Just before we reach Berkeley Street, we come to Hatchett’s Restaurant, the old “White Horse Cellar,” so named from the emblem in the crest of the House of Hanover. The old original “White Horse Cellar,” whence in the good old days the coaches left on their way to the west, stood nearly opposite, close to Arlington Street. As may be seen from old sporting prints, the outside of the original house was covered on particular occasions with oil lights of various colours—lights which many a jaded traveller must have seen with pleasure, and many a fresh one left with regret. One of these occasions was the King’s birthday, when the coachmen and guards donned new scarlet liveries, and even the coaches were touched up. Sir Vincent Cotton, Capt. Probyn, Lord Worcester and Sir Thomas Jones were among the amateur whips who frequently handled the ribbons and tooled their coaches down the intricacies of Piccadilly; and we can quite believe Hazlitt when he says that “the finest sight in the metropolis is the setting off of the mail coaches from Piccadilly.”
THE WHITE HORSE CELLAR—HATCHETT’S RESTAURANT—PICCADILLY
(From a Drawing by George Cruikshank.)
How many of us would not have given a good round sum to have seen Mr. Pickwick laboriously climb on to the top of the vehicle which was to carry him to Bath, or Sam Weller’s surprise when he observed the name of “Pickwick” painted on the coach door; or “the young man of the name of Guppy,” meeting Esther Summerson here on her arrival in London one foggy afternoon in November; or Jerry Hawthorn “fairly knocked up by all the excitement, getting into the coach”—being one of six inside, “what time his friends shake him by the hand, whilst the Jews hang round with oranges, knives and sealing wax, whilst the guard is closing the door.” All we can do is to rehabilitate the scene of the former from Dickens’s pen; and to imagine ourselves watching the latter in Cruickshank’s drawing.
Another hostelry from which coaches departed on their long journeys was the “Gloucester Coffee House,” kept by one Dale, which stood where the Berkeley Hotel, formerly known as the St. James’s Hotel, is now; and “The Green Man and Still” was yet another house of call for the coaches that went westward.
BERKELEY STREET.
Berkeley Street, formerly known as Berkeley Row, boasts one or two interesting residents in the past. Here Cosway dwelt, and it was here that he first attracted the notice of the Prince of Wales, whose portrait he “drew in little” so often and so successfully. In the same house, too, had previously lived Shackleton, the portrait painter; and it was to a residence here that Mr. Chaworth was carried after his duel with Lord Byron (the great uncle of the Lord Byron), which took place at the “Star and Garter,” in Pall Mall, over a dispute as to the best way of preserving game. Lord Byron, the survivor, underwent his trial in Westminster Hall, but was acquitted, and a certain French traveller, M. Grosley, who was present at the trial, saw his lordship a few days later taking part in the debate on the Regency Bill, as if nothing had happened.
DEVONSHIRE HOUSE.
The long front of Devonshire House, with its fine gates, which were originally at the Duke’s place at Chiswick, now faces us. It was erected from the designs of Kent, for the third Duke of Devonshire, two years after Berkeley House had been burnt down (in 1733). Its beautiful grounds are only divided from those of Lansdowne House by Lansdowne Passage, a short cut, sunk below the ground level, from Curzon Street to Hay Hill. There are iron bars at each end of this passage, and probably few people know why they were placed there. As a matter of fact, they were put up in consequence of a mounted highwayman in the eighteenth century, after having got away from Piccadilly with some booty, riding his horse through this passage and up the steps at the end. Thomas Grenville is the authority for this anecdote, and the robber was seen galloping past his residence in Bolton Street.
