Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/23

Rh at all tides, was used to board the ships moored to the wall. This wall was furnished with steps at intervals. It marked the southern limits of Southwark. An embankment at the top allowed the passers-by to rest their elbows on the Effroc Wall, as on the parapet of a quay. Thence they could look down on the Thames; on the other side of the river Loudon dwindled away into fields.

A little way up the river above the Effroc Wall, at the bend in the Thames which is nearly opposite St. James's Palace, behind Lambeth House, not far from the walk then called Foxhall (Vauxhall, probably), there was, between a pottery in which they made porcelain, and a glass-blower's where they made ornamental bottles, one of those large unenclosed spaces covered with grass, called formerly in France cultures and mails, and in England bowling-greens. Of bowling-green, a green on which to roll a ball, the French have made boulingrin. Folks have this green inside their houses nowadays, only it is put on the table, is a cloth instead of turf, and is called billiards.

It is difficult to see why, having boulevard (boulevert), which is the same word as bowling-green, the French should have adopted boulingrin. It is surprising that anything as sensible as the Dictionary should indulge in useless luxuries.

The bowling-green of Southwark was called Tarrinzeau Field, because it once belonged to the Barons Hastings, who are also Barons Tarrinzeau and Mauchline. From the Lords Hastings the Tarrinzeau Field passed to the Lords Tadcaster, who made a speculation of it, just as, at a later date, a Duke of Orleans made a speculation of the Palais Royal. Tarrinzeau Field afterwards became waste ground and parochial property. Tarrinzeau Field was a kind of permanent fair-ground, frequented by