A Tree with a Tale to Tell

In September, while in London, I had to pay a visit to my UK Tax accountants close to St. Paul’s Cathedral. I arrived a little early and so was able to explore a part of the old City of London that I barely knew. Situated off Cheapside, is Wood Street and there, next to my Tax Accountants’ office stands, what is reputed to be the oldest tree in London.

Originally there had been a church, St. Peter’s (West) Cheap, on the site but it was burned in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but not rebuilt. However, an area of the graveyard remained in that is where this magnificent plane tree was planted certainly by the 18th century, though no-one knows for sure.

William Wordsworth mentions the tree in a poem about Poor Susan in 1797:

At the corner of Wood-Street, when day-light appears,
There's a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years.
Poor Susan has pass'd by the spot and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripp'd with her pail,
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The only one dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in Heaven, but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade;
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all pass'd away from her eyes.

Poor Outcast! return—to receive thee once more
The house of thy Father will open its door,
And thou once again, in thy plain russet gown,
Mayst hear the thrush sing from a tree of its own.

Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon

Wordsworth, although a frequent visitor to London, preferred to live in the Lake District nearly three hundred miles further north. Today the area is thronged with summer tourists but in the 18th century it was then considered to be a wild and remote part of the country. However, at the end of the century, the region’s magnificent beauty inspired not only Wordsworth but his friend Coleridge to move there, later to be joined by Robert Southey and Harriet Martineau. For many years the Wordsworths lived at Rydal Mount just outside Ambleside.

Less than ten miles to the southeast, lived the Harrisons, who were my great-great grandparents. Their estate, Hundhow, had been purchased in 1695 and it is just outside Staveley. Here is what it looked like over a century ago.

Both William Wordsworth and Harriet Martineau exchanged gifts and letters with the Harrisons.

Harriet Martineau by Augustus Egg

In one letter, Martineau invites the Harrisons for a visit and says that they will also see the Wordsworths. Also, Martineau thanks Mrs. Harrison for a gift of plants that she had received via Mrs. Wordsworth.

In one of the Wordsworth letters from 1846, William regrets that he has not seen much of ‘Little Louisa’, then a teenager, who was visiting Ambleside. In 1851 Louisa began her book of Receipts, or recipe book as we would call it now. She continued writing in it throughout her life until her death in 1902.

She married Thomas Collier and they were my great grandparents.

One of the first recipes is for Portuguese Tart, which she entered only a few weeks after beginning the book:

Portuguese Tart

From Miss Louisa Harrison’s Recipe Book, Hundow, begun February 21st 1851.

Line a dish with puff pastry, thick at the edges, scoop the cores out of 4 or 6 apples, fill them with plum or strawberry jam, put the apples in the dish, lay a slice of candied citron on the top of each, bake 1 hour and ¼, when partly done pour over the apples a rich custard, brown it at the top, and sift grated sugar over it. A moderate oven is required. Bread and butter cut thin is an excellent substitute for puff pastry in lining the dish. March 7th, 1851.

I must confess that I have not yet made this, but I am certainly intrigued enough to give it a try.