LORD BOLINGBROKE AT BATTERSEA.

his parish and manor, three miles south-west of London, on the Surrey bank of the Thames, appertained, from a very early period, to the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster; and is conjectured, by Lysons, to have been therefrom named, in the Conqueror's Survey, Patricsey, which, in the Saxon, is Peter's water, or river; since written Battrichsey, Battersey, and Battersea. It passed to the Crown, at the dissolution of religious houses: in 1627 it was granted to the St. John family, in whose possession the property remained till 1763.

Here, in a spacious mansion, eastward of the church, was born, October 1, 1678, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, one of the brilliant lights of the Augustan age of literature in England. Here Pope spent most of his time with Bolingbroke, after the return of the latter from his seven years' exile;[79] and his house became also the resort of Swift, Arbuthnot, Thomson, Mallet, and other leading contemporary men of genius. Lord Marchmont was living with Lord Bolingbroke, at Battersea, when he discovered that Mr. Allen, of Bath, had printed 500 copies of the Essay on a Patriot King from the copy which Bolingbroke had presented to Pope—six copies only were printed. Thereupon, Lord Marchmont sent Mr. Gravenkop for the whole cargo, who carried them out in a waggon, and the books were burnt on the lawn in the presence of Lord Bolingbroke. Thenceforth he mostly resided at Battersea from 1742 until his death in 1751. He sunk under the dreadful malady beneath which he had long lingered—a cancer in the face—which he bore with exemplary fortitude; "a fortitude," says Lord Brougham, "drawn from the natural resources of his mind, and, unhappily, not aided by the consolation of any religion; for having early cast off the belief in revelation, he had substituted in its stead a dark and gloomy naturalism, which even rejected those glimmerings of hope as to futurity not untasted by the wiser of the heathens."

Bolingbroke, with his second wife, niece of Madame de Maintenon, lie in the family vault in St. Mary's Church, where there is an elegant monument by Roubiliac, with busts of the great lord and his lady; the epitaphs on both were written by Lord Bolingbroke: that upon himself is still extant, in his own handwriting, in the British Museum: "Here lies Henry St. John, in the reign of Queen Anne Secretary of State, and Viscount Bolingbroke; in the days of King George I. and King George II., something more and better."

The greater part of Bolingbroke House was taken down in 1778. In the wing of the mansion, left standing, a parlour of round form, and lined with cedar, was long pointed out as the apartment in which Pope composed his Essay on Man; it is said to have been called "Pope's Parlour." The walls may still be seen, but they support a new roof, and can only be distinguished from the rest of the building by their circular form. The mansion was very extensive—forty rooms on a floor.

Upon part of the site was erected a horizontal mill, by Captain Hooper, who also built a similar one at Margate. It consisted of a circular wheel, with large boards or vanes fixed parallel to its axis, and arranged at equal distances from each other. Upon these vanes the wind could act, so as to blow the wheel round. But if it were to act upon the vanes at both sides of the wheel at once, it could not, of course, turn it round; hence one side of the wheel must be sheltered, while the other was submitted to the full action of the wind. For this purpose it was enclosed in a large cylindrical framework, with doors or shutters on all sides, to open and admit the wind, or to shut and stop it. If all the shutters on one side were open, whilst all those on the opposite side were closed, the wind acting with undiminished force on the vanes at one side, whilst the opposite vanes are under shelter, turned the mill round; but whenever the wind changed, the disposition of the blinds must be altered, to admit the wind to strike upon the vanes of the wheel in the direction of a tangent to the circle in which they moved.—(Dr. Paris's Philosophy in Sport.) This mill resembled a gigantic packing-case, which gave rise to an odd story, that when the Emperor of Russia was in England, in 1814, he took a fancy to Battersea Church, and determined to carry it off to Russia, and had this large packing-case made for it; but as the inhabitants refused to let the church be carried away, the case remained on the spot where it was deposited.

This horizontal air-mill served as a landmark for many miles round: the proprietor was Mr. Hodgson, a maltster and distiller. It was visited by Sir Richard Phillips in his Morning's Walk from London to Kew, in 1813, who says: "The mill, its elevated shaft, its vanes, and weather or wind-boards, curious as they would have been on any other site, lost their interest on premises once the residence of the illustrious Bolingbroke, and the resort of the philosophers of his day. In ascending the winding flights of its tottering galleries, I could not help wondering at the caprice of events which had converted the dwelling of Bolingbroke into a malting-house and a mill. This house, once sacred to philosophy and poetry, long sanctified by the residence of the noblest genius of his age, honoured by the frequent visits of Pope, and the birthplace of the immortal Essay on Man, is now appropriated to the lowest uses. The house of Bolingbroke become a windmill! The spot on which the Essay on Man was concocted and produced, converted into a distillery of pernicious spirits! Such are the lessons of time! Such are the means by which an eternal agency sets at nought the ephemeral importance of man! But yesterday, this spot was the resort, the hope, and the seat of enjoyment of Bolingbroke, Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Monson, Mallet, and all the contemporary genius of England—yet a few whirls of the earth round the sun, the change of a figure in the date of the year, and the group have vanished; while I behold hogs and horses, malt-bags and barrels, stills and machinery!

"'Alas!' said I to the occupier, 'and have these things become the representatives of more human genius than England may ever witness on one spot again—have you thus satirised the transitory state of humanity—do you thus become a party with the bigoted enemies of that philosophy which was personified in a Bolingbroke or a Pope?' 'No,' he rejoined, 'I love the name and character of Bolingbroke, and I preserve the house as well as I can with religious veneration: I often smoke my pipe in Mr. Pope's parlour, and think of him with due respect as I walk the part of the terrace opposite his room.' He then conducted me to this interesting parlour, which is of brown polished oak,[80] with a grate and ornaments of the age of George the First; and before its window stood the portion of the terrace upon which the malt-house had not encroached, with the Thames moving majestically under its walls.

"'In this room,' I exclaimed, 'the Essay on Man was probably planned, discussed, and written!' Mr. Hodgson assured me this had always been called 'Pope's Room,' and he had no doubt it was the apartment usually occupied by that great poet, in his visits to his friend Bolingbroke. Other parts of the original house remain, and are occupied and kept in good order. He told me, however, that this was but a wing of the mansion, which extended, in Lord Bolingbroke's time, to the churchyard, and is now appropriated to the malting-house and its warehouses."

Sir Richard met with an ancient inhabitant of Battersea, a Mrs. Gilliard, a pleasant and intelligent woman, who well remembered Lord Bolingbroke; that he used to ride out every day in his chariot, and had a black patch on his cheek, with a large wart over his eyebrow. She was then but a girl, but she was taught to look upon him with veneration as a great man. As, however, he spent little in the place, and gave little away, he was not much regarded by the people of Battersea. Sir Richard mentioned to her the names of several of Lord Bolingbroke's contemporaries, but she recollected none, except that of Mallet, whom she said she had often seen walking about in the village while he was visiting at Bolingbroke House.[81]

In the first volume of the Diaries and Correspondence of the Right Hon. George Rose, we find the following entry respecting the treachery of Mallet:—"It appears by a letter of Lord Bolingbroke's, dated in 1740, from Angeville, that he had actually written some Essays dedicated to the Earl of Marchmont, of a very different tendency from his former works. These Essays, on his death, fell into the hands of Mr. Mallet, his executor, who had, at the latter end of his life, acquired a decided influence over him, and they did not appear among his lordship's works published by Mallet;[82] nor have they been seen or heard of since. From whence it must be naturally conjectured, that they were destroyed by the latter, from what reason cannot now be known; possibly, to conceal from the world the change, such as it was, in his lordship's sentiments in the latter end of his life, to avoid the discredit to his former works. In which respect he might have been influenced either by a regard for the noble Viscount's consistency, or by a desire not to impair the pecuniary advantage he expected from the publication of his lordship's works."

Upon this, the Editor of the Diaries, the Rev. Leveson Vernon Harcourt, notes: "The letter to Lord Marchmont here referred to, has a note appended to it by Sir George Rose, the editor of the Marchmont Papers, who takes a very different view of its contents from his father. He gravely remarks, that as the posthumous disclosure of Lord Bolingbroke's inveterate hostility to Christianity lays open to the view the bitterness as the extent of it, so the manner of that disclosure precludes any doubt of the earnestness of his desire to give the utmost efficiency and publicity to that hostility, as soon as it could safely be done; that is, as soon as death could shield him against responsibility to man. Sir George saw plainly enough that when he promised in those Essays to vindicate religion against divinity and God against man, he was retracting all that he had occasionally said in favour of Christianity; he was upholding the religion of Theism against the doctrines of the Bible, and the God of nature against the revelation of God to man."

It is painful to reflect upon this prostration of a splendid intellect; and we are but slightly relieved by Lord Chesterfield's statement, in one of his Letters, published by Lord Mahon, in his edition of Chesterfield's Works (ii. 450), that "Bolingbroke only doubted, and by no means rejected, a future state." We know that Bolingbroke denied to Pope his disbelief of the moral attributes of God, of which Pope told his friends with great joy. How ungrateful a return for this "excessive friendliness" was the indignation which Bolingbroke expressed at the priest having attended Pope in his last moments![83]

It is now, we believe, admitted on all hands that Christianity has not found a very formidable opponent in Bolingbroke, and that his objections, for the most part, only betray his own half-learning. Lord Brougham, whose touching remark we have already quoted, concludes his sketch of Lord Bolingbroke with this eloquent summing up: "Such was Bolingbroke, and as such he must be regarded by impartial posterity, after the violence of party has long subsided, and the view is no more intercepted either by the rancour of political enmity, or by the partiality of adherents, or by the fondness of friendship. Such, too, is Bolingbroke when the gloss of trivial accomplishments is worn off by time, and the lustre of genius itself has faded beside the simple, translucent light of virtue. The contemplation is not without its uses. The glare of talents and success is apt to obscure defects, which are incomparably more mischievous than any intellectual powers can be either useful or admirable. Nor can a lasting renown—a renown that alone deserves to be courted of a rational being—ever be built upon any foundations save those which are laid in an honest heart and a firm purpose, both conspiring to work out the good of mankind. That renown will be as imperishable as it is pure."[84]

Among the memorials of the Bolingbrokes, in Battersea Church, is the altar-window, filled with old stained glass, preserved from the former church, and executed at the expense of the St. Johns. It includes portraits of Henry VII., his grandmother, the Lady Margaret Beauchamp, and Queen Elizabeth; together with numerous shields of arms, showing the alliances of the family.

York House, at Battersea, the mansion of Booth, Archbishop of York, who died in 1480, and bequeathed it to his successors in the See, was mostly taken down some sixty years ago. Archbishop Holgate was one of the few prelates who resided here; he was imprisoned and deprived by Queen Mary for being a married man, and lost much property by illegal seizure. In Strype's Life of Cranmer, p. 308, it is stated that the officers who were employed to apprehend the Archbishop rifled his house at Battersea, and took away from thence 300l. of gold coin; 1600 ounces of plate; a mitre of fine gold, set with very fine diamonds, sapphires, and balists, other good stones and pearls; some very valuable rings; and the Archbishop's seal and signet.

There was long a tradition at Battersea that some ancient walls remaining there were a portion of the residence of the father of Queen Anne Boleyn. It appears from the monument to Queen Elizabeth, in Battersea Church, that the Boleyns were related to the St. Johns. Upon this Sir Richard Phillips contends that at York House, above named, resided Wolsey, as Archbishop of York. "Here Henry VIII. first saw Anne Boleyn; and here that scene took place which Shakspeare records in his play of Henry VIII.; and which he described truly, because he wrote it for Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, within fifty years of the event, and must himself have known living witnesses of its verity. Hence it becomes more than probable, that Sir Thomas Boleyn actually resided in the vicinity, and that his daughter was accidentally among the guests at that princely entertainment. I know it is contended that this interview took place at York House, Whitehall; but Shakspeare makes the King come by water; and York House, Battersea, was, beyond all doubt, a residence of Wolsey, and is provided with a creek from the Thames, for the evident purpose of facilitating in the course by water. Besides, the owner informed me, that a few years since he had pulled down a superb room, called 'the ball-room,' the panels of which were curiously painted, and the divisions silvered. He also stated that the room had a dome and a richly-ornamented ceiling, and that he once saw an ancient print, representing the first interview of Henry VIII. with Anne Boleyn, in which the room was portrayed exactly like the one that, in modernizing his house, he had found it necessary to destroy."