“There let the feasted eye unwearied stray; Luxurious, there, rove through the pendant woods That nodding hang o’er Harrington’s retreat.”
The view in these pages shows a glimpse of those pendant woods, still flourishing up along the ridge of Richmond Park, but it is now the better part of a hundred years since the Commissioners of Woods and Forests purchased that peer’s old estate, demolished the mansion, and added the land as a very beautiful annexe to Richmond Park. The cottages, with their little gardens, are charming, and would be even more so were they red bricks of which they are built, instead of common yellow stock brick.
I have just now remarked that there are at Petersham those who are numbered of the elect. But it must sadly be admitted that not all in the borough of Richmond, in which we have the doubtful honour of being included, are of the opinion that Petersham is inhabited by the children of light and grace. Indeed, the following remarks of a deleterious and poisonous character, lately brought to my notice, convince me that there exists among some misguided folk up yonder an idea that this most delightful of surviving villages within a short distance of London is inhabited wholly, or at least largely, by the mentally afflicted. This desolating and alarming belief was brought home to me by a friend, who hired a conveyance at Richmond station, to be brought down to our idyllic village.
“Ah!” exclaimed the driver—this was entirely uncalled-for, you know—“you mean balmy Petersham.”
“Yes,” rejoined the unsuspecting stranger, “the air there _is_ good, I suppose.”
“I don’t mean the hair,” he was astonished to be told, “but the people what lives there. Don’t you know that they’re all balmy on the crumpet—what you call ‘off it’?”
My poor friend looked a little astonished at this. I am afraid he is not intimately acquainted with the language of the streets.
“Oh! _you_ know!” continued the man, noticing this air of bewilderment: “they’re dotty, that’s what they are.”
“You mean _non compos mentis_,” rejoined my friend at last, comprehending what was meant, and heroically and waggishly endeavouring to get a bit of his own back, and in turn to mystify this derogatory licensed hackney-driver.