Wanderings in London, Piccadilly, Mayfair, and Pall Mall

by E. Beresford Chancellor

Not only have men of thought and fashion resided here, but men of action, in the persons of Lord Nelson and Sir Thomas Picton, have been represented. The former was staying at No. 147, in 1797, and therewith a curious circumstance is on record. After he had been created Duke of Bronté, he was accustomed to make presents to his friends of casks of Marsala, for which his estates in Sicily were celebrated. Curiously enough, during some excavations next door to Nelson’s one-time residence, a cask of this wine, in a bricked-up cellar, was discovered. So rotten, however, had the cask become, that on exposure to the air it fell to pieces.

Southey tells of the following incident which occurred during Nelson’s sojourn here.

“One night, after a day of constant pain, Nelson retired early to bed ... the family was soon disturbed by a mob knocking loudly and violently at the door. The news of Duncan’s victory had been made public, and the house was not illuminated. But when the mob was told that Admiral Nelson lay there in bed, badly wounded, the foremost of them made answer, “You shall hear no more from us to-night.”

Sir Thomas Picton, who fell at Waterloo, was living in Bond Street at the same time that Nelson and Lady Hamilton were there, and a few years later we find the redoubtable Lord Camelford a resident at No. 148. His rooms were so typical of those of a man about town of the day, that Cruickshank introduced the interiors in his illustrations to Pierce Egan’s “Tom and Jerry”; while the authors of the “Rejected Addresses” have also left on record an enumeration of the various lethal weapons that decorated the walls.

Lord Camelford was one of those fire-eaters who never seem able to exist for any length of time without “entrance to a quarrel.” He was known and feared throughout the town, and few cared to tackle the man who was so ready to seek an occasion for fighting, and so deadly in the field. It is thus that the best stories told of him are those which relate his encounters with strangers, one of which I will give, in the words of Timbs, who collected much interesting data about Lord Camelford’s career.

“Entering one evening the Prince of Wales’s Coffee-house in Conduit Street, Lord Camelford sat down to read the papers. Soon after came in a conceited fop, who seated himself opposite his Lordship, and desired the waiter to ‘bring a pint of Madeira and a couple of wax candles and put them into the next box.’ He then drew to himself Lord Camelford’s candle and began to read. His Lordship glanced at him indignantly and then continued reading. The waiter announced commands completed, when the fop lounged round into the box and began to read. Lord Camelford then, mimicking the tone of the coxcomb, called for a pair of snuffers, deliberately walked to the next box and snuffed out both the candles, and returned to his seat. The coxcomb, boiling with rage, roared out, ‘Waiter, who is this fellow that dares thus to insult a gentleman? Who is he? What is he? What do they call him?’ ‘Lord Camelford, sir,’ replied the waiter. ‘Who? Lord Camelford!’ returned the fop, in a tone of voice scarcely audible, terror-struck at his own impertinence. ‘Lord Camelford! What have I to pay?’ On being told, he laid down the money and stole away without daring to taste his Madeira!”

“THE WESTERN EXCHANGE,” BOND STREET.

It was while living in Bond Street that Lord Camelford chose to ignore the general illuminations for the peace of 1801, and would allow no lights to shine in the windows of his rooms. The result was that the mob attacked the house, and proceeded to break all the windows, whereat the pugnacious peer, undaunted, sallied forth with a thick stick, and proceeded to lay about him to such good effect that it was not till a considerable space of time had elapsed that he was overpowered by numbers, and was, perforce, constrained to retreat in an almost unrecognizable and wholly undignified condition.

To-day Bond Street, Old and New, is as nearly a complete street of shops as any in London; indeed, it is pre-eminently the “street of beautiful shops,” as Mr. Meredith calls it, and is, in this connection, known throughout the world. Anyone walking down it would have to draw heavily on his imagination, if he would try to realise that, as Bramston writes:—“Pease, cabbages, and turnips once grew where now stands New Bond Street ...”, so completely has time metamorphosed this once rural spot into a promenade of bricks and mortar, where the ends of the world seem to have been ransacked to fill its marts with all the riches of Nature and Art conceivable by the mind of man.