And the naiadlike lily of the vale, Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale, And the hyacinth purple, white, and blue, And the rose, like a nymph to the bath addrest, Shelley CAPTAIN STARKEY To the Editor of the Every-Day Book. Dear Sir, I read your account of this unfortunate Being, and his forlorn piece of self-history, with that smile of half-interest which the Annals of Insignificance excite, till I came to where he says "I was bound apprentice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer and Teacher of languages and Mathematics," &c.-when I started as one does on the recognition of an old acquaintance in a supposed stranger. This then was that Starkey of whom I have heard my Sister relate so many pleasant anecdotes; and whom, never having seen, I yet seem almost to remember. For nearly fifty years she had lost all sight of him-and behold the gentle Usher of her youth, grown into an aged Beggar, dubbed with an opprobrious title, to which he had no pretensions; an object, and a May game! To what base purposes may we not return! What may not have been the meek creature's sufferings-what his wanderings-before he finally settled down in the comparative comfort of an old Hospitaller of the And is poor Almonry of Newcastle? Starkey dead? I was a scholar of that " eminent writer" that he speaks of; but Starkey had quitted the school about a year before I came to it. Still the odour of his merits had left a fragrancy upon the recollection of the elder pupils. The school-room stands where it did, looking into a discoloured He which is so much more terrible to children, than the angriest looks and gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they took place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, whence we could only hear the plaints, This heightened the but saw nothing. But the decorum and the solemnity. ordinary public chastisement was the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that almost obsolete weapon nowthe ferule. A ferule was a sort of flat ruler, widened at the inflicting end into a shape resembling a pear,-but nothing like so sweet-with a delectable hole in the middle, to raise blisters, like a cupping-glass. I have an intense recollection of that disused instrument of torture and the malignancy, in proportion to the apparent mildness, with which its strokes were applied. The idea of a rod is accompanied with something ludicrous; but by no process can I look back upon this blister-raiser with any thing but unmingied horror.-To make him look more formidable-if a pedagogue had need of these heightenings-Bird wore one of those flowered Indian gowns, formerly in use with schoolmasters; the strange figures upon which we used to interpret into hieroglyphics of pain and suffering. But boyish fears apart-Bird I believe was in the main a humane and judicious master. O, how I remember our legs wedged in to those uncomfortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing each other-and the injunctions to attain a free hand, unattainable in that position; the first copy I wrote after, with its moral lesson "Art improves Nature;" the still earlier pothooks and the hangers some traces of which I fear may yet be apparent in this manuscript; the truant looks side-long to the garden, which seemed a mockery of our imprisonment; the prize for best spelling, which had almost turned my head, and which to this day I cannot reflect upon without a vanity, which I ought to be ashamed of our little leaden inkstands, not separately subsisting, but sunk into the desks; the bright, punctu ally-washed morning fingers, darkening gradually with another and another inkspot what a world of little associated circumstances, pains and pleasures mingling their quotas of pleasure, arise at the reading of those few simple words"Mr. William Bird, an eminent Writer and Teacher of languages and mathematics in Fetter Lane, Holborn !" Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar stamp of old-fashionedness in his face, which makes it impossible for a beholder to predicate any particular_age in the object. You can scarce make a guess between seventeen and seven and thirty. This antique cast always seems to promise ill-luck and penury. Yet it 66 seems, he was not always the abject thing he came to. My Sister, who well remembers him, can hardly forgive Mr. Thomas Ranson for making an etching so unlike her idea of him, when he was a youthful teacher at Mr. Bird's school. Old age and poverty-a life-long poverty she thinks, could at no time have so effaced the marks of native gentility, which were once so visible in a face, otherwise strikingly ugly, thin, and care-worn. From her recollections of him, she thinks that he would have wanted bread, before he would have begged or borrowed a halfpenny. If any of the girls (she says) who were my school-fellows should be reading, through their aged spectacles, tidings from the dead of their youthful friend Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do, at ever having teased his gentle spirit. They were big girls, it seems, too old to attend his instructions with the silence necessary; and however old age, and a long state of beggary, seem to have reduced his writing faculties to a state of imbecility, in those days, his language occasionally rose to the bold and figurative, for when he was in despair to stop their chattering, his ordinary phrase was, “ Ladies, if you will not hold your peace, not all the powers in heaven can make you." Once he was missing for a day or two; he had run away. A little old unhappy-looking man brought him back-it was his father -and he did no business in the school that day, but sate moping in a corner, with his hands before his face; and the girls, his tormentors, in pity for his case, for the rest of that day forbore to annoy him. I had been there but a few months (adds she) when Starkey, who was the chief instructor of us girls, communicated to us as a profound secret, that the tragedy of "Cato" was shortly to be acted by the elder boys, and that we were to be invited to the representation. That Starkey lent a helping hand in fashioning the actors, she remembers; and but for his unfortunate person, he might have had some distinguished part in the scene to enact; as it was, he had the arduous task of prompter assigned to him, and his feeble voice was heard clear and distinct, repeating the text during the whole performance. She describes her recollection of the cast of characters even now with a relish. Martia, by the handsome Edgar Hickman, who afterwards went to Africa, and of whom she never afterwards heard tidings,-Lucia, by Master Walker, whose bathing; while there is "ample room and verge enough" for all the sports and delights which "swimmers only know." It is no where so deep as five feet, and on one side only three; the experienced and the inexperienced are alike safe. There is likewise a capacious cold-bath in an adjacent building, for the use of those who prefer a temperature below that of the atmosphere. Peerless Pool is distinguished for having been one of the ancient springs that supplied the metropolis with water, when our ancestors drew that essential element from public conduits; that is to say, before the "old" water-works at Londonbridge" commenced to be," or the "New River" had been brought to London by sir Hugh Myddelton. The streams of this "pool" at that time were conveyed, for the convenience of the inhabitants near Lothbury, through pipes terminating "close to the south-west corner of the church."* Stow speaks of it as a "cleere water, called Perilous Pond, because," says our chronicler, "divers youths, by swimming therein, have been drowned."+ Upon Saterday the 19 of January, 1633, sixe pretty young lads, going to sport themselves upon the frozen Duckingpond, neere to Clearkenwell, the ice too weake to support them, fell into the water, concluding their pastime with the lamentable losse of their lives: to the great griefe of many that saw them dying, many more that afterward saw them dead, with the in-expressible griefe of their parents." In consequence of such accidents, and the worthy inhabitants of Lothbury having obtained their water from other sources, Perilous Pond was entirely filled up, and rendered useless, till Mr. William Kemp," an eminent jeweller and citizen of London," "after ten years' experience of the temperature" of this water, and " the happy success of getting clear of a violent pain of the head by bathing in it, to which he had for many years been subject, was generously led for public benefit" to open the spring in the year 1743, and "to form the completest swimming-bath in the whole world;" and "in reference to the improvements he had made on the ruins of that once Perilous Pond, and by a very natural transition, he changed that disagreeable appellation of Perilous," that is," says Maitland, “dangerous, or kazardous, to the more agreeable name of Peerless Pool, that is, Matchless Bath, a name which carries its own reason with it." Maitland says, that Kemp "spared no expense nor contrivance to render it quite private and retired from public inspection, decent in its regulation, and as genteel in its furniture as such a place could be made." He added a cold-bath, “ generally allowed," says Maitland, "to be the largest in England, being forty feet long, and twenty feet broad; this bath is supplied by a remarkably cold spring, with a convenient room for dressing.' The present cold-bath, faced with marble and paved with stone, was executed by sir William Staines, when he was a journeyman mason. He was afterwards lord mayor of London, and often boasted of this, while he smoked his pipe at the Jacob's-well in Barbican, as amongst his "best work." Kemp's improvements provided an entrance to it across a bowling-green on the south side, through a neat marble pavilion or saloon, thirty feet long, with a large gilt sconce over a marble table. Contiguous to this saloon were the dressing apartments, some of which were open, others were private with doors. There was also a green bower on each side of the bath, divided into other apartments for dressing. At the upper end was a circus-bench, capable of accommodating forty persons, under the cover of a wal. twelve feet high, surmounted on one side by a lofty bank with shrubs, and encircled by a terrace-walk planted with limetrees at the top. The descent to the bath was by four pair of marble stairs, as it still is, to a fine gravel-bottom, through which the springs gently bubbled and supplied, as they do at this time, the entire basin with the crystal fluid. Hither many a "lover and preserver" of health and long life, and many an admirer of calm retreat, resorted "ever and anon :” And in hyghe sommer eueriche daye I wene, * Maitland. ↑ Stow's Survey, edit. 1633, p. 11. ✰ Ibid. p. 782. And in a solempne lyghte, through braunches grene For hys delection he woulde ther' unlace, Wythin an arbre, where bryddes onlie bene The most remarkable feature of Peerless Pool, to the public eye, was a noble fish-pond, constructed by Kemp, due east and west. It was three hundred and twenty feet long, ninety-three feet broad, and eleven feet deep, stocked with carp, tench, and a great variety of the finny tribe, wherein subscribers and frequenters of either the pleasure or the cold-bath were privileged to angle. On each side was a high slope or bank, with thousands of variegated shrubs, terminated at the top by a gravelled walk between stately lime-trees : These beautiful plantations shadow'd all; That the cool water seem'd an open mirror The gentle seasons give the constant earth At the head of the fish-pond, westward, Mr. Kemp expired before his lease; but he left property to his family, and his son in possession of the " Pool," and of his lease. He was not so successful as his father; and after him the premises were held by a person named Taylor, and subsequently by one Crewe. At the expiration of his lease, a new lease upon building terms was obtained of St. Bartholomew's hospital, at a rental of 6001. per annum, by Mr. Joseph Watts, the present occupier and proprietor of the baths, who, to remunerate himself, set about "improving," by draining the fishpond, pulling down Kemp's house, and felling the trees. He built Baldwyn-street on the site of the fish-pond; Bath-buildings on the ground of Kemp's orchard; and erected other adjoining streets; preserving the baths as he found them, and in many respects improving them. The pleasure-bath is still a pleasant spot, and both that and the cold-bath retain their Mr. John Cleghorn, of Chapman-street, Islington, the architectural draftsman and engraver, was resident near Peerless Pool many years. There being no representation of the fish-pond and house, as they remained within the recollection of himself and the editor of the Every-Day Book, this gentleman, whose taste and knowledge of perspective have by the pencil |