[EIGHT]
From Regent Street to the Shadows of Soho
North of Trafalgar Square stands St. Martin-in-the-Fields, on the foundations of an older church which Henry VIII. built literally in the fields. Henry VIII., living at Whitehall, objected when the people of the parish of St. Margaret's at Westminster had the bodies of the dead carried by the palace. So he had St. Martin's built. The first church was a small one and being found quite too small the present St. Martin's took its place. The burial ground that once surrounded the church was gradually encroached upon to make way for the widening of the street and was done away with in 1829. Francis Bacon was christened here and in the old burial ground were laid to rest many whose names are familiar—Jack Sheppard, John Hunter, famous as a surgeon, Nell Gwynne, and Lord Mohun, a duellist, concerning whom much may be read in Thackeray's "Henry Esmond." It was beside St. Martin's that David Copperfield one wintry night came upon Martha Endell who had once been the companion of little Em'ly at Mr. Omer's.
St. Martin's Lane leading from Trafalgar Square to Long Acre was famous when it was called Crooked Lane. Here at different times lived Sir John Thornhill whose decorations adorn the interior of St. Paul's and whose daughter married Hogarth; Fuseli, a famous artist; Sir Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith, Roubiliac, the French sculptor; and Thomas Chippendale the cabinet maker who published "Gentlemen and Cabinet Makers' Directory."
The Music Hall centre, Leicester Square, has gradually grown out of Leicester Fields the garden of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester whose mansion stood close by where Daly's Theatre is now. On a house facing the square on the west is a tablet telling that Sir Joshua Reynolds once lived there; and another on the east side shows where Hogarth lived.
Around the corner from Leicester Square in Rupert Street Robert Louis Stevenson, in the "New Arabian Nights," places the Bohemian Cigar Divan conducted by Theophilus Godall, the Prince Florizel, formerly one of the magnates of Europe, whom a revolution hurled from the throne of Bohemia in consequence of his continued absence and edifying neglect of public business, and who, exiled and impoverished, embarked in the tobacco trade.
The plain brick building numbered 37 Gerrard just to the south of Macclesfield Street now occupied by a restaurant was long the home of Edmund Burke the philosopher and statesman. On the house-front is a tablet reading:
Edmund Burke
Author and Statesman