to be seen knocking at the front door of Leicester House. When the
door was opened his first inquiry was after the imperial ambassador’s
chaplain. The beau had, in James II.’s days, turned Papist; and when
Popery had gone out as William came in, he had not thought it worth
while to turn back again, and was nominally a Papist still. When the
Roman Catholic chaplain in Leicester House became aware of what his
visitor required, he readily assented, and the worthy pair might be
seen hastily crossing the square to that bower of love where the bride
was waiting. The chaplain satisfied her scruples as to the genuineness
of his priestly character, and in a twinkling he buckled beau and belle
together in a manner which, as he said, defied all undoing.
‘Undoing?’ exclaimed the lover. ‘I marry my angel with all my heart,
soul, body, and everything else!’--and he put a ring on her finger
bearing the poesy _Tibi soli_--the sun of his life.
In a few days the bubble burst. The lady turned out to be no rich
widow, but a Mrs. Wadsworth, who was given to frolicking, and who
thought this the merriest frolic of her light-o’-love life. Fielding,
who had passed himself off as a count, had not much to say in his own
behalf, and he turned the ‘sun of his life’ out of doors. Whither he
could turn he knew right well. He had long served all the purposes
of the Duchess of Cleveland, the degraded old mistress of Charles
II.; and within three weeks of his being buckled to Mrs. Wadsworth by
the Leicester Square priest he married Duchess Barbara. Soon after
he thrashed Mrs. Wadsworth in the street for claiming him as her
lawful husband, and he beat the Duchess at home for asserting that
Mrs. Wadsworth was right. Old Barbara did more. She put two hundred
pounds into that lady’s hand, to prosecute Fielding for bigamy, and
the Duchess promised her a hundred pounds a year for fifteen years
if she succeeded in getting him convicted. And the handsome Hercules
was convicted accordingly, at the Old Bailey, and was sentenced to be
burnt in the hand; but the rascal produced Queen Anne’s warrant to stay
execution. And so ended the Leicester Square wedding.
As long as the Emperor’s envoy lived in Leicester Fields he was the
leader of fashion. Crowds assembled to see his ‘turn out.’ Sir Francis
Gripe, in the ‘Busy-body,’ tempts Miranda by saying, ‘Thou shalt be
the envy of the Ring, for I will carry thee to Hyde Park, and thy
equipage shall surpass the what-d’ye-call-’em ambassador’s.’
Leicester House was, luckily, to let when the Prince of Wales
quarrelled with his father, George I. In that house the Prince set up
a rival court, against attending which the ‘London Gazette’ thundered
dreadful prohibitions. But St. James’s was dull; Leicester House was
‘jolly’; and the fields were ‘all alive’ with spectators ‘hooraying’
the arrivals. Within, the stately Princess towered among her graceful
maids. With regard to her diminutive husband it was said of his
visitors,
In his embroidered coat they found him,
With all his strutting dwarfs around him.
Most celebrated among the Leicester House maids of honour was the
young, bright, silvery-laughing, witty, well-bred girl, who could not
only spell, but could construe Cæsar--the maid of whom Chesterfield
wrote--
Should the Pope himself go roaming,
He would follow dear Molly Lepell.
And there rattled that other Mary--Mary Bellenden, laughing at all her
lovers, the little, faithless Prince himself at the head of them. She
would mock him and them with wit of the most audacious sort, and tell
stories to the Princess, at which that august lady would laugh behind
her fan, while the wildest, and not the least beautiful of the maids
would throw back her handsome head, burst into uncontrollable laughter,
and then run across to shock prim Miss Meadows, ‘the prude,’ with the
same galliard story. Perhaps the most frolicksome nights at Leicester
House were when the Princess of Wales was in the card-room, where a
dozen tables were occupied by players, while the Prince, in another
room, gave topazes and amethysts to be raffled for by the maids of
honour, amid fun and laughter, and little astonishment when the prizes
were found to be more or less damaged.
It was a sight for a painter to see these, with other beauties,
leaving Leicester Fields of a morning to hunt with the Prince near
Hampton. Crowds waited to see them return in the evening; and, when
they were fairly housed again and dressed for the evening, lovers
flocked around the young huntresses. Then Mary Bellenden snubbed her
Prince and master, and walked, whispering, with handsome Jack Campbell;
and Molly Lepell blushed and laughed encouragingly at the pleasant
phrases poured into her ear by John, Lord Hervey. There Sophy Bellenden
telegraphed with her fan to Nanty Lowther; and of _their_ love-making
came mischief, sorrow, despair, and death. And there were dark-looking
Lord Lumley and his Orestes, Philip Dormer Stanhope; and dark Lumley
is not stirred to laugh--as the maids of honour do, silently--as
Stanhope follows the Princess to the card-room, imitating her walk
and even her voice. This was the ‘Chesterfield’ who thought himself a
‘gentleman.’ The Princess leans on Lady Cowper’s shoulder and affects
to admire what she really scorns--the rich dress of the beautiful Mary
Wortley Montague. On one of the gay nights in Leicester House, when
the Princess appeared in a dress of Irish silk--a present from ‘the
Irish parson, Swift’--the Prince spoke in such terms of the giver as to
induce Lord Peterborough to remark, ‘Swift has now only to chalk his
pumps and learn to dance on the tightrope, to be yet a bishop.’
The above are a few samples of life in the royal household in Leicester
Square. There, were born, in 1721, the Duke of Cumberland, who was
so unjustly called ‘Butcher’; in 1723, Mary, who married the ‘brute’
Prince of Hesse-Cassel; and in 1724, Louisa, who died--one of the
unhappy English Queens of Denmark.
After the father of these children had become George II., his eldest
son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, established enmity with his sire, and
an opposition court at Leicester House, at Carlton House (which he
occupied at the same time), and at Kew.
Frederick, Prince of Wales, has been the object of heavy censure, and
some of it, no doubt, was well-deserved. But he had good impulses
and good tastes. He loved music, and was no mean instrumentalist. He
manifested his respect for Shakespeare by proposing that the managers
of the two theatres should produce all the great poet’s plays in
chronological order, each play to run for a week. The Prince had some
feeling for art, and was willing to have his judgment regulated by
those competent to subject it to rule.
In June 1749, some tapestry that had belonged to Charles I. was offered
to the Prince for sale. He was then at Carlton House, and he forthwith
sent for Vertue. The engraver obeyed the summons, and on being ushered
into the presence he found a group that might serve for a picture of
_genre_ at any time. The Prince and Princess were at table waiting
for dessert. Their two eldest sons, George and Edward, then handsome
children, stood in waiting, or feigned the service, each with a napkin
on his arm. After they had stood awhile in silence, the Prince said to
them, ‘This is Mr. Vertue. I have many curious works of his, which you
shall see after dinner.’ Carlton House was a store of art treasures.
The Prince, with Luke Schaub in attendance and Vertue accompanying,
went through them all. He spoke much and listened readily, and parted
only to have another art-conference in the following month.
The illustrious couple were then seated in a pavilion, in Carlton House
garden. The Prince showed both knowledge and curiosity with respect to
art; and the party adjourned to Leicester House (Leicester Square),
where Mr. Vertue was shown all the masterpieces, with great affability
on the part of Frederick and his consort. The royal couple soon after
exhibited themselves to the admiring people, through whom they were
carried in two chairs over Leicester Fields back to Carlton House.
Thence the party repaired to Kew, and the engraver, after examining the
pictures, dined at the palace, ‘though,’ he says, ‘being entertained
there at dinner was not customary to any person that came from London.’
During the tenancy of Frederick, Prince of Wales, Leicester House
was the scene of political intrigues and of ordinary private life
occurrences: Carlton House was more for state and entertainment.
Leicester House and Savile House, which had been added to the former,
had their joyous scenes also. The story of the private theatricals
carried on in either mansion has been often told. The actors were, for
the most part, the Prince’s children. He who was afterwards George III.
was among the best of the players, but he had a good master. After his
first public address as king, Quin, proud of his pupil, exclaimed,
‘I taught the boy to speak.’ Some contemporary letter-writers could
scarcely find lofty phrases enough wherewith to praise these little
amateurs. Bubb Doddington, who served the Prince of Wales and lost
his money at play to him (‘I’ve nicked Bubb!’ was the cry of the
royal gambler, when he rose from the Leicester House card-tables with
Bubb’s money in his pocket), Bubb, I say, was not so impressed by the
acting of these boys and girls. He rather endured than enjoyed it.
On January 11, 1750, all that he records in his diary is, ‘Went to
Leicester House to see “Jane Grey” acted by the Prince’s children.’
In the following May, Prince Frederick William was born in Leicester
House, ‘the midwife on the bed with the Princess, and Dr. Wilmot
standing by,’ and a group of ladies at a short distance. The time was
half an hour after midnight. ‘Then the Prince, the ladies, and some of
us,’ says Doddington, ‘sat down to breakfast in the next room--then
went to prayers, downstairs.’ In June the christening took place, in
Leicester House, the Bishop of Oxford officiating. ‘Nobody of either
sex was admitted into the room but the actual servants’ (that is, the
ladies and gentlemen of the household) ‘except Chief Justice Willes
and Sir Luke Schaub.’ Very curious were some of the holiday rejoicings
on this occasion. For example, here is a ‘setting out’ from Leicester
House to make a day of it, on June 28: ‘Lady Middlesex’ (the Prince’s
favourite), ‘Lord Bathurst, Mr. Breton, and I’ (writes Bubb) ‘waited
on their Royal Highnesses to Spitalfields, to see the manufactory of
silk, and to Mr. Carr’s shop, in the morning. In the afternoon the same
company, with Lady Torrington in waiting, went in private coaches to
Norwood Forest, to see a settlement of Gipsies. We returned and went
to Bettesworth, the conjurer, in hackney coaches.... Not finding him
we went in search of the little Dutchman, but were disappointed; and
concluded the particularities of this day by supping with Mrs. Cannon,
the Princess’s midwife.’ Such was the condescension of royalty and
royalty’s servants in the last century!
In March, of the following year, Bubb Doddington went to Leicester
House. The Prince told him he ‘had catched cold’ and ‘had been
blooded.’ It was the beginning of the end. Alternately a little better
and much worse, and then greatly improved, &c., till the night of the
20th. ‘For half an hour before he was very cheerful, asked to see some
of his friends, ate some bread-and-butter and drank coffee.’ He was
‘suffocated’ in a fit of coughing; ‘the breaking of an abscess in his
side destroyed him. His physicians, Wilmot and Lee, knew nothing of his
distemper.... Their ignorance, or their knowledge, of his disorder,
renders them equally inexcusable for not calling in other assistance.’
How meanly this prince was buried, how shabbily everyone, officially
in attendance, was treated, are well known. The only rag of state
ceremony allowed this poor Royal Highness was, that his body went in
one conveyance and his bowels in another--which was a compliment, no
doubt, but hardly one to be thankful for.
The widowed Princess remained in occupation of the mansion in which her
husband had died. One of the pleasantest domestic pictures of Leicester
House is given by Bubb Doddington, under date November 17, 1753:--
The Princess sent for me to attend her between eight and nine
o’clock. I went to Leicester House, expecting a small company and
a little musick, but found nobody but her Royal Highness. She made
me draw a stool and sit by the fireside. Soon after came in the
Prince of Wales and Prince Edward, and then the Lady Augusta, all
in an undress, and took their stools and sat round the fire with
us. We continued talking of familiar occurrences till between ten
and eleven, with the ease and unreservedness and unconstraint,
as if one had dropped into a sister’s house that had a family,
to pass the evening. It is much to be wished that the Princes
conversed familiarly with more people of a certain knowledge of
the world.
The Princess, however, did not want for worldly knowledge. About this
time the Princess Dowager of Wales was sitting pensive and melancholy,
in a room in Leicester House, while the two Princes were playing about
her. Edward then said aloud to George, ‘Brother, when we are men, you
shall marry, and I will keep a mistress.’ ‘Be quiet, Eddy,’ said his
elder brother, ‘we shall have anger presently for your nonsense. There
must be no mistresses at all.’ Their mother thereon bade them, somewhat
sharply, learn their nouns and pronouns. ‘Can you tell me,’ she asked
Prince Edward, ‘what a pronoun is?’ ‘Of course I can,’ replied the
ingenuous youth; ‘a pronoun is to a noun what a mistress is to a
wife--a substitute and a representative.’
The Princess of Wales continued to maintain a sober and dignified
court at Leicester House, and at Carlton House also. She was by no
means forgotten. Young and old rendered her full respect. One of the
most singular processions crossed the Fields in January 1756. Its
object was to pay the homage of a first visit to the court of the
Dowager Princess of Wales at Leicester House--the visitors being a
newly-married young couple, the Hon. Mr. Spencer and the ex-Miss Poyntz
(later Earl and Countess of Spencer). The whole party were contained in
two carriages and a ‘sedan chair.’ Inside the first were Earl Cowper
and the bridegroom. Hanging on from behind were three footmen in state
liveries. In the second carriage were the mother and sister of the
bride, with similar human adornments on the outside as with the first
carriage. Last, and alone, of course, as became her state, in a new
sedan, came the bride, in white and silver, as fine as brocade and
trimming could make it. The chair itself was lined with white satin,
was preceded by a black page, and was followed by three gorgeous
lackeys. Nothing ever was more brilliant than the hundred thousand
pounds’ worth of diamonds worn by the bride except her own tears in
her beautiful eyes when she first saw them and the begging letter of
the lover which accompanied them. As he handed her from the chair,
the bridegroom seemed scarcely less be-diamonded than the bride. His
shoe-buckles alone had those precious stones in them to the value of
thirty thousand pounds. They were decidedly a brilliant pair. Public
homage never failed to be paid to the Princess. In June 1763, Mrs.
Harris writes to her son (afterwards first Lord Malmesbury) at Oxford:
I was yesterday at Leicester House, where there were more people than
I thought had been in town.’ In 1766 Leicester House was occupied by
William Henry, Duke of Cumberland, the last royal resident of that
historical mansion, which was ultimately demolished in the year 1806.
But there were as remarkable inhabitants of other houses as of
Leicester House. In 1733 there came into the square a man about whom
the world more concerns itself than it does about William Henry, and
that man is William Hogarth.
There is no one whom we more readily or more completely identify with
Leicester Square than Hogarth. He was born in the Old Bailey in 1697,
close to old Leicester House, which, in Pennant’s days, was turned
into a coach factory. His father was a schoolmaster, who is, perhaps,
to be recognised in the following curious advertisement of the reign
of Queen Anne; ‘At Hogarth’s Coffee House, in St. John’s Gate, the
midway between Smithfield Bars and Clerkenwell, there will meet daily
some learned gentlemen who speak Latin readily, where any gentleman
that is either skilled in the language, or desirous to perfect himself
in speaking thereof, will be welcome. The Master of the House, in the
absence of others, being always ready to entertain gentlemen in that
language.’ It was in the above Queen’s reign that Hogarth went, bundle
in hand, hope in his heart, and a good deal of sense and nonsense
in his head, to Cranbourne Alley, Leicester Fields, where he was
’prentice bound to Ellis Gamble, the silver-plate engraver. There,
among other and nobler works, Hogarth engraved the metal die for the
first newspaper stamp (‘one halfpenny’) ever known in England. It was
in Little Cranbourne Alley that Hogarth first set up for himself for
a brief time, and left his sisters (it is supposed) to succeed him
there as keepers of a ‘frock shop.’ Hogarth studied in the street, as
Garrick did, and there was no lack of masks and faces in the little
France and royal England of the Leicester Fields vicinity. Much as
Sir James Thornhill disliked his daughter’s marriage with Hogarth, he
helped the young couple to set up house on the east side of Leicester
Fields. Thornhill did not, at first, account his son-in-law a painter.
‘They say he can’t paint,’ said Mrs. Hogarth once. ‘It’s a lie. Look
at that!’ as she pointed to one of his great works. Another day, as
Garrick was leaving the house in the Fields, Ben Ives, Hogarth’s
servant, asked him to step into the parlour. Ben showed David a head
of Diana, done in chalks. The player and Hogarth’s man knew the model.
‘There, Mr. Garrick!’ exclaimed Ives, ‘there’s a head! and yet they
say my master can’t paint a portrait.’ Garrick thought Hogarth had not
succeeded in painting the player’s, whereupon the limner dashed a brush
across the face and turned it against the wall. It never left Leicester
Square till widow Hogarth gave it to widow Garrick.
It was towards the close of Hogarth’s career that James Barry, from
Cork--destined to make his mark in art--caught sight of a bustling,
active, stout little man, dressed in a sky-blue coat, in Cranbourne
Alley, and recognising in him the Hogarth whom he almost worshipped,
followed him down the east side of the square towards Hogarth’s house.
The latter, however, the owner did not enter, for a fight between two
boys was going on at the corner of Castle Street, and Hogarth, who,
like the statesman Windham, loved to see such encounters, whether the
combatants were boys or men, had joined in the fray. When Barry came up
Hogarth was acting ‘second’ to one of the young pugilists, patting him
on the back, and giving such questionable aid in heightening the fray
as he could furnish in such a phrase as, ‘Damn him if I would take it
of him! At him again!’ There is another version, which says that it was
Nollekens who pointed out to Northcote the little man in the sky-blue
coat, with the remark, ‘Look! that’s Hogarth?’
Hogarth seems to have been one of the first to set his face against
the fashion of giving vails to servants by forbidding his own to take
them from guests. In those days, not only guests but those who came
to a house to spend money, were expected to help to pay the wages of
the servants for the performance of a duty which they owed to their
master. It was otherwise with Hogarth in Leicester Square. ‘When I sat
to Hogarth’ (Cole’s MSS. collections, quoted in Cunningham’s ‘London’)
‘the custom of giving vails to servants was not discontinued. On
taking leave of the painter at the door I offered the servant a small
gratuity, but the man very politely refused it, telling me it would
be as much as the loss of his place if his master knew it. This was so
uncommon, and so liberal in a man of Hogarth’s profession at that time
of day, that it much struck me, as nothing of the kind had happened to
me before.’
Leicester Square will ever be connected with Hogarth at the _Golden
Head_. It was not, at his going there, in a flourishing condition,
but it improved. In the year 1735, in Seymour’s ‘Survey,’ Leicester
Fields are described as ‘a very handsome open square, railed about
and gravelled within. The buildings are very good and well inhabited,
and frequented by the gentry. The north and west rows of buildings,
which are in St. Anne’s parish, are the best (and may be said to be so
still), especially the north, where is Leicester House, the seat of the
Earl of Leicester; being a large building with a fair court before it
for the reception of coaches, and a fine garden behind it; the south
and east sides being in the parish of St. Martin’s.’
Next to this house is another large house, built by Portman Seymour,
Esq., which ‘being laid into Leicester House, was inhabited by their
present Majesties’ (George II. and Queen Caroline) ‘when Prince and
Princess of Wales.’ It was then that it was called ‘the pouting place
of princes.’ Lisle Street is then described as coming out of Prince’s
Street, and runs up to Leicester Garden wall. Both Lisle and Leicester
Streets are ‘large and well-built, and inhabited by gentry.’
In 1737 the ‘Country Journal, or Craftsman,’ for April 16, contained
the following acceptable announcement: ‘Leicester Fields is going to be
fitted up in a very elegant manner, a new wall and rails to be erected
all round, and a basin in the middle, after the manner of Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, and to be done by a voluntary subscription of the inhabitants.’
It was to Hogarth’s house Walpole went, in 1761, to see Hogarth’s
picture of Fox. Hogarth said he had promised Fox, if he would only sit
as the painter liked, ‘to make as good a picture as Vandyck or Rubens
could.’ Walpole was silent. ‘Why, now,’ said the painter, ‘you think
this very vain. Why should not a man tell the truth?’ Walpole thought
him mad, but Hogarth was sincere. When, after ridiculing the opinions
of Freke, the anatomist, some one said, ‘But Freke holds you for as
good a portrait-painter as Vandyck,’ ‘There he’s right!’ cried Hogarth.
‘And so, by G----, I am--give me my time, and let me choose my subject.’
If one great object of art be to afford pleasure, Hogarth has attained
it, for he has pleased successive generations. If one great end of art
be to afford instruction, Hogarth has shown himself well qualified,
for he has reached that end; he taught his contemporaries, and he
continues teaching, and will continue to teach, through his works. But
is the instruction worth having? Is the pleasure legitimate, wholesome,
healthy pleasure? Without disparagement to a genius for all that was
great in him and his productions, the reply to these questions may
sometimes be in the negative. The impulses of the painter were not
invariably of noble origin. It is said that the first undoubted sign
he gave of having a master-hand arose from his poor landlady asking
him for a miserable sum which he owed her for rent. In his wrath he
drew her portrait _in caricatura_. Men saw that it was clever, but
vindictive.