Another resident was that Admiral Byng, whose infamous execution called forth a well-known sarcasm from Voltaire; while others who lived here in the past were Lord Camden, the great Lord Chief Justice; Lord Brougham, before he received his title; the Earl of Malmesbury, whose four volumes of entertaining memoirs record his diplomatic experiences and successes at half the courts of Europe; and Lords Lyttelton and Carlisle, both poets of distinctly minor attainments. Other names might be added; but to be exhaustive would be to hamper the wings of imagination.
HAYES STREET.
Passing by Hayes Street, now used as mews by the exigencies of fashion, and where, at the corner, a public-house with its sign bearing the inscription, “I am the only running Footman,” will recall to our minds this former appendage to fashionable state, of which “Old Q.” was the last to make use, we come to Charles Street, thus named after Charles, Earl of Falmouth, a brother of Lord Berkeley, the ground-landlord.
CHARLES STREET.
This is the last of what I call “the gridiron,” and is generally known as Charles Street, Berkeley Square, from its entering the square at its south-west corner.
Royalty in the person of William IV., when Duke of Clarence, has been represented in this street; while Sydney Smith, when he was incumbent of Berkeley Chapel close by, was residing here, at No. 33, the house in which the daughter of Lord Hervey was burnt to death, in 1815. It was about the purchase of this house that Smith once wrote “the lawyers discovered some flaw in the title about the time of the Norman Conquest, but, thinking the parties must have disappeared in the quarrels of York and Lancaster, I waived the objection!”
Among other residents I find the names of Lord Ellenborough, once Governor-General of India; Beau Brummell, at No. 42, in 1792; Lady Grenville, after the death of her husband, the Prime Minister; and Bulwer Lytton. The latter, in 1839, fitted up his house in a most lavish style, and one of the rooms was made to represent, as closely as might be, one of the chambers in Pompeii. James Smith, one of the authors of the “Rejected Addresses,” has left an amusing account of a visit he once paid here.
CURZON STREET.
A few steps brings us into Curzon Street. It is curious to notice the difference between the two ends of this fashionable thoroughfare, or rather it was till the Duke of Marlborough set up his splendid mansion amidst the small shops and public-houses which distinguish the eastern part, where Bolton, Clarges, and Half Moon Streets dwindle away into it, and Lansdowne Passage forms an exiguous connection between it and Berkeley Street.
Once the street was known as Mayfair Row; its present designation being derived from the family name of Lord Howe, the owner of the property. If we except Sunderland House, the Duke of Marlborough’s, (apropos of which the story is told that Queen Victoria once informed the Duke she had never been in Curzon Street, so prescribed are frequently the peregrinations of sovereigns) the chief mansion is Crewe House, the residence of the Earl of Crewe. Until comparatively recently it was known as Wharncliffe House, having been acquired by Mr. J. Stuart Wortley for £12,000, in 1818, and continuing in his family (later ennobled by the Barony of Wharncliffe) till its present owner bought it at a very different figure. Originally, in 1708, Mr. Edward Shepherd, who built Shepherd’s Market opposite, in 1735, lived here; and, in 1750, it was purchased by Lord Carhampton for £500, if one can possibly believe in the adequacy of so small a sum to buy anything in such a neighbourhood!