Now we are at the corner of Down Street, which leads directly to Mayfair; and here (in No. 116, Piccadilly) is now the Junior Athenæum Club, but known in earlier days as Hope House, which H. T. Hope, the author of “Anastasius” and the creator of “Deepdene,” at Dorking—built in 1848-9, at a cost of £80,000.
When a stranger is brought to this point and shewn the narrow way dividing the club from the adjoining houses, and is told that it is Park Lane (see page 134) he probably, being ignorant of locality, receives a shock, having in mind the celebrity of this part of the town and the fine houses which he has been taught to believe exist in it. But this narrow street is technically the commencement of Park Lane, and does much to account for the somewhat inappropriate title by which this fashionable thoroughfare is known.
The tenuity of this connecting neck, between Piccadilly and Park Lane proper (if I may so term it), is still more accentuated by the huge block of flats now being erected on the site of Gloucester House, until recently the well-known residence of the late Duke of Cambridge. Formerly this was the town house of that Lord Elgin who is famous as having acquired the marvellous collection of antique marbles over which poor Haydon was so enthusiastic, and here these treasures of antiquity were for a time to be seen. The house took its name from the Duke of Gloucester, who bought it in 1816, when he married his cousin the Princess Mary, one of the many children of George III.
THE GATES OF HYDE PARK IN 1756.
(From a Drawing by Jones.)
When Gloucester House was still in existence the two adjoining mansions, Nos. 138 and 139, stood out in the glory of their stone façades, from the old brick house which receded somewhat from the road, but now they in their turn threaten to become dwarfed by the huge erection which towers above them.
These two houses were originally one, and here lived that “wicked old Q.”—the Duke of Queensberry, whose manner of life was so notorious. Here the old profligate sat under a sunshade in fine weather to ogle the girls who passed by, and to send by his groom Radford, many an impertinent message to the more attractive of them. Here this “Star of Piccadilly” on one occasion, while engaging a running footman (he was one of the last to keep this former appendage to noble state), made the man put on his livery and run up and down in front of the house, and finding him suitable, told him so, when the rogue replied, “and your livery will suit me,” and making a mock bow, bolted, and was seen no more!
It may be well, as we are now at the end of Piccadilly proper (for, although the houses on the other side of Hamilton Place, among which is that famous “No. 1, London,” as someone once called Apsley House, where the great Wellington lived, and put up the celebrated iron shutters, now removed, are given in Directories as in Piccadilly, they should more properly be considered as at Hyde Park Corner), to end our perambulation at the house of one who was so pre-eminently a Londoner as “Old Q.” I wish we could have done so in better company, and inasmuch as Lord Byron once resided at No. 139, then called, “13, Piccadilly Terrace,” we do so, for although his lordship, apart from his remarkable genius, was not a pattern of morality, he compares well with the nobleman whose only redeeming merits were that he was no fool and loved London as he probably loved few things. When in town once in September, a friend asked Lord Queensberry if he did not find it empty. “Yes,” he replied, “but ’tis fuller than the country;” and there is little doubt but that even in those early days, no place could have been selected for anyone to better enjoy the life of London than that spot where the tide of humanity met, at the junction of Piccadilly and Park Lane, with almost as full a force as we have seen it do at the corner of Piccadilly and Old Bond Street, where Stewart’s, hoary with antiquity (but to-day one of the most artistic buildings in the neighbourhood), stands, and where those keenest judges in the world—our American cousins—love to foregather, on the spot that is perhaps better known to them than any other in London.
The Piccadilly Turnpike, which is such a feature in contemporary prints of this part of the West End, was removed in 1721 from the end of Berkeley Street to Hyde Park Corner. It remained here till 1825, in October of which year it was sold and removed.
