St. James's Street ends at the gateway to St. James's Palace. This gateway designed by Holbein is one of the few survivals of the original palace where in the open fields was once a hospital for lepers founded in 1190. The royal palace took the place of the hospital buildings under Henry VIII., who had Holbein design the structure. It was a royal abode until the time of George IV. Here Queen Mary died; here Charles I. slept the night before he walked through St. James's Park to Whitehall and to death, and here Charles II. and James II. were born. This, too, was the refuge for Marie de Medici in some of her unhappy wanderings.
In Bury Street beyond St. James's Street, Steele lived after his marriage. Horace Walpole also had lodgings here and so had Crabbe and Tom Moore. Dean Swift lived in this thoroughfare for a time, and it was from his Bury Street quarters that he wrote to the unfortunate Stella: "I have the first floor, a dining room, and a bed chamber, at eight shillings a week, plaguy dear."
Willis's restaurant in King Street stands on the site of Almack's the famous club opened in 1765, of which strange stories have been recounted. It is told that when a man dropped ill before the door and was carried inside club members made bets on his chances of life or death. When a doctor arrived his ministrations were interfered with because the members said that any medical aid would affect the fairness of the bets. So this must have been a great gaming place indeed.
Pall Mall now the thoroughfare of fashionable clubs got its name from the Italian game of palle-malle played with a palla and maglia—otherwise ball and mallet—which Charles I. introduced into England about 1635. Pall Mall was a suburban promenade until 1689 when it was laid out as it is to-day. At first it was called Catherine Street in honour of Catherine of Braganza Queen of Charles II. Nell Gwynne lived in this street from 1671 until her death in 1687 where No. 79 now is, and it was over the wall of the surrounding garden that she used to talk with Charles II. Here gas was first experimented with as a street illuminative, when in 1807 a row of lamps were set up before the colonnade of Carlton House.
The Smyrna Coffee House celebrated in the days of Queen Anne for the group of writers who gathered here to talk politics in the evenings was in Pall Mall close to Waterloo Place on the south side. Prior and Swift came here much together. Thomson the poet was a regular visitor and put up a notice announcing that subscriptions would be taken by the author for "The Four Seasons."
St. James's Square is a reminder of the times of Charles II. who had it laid out. In a house on the east side, now London House, Lord Chesterfield was born in 1694. Next door at the south-east corner now part of Norfolk House, is where George III. was born in 1738. It was around this square that Savage and Johnson brimful of much patriotism but having little money used to walk together.
Where now stands the York Column in Waterloo Place leading to Waterloo Steps and The Mall was the main entrance to Carlton House, built for Henry Boyle, Lord Carlton, in 1709, and afterwards occupied by the Prince Regent who became George IV. When the old building was demolished in 1827 the columns of the entrance were saved and used in 1832 to form the façade of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.
The name of the Haymarket has clung to it since the reign of Elizabeth when it was a mart for the sale of hay and straw and which existed until 1829.
The short and crooked street called Suffolk, off Pall Mall East, began its existence in the middle of the 17th century and marks the site of one of the homes of the Earl of Suffolk. It was in this street that Esther Vanhomrige lived for several years—Vanessa, the story of whose life is inseparable from that of Dean Swift. It was here also that Moll Davis lived in a house fitted up for her by King Charles II.