CHAPTER I.
PICCADILLY.
“By night or by day, whether noisy or stilly,
Whatever my mood is—I love Piccadilly.”
Locker-Lampson.
Dr. Johnson in one of his rhetorical flights said that Charing Cross was practically the centre of the universe. “I think,” he observed to Boswell, on a celebrated occasion, “the full tide of human existence is at Charing Cross.” Theodore Hook, on the other hand, considered that that small area in St. James’s, bounded by Piccadilly and Pall Mall, St. James’s Street and Waterloo Place, was the acme of fashion, and contained within itself all that was best worth cultivating in the Metropolis.
Like all generalizations, neither of these dicta will bear the test of logical analysis. Hook’s favourite quarter has undergone many a change, and its present-day equivalent is more likely to be found in that larger area known to all the world as Mayfair. Similarly, although much of the tide of human existence still flows past the spot where Queen Eleanor’s body rested for the last time, on its way to the Abbey, that tide flows as fully and with as much noisy vehemence past half a hundred other crowded spots in London. It is probable, however, that at no one point does it surge and rage (to carry on the metaphor), with greater force than at the spot where Piccadilly and Bond Street join. At this spot stands “Stewart’s”—famed all the world over. I say “Stewart’s,” as I should say in Venice, “Florian’s,” or in New York, “Delmonico’s”; for there are certain famous establishments in all great cities which require no more specific designation.
Who is there, indeed, that knows not Stewart’s? It has been presiding over this corner for the last two hundred years and more. It must be the oldest baker’s and confectioner’s business in London, beside which even such ancient houses as “Birch’s” or “Gunter’s” are comparatively modern. To-day it bears upon its rebuilt front, the date of its establishment—1688, and the massive foundations and old brickwork, which were brought to light during the recent rebuilding, fully support the theory that this was one of the original buildings erected by Sir Thomas Bond on the site of Clarendon House, when he laid out the street which bears his name.
Let us take this shop, as characteristic of many others, and try to recall what it may have witnessed in the lapse of years. In its early days it was, no doubt, too much occupied with its own affairs to take much note of great personages or historic events; but after it had settled down, so to speak, and had become, as it did, the purveyor of the staff of life to the Coffee-houses that had sprung up around it, it may be supposed to have given an eye, now and then, to the interesting men and beautiful women who passed by, or who made it a rendezvous while some of them waited for those who were spending or making fortunes in the gambling hells of St. James’s Street hard by.
Stewart’s Corner
Old Bond Sᵗ & Piccadilly
REBVILT 1907.
The Augustan age is here! Can that little shrivelled body limping along, having just come from its lodging in Berkeley Street, contain the great mind of Alexander Pope? Surely ’tis he, having but this moment penned a letter to Martha Blount, or put the finishing touches to his “Farewell to London.” He is probably on his way to visit my lord Burlington, whose home (the precursor of the later mansion built by his great grandson, and now known by the massive buildings of the modern Burlington House), is close by. Horace Walpole tells us that when asked why he built his mansion so far out of town, the first Earl replied, “Because he was determined to have no building beyond him!” Credite posteri! but he meant, and should have added, “to the north,” which is, in itself, wonderful enough for us to realize now, for Clarendon House and Berkeley House were already in existence to the west. Could it have been Pope, who asked the question? It seems likely, for we remember the anecdote of the irate gentleman who being in the poet’s company and required to give a definition of “a point of interrogation,” replied “that it was a little crooked thing that asked questions!”
And then that fine looking man in the full bottomed wig, can that be Mr. Addison of the Spectator, fresh from his lodgings in the Haymarket hard by, and still glowing in the reflected glory of “The Campaign?” None other. And lo! here is the handsome face of his hero, who “taught the doubtful battle where to rage,” as he hobbles along (he will soon be off to Bath to try and cure his gout)—fit indeed, monstrari digito, for other things besides his military glory. He will not turn in at Stewart’s we may be sure, for if the “tears of dotage” have not yet begun to flow, at least he is learning to save his money.
Here, too, comes jolly Dick Steele; he has just been into a coffee house to pen a line of excuse to his “dearest Prue,” in Kensington Square, and is on his way to a jollification with some of his boon companions; forgetful of his “Apology,” and hardly living up to the ethics of his “Christian Hero.” Still with all his faults, a pleasanter figure to meet than that dark-faced, dissatisfied-looking man in clerical attire. That is the redoubtable Dean Swift himself, one of the great geniuses, not only of his own day, but of all time. He knows this part of the town as well as he knows all the turns and twists of contemporary politics; and has probably come from his rooms in Ryder Street almost opposite. Wherever he is he will be penning that famous “Journal to Stella,” or plotting and planning with the heads of the Opposition—and there is no clearer or more potent brain among them. If he goes into the St. James’ Coffee House, or White’s Chocolate House, “the most fashionable hell in London,” or trudges further east to Willis’s, in Bow Street, be sure there will be plenty to note his strange manner and call him “the mad parson!” Perchance he may be taking the air to prepare himself for that particular dinner with my Lord Abercorn when there smoked upon the board the “fine fat haunch of venison, that smelt rarely on one side,” which he mentions, with such gusto, in his journal; or perhaps he is setting out on one of his long rambles to Chelsea to dine with the Dean of Carlisle, or to sup with Lord Mountjoy at Kensington Gravel Pits.
An observant traveller who visited London about this period, remarks that “Most of the streets are wonderfully well lighted, for in front of each house hangs a lantern or a large globe of glass, inside of which is placed a lamp which burns all night.” The light which hung before “Stewart’s” must have illuminated the face of many a “toast,” many a “Macaroni,” as they came up Bond Street, and sometimes that of one of those terrible “mohocks.” My Lord Mohun, not yet dreaming of his sanguinary and fatal encounter with his grace of Hamilton, but sufficiently notorious for that mysterious affair when Mountfort the player fell mortally wounded near his lodging in Norfolk Street; the eccentric Duke of Wharton, who once sent a bear to his tutor as an appropriate concomitant to his “bearish conduct”; who, marrying at sixteen, became a sort of Jacobite hero, and showed by some of his writings in “The True Briton,” what gifts he had squandered by a riotous life; and who finally ended his career in a Bernardine Convent, “the scorn and wonder of our days,” as Pope writes, “a sad outcast of each church and state.” Hervey, the “Sporus” of the same bitter pen, having dragged himself for a space from the Court, of which he was so characteristic an ornament, and from the company of the Princess who secretly loved him. Perhaps he will to-morrow fight, behind Arlington House, hard by, with Pulteney, who called him “a thing below contempt.” That slip of the foot at the critical moment saved the “thin-spun life,” and like so many protagonists in such encounters, the whilom enemies embrace, with more fervour on Pulteney’s part than on that of “My Lord” who but bows in silence and withdraws.
And then what a galaxy of beauty reflects the light from that “lantern or large globe of glass!” Here is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, not very much affected by the virulent lines of the “wicked wasp of Twickenham”; the lovely Molly Lepel, who married Lord Hervey, and whom Lady Suffolk loved so much; Mary Bellenden, afterwards Mrs. Campbell, another of those maids of honour whom Gay and Prior sung, and Swift and Arbuthnot undertook to prove the best wives, although we remember that the coachman at Leicester House solemnly forbade his son ever to think of any of them in so tender a way! Here, too, is Lady Mary Coke, who was used to almost regard herself as a royal widow, on the death of Edward Duke of York—for which “mealy faced boy” she had a “tendre”; the Duchess of Queensberry, Prior’s “Kitty ever fair,” whom Walpole thought looked “(by twilight) like a young beauty of an old-fashioned century,” and who died in Savile Row, in 1777, “of a surfeit of cherries.”
The list might be indefinitely extended, but “Anni labuntur” and other centuries are hurrying us along, bringing new faces in their train; George Selwyn with his witty talk and mania for executions; he is off now, probably to see John Rann, or “Sixteen-stringed Jack,” as he was called, strung up at Tyburn tree—my Lord Pembroke accompanies him, and the cronies chancing to meet a lot of young chimney sweeps who beg for money, Selwyn suddenly addresses them solemnly with the words “I have often heard of the sovereignty of the people. I suppose your highnesses are in Court mourning;” Charles James Fox, the most eminent of those “sons of faro,” who having lost his last penny and consoled himself by reading Homer in the small hours, is thinking of a “passover” to the Continent, which, as Selwyn says, will not be relished by the Jews; Lord March may also be seen, the wicked “old Q” of many a notorious story; and Hare—“the hare with many friends,” as his acquaintances nick-named him; and then the dandies of a later day; Alvanley, who succeeded Selwyn as a wit and almost rivalled Brummell as a dandy; “Ball” Hughes and “Teapot” Crawfurd; Lord Yarmouth and Prince Esterhazy; Jack Lee, and the great Brummell himself, who has cut the Regent and is thinking of bringing the old king into fashion!
These, and how many others, have not passed by that corner in Piccadilly where Stewart’s stands; they are but the ghosts of the beauties and exquisites of a bygone day that loiter there—for in this strenuous age no one dawdles—all is hurry and confusion, and the idle stroller, other than Thespian, is almost a thing of the past. Let us for the moment try to imitate our forbears and “take a walk down Piccadilly.”
What changes have not taken place in this street of streets! It was known by the quaint name it still bears as early as 1633, for Gerarde in his famous Herbal, mentions “the wild bu-glosse,” that “grows about the drie ditch-bankes about Pickadilla.” This is not the place to go into the mysteries of nomenclature, and many have been the theories as to the origin of the name; but that is probably the correct solution which traces it to the ruffs called Pickadils, worn by the gallants of James’s and Charles’s time. Blount in his “Glossography” (1656) thus speaks of the matter: “A Pickadil is that round hem, or the several divisions set together about the skirt of a garment or other thing; also a kind of stiff collar, made in fashion of a band. Hence, perhaps, the famous ordinary near St. James’s, called Pickadilly, took denomination, because it was then the utmost, or skirt house of the suburbs, that way.”
Thus Blount, and I think we may leave it at that. We shall return later on to the “famous ordinary,” which was known as Pickadilla Hall, and was situated at the north-east corner of the Haymarket: now we are on our way west, like the wise men of old.[1]
ALBEMARLE STREET.
The first tributary street we come to is Albemarle Street, formed, at the same time as Bond Street, about 1684, by Sir Thomas Bond, on the site of Clarendon House, which the great Lord Clarendon built from the designs of Pratt, according to Evelyn, on ground which had been granted him by Charles II., in 1664. The Diarist had “never seen a nobler pile,” and he had every opportunity for criticising it thoroughly as, on one occasion, the Chancellor himself showed him all over it; and the extant views of it fully confirm Evelyn’s enthusiasm. The populace, however, saw in the great place the results of bribery and corruption, and Dunkirk House, Holland House, and Tangier House, were titles freely applied to it. On Clarendon’s death, the house was sold (1675) to the second duke of Albemarle (the son of the great Monk) for £26,000 (it had cost £40,000 originally). In consequence of extravagance in all sorts of ways, however, its new owner was not long able to keep it, and he in turn sold it, it is said, for £20,000, to Sir Thomas Bond, who pulled it down and built Albemarle Street (then called Albemarle Buildings), and Bond Street on its site. Evelyn, on September 18th, 1683, notes that he “walked to survey the sad demolition of Clarendon House, that costly and only sumptuous palace of the late Lord Chancellor Hyde,” “where,” he adds, “I have often been so cheerful with him and sometimes so sad.”
Clarendon Hovse
(From a print of the period.)
Albemarle Street, “of excellent new buildings, inhabited by persons of quality,” as the New View of London (1708) describes it, has had some interesting inhabitants. Here, in 1712, Sir William Wyndham and his family escaped in their night clothes from the fire that destroyed his house, for which he had given £6,000, as he told Swift, when many rare pictures and other valuables were destroyed; here, in Lord Grantham’s house, lived for a time the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II., until he moved to Leicester House. Bishop Berkeley was lodging at Mr. Fox’s (an apothecary’s) in this street, from 1724 to 1726, as he records in his “Literary Relics,” and Sir Richard Mead, who formed that fine collection of drawings subsequently added to the Royal Collection, resided here in 1720.
Many years later the Duc de Nivernois was lodging in the street, and here received on one occasion Gibbon “more as a man of letters than as a man of fashion,” much to the latter’s chagrin. Lord Bute, another minister who became, as Clarendon had done, an object of popular hatred, was living here in 1764; and there is a story told by Lord Malmesbury, that when a Mr. Calvert asked in the House of Commons “Where is Athens? What is become of Lacedæmon?” some member of the Opposition called out that “they had gone to Albemarle Street.”
It is obviously possible to do little more than mention the names of some of the other distinguished residents in Albemarle Street. Here lived Zoffany, the painter, who executed, about this period, a portrait of Wilkes, “looking—no, squinting—at his daughter,” as Walpole records: Robert Adam, the architect of so many fine dwellings, died here, in 1792, and his brother James two years later, at No. 13; Charles James Fox was living here when Rogers first knew him; Sir James Mackintosh was at No. 26, on his return from India in 1811, and “Leonidas” Glover, died in a house here, in 1785.
Albemarle Street has been noted for its hotels. Here was Dorant’s, where Byron stayed, when he was publishing his “Hours of Idleness”; and the famous Grillion’s, where Louis XVIII. in exile held his Court.
The name of Byron brings us appropriately enough to No. 50, Albemarle Street—for here the great publishing firm of Murray, so closely connected with his name, has been settled since John Murray removed hither from Fleet Street, in 1812.
The columnar façade of the Royal Institution, the work of Vulliamy, forms a curiously solemn note in Albemarle Street, but its importance as a great scientific centre more than justifies its severe, almost melancholy, appearance.
DOVER STREET.
Dover Street, to which we come a few steps further west, was built about 1686, and was named after Henry Jermyn, Lord Dover. He lived in a house which was subsequently advertised for sale in the “Daily Journal” for January, 1727. It would appear that after his death his widow had been residing here, for the notice indicates that the cause of the sale was that lady’s decease. Mention is particularly made of a beautiful staircase painted by Laguerre, as well as “all manner of conveniences for a great family.” The house was on the east side, and not far from it, Evelyn came to dwell in 1699, having taken the lease of a residence on the same side of the street. That mad Duke of Wharton whom I have already mentioned, also lived in Dover Street, “in a most sumptuous building, finely finished and furnished”; so did the great Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, as well as his son, the second Earl, who married the heiress of the Duke of Newcastle. Pope used to stay here as a guest at this time; and as Arbuthnot was also living in the same street these two friends would often, we are to suppose, discuss that “half pint of claret” which the latter humorously told Pope, he could still afford. Another of this coterie, Bolingbroke, was wont to lodge at “Mr. Chetwynd’s,” as Gay informs Swift, probably with a view to a philosophic, albeit, a merry meeting there. Sir William Wyndham was also a former resident; so was Miss Reynolds, the sister of Sir Joshua, whom Johnson used to visit; Lord King, the biographer of Locke; Archdeacon Coxe, who wrote ponderous tomes about Sir Robert Walpole and the House of Austria, and Nash, the architect, who built the more imposing portion of Regent Street.
But the two most interesting houses were (for one has disappeared, and its site is covered by a mushroom block of red brick flats, and although the other still remains, it is empty and will probably soon go the way of all old buildings) Ashburnham House and Ely House.
The former, with its gateway and lodge designed by Robert Adam in 1773, was the town house of the Earls of Ashburnham, but others beside that family occasionally inhabited it, and for a time it was the Russian Embassy; Prince Lieven being the first ambassador residing here, and Pozzo di Borgo the last.
Ely House, designed by Sir Robert Taylor, has been, since 1772, the town residence of the Bishops of Ely, and was conveyed to that See in exchange for Ely Place, Holborn.
Dover Street has always been rather famous for its hotels, and in this respect at least, its reputation is well sustained. Le Telier’s was one of the older ones, and is notable as being the house to which the Literary Club moved from Sackville Street, before going into St. James’s Street.
THE WHITE HORSE CELLAR.
Just before we reach Berkeley Street, we come to Hatchett’s Restaurant, the old “White Horse Cellar,” so named from the emblem in the crest of the House of Hanover. The old original “White Horse Cellar,” whence in the good old days the coaches left on their way to the west, stood nearly opposite, close to Arlington Street. As may be seen from old sporting prints, the outside of the original house was covered on particular occasions with oil lights of various colours—lights which many a jaded traveller must have seen with pleasure, and many a fresh one left with regret. One of these occasions was the King’s birthday, when the coachmen and guards donned new scarlet liveries, and even the coaches were touched up. Sir Vincent Cotton, Capt. Probyn, Lord Worcester and Sir Thomas Jones were among the amateur whips who frequently handled the ribbons and tooled their coaches down the intricacies of Piccadilly; and we can quite believe Hazlitt when he says that “the finest sight in the metropolis is the setting off of the mail coaches from Piccadilly.”
THE WHITE HORSE CELLAR—HATCHETT’S RESTAURANT—PICCADILLY
(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank.)
How many of us would not have given a good round sum to have seen Mr. Pickwick laboriously climb on to the top of the vehicle which was to carry him to Bath, or Sam Weller’s surprise when he observed the name of “Pickwick” painted on the coach door; or “the young man of the name of Guppy,” meeting Esther Summerson here on her arrival in London one foggy afternoon in November; or Jerry Hawthorn “fairly knocked up by all the excitement, getting into the coach”—being one of six inside, “what time his friends shake him by the hand, whilst the Jews hang round with oranges, knives and sealing wax, whilst the guard is closing the door.” All we can do is to rehabilitate the scene of the former from Dickens’s pen; and to imagine ourselves watching the latter in Cruickshank’s drawing.
Another hostelry from which coaches departed on their long journeys was the “Gloucester Coffee House,” kept by one Dale, which stood where the Berkeley Hotel, formerly known as the St. James’s Hotel, is now; and “The Green Man and Still” was yet another house of call for the coaches that went westward.
BERKELEY STREET.
Berkeley Street, formerly known as Berkeley Row, boasts one or two interesting residents in the past. Here Cosway dwelt, and it was here that he first attracted the notice of the Prince of Wales, whose portrait he “drew in little” so often and so successfully. In the same house, too, had previously lived Shackleton, the portrait painter; and it was to a residence here that Mr. Chaworth was carried after his duel with Lord Byron (the great uncle of the Lord Byron), which took place at the “Star and Garter,” in Pall Mall, over a dispute as to the best way of preserving game. Lord Byron, the survivor, underwent his trial in Westminster Hall, but was acquitted, and a certain French traveller, M. Grosley, who was present at the trial, saw his lordship a few days later taking part in the debate on the Regency Bill, as if nothing had happened.
DEVONSHIRE HOUSE.
The long front of Devonshire House, with its fine gates, which were originally at the Duke’s place at Chiswick, now faces us. It was erected from the designs of Kent, for the third Duke of Devonshire, two years after Berkeley House had been burnt down (in 1733). Its beautiful grounds are only divided from those of Lansdowne House by Lansdowne Passage, a short cut, sunk below the ground level, from Curzon Street to Hay Hill. There are iron bars at each end of this passage, and probably few people know why they were placed there. As a matter of fact, they were put up in consequence of a mounted highwayman in the eighteenth century, after having got away from Piccadilly with some booty, riding his horse through this passage and up the steps at the end. Thomas Grenville is the authority for this anecdote, and the robber was seen galloping past his residence in Bolton Street.
THE GLOUCESTER COFFEE HOUSE, PICCADILLY.
Devonshire House is one of the great houses of London, and is full of Art treasures, a list of which alone would fill a volume; particularly remarkable is the collection of drawings by the old masters, which includes the original “Liber Veritatis” of Claude de Lorraine; and a superb collection of engravings by Marc Antonio—to mention but these. In the library is the great Kemble collection of old plays, including the first four folios of Shakespeare’s works, &c., which the sixth Duke bought for £2,000. What are they not worth now?
The portico replaced, in 1840, the old entrance which was by a flight of steps on each side; and among the other improvements made by the sixth Duke was the addition of a fine marble staircase up which all the great ones of several generations have passed, from the days when the beautiful Duchess welcomed Fox here, and the Prince Regent, “surrounded by the first Whig families in the country,” stood to see the apotheosis of the “man of the people” after the Westminster election, to days within memory, when Dickens and his friends acted here for charity.
STRATTON STREET.
Beyond Devonshire House is Stratton Street, which is, of course, named after Lord Berkeley, the hero of Stratton fight. Although there have been one or two interesting people living in this street in the past, such as Campbell, the poet, who was here in 1802; James Douglas, the author of “Nenia Britannica”; and Lord Lynedoch, who was second in command in the Peninsula, the chief interest attaching to it is the fact that at No. 1, which belonged to Coutts, the banker, and looks on to Piccadilly, lived for many years, until her death quite recently, the venerable Baroness Burdett-Coutts. The house next door, No. 80, Piccadilly, with its old-fashioned front and painted glass windows to the ground floor rooms, was for many years the residence of her father, Sir Francis Burdett, and it was from here that, in 1810, he was taken to the Tower. For two days he successfully barricaded himself in the house, but entrance being eventually forced, he was found, somewhat theatrically, teaching one of his children Magna Charta. The riots consequent on this incarceration are mentioned at length in many of the letters and diaries of the period; and the soldiers, for their share in suppressing them, were termed “Piccadilly Butchers.”
The house next door (No. 81) stands on the site of the celebrated Watier’s Club, established in 1807. Watier had been cook to the Prince of Wales, and although his gastronomic skill was unquestionable, and although Brummell was the presiding genius (or, was it because of that fact?), the club, which had been the ruin of many a member, only existed for about 12 years, according to Gronow, whose well-known story of its origin, may be repeated here:—
“Upon one occasion some gentlemen of both White’s and Brookes’s had the honour to dine with the Prince Regent, and, during the conversation, the Prince inquired what sort of dinner they got at their clubs, upon which Sir Thomas Stepney, one of the guests, observed, ‘that their dinners were always the same, the eternal joints or beefsteaks, the boiled fowl with oyster sauce, and an apple-tart; this is what we have at our clubs, and very monotonous fare it is.’ The Prince, without further remark, rang the bell for his cook, Watier, and in the presence of those who dined at the Royal table, asked him whether he would take a house and organize a dinner-club. Watier assented, and named Madison, the Prince’s page, manager, and Labourie, from the Royal kitchen, the cook.”
It was here that once, on Brummell’s calling with a tragic air to a waiter to bring a pistol, for he had been losing heavily, one of the members, Bob Leigh, who proved to be mad, said, “Mr. Brummell, if you really wish to put an end to your existence, I am extremely happy to offer you the means,” at the same time producing two loaded pistols from his pockets and laying them on the table; and here, too, Jack Bouverie threw his bowl of counters at the head of Raikes who had been making some ill-timed jests at his losses.
BOLTON STREET.
Bolton Street here joins Piccadilly. Formed in 1699, it was described by Hatton, a few years later, as “the most westerly street in London, between the road to Knightsbridge, south, and the Fields, north.” Here both Martha and Theresa Blount once lived, and were called the “Young Ladies in Bolton Street” by their admirer, Pope. The poet not only visited them here, but was also occasionally the guest of the eccentric Earl of Peterborough, who lived in the same street for fourteen years, from 1710. George Grenville, also resided in Bolton Street, as did another politician, Lord Melbourne; and at least three notable ladies are connected with this vicinity, Fanny Burney (Madame D’Arblay), who came to live in the street in 1818, shortly after the death of General D’Arblay, and was visited by Scott and Rogers and many another fashionable and literary notabilities; Mrs. Delany, who lived in the adjoining Bolton Row in 1753; and Mrs. Vesey, whose evening parties probably kept the quieter denizens of the street awake o’nights.
If, as is sometimes reported, Prince Charles Edward really did pay a visit to London in 1760, and was present at the Coronation, then he set out for the Abbey from a house in Bolton Street, for here he is said to have lodged, without even “the semblance of a kingly crown” about his brows.
BATH HOUSE.
When Horace Walpole, who loved not his father’s old enemy, Lord Bath, wrote on one occasion that “the grass grows just before my Lord Bath’s door, whom nobody will visit,” he indicated the large house still known as Bath House which occupies much of the western side of Bolton Street, and which was originally built by William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, on whom so many bitter epigrams were written, and whose parsimony was so notorious. As an example of the former, I may remind the reader of those lines “written on the Earl of Bath’s door in Piccadilly,” by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, which run thus:
“Here dead to fame lives patriot Will,
His grave a lordly seat,
His title proves his epitaph,
His robes his winding sheet.”
As a proof of the latter, is extant the story that having visited Holkham, and forgetting to tip the servants, a pang of conscience spurred his lordship to send back a horseman six miles, with half a crown. An even better illustration of his ostentation and meanness combined is preserved by George Colman, who relates that when driving through the lodge gates of his country house, word would be given to halt; the outriders repeated the order, the coachman pulled up his four horses, and from the becoronetted carriage, William Pulteney, Earl of Bath, Viscount Pulteney, of Evington, Baron of Hedon, P.C., F.R.S., etc., etc., would stretch forth his arm and drop into the palm of the curtseying gatekeeper—a halfpenny!
After Lord Bath’s death, his brother and inheritor of his vast fortune, occupied Bath House for three years, when he also departing to the land of shades (Charon got but small tips from these Adelphi it may be presumed), the place was let to the Duke of Portland. In 1821, Alexander Baring bought it and rebuilt the mansion. He was created Lord Ashburton fourteen years later, and was the head of the great banking house, which the Duc de Richelieu once said was the sixth great power in Europe. Under the Ashburton régime, Carlyle, who was more friendly with Lady Ashburton than Mrs. Carlyle always approved of, was a frequent visitor here. In our days it has been the town house of the millionaire Baron Hirsch, and is now the residence of Sir Julius Wernher, so that it would appear to have always been associated with worldly riches and well-known names.
CLUBS OF PICCADILLY.
At this point begins that remarkable series of clubs for which Piccadilly is almost as famous as Pall Mall; indeed, between the United Empire Club at No. 84, and the Lyceum, at No. 128, there are a good baker’s dozen of these “assemblies of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions,” as Dr. Johnson defined them. Those in this quarter of the town are for the most part comparatively modern, and I believe I am right in saying that not one of their names will be found included in Timbs’ interesting work on “Clubs and Club Life.” It would form but monotonous reading to set them all down here, and I should be arrogating to myself by doing so the functions of the compiler of Directories were I to attempt it, but as we go along, one or two will require a word chiefly from the fact of their inhabiting houses which are otherwise interesting.
CLARGES STREET.
Clarges Street, however, for a moment, intervenes before we come to one of them. It was formed between 1716 and 1718, by Sir Walter Clarges, on ground adjoining Clarges House, the residence of his father, Sir Thomas, who, it will be remembered, was the brother-in-law of the great Duke of Albemarle. Like all the streets in this neighbourhood, it is connected with many a well-known name; Mrs. Delany, the friend of George III. and Queen Charlotte; Miss O’Neil, the beautiful actress, who nearly extinguished Mrs. Charles Kemble, and created a furore by her rendering of “Juliet” at the Dublin theatre; Edmund Kean, whom no one could extinguish, and who is said to have kept a tame puma in his house; the beautiful Emma Hart, better known as Lady Hamilton; William Mitford, who wrote the story of Grecian prowess, and was himself a Colonel of Militia; Mrs. Carter, that learned lady, who introduced Epictetus to the unlearned; and Lord Macaulay, who remembered everything, and was called by Lord Melbourne “a book in breeches,” highly to the amusement of Queen Victoria. These are some of the great ones who have left their record on the houses in Clarges Street.
HALF MOON STREET.
Half Moon Street, close by, which takes its name from an old inn with this sign, one of the many public houses which at one time congregated in this quarter, of which the “Hercules Pillars,” the “Swan,” the “Golden Lion,” the “Horse Shoe,” the “Barleymow,” and the “White Horse,” may be mentioned—was formed about 1730. Boswell once lodged here, and on his own shewing, gave admirable dinners, “and some claret,” to such as Hume and Franklin; Garrick and Oglethorpe. Madame D’Arblay’s last residence was also here, over a linen-draper’s shop; and here, “in a little, projecting window,” might once have been seen “all day long, book in hand, with lively gestures and bright eyes,” the poet Shelley; so that someone said he only wanted a pan of water and some fresh turf “to look like a young lady’s bird, hanging outside for air and song.” Here, too, it was, while stepping into her carriage, that the notorious Lola Montes, was arrested in 1849, on a charge of bigamy.
CAMBRIDGE HOUSE.
For a moment a break in the succession of tributary streets, gives us pause to return to some of the more interesting houses in Piccadilly itself; and one of the most noticeable of these is that once known as Cambridge House, but now as the Naval and Military or “In and Out” Club, the latter colloquial designation having its simple origin in the large “In” and “Out” directions for drivers, at its two entrances. This fine house has had at least four names, for, besides those given, it was originally known as Egremont House, and later as Cholmondeley House. It took its first title from the second Earl of Egremont, who died here in 1763 “of an apoplexy, which from his figure was reasonably to be expected,” writes Lord Chesterfield. The third Earl, whom Mrs. Delany thought “a pretty man,” and even Horace Walpole allowed to be handsome, also lived here for a time. The name of the house was changed to Cholmondeley House when the first Marquis of Cholmondeley was residing here. He had been Chamberlain to the Prince of Wales in 1795, and was, after George IV.’s accession, Lord Steward of the Household; he died in 1827, and some years later the old Duke of Cambridge (father of the late Duke) came to reside here, when the designation of the house was again changed to that of its owner.
Many are the good stories told of His Royal Highness and his habit (like Lord Dudley’s) of “thinking aloud,” particularly in church—such as his audible remark, when the parson had uttered the words “Let us pray,” of “By all means;” his “No, no, I don’t mind tithes, but can’t stand half,” when the clergyman had read the text as to the expediency of giving half of one’s possessions to the poor; and his common-sense view of the non-efficacy of a certain prayer for rain: “No good—shan’t get rain while the wind’s in this quarter;” and so on.
On his death in 1850, the Duke was succeeded in the occupancy of the house by a man who was also the hero of many excellent “mots”—Lord Palmerston.
“The frolicsome statesman, the man of the day
A laughing philosopher, gallant and gay,”
as Locker-Lampson called him. It is said that much of Palmerston’s popularity was due to the splendid functions which took place under Lady Palmerston’s auspices in this fine mansion. At his death there was some idea of pulling down the house to make room for a Roman Catholic Cathedral, but happily the scheme fell to the ground, and the place is, with some additions necessary to the club which occupies it, in practically the same state as when the royal Duke thought aloud in its chambers, or the Prime Minister nonchalantly sauntered through its gates.
OTHER PICCADILLY CLUBS.
Passing the Junior Naval and Military Club at No. 96, the Badminton at No. 100, and the massive buildings of the Junior Constitutional, representing Nos. 101 to 104, Piccadilly, we come to a beautiful house, now the home of the Isthmian Club, which removed here from its premises opposite Berkeley Street, now absorbed by the magnificent Ritz Hotel.
This residence, No. 95, was originally known as Barrymore House, having been built in 1780, by Novosielski, for the Earl of Barrymore, on a site once occupied by the workshop of that Van Nost, who was responsible for the statue of George I. formerly in Grosvenor Square. Lord Barrymore was the eldest of those three brothers and one sister, who earned for themselves the unflattering sobriquets of Hellgate, Cripplegate, Newgate, and Billingsgate—the second being in allusion to one of the brothers who was lame, and the last, to the sister whose command of strong language was “extensive and peculiar.” Gambling and general profligacy—by the way “profligate” might have summed up the whole family—brought Lord Barrymore to great distress, and Raikes records in his Diary that when the peer wished to give a dinner, he had perforce—à la Dick Steele—to dress up the bailiffs, who were perpetually in the house, in his own liveries and get them to wait at table!
It is hardly surprising to learn that the house was left unfinished at the death of this unsavoury personage, and subsequently Smirke added the porch. After a fire had occurred here—the curious thing being that it did not happen in Barrymore’s lifetime—the place was repaired and opened as the “Old Pulteney Hotel,” and here it was that the Emperor of Russia stayed, when the allied Sovereigns were in this country in 1814.
After its day as an hotel, the Marquis of Hertford purchased the house, and greatly improved, but practically never occupied it. This was the third Lord Hertford, who married that Maria Fagniani, about whose paternity George Selwyn and Old Q. could never satisfactorily agree, and who is so largely responsible for the magnificent art collection which Sir Richard Wallace left to the nation.
Next door, divided by a narrow passage, is No. 106, which is now known as the “St. James’s Club.” Built on the site of an old inn called “The Greyhound,” by the sixth Earl of Coventry, “the grave young lord,” as Walpole calls him—who, by the bye, married one of the beautiful Gunnings, who killed herself, ’tis said, by trying to improve the loveliness that Nature had given her. Here he died in 1809; his successor to the title also lived here, and, after his decease in 1831, it became the headquarters of the “Coventry House Club” (or the “Ambassadors’”), which was, however, closed in 1854. The house next door is also a club—“The Savile”—one of the literary clubs of modern London. In the old days, it was the home of the famous Nathan Rothschild, who made a great coup over the Battle of Waterloo, and once told Spohr that the only music he cared for was the chink of money!
As we loiter along, the trees of the Green Park attract us, and the gradual widening of the thoroughfare as we approach Hyde Park Corner, an improvement made but a few years since, gives an additional effect to the coup d’œil that here presents itself. That curious object over there, a sort of high shelf standing on two iron supports, has exercised many a mind as to its uses. Perhaps not many people are aware that the solution is to be found on a plate affixed to the object itself, the words of which are as follows: “On the suggestion of R. A. Slaney, Esq., who for 26 years represented Shrewsbury in Parliament, this porters’ rest was erected in 1861 by the Vestry of St. George, Hanover Square, for the benefit of porters and others carrying burdens. As a relic of a past period in London’s history it is hoped that the people will aid in its preservation.” But we must return to our bricks and mortar and the associations connected with them.
DOWN STREET.
Now we are at the corner of Down Street, which leads directly to Mayfair; and here (in No. 116, Piccadilly) is now the Junior Athenæum Club, but known in earlier days as Hope House, which H. T. Hope, the author of “Anastasius” and the creator of “Deepdene,” at Dorking—built in 1848-9, at a cost of £80,000.
When a stranger is brought to this point and shewn the narrow way dividing the club from the adjoining houses, and is told that it is Park Lane (see page 134) he probably, being ignorant of locality, receives a shock, having in mind the celebrity of this part of the town and the fine houses which he has been taught to believe exist in it. But this narrow street is technically the commencement of Park Lane, and does much to account for the somewhat inappropriate title by which this fashionable thoroughfare is known.
The tenuity of this connecting neck, between Piccadilly and Park Lane proper (if I may so term it), is still more accentuated by the huge block of flats now being erected on the site of Gloucester House, until recently the well-known residence of the late Duke of Cambridge. Formerly this was the town house of that Lord Elgin who is famous as having acquired the marvellous collection of antique marbles over which poor Haydon was so enthusiastic, and here these treasures of antiquity were for a time to be seen. The house took its name from the Duke of Gloucester, who bought it in 1816, when he married his cousin the Princess Mary, one of the many children of George III.
THE GATES OF HYDE PARK IN 1756.
(From a Drawing by Jones.)
When Gloucester House was still in existence the two adjoining mansions, Nos. 138 and 139, stood out in the glory of their stone façades, from the old brick house which receded somewhat from the road, but now they in their turn threaten to become dwarfed by the huge erection which towers above them.
These two houses were originally one, and here lived that “wicked old Q.”—the Duke of Queensberry, whose manner of life was so notorious. Here the old profligate sat under a sunshade in fine weather to ogle the girls who passed by, and to send by his groom Radford, many an impertinent message to the more attractive of them. Here this “Star of Piccadilly” on one occasion, while engaging a running footman (he was one of the last to keep this former appendage to noble state), made the man put on his livery and run up and down in front of the house, and finding him suitable, told him so, when the rogue replied, “and your livery will suit me,” and making a mock bow, bolted, and was seen no more!
It may be well, as we are now at the end of Piccadilly proper (for, although the houses on the other side of Hamilton Place, among which is that famous “No. 1, London,” as someone once called Apsley House, where the great Wellington lived, and put up the celebrated iron shutters, now removed, are given in Directories as in Piccadilly, they should more properly be considered as at Hyde Park Corner), to end our perambulation at the house of one who was so pre-eminently a Londoner as “Old Q.” I wish we could have done so in better company, and inasmuch as Lord Byron once resided at No. 139, then called, “13, Piccadilly Terrace,” we do so, for although his lordship, apart from his remarkable genius, was not a pattern of morality, he compares well with the nobleman whose only redeeming merits were that he was no fool and loved London as he probably loved few things. When in town once in September, a friend asked Lord Queensberry if he did not find it empty. “Yes,” he replied, “but ’tis fuller than the country;” and there is little doubt but that even in those early days, no place could have been selected for anyone to better enjoy the life of London than that spot where the tide of humanity met, at the junction of Piccadilly and Park Lane, with almost as full a force as we have seen it do at the corner of Piccadilly and Old Bond Street, where Stewart’s, hoary with antiquity (but to-day one of the most artistic buildings in the neighbourhood), stands, and where those keenest judges in the world—our American cousins—love to foregather, on the spot that is perhaps better known to them than any other in London.
The Piccadilly Turnpike, which is such a feature in contemporary prints of this part of the West End, was removed in 1721 from the end of Berkeley Street to Hyde Park Corner. It remained here till 1825, in October of which year it was sold and removed.
THE TURNPIKE AT HYDE PARK CORNER, 1706.