The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 565, September 8, 1832

LEE, KENT

The rural village of Lee is situate six miles south of London, on the south side of Blackheath, and on the road to Maidstone. It is a place of considerable antiquity; and was originally written Legheart, and in old Latin, Laga, i.e. a place which lies sheltered. "The manor was held of Edward the Confessor by Alwin. William the Conqueror gave it to his half-brother, Odo, bishop of Baieux, and Earl of Kent, of whom it was held by Walter de Donay." In the time of the Confessor, it was valued at 3l. and in Domesday at 100s. Its extent is somewhat more than 1,000 acres. Hasted enumerates the successive lords, among whom were Lord Rivers, who was beheaded at Banbury in 1649; and his son, Anthony, Earl Rivers, who was beheaded at Pomfret, in 1483. The manor was purchased by Sir Francis Baring, bart., in 1798.

Lee Church and Parsonage.

The picturesque vignette includes the church and parsonage. The Church is in what is called the pointed style, or rather in humble imitation of antiquity, for it is a recent structure built on the site of the walls of the old church, but with the addition of side-aisles. Nearly two centuries before the erection of the present church, the villagers reported the old building to be in a state too ruinous to admit of repair: how long did its stability gainsay their judgment, while they were laid asleep about the walls. The church was an appendage to the manor till the time of Charles I., who granted away the fee of the manor, but reserved the patronage of the church to the crown, where it continues to this time. It was valued l5 Edward I. at 10 marks; in the king's books it is at 3l. 11s. 8d.; and the yearly tenths at 7s. 2d. The parsonage has much of the snug character of the glebe-house; it was rebuilt in 1636, by the rector, the Rev. Abraham Sherman.

In the church are some monumental brasses and a handsome tomb of marble and alabaster. One of the former is to the memory of Nicholas Ansley, or Annesley, Esq. who died in 1593; with the following inscription:—

 
When the Quene Elizabeth full five years had rain'd,
Then Nicholas Ansley, whos corps lyes here interred,
At fyve and twenty yeres of age was entertayned
Into her servis, where well himself he caried
In eche man's love till fifty and eight yeres ould,
Being Sergant of the Seller, death him contrould.
 

Above is an upright figure (on a brass plate,) of the deceased, in armour, kneeling at a desk. The latter monument is to Brian Annesley, Esq. (son of Nicholas) gentleman pensioner to Queen Elizabeth. It consists of an elliptic arch supported by Corinthian columns, and ornamented with a Mosaic pattern studded with roses. Beneath lie the effigies of Annesley, in armour, and his wife, in a gown and ruff; their son, and three daughters.

In the churchyard, among the tombs, is that of Dr. Halley, who succeeded Flamstead as Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, where he died in 1741-2: Halley published a treatise on Comets, when he was nineteen years old; and first applied the barometer to measure heights. Here also lie William Pate, whom Swift, in his Letters, calls the learned woollen-draper: Sir Samuel Fludyer, bart., the courtly lord mayor; Parsons, the comedian, with this quaint epitaph:—

 
Here Parsons lies, oft on life's busy stage
With nature, reader, hast thou seen him vie;
He science knew, knew manners, knew the age,
Respected knew to live, lamented die.
 

Bliss, the Astronomer Royal, who died in 1762, is also buried here; Charnock, the author of Biographia Navalis, a Life of Nelson, &c.; the amiable Lord Dacre, who died in 1794; and Mary, his relict, 1808.⁵

Harris says that Samuel Purchas resided at Lee, and there wrote a great part of his collection of travels, or "Celebrated Pilgrimages and Relations of the World."

Among the grateful recollection of Lee we must not omit the alms-house, chapel, and school-house founded by C. Boone, Esq. in 1638.

The Public Journals

THE VICTIMS OF SUSCEPTIBILITY

By a Modern Pythagorean

Fortune, it has been truly said, is blind, and the same thing may be alleged of nature; for while there are some to whom the latter goddess has denied the commonest gifts, either of person or intellect, she has bestowed the most splendid upon others, with a prodigality which astonishes and perplexes the world. A beautiful person, and genius almost superhuman, fell to the share of Milton; nor can it be doubted, that in these respects the blind goddess was equally kind to the bard of Avon, whose presence, even judging from the imperfect, and somewhat apocryphal likenesses handed down to us, was noble to behold, while his genius more resembled that of a superior nature than of a human being. The same remark applies to the beautiful, the divine Raphael,—nor less to Tasso, and various others, whom we might easily point out.

It will perhaps be deemed presumptuous, after naming those illustrious characters—those "demigods of fame"—to allude to Augustus Merton, who, although he obtained the distinction of first wrangler at Brazennose, Oxford, and carried off a multitude of prizes from that seat of learning, may yet be thought an inadequate testimony of the fact with which we set out, more especially when placed in juxtaposition with the Miltons, the Shakespeares, the Raphaels, and the Tassos of the world. We discuss not this point. We claim for him no equality with these august names; and yet, with all such reservations, do we set him forward as no unmeet proof of the soundness of our assertion.

Merton was gifted with fine genius, and with a person all but faultless. In stature he rose to six feet, and was slightly but elegantly formed; while his whole air bespoke at once the gentleman and scholar. Those who have seen his fine Spanish countenance, dark eyes, and rich clustering hair,—the whole communicating dignity, grace, and interest to his natural melancholy,—will not soon efface his imposing image from their remembrance. His talents were of a highly-diversified order. He was a first-rate Grecian and had he turned his attention exclusively to that language might have contested the palm with Porson himself; nor do those who are best qualified to judge hesitate to place him upon an equality with Burney, Young or Parr. He was also an excellent Latinist, and had a profound acquaintance with geometry, and the other branches of mathematical science. For knowledge of the various eastern tongues he was no unequal match for Lee, of Cambridge; while his acquirements in natural philosophy, political economy, and metaphysics, were such as would have fairly entitled him to prelect on these subjects in any university in Europe. Besides this, he had an exquisite poetical genius; and, in his very first contest, succeeded in carrying off the prize of poetry, to the utter discomfiture of many formidable rivals.

But, with all these high acquirements, he was not a happy man. He had been baptized in the waters of melancholy; and a circumstance which occurred in the fifth year of his curriculum had a baleful and, ultimately, a fatal effect upon him, dethroning reason from its lofty seat, and plunging not him only, but another estimable individual, in the deepest distress. This circumstance, painful as it is, we must relate; and, on perusing it, the reader will see that the noble aspirations, the keen susceptibilities, of the mind do not always lead to happiness; for, alas! it was such an excess of susceptibility in his intellect which disturbed so sadly the current of his ideas, and made him an inmate of St. Luke's.

The weather at the period we speak of was truly melancholy. It was in the gloomy month of November,—that month in which it is said the suicidal propensities of the English nation are most strongly in force. The air was either filled with dull, sluggish, unwholesome fogs, which hung upon it like a nightmare, or soaked in a constant drizzle of small, annoying, contemptible rain-drops, which, without possessing the energy and dignity of a shower, were infinitely more disagreeable, and found their way to the flesh in spite of all the protective armoury of great-coats, hessian cloaks, or umbrellas. It seemed as if a wet blanket were drawn between the sun and the earth. The atmosphere was always foggy, often perfectly wet, but never thoroughly dry. It wanted vitality; and every person that breathed it partook of its own damp, hypochondriac, inanimate character.

It was in the morning of one of those days of fog, gloom, and ennui, that Augustus last sallied out to lounge about the streets of Oxford, as was his custom, before breakfast. There was a favourite spot in which he was wont to walk; it was upon the footpath of a very short street, about the middle of which stood the shop of Jonathan Hookey, a barber. This street (we forget its name) is not above fifty yards in length, and opens at each end into a cross street. Now, Merton's walk extended from one of those cross streets to the other, including, of course, the whole extent of the short street; he always walked on one side of this street, viz. on that opposite to the barber's shop. These particulars may seem trifling, but they are essential to the proper understanding of the story.

While making these morning perambulations, he had always an air of deep thought, his arms were crossed, and he kept his eyes constantly fixed upon the ground, as if deeply engrossed in profound meditation. It boots not now to inquire on what subjects his thoughts were mostly employed, but it was unquestionably on themes of deep import, and concerned not himself only, but the interests of science, learning, and humanity at large. The morning in question was peculiarly dull and foggy; but whether it was this or something else, certain it is, that he felt himself more than usually overpowered. The air oppressed him like a leaden shroud, and the energies of his soul seemed for once on the point of sinking beneath the superincumbent burden.

Turn we now to Jonathan Hookey, the barber. In person he differed much from Merton. His height did not exceed five feet, but, he made amends for it in breadth; for he was a man of a lusty habit, and sported a paunch which no London alderman or burgomaster of Amsterdam would look upon with contempt. Bald was his head, and his nose was not merely large but immense; but it is idle to grow eloquent upon noses. Has not Sterne exhausted the theme? have not we ourselves more than once expatiated upon it? Swakenbergius had a nose, so had Ovidius Naso; but to neither would Jonathan Hookey's strike its colours, and good crimson ones they were.

Jonathan, despite his bald head, his diminutive stature, his ample pot-belly, and ampler nose, was a man of fine feelings. Nature was outraged when he became a barber. He most assuredly was never destined by her to shave beards, and manufacture perukes for heads more brainless, many of them, than his own blocks. He ought to have been a professor of metaphysics or logic in some famous university, such as Heidelburg, Gottingen, or Glasgow;—but why lament over cureless evils? it is sufficient to say he is a barber, and there is an end of the matter.

We must now return to Merton. His solitary walks on the opposite side of the street had not even, from the first, escaped the scrutinizing eyes of Mr. Hookey. No: he saw in the tall, pale, elegant, dark-haired student the victim of deep sensibility. From seeing him, he wondered, from wondering he loved him, from loving he adored him: he knew at once he was no common man. Having perused Byron's Manfred, he conceived him to be such another as that strange character; or he might be a second Lara; or, more, he might be, nay he was, a glorious genius, full of high imaginings. Little do we know what bright thoughts passed through the mind of the enthusiastic Hookey. He cursed his profession, which debarred him from the fellowship of such a man: he cursed his nose, which stood between him and the object of his adoration.

Day after day had Mr. Hookey noticed the accomplished, the highly-gifted Merton; but it was only upon this particular morning that the recognition was mutual. Merton, on turning his eyes by chance from the ground, looked to the opposite side of the street, and there beheld a nose. He then turned his eyes to the earth in his usual meditative mood; but, reflecting that a nose without an owner was rather a singular phenomenon, he looked a second time, and there, behind the nose, he saw a man; it was Mr. Hookey himself.

This was the first time that the melancholy and intellectual student reciprocated upon Hookey the attention which Hookey had hitherto bestowed exclusively upon him. No more was the barber's "sweetness wasted upon the desert air," but fell on one who knew how to appreciate it to its fullest extent. Merton stood stock-still, and gazed upon him with mute admiration. He was positively fascinated. The nose operated upon him like the head of Medusa, and almost turned him to stone. And Mr. Hookey was fascinated too. Merton also had become Medusafied, and exercised a petrifactive influence upon the barber. He was nailed fast to the threshold of his own door, and gazed upon his fancied personification of Lara and Manfred with an indomitable and resistless perseverance, which utterly confounded himself; while Merton, nailed alike fast to the opposite footpath, stood staring at his antagonist, or rather at his nasal protuberance. This impressive scene continued for several minutes, when Merton, regaining the power of locomotion, slowly approached the barber, his arms all the while crossed, and his eyes intently fixed upon the nose. Nine slow and awful steps brought him face to face with Hookey. The barber's eyes were fixed intently upon his—his eyes upon the barber's nose. The scene was extremely dreadful; and Mr. Hookey, after vainly trying to keep his ground, retreated into the shop, still facing Merton, who kept advancing upon him as he receded. Back, step by step, went Hookey; forward, step by step, came Merton; each all the while eyeing the other with equal astonishment. The barber continued retreating, the other following him,—first through the shop, then through the kitchen, then through the parlour—the three apartments leading into one another. At last he got to the remotest corner of the parlour, and could get no farther. Here he paused, and Merton paused also. Still they gazed on each other,—the barber in the corner overpowered with amazement, and the student standing before him hardly less surprised. At last Merton broke silence in the following awful words,—"GRACIOUS HEAVENS WHAT A NOSE!" So saying, he retreated as slowly as he entered, leaving Mr. Hookey utterly stupified and bewildered. The sentence went like iron into the barber's soul; he felt it in all its bitterness.

It is almost unnecessary to say what an effect this scene had upon the highly-susceptible temperament of Merton. From that moment peace fled his mind. He went instantly home; but instead of devoting himself, as before, to those studies in which he delighted, and in which he was wont so highly to excel, he immured himself in his chamber, giving way to gloomy abstraction, and agonizing his spirit with painful and most distressing fancies. The great power of his imagination caused him, in a peculiar manner, to suffer from the remembrance of what he had witnessed; and, accordingly, his waking as well as his sleeping hours were haunted with visions of noses,—noses of stupendous size, which arose, like ocean islands, amid the gloomy tabernacle of his brain, and filled him with utter despair. At last, from bad to worse, he became the mere shadow of his former self, the wreck of what he was, and a picture of fallen and shattered genius. To drive away the hideous phantasmagorias that tortured him, as with the stings of demons, he had recourse to gin, and soon became a confirmed drunkard: the next stage was lunacy; and he was confined for fourteen months in Saint Luke's Hospital for the insane.