At No. 1 Devonshire Terrace Charles Dickens lived from 1839 to 1851. Here he finished "Barnaby Rudge" and "Dombey and Son," and wrote "Martin Chuzzlewit," "Old Curiosity Shop," "David Copperfield," "The Haunted Man," "The Christmas Carol," "The Cricket on the Hearth," "American Notes," and "The Battle of Life." Here he spent many happy hours with Carlyle, Longfellow, Hood, Landseer, Macready and a host of other good and famous men who visited him.
A tablet on the house No. 2 Blandford Street running out of Baker Street to the east, tells that it was here that Michael Faraday the distinguished chemist served his apprenticeship.
Hertford House in Manchester Square is the Gaunt House of "Vanity Fair" and it was from the fourth Marquis of Hertford that Thackeray drew his picture of Lord Steyne. The building now contains the Wallace Collection of paintings, given to the nation by Lady Wallace some years ago.
During the last years of his life Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton lived in Grosvenor Square in the house numbered 12. This is a three-storied structure with a high iron fence, and before its door pillars on which are flambeaux snuffers attest the age of the building. These extinguishers were used by the footmen to put out the flambeaux that were carried lighted on the backs of carriages at night. Writing of these lights the poet Gay says:
Yet who the footman's arrogance can quell
Whose flambeau gilds the sashes of Pall-Mall,
When in long rank a train of torches flame,
To light the midnight visits of the dame.
Many men and many women prominent in the life of London have lived in houses looking upon this Square during its two hundred years of existence.
Mayfair, an aristocratic residential section of London, has Bond Street and Park Lane on the east and west; with Piccadilly and Oxford Street on the south and north. It is named for a fair held where Shepherd's Market is now in each May until about the middle of the 18th century.
Through the Mayfair district stretches Curzon Street named for the third Viscount Howe—George Augustus Curzon; noticeable for having no thoroughfare for carriages at either end. To the west it ends in the cul-de-sac Seamore Place; to the east continued as Bolton Row it is halted against Devonshire Gardens.
In Curzon Street at No. 8 lived the great friends of Horace Walpole the sisters Mary and Agnes Berry. Walpole was a constant visitor during the latter years of his life and it is thought that he strongly desired to marry Mary Berry. Just opposite where Queen Street ends was the Curzon Street Chapel which was demolished in 1900. It was in this church that, according to general report, George III. was married to Hannah Lightfoot in 1759. In the house No. 24 Chantrey the sculptor lived in an attic during the early years of his struggle for recognition. Thackeray tells us that Becky Sharp took "a small but elegant house in Curzon Street," when as Mrs. Crawley she planned to live on nothing a year. Lord Curzon, former Viceroy of India, is the most notable member of the Curzon family to-day.