Note 405 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 3)

Horwood’s map of London (1799) shows the river walk from Abingdon Street almost to Chelsea Bridge between willows, along the water-edge, and nursery gardens. A good idea of Millbank as it was at this period may be obtained from the Earl of Albemarle’s Fifty Years of my Life (vol. i. cap. vi.), where we see the boys of Westminster School roaming these spaces, hiring guns from Mother Hubbard, and obtaining dogs and badgers from their obliging friend, William Heberfield, “Slender Billy,” who was mercilessly hanged in 1812 for passing forged notes. See a curious account of Palmer’s village in Charles Manby Smith’s Curiosities of London Life (1853). Smith has an etching of the Willow Walk in his Remarks on Rural Scenery (1797).