THE WATER GATE.
us, was occupied by the Czar Peter on his visit to London. Its various chambers are now given over to the Charity Organisation Society, to a maternity association, etc.; but on going up the stairs we see palpable vestiges of the magnificence of the place, which must have had some connection with old York House. For we find ourselves in a spacious and imposing drawing-room, of which the entire walls are oak as well as the flooring, while the two elegant doorways are embroidered round with a rich carved flowering border. But it is the unique ceiling that will excite admiration, consisting of a thick wheel-like border, filled in with the boldest and richest stucco-work, presenting solidly wrought roses and leaves. This encircles a painted allegorical piece, but so grimed with dirt that the subject cannot be clearly seen. It is but little damaged. One could fancy this room restored and furnished, and the rude Muscovite seated in congenial proximity to his favourite river. The side of the house that looks over the Embankment, though covered with whitewash, displays a tall elegant central window of a decorated kind, showing that the whole must in its best days have been of a spacious and imposing character. The view from this window, as indeed it is from all these corner houses giving on the river, is charming. On the opposite side of the street, a few doors higher up, is another old mansion of some pretence—also given over to offices—and noteworthy for the twenty or so grotesque heads, one of which is set over every window. It is hard to account for this odd form of adornment, unless it came with the Dutch. They are found in many quarters of London, some putting their tongues out to the spectators, others crying, laughing, etc. This mansion is believed to have been the one occupied by Mr. Secretary Pepys, and so we look at it with interest.
But this does not exhaust the associations of the Adelphi. There we lately saw the “house breakers” hard at work levelling what has some very pathetic associations with the early life of Dickens. For many generations now, a dilapidated miscellany of shanties has been visible from the terrace; a shed, outhouses, a small mean-storied thing in the last stage of decay, with an ancient cart or two lying up in ordinary. Across the wall ran a faded half-effaced legend, in what were once gold letters on a blue ground:—
THE FOX-UNDER-THE-HILL.
HOARE & CO’S ENTIRE,
AND BRILLIANT ALES.
It was hard to conceive of anything “brilliant” in such a place, save the little half-starved boy employed at the blacking factory in Hungerford Market, who used to make his way thither. “One of his favourite localities,” says Mr. Forster, “was a little public-house by the water-side called the Fox-under-the-Hill, approached by an underground passage, which we once missed in looking for it together; and he had a vision, which he has mentioned in ‘Copperfield,’ of sitting eating something on a bench outside and looking at some coal-heavers dancing.” This memorial has for years borne a dismal forlorn aspect, very suggestive of this despairing season in Dickens’s childhood. Within these few months, therefore, it was like losing a friend to find the “brilliant ales” gone and the house all but levelled.
On the higher level of the terrace, facing the Strand, are some gloomy-looking hotels, of many windows, “The Caledonian” and “The Adelphi.” There is here the air of dingy old fashion, so well suited to Pickwick, and we know that this Adelphi Hostelry is the “Osborne’s Hotel,” where Wardle and his daughter Emily put up, and where the droll scene occurred of Mr. Snodgrass being secreted during dinner—the fat boy running “something sharp into Mr. Pickwick’s leg” to attract his attention. As we look up at the first-floor windows the scene rises before us, and the whole appears in harmony with the humours of Pickwick. Most natural is it, too, that the Wardles should put up at such a house, for the dingy furniture, etc., all seems to belong to that era.
Here in the Adelphi we come upon a handsome building which houses the useful Society of Arts, its energetic Secretary, Sir H. Trueman Wood, and Librarian, Mr. Wheatley, so well skilled in London lore.
The story of the luckless Barry is most pathetic, and as we sit in the fine meeting-room of the Society and look up at the painter’s crowds of animated figures that line the walls, it comes back on us with a strange vividness. He had something akin to the character and erratic temper of Haydon, the same despairing sense of talent neglected and put aside; the same struggle with the Academy, and a quarrelsome eccentricity. A difference, however, between the two men was that Barry’s work on the walls speaks for him and proclaims his fine academic culture, his grace and poetry in the beautiful, well-designed figures and groups, and the refined transparent colouring; with which we have to contrast the heavily-painted, earthy-looking portraits of the Sovereign and her Consort, which by some strange lack of congruity have been thrust into this classical company. One can conceive, however, the difficulties of dealing with a man who insisted on representing the death of Wolfe with a number of perfectly nude figures standing round, and who in his latter days of penury and neglect, when asked out to dine, insisted on tendering two shillings to his host in payment of the meal! These fine pictures cover a canvas that spreads round the room. To obtain the fame and expanse of canvas allowed by such an undertaking, the artist offered to do the whole work gratis; not, however, it may be supposed, that when the work was done the Society left him without remuneration. As the result proved, he was fairly well paid for his labours. The variety, the fine workmanship displayed, the grace of the figures, are extraordinary when we consider it was the work of one man.