Where Curzon Street ends Seamore Place juts off at right angles, only a few yards in length. Here at No. 6 Lady Blessington held her salon in 1830.
Chesterfield House, at the southern end of South Audley Street, was built for the fourth Earl of Chesterfield who lived and died here. He wrote the famous Chesterfield letters and their style and eloquence coined the adjective—Chesterfieldian.
Jostling side by side with the homes of the rich, just to the south of Curzon Street, is a cluster of ancient shattered buildings and dingy shops two hundred and odd years old. This district is known as Shepherd's Market. Here the fair was held that gave the name to Mayfair.
Many notables have lived in Clarges Street, named for Sir Walter Clarges, a relative of General Monk's wife—Anne Clarges. Early in the 19th century No. 11 in this street was for two years the home of Lady Emma Hamilton, the friend of the greatest of British Admirals, Lord Nelson. At No. 21 lived the celebrated lady scholar, Elizabeth Carter, a comrade of Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke. In this street, too, lived Edmund Kean the actor, and Thomas Babington Macaulay, equally famous in their different arts.
Charles Street has changed less in appearance and atmosphere than any other of the Mayfair streets. It was here, where the house numbered 42 is, that Beau Brummel lived in 1792.
Memories crowd thickly about the old houses around Berkeley Square, laid out in 1698. On the west side in the house numbered 45 Lord Clive the founder of the British Empire in India, lived, and where he killed himself in 1774. At No. 11 Horace Walpole whose letters give the record of fashionable society of his day died in 1797.
Below the level of the Lansdowne Gardens, off Berkeley Street, is the Lansdowne Passage. The curious iron bar that blocks the entrance is a reminder of the act of a bold highwayman in the last days of the 18th century. After robbing a man in nearby Piccadilly, and mounting his horse, he dashed through Bolton Street, then through this passage and up the stone steps at full gallop. The bars were put up to prevent a recurrence of this. Anthony Trollope in his book "Phineas Redux" makes this dark uncanny looking passage the scene of a murder, and the place where a body was found.
Opposite Lansdowne Passage is Hay Hill, once a favourite resort of highwaymen. Here the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., and the Duke of York were halted one night by a man, revolver in hand, who fared ill, however, as the two nobleman had only three shillings between them. It was a custom to exhibit on Hay Hill the heads of executed persons as an example to evildoers. Here was exposed the head of Thomas Wyatt the younger, in the rebellion of 1554 when he was captured after his attack on Ludgate Hill.
In Berkeley Street a few doors south of Berkeley Square lived Alexander Pope, the poet, on the east side of the street opposite Lansdowne House.