CHAPTER XXII. RICHMOND. ON again turning to our river, the attention is caught by a large brick mansion having its frontage extended by corridors, and rendered rather singular by an octagonal projection, evidently more recent than the main building, though still not belonging to the present age or taste. The house was standing in the reign of William III.; when the Princess of Denmark, afterwards Queen Anne, occupied it for a short period. The building is probably not of a much earlier date. But it owes its present appearance to Secretary Johnstone, who enlarged and altered the old house; the octagon room he erected especially for an entertainment which he gave to Queen Caroline, wife of George II. "Macky, whose tour through England was published in 1720, says that Secretary Johnstone had in his gardens the best collection of fruit of most gentlemen in England; that he had slopes for his vines, from which he made some hogsheads of wine a year; and that Dr. Bradley, in his Treatise on Gardening,' ranked him among the first gardeners in the kingdom." (Lysons.) It is not at all unusual to meet in local histories of the southern and midland counties with notices of vineyards-especially in connexion with the sites of monasteries-and of the quantity of wine made from them; while traditions are still more common. But this is probably one of the latest accounts of wine being made in any quantity in the vicinity of London. The gardens here are now, however, not what give the house its local celebrity-which, by the way, recent events may have somewhat lessened. It was the residence of Louis-Philippe during good part of his former exile; whence its present name of Orleans House. The remembrance of the abode of the Duke of Orleans is (or was) cherished in Twickenham. The stately stone mansion which we see some little way farther on, has been celebrated by Pope and Swift-who, like most of the other wits of that day, paid earnest but mistaken court to its mistress. Marble Hill was built by George II. for the Countess of Suffolk. The Earl of Pembroke, it is said, was the architect; and Pope laid out the grounds. The Countess of Suffolk is the lady, as will be recollected, whose task Horace Walpole, in the 'Parish Register,' represents to have been that of "pleasing one not worth the pleasing." He probably had in mind the words of Madame Maintenon; but there is a passage in one of the Countess's letters to Swift, which shows pretty plainly the bitterness of her employment. "I have been," she says, writing in 1727, "a slave these twenty years, without ever receiving a reason for any one thing I was obliged to do." Lord Hervey's Memoirs sufficiently corroberate the assertion; while they show also that the wife was no better off than the mistress. "The Queen was at least seven or eight hours tête-à-tête with the King every day, during which time she was generally saying what she did not think, assenting to what she did not believe, and praising what she did not approve." Marble Hill, like Strawberry Hill, has its minor. Little Marble Hill was once noted as the residence of Lady Diana Beauclerk, a lady celebrated for her talents, and for some other matters also. Her ladyship was the wife of Topham Beauclerk, the friend of Johnson; both the lady and her husband will be remembered by the reader of Boswell. And this reminds me that the house seen on the rising ground just beyond, ought also to be mentioned. It is "the beautiful villa on the banks of the Thames near Twickenham," which belonged to Owen Cambridge, the friend of both Johnson and Boswell. It was on one of his journeys to this hospitable roof that his admiring disciple was, as he expresses it, "struck with wonder to hear "the stately moralist apply to himself "the epithet fellow." As they were riding along in Sir Joshua Reynolds's coach, Johnson had been lamenting the rareness of good-humour in the world. Boswell named some four or five of their acquaintances, who he thought possessed that quality, but not one of them would the Doctor "allow to be goodhumoured. One was acid, another was muddy," and so on. 66 Then, shaking his head and stretching himself at ease in the coach, and smiling with much complacency, he turned to me," says the faithful chronicler, and said, "I look upon myself as a good-humoured fellow."" That is a picture worth imagining. Owen Cambridge was author of the 'Scribleriad ;' and a very learned, able, and worthy man ; his successor here, Archdeacon Cambridge, was "of worthy father worthy son.' Both of them enjoyed a considerable social reputation, and the Twickenham villa attracted a large circle of literary and political notables during the life of both. But there is a house on the other side of the river that demands a brief notice; we may cross to it by the ferry. A strange gloomy atmosphere seems to surround the cheerless pile. It is not ruinous, nor has it passed into the hands of lowly occupants; yet you see at a glance that it has fallen from its high estate. It appears occupied, yet neglected; deserted, yet preserved. The untrimmed gardens - the grass-grown walks-the long, noble, uncared-for avenues-the lofty ornamental gates, unpainted, rusty, evidently seldom opened all proclaim that it belongs to some owner whose chief or only care is that it shall not quite fall to ruin. One who visits it and wanders on an autumn evening about the sombre purlieus, will hardly wonder that it should have suggested to a poet of highly imaginative genius the imagery of that exquisite poem The Elm-tree.' It is perhaps now its chief claim to general regard, that it was here Thomas Hood wrote or conceived a poem of such singular beauty; and it will be acknowledged that he has faithfully drawn the scenery-not indeed with topographical accuracy, but as invested with those lofty attributes which only genius is privileged to behold and to represent. Well might he, with such thoughts resting on his mind, feel as he sings, in lines which, beautiful as they are, serve but to herald in others far more beautiful "With wary eyes, and ears alert, I wander'd down the dappled path How cheerly shone the glimpse of heav'n All overarch'd with lofty elms, That quench'd the light the while, As serves to fill Some old cathedral pile !" But the plain prose of the history of Ham House must be briefly told. It was built in 1610, by Sir Thomas Vavasour; in 1651 it passed into the possession of Sir Lionel Tollemache, in whose descendants, the earls of Dysart, it yet remains vested. His widow, famous in the history of that time, under the title of the Duchess of Lauderdale, greatly enlarged and altered the mansion; and Charles II. furnished it at a considerable expense. It was at Ham House that the Cabal held their meetings. It has a more honourable celebrity as the birth-place of the eminent statesman, John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. Ham House was the place to which James II. was directed by the Prince of Orange to remove, after his unsuccessful attempt to escape from the kingdom; but the King objected to it, as being too damp for a winter residence he wished to be nearer the sea. Ham House is a fine specimen of the somewhat fanciful style that was engrafted on the old Tudor domestic architecture. It is of red brick, with a slated roof of high pitch. The front is varied, and though quaint, not unpleasing in design. The most remarkable feature is a series of busts in niches, which range along the entire frontage above the windows of the ground-floor, and are continued round the garden walls. From the mansion in various directions runs |