Knightsbridge Terrace till within the last five-and-twenty years had not a shop in it. Every house was private, and had a deep basement area in front. The corner house, now divided, was for many years Mr. Telfair’s “College for the Deaf and Dumb.” James Telfair died in 1796, aged 84; his son, Cortez Telfair, died April 23rd, 1816, aged 65. Both were buried at Kensington, and in the church is a tablet to their memory. It states Cortez Telfair to have been celebrated for his literary attainments; but what these were I have not been able to learn, other than that, in 1775, he edited “The Town and Country Spelling Book.” [147]
In one of the houses immediately facing the Chapel resided for many years Maurice Morgann, Esq., author of an “Essay on the Character of Falstaff,” and Under-Secretary of State to the first administration of Lord Shelburne. He was also Secretary to the Embassy for ratifying the Peace with the United States in 1783.
Besides his remarkable “Essay on Falstaff,” he published “Remarks on the Slave Trade,” a useful and earnest pamphlet. In the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” December, 1815, a writer endeavoured to fix on him the authorship of the “Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers,” now known to have been concocted by Mason and Walpole, but published under the pseudonyme of “Malcolm M‘Gregor, of Knightsbridge, Esq.” But Dr. Symmons, Morgann’s friend and executor, denied the ownership, and declared his repeated injunctions were, that all his papers should be destroyed, and that he never published any but those with his name. Symmons had previously said, “Some of those writings destroyed, in the walks of politics, metaphysics, and criticism, would have planted a permanent laurel on his grave.” [148] Mr. Morgann is one who has an honourable niche in Boswell’s inimitable “Life of Johnson.”
Morgann afterwards removed to High Row, where he died March 28th, 1802, in his seventy-seventh year. “As a man, he stood detached from the general contagion of the age he lived in; neither complying with the vices of the great, however familiar or seductive, nor with their frivolities, however general or imposing. His mind was compounded of pure and simple elements, which inseparably mixed in his business, his friendships, and intercourse with all mankind; and it was often no less pleasing to his friends, than to the lovers of virtue in general, to see with what lustre those plain but prepossessing colours outshone the glare of fashion, and the accommodating varnish of modern morals.” [149a]
Lowndes Square, so named from William Lowndes, Esq., of Chesham, to whom the land belongs. According to Dr. King, rector of Chelsea (1694 to 1732), in his MS. account of that parish, [149b] this site at one time belonged to a Benedictine convent. It certainly formed part of the gift of Edward the Confessor to the Abbey, but has been in lay hands ever since the Reformation. At about where William Street joins the Square stood a large detached house, formerly a place of amusement, and known as Spring Garden. Dr. King mentions it as “an excellent Spring Garden.” [149c] And among the entries of “The Virtuosi, or St. Luke’s Club,” Established by Vandyke, is the following allusion:—
“Paid and spent at Spring Gardens, by Knightsbridge, forfeiture £3 15 shgs.” [149d]
That enjoyable chronicler, Pepys, too, I fancy alludes to Spring Gardens in the following entry in his “Diary.” It must be premised that the hearty clerk of the Admiralty had been to Kensington, and there, as was frequently his wont, had had what he innocently and amusingly terms a “frolic”:—
“June 16, 1664. I lay in my drawers, and stockings, and waistcoat till five of the clock, and so up, and being well pleased with our frolic, walked to Knightsbridge, and there ate a mess of cream, and so to St. James’,” &c.
And again he chronicles (April 24th, 1665) a visit to the Park. “But the King being there, and I now-a-days being doubtful of being seen in any pleasure, did part from the town, and away out of the Park to Knightsbridge, and there ate and drank in the coach and so home.”
Spring Gardens was at this time a name applied to almost all places of outdoor recreation, the appellation being borrowed from the celebrated garden near Charing Cross. But Pepys speaks also of a place of entertainment called “The World’s End,” at Knightsbridge, which I believe could have been only the sign adopted by the owner of this garden for his house. Pepys, on another occasion relating that he went forth to Hyde Park, was “too soon to go in, so went on to Knightsbridge, and there ate and drank at the World’s End, where we had good things, and then back to the Park, and there till night, being fine weather, and much company.” (“Diary,” May 9th, 1669.) Again, on May 31st in the same year, he records going “to the World’s End, a drinking-house by the Park, and there merry, and so home late.”