ALLEN’S STALL
The story is a pretty one, and tells how the King was riding into Hyde Park, when he noticed the soldier, still wearing a tattered uniform, taking charge of the stall in company with his wife.
“What can I do for you?” asked the King, replying to the military salute which the ragged veteran offered.
HYDE PARK CORNER, 1786.
“I ask nothing better than to earn an honest living, your Majesty,” replied the soldier; “but I am like to be turned away by the Ranger. If your Majesty were to give me a grant of the ground my stall stands on, I would be happy.”
“Be happy, then,” answered the King, and saw to it that Allen had his request satisfied.
The stall became a cottage, where Allen and his wife lived until they were gathered to the great majority, having in the meanwhile, it may be supposed, done pretty well for themselves, since we find their son to have been an attorney. The cottage was deserted, and the royal gift of the land partly forgotten, so that the Lord Chancellor of that period was granted a lease of the ground and began to build a mansion on it. Allen’s son had to the full that shrewdness which has made the name of “attorney” so generally detested that those “gentlemen by Act of Parliament” prefer nowadays to call themselves “solicitors.” He waited until my Lord Chancellor had nearly completed his house, and then put forward his claim, finally obtaining £450 per annum as ground rent. He subsequently sold the land outright, and so Lord Chancellor Henry Bathurst, Baron Apsley, and Earl Bathurst, became the freeholder, and named his residence “Apsley House.” The mansion was purchased by the nation for the great Duke of Wellington in 1820. It was, from its situation, long known as “No. 1, London.”