[Illustration: A DOORWAY, CURLEW STREET, BERMONDSEY]
The expansion of London during the Nineteenth Century is in itself a fact unparalleled in the history of cities. Those who call attention to this miracle always point to the filling up of the huge area between Highgate and Hampstead and Clerkenwell in the North, or the extension of the town to Hammersmith on the West. Perhaps a little consideration of the South may show a still more remarkable growth. I have before me a map of the year 1834, only sixty-four years ago, showing South London as it was. I see a small town or collection of small towns, occupying the district called the Borough Proper, Lambeth, Newington, Walworth, and Bermondsey. In some parts this area is densely populated, filled with narrow courts and lanes; in other parts there are broad fields, open spaces, unoccupied pieces of ground. At the back of Vauxhall Gardens, for instance there are open fields; in Walworth there is a certain place, then notorious for the people who lived there, called Snow's Fields; in Bermondsey there are also open spaces, some of them gardens, or recreation grounds, without any buildings. Battersea is a mere stretch of open country. I myself remember the old Battersea Fields perfectly well; one shivers at the recollection; they were low, flat, damp, and, I believe, treeless; they were crossed, like Hackney Marsh, by paths raised above the level; at no time of year could the Battersea Fields look anything but dreary. In winter they were inexpressibly dismal. As a boy I have walked across the fields in order to get to the embankment or river wall from which one commanded a view of the Thames with its barges and lighters going up and down--pleasant when the sun shone on the river, but a mere shadow of the ancient glory when the pleasure barges and the State barges swept majestically up the river with the hautboys and the trumpets in the bows; when the swans by thousands sailed upon the broad bosom of the waters, and in the middle of the river the fisherman cast his net, as Edric had done fifteen hundred years before at St. Peter's orders, when he brought out his famous salmon. One walked along the embankment; the fields on one side were lower than the waters on the other. Beyond the river were the trees of Chelsea Hospital. Close to the river bank was an enclosure which was called the Subscription Ground; here the subscribers came to shoot pigeons--noble sport. If I remember aright, while the subscribing sportsmen shot at the pigeons in the enclosure, others of low condition who were not subscribers lurked about on the outside to shoot down those birds which escaped from the murderers within. Close by the Subscription Ground was a certain famous tavern called the Red House. I do not know why it was famous, but everybody always said it was. I believe it was much frequented on summer evenings, and that the subscribing sportsmen close by, whether they hit their pigeon or not, proved excellent customers for the drinks of the Red House. At that time there were 'famous' taverns all up and down the river on either bank. There are still Riverside taverns, but the invasion of the new streets and houses has driven them, considered as 'famous' taverns, either higher up, or lower down. As mere commonplace public houses they probably remain still. Duels were conducted on the Battersea Fields, and there were certain historical associations in connection with these dreary flats. Here, for instance, the Duke of Wellington fought his duel with Lord Winchilsea. Other important people were also connected either with the Fields or the Village of Battersea, but at the time I knew not anything about them. The Battersea of my boyhood is gone absolutely: no trace of it remains, except the Church. The Grosvenor Railway Bridge passes over the site of the famous Red House; the most beautiful of all our Parks covers the Subscription Shooting Grounds, together with most of the flat and dreary fields; and houses by the thousand, with streets mean and monotonous, stand where formerly the pigeons flew wildly, hoping to escape those who waited outside the grounds as they had escaped those who potted at them from within.