And then there were the
fashionable resorts--the gardens or the fields which the town had marked as
its own. Beauty and wit had their choice of such meeting-grounds between
Westminster and Barn Elms, where in the remote solitudes along the river
murder might be done in strict accordance with etiquette, and was too
seldom punished by law.
Among the rendezvous of fashion there was one retired spot less widely
known than Fox Hall or the Mulberry Garden, but which possessed a certain
repute, and was affected rather by the exclusives than by the crowd. It was
a dilapidated building of immemorial age, known as the "haunted Abbey,"
being, in fact, the refectory of a Cistercian monastery, of which all other
remains had disappeared long ago. The Abbey had flourished in the lifetime
of Sir Thomas More, and was mentioned in some of his familiar epistles.
The ruined building had been used as a granary in the time of Charles the
First; and it was only within the last decade that it had been redeemed
from that degraded use, and had been in some measure restored and made
habitable for the occupation of an old couple, who owned the surrounding
fields, and who had a small dairy farm from which they sent fresh milk into
London every morning.
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