o be a goodly company of an
evening in the coffee room of retired officers and well-to-do people in
the neighbourhood, to play whist and chess, and sometimes all-fours.
There was an ordinary on Sunday at two o'clock, when they gave you a rare
good dinner for two-and-sixpence, including beer.

I well recollect the Kingsleys coming to Chelsea, I think it was about
the year 1832. I know it was near about the "cholera year." The first
time I saw Charles and Henry they were boys about twelve and fourteen. I
met them in the rectory garden at the giving of prizes to the St. Luke's
National School boys, when they were regaled with buns and milk. The
rector and the boys were great favourites with the parishioners as they
were courteous and very free with everybody. I can recognize many of the
characters in "The Hillyars and the Burtons" as old Chelsea inhabitants,
and the description of the mounds and tablets in old Chelsea Church and
the Churchyard, and the outlook over the river is as correct as it well
can be.

Opposite the Church in the corner by the Church draw-dock stood the cage,
and by the side of it the stocks, then came Lombard Street, and the
archway with shops and wharfs all along the riverside up to Battersea
Bridge. At that time there were fishing boats, and fishermen got a
living by catching roach, dace, dabs and flounders, and setting pots for
eels all along Chelsea Reach, and between Battersea Bridge and Putney,
and they would hawk them through the streets of a morning. The eels were
carried in little tubs, as many as eight or ten, one on top of the other,
on the man's head, and sold by the lot in each tub at about sixpence or
eightpence each.

The favourite promenade, especially on a Sunday, was the River Terrace at
the back of Chelsea Hospital. It was thrown open to the public, and you
gained access to it from the gate of the private gardens opposite King
Charles' statue. It consisted of a gravelled terrace and a dwarf wall on
the river side, with two rows of immense elms commencing at the outlet of
Ranelagh Ditch to the river, and ending at the Round House. On the
corner by Ranelagh Ditch stood the College Water Works, with the old
machinery going to decay, that had been used to pump water for the use of
the hospital. This was a grand place, and considered extremely
fashionable, where most of the courting and flirting by the young people
was carried on. The Ranelagh Ditch was the boundary of the