CHAPTER VIII
Carlyle’s and Rossetti’s monuments—Paradise Row as it used to be—Hortense de Mazarin—Whistler’s White House and the Victoria Hospital—The Physick Garden—Swan Walk and Doggett’s race for the “Coat and Badge”—The Royal Hospital—Poor, pretty Nelly’s pleasure house—The Chapel—The Hall—An American offer—A French Eagle—Walpole House and a Queen at dinner—Ranelagh and its Rotunda—The Pensioners’ Gardens.
IN the Embankment Gardens, facing Cheyne Row and Queen’s House respectively, are the statue of Carlyle by Boehm and the Drinking Fountain Memorial to Rossetti, with a portrait in relief by his friend, Ford Madox Brown. Both are excellent likenesses, though Carlyle’s is a peaceful presentment, and Rossetti’s mournful and rather repellent.
Passing through the gardens, I have often been reminded of the Greek painter and the birds who pecked at his grapes, for the children often stop to finger the pile of books under Carlyle’s chair. “They’m real books, ain’t they, missus, wat the old genelman wrote?” Thus we talk of Carlyle still, a stone’s throw from his study windows. It is interesting to know that the annual number of visitors to the Carlyle House increases steadily, and the custodian assures us that the knowledge of his works—intelligent, not merely curious—increases also, though among Colonials and Americans he is better known than among ordinary English people. And for “Colonials” read Scotch, or Scotch extracted.
Leaving Cheyne Walk behind and walking eastward, we pass blocks of new flats and modern houses where once was Queen’s Road and beautiful Paradise Row—a terrace of houses that three hundred years ago was a centre of life and fashion. Here lived Hortense Duchesse de Mazarin, who dared not marry Charles II. in his days of exile, but flirted with him extensively later, and accepted a pension from him of £4,000 a year, which she spent on riotous entertainments rather than on paying her just rates and debts. Charles, Duke of St. Albans, son of Nell Gwynn and the Merry Monarch, lived here, and so did Mary Astell, the Suffragette of her times, whose advanced views found little favour with the wits at the Don Saltero or the fashionables of the Court, though serious John Evelyn sees fit to commend her. Dukes and earls and “smart” bishops jostled each other in Paradise Row in the gay Stuart days, then artists, physicians, scientists, and schoolmasters succeeded to the fine old houses with their stately forecourts, and Elizabeth Fry established her “School of Discipline” for homeless and vagabond girls at the corner in 1828. Finally, in 1908 it was swept away, and re-created to meet modern requirements as Royal Hospital Road.
Tite Street turns off towards the river, and holds two buildings of note: Mr. Whistler’s White House, which looks as if it had strayed out of its way from Constantinople, and the Victoria Hospital for Children, a splendid new building, embracing, as its nucleus, Gough House, built by the Earl of Carberry in Charles II.’s time. Sir Richard Gough, who succeeded the Earl, gave it its name. The hospital is an unspeakable boon to the poor of the district; it has seventy beds, and a very extensive out-patients’ department, as well as a convalescent home at Broadstairs. Visitors can visit it daily between 2 and 4 p.m., and all parents must owe it their gratitude for its devotion to the cause of all children in illness.
The Physick Garden entrance faces Swan Walk, and a ring at the resounding bell in the wall will bring an answering gardener, who will admit the inquiring visitor; but it is generally understood that such visits are made for reasons of botanical or scientific research.
There is no fee, but visitors sign their names in the register, and, if I am not mistaken, enter the object of their special study. The garden, presented by Sir Hans Sloane to the Apothecaries Company, is mainly designed for the use and assistance of students of medicine and botany. All the plants grown in it have their medicinal value. Only one of the Lebanon cedars planted in 1683 remains.
