Highways and Byways in London

by Emily Constance Baird Cook

"Yes, indeed! some of them are very gross," says the Mentor; and I almost wish that I had held my peace.

The panels of the mysterious room that contains the Hogarths afford a wonderful example of how to hang many pictures in a limited space. They open at the touch of a spring, disclosing not only inner walls of pictures, but also their own inner sides similarly adorned. Through the walls thus magically opened a glimpse is obtained of a little basement room called "The Monk's Parloir," adorned with carving and statuary. Sir John Soane was, of course, the architect of the existing Bank of England, and interesting architectural drawings, beside innumerable imaginary palaces by him, abound in the museum. The chief treasure of the collection, the hieroglyphic-covered alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I., father of the great Rameses, lies in the basement; which is, indeed, entirely filled with works of "antiquity and virtue"; the "backs" and basements of three adjoining houses being utilised for the required space. To judge from the wide variety among the objects collected, Sir John Soane must have been a man of cosmopolitan tastes, and possessed of an interesting personality. Perhaps he found some comfort in art for the tragedies of his later life; for his two sons (whose quaint portraits, in youthful blue and silver, are to be seen in the museum) died in his lifetime. At any rate, that Sir John was a man of some humour seems to be sufficiently attested by the curious post-mortem joke that he perpetrated on his trustees! For, when leaving his treasures to the nation, and specifying especially that the house was to be left precisely as he had lived in it, he appended to his will three codicils, directing that three mysterious sealed cupboards in his museum-house should not be opened till respectively thirty, fifty, and sixty years after his death! This was accordingly done, expectation rising higher in each decade; and lo! on each occasion nothing was found but a few worthless papers, relating either to antiquated accounts, or to still more antiquated family disagreements!

There is, at the present time, despite the encroachments of a modern and generally iconoclastic London, now a wholesome spirit of veneration abroad, which tends not only towards the preservation of ancient and historical buildings, but also towards the acquisition of the homes that have been lived in and made beautiful by the celebrated men of our own day. Of this kind is "Leighton House," bought since Lord Leighton's death by the effort of a private committee, and now opened free to the nation. The rooms and internal arrangement are, as in the case of the "Carlyle House," left as nearly as possible in their original condition, and though of necessity much of the valuable furniture and accessories have been removed, yet the many sketches and drawings illustrative of the painter's life-work that fill the walls do something to dispel the unavoidable sense of incompleteness. It is interesting to wander through the beautifully-proportioned rooms, to gaze into the well-tended, sun-lit garden, with its gay geranium beds and its green lawn; to sit in the mysterious semi-darkness of the "Arab Hall," and look up into its gold-encrusted dome; to listen to the mournful splash of the tiny fountain in its marble basin;—and yet, "wanting is—what?"

"When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead."

It will always be a question how far the mere dwelling of a great painter is worth thus preserving in its integrity, when once the magic of his presence, his genius, has deserted it, and the growing work of his art no longer adorns its walls. The committee of the "Leighton House" have done their work with judgment and care, and, if the inevitable comparison occurs to those who saw it in the life time or during the "show days" of its late master, of former life and splendour with present gloom and sadness, this is only in the nature of things. The blue tiles that the painter loved still adorn, in bird-of-paradise like splendour, the wide, massive staircase; the water still tinkles in the Pompeian atrium as of old; and the master's art can still be studied in the many drawings and reproductions that fill, so far as they can, the places left by greater works.

Hertford House, in Manchester Square, the sumptuous home of the Wallace collection, bequeathed to the nation by Lady Wallace in 1898, is the most important of the nation's artistic legacies. Though in a sense historic—for it is the "Gaunt House" of Vanity Fair, and its former owner, Lord Hertford, was caricatured as the Marquis of Steyne;—yet, as it is mainly as a picture gallery that it must be noticed, it has fallen most conveniently into a previous chapter.

But the historical houses of London are innumerable, and my space is but limited. History is written in many kinds. And the greater portion of the fine houses of the metropolis, the palaces of Mayfair, Pall Mall, Kensington, possess historic interest of their own; interest, indeed, often unknown and unsuspected by any but the privileged few, because unvisited and generally inaccessible. Of these are Chesterfield House, in South Audley Street, the home of the author of the famous Letters, where the poor scholar Johnson waited patiently for interviews with his noble patron; Apsley House,—the pillared façade of which is so well known to travellers on the humble omnibus as it passes Hyde Park Corner,—the abode of the "Iron Duke," that old man in the blue coat and white trousers, to the last the people's idol, whose daily appearances, in old age, were here awaited patiently by expectant crowds; Lansdowne House, Devonshire House, Sutherland House, Bridgewater House, splendid mansions on or near the "Green Park," famed, like so many others, for their picture galleries; Sutherland House, often now hospitably thrown open for gatherings of "the people," is said to be the finest private mansion in London: "I have come," a Queen is reported to have said to a former Duchess of Sutherland, "from my house to your palace."

Many of the splendid old mansions of Stuart times have, indeed, gone; yet in some instances they have risen again from their ashes to new spheres of interest. Thus, old Montague House in Bloomsbury, old Burlington House in Piccadilly, old Somerset House in the Strand, have been rebuilt and utilised by Government as National Collections or offices. Where lovely ladies of the Restoration trailed their sheeny silks in Lely-like voluptuousness, where court gallants presented odes, and court dandies took snuff and patronage, now sweet girl graduates pace the galleries, spectacled lady-students copy "old masters," Academy pupils study "the antique." The contrast is picturesque as well as strange. Does one not sometimes, as twilight falls, seem to hear the ghostly "swish" of the court beauties' dresses along a deserted British Museum Gallery, or seem to see in a stone Venus, with uplifted arm, an insufficiently clad fair lady of the olden time? It is but fancy, yet such is the charm of history and of historic association.

Ghosts of our own fancy may, and do, wander at their will in London's misty galleries; but ghosts, better authenticated, are popularly supposed to haunt a few of London's old houses. Thus, No. 50, in Berkeley Square has gained undesirable notoriety as the "Haunted House," and many extraordinary tales have from time to time been told as to its ghostly manifestations. Berkeley Square has, undeniably, a solid and old-time look that fits in well with the gloomy tradition; it has the best and most ancient plane-trees of any London square, and its fine old iron-work, with occasional torch-extinguishers (used by the "link-boys" of sedan chairs in Stuart times), are all in keeping with the old-world spirit. Nevertheless, Berkeley Square has other and sadder associations than those of mere ghosts. For in No. 45,—a house specially noted for its iron-adornments,—the great Lord Clive, founder of the British Empire in India, committed suicide in 1774. "In the awful close," says Macaulay, "of so much prosperity and glory," some men only saw the horrors of an evil conscience; but Clive from early youth had been subject to "fits of strange melancholy," while now his strong mind was sinking under physical suffering, and he took opium for a distressing complaint.

In Berkeley Square (No. 38) is the town house of Lord Rosebery, once the residence of Lady Jersey, and the place whence her mother,—the daughter of Child, the banker,—eloped to marry the Earl of Westmorland, in 1782.