Note 65 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY

The exact site of the famous Footsteps is not easily determined. Dr. Rimbault (Notes and Queries, February 2, 1850) says that it was reputed to be “at the extreme termination of the north-east end of Upper Montague Street.” It is placed a little farther west by Robert Hill, the water-colour painter, who stated in a letter, quoted by Mr. Wheatley in his London: “I well remember the Brothers’ Footsteps. They were near a bank that divided two of the fields between Montague House and the New Road, and their situation must have been, if my recollection serves me, what is now Torrington Square.” Smith says the Footsteps were “on the site of Mr. Martin’s chapel, or nearly so.” Mr. John Martin, the Baptist minister, had the chapel in Keppel Street. It still exists. This brings the Footsteps a few yards south, but Smith’s indefiniteness must be taken into account. That these markings were visible as late as 1800 is proved by the following entry in the Commonplace Book of Joseph Moser: “June 16th, 1800. Went into the fields at the back of Montague House, and there saw, for the last time, the Forty Footsteps: the building materials are there to cover them from the sight of man.” The feeling with which these curious marks were regarded by educated people may be judged by a letter quoted in the Gentleman’s Magazine of December 1804, in which the writer expresses his conviction that “the Almighty has ordered it as a standing monument of his great displeasure of the horrid sin of duelling,” an opinion in which the poet Southey concurred. In 1828, Miss Jane Porter published her novel, The Field of the Forty Footsteps.