CHAPTER II.
ST. JAMES’S STREET AND PALL MALL.
“O bear me to the paths of fair Pall Mall,
Safe are thy pavements, grateful is thy smell.”
—Gay’s “Trivia.”
Can we do better, after the surfeit of bricks and mortar which we have just undergone, than relax our jaded senses and relieve our wearied eyes by loitering for a few moments in the Green Park? See! it is just across the way, and a convenient entrance helps to tempt our steps. It is not extensive, but it is an oasis that many a Londoner—besides Lord Beaconsfield, who loved to wander there, when he had one of his rare opportunities—will seek with eagerness and enjoy with a thankful heart.
THE GREEN PARK.
When Piccadilly was “the way to Redinge,” and before Buckingham House—the red-brick precursor of the present Palace—had risen on the site of Tart Hall, the site of the Green Park was waste land, with here and there a little ditch, and here and there a willow; and yet it has had “its scenes, its joys and crimes,” in common with every square foot of ground in the metropolis. We may be sure it felt the tread of armed men in 1554, when Wyatt’s rebellion threatened to upset the throne of “bloody Mary”; and a century later, in 1643 to be precise, cannot we in imagination see the crowd of men, women, and children streaming across it to give a helping hand in the formation of those fortifications which were to prevent a king from entering his capital? As to its crimes, it is certain that there were plenty of those committed when the guardianship of the peace was a very different thing from what we pampered mortals are accustomed to consider it. Why, the duels alone that were fought here would make matter for a good-sized chapter. Beau Fielding fights Sir Henry Colt, in 1696, and, they say, runs him through the body before he has time to draw his sword, but, nevertheless, gets disarmed himself; and “That thing of silk, Sporus,” as I have already indicated, meets William Pulteney here, some thirty years later, what time the Park had become so favourite a place for such encounters that it is specifically mentioned as “a rendezvous for duels,” in a guide to London of the period.
Had Queen Caroline—that clever woman who managed George II. and ruled the kingdom with Walpole—had her way, a royal residence might now be actually in the Park. She did build a library here, practically where Stafford House now stands, but that is as far as she went. Her royal husband, who, with his many faults, was a brave man, and knew how to fight—and on foot, too, as he did at Dettingen—liked reviews of all things, and used to have his troops manœuvring about in the Park on all sorts of occasions. One such review is mentioned in 1747, when “the regiment (Sir Robert Rich’s Dragoons) made a very fine appearance, and his Majesty was greatly pleased with them,” we are told. The Duke of Cumberland’s Dragoons, which distinguished themselves, or otherwise, according to the Stuart or Hanoverian sympathies of the time, in “the ’45,” were out, for the same picturesque reason, some days later. Then there was that great celebration for the conclusion of the War of Succession, when a huge temple was erected, and fireworks blazed to the accompaniment of a military overture written by the illustrious Handel himself.
Sir Robert Peel wanted to transform the Park into something analogous to what we have seen occurring to the Mall, but surely with less happy results; one of its very charms lies in the fact that in the midst of Urbanism (to coin a word) it remains rustic, in the very centre of conventionalism it is unconventional. The great minister, when advocating such an alteration, could little have supposed that his death would be so closely connected with this spot; but here it was that, riding down Constitution Hill yonder, his horse threw him, on June 29th, 1850, and three days later he was no more.
CONSTITUTION HILL.
This Constitution Hill, about the origin of which name no good explanation is forthcoming, was in Strype’s day known simply as the “Road to Kensington,” as may be seen on his plan dated 1720.
Here it was that Charles II. was walking towards Hyde Park when—according to Dr. King’s well-known anecdote—he met the Duke of York in his coach, just as he was about to cross Hyde Park Corner. The Duke, on being informed that his Majesty was walking, immediately alighted, and going up to the King told him he was surprised to find him on foot and with so few attendants; intimating that Charles was exposing himself to some danger. “No kind of danger, James,” replied the Merry Monarch, “for I am sure no man will kill me to make you king.” But the road has not always been so safe for kingly heads, for here, it will be remembered, the lunatic Oxford shot at Queen Victoria, as she was driving, on June 10th, 1840.
The wall of Buckingham Palace grounds runs the entire length of Constitution Hill, to which additional width is just being given, and as we wend our steps across the Park, at an angle, towards the little paved way that leads by Stafford House, we can see the commencement of that great memorial which will perpetuate in stone, as they are enshrined in the hearts of the people, the virtuous life and great qualities of Queen Victoria.
Stafford House lies in front of us, to the right. A wondrous pile, it was originally built for that Duke of York whose effigy stands on the top of the great pillar in Carlton House Terrace. Although glorious within, externally—except from its size—it is not imposing, and its plainness gives point to the remark of some wit of the period that it looked like a packing-case out of which Bridgewater House, the graceful building on our left, had been taken.
When Fielding, as we have seen, fought with Colt, he did so in sight of the windows of Cleveland House, which originally stood close by, the ground having been given by Charles II. to that Duchess of Cleveland who caused him so much trouble, and who had a partiality for the Beau who fought beneath her windows.
CLEVELAND ROW.
Cleveland Row takes its name from old Cleveland House, and forms the south side of that most curious of “quadrates,” Cleveland Square.
Theodore Hook once lived in the Row, at No. 5; so did Lord Rodney and Sir Sidney Smith; Thomas Grenville, of bibliophilic fame; and Lord Stowell, the great lawyer, and brother of Lord Eldon. George Selwyn died at what was then called, 1, Cleveland Court, in 1791; and Mason, the poet, was residing here at a “Mr. Mennis’s” four and twenty years earlier. Walpole and Townshend had their memorable quarrel, parodied by Grey in his “Beggar’s Opera,” in a room in one of the houses; while Lord Bute, in 1761, moved a portion of the Foreign Office hither from its former locale in the Cockpit at Westminster.
ST. JAMES’S PLACE.
The houses that adjoin Bridgewater House to the north are those of which the entrances are in St. James’s Place and Arlington Street. The most architecturally noticeable is the first we see, Spencer House, in the making of which, the talent of John Vardy, James Stuart, and M. H. Spong was combined. A little further on is the house in which the poet Rogers lived and gave those breakfasts and dinners which have become historic. The contents were so carefully selected and so rich, as treasures of art or literature, that Byron used to say there was not a single object which did “not bespeak an almost fastidious elegance in the possessor;” and Moore, and Macaulay, and Burney, and a hundred others who were guests here, have left confirmatory praise. Here it was that Byron, invited to meet Moore and Campbell (what a constellation!) would eat nothing but potatoes mashed up in vinegar, and then, ’tis said, went off later to a club in St. James’s Street and made a hearty supper off beefsteaks! Here Chantry, the great sculptor, told his host that it was he who, in the days of his probation as a working carpenter, had made a certain piece of furniture in the dining room; but there would be no end to the recollections clustering about this house if I did not place a curb on my pen. Other poets have lived in St. James’s Place—Addison and Parnell, besides many another well-known personality; Molly Lepel, and Sir John Cope; Secretary Craggs, and Charles James Fox; “Perdita” Robinson, and Sir Francis Burdett; Wilkes, the noisy demagogue, and Warren Hastings, the great pro-consul.
ARLINGTON STREET.
Arlington Street is hardly less interesting. There is the home of the Cecils, where one great Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, could once look across the street at the windows of the house that had sheltered another—Sir Robert Walpole. As the son of the latter once wrote to Montagu: “Nothing can be more dignified than this position.” In the past, as in the present, its houses have been the homes of the illustrious. The street was formed in 1689, and was the property of that Arlington who was one of the “A’s” of the famous (or, shall we say, infamous?) “Cabal.” The Duchess of Cleveland withdrew hither, after the death of Charles had made Cleveland House too costly an abode; the Duchess of Buckingham, wife of that Duke, castigated in Dryden’s best-known lines, and daughter of Fairfax, Cromwell’s henchman; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who resided here with her father, the Duke of Kingston; Pulteney, Earl of Bath—as if he could never get away from his enemy, Sir Robert; and Henry Pelham, who lived at No. 17, in the house built by Kent and now Lord Yarborough’s. At No. 21 Lord Sefton gave his famous dinners with Ude as chef in command; and Lord Wimborne’s house, which is already dwarfed by the neighbouring “Ritz,” once belonged to Lord Camden, then to the Duke of Beaufort, and was subsequently sold to the Duke of Hamilton for £60,000; while John Lothrop Motley was renting Lord Yarborough’s house, from 1869-70, during his term of office as United States Minister.
If we turn back into St. James’s Street and look down that famous thoroughfare two things cannot fail to strike us—one, the effective screen at the bottom formed by the picturesque clock-tower of the Palace which dates from Henry VIII.’s time; the other, the marked declivity in the ground, which is only comparable with Ludgate Hill, in the East, and is considerably steeper than any part of Piccadilly or Knightsbridge, in the West.
ST. JAMES’S STREET.
St. James’s Street is a street of memories, if ever there was one in London; to mention all the interesting people who have lodged in it would make a very fair chapter; to record even the bare outlines of the history of its clubs and coffee-houses would form another. Appropriately is it named “St. James’s Street,” for it is pre-eminently the thoroughfare of this aristocratic quarter. Here may still be seen one or two old shops that recall Georgian days, although the street is undergoing such a metamorphosis of rebuilding that one never knows but that some fine morning their familiar fronts may have disappeared; here survive some of the most exclusive and best known of the Clubs which are the particular characteristic of this quarter; and the unchanged front of the Palace at the lower end is such a dominating note in the picture, that, looking down the street, when one of those mists so beloved of Whistler give atmospheric mystery to the thoroughfare, we may almost expect to see Charles II. sauntering through its portals with Rochester or Sedley; or George II. driving through its gates on his way to Kensington Palace or Richmond Park.
The history of
“The dear old street of clubs and cribs,
As north and south it stretches,”
is one which, if its record were fully written, would be found to have no little connection with the annals of the country. Its position, its proximity to the Palace, its past inhabitants, its famous club houses (where so much of the history of the country was, and is, evolved,) all make for its claim in this respect.
WHITE’S CLUB.
On our left is the famous bow window of “White’s,” where the dandies used to assemble to quiz the ladies on their way to the drawing-rooms. What a history has that club! It has been written, and fills two large volumes, and the “betting book” is a sight for gods and men—if not for young men and maidens. In the old days they used to bet on anything and everything, and there is the story of the man who fell down in a fit, outside the club windows, and wagers being immediately laid as to whether he was dead or not, certain interested members solemnly objected to means being taken to revive the unhappy individual—as it would have affected the validity of the bets laid!
White’s Club. JAMES’S STREET IN THE REIGN OF GEORGE III Brooks’s Club.
It was by giving his arm to one then unknown to fame, from the bottom of the street to the door of White’s, that Brummell considered he had rendered a very important service to a young man, and as it were, given him a splendid set-off in life!
The origin of the club, for which, it will be remembered, Horace Walpole once designed a coat of arms, was White’s Chocolate House, which was established in 1698, just ten years after Stewart’s Bakery, as we have seen, opened its doors at the corner of Bond Street. White’s was then on the west side of St. James’s Street, five doors from the bottom, and occupied the one-time residence of that Countess of Northumberland, who was such a “grande dame,” that her grand-daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Somerset, is reported to have never sat down in her presence without previously asking her leave. It soon became a hot-bed of aristocratic gamesters. Robert Harley never passed by without cursing it, as the bane of half the nobility; Whitehead, in one of his poems, does not hesitate to call it a den of thieves; and although Chesterfield once wrote to his son that “a member of a gaming club should be a cheat or he will soon be a beggar,” that teacher of manners and morals practically lived at White’s, not putting in practice, it is to be hoped, what he taught by precept.
The Club was burnt down in 1733; but, phœnix-like, sprang up again soon after, at Gaunt’s Coffee House, which was next door to the St. James’s Coffee House near the south-west corner of the street. Arthur, Mackreth, Martindale, and Raggett, all names familiar to students of the social life of the eighteenth century, were the successive proprietors of White’s, after 1736, when the Chocolate House was formed into a regular club. Nineteen years after that date it was removed to the premises it now occupies and its present outward appearance is due to alterations made nearly a century later.
BOODLE’S CLUB.
Boodle’s, another famous club, is almost opposite, at No. 28, and was known formerly, from its gastronomic reputation, as the “Savoir Vivre.” The Club House was designed by Adam for John Crunden, in 1765, and additions were made to it in 1821. It was largely frequented by country gentlemen, who knew probably how hard it was “to rival Boodle’s dinners,” and it used to be said, in consequence, that if a waiter came into the reading-room and called out, “Sir John, your servant has come,” every other head was mechanically turned in answer to the summons! Both Gibbon and Wilberforce were members, as was that Sir Frank Standish, caricatured by Gillray as “A Standing Dish at Boodle’s.” Gillray, by the bye, lived next door, at No. 29, where, in 1815, he committed suicide by throwing himself from an upper window.
CROCKFORD’S CLUB.
Opposite “White’s” is the Devonshire Club, which occupies the site of the famous Crockford’s, probably the most notorious gaming house of its day. It took its name from one Crockford, who had been a fish salesman in the City, but, coming to the West, made an immense fortune here. The house was built for him, in 1827, from the designs of the Wyatts. The internal decorations were so lavish that the ubiquitous Creevey describes the place as “magnificent, and perfect in taste and beauty,” and adds that “it is said by those who know the Palace of Versailles, to be even more magnificent than that,” which certainly sounds like thundering hyperbole! The great “Ude” catered for the palates of Crockford’s habitués, and there is a story told of the illustrious chef, during his connection with the club, to the following effect:—Colonel Damer happening to enter Crockford’s one evening to dine early, found Ude in a towering rage, and asking the cause, was thus answered by the infuriated cordon bleu:—“Monsieur le Colonel, did you see that man who has just gone out? Well, he ordered a red mullet for his dinner. I made him a delicious little sauce with my own hands. The price of the mullet marked on the carte was 2s.; I asked 6d. for the sauce. He refuses to pay the 6d. The imbecile apparently believes that the red mullets come out of the sea with my sauce in their pockets!” Of such are the woes of genius! It was Ude, too, who, on hearing of the last illness of his former patron the Duke of York, exclaimed, “Ah! Mon pauvre Duc, how much you shall miss me where you are gone!”
Wellington was a member of Crockford’s, though he never played deeply; so was Theodore Hook, who, because his doctor had once warned him against exposing himself to the night air, had the following method of abiding by the medico’s instructions:—“I therefore,” he said, “come up every day to Crockford’s, or some other place to dinner, and I make it a rule on no account to go home again till about four or five o’clock in the morning!”
BROOKS’S CLUB.
Another famous Club in St. James’s Street, was Brooks’s, which was nearly opposite the original White’s. Like so many of these clubs it took its name from a former proprietor, although it was at first merely a gaming club, formed by Almack.
Brooks, whom Tickell immortalises (if he could immortalise anything) as
“Liberal Brooks, whose speculative skill,
Is hasty credit, and a distant bill,”
removed the club from its quarters in Pall Mall to its present position, and opened it in 1778, but, unlike Crockford, he does not appear to have made a fortune out of the concern.
The members included such great ones as Reynolds and Burke and Garrick, Hume and Gibbon, Horace Walpole, Sheridan, and Wilberforce. The latter has recorded his first appearance here, thus: “Hardly knowing anyone, I joined, from mere shyness, in play at the faro table, where George Selwyn kept bank. A friend, who knew my inexperience and regarded me as a victim decked out for sacrifice, called to me, ‘What, Wilberforce, is that you?’ Selwyn quite resented the interference, and, turning to him, said, in his most expressive tone, ‘Oh, sir, don’t interrupt Mr. Wilberforce; he could not be better employed.’”
Apropos of Gibbons’ membership of Brooks’s, a curious memento should still be among the treasures of some lucky bibliophile, for, when Fox’s effects were sold, at his death, in 1806, there was included among them the first volume of Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” presented by the writer to the great statesman who had written the following words on one of the blank leaves:—
“The author, at Brooks’s, said there was no salvation for this country until six heads of the principal persons in administration were laid upon the table. Eleven days after, this same gentleman accepted a place of lord of trade under those very Ministers, and has acted with them ever since!”
There are no end to the anecdotes connected with Brooks’s, and the famous or notorious people with whom they are connected. Here is Roger Wilbraham, what time honours were in the air, asking Sir Philip Francis, an absorbed player, what he thought they would give him; and the irate gamester, suddenly turning round and roaring out, “A halter, and be d——d to you!”; here, it is said, the Prince of Wales was a party to the hoax by which Sheridan got elected in the very teeth of the redoubtable Selwyn; here, at a later date, the brewer, Alderman Combe, losing heavily to Brummell who patronisingly said he would never in future drink any porter but his opponent’s, retorted with “I wish every other blackguard would tell me the same;” and here is the Duke of Devonshire partaking of that broiled bladebone of mutton for which he had such a passion, and which was regularly prepared for him at the club!
OTHER ST. JAMES’S STREET CLUBS.
Many other clubs which to-day are to be found in this street, are descendants of earlier institutions, while some have taken the place of older ones; among the latter may be named the Devonshire, and the New University, with its noticeable buildings which Waterhouse designed: the former are distinguished by their names alone; the “Cocoa Tree,” the “Thatched House,” and “Arthur’s.” Built in 1825, on the site of the original Chocolate House, “Arthur’s” took its name from that Arthur whose son-in-law, Mackreth, eventually succeeded to its ownership.
It will be remembered that it was on the occasion of one of the waiters here being convicted on a charge of robbery, that Selwyn remarked: “What a horrid idea he will give of us to the people in Newgate.” The Thatched House Club, which grew out of the “Thatched House,” where the Dilettanti Society and innumerable other fraternities were wont to foregather, does not stand on the site of the original clubhouse, which was till recently occupied by the Civil Service Club at the corner of King Street; but the name was formerly preserved in “Thatched House Court,” which has long since passed away.
ST. JAMES’S STREET CHOCOLATE HOUSES.
Just as the St. James’s Chocolate House was the resort of the Whigs in the Augustan age so the Tory headquarters were at the “Cocoa Tree,” which was metamorphosed into a club some time in George II.’s reign, and was then noted for high play. There is extant the story of one O’Birne, an Irish gamester, who had won a round £100,000 at the Cocoa Tree from a young man named Harvey. “You can never pay me,” said the Irishman. “I can,” replied Harvey, “my estate will sell for the debt.” “No,” said O’Birne, “I will win ten thousand—you shall throw for the odd ninety,” which, being done, Harvey, who would seem to have hardly deserved his luck, won! Gibbon, and later Byron, belonged to this club, and this reminds me that it was while lodging in St. James’s Street that the latter awoke one morning and found himself famous. An extraordinary medallion portrait under glass commemorates the house (No. 8) in which the author of “Childe Harold” lodged, and it was from here that he set forth to deliver his maiden, and only speech in the House of Lords.
Among other interesting residents of St. James’s Street was Charles James Fox; and here Walpole saw his furniture being carried off to satisfy his horde of creditors. To hark back, we find Waller in a house on the west side, and Lord Brouncker, the first President of the Royal Society, living here; Pope at “my lodgings at Mr. Digby’s, next door to ye Golden Bell, on ye second Terras in St. James’s Street;” Wolfe, who wrote from here in 1758 to Pitt, desiring employment in America; and Gibbon, who died 26 years later, at No. 76, now part of the Conservative Club.
It was in this street that Dr. Johnson once did some shopping with Boswell; calling at Wirgman’s toy-shop (at No. 69, where Arthur’s is now) “to choose a pair of silver buckles, as those he had were too small.”
KING STREET.
King Street, through which we can see the trees of St. James’s Square, must not delay us, or we shall never get along, but we may remember that from 1673, when it was formed, to 1830, it was not a street proper at all, but merely one of those exiguous courts, of which Crown Court, in Pall Mall, is a survivor. There is one private house of interest in King Street, for at No. 1c, as a memorial tablet commemorates, Napoleon III., while yet only Prince Louis Napoleon, resided for two years, 1838-40, after he had been expelled from Switzerland. While living here he was enrolled as a special constable during the Chartist riots; and while here he also took part in that famous Eglinton Tournament which required nothing to make it successful but fine weather. It was from King Street that the future Emperor started on his unsuccessful descent on Boulogne, when it is said that he procured a tame eagle from Covent Garden as a sort of political property, which was to be released on his stepping on to French soil—a piece of theatrical legerdemain that cost him the adherence of at least one follower. I may remind the stranger that the famous Willis’s Rooms, formerly Almack’s, that “Matrimonial Bazaar,” as Lord William Pitt Lennox calls it, the laws of which were as those of the Medes and Persians, as the great Duke of Wellington once had reason to remember when he was turned away from its doors, are still in King Street, but turned to other uses, and that just opposite stands the equally famous “Christie’s,” where old and new masters are continually changing hands.
As we turn into Pall Mall, the picturesque buildings of St. James’s Palace tempt us to loiter; but that is a subject which once entered upon in this little book would lead me into an endless maze of historical and topographical data, and we must unwillingly pass by.
PALL MALL.
Here we are in the very heart of Clubland; indeed, so long ago as 1849, when J. T. Smith wrote his fascinating book on the Streets of London, he speaks of this noble street as bidding fair to contain in a short time nothing but club-palaces, as he very properly terms them; and to-day (as Thackeray wrote): “Extending down the street palace after palace rises magnificent, and under their lofty roofs warriors and lawyers, merchants and nobles, scholars and seamen, the wealthy, the poor, the busy, the idle assemble.”
Sᵗ. James’s Palace, view’d from Pall Mall.
The Same from the Park.
THE CARLTON AND REFORM CLUBS.
Here are the two great political headquarters—the Carlton, founded by the Duke of Wellington and some of his supporters, and built, so far as its premises here are concerned (for it was originally housed in Charles Street close by), in 1836, from the designs of Smirke; and the Reform, which, as its name implies, was started to help the cause of the great Reform Bill, in 1830. The present beautiful buildings of the latter club were the work of Barry, and carry us in imagination to that Farnese Palace at Rome from which some features in its construction were borrowed. The kitchens, as important adjuncts to a club as they are to a college, were designed by the great Alexis Soyer. Among the great successes of this admirable genius (who, by the bye, had been, in turn, chef to Prince George of Cambridge, Lord Ailsa, and Lord Panmure), was the great banquet held on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s Coronation, and the dinner given to Lord Palmerston, in 1850. In the latter case a gastronomic triumph was particularly appropriate, for “Pam” liked a good dinner as much as any man, and, indeed, an opponent once had to confess that “Lord Palmerston is redeemed from the last extremity of political degradation by his cook!”
THE JUNIOR CARLTON CLUB.
Another great club in Pall Mall, the Junior Carlton, is an off-shoot of the Carlton. Formed in 1864, and originally located at No. 14, Regent Street, the club moved to its present quarters in 1867, when several small houses in St. James’s Square and Pall Mall having been pulled down, it arose on their site under the architectural wand of Brandon. Some 20 years later, Adair House was demolished and the club enlarged. Opposite the Junior Carlton, on the same side of Pall Mall (the tiny George Street intervening), is the Army and Navy Club, which has its chief front in the Square. The building was erected by Parnell and Smith, in 1848-51, and is modelled on the Palazzo Cornaro at Venice.
OTHER PALL MALL CLUBS.
Across the way, and next to the Reform, is the unpretentious front of the Travellers’ Club, the idea of which originated with Lord Castlereagh about the year 1814. Barry built the present house in 1832. In view of its name, it is interesting to know that one of its rules ordains that no one is eligible as a member “who shall not have travelled out of the British Islands to a distance of at least 500 miles from London in a direct line.” When that rule was formed travelling was a very different business from what it is to-day, for now one can hardly overcome the results of a London season without going this distance, and many people find it necessary to go twice as far to keep their minds occupied and their livers in order.
Talleyrand was an habitué of the Travellers’, and it was here that he made his well-known reply to someone who wondered how a certain great lady could, at her age, have married, as she had done, a valet de chambre: “It was late in the game” replied Talleyrand, who was playing whist at the time. “At nine we don’t reckon honours.”
The Athenæum, at the corner of Waterloo Place, built in 1829, is a very learned club, and appropriately has the finest club library in London. Its premises, which are thoroughly classic, were designed by Decimus Burton. It had been instituted five years previously by, among others, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Wilson Croker, Sir Humphrey Davy, and that Jekyll, whom George IV., when Prince of Wales, insisted on Eldon’s making a Master in Chancery. I will not again inflict the well-known anecdote on long-suffering readers; but I may remind them that on one occasion the hospitality of the Junior Army and Navy, on the other side of Waterloo Place, was, during some cleaning process, extended to the members of the Athenæum, many of whom graced the church, and that soon after, the umbrella of one of the service members mysteriously disappeared; whereupon the irate soldier exclaimed, “Exactly, I knew what it would be when we agreed to allow those d——d bishops to come to our shop!”
Talking of shops reminds me that Hoby’s, the celebrated bootmaker’s, was, till quite recently, opposite, at the corner of John Street—the shortest thoroughfare, by the bye, in London. The original Hoby was a great character, and said what he liked to his customers, who were legion, and frequently illustrious. He made the Duke of Wellington’s boots, and always attributed the successes of that great leader to this fact, and also, parenthetically, to the prayers which he used to offer up on his behalf!
Two examples of Hoby’s way of talking to his clientèle are extant; one, when Ensign Churchill complained of some boots made to his order, and Hoby, putting on a mock serious face, turned to an assistant and told him to put up the shutters, as if the Ensign’s custom was withdrawn, there was an end of the business; the other, when a nobleman complained of his riding boots being uncomfortable when he walked, whereupon Hoby told him that he had made the boots for riding not for walking.
As we are wandering about Pall Mall in a somewhat desultory manner, I make no excuse for turning back from the Athenæum to the large building near by, which up to quite recently, formed an inadequate home for the War Office. That part of it which has a small courtyard in front, in which stood the graceful statue of Sidney Herbert, was rebuilt for the use of the Secretary of State for War; but the most interesting portion is that known as Schomberg House, which was erected in 1650, at the time when Pall Mall was planted with elm trees. It took its name from that Duke of Schomberg who was killed at the Battle of the Boyne, and was much improved by the third and last Duke; but its chief claim to notice lies in the fact that Gainsborough (as Cosway had done before him) lived the last years of his life here, and expired in the second floor room (which is now indicated by a tablet), in 1788, with the well-known exclamation on his lips: “We are all going to heaven, and Vandyck is of the company.”
The house next door (to the west), now the Eagle Insurance Office, is interesting from the fact that it stands on the one-time residence of Nell Gwyn, the gardens of which stretched to the Mall, and here took place that “familiar discourse between the King and Mrs. Nellie, as they call an impudent comedian, she looking out of her garden on a terrace, at the top of the wall, and the King standing on the green walk under it,” which Evelyn has thus recorded, and E. M. Ward, R.A., perpetuated on canvas. This site is the only freehold in Pall Mall, and the story goes that on Charles giving “Mrs. Nellie” a lease of the place, she took the parchment and threw it in his face, intimating at the same time that nothing short of “freehold tenure” was good enough for her.
The two adjoining houses have been, not long since, converted into one, and now form the London residence of T.R.H. the Prince and Princess Christian.
When the great “Sarah of Marlborough” was amazed by, as she called them, her neighbour George’s “orange chests,” she was in residence at the large red brick house, faced with stone, which a grateful nation had presented to her husband (although the Duchess always said it cost him £40,000 to £50,000 out of his own pocket), and which had been erected in 1709, on part of the pheasantry of St. James’s Park, which had been leased by Queen Anne to her old favourite. Here the great Duke, “with the tears of dotage” flowing from his eyes, expired in 1722, and one of the great sights of Pall Mall must have been that almost regal funeral which the Duchess arranged herself, and in which figured that funeral-car which she refused at a later date to lend to the Duchess of Buckingham, because, as she said, no one was worthy to be carried on what had borne the illustrious victor of Blenheim! Some fifty years after her husband’s death, the indomitable old “Sarah,” at the age of 84, was told that she must be blistered or she would die, to which she replied in angry tones, “I won’t be blistered and I won’t die.” She died in the year 1774.
Marlborough House was subsequently purchased (in 1817) by the Crown, as a residence for the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold; and here, after the death of the Princess, the widower lived for some years; so did Queen Adelaide after the decease of William IV., and in 1850, the house was settled on the Prince of Wales (now His Majesty the King); but before he occupied it, its lower apartments had been used for various art exhibitions. The entrance is anything but imposing, and is rendered still more insignificant by the high buildings of the Junior Oxford and Cambridge Club next door, adjoining which are the Guards’ Club and the imposing front of the Oxford and Cambridge itself, the latter of which was built by Smirke in 1836.
On the north side of Pall Mall we get a glimpse of an almost Georgian perspective if we look up the narrow Crown Court, and can for the moment forget its new front and the adjoining elaborate buildings which have been recently erected facing Marlborough House. This Court is one of the few survivors of many, and is shewn on old plans, which, on the other hand, do not give Pall Mall Place (of later construction), a little further east, which passes under one of the windows of No. 51, once the famous headquarters of Dodsley, the publisher. This house then rejoiced in that sign of “Tully’s Head,” appearing on the titles of so many of the best-known works of the eighteenth century which the great Dodsley ushered into the world.
PALL MALL TAVERNS.
Pall Mall has been in the past—for you shall seek long enough for them now—noted for its taverns. There was, for instance, the “Queen’s Arms,” where the sanguinary duel between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun was planned; and the “Star and Garter” (the descendant of which has but recently disappeared), where Lord Byron killed Mr. Chaworth in 1765, and where the first Cricket Club is said to have been founded in 1774, by Sir Horace Mann (a Kent cricketer and Walpole’s correspondent), the Duke of Dorset, and Lord Tankerville, of the Surrey and Hants eleven, and others.
Then there was “Wood’s at the Pell Mell” mentioned by Pepys, where, in 1662, Mr. Jermyn and Captain Howard fought a duel; and the “Sugar Loaf,” the “Golden Pestle and Mortar,” the “Golden Door,” and the “Barber’s Pole”—to mention but these—were signs that might previously have been seen here. The Coffee Houses numbered among them the well-known “Smyrna” of early Georgian days, and the “King’s Arms,” where the “Liberty” or “Rumpsteak Club” met and concerted measures against Sir Robert Walpole.
It was in Pall Mall, near the bottom of the Haymarket, that Thynne was murdered at the instigation of Konigsmarck—a brutal deed which may still be seen commemorated on the tomb of the victim in Westminster Abbey; here, too, the mail from France was robbed at half-past eight on January 7th, 1786, almost in the very faces of the Palace Guard, as Walpole relates with natural astonishment; and here the Gordon Rioters were with difficulty prevented from destroying that Schomberg House we have but recently been gazing at.
If great people have left their mark on the street, some curious individualities have also been connected with it. Think of four women racing down Pall Mall for a prize, to wit, “a holland smock, a cap, checked stockings, and laced shoes!” Yet this is what was witnessed here in the year of grace 1733. This appears to have been permitted by the long-suffering authorities, but when one of the residents offered “a laced hat” to be run for by five men, so great a disturbance was created that the magistrates intervened.
During the earlier years of Charles II.’s reign, when Catherine of Braganza came over to share his throne, if nothing else, streets were named with some profusion after that ill-treated lady; thus, as Piccadilly was then converted into Portugal Street, so, for a time at least, Pall Mall was known as Catherine Street. Its former, and present better-known denomination is derived, as all the world is aware, from the game of Pall Mall or Paille-Maille—from Palla, a ball, and maglia, a mallet—a game somewhat analogous to our croquet, which was once played in the “Mall” close by.
CARLTON HOUSE.
Although its name is redolent of Carolean times, it is probable that few streets have been so altered in outward appearance as Pall Mall. The chief cause of this is undoubtedly the favour it has found in the eyes of club promoters, for it is the palatial buildings of these institutions that have chiefly robbed the street of its old-world appearance. But at its eastern extremity, the greatest alteration is due to the demolition of Carlton House, which practically occupied the centre of Waterloo Place at its southern end, and extended east and west with its grounds, entrance court, and screen, where Carlton House Terrace and the Duke of York’s monument now exist.
CARLTON HOUSE.
George IV. proclaimed King.
The history of Carlton House has not been written. It is probably just as well that no one has attempted to record the annals of that mansion, for what we know of it from the innumerable memoirs and diaries of the period covering the better part of George III.’s reign and the Regency, is not particularly edifying.
Carlton House was built in 1709, by Lord Carlton, or Carleton, as it was then spelt, on whose death, in 1725, the house came into the possession of his nephew, the Earl of Burlington. Kent laid out the gardens, which extended from Spring Gardens to Marlborough House, at the back of the entire length of Pall Mall, east and west. Lord Burlington presented the house to his mother, who sold it, in 1732, to Lord Chesterfield, purchasing on behalf of Frederick, Prince of Wales. After that Prince’s death, his widow resided here till her demise in 1772. Eleven years later, George, Prince of Wales, came into possession, and under his auspices, with the help of Holland, the architect, the place was practically rebuilt, the brickwork being covered with stone, a Corinthian portico added, and that celebrated screen erected, of which Prince Hoare once wrote:
“Dear little columns, all in a row,
What do you do there?
Indeed, we don’t know!”
on the site of some houses which had previously hidden the mansion from Pall Mall. (See Plates at pp. 64 and 76.)
Under its new master, Carlton House witnessed many vicissitudes; now being the scene of the most lavish entertainments; anon being practically shut up, when the Prince could not persuade his Royal father to ask Parliament for money to pay his perennial debts, and tried to force his hand by an exhibition of erratic economy; at one time teeming with the gay crowd that formed the Prince’s court, when the great Whig families rallied around him, and the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire—“the best bred woman in Europe”—the Duchess of Rutland, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and Mrs. Crewe of the “Buff and Blue” toast, “rained influence”; at another time echoing to the merry wit of Sheridan, the classical allusions of Fox, the broad stories of Hanger, and even the rich tones of the great Sir Walter himself as he joined in the vociferous cheering that greeted the toast of “The Author of Waverley.”
If those walls could have related what they heard, many an unedifying tale would have been told, but also the actual truth of many an anecdote which tradition has handed down to us. Did Brummell really tell the Prince to “ring the bell,” and did his Royal Highness do so, and order “Mr. Brummell’s carriage”? Did the Royal host become so actually imbued with the idea that he had been present at Waterloo, that he would frequently refer to the hero of that day, with: “Was I not there, Duke?” to which Wellington was wont to reply, with a bow and a grim smile, “I have often heard you say so, Sir?” Did Sir Philip Francis on one occasion go up to the entrance and, instead of ringing the bell, knock loudly on the door with his stick; and did the Prince Regent’s confidential friend, Colonel McMahon, subsequently expostulate with, “Upon my word, Francis, you must try and keep Sir Philip in order? Do you know he has been knocking at the Prince’s door with a stick, and making such a noise, because he was not admitted, that we thought we should never get him away?”
These, and how many other stories might we not substantiate or otherwise with the help of that mural evidence!
“But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
With all the freaks of wanton wealth array’d,”
have passed away with Carlton House for ever, and in its place we have the flight of stone steps leading to the Park, down which a carriage had once rushed headlong but for Mr. Gladstone’s restraining hand, and a stone Duke of York gazing at the sky.
The Prince Regent, when he became George IV., thought of connecting Carlton House with Marlborough House by a great gallery running the length of Pall Mall, and dedicated to the portraits of the Royal and notable persons of this country. Had he done so, he would have anticipated the National Portrait Gallery of to-day, and built a nobler Valhalla; but Nash was allowed to demolish Carlton House and cover its site with the great mansions and terraces which now stand there.
The Princess Charlotte—the nation’s hope, so untimely cut off—was born at Carlton House, but she is more closely connected with Warwick House, which almost adjoined it on the east side, and stood at the end of Warwick Street, which still exists. The original Warwick House had been the birthplace of that Sir Philip Warwick, whose memoirs of his Royal master, Charles I., are frequently to be met with. When the Princess Charlotte lived here with her governess, Miss Knight, the latter states that the entrance was secured by bars of iron on the inside, and that the Princess was obliged to go through the court of Carlton House. The same lady gives as dreary an account of the house, as Fanny Burney did of Kew Palace; it was, she says, “an old moderate-sized dwelling, at that time miserably out of repair, and almost falling to ruins.” This was in 1813; in the following year the Princess, worn out by petty restraints, the coercive measures of the Prince Regent, and above all her enforced separation from her mother, escaped from the house and drove in a hackney cab to Queen Caroline’s then residence in Connaught Place. Hither, however, she returned at the urgent solicitations of Brougham and the Duke of Sussex; and here, subsequently, occurred that scene between the Regent and the Princess and her attendants which forms the subject of a well-known caricature drawing.
It is difficult to pass by Charing Cross and its manifold memories, but if we gave way to the temptation, we should find fresh attractions in Whitehall and the Strand, and I must unwillingly refrain from penetrating further east. The Haymarket, which we are now going up, and Piccadilly east, which we shall presently come to, are, however, both so full of interest that I hope we shall find matter in these “pastures new” to compensate us.