_BOND STREET._
“_And now our Brothers Bond Street enter
Dear Street of London’s charms the centre._”
--LYTTON.
[Sidenote: BOND STREET.]
Bond Street is really as much the centre of the charms of London
to-day, as it was when Lord Lytton wrote the lines quoted above; if
by charms we mean fine shops, about which Lord Beaconsfield once
waxed eloquent, and a segregation of brilliant humanity; otherwise
it is curious that a thoroughfare of such importance should be at
once so narrow and so cut up by tributary streets, in some cases,
wider than it is itself, which make it crowded and inconvenient to a
degree only possible in a City as old and as relatively unchanged in
outline as London; for Bond Street, although not of any great age, as
we understand the word, would probably be considered by those not so
familiar as ourselves with antiquity, as having a decent pedigree, for
it dates from 1686, and forms perhaps the most important portion of the
scheme of development associated with Sir Thomas Bond.
It occupies a part of the site of Clarendon House, and when that
mansion with its grounds of 300 acres was purchased by Bond and others,
the street was formed. The west side was the first to be built, being
then termed Albemarle Buildings, from the Duke of Albemarle who sold
Clarendon House to Bond. Hatton described the street in its early
days as being “inhabited by the nobility and gentry.” You shall seek
long enough to-day before you find members of either class represented
among the inhabitants other than occasionally in the various hotels
in the street, or perhaps in chambers above the shops, which is but a
repetition of what was the custom at an earlier day, when all sorts
of illustrious individuals gave as their addresses the upper parts
of business premises which, in the absence of numbers to houses and
shops, were sufficiently distinctive; thus, when we read of (say) the
“Duke of A., at Mr. Jones’s, hairdressers,” we are not to assume that
that capillary artist entertained noble guests in his first floor
front, other than in the light of lodgers who paid handsomely for the
privilege of being in a fashionable street without having to keep up
a fashionable house. But, at first, private houses were as much _de
rigueur_ in Bond Street as they are in Brook Street or Grosvenor Street
to-day, and one of the earliest titled inhabitants was that Duke of
St. Albans, the son of Charles II. and Nell Gwynn, whose title would
seem to have been a royal afterthought, according to the well-known
story, which tells us that, on one occasion, his mother addressed him
as “little bastard,” when Charles, who overheard it, remonstrated with
her for the use of the term, whereupon Mistress Eleanor, who probably
used the ugly word for a sufficiently good reason, replied that the
child had no other name. This, apparently, set the King a-thinking,
with the result that shortly afterwards, a patent of nobility was made
out for the boy. Although I can’t say in what year the Duke took up his
residence here (it was probably about 1720), he died in 1726, and an
advertisement in _The London Gazette_ in the following year contains an
intimation to the effect that his Grace’s house was then for disposal,
in consequence of his decease.
The _Court Guide_ is responsible for the names of other inhabitants,
and among them may be noted that Duke of Kingston who married a
painfully notorious wife--Miss Chudleigh; and that Countess of
Macclesfield who proved such an unnatural mother to Savage, the poet.
In 1708, I find Lords Abingdon, Anglesea, and Coningsby mentioned
as living in Old Bond Street; some years later the Countess of
Gainsborough resided here; but the street as a residential quarter is
more interesting from the fact that Laurence Sterne died, at what is
the present No. 41, in 1768. The man whose name was on everyone’s lips,
and whose extraordinary work was in everyone’s hands, departed to the
land of shades with only two hirelings to bid him Godspeed; and one
of these alien hands, that of John Macdonald, a footman, has left the
description of that last strange scene. “About this time Mr. Sterne,
the celebrated author, was taken ill at the silk-bag shop in Old Bond
Street.... I went to Mr. Sterne’s lodgings; the mistress opened the
door; I inquired how he did. She told me to go up to the nurse; I went
into the room, and he was just a-dying. I waited ten minutes; but in
five he said, ‘Now it is come’! He put up his hand as if to stop a
blow, and died in a minute.”
[Illustration: LONG’S HOTEL, BOND STREET.]
The ubiquitous Boswell was lodging in Old Bond Street a year after
Sterne’s death, and Pascali Paoli, whose name looms largely in
Boswell’s “voluminous page,” had already come here some eight years
earlier. Gibbon, on his return from Lausanne, also lodged in Bond
Street, where he writes: “While coaches were rattling through Bond
Street, I have passed many a solitary evening in my lodgings with
my books”; while half a century earlier Mrs. Loe, a friend of Lady
Wentworth’s, was residing here, in 1710, and we find the old gossip
visiting her and subsequently informing her son that “she (Mrs. L.) had
ten wax candles, six in one room and fower in a very little one and
very fynly furnished,” to her ladyship’s evident astonishment.
At No. 24, the Artists’ Benevolent Institution was housed, in 1814;
but this particular building is more interesting still from the fact
that, in 1791, it was the residence--one of his many in London--of Sir
Thomas Lawrence; while Northcote, the artist, at No. 2, in 1781, and
Ozias Humphrey, the miniature painter, at No. 13, in 1796, combine with
Lawrence, to represent Art here.
Bond Street, if to a lesser degree than some other thoroughfares close
by, has always been noted for its hotels, one of the most famous being
Long’s, at Nos. 15 and 16, rebuilt and greatly enlarged in 1888, which
was patronised by Sir Walter Scott; and here he met Lord Byron for the
last time in 1815; and Stevens’s Hotel, two doors off, where Byron was
to be met with in the days when he affected to live a fashionable life
and consort with the “Dandies.” Stevens’s was at No. 18, and, having
been rebuilt in 1888, is now a jewellers’; another hostelry has also
disappeared these 30 years--this was the Clarendon Hotel, at No. 169,
which occupied the former town residence of the Dukes of Grafton, where
at a later time the great Chatham once lived.
Old Bond Street, which begins at “Stewart’s Corner,” runs into New
Bond Street with nothing to mark their division or to indicate that
they form, except in name, anything but one continuous thoroughfare.
The latter was not, however, formed till about 30 years after its
prototype; but it equals it in interest by reason of the illustrious
ones who have dwelt in it. Here, for instance, came in 1727, to lodge
with his cousin Lancelot, at a house then described as “over against
the Crown and Cushion,” the great Dean of St. Patrick’s, whom we
have met with in Piccadilly when he was lodging in Pall Mall or Bury
Street; here lived a few years later that most delightful of garrulous
memoir-writers, Mrs. Delany, the friend of Fanny Burney and Queen
Charlotte and of how many others; Lord Coventry, who married one of
the beautiful Gunnings, was here, in 1732; so was Lord Craven and Lord
Abergavenny; later still George Selwyn cut his jokes in the street and
hurried by this way to many a last scene at Tyburn, not far off in the
Oxford Road. Dr. Johnson’s ponderous form might have been seen here,
rolling along, as he touched all the posts he passed.
Thomson, “who sang the seasons and their change,” and used to lie abed
so unconscionable a time o’mornings also lived in New Bond Street,
before he flitted to “ambrosial Richmond.”
Not only have men of thought and fashion resided here, but men of
action, in the persons of Lord Nelson and Sir Thomas Picton, have been
represented. The former was staying at No. 147, in 1797, and therewith
a curious circumstance is on record. After he had been created Duke of
Bronté, he was accustomed to make presents to his friends of casks of
Marsala, for which his estates in Sicily were celebrated. Curiously
enough, during some excavations next door to Nelson’s one-time
residence, a cask of this wine, in a bricked-up cellar, was discovered.
So rotten, however, had the cask become, that on exposure to the air it
fell to pieces.
Southey tells of the following incident which occurred during Nelson’s
sojourn here.
“One night, after a day of constant pain, Nelson retired early to
bed ... the family was soon disturbed by a mob knocking loudly and
violently at the door. The news of Duncan’s victory had been made
public, and the house was not illuminated. But when the mob was told
that Admiral Nelson lay there in bed, badly wounded, the foremost of
them made answer, “You shall hear no more from us to-night.”
Sir Thomas Picton, who fell at Waterloo, was living in Bond Street at
the same time that Nelson and Lady Hamilton were there, and a few years
later we find the redoubtable Lord Camelford a resident at No. 148. His
rooms were so typical of those of a man about town of the day, that
Cruickshank introduced the interiors in his illustrations to Pierce
Egan’s “Tom and Jerry”; while the authors of the “Rejected Addresses”
have also left on record an enumeration of the various lethal weapons
that decorated the walls.
Lord Camelford was one of those fire-eaters who never seem able to
exist for any length of time without “entrance to a quarrel.” He was
known and feared throughout the town, and few cared to tackle the
man who was so ready to seek an occasion for fighting, and so deadly
in the field. It is thus that the best stories told of him are those
which relate his encounters with strangers, one of which I will give,
in the words of Timbs, who collected much interesting data about Lord
Camelford’s career.
“Entering one evening the Prince of Wales’s Coffee-house in Conduit
Street, Lord Camelford sat down to read the papers. Soon after came in
a conceited fop, who seated himself opposite his Lordship, and desired
the waiter to ‘bring a pint of Madeira and a couple of wax candles and
put them into the next box.’ He then drew to himself Lord Camelford’s
candle and began to read. His Lordship glanced at him indignantly and
then continued reading. The waiter announced commands completed, when
the fop lounged round into the box and began to read. Lord Camelford
then, mimicking the tone of the coxcomb, called for a pair of snuffers,
deliberately walked to the next box and snuffed out both the candles,
and returned to his seat. The coxcomb, boiling with rage, roared out,
‘Waiter, who is this fellow that dares thus to insult a gentleman? Who
is he? What is he? What do they call him?’ ‘_Lord Camelford_, sir,’
replied the waiter. ‘Who? Lord Camelford!’ returned the fop, in a tone
of voice scarcely audible, terror-struck at his own impertinence. ‘Lord
Camelford! What have I to pay?’ On being told, he laid down the money
and stole away without daring to taste his Madeira!”
[Illustration: “THE WESTERN EXCHANGE,” BOND STREET.]
It was while living in Bond Street that Lord Camelford chose to ignore
the general illuminations for the peace of 1801, and would allow no
lights to shine in the windows of his rooms. The result was that the
mob attacked the house, and proceeded to break all the windows, whereat
the pugnacious peer, undaunted, sallied forth with a thick stick,
and proceeded to lay about him to such good effect that it was not
till a considerable space of time had elapsed that he was overpowered
by numbers, and was, perforce, constrained to retreat in an almost
unrecognizable and wholly undignified condition.
To-day Bond Street, Old and New, is as nearly a complete street of
shops as any in London; indeed, it is pre-eminently the “street of
beautiful shops,” as Mr. Meredith calls it, and is, in this connection,
known throughout the world. Anyone walking down it would have to
draw heavily on his imagination, if he would try to realise that, as
Bramston writes:--“Pease, cabbages, and turnips once grew where now
stands New Bond Street ...”, so completely has time metamorphosed this
once rural spot into a promenade of bricks and mortar, where the ends
of the world seem to have been ransacked to fill its marts with all the
riches of Nature and Art conceivable by the mind of man.
The shops of Bond Street have always been famous. In the early years
of the 19th century the so-called Western Exchange was established
there, but has long since disappeared. Its size can be estimated by the
illustration here given, taken from an old coloured print of the day.
But undeniably fashionable and central as is Bond Street, the stranger
will be struck at its exceeding tenuity, especially in that part where
Grafton Street joins it. Here, during the season, one is accustomed to
see carriages and carts in apparently inextricable confusion, until the
white glove of authority is raised aloft and confusion ceases to be
confounded.
Lord Beaconsfield, who knew and loved his London thoroughly, once wrote
that, “Those who know Bond Street only in the blaze of fashionable
hours can form but an imperfect conception of its matutinal charm when
it is still shady and fresh, when there are no carriages, rarely a
cart, and passers-by gliding about on real business.”
Should, then, we wish to feel “as in some Continental city,” which
the author of “Endymion” assures us is the case, if we share Bond
Street with the lark, we must join this blythe spirit, before the late
breakfasted “West End” surges through its long vista.
One of the street’s former residents, we may be sure, never did this,
for, when the poet Thomson was lodging at a milliner’s here, he, to use
Mrs. Piozzi’s words, “seldom rose early enough to see the sun do more
than glisten on the opposite windows of the streets.”
[Sidenote: BURLINGTON STREET AND BURLINGTON GARDENS.]
Burlington Gardens, leading to Old Burlington Street, and, by Vigo
Street, to Regent Street, is the first thoroughfare we come to on
the right after leaving Piccadilly. Old Burlington Street has passed
through no less than three changes of name. In 1729 it was known as
Nowell Street; four years later it blossomed into Great Burlington
Street; to-day this adjective is, appropriately, discarded. It, of
course, takes its name from Lord Burlington, whose palace stood between
Burlington Gardens and Piccadilly, and whose grounds once occupied
the land where the street now runs. The West End branch of the Bank
of England is housed in Burlington Gardens in the residence formerly
known as Uxbridge House, from the lesser title of that Marquis of
Anglesea who once owned it, and who died here, in 1854. Famous for his
share in the victory of Waterloo, one of his legs lies buried in the
little church adjoining the battle field, and the old soldier was once
surprised, on paying it a subsequent visit, to find the resting place
of his limb converted into a sort of shrine. Uxbridge House was erected
in 1790-2 by Vardy and Bonami, and stood on the site of Queensbury
House, where Gay’s patron and patroness, who set up that great monument
to the poet, in Westminster Abbey, once lived.
Another titled lady, whose connection with a poet has alone caused
her name to survive, resided in Burlington Street, in the person of
Lady Warwick, the widow of the great Addison; and among other past
inhabitants mention may be made of Lord Hervey (Pope’s “Sporus” and
“Lord Fanny”); Mark Akenside, the poet-physician, who died here in
1770; and Sir Joseph Banks, who took a house here in the following
year; Colonel Ligonier (whose portrait by Reynolds is one of that
Master’s memorable achievements), and the Marquis Cornwallis, who
resided at No. 29, where he died in 1805.
Another great soldier is indirectly connected with the street, for
we find Wolfe writing to his mother and brother who were at one time
living here, although there is no evidence to show that the hero of
“The Heights of Abraham” himself ever resided in Burlington Street.
The “great” Lady Cork--for I think she deserves the adjective--is,
however, closely associated with this street. That noble patroness of
literature, and last of the “blue stockings”--to use the words in
their best sense--died here, in 1840, and Hayward has recorded the
charm of her personality, her good nature, and unusual gifts.
It is an interesting fact that in Burlington Street brass door-plates
bearing the names of private persons (of which Lord Powis’s in Berkeley
Square is the sole survivor) were first used in London.
[Sidenote: VIGO STREET.]
Vigo Street, which connects Burlington Gardens with Regent Street,
takes its name from the sea-fight which occurred at Vigo Bay in 1702.
It was formerly known as Vigo Lane, which title was originally applied
to that portion of the thoroughfare now known as Burlington Gardens,
as well. The change seems to have taken place subsequently to the
formation of Regent Street.
[Sidenote: CLIFFORD STREET.]
A few steps further up Bond Street, we come to Clifford Street, where
Dr. Addington, the father of Lord Sidmouth, lived, at No. 7. Lord
Sidmouth himself, who was, in consequence of his father’s profession
and also because he once prescribed a soporific for George III., known
as “the Doctor,” also dwelt here, and was, at least on two occasions,
visited here by Lord Nelson. Bishop Hurd, known both ecclesiastically
and also for his edition of Horace, also once resided close by, at
No. 5; and Sir Arthur Wellesley was staying at No. 14, in 1806; while
the Prince of Orange, who came to this country with the object of
becoming engaged to the Princess Charlotte--an object frustrated by the
Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, as well as by the Princess’s almost open
repugnance to the not very prepossessing gentleman himself--lodged at
his tailor’s, at No. 8.
The street also once had its particular Coffee-house (as what street
in London in those days had not?), known as the “Clifford Street
Coffee-house,” which is chiefly interesting from the fact that the
“Debating Club,” of which “Conversation” Sharp and Lord Charles
Townshend were shining lights, once had its headquarters here.
[Sidenote: SAVILE ROW.]
Clifford Street leads into Savile Row, named after Dorothy, the heiress
of Savile, Marquis of Halifax, and wife of the architect Earl of
Burlington. Here Lady Suffolk, Queen Caroline’s “good Howard,” and most
respectable of Royal mistresses, lived, in a house she had purchased
for £3,000, in 1735. William Pitt and his brother were also residing
in Savile Row in 1781, and here died, under the pathetic circumstances
known to all the world, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, at No. 17, whence
he wrote to Rogers that agonizing letter for assistance to prevent the
bailiffs “putting the carpets out of window,” as the dying man phrased
it. A tablet indicates the last home of “Sherry,” who had enlivened a
generation with his wit and astonished it by his surprising gifts.
Among other residents at a later date, at No. 20, was Bobus Smith,
the brother of Sydney; and Grote, the historian of Greece, who died,
at No. 12, on June 18th, 1871. Here Mrs. Grote gave those musical
receptions at which the voice of Jenny Lind and the recitals of Chopin
and Thalberg were to be heard. A memorial tablet now indicates Grote’s
residence here.
Sir Benjamin Brodie, the great surgeon, was at one time living at No.
16, Savile Row, and Tierney, the politician, drew his last breath at
No. 11, in 1830.
[Sidenote: CORK STREET.]
Cork Street, joining Clifford Street and Burlington Gardens, was named
after Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, and its chief feature was the fine
house, or, rather one should perhaps say, externally fine house,
for Walpole affirms that “all its beauty was outside”--which Lord
Burlington designed, in 1723, for Field-Marshal Wade, on whose death,
in 1748, it was sold by public auction.
In Cork Street lived Dr. Arbuthnot, the friend of Pope and Swift, and
one of the three “Yahoos of T’witnam”; he appears to have come here
in 1729, and here he died six years later. Another one-time resident
was Mrs. Abigail Masham, who replaced Sarah of Marlborough in the
affections and confidence of Queen Anne.
Cork Street has always been notable for its hotels, from the time
when Gibbon speaks of the Cork Street Hotel, to the later days of the
Burlington, where the Empire-builder, Cecil Rhodes, was wont to put up.
[Sidenote: CONDUIT STREET.]
Conduit Street can be reached from Savile Row by one the quaintest
little alleys in the West End, called Savile Place, a tiny thoroughfare
which I never go through without expecting to see a Sedan chair waiting
at the other end, and a bewigged and besworded gentleman or a hooped
and patched lady passing through on their way to it. If we followed
them we should find ourselves in the middle of Conduit Street, but, as
for my purpose it is more convenient to enter at its western end, let
us pass along Bond Street until we come to this its largest tributary.
The width of Conduit Street is accounted for when we know that it
originally consisted of private houses, although you shall seek long
enough nowadays ere you find one that has not been transformed into
a business establishment of some sort or another. The street was
completed in 1713, and takes its name from a conduit of water which
stood in what was then known as Conduit Mead, a field of 27 acres,
described in the vaguest of vague ways as lying between Piccadilly and
Paddington, and of which Lord Clarendon had obtained in 1666 a lease
of 99 years at the nominal rental (oh! those rents of former days, are
they not alone sufficient to stamp that far-gone period as the “good
old times”?) of £8 per annum.
The Chapel of the Trinity, which had been built by Archbishop Tenison,
in 1716, and replaced the older wooden chapel, once used by James II.
on Hounslow Heath, when his camp was pitched there, but subsequently
brought hither and left stranded in what now seems somewhat incongrous
surroundings, was standing so late as 1877; but its site has now given
place to one of the many tailors’ establishments for which Conduit
Street is noted. Evelyn, in an entry in his diary for July 18th,
1691, mentions attending service at the original chapel, then but
newly arrived here from Hounslow. One can with difficulty imagine the
place surrounded by those fields in which Carew Mildmay, according to
Pennant, remembered shooting woodcock, and before Lord Burlington, the
first to build here, had set about the development of the property.
When, however, houses _were_ erected, they soon found illustrious
tenants. The Earls of Macclesfield had their town residence at what is
now No. 9 and to-day the headquarters of the Royal Society of British
Architects, and other Societies. The notorious Duke of Wharton was
also living here, in 1725; so were Boswell and Wilberforce at later
dates. One wonders if it was in Conduit Street that poor Sheridan was
once found drunk, but, so far as speech was concerned, anything but
incapable, and when asked by the Watch whom he might be, hiccuped out,
“William Wilberforce”! Delmé Redcliffe died in this street; and at 36,
resided Sir Walter Farquhar, the physician whose name has come down to
posterity chiefly through the fame of one of his patients, the great
William Pitt. Farquhar was not the only doctor of note whose address
was in Conduit Street, for Sir Astley Cooper died here, at No. 39,
in 1841, and that Dr. Eliotson who once saved Thackeray’s life (and
to whom in consequence the novelist dedicated “Pendennis”), lived at
No. 37, a house doubly famous (though since rebuilt), having been
the residence of George Canning, for a year, as a memorial tablet
testifies. But the chief interest in the street, lies in the fact that
here, on January 24th, 1749, was born Charles James Fox, perhaps the
most remarkable of all the remarkable men who made the later years of
George III.’s long reign memorable.
The street had, of course, its taverns or coffee-houses; notably,
“The Prince of Wales’s,” where David Williams inaugurated the Royal
Literary Fund, in 1772, the year in which Boswell came to lodge here,
and the scene of the last of those quarrels which Lord Camelford was
never tired of provoking. This terrible fire-eater seems to have at
last met more than his match (at one time it was generally supposed
that he never would do so) in a Captain Best, and as the result of
a dispute about a lady of easy ethics named Simmons, the two went
away to the fields behind Holland House, and fought the last duel in
which Camelford was ever to take part, in the year of grace 1804. His
Lordship had at an earlier date, wantonly insulted the great traveller
Vancouver, in the same street; and there was therefore a sort of poetic
justice in the coincidence that he should forfeit his life as the
result of one more dispute in this locality.
Another tavern in the street had also a gruesome notoriety, for it was
from “The Coach and Horses” that Thurtell, the cold-blooded murderer of
Weare, drove in that gig, made famous by Carlyle’s celebrated allusion,
to pick up and drive into the country his “murdered man”--to apply
Keats’s magnificent anticipatory phrase.
[Sidenote: MADDOX STREET.]
To the north of Conduit Street we come to Maddox Street, one of those
formed by the Earl of Burlington as part of his building development,
in 1721. It takes its curious name from that of the original ground
landlord, Sir Benjamin Maddox, who died in 1670.
[Sidenote: GEORGE STREET.]
The chief thoroughfare running through Maddox Street is George Street,
connecting Conduit Street with Hanover Square.
First named Great George Street in honour of King George I., it was
formed about 1719, and, apart from its many past inhabitants of light
and leading, is known all the world over as containing that church of
St. George’s, Hanover Square, which has always been associated with
the weddings of fashion.
[Sidenote: ST. GEORGE’S, HANOVER SQUARE.]
It was one of the fifty churches which were ordered to be erected in
Queen Anne’s reign, and was commenced during the last year of her rule.
It either took an unconscionable time in building or its erection was
delayed, for it was not consecrated till 1724. James of Greenwich,
as he is called, was the architect, and even Ralph, who wrote a sort
of gossiping survey of London, and is so hypercritical that hardly
anything in the metropolis wholly pleases him, unreservedly praises
the elevation of its Corinthian portico and its lofty clock-tower. The
interior is not particularly striking, but the marriage-registers are
of the greatest interest and importance. Here will be found the names
of the Duke of Kingston and Miss Chudleigh, who were married in 1769,
the lady already being the wife of Mr. Hervey, and afterwards figuring
in that celebrated bigamy case, about which most of us have read or
heard. Three years after this wedding, we find the great miniature
painter, Richard Cosway’s name opposite that of Marion Hatfield, who,
as Mrs. Cosway, also made some mark as a painter of portraits “in
little.”
Twenty years later Sir William Hamilton leads to the altar Emma Hart,
whose name is as closely associated with the fame of Nelson and the
genius of Romney as with that of her lawful lord; while at least one
member of the Royal family has been married in St. George’s; for here,
in 1793, the Duke of Sussex was united to Lady Augusta Murray, a
marriage rendered void by the Royal Marriage Act.
Among other names which may be picked out from an almost inexhaustible
list, are those of the Earl of Derby, who, on the death of his first
wife, married in somewhat indecent haste, the beautiful and talented
actress, Miss Farren, although the actual ceremony was performed at his
Lordship’s house in Grosvenor Square; Mr. Heath, who was united here to
the notorious Lola Montes, for whose “_beaux yeux_,” a king of Bavaria
almost lost his throne; and Mr. Cross, who was married, in 1880, to
Miss Evans, known to all readers as George Eliot.
[Sidenote: George Street, Continued.]
George Street, as well as Hanover Square, has in latter days taken on
itself a certain business and commercial air, sadly at variance with
its past traditions, for where we now find offices, and particularly
dressmakers’ headquarters, once dwelt people of fashion, and some of
national importance. For instance, No. 25, with its fine stone front,
erected for Earl Temple in 1864, and later the residence of the Duchess
of Buckingham, was, before its transformation a smaller house in which
lived successively John Copley, the painter of the well-known “Death
of Chatham,” and other much engraved pictures, and his son, who became
Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, and who died here in 1863.
At No. 3, Madame de Stael stayed when on her visit to this country,
and here probably posed as untiringly as we know she did at Lansdowne
House. Admiral Hawke once lived at No. 7, and next door, at No. 8,
David Mallet, for whom is claimed, in common with James Thomson, the
authorship of “Rule Britannia,” which was first written as a lyric in
that Masque which the joint authors produced for Frederick, Prince of
Wales.
Besides Copley, two other artists once resided in George Street; Sir
William Beechey and Sir Thomas Phillips; neither perhaps in the first
flight, but both untiring wielders of the brush, and in their day
successful portrait painters.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s bright eyes and bardolphian face must often
have lighted up the street as he listened to the chimes at midnight,
at No. 9; and at an earlier day, the somewhat solemn visage of Lord
Chancellor Cowper was to be seen here as he passed stately up the steps
of No. 13, where his wife may have been penning that valuable diary
which has come down to us. The list might be carried on interminably.
Only one or two more names, and we must hurry into Hanover Square. The
Earl of Albemarle and Lord Stair, of George II.’s day, lived in this
street; and in 1762, the witty Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who once, on
someone’s hinting that her hands were in need of ablution, replied,
“You should see my feet,” and whom Walpole described ungallantly as
“always a dirty little thing.” Who else can I pick out? Sir Charles
Clarges, in 1726; Colonel Francis Charteris, three years later, and
Lord Shelburne, in 1748. These, and how many others, pass by like
ghosts and carry us back to “the snows of yesteryear!”
[Sidenote: HANOVER SQUARE.]
As we look up George Street, the pleasant green oasis of Hanover
Square’s central garden faces us, grouped round the great statue of
Pitt which Chantry designed, and which was put up in 1831. There is
no inscription on the base other than the name and dates of birth
and death; but Sydney Smith, for once departing from his usual genial
humour, wrote a suggested epitaph for it, so galling and so bitter,
that it might have drawn the ghost of the “pilot that weathered the
storm” from the shades where such great spirits dwell, and set it
wandering with uneasy footsteps round its bronze counterfeit!
The Square was formed between the years 1716 and 1720. Being part
of that great property which came to Harley, second Earl of Oxford,
through his marriage, in 1713, with the Lady Henrietta Cavendish
Holles, heiress of John, Duke of Newcastle. It was at first intended to
call it Oxford Square, and only a loyal afterthought was responsible
for its present designation. Notwithstanding that it has almost
entirely lost that residential character with which it began its
fashionable career, there luckily survive some of the original
houses--Nos. 17 and 18 being cases in point--but the majority have
been rebuilt out of all knowledge. To-day in these are found clubs,
fashionable dressmakers, learned societies, anything you will but
private residents; but in past times it held its own with any of the
West End squares in the celebrity and importance of its inhabitants.
For instance, No. 13, known as Harewood House, which until recently
was associated with the Royal Agricultural Society, was built by
William Adam for the bibliophilic Duke of Roxburgh. Its present name
was given it when the Earl of Harewood purchased it in 1795, and it
remained in his family for just upon a century. At what was formerly
numbered 15, but now 17, lived Mrs. Jordan, the beautiful and talented
actress who fascinated the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV.
Angelica Kauffmann was employed to decorate the principal ceiling here,
and marbles from Italy were used in the formation of the beautiful
mantelpieces. Next door (now No. 18), where, in 1824, Sir John Malcolm
inaugurated the Oriental Club, was, from 1771, for ten years occupied
by Lord Le Despenser, who, as Sir Francis Dashwood, was one of the most
notorious of that band of Medmenham monks, whose “Hell Fire Club,” with
its orgies, in which John Wilkes was one of the protagonists, was the
scandal of the day. When the Oriental Club was formed the house was
rebuilt, in 1827, by the Wyatts, for its accommodation.
Another important house in the Square was Downshire House, built in
1793, and once the residence of Lord Hillsborough. To-day it is a Bank;
but in 1835 Prince Talleyrand was living here, and its walls may have
heard some of the brilliant “_mots_” which this extraordinary man was
wont to enunciate in what Sydney Smith described as “gurgling, not
talking.” Yet another celebrated individual is associated with the
place, for, after Talleyrand’s departure, Earl Grey, the hero of the
great Reform Bill, lived here for a time. Two doors off once resided
Lord Palmerston; not the “Pam” of the satirists and whilom Prime
Minister, but his father; while later the Duchess of Brunswick, sister
of George III., died in the same house in 1813.
If we can call “Lansdowne the polite,” as Pope terms him, a poet, and
Ambrose Phillips one (he does to some extent deserve the title), then
Hanover Square has been the home of the muses; and indeed, since I can
add the name of Thomas Campbell, there should be no doubt about the
matter, for all three lived, and two of them died here; the first in
1735, the second fourteen years later. The United Services have also
contributed their share of inhabitants, and great ones at that, for not
only Field-Marshal Lord Cobham, to whom Pope dedicated his “Characters
of Men,” but also Lord Rodney, (who was the first to make use of that
manœuvre of “breaking the line,” which Nelson carried into such deadly
effect at Trafalgar), and Lord Anson, a hardly less brilliant naval
commander, all resided in the precincts of the Square.
Perceval Pott is hardly remembered to-day, but in his time he was a
great surgeon; Sir James Clark, physician to the late Queen Victoria,
is better known, and as both these benefactors to the ills of humanity
lived in the Square, medicine may be said to have been well represented
here in the past. Let me make an end of names with that of Mr.
Hamilton, whose “single speech,” so full of promise, is invariably
associated with him, and who once occupied a house here.
It was in Hanover Square that the fine building erected by Sir John
Gallini in 1771, was opened as the Hanover Square Concert Rooms,
where John Christian Bach gave for eight years a series of concerts,
and where later the “Ancient Music Society,” and later still, the
Philharmonic Society, drew crowded audiences, and may be regarded
as the first serious and successful attempts to make classical
music popular in this country. In 1862 the rooms were enlarged and
redecorated, and, as the “Queen’s Concert Rooms” held on gallantly for
thirteen years, when they went the way of all musical flesh in London!
Let us now return and cross Bond Street, and, casting an eye up South
Molton Street, where a stone on No. 36 indicates that the thoroughfare
was formed in 1721; and not forgetting that the painter-poet and
extraordinary visionary William Blake was living there, at No. 17, in
1807, let us wander up Brook Street.
[Sidenote: BROOK STREET.]
With Brook Street we enter into the purlieus of Mayfair, which stands
for the West End, as Whitechapel does for the East, in those points of
social habit characteristic of the two extreme quarters of the town.
Like so many of the thoroughfares in this quarter of London, Brook
Street has gone through its second and third baptism, for first it was
called Little Brook Street, and later Lower Brook Street. The stream
once known as the Tyburn, which followed in its course South Molton
Lane, across Brook Street, through the gardens of Lansdowne House to
Buckingham Palace, is responsible for the name of Brook Street, but the
pedestrian will need to pass over no bridges now on his way to Pimlico.
Statesmen and doctors, musicians and painters, have all in the past
helped to give an interest to Brook Street, which to-day must chiefly
rely on its fashionable residents, with here and there a stray
politician, for what of interest it may be said to possess. It is
still undoubtedly a fine street, and not a few of its houses help to
carry us back to past days. Once Edmund Burke lived in it, at what is
now No. 72. The great Handel’s spinet may have been heard through the
open windows of No. 57 as he tried, shall we say, the exquisite air
from “Rinaldo,” or gave the finishing touches to that “Water music”
which was to charm (if his ears ever could be charmed by sweet sounds)
his gracious Majesty King George II. We had better not intrude too
curiously into the workshop of genius, or we might receive a shock,
if we found its master not intent on some inspired number from the
“Messiah,” but spoiling one of his few books (a presentation copy,
perchance, and oh! the feelings of the author), with fingers greasy
with muffins, or indulging in one of his gargantuan feasts at which
he alone was “de gompany.” It would be like coming upon the great
Beethoven, not in the throes of the Ninth Symphony, or the “Waldstein”;
but hurling cups and saucers at his terrified maidservant!
Not far from Handel’s lodgings (on the wall of which, by the bye,
a tablet reposes) a painter, and an engraver plied their quieter
arts and laboured in their “unregarded hours,” for here both Gerard
Vandergucht and his artist son Benjamin lived, and here were finished,
with infinite pains, those engravings in which the elder man reproduced
the refinement of Vandyck and the strength of Dobson. Thomas Barker
(Barker of Bath, as he is termed) also painted in Brook Street; and the
healing-art has been represented here by such medical names to conjure
disease with as Jenner and Gull, Williams, Savory, and Broadbent. Sir
Charles Bell, who died here in 1832, and Lord Davey, who happily is
still with us, represent science; and Lord Lake, one of the famous of
those, who, as Carlyle put it, “get their living by being killed”--the
art of war.
Dear old Mrs. Delany, who was always young, and yet makes us think of
her as always old and charming, lived here; and Sydney Smith, with whom
we are for ever meeting (never too often, however), cut his jokes, (in
which was often hidden so much genial philosophy), in Brook Street,
among innumerable other places in London; while readers of “Dombey and
Son” will remember that Cousin Feenix’s “dull and dreary” residence was
in this fashionable thoroughfare. Claridge’s Hotel is in Brook Street,
as most people know; but it looks very different to-day to what it must
have done when the father of “Little Dorrit” stayed there on his return
from the Continent.
[Sidenote: GROSVENOR STREET.]
By taking a short cut down Avery Row we shall find ourselves in
Grosvenor Street, which was formed about 1726, and was a later
addition to that great building development which was begun by Sir
Richard Grosvenor in 1695. In size and appearance it is analogous to
Brook Street. If Lord Balcarres lives in the former, have we not Earl
Carrington in the latter? If Brook Street can boast Lord Davey, cannot
Grosvenor Street glory in the presence of Queen Victoria’s trusted
physician, Sir James Reid; and till recently the Right Hon. James
Lowther, Speaker of the House of Commons, and officially first of the
untitled ones of England? And in the past a similar comparison could be
sustained. We have noted some of the interesting residents of a bygone
day in Brook Street; let us glance for a moment at those who once lived
here. We can begin with a Prime Minister; for Lord North, that amiable
and somnolent first Minister of the Crown, whose equanimity allowed
him to peacefully doze while the Opposition was successfully voting
the overthrow of his Government, lived here, in 1740; in the same year
Sir Paul Methuen, the ancestor of Lord Methuen, the distinguished
soldier of our own day, was residing here. Then there is that Miss
Lane, notorious if for nothing else, at least for being the mistress
of Frederick, Prince of Wales--the “Fritz” of many a popular, and
generally scurrilous, ballad.
A later period brings before us the figure of Lord Crewe; and the
Marquis Cornwallis, who was living in Grosvenor Street for five years
(1793-8) before he went to reside in Grafton Street; and William
Huskisson, whose tragic death saddened the inauguration of the first
railway line in England. Samuel Whitehead was another old Parliamentary
hand who was living here in 1800, as was Sir Humphrey Davy (at No.
28) eighteen years later, and before he removed to his last residence
in Park Street, on the other side of the Square; and still later,
that fashionable physician of the day, Matthew Baillie, whose merits,
Moore, and Rogers (who once said that “bile and Baillie were his only
companions”) were never tired of advertising.
[Sidenote: BRUTON STREET.]
As we return southwards again, by way of Bond Street, we come to Bruton
Street, which faces Conduit Street, but was not formed till nearly
fifteen years after that thoroughfare.
As in most of the streets in this quarter there are several fine
old houses to be found here, two of them, Nos. 17 and 22, being
particularly noticeable. Here the great Duke of Argyle and Greenwich
drew his last breath, in 1743. Six years later Horace Walpole came from
Bolton Row to live here, many years before he succeeded to that title
which he affected to consider such a weariness to the flesh.
But a greater than Walpole makes Bruton Street memorable, for here,
in the year in which George III. ascended the throne, was residing
William Pitt; so, too, some quarter of a century later, was Sheridan
before he went to one of many subsequent residences in George Street,
Whitehorse Street, Queen Street, and Savile Row.
Indeed Bruton Street seems always to have been a favourable resort of
statesmen, and among lesser lights of the political world--and few will
find fault at being placed among the smaller constellations by the side
of such planets as Sheridan and Pitt--we find living here at various
times Lord Hobhouse, Lord Granville, Lord Chancellor Cottenham, and,
perhaps another planet, George Canning, in 1809, after he had left
Maddox Street. Painting has been represented by William Owen, R.A.,
who died here in 1825; and medicine, by Sir Matthew Tierney, who was a
resident in 1841.
[Sidenote: GRAFTON STREET.]
As we approach the Piccadilly end of Bond Street, only one more turning
intervenes before we stand again at Stewart’s Corner; this is the small
Grafton Street, forming as it were a boundary to both Albemarle and
Dover Streets, which run into it. It takes its name from that Duke
of Grafton who lived in the family mansion at the corner of Clarges
Street, and who was associated with Lord Grantham in 1735, in the
purchase of the property through which it runs.
Not always has it borne even the title of a street, for once it was
known as “Ducking Pond Row,” which would seem to indicate the vicinity
of fields and one of those pieces of water in which recalcitrant
spouses, when the “scold’s bridle” failed in effect, were solemnly
placed in a “ducking stool,” and lowered into watery depths until their
powers of “nagging” were deemed to have been thoroughly eradicated.
At a still later date, 1767 to wit, Grafton Street was known as “Evans
Row,” but its more euphonious title has long since been restored to it.
London knows it chiefly on account of the Grafton Galleries which are
situated at No. 7, and which annually attract crowds of art lovers. The
celebrated Dilettanti Society and their fine collection of portraits
are now housed here. Several clubs, notably the Turf, the Green Park
Club, and the New Club, have their headquarters in Grafton Street, the
latter club in the house, No. 4, in which Lord Brougham lived and died
in 1848, after he had left Berkeley Square.
Another great statesman also once resided in Grafton Street, in the
person of Charles James Fox, who was here, in 1783, before he moved to
his temporary lodging at an hotel in Berkeley Square, and afterwards
to the house in which we have met him in Clarges Street. When Mrs.
Fitzherbert left Upper Grosvenor Street she came to live in Grafton
Street in 1796; and among other notable inhabitants of the past, the
names of Admiral Earl Howe, who died here, at No. 11, in 1799; Lord
Stowell, at No. 16; the Marquis Cornwallis, subsequently to his sojourn
in Grosvenor-Street; and the Right Honourable George Tierney, in 1809,
occur to me.
[Sidenote: HAY HILL.]
If we leave Grafton Street, where it turns at right angles and
continues without break into Dover Street, we shall see on our right a
sharp declivity leading into Berkeley Square; this is Hay Hill, named
from a farm which once stood here--if one can possibly imagine anything
of the sort in this locality, unless the trees in Lansdowne House
gardens, which are seen at the bottom of the hill, are sufficient to
carry our minds to anything so rural. The Tyburn flowed at the foot of
Hay Hill, as we have seen, and perhaps a water mill creaked noisily
where nowadays the hoofs of toiling horses grind the pavement. In any
case it seems to have been a desirable possession, for I find that, in
1617, it was granted to Hector Johnstone, who afforded help, probably
of a monetary character, to that unfortunate Elector Palatine of
Bohemia, whose father-in-law, our own pacific James I., was so dilatory
in assisting.
At a later date, in Queen Anne’s day to wit, it was granted to the
Speaker of the House of Commons, who eventually sold it, and gave the
£200 which he thus obtained for it to the poor. If proof were wanted of
the sudden and immense increase in the value of property in the West
End, we have it in the fact that, before 1759, the same estate was
disposed of by the Pomfret family, into whose possession it had come,
for the very respectable sum of £20,000 odd.
Hay Hill has its historical importance, for here the heads of Sir
Thomas Wyatt and three of his adherents were exposed after the failure
of the well-known attempt to unthrone Queen Mary in 1554; and here
George, Prince of Wales, with the Duke of York, returning from one of
their frequent nightly revels, was held up by a highwayman, and the
combined resources of the heir to the throne and his brother amounted
to just half a crown!
[Sidenote: BERKELEY SQUARE.]
At the bottom of Hay Hill, we are in Berkeley Square, in many respects
the most interesting of London’s “quadrates,” as they were once termed.
It was formed on portions of the grounds of Berkeley House, and
Evelyn, the Diarist, helped to lay out the estate, of which it is a
part. Lansdowne House, with its gardens, occupies the south side of the
square. This magnificent example of Adam’s work was erected for Lord
Bute, George III.’s unpopular Minister, but was sold by him, in a yet
unfinished state, to the Earl of Shelburne, the ancestor of the Marquis
of Lansdowne, who now occupies it. It naturally dwarfs all the other
houses in the square, but many of these are also full of interest.
At No. 6 lived the second Lord Chatham, and here William Pitt sometimes
stayed; close by, at No. 10, Sir Colin Campbell lived and died; and
next door to his residence was the last of Horace Walpole’s homes in
London, now indicated by a tablet.
Other interesting people whose names have in the past been connected
with Berkeley Square include Colley Cibber, and Charles James Fox; Lord
Clive, who committed suicide at No. 45, and Lord Brougham, who occupied
in turn two houses here; Lord and Lady Clermont, in whose house the
beautiful Duchess of Devonshire took refuge from the Gordon Rioters,
and Lady Anne Lindsay, who wrote “Auld Robin Gray”; Lord Canterbury,
once Speaker of the House of Commons when Mr. Manners Sutton; and
Child, the banker, whose daughter ran away with Lord Westmorland,
and whose house, No. 38, now rebuilt, is the residence of the Earl
of Rosebery. In fact the whole square is full of memories, social,
historical, and political, and clinging about almost every house are
recollections of the witty, the powerful, and the illustrious, who
have at one time or another dwelt within their walls.
From Berkeley Square and its adjacent streets we enter into that large
district known as Mayfair, which in the next chapter we shall have all
our work cut out to even superficially examine.
[Illustration: THE MAY FAIR IN 1716.]