This was a favourite tea-garden from the latter part of the eighteenth century till the fifties. An inn, originally called the White House, had long existed near the foot of Primrose Hill, and probably first gained custom by its proximity to the hill, which (about 1797) is described [39] as a ‘very fashionable’ Sunday resort of the modern citizens, who usually ‘lead their children there to eat their cakes and partake of a little country air’—a truly idyllic performance. Chalk Farm had also its more martial customers, for towards the close of the eighteenth century the St. Pancras Volunteers used to march thither to fire at a target at the foot of the hill for a silver cup. The duels, moreover, for which a field adjoining the inn was notorious began at least as early as 1790, and lasted till the twenties. As they are hardly to be reckoned among the amusements of the place, I need not record their painful details. The famous interrupted duel of Tom Moore and Francis Jeffrey—when ‘Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by’—occurred in 1806. Byron treats it as ludicrous, but the meeting was not without its pathos. ‘What a beautiful morning it is!’ said Jeffrey, on seeing his opponent. ‘Yes,’ answered Moore; ‘a morning made for better purposes.’ To which Jeffrey’s only response was ‘a sort of assenting sigh.’ Another famous duel took place on February 16, 1821, by moonlight, between John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, and Mr. Christie. Scott was badly wounded, and was carried on a shutter to the tavern, where he died in a fortnight. This was practically the last of the Chalk Farm duels, [40a] and, curiously enough, it is the London Magazine [40b] that about a year later furnishes a long and most philosophical account of the tea-drinking at this very garden. What the writer notices is the seriousness of the ordinary frequenter of the garden, who drinks and smokes with no approach to the least flexibility of limb or feature. There are three plain citizens sitting stolidly in one alcove without uttering a word. In another box, over a glass of punch, are a prim tradesman and his wife and a sickly-looking little boy, who wants to play with the other children on the lawn, but who is not allowed to ‘wenture upon the nasty vet grass.’ The same observer also notes the occasionally successful efforts of the Cockney sportsmen to shoot wretched sparrows let out of a box at twenty yards’ distance.
In the thirties the aspect was more cheerful, with pony-races, rifle-shooting, [40c] and the contests of the Cumberland and Westmorland wrestlers for silver tankards and snuffboxes.
The tavern (the successor of an older building) was pulled down in 1853, and the present public-house—No. 89, Regent’s Park Road—was built. The open fields which formerly led from this site to the slopes of Primrose Hill are now covered by houses at the back and front of the present building, and the row of tall houses in Primrose Hill Road would effectively shut out the view, even if the tavern had still preserved its garden. A water-colour drawing of about 1830 shows Chalk Farm without any building intervening between itself and its grassy mount. One side of the tavern is provided with many windows, and a veranda looks towards the hill, and close by is the flower-garden. At the back of the house are fields and a road leading to the lower slopes.
[Authorities in Palmer’s St. Pancras, p. 287; Picture of London, 1802–1846; Miller’s St. Pancras, p. 201; Walford, Old and New London, v. 289 f.; newspapers.
Views: Water-colour, circa 1830, showing Primrose Hill and the tavern (W.); drawing by Matthews, 1834, Crace Cat., p. 671, No. 89; drawing by T. H. Shepherd, 1853, ibid., p. 569; Partington’s Views of London, ii. 181; a view in Dugdale’s England and Wales, and water-colour drawings from this.]
