A laughing philosopher, gallant and gay,”
as Locker-Lampson called him. It is said that much of Palmerston’s popularity was due to the splendid functions which took place under Lady Palmerston’s auspices in this fine mansion. At his death there was some idea of pulling down the house to make room for a Roman Catholic Cathedral, but happily the scheme fell to the ground, and the place is, with some additions necessary to the club which occupies it, in practically the same state as when the royal Duke thought aloud in its chambers, or the Prime Minister nonchalantly sauntered through its gates.
OTHER PICCADILLY CLUBS.
Passing the Junior Naval and Military Club at No. 96, the Badminton at No. 100, and the massive buildings of the Junior Constitutional, representing Nos. 101 to 104, Piccadilly, we come to a beautiful house, now the home of the Isthmian Club, which removed here from its premises opposite Berkeley Street, now absorbed by the magnificent Ritz Hotel.
This residence, No. 95, was originally known as Barrymore House, having been built in 1780, by Novosielski, for the Earl of Barrymore, on a site once occupied by the workshop of that Van Nost, who was responsible for the statue of George I. formerly in Grosvenor Square. Lord Barrymore was the eldest of those three brothers and one sister, who earned for themselves the unflattering sobriquets of Hellgate, Cripplegate, Newgate, and Billingsgate—the second being in allusion to one of the brothers who was lame, and the last, to the sister whose command of strong language was “extensive and peculiar.” Gambling and general profligacy—by the way “profligate” might have summed up the whole family—brought Lord Barrymore to great distress, and Raikes records in his Diary that when the peer wished to give a dinner, he had perforce—à la Dick Steele—to dress up the bailiffs, who were perpetually in the house, in his own liveries and get them to wait at table!
It is hardly surprising to learn that the house was left unfinished at the death of this unsavoury personage, and subsequently Smirke added the porch. After a fire had occurred here—the curious thing being that it did not happen in Barrymore’s lifetime—the place was repaired and opened as the “Old Pulteney Hotel,” and here it was that the Emperor of Russia stayed, when the allied Sovereigns were in this country in 1814.
After its day as an hotel, the Marquis of Hertford purchased the house, and greatly improved, but practically never occupied it. This was the third Lord Hertford, who married that Maria Fagniani, about whose paternity George Selwyn and Old Q. could never satisfactorily agree, and who is so largely responsible for the magnificent art collection which Sir Richard Wallace left to the nation.
Next door, divided by a narrow passage, is No. 106, which is now known as the “St. James’s Club.” Built on the site of an old inn called “The Greyhound,” by the sixth Earl of Coventry, “the grave young lord,” as Walpole calls him—who, by the bye, married one of the beautiful Gunnings, who killed herself, ’tis said, by trying to improve the loveliness that Nature had given her. Here he died in 1809; his successor to the title also lived here, and, after his decease in 1831, it became the headquarters of the “Coventry House Club” (or the “Ambassadors’”), which was, however, closed in 1854. The house next door is also a club—“The Savile”—one of the literary clubs of modern London. In the old days, it was the home of the famous Nathan Rothschild, who made a great coup over the Battle of Waterloo, and once told Spohr that the only music he cared for was the chink of money!
As we loiter along, the trees of the Green Park attract us, and the gradual widening of the thoroughfare as we approach Hyde Park Corner, an improvement made but a few years since, gives an additional effect to the coup d’œil that here presents itself. That curious object over there, a sort of high shelf standing on two iron supports, has exercised many a mind as to its uses. Perhaps not many people are aware that the solution is to be found on a plate affixed to the object itself, the words of which are as follows: “On the suggestion of R. A. Slaney, Esq., who for 26 years represented Shrewsbury in Parliament, this porters’ rest was erected in 1861 by the Vestry of St. George, Hanover Square, for the benefit of porters and others carrying burdens. As a relic of a past period in London’s history it is hoped that the people will aid in its preservation.” But we must return to our bricks and mortar and the associations connected with them.
DOWN STREET.