What do you do there?
Indeed, we don’t know!”
on the site of some houses which had previously hidden the mansion from Pall Mall. (See Plates at pp. 64 and 76.)
Under its new master, Carlton House witnessed many vicissitudes; now being the scene of the most lavish entertainments; anon being practically shut up, when the Prince could not persuade his Royal father to ask Parliament for money to pay his perennial debts, and tried to force his hand by an exhibition of erratic economy; at one time teeming with the gay crowd that formed the Prince’s court, when the great Whig families rallied around him, and the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire—“the best bred woman in Europe”—the Duchess of Rutland, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and Mrs. Crewe of the “Buff and Blue” toast, “rained influence”; at another time echoing to the merry wit of Sheridan, the classical allusions of Fox, the broad stories of Hanger, and even the rich tones of the great Sir Walter himself as he joined in the vociferous cheering that greeted the toast of “The Author of Waverley.”
If those walls could have related what they heard, many an unedifying tale would have been told, but also the actual truth of many an anecdote which tradition has handed down to us. Did Brummell really tell the Prince to “ring the bell,” and did his Royal Highness do so, and order “Mr. Brummell’s carriage”? Did the Royal host become so actually imbued with the idea that he had been present at Waterloo, that he would frequently refer to the hero of that day, with: “Was I not there, Duke?” to which Wellington was wont to reply, with a bow and a grim smile, “I have often heard you say so, Sir?” Did Sir Philip Francis on one occasion go up to the entrance and, instead of ringing the bell, knock loudly on the door with his stick; and did the Prince Regent’s confidential friend, Colonel McMahon, subsequently expostulate with, “Upon my word, Francis, you must try and keep Sir Philip in order? Do you know he has been knocking at the Prince’s door with a stick, and making such a noise, because he was not admitted, that we thought we should never get him away?”
These, and how many other stories might we not substantiate or otherwise with the help of that mural evidence!
“But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
With all the freaks of wanton wealth array’d,”
have passed away with Carlton House for ever, and in its place we have the flight of stone steps leading to the Park, down which a carriage had once rushed headlong but for Mr. Gladstone’s restraining hand, and a stone Duke of York gazing at the sky.
The Prince Regent, when he became George IV., thought of connecting Carlton House with Marlborough House by a great gallery running the length of Pall Mall, and dedicated to the portraits of the Royal and notable persons of this country. Had he done so, he would have anticipated the National Portrait Gallery of to-day, and built a nobler Valhalla; but Nash was allowed to demolish Carlton House and cover its site with the great mansions and terraces which now stand there.