CHAPTER II GREENWICH--THE ROYAL NAVAL HOSPITAL--THE "FUBBS YACHT"--THE GREENWICH WHITEBAIT DINNERS--WOOLWICH--THE "PRINCESS ALICE" DISASTER--LESNES ABBEY--ERITH--DARTFORD

To fully appreciate the majestic appearance of Greenwich, you must view it from the river. Indeed, none of these waterside places from Deptford all the way to Gravesend, show to advantage on shore. Their historic associations and original scenic beauties are too overwhelmed with recent squalid developments. But from the busy Thames, Greenwich has a grandeur that is not easily to be expressed. This is due, of course, chiefly to the architectural interest of Greenwich Hospital, whose stately water-front is in part the work of Sir Christopher Wren. It began as a Royal Palace, arising on the site of the ancient palace of Placentia built here by Henry the Sixth, who also enclosed the park. In that vanished palace Henry the Eighth was born, and there died Edward the Sixth. Queen Mary in 1516, and Elizabeth in 1533 were born at Placentia, and from its terrace Elizabeth watched the sails of her adventurous seamen setting forth to realms that CÆsar never knew. When Charles the Second found himself firmly established, he began to build himself a new and gorgeous palace on the site of Placentia, which had suffered much in the time of Cromwell. The beginnings of it alarmed Pepys, who was afraid it would cost a very great deal of money; but it was never finished as a royal residence, and was incomplete in 1692 when Queen Mary selected it as a home for wounded sailors returned from the battle of La Hogue. She died in 1694, and William the Third continued his wife’s scheme. The buildings were completed and opened as a hospital in 1705.

I do not think there was ever a Greenwich Pensioner who liked living in Greenwich Hospital. That they ever reasoned out all the causes of their dissatisfaction is not to be supposed, but it must be quite obvious that residence amid these stately colonnades of Wren’s design, and in these monumental buildings of such prodigious scale, was not a little like living in a mausoleum. Then there was the feeling of being a mere part of a system and subject to a certain degree of control which, together with an embarrassing public curiosity, must have made burdensome the life of any Greenwich Pensioner of independent mind. They are nowadays much happier in living with friends and relations; and probably suffer less from rheumatism than they did amid these draughty waterside colonnades, pleasant enough in summer, but where the bitter blasts of winter can be really murderous. The views of an old Greenwich Pensioner on Wren’s stately architecture would be interesting, but probably not at all flattering to the memory of that great master. They would not be worth listening to on the score of ideas about architectural style, but as criticisms of the Hospital as a dwelling-house they would be very much to the point.

In course of time, somewhere about 1870, the Greenwich Pensioners plucked up courage sufficient to express their dislike of the place; and at last prevailed upon those Pharaohs, the Governors of the institution, to let them go from the House of Bondage and Draughts, so to speak, and to betake themselves and their pensions wheresoever it pleased them to live.

The Royal Naval College now partly occupies these great ranges of buildings; and other portions, are, of course, well known as a museum, in which the Nelson relics and a curious collection of ship-models are to be seen.

There are, in one way and another, a good many recollections of Charles the Second at Greenwich. One of them is found in the name of the “Old Fubbs Yacht” inn, which stands in Brewhouse Lane, hard by the “Ship.” “The Fubbs Yacht” is nowadays more in the nature of an obscure public-house than an inn, but the back of it looks upon the river, and passengers by steamer to and from Greenwich Pier may easily see the odd and not beautiful name. No one, however, is in the least likely to associate it with Charles the Second; but the sign derives directly from his royal yacht, Fubbs, which succeeded his first yacht, the Cleveland, just as his favourite, the Duchess of Cleveland, was succeeded by Louise de KÉrouaille, whom he created Duchess of Portsmouth, and whom he nicknamed “Fubbs” because of her “plump and pleasing person.” Singularly enough, these are exactly the words in which the vicar describes Mrs. Partlet, the pew-opener, in the comic opera, The Sorcerer.

But you will hear nothing of this history at the inn itself, where the vague idea prevails that “Old Fubb” was a sportsman, who, at some time unspecified, sailed racing yachts. The situation of the house is now of the grimiest, with a busy coal-wharf on either side, but it is sung by a modern poet—not Tennyson, nor Alfred Austin, nor Kipling, but by one J.G. Hamer, who writes thus, in the advertising way:

Together with much more to the same effect. I fear no contradiction when I say that Tennyson never wrote anything like this.

Beyond the stately Hospital, along a humble waterside street where the riverside “Yacht” and “Three Crowns” inns hang out their signs, the inquisitive stranger will find the Hospital of the Holy Trinity, sometimes called Norfolk College, an alms-house for a number of old men, founded together with another at Clun in Shropshire, and one for women at Castle Rising in Norfolk, by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, in 1814. It is a quaint, white-painted group of buildings, enclosing a little cobble-stoned courtyard with a central garden and a fine large lawn at the back. In the chapel, otherwise uninteresting, is the monument of the founder; removed in 1696, together with his body, from the then ruined and roofless church of St. Mary at Dover Castle, where he had been Constable. His life-sized, white marble kneeling figure, with the Garter on his left leg, looks stately and dignified in the chancel. It is indeed among the best works of that notable sculptor, Nicholas Stone. Other portions of the monument, in fragments at the west end of the building, show signs of having at some time been long exposed to the weather. The figures are rather speculative, and may be either a galaxy of Virtues and Graces, or wife and children.

Trinity Hospital is overhung and pitifully dwarfed by the great electric power-house of the London County Council’s electric tramways, whose chimneys rise to a height of nearly 300 feet. They are typical of the great change that has come over Greenwich in modern times, tending towards degrading it to a mere indistinguishable part of London. Fortunately, it possesses too many beautiful natural features to become ever quite that.

But no longer is Greenwich dignified by the ministerial whitebait dinners that were once held at the “Ship.” These once famous entertainments that generally marked the close of the parliamentary summer session originated in a casual way, about 1798, when the commissioners of Dagenham Breach invited Pitt to be a guest at their annual fish dinner at Dagenham. The occasion was successful enough to be repeated, and the scene was eventually changed to a tavern, sometimes at Blackwall and sometimes at Greenwich. By this time the annual feast had developed into a Tory ministerial event, and proved so useful in the strengthening of party ties that the Whigs, when in office, adopted the custom.

The Greenwich ministerial whitebait dinners, held either at the “Ship,” the “Crown and Sceptre,” or the “Trafalgar,” were formerly accompanied by something of what, in less exalted circles, we should style the showy “beanfeast” element; for the Royal and Admiralty barges, gay with bunting, conveyed the guests to the scene of jollity, and back. Only the concertinas were lacking. The function was first broken during the Gladstonian administration of 1868–74. In that last year, with the triumph of the Conservatives, Disraeli revived it, but the excursion was made by steamer instead of by barge. And so it continued, through the next Liberal term of office, until 1883, when it was again discontinued; to be revived on only one occasion since, in 1894, during the short-lived administration of Lord Rosebery.

Not only Ministers of the Crown resorted to Greenwich for whitebait dinners: they were long popular with Londoners in general; but now that the swiftest of communication with London is obtainable, this most easily perishable of fish is just as readily to be had there, and Greenwich has suffered in consequence. Whitebait, supposed by some to be a distinct species of fish, and declared by others to be merely the small fry of herring, are caught between Blackwall and Greenwich, said to be the only waters in which they are found.

All the way from Greenwich to Woolwich, a matter of three miles, run the electric trams; the river going in a bold loop almost due north, along Blackwall Reach. A fine, broad, new road runs across the dreary flats to the Blackwall Tunnel; and all along these once solitary levels great modern factories are springing up. The explorer will not get much joy of going that way; nor indeed will he find much by going ahead into Woolwich, for the mean things that fringe about the skirts of a great city are abundantly evident.

Woolwich looks imposing from the river, with its crowded houses backed by the wooded heights of Charlton and Shooter’s Hill, but it is disappointing on close acquaintance. Its streets, of the narrowest, described to the present writer by a contemptuous attendant at the Free Ferry as “not wide enough to wheel a bassinette,” are old without being either ancient or picturesque, and although they own such attractive names as “Nile” and “Nelson” Streets, “Bellwater Gate,” and “Market Hill,” are grim and repellent. The parish church, in midst of these unlovely surroundings, is exactly in keeping: a grim, eighteenth-century affair of dull stock brick, like a factory. Many of the crowded tombstones around it were removed in 1894. Among them was one to a certain Emmanuel Skipper, who died in 1842, whose epitaph concluded:

To which some one, apparently a stone-worker engaged in the churchyard, added in very neat lettering:

North Woolwich, whose name will be found by the diligent student of maps, on the opposite shore, is not, as might reasonably be supposed from its situation, in Essex, but is a portion of the county of Kent. There are, of course, many instances throughout England of detached portions of shires and counties islanded in others, but perhaps none so oddly arbitrary as this, where a broad river separates the two portions. Rarely ever do we find an altogether satisfactory explanation of these peculiarities. In the present instance it is held to be owing to the ancient local manorial possessions of Count Haimo, Sheriff of Kent in the reign of William the Conqueror, lying on either side of the Thames, and that, therefore, the smaller portion of his holding was included in that county in which his greater interests lay. It is an ingenious, if not altogether convincing theory.

Woolwich is associated with one of the most terrible shipwrecks of modern times. A good many years have passed since the wreck of the pleasure-steamer Princess Alice thrilled London, but there are many yet living who remember the occasion. The Princess Alice plied frequently in the summer between London and Gravesend, and was generally crowded. She was exceptionally well filled on that fatal day, September 3rd, 1878. More than eight hundred people were aboard. London trippers are proverbially jolly, and those who in those days made holiday at Gravesend and Rosherville were folk of exuberant spirits. Music and dancing occupied the attention of the holiday folk on the return voyage, and all went well until after passing Gallions Reach and rounding Tripcock’s Tree Point. Night had fallen upon the broad and busy river, and coming swiftly down-stream appeared the lights of a large screw-steamer, the Bywell Castle collier. The captains of both vessels were taken by surprise, and both lost their presence of mind, with the result that the Bywell Castle struck the Princess Alice immediately forward of her engine-room, and cut her in two. In less than four minutes the Princess Alice had sunk, and 670 persons were drowned. Some few, with the exercise of much agility, jumped aboard the collier at the moment of the collision, but many were women and children, and many more were in the saloon, and were caught there, as in a trap.

It was finally decided in litigation that the Princess Alice was alone to blame for the disaster. Some of the drowned were buried in Woolwich Cemetery, where a monument stands, erected by a “national sixpenny subscription” contributed by over 23,000 subscribers. Around it are long lines of small stones, marking where the dead lie. The inscription on the monument gives figures considerably at variance from those given in books of reference. It states: “It was computed that seven hundred men, women, and children were on board. Of these about 550 were drowned. One hundred and twenty were buried near this place.”

This melancholy spot is situated on the one-time pleasant hill-side above Plumstead, between Woolwich and Abbey Wood; close to where Bostal Woods still look down from their craggy heights upon the wide-spreading marshes of Plumstead and Erith. This was once an exceedingly delightful escarpment, densely clothed with noble woods and vigorous undergrowth, stretching away to Erith, but the suburban expansion of London is spoiling it. Cemeteries—the abodes of the dead—and little mean streets of houses, scar the once rustic hill-sides, and along the road that goes to Erith, down in the levels, the electric trams run swiftly. But the place-names are still fragrant: Abbey Wood, Picardy, Belmont, and Belvedere; and indeed the great Abbey Wood is still very much more than a name.

Here is Lesnes Abbey Farm, whose 260 acres comprises 200 acres of woodland. The lands, now and for long past the property of Christ’s College, are of much romantic and antiquarian interest, for here was situated the Abbey of Westwood, or Lesnes, founded in 1178 for Augustinian Canons by Richard de Lucy, Lord Chief Justiciar of England, and at one time protector of the realm. The founder died within a year, and was buried in his abbey church. For 347 years the Abbey of Lesnes continued in existence, and was then suppressed by Cardinal Wolsey, in 1525, and its revenues seized for the purposes of his educational endowments. The Abbey ruins and lands passed in succession to a number of owners.

So long ago as 1752 the buildings had become a mere heap of rubbish, with little remaining above ground, and that greatly overgrown with trees. Excavations were then made and numerous monuments were discovered, but they appear to have been all covered up again; and not until 1910 was the site again explored. Work was then undertaken by the Woolwich Antiquarian Society, and some highly interesting remains have been unearthed. There, close by the modern farmhouse, deep down in pits dug in the accumulated soil, you see the bases of pillars of the Lady Chapel and the Chapter House, with floors of encaustic tiles; and there, too, are five Purbeck or Bethersden marble coffin-lids of the abbots and brethren of this vanished Abbey. One, bearing a shepherd’s crook, is that of Abbot Elyas, while another, on which the word “medicina” may be clearly traced, is obviously that of a brother who acted as doctor. A museum of relics has been established in a room of the farmhouse. Chief among these was the life-size, cross-legged effigy of a knight in chain-mail, supposed to represent one of the De Lucy family, about 1301; the shield on his arm bearing the “flower-de-luce.” The colours and gilding are still perfect. This interesting relic has now been removed to the South Kensington Museum.

The name of Belvedere is curiously un-English, but the village is sufficiently British, with a very ordinary “Belvedere” railway station. The origin of the place takes us back to early in the eighteenth century, when a mansion of that name was built on the wooded hill-top, in a pleasant park whence the estuary of the Thames and its crowded shipping could be seen. Hence “Belvedere,” a word deriving from the Italian, bello vedere, a pleasant view. Look-out towers commanding fine prospects, and known as “belvederes,” or sometimes as “follies,” are familiar objects all over the country, in ancestral parks. This mansion of Belvedere was rebuilt in a “classic” style, in red brick, about 1764, by Lord Eardley. A still wider view is obtained from a prospect-tower in the grounds. The park was greatly cut up for building purposes in 1859, and the village of Belvedere then sprang up. The mansion itself was purchased for £12,000 and opened in 1867 as a home for old sailors: the Royal Alfred Institution for Aged Merchant Seamen.

Any expectation of beauty in the village, or wretched forlorn settlement, of Belvedere that fringes the road to Erith would be doomed to disappointment, and Erith, which succeeds it, is simply beastly: there is no other fitting word for the place nowadays. “Aer-hythe,” whence the place-name is said to derive, is considered to mean the “old port,” and a picturesquely dilapidated old place it remained until recent years, with a quaintly ramshackle old wooden jetty projecting into the Thames, and a curious wood-and-glass house at the head of it. Coal was leisurely landed here, in a way that was, by comparison with the present methods, altogether amateurish. Nowadays the street of Erith is mean and squalid, and filthy coal-yards and busy power-houses, together with a network of railway-lines, occupy the shore. Modern industrial conditions have rendered Erith a place eminently desirable to leave unvisited. Nor do the marshes and low-lying fields beyond it, towards the mouth of the river Darent, reward the explorer, whose only course is now to turn inland and so come, past the hamlet of Perry Street, through Crayford and along the Dover Road, into Dartford town.

Dartford does not greatly concern us here, because, for one thing, it is not upon the coast, and, for another, it belongs to quite a different subject, the Dover Road; and in a book on that highway I have described the town at some length.

It is a matter of some two miles from the town, more or less beside the river Darent, across the low-lying and sometimes marshy meadows, to the Thames-side. You pass the scattered hamlet of Joyce’s Green and evidences of gunpowder works; and, nearing the Thames, there opens before you a view of Long Reach, with the smallpox hospital-ships, and on the Essex shore the very striking picture of Purfleet, a busy little place, nestling at the foot of its bold, chalky hill. A place very little, yet very busy and grimy when you come closely into touch with it, is “Portflete”—thus to style it by its older name.

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