The Prince of Wales’s palace is no favourable specimen of English architecture. Before the house are thirty columns planted in a row, two and two, supporting nothing but a common entablature, which connects them. As they serve for neither ornament nor use, a stranger might be puzzled to know by what accident they came there; but the truth is, that these people have more money than taste, and are satisfied with any absurdity if it has but the merit of being new. The same architect was employed[[6]] to build a palace, not far distant, for the second prince of the blood, and in the front towards the street he constructed a large oven-like room completely obscuring the house to which it was to serve as an entrance-hall. These two buildings being described to the late Lord North, who was blind in the latter part of his life, he facetiously remarked, Then the Duke of York, it should seem, has been sent to the round-house, and the Prince of Wales is put into the pillory.[[7]]
[6]. The author must have been misinformed in this particular, for the Duke of York’s house at Whitehall, now Lord Melbourne’s, was not built by his Royal Highness; but altered, with some additions, of which the room alluded to made a part.—Tr.
[7]. There is an explanation of the jest in the text which the translator has thought proper to omit, as, however necessary to foreign readers, it must needs seem impertinent to an English one.—Tr.
I had now passed the trading district, and found little to excite attention in large brick houses without uniformity, and without either beauty or magnificence. The royal palace itself is an old brick building, remarkable for nothing, except that the sovereign of Great Britain should have no better a court; but it seems that the king never resides there. A passage through the court-yard leads into St James’s Park, the Prado of London. Its trees are not so fine as might be expected in a country where water never fails, and the sun never scorches; here is also a spacious piece of water; but the best ornament of the park are the two towers of Westminster Abbey. Having now reached the proposed limits of my walk, I passed through a public building of some magnitude and little beauty, called the Horse Guards, and again entered the public streets. Here, where the pavement was broad, and the passengers not so numerous as to form a crowd, a beggar had taken his seat, and written his petition upon the stones with chalks of various colours, the letters formed with great skill, and ornamented with some taste. I stopped to admire his work, and gave him a trifle as a payment for the sight, rather than as alms. Immediately opposite the Horse Guards is the Banqueting House at Whitehall; so fine a building, that if the later architects had had eyes to see, or understandings to comprehend its merit, they would never have disgraced the opposite side of the way with buildings so utterly devoid of beauty. This fragment of a great design by Inigo Jones is remarkable for many accounts; here is the window through which Charles I. came out upon the scaffold; here also, in the back court, the statue of James II. remains undisturbed, with so few excesses was that great revolution accompanied; and here is the weathercock which was set up by his command, that he might know every shifting of the wind when the invasion from Holland was expected, and the east wind was called Protestant by the people, and the west Papist.
My way home from Charing Cross was varied, in as much as I took the other side of the street for the sake of the shop windows, and the variety was greater than I had expected. It took me through a place called Exeter Change, which is precisely a Bazar, a sort of street under cover, or large long room, with a row of shops on either hand, and a thoroughfare between them; the shops being furnished with such articles as might tempt an idler, or remind a passenger of his wants,—walking-sticks, implements for shaving, knives, scissars, watch-chains, purses, &c. At the further end was a man in splendid costume, who proved to belong to a menagerie above stairs, to which he invited me to ascend; but I declined this for the present, being without a companion. A maccaw was swinging on a perch above him, and the outside of the building hung with enormous pictures of the animals which were there to be seen.
The oddest things which I saw in the whole walk were a pair of shoes in one window floating in a vessel of water, to show that they were water-proof; and a well-dressed leg in another, betokening that legs were made there to the life. One purchase I ventured to make, that of a travelling caissette; there were many at the shop-door, with the prices marked upon them, so that I did not fear imposition. These things are admirably made and exceedingly convenient. I was shown some which contained the whole apparatus of a man’s toilet, but this seemed an ill assortment, as when writing you do not want the shaving materials, and when shaving as little do you want the writing desk.
In looking over the quack’s notices after my return, I found a fine specimen of English hyperbole. The doctor says that his pills always perform, and even exceed whatever he promises, as if they were impatient of immortal and universal fame.
LETTER VIII.
Proclamation of Peace.—The English do not understand Pageantry.—Illumination.—M. Otto’s House.—Illuminations better managed at Rome.