So it is that money enough enables common folk now to dine in palaces and enjoy banquets quite as royally served and surrounded as Bluff Harry offered to Cardinal Wolsey and the lords and ladies at the Presence Chamber in York Place. But even that monarch could not have entertained his guests so luxuriously in one particular as Messrs. Spiers & Pond theirs; for these, having dined, may pass through a door and descend by a stairway adorned with Muses and mirrors, and rich with floral clusters, to a theatre all glorious in blue and gold, cushioned chairs, boxes with curtains of yellow satin and lace, and a good drab background to set them off, and pass the rest of the evening in enjoyment of well-acted comedies or operettas.
So far as most of the hotels and restaurants of London are concerned, one may with satisfaction follow the advice of the Duke of Gloster to Anne, in the first act of Richard III.:
“Leave these sad designs
To him that hath more cause to be a mourner,
And presently repair to Crosby Place.”
For the old Gothic palace in the City, which Sir John Crosby built on a piece of land with one hundred and ten feet frontage, for which he paid a little over eleven pounds, which his widow sold to the duke who afterward became Richard III., and which in Shakspeare’s time had fallen to the richest of Lord Mayors (Sir John Spencer), has now followed the course of so many royal buildings, and become the banqueting-hall of the public.
ALBERT MEMORIAL, HYDE PARK.