowy vistas blending into blossoming bloss oming lanes every one of which sun flecked and odor laden invites to the free wide expanse or the pleasant country beyond you enter the heath at once from old hampstead town and instantly comprehend that the region and its attractions to londoners Lon doners must be considered in three distinct and delicious aspects its advantages for free and untrammeled untra meled recreation its positive inspiration to painter and poet and excellent uses for the naturalist and from those bl endings and environment of mellow age tender est aspect of all which furnish the idler and dreamer a host of winsome memories first of all it is a wild and rugged heath and not a park dark wind bound fir trees hang bang against sandy ridges where they have for centuries clutched the virgin so soil there are high banks of red 8 sand and PI pierced arced by rabbit burrows an ancient ci ent ditches and hedges cut each other at sharp an angles agles narrow bournes or ravines their hallowed floors of clear and shining sand plough the hills in fanciful furrows pro viding tiny crags of furze mounds of verdure and pleasant ways and shade as if one walked in well worn ancient water courses altogether it is a mass of hills scooped into innumerable pits and cavities threaded with tiny ponds banked every where with hardy gorse and mazes of heather wild flowers and grass splotched sp latched with knots of noble trees intersected by countless foot ways wild and ragged as when the romans were here and all seemingly held together by interlacing roadways and rugged sides of rock and sand and pines and furze around it is a shining thread of lovely bam hamlets lets stately halls and winsome cottages all gabled ivied old within it on gardened hills bills and blossoming bloss oming hollows or at its slumbering edges where old structures like old folk seem to love to doze in sun and shade are scores of those quaint and ancient inns still the most charming heritage of the merrie england of long ago and the whole region is exhilarating from its free fine uncouthness and the ceaseless breezes sweeping from odorous northern vales ever inviting to their life giving dalliance the city millions below and beating back from these fields of 01 pleasure the pestilential breath of grimy london town Is it any wonder that the hundreds of thousands of london folk who come here give themselves to unrestrained enjoyment or that this transition from city woes boes aud and wails produces such a joyous delirium to young and old that you will hear on hampstead heath more ringing almost ecstatic laughter than in any other place in all the world seated beneath the flagstaff which marks the highest elevation of the heath one can readily understand how the region roundabout has been the best beloved of all the near haunts of london naturalists natura lists and why from the days of Games Gaines borough and constable it has furnished the landsea landscape ar artists t is t s can canvas vas with many of its n noblest aee lest themes and scenes it is the one place in england where its greatest city and a vast expanse of typical english landscape can be contemplated almost at the same glance wide open to the wind and sun stretches vale after vale to the southeast the north and the west your circling view extends into seven english shires far in the north can be traced the spire of Hain slop steeple in northampton shire the Knoch olt beeches beaches in kent the hills and downs of surrey the lain don hills of essex the turrets of royal windsor in berks and a church on the far borders of Oxford shire are in full view down below old by the exhalations exha lations of hundreds of thousands of chimneys in the distance its myriad roofs like a plain of broken and seething lava iava lies the metropolis of the world the dome of gray old st pauls like a peak of fuse fu seless ess steel in a measureless incinerating mass what mind oan grasp the magnitude of human history of of human accomplishment and of human despair within this single circle of vision one is said to always find good company at hampstead heath yes even if alone you can still sit liere here by the flagstaff with no one to converse with and conjure up a grew some or goodly company it was at hampstead heath as at hounslow heath that the jacksons the dugals and the of the sixteenth seventeenth and eighteenth centuries cut purses and throats if need be to get them and made merry as lords at its inns some of which are here to minister alike to saint and sinner now over against the gardens of wildwood at the side of heath hill road still stands the ancient gibbet elm upon its huge old arms many centuries 0 old id were hung in chains when caught these merry knights of the road the same locality as you stroll to wards spaniards road will remind you as you look at the little oriel window of wildwood house of the saddest vearow year of lord chathams life the year when the english nations destinies were trembling in in the balance and chatham shut un here like a monk at penance struggled glea and prayed to be physically new and whole it was here that addison and his friends passed their summer evenings in the gardens of the old bell and bush tavern george steea ns shak note noted il commentator lived and died at the ancient upper flask inn dr johnson wrote his vanity of I hu au man wishes down there at Fr it in the edge of hampstead doubt doubtless ler spurred to deepest conception of the subject by his giddy wife who housed at the wells the ancient hampstead heath spa constantly quarrelled quarrel led with her physician about having her blonde tresses dyed black in the groves at highgate still stands the house in which samuel taylor coleridge lived and died richardson lastingly connected his memory with the 1 heath by lodging his heroine clarissa t harlowe at the upper flask inn lord mansfield who once resided at caen 11 a wood used to give dinners to the poor to from four to div five e hundred at a time 1 presenting each guest with a hall haf crown and a loaf when dinner V was over lord erskine once lived near the spaniards inn and the most famous historic inn of the heath which is still standing owes much of its n noteworthiness to its old time proprietor inventing the no popery or gordon rioters who after burning lord mansfields house in bloomsbury came to to destroy his rural seat at caen wood in to his own cellars where they became so drunk that the rescuing troops drove them like sheep down the hampstead hampsten a d hills into frenzied london dickens utilized the incident in I 1 barnaby rudge e and he also brought the immortal to hampstead ponds to pursue his earnest scientific investigations indeed a goodly volume could be written upon the worthies whose love of breezy hampstead heath has left upon J it one of its rarest and sweetest charms shelley hazlitt and haydn often met here in the cottage of leigh hunt in the vale of health pope and murray were k often seen upon the high road from 01 old d X hampstead to highgate hornsey an and d A I 1 barnet goldsmith found the heath favorable to his muse and sauntered much in its thickets hollows and rustic lanes here john keats lived and here hem he wrote eve of st agnes ode to the nightingale and endymion Eny endymion ll 11 a as he sobbed out the closing years of his life before they took him to rome to place his ashes near the pyramid of Ces tius the mother of tennyson died in the fine old avenue of limes well walk and when the old wells were noted as a spa the quality the london quality both of purse and intellect flocked here to drink the waters to gamble and to flirt at a later tim time thackeray loved to study the folk and their manners at the heath di dickens kens and forster used to muffle themselves themselves up for a brisk walk over its wind swept wept heights and take a red hot windswept cho chop for dinner with a glass of good wine at 1 I ja jack S straws castle the spaniards or mk other er of its fine old inns and descending highgate hill from lauderdale ding house ouse the glorious truth of blessed nursery rhyme comes home to us when we see se the very spot now covered by a thus nias sl sive v e memorial stone where sat poor dick W whittington hattington hitt ington as he listened to old bow bells which rang him back to his city toil to be made thrice lord mayor of london it would be a difficult thing to say just when hampstead heath is in its mott most alluring mood to the v visitor for myself Oay self I 1 most love to sit here and see close upon one hundred thousand folk disporting distorting di sporting almost ecstatically within its runs and hollows with an abandon and hilarity which for the day seem to utterly dispel the sombre shadows of their near flear work aday a day world they are so quickly here from london the transformation from to thrilling lib arty lerty is so inexpressibly complete and all U the magic of the sun the wind the mugged wilderness of the heath the splendor of surrounding vales is so suddenly ily and so powerfully ap applied pied that a sort of physical and spiritual delbri delirium possesses assesses oss esses all great fel fellows lows from the waterside from the market booths and from factories leap and shout and roll in the gorse and sand like animals there is a smile on every womans comans face the children seem to take from the influence something of the nature of winged birds and to sin sing g and almost fly in their rollings ca and r romp inge the dogs and there are as many dogs as folk at hampstead heath lea leap 9 and roll and tumble and pirouette an and bark with a shrill panting shriek of boundless joy as though the entire enlivening scene was being enacted for their own holiday heaven and I 1 truly believe if man has ever seen an english 1261 holiday iday resort donkey that nearest movable monument to defunct animal life toss its heels spread its legs seesaw its ample ears and give forth a downright roar of laughter it has been through eh the irresistible spell of delight anich touches all who tarry here EDGAR L |