The Princess Charlotte—the nation’s hope, so untimely cut off—was born at Carlton House, but she is more closely connected with Warwick House, which almost adjoined it on the east side, and stood at the end of Warwick Street, which still exists. The original Warwick House had been the birthplace of that Sir Philip Warwick, whose memoirs of his Royal master, Charles I., are frequently to be met with. When the Princess Charlotte lived here with her governess, Miss Knight, the latter states that the entrance was secured by bars of iron on the inside, and that the Princess was obliged to go through the court of Carlton House. The same lady gives as dreary an account of the house, as Fanny Burney did of Kew Palace; it was, she says, “an old moderate-sized dwelling, at that time miserably out of repair, and almost falling to ruins.” This was in 1813; in the following year the Princess, worn out by petty restraints, the coercive measures of the Prince Regent, and above all her enforced separation from her mother, escaped from the house and drove in a hackney cab to Queen Caroline’s then residence in Connaught Place. Hither, however, she returned at the urgent solicitations of Brougham and the Duke of Sussex; and here, subsequently, occurred that scene between the Regent and the Princess and her attendants which forms the subject of a well-known caricature drawing.
It is difficult to pass by Charing Cross and its manifold memories, but if we gave way to the temptation, we should find fresh attractions in Whitehall and the Strand, and I must unwillingly refrain from penetrating further east. The Haymarket, which we are now going up, and Piccadilly east, which we shall presently come to, are, however, both so full of interest that I hope we shall find matter in these “pastures new” to compensate us.
CHAPTER III.
THE HAYMARKET, ST. JAMES’S SQUARE, AND
PICCADILLY (EAST).
“A spacious street of great resort.”—Strype.
THE HAYMARKET.
The Haymarket is one of those thoroughfares whose names speak for themselves. To-day, it is true, it has little the appearance of that which its title indicates, and it is, therefore, all the pleasanter to find its older uses recalled in its present denomination. The curious thing is that the St. James’s hay-market, which was held close by, so early as the days of Elizabeth, should have survived to so comparatively recently as the reign of William IV.; yet it was not till 1830, that the Act was passed which removed the market to the vicinity of Regent’s Park. That the Haymarket was long an important thoroughfare is evidenced by Strype, who calls it “a spacious street of great resort, full of inns and places of entertainment, especially on the west side.”
Let us first see what were the “inns” which clustered here in such profusion that a solemn topographer should have thought it necessary to specifically mention them. The names of some of them have survived, and I find, appropriately enough, “The Nag’s Head,” “The White Horse,” “The Black Horse,” and “The Cock,” as well as “The Phœnix” (that perennial fowl), “The Unicorn” (that hardly less ubiquitous animal), and “The Blue Posts,” one of the best known of them all. If we look at a plan of this locality, dated 1755, we shall see that the west side of the street was riddled with small alleys or yards, some of which were part and parcel of the taverns that once congregated here. Thus, nearly at the bottom, on the site of the Carlton Hotel, was Phœnix Inn Yard; next to it, where His Majesty’s Theatre now stands, the yard of “The White Horse”; “The Cock” Yard was about half-way up, and “The Nag’s Head” Yard next it. At the back of these, approached from Pall Mall by two streets, known as St. Alban’s, and Market Streets, was the St. James’s Market itself, since replaced by an extension of Regent Street and Waterloo Place. “Black Horse” Yard was nearly at the top of the Haymarket, where the continuation of Jermyn Street now runs, and practically on the site of the Piccadilly Station of the Tube Railway; while where Charles Street crosses the Haymarket on its western side was formerly a small passage, known as Six Bell Alley.