Portman and Cavendish Squares offer a great variety of mansions, well built and well designed—such specimens of the interiors as I have seen are remarkable for their noble stone staircases, florid ironwork railings, and heavily panelled walls. The beautiful solid work with which noblemen and gentlemen used to adorn their mansions can be well illustrated by a casual instance which lately came under my notice. A gentleman who was fitting up his West End house was informed by his builders that a mansion was being pulled down in Grosvenor Street, I think, and that some of the fittings could be secured for the usual “old song.” Among these were a set of massive mahogany doors—portes battantes—of the finest description, the mouldings being set off with richly gilt brass.
St. James’s Square has a cheerful dignity of its own: one of the most dramatic incidents of the century took place in one of the houses. When the issue of the battle of Waterloo was unknown, a wealthy Mrs. Boehm was giving a grand ball, at which the Regent was present. All the rank and fashion of London were there, the windows lit up and open, for the night was sultry; the crowd gathered thickly, looking up at the festivity and the clustered figures. It was after midnight, when a roar came from the distant streets, which increased and swelled, and was borne into the room. The dancing stopped, and those looking on witnessed an indescribable scene of tumult and joy. A chaise and four approached—flags projecting from the windows: an officer, Major Percy, leaped out, carrying his flags, rushed upstairs, and coming up straight to the Prince, knelt on one knee and announced the great victory. Poor Mrs. Boehm’s ball was ruined, for the Prince and everyone departed instantly. But the scene rises before us on some of the summer nights when festivity is going on in the square.[16]
How very few “West-enders” have penetrated so far as Fitzroy Square, which, though close to Tottenham Court Road, is somewhat difficult to find. There is an attraction in its stately façades, one side of which is the work of the Brothers Adam, and has quite the flavour of Bath. Another side was designed by an inferior artist; while the remaining ones are in the ordinary style. Anyone who would wish to feel thoroughly “old-fashioned” should come and live here. Not many years ago, before the era of studio building set in, it was much affected as a haunt of artists; but now it offers a curious “running to seed” air. It is, however, well worth a visit, and a person of taste, by contrasting the two sides, will see how skilfully a true architect can lay out a pile of buildings.
MANSION IN CAVENDISH SQUARE.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE OLD TAVERNS.
OLD inns in London may perhaps owe their repute to the share they have in the scenery of Pickwick and Nickleby. The London inns and inn-yards, still used as houses of entertainment, are among the last few survivals which link us to the antique customs of old London. These are now being swept away with a pitiless rapidity, and in a dozen years more not one will be left. The enormous, sheltering, tiled roofs, the galleries, balustrades, crannies, winding stairs, joined to make these singular structures picturesque, with their lights and shadows, suggestive of the buildings in an old Normandy town. The strange part is that these hostelries seem to do business up to the moment of their extinction; and even when that occurs, the traffic is transferred to a parasite public-house bearing the same name. In most cases, however, the tradition of its being a halt or starting place for carriers and country waggons is maintained, as the great railway companies have seized on many to serve as their goods depots. Hence we find the Bricklayers’ Arms and such places, from under whose archways now rumble forth the Pickford vans, instead of the favourite “Mouldy’s Iron Devil,” the six or eight-horse waggon of our grandsires. The old inns were frail and precarious structures; and it is a marvel that they should have survived so long, the vast expanse of tiled roof being warped and bent in eddying waves, while the crazy stairs and galleries of ancient wood were rotten with age. Many of the Dickens inns were in the City, notably the one in which Mr. Squeers put up when he used to repair to London to collect victims for his school. Mr. Squeers’s house, with many other curious places, was swept away when Snow Hill was abolished, and the Holborn Viaduct carried through to Newgate Street.
Two picturesque specimens—the “Old Tabard,” in the Borough, and the “Warwick Arms,” close to Paternoster Row, would have found admirers in Nuremberg or Rouen. The latter was a remarkable specimen from its size and elaborateness, with its huge roof, rambling galleries and crannies, cavernous dark shadows, and general air of mystery. The tiled roofs of these buildings seemed to grow bent and warped from age and weakness, and fall into those wavings and twists which form an element of the picturesque. The wood of the balustrades grew black and grimed; it was strange that what appeared so crazy should have held together so long. The “Tabard,” though it did not date from Chaucer’s day, as many innocently fancied, was a genuine structure of the seventeenth century. The wonder, in truth, is that any of these fragile structures should still be in existence. Perhaps the most remarkable and most interesting of the old inn-yards was that of the “Four Swans,” which stood till some eight or ten years ago in Bishopsgate Street. This was considered the most perfect and best preserved of all, having more galleries, and having been the scene of a stirring adventure during the Roundhead and Cavalier wars. Its neighbour, the “Green Dragon,” was levelled about the same time. What a pleasing twang, it may be said, is there about the titles of these hostelries, which contrast with the more prosaic designations of latter-day life!