* A house in Lisle Street, looking down Leicester Place,
still (1897) perpetuates the name, and bears on its façade
in addition the words, 'New Lisle Street, mdccxci.' It is
occupied by a foreign school or schools ('Ecoles de Notre
Dame de France').
In 1791 Lisle Street was continued across its garden; and a little later still, Leicester Place traversed its site, running parallel to Leicester Street, which had existed long previously, being described in 1720 'as ordinarily built and inhabited, except the west side, towards the Fields, where there is a very good house.'
Leicester Place and Leicester Street,—like Leicester Fields itself,—directly preserve the memory of what Pennant aptly calls the 'pouting-place of Princes.' But there are other traces of Leicester House in the nomenclature of the neighbourhood which had grown up about it. One of the family titles survives in 'Lisle Street'; another in 'Sidney Alley.' Bear Street again recalls the Leicester crest, a bear and ragged staff, while Green Street (one side of which has been recently rebuilt), according to Wheatley and Cunningham, derives its name from the colour of the Leicester Mews, which stood to the south of the Fields. The central inclosure seems to have been first systematically laid out—though it had long been railed round—about 1737. Eleven years later arrived from Canons (Lord Burlington's seat at Edgeware) that famous equestrian statue of George I., which Londoners so well remember. At the time of its erection it was lavishly gilt, and was one of the popular sights of the Town. By some it was attributed to Buchard; by others to Van Nost of Piccadilly, then a fashionable statuary (in lead) like Cheere of Hyde Park Corner. The horse was modelled upon that by Hubert Le Sour which carries King Charles I. at Charing Cross.
Considering its prolonged patronage by royalty, Leicester Fields does not seem to have been particularly favoured by distinguished residents. Charles Dibdin, the song-writer, once lived in Leicester Place, where in 1796 (on the east side) he built a little theatre, the Sans Souci; * and Woollett, of whose velvety engravings Mr. Louis Fagan, not many years ago, prepared an exhaustive catalogue, had also his habitat in Green Street (No. 11), from the leads of which he was wont—so runs the story—to discharge a small cannon when he had successfully put the last touches to a 'Battle of La Hogue,' or a 'Death of General Wolfe.'
* Mr. Tom Taylor ('Leicester Square,' 1874, pp. 306 and 456)
says that Dibdin's Theatre stood nearly on the site of 'The
Feathers,' Hogarth's house of call in the Fields. But if
Leicester Place did not exist until 1796, and then occupied
ground occupied six years before by Leicester House, it is
difficult to connect Hogarth with any tavern in Leicester
Place, as Hogarth died in 1764.
Allan Ramsay (in his youth), Barry, and John Opie all once lodged in Orange Court (now Street); and here—at No. 13—was born, of a shoemaker sire and a mother who cried oysters, into a life of many changing fortunes, that strange Thomas Holcroft of the 'Road to Ruin.' In St. Martin's Street, next door to the Congregational Chapel on the east side, lived Sir Isaac Newton from 1710 until January 1725, or two years before his death at Kensington. Few traditions, however, connect the abstracted philosopher (he was nearing seventy when he came to the Fields) with the locality, beyond his visits to Princess Caroline at the great house opposite. *
* A so-ealled Observatory on the roof, now non-existent, was
for many years exhibited at Newton's. Recent authorities,
however, contend that this was the fabrication of a later
tenant. But it should be noted that Madame D'Arblay, who
also lived in the house, and wrote novels in the room in
question, seems to have had no doubts of the kind. She says
('Memoirs of Dr. Burney,' 1832, i. 290-1) that her father
not only reverently repaired the Observatory when he entered
upon his tenancy of No. 35 [in 1774], but went to the
expense of practically reconstructing it when it was all but
destroyed by the hurricane of 1778.
But there was one member of his household, a few years later, who must certainly have added to the attractions of the ordinary two-storeyed building where he superintended the revision of the second and third editions of the 'Prineipia.' This was his kinswoman,—the 'jolie niece' of Voltaire,—the 'famous witty Miss Barton' of the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' At this date she was 'Superintendant of his domestick Affairs' to Charles, Earl of Halifax, who, dying in 1715, left her £5,000 and a house, 'as a Token'—so runs the bequest—'of the sincere Love, Affection, and Esteem I have long had for her Person, and as a small Recompence for the Pleasure and Happiness I have had in her Conversation.' This, taken in connection with the fact that, since 1706, she had been in receipt of an annuity of £200 a year, purchased in her uncle's name, but for which Halifax was trustee, has led to the conclusion that the relation between the pair was something closer than friendship, and that, following other contemporary precedents, they were privately married. * Be this as it may, Catherine Barton is also interesting as one of the group of gifted women to whom Swift extended the privilege of that half-patronising, half-playful, and wholly unconventional intimacy which is at once the attraction and the enigma of his relations with the other sex.
* See 'Newton: his Friend: and his Niece,' 1885, by
Professor Augustus de Morgan, which labours, with much
digression, but with infinite ingenuity and erudition, to
establish this satisfactory solution of a problem in which
the good fame of Newton cannot be regarded as entirely
unconcerned.
He met her often in London, though not as often as he wished. 'I love her better than any-one here,' he tells Stella in April, 1711, 'and see her seldomer.' He dines with her 'alone at her lodgings'; he goes with her to other houses; and, Tory though he has become, endures her vivacious Whiggery.