There were some notable people living in Cheyne Walk in those days. At number three lived Mr. Goss, organist at St. Luke’s, afterwards at St. Paul’s Cathedral, who was subsequently knighted. At number five lived Justice Neild, an eccentric old bachelor, who left half a million of money to the Queen, and next door lived Doctor Butler, curator of the British Museum, and at Gothic House lived Mr. Moore, a man seven feet high, and stout in proportion, dressed in a long drab coat, breeches and Hessian boots with large tassels. He had been a contractor for the stores and accoutrements for Wellington’s army in the Peninsular campaign. A constant visitor was the Countess of Harrington, in a splendid carriage with two tall footmen behind in a quaint brown livery trimmed with gold lace, breeches and silk stockings. Then there were the Owens and the Bayfords, very charitable people. Then there was “Don Saltero’s” tavern, kept by a tall Scotchman and his factotum, a little short fat man, a sort of “Joe Willett of the Maypole,” who was barman, cellarman, and waiter in one. There used to be a goodly company of an evening in the coffee room of retired officers and well-to-do people in the neighbourhood, to play whist and chess, and sometimes all-fours. There was an ordinary on Sunday at two o’clock, when they gave you a rare good dinner for two-and-sixpence, including beer.

I well recollect the Kingsleys coming to Chelsea, I think it was about the year 1832. I know it was near about the “cholera year.” The first time I saw Charles and Henry they were boys about twelve and fourteen. I met them in the rectory garden at the giving of prizes to the St. Luke’s National School boys, when they were regaled with buns and milk. The rector and the boys were great favourites with the parishioners as they were courteous and very free with everybody. I can recognize many of the characters in “The Hillyars and the Burtons” as old Chelsea inhabitants, and the description of the mounds and tablets in old Chelsea Church and the Churchyard, and the outlook over the river is as correct as it well can be.

Opposite the Church in the corner by the Church draw-dock stood the cage, and by the side of it the stocks, then came Lombard Street, and the archway with shops and wharfs all along the riverside up to Battersea Bridge. At that time there were fishing boats, and fishermen got a living by catching roach, dace, dabs and flounders, and setting pots for eels all along Chelsea Reach, and between Battersea Bridge and Putney, and they would hawk them through the streets of a morning. The eels were carried in little tubs, as many as eight or ten, one on top of the other, on the man’s head, and sold by the lot in each tub at about sixpence or eightpence each.

The favourite promenade, especially on a Sunday, was the River Terrace at the back of Chelsea Hospital. It was thrown open to the public, and you gained access to it from the gate of the private gardens opposite King Charles’ statue. It consisted of a gravelled terrace and a dwarf wall on the river side, with two rows of immense elms commencing at the outlet of Ranelagh Ditch to the river, and ending at the Round House. On the corner by Ranelagh Ditch stood the College Water Works, with the old machinery going to decay, that had been used to pump water for the use of the hospital. This was a grand place, and considered extremely fashionable, where most of the courting and flirting by the young people was carried on. The Ranelagh Ditch was the boundary of the hospital grounds at that tune, and was an open stream about nine feet wide; while its banks were supported by planks and struts across it. It was open right up to the end of Eaton Place. It was crossed by two bridges, one called Ranelagh, in the Pimlico Road, by the side of the “Nell Gwynn” tavern, the other called Bloody Bridge, in the King’s Road, between Sloane Square and Westbourne Street. On the banks of this foul and offensive stream there was no better than a common sewer. Between the two bridges at the back of George Street and overlooking it, were crowded together a lot of old two and three-roomed cottages that periodically at high tide were flooded by the offensive matter. The district was known as Frog’s Island, and suffered terribly in the outbreak of cholera in 1832. It was inhabited by a class that was always in a chronic state of poverty, and as there had been a very severe winter, that had a great deal to do with it. I think this stream is now covered over. It had its rise from the overflow in the Serpentine, in Hyde Park, and crossed under the road at Knightsbridge, about where Albert Gate now stands, into the Park. [32]