It was said that it was Lord Coventry, the husband of the famous beauty, who finally caused an end to be put to the “May fair” which used to be held upon the ground now covered by Hertford Street, Curzon Street, Shepherd’s Market, and some other streets. Lord Coventry lived at the house at the corner of Engine Street (now Brick Street) which, in the middle of the eighteenth century, had been erected on the site of the large and ancient Greyhound Inn. The perpetual noise and uproar which went on by night as well as by day during the whole month of May, owing to the fair, so irritated and annoyed him that he determined to make an effort to have it totally suppressed. As early as 1709 it had been prohibited, but within a few years was once more revived, though the Grand Jury of the City of Westminster had characterised it as a vile and riotous assembly. Lord Coventry, however, by some means or other, was completely successful in his efforts to abolish finally what he considered to be an intolerable nuisance, and no “May fair” seems to have been held much after 1764, the date at which Lord Coventry entered into possession of his new house. Most of the ground on which the fair was held belonged to a Mr. Shepherd, whence has originated the present name of Shepherd’s Market, which is sometimes wrongly called “Shepherd Market,” as if it had been a meeting-place for shepherds in the past. This was never the case. Another gentleman of the same sounding name also lived in Mayfair for a time in 1723. This was the celebrated Jack Sheppard of notorious memory.
In an attic in Curzon Street Sir Francis Chantrey, when quite an undistinguished young man, modelled his Head of Satan and the bust of Lord St. Vincent; and in this street also lived Madam Vestris; the Miss Berrys, one of whom I knew, lived at No. 8, whilst Lord Beaconsfield went to reside in this street at No. 19 at the beginning of 1881, in which house he died some three months later.
Many have sought to trace the origin of the name Piccadilly, but I believe that no entirely satisfactory explanation has ever been given. The first mention of what is now a world-famous thoroughfare occurs (as is well known) in Gerard’s Herbal, which has originated an erroneous idea that Piccadilly existed in 1596 when the work in question was published. As a matter of fact, it is not in the original edition of Gerard’s Herbal that such a mention occurs, but in a much later one published in 1636, and edited by Thomas Johnson. It runs as follows:—“The little wild bugloss grows upon the dry ditch bank about Pickadella.” It is pretty well authenticated that about 1630 a retired tailor, named Higgins, whose fortune had been in a great measure made by the sale of “pickadelles”—piccadillies or turnover collars—built himself a snug house in this locality which he called Pickadilla Hall; and Mr. Higgins, therefore, it was who, in all probability, originated the name.
Up to about 1851, the year of the great Exhibition, Piccadilly was more a fashionable lounge than anything else, but since that time it has completely changed, and from having been a purely West End street has become an ordinary London thoroughfare.
WIMBORNE HOUSE
No. 22 Arlington Street, now Wimborne House, has had a good many different names as well as occupants. Once it was called Beaufort House, then Hamilton House, then Walsingham House, and now finally, as has been said, Wimborne House. Amongst other remarkable people who have lived there was Lord Houghton, who once took it for a year. It was the interior of this house, it is said, that Hogarth utilised as the scene of the wonderful series illustrating the marriage à la mode of his day. In 1870 Mr. Pender (afterwards Sir John) gave a great party in this mansion to inaugurate the opening of a telegraph cable to India, in those days considered a great feat. Messages, I remember, were sent to the Viceroy during the evening, and congratulatory replies duly received, whilst most of the intellect and rank of London were amongst the guests. The present King and Queen were there, and Mr. and Mrs. Disraeli, and altogether the whole entertainment was a most brilliant one. Just about this time society was beginning to widen out, and the stamp which once used so ruthlessly to hall-mark people as belonging to the crême de la crême or as being outside the pale, to make a more feeble impression. Nevertheless, the great millionaires had not yet made their appearance, and if any one died and left a hundred thousand it was still thought enormous.
The ways and things of the ’sixties seem very strange to-day. Oysters were a shilling a dozen, and people used to be made ill by arsenic green wall-paper. The hideous crinoline was universally worn by ladies, and entailed untold inconvenience and discomfort. Old Dr. Fuller of Piccadilly (the last of the apothecaries) was once summoned to dislodge a fish-bone from the throat of Frances Anne, Lady Londonderry, and when imperiously told to begin, was obliged to say that he was quite unable to get within many yards of her ladyship’s throat in consequence of her crinoline being so enormous and so solid!
People were much more ignorant about health than is the case nowadays, when they discuss the unromantic ailments of their interiors with the greatest freedom. Formerly great reticence was observed about such subjects, which no one would have even dreamt of mentioning. Doctors, and the medicine they gave, were still viewed with something of a mysterious awe. In the days when the old Coliseum in Regent’s Park was still in existence, a gentleman came out of his doctor’s in Harley Street, looking very solemn, and met a friend on the doorstep, who said, “What on earth is the matter? You look like the man who lost a sovereign and found sixpence.” “Well,” said the other, “my doctor tells me that I’m not at all the thing. By the way, where is the ‘Perineum’?” “Oh,” replied his friend, “that’s easily answered; straight down Portland Place, and turn to the right, and then you’ll see it in front of you!”
THE TURKISH AMBASSADRESS
At a great party which was given at the India Office during the Sultan’s visit to England in 1867, the wife of the Turkish Ambassador (who was, of course, like most of the Turkish envoys sent to England, a Christian), a lady weighing some twenty-five stone, completely succumbed, being overpowered by the heat. A doctor was present in the room, being in close attendance upon the Sultan, and every one thought that he would at once be sent to revive the enormous and prostrate Ambassadress. Her imperial master, however, instead of thus despatching his medical adviser, whom he kept in close attendance by his side, did not show the slightest desire to dispense even for a moment with his services, but on the contrary, fearing that the excitement consequent upon this unfortunate occurrence would heighten the august temperature, bade the physician keep his hand closely upon the imperial pulse till such time as all inflammatory symptoms should have subsided.