1681. Lukar and Co. 1714. Smith and Co.
1686. Cooke and Co. 1756. Jefferies and Co.
1689. Wise. 1788. Gray and Co.
1694. London and Wise. — Gray, Adams, and Hogg.
1700. Swinhoe. 1849. Adams and Hogg.

Mr. James Gray, who was chief partner in this concern so long, died at Brompton in 1849. He is mentioned with respect in Faulkner’s “History of Kensington.”

Park House, a plain but spacious mansion, pulled down in 1856, adjoined Princes Gate. It was divided from the road by a brick wall, part of that ancient one just mentioned, for this house stood within Brompton Park: hence its name. Probably a more ancient mansion stood here; but the late one was for many years the seat of the Veres, bankers of the city of London. Afterwards it became the residence of William Evans, Esq., M.P., soon after whose death it was sold.

Eden Lodge was the residence of Lord Auckland, Governor-General of India. Here he retired after his return, and died in 1849.

Mercer Lodge, a small brick residence, was inhabited by Frank Marryat, son of the novelist, and himself an author of one or two books of travel. Mr. Henry Mayhew now resides here.

Immediately adjoining is a row of five houses, called emphatically Kensington Gore. All are faced with white stucco, are very small, and appear as if intended for the lodge of some great mansion never erected. Two of them, which seem to contain but one room, have, however, second storeys at the back, and good gardens, which, with the Park in front, render them very pleasant residences. At one of these houses, in 1816, Mrs. Inchbald inquired after some lodgings which were to let. The landlady was too fine a personage for the writer of “The Simple Story,” and so exacting in her demands that her applicant indignantly wended her way elsewhere. No. 2, now called Hamilton Lodge, was once the occasional residence of John Wilkes. The house was kept by Mrs. Arnold, mother of his second daughter Harriett, who married Mr. Serjeant Rough, afterwards an Indian judge. Wilkes sometimes had high visitors here: Mr. Leigh Hunt quotes a memorandum of his, regarding a dinner here to Counts Woronzow and Nesselrode; and if we are to set down Sir Philip Francis as Junius, here Junius visited, as Mrs. Rough said, frequently; and when a child he once cut off a lock of her hair. Wilkes to the last walked hence to the city, attired in his scarlet and buff suit, with a cocked hat and rosette, and military boots, a dress authorised by his position as colonel of militia. The urn over the doorway Mr. Leigh Hunt imagines to have been placed there by him as an indication of his classic taste, and the supposition is most probably correct. No. 5 was the residence for awhile of Count D’Orsay.

Gore House.—In 1808, Mr. Wilberforce took this mansion (which had previously been the residence of a Government contractor) for his home. He found it, he says, more salubrious than his house at Clapham; and writes further, “We are just one mile from the turnpike at Hyde Park Corner, having about three acres of pleasure-ground around our house, or rather behind it, and several old trees, walnut and mulberry, of thick foliage. I can sit and read under their shade, with as much admiration of the beauties of nature as if I were two hundred miles from the great city.” Here he passed many years of his happy and useful life, his house the resort of those men who awoke our land from the deadly torpor into which years of fearful warfare had plunged it. Here came Clarkson, Zachary Macaulay, Romilly, and others, to commune together on those measures which, to quote Channing, brought about “the most signal expression afforded by our times of the progress of civilisation and a purer Christianity.”

Wilberforce was exceedingly partial to Gore House, and his friends appear to have always found a ready home within it. In 1814, Mr. Henry Thornton, for many years M.P. for Southwark, and one of his most earnest supporters, came here for the benefit of the air and medical aid. He lingered a few weeks, and died here January 17th, 1815, aged fifty-three. Isaac Milner, too, an early friend, who came to London to attend the Board of Longitude, died here after five weeks’ illness, on April 1st, 1820.

The following year Wilberforce quitted Gore House. He retired to Marden, in Surrey, a lovely spot and an interesting locality; but he regretted leaving

“The still retreats that soothed his tranquil breast,”