By rail it is ten miles from Liverpool Street Station, and we whisk there in forty minutes by many trains each day; underground, behind houses, over their roofs; along by Bethnal Green and Hackney Downs and London Fields--where now can be seen no green nor downs nor any fields--past Silver Street and Seven Sisters and White Hart Lane, and many such prettily named places; and last of all through a stretch of real country into the dapper little station of Enfield.
“Enfield Chase” was a favourite hunting-ground of royalty until it was divided into parcels and sold after the execution of Charles I. Some of the old hunting-lodges still stand in gardens, one of them once tenanted by William Pitt. I have talked with aged men in the village who have seen, when they were boys, the “King’s red deer” come into “The Chase” to drink from the New River: which winds through the land here, its waters drawn from the springs of Amwell and Chadwell, and from slopes with sunshine on them, and led later underground through pipes to supply London town. This _new_ river was cut and engineered by Mr. Hugh Myddelton, citizen and goldsmith, who, “with his choice men of art and painful labourers set roundly to this business,” in the year of grace 1609, and was knighted by the first James for his enterprise and success in his stupendous work. Tom Hood got out “Walton Redivivus, a New River Eclogue,” and Lamb wrote a preface for it, in which he referred to his new home having the same neighbour as his cottage at Colebrook. Doubtless he recalled, too, his out-of-town bathing-excursions with the other boys at Christ’s, and how they would wanton like young dace in this same stream. “My old New River has presented no extraordinary novelties lately. But there Hope sits, day after day, speculating on traditionary gudgeons. I think she hath taken the fisheries. I now know the reason why our forefathers were denominated the East and West Angles.”
We pass the town’s old inns, with steep-sloping roofs, and many a stately mansion set in great gardens; among them the ancient manor-house, renovated by Edward VI. for the residence of his sister, the Princess Elizabeth. From here she wrote letters which you may see in the British Museum; and in the Bodleian at Oxford is the MS. translation, in her own hand, of an Italian sermon preached here by Occhini. This building--now The Palace School--contains one of her rooms, oak-panelled and richly ceilinged; and in the grounds is a noble cedar of Lebanon, planted in 1670. We look up at the swinging signs of the _Rising Sun_ and the _Crown and Horseshoes_, past all of which Lamb often went, and, doubtless, too often did _not_ get past without going in. It tickled him to urge truly proper people to tipple with him in these two taverns; and even lady-like Miss Kelly--the actress with the “divine, plain face”--and the austere Wordsworth were enticed to enter, and persuaded to have “a pull at the pewter!”