Poussons cette douce ivresse
Jusqu'an milieu de la nuit,
Et n'écoutons que la tendresse
D'un charmant vis-à-vis."'
'What signifies if Europe has a tyrant more or less, So we but pray Calliope Our verse and song to bless'—-proceeds this Anacreontic performance; and Walpole copies out its entire five stanzas to send to Mann at Florence. They miscarry, he says, 'in nothing but the language, the thoughts and the poetry,'—a judgment which is needlessly severe.
In March, 1751, an end came to these lighthearted junketings, when His Royal Highness quitted the scene almost precipitately from the breaking of an abscess in his side, caused by the blow of a cricket-ball at Cliveden. The Princess and her children continued to live in Leicester Fields until 1766. Meanwhile, to the accompaniment of trumpets and kettledrums, the old house witnessed the proclamation of George III., and the marriage, in its great drawing-room, of the Princess Augusta to Ferdinand, Hereditary Prinee of Brunswick, one of the most popular heroes ever huzzaed to by an English mob. After this last occurrence, the only important event connected with royalty in the Fields is the death at Savile House on 29th December, 1765, of one of the princes. 'The King's youngest brother, Prince Frederick,' writes Walpole (with one of those Gallic affectations of phrase which roused the anger of Macaulay) 'is dead, of a dropsy and consumption: he was a pretty and promising boy.'
The Savile House above referred to stood next to Leicester House on the west. Savile House, too, was not without its memories. It was here that Peter the Great had boozed with his pot companion, the Marquis of Caermarthen, who occupied it when the Czar made his famous visit to this country in 1698. More than one English home bore dirty testimony to the passage of the imperial savage and his suite, the decorous dwelling of John Evelyn in particular, at Sayes Court, Deptford, being made 'right nasty.' There is, however, no special record of any wrong to Savile House beyond the spilling, down the autocratic throat, of an 'intolerable deal of sack' and peppered brandy. In January, 1718, the house was taken by the Prince of Wales, and when, a little later, Leicester House was vacated by Lord Gower, a communication was opened between the two, the smaller being devoted to the royal children. It belonged originally to Aylesbury family, and came through them to the Saviles, one of whom was the Sir George Savile who is by some supposed to have sat for Goldsmith's Mr. Burchell. Sir George was its tenant in the riots of '80, when (as Dickens has not failed to remember in 'Barnaby Rudge') it was besieged by the rioters because he had brought in the Catholic Bill. 'Between Twelve and One O'clock Yesterday morning [June 6th]—says the 'Public Advertiser'—'a large Body [of rioters] assembled before Sir George Savile's House in Leicester Fields, and after breaking all the Windows, destroyed some of the Furniture.' They were finally dispersed by a party of the Horse Grenadier Guards, but not before they had torn up all the iron railings in front of the building, which they afterwards used effectively as weapons of offence. Burke, who had also supported the Bill, was only saved from a like fate by the exertions of sixteen soldiers who garrisoned his house in Charles Street, St. James's Square. With the later use of Savile House, as the home of Hiss Linwood's Art Needlework, which belongs to the present century, this paper has nothing to do.
Moreover, we are straying from Leicester House itself. Deserted of royalty, it passed into the hands of Mr., afterwards Sir Ashton Lever (grand uncle of Charles Lever the novelist), who transferred to it in 1771 the miscellaneous collection he had christened the 'Holophusikon'—a name which did not escape the gibes of the professional jester. His omnium gatherum of natural objects and savage costumes was, nevertheless, a remarkable one, still more remarkable when regarded as the work of a single man. It filled sixteen of the rooms at Leicester House, besides overflowing on the staircases, and included, not only all the curiosities Cook had brought home from his voyages, but also a valuable assortment of bows and arrows of all countries contributed by Mr. Richard Owen Cambridge of Twickenham. *
* See 'Cambridge the Everything,' in 'Eighteenth Century
Vignettes,' 3rd series, 1896, p. 1847 In an outhouse of the
'Holophusikon,' it may be added, were exhibited (stuffed)
Queen Charlotte's elephant and female zebra—two favourites
of royalty, which, during their lifetime, had enjoyed an
exceptional, if not always enviable, notoriety.
Its possessor had been persuaded that his treasures which, in their first home at Alkrington near Manchester, had enjoyed great popularity, would be equally successful in London. The result, however, did not justify the expectation (an admittance of 5s. 3d.. per person must have been practically prohibitive), and poor Sir Ashton was ultimately 'obligated,' as Tony Lumpkin would say, to apply to Parliament for power to dispose of his show, as a whole, by lottery. He estimated his outlay at £50,000. Of 30,000 tickets issued at a guinea each, only 8,000 were taken up. The lottery was drawn in March, 1780, and the winner was a Mr. Parkinson, who transferred his prize to the Rotunda at the Southern or Surrey end of Blackfriars Bridge, changing its name to the Museum Leverianum. But it was foredoomed to misfortune, and in 1800 was dispersed under the hammer. A few years after it had crossed the river, Leicester House in turn disappeared, being pulled down in 1790. *