The associations of this part are numerous and very interesting. The busts of the four men standing in the corners of the centre garden have all some local connection. They are those of Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Hunter. Hogarth's house was on the east, on the site of Tenison's School, and next to it was that of John Hunter, the famous surgeon. Sir Joshua Reynolds bought No. 47 on the west side in 1760, and lived in it until his death. Sir Isaac Newton lived in the little street off the south side of the square, at the back of the big new Dental Hospital. His house is still standing, and bears a tablet of the Society of Arts. It is quite unpretentious—a stucco-covered building with little dormer-windows in the roof. The great scientist came here in 1710, when he was nearly sixty, and his fame was then world-wide. Men from all parts of Europe sought the dull little street in order to converse with one whose power had wrought a revolution in the methods of scientific thought. In the same house Miss Burney afterwards lived with her father. Sir Thomas Lawrence took apartments at No. 4, Leicester Square, in 1786, when only seventeen, but he had already begun to exhibit at the Royal Academy. The square was for long a favourite place of residence with foreigners, and has not even yet lost a slightly un-English aspect.
Archbishop Tenison's School is at the south-east corner of the square. Its founder, who was successively Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop of Canterbury, intended that it should counterbalance a flourishing Roman Catholic school in the Savoy precincts. Among old boys may be mentioned Postlethwaite, afterwards Master of St. Paul's; Charles Mathews, when very young; Horne Tooke a former Lord Mayor of London; and Liston who was for a time usher.
As stated above, the northern half of the square is in the parish of St. Anne's, Soho, a parish now tenanted to a very large extent by foreigners, chiefly French and Italians. Shaftesbury Avenue, running diagonally through the parish, is of very recent origin.
Soho has been derived from the watchword of Monmouth at Sedgemoor, because the Duke had a house in Soho, then King's Square. It is much more likely that the reverse is the case, and the Duke took the watchword from the locality in which he lived, for the word Soho occurs in the rate-books long before the Battle of Sedgemoor was fought. In 1634 So-howe appears in State papers; and various other spellings are extant, as Soe-hoe, So-hoe. This district was at one time a favourite hunting-ground, and Halliwell-Phillipps in the "Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words" suggests that the name has arisen from a favourite hunting cry, "So-ho!"
The parish was first made independent of St. Martin's in 1678. Soho has always been a favourite locality with foreigners. There were three distinct waves of emigration which flooded over it: first after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1635; then in 1798, during the Reign of Terror; and thirdly in 1871, when many Communists who had escaped from Paris found their way to England. At the present time half the population of the parish consists of foreigners, of which French and Italians preponderate, but Swiss, Germans, and specimens of various other nationalities, are frequently to be met with in the streets.
The parish church of St. Anne's was so named "after the mother of the Virgin Mary and in compliment to Princess Anne." The site was a piece of ground known as Kemp's Field, and the architect selected was Sir Christopher Wren. The building is in all respects like others of its period, but has a curious spire added later. This has been described as "two hogsheads placed crosswise, in the ends of which are the dials of the clock," and above is a kind of pyramid, ending in a vane.
The old churchyard lies above the level of the street, and has been turned into a public garden. Facing the principal entrance in Wardour Street is a stone monument to King Theodore of Corsica, and a small crown on the stone marks his rank. King Theodore died in this parish December 11, 1756, immediately after leaving the King's Bench Prison, by the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, in consequence of which he registered his kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors.
His epitaph was written by Horace Walpole:
"The grave, great teacher, to a level brings
Heroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings.
But Theodore this moral learned ere dead:
Fate poured its lessons on his living head,
Bestowed a kingdom, but denied him bread."
Close by is a monument to the essayist Hazlitt, born 1778, died 1830. The inscription says that he lived to see his deepest wishes gratified as he expressed them in his essay on the "Fear of Death," and proceeds to set forth at considerable length the tenor of those wishes.