“While brawny brutes, in stupid wonder stare,
And marvel at his lordship’s ‘stone shop’ there.”
Lower down is Dorchester House, the residence of Capt. Holford, erected in 1852-4. It is so named because it stands on the site of a house belonging to the Damers, Earls of Dorchester. It is celebrated for its libraries, engravings, and paintings by the old masters. Yet nearer Hyde Park Corner is Londonderry House, the town house of the Marquess of Londonderry, K.G.
Hyde Park Corner, as shown in a water-colour drawing of 1756 in the Crace Collection, gives us a good idea of what it was like—its wooden gates, its apple stall, the row of squalid cottages, and the public-house called the “Hercules’ Pillars”—where now stand Apsley House and the houses of the Rothschilds. Anent the apple stall, the story is told that the wife of a discharged soldier named Allen kept it during the reign of George II. Allen somehow attracted the notice of the King, who, upon learning that he had fought at Dettingen, asked what he could do for him. Allen asked for the grant of the bit of land on which his hut and apple stall stood, and the boon was granted. In 1784, Allen’s representative sold the ground to Henry, Lord Apsley, who was then Lord Chancellor, who thereon built a red brick house, which he is said to have designed, and, having built the first floor, found that he had forgotten any staircases to go up higher.
In 1820 it was purchased by the nation and settled on the great Arthur, Duke of Wellington, and his heirs for ever, but it had to undergo many alterations before it took its present shape. Many of my readers will remember the bullet-proof iron shutters which were put up at every window facing Piccadilly, after all the windows had been smashed by a mob during the popular ferment caused by the Reform Bill. They were never opened during the old Duke’s life, and were only taken down by his son in 1856. The story of these iron shutters is thus told by the Rev. R. Gleig, in his Life of Arthur, Duke of Wellington (ed. 1864, p. 360):—
“The Duke was not in his place in the House of Lords on that memorable day when the King went down to dissolve (prorogue) Parliament (April 22nd, 1831). He had been in attendance for some time previously at the sick bed of the Duchess, and she expired just as the Park guns began to fire. He was therefore ignorant of the state into which London had fallen, till a surging crowd swept up from Westminster to Piccadilly, shouting and yelling, and offering violence to all whom they suspected of being anti-reformers. By-and-by, volleys of stones came crashing through the windows at Apsley House, breaking them to pieces, and doing injury to more than one valuable picture in the gallery. The Duke bore the outrage as well as he could, but determined never to run a similar risk again. He guarded his windows, as soon as quiet was restored, with iron shutters, and left them there to the day of his death—a standing memento of a nation’s ingratitude.”
The illustration representing the Duke looking out of his smashed windows is taken from Political Sketches by H.B. (John Doyle), No. 267, June 10th, 1833, and is entitled “Taking an Airing in Hyde Park; a portrait, Framed but not YET Glazed.”
Nearly opposite Apsley House, and at the top of Constitution Hill, stands an Arch which was originally intended as a private entrance to Buckingham Palace; but it was erected on its present site about 1828, when Burton put up his screen at the entrance to Hyde Park. It is now more generally known as the Wellington Arch, from its having been surmounted by a colossal bronze equestrian statue of the great Duke, by Matthew Cotes Wyatt, in 1846. This was the outcome of a public subscription for the purpose, which is said to have amounted to £36,000. So much ridicule, however, was heaped upon it, that it was taken
down in January, 1883, and removed to Aldershot in August, 1884, where it now is. A new statue on a pedestal supported by four soldiers, by Sir J. E. Boehm, was afterwards erected on nearly the same spot, and was unveiled by the Prince of Wales, on December 21, 1888.