Nooks and Corners of Old London Part 8

Memories crowd thickly about the old houses around Berkeley Square, laid out in 1698. On the west side in the house numbered 45 Lord Clive the founder of the British Empire in India, lived, and where he killed himself in 1774. At No. 11 Horace Walpole whose letters give the record of fas.h.i.+onable society of his day died in 1797.

Below the level of the Lansdowne Gardens, off Berkeley Street, is the Lansdowne Pa.s.sage. The curious iron bar that blocks the entrance is a reminder of the act of a bold highwayman in the last days of the 18th century. After robbing a man in nearby Piccadilly, and mounting his horse, he dashed through Bolton Street, then through this pa.s.sage and up the stone steps at full gallop. The bars were put up to prevent a recurrence of this. Anthony Trollope in his book "Phineas Redux" makes this dark uncanny looking pa.s.sage the scene of a murder, and the place where a body was found.

Opposite Lansdowne Pa.s.sage is Hay Hill, once a favourite resort of highwaymen. Here the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., and the Duke of York were halted one night by a man, revolver in hand, who fared ill, however, as the two n.o.bleman had only three s.h.i.+llings between them.

It was a custom to exhibit on Hay Hill the heads of executed persons as an example to evildoers. Here was exposed the head of Thomas Wyatt the younger, in the rebellion of 1554 when he was captured after his attack on Ludgate Hill.

In Berkeley Street a few doors south of Berkeley Square lived Alexander Pope, the poet, on the east side of the street opposite Lansdowne House.

Dover Street, named for a very early resident, Henry Jermyn, Lord Dover, was long a thoroughfare noted for the homes of statesmen. John Evelyn, the diarist, lived here, near Piccadilly, and in 1705 died here. To-day it is wholly given over to trade.

Albemarle Street was a dignified thoroughfare, and here lived at different times James and Robert Adam, two of the famous brothers who laid out the Adelphi district; Zoffany, who painted the portrait of John Wilkes; Lord b.u.t.te, and Charles and James Fox. Now it is as much of a business section as it was once residential.

In quiet Savile Row the place of high-priced tailors, on No. 12, a yellow brick house with link snuffers before the door, is a tablet telling that here Grote the historian died, and reading:

George Grote 1794-1871 Historian Died Here

Close by in Savile Row No. 14 is a house now quite conventional in appearance where Sheridan the dramatist lived and died, as is set forth on the tablet of the house-front:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Shunned by his friends Sheridan was arrested for debt on his deathbed and but for his physician who declared that his removal would be fatal would have been moved away. In contrast to his lonely deathbed, his burial in Westminster Abbey was attended by a great concourse of people of the highest rank who gathered to do homage to the genius of the man whom living they forgot.

Queer Albany Courtyard lies close by Sackville Street and is entered from bustling Piccadilly, pa.s.sing from a thoroughfare of busy shops to a courtyard of asphalt, quiet and dignified. After a few yards the s.p.a.ce widens and a moderate sized square brick building looms up. This is the "Albany," with no external suggestion of the many memories within. Byron lived here, and Lord Lytton, Monk Lewis, Canning and other great folk.

In St. James's Church in Piccadilly almost opposite the "Albany," is buried the eccentric Duke of Queensberry, better known as "Old Q," and Charles Cotton, the friend of Izaak Walton, fisherman. A tablet on the outer wall reads:

Tom D'Urfey Dyed February 26 1723

This was the poet who wrote "Pills to Purge Melancholy," and whose name crept into history more because of his friends.h.i.+p for Charles II. and of the king's for him than for the actual merit of his verse. Addison wrote of him: "Many an honest gentleman has got a reputation in his country, by pretending to have been in company with Tom D'Urfey." Lord Chesterfield, the letter writer, was baptised here.

St. James's Street off Piccadilly and terminating at the gateway of St.

James's Palace is the street in which Lord Byron lived, at No. 8, when the world acclaimed him a poet. Of St. James's Street Frederick Locker Lampson wrote:

Why that's where Sacharissa sigh'd When Waller read his ditty; Where Byron lived and Gibbon died And Alvanley was witty.

Sir Christopher Wren died at his home in this street in 1723. Close by the Pall Mall end the Conservative Club stands on the site of the house where Gibbon, the historian of the Roman Empire, died in 1794. Next door to Gibbon's home, set well back from the street, stood the Thatched House Tavern, for two centuries a meeting place for litterateurs, and such famous clubs as the Dilettanti and the Literary. The Brothers Club, of which Dean Swift was one of the organisers, also met in the Thatched House Tavern and concerning this club Swift wrote to Stella: "The end of our Club is to advance conversation and friends.h.i.+p, and to reward learning without interest or recommendation. We take in none but men of wit, or men of interest; and if we go on as we began, no other Club in this town will be worth talking of." But the time came before long when he wrote again to Stella that there was much drinking and little thinking at the Brothers and that the business the members met to consider was usually deferred to a more convenient season. In one of the shops beneath the wall of this tavern was the hair-dressing establishment of the great Rowland who made a fortune with his Maca.s.sar Oil--a fortune doubtless largely contributed to by his regular business, since he charged five s.h.i.+llings for cutting hair.

St. James's Street ends at the gateway to St. James's Palace. This gateway designed by Holbein is one of the few survivals of the original palace where in the open fields was once a hospital for lepers founded in 1190. The royal palace took the place of the hospital buildings under Henry VIII., who had Holbein design the structure. It was a royal abode until the time of George IV. Here Queen Mary died; here Charles I. slept the night before he walked through St. James's Park to Whitehall and to death, and here Charles II. and James II. were born. This, too, was the refuge for Marie de Medici in some of her unhappy wanderings.

In Bury Street beyond St. James's Street, Steele lived after his marriage. Horace Walpole also had lodgings here and so had Crabbe and Tom Moore. Dean Swift lived in this thoroughfare for a time, and it was from his Bury Street quarters that he wrote to the unfortunate Stella: "I have the first floor, a dining room, and a bed chamber, at eight s.h.i.+llings a week, plaguy dear."

Willis's restaurant in King Street stands on the site of Almack's the famous club opened in 1765, of which strange stories have been recounted. It is told that when a man dropped ill before the door and was carried inside club members made bets on his chances of life or death. When a doctor arrived his ministrations were interfered with because the members said that any medical aid would affect the fairness of the bets. So this must have been a great gaming place indeed.

Pall Mall now the thoroughfare of fas.h.i.+onable clubs got its name from the Italian game of _palle-malle_ played with a palla and maglia--otherwise ball and mallet--which Charles I. introduced into England about 1635. Pall Mall was a suburban promenade until 1689 when it was laid out as it is to-day. At first it was called Catherine Street in honour of Catherine of Braganza Queen of Charles II. Nell Gwynne lived in this street from 1671 until her death in 1687 where No. 79 now is, and it was over the wall of the surrounding garden that she used to talk with Charles II. Here gas was first experimented with as a street illuminative, when in 1807 a row of lamps were set up before the colonnade of Carlton House.

The Smyrna Coffee House celebrated in the days of Queen Anne for the group of writers who gathered here to talk politics in the evenings was in Pall Mall close to Waterloo Place on the south side. Prior and Swift came here much together. Thomson the poet was a regular visitor and put up a notice announcing that subscriptions would be taken by the author for "The Four Seasons."

St. James's Square is a reminder of the times of Charles II. who had it laid out. In a house on the east side, now London House, Lord Chesterfield was born in 1694. Next door at the south-east corner now part of Norfolk House, is where George III. was born in 1738. It was around this square that Savage and Johnson brimful of much patriotism but having little money used to walk together.

Where now stands the York Column in Waterloo Place leading to Waterloo Steps and The Mall was the main entrance to Carlton House, built for Henry Boyle, Lord Carlton, in 1709, and afterwards occupied by the Prince Regent who became George IV. When the old building was demolished in 1827 the columns of the entrance were saved and used in 1832 to form the facade of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

The name of the Haymarket has clung to it since the reign of Elizabeth when it was a mart for the sale of hay and straw and which existed until 1829.

The short and crooked street called Suffolk, off Pall Mall East, began its existence in the middle of the 17th century and marks the site of one of the homes of the Earl of Suffolk. It was in this street that Esther Vanhomrige lived for several years--Vanessa, the story of whose life is inseparable from that of Dean Swift. It was here also that Moll Davis lived in a house fitted up for her by King Charles II.

EIGHT

FROM REGENT STREET TO THE SHADOWS OF SOHO

North of Trafalgar Square stands St. Martin-in-the-Fields, on the foundations of an older church which Henry VIII. built literally in the fields. Henry VIII., living at Whitehall, objected when the people of the parish of St. Margaret's at Westminster had the bodies of the dead carried by the palace. So he had St. Martin's built. The first church was a small one and being found quite too small the present St. Martin's took its place. The burial ground that once surrounded the church was gradually encroached upon to make way for the widening of the street and was done away with in 1829. Francis Bacon was christened here and in the old burial ground were laid to rest many whose names are familiar--Jack Sheppard, John Hunter, famous as a surgeon, Nell Gwynne, and Lord Mohun, a duellist, concerning whom much may be read in Thackeray's "Henry Esmond." It was beside St. Martin's that David Copperfield one wintry night came upon Martha Endell who had once been the companion of little Em'ly at Mr. Omer's.

St. Martin's Lane leading from Trafalgar Square to Long Acre was famous when it was called Crooked Lane. Here at different times lived Sir John Thornhill whose decorations adorn the interior of St. Paul's and whose daughter married Hogarth; Fuseli, a famous artist; Sir Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith, Roubiliac, the French sculptor; and Thomas Chippendale the cabinet maker who published "Gentlemen and Cabinet Makers'

Directory."

The Music Hall centre, Leicester Square, has gradually grown out of Leicester Fields the garden of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester whose mansion stood close by where Daly's Theatre is now. On a house facing the square on the west is a tablet telling that Sir Joshua Reynolds once lived there; and another on the east side shows where Hogarth lived.

Around the corner from Leicester Square in Rupert Street Robert Louis Stevenson, in the "New Arabian Nights," places the Bohemian Cigar Divan conducted by Theophilus G.o.dall, the Prince Florizel, formerly one of the magnates of Europe, whom a revolution hurled from the throne of Bohemia in consequence of his continued absence and edifying neglect of public business, and who, exiled and impoverished, embarked in the tobacco trade.

The plain brick building numbered 37 Gerrard just to the south of Macclesfield Street now occupied by a restaurant was long the home of Edmund Burke the philosopher and statesman. On the house-front is a tablet reading:

Edmund Burke Author and Statesman Lived Here B 1729 D 1797

Close by at No. 43 Dryden lived for fourteen years until his death in 1701. Within a few doors on the same side of the way d.i.c.kens places the home of Jaggers, the criminal lawyer of "Great Expectations." The street itself takes its name from Gerrard, Earl of Macclesfield, whose mansion stood on the south side facing the present Macclesfield Street. Here in 1694 he died. The house was afterwards occupied by Lord Mohun and his body was brought here after the fatal duel with the Duke of Hamilton.

The Turk's Head Tavern was to be found in Gerrard Street at the Greek Street corner. In the tavern, in 1764, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr.

Samuel Johnson founded the Literary Club, an a.s.sociation of scholars, authors and statesmen which has been called "the formidable power in the commonwealth of letters." The club met here until 1783. In its early days it was limited to forty members among whom were Boswell, Gibbon, Oliver Goldsmith and George Colman the elder. It was most exclusive in those days and for years David Garrick struggled for admittance but finally became one of them. Many men of note were blackballed, including the Bishop of Chester and Lord Camden.

Just off busy Shaftesbury Avenue in Wardour Street is the square brick church of St. Anne's, seeming for all the world to be pa.s.sing a contented old age. Well up from the street, behind a wall and an old iron fence, there is about it still a remnant of green sward but hemmed in by asphalt s.p.a.ces that have engulfed the few tombstones. One tablet tells that William Hazlitt, painter and critic, was buried here in 1830; another how Theodore, King of Corsica, found a last resting place in 1756 beside the church near which the last years of his life had been spent in poverty. On the outer wall of the church the tablet erected by Horace Walpole can yet be deciphered:

Near this place is interred Theodore, King of Corsica, who 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 resigned his kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors.

His funeral expenses were paid by an oilman who declared himself willing _for once_ to pay the funeral expenses of a king.

Regent Street was at first part of an elaborate plan to provide a wide and systematic street system for London--a plan that failed and left to time merely a name for this thoroughfare and for Regent's Park in honour of the Prince Regent who afterwards became George IV.

Golden Square a s.p.a.ce of commonplace residential houses now given over to business is hidden away in the labyrinthian streets to the east of Regent Street. It was here that d.i.c.kens placed the home of Ralph Nickleby, in the house No. 2 on the east side, now a small hotel.

Hanover Square was first laid out in 1731 and was the cause of changing the place for execution of criminals from Tyburn to Newgate. The square and its surroundings being intended for the homes of wealth and fas.h.i.+on it was feared that the sight of the criminals pa.s.sing in carts from Newgate to Tyburn would be annoying to them.

In Brook Street near Bond Street is a tablet on the house numbered 25 marking it as the one time home of George Frederick Handel. Here he rehea.r.s.ed his oratories. Brook Street is a reminder of the old Tye Bourne Brook the course of which followed its direction.

Lord Byron was born in 1788 at No. 28 Holles Street, between Oxford Street and Cavendish Square, in a house now given over to trade.

So high above the roadway that its inscription can hardly be made out is a tablet on the house numbered 50 Wimpole Street on the west side above New Cavendish. It sets forth that this was the house of Mrs. Browning's father, from which she went secretly to marry Robert Browning. In this house she wrote her "Cry of the Children" and other poems.