A Walk from London to FulhamCroker, Thomas Crofton
History
A Walk from London to Fulham
Croker, Thomas Crofton
London (England) -- Description and travel
“To be sold by auction, the household goods, plate, china ware,
linen, &c., of Sir James Wishart, deceased, on Thursday the 18th
instant, at his late dwelling-house at Little Chelsea. The goods to
be seen this day, to-morrow, and Wednesday, before the sale, from 9
to 12 in the morning, and from 3 to 7 in the evening. Catalogues to
be had at the sale.
“N.B. A coach and chariot to be sold, and the house to be let.”
Admiral Sir John Balchen resided at Little Chelsea soon after Sir James
Wishart’s death. In 1744, Admiral Balchen perished in the Victory, of
120 guns, which had the reputation of being the most beautiful ship in
the world, but foundered, with eleven hundred souls on board, in the Bay
of Biscay.
On the 31st of March, 1723, Edward Hyde, the third Earl of Clarendon,
died “at his house, Little Chelsea;” but where the earl’s house stood I
am unable to state.
Mrs. Robinson, the fascinating “Perdita,” tells us, in her autobiography,
that, at the age of ten (1768), she was “placed for education in a school
at Chelsea.” And she then commences a most distressing narrative, in
which the last tragic scene she was witness to occurred at Little
Chelsea.
“The mistress of this seminary,” Mrs. Robinson describes as “perhaps
one of the most extraordinary women that ever graced, or disgraced,
society. Her name was Meribah Lorrington. She was the most
extensively accomplished female that I ever remember to have met
with; her mental powers were no less capable of cultivation than
superiorly cultivated. Her father, whose name was Hull, had from her
infancy been master of an academy at Earl’s Court, near Fulham; and
early after his marriage, losing his wife, he resolved on giving this
daughter a masculine education. Meribah was early instructed in all
the modern accomplishments, as well as in classical knowledge. She
was mistress of the Latin, French, and Italian languages; she was
said to be a perfect arithmetician and astronomer, and possessed the
art of painting on silk to a degree of exquisite perfection. But,
alas! with all these advantages, she was addicted to one vice, which
at times so completely absorbed her faculties as to deprive her of
every power, either mental or corporeal. Thus, daily and hourly, her
superior acquirements, her enlightened understanding, yielded to the
intemperance of her ruling infatuation, and every power of reflection
seemed absorbed in the unfeminine propensity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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