“And all that passes inter nos,
May be proclaimed at Charing Cross.”
Swift.
Dr. Johnson once said, “Why, sir, Fleet Street has a very animated appearance, but I think the full tide of human existence is at Charing Cross.”
Certainly Charing Cross is the best of all starting-points for exploring expeditions, and by Charing Cross I mean the south-east corner of Trafalgar Square.
From there you may wander along the Strand, or north into Bloomsbury, or through Cockspur Street into the realms of Mayfair, or southward to the Thames, and in every direction there are unnoticed stories to be found.
United Services Museum
“More kindly love have I to that place than to any other in yerth.”—Chaucer.
One day I turned my back on Charing Cross to go to St. Margaret’s via Whitehall, blissfully unconscious of the fact that it happened to be Saturday and that the church closes its doors every day at 4 p.m. and for all day on Saturdays.
At the corner of the Horse Guards Avenue I paused undecided, having taken months to summon up courage to pass the giant at the entrance to the United Services Museum!
He snorts with such a supercilious sniff at the would-be visitor that you have to remember it may possibly be only the good-natured contempt of one service for another, and that the Orion’s figurehead may really be elevating his nose at the Horse Guards across the way, on which I notice that Spencer Compton, 8th Duke of Devonshire (b. 1833, d. 1908) also bends a grave and somewhat disapproving eye from his elevated statue in the middle of the road.
Mr. Street, in his delicious Ghosts of Piccadilly, says, “There is ever a Devonshire filling his eminent position, calm, retiring, imperturbable, and never an amusing thing to tell of any one of them,” and this statue tells you to believe him.