If this picture be considered worth preserving, why expose it so shamefully to injury by suffering it to hang as it does? If, on the contrary, why not at once consign it to the waters of oblivion, by casting it into Chelsea Reach? Mr. Ward’s superior talents have been in numerous instances acknowledged by some of the best judges.
Descending Villiers Street on one of my peregrination mornings, a tremendous storm obliged me to request shelter of Mrs. Scott, the wife of the present keeper of York Terrace, and successor of Hugh Hewson, a man who declared himself to be the genuine character famed by Dr. Smollett in _The Adventures of Roderick Random_, under the appellation of Hugh Strap.[468] Here I met with a young man whose father had attended Hewson’s funeral, who informed me that Hugh had been frequently known to amuse the ambulators of that walk by recapitulating the enterprising events which had taken place during his travels with the Doctor. Hugh, who had for years followed the trade of a hairdresser, was buried in St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and his funeral was attended by three generations.
On my way towards Hungerford Stairs, my organ of inquisitiveness was arrested by two carvings in stone, of a wheatsheaf and sickles, let into either side of the north-end houses in the alley leading to the “The Swan.” A waterman informed me that the south portion of Hungerford Market was originally allotted for the sale of corn, but I have since learned that that device is the crest of the Hungerford family. “Pray now,” said I to my oracle, “do enumerate the signs of Swans remaining on the banks of the Thames, between London and Battersea Bridges.” “Why, let me see, Master, there’s the Old Swan at London Bridge, that’s one;--there’s the Swan in Arundel Street, two;--then ours here, three;--the Swan at Lambeth, that’s down, though;--well then, the Old Swan at Chelsea, but that has long been turned into a brewhouse, though that was where our people rowed to formerly, as mentioned in Doggett’s Will; now they row to the sign of the New Swan beyond the Physic Garden; we’ll say that’s four;--then there’s the two Swan signs at Battersea, six.”[469]
Next evening, away I trudged to take water with George Heath (Mathews’s Joe Hatch) at Strand Lane. “I find the Swan to be your usual sign up the river,” said I.