History:Although the title does not mention him, 142 Strandis a book about John Chapman, who lived and worked in the building from 1847 to 1854.
The dust jacket, however, bears his name by its insertion, in very small print, together with his occupation of "bookseller and publisher" above the building, in a line drawing of the Strand from John Tallis's London Street Views 1847, which elegantly encases the book. However, the formal elegance of the architecture of the terrace belies the period of Chapman's occupancy, when 142 "became famous for the people who inhabited it, who came and went on business and for the ideas those people espoused and propounded". A contributing factor to this flow of people was the purchase by Chapman of the Westminster Review in 1851 and under his proprietorship it "became the mouthpiece of the most advanced and the most respected thinkers of the day". As Ashton sagely notes, "in 1851, the words 'advanced' and 'respected', though still often in tension, were not mutually exclusive".
Apart from Chapman and his family, the occupants of No 142included one Marian Evans. She had come to Chapman's attention as the translator of Strauss's Life of Jesus, which was a scholarly assault on the authority of the Bible. While the book brought neither the translator nor publisher financial rewards, it did attract a large amount of attention. It was also the means of "bringing Chapman and Marian Evans together in a partnership which offered her the opportunity to write forcefully, wittily and anonymously in the Westminster Review thereby gaining the confidence to try her hand at fiction". This she did as George Eliot.
Chapman was at the centre of "Victorian radicalism in its many manifestations" and 142 Strand was a meeting place for the disparate group of people who proclaimed radical views. However, publishing radical views, whether as a publisher of books or of a quarterly review, is hard labour and not an activity which is likely to make money. Ashton's solid research into contemporary correspondence demonstrates that Chapman was ill-suited to the business side of his occupation, however successful he was in finding radical people with something to say.
Inevitably, Chapman was forced to leave No 142 in order to effect financial savings, but the finances of the Westminster Review remained precarious, with two of the financial backers, one of whom was a Mr Martineau, turning nasty. It is not often that sibling dislike has positive consequences, but Mr Martineau's sister came to the financial rescue primarily out of her dislike of her brother. The Westminster Review was safe, with Chapman as editor.
However, he needed an income as he was no longer a book publisher and was set on developing his other interests, including medicine, of which he became a practitioner. In this capacity he invented a "treatment of disease through the agency of the nervous system by the application of dry cold and heat along the spine". There is a lovely illustration of "Dr Chapman's spine bags" from the second edition of his book, entitled Diarrhoea and Cholera, published in 1866.
Chapman had a wide circle of radical women friends, to whom Ashton devotes a chapter. Nor does she hide the fact that he was a philanderer and not an ideal husband, but, unlike many of his male contemporaries, he was not hypocritical about his activities. He was, however, an eminent Victorian, even if overlooked.
John McBratney is a barrister
142 Strand - A Radical Address in Victorian London: A Biography By Rosemary Ashton Chatto & Windus, 386pp. £20