CHAPTER IV.
BOND STREET.
“And now our Brothers Bond Street enter
Dear Street of London’s charms the centre.”
—Lytton.
BOND STREET.
Bond Street is really as much the centre of the charms of London to-day, as it was when Lord Lytton wrote the lines quoted above; if by charms we mean fine shops, about which Lord Beaconsfield once waxed eloquent, and a segregation of brilliant humanity; otherwise it is curious that a thoroughfare of such importance should be at once so narrow and so cut up by tributary streets, in some cases, wider than it is itself, which make it crowded and inconvenient to a degree only possible in a City as old and as relatively unchanged in outline as London; for Bond Street, although not of any great age, as we understand the word, would probably be considered by those not so familiar as ourselves with antiquity, as having a decent pedigree, for it dates from 1686, and forms perhaps the most important portion of the scheme of development associated with Sir Thomas Bond.
It occupies a part of the site of Clarendon House, and when that mansion with its grounds of 300 acres was purchased by Bond and others, the street was formed. The west side was the first to be built, being then termed Albemarle Buildings, from the Duke of Albemarle who sold Clarendon House to Bond. Hatton described the street in its early days as being “inhabited by the nobility and gentry.” You shall seek long enough to-day before you find members of either class represented among the inhabitants other than occasionally in the various hotels in the street, or perhaps in chambers above the shops, which is but a repetition of what was the custom at an earlier day, when all sorts of illustrious individuals gave as their addresses the upper parts of business premises which, in the absence of numbers to houses and shops, were sufficiently distinctive; thus, when we read of (say) the “Duke of A., at Mr. Jones’s, hairdressers,” we are not to assume that that capillary artist entertained noble guests in his first floor front, other than in the light of lodgers who paid handsomely for the privilege of being in a fashionable street without having to keep up a fashionable house. But, at first, private houses were as much de rigueur in Bond Street as they are in Brook Street or Grosvenor Street to-day, and one of the earliest titled inhabitants was that Duke of St. Albans, the son of Charles II. and Nell Gwynn, whose title would seem to have been a royal afterthought, according to the well-known story, which tells us that, on one occasion, his mother addressed him as “little bastard,” when Charles, who overheard it, remonstrated with her for the use of the term, whereupon Mistress Eleanor, who probably used the ugly word for a sufficiently good reason, replied that the child had no other name. This, apparently, set the King a-thinking, with the result that shortly afterwards, a patent of nobility was made out for the boy. Although I can’t say in what year the Duke took up his residence here (it was probably about 1720), he died in 1726, and an advertisement in The London Gazette in the following year contains an intimation to the effect that his Grace’s house was then for disposal, in consequence of his decease.
The Court Guide is responsible for the names of other inhabitants, and among them may be noted that Duke of Kingston who married a painfully notorious wife—Miss Chudleigh; and that Countess of Macclesfield who proved such an unnatural mother to Savage, the poet.
In 1708, I find Lords Abingdon, Anglesea, and Coningsby mentioned as living in Old Bond Street; some years later the Countess of Gainsborough resided here; but the street as a residential quarter is more interesting from the fact that Laurence Sterne died, at what is the present No. 41, in 1768. The man whose name was on everyone’s lips, and whose extraordinary work was in everyone’s hands, departed to the land of shades with only two hirelings to bid him Godspeed; and one of these alien hands, that of John Macdonald, a footman, has left the description of that last strange scene. “About this time Mr. Sterne, the celebrated author, was taken ill at the silk-bag shop in Old Bond Street.... I went to Mr. Sterne’s lodgings; the mistress opened the door; I inquired how he did. She told me to go up to the nurse; I went into the room, and he was just a-dying. I waited ten minutes; but in five he said, ‘Now it is come’! He put up his hand as if to stop a blow, and died in a minute.”
LONG’S HOTEL, BOND STREET.
The ubiquitous Boswell was lodging in Old Bond Street a year after Sterne’s death, and Pascali Paoli, whose name looms largely in Boswell’s “voluminous page,” had already come here some eight years earlier. Gibbon, on his return from Lausanne, also lodged in Bond Street, where he writes: “While coaches were rattling through Bond Street, I have passed many a solitary evening in my lodgings with my books”; while half a century earlier Mrs. Loe, a friend of Lady Wentworth’s, was residing here, in 1710, and we find the old gossip visiting her and subsequently informing her son that “she (Mrs. L.) had ten wax candles, six in one room and fower in a very little one and very fynly furnished,” to her ladyship’s evident astonishment.
At No. 24, the Artists’ Benevolent Institution was housed, in 1814; but this particular building is more interesting still from the fact that, in 1791, it was the residence—one of his many in London—of Sir Thomas Lawrence; while Northcote, the artist, at No. 2, in 1781, and Ozias Humphrey, the miniature painter, at No. 13, in 1796, combine with Lawrence, to represent Art here.
Bond Street, if to a lesser degree than some other thoroughfares close by, has always been noted for its hotels, one of the most famous being Long’s, at Nos. 15 and 16, rebuilt and greatly enlarged in 1888, which was patronised by Sir Walter Scott; and here he met Lord Byron for the last time in 1815; and Stevens’s Hotel, two doors off, where Byron was to be met with in the days when he affected to live a fashionable life and consort with the “Dandies.” Stevens’s was at No. 18, and, having been rebuilt in 1888, is now a jewellers’; another hostelry has also disappeared these 30 years—this was the Clarendon Hotel, at No. 169, which occupied the former town residence of the Dukes of Grafton, where at a later time the great Chatham once lived.
Old Bond Street, which begins at “Stewart’s Corner,” runs into New Bond Street with nothing to mark their division or to indicate that they form, except in name, anything but one continuous thoroughfare. The latter was not, however, formed till about 30 years after its prototype; but it equals it in interest by reason of the illustrious ones who have dwelt in it. Here, for instance, came in 1727, to lodge with his cousin Lancelot, at a house then described as “over against the Crown and Cushion,” the great Dean of St. Patrick’s, whom we have met with in Piccadilly when he was lodging in Pall Mall or Bury Street; here lived a few years later that most delightful of garrulous memoir-writers, Mrs. Delany, the friend of Fanny Burney and Queen Charlotte and of how many others; Lord Coventry, who married one of the beautiful Gunnings, was here, in 1732; so was Lord Craven and Lord Abergavenny; later still George Selwyn cut his jokes in the street and hurried by this way to many a last scene at Tyburn, not far off in the Oxford Road. Dr. Johnson’s ponderous form might have been seen here, rolling along, as he touched all the posts he passed.
Thomson, “who sang the seasons and their change,” and used to lie abed so unconscionable a time o’mornings also lived in New Bond Street, before he flitted to “ambrosial Richmond.”
Not only have men of thought and fashion resided here, but men of action, in the persons of Lord Nelson and Sir Thomas Picton, have been represented. The former was staying at No. 147, in 1797, and therewith a curious circumstance is on record. After he had been created Duke of Bronté, he was accustomed to make presents to his friends of casks of Marsala, for which his estates in Sicily were celebrated. Curiously enough, during some excavations next door to Nelson’s one-time residence, a cask of this wine, in a bricked-up cellar, was discovered. So rotten, however, had the cask become, that on exposure to the air it fell to pieces.
Southey tells of the following incident which occurred during Nelson’s sojourn here.
“One night, after a day of constant pain, Nelson retired early to bed ... the family was soon disturbed by a mob knocking loudly and violently at the door. The news of Duncan’s victory had been made public, and the house was not illuminated. But when the mob was told that Admiral Nelson lay there in bed, badly wounded, the foremost of them made answer, “You shall hear no more from us to-night.”
Sir Thomas Picton, who fell at Waterloo, was living in Bond Street at the same time that Nelson and Lady Hamilton were there, and a few years later we find the redoubtable Lord Camelford a resident at No. 148. His rooms were so typical of those of a man about town of the day, that Cruickshank introduced the interiors in his illustrations to Pierce Egan’s “Tom and Jerry”; while the authors of the “Rejected Addresses” have also left on record an enumeration of the various lethal weapons that decorated the walls.
Lord Camelford was one of those fire-eaters who never seem able to exist for any length of time without “entrance to a quarrel.” He was known and feared throughout the town, and few cared to tackle the man who was so ready to seek an occasion for fighting, and so deadly in the field. It is thus that the best stories told of him are those which relate his encounters with strangers, one of which I will give, in the words of Timbs, who collected much interesting data about Lord Camelford’s career.
“Entering one evening the Prince of Wales’s Coffee-house in Conduit Street, Lord Camelford sat down to read the papers. Soon after came in a conceited fop, who seated himself opposite his Lordship, and desired the waiter to ‘bring a pint of Madeira and a couple of wax candles and put them into the next box.’ He then drew to himself Lord Camelford’s candle and began to read. His Lordship glanced at him indignantly and then continued reading. The waiter announced commands completed, when the fop lounged round into the box and began to read. Lord Camelford then, mimicking the tone of the coxcomb, called for a pair of snuffers, deliberately walked to the next box and snuffed out both the candles, and returned to his seat. The coxcomb, boiling with rage, roared out, ‘Waiter, who is this fellow that dares thus to insult a gentleman? Who is he? What is he? What do they call him?’ ‘Lord Camelford, sir,’ replied the waiter. ‘Who? Lord Camelford!’ returned the fop, in a tone of voice scarcely audible, terror-struck at his own impertinence. ‘Lord Camelford! What have I to pay?’ On being told, he laid down the money and stole away without daring to taste his Madeira!”
“THE WESTERN EXCHANGE,” BOND STREET.
It was while living in Bond Street that Lord Camelford chose to ignore the general illuminations for the peace of 1801, and would allow no lights to shine in the windows of his rooms. The result was that the mob attacked the house, and proceeded to break all the windows, whereat the pugnacious peer, undaunted, sallied forth with a thick stick, and proceeded to lay about him to such good effect that it was not till a considerable space of time had elapsed that he was overpowered by numbers, and was, perforce, constrained to retreat in an almost unrecognizable and wholly undignified condition.
To-day Bond Street, Old and New, is as nearly a complete street of shops as any in London; indeed, it is pre-eminently the “street of beautiful shops,” as Mr. Meredith calls it, and is, in this connection, known throughout the world. Anyone walking down it would have to draw heavily on his imagination, if he would try to realise that, as Bramston writes:—“Pease, cabbages, and turnips once grew where now stands New Bond Street ...”, so completely has time metamorphosed this once rural spot into a promenade of bricks and mortar, where the ends of the world seem to have been ransacked to fill its marts with all the riches of Nature and Art conceivable by the mind of man.
The shops of Bond Street have always been famous. In the early years of the 19th century the so-called Western Exchange was established there, but has long since disappeared. Its size can be estimated by the illustration here given, taken from an old coloured print of the day.
But undeniably fashionable and central as is Bond Street, the stranger will be struck at its exceeding tenuity, especially in that part where Grafton Street joins it. Here, during the season, one is accustomed to see carriages and carts in apparently inextricable confusion, until the white glove of authority is raised aloft and confusion ceases to be confounded.
Lord Beaconsfield, who knew and loved his London thoroughly, once wrote that, “Those who know Bond Street only in the blaze of fashionable hours can form but an imperfect conception of its matutinal charm when it is still shady and fresh, when there are no carriages, rarely a cart, and passers-by gliding about on real business.”
Should, then, we wish to feel “as in some Continental city,” which the author of “Endymion” assures us is the case, if we share Bond Street with the lark, we must join this blythe spirit, before the late breakfasted “West End” surges through its long vista.
One of the street’s former residents, we may be sure, never did this, for, when the poet Thomson was lodging at a milliner’s here, he, to use Mrs. Piozzi’s words, “seldom rose early enough to see the sun do more than glisten on the opposite windows of the streets.”
BURLINGTON STREET AND BURLINGTON GARDENS.
Burlington Gardens, leading to Old Burlington Street, and, by Vigo Street, to Regent Street, is the first thoroughfare we come to on the right after leaving Piccadilly. Old Burlington Street has passed through no less than three changes of name. In 1729 it was known as Nowell Street; four years later it blossomed into Great Burlington Street; to-day this adjective is, appropriately, discarded. It, of course, takes its name from Lord Burlington, whose palace stood between Burlington Gardens and Piccadilly, and whose grounds once occupied the land where the street now runs. The West End branch of the Bank of England is housed in Burlington Gardens in the residence formerly known as Uxbridge House, from the lesser title of that Marquis of Anglesea who once owned it, and who died here, in 1854. Famous for his share in the victory of Waterloo, one of his legs lies buried in the little church adjoining the battle field, and the old soldier was once surprised, on paying it a subsequent visit, to find the resting place of his limb converted into a sort of shrine. Uxbridge House was erected in 1790-2 by Vardy and Bonami, and stood on the site of Queensbury House, where Gay’s patron and patroness, who set up that great monument to the poet, in Westminster Abbey, once lived.
Another titled lady, whose connection with a poet has alone caused her name to survive, resided in Burlington Street, in the person of Lady Warwick, the widow of the great Addison; and among other past inhabitants mention may be made of Lord Hervey (Pope’s “Sporus” and “Lord Fanny”); Mark Akenside, the poet-physician, who died here in 1770; and Sir Joseph Banks, who took a house here in the following year; Colonel Ligonier (whose portrait by Reynolds is one of that Master’s memorable achievements), and the Marquis Cornwallis, who resided at No. 29, where he died in 1805.
Another great soldier is indirectly connected with the street, for we find Wolfe writing to his mother and brother who were at one time living here, although there is no evidence to show that the hero of “The Heights of Abraham” himself ever resided in Burlington Street. The “great” Lady Cork—for I think she deserves the adjective—is, however, closely associated with this street. That noble patroness of literature, and last of the “blue stockings”—to use the words in their best sense—died here, in 1840, and Hayward has recorded the charm of her personality, her good nature, and unusual gifts.
It is an interesting fact that in Burlington Street brass door-plates bearing the names of private persons (of which Lord Powis’s in Berkeley Square is the sole survivor) were first used in London.
VIGO STREET.
Vigo Street, which connects Burlington Gardens with Regent Street, takes its name from the sea-fight which occurred at Vigo Bay in 1702. It was formerly known as Vigo Lane, which title was originally applied to that portion of the thoroughfare now known as Burlington Gardens, as well. The change seems to have taken place subsequently to the formation of Regent Street.
CLIFFORD STREET.
A few steps further up Bond Street, we come to Clifford Street, where Dr. Addington, the father of Lord Sidmouth, lived, at No. 7. Lord Sidmouth himself, who was, in consequence of his father’s profession and also because he once prescribed a soporific for George III., known as “the Doctor,” also dwelt here, and was, at least on two occasions, visited here by Lord Nelson. Bishop Hurd, known both ecclesiastically and also for his edition of Horace, also once resided close by, at No. 5; and Sir Arthur Wellesley was staying at No. 14, in 1806; while the Prince of Orange, who came to this country with the object of becoming engaged to the Princess Charlotte—an object frustrated by the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, as well as by the Princess’s almost open repugnance to the not very prepossessing gentleman himself—lodged at his tailor’s, at No. 8.
The street also once had its particular Coffee-house (as what street in London in those days had not?), known as the “Clifford Street Coffee-house,” which is chiefly interesting from the fact that the “Debating Club,” of which “Conversation” Sharp and Lord Charles Townshend were shining lights, once had its headquarters here.
SAVILE ROW.
Clifford Street leads into Savile Row, named after Dorothy, the heiress of Savile, Marquis of Halifax, and wife of the architect Earl of Burlington. Here Lady Suffolk, Queen Caroline’s “good Howard,” and most respectable of Royal mistresses, lived, in a house she had purchased for £3,000, in 1735. William Pitt and his brother were also residing in Savile Row in 1781, and here died, under the pathetic circumstances known to all the world, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, at No. 17, whence he wrote to Rogers that agonizing letter for assistance to prevent the bailiffs “putting the carpets out of window,” as the dying man phrased it. A tablet indicates the last home of “Sherry,” who had enlivened a generation with his wit and astonished it by his surprising gifts.
Among other residents at a later date, at No. 20, was Bobus Smith, the brother of Sydney; and Grote, the historian of Greece, who died, at No. 12, on June 18th, 1871. Here Mrs. Grote gave those musical receptions at which the voice of Jenny Lind and the recitals of Chopin and Thalberg were to be heard. A memorial tablet now indicates Grote’s residence here.
Sir Benjamin Brodie, the great surgeon, was at one time living at No. 16, Savile Row, and Tierney, the politician, drew his last breath at No. 11, in 1830.
CORK STREET.
Cork Street, joining Clifford Street and Burlington Gardens, was named after Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, and its chief feature was the fine house, or, rather one should perhaps say, externally fine house, for Walpole affirms that “all its beauty was outside”—which Lord Burlington designed, in 1723, for Field-Marshal Wade, on whose death, in 1748, it was sold by public auction.
In Cork Street lived Dr. Arbuthnot, the friend of Pope and Swift, and one of the three “Yahoos of T’witnam”; he appears to have come here in 1729, and here he died six years later. Another one-time resident was Mrs. Abigail Masham, who replaced Sarah of Marlborough in the affections and confidence of Queen Anne.
Cork Street has always been notable for its hotels, from the time when Gibbon speaks of the Cork Street Hotel, to the later days of the Burlington, where the Empire-builder, Cecil Rhodes, was wont to put up.
CONDUIT STREET.
Conduit Street can be reached from Savile Row by one the quaintest little alleys in the West End, called Savile Place, a tiny thoroughfare which I never go through without expecting to see a Sedan chair waiting at the other end, and a bewigged and besworded gentleman or a hooped and patched lady passing through on their way to it. If we followed them we should find ourselves in the middle of Conduit Street, but, as for my purpose it is more convenient to enter at its western end, let us pass along Bond Street until we come to this its largest tributary.
The width of Conduit Street is accounted for when we know that it originally consisted of private houses, although you shall seek long enough nowadays ere you find one that has not been transformed into a business establishment of some sort or another. The street was completed in 1713, and takes its name from a conduit of water which stood in what was then known as Conduit Mead, a field of 27 acres, described in the vaguest of vague ways as lying between Piccadilly and Paddington, and of which Lord Clarendon had obtained in 1666 a lease of 99 years at the nominal rental (oh! those rents of former days, are they not alone sufficient to stamp that far-gone period as the “good old times”?) of £8 per annum.
The Chapel of the Trinity, which had been built by Archbishop Tenison, in 1716, and replaced the older wooden chapel, once used by James II. on Hounslow Heath, when his camp was pitched there, but subsequently brought hither and left stranded in what now seems somewhat incongrous surroundings, was standing so late as 1877; but its site has now given place to one of the many tailors’ establishments for which Conduit Street is noted. Evelyn, in an entry in his diary for July 18th, 1691, mentions attending service at the original chapel, then but newly arrived here from Hounslow. One can with difficulty imagine the place surrounded by those fields in which Carew Mildmay, according to Pennant, remembered shooting woodcock, and before Lord Burlington, the first to build here, had set about the development of the property. When, however, houses were erected, they soon found illustrious tenants. The Earls of Macclesfield had their town residence at what is now No. 9 and to-day the headquarters of the Royal Society of British Architects, and other Societies. The notorious Duke of Wharton was also living here, in 1725; so were Boswell and Wilberforce at later dates. One wonders if it was in Conduit Street that poor Sheridan was once found drunk, but, so far as speech was concerned, anything but incapable, and when asked by the Watch whom he might be, hiccuped out, “William Wilberforce”! Delmé Redcliffe died in this street; and at 36, resided Sir Walter Farquhar, the physician whose name has come down to posterity chiefly through the fame of one of his patients, the great William Pitt. Farquhar was not the only doctor of note whose address was in Conduit Street, for Sir Astley Cooper died here, at No. 39, in 1841, and that Dr. Eliotson who once saved Thackeray’s life (and to whom in consequence the novelist dedicated “Pendennis”), lived at No. 37, a house doubly famous (though since rebuilt), having been the residence of George Canning, for a year, as a memorial tablet testifies. But the chief interest in the street, lies in the fact that here, on January 24th, 1749, was born Charles James Fox, perhaps the most remarkable of all the remarkable men who made the later years of George III.’s long reign memorable.
The street had, of course, its taverns or coffee-houses; notably, “The Prince of Wales’s,” where David Williams inaugurated the Royal Literary Fund, in 1772, the year in which Boswell came to lodge here, and the scene of the last of those quarrels which Lord Camelford was never tired of provoking. This terrible fire-eater seems to have at last met more than his match (at one time it was generally supposed that he never would do so) in a Captain Best, and as the result of a dispute about a lady of easy ethics named Simmons, the two went away to the fields behind Holland House, and fought the last duel in which Camelford was ever to take part, in the year of grace 1804. His Lordship had at an earlier date, wantonly insulted the great traveller Vancouver, in the same street; and there was therefore a sort of poetic justice in the coincidence that he should forfeit his life as the result of one more dispute in this locality.
Another tavern in the street had also a gruesome notoriety, for it was from “The Coach and Horses” that Thurtell, the cold-blooded murderer of Weare, drove in that gig, made famous by Carlyle’s celebrated allusion, to pick up and drive into the country his “murdered man”—to apply Keats’s magnificent anticipatory phrase.
MADDOX STREET.
To the north of Conduit Street we come to Maddox Street, one of those formed by the Earl of Burlington as part of his building development, in 1721. It takes its curious name from that of the original ground landlord, Sir Benjamin Maddox, who died in 1670.
GEORGE STREET.
The chief thoroughfare running through Maddox Street is George Street, connecting Conduit Street with Hanover Square.
First named Great George Street in honour of King George I., it was formed about 1719, and, apart from its many past inhabitants of light and leading, is known all the world over as containing that church of St. George’s, Hanover Square, which has always been associated with the weddings of fashion.
ST. GEORGE’S, HANOVER SQUARE.
It was one of the fifty churches which were ordered to be erected in Queen Anne’s reign, and was commenced during the last year of her rule. It either took an unconscionable time in building or its erection was delayed, for it was not consecrated till 1724. James of Greenwich, as he is called, was the architect, and even Ralph, who wrote a sort of gossiping survey of London, and is so hypercritical that hardly anything in the metropolis wholly pleases him, unreservedly praises the elevation of its Corinthian portico and its lofty clock-tower. The interior is not particularly striking, but the marriage-registers are of the greatest interest and importance. Here will be found the names of the Duke of Kingston and Miss Chudleigh, who were married in 1769, the lady already being the wife of Mr. Hervey, and afterwards figuring in that celebrated bigamy case, about which most of us have read or heard. Three years after this wedding, we find the great miniature painter, Richard Cosway’s name opposite that of Marion Hatfield, who, as Mrs. Cosway, also made some mark as a painter of portraits “in little.”
Twenty years later Sir William Hamilton leads to the altar Emma Hart, whose name is as closely associated with the fame of Nelson and the genius of Romney as with that of her lawful lord; while at least one member of the Royal family has been married in St. George’s; for here, in 1793, the Duke of Sussex was united to Lady Augusta Murray, a marriage rendered void by the Royal Marriage Act.
Among other names which may be picked out from an almost inexhaustible list, are those of the Earl of Derby, who, on the death of his first wife, married in somewhat indecent haste, the beautiful and talented actress, Miss Farren, although the actual ceremony was performed at his Lordship’s house in Grosvenor Square; Mr. Heath, who was united here to the notorious Lola Montes, for whose “beaux yeux,” a king of Bavaria almost lost his throne; and Mr. Cross, who was married, in 1880, to Miss Evans, known to all readers as George Eliot.
George Street, Continued.
George Street, as well as Hanover Square, has in latter days taken on itself a certain business and commercial air, sadly at variance with its past traditions, for where we now find offices, and particularly dressmakers’ headquarters, once dwelt people of fashion, and some of national importance. For instance, No. 25, with its fine stone front, erected for Earl Temple in 1864, and later the residence of the Duchess of Buckingham, was, before its transformation a smaller house in which lived successively John Copley, the painter of the well-known “Death of Chatham,” and other much engraved pictures, and his son, who became Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, and who died here in 1863.
At No. 3, Madame de Stael stayed when on her visit to this country, and here probably posed as untiringly as we know she did at Lansdowne House. Admiral Hawke once lived at No. 7, and next door, at No. 8, David Mallet, for whom is claimed, in common with James Thomson, the authorship of “Rule Britannia,” which was first written as a lyric in that Masque which the joint authors produced for Frederick, Prince of Wales.
Besides Copley, two other artists once resided in George Street; Sir William Beechey and Sir Thomas Phillips; neither perhaps in the first flight, but both untiring wielders of the brush, and in their day successful portrait painters.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s bright eyes and bardolphian face must often have lighted up the street as he listened to the chimes at midnight, at No. 9; and at an earlier day, the somewhat solemn visage of Lord Chancellor Cowper was to be seen here as he passed stately up the steps of No. 13, where his wife may have been penning that valuable diary which has come down to us. The list might be carried on interminably. Only one or two more names, and we must hurry into Hanover Square. The Earl of Albemarle and Lord Stair, of George II.’s day, lived in this street; and in 1762, the witty Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who once, on someone’s hinting that her hands were in need of ablution, replied, “You should see my feet,” and whom Walpole described ungallantly as “always a dirty little thing.” Who else can I pick out? Sir Charles Clarges, in 1726; Colonel Francis Charteris, three years later, and Lord Shelburne, in 1748. These, and how many others, pass by like ghosts and carry us back to “the snows of yesteryear!”
HANOVER SQUARE.
As we look up George Street, the pleasant green oasis of Hanover Square’s central garden faces us, grouped round the great statue of Pitt which Chantry designed, and which was put up in 1831. There is no inscription on the base other than the name and dates of birth and death; but Sydney Smith, for once departing from his usual genial humour, wrote a suggested epitaph for it, so galling and so bitter, that it might have drawn the ghost of the “pilot that weathered the storm” from the shades where such great spirits dwell, and set it wandering with uneasy footsteps round its bronze counterfeit!
The Square was formed between the years 1716 and 1720. Being part of that great property which came to Harley, second Earl of Oxford, through his marriage, in 1713, with the Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles, heiress of John, Duke of Newcastle. It was at first intended to call it Oxford Square, and only a loyal afterthought was responsible for its present designation. Notwithstanding that it has almost entirely lost that residential character with which it began its fashionable career, there luckily survive some of the original houses—Nos. 17 and 18 being cases in point—but the majority have been rebuilt out of all knowledge. To-day in these are found clubs, fashionable dressmakers, learned societies, anything you will but private residents; but in past times it held its own with any of the West End squares in the celebrity and importance of its inhabitants.
For instance, No. 13, known as Harewood House, which until recently was associated with the Royal Agricultural Society, was built by William Adam for the bibliophilic Duke of Roxburgh. Its present name was given it when the Earl of Harewood purchased it in 1795, and it remained in his family for just upon a century. At what was formerly numbered 15, but now 17, lived Mrs. Jordan, the beautiful and talented actress who fascinated the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV. Angelica Kauffmann was employed to decorate the principal ceiling here, and marbles from Italy were used in the formation of the beautiful mantelpieces. Next door (now No. 18), where, in 1824, Sir John Malcolm inaugurated the Oriental Club, was, from 1771, for ten years occupied by Lord Le Despenser, who, as Sir Francis Dashwood, was one of the most notorious of that band of Medmenham monks, whose “Hell Fire Club,” with its orgies, in which John Wilkes was one of the protagonists, was the scandal of the day. When the Oriental Club was formed the house was rebuilt, in 1827, by the Wyatts, for its accommodation.
Another important house in the Square was Downshire House, built in 1793, and once the residence of Lord Hillsborough. To-day it is a Bank; but in 1835 Prince Talleyrand was living here, and its walls may have heard some of the brilliant “mots” which this extraordinary man was wont to enunciate in what Sydney Smith described as “gurgling, not talking.” Yet another celebrated individual is associated with the place, for, after Talleyrand’s departure, Earl Grey, the hero of the great Reform Bill, lived here for a time. Two doors off once resided Lord Palmerston; not the “Pam” of the satirists and whilom Prime Minister, but his father; while later the Duchess of Brunswick, sister of George III., died in the same house in 1813.
If we can call “Lansdowne the polite,” as Pope terms him, a poet, and Ambrose Phillips one (he does to some extent deserve the title), then Hanover Square has been the home of the muses; and indeed, since I can add the name of Thomas Campbell, there should be no doubt about the matter, for all three lived, and two of them died here; the first in 1735, the second fourteen years later. The United Services have also contributed their share of inhabitants, and great ones at that, for not only Field-Marshal Lord Cobham, to whom Pope dedicated his “Characters of Men,” but also Lord Rodney, (who was the first to make use of that manœuvre of “breaking the line,” which Nelson carried into such deadly effect at Trafalgar), and Lord Anson, a hardly less brilliant naval commander, all resided in the precincts of the Square.
Perceval Pott is hardly remembered to-day, but in his time he was a great surgeon; Sir James Clark, physician to the late Queen Victoria, is better known, and as both these benefactors to the ills of humanity lived in the Square, medicine may be said to have been well represented here in the past. Let me make an end of names with that of Mr. Hamilton, whose “single speech,” so full of promise, is invariably associated with him, and who once occupied a house here.
It was in Hanover Square that the fine building erected by Sir John Gallini in 1771, was opened as the Hanover Square Concert Rooms, where John Christian Bach gave for eight years a series of concerts, and where later the “Ancient Music Society,” and later still, the Philharmonic Society, drew crowded audiences, and may be regarded as the first serious and successful attempts to make classical music popular in this country. In 1862 the rooms were enlarged and redecorated, and, as the “Queen’s Concert Rooms” held on gallantly for thirteen years, when they went the way of all musical flesh in London!
Let us now return and cross Bond Street, and, casting an eye up South Molton Street, where a stone on No. 36 indicates that the thoroughfare was formed in 1721; and not forgetting that the painter-poet and extraordinary visionary William Blake was living there, at No. 17, in 1807, let us wander up Brook Street.
BROOK STREET.
With Brook Street we enter into the purlieus of Mayfair, which stands for the West End, as Whitechapel does for the East, in those points of social habit characteristic of the two extreme quarters of the town.
Like so many of the thoroughfares in this quarter of London, Brook Street has gone through its second and third baptism, for first it was called Little Brook Street, and later Lower Brook Street. The stream once known as the Tyburn, which followed in its course South Molton Lane, across Brook Street, through the gardens of Lansdowne House to Buckingham Palace, is responsible for the name of Brook Street, but the pedestrian will need to pass over no bridges now on his way to Pimlico.
Statesmen and doctors, musicians and painters, have all in the past helped to give an interest to Brook Street, which to-day must chiefly rely on its fashionable residents, with here and there a stray politician, for what of interest it may be said to possess. It is still undoubtedly a fine street, and not a few of its houses help to carry us back to past days. Once Edmund Burke lived in it, at what is now No. 72. The great Handel’s spinet may have been heard through the open windows of No. 57 as he tried, shall we say, the exquisite air from “Rinaldo,” or gave the finishing touches to that “Water music” which was to charm (if his ears ever could be charmed by sweet sounds) his gracious Majesty King George II. We had better not intrude too curiously into the workshop of genius, or we might receive a shock, if we found its master not intent on some inspired number from the “Messiah,” but spoiling one of his few books (a presentation copy, perchance, and oh! the feelings of the author), with fingers greasy with muffins, or indulging in one of his gargantuan feasts at which he alone was “de gompany.” It would be like coming upon the great Beethoven, not in the throes of the Ninth Symphony, or the “Waldstein”; but hurling cups and saucers at his terrified maidservant!
Not far from Handel’s lodgings (on the wall of which, by the bye, a tablet reposes) a painter, and an engraver plied their quieter arts and laboured in their “unregarded hours,” for here both Gerard Vandergucht and his artist son Benjamin lived, and here were finished, with infinite pains, those engravings in which the elder man reproduced the refinement of Vandyck and the strength of Dobson. Thomas Barker (Barker of Bath, as he is termed) also painted in Brook Street; and the healing-art has been represented here by such medical names to conjure disease with as Jenner and Gull, Williams, Savory, and Broadbent. Sir Charles Bell, who died here in 1832, and Lord Davey, who happily is still with us, represent science; and Lord Lake, one of the famous of those, who, as Carlyle put it, “get their living by being killed”—the art of war.
Dear old Mrs. Delany, who was always young, and yet makes us think of her as always old and charming, lived here; and Sydney Smith, with whom we are for ever meeting (never too often, however), cut his jokes, (in which was often hidden so much genial philosophy), in Brook Street, among innumerable other places in London; while readers of “Dombey and Son” will remember that Cousin Feenix’s “dull and dreary” residence was in this fashionable thoroughfare. Claridge’s Hotel is in Brook Street, as most people know; but it looks very different to-day to what it must have done when the father of “Little Dorrit” stayed there on his return from the Continent.
GROSVENOR STREET.
By taking a short cut down Avery Row we shall find ourselves in Grosvenor Street, which was formed about 1726, and was a later addition to that great building development which was begun by Sir Richard Grosvenor in 1695. In size and appearance it is analogous to Brook Street. If Lord Balcarres lives in the former, have we not Earl Carrington in the latter? If Brook Street can boast Lord Davey, cannot Grosvenor Street glory in the presence of Queen Victoria’s trusted physician, Sir James Reid; and till recently the Right Hon. James Lowther, Speaker of the House of Commons, and officially first of the untitled ones of England? And in the past a similar comparison could be sustained. We have noted some of the interesting residents of a bygone day in Brook Street; let us glance for a moment at those who once lived here. We can begin with a Prime Minister; for Lord North, that amiable and somnolent first Minister of the Crown, whose equanimity allowed him to peacefully doze while the Opposition was successfully voting the overthrow of his Government, lived here, in 1740; in the same year Sir Paul Methuen, the ancestor of Lord Methuen, the distinguished soldier of our own day, was residing here. Then there is that Miss Lane, notorious if for nothing else, at least for being the mistress of Frederick, Prince of Wales—the “Fritz” of many a popular, and generally scurrilous, ballad.
A later period brings before us the figure of Lord Crewe; and the Marquis Cornwallis, who was living in Grosvenor Street for five years (1793-8) before he went to reside in Grafton Street; and William Huskisson, whose tragic death saddened the inauguration of the first railway line in England. Samuel Whitehead was another old Parliamentary hand who was living here in 1800, as was Sir Humphrey Davy (at No. 28) eighteen years later, and before he removed to his last residence in Park Street, on the other side of the Square; and still later, that fashionable physician of the day, Matthew Baillie, whose merits, Moore, and Rogers (who once said that “bile and Baillie were his only companions”) were never tired of advertising.
BRUTON STREET.
As we return southwards again, by way of Bond Street, we come to Bruton Street, which faces Conduit Street, but was not formed till nearly fifteen years after that thoroughfare.
As in most of the streets in this quarter there are several fine old houses to be found here, two of them, Nos. 17 and 22, being particularly noticeable. Here the great Duke of Argyle and Greenwich drew his last breath, in 1743. Six years later Horace Walpole came from Bolton Row to live here, many years before he succeeded to that title which he affected to consider such a weariness to the flesh.
But a greater than Walpole makes Bruton Street memorable, for here, in the year in which George III. ascended the throne, was residing William Pitt; so, too, some quarter of a century later, was Sheridan before he went to one of many subsequent residences in George Street, Whitehorse Street, Queen Street, and Savile Row.
Indeed Bruton Street seems always to have been a favourable resort of statesmen, and among lesser lights of the political world—and few will find fault at being placed among the smaller constellations by the side of such planets as Sheridan and Pitt—we find living here at various times Lord Hobhouse, Lord Granville, Lord Chancellor Cottenham, and, perhaps another planet, George Canning, in 1809, after he had left Maddox Street. Painting has been represented by William Owen, R.A., who died here in 1825; and medicine, by Sir Matthew Tierney, who was a resident in 1841.
GRAFTON STREET.
As we approach the Piccadilly end of Bond Street, only one more turning intervenes before we stand again at Stewart’s Corner; this is the small Grafton Street, forming as it were a boundary to both Albemarle and Dover Streets, which run into it. It takes its name from that Duke of Grafton who lived in the family mansion at the corner of Clarges Street, and who was associated with Lord Grantham in 1735, in the purchase of the property through which it runs.
Not always has it borne even the title of a street, for once it was known as “Ducking Pond Row,” which would seem to indicate the vicinity of fields and one of those pieces of water in which recalcitrant spouses, when the “scold’s bridle” failed in effect, were solemnly placed in a “ducking stool,” and lowered into watery depths until their powers of “nagging” were deemed to have been thoroughly eradicated.
At a still later date, 1767 to wit, Grafton Street was known as “Evans Row,” but its more euphonious title has long since been restored to it. London knows it chiefly on account of the Grafton Galleries which are situated at No. 7, and which annually attract crowds of art lovers. The celebrated Dilettanti Society and their fine collection of portraits are now housed here. Several clubs, notably the Turf, the Green Park Club, and the New Club, have their headquarters in Grafton Street, the latter club in the house, No. 4, in which Lord Brougham lived and died in 1848, after he had left Berkeley Square.
Another great statesman also once resided in Grafton Street, in the person of Charles James Fox, who was here, in 1783, before he moved to his temporary lodging at an hotel in Berkeley Square, and afterwards to the house in which we have met him in Clarges Street. When Mrs. Fitzherbert left Upper Grosvenor Street she came to live in Grafton Street in 1796; and among other notable inhabitants of the past, the names of Admiral Earl Howe, who died here, at No. 11, in 1799; Lord Stowell, at No. 16; the Marquis Cornwallis, subsequently to his sojourn in Grosvenor-Street; and the Right Honourable George Tierney, in 1809, occur to me.
HAY HILL.
If we leave Grafton Street, where it turns at right angles and continues without break into Dover Street, we shall see on our right a sharp declivity leading into Berkeley Square; this is Hay Hill, named from a farm which once stood here—if one can possibly imagine anything of the sort in this locality, unless the trees in Lansdowne House gardens, which are seen at the bottom of the hill, are sufficient to carry our minds to anything so rural. The Tyburn flowed at the foot of Hay Hill, as we have seen, and perhaps a water mill creaked noisily where nowadays the hoofs of toiling horses grind the pavement. In any case it seems to have been a desirable possession, for I find that, in 1617, it was granted to Hector Johnstone, who afforded help, probably of a monetary character, to that unfortunate Elector Palatine of Bohemia, whose father-in-law, our own pacific James I., was so dilatory in assisting.
At a later date, in Queen Anne’s day to wit, it was granted to the Speaker of the House of Commons, who eventually sold it, and gave the £200 which he thus obtained for it to the poor. If proof were wanted of the sudden and immense increase in the value of property in the West End, we have it in the fact that, before 1759, the same estate was disposed of by the Pomfret family, into whose possession it had come, for the very respectable sum of £20,000 odd.
Hay Hill has its historical importance, for here the heads of Sir Thomas Wyatt and three of his adherents were exposed after the failure of the well-known attempt to unthrone Queen Mary in 1554; and here George, Prince of Wales, with the Duke of York, returning from one of their frequent nightly revels, was held up by a highwayman, and the combined resources of the heir to the throne and his brother amounted to just half a crown!
BERKELEY SQUARE.
At the bottom of Hay Hill, we are in Berkeley Square, in many respects the most interesting of London’s “quadrates,” as they were once termed. It was formed on portions of the grounds of Berkeley House, and Evelyn, the Diarist, helped to lay out the estate, of which it is a part. Lansdowne House, with its gardens, occupies the south side of the square. This magnificent example of Adam’s work was erected for Lord Bute, George III.’s unpopular Minister, but was sold by him, in a yet unfinished state, to the Earl of Shelburne, the ancestor of the Marquis of Lansdowne, who now occupies it. It naturally dwarfs all the other houses in the square, but many of these are also full of interest.
At No. 6 lived the second Lord Chatham, and here William Pitt sometimes stayed; close by, at No. 10, Sir Colin Campbell lived and died; and next door to his residence was the last of Horace Walpole’s homes in London, now indicated by a tablet.
Other interesting people whose names have in the past been connected with Berkeley Square include Colley Cibber, and Charles James Fox; Lord Clive, who committed suicide at No. 45, and Lord Brougham, who occupied in turn two houses here; Lord and Lady Clermont, in whose house the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire took refuge from the Gordon Rioters, and Lady Anne Lindsay, who wrote “Auld Robin Gray”; Lord Canterbury, once Speaker of the House of Commons when Mr. Manners Sutton; and Child, the banker, whose daughter ran away with Lord Westmorland, and whose house, No. 38, now rebuilt, is the residence of the Earl of Rosebery. In fact the whole square is full of memories, social, historical, and political, and clinging about almost every house are recollections of the witty, the powerful, and the illustrious, who have at one time or another dwelt within their walls.
From Berkeley Square and its adjacent streets we enter into that large district known as Mayfair, which in the next chapter we shall have all our work cut out to even superficially examine.
THE MAY FAIR IN 1716.