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THE HISTORY OF 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 SQUARES of LONDON 
 
 TOPOGRAPHICAL HISTORICAL 
 
 BY 
 
 E. BERESFORD CHANCELLOR, M.A. 
 
 F.R. Hist. Soc. 
 
 WITH THIRTY -SIX ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LT? 
 
 1907 
 
The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson <5r* Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh 
 
 THE GETTY CENTER 
 LIBRARY 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 (BY GRACIOUS PERMISSION) 
 
 TO 
 
 H.R.H. THE PRINCESS ROYAL 
 DUCHESS OF FIFE 
 
 THE ONLY MEMBER OF THE ROYAL FAMILY 
 RESIDING IN ONE OF THE SQUARES 
 OF LONDON 
 
PREFACE 
 
 M Y aim in the writing of this book has been to give the history 
 of the various Squares dealt with in as concise a form as 
 possible, together with, in some cases, short accounts of 
 past interesting inhabitants and anecdotes bearing on them 
 or the localities in which they lived. 
 
 It has been obviously impossible to be exhaustive in the treatment 
 of the different Squares, I mean, to trace the history of each house and 
 its successive owners from the earliest days of their dual history, for had 
 I attempted any such feat, my work would have been well-nigh endless, 
 and I fear the volumes, like the valley of bones, would have been very 
 many and very dry. I have, however, consulted many Rate Books to 
 confirm a date, or with the hope of discovering fresh names of interest, 
 and my search has, I am glad to think, not always been unprofitable. 
 
 If I attempted to tender my individual thanks to every one who has 
 given me help, during the writing of this book, my task would be a 
 pleasant, but it would also be a lengthy, one. Not only have very many 
 of the present residents in the various Squares of London afforded me 
 every assistance in their power, but the Rectors and Vicars of churches 
 which in many instances stand in the precincts of the Squares, have also 
 given me help on matters in which their knowledge is extensive and 
 peculiar. 
 
 There are, however, some to whom my indebtedness cannot be dis- 
 charged by a mere general line of thanks, and their names should rightly 
 be found here, even if their claims on my gratitude are not specifically 
 stated ; but under the general heading of direct information, loans of 
 books, &c., and researches on behalf of this work, the following, among 
 many others who have shown interest in its progress, it gives me pleasure 
 to particularly thank : — 
 
 Mrs. Richmond Ritchie ; Lady Burne-Jones ; Mrs. J. R. Green ; 
 Mrs. Godfrey Clark ; the Marquis of Lansdowne ; the Earl of Kerry ; 
 Lord Carew ; the Archdeacon of Westminster ; C. B. B. McLaren, 
 Esq., K.C., M.P. ; G. Harland Peck, Esq. ; the Hon. Percy Wyndham ; 
 Godfrey Hamilton, Esq. ; W. T. Boodle, Esq. ; H. J. Fielding, Esq. ; 
 
 vii 
 
Vlll 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Sir Howard Vincent ; John B. Chubb, Esq., F.R.I.B.A. ; Weedon 
 Grossmith, Esq. ; Walter P. Daniell, Esq. ; Lord Haversham ; Graham 
 Vivian, Esq. ; the Earl of Powis ; A. Rhuvon Guest, Esq. ; A. S. Sadler, 
 Esq. ; H. E. Hamilton-King, Esq. ; Robert Birkbeck, Esq. ; J. H. 
 Yoxall, Esq., M.P. ; G. P. Willoughby, Esq. ; Francis Ricardo, Esq. ; 
 Halsey Ricardo, Esq. ; Herbert C. Gibbs, Esq. ; W. Harris, Esq. ; 
 L. L. Berman, Esq. ; T. F. Blackwell, Esq. ; A. R. O. Stutfield, Esq. ; 
 F. W. Hunt, Esq. ; J. Mackintosh, Esq. ; besides many others who have 
 taken an interest in the work during its progress, and have helped with 
 advice and encouragement. 
 
 To these sources of information must be added both that of the 
 offices of the various ground-landlords, as well as the Rate Books. From 
 the heads of the former and the custodians of the latter I have received 
 every courtesy, which I here most gratefully acknowledge. 
 
 To speak in any detail of the books I have consulted — historical, 
 biographical, and topographical — is unnecessary ; but had I not had the 
 splendid piece of work which Mr. Arthur Dasent has done in his History 
 of St. James s Square , or the excellent account of Leicester Square by 
 Tom Taylor (the only two books, so far as I know, dealing specifi- 
 cally with Squares), my chapters on those two places would have been 
 far less adequate, than, thanks to them, I hope I have made them. 
 
 Of a more embracing nature, I need hardly say how much I owe to 
 Mr. H. B. Wheatley’s great amplification of Cunningham’s Handbook of 
 London , under the title of London Past and Present , a monumental work 
 which combines the various labours of those who have more amply 
 dealt with particular districts, whose individual works have also laid 
 me under deep obligations ; to which Mr. Harrison’s Memorable London 
 Houses and Mr. Flutton’s Literary Landmarks must be added, as affording 
 those short cuts to information which might otherwise have been easily 
 overlooked. 
 
 To all these, and to how many others, I can but say, in Hamlet’s 
 words — 
 
 “Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks ; but 1 thank you.” 
 
 E. B. C. 
 
 29 Elm Park Gardens, S.W. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 “ London ! thou comprehensive word, 
 
 What joys thy streets and squares afford.” 
 
 Luttrell, Advice lo Julia. 
 
 T HE “Square” as we know it, that is, as a residential quarter, is 
 essentially an English institution. It is neither exactly analo- 
 gous to the French Place, the Italian Piazza, or the German 
 Platz ; nor do we find on the Continent, to take but this 
 quarter of the globe, any collocation of private houses, the in- 
 habitants of which have a sort of prescriptive right over the ground on 
 which their residences abut, as have those in the residential Squares of 
 London; for such as Trafalgar and Sloane Squares, which have much in 
 common with the Places of Paris, are not included in the perambulation 
 which we are about to undertake . 1 
 
 Those which I have dealt with in this volume, are practically all the 
 residential Squares in London ; their number is a larger one than many 
 people would at first imagine, and their characteristics are curiously 
 diverse. As Charles Lamb speaks of certain books which are “ no books,” 
 so I may well describe certain Squares as being “no Squares”; and by 
 this is not meant merely that their form logically precludes the appro- 
 priateness of such a designation, for were this so, this book would be a 
 small one, as it is a curious fact that hardly any of the Squares of London 
 are, in form, square at all ; there are some which are triangles, some with 
 only three, and many with unequal sides, and a few mere wedges and 
 excrescences from adjoining thoroughfares ; but by “ no Squares ” are 
 meant such curious survivals of a past time, as, to take an instance, 
 Gough Square, which contains one house of great interest and a few other 
 buildings of little or none. 
 
 Then, the diverse characteristics of London Squares will be found in 
 the antithesis of those in the east, to those in the west, end of the 
 City. The former, once important in their buildings and their past 
 residents, but now fallen from their high estate to merely commercial and 
 
 1 Neither are the Squares belonging to the various Inns of Court dealt with, as being in 
 their character sui generis ; and requiring for their adequate treatment, a volume to themselves. 
 
 ix 
 
X 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 professional uses ; the latter still retaining their original character, but 
 even here, in some instances, as in the case of Hanover Square, which 
 appears to be following in the wake of Soho, Red Lion, Golden, Devon- 
 shire, and Salisbury Squares, to mention but these, gradually undergoing a 
 metamorphosis no less sure because it happens to be slow. 
 
 We shall find that, apart from those in the City, the great majority of 
 London Squares are of comparatively recent date, that is, not earlier 
 than the eighteenth century ; the exceptions can be counted on the fingers, 
 and many of the more important, not historically but residentially speak- 
 ing, if the word can be used in this connection, will be found to be 
 situated on ground regarded, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 as being almost, if not quite, in the country ; some of which were not 
 formed till the century had reached the second half of its course. 
 
 Some Squares that are no longer in existence will be found dealt with ; 
 some, like Queen Square, Westminster, now known as Queen Anne’s 
 Gate, that have lost their identity in a change of nomenclature, but have 
 otherwise practically retained their original features; some having so little 
 of historic or antiquarian interest attaching to them that they have to be 
 perforce dismissed with a mere allusion; others so full of interest that 
 it has been difficult to discriminate between what should be said about 
 them and what left unsaid. What I have attempted to do, is to set down 
 the history of the various Squares, to describe their formation, to trace the 
 occupancy of their houses to interesting, notable, in some cases notorious, 
 people, and to, here and there, enliven a mere dull enumeration of names 
 and dates, by some story or anecdote, which may seem to be not wholly 
 out of place in a book of this character. Had I attempted to do more 
 than this, the result would have been stupendous, the number of volumes 
 required appalling, and the time needed for its completion lifelong, for 
 it is a fact that, taken as a whole, the history of the Squares of London 
 and their inhabitants, past and present, makes a large inroad on the 
 literary, the artistic, and the political annals of the country. Statesmen 
 and poets, writers and politicians, men and women of fashion, artists and 
 doctors, people who have been famous or infamous, those who have been 
 celebrated and those who have only been notorious, will all be found 
 among the past residents, all having the same varied characteristics and 
 the same various claims to attention as the Squares in which they once 
 lived, and who are now 
 
 “ Cold, cold as those who lived and loved a thousand years ago.” 
 
 Obviously I have been forced to refrain from any excursion into what 
 may be termed conjectural hypothesis, for had I done this, I might have 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 xi 
 
 reasonably connected with the many houses, with the very stones of the 
 Squares, nearly all the great ones of the past who have made London their 
 home, and whose footsteps must so often have echoed on the pavements 
 or in the rooms, from Devonshire Square in the east to St. James’s in 
 the west. 
 
 But although I have not attempted any such rehabilitation of life in 
 the past as this, I have noticed the residence in various Squares of such 
 real personages as Esmond and Sir Charles Grandison, Ralph Nickleby and 
 Amelia Sedley ; and even if these names are not to be found in the Rate 
 Books, their ghosts must surely haunt the Squares where their actual 
 presence seems hardly less real than does that of the many famous men 
 and women whom we shall meet with in the following pages. 
 
 Apart from the intrinsic interest attaching to the various Squares , 1 we 
 must remember that they all form part of that great organic whole, that 
 wonder and mystery, that microcosm of the universe, London ! Johnson 
 once said that “ London is nothing to some people ; but to a man whose 
 pleasure is intellectual, London is the place.” If my readers agree with 
 the great lexicographer, to borrow Miss Pinkerton’s phrase, I shall hardly 
 want a further inducement to tempt them into a perambulation of these 
 lesser lungs to which the innumerable arteries of this great organism lead, 
 and they will be more ready to find excuses for the many imperfections 
 and shortcomings in the following pages, because these pages try to tell, 
 however inadequately, something of the City they love. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 During the writing of this book a few alterations have taken place in the occupancy of 
 some of the houses in the various squares, apart from the changes of private ownership which 
 are constantly occurring, and these call for a word of notice. 
 
 In Hanover Square, Harewood House has been sold this year (1907) by the Royal Agri- 
 cultural Society to the Central London Property Syndicate for ,£45,000, and the Society’s 
 new headquarters are now at 16 Bedford Square. 
 
 No. 20 St. James’s Square, late the residence of the Watkin Wynn family, has been 
 purchased by the Earl of Strathmore ; while Winchester House, next door, has ceased to form 
 part of the War Office, in consequence of the completion of the new War Office buildings in 
 Whitehall. 
 
 In Cavendish Square, Harcourt House, as indicated in the text, has now been completely 
 demolished, and on its site residential flats are being erected. 
 
 I have not mentioned the so-called Audley Square, because it cannot, notwithstanding its 
 
 1 Those mentioned, some only mentioned I need hardly say, number about 200. To 
 these the tiny Princes Square, situated between Little Queen Street and Gate Street and once 
 in the parish of St. Giles, might be added. 
 
Xll 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 name, be regarded as other than an integral part of South Audley Street ; its seven houses 
 simply standing back from the main thoroughfare. It is, however, interesting to know that 
 the Duke of York was occupying one of the houses at the time of his death, although that did 
 not actually occur here, in 1827 ; that Spencer Perceval was born herein November 1762 ; and 
 that Lady William Russell, the mother of the late Lord Ampthill, whose charm of manner 
 attracted to her salon so many notable people, lived at No. 2 for a number of years. 
 
 There should, too, be added to the account of Orme Square, the fact that the late Lord 
 Leighton occupied No. 2 from the autumn of 1859, till he removed to his house in Holland 
 Park Road in 1866 ; while the eminent Lord Chief Justice Coleridge resided at No. 1 Sussex 
 Square. 
 
 An error has crept into p. 46. It was not the “ Princely Chandos” who died of grief at the 
 loss of his infant son, as there stated, and as mentioned by Hare ! As a matter of fact, the 
 duke died in 1744, aged seventy-one, and was succeeded by his sixth son, the second duke. 
 
 The date of the planting of the plane-trees in Berkeley Square should be 1789, and not 
 1759 - 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE . 
 
 INTRODUCTION . 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. Berkeley and Grosvenor Squares ...... 
 
 II. Cavendish and Hanover Squares ...... 
 
 III. St. James’s, Panton, and Cleveland Squares . . . . 
 
 IV. Soho and Golden Squares ....... 
 
 V. Leicester Square ......... 
 
 VI. Red Lion, Bloomsbury, and Bedford Squares 
 
 VII. Russell and Queen Squares ....... 
 
 VIII. Tavistock, Gordon, Brunswick, Mecklenburgh, Woburn, 
 
 Torrington, Regent, and Argyle Squares ; and Har- 
 rington, Ampthill, Oakley, Fitzroy, Tolmers, Euston, 
 Munster, Park, and Clarendon Squares 
 
 IX. Portman, Montagu, Bryanston, Dorset, Manchester, Hare- 
 wood, AND BlaNDFORD SQUARES . . . . . 
 
 +2 
 80 
 108 
 141 
 172 
 21 1 
 
 238 
 
 262 
 
 X. Kensington Squares — 
 
 Cadogan, Ovington, Trevor, Montpelier, Brompton, 
 Alexander, Thurloe, Onslow, Hereford, Edwards, 
 and Kensington Squares. 
 
 Squares North of the Park — 
 
 Connaught, Oxford, Cambridge, Gloucester. Hyde 
 Park, Norfolk, Orme, Pembroke, Norland, Ladbrooke, 
 
 St. Charles’s, and St. James’s Squares .... 287 
 
 xiii 
 
XIV 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGK 
 
 XI. Westminster Squares — 
 
 Vincent, Smith, and Queen Squares 
 
 Belgravia Squares — 
 
 St. George’s, Warwick, Ebury, Victoria, Eccleston, 
 Chester, Eaton, Belgrave, and Lowndes Squares. 
 
 Chelsea Squares — 
 
 Markham, Marlborough, Tedworth, Wellington, 
 Trafalgar, Carlyle, Paultons, Camera, and Gillray 
 Squares .......... 324 
 
 XII. Squares of the City and East End — 
 
 Gough, Salisbury, Devonshire, Myddelton, Wellclose, 
 Prince’s, Charterhouse, St. John’s, Finsbury, Billiter, 
 Haydon, Hoxton, Charles, Granville, Claremont 
 Squares, &c. 
 
 Squares of North-East and South London — 
 
 Arundel, Barnsbury, Cloudesley, De Beauvoir, and 
 Canonbury Squares; Trinity, Merrick, Nelson, and 
 Lorrimore Squares ........ 356 
 
 INDEX 399 
 
 xiii 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 View of Kensington Square ....... Frontispiece 
 
 On a fan , temp. William III. Reproduced for the first time by kind 
 permission of the owner , Miss Moss. 
 
 Berkeley Square, West Side ...... To face page i 
 
 From a water-colour drawing , dated 1814, in the Grace Collection. 
 
 Lansdowne House, Berkeley Square .... „ 7 
 
 From a drawing by SCHNEBBELIE. 
 
 Grosvenor Square, looking North ..... „ 23 
 
 From the view in Strype’s edition of Sl ow. 
 
 Cavendish Square ........ ,, 42 
 
 On a fan supposed to have been painted by Canaletto. 
 
 Plan of Lord Harley’s Estate, dated 1719 . . . ,, 44 
 
 Drawn by John Prince and engraved by Sutton Nicholls. 
 
 Hanover Square ,, 60 
 
 From the print by Sutton Nicholls. 
 
 Plan of the Parish of St. George’s, Hanover Square, 
 
 dated 1787 „ 70 
 
 From Bowles’s Map of London. 
 
 St. James’s Square „ 80 
 
 From the first state ^/"Sutton Nicholls’s view. 
 
 St. James’s Square ........ „ 91 
 
 Second state of the same print. 
 
 St. James’s Square ........ ,, 102 
 
 From the view by Ackermann, dated 1812. 
 
 Panton Square ,, 105 
 
 From a water-colour drawing by Shepherd, in the Crace Collection. 
 
 XV 
 
 b 
 
xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Cleveland House, Cleveland Square .... To face page 107 
 
 From the view published by N. Smith in 1799. 
 
 Soho Square ......... „ 109 
 
 From Sutton Nicholls’s print, dated 1754. 
 
 Plan of the Duke of Portland’s Estate, including 
 
 Soho Square ........ ,, 113 
 
 From the print by White, dated 1799. 
 
 North-East Corner of Soho Square .... „ 120 
 
 From a water-colour drawing by Richardson, dated 1826, in the 
 Crace Collection. 
 
 Golden Square. ........ ,, 129 
 
 From the print by SUTTON NlCHOLLS, dated 1750. 
 
 Leicester Square ,, 141 
 
 First state of the print published by Bowles. 
 
 View of the Centre of Leicester Square, showing 
 
 Wyld’s Globe ,, 170 
 
 From a water-colour drawing by SHEPHERD, dated 1851, in the 
 Crace Collection. 
 
 Red Lion Square ........ 
 
 From the print by Sutton Nicholls. 
 
 Map of the Parish of St. Giles 
 
 From Morden and Lea’s Plan of London, dated 1732. 
 
 Southampton or Bloomsbury Square . 
 
 From the print by SUTTON NlCHOLLS. 
 
 Bedford House, Bloomsbury Square . 
 
 From a print by Howlett. 
 
 Russell Square, showing Statue of the Duke of Bed- 
 ford .......... 
 
 Front the engraving by Motram of Shepherd’s water-colour 
 drawing. 
 
 Queen Square, Bloomsbury 
 
 From Pollard's engraving of the picture by E. Dayes. 
 
 The East Side of Fitzroy Square . . . . . 
 
 From Malcolm’s print, dated 1807. 
 
 172 
 
 177 
 
 183 
 
 21 I 
 
 n 
 
 M 
 
 226 
 
 251 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xvii 
 
 Portman Square, North Side . . . . . .To face page 262 
 
 From the water-colour drawing by GlNGAL, dated 1794, * n Me Crace 
 Collection. 
 
 Mrs. Montagu’s House, Portman Square 
 
 From the water-colour drawing by Shepherd. 
 
 Manchester Square, showing Manchester (now Hert- 
 ford) House 
 
 Plan of the Grosvenor Estate, in the Parish of St. 
 George, 1723 
 
 View of Cottages on the Site of Eaton Square . 
 
 From a water-colour drawing in the Chelsea Library. Reproduced 
 for the first time by kitul permission of the Committee. 
 
 View of Spring Gardens, on the Site of Lowndes 
 Square .... 
 
 From a water-colour drawing in the Chelsea Library. Reproduced 
 for the first time by kind permission of the Committee. 
 
 Charterhouse Square ....... 
 
 From the print by SUTTON Nicholls. 
 
 Finsbury Square . 
 
 From the print published by John Fairbairn in 1796. 
 
 Plan of Shoreditch and Vicinity, showing Hoxton and 
 Charles Squares and Moorfields, the Site of 
 Finsbury Square ....... 
 
 271 
 
 II 
 
 281 
 
 333 
 
 339 
 
 347 
 
 372 
 
 379 
 
 )t 3 86 
 
 Crosby Hall, Crosby Square .... 
 
 From Tingle’s print 3/" Shepherd’s water-colour drawing. 
 
 39 ° 
 
BERKELEY SQUARE 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BERKELEY SQUARE 
 
 “ A broad square, filled with trees, flowers, and garden-ground opens before us.” 
 
 Max Schlesinger, Saunterings in and about London. 
 
 T HOUGH not so old as St. James’s or Bloomsbury Squares, 
 Berkeley Square is one of the oldest and most important of 
 the squares or “quadrates,” as Maitland 1 terms them, in the 
 west end of London. Its genesis, the noble family and mansion 
 from which it takes its name, and the original appearance of 
 many of the houses, as well as its position in the heart of the most fashion- 
 able portion of the town, all contribute to its importance and interest ; 
 while the number of remarkable people who have, at one time or another, 
 lived in it, give it an almost historic position in the annals of the country. 
 
 It was formed in the early part of the eighteenth century, 2 on a 
 portion of the “ noble gardens,” as Evelyn calls them, of Berkeley House 
 which John, Lord Berkeley, the hero of Stratton fight, erected at a cost 
 of over ^30,000 on his return from his tenure of the vice-royalty of 
 Ireland. “It was built not only in the country, but where a rustic 
 structure stood, called Hay Hill farm,” says the Hon. Grantley Berkeley, 3 
 “ nevertheless it was on the north side of Piccadilly, opposite the Green 
 Park. The estate of which it formed a part was afterwards selected 
 for building purposes by his widow, and a square and two streets in a 
 few years sprang up around it, much to the distaste of honest John 
 
 1 History of London. 
 
 2 In Aggas’ plan {temp. Queen Elizabeth) the site is shown as open fields, as it also is in the 
 later plan by Faithorne dated 1655. 
 
 3 My Life and Recollections , vol. i. p. 78. 
 
2 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Evelyn, who feelingly expressed his disapprobation at the overgrowth of 
 London ! ” 
 
 In 1736, Messrs. Cock and Hillyard, described in the deeds as 
 “ carpenters,” had obtained building leases and erected houses in Bruton 
 Street and Berkeley Street, and having been successful in their under- 
 taking, were anxious to enlarge their operations, whereupon William, 
 Lord Berkeley, agreed to grant them a lease of certain ground on the under- 
 standing that the necessary space should be left to complete the square. 
 It was not, however, till eleven years later that Lord Berkeley’s successor, 
 John, Lord Berkeley, executed this lease, by which he granted to Edward 
 Cock and Francis Hillyard of the parish of St. George’s, Hanover Square, 
 about three acres of land, which now comprises Berkeley Square. In the 
 lease thus granted, this land is described as being “ enclosed by dwarf 
 brick walls, and wooden rails and pallisadoes set thereon.” 1 
 
 Old Berkeley House, 2 which Evelyn calls “one of the most magnifi- 
 cent pallaces of the towne,” and which had been built by Hugh May in 
 the classical style, in imitation of a design by Palladio, became the resi- 
 dence at one time of the Princess Anne until January 1695, and in 1697, 
 was purchased by the first Duke of Devonshire, “ the finest and handsomest 
 gentleman of his time.” On October 16, 1733, it was burnt to the 
 ground, through the carelessness of workmen engaged in repairing it, 3 
 and although many of the more valuable contents were saved, the loss 
 was estimated at ^30,000 — the sum which it was said to have originally 
 cost. The present house, built from designs by Kent and now known 
 as Devonshire House, 4 was erected on the site of the former mansion, of 
 which all that was incorporated in the later building was the portico and 
 marble staircase. Although Evelyn saddened at the thought of the 
 extension of London, as we have seen, it was nevertheless he who was 
 consulted by Lady Berkeley in the development of a portion of her estate, 
 and in his Diary , under date of June 12, 1684, he writes: “I went to 
 advise and give directions about building two streets in Berkeley Gardens, 
 reserving the house and as much of the garden as the breadth of the 
 house. In the meantime I could not but deplore that sweet place (by far 
 the most noble gardens, courts and accommodations, stately porticos, etc., 
 
 1 Information kindly supplied me by Walter Boodle, Esq., of the Grosvenor Estate Office. 
 
 2 The only view of it known to exist is that on the large map of London published by Ogilby 
 and Morgan about 1682. It shows a palatial erection not unlike old Burlington House 
 
 close by. 
 
 3 Wheatley’s Round about Piccadilly , p. 96. 
 
 * The name seems to have been changed when the Duke of Devonshire purchased it in 1697, 
 for his death in 1707, is stated by Bishop Kennet to have occurred at "Devonshire House 
 Piccadilly.” N ote to Evelyn’s Life of Mrs. Godolphin. 
 
BERKELEY SQUARE 3 
 
 anywhere about town) should be so much straitened and turned into 
 tenements.” The Diarist, however, finds some excuse for Lady Berkeley’s 
 action, in the fact that Lord Clarendon’s house close by had met the same 
 fate, and also in consequence of “ so excessive a price as was offered, 
 advancing near ^iooo per annum in mere ground rents.” Could Evelyn 
 have anticipated what would be the value of these mere ground rents 
 two centuries later, he might have regarded the change still more 
 philosophically ! 
 
 In a plan of the Parish of St. James’s taken from a survey made in 
 1755, and reproduced by Jesse, 1 we can see the relative size of old 
 Berkeley House and its grounds ; practically the northern half of the 
 ground there shown now forms the site of the present Lansdowne House, 
 which occupies the whole of the south side of Berkeley Square, except 
 the south-eastern corner, which forms the opening into Berkeley Street. 
 
 Notwithstanding the central position which Berkeley Square occupies, 
 Beloe in his Sexagenarian tells an anecdote which curiously illustrates 
 the restricted peregrinations of our forefathers ; it was the last story 
 which he heard Horace Walpole relate, and is to the effect that “ in 
 the time of Sir Robert Walpole it was the established etiquette that the 
 Prime Minister returned no visits, but on his leaving office Sir Robert 
 took the earliest opportunity of visiting his friends, and one morning he 
 happened to pass, for this purpose, through Berkeley Square, the whole of 
 which had been actually built whilst he was Minister, and he had never 
 before seen it. This incident alone prevailed upon his son Horace to take 
 the first opportunity which offered of purchasing a house here.” 2 
 
 Lansdowne House, which with its grounds occupies the whole of the 
 south side of the square, was commenced in the middle of the eighteenth 
 century by the Earl of Bute, from designs by Robert Adam ; and it is 
 known, as Wraxall phrases it, that this magnificent residence “ exposed 
 him to very malignant comments respecting the means by which he 
 had reared so expensive a pile ” ; while political scandal, at the time, 
 asserted that Lansdowne House was built by one Peace (Lord Bute’s in 
 1762) and paid for by another (Lord Shelburne’s in 1783). It was not, 
 however, till 1765 that Lord Bute sold the place in an unfinished con- 
 dition to the Earl of Shelburne for ^22,500, although as it then stood 
 
 1 Memorials of London. 
 
 2 This is given in Wheatley and Cunningham’s London Past and Present. But it is hardly 
 correct to say that the whole Square had been built during Walpole’s tenure of office. 
 Walpole’s first premiership lasted from 1715-1717, his second from 1721-1742; and, as we 
 have seen, the Square was formed early in the eighteenth century. Allowing, however, for its 
 very gradual development, we may substitute the word “finished” in place of “built,” and be 
 tolerably correct. 
 
4 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 it is supposed to have cost him some thousands more. Lord Shelburne, 
 the “ Malagrida ” 1 of Junius and the “Jesuit of Berkeley Square” of 
 George 111 ., would appear to have been contemplating the purchase of 
 a house, or a site on which to build one, some years previously, for we 
 find C. J. Fox writing to him, on June 29, 1761, when he talked of 
 retiring from public life, thus : “ I see you have ordered Mr. Adam 
 to look out for space to build an Hotel upon. The late Lord Leicester 2 
 and the late Lord Digby were about a fine piece of ground for that 
 purpose, still to be had, the garden of which, or the court before which, 
 may extend all along the bottom of Devonshire garden, though no 
 house must be built there ; the house must be where some old paltry 
 stables stand at the lower end of Bolton Row.” 3 This site was, how- 
 ever, secured by Lord Bute, before Lord Shelburne could make up his 
 mind to take Fox’s advice, and the present position of Lansdowne 
 House, not facing Berkeley Square as one might have supposed it would, 
 is thus accounted for by the restrictions mentioned by Fox — restrictions 
 undoubtedly made when Lady Berkeley of Stratton originally developed 
 the estate. We find a reference to the new house in Lady Shelburne’s 
 Diary, where, under date of January 14, 1760, she writes: “Lord 
 Dunmore breakfasted here, and went afterwards with Lord Shelburne to 
 the new house in Berkeley Square.” Although Lord Shelburne gave a 
 sort of house-warming in his new possession on August 1, 1760, it was 
 even then in an unfinished state, for Lady Shelburne’s Diary contains this 
 entry for August 20th of the same year : “ I had the pleasure of coming 
 to Shelburne House, from whence I continue this diary My Lord was 
 just going to the Council, as I arrived, with Lord Granby; we had some 
 little conversation upon the steps, and I had full time to walk over and 
 examine the house. It is very noble and I am much pleas’d with it, 
 tho’ perhaps few people wou’d have come to live in it in so unfinished 
 a state.” 4 Although Lord Shelburne held various high offices and was 
 Prime Minister in 1782—3, being created Marquis of Lansdowne in the 
 following year, and although, as Mr. McCarthy says, “ most of his political 
 ideas were in advance of his time, and his personal friendships prove him 
 to have been a man of appreciative intelligence,” 5 it seems to have been 
 
 1 Goldsmith once naively remarked to Lord Shelburne that he could not imagine why 
 any one should compare him to Malagrida, “for Malagrida was a very good sort of man." 
 
 2 Thomas Coke, created Earl of Leicester 1744, and Edward, sixth Lord Digby. 
 
 3 Fitzmaurice's Life of Lord Shelburne , vol. i. p. 106. 
 
 4 Ibid., vol. ii. p. I S3. 
 
 5 Hayward tells a story to the effect that “when Gainsborough painted his portrait, his 
 lordship complained that it was not like. The painter said he did not approve of it either, and 
 
 begged to try again. Failing a second time he flung down his pencil, saying : “D it, 
 
 I never could see through varnish, and ‘there’s an end.’” 
 
BERKELEY SQUARE 5 
 
 rather his misfortune than his fault that he could never attain a reputation 
 for sincerity ; and we shall not be surprised to find Lord Brougham, 
 considering that the fact that Dr. Priestley was Librarian at Lansdowne 
 House in the time of Lord Shelburne, constituted its chief glory. The 
 passage in the life of Priestley can, mutatis mutandis , be compared with 
 Gibbon’s more celebrated apotheosis of Fielding: “With whatever differ- 
 ence of sentiment statesmen may at any time view Lansdowne House, 
 the lovers of science in the latest ages will gaze with veneration on that 
 magnificent pile, careless of its architectural beauties but grateful for the 
 light which its illustrious founder caused to beam from thence over the 
 whole range of natural knowledge ; and after the structure shall have 
 yielded to the fate of all human works, the ground on which it once 
 stood, consecrated to far other recollections than those of conquest or 
 power, will be visited by the pilgrim of philosophy with a deeper fervour 
 than any that fills the bosom near the Forum or the Capitol of ancient 
 Rome.” 
 
 Although Brougham makes this statement with regard to Priestley 
 alone, it is probable that when he wrote it he did not foresee the illus- 
 trious ones in all walks of life whom the third Marquis of Lansdowne 
 was to gather around him in Berkeley Square. Without taking up a 
 large portion in the annals of his country, the third Lord Lansdowne 
 was a remarkable man and held many high offices of state, and indeed 
 in his later years became a sort of Nestor to the Liberal Party. Lucky 
 in himself and his possessions, he was luckier still in his friends, and the 
 pages of Moore’s Diary and similar records of the period attest the 
 amiability of his character and the discrimination of his judgment. One 
 reference in Moore’s journal may parenthetically be given here. He was 
 told by Jekyll that the proprietor of Lansdowne House before the old Lord 
 Lansdowne, presumably Lord Bute, had a project of placing twenty-seven 
 fiddlers in an underground apartment, hermetically sealed, from which 
 room pipes introduced into any other chamber where required, would 
 conduct the music ; Lord Lansdowne himself confirmed this, but stated 
 that an organ and not men, was intended to be thus placed, and that 
 the pipes were actually discovered when some repairs were being subse- 
 quently made to the mansion. 
 
 The son of the first Marquis was also a man of some little note — 
 “ a tall personable man, rather regardless of his dress,” according to a 
 contemporary authority ; 1 he succeeded as second Marquis in 1805, and 
 died four years later. His first act on succeeding to the title was to 
 disperse the fine collection of literary and artistic treasures which his 
 
 1 Public Characters, 1809 - 10 . 
 
6 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 father had collected in Lansdowne House. The pictures went in all 
 directions, but the invaluable Lansdowne MSS. were purchased en bloc 
 by the British Museum. But although the second Marquis showed so 
 little care for these treasures, he proved his appreciation of the collection 
 of antique statues, which he took over from the executors of the first 
 Marquis, at ^6000 or £jooo. It was this nobleman who tried to 
 emulate Sir William Petty’s principle of a double-bottomed ship 1 — with 
 somewhat disastrous results. Eccentric in most things, he took a pride in 
 emerging from Lansdowne House in the coldest weather without great- 
 coat or gloves, and in town he became a marked man. 2 
 
 When the third Marquis succeeded his half-brother, he found, with 
 the exception of a few family portraits, hardly a picture in Lansdowne 
 House, and it became his immediate care to bring together a fine and 
 representative collection of the works of the old masters, while the 
 contemporary records of celebrated painters show that he was a liberal 
 and discriminating patron of the artists of his own time ; he also pur- 
 chased from the widow of the second Marquis, the collection of sculpture 
 which had been left her by that peer, and which is thus proved, rather 
 curiously, not to have been an heirloom. 
 
 The pictures which grace this noble house are too numerous to 
 mention with anything like completeness ; but special attention may be 
 drawn to Reynolds’s beautiful portrait of Mrs. Sheridan as St. Cecilia, 
 and the celebrated portrait of Pope by Jervas, as well as Hogarth’s well- 
 known representation of Peg Woffington, Reynolds’s portrait of Horace 
 Walpole, the sleeping child by Velasquez, and the Due de Reichstadt 
 by Lawrence, besides examples of the great painters from the early days 
 of the art down to Leighton and Millais. 
 
 The beautiful furniture and objtts d' art equal in value and rarity 
 the canvases that hang on the walls, and the magnificent reception rooms, 
 of which a characteristic is that they all communicate, and thus form, 
 on the occasion of balls and receptions, one vast and complete suite of 
 apartments, as do those on the first floor, form a fitting setting for these 
 treasures, and place Lansdowne House amongst the half-dozen finest 
 private palaces (to call them houses seems inadequate) in London. 
 
 Apart from the exterior, Adam’s beautiful work is to be seen to 
 great perfection, not only in the details such as chimney-pieces, cornices, 
 &c., but particularly in the dining-room, probably the most elaborate 
 example of his style in existence. 
 
 The formation of the remarkable collection of statuary seems to have 
 
 1 Mentioned by Sorbiere in his Voyage en Angleterre, 1666, p. 63. 
 
 2 Timbs’s Romance of London. 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

BERKELEY SQUARE 7 
 
 had its genesis in a visit which Lord Shelburne paid to Italy in 1771, after 
 the death of his wife. He was aided in the acquirement of these 
 treasures by Gavin Hamilton, who undertook on his behalf extensive 
 excavations in the vicinity of Rome. Hamilton, a Scottish painter whom 
 Goethe in his Winckelmann praised for thus enlarging the field from 
 which artists drew their inspiration, was just the man for the work — 
 full of knowledge, energy, and patience ; and that Lansdowne House 
 contains probably the finest private collection of sculpture in this country, 
 is largely due to his indefatigable interest in the work of excavation. 
 But not only this : he was as careful over the housing of these artistic 
 relics as he was in their discovery, and he prepared an elaborate scheme 
 for adorning the home of his patron and for preserving his trouvailles. 
 The chief item in his scheme was the formation of a gallery, which it 
 was arranged should be erected by the architect Panini . 1 This gallery 
 was formed by the enlargement of a music-room, which had been a part 
 of Adam’s original design of Lansdowne House, and it is now used as a 
 ball-room. Here are now to be seen the Discobolus, the Hermes, the 
 statue of Artemis, the group of Eros and Psyche, the Marcus Aurelius, 
 and other equally famous pieces of sculpture, together with sarcophagi, 
 altar-fronts, busts, and torsos, one of which would be almost sufficient to 
 give a cachet to a collection less richly endowed. 
 
 Lord Lansdowne was not only a patron of artists, he was also a true 
 friend to the literary men of his day. “ He did not,” we are told, 
 “ extend a haughty or condescending patronage to men of talent or 
 genius. He claimed brotherhood with them .” 2 And further, “The 
 guests at Lansdowne House were so selected that the host took care that 
 all should share in the conversation, and when they were re-assembled in 
 the drawing-room, he would adroitly coax them into groups, or devote 
 himself for a minute or two carelessly and without effort to the most 
 retiring or least known.” 
 
 After the manner of Macaulay’s sketch of Holland House, Hayward 
 thus speaks of Lansdowne House : “ There is the dinner-table at which 
 Rogers, placed between Hallam and Macaulay, complained that they 
 wrangled and fought over him, ‘as if I was a dead body ’ : at which, in 
 precisely similar circumstances, the great French historian and statesman, 
 Thiers, fell asleep. There are the grim grey statues, looking down from 
 their niches on the recumbent figure (by Canova) in white marble that 
 
 1 The whole matter, with Hamilton’s correspondence, is fully given in the catalogue of 
 Ancient Marble at Lansdowne House, prepared by Professor Michaelis and printed for private 
 circulation. A copy, from which the above information is extracted, was kindly lent me by the 
 Marquis of Lansdowne. 
 
 2 Hayward. 
 
8 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 gave rise to the somewhat hazardous joke of Payne Knight, which the 
 Marquis did not repeat till the ladies had withdrawn. It was in the 
 doorway of that concert-room that the brilliant and fastidious French- 
 man (Montalembert) uttered his now celebrated saying, ‘You English 
 cling to your established beauties as you stand by your old institutions ; ’ 
 and it was in the adjoining saloon that Madame de Stael, after a consulta- 
 tion with her host as to the best position for attracting notice, took her 
 premeditated stand;” 1 while of the library, which was added in 1790, 
 Fox 2 was used to say he always liked it, it was so vast, so retired, and he 
 always liked the idea of a large room in the midst of a great city. 
 
 Lansdowne House is the most important mansion in Berkeley Square, 
 but some of the smaller houses more than equal it in interest so far as the 
 fame of their former occupiers is concerned. 
 
 At No. 6, lived the second Earl of Chatham, and although this noble- 
 man has left no particular mark on the records of his country, he has an 
 adventitious glory in being the son of the great Earl and the brother of 
 William Pitt. On the authority of Wraxall we know that “ he strongly 
 resembled his father in face and person,” but we also know “ that his 
 manners seemed to prohibit all familiarity and almost to forbid approach.” 
 It was at this house that William Pitt when Prime Minister received, in 
 1784, a deputation from the City of London, which brought him the 
 Freedom, “ as a mark of gratitude for, and approbation of, his zeal and 
 assiduity in supporting the legal prerogatives of the crown,” and subse- 
 quently attended him to a banquet in the Hall of the Grocers’ Company. 
 Great crowds, we are told, had assembled early in the morning, and an 
 immense concourse of people joined the procession on its leaving the door 
 of Lord Chatham’s house. 3 
 
 Two interesting people lived at different times at No. 10. One was 
 the Dowager-Countess of Albemarle, widow of the third Earl and daughter 
 of Sir John Miller, a Hampshire baronet. She would seem to have had 
 anything but an amiable temper, and her grandson mentions that she once 
 boxed his ears after he had served in the Waterloo campaign ! The same 
 chronicler relates how, being a stout Burdettite when a boy, and during 
 the Burdett Riots having cried out lustily, “ Burdett for ever,” but being 
 terrified by the clattering of swords and pattering of hoofs which betokened 
 the approach of the soldiery, he did not stop running until he found him- 
 self, safe and sound, in his grandmother’s house. “ That same evening,” 
 he continues, “ a large and noisy multitude assembled in our Square, and 
 smashed every pane of glass in the windows of No. 12, the house next 
 
 1 Hayward's Essay on Lord Landsdowne. 2 Rogers’s Recollections , p. 39. 
 
 3 Tomline’s Life of Pitt, vol. i. p. 408. 
 
BERKELEY SQUARE 9 
 
 but one to Lady Albemarle’s. The object of popular resentment was the 
 Earl of Dartmouth, who rented that house of my father.” 1 This Lord 
 Dartmouth was the third Earl, described in the Malmesbury Letters as 
 being in 1777, “a very fat fair young man,” who held many important 
 positions, amongst others that of Lord of the Bedchamber to George IV., 
 when Prince of Wales. 
 
 Berkeley Square was to be startled by another political demonstration, 
 more important even than that connected with Sir Francis Burdett, for 
 Charles James Fox, after his return to Parliament for Westminster in 1784, 
 was the chief figure in a procession as remarkable as any that has ever 
 perambulated the streets of London. Besides the Dukes of Devonshire 
 and Portland, each in a coach and six, trumpeters on foot and on horse- 
 back, bands, bodies of electors, emblematical banners, &c., and the “select 
 committee, splendidly mounted, composed of the first men of rank and 
 fortune,” 2 the “sights self,” as Browning phrases it — the “hero of the 
 hour,” was in the midst “ in a simple and elegantly adorned chair, inter- 
 woven with laurel, myrtle, and flowers, with a relief of thirty-two men 
 in white.” This procession, after proceeding round Covent Garden, 
 entered the Strand by Catherine Street and went westward past Charing 
 Cross, and after going to Parliament Street returned to Pall Mall, where 
 it made a halt at Carlton House ; thence up St. James’s Street to Piccadilly, 
 where at Devonshire House the Prince of Wales was awaiting it. The 
 cavalcade then paraded Berkeley Square, and returned to Devonshire 
 House, “ the gates of which were thrown open, and discovered upon the 
 balustrades the heir apparent surrounded by the first Whig families in the 
 kingdom.” 3 
 
 The other notable, later, occupant of No. 10 was Sir Colin Campbell, 
 afterwards Lord Clyde ; illustrious in all the wars waged by this country, 
 from the Peninsular, to the Mutiny where he was chief-in-command. In 
 March 1863, “ he furnished a house, No. 10 Berkeley Square, and wrote to 
 his friends, General and Mrs. Eyre, telling them he had set up two small 
 bedsteads for their children, of whom he seems to have been very fond ” ; 4 
 but he died, after a long illness, during August of the same year. 5 
 
 Next door to No. 10, is the house, No. 11, which Horace Walpole 
 
 1 Lord Albemarle’s Fifty Years of My Life. The house was originally No. 39, and in 
 Boyle’s Court Guide for 1795, the Earl of Albemarle is given as then residing there. 
 
 2 Mrs. Papendiek mentions this in her Diary, and states that George Papendiek and her 
 nephew Hugh were two of the twenty-four gentlemen of the Prince of Wales’s household who 
 immediately followed the chair in which Fox was seated. Diary , vol. i. p. 21 1. 
 
 3 Fashion Now and Then , by Lord W. Pitt Lennox, vol. i. p. 135. 
 
 4 The house was not long since occupied by Lieut.-Col. H. R. Eyre. 
 
 5 Henry Greville notes the circumstance in his Diary for August 16, 1863. 
 
IO 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 occupied, having removed here in 1779, from Arlington Street, the lease 
 of which had just expired. Although the house is now No. 1 1, it was, in 
 Walpole’s time, No. 40, and is so given in Boyle’s Court Guide for 1795. 
 There has been some difference of opinion as to which was Walpole’s 
 actual house, Mr. Hutton 1 giving it as No. 42, at the corner of Hill 
 Street. “This was the old No. 1 1,” says Mr. Harrison, 2 “but the present 
 numbering appears with the old on Horwood’s plan of London for 1799, 
 No. 1 1 being identical with the old No. 40, where, as Lord Orford, 
 Walpole appears in the Guide for 1796.” 
 
 Walpole had commenced negotiations for the purchase of this house 
 two years previously, and in the November of 1777, he had, as he tells 
 Lady Ossory, come to town to take possession, but difficulties arose over 
 the purchase, and he found himself, from some cause or other, involved in 
 Chancery proceedings. In July 1797, however, the troubles were over- 
 come, and we find him coming up from Strawberry Hill to pay the 
 purchase money. Two months later he moved in and was apparently 
 delighted with his acquisition, for he writes again to Lady Ossory, on 
 October 14th of that year, in these terms: “I came to town this morning 
 to take possession of Berkeley Square, and am as well pleased with my 
 new habitation as I can be with anything at present. Lady Shelburne’s 
 being queen of the palace 3 over against me has improved the view since 
 I bought the house, and I trust will make your ladyship not so shy 
 as you were in Arlington Street.”' 1 
 
 On the day this letter was written, his “ inauguration day,’’ he writes 
 to others besides Lady Ossory, and “ it is seeming to take a new lease of 
 life,” he says to Mason. But although he had a decade and a half before 
 him, he had “sober monitors that warn me not to delude myself,” he adds. 
 Indeed, he soon had one of the lesser ills of life to trouble him, for in the 
 first year of his occupancy, he was summoned, he writes to Miss Berry, 
 from Strawberry Hill ; “ My footman John having pawned a silver 
 strainer and spoons, which, not being found out till noon, as it had been 
 done here, he ran away in the night, and I have been forced to come and 
 see if he had done no worse.” But apparently he had done vrorse, for the 
 man appears to have gone straight from Berkeley Square to Strawberry 
 Hill and there to have hanged himself in the grounds. 
 
 For over twenty years Walpole divided his time between Strawberry 
 Hill and Berkeley Square, and at the latter house he died on March 2, 
 1797, in his eightieth year. He left the house to his niece, Lady Walde- 
 grave, who was living here in 1800, as is evidenced by the Hon. Grantley 
 
 1 Literary Landmarks. 
 
 3 Lansdowne House, of course. 
 
 2 Memorable Lotuion Houses. 
 4 Cunningham’s London. 
 
BERKELEY SQUARE n 
 
 Berkeley, who says that about the year of his birth {circa 1800), she was 
 the occupant of the residence. 1 
 
 This Lady Waldegrave was interested, as a relative, in the so-called 
 Seymour case, which arose about the disputed guardianship of Mrs. Fitz- 
 herbert over Mary Seymour, the youngest child of Lord Hugh and Lady 
 Horatia Seymour. The executors of Lord Hugh did not wish Miss 
 Seymour to remain under the care of Mrs. Fitzherbert, simply because 
 there were relatives of her own able and willing to take charge of her, and 
 they named Lady Waldegrave as being one of these. As Mrs. Fitzherbert 
 had been specially asked by the mother and father to extend her protection 
 to their child, and as both she and the Prince Regent had become very 
 devoted to Miss Seymour, a great deal of controversy took place, which 
 resulted finally in Mrs. Fitzherbert winning the day. In a letter from 
 Mrs. Fitzherbert to Mrs. Browne dated June 17, 1806, telling the glad 
 news, she mentions the fact that “ Lady Waldegrave came to town on 
 purpose, wrote to all the press to support her, turned out the people 
 she had let her house to in Berkeley Square and fixed herself in it, tell- 
 ing everybody my poor child was to go to reside with her on Saturday 
 evening.” 2 
 
 Although it appears to be uncertain as to whether he died here, it is 
 known that Colley Cibber once lived at 20 Berkeley Square, at the north 
 corner of Bruton Street, and here it is probable that he produced some of 
 his numerous plays — for that they w r ere numerous we have his own 
 authority, did we require it, in his Apology , couched in these quaint 
 terms : “ It may be observable that my muse and my spouse were equally 
 prolific, that the one was seldom the mother of a child but in the same 
 year the other made me the father of a play. I think we had a dozen of 
 each between us, of both of which kinds some died in their infancy, and 
 near an equal number of each were alive when I quitted the theatre.” 
 
 John Taylor, in his Records of My Life , states that his mother told 
 him that she once saw Colley Cibber “ standing at his parlour window (in 
 Berkeley Square), drumming with his hands on the frame. She said he 
 appeared like a calm, grave, and reverend old gentleman.” 
 
 I have said that it is uncertain whether Cibber died in Berkeley 
 Square, and the fact that Dr. Doran 3 says, “In December 1757 I read 
 in contemporary publications that there died at his house in Berkeley 
 
 1 A marble tablet inserted in the wall of the house now indicates the fact that it was for 
 some time Walpole’s town residence. 
 
 2 Wilkins’s Mrs. Fitzherbert and George IV, vol. ii., where there is a chapter devoted to 
 this incident. 
 
 3 Annals of the Stage, vol. ii. pp. 234-5. 
 
12 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Square, Colley Cibber, Esq., Poet Laureate,” might seem to have authority, 1 
 but Dr. Doran is not wholly to be relied on, for further on he states that 
 “ Cibber was carried to sleep with kings and heroes in Westminster 
 Abbey,” which is not the case, as he was not buried in the Abbey at all. 
 
 It was probably, however, in Berkeley Square that Horace Walpole 
 hailed him on his birthday, saying : “ I am glad, Sir, to see you looking so 
 well,” to which Cibber replied : “Egad, Sir, at eighty-four it is well for a 
 man that he can look at all.” Two years later, on the 12th of December, 
 “ his man-servant, who had conversed with him at six o’clock, found him 
 with his face reclining on the pillow quite dead at the hour of nine.” 2 
 
 The present owner, Robert Birkbeck, Esq., informs me that he bought 
 the house, which appears to have been rebuilt in 1825, from the second 
 Lord Brougham in 1868, and twenty years later enlarged it by taking 
 in a portion of the next house, No. 21, the two houses having been joined 
 together in Lord Brougham’s time. 
 
 Next door to Cibber’s house, at No. 21, given in Boyle (1795), as 
 No. 26, lived during the last years of her life, Lady Anne Barnard, 
 daughter of the Earl of Balcarres, who, as Lady Anne Lindsay, is re- 
 membered as the authoress of the song “ Auld Robin Gray,” published 
 in 1772; and she amusingly referred, on one occasion, to the great 
 popularity of that ballad as being exemplified by an exhibition of the 
 ballet of Auld Robin Gray performed under her window in Berkeley 
 Square by dancing dogs ! She was greatly delighted by Sir Walter Scott’s 
 reference to her song in The Pirate , and writing from Berkeley Square 
 to Sir Walter, she asked him to “ convey to the author of tVaverley, 
 with whom I am informed you are personally acquainted, how grate- 
 fully I leel the kindness with which he has so distinguishedly noticed, 
 and by his powerful authority assigned, the long-contested ballad to its 
 real author.” 
 
 The town-house of the Earl of Powis is in Berkeley Square — No. 45. 
 It appears to have been one of the first to be erected here, and with the 
 adjoining one (now Mr. Mildmay’s) was built by Kent. In Boyle (1795) 
 is numbered No. 8 ; it is distinguishable not only by the link-extinguishers 
 which flank the doorway, but also as being one of the few London houses, 
 if not the only one, which bears the name of the owner, not being a 
 
 1 Mr. Wheatley gives, however, his great authority to the statement that Cibber died here. 
 See Wheatley and Cunningham’s London Past and Present. In the Rate Books for 1751, 
 Cibber is given as residing here, and paying ^50 rates. Among other residents also 
 mentioned may be named the Earls of Clarendon, Ancrum, Darnley, Powis, the Duchess 
 of Hamilton, Lady Bell Finch (rated at ,£100), Lords Cornbury and Talbot, and Sir W. 
 Wolseley. 
 
 1 Sequel to Cibber’s Apology. 
 
BERKELEY SQUARE 13 
 
 professional man, on a brass plate on the door itself. The house has, 
 too, another and more sombre claim on attention, for it was here that 
 Lord Clive ended his great career. The man who, as it has been ex- 
 pressed, “could boast that between the ages of twenty-four and forty- 
 four he had saved a province, conquered a kingdom, and substituted in 
 the management of its affairs order for anarchy and justice for violence,” 
 put an end to his life on November 22, 1774. According to his 
 biographer, 1 he had long been used to take large doses of laudanum for a 
 painful internal disorder, and for some days before the end paroxysms of 
 agony had caused him to swallow still larger quantities. It may well, 
 therefore, be supposed that the remedy, while alleviating the pain, pro- 
 duced a mental stupor which caused the loss of all self-control ; while 
 Macaulay reminds us that “ his strong mind was fast sinking under many 
 kinds of suffering.” It must have been some great access of despair 
 which caused one who had done so much and been so great and who had 
 only just completed his fifty-ninth year, to use the razor or penknife with 
 which, according to various accounts, the fatal deed was done. 
 
 Walpole, writing from Arlington Street on November 23rd, thus 
 notices the event : “The nation had another great loss last night — Lord 
 Clive went off suddenly. He had been sent for to town by some of his 
 Indian friends — and died. . . . Lord H. has just been here, and told me 
 the manner of Lord Clive’s death. Whatever had happened it had flung 
 him into convulsions, to which he was very subject. Dr. Fothergill gave 
 him, as he had done on like occasions, a dose of laudanum ; but the pain 
 was so violent, that he asked for a second dose. Dr. Fothergill said ‘ if he 
 took another, he would be dead in an hour.’ The moment Fothergill 
 was gone, he swallowed another, for another, it seems, stood by him, and 
 he is dead.” 
 
 Macaulay, in his remarkable essay on Clive, says : “ In the awful close 
 of so much prosperity and glory, the vulgar saw only a confirmation of 
 all their prejudices, and some men of real piety and genius so far forgot 
 the maxims both of religion and philosophy, as confidently to ascribe the 
 mournful event to the just vengeance of God, and to the horrors of an 
 evil conscience.” “It is,” he adds, “with very different feelings that we 
 contemplate the spectacle of a great mind ruined by the weariness of 
 satiety, by the pangs of wounded honour, by fatal diseases, and more 
 fatal remedies.” No. 45 has been continuously in the possession of Lord 
 Clive’s descendants ever since, and the present owner, the Earl of Powis, 
 has kindly given me this information regarding it. 
 
 1 Malcolm’s Life of Clive. 
 
THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 The house next Lord Powis’s, No. 44, was built by Kent, 1 and 
 finished in 1745, for Lady Isabella Finch, Maid of Honour to Princess 
 Amelia, aunt of George IIP, and the staircase was considered so fine by 
 Walpole that he makes a special mention of it. “ The staircase at 
 Lady Isabella Finch’s in Berkeley Square,” he says, “ is as beautiful a 
 piece of scenery, and considering the space, of art, as can be imagined.” 2 3 
 
 Walpole, who was a frequent visitor here, had ample opportunities of 
 judging of its merits, and one can see for one’s self to-day that his eulo- 
 gium is in no way exaggerated ; it is truly a magnificent bit of work, 
 beautifully proportioned and gracefully decorated. On the first floor 
 landing is a small room masked by a glass screen, which Mr. Godfrey 
 Clark, the present owner, informs me is traditionally known as Lady 
 Betty’s hiding-place, the said Lady Betty — whose identity seems to coincide 
 with that of Lady Betty Finch, who married Mr. Murray, to the satisfaction 
 of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu — being used to watch from here the 
 arrival of guests. The ceiling in the principal drawing-room is the work 
 of Zucchi, and is painted in compartments en grisaille in the most elaborate 
 and effective way ; around the walls are mirrors and satin panels encased 
 in a very original manner by frames formed of small hexagonal pieces 
 of looking-glass — said to be similar to one at Versailles. Among Lady 
 Isabella Finch’s visitors here was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whom 
 we find writing to Lady Pomfret in 1738 and saying, “I passed two very 
 agreeable evenings last week with Lady Bell Finch,” and, as we have seen, 
 Horace Walpole, who on one occasion writes to the Hon. H. S. Conway 
 (June 5, 1764) thus: “We had a funereal loo last night in the 
 
 great chamber at Lady Bel. Finch’s ; the Duke, Princess Emily, and 
 the Duchess of Bedford were there.” Lady Isabella is not of course to 
 be confounded with Lady Charlotte Finch, nee Berkeley, her sister-in-law, 
 who married the Hon. William Finch, second son of the sixth Earl of 
 Winchelsea, and whose name also frequently occurs in letters of the 
 period. 
 
 Four doors off, at No. 48,® once lived Lord Brougham, from 1830 to 
 [834. Two years later we find him at No. 21, which, as we have seen, was 
 formerly the residence of Lady Anne Barnard, where he lived till 1837. 
 
 It was when walking with Lord Albemarle early round the Square, 
 on the day on which he was offered the Lord Chancellorship, that, as 
 
 1 “There was one fine room in this house, the ceiling of which was painted in arabesque 
 compartments by Zucchi ; it is now the residence of C. B. Wall, Esq.” Note by Lord 
 Dover to his edition of Walpole's Letters to Mann, 1833, vol. i. p. 209 
 
 2 A?iecdotes of Painting, vol. iv. 
 
 3 The present occupier of this house, J. B. Fortescue, Esq., informs me that it was once 
 in the possession of the Marquis of Bath. 
 
BERKELEY SQUARE 15 
 
 Charles Gore told Haydon, 1 a packet of letters was brought out. 
 Brougham put all into his pocket except one; “This I must read,” 
 said he to Lord Albemarle ; “ it is from my mother.” He read it and 
 said : “ She advises me against taking the Chancellorship, but to be 
 content and remain member for Yorkshire.” “This,” says Haydon, 
 “ was a fine trait ; ” though whether he refers to Brougham’s anxiety 
 to read his mother’s letter, or to the advice contained in it, is not quite 
 clear. At this time, Brougham was living at No. 5 Hill Street, and it 
 was only on his elevation to the Lord Chancellorship that he took Lord 
 Grey’s house in Berkeley Square in 1830. When he gave it up four years 
 later, Lord Grey’s agent told Haydon that he never saw a house left in a 
 dirtier condition. “ The bedrooms were simply unendurable ; and hidden 
 in the handsome satin curtains in the drawing-room he found a kitchen 
 candlestick, and black-lead for the grates. The furniture was nearly all 
 ruined by ill-usage and neglect, and although Lord Grey gave Brougham 
 two months in excess of his term to move out, it was next to impossible 
 to get him out, and when he went, instead of paying up the arbitrated 
 sum — for he had insisted on ‘ arbitration ’ as to damages — he sent a cheque 
 short of ^15. The cheque was returned and in three days the full amount 
 was sent.” Well might Haydon add that, “ Brougham was certainly 
 wanting in delicate feeling in all the common transactions of life.” 2 
 
 Mr. Justin McCarthy’s estimate of Brougham’s public character would 
 seem to be a commentary on his private life. “To the close of his long 
 career,” says the historian of the Georges, “ he was a commanding figure 
 in the house and in the country, but it was an individual figure, an eccentric 
 figure, whose movements must always excite interest, must often excite 
 admiration, but from whom guidance and inspiration were never to be 
 expected.” 3 
 
 Another interesting person who once lived in the Square 4 was Thomas 
 Hope, the author of Anastasius , an extraordinary work, which has been 
 described as “ uniting the entertainment of a novel with the information 
 of a book of travels.” This work is not the only one left by Thomas 
 Hope, and although it was followed by a still more remarkable produc- 
 tion, On the Origin and Prospects of Man , it is probable that its author is 
 chiefly remembered as the creator of the classic “ Deepdene,” near Dorking. 
 That wonderful house shows what a catholicity of taste characterised its 
 creator, and the varied collection of sculpture contained in it proves that 
 
 1 Table Talk of Haydon , p. 349. 2 Ibid., p. 418. 3 History of the Four Georges. 
 
 * Mr. Hope’s better known London house was the one he built at the corner of Down 
 Street, at a cost of ,£30,000, in 1848-1849; it was sold by Mr. Hope’s son-in-law, the Duke of 
 Newcastle, to the Junior Athenaeum Club. Wraxall mentions dining with Mr. Hope in Berkeley 
 Square on February 10, 1799. 
 
16 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 he was in more than mere name the patron of such men as Flaxman, 
 Thorwaldsen, Chantrey, and Canova. In a letter from Miss Mitford to 
 Miss Jephson the writer pays a tribute to the memory of Mr. Hope. 
 “ Of all the persons I ever knew, I think he was the most delightful. 
 There was a quick, glancing, delicate wit in his conversation such as I 
 never heard before — it came sparkling in, chequering his grave sense like 
 the sunbeam in a forest,” she says. “ He had also (what all people of 
 any value have) great truth and exactness of observation, and said the 
 wisest things in the simplest manner.” 1 
 
 Mr. Hope has the honour — perhaps, considering the way he is 
 mentioned, a questionable honour — of being referred to by Byron in an 
 unpublished stanza to Childe Harold , thus : 
 
 “ . . . that lesser wight, 
 
 The victim sad of vase-collecting spleen, 
 
 House-furnisher withal, one Thomas hight.” 
 
 But he was to be the victim of a far more reprehensible attack, for 
 having in some way offended a French painter named Dubost, that 
 gentleman revenged himself by painting a picture which he called “ Beauty 
 and the Beast,” in which Mr. and Mrs. Hope were represented according 
 to the well-known fairy story. What was worse, the picture was publicly 
 exhibited, drawing, it is said, thirty pounds a day, and on one of these 
 occasions Mr. Hope’s brother thrust his sword through the canvas — a 
 proceeding which caused some noise at the time. 2 
 
 Amongst other notable inhabitants of the Square, I must not forget 
 to mention Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who is said to have died here 3 
 in 1762, after her removal from George Street. Her obituary notice was 
 penned by Horace Walpole, which fact some have considered as the saddest 
 incident attending her end. 
 
 Another great Georgian figure at one time occupied No. 2 5 (subse- 
 quently Thomas’s Hotel and now being rebuilt, the original house dating 
 from 1809), in the person of Charles James Fox, who was living here 
 during the years 1802-3, at which time Mrs. Robinson — the Perdita of 
 the Prince of Wales’s Florizel — was, according to some accounts, residing 
 under the statesman’s protection in the same house. Fox certainly 
 evinced great interest in the abandoned favourite of the Prince of Wales, 
 and when that high personage, on coming of age, refused to pay the 
 £20,000 for which during his infatuation he had given “Perdita” a 
 
 1 Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford. 3 Notes to Lord Byron’s Poems. 
 
 3 Mr. Brimley Johnson says she died in George Street, Hanover Square, on August 21, 
 1762. 
 
BERKELEY SQUARE 17 
 
 bond, the friend of the people procured for her from the pockets of the 
 people an annuity of ^300. 1 
 
 To come to a somewhat later date we find Lord Canterbury, 2 who as 
 Mr. Manners Sutton was at one time Speaker of the House of Commons, 
 residing in the Square. In 1832, Manners Sutton was proposed as 
 Premier, but, according to Charles Greville, at a meeting at Apsley House 
 he “talked such incredible nonsense that when he was gone they all (the 
 Duke of Wellington, Lyndhurst, Baring, Ellenborough, Aberdeen, &c.) 
 lifted up their hands and with one voice pronounced the impossibility of 
 forming any government under such a head.” 3 However, he appears to 
 have made a more successful Speaker, as he was twice elected to that posi- 
 tion before being rewarded with the Peerage, which Greville maliciously 
 hints was his chief aim in life. This honour came to him in 1835, an d ten 
 years later we find him described in the Times as having “ possessed all the 
 advantages of a commanding presence, and that winning grace of manner 
 for which our language affords no precise epithet ” ; while, during his first 
 tenure of the office of Speaker, Lord Folkestone, writing to Creevey, says, 
 “We all like our new Speaker most extremely; he is gentlemanlike and 
 obliging.” 4 
 
 Among Lord Canterbury’s many friends was numbered that extra- 
 ordinary wit and amazing improvisatore, Theodore Hook, they having 
 first met at General Phipps’ (a relation of Hook’s mother) ; indeed they 
 became so intimate, that “ H. B.” makes them, strolling down St. James’s 
 Street arm in arm, the subject of one of his sketches. It was, too, at Lord 
 Canterbury’s house in Berkeley Square that Hook, having lunched at the 
 Freemasons’ Tavern and discussed any number of glasses of punch at “ The 
 Club ” afterwards, was observed to eat very little, and on being asked 
 if he was unwell made his memorable reply : “ Oh no, not exactly, but 
 my stomach won’t bear trifling with, and I was foolish enough to take 
 a biscuit and a glass of sherry by way of luncheon ! ” It was at Lord 
 Canterbury’s that Rogers met Hook for the last time, and saw him, at the 
 end of the reception, marching about the hall, and to the amazement of 
 the servants singing, “Shepherds tell me, have you seen my hat f” 5 
 
 There also resided in Berkeley Square at one time Lord and Lady 
 Clermont, the latter of whom had once been a friend of both Marie 
 Antoinette and Queen Charlotte, and both of whom were on intimate terms 
 
 1 Doran’s Annals of the Stage, vol. iii. p. 171. 
 
 2 Born in 1780 and died in 1845. 
 
 3 Greville’s Diary , 1st series, vol. ii. p. 326. 
 
 4 Creevey Papers, vol. i. p. 272. A notice of Lord Canterbury is contained in the Appendix 
 to the first volume of Madden’s Life of Lady Blessington. 
 
 5 Rogers’s Table Talk. 
 
 B 
 
1 8 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 with George, Prince of Wales, and Mrs. Fitzherbert. The latest biographer 1 
 of this injured woman notices the fact. “Lord and Lady Clermont,” he 
 says, “ were aristocrats of the old school, courtly and dignified in their 
 manners, and with a high sense of noblesse oblige. At their house in 
 Berkeley Square they entertained with stately hospitality. They had the 
 best chef and wines in London, and invitations to the Clermonts’ dinners 
 and assemblies were eagerly sought. The Prince of Wales often dined 
 with them, and so did Mrs. Fitzherbert ” ; while Wraxall notes that the 
 Prince “enjoyed the privilege of sending at his pleasure to Lord Clermont, 
 of commanding a dinner, and naming the persons to be invited of both 
 sexes — a permission of which his royal highness often availed himself.” 
 Notwithstanding his intimacy with the Prince, Lord Clermont was always 
 well received at St. James’s, and this is the more remarkable, as he was also 
 on terms of intimacy with Charles James Fox, whom he used to see much 
 of in Norfolk, where he possessed a country seat at which Fox used to 
 visit for the shooting. It was on one of these occasions that Lord 
 Clermont made the extraordinary bet, for one hundred guineas, with Fox 
 and Lord Foley, that he would find a heifer which would eat twenty stone 
 of turnips in twenty-four hours, a bet which he is said to have won. 2 
 
 It was at Lord Clermont’s house that, in 1780, during the Gordon 
 Riots, the Duchess of Devonshire sought shelter, sleeping during some 
 nights on a sofa in the drawing-room, as Devonshire House was not 
 thought to be safe from the depredations of the mob and was garrisoned 
 by soldiers ; 0 and it was while staying at her mother’s, the Dowager 
 Duchess of Beaufort’s house in Berkeley Square, that the Duchess of 
 Rutland heard of the desperate state of her husband, who was then at 
 Bangor, and who died before she could reach him, 4 on October 24, 
 1787. In 1814, Lord Byron accompanied Miss Hanson, the daughter 
 of Mr. Hanson of Berkeley Square, to church, and gave her away to 
 the Earl of Portsmouth, and subsequently returned to the house, “ con- 
 gratulated the family and bridegroom, drank a bumper of wine (whole- 
 some sherris) to their felicity, and all that, — and came home.” 5 
 
 Smith’s Book for a Rainy Ray — that storehouse of curious informa- 
 tion — reminds us that Mr. Woodhull, the translator of Euripides, which 
 was the first rendering into English of the Greek tragedian, also lived in 
 Berkeley Square. Smith’s description of this personage is amusing. 
 ,c He was very thin, with a long nose and thick lips; of manners perfectly 
 
 * T he late W. H. Wilkins in his Mrs. Fitzherbert and George IV, vol. i. p. 142. 
 
 2 Wraxall, Posthumous Memoirs of My Own Time , vol. ii. p. 358. 
 
 3 Wheatley’s Round about Piccadilly , p. 99. 
 
 4 Wraxall. 
 
 5 Byron’s Diary. 
 
BERKELEY SQUARE 19 
 
 gentlemanly. The great singularity of his appearance arose, perhaps, 
 from his closing his coat from the first button, immediately under his 
 chin, to the last, nearly extending to the bottom of his deep-flap waistcoat 
 pockets. He seldom spoke, nor would he exceed one sixpence beyond 
 the sum which he had put down in his catalogue to give for the articles 
 he intended to bid for, and though he frequently went away without 
 purchasing a single lot, or even speaking to any one during the whole 
 evening, he always took off his hat and bowed low to the company before 
 he left the auction-room.” 
 
 Lady Shelley also lived in Berkeley Square, and it was at her house, as 
 noted in his Recollections , that Rogers heard, on May 8, 1823, from the 
 Duke of Wellington, this interesting reference to Napoleon: “After his 
 Austrian marriage, Metternich was sent to Paris to see him, and to report 
 upon his character, and to discover whether he meant to be quiet. His 
 answer, as he told me, was in three words, ‘ He is unaltered.’ He had 
 then resolved to invade Russia.” 1 
 
 Martha Blount, the friend of Pope, is said to have died in a house in 
 the Square in 1762. If this be so, which is somewhat doubtful, it is 
 curious that the poet himself should have formerly lived within a stone’s- 
 throw, for he, possibly in 1715, resided at No. 9 Berkeley Street, on the 
 eve of his departure for his better-known residence at Twickenham, and 
 here Jesse thinks he may probably have penned his Farewell to London ; 2 
 but I am inclined to think that it was not in Berkeley Square, but in 
 Berkeley Row, Hanover Square, that the friend of the poet breathed 
 her last. 3 
 
 Various as have been the events connected with Berkeley Square, I 
 believe that only on one occasion has a marriage service been performed 
 in it. This has, however, occurred; for at No. 38 — it has been re- 
 fronted and is now a red-brick house — the residence of Lord Rosebery, the 
 fifth Earl of Jersey was married to Lady Sarah Fane, eldest daughter of 
 John, tenth Earl of Westmorland. She was a celebrated beauty, and as 
 we know from the Memoirs and Diaries of the time, a famous leader of 
 fashion for fifty years. At that time No. 38 belonged to Lady West- 
 morland’s father, Robert Child, who had bought it from the Duke of 
 Manchester for ^10,000 in 1767, 4 but became hers the next year, as heiress 
 
 1 Rogers’s Recollections , p. 218. 2 Jesse’s Memorials of London, vol. i. 
 
 3 In Pope’s will, the thousand pounds which the poet left her is bequeathed to “ Mrs. 
 Martha Blount, late of Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square.” Ruffhead, Life of Pope. In the 
 Rate Books for 1725, “ Madam Martha Blount” is given as residing in Berkeley Street, and as 
 her house may have been one at the junction of that thoroughfare with the Square, the mistake 
 of placing her residence actually in the Square may have thus arisen. 
 
 4 Letters of a Lady of the Eighteenth Century , edited by Emily D. Osborn, under date 
 April 1767. 
 
20 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 of the Childs of Osterley, whose name her daughter’s husband, Lord 
 Jersey, subsequently took. This Lady Jersey, who died on January 26, 
 1867, is not to be confounded with Frances, wife of the fourth Earl, and 
 favourite of George IV., who became perhaps the most hated woman of her 
 time in this country. It is a curious fact that Miss Child had eloped from 
 this same house with her future husband, Lord Westmorland, in 1782. 1 
 
 If we take Boyle’s Court Guide for 1795 as a fairly representative 
 list of those who lived in the Square in former days, we find that, 
 besides those before mentioned ; Lord John Cavendish was at No. 2 ; 
 Lady Theodosia ana Capt. Bligh at No. 3 ; the Earl of Camden at No. 
 6 ; the Earl of Darnley at No. 7 ; the Earl of Claremont at No. 9 ; 
 Lord Robert Spencer at No. 10; Lord St. Asaph at No. 11 ; the Hon. 
 Edward Bouverie at No. 24 ; Lord Sondes at No. 34 ; Sir Robert 
 Cotton at No. 36 ; the Dowager Duchess of Manchester at No. 37 ; 
 and Mrs. Vivre at No. 44 ; while at a later day the well-known soldier, 
 Sir Hugh Rose, afterwards Lord Strathnairn, occupied for some years 
 No. 52, now the residence of Montrose Cloete, Esq. 
 
 Although Berkeley Square is essentially a square of private houses, 
 there are yet one or two exceptions, and we find the celebrated Gunters 
 still at No. 7, while Thomas’s Hotel till lately occupied No. 25, and, 
 according to Andrews, 2 Mr. Hutchinson, a linen-draper, whose name 
 with those of others is found attached to a trade hand-bill dated 1788, 
 formerly occupied No. 1. In 1805, we know that the north side was 
 occupied by small tradesmen’s shops. 
 
 The garden in the centre of the Square, the site of which, Mr. Coke 
 told Haydon the painter, was in his recollection an excellent place for 
 snipe, 3 was formerly in a very chaotic state, for in 1766, an Act, which 
 contained a recital that “ the late enclosure is gone to ruin,” and that 
 the inhabitants of the Square were willing and desirous by an adequate 
 contribution among themselves to raise money sufficient for the better 
 paving, lighting, supporting, and keeping the same in repair for the 
 future, was passed, “ for inclosing, paving, cleansing, lighting, and adorning 
 Berkeley Square.” And trustees were duly appointed, and have since been 
 delegated by the freeholders, for the carrying out of the provisions of this 
 Act, and to collect the necessary rates for the maintenance of the Square. 
 
 ' One of the adornments indicated appears to have been an equestrian 
 
 1 See an interesting account of the incident in Walford’s Londoniana. 
 
 2 Anecdotes. In London and its Environs Described , 1761, is given an account running to 
 no less than thirteen pages of a collection of pictures and prints formed by Mr. Barnard at 
 his house in the Square. 
 
 3 Incorrect on the face of it, for Mr. Coke was not born till 1752, by which time practically 
 the whole Square had been finished. 
 
BERKELEY SQUARE 21 
 
 statue of George III. as Marcus Aurelius, 1 which was executed by 
 Beaupre under the direction of Wilton 2 for the Princess Amelia, who 
 had it placed there in 1766, but this was removed in 1827. Allen 
 speaks of “ the clumsy ” pedestal which supported it, while Mason, 
 writing to Walpole, says : “ I congratulate you on your removal to 
 Berkeley Square. May you enjoy the comforts of your new situation 
 as long as the Phidiart work which is placed in the centre of that square 
 continues to be its chief ornament.” 3 
 
 Although the statue has disappeared and has been replaced by a 
 summer-house, a stone statue of a female 4 still remains at the south 
 side of the centre garden ; concerning which a story is told by the 
 late Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff. 5 “Conversation,” says the Diarist, 
 “ found its way, via last night’s discussion in the House about Cromwell’s 
 statue, to open-air statues in London generally, and I said something 
 in praise of the one at the bottom of Berkeley Square. ‘You don’t, I 
 presume,’ remarked Courtney, ‘ agree with Herbert Spencer, who declares 
 that it is superior to the Venus of Milo.’ ‘ Not seriously ? ’ I said. 
 ‘ Most seriously,’ was the rejoinder ; ‘ he would be quite ready to demon- 
 strate the truth to you on the spot.’ ” 
 
 The plane trees in this central garden are said to be the finest and 
 oldest in London, and Hare, in his W alks in London, mentions that they 
 were planted by Edward Bouverie, in 1759. 
 
 I suppose no mention of Berkeley Square would be considered quite 
 complete without a reference to the so-called “ Berkeley Square mystery.” 
 Readers of Notes and Queries will remember that in the 4th, 5th, and 
 6th series of that publication, there appears an exhaustive correspondence 
 on this subject, which is one that has exercised a fascination over many 
 people for a great number of years. A gentleman who signs himself 
 “ J. C. M.,” in reply to two correspondents who desired enlightenment, 
 vouched for the accuracy of the following facts : — 
 
 “ The house in question belonged to an eccentric gentleman, who 
 chose to spend no money on it ; then by degrees began the stories. 
 He died. His sister sent a house-agent to report as to the advisability 
 of repairs, &c., considering the shortness of the then lease.” The agent 
 told J. C. M. that the place was in hideous disrepair. “ He asked the 
 maids if they ever heard strange noises.” They said “ No.” “ Do you 
 ever see ghosts ? ” They laughed. “ We never seed none.” But so 
 
 1 Modern London , 1805, p. 392. 
 
 2 Allen, in his History of London, incorrectly says Wilmot. 
 
 3 Quoted in Wheatley and Cunningham’s London Past and Present. 
 
 4 This, which forms a fountain, was the gift of the Marquis of Lansdowne. 
 
 6 Diary , under date June 15, 1895. 
 
22 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 far from this statement satisfying the curious, it gave rise to a lengthy 
 reply from “ C. C. M.,” who tabulates his answers under three headings, 
 and as these incidentally provide us with some information about the 
 house in question — No. 50, Berkeley Square — it will be interesting to 
 give the substance of them. 
 
 In the first place, we are told that the last name appearing in the 
 London Directory as an occupier of the house is that of the Hon. Miss 
 Curzon, who died in 1859, aged ninety, and from that date till 1880 
 the house had the, at any rate, external appearance of an unoccupied 
 dwelling. There is, too, no doubt about the fact of the late Lord 
 Lyttelton having written to Notes and Queries in November 1872, in 
 these terms : “ It is quite true that there is a house in Berkeley Square 
 (No. 50), said to be haunted, and long unoccupied on that account. 
 There are strange stories about it, into which this deponent cannot 
 enter.” Another investigator thereupon took the trouble to call at 
 the house to make inquiries, and was told that the house was occupied, 
 his informant refusing to say by whom. 
 
 Our next reference is very much of this world, being no less than 
 an application by the collector of taxes at Marlborough Street Police 
 Court against a Mr. Myers, then the occupier, for taxes overdue, 1 for 
 which a warrant was issued. This communication was followed by a mass 
 of correspondence from various people — the most sensational being the 
 story told by Mr. J. F. Meehan of Bath, and incorporated in a letter 
 addressed to Bishop Thirlwall from a correspondent whose name is not 
 given, and dated January 22, 1871. It is a good ghost story, and those 
 interested in such matters will find it in Notes and Queries . 2 
 
 From other sources we learn that on Miss Curzon’s death the house 
 came into the possession of Mr. Todhardy 3 (j/V), who sold it to the Mr. 
 Myers mentioned before. On his death his legatee, Miss Myers, was bed- 
 ridden, and determined during her life to do nothing with the house, 
 which would be quite sufficient to account for its dreary appearance. 
 Subsequently Lord Fitzhardinge sold a reversionary lease to Mr. Fish, the 
 well-known builder. 
 
 The matter was not allowed to die, however, and four further lengthy 
 references, including another “creepy” story, 4 appeared on this subject, 
 which nobody, with the best of intentions, seems to have been able to 
 invest with a sufficient degree of gruesomeness to satisfy some of the 
 correspondents. 
 
 1 Weekly Times, May 4, 1873. 2 Notes and Queries, 6th series, p. 515. 
 
 3 Can this be meant for the late Mr. Tod-Heatlv, who owned so much London property? 
 
 4 Notes and Queries, 6th series, p. in. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
GROSVENOR SQUARE 23 
 
 As a pleasing mystery, which was unintentionally parodied by Miss 
 Broughton, and may have had its genesis in Lord Lytton’s fearful story, 1 2 
 the ghost of Berkeley Square does not seem to have been an unqualified 
 success. 
 
 Although to trespass, as a general rule, beyond the actual limits of the 
 Squares of London would involve me rather in a history of London than 
 in a notice of these particular parts of it, yet Hay Hill is so much an 
 integral part of Berkeley Square, and is besides so closely connected with 
 an historical incident, that I may be pardoned for making it an exception, 
 for here occurred a critical phase in the ill-starred rebellion of Sir Thomas 
 Wyatt against Queen Mary in 1554, a skirmish between the royalist 
 forces and the rebels taking place at this spot. Machyn, in his invaluable 
 Diary , writes : “ Ther the qweyns men and (Wyatt’s) men dyd skryssmys, 
 wher he and ys captayns wher over-cum, thanke be unto God,” and Stowe 
 says : “ Wyat and his companie planted his ordinance upon a hill beyond 
 S. James, almost over against the parke corner, and himselfe after a few 
 words spoken to his soldiers came down the old lane on foote, hard by 
 the court gate of S. James, with foure or five ancients, his men marching 
 in good array.” The outcome of Wyatt’s rebellion is a matter of history, 
 and it is only interesting to us here to note, that after his execution on 
 Tower Hill, “his head was set up on the gallowes on Hay Hill neare 
 Hyde Parke, from whence it was shortly after stolen and conveied 
 
 yy 0 
 
 away. 
 
 GROSVENOR SQUARE 
 
 “ Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare, 
 
 The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city square. 
 
 Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there.” 
 
 Browning. 
 
 Both in size and importance Grosvenor Square may fittingly be described 
 as one of the great squares of London. When formed, indeed, it was 
 intended to throw all other then existing squares into the shade, and 
 
 1 Haunters and the Haunted. In her recently published book of Reminiscences, Lady 
 Dorothy Nevill has an interesting reference to this matter. 
 
 2 Stowe, Chronicles. Machyn adds, “ where dyd hang 3 men in chynes a-pon a stayke.” 
 Walker in his Original , tells also how on one occasion, George, Prince of Wales, and the 
 Duke of York were held up by a highwayman at this spot; and in connection with the Prince 
 a curious tract entitled The Vis a Vis of Berkeley Square, a poem “on the matchless 
 Perdita,” without date, may be mentioned as still to be met with. 
 
24 the SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Malcolm remarks that his readers “ must know that this square is the 
 very focus of feudal grandeur, fashion, taste, and hospitality,” and in 
 a work published in 1786, it is given with Lincoln’s Inn Fields as one of 
 the sights of London, while a writer in 1 805, styles it “ the most magni- 
 ficent square in the Metropolis.” It is essentially the fashionable centre 
 to-day that Soho Square was during the better part of the eighteenth 
 century, and both in extent and grandeur of its houses it leaves that old- 
 world, now almost forgotten, locality far behind it. 1 We cannot conceive 
 the fate of such squares as Russell Square, Bedford Square, or Brunswick 
 Square overtaking it any more than we can contemplate the turning of 
 Berkeley Square into offices or business premises ; but in the ever-tending 
 migration westward, who shall say but that it may not yet undergo a trans- 
 formation as complete as that which has come over Cavendish and Hanover 
 Squares, and become so heterogeneous as to its inhabitants that it will, like 
 them, almost defy logical classification ! 
 
 The author of A Critical Review of the Publick Buildings in London, 
 who is now generally known to have been James Ralph, regards, how- 
 ever, its pretensions with anything but a favourable eye. “ Grosvenor 
 Square,” he writes in 1734, “is not only the last addition which has 
 been made to the town, but the last in situation too ; and ’tis generally 
 understood to be the finest of all our squares. I am sorry I have the 
 opportunity to say it has so few advantages to recommend it. . . . It 
 was meant to be fine, but has miscarried very unfortunately in the exe- 
 cution. There is no harmony or agreement in the parts which compose 
 it ; ” and although he is particularly severe on “ the triple house on the 
 north side,” describing it as “ a wretched attempt at something extra- 
 ordinary,” we must remember that Mr. Ralph could find very little indeed 
 to admire in the whole of his peregrination of London, a peregrination 
 which in one part of his work he deliberately terms “ a painful survey.” 
 
 We are hardly accustomed to think of Grosvenor Square as being one 
 of the older ones, but its history dates so far back as 1695, in which year 
 it was laid out ; and that it must have progressed apace is evidenced by the 
 fact that Pope, writing front Bristol to Martha Blount in 1716, refers to 
 it, in speaking of the sights of Bristol, where he says “ nothing is fine in 
 it but the Square, which is larger than Grosvenor Square.” 2 But it is yet 
 probable that it was some years before it became fashionable, for we find 
 no notice of it, for instance, in the Diary of Lady Cowper (1714-20), 
 
 1 Mrs. Montagu, writing to her sister, in 1744, on the choice of a house, says : “As to the 
 house you mention in Grosvenor Square, I think the fault cannot be in the goodness of the 
 house or situation, for, as I take it, they are all calculated for large fortunes.” Among the 
 various views of the Square may be mentioned those by J. Maurer, 1746, and T. Bowles, 1751. 
 
 2 Pope’s Letters. It is right to add that the date of this letter has been questioned. 
 
GROSVENOR SQUARE 25 
 
 who would probably have mentioned it had it become one of the then 
 restricted localities favoured by the ton. 
 
 The Square was formed by Sir Richard Grosvenor — a mighty builder 
 of that day, indeed “as great a builder as the Duke of Bedford,” 1 who is 
 remembered besides as having acted as cup-bearer at the Coronation of 
 George II. 2 The actual completion of the Square did not take place till 
 1725, when Sir Richard summoned his intending tenants to a “ splendid en- 
 tertainment,” at which the new streets and squares were solemnly named. 3 
 
 The original site of Grosvenor Square is not without its historical 
 importance, for here the rebel citizens in 1641, on the approach of Charles 
 after Edgehill, threw up a redoubt, long known as Oliver’s Mount, from 
 which the present Mount Street takes its name. The actual site of this 
 fortification was that which the central gardens of the Square now occupy. 
 
 The earliest mention we have of any individual house in the Square 
 is in the year 1739, when, according to the Gentleman s Magazine, the 
 centre house on the east side, which had been built by a Mr. Simmons, 
 was raffled for and won by two persons named Hunt and Braithwaite. 
 The possessors valued it at £ 10,000, we learn ; but two months after they 
 sold it to the Duke of Norfolk 4 for £7000. This house occupied ground 
 held by Sir Richard Grosvenor for eighty-four years from 1737, at a ground 
 rent of ^42 per annum ! 5 
 
 Besides this nobleman, we shall find that a great number of important 
 people have lived at one time or another in Grosvenor Square, just as, 
 to-day, the pages of the Directory will show that its reputation in this 
 respect is well maintained. 
 
 An early inhabitant was the notorious rather than celebrated Ermen- 
 gard de Schulemberg, Duchess of Kendal. She, it will be remembered, 
 arranged the interview between the youthful Horace Walpole and his 
 sovereign, so graphically detailed in Walpole’s Reminiscences, and she 
 is there described as “ a very tall, lean, ill-favoured old lady,” which 
 coincides with other accounts of the maitresse en titre at the time. The 
 meeting, as we know, took place in the apartments (at St. James’s Palace) 
 of Lady Walsingham. This lady, known as Melusina de Schulemberg, 
 was the reputed niece of the Duchess, but really her daughter by George I., 
 and she was married in September 1733, to the Earl of Chesterfield, who 
 is ungraciously described by Lord Hervey as being “ very short, dispro- 
 portioned, thick and clumsily made ; with a broad, rough-featured, ugly 
 
 1 Malcolm. 2 He died in 1732. 
 
 3 McCarthy, History of the Four Georges (vol. i. p. 36), who thinks that Grosvenor Square 
 was not commenced till 1716. 
 
 4 The ninth Duke, born 1686, died 1 777. 
 
 5 Old and New London , vol. iv. p. 339. 
 
2 6 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 face, with black teeth and a head big enough for a Polyphemus.” 1 Johnson, 
 however, who, as all the world knows, had no reason to love him, speaks 
 of his manner as being “ exquisitely elegant.” 
 
 On his marriage Lord Chesterfield took the house next door to that 
 of the Duchess of Kendal, and resided here from 17 33 to 1750, having 
 removed from 18 St. James’s Square. We find him writing to Bubb 
 Dodington on September 4, 1741, in these terms: “If the Duke of 
 Argyle sounds to battle I will follow my leader ; if he stays in Oxford- 
 shire, I’ll stay in Grosvenor Square.” 2 It was here, 3 4 5 and not at the better- 
 known Chesterfield House in Mayfair, that Dr. Johnson, as he phrased 
 it in the celebrated letter he addressed to Lord Chesterfield, “waited in 
 your outward rooms or was repulsed from your doors.” The letter was 
 written on February 7, 1755, an d the Doctor explicitly mentions the 
 term of seven years since his ill-usage, which would make the date of 
 it 1749. This is not the only connection of Dr. Johnson with Grosvenor 
 Square, for we are told by J. T. Smith,' 1 that he “once saw him follow a 
 sturdy thief, who had stolen his handkerchief in Grosvenor Square, seize 
 him by the collar with both hands, and shake him violently, after 
 which he quickly let him loose ; and then, with his open hand, give 
 him so powerful a smack on the face, that sent him off the pavement 
 staggering.” 
 
 The neighbourhood of Grosvenor Square was indeed, nearly up to 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century, a happy hunting ground for such 
 depredators, and we have an instance of it given in the Annual Register for 
 June 10, 1777, thus: “ H. E. the Neapolitan Ambassador was attacked 
 in his carriage in Grosvenor Square by four footpads, one of whom 
 presented a pistol to his coachman, two more one to each of the footmen, 
 while the fourth robbed his Excellency of a gold watch and money.” 
 
 We know that this sort of thing continued for a number of years, and 
 as time went on Grosvenor Square might have naturally been considered 
 an advantageous spot by thieves, &c., for it was the last of the squares in 
 London to be lighted by gas, 3 an innovation that had been successfully 
 tried by Winser, in Pall Mall, so early as 1807. 
 
 1 Croker, the editor of Hervefs Memoirs , naturally finds it difficult to reconcile this bitter 
 description with the portraits which are extant, even allowing for flattery on the one hand and 
 hatred on the other. 
 
 2 Wheatley’s London Past and Present , vol. ii. pp. 164-5. 
 
 3 The Whartons, in their Wits and Beaux of Society , think it may have been in the old 
 Chesterfield mansion in Bloomsbury Square, but this is improbable. 
 
 4 Book for a Rainy Day. 
 
 5 This was in the year 1839, and we find Moore in his Diary mentioning a letter he had 
 received from Byng, in which the latter says Are you aware that Grosvenor Square is at 
 length completely lighted with gas?” (vol. vii. p. 254). 
 
GROSVENOR SQUARE 27 
 
 To return to past inhabitants worthy of being recorded, I find by 
 the Rate Books for 1751, the Marchioness of Blandford, the Earl of 
 Halifax, Sir James Dashwood, Lord Guernsey, the Duchess of Somerset, 
 the Countess of Thanet, Lord Maynard, Peter Delm£, Lord Carpenter, 
 probably removed from Hanover Square where he was living in 1725, 
 Dudley North, Lord de la Warr, and the Earl of Jersey all residing here, 
 and all paying rates on rentals varying from £130 to ^iqo. 1 Bishop 
 Warburton came to live in the Square, from Bedford Row, in 1757. 
 A letter of his to Bishop Hurd, in which he says, “We have been 
 here near a week,” fixes the date and indicates his exact residence, for 
 it is dated “ Grosvenor Square, the Parkside, and the last door at the 
 south side, February 7, 1757.” It would appear that another ecclesiastic 
 was once, at least, staying in the Square, for a letter from the Rev. Thomas 
 Newton, afterwards Bishop Newton, to David Garrick, dated Dec. 28, 
 1741, is headed Grosvenor Square. In it, Newton remarks that he 
 is “ to thank you in the name of our company for our entertainment 
 last Wednesday,” which refers to a performance of Richard III. by 
 Garrick. 2 
 
 Here, too, a year later, came Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, a man of 
 great ability, of whom Hervey once said that “ no one could make more 
 of a good cause ” ; he lived to make a great name and to leave a permanent 
 mark on the history of the country, and he died in Grosvenor Square on 
 March 6, 1764, having filled so many high offices that the mere enumera- 
 tion of them would fill a page. 
 
 Two other later Georgian statesmen are connected with the Square. 
 One, Lord Rockingham, whom we shall meet with as having married Miss 
 Bright, of Golden Square, “ was one of those ornaments of the English 
 Senate,” to quote the historian of the Georges, 3 “ for the benefit of whose 
 biographers the adjective ‘ amiable ’ seems especially to have been invented,” 
 and who lived in Grosvenor Square till his death in 1782. The other 
 was Lord North, of whose personality — his equability of temper, which 
 allowed him to meet political reverses with the most smiling good-humour ; 
 his equability of mind, which enabled him to indulge in sleep at the most 
 
 1 Of these I may remind the reader that Lady Thanet, wife of the seventh Earl, was daughter 
 and co-heiress of the second Marquis of Halifax, and sister therefore of the third Marquis, who is 
 also given as residing in the Square at this time, and whom Cumberland describes as graceful 
 in his person, and William Pitt called “ a pretty man.” The Lady Blandford here mentioned was 
 wife of the Marquis who subsequently became third Duke of Marlborough, while the Duchess 
 of Somerset was probably the wife of the eighth Duke, as the word “ Dowager ” is omitted. Lord 
 Maynard was the sixth Baron, and Lord de la Warr the sixteenth Baron, who was created 
 an Earl in 1761, and whom Lord Hervey describes as “long, lank, and awkward.” 
 
 2 Celebrated Friendships , by Mrs. Thomson, vol. ii. p. 243. 
 
 3 Mr. McCarthy, vol. ii. p. 23. 
 
28 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 critical moments — the Diaries and Memoirs of the time contain so many 
 amusing reminiscences. He was Prime Minister from 1770 to 1782, 
 during that eventful time when we lost America, and few ministers have 
 had to undergo so large a share of unpopularity as fell to his lot. But if 
 mistaken and bigoted he was an able man, a characteristic that was not, 
 indeed, to be gathered from his appearance. Horace Walpole 1 has left this 
 little vignette of his outward man : “ Nothing could be more coarse or 
 clumsy or ungracious than his outside. Two large prominent eyes that 
 rolled about to no purpose (for he was utterly short-sighted), a wide mouth, 
 thick lips, and inflated visage, gave him the air of a blind trumpeter . . . 
 yet within that rude casket were enclosed many useful talents.” Not a 
 pleasing portrait; but Butler in his Reminiscences adds that “the word 
 ‘ gentleman ’ was never applied to any person in a higher degree, or more 
 generally, than it was to Lord North,” and Wraxall notes “the sallies of 
 genuine humour with which he always illuminated and often enlightened 
 subjects of parliamentary discussion.” He died in his house in Grosvenor 
 Square, where Wraxall notes having frequently seen him, with Gibbon, 
 who was often a guest, disclosing “the stores of a classic mind, wit, and 
 variety of interesting information,” on August 5, 1792. 
 
 Two years before the death of Lord North, the inhabitants of the 
 Square received a new neighbour of a very different type, for here came 
 to what is now No. 35 — but was then No. 30 — at the corner of South 
 Audley Street, the demagogue, John Wilkes. His latest biographer 2 thus 
 notices the circumstance. “In 1790 he removed from the old, unpre- 
 tending house in Prince’s Court to a more stately one in Grosvenor Square, 
 whence, with unfailing punctuality, he walked into the City to attend 
 to his duties.” And here, says his biographer Almond, “ in a salubrious 
 situation he resided with his daughter during the winter months for 
 several years.” Leigh Hunt puts the matter in a somewhat different 
 form thus : “ Wilkes prospered so well by his patriotism that he main- 
 tained three establishments at one time ; one in the Jsle of Wight, another 
 in Grosvenor Square, where his daughter Mary kept house for him, and 
 a third in Kensington Gore.” 3 But although Leigh Hunt could hardly 
 speak well of any successful man, he might, considering his own opinions, 
 have refrained from the sneer implied in this statement. As a matter of 
 fact Wilkes died insolvent, to the amazement of many who regarded a 
 large house as indicating necessarily a large fortune. 
 
 Angelo in his Reminiscences thus refers to Wilkes’s house in 
 Grosvenor Square. “ Mr. Wilkes removed to the corner of South 
 
 1 Memoirs of George III., vol. iv. p. 78. 2 Mr. Percy Fitzgerald’s Life of Wilkes. 
 
 3 Old Court Suburb , p. 19. 
 
GROSVENOR SQUARE 29 
 
 Audley Street, with one front leading into Grosvenor Square, and the last 
 time I had the honour to meet him was immediately after the Mount 
 Street rioters broke the glass of his parlour windows, which perhaps 
 were the most valuable of any in the world, for the whole of the lower 
 sashes, composed of very large panes, were of plate glass, engraved 
 with eastern subjects in the most beautiful taste. These were naturally 
 the more valued by Mr. Wilkes as they were the ingenious labour of his 
 daughter.” 
 
 Wilkes was taken ill in December of 1797, and after a short struggle 
 for life expired on Christmas Day, 1 meeting death, we are told, “ with 
 exemplary calmness and fortitude,” a characteristic of many strong minds 
 whether they be religious or otherwise. By a provision in his will, he 
 ordained that his body should be carried from his house in Grosvenor 
 Square to the vaults of the church in South Audley Street, where he lies 
 buried, by six poor men. His old house is now the residence of the 
 Duke of Somerset. 
 
 Another shadow of those times comes before us in the person of 
 Henry Thrale, the brewer, an estimable man in every respect, but perhaps 
 best known to us as the husband of Mrs. Thrale and the friend of 
 Dr. Johnson. Mr. Thrale only lived in Grosvenor Square for a short 
 time — but a few months indeed ; for we find Boswell, under date of 
 March 20, 1781, writing : “I found on visiting Mr. Thrale, that he was 
 now very ill, and had removed, I suppose by the solicitations of 
 Mrs. Thrale, to a house in Grosvenor Square.” And on the following 
 4th April, in answer to a call of the Literary Club, Dr. Johnson penned 
 this note, pathetic in its brevity : “ Mr. Johnson knows that Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds and the other gentlemen will excuse his incompliance with the 
 call, when they are told that Mr. Thrale died this morning.” The good 
 Doctor thus mentions the sad loss he then sustained in his Diary : 2 “ Good 
 Friday , April 13, 1781. — On Wednesday 11th, was buried my dear 
 friend Thrale, who died on Wednesday 4th, and with him were buried 
 many of my hopes and pleasures. About five, I think, on Wednesday 
 morning he expired. I felt almost the last flutter of his pulse, and looked 
 for the last time upon the face that for fifteen years had never been 
 turned upon me but with respect or benignity.” 
 
 At No. 8 Grosvenor Square, now occupied by Lord Amherst, re- 
 sided for three years, 1796 to 1799, the Hon. Mrs. Darner. The year 
 after she had taken it, Horace Walpole died leaving her the classic 
 Strawberry Hill, and as we find her subsequently, after resigning Straw- 
 berry Hill to Lord Waldegrave, living at York House, Twickenham, 
 
 1 Almond says on December 26. 2 Boswell’s Johnson , vol. viii. p. 59. 
 
30 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 and also having a town house in Park Lane, it is probable that she had 
 the house in Grosvenor Square merely on a short tenancy and gave it up 
 at the end of that period. 
 
 Another friend of Horace Walpole had many acquaintances and 
 stories to tell of them and their doings in Grosvenor Square ; this was 
 Gilly Williams, whose appearance is known by Sir Joshua’s celebrated 
 picture, in which he figures in company with George Selwyn and the 
 Hon. Richard Edgecumb. Writing to the former, who was then in Paris, 
 in 1763, he tells of a characteristic reply which Lord Berkeley’s brother 
 sent to Sir Charles Banbury “ at Lord Coventry’s in Grosvenor Square,” 
 with regard to the character of a servant. Anon we find him informing 
 Selwyn, in 1766, that “Lord Lisburne had taken an excellent house in 
 Grosvenor Square and will give dinners” ; adding, “ Pray come over and 
 eat them.” That he himself tested their excellence is proved by another 
 communication, in which he says : “ Lord Lisburne has an excellent house 
 in Grosvenor Square, and some of the best old claret I have ever drank ; ” 
 while on December 26th of the same year he writes: “You have 
 
 one enemy less in the world than you had : the Countess of Guildford 
 expired yesterday. It is imagined she has left her estate among the 
 St. Johns, but as the will is not opened yet all is conjecture. Lord Sondes 
 gets a rent charge of ^2000, and the house in Grosvenor Square.” 1 Lady 
 Guildford was the widow of Lord Rockingham — not the Marquis men- 
 tioned before, but Lewis Watson, the second Earl, who died in 1745 ; and 
 the Lord Sondes here spoken of was a son of the first Lord Monson, who 
 took the name of Watson in 1746, in which year Lady Guildford became 
 the third wife of the first Earl of Guildford, and thus stepmother to 
 Lord North, whom I have noticed as also residing in the Square, 
 
 probably in the same house. 
 
 A more tragic interest attaches to another letter in the Selwyn corre- 
 spondence, for Lord Holland writes to Selwyn on May 2, 1770, in 
 answer to a communication from him, thus: “You saw Mr. Delm6 the 
 night before he shot himself. I suppose you took care to see him the 
 
 night after.” 2 This refers to the suicide of Peter Delme, a man of 
 
 fashion who ran through a large fortune and put an end to his life in 
 his house in the Square on April 10, 17 70. 3 
 
 Delme, who had married Lady Elizabeth Howard, sister of Lord 
 Carlisle, was called Peter the Czar, in allusion to his great wealth. I 
 
 1 Jesse’s Selwyn and his Contemporaries. 
 
 2 It is hardly, perhaps, necessary to say that this is an allusion to Sehvyn’s well-known 
 love of viewing dead bodies. 
 
 3 See George Selwyn , by Roscoe and Clergue ; and Selwysi and his Contemporaries. 
 
GROSVENOR SQUARE 3 1 
 
 have said that he committed suicide in 1770, but Anthony Storer (who, 
 by-the-bye, lived in Golden Square), in a letter to Lord Carlisle dated 
 February 28, 1781, writes: “ Delm£ has sold all his hunters, and sold them 
 at very extraordinary prices ; his hounds, too, sold excessively well ; it 
 was fortunate at all events to part with them, but the people who bought 
 them, according to all accounts, were as mad as he had been in keeping 
 them.” This hardly sounds the tone which any one would have employed 
 in recounting an event which had taken place eleven years previously, 
 but the evidence of the dates seems to confirm the correctness of both the 
 period of the tragic circumstance and Storer’s reference to the sale of 
 Delm6’s belongings. 
 
 Among other notable inhabitants of the Square must be numbered 
 William Beckford, who resided at one time at No. 22, where he sur- 
 rounded himself with a collection of magnificent objects only second to 
 his vast accumulations at Fonthill. When Lord Nelson returned after 
 the victory of the Nile, the Hamiltons were staying with Beckford in 
 Grosvenor Square, and the victorious captain was a frequent and honoured 
 guest. 1 
 
 According to Walford, 2 it was here that occurred, on one of these 
 visits, the incident which one would be sorry to regard as characteristic 
 of the great naval captain’s habitual temperament. He was dining with 
 Beckford on one occasion, at a time of great scarcity, when even the very 
 rich denied themselves the use of bread at dinner, and when even such an 
 epicure as William Beckford was content to do without it. Lord Nelson, 
 however, contrary to customary usage, called for bread at dinner, and 
 was told by one of the servants that, owing to the scarcity of wheat, bread 
 was not served at Mr. Beckford’s table ; whereupon his Lordship, looking 
 angry, drew from his pocket a shilling, and calling for his own servant 
 ordered him to go out and buy a loaf, observing that having fought for 
 his bread he thought it hard to be denied it by his own countrymen. 
 
 The house, No. 23, next door to Beckford’s, is notable as having 
 been the scene of the wedding, in 1797, of Lord Derby and the beautiful 
 actress, Miss Farren, 3 who was then living in the neighbouring Green 
 Street. Lord Derby had awaited the death of his first wife for this event, 
 and according to the witty Walpole had been “as constant as the wind.” 
 There was an indecent haste about the whole thing : the first Countess 
 
 1 He was one of the few whom the eccentric owner would consent to receive at Fonthill. 
 
 2 Old and New Lem don, vol. iv. p. 340. 
 
 3 The entry in the Parish Register is as follows : “The Rt. Hon. Edward Smith Stanley, 
 Earl of Derby, widower, and Elizabeth Farren, spinster, married by special licence in the 
 dwelling-house of the Earl of Derby in Grosvenor Square.” Given in Clinch’s Belgravia and 
 Mayfair. 
 
32 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 died on March 14th, Miss Farren took leave of the stage on April 8th, 
 and on May Day was married to the head of the Stanleys. 1 One of Lord 
 Albemarle’s pleasant memories, he tells us, was of a ball given by Lady 
 Derby in Grosvenor Square, 2 in the house which continued to be the town 
 residence of the Derby family until their removal to St. James’s Square, 
 in 1852. 
 
 Although Grosvenor Square cannot be looked upon as a home of 
 artists, one painter did live here in the person of Sir George Beaumont, 
 who resided at No. 29 till 1827, in which year he died. Although a 
 painter and so represented in the National Gallery, which he helped to 
 found, he is chiefly remembered as a connoisseur and art patron. Readers 
 of Haydon’s Diary and Reminiscences will be familiar with his name, and 
 the dispute that that extraordinary man, who seems to have been fated to 
 fail in art and to succeed so admirably in chronicling his failures, had with 
 him. The story of the commission from Sir George, and the subsequent 
 disagreement as to the size of the picture, &c., is set out at great length in 
 Haydon’s Autobiography ; 3 during its progress we find Haydon calling on his 
 somewhat reluctant patron. “ I walked away to Grosvenor Square and 
 found Sir George dressing for dinner, but I was admitted instantly,” he 
 writes. “ I said, ‘ Sir George, I will paint the smaller picture, as you seem to 
 wish it.’ He looked blank, as if he was rather disappointed than pleased,” 
 adds the ingenuous Haydon. “To be sure he looked blank,” chuckled 
 Northcote, on being told of the interview, “ he disn’t want ’ee to paint 
 large or small,” which was probably about the truth, but Haydon was the 
 last man to credit such a thing. However, Haydon was subsequently 
 commissioned to paint a picture, the subject being Macbeth, for Sir 
 George had said in 1807 “he must have a sketch by me,” 4 this being 
 probably on the occasion when Haydon and Wilkie dined in Grosvenor 
 Square, when “ the door opened, and we were marched through a line of 
 servants, who bawled out our names from the entrance.” 5 Had Haydon 
 always attended to Sir George’s sound advice, his life might have been a 
 happier and certainly a less controversial one, for on one occasion his 
 patron wrote him from Grosvenor Square in these terms : “ As your sincere 
 well-wisher I earnestly require you to abstain from all writing except on 
 broad and general subjects, chiefly allusive to your art. If any severe or 
 unjust remarks are made on you or your works paint them down. You 
 can. But if you retort in words, action will produce reaction, and your 
 
 1 See Doran’s Their Majesties Servants, vol. iii. p. 96, et seq., for an account of Miss Farren. 
 
 2 In the Crace collection is a plan of Lord Derby’s house, which was designed by Adam, 
 in 1773. 
 
 3 Vol. i. pp. 136-145. 4 Haydon’s Autobiography , vol. i. p. 136. 
 
 5 Ibid., p. 58. 
 
GROSVENOR SQUARE 33 
 
 whole remaining life will be one scene of pernicious contention ; ” the 
 appropriate nature of these wise words, readers of Haydon's life will 
 realise. Sir George did not, however, live to see the truth of his predic- 
 tion, or the chronic inability of Haydon to follow his advice. On Sep- 
 tember 17, 1827, Haydon has this entry in his journal : “I took my child 
 Frank to-day to see Macbeth at Sir George’s, Grosvenor Square. As we 
 wandered through the deserted gallery and drawing-rooms, I thought, 
 
 ‘ Here have assembled more men of real genius, and more pretenders to it, 
 than in any other room perhaps in Europe.’ ” 
 
 At this house, the corner one in the Square, between Upper 
 Grosvenor Street and South Audley Street, subsequently lived for a 
 number of years Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, known more generally, 
 perhaps, by his former name of Sir Stratford Canning. He was a brother- 
 in-law of Thomas Raikes, having married Miss Harriet Raikes in i 8 1 6 . 
 A great diplomatist, he represented this country successively in Switzer- 
 land, America, Russia, and Turkey, and sat in Parliament from 1828 
 to 1841. He negotiated the treaty of Bucharest in 1812, and was raised 
 to the peerage in 1852. At his house in Grosvenor Square, when at 
 a very advanced age, he produced various literary efforts, and died so 
 lately as 1880, at the great age of 94. 
 
 A near relation of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe’s in the person of Earl 
 Canning, the third son of George Canning, was living, in 1841, at No. 10 
 Grosvenor Square, with Lord Granville (then Lord Leveson). Lord Canning 
 is remembered as Governor-General of India from 1855 to 1862, in which 
 latter year he died ; and I find in Henry Greville’s Diary , under date of 
 June 17th of that year, the following entry referring to the circumstance : 
 “At 11 at night Sydney and I went to Grosvenor Square, where we heard 
 that during the last three hours he (Canning) had made so great a rally that 
 some of his family entertained hope, which, however, the doctors con- 
 sidered illusory. This morning Meryon called to tell me that at 6 a.m. 
 this morning he expired.” 1 
 
 The name of the other joint occupant of the house, Lord Granville, 
 is still a household one among politicians of all opinions, as an exempli- 
 fication of tact and urbanity ; and the Life of Lord Granville which Lord 
 Edmund Fitzmaurice has recently written bears out to the full these 
 amiable characteristics, and shows at the same time the strength of 
 character which underlay them — the iron hand within the velvet glove ! 
 
 Next door, at No. 9, another statesman who, as our Ambassador to 
 many countries, merited a similar designation, Lord Dufferin, was living in 
 1866, and here the present holder of the title was born. Lord Haversham, 
 1 Henry Greville’s Diary , 4th series, p. 56. 
 
 C 
 
34 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 who now occupies the house, informs me that Lord Cowper, who in- 
 habited it till 1882 (in which year Lord Haversham succeeded him here), 
 bought the panelling of the dining-room in Paris at an auction, it 
 having been removed from the Hotel de Finances to escape destruction 
 during the Commune. Part of it was removed to Lord Cowper’s sub- 
 sequent residence in St. James’s Square, and the rest remains in silu. 
 
 A few doors off No. 9, at No. 6, once resided Mr. Joseph Neeld, M.P., 
 and here he formed that magnificent collection of pictures with which his 
 name is associated. Mr. Neeld was a millionaire — when such were not so 
 common as they appear to be in these days. The foundation of his vast 
 wealth was the property left him by his uncle Philip Rundell, the wealthy 
 goldsmith of Ludgate Hill, who died in 1827, at the age of eighty-one. 
 Although possessed of riches, Rundell had not married, nor indeed had a 
 regular home of his own, but lived alternately with two nieces — one at 
 Brompton, and the other the wife of John Bannister the actor. His eldest 
 son inherited £10,000, and Bannister himself £5000, but the residuary 
 legatee was Joseph Neeld, who came into something over £1,000,000. 
 
 Gronow tells a story of the latter which would seem to show that 
 Neeld did not always carry his good fortune as gracefully as might have 
 been expected. It appears that Lord Alvanley had been invited to dine 
 with him, and before dinner his host was expatiating on the merits and 
 beauty, and particularly the cost, of the many pictures and articles of virtu 
 with which the rooms were crowded. This form of monologue was con- 
 tinued when the guests entered the dining-room ; and Neeld was just 
 describing the gilding of the room and the money expended on it, when 
 the mutton was brought in. Lord Alvanley, who had been intensely bored 
 for some time, hereupon broke out with : “ I care not what your gilding 
 cost, but, what is more to the purpose, I am anxious to make a trial of 
 your carving, Mr. Neeld, for I am exceedingly hungry ! ” Gronow com- 
 placently adds that the nouveau riche was rather astonished, but that his 
 anxiety to form a circle of aristocratic acquaintances obliged him to let it 
 pass without notice. To the plain man it would seem a difficult matter 
 to discriminate as to whether the host or his guest showed the greater 
 want of taste. 
 
 At No. 24, in the Square, the late Earl of Shaftesbury, whose name 
 has become a synonym for philanthropy, lived for more than thirty years — 
 the same house is given in Boyle’s Court Guide for 1795, as the residence 
 of the Dowager-Countess of Shaftesbury; and at No. 35 lived for a short 
 time, from 1838, the well-known theologian, Edward Bouverie Pusey, with 
 his mother, Lady Lucy, after the death of his wife, on account of whose pre- 
 carious health he had come to stay in London in order to be near the best 
 
GROSVENOR SQUARE 3 5 
 
 medical advice. The connection of Pusey with the Tractarian movement 
 is too well known to need amplification here ; but mention may be made 
 of the fact that Baron Bunsen was a frequent guest here, as he continued 
 to be in Hertford Street, whither the Puseys moved in April 1839. 
 
 If Grosvenor Square has not been particularly connected with the art 
 of painting, it can certainly boast, in a one time inhabitant, an illustrious 
 exponent of that of writing, for here once resided the great Lord Lytton. 
 It was his last abode in London, and the house he selected was No. 12, 
 on the north side of the Square. In that house, which is not, of course, 
 identical with the No. 12, now in the occupation of J. Pierpont Morgan, 
 Esq., with its early Georgian front and its characteristic pillar supports, 
 the novelist produced, not perhaps the greatest, but certainly one of the 
 most brilliant of his many works, for here he wrote The Coming Race. 
 He spent the last five years of his life in Grosvenor Square, having 
 come there in 1868, two years after he had been raised to the peerage, 
 and dying in 1873, at Torquay; his funeral taking place from his London 
 residence. 
 
 Another one time resident, who, although not a literary man, is re- 
 membered now-a-days chiefly by his entertaining Journal , was Thomas 
 Raikes, the brother of the more justly celebrated Robert Raikes. Raikes, 
 who was called by the club wits of the day, Apollo, because he rose in the 
 east and set in the west, in allusion to the hours he spent alternately in 
 his banking-house in the City and the clubs of the West-end, was in the 
 habit of entertaining here, not only merely fashionable people, but such 
 brighter luminaries as Pope and the elder Charles Mathews, the actors, 
 Tom Sheridan, the son of the great Richard Brinsley, Charles Calvert, &c. 
 Indeed the first time Raikes ever met Mathews was when Pope once 
 brought him to dinner in Grosvenor Square, when, as Raikes records, “ his 
 imitations of Kemble, Munden, Bannister, Quick, &c., were inimitable.” 
 It was on this occasion that Pope (I will give the story in Raikes’s own 
 words) “ alluded to some old gentleman in the country, who was so madly 
 attached to the society of Mathews, that whenever he came to town he 
 went straight to his house, and if he did not find him at home, would 
 trace him, and follow him wherever he might happen to be. This did 
 not excite much attention ; but at about nine o’clock, we all heard a 
 tremendous rap at the street door, and my servant came in to say that a 
 gentleman was in the hall, who insisted on speaking with Mr. Mathews. 
 The latter appeared very much disconcerted, made many apologies for 
 the intrusion, and said he would get rid of him instantly, as he doubtless 
 must be the individual who so frequently annoyed him. As soon as he 
 had retired, we heard a very noisy dialogue in the hall between Mathews 
 
3 6 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 and his friend, who insisted on coming in and joining the party, while the 
 other as urgently insisted on his retreat. At length the door opened, and 
 in walked a most extraordinary figure, who sat down in Mathews’ place, 
 filled himself a tumbler of claret, which he pronounced to be execrable, 
 and began in the most impudent manner to claim acquaintance with all 
 the party, and say the most ridiculous things to every one. We were all, 
 for the moment, thrown off our guard ; but we soon detected our versatile 
 companion, who had really not taken three minutes to tie up his nose with 
 a string, put on a wig, and otherwise so metamorphose himself, that it was 
 almost impossible to recognise him.” 1 
 
 When Raikes was in Paris in 1820, he was induced by John Warrender 
 to visit a fortune-teller, who, among other predictions, said, “ Vous serez 
 arrete dans six mois par un huissier pour cause de dette.” This was 
 verified in the following way. “ I was then in very prosperous circum- 
 stances,” says Raikes, “living in Grosvenor Square. The repairs of that 
 house had been performed by contract, the builder failed before his work 
 was concluded, and the assignees claimed of me the whole amount of the 
 agreement, which I would only pay as far as it had been fairly earned. The 
 difference was only ^150, but the assignees really did send a bailiff into 
 my house, and arrested me, while my carriage was at the door to convey 
 me to dinner at York House, where the story caused considerable merri- 
 ment at the time.” 
 
 Among other bygone residents in the Square I can trace Sir Lionel 
 Darell (to whom it will be remembered George III. gave a piece of ground 
 adjoining Ancaster House, Richmond Park), 2 who is given in a Directory 
 for 1798, as a Director of the East India Company, and as living here; 
 and the Countess of Pembroke, who occupied No. 44 ; and in the New 
 Review of London for 1728, are given the names of the Earl of Hertford 
 and Lord Bernard as residents here, while I find Sir Edward Jerningham 
 writing to his sister Charlotte in 1785, and dating the letter from Gros- 
 venor Square. The Hon. Edward Petre, a friend of Lord William Pitt 
 Lennox, who mentions him in his Reminiscences , also had a house here ; 
 and in 1838, Hayward records an invitation to dine with the Brinsley 
 Sheridans, who were then living in the Square. 
 
 I have left the notice of Lord Harrowby’s house, No. 44, till the 
 last, but it is probably the most interesting mansion in Grosvenor Square, 
 for, from its connection with a well-known incident, it hangs on to the 
 skirts of history. In 1820, it was numbered 39, the renumbering of the 
 houses on the west and south side of the Square having taken place in 
 
 1 Raikes’s Diary , July 9, 1835. 
 
 2 See the author’s History of Richmond, pp. 204-5. 
 
GROSVENOR SQUARE 37 
 
 1888 ; and at No. 39, the Cato Street conspirators hoped to make a holo- 
 caust of the whole of the Ministers of the Crown, who were to dine there 
 with Lord Harrowby — then Lord President of the Council — on February 
 23, 1820. 
 
 As readers of the history of the period know well enough, this was a 
 time of much popular discontent, and the moment was seized by one 
 Arthur Thistlewood— who had previously suffered conviction for sending 
 a challenge to Lord Sidmouth, and was a man “full of blood and fury” — 
 to gather around him a band of ruffians as desperate as himself, and to 
 concert plans almost emulating the attempt associated with the name of 
 Guy Fawkes, and, had they been successful, almost as far-reaching in their 
 effects as the Gunpowder Plot. 
 
 The conspirators were accustomed to meet in a house in Gray’s Inn 
 Lane, and their deliberations seem to have been known to two Government 
 spies, Oliver and Edwards. At this time their plan was to assassinate the 
 Ministers individually in their own houses, but finding probably that 
 such a course would lay their scheme open to frustration before they 
 had completed it, they changed their methods, and the arrangement for the 
 dinner at Lord Harrowby’s having come to their knowledge, the venue 
 was altered. Their subsequent meeting, at which they put the finishing 
 touches to their nefarious scheme, took place in Cato Street, Edgware 
 Road, in the loft of a stable belonging to General Watson. The larger 
 of the two rooms into which the loft was divided accommodated at one 
 time, it is said, no less than twenty-four conspirators. 
 
 Their plan was as follows. Some of the desperadoes were to watch 
 No. 39 at a convenient distance, while one of their number was to call at 
 the house and deliver a despatch-box, and when the door was opened the 
 others were to rush in and murder the Ministers as they sat at dinner ; and 
 their further atrocious purpose was to bring away the heads of Lord 
 Sidmouth and Lord Castlereagh, at whom the conspiracy was chiefly 
 directed, as trophies of their success, in two bags provided for the purpose. 
 Further depredations were in view with the help of the people who, they 
 calculated, would rise as in revolutionary Paris, at the sight of the 
 mangled remains of their oppressors ! Greville states, indeed, that the 
 conspirators intended firing a rocket from Lord Harrowby’s house as 
 soon as their dastardly deed was accomplished, as a signal to their friends ; 
 an oil shop was then to have been set on fire to add to the confusion and 
 to collect a mob, and then the Bank was to be attacked and Newgate 
 thrown open. The plot was revealed by Edwards, who had wormed himself 
 into the confidence of Thistlewood and his confederates, and information was 
 given to those concerned. It was, however, decided that no outward notice 
 
38 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 should be taken of the fact , 1 and the preparations for the dinner went on 
 as if nothing was anticipated. This wise resolution also seems to have 
 suggested itself to Lord Lyndhurst, then Solicitor-General, who thought 
 it the best means of effecting the capture of the conspirators. Lord 
 Eldon, we are told, exclaimed on hearing this advice, “You won’t be there ! 
 I strongly object to the dinner taking place.” 2 However, Lord Eldon 
 was overruled, and as if to help in the deception, it so happened that 
 the Archbishop of York, who lived next door, was also giving a dinner 
 party on the same evening, and the spies of the conspirators being deceived 
 by the carriages setting down the guests, reported the fact in Cato Street, 
 and added that “ all was well.” Thistlewood and his gang thus lost the 
 time in which, had they known the true state of the case, they might 
 have effected their escape, and the Bow Street officers, headed by their 
 leader Smithers, came upon them while they were arming themselves by 
 the light of two or three candles. The ascent to the loft was by a ladder, 
 and on Smithers appearing at the top of it and trying to seize Thistlewood 
 he was run through the body and fell ; 3 the lights were extinguished, and 
 in the confusion Thistlewood and some of his companions escaped out of 
 a back window. Nine of the conspirators were, however, taken the same 
 evening with arms upon their persons, and Thistlewood himself was 
 apprehended before eight o’clock the next morning at a house in White 
 Street, Little Moorfields. The whole gang were sent to the Tower ; 4 
 Thistlewood and four of his chief confederates being subsequently hanged, 
 five others transported for life, while one was pardoned. 
 
 Lord Harrowby’s house is connected with another stirring event, the 
 news of the battle of Waterloo. An interesting account of the incident is 
 given by Lord Stanhope , 5 who received it from Arbuthnot, who was sitting 
 in his room at Downing Street, on his return from the House of Commons, 
 when he heard a commotion in the street below, and going down to 
 ascertain the cause of it, saw a chaise and four at the door of the Colonial 
 Office, with a number of French standards sticking out of the windows, 
 and Percy, who had brought them, inquiring for Lord Bathurst. Arbuthnot 
 happened to know that Lord Bathurst was dining with the other members 
 of the Cabinet at Lord Harrowby’s in Grosvenor Square, so he got into 
 the carriage with Percy and drove there. On their arrival the sight of the 
 
 1 This was due to the Duke of Wellington’s advice. See the interesting account of the 
 whole incident told by himself and included in Lady de Ros’ Retniniscences, p. 160 et seq. 
 
 2 Sir W. Fraser’s Disraeli and His Day , p. 73. 
 
 3 There is a well-known and curious contemporary coloured print of the incident, by 
 Cruikshank. 
 
 4 They were the last persons imprisoned there. 
 
 5 Notes of Conversatio?is with the Duke of Wellington. 
 
GROSVENOR SQUARE 39 
 
 trophies caused a large crowd to collect, and Arbuthnot went out to the 
 head of the staircase, by direction of Lord Bathurst, to make known the 
 great news. He is said to have announced the total destruction of the 
 French army, when Lord Harrowby, in his usual critical way, corrected 
 him by saying : “ Not exactly. I think you are going a little too far.” 
 
 The whole of Grosvenor Square covers about six acres, and the central 
 garden is of considerable extent. It was laid out by the celebrated Kent, 
 and in the middle of it formerly stood the gilt statue of George I. by Van 
 Nost, 1 which Sir Richard Grosvenor erected in 1726, practically on the 
 spot where the redoubt known as Oliver’s Mount was formed during the 
 Civil Wars, as we have seen. A view of the Square reproduced in Strype’s 
 edition of Stow, 1755, in which it is called Grosvenor Square, shows the 
 circular garden, railed in with wooden palings, and the equestrian statue 
 standing on a square grass plot, with flower-beds around, which is practi- 
 cally identical with the smaller plan by Rocque, 1741-45 ; while Pollard’s 
 later view of 1787, shows only a portion of the Square in perspective. 
 
 Some months after the statue had been placed in the garden, “ some 
 villains dismembered it in the most shameful manner,” according to Allen, 2 
 “ and affixed a traitorous paper to the pedestal.” Every effort was made 
 by Sir Richard Grosvenor to bring the perpetrators of the deed to justice ; 
 in fact he offered a reward of ^100 3 for their apprehension, but they were 
 never discovered. The statue has long been removed, and its site is 
 occupied by a summer-house. 
 
 As in other of the older London squares, specimens of the old link 
 extinguishers can still be seen in Grosvenor Square. Apropos of the link- 
 boys of a bygone day, it is possible that some of the depredations on 
 unwary pedestrians and others, committed in Grosvenor Square, may have 
 been due to their instrumentality, or at least connivance, if we are to 
 believe the poet Gay, who in his Trivia gives this necessary warning : — 
 
 “ Though thou art tempted by the linkman’s call, 
 
 Yet trust him not along the lonely wall ; 
 
 In the mid-way he’ll quench the flaming brand, 
 
 And share the booty with the pilfering band.” 
 
 Looking at Grosvenor Square to-day, it is difficult to imagine it 
 as surrounded by meadow land, as it was about 1706, when Colley Cibber 
 could write in his Apology of the “ green fields of pasture, from whence 
 little or no sustenance could be drawn, unless it were that of a milk diet ” ; 
 
 1 In the Daily Journal for August 17, 1726, the erection of the statue is mentioned. 
 
 2 History of London. 
 
 3 See London Gazette for March 14-18, 1726. 
 
4 o THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 but if we glance at the pages of Boyle’s Court Guide for nearly a century 
 (1795) later, we shall find no difficulty in endorsing Malcolm’s description 
 of the Square as being “ the very focus of feudal grandeur, elegance, and 
 fashion.” As representing the inhabitants of a century ago, it may be 
 interesting to give the names of those who were then living here. I 
 would premise this list by reminding the reader that about ten years since 
 all the houses, with the exception of those on the east side, were re- 
 numbered, and therefore only those from No. 1 to No. 8, are identical 
 with the old numbering : — 
 
 No. 
 
 1. Sir Richard Heron. 
 
 No. 
 
 22. Marquis of Abercorn. 
 
 55 
 
 2. The Duke of Leeds. 
 
 55 
 
 23. Earl of Derby. 
 
 
 3. Earl Sydney. 
 
 55 
 
 26. Lady Heathcote. 
 
 55 
 
 4. Earl Fitzwilliam. 
 
 55 
 
 27. William Jennins, Esq. 
 
 >> 
 
 5. The Duke of Beaufort. 
 
 55 
 
 28. William Egerton, Esq. 
 
 55 
 
 6. Lady Anne Connolly. 
 
 55 
 
 29. Sir George Beaumont. 
 
 55 
 
 7. Lady Penrhyn. 
 
 55 
 
 30. John Wilkes, Esq. 
 
 55 
 
 8. Hon. Mrs. Darner. 
 
 >5 
 
 31. Earl of Jersey. 
 
 55 
 
 9. Hon. Robert Petre. 
 
 55 
 
 32. Richard Benyon, Esq. 
 
 55 
 
 xo. Dowager Duchess of Beaufort. 
 
 55 
 
 33. Sir H. G. Althorpe. 
 
 55 
 
 1 1. Mrs. Allanson. 
 
 55 
 
 35. Sir Joshua Vanneck. 
 
 55 
 
 12. Mrs. Knightley. 
 
 55 
 
 36. Lady Manners. 
 
 55 
 
 13. Mrs. Hopkins. 
 
 55 
 
 37. Mrs. Grosvenor. 
 
 r> 
 
 14. Colonel Egerton. 
 
 55 
 
 38. Dowager Lady Dashwood. 
 
 55 
 
 15. William Drake, Esq. 
 
 5) 
 
 39. Earl Grosvenor. 
 
 55 
 
 16. Viscount Courtney. 
 
 55 
 
 40. Dowager Countess of Ayles- 
 
 55 
 
 18. Paul Benfield, Esq. 
 
 
 ford. 
 
 55 
 
 19. The Earl of Leicester. 1 
 
 55 
 
 41. Lord Grimston. 
 
 55 
 
 20. Edward Dawson, Esq. 
 
 55 
 
 42. Hon. Percy Wyndham. 
 
 55 
 
 21. Dowager Duchess of Chandos. 
 
 55 
 
 43. Christopher Bethell, Esq. 
 
 In 1875, I find Mrs. Arabin living at No. 36, and Lord Sandon, 
 eldest son of Lord Harrowbv, at No. 40 ; while to-day Sir Howard 
 Vincent is at No. 1, the Duke of Portland at No. 3, Earl Fitzwilliam 
 at No. 4, the Dowager Duchess of Manchester at No. 5, Lord Farquhar 
 at No. 7, Sir Arthur Hayter at No. 9, Col. Ralph Vivian at No. 15, 
 the Italian Embassy at No. 20, Lord Strathcona at No. 28, the Marquis 
 of Bath at No. 29, Lord Calthorpe at No. 38, Lord Durham at No. 39, 
 Sir Charles Tennant (till his death recently), at No. 40, and Sir Ernest 
 Cassell at No. 41. 
 
 Of those named several have at various times been elected Trustees 
 
 1 As helping to identify in some way the old and new numbering, I may mention that 
 Horwood, in his plan of 1792, gives Lord Leicester’s house as being the corner one at the 
 west end of the north side of the Square, now No. 21. 
 
GROSVENOR SQUARE 41 
 
 for the Square: thus in 1884, we find Sir Charles Tennant so acting; in 
 1894, Lord Calthorpe ; in 1896, the Duke of Portland; in 1900, the 
 Duke of Somerset and Lord Farquhar ; in 1902, Lords Durham and Bath ; 
 and in 1904, Lord Fitzwilliam, in addition to various other noblemen 
 and gentlemen. The present garden committee consists of Sir Howard 
 Vincent, Lord Newlands, and Col. Ralph Vivian. 1 
 
 1 I am indebted to Sir Howard Vincent for giving me information on these and kindred 
 matters. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CAVENDISH SQUARE 
 
 “ I must breathe some vital air 
 If any’s to be found in Cavendish Square.” 
 
 B Y a plan of the Marylebone Estate taken in 1708, when it 
 was purchased by the Duke of Newcastle — “ the black ruddy 
 complexioned man,” 1 who married Lady Margaret Cavendish, 
 heiress of Henry, second Duke of Newcastle, and thus joined 
 the Holies and Cavendish lines 2 — we see that the ground 
 which Cavendish Square now occupies was then surrounded by fields 
 on all sides. To the north were the Clay Pits, covering nearly twelve 
 acres, now intersected by Wimpole Street, and the Ten Acres, on the 
 site of which Langham Place to-day stands ; to the west, Mill Hill 
 Fields (about eleven acres); to the east, Burgesses’ Farm of thirty- 
 three acres, on what is now the north end of Regent Street ; and to 
 the south, the House Field, between Old Cavendish Street and Holies 
 Street. But although this estate had been purchased in 1708, it was not 
 till about seven years later that the plan for its proposed development was 
 prepared. In that plan the site of Cavendish Square is seen to be crossed 
 by a pathway which ran from a cottage at the corner of Princes and 
 Oxford Streets, in a north-westerly direction, through the Clay Pits past 
 a building called the Water House, to a cottage close by, about where 
 Marylebone and Thayer Streets join. 3 About two years later (1717), 
 the Square was actually laid out, and the central garden enclosed with 
 a low wall surmounted by wooden railings, and planted with shrubs ; 
 but although this was done, the building of the surrounding houses 
 proceeded but slowly. Nevertheless the elaborate plan published in 1719, 
 and entitled “ A Design of Buildings already begun to be built in ye 
 Parish of St. Mary la Bonne, Belonging to the Rt. Hon. Edward Lord 
 
 1 Macky. 
 
 2 He was originally John Holies, son of the third Earl of Clare, and had been created 
 Duke of Newcastle in 1692. 
 
 3 Known then as Lovers’ Walk. 
 
 42 
 
CAVENDISH SQUARE. 
 

 
 
CAVENDISH SQUARE 43 
 
 Harley 1 and ye Rt. Hon. Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holies Harley,” 
 shows how complete was the scheme of development, and fully enlightens 
 us as to what an impetus to this parish was given by it, enabling us to 
 realise how, as Maitland and Lambert both state, the increase of houses 
 from 577 in 1739, to 9000 in 1806, was effected. 
 
 As an elaborate list of distances from Cavendish Square and various 
 other squares, as well as St. James’s Palace and Westminster Hall, is 
 given on this plan, it is obvious that it was intended to proceed with 
 building operations, but unfortunately the bursting of the South Sea 
 Bubble in 1720, 2 seems to have interfered with the design; indeed in 
 the map by Sutton Nicholls dated 1754, the Square is shown as standing 
 practically isolated amidst the fields to the north of Oxford Street ; 
 and as a further proof of the rural nature of this part of London at 
 that period, I may remind the reader that Mr. Coke, in 1832, told 
 Haydon that he remembered a fox being killed in what is now Cavendish 
 Square — a much more probable story than his assertion that the site of 
 Berkeley Square was within his recollection a capital place for snipe ! 3 
 
 The Square appears to have been first called indiscriminately Caven- 
 dish and Oxford, Square (although in the plans mentioned it is uniformly 
 given as the former), and Ralph in his Critical Review is consequently 
 uncertain which to term it, “ but,” says he, in his usual lugubrious tone, 
 “ whichever name we choose, we shall see the folly of attempting great 
 things before we are sure we can accomplish little ones. Here it is the 
 modern plague of building was first stayed ; and I think the rude, un- 
 finished figure of this project should deter others from a like infatuation.” 
 “I am morally assured,” he adds, “that more people are displeased at 
 seeing this Square lie in its present neglected condition than are enter- 
 tained with what was meant for elegance or ornament in it.” There 
 was no pleasing the critical Ralph, who might have remembered that 
 ruin little short of national was the chief cause of the interruption of 
 building operations. 
 
 According to Wallace, 4 in order to induce the builders to take up 
 leases, a chapel as well as what was known as Oxford Market were 
 projected for the convenience of the new inhabitants. These buildings 
 were designed by Mr. Gibbs, and were finished so early as 1724; the 
 
 1 He, a son of the great Harley, had married Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holies, heiress of 
 John, Duke of Newcastle, who had purchased the estate in 1708. 
 
 2 In this year the name of Cavendish Square, although incomplete, appears on the general 
 maps of London (Pennant). Of later views of the Square, mention may be made of the print by 
 T. Malton, showing the north side, and dated 1800 ; and of the west side by J. P. Malcolm, 
 dated 1808 ; while another of the north side by the latter engraver appeared in 1815. 
 
 3 Haydon’s Table Talk, vol. ii. p. 360. 4 London , 1810. 
 
44 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Market, however, was not opened till 1732, in consequence of the opposi- 
 tion of Lord Craven, who feared that it would prejudicially affect the 
 profits of Carnaby Market. 
 
 The first house to be completed in the Square was Harcourt House, 
 No. 15, according to the original numbering, which occupied until quite 
 recently the centre of the west side. This was erected by Benson, Lord 
 Bingley, whose widow, once Lady Elizabeth Finch, eldest daughter of 
 Heneage, Earl of Aylesford, was the subject of one of Horace Walpole’s 
 epigrams, 1 in 1722-23, and whose name appears in the Rate Books for 
 the year 1730, &c. According to the author of London and its Environs 
 Described (1761), a Mr. Lane succeeded Lord Bingley in the tenancy of 
 the house, but his name does not appear in the Rate Books for 1732 or 
 1735, in which former year Simon, Earl of Harcourt, who had been living 
 previously in the Square in a smaller house which he had built on the 
 east side, bought the place, and I find his name given simply as “ Harcott,” 
 in the Rate Books for 1732, while in those for three years later he and 
 Lady Harcourt are given as living in separate houses, and in 1738, Lady 
 Harcourt is alone mentioned as residing in the Square. 
 
 Harcourt House was enlarged and greatly improved by Lord 
 Harcourt’s grandson and successor in the title, whom Walpole calls 
 “ civil and sheepish,” and who had been selected to act as Governor to 
 George, Prince of Wales, in succession to Lord North. He subsequently 
 filled the more important posts of Ambassador in Paris in 1768, and Lord 
 Lieutenant of Ireland in 1772, although, according to Wraxall, 2 he was 
 “ too grave and reserved in his manners to acquire general attachment in 
 Ireland.” Harcourt House subsequently passed into the possession of the 
 Duke of Portland. 3 Its gloomy, almost monastic appearance, with its 
 high walls inviting the utmost seclusion, enable us for once to agree with 
 the author of The Critical Review of London Houses , when he calls it “ one 
 of the most singular pieces of architecture about the town, rather like a 
 convent than the residence of a man of quality, a copy of one of Poussin’s 
 landscape ornaments than a design to imitate any of the genuine beauties 
 of building”; and we cannot agree with Angelo 4 that “it presents, with 
 its high court-walls and porte-cochere, more the appearance of a Parisian 
 Mansion than any other house in London.” The original design for 
 the house is now in the Crowle Pennant ; it is described as drawn by 
 
 1 See Letters to Matin, vol. ii. p. 453. 2 Historical Memoirs. 
 
 3 The second Duke of Portland, said to have been the handsomest man in England, who 
 died in 1762, married Lady Margaret Cavendish Harley, heiress of Edward, second Earl of 
 
 Oxford, who, we have seen, succeeded to these estates through his wife, who was heiress of the 
 Duke of Newcastle who purchased the property in 1708. 
 
 4 Quoted by Timbs in his Curiosities of London. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
ESTATE. 
 
CAVENDISH SQUARE 45 
 
 Mr. Archer, but built and altered to what it now is, by Edward Wilcox, 
 Esq., this referring to the alterations made by the second Lord Harcourt. 
 
 It is probable that more legendary tales have clustered around those 
 gloomy walls than around any other private dwelling in town. Some of 
 this was due to the eccentricities — greatly exaggerated — of the fifth Duke 
 of Portland, who lived part of his secluded life within its walls, and even 
 when he took his drives was carefully guarded from the gaze of the 
 profanum vulgus by elaborate means of concealment ; but perhaps still 
 more to the fact that Thackeray took the house as the original of Gaunt 
 House in Vanity Fair , the mansion of the notorious Marquis of Steyne, 
 for whose character a well-known nobleman of the day served as part 
 model. All the world knows the description of the mansion and the 
 Square in the 47th chapter of the immortal book, and “ the vast wall in 
 front, with the columns at the great gate . . . and over the wall the 
 garret and bedroom windows, and the chimneys, out of which there 
 seldom comes any smoke now,” is alone sufficient to differentiate it from 
 Lansdowne Elouse, Berkeley Square, which Mr. Clinch opines is the 
 identical Gaunt House. 1 The illustration by Thackeray of Captain 
 Rawdon Crawley’s arrest in the Square, where an equestrian statue is 
 shown in the background (there is not, nor ever was, one in Berkeley 
 Square), is an additional proof that Cavendish and not Berkeley Square is 
 the real locale. 
 
 The condition of Harcourt House, now demolished, was up till quite 
 
 ( recently one of desolation. As one crossed the large courtyard and 
 entered the great dining-room, with its fine old Jacobean chimney-piece, 
 or the reception rooms, three of which had the ceilings painted en grisaille , 
 surrounded by heavy and elaborate cornices, one felt that such a house 
 may have had a past, but would certainly have little or no future. The 
 drawing-room and its adjacent ball-room, and the other “state-rooms” 
 on the first floor, where the solitary owner may have paced, or the 
 immortal Becky Sharp have fretted her hour on an amateur stage, were 
 obviously destined to soon pass away, and those great glass screens, which 
 once warded off the gaze of the vulgar, to be pulled down, and 
 Gaunt House to only live — but with what an immortality — in the pages 
 of Vanity Fair. 
 
 Harcourt House was the only house built in the Square when the Duke 
 of Chandos — the “Princely Chandos ” — then Earl of Carnarvon, formed 
 the idea of erecting a mansion 2 which should cast all others into the 
 
 1 Mayfair and Belgravia , p. 107. 
 
 3 Although this house was never completed, I find by the Rate Books that the Duke was 
 rated on the sum of ,£1203, in 1735. 
 
46 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 shade, 1 and not only this, but to purchase all the land to the north of 
 his contemplated palace as far as his palatial residence, so well known 
 as Canons, at Edgware, in order that he might ride from one to the 
 other through his own property. For this purpose he took the whole 
 of the north side of the Square, and from a view of the proposed house, 
 from designs by John Price, dated 1720, which is preserved in the 
 British Museum, we can see what grandiose ideas possessed the mind 
 of the “Grand Duke,” as he has been called. Unfortunately the com- 
 plete design was never destined to be carried out, for the Duke died of 
 grief at the loss of his infant son and heir, who expired under tragic 
 circumstances while being christened. Two wings of the mansion — them- 
 selves forming large houses and giving evidence of the intended grandeur 
 of the completed structure — alone were erected. Dodsley 2 refers to them 
 when he writes : “ In the centre of the north side is a space left 
 for a house intended to be erected by the late Duke of Chandos, the 
 wings only being built ; there is, however, a handsome wall and gates 
 before this space, which serve to preserve the uniformity of the Square.” 
 Ralph, this time in sceptical mood, questions this, without as it seems the 
 slightest authority, except what he is pleased to give from his own views 
 of architectural uniformity ; “ I am apt to believe,” he writes, “ that 
 this is a vulgar mistake ; for these structures, though exactly alike, could 
 have been in no way of a piece with any regular or stately building.” 
 
 Even in his own day, when men of wealth erected mansions of vast 
 proportions, the Duke was regarded as having somewhat of a Cacoethes 
 tedificandi. Pope, it will be remembered, in his Epistles , calls him 
 Timon, and hpropos of the projected house in Cavendish Square, writes : 
 
 “ Greatness with Timon dwells in such a draught 
 As brings all Brobdingnag before your thought ; 
 
 To compass this his building is a town, 
 
 His pond an ocean, his parterre a down.” 
 
 But in an age when Houghton and Wentworth Wodehouse, Blenheim 
 and Castle Howard laid their heavy weight on the long-suffering earth, 
 it might be thought that a wondering people would have become too 
 used to stupendous buildings to be unduly excited by such a place as the 
 Duke contemplated. The portrait which Dahl painted of the “ Princely 
 Chandos,” shows us a fine and intelligent-looking man, and the character 
 which Speaker Onslow has left of him, 3 coming from the pen of a careful 
 
 1 At this time the value of the land here is given at 2s. 6d. a square foot ! 
 
 2 Environs of London, 1761. 
 
 3 See Burnet’s History of His Own Times , vol. vi. p. 47. 
 
CAVENDISH SQUARE 47 
 
 judge of men, proves that he had many of the elements of a great one. 
 “ He had,” says Onslow, “ parts of understanding and knowledge and 
 experience of men and business, with a sedateness of mind and a gravity 
 of deportment, which more qualified him for a wise man than what the 
 wisest men have generally been possessed of. ... A man of more true 
 goodness of nature or gentleness of manners never lived.” 
 
 Chandos Street, on the north-east side of the Square, preserves the 
 name of the Duke, while Harley Street is named after the original ground 
 landlord. In Morden and Lea’s plan, taken in 1732, the names of these 
 two streets are, curiously enough, reversed ; this is, of course, an error, 
 but a somewhat strange one, in an otherwise very correct survey. This 
 plan, which shows the development of the estate, also indicates the spaces 
 left unbuilt in the rear of the projected Chandos House, which finally 
 lose themselves in large enclosures marked as then being known as 
 “ Marybone Parke.” 
 
 I have mentioned the two relatively small portions which now remain 
 of what was to have been Chandos House, and which the Duke, it 
 is said, intended for his porters and other members of his household, 1 
 and by the plan dated 1719, and before referred to, we see that they were 
 merely destined to serve as the ends to a vast elongated semicircle of 
 buildings forming two large wings to the main structure, 2 which latter 
 stood back about halfway between the Square and Queen Anne Street. 
 The gardens behind the house are shown as being laid out, as is also 
 another large space immediately behind them extending to Marybone 
 Street, now New Cavendish Street ; another similar space behind this latter 
 abutting on open fields where Weymouth Street now runs. In the middle 
 of the semi-circular courtyard in front of Chandos House a small circular 
 pond was projected and is shown in the plan. 
 
 Of these two houses, that at the corner of Harley Street was subse- 
 quently occupied by Sir Richard Lyttelton, from whom it was afterwards 
 taken by the Princess Amelia, 3 the daughter of George II., who is given 
 in the Rate Books for 1769 and 1786, inter alia , as then residing there. 
 This lady is known to readers of Lord Hervey’s gossiping and sometimes 
 scandalous memoirs ; and a more impartial judge has left this record of 
 her character, for the first Lord Holland calls her “ a lively, meddling, 
 mischief-making and mischief-meaning woman, has parts without any 
 
 1 Greater London , vol. i. p. 293. 
 
 2 A somewhat similar design on a much smaller scale is that of the White Lodge in 
 Richmond Park. 
 
 3 Walpole to Montague, October 31, 1760, says: “Princess Amelia is dealing for Sir 
 Richard Lyttelton’s house in Cavendish Square.” 
 
48 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 understanding, and has employed them all her life in doing all the harm 
 she can. She would not do so much if she had sense to see, what she 
 would regard extremely if she did see it, her own interest.” 1 Had 
 Lord Holland known what Princess Amelia once said of his famous son, 
 Charles James Fox, he might have felt inclined to soften this picture, for 
 on one occasion she exclaimed, “ I tell you what. That Fox may be a 
 rogue — I know nothing of that ; all I know is that he is a great man, and 
 this country is ruined unless such a great man governs it, so I wish him 
 success with all my heart.” 2 
 
 We know from other sources that she was of a masculine turn of 
 mind ; that she rose early, and always drank her morning chocolate in a 
 standing posture, or walking all the while about the room ; that she took 
 immoderate quantities of snuff, and was an inveterate card-player; and 
 there is a story that being one evening at the Pump Room at Bath, and 
 having her snuff-box open on the table, an officer impertinently took a 
 pinch from it, whereupon her Royal Highness ordered her servant to 
 throw the remaining contents of the box into the fire. 3 The inhabitants 
 of Cavendish Square, when the Princess lived there, and before they 
 became used to the sight, must have been surprised to see her emerge 
 nearly always attired in a riding-habit in the German fashion ; and she 
 was used to constantly visit her stables, especially when any of the horses 
 were ill, when she would discuss their disorders with her grooms and 
 veterinary surgeon, with all the knowledge and assurance of a man. 
 
 Princess Amelia died in 1786, and her house became the home of Lord 
 Hopetoun, who is duly entered in the Rate Books for 1787, as Lord 
 Hopeton. Succeeding him in its occupancy was Mr. Henry Hope 4 — not 
 Thomas Hope (who lived first in Berkeley Square and then in Piccadilly), 
 as stated by Jesse ; and it was at this house that occurred the incident 
 which Rogers used to relate thus : “ I was at a great party given by Henry 
 Hope in Cavendish Square. Lady Jersey said she had something particular 
 to tell me ; so, not to be interrupted, we went into the gallery. As we 
 were walking along it we met the Prince of Wales, who, on seeing Lady 
 Jersey, stopped for a moment, and then, drawing himself up, marched 
 past her with a look of the utmost disdain. Lady Jersey returned the 
 look to the full ; and, as soon as the Prince was gone, said to me with a 
 smile, ‘ Didn’t I do it well ? ’ ” 5 6 
 
 1 Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, vol. ii. p. 42. 
 
 2 Ibid., vol. i. pp. n-12. 
 
 3 George III., His Court and Family, vol. ii. p. 56. 
 
 4 In the Picture of London, 1806, amongst private collections of pictures is given Mr. Henry 
 
 Hope’s, “which may be seen by applying at his house in Cavendish Square.” 
 
 6 Rogers’s Table Talk, pp. 264-65. 
 
CAVENDISH SQUARE 49 
 
 Mr. Hope, 1 who stood in the Tory interest for Marylebone in 1833, 
 but was defeated by the Radical candidate, Sir Samuel Whalley, 2 would 
 appear to have been Henry Philip Hope, brother of the better-known 
 Thomas. He died in 18 11, and his executors paid rates till 1820, when 
 they were succeeded in the tenancy of the house, 3 which appears to have 
 remained empty till 1820, by Mr. Watson Taylor, of whom Sir Robert 
 Peel once said that “ no man ever bought ridicule at so high a price.” 
 This was an allusion to the fact that, although when he was fifty-five he 
 came into an income of ^60,000 a year, his subsequent extravagance of 
 living, and the huge sums he spent on forming the very valuable collection 
 of paintings which he assembled here, ruined him in the space of ten or 
 twelve years and he became a bankrupt. He spent, too, vast sums of money 
 on the decorations and alterations of this house, and Croker in a letter 
 says: “I have seen Mr. Watson Taylor’s bills for the repairs and addi- 
 tions ; they are .£48,000, besides the original purchase-money, which was 
 ,£20,000.” The Watson Taylor collection was dispersed by Messrs. 
 Christie in June 1823, and formed the sensation of the day; when we 
 know what magnificent works of art it contained, and then learn that it 
 realised a little over j£i8,oco, out of which ,£6000 worth of pictures were 
 bought in, we may well be amazed at the extraordinary increase in the 
 prices which works of such a character fetch nowadays. 
 
 Mr. Watson Taylor’s house, which had subsequently been divided into 
 two, and later into three, residences, one of which was properly in Harley 
 Street, 4 and in which was the main staircase of the original mansion, was 
 afterwards occupied, so far as that portion of it, No. 16, is concerned, 
 by Viscount Beresford, who purchased it in 1828, and in whose family it 
 remained till 1854. 
 
 The corresponding mansion at the corner of Chandos Street was for 
 many years the town residence of the Earls of Gainsborough, and was 
 originally No. 8. The original structure has now disappeared, and on its 
 site a large block of flats has been erected. In the open space in the 
 centre, on each side of what is now Dean’s Yard, were subsequently built 
 two fine houses, numbered 10 and 11 in Horwood’s plan, ornamented 
 with corinthian columns somewhat in the manner of Inigo Jones, which 
 
 1 Miss Berry calls Henry Hope, the author of Anastasius and owner of “ Deepdene,” but this 
 mistake may have arisen from the fact that Thomas’s second name was Henry ; see for the 
 family, Brayley’s History of Surrey, vol. v. p. 82. 
 
 2 See Raikes’s Diary for March 19, 1833. 
 
 3 It is a curious fact that in the Rate Books this house is invariably given without a 
 number, being placed between Nos. 12 and 13 (original numbers). 
 
 4 By Horwood’s plan of 1792, we see that this house was really No. 1 Harley Street, and 
 not numbered in Cavendish Square at all. 
 
 D 
 
5 o THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 are said to have been the work of another architect once in the pay of 
 the Duke of Chandos at Canons, named James, an inhabitant of Green- 
 wich where he was employed on various works. It was he who built St. 
 George’s, Hanover Square, as well as a portion of Twickenham Church, 
 and that he was as interested in landscape gardening as in ecclesiastical 
 architecture is proved, on the authority of Walpole, by the fact that he 
 translated various French books on gardening into his own language. 1 
 The two houses which he designed in the Square still remain ; they are 
 of stone and have some fine ironwork, with link extinguishers on each 
 side of the doorways. One of them is now the Convent of the Holy 
 Child Jesus, and the other a private residence. Between them runs Dean’s 
 Yard, leading to stabling attached to these and other houses in the Square. 
 
 Among the other past illustrious inhabitants of the Square may be 
 mentioned Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who appears to have been 
 living here, at No. 3, now No. 5, intermittently from 1723 to 1730, 2 
 during which time Pope published some of his most scurrilous satires on 
 her, and here in the words of Jesse she held her court, “ composed of 
 youth, rank, and beauty,” before her long absence from England. Here 
 she received her friends, among whom were such opposite characters as 
 Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and Henry Fielding, on Sundays, keeping 
 her special favourites to sup with her. In one of her amusing letters she 
 tells her daughter, Lady Bute, that she had sometimes an inclination to 
 desire the latter’s father to send her “ two large jars that stood in the 
 windows in Cavendish Square.” Some years later Lord Bessborough was 
 living in the Square ; in 1769, according to the Rate Books, at No. 1, then 
 the large corner house at the south end of the east side; then from 1786 
 till 1826, No. 2 was the town-house of the family which, in 1828, we 
 find removed to No. 3. These various numbers arise from the fact that 
 the Square has been twice re-numbered, once between the years 1769 and 
 1786, and again in 1826. The present Lord Bessborough’s house is 
 No. 17, in the Square. The original house plays a part in the well-known 
 story of how Sheridan was elected to Brooks’s Club by a stratagem con- 
 cocted by Fox’s party after Sheridan’s entrance into the House of Commons 
 in 1780. The tale has been variously told, and in fact one version con- 
 nects the Prince of Wales directly with the artifice, 3 but the following 
 is, in substance, the account given by Jesse in his Selivyn and His Con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 On the evening on which it had been arranged to ballot for Sheridan’s 
 
 1 Anecdotes of Painting. 
 
 • In the Rate Books, Wortley Montagu is given as residing here during the year 1738. 
 
 3 For a lengthy account of this version see Huish’s Memoirs of George IV., vol. i. p. 95. 
 
CAVENDISH SQUARE 51 
 
 election, his two determined enemies, Lord Bessborough and George Selwyn, 
 were found as usual prepared and awaiting the attack. Sheridan’s friends, 
 therefore, knowing how hopeless would be the struggle with the two 
 certain black balls which would inevitably be dropped into the box, 
 arranged for a chairman to bring a note, written in the name of Lady 
 Duncannon, Lord Bessborough’s daughter-in-law, who with his son lived 
 with him in London, informing him that a fire had broken out in the 
 house in Cavendish Square, and beseeching him to return home imme- 
 diately. Unsuspicious of any trick, and forgetting, probably, in the face of 
 such a catastrophe, his object in being present at Brooks’s, Lord Bess- 
 borough, without a moment’s hesitation, jumped into a sedan chair and 
 was conveyed to Cavendish Square. One of the enemies had thus been dis- 
 posed of, and it remained to get rid of the other. Selwyn had, as all the 
 world knows, one weak spot — his devotion to the child of whom both he 
 and Lord March disputed the paternity — and his enemies knew it and took 
 a mean advantage of the fact ; for he received a message about the same 
 time as Lord Bessborough had done, intimating that Miss Fagniani had 
 been suddenly taken ill. It is probable that Selwyn saw through the ruse, 
 and either did not want to risk a mistake (for the story might after all be 
 true), or was unwilling to bear the onus of Sheridan’s rejection alone — 
 whichever reason actuated him, he departed forthwith. Hardly had his 
 back been turned than Sheridan was balloted for and duly elected, and 
 on the return of the duped pair they found they were too late to remedy 
 the effects of the ballot, and we may hope bore their deception and defeat 
 with as good a grace as they could. 
 
 This Earl of Bessborough, who, by-the-bye, was the grandfather of the 
 well-known Lady Caroline Lamb, is met with in the pages of the gossiping 
 J. T. Smith , 1 who records that he was so well known to Nollekens’ other- 
 wise implacable house dog, that whenever he saw his lordship’s leg advanc- 
 ing through the gate he immediately ceased barking and welcomed the 
 visitor, who always had a French roll in the pocket of his blue great-coat 
 ready for his canine friend. Smith takes the occasion of this reference to 
 Lord Bessborough to tell another story of him showing the kindliness of 
 his disposition. “ His lordship was once standing to see the workmen 
 pull down the wooden railing and brickwork which surrounded the centre 
 of Cavendish Square,” says Smith, “ when a sailor walked up to him and 
 asked him for a quid of tobacco. His lordship answered : ‘ My friend, I 
 don’t take tobacco.’ ‘ Don’t you ? ’ rejoined the sailor ; ‘ I wish you did, 
 master, for I have not had a bit to-day.’ As he was turning away, his 
 
 1 Nollekens and His Times , p. 119. 
 
52 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 lordship called to him and said, ‘ Here, my friend, here is something that 
 will enable you to buy tobacco,’ and gave him half-a-crown.” 
 
 It was in Cavendish Square, too, that Nollekens, with his usual 
 parsimoniousness, desired his man Dodimy to take up some sop which a 
 boy had just thrown out of a beer-pot, saying that it would do for his dog 
 Cerberus ; when Dodimy exclaimed : “ Lord, sir ! I take it up ! What, 
 in the sight of yonr friends Lord Bessborough and Lord Brownlow ? Sir, 
 sir, there’s Mr. Shee looking down at you. No, sir, I would not do it 
 if you were even to scratch me.” By which last expression he meant 
 scratched out of Nollekens’ will. Which, adds Smith, Nollekens never- 
 theless eventually did. 
 
 A few years after the Sheridan incident the peace of Cavendish Square 
 was disturbed by no less a person than the redoubtable Lord Camelford, 
 whose turbulent career of quarrelling and its then attendant duelling, 
 coupled with his natural pugnacity and success, made his name a terror 
 to all peacefully inclined citizens. On this occasion he was associated in 
 an attack on four watchmen in the Square; and what may have been 
 intended for one of the then not infrequent exploits of finding the 
 “ Charlies ” slumbering, and either overturning them and their boxes bodily, 
 or at least awakening and giving them a drubbing, resolved itself into 
 a conflict lasting nearly an hour; at the end of which time the watchmen, 
 having been reinforced, overcame Camelford and his associates, who, guarded 
 by no less than twenty armed custodians of the law, were taken to the 
 watch-house and confined during the night, being the next morning 
 brought up at Marlborough Police Court and there fined. 1 
 
 To return to the past inhabitants and their houses in the Square, I 
 find that what is now No. 15 2 was formerly well known as Charleville 
 House, where the Dowager Countess of Charleville formed a sort of 
 salon , which in some way equalled the more celebrated reunions at 
 Gore House. One who knew Lady Charleville tells us that she was a 
 very remarkable person, eminently gifted and highly accomplished, and 
 that few women possessed sounder judgment or were more capable of 
 forming just opinions on most subjects. 3 Lady Charleville’s name was 
 disagreeably connected with the notorious translation of Voltaire’s Pucelle 
 d Orleans, but there is every reason to believe, indeed she herself always 
 stated the fact, that she had nothing whatever to do with the book ; but 
 
 1 Timbs’s Romance of London. See article on Lord Camelford. 
 
 2 In the Rate Books for 1828, however, Lord Charleville is given as residing at No. 14, and 
 No. 15 is marked as “ In Building.” Both houses were part of the former house occupied by 
 Mr. Watson Taylor, as we have seen. 
 
 3 Madden, in his Life of Lady Blessington , vol. i. p. 165. 
 
CAVENDISH SQUARE S3 
 
 she seems fated to go down to posterity — the posterity, at any rate, which 
 reads the catalogues of second-hand booksellers — as the author of that 
 very free production. 
 
 For a number of years preceding her death she had lost the use of 
 her legs, and she might have been seen being carried out of her house 
 in the Square, to the carriage or bath-chair which she used constantly ; 
 in the latter she used to be wheeled about her apartments when she 
 held her receptions, which not even this affliction caused her to discon- 
 tinue. These receptions, we are told, were hardly exceeded by any in 
 London, so much agreeable society and intellectual conversation was to 
 be found there. Lady Charleville died in Cavendish Square in 1851, 
 having survived her husband about sixteen years. At her death, Abraham 
 Hayward, who had been a great friend and constant correspondent of 
 hers, as readers of his Letters will remember, wrote a notice of her 
 life which appeared in the Times , and is also inserted in Lady Morgan’s 
 Memoirs. Writing to the latter in 1851, Hayward says: “I send you 
 my tribute to the memory of our dear old friend. It was first read 
 and sanctioned in Cavendish Square. When I once told her I should 
 do something of the sort, if I survived her, she said, ‘ Then remember 
 to clear my name from that calumny about the book.’” 1 No. 15 is 
 now occupied by Jonathan Hutchinson, Esq., M.D., F.R.S. 
 
 Another former resident in the Square was Edmund Hoyle, at one 
 time Registrar of the Prerogative Court, who died here on the 29th 
 August 1769, at the great age of ninety-seven. He is remembered as 
 the author of a standard book of games, and as the great authority on 
 “ Whist,” a treatise on which was included in his larger work. 2 It is a 
 pity he gave up to games what was meant for mankind, for as his life 
 extended through no less than six reigns, covering a peculiarly interest- 
 ing period, had he left us his recollections they could hardly have failed 
 to prove of the greatest value. It was Mrs. Nollekens who would insist 
 on the nice precision of the game of whist as much as ever did the 
 immortal “ Mrs. Battle,” and she would play it as her mother had done, 
 “ according to Hoyle, Mr. Edward Hoyle,” and Smith tells us that she 
 remembered Mr. Hoyle being buried at Marylebone, on August 23, 1769, 
 and that he was ninety years old when he died ; but here her memory 
 played her false, for Hoyle was born in 1672, and was therefore, as I have 
 stated, ninety-seven. 3 
 
 1 Hayward’s Letters , vol. i. p. 155. “The book,” of course, refers to the translation of La 
 Pucelle. 
 
 2 He once lived for a time in Queen Square, Bloomsbury. For his treatise on whist he 
 received ,£1000 from his publishers, and it ran through five editions in one year. 
 
 3 Smith’s Nollekens and His Times, p. 44. Edward is a mistake for Edmund. 
 
54- THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 I find Anthony Collins, the Freethinker, who died in 1729, be- 
 queathing to his wife “his dwelling house in Cavendish or Oxford 
 Square,” but which this identical house was I have been unable to 
 trace. Other old time residents in the Square include Captain and Mrs. 
 Horatio Nelson, who, in October 1787, were residing at No. 5. As 
 this house is given in the Rate Books for that year as belonging to 
 Sir Herbert Mackworth, with the word “tenants” attached to his name, 
 it is probable that the Nelsons had hired part of it as a temporary abode. 
 At No. 6, Lord Barrington was residing in 1769, and also in 1786 ; while 
 his son, Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham, was occupying, according 
 to the Rate Books, the same house in 1821. Boyle, for 1795, also 
 gives him as residing here in that year. No. 12, which was empty in 
 1769, was occupied in 1786, by Sir James Langham (he was here also 
 as late as 1795), and in 1821, by Lady Langham; while General Sir 
 Robert Wilson is recorded as having died at Thompson’s Hotel in the 
 Square, in 1849. 
 
 Matthew Baillie, a fashionable physician of a past day, also once 
 resided here ; and, as we shall see by the Directory, the traditions of the 
 healing art are well kept alive by the numerous notable exponents of 
 it who reside there to-day. Moore refers to Dr. Baillie, in a letter to 
 his mother, in the year 1 800, when he was ill in London : “ I have not 
 wanted for care and nursing of the best kind,” he says. “ Dr. Baillie, 
 the first physician here, has attended me every second day ; ” while ten 
 years later he confirms his high opinion of the Doctor, by telling Lady 
 Donegall he thinks she is very right in consulting him instead of relying 
 on her own physician. Baillie, indeed, seems to have had a large and 
 interesting number of patients, for Rogers, writing to Moore at the end 
 of 1809, sa Y s “ Bile and Baillie have been my only companions,” while it 
 was this doctor who is referred to by Croker as being “ the late excellent 
 Dr. Baillie, who advised a gentleman (Croker himself), whose official 
 duties were of a very constant and engrossing nature, and whose health 
 seemed to suffer from overwork, to play at cards in the evening, which 
 would tend, he said, to quiet the mind, and to allay the anxiety created 
 by the business of the day.” Dr. Baillie, who lived at No. 25, 1 died 
 there in 1823. Not far from this house, at No. 27 , 2 lived the Marquis 
 of Winchester, who is given in the Rate Books for 1828, as then residing 
 here ; and in later years Mr. Birch, a Governor of the Bank of 
 England, occupied it. The premises have been rebuilt and are now 
 
 1 By Horwood’s plan of 1792, I find that only three sides of the Square were then 
 numbered, the houses on the south side being numbered in Henrietta Street. 
 
 2 No. 25 is the old numbering ; No. 27 the later numbering. 
 
CAVENDISH SQUARE 5 5 
 
 occupied by a Bank. Other later inhabitants of the Square were the 
 late Earl of Fife, the well-known physician, Sir Andrew Clark, and 
 Mr. (now Sir) Squire Bancroft. 
 
 Cavendish Square is not to-day an artistic centre, but at one time it 
 numbered several well-known — and one certainly great — painters among 
 its inhabitants. To be chronological, I must first mention John Wootton, 
 the well-known delineator of horses and dogs. If not as celebrated as 
 Stubbs or Sartorius in this branch of art, he was yet a very successful 
 exponent of it. Walpole says that he was a pupil of John Van Wyck, a 
 painter of battle scenes and hunting pieces, who died at Mortlake in 
 1702, but Pilkington doubts this on the ground that at Wyck’s death 
 Wootton must have been a mere child. Walpole calls Wootton “a very 
 capital master in the branch of his profession to which he principally 
 devoted himself . . . the painting of horses and dogs, which he both drew 
 and coloured with consummate skill, fire, and truth.” He was wont to 
 frequent Newmarket to study equine life there, and prints from his 
 hunting and racing pictures are to be still met with with some frequency, 
 while many of his original pictures are to be seen, especially in country 
 houses. He died at his house in Cavendish Square, 1 which he had built 
 for himself, in January 1765, and that he had given up active work 
 some years previously is proved by the fact that his collection of unsold 
 works was disposed of four years previously. 
 
 Another painter who built himself a house in the Square — No. 24 — 
 was Francis Cotes, the portrait painter, a pupil of Knapton. Cotes died 
 so comparatively early — in his 45th year — that he hardly had time to do 
 full justice to his undoubted talent. Walpole mentions some of his 
 works, and adds, “ If they yield to Rosalba’s in softness they excel hers in 
 vivacity and invention ” ; but this is very faint praise, for there was some- 
 thing virile and forceful in Cotes’s work which should have saved him 
 from such a comparison as that instituted by Walpole, who might with 
 propriety have placed his name near even that of the great Reynolds 
 himself ; indeed Hogarth once declared that he was superior to the Master, 
 but this was to err on the other side. Cotes died in Cavendish Square on 
 July 20, 1770, and was buried at Richmond. 2 
 
 But a more famous even than Cotes was destined to shed lustre over 
 Cavendish Square, and indeed over the very house which Cotes had him- 
 
 1 In the Rate Books for 1730 et seq., he is given ; but as the houses were not numbered in 
 these early years there is no clue to the actual house he occupied. As, however, in 1730, only 
 thirteen houses are given, it must have been on the north or east side, as these were first 
 built on. 
 
 2 Pilkington’s Dictionary of Painters. 
 
56 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 self built, for here 1 came to reside, in 1775, George Romney — “The Man 
 in Cavendish Square,” as Sir Joshua, his early rival, somewhat contemptu- 
 ously called him. Here he painted those marvellous portraits of which a 
 nation of slow apprehension seems only just beginning to realise the worth 
 and beauty ; here, to use the words of one of his biographers, he “ often 
 wrought thirteen hours a day, commencing at eight or earlier, and, except 
 when engaged out, which was not frequently, prolonging his application 
 into the night.” 2 This was the heyday of his fame, and although he had 
 basely left a wife and young family to shift for themselves in the country, 
 and had allowed himself to be fascinated by the meretricious beauty of 
 the woman known as Lady Hamilton, everything was forgotten in the 
 anxiety of fashionable people to be painted by the man of the day ; so 
 great, indeed, was the desire to be perpetuated by Romney that he tells 
 us, “ that at one time he thought he must have planted cannon at his 
 door to overawe the eager crowds that pressed upon him for their 
 portraits.” He had no need now to tremble every morning in his new 
 and spacious house in the Square, “with the painful apprehension of not 
 finding business sufficient to support him,” as Hayley tells us was the case 
 when he first took possession of Cotes’s old house at Christmas, 1775. 
 Cunningham very properly reprobates his not now sending for his wife 
 and family, and giving her “ the keys of his house in Cavendish Square, 
 when he had obtained fame and opulence, with a well-furnished table 
 and all that he wished for.” 3 But the fact was that the woman whom 
 the brush of Romney, and the love of Nelson, have alone made famous, 
 was wrecking Romney’s life. In order to have more of her company, 
 he lessened the number of his sitters, and although he painted Emma 
 Hamilton in every pose and under every condition, such continual work 
 given to a single face and form, however beautiful, could not but have 
 enervated his powers and vitiated his perception for reproducing faithful 
 likenesses of other sitters, if indeed it did not take from him the desire 
 to paint any one but the siren who had bewitched him. The time came 
 when Cavendish Square was deserted, and Romney, the once great and 
 fashionable, was left without a sitter. 4 
 
 A mania for the painting of works on a vast scale came upon him 
 — it was a species of madness which had afflicted the unhappy Haydon — 
 
 1 Walford, in Old and New London , says No. 24, while Harrison in his Memorable London 
 Houses gives it as No. 32. This discrepancy is accounted for by the fact that the old 24, on 
 the renumbering of the houses in 1826, became 32. Thus in the Rate Books for 1769, I find 
 Cotes at No. 24 ; in 1786, Romney at the same house (paying, by-the-bye, £\(o on £ 120 rental 
 value) ; and in 1821, Martin Shee at No. 24, whereas in 1828, Martin Shee is given at No. 32. 
 
 1 Lord Ronald Gower’s Life of Romney. 
 
 3 d.ives of the Painters , vol. v. p. 93. 4 Frith in his Further Reminiscences. 
 
CAVENDISH SQUARE 57 
 
 and thinking the house in Cavendish Square too small to contain such a 
 studio as he dreamed of, he spent a large sum of money in erecting one 
 to suit his ideas, at Hampstead, whither he removed from Cavendish Square 
 in 1797, and here he passes from our present ken ! 
 
 He was followed in the occupancy of No. 24, afterwards No. 32, by 
 an artist who, although succeeding Lawrence as President of the Royal 
 Academy, is known to us almost solely by name, 1 Sir Martin Archer Shee, 
 who had purchased the lease from Romney. He was, also, a fashionable 
 portrait painter, but we have long since learned to discriminate between 
 fashionable portrait-painting Presidents and artists, and every one knows 
 that Shee was of such inferior calibre as hardly to deserve the latter title ; 
 indeed his success has been considered as much attributable (I should 
 have said more), to his social qualifications as to his power as a painter. 
 He died in the Square in 1850, at the ripe age of eighty. No. 32 
 Cavendish Square has had other and later illustrious occupants, for here 
 resided Sir Jonas Quain and Sir Richard Quain, the great physicians, 
 while subsequently, in 1887, the house was purchased by E. D. Mapother, 
 Esq., M.D., who informed Mr. Clinch 2 of various facts connected with 
 the house, and among others that Romney’s studio was still in existence 
 in 1892; but in 1904 the house was pulled down 3 and has since been 
 replaced by another. 
 
 Next door, at No. 31, Sir Squire and Lady (then Mr. and Mrs.) 
 Bancroft lived, I am told by F. L. Sandwith, Esq., the present occupier; 
 and Lady Fife, at whose house Yates first met Sir Alexander Cockburn ; 
 and Mrs. Dickenson, a great friend of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, both 
 resided in the Square. 
 
 A glance through the Rate Books for various years shows us a variety 
 of other inhabitants whose names, if not exactly celebrated, it may be 
 interesting to rescue from the oblivion of these musty records. Thus 
 in 1730, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Lady Pearpoint, and M. Viyose were 
 living here. In 1732, the latter gentleman has been metamorphosed 
 into Vioyse, and Lady Pearpoint becomes Madame E. Pearpoint ; while 
 among other past inhabitants are Governor Robert Adams and Wortley 
 Montagu, Esq. Coming to 1738, I find the Duke of Argyll a resident, 
 as well as such well-known names as those of John Finch, George Fox, 
 and William Velasyse; and in the following year, a time when the Square 
 became very fashionable, the second Lord Portmore, known as Beau 
 
 1 Although in the Picture of London for 1806, the author writes of Shee’s work : “There is 
 an originality in the air and latitude of his figures which shows that he thinks for himself and 
 is superior to servile imitation.” 
 
 2 Marylebone and St. Pancras, p. 104. 3 Note in Smith’s Rainy Day , p. 164. 
 
58 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Colyear, removed hither from St. James’s Square. Some thirty years later 
 (1769), Savile Finch, Esq., is given as at No. 2 (Mrs. Finch was at 
 No. 3 in 1795), Lady Wenman at No. 5, Lord Delamere at No. 7, the 
 Hon. Thomas Grosvenor at No. 13, and the Earl of Winchilsea at No. 18, 
 while Nos. 9, 10, 11, and 12 are set down as being empty, and the 
 Princess Amelia’s name is entered in the Books with no number against 
 her. Coming to 1786, Lord Bessborough’s house is found to be occupied 
 by Lord Sommers, and Lord Bessborough occupying No. 2, while Savile 
 Finch, who was previously at No. 2, is given at No. 3. On the 
 other hand, the renumbering seems to have been only partial, for 
 the Hon. Thomas Grosvenor is still at No. 13, as he was in 1769, 
 and Lord Harcourt is entered as the owner of No. 15, which in 1769 
 is given as Lord Bingley’s, whom, however, we know Lord Harcourt 
 succeeded in the tenancy. Among other fresh names for the year 
 1786, I find Sir George Cooper at No. 7, Sir William Jones at No. 9, 
 Sir James Langham at No. 12, Admiral Darley at No. 14, Lady Hales 
 at No. 18, and the Earl of Macclesfield at No. 19, where he was 
 also residing in 1771. In 1821, Lord Brownlow is given (at No. 1), 
 Lord Orford (at No. 3), and Lord Dufferine Claneboyne, besides a 
 number of other new names which it would hardly be of interest to 
 transcribe in detail. 
 
 It was in Cavendish Square that the Dilettante Society, which was 
 formed in 1747 , and to which Knapton, mentioned before as the master 
 of Cotes, was appointed painter in 1765, bought 1 a piece of ground on 
 which the members proposed to erect a house, but this design was 
 eventually abandoned; while at No. 5, in 1851, took place the celebrated 
 International Chess Tournament, which drew the finest players from all 
 parts of the world hither. 
 
 The central garden in the Square was originally enclosed by a dwarf 
 brick wall, surmounted by a heavy wooden railing, 2 which, as we have 
 seen, was being removed in Lord Bessborough’s time, the present iron 
 railing being then substituted. When the Square was formed it was 
 intended to erect a statue of Queen Anne in the centre, in fact this is 
 shown, by anticipation, in the plan dated 1719; but this design was never 
 carried out; indeed the space remained unadorned till 1770, when 
 Lieut. -Gen. William Strode erected an equestrian statue, modelled by 
 John Cheere, 3 of William, Duke of Cumberland, popularly known as 
 “ The Butcher.” The statue was made of lead and was covered with 
 
 1 They bought the ground in 1747, and disposed of it in 1760. Timbs’s Clubs of London. 
 
 2 Smith’s Book for a Rainy Day. 
 
 s Nightingale, in his London and Middlesex , calls the sculptor, “ Mr. Chew.” 
 
CAVENDISH SQUARE 59 
 
 gilding, and bore the following inscription, which Cunningham, 1 from the 
 nature of the wording, rightly calls “remarkable” : — 
 
 “William, Duke of Cumberland, born April 15th, 1721 — died 
 October 31st, 1765. This equestrian statue was erected by Lieutenant- 
 General William Strode, in gratitude for his private friendship, 2 in honour 
 to his public virtue. November 4th, Anno Domini 1770.” 
 
 The Duke was represented in a contemporary military uniform, and 
 this fact gave rise to much criticism ; indeed Sir Joshua Reynolds was 
 supposed to refer to this particular statue in one of his Discourses where 
 he remarks, “ In this town may be seen an equestrian statue in a modern 
 dress, which may be sufficient to deter modern artists from any such 
 attempt.” But surely it was more consonant with reason that Cumberland 
 should appear in the dress he actually wore than that, for instance, 
 James II. should masquerade as Julius Cassar, or that Louis XIV. as 
 Pompeius Magnus should stretch out a helpless baton in command over 
 a heedless people ! 
 
 In 1868, the statue was removed to be recast, but it has never been 
 restored to its former position. The Square is not without its effigy, 
 however, for in 1848, a colossal bronze figure of Lord George Bentinck, 
 for some time leader of the Conservative party and remembered now 
 mainly through Disraeli’s biography, was erected on the south side facing 
 Holies Street. It simply bears the name and the dates of his birth and 
 death on the pedestal, and is the work of Campbell. 
 
 Cavendish Square is to-day largely given over to the medical pro- 
 fession, some of the most eminent members of which occupy houses in 
 it, while among other illustrious persons who live there may be mentioned 
 the Right Hon. H. H. Asquith, K.C., M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 and at No. 2, the Earl of Crawford, K.T., who informs me that he 
 bought the house from Lady Isabella Schuster, and that it had previously 
 belonged to the Earl of Wicklow. 
 
 The Square has suffered, so far as the uniformity of its houses is 
 concerned, by much rebuilding ; and now that the demolition of Harcourt 
 House is an accomplished fact, the probable covering of its site with new 
 buildings will still further alter its once old-world appearance, and I fear 
 will not improve its general aspect. 
 
 Note. — The very interesting view of the Square which is reproduced at the 
 beginning of this chapter is on a fan once in the famous collection of Mr. Walker, 
 
 1 Handbook to London, vol. i. p. 17 1. 
 
 2 Nightingale gives it “ kindness,” and in a note says, “It is singular that Lysons and 
 Malcolm should have copied this inscription very erroneously.” Londo 7 i and Middlesex, 
 vol. iii. pt. 2, p. 734. 
 
6o THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 which was sold by Messrs. Sotheby, on June 8, 1882. The following is the 
 description of the fan given by Mr. Walker himself: “A Fan, paper mount, 
 painted with a view of St. James’s Square, attributed to Canaletto ; at the back a view 
 of Wanstead House, Essex.” Now it is quite obvious that the view does not 
 represent St. James’s Square, but Cavendish Square, and it is therefore probable that 
 the picture on the other side depicts not Wanstead House but Canons, Edgeware ; 
 especially as it is known that the columns of Canons formed subsequently the portico 
 to Wanstead. The fan would thus incorporate views of the Duke of Chandos’s town 
 and country residences, and may conceivably have been made to his order. Being 
 ignorant of the present whereabouts of the fan, I can merely surmise this, but I think 
 it seems a not unreasonable supposition. I am indebted to the courtesy of T. Hodge, 
 Esq., of the firm of Messrs. Sotheby, Wilkinson, & Hodge, for permission to reproduce 
 the fan here. 
 
 HANOVER SQUARE 
 
 “ London has many fine open spaces called squares, because they are of that shape. The 
 centres of these squares are shut in by railings . . . and contain gardens with flowers, trees, and 
 paths.” — M. de Saussure (1725). 
 
 Hanover Square has found favourable acceptance from the most 
 exacting, and even the hypercritical Ralph 1 has some praise to bestow on 
 it. “ The west side of Hanover Square is uniform,” he writes, “ argues 
 a very tolerable taste in the architect, and deserves a good deal of appro- 
 bation.” But he qualifies this by adding that, “ the rest are (sic) intoler- 
 able and deserve no attention at all ; ” while a contemporary newspaper 
 writer," about the time the Square was in course of formation, says : 
 “ Round about the new square which is building near Oxford Road, there 
 are so many other edifices, that a whole magnificent city seems to be risen 
 out of the ground, that one would wonder how it should find a new set 
 of inhabitants.” We shall see that from its earliest day it not only did 
 not lack inhabitants but contained many of importance. 
 
 In 1716, Pennant speaks of the Square as being unbuilt, but as it is 
 marked in the various plans of London published in 1720, we can place the 
 time of its formation and completion between these years. 
 
 In that storehouse of curious and valuable facts about the town — 
 London Past and Present 3 — an interesting quotation is given from Apple- 
 
 1 Critical Survey. There are two views of Hanover Square by Sutton Nicholls, being 
 the first and second states of the same plate, dated respectively 1720 and 1754; and one by 
 Overton, dated 1727. 
 
 2 In the Weekly Medley for the year 1717, quoted in Malcolm’s Londinum Redivivum. 
 
 3 By H. B. Wheatley, Esq., based on Cunningham’s Ha?idbook to Loridon. 
 
HANOVER SQUARE 61 
 
 bee's Journal , with regard to Hanover Square in its early days. Under 
 date of September 4, 1725, the Diarist has this entry: “I went away 
 towards Hyde Park, being told of a fine avenue made to the east side of 
 the park, fine gates and a large visa, or opening, from the new square 
 called Hanover Square. ... In the tour I passed an amazing scene of 
 new foundations, not of houses only, but as I might say of new cities, new 
 towns, new squares, and fine buildings, the like of which no city, no town, 
 nay, no place in the world, can show ; nor is it possible to judge where or 
 when they will make an end or stop building.” 
 
 The visa mentioned above is obviously what we now know as George 
 Street, for it was then, as it is now, an opening to be seen from both Hanover 
 and Cavendish Squares, which Applebee refers to when he uses the words 
 “ new squares.” It was this visa that extorted admiration even from 
 Ralph. For him, he is mildly enthusiastic, as witness what he says of it : 
 “ I must own that the view down George Street, from the upper sides of 
 the Square, is one of the most entertaining in the whole city : the sides of 
 the Square, the area in the middle, the breaks of building that form the 
 entrance of the vista, the vista itself, but above all the beautiful projection 
 of the portico of St. George’s Church, are all circumstances that unite its 
 beauty and make the scene perfect ; ” 1 to which I may append Words- 
 worth’s dictum : that the view from Harewood Place was one of the finest 
 in old London. 2 
 
 It seems difficult nowadays to connect Hanover Square with the idea 
 of a suburban situation, but such it undoubtedly had at the time it was 
 built. Pennant himself remembered the neighbouring Oxford Road as 
 having, eastward from this spot as far as High Street, St. Giles’s, only a few 
 isolated houses on its northern side, and the road itself being a deep 
 hollow way full of sloughs and ruts, with here and there a dilapidated 
 tenement, which formed a convenient hiding-place for the footpads and cut- 
 throats who infested this district ; so bad a reputation had it indeed in 
 this respect that the worthy antiquary writes : “ I never was taken that 
 way by night in my hackney-coach, but I went in dread the whole way.” 
 
 Many of these disadvantages were of course removed, during the 
 development of the Duke of Newcastle’s estate, by the formation of 
 Cavendish Square and its adjoining streets on the opposite side of the 
 Oxford Road, which took place about the same time as the building of 
 Hanover Square ; but this development was very gradual, and many of 
 the terrors caused by bad roads and questionable company must have 
 lasted for a number of years; even so late as 1771, the Square itself 
 
 1 Critical Observations on the Buildings in London. 
 
 2 Allsop’s Recollections of Coleridge. 
 
62 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 appears to have been in anything but a satisfactory condition, and although 
 it is the author of the Critical Observations on London who speaks, and 
 therefore some allowance should doubtless be made, yet there can be little 
 doubt that there was something more than a mere substratum of truth 
 in his complaint. “ As to Hanover Square,” he says, “ I do not know 
 what to make of it. It is neither open nor enclosed. Every convenience 
 is railed out, and every nuisance railed in. Carriages have a narrow, ill- 
 paved street to turn round in, and the middle has the air of a cow-yard, 
 where blackguards assemble in the winter to play at hustle-cap, up to the 
 ankles in dirt.” Perhaps nothing attests its then comparatively isolated 
 position better than the fact that when first developed the ground sold at 
 half-a-crown a foot, and the fact that this small price quickly rose to 
 fifteen shillings 1 also shows with what rapidity its prosperity grew. This 
 latter circumstance is further proved by the fact that Strype gives it as 
 a current report that “ the common place of execution of malefactors at 
 Tyburn shall be appointed elsewhere . . . for the removing any in- 
 convenience or annoyance that might thereby be occasioned to (Hanover) 
 Square or the houses thereabouts.” 2 
 
 It was customary to vary the position of the gallows at Tyburn 
 from time to time, but we may roughly put its approximate position at 
 where the Marble Arch now stands, and therefore it was a considerable 
 way from the newly formed Square (which, by-the-bye, we may note was 
 at first called Hanover Square Street), 3 but its suggested removal was to 
 avoid the scandalous scenes which accompanied the last journey of 
 a condemned man to the gallows from affecting the inhabitants of the 
 Square through or near which the gruesome procession would pass. A 
 foreign visitor faithfully describes such a scene as frequently took place, 
 and adds, “ In this way part of the town is crossed, and Tyburn, which is 
 a good half mile from the last suburb, is reached,” 4 . . . and he adds 
 that “ executions are frequent in London ; they take place every six 
 weeks, and five, ten or fifteen criminals are hanged on these occasions ; ” 
 while another foreigner, writing thirty-five years later, is able to state 
 that “Tyburn was formerly a village, which vanished when the city 
 extended in that direction, so that at present the name of Tyburn only 
 applies to a site where the gallows and a turnpike stand.” 5 
 
 In a fine view of Hanover Square looking north which gives us an 
 excellent idea of its appearance when completed, what is now Oxford 
 
 1 Malcolm’s Londinum Redivivutn , vol. iv. p. 337. 
 
 2 Strype, quoted by Cunningham. 3 Rate Books of St. Martin’s. 
 
 4 Letters of M. de Saussure , 1725, p. 124. 
 
 5 Diary of a Journey to England , by Count Kilmansegge, 1761. 
 
HANOVER SQUARE 63 
 
 Street is shown as Tiborn (sic) Road, and what is now Harewood Place 
 appears as a paved way planted with trees on one side and separated 
 from “Tiborn Road” by posts and rails, with egress for pedestrians 
 only. 1 
 
 Notwithstanding its completion, it was yet considered so far out of 
 town — a nearer sort of suburb, in fact — that we find Swift in his Polite 
 Conversation making Neverout address Sir John with, “ What do you 
 think of Hanover Square? Why, Sir John, London is gone out of town 
 since you saw it.” 
 
 Its name appears to have been the outcome of that perhaps somewhat 
 exaggerated loyalty which, had not the Pretender been stirring over the 
 border, would probably not have found this outward expression, for it 
 was originally intended to name it Oxford Square, from the neighbouring 
 Oxford Road, and its present name seems to have been a loyal after- 
 thought. In any case it was but proper that a new part of the town 
 should take the name of a new dynasty, especially as their advent was 
 nearly contemporaneous. Hanover, or Hannover Square, as it is fre- 
 quently to be found spelt in old topographical books, appropriately 
 therefore exhibited, as the careful Hughson takes pains to point out, 
 examples of the German style of architecture ; 2 but we may search long 
 enough to-day for specimens of the Fatherland’s influence on the sur- 
 rounding houses, for it is probable that no Square in London has under- 
 gone such a transformation as the one under consideration ; where used 
 to dwell notable sailors, soldiers, statesmen, and people generally of light 
 and leading, is now given over to the dressmaking art ; to learned societies 
 with portentous names ; or to business establishments with the most 
 uncompromising exteriors ; while the most notable house in the Square was 
 until quite recently the home of the Royal Agricultural Society. 
 
 This mansion, No. 13, formerly No. 12, is still known by its original 
 name of Harewood House. Before saying anything about it, however, 
 I must mention the names of some of those who were the earliest 
 inhabitants in the Square. From a number of names given by the writer 
 in the Weekly Medley , which I have before quoted, it would appear to have 
 been in particular favour with the army, for among those who were said 
 to have bought houses here before the Square was actually finished, we 
 find General Lord Cadogan, who removed hither from St. James’s Square 
 in 1787, and no less than six other generals, viz., Carpenter, Wills, Evans, 
 
 1 Several Prospects of Publick Buildings in London , by John Bowles, folio, 1724. This plate 
 is also given in Strype’s edition of Stow, 2 vols., 1755. A later print by Pollard of the Square 
 is dated December 1787, and looks south. 
 
 2 History of Londo 7 i, 1 807. 
 
6+ THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Pepper, and two Stuarts. Besides these, in the Rate Books of St. Martin’s 
 for 1725, are given the names, among others, of Lord Hillsborough, the 
 Duke of Montrose, Lords Falkland, Carpenter, and Dunmore, the Duke 
 of Bolton, Col. John Fane, and Mrs. Hewers on the west side, most of 
 whom were rated on estimated rentals of ^140 to _£i6o; on the north of 
 the Square, Sir Adolphus Oughton, Madame Bridgeman, Lady Dash- 
 wood, Lords Pontefract and Litchfield, General Stewart, Henry Furness, 
 Esq., and the Duke of Roxburgh ; and on the east side, Count Staremberg, 
 Col. Cotton, Lady Buckley, Sir W. Gaze, and Lord Londonderry ; while 
 other early residents included Sir Theodore Jansen, Lords Coventry and 
 Brook, and Mr. Sheldon. A few years later it is shown by a list of the 
 “Houses of the Nobility ” given in a work on London published in 1728, 1 
 that the Earl of Anglesea, Lords Bolton, Carpenter, and Foley, the Earls 
 of Litchfield, Leicester, Essex, and Pomfret, and the Bishop of Durham 
 were among the titled occupants of houses in the Square, while the Earl 
 of Dunmore and the Dukes of Montrose and Roxburgh are given as still 
 living there. Henry Hope, Esq., at No. 2, Sir Richard Sutton, at No. 
 13, and Lord Mendip at No. 20, were residing in the Square in 1795, 2 
 besides others who will be found mentioned later on. 
 
 The house of the Duke of Roxburgh was that later known as Hare- 
 wood House. It is evident that the Duke bought the ground on which 
 it stands, as it is known that the mansion itself was built by the brothers 
 Adam for his Grace. 3 He was the ducal bibliomaniac after whom the 
 Roxburgh Club was named in 1812, at the time of the dispersal of his 
 famous library, and here he housed many of the treasures which he picked 
 up on the bookstalls of the town when bargains really could be found for 
 the seeking. Dr. Dibdin, who claimed the honour of founding the club, 
 has described with the pen of an enthusiast the Homeric contest which 
 took place at the sale of the Duke’s books for the possession of the great 
 Valdafar Boccaccio. It was the first really great library to be dispersed, 
 and the good Doctor waxes piously unctuous over those ten thousand 
 “lots” of rarities — rarities which, says J. H. Burton, 4 “it was rumoured 
 had been bargains, and that the noble collector drew largely on the spirit 
 of patient perseverance and enlightened sagacity for which Monkbarns 
 (another mighty bookhunter) claims credit.” Readers of Burton will 
 remember the story of a crossed love which he tells, and which is said to 
 have been the primary cause of the Duke’s bibliomaniacal tendencies ! After 
 his removal to 13 St. James's Square, the mansion became the property of 
 
 1 A New Review of London, 1728. 2 Bayley’s Court Guide. 
 
 3 Hughson’s History of London. 4 The Bookhunter. 
 
HANOVER SQUARE 65 
 
 the Earl of Harewood, 1 who purchased it in 1795, an d from whom it takes 
 its name. He also possessed a collection, not of books but of china, 
 and, appropriately as it seems, considering the late use to which his old 
 home was put, he was also an enthusiastic agriculturist. His wonderful 
 assemblage of porcelain had been formed by his elder brother, known 
 as Beau Lascelles, who died before coming into the title, and unmarried, 
 in 1814. Raikes in his journal for May 14, 1837, gives an account 
 of Lascelles, and there speaks of the collection he had formed “ with 
 great taste and judgment at a time when he had few competitors,” as 
 the finest in England, and housed in the mansion of Lord Harewood 
 in Hanover Square, “ a nobleman whose agricultural pursuits and simple 
 habits would give little reason to suppose that he possessed an expensive 
 article of luxury and taste.” 2 Harewood House remained in the posses- 
 sion of the Harewood family till the year 1894, when it was purchased by 
 the Royal Agricultural Society, which had been established in 1838, and 
 which was previously housed in the present No. 12, in the Square, now the 
 headquarters of the Shire Horse Association and other institutions. 
 
 Strype, in noticing the formation of the Square and the rapidity with 
 which the newly erected houses were taken, specifically mentions one as 
 being the new residence of Lord Cowper, late Lord High Chancellor — 
 “ the silver-tongued Cowper,” as he has been called. He it was who 
 opposed with all his logical acuteness the proposals of the organisers 
 of the South Sea Scheme ; he, too, exposed the fallacies attending the 
 fining of Roman Catholics in 1723, and, on the evidence of Lawyer Layer, 
 was nearly implicated in the charges brought against Atterbury. He 
 is remembered as being in the habit of wearing his own hair, an unusual 
 thing in those days, which led Queen Anne to insist on his having his 
 hair cut and wearing a heavy wig ; otherwise, she is reported to have 
 said, “the world would think she had given the seals to a boy;” 3 an 
 allusion, of course, to his being appointed Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1705, 
 when he was in his forty-first year. His character is thus given by the 
 historian of the period : “ Cowper was a prudent, cautious, clever man, 
 whose abilities made a considerable impression upon his own time, but 
 have carried his memory only in a faint and feeble way on to ours. He 
 was a fine speaker, so far as style and manner went, and he had a 
 charming voice. Chesterfield said of him that the ears and eyes gave 
 him up to the hearts and understandings of his audience.” The portrait 
 which Richardson painted of Lord Cowper bears out part of this state- 
 
 1 Born 1767, died 1841, having married Henrietta, daughter of Sir John Sebright, in 1794. 
 
 2 Journal , vol. iii. p. 184. 
 
 * McCarthy’s History of the Four Georges. 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 ment, and Burnet speaks of his “ engaging deportment,” while The 
 True Briton , in an obituary notice in 1723, says of him, “In his person 
 and appearance there was plainly to be seen a fine exterior figure of that 
 inward worth which everybody experienced.” Such was the man — the 
 most famous — who was one of the earliest inhabitants of Hanover Square. 
 His wife, too, is remembered as having been Lady of the Bedchamber 
 to Queen Caroline, and as having left us a Diary for the years 1714-20, 
 a period which otherwise lacks personal records of this sort, of the greatest 
 value. In that Diary no mention is, however, made of the house in 
 Hanover Square, and from this fact it is probable that Lord Cowper’s 
 residence here was only a temporary one after all — in any case, as he 
 died in 1723, it would only have been a short one. 
 
 Lord Delavel, the father of Lady Tyrconnel, to whom the Duke of 
 York was, at one time, much attached, also had a house in the Square, where 
 he and his son-in-law and daughter resided together, according to Wraxall, 
 who was a friend of the family ; while another peer who once lived here 
 was the fourth and last Lord Holdernesse, whose formality of manner 
 is noticed by Walpole, as well as the unreliability of his statements, 
 although Lady Mary Wortley Montagu calls him a “ Whig and an honest 
 man.” He appears to have rented a house belonging to Mrs. Donnellan, 
 and that lady, writing to Mrs. Montagu 1 in 1752, says that his lease 
 expired in the August of that year, and that as the house was too large 
 a one for her to occupy, and her lease nearly at an end, she desires 
 Mrs. Montagu to look out for a house for her somewhere outside London, 
 but not further off than Windsor ; and in another letter of the same 
 year 2 to Mrs. Dewes, she speaks of intending to remain in Hanover Square 
 till she can find another house. 
 
 According to Besant only a few of the original houses in the Square 
 now remain, notably among others, Nos. 17 and 23; the latter, which 
 is the large house in the south-western corner, is mentioned by Lambert 
 as being “the best piece of brick work in the metropolis,” and therefore 
 appropriately survives. This house, then No. 21, became at the end 
 of the eighteenth century the residence of Lord Palmerston, the father 
 of the more illustrious Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister from 1855, 
 with an interval, till his death. Here were held social and political 
 assemblies only less notable than those which were later to make famous 
 
 1 Not to be confounded with Mrs. Montagu of Papplewick, whom Mrs. Delany invariably 
 styles “ Mrs. (Hanover Square) Montagu,” probably to distinguish her from Mrs. (Portman 
 Square) Montagu. 
 
 2 Mrs. Montagu, by Mrs. Climenson, 2 vols., 1906, where we are told, in a note, that Mr. 
 Macartney took over the house in question. 
 
HANOVER SQUARE 67 
 
 Cambridge House, Piccadilly. It was in this house that Count Rumford’s 
 principle of obviating smoking chimneys was first applied, the experiments 
 meeting with great success and leading the way to improvements of a 
 like nature in many other London houses, such as Sir Joseph Banks’s in 
 Soho Square, the Earl of Bessborough’s in Cavendish Square, and Mrs. 
 Montagu’s in Portman Square. 1 
 
 So little is known of Lord Palmerston’s father that we hail with 
 pleasure a reference to him contained in an article 2 on his son, in which 
 the writer speaks of him as being an accomplished and fashionable gentle- 
 man, a politician (he seconded the address during Lord Nottingham’s 
 Administration, held office as Lord of Trade, and was afterwards a 
 member of the Admiralty Board), a lover of art, and an appreciator 
 of beauty, of which he gave a proof by marrying Miss Mee of Gloucester- 
 shire, into the house of whose father he had been carried in consequence 
 of an accident when riding in the neighbourhood. 
 
 No. 23, had also another illustrious occupant in the person of Augusta, 
 Duchess of Brunswick, who lost her husband, to whom she was married 
 in 1764, at Jena, and her son at Quatre-Bras. She was the eldest child 
 of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and was born in 1737. The quarrel 
 between her parents and George II., and the extraordinary circumstances 
 attending the birth of this “ little rat of a girl, about the bigness of a 
 good large toothpick case,” as Lord Hervey calls her, will be found 
 fully detailed in that nobleman’s memoirs. 3 When she returned to 
 England in 1807, flying from Napoleon’s eagles, she took up her resi- 
 dence at Blackheath, and there George III. visited her immediately after 
 her arrival ; but a few years after she took the house in Hanover Square, 
 and there in March 18 11, Lady Jerningham paid her respects to the 
 Duchess. Writing to Lady Bedingfield on the 9th of the month, Lady 
 Jerningham thus describes the incident : “ I must now give you an 
 
 account of my visit to the Royal Highness of Brunswick . . . she de- 
 sired that I would come with Lady Findlater to dine with her. ... I 
 accordingly went at the half hour after four. She has a corner house 
 in Hanover Square, belonging to Lord Palmerston ; the outward ap- 
 pearance is not considerable, but within it is large, and it has a good 
 garden. The Duchess was alone in her grand apartment, two very fine 
 rooms, one looking to the Square and the other to the garden. . . . 
 After dinner we went up to her dressing-room, which is her usual 
 
 1 For an account of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, an American scientist and a 
 
 Bavarian Administrator, born 1753, died 1814, see Walford’s Londoniana and the usual Bio- 
 graphical Dictionaries. 
 
 s In Tefnple Bar for April 1876. 3 Vol. ii. p. 362, et seq. 
 
68 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 apartment of common visiting days, and after some more conversa- 
 tion upon everything, a card table was put, and she played at 
 ombre.” 1 
 
 The Duchess died in 1813 — according to Croker, in Spring Gardens, 
 — so it is probable that she had given up Lord Palmerston’s house before 
 that event, although in London Past and Present , it is spoken of as her 
 last London residence. 
 
 The present No. 17, formerly No. 15, which is doomed to destruc- 
 tion, also had, it is said, a once well-known occupier in the person of 
 Mrs. Jordan, who was living here under the protection of the Duke of 
 Clarence. As an actress she can have had but few equals, indeed Genest 2 
 affirms that in her own line she was incomparable, and states that her 
 conception of the character of Hippolita will never be excelled, while 
 other notable parts in her repertoire were those of Viola and Rosalind ; 
 and we know that even Mrs. Siddons allowed that she had “ a vast deal 
 of merit.” 
 
 If we now take the houses more or less in rotation, it will be observed 
 that most of them have had, at one time or another, occupants who have 
 made their mark on the history of the country. Beginning with No. 10, 
 we shall see that Lord Rodney was living here in 1792. 3 As the gallant 
 Admiral died in that year, his tenancy of No. 10 must have been 
 restricted to months only. Walford tells an anecdote of the victor of 
 Cape St. Vincent. It is known that his favourite daughter eloped with 
 Captain Chambers, son of Sir William Chambers, the celebrated architect, 
 and was married at Gretna Green. When Lord Rodney heard of the 
 escapade he was at first, as was natural enough, exceedingly wroth, but 
 his habitual equanimity soon succeeded the angry storm, and he is 
 recorded to have delivered this obiter dictum on the affair : “ Well, well ! 
 what is done can’t be undone ; but it is odd that my own family is 
 the only crew I never could manage, and 1 only hope that Jessy will 
 never mutiny under her new commander.” 
 
 But Rodney was not the only illustrious naval commander who resided 
 at No. 10, for thirty years previously — in 1762 — the great Lord Anson 
 was dwelling beneath the same roof, but, as in the case of Lord Rodney, 
 only for a few months, for on June 7th of that year he died at Moor 
 Park in Hertfordshire. The intelligence that beams from his good- 
 looking face in his portrait by Sir Joshua, bears out the remarks on his 
 
 1 The Jerningham Letters, vol. ii. pp. 4-5. 2 History of the Stage. 
 
 3 Besant’s Mayfair states from 1792-1796, but Lord Rodney died in the former year as 
 
 stated in the text! Boyle’s Court Guide for 1795, gives Lady Rodney as living at No. 9, in 
 that year. 
 
HANOVER SQUARE 
 
 69 
 
 personal appearance given in the Lives of the British Admirals } “Hand- 
 some and well formed,” he is there described as being “ rather above the 
 middle size ; in movement easy and unaffected, and with a complexion 
 fair and sanguine, but in the expression of the face more grave than im- 
 passioned, sedate rather than melancholy.” Mrs. Pilkington, in her 
 Memoirs , mentions a call she made on the Admiral at his house, and tells 
 how she was “ shown into the back parlour of a small house in Hanover 
 Square,” and how “ it was well adorned with books in glass cases even 
 from the ceiling to the floor.” Although Lord Anson’s name is indis- 
 solubly connected with the prowess of the British Navy, he only obtained 
 the highest rank in it — that of Admiral of the Fleet — the year before his 
 death. 
 
 Three years after that event, No. 10 had as occupier the gentleman 
 who has come down to posterity as “ Single-Speech Hamilton.” William 
 Gerard Hamilton, who is thus indicated, was born in London in 1729, 
 and died there in 1796. He entered Parliament in 1754, and on 
 November 13, 1755, he delivered his maiden speech during the debate on 
 the Address, in which he showed the true spirit of oratory and a promise 
 that was never fulfilled, for it remained during his parliamentary life his 
 sole elocutionary effort of any note, and thus obtained for him that 
 species of fame which many speeches have been unable to secure less 
 favoured individuals. Leland described him as a selfish, canker-hearted, 
 envious reptile ! because he refused the great Burke, who, as a young 
 man, had accompanied him to Ireland and acted as his private secretary, 
 the leisure the latter demanded for his literary pursuits ; while Burke 
 himself, who, when roused, never minced matters, roundly calls him “ an 
 infamous scoundrel.” There was probably something to be said on the 
 other side. 
 
 Another one time occupier of No. 10, which we have seen was a 
 temporary home of both Lord Anson and Lord Rodney, was Perceval 
 Pott, the celebrated surgeon, who resided here from 1777-1788, while a 
 no less notable physician of a later day lived here in 1841, in the person 
 of Sir James Clark, who was born in the year that Pott ceased to reside 
 in the Square. He is known for two important works — one on Con- 
 sumption, published in 1835, and an earlier one on The Influence of 
 Climate in the Preservation and Cure of Chronic Diseases. He died at 
 Bagshot Park, now the country residence of the Duke of Connaught, in 
 1870, and was the father of the no less celebrated Sir Andrew Clark of 
 our own day. 
 
 No. 10 was for a time the Brunswick Hotel, and it was writing from 
 
 1 Vol. vi. p. 388. 
 
 
 rb'r 
 
70 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 this hotel that Clement Hill, whose nephew had been taken ill, asked 
 Lord W. Pitt Lennox to take his place as page at the Coronation of 
 George IV. 1 
 
 As we have seen, among the earliest inhabitants of the Square appears 
 the name of Lord Hillsborough. This was the first Lord, and father of 
 the peer whom Mrs. Delany describes as very well bred, sensible, and 
 entertaining, 2 and who was created Marquis of Downshire in 1789. It 
 is important to remember this and not to confound the latter with his 
 father, at whose house in Hanover Square strange doings took place, 
 according to Prior, who, in his Life of Malone , 3 gives the following 
 account of them 
 
 “ He (Walpole) has a copy of a very curious letter of Lady M. W. 
 Montague’s (sic) giving an account of a private society that used to meet 
 about the year 1730 at Lord Hillsborough’s in Hanover Square, where 
 each gentleman came masked, and brought with him one lady — either his 
 mistress, or any other man’s wife, or perhaps a woman of the town — who 
 was also masked. They were on oath not to divulge names, and con- 
 tinued masked the whole time. There were tables set out for supper, 
 artificial arbours, couches, &c., to which parties retired when they pleased, 
 and called for what refreshment they chose. . . . This institution pro- 
 bably lasted but a short time. The late Captain O’Brien told me that his 
 father, Sir Edward, was one of the members.” 
 
 The house at which this indeed strange society met must have been 
 that known (No. 21, formerly No. 19) 4 from 1793 as Downshire House, 
 at the corner of Brook Street, which was inhabited in 1826 by the 
 second Marquis of Salisbury, three years after he had come into the title ; 
 he appears only to have rented it, for in 1835 it was occupied by Talley- 
 rand, then French Ambassador to this country. In his time it was the 
 scene of numerous reunions of diplomatists, wits, and literary men ; but 
 there is no doubt that the Prince was looked at askance during his residence 
 in London. Lady Bedingfield calls him “a horrid old creature,” and Lady 
 Gore once remarked, “ Whenever I see Talleyrand I expect to smell sulphur 
 and brimstone.” 5 
 
 It was probably at the house in Hanover Square that Lord Sefton used 
 to visit the Prince, an amusing account of one of these calls being described 
 by his Lordship to Raikes at White’s Club, and thus recorded by the 
 
 1 Lord W. Pitt Lennox’s Reminiscences of Fifty Years, vol. ii. p. 20. 
 
 2 Mrs. Delany’s Autobiography , vol. iii. p. 512. 
 
 3 Prior’s Life of Malone, p. 512, embodying a memorandum, dated March 8, 1789, by 
 Malone of a conversation he had on that day with Horace Walpole. 
 
 4 Boyle gives Lord Downshire as living at No. 19 in 1795. 
 
 6 ferningham Letters, vol. ii. p. 342. 
 

 
 • , '• .. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PLAN OF THE PARISH OF ST. GEORGE'S, 
 HANOVER SQUARE. 
 
HANOVER SQUARE 71 
 
 Diarist : 1 “ This morning he was ushered into the dressing-room of this 
 celebrated octogenarian, who was under the hands of two valets de chambre , 
 while a third, who was training for the mysteries of the toilette, stood 
 looking on with attention to perfect himself in his future duties. The 
 Prince was in a loose flannel gown ; his long locks (for it is no wig), which 
 are rather scanty, as may be supposed, were twisted and crepus with the 
 curling iron, saturated with powder and pomatum, and then with great 
 care arranged into those snowy ringlets which have been so much known 
 and remarked upon all over Europe. His under attire was a flannel panta- 
 loon, loose and undulating in those parts which were restrained by the 
 bandages of the iron bar which supports the lame leg of this celebrated 
 cul-de-jatte." A writer in the Morning Post about the year 1838, wrote a 
 long character of this extraordinary man, in which he says that when the 
 Prince came to England, “ one cannot refrain from laughing on thinking how 
 he appeared then. He gave his audiences to his countrymen in his salon in 
 Hanover Square with a round hat on his head, on the front of which was 
 a tri-coloured cockade six inches square, whilst lying tout au long on the 
 sofas were three young sans-culottes of July he had brought with him to 
 give himself an air of Republicanism. Louis Philippe got settled on his 
 throne, the tri-coloured cockade was torn off the round hat and thrown 
 into the fire, and the new-born embryos of Republicanism were sent back 
 to Paris.” 
 
 Sydney Smith’s humorous — more humorous than strictly true — descrip- 
 tion of Talleyrand’s talking, or attempt at talking, is well known : “ When 
 he did speak,” says the witty parson, “ he was so inarticulate I could never 
 understand a word he said ... he had no teeth, and, I believe, no roof 
 to his mouth — no uvula, no larynx, no trachea, no epiglottis, no anything. 
 It was not talking ; it was gurgling.” 2 
 
 Among other illustrious bygone people at one time connected with 
 Hanover Square, mention must be made of George Granville, Lord 
 Lansdowne, who has taken a place among the third or fourth-rate poets 
 — strictly, if we follow the Horatian maxim, no poet at all, but, as he 
 would have been probably termed in his own day, a producer of light 
 and not unpleasing verse. His works in verse and prose appeared in 1732, 
 but besides these lighter amusements, George Granville — as he was before 
 being created Lord Lansdowne in 17 11 — was a Member of Parliament 
 for Cornwall, and at one time filled the high post of Secretary for War. 
 In 1712 he was made Comptroller of the Household. After acquiring 
 
 1 Raikes’s Journal , vol. i. pp. 121-22. 
 
 2 I may remind the reader that one of the lost books of the world was the projected (and 
 even announced) Life of Talleyrand by Thackeray. 
 
72 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 the title he married Lady Mary Thynne, widow of Thomas Thynne, and 
 daughter of Edward, first Earl of Jersey. If not a great poet himself, and 
 we have the authority of Dr. Joseph Warton for calling him a very in- 
 different one— a faint copyist of Waller, — Lord Lansdowne had the honour 
 of playing the patron to both Dryden, who addressed his Eleventh Epistle 
 to “ Mr. Granville on his excellent tragedy called Heroic Love ,” and to Pope, 
 who terms him “ Granville the polite,” which does not seem to err on 
 the side of effusiveness ; but we may remember that the poet dedi- 
 cated his Windsor Forest to him, and in a letter dated from Binfield, 
 January io, 1712, he thanks his patron “for,” to use his own words, 
 “ having given my poem of Windsor Forest its greatest ornament, that 
 of having your name in front of it.” 1 Lord Lansdowne was, besides, a 
 close friend of Swift, and in the Journal to Stella will be found many 
 references to him, some of which seem to show that Swift must have been 
 a not infrequent guest at the house in Hanover Square. Here, on 
 January 30, 1735, Lord Lansdowne died. 2 
 
 Another poetaster is recorded as having once lived in Hanover Square, 
 and as dying there in 1749, in the person of Ambrose Philips, the one time 
 rival of Pope. Cunningham is the authority for this, but Campbell says 
 that he died at his lodgings near Vauxhall. 3 In any case we know he 
 was an habitue of the London Clubs during his sojourn in town, and that 
 he wrote for the Whigs, notably in a publication called The Freethinker , 
 which ran for about a year and a half — to be accurate from March 24, 
 1718, to September 28, 1719 — appearing twice a week. For the work he 
 did for his party, he was placed on the commission of the peace soon after 
 the accession of George I., and in 1717 was made one of the Commissioners 
 of the Lottery. As to his poetry, since Goldsmith thought the commence- 
 ment of his lines to the Earl of Dorset “ incomparably fine,” we shall be 
 safe in following so good a judge, and equally so, when he speaks of the 
 latter part as “tedious and trifling.” Dr. Johnson, who included him in 
 his Lives of the Poets, ends his notice by saying that, “ he has added 
 nothing to English poetry, yet at least half his book deserves to be 
 read.” 
 
 Philips is chiefly remembered now for his quarrel with Pope, they 
 having at one time been regarded as chiefs of the opposite camps of 
 
 1 Pope’s Works, vol. iii. p. 499. 
 
 2 Campbell, in his Specimens of British Poets , gives a song as characteristic of the peer, who 
 he says is better known as “ Granville the polite than Granville the poet.” 
 
 3 Johnson says “he was struck with a palsy, and died June 18, 1749, in his seventy- 
 eighth year,” while his editor adds, “ at his house in Hanover Street,” which, as we know 
 Hanover Square used to be called “ Hanover Square Street,” may be synonymous with the 
 Square. 
 
HANOVER SQUARE 73 
 
 pastoral poets, strange as such a contrast of a pigmy and a giant may seem ; 
 and how Philips once ostentatiously hung up a rod at Button’s Coffee- 
 House, with which he threatened to chastise his rival, and how the “ Wasp 
 of Twitnam” called him a rascal and accused him of appropriating certain 
 subscriptions for the translation of Homer which had been handed to him 
 at the Hanover Club, are matters of literary gossip which must not here 
 detain us. 
 
 Pope was closely connected with another celebrity who once lived in 
 Hanover Square, for here, at No. 20, resided Richard Temple, created 
 Lord Cobham, in 1714. To him the poet inscribed his Characters of Men, 
 in 1734, and in that poem are contained those lines which have become 
 proverbial : — 
 
 “ And you ! brave Cobham, to the latest breath, 
 
 Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death : 
 
 Such in those moments as in all the past ; 
 
 ‘Oh, save my country, Heav’n ! ’ shall be your last.” 
 
 Cobham, whose military career is here indicated, was, like the great majority 
 of brave soldiers, a modest man, and we find him writing to Pope to sug- 
 gest that he has here protested too much. The letter, dated from Stowe, 
 in November 1733, will be found in Ruffherd’s Life of the poet, where 
 his lordship is termed “ a man of sense and vivacity ” and his observations 
 “just and sprightly.” Mrs. Delany, too, writing to her sister in 1739, 
 speaks of his giving her more entertainment than the whole House of 
 Lords, a debate of which she had been attending, and adds “ that this 
 decayed carcase of his contains a spirit that is surprising.” 1 
 
 Cobham was not only intimate with Pope but was also the friend of 
 Congreve, who addressed his epistle, Of Pleasing, to him when he was 
 still Sir Richard Temple, and later, in “ a letter to Viscount Cobham ” 
 (1729), calls him— 
 
 “Graceful in form, and winning in address.” 
 
 Besides these connections with two great writers, Lord Cobham is remem- 
 bered as having, by the aid of Capability Brown, who was originally his 
 gardener, created the beautiful gardens at Stowe, where he died in 1749. 
 Ten years later, Gray, in a letter to Wharton, mentions his widow thus: 
 “ I have been down at Stoke to see poor Lady Cobham, and after about 
 three weeks passed there I returned with her to town, and have been ever 
 
 1 Autobiography , vol. ii. p. 43. 
 
74 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 since, till about ten days ago, by her desire with her in Hanover 
 Square.” 1 
 
 Lady Cobham, who was a daughter of Edmund Halsey, Esq., 
 of Southwark, was a close friend of Gray’s, who refers to her in the 
 eighth stanza of his Long Story. She was one of the few who saw 
 the first draft of the Elegy , which was shown her by Walpole, to 
 whom Gray had sent it, and she so much admired it that she wished to 
 be acquainted with the author ; it was a somewhat singular circumstance 
 that she was living at the time at the mansion-house of Stoke Pogis 2 — 
 in the churchyard of which place, as all the world knows, the famous 
 poem was composed. 
 
 John Cam Hobhouse, the friend of Lord Byron, was living at No. 2 
 Hanover Square in 1820, and a letter addressed by him, in November 
 of that year, to John Murray, with respect to a song Byron had written 
 about him at the time he was standing for Westminster with Sir Francis 
 Burdett, is extant, and is given by Smiles in his Memoirs of the Murrays. 
 
 Another friend of a poet lived later in the Square in the person of the 
 second Earl of Minto, and here Thomas Campbell stayed from time to 
 time, acting occasionally as his host’s private secretary. Beattie refers to 
 this in the following passage : “ At Lord Minto’s residence in Hanover 
 Square, a Poet’s Room was prepared for his reception ; and here, according 
 to invitation, he took up his residence for the season. His Lordship, 
 it is understood, availed himself occasionally of his services as secre- 
 tary.” 3 
 
 At No. 18 in the Square, are the premises of the Oriental Club. 
 This house stands on the site of one which was occupied by Lord 
 Le Despenser for ten years — from 1771-81. 4 This peer was one 
 of the members of the notorious Hell Fire Club associated with the 
 names of Wilkes and Churchill, which has brought, by unfortunate 
 association, discredit on the beautiful ruins of Medenham Abbey. In 
 that curious work, Chrysal , or the Adventures of a Guinea , its author, 
 Charles Johnston, gives an account of this fraternity and its infamous 
 members, and in a key 5 to that work I find Lord Le Despenser adum- 
 brated as “ a person of flighty imagination,” which is letting his Lordship’s 
 memory off rather easily, for besides what we know of him in connection 
 with this club, we have Walpole’s 6 authority for stating that “he was a 
 
 1 Dated November 28, 1759. See Gray’s Letters , edited by Tovey. 
 
 2 Gray’s Letters , p. 207. 3 Lije of Campbell , vol. i. p. 383. 
 
 4 It was formerly No. 16, and in 1795 was occupied by the Duchess of Rutland. At the 
 old No. 18 Lord Stowell is given by Boyle as residing in 1795. 
 
 5 See Davis’s Olio of Literary Anecdotes , p. 16. 
 
 6 Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of George Ills Reign , vol. i. p. 106. 
 
HANOVER SQUARE 75 
 
 man of sense without eloquence, and of humour without good-humour,” 
 and the gossiping chronicler further tells us how “ he had early in life made 
 a voyage to Russia dressed like Charles the Twelfth, in hopes of making 
 the Czarina Anne fall in love with him ! ” 
 
 Lord Le Despenser’s house was subsequently rebuilt in 1827, from 
 designs by Wyatt, for the club which still occupies it, and which had been 
 formed in 1824, by Sir John Malcolm, who, having received a commission 
 in the East India Company’s service in 1781, worked his way up to the 
 Governorship of Bengal, which he held for three years, from 1827-30. 
 On his return to England he represented Launceston in Parliament in the 
 Tory interest from 1831-32, dying in Princes Street, Hanover Square, in 
 the following year. He wrote among other things a History of Persia, 
 and a Political History of India. 1 The club is, as its name implies, for 
 the use of those associated with our Eastern Empire, and is said to have 
 been called the “ Horizontal Club ” by hackney-coachmen of an earlier 
 day, while a writer in the New Monthly Magazine , about 1837, waxed 
 highly satirical over what he was pleased to term the “ nabobery.” “ Enter 
 it,” he wrote, “ it looks like a hospital, in which a smell of curry powder 
 pervades the wards filled with venerable patients, dressed in nankeen shorts, 
 yellow stockings and gaiters, and facings to match.” 2 In 1855 the 
 Alfred, another club which had been founded on somewhat similar lines 
 in 1808, was amalgamated with the Oriental. Old Lord Dudley used 
 to say of this institution that it was “the asylum of doting Tories and 
 drivelling quidnuncs.” Lord Byron, who was a member, gives a livelier 
 description of it, although he allowed it to be “ a little too sober and 
 literary.” Its one time cockney appellation as “ The Half-read Club ” 
 seems, in any case, to have been highly inappropriate. 
 
 Other houses in the Square are now the headquarters of Clubs and 
 Associations of various kinds ; thus the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, 
 which was founded in 1838, and had its home formerly at No. 6 Blooms- 
 bury Square, was moved to No. 15 Hanover Square in 1856; at No. 3, 
 the Zoological Society, established in 1826, is housed, as well as the 
 Anthropological Society ; at No. 17, where formerly stood Mrs. 
 Jordan’s residence, is the Arts Club; and at No. 16, the Royal College 
 of Chemistry was installed in the year of its foundation, 1845 ; in which 
 connection I am reminded that that talented student of physical science, 
 Mrs. Somerville, nee Mary Fairfax, was residing in Hanover Square with 
 
 1 It may here be noted that from 1863-65, the Naval and Military Club had its headquarters 
 at No. 32 in the Square. 
 
 2 Curiosities of London, p. 253. 
 
76 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 her parents, Sir William and Lady Fairfax, in 1 8 1 6. Here they used to 
 hold those scientific and literary receptions, at one of which Sir Charles 
 Lyall met his future wife, the beautiful Miss Horner. Mrs. Somer- 
 ville, who is known as the writer of a variety of learned works, does 
 not seem to have been nearly so blue as she is painted, for even so 
 lightsome a creature as Tom Moore, on meeting her at Murray’s, could 
 afterwards record that she gained on him exceedingly, adding that 
 “ so much unpretending womanliness of manner, joined with such rare 
 talent and knowledge, is indeed a combination that cannot be too much 
 admired.” 1 
 
 Mrs. Piozzi appears once to have lived in Hanover Square, after her 
 second marriage, for writing to a friend in 1 8 1 8, she embodies the following 
 anecdote in her letter: “Did I ever tell you of a Count Andriani,” she 
 
 says, “ who dined with Mr. Piozzi and me once in Hanover Square ? 
 Helen Maria Williams met him, and whispered me, before dinner, how 
 handsome she thought him. He was very showy-looking ; and had made 
 a long tour about our British dominions. While the dessert was upon 
 the table I asked him which was finest — Loch Lomond or the Lake of 
 Killarney ? ‘ Oh, no comparison,’ was the reply ; ‘ the Irish lake is a 
 
 body of water worth looking at, even by those who, like you and I, have 
 lived on the banks of Lago Maggiore, that much resembles, and little 
 surpasses it ; the Highland beauty is a cold beauty, truly.’ Helen’s 
 Scotch blood and national prejudice boiled over in the course of this 
 conversation ; and when the ladies retired to the drawing-room after 
 dinner, ‘I was mistaken in that man’s features,’ said she'; ‘he is not 
 handsome at all when one looks more at him.’ ” We may join with Mrs. 
 Piozzi in her exclamation of “ Comical enough, was it not ? ” 2 
 
 In order to say something more at length of the once famed Hanover 
 Rooms, 3 I have left the notice of them and their former premises to the 
 end of the chapter. The premises of the “ Hanover Square Club,” 
 which was established here in 1875, occupied the site of the concert 
 and ball rooms erected by Sir John Gallini, who is given by Boyle 
 as residing at No. 4, in 1795. A Swiss by birth, he came to England and 
 was engaged to teach dancing to some of the members of the Royal 
 Family and others. He soon made a considerable fortune, received the 
 
 1 Journal , vol. vii. p. 182. 2 Piozziana , p. 95. 
 
 3 The site of this house was formerly called the Mill Field or Kirkham Close and was 
 originally in the parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields, but in 1778 was incorporated in that of 
 St. George’s, Hanover Square. It appears to have formed part of the premises in the occupa- 
 tion of Matthew, Lord Dillon, the ground landlord being the Earl of Plymouth, who sold 
 it to Lord Denman, who resold it to Sir John Gallini. Old and New London , vol. iv. 
 
 pp. 316-17. 
 
HANOVER SQUARE 77 
 
 honour of knighthood, and further enhanced his prospects by marrying 
 Lady Betty Bertie, daughter of the third Earl of Abingdon. In 1774, in 
 conjunction with John Christian Bach, 1 the second son of the great John 
 Sebastian, who had settled in the country and lived at Richmond, and 
 Charles F. Abel, the celebrated Viol-di-Gamba player, Gallini opened the 
 Hanover Square Concert Rooms, where concerts went hand in hand with 
 balls and masquerades, and formed a counter-attraction to Mrs. Cornelys’ 
 notorious assemblies in Soho Square. Here music of the best kind was to 
 be had, and as Gallini, who appears to have gradually bought out his 
 partners, had secured Royal patronage, his venture flourished exceedingly. 
 George III. and Queen Charlotte frequently honoured the concerts by 
 their presence, and there is a tradition that the King had a small room 
 added to the premises, called “The Queen’s Tea Room,” where refresh- 
 ments might be taken by the Royal party during the intervals of the music; 
 and here, over the mantelpiece, a large mirror was fixed which had also 
 been presented by the sovereign. Two years after the inception of Gallini’s 
 plan, a committee of noblemen had been formed for the purpose of initiat- 
 ing those concerts of “ Ancient Music ” about which we hear so much in 
 the memoirs and the diaries of the period ; these concerts were held in 
 various places, until in 1804 they were removed to the Hanover Square 
 Rooms, where Gallini’s original scheme had come to an end in 1793, Sir 
 John receiving a rental for the rooms from the Directors of the Ancient 
 Music. Mr. Greatorex was the conductor here till 1831, when Mr. Knyvett 
 succeeded him. One of the rules of the Directors was “ that no composi- 
 tion less than twenty-five years old ” could be performed there, and Sir 
 Richard Phillips, who records this, adds that two disadvantages accrued 
 from this, one being a want of variety in the performances, and the other 
 — a chronic disability in this country, it would seem — “ discouragement of 
 living genius.” 
 
 In 1833 “the Ancient Music” was followed in the Hanover Square 
 Rooms by the Philharmonic Concerts, which had been initiated by Messrs. 
 Cramer in 1813. In 1862, the rooms were re-decorated and styled the 
 “ Queen’s Concert Rooms,” the interest in them held by the Misses 
 Gallini, Sir John’s nieces, having been acquired by Mr. Robert Cocks, the 
 music publisher, in 1845, and in 1875 they were let on lease to the 
 Hanover Square Club. 
 
 Musical performances were not by any means the only entertain- 
 ments given here, for besides the balls, readings, such as those of Charles 
 Dickens ; lectures, a series of which were delivered by Dr. Chalmers in 
 
 1 For numerous references to both Bach and Abel, see Mrs. Papendiek’s Diary, passi?n. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 
 
 “We call it little London ; and it outdoes ... all the Squares in dressing and breeding ; 
 nay, even the Court itself, under the rose.” — Shadwell’s Bury Fair , Act I., Scene I. 
 
 A LTHOUGH St. James’s Square is an extensive one, according 
 /\ to Hatton, in 1708 extending to almost 4^- acres, and to 
 ! \ 5 acres, by the survey taken in 1853, it contains fewer houses 
 
 / \ than any square of a similar size ; which helps to show that 
 
 the mansions here are some of the largest and most impor- 
 tant in London. Besides this, its claims as a fashionable centre have 
 long been established, and still hold good, although some of the residences 
 within it have passed from the noble owners who once occupied them into 
 the use of clubs, and for other non-residential purposes. 
 
 The Square dates from the time of Charles II., and has been inhabited 
 by so many illustrious people that it would have required a volume to 
 adequately deal with it, had not such a book already been written by 
 Mr. Arthur Dasent, 1 whose researches have been so painstaking and 
 thorough that any one treading the same ground must perforce, if he 
 wishes to avoid the sloughs of error, walk in the footsteps that have been 
 so clearly marked out by the first historian of this interesting spot. Here, 
 at any rate, I can pretend to no original research, and I tremble to think 
 of the mistakes I might have committed had I not had the advantage of 
 Mr. Dasent’s learned and interesting work to guide me in the right path. 2 
 
 I have, in other parts of this book, set down what Ralph, in his 
 Review of Publick Buildings in London , published in 1734, has had to say 
 about the London Squares in general ; as his criticism is nearly always 
 adverse, it says something for St. James’s Square that he should find it 
 having “an appearance of grandeur superior to any other place in town,” 
 although we shall be somewhat surprised to find that he traces the 
 
 1 The History of St. James's Square, 1895. 
 
 2 As an earlier pioneer in this direction, Mr. H. B. Wheatley must be mentioned as giving 
 a most concise account of the Square in a chapter devoted to it in his Round about Piccadilly , 
 published in 1870. 
 
 80 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 81 
 
 “ grandeur ” solely to “ the regularity of the buildings, the neatness of 
 the pavement, and the beauty of the basin in the middle ” ; as, however, 
 is usual with Ralph when he has been led into praise of any kind, he 
 qualifies this statement by remarking that he “ can never thoroughly 
 applaud the basin itself, till ’tis finished as it ought with a statue or 
 obelisk in the middle,” and by the wider assertion that the Square has 
 “not any one elegant house in it.” To-day the statue desired by Ralph 
 stands in the centre garden, while there is not one but many “ elegant ” 
 houses around it. 
 
 St. James’s Square owes its existence to the enterprise and energy of 
 one who otherwise showed not much of either quality — Henry Jermyn, 
 Earl of St. Albans, who is known to the student of history as a devoted 
 adherent of Charles I. and an intimate friend of Henrietta Maria. Re- 
 turning to England at the Restoration, he became one of the favourite 
 courtiers of the Merry Monarch ; an outcome of which favour was the 
 grant made to him by the King of no less than 45 acres of ground, then 
 known as St. James’s Fields. Faithorne’s map of London, for 1658, 
 shows this ground as an open space, planted with a double row of trees, 
 where it faced what is now Pall Mall, and having some irregular houses 
 at the south-east corner, and a long low building at the south-west ex- 
 tremity at the corner of what is St. James’s Street. The ground forms 
 almost a square, and is bounded on the north and south by Piccadilly and 
 Pall Mall, and on the east and west by the Haymarket and St. James’s 
 Street. 
 
 The grant which Lord St. Albans obtained in 1662, was originally 
 merely a lease, and the warrant for it is still preserved in the Public 
 Record Office. 1 By it we find that Lord St. Albans paid into the Ex- 
 chequer the sum of ^6000 for one portion of the ground, and ^4000 for the 
 remainder, together with a rent of £5 per annum for what was then called 
 “ Pall Maile feild,” and £1 for three acres known as Suffolke Stable, while a 
 further rent of ^5, 6s. 8d. was to be paid from 1684, when the lease, 
 formerly granted to John Harvey and John Coell, for certain “ houses and 
 grounds scituate and being in the parish of St. Gyles,” expired, and for 
 which the above-mentioned fine of .£4000 had been paid. In 1665, the 
 site of the present Square was granted absolutely to Lord St. Albans, who 
 together with Sir John Coell, Sir Thomas Clarges, and others had already, 
 
 1 Mr. Dasent gives it, as well as the later grant of the site in 1665, in an appendix to his 
 work on the Square. That this formed merely a part of many improvements in this neigh- 
 bourhood is proved by an entry in Evelyn’s Diary , where the writer speaks of being one of 
 the Commissioners appointed for “reforming buildings and streets of London” on which 
 occasion the paving of “the way from St. James’s north . . . and the Haymarket” was 
 ordered. 
 
 F 
 
8 2 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 on the obtaining of the first lease, proceeded to develop it. That some 
 headway must have already been made by the end of 1663, is proved by 
 a remark of Pepys, under date of September 2nd of that year, that “ the 
 building of St. James’ by my Lord St. Albans” was “now about,” 
 which, he adds, “the city stomach highly, but dare not oppose it.” 
 What, however, the City was unable to do the Plague and the Great 
 Fire effected, and building operations had to be suspended, until some- 
 thing like a resumption of ordinary daily life took place after the latter 
 disaster. 
 
 Although other parts of Lord St. Albans’ estate must have begun to 
 be developed, it was not, apparently, till some years later that the Square 
 itself was commenced, the first mention in the Rate Books appearing in 
 1667, in connection with the ground-landlord’s own house in the south- 
 east corner, which formed the southern portion of what is now Norfolk 
 House. Lord St. Albans then proceeded, says Mr. Dasent, “to dis- 
 tribute the various plots among his friends and the principal builders of 
 the day in about equal proportions, his practice being to devise the fee 
 and inheritance of the soil for a sum of money down, while reserving a 
 small yearly ground-rent in perpetuity.” By help of a plan of the 
 allocation of building sites in the Square dated 1676, given in Mr. Dasent’s 
 book, we find that the largest plot, now occupied by|Derby House, London 
 House, and the north part of Norfolk House, went to Lord Bellasis ; what 
 forms now the sites of Nos. 1 and 2, to Lord Arlington ; and the plot 
 at the junction of King Street with the Square (now Nos. 17 and 18), to 
 Lord Halifax; while Lord St. Albans eventually took the site at the west 
 corner of York Street (now Nos. 9, 10, and 11), for his own use as 
 being considered probably a better situation than the smaller one he had 
 originally chosen. The names of Sir Cyril Wyche (No. 12), 1 Sir Thomas 
 Clarges (No. 13), Sir Fulke Lucy (No. 14), the Hon. Thomas Jermyn 
 (No. 16), Sir Peter Apsley (No. 20), Arabella Churchill (No. 21), Mrs. 
 Mary Davis (the Army and Navy Club), help us to trace the favoured 
 friends who obtained sites ; while other plots are found to be leased to 
 some of the well-known builders of the day — Barebone, Storey, and Frith ; 
 the first, as we shall see, the builder of Red Lion Square and otherwise 
 notable, and the last two by name perpetuated in Frith Street and Storey’s 
 Gate. What is now the Sports Club was then marked as the French 
 Embassy, for which the Ambassador, M. Courtin, paid ^400 rent, 
 while the large plot at the south corner of King Street, where Cleveland 
 House was eventually to stand, is shown as not being yet appropriated to 
 any one. 
 
 1 These numbers in brackets represent the present numbering. 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 83 
 
 Mr. Dasent very properly draws attention to the excellence of the 
 building in St. James’s Square, a point that many modern builders would 
 do well to lay to heart, and he tells us that when Cleveland House was 
 pulled down a few years since, even the interior brickwork was found 
 to be 3 feet thick ! 
 
 In the Rate Book of St. Martin’s for 1676, are given some other names, 
 beyond those just mentioned, of inhabitants in the Square ; thus there is 
 Lord Purbeck, who, Mr. Dasent thinks, occupied the house on ground 
 given as having been allocated to the Hon. Thomas Jermyn and Frith 
 the builder ; the Marquis of Blanquefort, Lady Newburgh, the Countess 
 of Warwick, the Earls of Oxford (Aubrey de Vere, last Earl) and 
 Clarendon (Henry Hyde, second Earl), and Lawrence Hyde, afterwards 
 Earl of Rochester, all of whom occupied the various houses erected 
 by the builders whom we have seen had obtained building leases. 
 
 Among these names are many of historical importance, and with 
 a few exceptions they belong to the representatives of great and noble 
 families. It is hardly necessary to say that the name of Mrs. Mary Davis, 
 who, to use Dr. Doran’s words, “ danced well, played moderately ill, 
 announced the next afternoon’s performance with grace, and won an in- 
 famous distinction at the King’s hands,” is one of these exceptions. Sir 
 Cyril Wyche and Sir Allen Apsley both have claims to attention, the 
 former, a relative of Lord St. Albans, having been President of the Royal 
 Society, while the latter was Keeper of the King’s Hawks and Treasurer 
 to the Duke of York, who slept at his house in St. James’s Square on the 
 night he returned to England in 1679, 1 when the sudden illness of the 
 King made his presence in the country necessary. This house was subse- 
 quently rebuilt by Robert Adam for Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, at which 
 time Angelica Kauffman and Zucchi were commissioned to decorate the 
 interior, and were aided in their efforts by Joseph and Cipriani. 
 
 The most important house in the Square is of course Norfolk House. 
 The present structure dates from 1748, 2 when the southerly portion of 
 the large plot, assigned originally to Lord Bellasis, and first let to Lady 
 Newburgh, was incorporated with Lord St. Albans’ original house next 
 door. Before this amalgamation of the two mansions, each had been 
 occupied by many, some of them interesting, people. Thus in old 
 St. Albans House, Sir John Duncombe, once Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 followed the original owner, in 1675, for a short time; after him, it was 
 
 1 See Strickland’s Lives , vol. vi. p. 86. 
 
 2 The house did not find favour with “ Athenian Stuart,” who remarks, “ Would any foreigner, 
 beholding an insipid length of wall broken into regular rows of windows, ever figure from 
 thence the residence of the first duke of England ? ” Critical Observations on the Buildings 
 of London , p. 28. 
 
84 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 occupied by the Marquis of Blanquefort and the Earl of Feversham till 
 1680, when the Portuguese Ambassador took up his residence, apparently 
 only for a year, here. We then find the Earl of Conway, the (seventh) 
 Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Kildare, and the Spanish Ambassador living 
 here in turn till 1692, in which year the Marquis of Blanquefort and 
 Lord Feversham are again here. In 1694, they were followed by the 
 second and third Earls of Sunderland, 1 the latter of whom was once Prime 
 Minister, the first Duke of Portland, and, in 1723, by the eighth Duke of 
 Norfolk. His son, the ninth Duke, lent the place to Frederick, Prince of 
 Wales, in 1738, and here, in the old building still standing behind the 
 present Norfolk House, George III. was born on the 4th of June of the 
 following year. When the Prince of Wales left Norfolk House for 
 Leicester House in 1743, the Duke of Norfolk returned, and some years 
 after obtained from the representatives of Joseph Banks the adjoining 
 house on the north side, then in a very dilapidated condition, with an 
 estimated rent of but ^170, for the trivial sum of ^1830, and com- 
 menced those building operations, under the superintendence of Matthew 
 Brettingham, the architect, which resulted in 1752, in the completion 
 of the present magnificent house; in this year it was rated at ^525 
 as its estimated annual value. 
 
 The north portion of the property has had in the past almost as 
 illustrious occupiers as its neighbour. After Lady Newburgh’s death in 
 1678, it was occupied by Sir John Ernley, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 till 1683, when Henry Savile, Lord Eland, took it. After him his son 
 William, afterwards second Marquis of Halifax, lived here till 1694, 
 and Gertrude, Countess of Halifax, for three years longer. She was 
 succeeded in the tenancy by Charles Berkeley, Lord Dursley, subsequently 
 second Earl of Berkeley, who is remembered as Ambassador at The 
 Hague, till 1699 ; and in the following year we find Edward Villiers, first 
 Earl of Jersey, living here. From 1701, when Sir Edmund Denton, Bart., 
 took the house, it was successively occupied by John Talbot, Sir James 
 Bateman, once Lord Mayor of London, Henriette, Countess of Strafford, 
 Joseph Banks, who appears to have sub-let it to Count Daggen- 
 felt, the Prussian Minister, in 1731, and Sir Robert Browne, Member 
 for Ilchester, who resided here from 1737 to 1745. In the Rate 
 Books the name of Thomas Knight, 2 probably merely a caretaker, is 
 
 1 Luttrell writes on September 19, 1693: “Earle of Sunderland has come to towne.with 
 his family, and has taken a great house in St. James’s Square.” 
 
 2 It must be clearly understood that these investigations from the Rate Books, a work of 
 enormous trouble and research, as I have found in other cases, are here solely the work of Mr. 
 Dasent, from whose book I have culled them. In Appendix B. to his History of St. James’s 
 Square they will be found tabulated for every house in the Square. 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 85 
 
 given for the years 1746 and 1747, or until the Duke of Norfolk 
 acquired it. 
 
 Next door to Norfolk House is what is now known as London 
 House, since 1771, the town residence of the Bishops of London. As 
 we have seen, on the original allocation of plots in the Square, this 
 house formed the centre of the large site obtained by Lord Bellasis. 
 By the Rate Books, however, we find it first in the occupation of Anne, 
 Countess of Warwick, widow of the fifth Earl of Warwick, and daughter 
 of the Parliamentarian Earl of Manchester, who appears to have remained 
 here till 1685, during which period her poor rate amounted to £$ ! 
 She was succeeded here by Edward Rich, sixth Earl of Warwick of that 
 creation, till 1688, when Anne, Lady Bellasis, occupied it for two years. 
 She, in turn, was followed by Philip Stanhope, afterwards third Earl of 
 Chesterfield, son of the first Earl, whom we meet with in Bloomsbury 
 Square, and father of the more celebrated fourth Earl, who was born 
 in St. James’s Square in 1694. Two years after that event John Talbot 
 of Longford, who took for a year the northern part of Norfolk House 
 next door in 1706, is given as living here till 1700, and after him, the 
 house was successively occupied by Rebecca, Marchioness of Worcester ; 
 William Henry Bentinck, first Duke of Portland, who moved hence to 
 old St. Albans House in 1710; and the fourth Duke of Hamilton, who 
 lived here from that year till 1712, when (in November) he was killed in 
 that memorable duel with Lord Mohun, which has been so often de- 
 scribed, and to which Swift thus refers in his Journal to Stella on Novem- 
 ber 15, 1712. “Before this comes to your hands you will have heard 
 of the most terrible accident that hath almost ever happened. This 
 morning at eight, my man brought me word that the Duke of Hamilton 
 had fought with Lord Mohun, and killed him, and was brought home 
 wounded. I immediately sent him to the Duke’s house in St. James’s 
 Square, but the porter could hardly answer for tears, and a great rabble 
 was about the house.” 
 
 The Duke of Hamilton’s widow continued to reside in the house 
 till 1716, and during the following year it remained empty. Among 
 those who occupied it later may be mentioned the seventh Earl of 
 Lincoln, from 1718 to 1728, during which time he was one of the 
 residents appointed as trustees in 1726, for the putting and keeping 
 the Square in order; the first Earl of Ashburnham, 1729-37; the 
 fourth Duke of Leeds, till 1741, when he went to No. 21 in the Square 
 (Winchester House) ; and the fourth Marquis of Tweeddale, 1742-45. In 
 1749, the ninth Duke of Norfolk occupied it during the rebuilding of 
 Norfolk House, and when he left it two years later it remained empty 
 
86 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 till 1754, when the sixth Viscount Montagu took it, and lived here for 
 about nine years; after whom came Thomas Anson, M.P. for Lichfield, 
 who resided here from 1764-65, while he was having No. 15 rebuilt 
 under the superintendence of “Athenian” Stuart. In the following 
 year, an Earl of Warwick of the Greville family took up his residence 
 here, and Mr. Dasent notes the somewhat singular circumstance of two 
 members of different families bearing the same title, residing in the same 
 house with an intervening period of exactly a century ! In 1770, Greville 
 left to take up his residence at No. 7, and in the following year, the 
 house having fallen into disrepair, it was purchased at a nominal figure 
 for use as the town residence of the Bishops of London, for which pur- 
 pose, notwithstanding the present Bishop’s recent public complaint of its 
 attendant expenses, it is still used. In 1820 an Act of Parliament was 
 obtained for its rebuilding and the sum of ^10,000 voted for that 
 purpose. Bishop Terrick was its first episcopal occupier, and since his 
 day all the holders of the See have lived here in turn. 
 
 Derby House, which adjoins London House on its north side, has been 
 the residence of the Earls of Derby since 1854, when the fourteenth Earl 
 took it, he having since 1837, been residing at No. 10. It stands on the 
 remaining portion of Lord Bellasis’ large site, and here was the first house 
 erected by that enterprising old “ kings-man.” When completed it was 
 taken by Aubrey de Vere, twentieth Earl of Oxford, as dissolute a man as 
 any in the dissolute court of Charles II. Although I find him rated at 
 but £ 2 , 1 os. in 1676, we are told by Mr. Dasent that he was one of the 
 several recalcitrant inhabitants of the Square who were perpetually either 
 actually refusing to pay or making weak excuses for not paying, and, in 
 short, giving the parochial authorities no end of trouble. Lord Oxford 
 did not, however, cause this inconvenience long, in this house, for he 
 moved to No. 12 in 1678, when William Cavendish, afterwards first 
 Duke of Devonshire, replaced him here, and remained till 1685. He 
 was a son-in-law of the great Duke of Ormond, but was nevertheless sus- 
 pected of complicity in William, Lord Russell’s plot, to which his well- 
 known sympathy with the Catholics as opposed to the Romanists gave 
 colour. He was present as a witness for Lord Russell and accompanied 
 him at his execution. He left St. James’s Square in 1685, to take up his 
 residence at Montagu House, Bloomsbury, which, however, was burnt 
 to the ground in the following year. He seems to have been unfortunate 
 in this respect, for the house he next occupied in Whitehall was also de- 
 stroyed by fire, and I find him returning to St. James’s Square in 1698, 
 w'here he occupied No. 3 till 1704, in which year he removed to his new 
 mansion, Devonshire House, Piccadilly. For a year after the Duke’s 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 87 
 
 removal, Derby House was occupied by Rebecca, Countess of Yarmouth, 
 and then we have the original ground landlord returning to it for another 
 twelvemonth. In 1692, it was empty, but in the following year Isabella, 
 Duchess of Grafton, was residing here, having removed from No. 3, which 
 she also rented for a year only. She was, it will be remembered, a daughter 
 of Lord Arlington, and had been married to the Duke of Grafton, one 
 of Charles II. ’s natural children, at the age of twelve ! 
 
 Among subsequent occupiers may be mentioned the seventh Duke of 
 Norfolk, who died here in 1701 ; the second Duke of Bolton, who was here 
 from 1702 to 1707, and several other less known people, till 1734, when 
 Lord Hobart, afterwards first Earl of Buckinghamshire, came here and 
 remained for nine years. Empty again in 1744 for a year, it was taken 
 in 1746 by Sir Thomas Webb, Bart., and here he and his son, the fifth 
 Baronet, resided successively till 1768. The third and fourth Earls of 
 Buckinghamshire were here from 1792 to 1806, and in the following 
 year Lord Eliot, a descendant of the famous Sir John Eliot of Charles I.’s 
 day, came to live here and continued till 1823. From 1824 till 1840 
 the house was the residence of the son of the great picture collector, 
 John Angerstein, who bore the same names, and who was succeeded by 
 the fourth Earl of Dartmouth till 1845, when it became, as it remains, 
 the town residence of the Earls of Derby. 
 
 On the other side of Charles Street we come to two houses, now 
 numbered 1 and 2, St. James’s Square, which are respectively occupied 
 to-day by the West-end Branch of the London and Westminster Bank, 
 and by the well-known naturalist and banker, Lord Avebury. The two 
 original houses on this site formed, until 1753, a single residence known 
 as Ossulston House, after its original owner, Sir John Bennet, who was 
 subsequently created Lord Ossulston. In the Rate Books he is given as 
 residing here from 1677 to 1695, but that he occasionally let the 
 house is proved by a message in a letter from Lady Chaworth to her 
 brother Lord Roos, dated January 1677, and quoted by Mr. Dasent, 
 in which she says : “ Lord Purbecke hath hired, after the example of the 
 Duke of Monmouth, Sir John Bennet’s house in St. James’s Fields, for to 
 make a ball to the Masqueraders in next week.” 
 
 Two other members of the Bennet family subsequently occupied it, 
 the second of whom (the second Earl of Tankerville), made many improve- 
 ments, particularly in decorative work, for which purpose he employed the 
 Italian artist Amiconi, who came to England in 1729, and who has been 
 described as “ a mere shadow of the old Italian masters, and more feeble 
 than even Sebastian Ricci,” 1 to paint the staircase, &c. The Earl, how- 
 
 1 Taylor’s Fine Arts in England. 
 
88 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 ever, subsequently sold the house for T6000, when it was pulled down 
 and two residences built in its place. This work was completed in 1754, 
 when the second Earl of Dartmouth took No. 1, the corner house, and 
 with one break, in 1806 to 1830, when it was occupied by Lord Grantham, 
 once First Lord of the Admiralty as well as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 
 it remained in the Legge family till 1841, three years after which date 
 the London and Westminster Bank acquired it. 
 
 The other house, No. 2, was taken by the second Lord Falmouth, and 
 it remained in the Boscawen family’s possession down to about 1895, 
 when it was bought by Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury). Only in one 
 instance does the house appear to have been let, when we find the second 
 Lord Chatham, who was previously, as we have seen, living in Berkeley 
 Square, here from 1802 to 1805. 1 
 
 The house next door, No. 3, was originally, it seems, in the possession 
 also of Lord Ossulston previous to 1686, and it was originally one of those 
 the site of which was leased by Lord St. Albans to a builder, in this 
 instance Edward Shaw. In 1686, it was occupied by the Earl of Ossory, 
 who became, in course of time, second Duke of Ormond, after whose day 
 it was the abode of many bearers of great titles, amongst them being, 
 Isabella, Duchess of Grafton ; the third Earl of Bridgewater ; the first 
 Duke of Shrewsbury, the last High Commissioner of England ; the third 
 Earl of Carlisle, who built Castle Howard ; the first Duke of Devonshire ; 
 the second Earl of Oxford ; the first and second Viscounts Palmerston, and 
 the first Marquis of Donegall ; which brings us down to the year 1800, 
 when it is given as “ empty ” in the Rate Books. Of all these great names, 
 the first Lord Palmerston was the only one who occupied the house for 
 more than a few years, his tenancy extending from 1717 to 1757. In 
 1801, the third Earl of Hardwicke, once Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, took 
 the place and remained here till 1834. He was followed in turn by the 
 sixth Duke of Leeds, and Sackville Walter Lane Fox, Esq., whose tenancy 
 expired in 1852, when the Wellington Club took the premises as its head- 
 quarters, but only for a year, for in 1854 it was acquired by the Govern- 
 ment from the Duke of Leeds, the owner, for the use of the Copyhold and 
 Commissions Office, for which purpose it is still used. 
 
 The site of No. 4, which we now come to, was originally acquired 
 by Nicholas Barebone, the great builder, in 1676, and the house erected 
 here was first tenanted by Anthony Grey, tenth Earl of Kent, whose 
 occupancy extended till 1702 ; in the following year he was succeeded 
 here by his son, the eleventh Earl, who was subsequently created first 
 Duke of Kent, at one time Chamberlain to Oueen Anne, and familiar to 
 1 Boyle’s Court Guide , quoted by Mr. Dasent. 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 89 
 
 readers of Lord Hervey’s Memoirs. During his sojourn here, the house 
 was almost destroyed by fire in 1725, a disaster not without its com- 
 pensations, however, for the rebuilding was under the superintendence of 
 Lord Burlington, who, says Mr. Dasent, “ himself designed the great 
 Louis Quinze room on the first floor, overlooking the Square.” The 
 house has remained in the same family ever since 1677 , for its present 
 owner, the seventh Earl Cowper, traces his descent to the Duke of Kent 
 in the female line. 
 
 With this house the east side of the Square is completed. When the 
 sites here were originally allocated, they numbered only five, having an 
 aggregate frontage of 400 feet ; on the passing of the Improvement Act of 
 1726, there were seven, with a frontage of 398 feet (Norfolk House then 
 being two, and Nos. 1 and 2 a single house), to-day there are seven, and with 
 regard to Norfolk House and No. 4, their appearance is substantially the 
 same as shown in Bowles’ view of the Square in 1752, except that a balcony 
 has been added to the first floor rooms of the former, which, however, still 
 has in front the old stone posts at the pavement edge, now removed from 
 No. 4 and the other houses in the Square. 
 
 The four houses we now come to in the north-east corner of the Square 
 (Nos. 5, 6, 7 and 8) stand on the sites obtained from Lord St. Albans by 
 the builders, George Chisley, Abraham Story, and John Angier respectively, 
 No. 8 having been reserved for the French Embassy. By the plan of 
 1726, the Earl of Strafford is given as residing at No. 5 ; indeed from 
 1712 to the present day it has been in the possession of that family, either 
 in the Wentworth or Byng line. 1 In 1676, however, Henry Hyde, 
 second Earl of Clarendon, was there for at least three years, he being 
 followed by Elizabeth, Countess of Thanet ; Meinhardt de Schomberg, 
 Duke of Leinster ; the Dukes of Richmond and Shrewsbury ; Edward 
 Coke, Esq., 1697 to 1699, when he removed to No. 8; the first Duke 
 of St. Albans ; Lady Katherine O’Brien, and Sir Thomas Child, whose 
 tenancy extended from 1704 to 17 11. In 1703, the house is marked 
 as empty, and in 1748, during the fourth Earl of Strafford’s tenancy, 
 it was rebuilt under the direction of Brettingham, who, as we have seen, 
 was about the same time superintending the reconstruction of Norfolk 
 House. 
 
 It will be seen that No. 5 yields to none in the importance of its 
 former owners. Henry Hyde, son of the great Clarendon, was himself 
 both Lord Privy Seal and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, as well as the writer 
 of a remarkable and interesting Diary ; the Duke of Leinster is better 
 
 1 The walls of the dining-room were painted by Claremont, a French artist domiciled in 
 England, who copied for this purpose Raphael’s Loggie in the Vatican. See Walpole. 
 
9 o THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 known by the title he bore before he was made an Irish Duke by 
 William III., that of the third Duke of Schomberg, son of him who fell 
 at the Boyne, and the builder of Schomberg House in Pall Mall ; the 
 Duke of Richmond was one of Charles II.’s sons, who inherited, says 
 Mr. Dasent, “ the extravagant tastes of his mother the Duchess of 
 Portsmouth, and left debts at his death amounting to ^14,000, a com- 
 paratively large sum in those days-” ; the Duke of Shrewsbury was one of 
 William’s great ministers, and we have seen him occupying No. 3 in 1695, 
 the year before he removed to No. 5, where he resided for the same 
 short period ; the Duke of St. Albans was of course Charles II.’s son by 
 Nell Gwynne, who married the Earl of Oxford’s daughter, a union that 
 gave rise to some well-known lines ; Lady Katherine O’Brien was a sister 
 of the Duke of Richmond, who was afterwards married to Sir Joseph 
 Williamson, Arlington’s secretary, with whom she lived at No. 21 for 
 a time previously to occupying No. 5. Sir Richard Child was a City 
 merchant, and represents one of the few purely business men who lived 
 in the Square in that day. He afterwards became Viscount Castlemaine 
 and Earl of Tylney, for which honour he is supposed to have paid the 
 sum of 10,000. He was living here from 1704 to 1711, and it was 
 from him, not without difficulties as to fixtures, &c., that the Wentworths 
 acquired the house. We meet with him in Soho Square, where No. 20 
 is said to have been built for him by Colin Campbell, the architect of 
 Wanstead. 
 
 The house next door to No. 5, has consistently remained in one 
 family, that of the Marquis of Bristol, ever since John Hervey, Esq., 
 Member for Hythe and Receiver-General to the Queen, took it from its 
 builder, Story, in 1677. In 1716 the rates on it amounted to £ 10 , in 
 1876, they were £72 odd! Occasionally the house was let; thus, from 
 1682 to 1685, the first Earl of Dartmouth was occupying it; from 1686 
 to 1694, the year in which he took No. 7, the second Earl of Radnor 
 was here; for two years, 1757-59, the second Earl of Ashburnham 
 rented it ; and to bridge a long gap, in 1 800, George Henry Rose, M.P. 
 for Southampton and son of Pitt’s Rose, took it for a couple of years, to 
 be followed for another three years by the second Earl of Liverpool, then 
 Lord Hawkesbury, the Leader of the House of Lords under Pitt, in turn 
 a Secretary of State in every department of Government, and finally Prime 
 Minister for a then unprecedented length of time. The remarkable 
 series of events which occurred during his tenure of that great office, 
 culminating with the victory of Waterloo, the trial of Oueen Caroline, and 
 the disputes over Catholic Emancipation, together with the difficulty of 
 ruling the various temperaments of several strong men in the Cabinet, 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 91 
 
 shows that he was almost as capable of weathering the storm of public 
 opinion, as well as of private opposition, as his former great leader himself. 
 Mr. Dasent pays a proper and deserved tribute to his memory when he 
 notes his fairness and candour in debate and his affectionate character and 
 sincerity in private life. As Lord Liverpool was the son-in-law of the 
 fourth Earl of Bristol (also Bishop of Derry), his tenure of the family 
 mansion, during its owner’s absence abroad, should not, perhaps, be con- 
 sidered as among those of the “strangers” who have from time to time 
 lived here. 
 
 The first Earl of Ranelagh, once Vice-Treasurer of Ireland, was the 
 first to occupy No. 7, but as he did not take up his residence in the 
 house, built by John Angier, till 1678, the mansion, like No. 15, was 
 either not built so soon as others in the Square, or, if built, remained 
 longer without a tenant. In 1694, Lord Ranelagh was followed by the 
 second Earl of Radnor, a great patron of art, who is supposed to have 
 employed Laguerre in the decoration of the house, Mr. Dasent con- 
 sidering that the mural paintings still remaining date from Lord Radnor’s 
 time. Thomas Scawen, a Surrey Member of Parliament, succeeded in the 
 tenancy of the house in 1724, and remained here till 1743; his name is 
 given on the plan of 1726, and I find him selected as one of the trustees 
 of the Square in that year. He was followed here by the third Earl 
 Fitzwilliam, who was in turn succeeded in 1757, by the second Viscount 
 Bolingbroke, who took up his residence here on his marriage with the 
 celebrated Lady Di Beauclerk, the accomplished friend of Horace Walpole, 
 who found subsequently the charms of Topham Beauclerk of “the 
 courtly sneer” greater than those of her lawful lord. Thomas Scawen 
 apparently merely let the house to the last two noblemen, as his 
 name again appears in the Rate Books for 1761 to 1769. In the following 
 year the house was taken by Francis Greville, Earl Brooke and Warwick, 
 who with his son, the second Earl, fill the gap between 1770 and 1781. 
 Then for fourteen years Richard Barwell, Member of Parliament for 
 Helston, was here, and in 1797, the house was purchased by William 
 (Tatton) Egerton, in whose family it still remains, its present occupier 
 being the first Earl Egerton of Tatton and his wife, the Duchess of 
 Buckingham. 
 
 The last house in the north-east corner of the Square is that which, as 
 we have seen, was originally occupied by the French Ambassador. In 
 those days Embassies were not endowed with regular residences, and just as 
 the representatives of other foreign powers took houses in various parts of 
 London according to the particular taste of the Ambassador in esse , for 
 more or less extended periods, so here we find M. Courtin staying for 
 
9 2 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 no longer than one year. 1 That, however, it was looked upon with 
 favour by his successor is proved by the fact that, after it had served as 
 a home for Sir Cyril Wyche, a President of the Royal Society, a Lord 
 Justice of Ireland and a Member of Parliament, and for the eighth Earl of 
 Pembroke, himself also a President of the Royal Society and First Lord of 
 the Admiralty, it was the residence for two years, 1686-88, of M. Paul 
 Barillon, the French Ambassador at that period, and Luttrell notes the 
 fact of the Duke of York dining there on the 10th August 1682, thus: 
 “ The same day, towards evening, the French Ambassador entertained his 
 royall highnesse, many of the nobility of this realm, and most of the foreign 
 ambassadors, at his house in St. James’s Square, for joy of the birth of the 
 dauphin’s son : the entertainment was very great and splendid, and at 
 night severall fireworks were lett off.” It was in M. Courtin’s time that 
 the chapel, once existing in York Street, then known as the “Turning 
 down to the Square,” was built. 
 
 During Barillon’s occupancy fears were entertained that the Anti- 
 Popery mobs of 1688, would have sacked the house, indeed they did 
 arrive in the Square, probably for that purpose, but the troops that had 
 been sent to guard the place proved a successful check to their designs. 
 
 In 1689, Henry Jermyn, Earl of Dover, took the house; he was a 
 nephew of Lord St. Albans, who seems to have been anxious to have 
 friends, as in the case of the French Ambassadors, or relations, in the 
 house, which was only separated by York Place from his own residence 
 (after he had moved from old St. Albans House). Lord Dover was 
 at one time Master of the Horse to James II. and fought for his 
 King at the Boyne, although he subsequently became a loyal subject of 
 William III. 
 
 For five years, 1694-99, the house was the home of Anne, Duchess of 
 Buccleuch, the widow of the ill-fated Monmouth, who was followed by 
 that Edward Coke who removed hither from No. 5, and remained here 
 till 1706. The second Duke of Queensberry came here on the expiration 
 of Coke’s tenancy, and Mr. Dasent thinks probably remained till 17 11, 
 but a lacuna in the record of rates makes this merely conjectural ; while 
 for the same reason the tenancy of his successor, the eighth Duke of 
 Norfolk, was probably longer than the four years at which it is given. 
 
 In 1720, Sir Matthew Decker, who as we shall see had much to do 
 with the government of the Square in his day, came to live here and re- 
 
 1 Mr. Wheatley, quoting from the Additional MSS. No. 22,063 ' n the British Museum, 
 gives this entry in his Round about Piccadilly: “His Ex. Monseigneur Curtein, the French 
 Ambassador, payeth for his Ldsps. house scituate on the north side of Yorke Street, by the 
 yeare by quarterly payments, ^6400.” 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 93 
 
 mained for no less than twenty-nine years, while his widow lived here for 
 another decade. Decker was closely connected with Richmond, where 
 George II. was dining with him on the day he was being proclaimed King 
 of England, and it is curious that he was succeeded in the tenancy of No. 8 
 by another old resident in that town, for Richard, Viscount Fitzwilliam, the 
 founder of the Fitzwilliam Museum, was living here from 1760 to 1768 ; 
 but No. 8 has a deeper interest in the fact that it was here that, after the 
 death of his famous father, Josiah Wedgwood the younger, in conjunc- 
 tion with Thomas Byerley, opened his show-rooms, in 1796, remaining 
 here till 1830. After an interval of eight or nine years, when the Earl of 
 Romney occupied the house, it became the headquarters of the Erechtheum 
 Club, from 1840 to 1854, and then of the Charity Commissioners, who 
 paid rates of ^46, 13s. 4d. on an estimated gross rental of ^840 till 1876. 
 Since that day it has been given over wholly to Club use, the Junior 
 Oxford and Cambridge, the Vine, the York, and the Junior Travellers’ 
 Clubs having successively preceded, for longer or shorter periods, the 
 Sports Club, which now occupies it. 
 
 On the west side of York Street we come to three houses, Nos. 9, 10, 
 and 11, occupying the large site which Lord St. Albans chose for himself 
 on giving up old St. Albans House. In the plan of the Square, as it was 
 in 1676, this site is shown to have as much as 120 feet frontage, or only 
 13 feet less than that allocated to Lord Bellasis. In the later plan of 
 1726, it is found to be substantially the same, and then occupied by the 
 Duke of Chandos ; but nine years later the mansion, known as Ormond 
 House, was demolished and three houses built on its site. 
 
 Mr. Dasent terms Ormond House “ the largest and in some respects 
 the most interesting house in the Square,” and we shall see that he has 
 full authority for this statement. 
 
 As I have said, Lord St. Albans removed hither after he had lived 
 but a few years in his former residence in the Square, and here he re- 
 mained, or paid rates, which it is convenient to regard as synonymous, 
 till 1683, when the first Duke of Ormond, four times Lord Lieutenant 
 of Ireland, took it, and was succeeded in it by his grandson, the second 
 Duke, who until his fall from power in 1715, resided here. He, it will 
 be remembered, was the “Ormond” of “High Church and Ormond,” 
 the cry with which his supporters attacked the Mug-houses, as they were 
 called, and which I refer to in speaking of Salisbury Square. 
 
 Many important events took place at Ormond House, under the 
 second Duke’s regime , such as the great meeting of 1688, when an 
 address of welcome was drawn up to William III. ; the installation of 
 the Duke as Chancellor of Oxford University ; the sojourn here of 
 
94 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Count Tallard in 1698 ; 1 2 the visit of Prince Eugene in 1712 ; and even 
 a robbery, deemed of sufficient importance by Luttrell to be made the 
 subject of a paragraph in his Diary. It was certainly on a large scale, 
 for we are told that no less than thirteen rogues “entered the house, but 
 being surprised, seven were apprehended and committed.” 
 
 From 1716 to 1719, the Duke’s brother lived here; he was that 
 Earl of Arran whom Walpole damns with the faint praise of being “ an 
 inoffensive old man.” During Lord Arran's tenure the mansion was 
 occupied, in 1718, as the Spanish Embassy, and in the following year the 
 name of the Duke of Chandos is given as occupying it. The Princely 
 Chandos, who is chiefly connected with Cavendish Square, where I have 
 had something to say of him, would seem to have purchased Ormond 
 House through a Mr. Hackett, who is said to have bought it, in 1719, 
 for the sum of ^7500. Chandos House, as it had begun to be called, was 
 occupied by the Duke till 1 7 3 5 when owing to his prodigality he became 
 involved in financial difficulties, and was obliged to give it up. It was 
 then pulled down, and the three houses erected. 
 
 Of these three residences, No. 9 was built for William Wollaston, 
 and after him was occupied by various people, of more or less im- 
 portance, among them Henry Verelst, notable as Clive’s successor in 
 India ; the fourth Earl of Aylesford ; and the third Earl of Altamont ; 
 until, in 1789, it passed into the possession of the Hoare family, in the 
 person of Sir Henry Hugh Hoare, in whose hands it remained down 
 to 1885, when it became, as it remains to-day, the home of the Portland 
 Club. 
 
 No. 10 is notable as having been the residence for three years of 
 William Pitt, Earl of Chatham ; of the fourteenth Earl of Derby from 
 1837 to 1854; and of Gladstone during the year 1890; while as once 
 the home of the “gorgeous Lady Blessington ” it has a further claim to 
 distinction. It was originally erected by Sir William Heathcote, who, 
 together with his son, the second Baronet, who followed him in the 
 occupancy of the house, cover the years 1737 to 1753. Although appar- 
 ently remaining in the family, for later on, from 1794 to 1819, we find 
 two other Heathcotes residing there successively, it was let to various 
 people ; first to Sir George Lee, and then to the great Chatham, who 
 remained here from 1759 to 1762, and who, says Mr. Dasent, had, from 
 1743 to 1746, previously resided in the Square at a house whose identity 
 is now lost. While at No. 10, Chatham had for his secretary Sir Philip 
 
 1 See Luttrell (Feb. 26, 1698), who says, “The Duke of Ormond’s house in St. James’s 
 Square is taken for three years for Count Tallard.” 
 
 2 During this time the Duke was building his vast palace in Cavendish Square. 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 95 
 
 Francis, whom we shall find living later at No. 17. 1 Chatham was followed 
 by Sir Charles and Sir John Sheffield respectively, and some years later, the 
 Earl of Blessington took the house, and decorated and furnished it in a 
 most elaborate manner for the beautiful wife 2 who was to make it the 
 scene of the first of those notable salons where it is difficult to say 
 whether fashion or genius was the better represented. Lord Blessington 
 remained here for nine years, and soon after his death his widow left the 
 house for Seamore Place. From 1830 to 1836, it was let furnished at 
 id 35 ° P er annum, to the Windham Club, before its removal to No. 13 ; 
 and from 1837 to 1854, Lord Derby was living here, until he took Derby 
 House, as we have seen. He was followed at No. 10, by the first Lord 
 Tollemache, who resided here till 1889; and after Mr. Gladstone’s short 
 tenancy, it was purchased by Lord Kinnaird, its present owner, in 1891. 
 
 The last of the three houses built on the site of Ormond House was 
 No. 11, which was erected by the second Earl of Macclesfield, once a 
 President of the Royal Society, in 1737. Here he lived till 1764, and 
 here his body lay in state. Lord Macclesfield’s widow resided for two 
 years longer in the house, when she was followed by Sir Rowland Winn, 
 Sir Richard Colt Hoare, and others, among whom it is only necessary 
 to mention Alexander Davison, notable as Nelson’s prize captain and 
 for the medals he had struck to commemorate the victory of the Nile ; 
 Hudson Gurney, the antiquary, who wrote verses ; and Henry Hoare, 
 who in altering the house, placed a swimming-bath in it. In 1876, the 
 place was bought by Sir Joseph Russell Bailey, Bart., and was later, till 
 his death, the residence of Col. Henry McCalmont. It is now the town- 
 house of the Hon. Rupert and Lady Gwendolen Guinness. 
 
 No. 12, now the Nimrod Club, has had many occupiers since the day 
 when Sir Cyril Wyche built the house in 1676. It is given as empty in 
 1752-53, but in the interval between then and the expiration of Sir Cyril 
 Wyche’s occupancy in 1677, it was inhabited by such diverse people as 
 the Earl of Oxford, who came here from Derby House ; Rebecca, 
 Countess of Yarmouth, who was here for a year, 1684-85, when she went 
 to Derby House ; and the eighth Earl of Pembroke, President of the 
 Royal Society, 3 who came here from No. 8, and was one of the trustees 
 of the Square in 1726. Lord Pembroke was as versatile as some of his 
 successors in the title have been, for not only was he a man interested in 
 
 1 See Life of Francis , by Parker. “ I have removed into a very convenient house in St. 
 James’s Square, where I believe I am at anchor for life,” writes Francis in 1791. 
 
 2 Although in a letter she speaks of its “comparatively dingy rooms” after those she 
 occupied in Paris. See Madden 's'Life, vol. i. pp. 136, 168. 
 
 3 See Histoi-y of the Royal Society. Thoresby mentions visiting Lord Pembroke here, and 
 inspecting his collection of curiosities, on May 17, 1714. 
 
96 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 “statues, dirty gods, and coins,” as Pope says, but he filled such high 
 offices as those of Lord President of the Council, and Lord Lieutenant of 
 Ireland; after his death in 1733, his widow remained at No. 12 till 
 1746, when the house became the residence of Sir Evered Fawkener, who 
 jointly held the office of Postmaster-General with the Earl of Leicester, 
 and on whom Selwyn, seeing him lose at cards on one occasion, made his 
 well-known mot , “ Why, here’s the post-boy robbing the mail.” In 
 1754, the last and notorious Lord Baltimore, who is chiefly connected 
 with Russell Square, lived here. After being the residence of the tenth 
 Earl of Pembroke for a time, 1755-58, the house passed into the pos- 
 session of the Sturt family, 1 2 three members of which lived here till 1798 ; 
 when, after remaining empty for a time, it became the residence of the 
 first Earl of Rosslyn, when Lord Loughborough, for a short time, after 
 he had left Bolton House, Russell Square. His widow, for a short 
 period, and his son, a General in the Army, and holder of several high 
 offices in the Cabinet, till 1832, lived here; when the Earl of Lovelace 
 took the house. Lord Lovelace was, of course, Byron’s son-in-law, and 
 he it was who reconstructed the house as it is at present, being followed 
 here, in 1846, by the thirteenth Earl of Eglinton, of Tournament fame, 
 who in turn was succeeded by the sixth Duke of Marlborough, the well- 
 known Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1880, the premises were acquired 
 by the Salisbury Club, which remained here till 1892, and after being 
 upwards of a year unoccupied, they became, in 1894, the headquarters of 
 the Nimrod Club. 
 
 The last house in the corner, on the north side of the Square, is 
 No. 13, the site of which was, as we have seen, allocated to Sir Thomas 
 Clarges, in 1676. Its first inhabitant was Laurence Hyde, afterwards 
 Earl of Rochester, who was followed by Sir John Williams, of Marnhull 
 in Dorset, and various members of his family, till 1684. Then came a 
 succession of tenants, whose names in the Rate Books show that their 
 sojourn here was generally little over a year’s duration, among them the 
 second Earl of Sunderland, the first Earl of Ranelagh, and the Dutch 
 Ambassador, Herr Van Citters, who made a memorable bonfire before his 
 house on the occasion of a thanksgiving ordered by the States-Generalb 
 He was followed by Hugh Fitzroy, Duke of Northumberland, “ a young 
 gentleman of good capacity, well bred, civil and modest,” according to 
 Evelyn, who came to No. 13 in 1699, and remained, Mr. Dasent thinks, 
 till his death in 1716. In that year, at any rate, the name of George 
 
 1 See Malmesbury’s Diary , vol. ii. p. 126, for a reference to Lord Malmesbury meeting the 
 Prince of Wales here. 
 
 2 See Luttrell for October 28, 1697. 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 97 
 
 Granville, first Lord Lansdowne, the playwright and poet, is given as 
 paying rates, but only for a short time, for in 1718, the Marquis of 
 Carmarthen was here, followed in 1720, by the eighth Duke of Norfolk, 
 who went to the south portion of Norfolk House in 1723, and who had 
 lived previously both at No. 19 and No. 8, and thus had an extensive 
 acquaintance with the Square. The Commissioners of the Admiralty 
 took the house in 1723, but returned to Whitehall two years later, when 
 the Clarges family, in the person of Lady Clarges and George Clarges, 
 the latter one of the trustees of the Square in 1726, came to live on the 
 family property. They were followed by the third Earl of Essex, the 
 third Duke of Beaufort, and, from 1730 to 1784, the first Earl of 
 Ravensworth. It was the daughter of the last named, Miss Anne Liddell, 
 who was married from this house to the Duke of Grafton, once Prime 
 Minister, in 1756, who obtained a separation from her on account of her 
 misconduct with the Earl of Ossory, who is given as living at No. 13, in 
 1795, in which year he sold the house to the third Duke of Roxburgh, 1 
 the great book collector, who had been more closely connected, as we 
 have seen, with Hanover Square. He was followed here by the fourth and 
 fifth Dukes till 1813, when Lord Chancellor Ellenborough came here 
 from No. 15, and remained for about five years, having bought the house 
 from the Roxburgh family. It was concerning his new possession that he 
 once wrote that “if you let off a piece of ordnance in the hall, the report 
 is not heard in the bedrooms,” as a proof of its size. Ellenborough, who 
 died here, was succeeded by the fourth Duke of Portland, the owner of 
 the famous Portland vase, from 1819 to 1826; the fourth Duke of 
 Athole till 1830; Lord Grantham, who had previously lived at No. 1 ; 
 and the fifth Duke of Athole. In 1836, the house was purchased by the 
 Windham Club, and some of the Duke of Roxburgh’s original bookcases 
 are still used by the Club, having remained as fixtures in the house. 
 
 We now come in our perambulation to the east side of the Square, the 
 first residence of which, No. 14, “admittedly the worst house in the 
 Square,” says Mr. Dasent, is now the well-known London Library, which has 
 been located here since 1845, and which has been comparatively recently 
 reconstructed. Its first owner was Sir Fulke Lucy, a Cheshire M.P., who 
 was rated at the small sum of £2 in 1676, which rate, notwithstanding, is 
 entered as “ arrears ” ! He was followed by Sir John Dawnay, the member 
 for Pontefract, and afterwards first Viscount Downe, who left in 1685, 
 and for a year occupied Lichfield House next door, after whom came the 
 third Earl of Carbery, once President of the Royal Society, who resided here 
 
 1 John, the “ Book Duke,” as Jerdan calls him, in describing in his Autobiography the dinner 
 here when he was shown his host’s “ noble library.” 
 
 G 
 
g8 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 for three years. Since his day the house has had a variety of occupiers, 
 but mostly for quite short periods. Amongst them may be, however, 
 mentioned Admiral 1 the Earl of Torrington, not to be confused with 
 George Byng, Viscount Torrington. He was the hero or otherwise of the 
 fight off Beachy Head in 1689, and was tried by court-martial and acquitted 
 for his conduct on that occasion; a man, says Macaulay, “who shrank 
 from the responsibility of fighting and the responsibility of not fighting.” 
 
 The first Duke of Kent was also here for a year, 1728-29, while 
 No. 4 was being reconstructed, and then till 1733 the house was empty; 
 followed several tenants of no particular importance till 1768, when 
 Sir Charles Asgill, who built Asgill House at Richmond, and was once 
 Lord Mayor of London, came here and remained till 1773. -^ n it 
 
 was taken by the third Lord Cadogan for about a year, when he went, 
 as I have noted, to Hanover Square ; and two years later General Lord 
 Amherst was occupying it — a soldier of dauntless courage and tactical 
 ability, who reduced Canada to submission by taking Montreal in 1760, 
 and had been present at Dettingen and Fontenoy ; after his death here in 
 1797, the house was empty, till it was taken by the first Earl Beauchamp 
 in 1799, who also died here, in 1816 ; his widow remained till her death 
 in 1 844, when the house shortly afterwards became the headquarters of 
 the London Library. 
 
 The site of the mansion next door, No. 15, or Lichfield House, as it is 
 called from the Anson family who so long owned it, was in 1676, leased 
 to the builder Richard Frith, and its first occupant was the Duchess of 
 Richmond, well known in the pages of Anthony Hamilton and the 
 pictures of Lely, as “ La Belle Stewart,” who was the model, it will be 
 remembered, for the Britannia which appears on the copper coins of the 
 realm. From 1682 to 1 684, in which latter year he moved to the southerly 
 portion of Norfolk House, resided here the eighteenth Earl of Kildare, 
 who had married a daughter of the Earl of Ranelagh, who, as we have 
 seen, also lived in the Square. After him Lord Conyers Darcy was here 
 for a year, before going to No. 13, for a similarly short period, and 
 from 1687 to 1722, the house was the residence of the Marchioness 
 de Gouvernet, whose daughter had been married to Lord Halifax’s eldest 
 son ; and after her death here it was taken by the fourth Earl of Clarendon. 
 
 In 1755, the third Viscount Weymouth, afterwards first Marquis of 
 Bath, is given as residing here, and afterwards till 1759, it was tenanted 
 by one John Ball, described as an “ upholder in Vine Street.” About 
 four years later it was pulled down. In the Public Advertiser of July 21, 
 1763, there is a notice that Mr. Christie was about to sell the effects of 
 
 1 See Royal Historical Society’s publications for an account of Torrington. 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 99 
 
 a large house “ about to be demolished in St. James’s Square,” and as this 
 is the only house that was pulled down in that year, the advertisement 
 obviously refers to it. In 1766, the site was apparently covered by the 
 new house built by Thomas Anson, M.P. for Lichfield, who had been, 
 during the progress of building operations, living at London House, and 
 it remained in the Anson family, with various periods of lettings to 
 different people, till 1856, when it was sold to the Clerical, Medical, and 
 General Assurance Company, it being let by that Company to the Junior 
 United Service Club. Among the earlier tenants may be mentioned the 
 Duchess of Gordon in 1806, the first Earl of Ellenborough from 1809-12, 
 or until he removed to No. 13, and the second Earl Grey, Prime Minister, 
 and the hero of the Reform Bill of 1832. 
 
 The East India United Service Club now occupies No. 16, which it 
 first rented (1850), and then purchased (1862), from the Marquis of 
 Clanricarde, who was living here from 1826 to 1843. 
 
 In 1676, the Hon. Thomas Jermyn, the “little Jermyn ” of De 
 Grammont’s Memoirs , nephew of Lord St. Albans, whose wit “ consisted 
 in expressions learnt by rote, which he occasionally employed either in 
 raillery or in love,” and who, we are told by the same authority, “ was 
 supported by his uncle’s wealth,” obtained the site, which was evidently 
 allocated to him for the purpose of speculation, and I find the first 
 inhabitant of the house to have been Lord Purbeck, who paid so high 
 a rate, ^10 — exceeding any in the Square — that Mr. Dasent conjec- 
 tures that it was intended to cover both No. 15 as well as No. 16. In 
 1679, the Swedish Ambassador was here for a year, followed by the third 
 and fourth Earls of Suffolk, till 1691, when the first Viscount Sidney, after- 
 wards Earl of Romney, 1 took it and remained here till 1704, when Sir 
 John Germain and Lady Betty Germain came here ; the former died in 
 1718, but Lady Betty continued to reside at No. 16 till 1769. Here, she 
 who had seen five sovereigns on the throne, and whose name is a house- 
 hold word to readers of the memoirs and diaries of the time, held her 
 famous card parties, and watched not only the gradual improvement of 
 the Square but the gradual development of the country. After her death 
 the house became the residence of various members of the Beauclerk 
 family (fifth Duke of St. Albans for a short time among them), till 
 1783, and after remaining empty a number of years was pulled down 
 in 1790. The site remained vacant till 1806, when it was taken, and 
 a new house erected thereon, by Edward Boehm, and it was here, under 
 
 1 Lord Romney was Master-General of the Ordnance to William III., and Luttrell, in 
 his Diary, has many entries referring to the displays of fireworks which took place in the 
 Square on all sorts of occasions of public rejoicing, under his auspices. 
 
IOO 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 the auspices of Mrs. Boehm, that the ball, attended by the Prince Regent, 
 was in progress, when the news of the Battle of Waterloo arrived, so graphi- 
 cally described in Lady Brownlow’s Reminiscences , as well as in the Diaries 
 of a Lady of Quality. In 1828, the Marquis of Wellesley rented the house 
 on his return from India, and before its present occupiers it was used as 
 the Prince of Wales Club for a year, 1844-45, an d as the Free Trade Club 
 from 1 847 to 1 849. 
 
 We now come to one of the most important houses in the Square, 
 or rather the two, Nos. 17 and 18, which until 1725, formed Halifax 
 House. The site, with an 80 feet frontage to the Square, and a return 
 frontage to King Street, was secured by Lord Halifax, whose name, 
 according to Mr. Dasent, occurs in the Rate Books three years earlier, 
 in 1676. Halifax, who has written his own character in his History 
 of a Trimmer , and whose name is so closely associated with the political 
 history of the country during the reigns of Charles II., James II., and 
 William III., died in 1695, an d was succeeded here by the second 
 Marquis, whose widow married the first Duke of Roxburgh, with whose 
 tenancy the history of old Halifax House closes, for it was pulled down 
 and rebuilt as two houses, in 1725, by a builder named Phillips. Of 
 these two residences No. 17 was first occupied by Mary, Countess of 
 Bradford, till 1737, and afterwards by Sir Orlando and Sir Henry 
 Bridgeman, fourth and fifth Baronets, in turn till 1790, when Sir Philip 
 Francis, till [818, and his widow for eight or nine years longer, lived in 
 it. It was during the latter tenancy that Queen Caroline stayed here 
 during the stormy days of her so-called trial, and from here she went 
 daily to the House of Lords, the Square before No. 17 being filled with 
 a sympathetic mob, as may be seen from a print of the period, which 
 incidentally gives a good representation of the mansion and those on 
 either side of it. In 1822, the Earl of Albemarle rented No. 17. 
 Empty in 1838, it was taken for the Colonial Club in the following 
 year; and from 1843 to 1862, a Mr. John Howell is given as residing 
 there, while in the following year it was pulled down and rebuilt, together 
 with No. 16, for the use of the East India United Service Club. 
 
 No. 18, on being built on part of the site of Halifax House, was 
 first, from 1727 to 1733, occupied by the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, the 
 great Earl, until his marriage, when, as we have seen, he removed to 
 Grosvenor Square. The house was then taken by Sir John Heathcote, 
 and among its subsequent occupiers may be noted the Count Walderen 
 (Dutch Minister), from 1773 to 1781 ; Lord Chancellor Thurlow, 1794 
 to 1 803, “ whose private life,” according to Lord Stanhope, “ by no 
 means eminently qualified him to stand forth as the champion of any 
 
IOI 
 
 ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 
 
 Church or creed” 1 ; William Ord, 2 M.P. for Morpeth from 1804-5; 
 and the second Marquis of Londonderry, better known as Lord Castlereagh, 
 perhaps the most unpopular Secretary for Foreign Affairs who has ever 
 held that difficult post. In 1831, after being for a time empty, the 
 house was converted to the use of the Oxford and Cambridge Club, 
 which occupied it till 1837, when it was taken by the Army and Navy 
 Club till 1845. E then became the property of Sir John Kelk, who 
 remodelled and encased it, after which obliteration of its outward 
 appearance its former interesting character was finally taken from it, 
 on its becoming a lodging-house. 
 
 Where now stands a block of egregious red-brick buildings, used as 
 offices, flats, &c., and wholly out of keeping with the rest of the Square, 
 was, until 1894, old Cleveland House, one of the great mansions of the 
 Square. It took its name from the first Duke of Cleveland, who came to 
 live here in 1721, and in whose family it remained practically until its 
 demolition ; but it was originally associated with the Capel family, the 
 first Earl of Essex obtaining the site in 1677, it then being the only 
 one in the Square unappropriated. Lord Essex, whose connection with 
 Ireland was of the closest — he was Lord Lieutenant for a time — fell into 
 disgrace over his supposed complicity in the Popish Plot, and was 
 sent to the Tower, where he was subsequently found with his throat 
 cut. He was followed at Cleveland House by the second Earl, from 
 1684 to 1686, and again from 1688 to 1692 ; in the intervening year the 
 house having been let to the Earl of Ossory, who left it to take up 
 his residence at No. 9. Although given as being at Cleveland House 
 in 1687, he was also paying rates on his former residence in the Square, 
 No. 3, from 1686-88. The Duke of Norfolk was here from 1706 for 
 some years, and later (1716—19), the Venetian Ambassador is given as 
 occupying the mansion. The Duke of Norfolk seems to have been the 
 most ubiquitous of all the residents in the Square, having occupied no 
 less than four houses here at different times, and living in turn in each 
 of its four blocks. 
 
 No. 20, which we have now reached, is the one example of Adam’s 
 work in the Square, it having been rebuilt, under the direction of Robert 
 Adam, between 177 2 — 74 > f° r Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, in whose family, 
 although now for sale, it still remains. The site of this house was 
 originally taken by Sir Allen Apsley, frequently mentioned by Pepys, 
 who paid rates of £2, 16s. Sir Peter Apsley and Sir Benjamin Bathurst 
 followed him, till 1705, when it was occupied by the first Earl Bathurst 
 for no less than sixty-six years, and here his son, Lord Apsley, once 
 
 1 Life of Pitt. 2 Nephew of Mrs. Creevy. See Creevy’s Diary. 
 
102 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Lord Chancellor, resided with him. During the Williams Wynn regime , 
 William Wyndham Grenville, the Prime Minister in the “ All the 
 Talents” Ministry, and an uncle of the fifth Baronet, lived here for three 
 or four years (17 89—9 2), and later the house was let to Lord Sondes for 
 a term of years (1841-47). 
 
 No. 21 St. James’s Square has been, since 1876, a branch of the 
 War Office, and is known as Winchester House, a name given to it in 
 1829, when it was bought from its then owner, the ninth Duke of 
 St. Albans, for the London residence of the Bishops of Winchester. Three 
 prelates of this diocese lived here — Sumner, 1829-69; Wilberforce, 
 1870-73; and Harold Browne, till 1875. Remembering this, it seems a 
 somewhat anomalous circumstance that in its early days it should have 
 been the home of two successive mistresses of a king ; but here resided 
 for some time, Arabella Churchill, 1676-78; and the ugly but witty 
 Countess of Dorchester, 1685-96. Between the tenancies of these two 
 ladies, Sir Joseph Williamson, a President of the Royal Society, and once 
 Secretary of the Arlington Cabal, resided here from 1679-84; as did 
 Lord Somers for a time, from October 1700. 1 Six or seven years later 
 the Prussian Ambassador, Spanheim, lived in the house till 1710, at which 
 time a contemporary, quoted by Mr. Dasent, describes it as “ a very good 
 house and very convenient and well built,” and further affirms that it 
 cost ^10,000 to build, and that it is “ the best house in the Square.” 
 
 From 17 1 1 to 1717, the first Earl of Portmore is given as paying 
 rates on No. 21. The fact was, he had married Lady Dorchester ( nee 
 Catherine Sedley), and lived here with his wife till her death in the latter 
 year, when the first Duke of Dorset rented it for some five years, but 
 Lord Portmore was again here from 1724 to 1730, when he bought the 
 freehold and made alterations to the house, having in the interval been 
 living at No. 14. His son, known as Beau Colyear, followed him from 
 1731 to 1739, when he removed to Cavendish Square. After a period of 
 emptiness the fourth Duke of Leeds bought it and rebuilt the house, 
 from designs by Brettingham, in 1791, and here he and his two successors 
 in the title lived until 1802, when it again became empty and remained 
 so till about 1806, when George Raggett, afterwards the proprietor of 
 White’s, took it and opened it as the Union Club, which seems to have 
 been a regular gambling hell ; and it was probably here that Gronow, as 
 told in his Reminiscences , with ^200 he had obtained from his bankers, 
 “managed by some wonderful accident to win ^600.” After Raggett’s 
 departure in 1816, it again remained empty, until the eighth Duke of 
 
 1 See Leicester Square, where he once resided ; and also Luttrell’s Diary for October 5, 
 1700. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 s tjtame ss s q> vak e . 
 
ST. JAMES’S SQUARE 103 
 
 St. Albans bought it and lived and died here, being succeeded in the 
 tenancy by the ninth Duke. 
 
 We now arrive at the last house in the Square, for those on the south 
 side, although some have now entrances in the Square, are generally re- 
 garded as appertaining to the north side of Pall Mall, and in Acts of 
 Parliament affecting the Square they are described as “ the back of the 
 north row of houses in Pall Mall street.” 1 
 
 The house, having a frontage of 43 feet in 1676, was first occupied 
 by Mary (Moll) Davis, the actress, and mistress of Charles II., who paid 
 rates amounting to £ 2 , 6s., and the ground on which it was built was 
 held by the builder, Edward Shaw, in 1672, at a yearly rent of ^13, 5s. 2d. 
 Moll Davis is remembered, apart from her connection with the Merry 
 Monarch, as the creator of the part of Celania in Davenant’s Rivals, and 
 her singing of the old song, “ My lodging is on the cold ground,” by 
 which she first attracted the King’s attention. After her, the first Lord 
 Ossulston, elder brother to Lord Arlington, took the house, and was 
 paying rates here from 1677-95. From 1692 to 1719, Mary, Countess 
 of Northampton, is given as the occupier, and in the following year 
 Sir Spencer Compton, whom George II. first preferred to Walpole, 
 and who did indeed become First Lord of the Treasury in 1742, for a 
 short period, took the house and remained there till 1743. The residence 
 then became in turn the home of the first Earl of Buckinghamshire, who 
 removed hither from what is now Derby House ; Thomas Brand, M.P. 
 for Tavistock; the Hon. Henry Russell, M.P. for Midhurst; Lord 
 William Russell ; and, after being empty for about a year, of Samuel 
 Thornton, M.P. for Kingston-upon-Hull, from 1797 to 1817, who 
 was in turn followed by the third Lord Holland for a short time, and 
 later by the first Lord de Mauley (then the Hon. W. F. Spencer 
 Ponsonby, M.P. for Poole), from 1820 to 1846. The last-named appa- 
 rently let it, for Mr. Dasent states that, from 1837 to 1841, it was occupied 
 by the Parthenon Club. It was subsequently pulled down, and the 
 Army and Navy Club buildings erected, from designs by Parnell, on 
 the site. 2 
 
 Under the able guidance of Mr. Dasent we have made a complete 
 perambulation of the Square, and a word must now be said about the 
 central garden. This was originally a mere open space, like so many of 
 
 1 Among residents here, chiefly lodgers, may be mentioned a Dr. Lefevre, 1670, in a 
 house on what is now occupied by part of the Junior Carlton Club ; Sir John Irwin, an M.P. 
 (1768); a Dr. Moore, 1792; and an artist named Morland, father of Henry Robert Morland, 
 mentioned by Pilkington. Old Adair House was formerly on the site of the Junior Carlton. 
 
 2 The Army and Navy Club was opened in 1851. The Club had previously been located 
 at No. 18 (1838—45), and at No. 15 (1846-50). 
 
104 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 those in the older squares— a receptacle for rubbish, much utilised for 
 the display of fireworks, 1 so beloved of our ancestors ; and not unknown to 
 footpads. Subsequently, a circular basin of water, surrounded by railings 
 in octagonal form, and the inevitable obelisks, was formed in the centre 
 of the Square, as may be seen by Bowles’ View of the Square (1752), as the 
 result of an Act of Parliament, passed in 1726, for the better maintenance 
 of the Square, the appointment of trustees, and the levying of a propor- 
 tionate rate on the inhabitants for carrying out the various provisions of 
 the Act according to the stated requirements. The basin was supplied 
 with water from the York Buildings Company, and a fountain was then 
 placed in the middle, but was not long after removed, and replaced by a 
 pedestal for the statue of William III., which it had been in contemplation 
 to erect there. 
 
 The history of this statue is curious. So early as 1677, it had been 
 mooted, and indeed it appears to have been ordered to be set up. 2 It was 
 to have been of brass and the base ornamented with mottoes and em- 
 blematical designs; but nothing was done till 1721, when the sculptor 
 David attempted to get up a subscription for a statue, not of William, 
 but of George I. The money, however, not being forthcoming, the 
 matter again lapsed, until three years later, when one Samuel Travers, who 
 does not appear to have been otherwise connected with the Square, left a 
 sum of money “ to purchase and erect ... an equestrian statue in brass 
 to the glorious memory of my master, King William III.” Apparently 
 the only effort made to fulfil this bequest was to erect the pedestal ! But 
 in 1 806, the money having been discovered among some unclaimed 
 dividends, says Mr. Dasent, the younger Bacon, the sculptor, was com- 
 missioned to provide the statue of William, not in brass but in bronze, 
 which now stands in the central garden, for many years surrounded by 
 the original basin of water, which was not drained off till about sixty 
 years since. 
 
 There are many views of the Square in existence, of which the two by 
 Sutton Nicholls, varying in certain respects ; the later one by Bowles 
 (1752); and that of Ackerman (1812); maybe mentioned, as perhaps 
 giving the best idea of its general appearance at various important stages 
 of its existence. By these we can see that, so far as the houses are con- 
 cerned, St. James’s Square still retains, more nearly, perhaps, than any 
 other square of its age in London, the characteristic features of its earlier 
 
 1 Illuminations for the Victory of the Boyne ; the Taking of Namur, of which a mezzotint 
 by B. Lens is in existence and is given in Mr. Dasent’s book ; and the Peace of Ruyswick, may 
 be mentioned among many other occasions. 
 
 2 See LuttrelPs Diary for December 9, 1697. 
 
PANTON SQUARE. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
PANTON SQUARE 105 
 
 days, when Dr. Johnson and Richard Savage, cold and hungry, per- 
 ambulated its precincts, or Sir Charles Grandison (not given in the Rate 
 Books) was one of its most notable residents. 1 
 
 NOTE ON PANTON SQUARE, PICCADILLY, AND 
 CLEVELAND SQUARE, PALL MALL 
 
 Panton Square, or, as it was termed in Strype’s Map of 1720, Panton 
 Yard, was known by that name till 1868, when it became absorbed in 
 Arundel Street, leading to Coventry Street. The Square took its title 
 from the celebrated gambler, Colonel Thomas Panton, one of the Titus 
 Oates gang of false swearers. 2 After having been the proprietor of the 
 gambling hell known as Piccadilly Hall, and winning a sum which brought 
 him in no less than ^1500 a year, the Colonel turned saint and building 
 developer. He acquired the ground on which Panton Street and Square 
 were eventually formed in 1664, and I find Sir Christopher Wren 
 reporting favourably on the Colonel’s design to erect buildings here, in 
 1671 ; and subsequently an application being formally made to proceed 
 with the work. The more important Panton Street need not detain us 
 here, as being outside the scope of this work, but a word must be said 
 about the Square or Yard, which Strype describes as “ a very large place 
 for stabling and coach-houses, there being one large yard within another.” 
 Notwithstanding this description, which was written in 1720, the 
 Square was to rise to better, or worse, things, for in 1762, the Ambassador 
 from Morocco was lodging here, and O’Keefe in his Recollections gives an 
 anecdote characteristic of the swift rather than the legal methods employed 
 by his Excellency in ridding himself of domestic annoyances. “ The 
 Morocco Ambassador,” writes O’Keefe, “ lived in Panton Square, near 
 Coventry Street. One of his attendants happened to displease him : he 
 had him brought up to the garret, and there sliced his head off. It was 
 made no secret : he and his servants thought it was very proper, but the 
 London people, who had somewhat of Christianity, were of another 
 opinion. I saw a violent party gather before the house : they broke into 
 it, demolished the furniture, threw everything they could lay their hands 
 
 1 Mr. Wilkins, in his Mrs. Fitzherbert and George IV., states that the former rented Lord 
 Uxbridge’s house in St. James’s Square for a time (1785-86), but I can find no record of Lord 
 Uxbridge ever having owned, or rented, a house here. 
 
 2 Wheatley. 
 
io6 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 on out of the window, and thrashed and beat the grand Moor and his 
 retinue down the Haymarket, and afterwards attacked them wherever 
 they found them.” 
 
 There is no record of the residence in Panton Square of any one 1 of 
 more savoury memory than the “ Morocco Ambassador,” and so this 
 gentleman of easy ethics remains the one notable or rather notorious 
 inhabitant of a place that had better perhaps have remained as it originally 
 was, “ a large place for stabling.” 
 
 As showing how a wrong derivation of a name can be assumed, it 
 may be mentioned that the word Panton was once erroneously deduced 
 from a sort of horse-shoe called a “ panton,” the use to which the Square 
 was formerly put giving some colour to the idea. 
 
 The other little square in this neighbourhood requires a word of notice 
 because it is so described in the Directories, although there are many 
 people, I believe, who hardly recognise it by the name there given to it, 
 i.e., Cleveland Square. 
 
 Beyond St. James’s Palace and the new block of buildings being 
 erected at the south-west corner of St. James’s Street, lie two or three 
 houses ; the one facing us is the residence of Lord Armistead, the life- 
 long friend of Mr. Gladstone, and beyond it is Cleveland Row, notable 
 among other things as having been once the residence of Lord Rodney, 
 who was living in one of its small houses in 1772. Sir Sidney Smith 
 was also residing here in 1810; his house was No. 5, and was, at a later 
 date, 1827 to 1831, to become the home of the amusing and eccentric 
 Theodore Hook. 2 Other one-time residents were Lord George Gordon, 
 in 1785 ; Sir Gilbert Blane, the physician, at No. 4, from 1809 till 1820; 
 and Thomas Grenville, the great book-collector, whose superb library is 
 now in the British Museum, who was living at No. 1 5, from 1796 till 1801. 
 Lord Stowell, when Sir William Scott, is also stated to have lived in a 
 house here, and Lord Castlereagh was residing at No. 3, afterwards occupied 
 by Viscount Sydney, in 1803 ; but perhaps the chief interest of this part of 
 Cleveland Square centres in the fact that in a room in one of the houses 
 occurred the memorable quarrel between Walpole and Townshend, when 
 the statesmen actually came to blows, according to Wraxall, and seized 
 each other by the throat, a disgraceful scene which Gay parodied in his 
 Beggar s Opera. 
 
 Opposite this Row is a newly encased house standing by itself, now 
 
 1 Unless I except the engraver, B. Baron, who died in the Square on January 24, 1762, 
 according to Walpole. I may mention that the Rate Books for 175 1, give the names, among 
 others, of the following as then living in Panton Square : Thomas Cumming, Margaret M‘Cay, 
 David Scott, Theodosia Lawrence, Sophia Putzean, and James Higgenson. 
 
 2 Who rented it from Lord Lowther at ,£200 per annum. 
 

 Cleveland House. 
 
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CLEVELAND SQUARE 107 
 
 the residence of Rochfort Maguire, Esq., while on the north side is the 
 magnificent town mansion of the Earl of Ellesmere — Bridgewater House, 
 with its wealth of pictures and its fine furniture and decorations. These 
 residences, various in size and interest, constitute Cleveland Square, but 
 anything less like a square, even among the varied enclosures in London 
 so called, it would be difficult to find. 
 
 Bridgewater House stands on the site of Berkshire House (where Clar- 
 endon once lived for a time), which Charles II. purchased from its owners 
 the Howards, as a present to the Duchess of Cleveland, who pulled down 
 the original house, and let off some of the ground belonging to it. It 
 was bought, in 1730, by the Duke of Bridgewater, and when the third 
 Duke died unmarried in 1803, and the title became extinct, the house with 
 its wonderful artistic and other treasures passed by will to his nephew, Lord 
 Stafford, with a reversion to Lord Stafford’s second son, created Earl of 
 Ellesmere in 1 846. He it was who rebuilt the residence, from the designs 
 of Sir Charles Barry, in 1849, as an inscription over the front door attests. 
 
 Hazlitt and others have waxed eloquent over the pictorial treasures 
 which are preserved in this lordly mansion, and which constitute one 
 of the finest galleries of pictures in this country of wondrous collections. 1 
 
 1 I may mention that Mason, the poet, came to live here in 1767, at “Mr. Mennis’s, a 
 tailor, at the Golden Ball in Cleveland Row, the last door but one nearest the Green Park 
 Wall,” and that Henry Flood was residing here, in 1784, while George Selwyn had a house 
 here where he died on January 25, 1791 ; in which connection it is interesting to note that 
 Romney, in his engagement-book, has an entry which ends : “ Maria Pagniani, 1 Cleveland 
 Court,” for the year 1789. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SOHO SQUARE 
 
 “ The stately quadrate denominated King-square, but vulgarly Soho-square.” 
 
 Maitland, History of London. 
 
 I F we examine a London Directory and turn to Soho Square 1 we shall 
 be surprised at the commercial aspect which this once fashionable 
 dwelling-place, formerly, according to Noorthouck, “the most remark- 
 able place in this parish,” now presents. We shall find as radical a 
 change hereas in the case of Golden Square, and, except for the ap- 
 pearance of a few of the remaining old houses, we shall hardly be able to 
 make so large an inroad on our imagination as to people it again with the 
 rank and fashion of a period extending from the time of Charles II. to that 
 of the earlier Georges, when, as Macaulay says, “ Soho Square was to our 
 ancestors a subject of pride with which their posterity will hardly sym- 
 pathise.” And this is the more to be deplored in that Soho Square is 
 one of the 1 most historically interesting in London. Its associations date 
 from the time of Charles II., and its fashionable spirit survived until the 
 end of George II. ’s long reign. Tradition has indeed attempted to invest 
 its very name with an historical origin, for Pennant tells us he was in- 
 formed 2 that on the death of Monmouth, his admirers changed the name 
 of the Square to “ Soho,” “ being the word of the day at the field of Sedge- 
 moor,” but Jesse properly points out the inaccuracy of such a deduction, 
 giving the excellent authority of the Present State of England, published in 
 1684, “ more than four 3 years before Sedgemoor was fought,” in which the 
 London residence of the Duke of Monmouth is distinctly stated to be 
 Soho Square ; to which may be added the testimony of the industrious 
 Luttrell, who, in his Diary , mentions the fact that Monmouth “returned 
 to his home in So-hoe Sq.,” under date of September 20, 1682. The 
 
 1 I believe that this square, with the exception of Cloudesley Square, Islington, is the only 
 actual square in London — no street, except Greek Street, entering it from the corners. 
 
 2 By S. Pegge. 
 
 3 Jesse here himself falls into error, for Sedgemoor was fought in July, 1685. 
 
 108 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

SOHO SQUARE 109 
 
 origin of the name is probably just the reverse, and, as Macaulay conjec- 
 tures, the battle cry “ had doubtless been selected in allusion to Soho Fields 
 in London, where their leader’s palace stood.” Indeed the name was even 
 at that time no new one, for by the Rate Books of St. Martin the ground 
 which the Square now occupies was known as “Soho” as early as 1632, 
 and numerous are the references to this name onwards ; for example, in 
 1636, we are told that people were living in the “ Brick-kilns near Sohoe,” 
 and in the burial register of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, an entry for Dec. 
 16, 1660, reads, “A pr’sh child from Soeho in ch. yd.” while a pro- 
 clamation dated April 7, 1671, prohibits the further erecting of small 
 habitations and cottages in the fields called the Windmill Fields, Dog 
 Fields, and the fields adjoining to So-hoe, which buildings, it is said, 
 “ Choak up the air of His Majesty’s palaces and parks, and endanger the 
 total loss of the waters, which, by the expensive conduits, &c., are conveyed 
 from those fields to His Majesty’s palace at Whitehall.” 1 2 Indeed by 
 1675, this region would appear to have been so largely built over, not- 
 withstanding royal proclamations, that a separate receiver of rates for this 
 part of the parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields had to be appointed, the 
 book for this separate division being styled the “Soho Book.” 3 
 
 Pennant seems to have been singularly unlucky in some of his deduc- 
 tions, particularly where he gained his information from the communica- 
 tions of friends, for beyond this error with regard to the origin of the 
 name of Soho, it will be seen that his authority for the name of Golden 
 Square has been proved to be baseless. But it would seem that in the 
 Square under consideration he has made another mistake, for he dis- 
 tinctly states that Soho Square was originally called Monmouth Square in 
 honour of the Duke of Monmouth 4 who lived in it, and that the name 
 was subsequently changed to King Square. But neither the painstaking 
 Cunningham, nor indeed, so far as I know, any more recent topographer 
 has ever heard of its being so called ; indeed had it been, it surely would 
 have constituted a record in changing nomenclature ; for the Square was 
 formed in 1681, and Sedgemoor was fought in 1685, and as we know that 
 it was called King’s (not ‘ King,’ as Pennant states) Square, and alternately 
 
 1 Shadwell mentions the name in one of his plays in 1661. 
 
 2 Quoted by Cunningham. 
 
 3 Cunningham further adds, as demolishing the Pennant tradition, that an epistle in 
 Radcliffe’s Ovid Travestie is dated from So-hoe Fields, February 27, 1679-80. Readers of 
 the Spectator will remember that when in town Sir Roger de Coverley is stated to have lived 
 there. 
 
 4 Even the neighbouring Monmouth Street, supposed to have been called after the Duke, 
 is thought by Thornbury to have rather been named after Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, 
 who died in 1626, and with his son was a parishioner of St. Giles ( Haunted London ). Macaulay 
 has curiously enough perpetuated this error of Pennant’s. 
 
no THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Soho Square, it would mean, according to Pennant, a change of name every 
 other year. 
 
 The fact is the Square was formed in 1681, by Gregory King, an 
 architect who was afterwards Lancaster Herald of Arms, and in this capa- 
 city formed one of the deputation which invested the Elector of Branden- 
 burg with the Garter in 1690, and was employed in a like capacity when 
 William III sent the same decoration to the Elector of Hanover in 1701. 
 He was, seven years later, made one of the commissioners to inquire into 
 the state of the King’s debts due to the Civil List, officers, soldiers, &c., 
 and may therefore be considered a person of some importance in his day. 1 
 
 As the Square was built on land then known for many years as “ Soho,” 2 
 and as its designer was named King, it is not difficult to see that for a 
 time it should be known alternately by both names, and this is in fact 
 what happened. As the name and personality of its architect gradually 
 became forgotten, the name of its position came into prominence, and from 
 that time till now it has been known solely as Soho Square ; although the 
 former name was occasionally used, as by Hatton, who calls it “ King’s or 
 Soho Square” in 1708, by Strype in 1720, who calls it “King’s Square” 
 in the text and “ Soho Square ” in his index, and by Maitland in 1739, who 
 terms it “ the stately quadrate denominated King’s-square, but vulgarly 
 Soho-square.” 3 
 
 So much for the origin of the name, more interesting will it be to trace 
 some of the notable people who have helped to make the Square famous. 
 
 By the Rate Books I find that the first inhabitants were eight in 
 number, among them being the Duke of Monmouth, Colonel Rumsey, 
 Mr. Pilcher, Mr. Broughton, Sir Henry Inglesby, and the Earl of Stamford. 
 Of these the Duke of Monmouth is, of course, the well-known one. The 
 natural son of Charles II. by Lucy Walters has taken too firm a hold of 
 the popular imagination to fear extinction in the popular memory. His 
 career does not concern us here, however; it belongs to the domain of 
 history, but his one-time habitation plays so important a part in the annals 
 of Soho Square that it demands more than a mere passing notice. It 
 would seem indeed to have occupied the whole south side of the Square, 
 and to have been built from designs by Sir Christopher Wren for the Duke 
 of Monmouth, whence its name of Monmouth House. Allen says that 
 
 1 He is mentioned by Pepys, and a letter from him to the Diarist is extant. 
 
 2 “ So ho” being the cry of the huntsmen when calling off their hounds, at the time when 
 this locality was open country. 
 
 3 Sutton Nicholls published a view of the Square, looking north, in 1754; and there is one 
 by Bowles, dated 1727. In the Crace collection will also be found several water-colour 
 drawings of old houses here, such as Monmouth House, by Shepherd, and the White House, 
 and others, by Richardson, 1826. 
 
SOHO SQUARE 1 1 1 
 
 the Duke’s mansion was “ the second house ” in the Square, by which 
 I assume that he means the second one erected on this spot. It was 
 completed from designs by Wren, probably at the end of 1681, or the 
 beginning of the following year, and it is probable that Monmouth first 
 took up his residence here somewhere before March 25, 1682 (which 
 would account for the Rate Books stating that he was living here in 1681, 
 as under the old style this date would hold good till our present quarter- 
 day, which was then the commencement of a new year), because Narcissus 
 Luttrell, under date December 7, 1681, states in his Diary that “the 
 Duke of Monmouth still resides at his house in Hedge Lane ” (a former 
 residence of the Duke’s), while on September 20, 1682, he notes the 
 Duke’s return “ to his house in So-hoe Square.” That Monmouth was here 
 very irregularly is accounted for by the various plots he was then engaged 
 in, and his fear of detection; thus in July 1683, he was in hiding other- 
 where than at Monmouth House, and we have Luttrell noting that 
 “ Lord Anglesey’s house in Drury Lane was searched for the Duke of 
 Monmouth ; the same day also Counsellor Thompson’s house in Essex 
 Street was searched for him ; ” while in the following January we read that 
 “ the Duke of Monmouth since his being forbid the Court has lodged at 
 a private house in Holborn and been at his home at Moorpark.” 1 
 
 In the case of Monmouth House we are luckily enabled to more or 
 less rehabilitate some of its characteristic features through the medium 
 of the indefatigable antiquary, John Thomas Smith. 2 His account cannot 
 well be curtailed and so I give it in extenso. “ Mr. Nollekens,” he says, 
 “ stopped to show me the dilapidations of the Duke of Monmouth’s 
 house in Soho Square. It was on the south side, and occupied the site 
 of the houses which now stand in Bateman’s Buildings ; and though the 
 workmen were employed in pulling it down, we ventured to go in. The 
 gate entrance was of massive ironwork supported by stone piers, sur- 
 mounted by the crest of the owner of the house ; and within the gates 
 there was a spacious courtyard for carriages. The hall was ascended by 
 steps. There were eight rooms on the ground floor ; the principal one 
 was a dining-room towards the south, the carved and gilt panels of which 
 had contained whole-length pictures. At the corners of the ornamented 
 ceiling, which was of plaster, and over the chimney-piece, the Duke of 
 Monmouth’s arms were displayed. From a window we descended into a 
 paved yard, surrounded by a red brick wall with heavy stone copings, 
 which was, to the best of my recollection, full twenty-five feet in height. 
 The staircase was of oak, the steps very low, and the landing places were 
 tessellated with woods of light and dark colours, similar to those now 
 
 1 Luttrell’s Diary , January 6, 1683-84. 2 Nolleke?is ajid His Times. 
 
II 2 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 remaining on the staircase of Lord Russell’s, late Lowe’s Hotel, Covent 
 Garden, and in several rooms of the British Museum. 
 
 “ As we ascended, I remember Mr. Nollekens noticing the busts of 
 Seneca, Caracalla, Trajan, Adrian, and several others, upon ornamental 
 brackets. The principal room on the first floor, which had not been 
 disturbed by the workmen, was lined with blue satin, superbly decorated 
 with pheasants and other birds in gold. The chimney-piece was richly 
 ornamented with fruit and foliage . 1 ... In the centre of the chimney- 
 piece, within a wreath of oak leaves, there was a circular recess which 
 evidently had been designed for the reception of a bust. The heads of 
 the panels of the brown window shutters, which were very low, were gilt, 
 and the piers between the windows, from stains upon the silk, had 
 probably been filled in with looking-glasses. The scaffolding, ladders, 
 and numerous workmen rendered it too dangerous for us to go higher, 
 or see more of this most interesting house.” 2 
 
 It is not often that one is able thus to rehabilitate the appearance of 
 one of those fine mansions which at one time occupied the spaces now 
 covered by streets or smaller tenements. 
 
 On Monmouth’s death his residence was purchased by Lord Bateman, 
 from whom the late Bateman’s Buildings, which occupied a portion of 
 the site, took their name. I may remind the reader that it was he 
 whom George II. created a peer to avoid making him a Knight of the 
 Bath, saying, according to Walpole, that he could make him a peer but 
 could not make him a gentleman, — a story so closely akin to one told of 
 James I., who was a wit on occasion, and so contrary to the character 
 of George II., who never was one on any occasion, as to sound highly 
 apocryphal ! 
 
 Ralph, in his Critical Review of the Publick Buildings in London , is as 
 usual highly disdainful of the Square in general and falls foul of Mon- 
 mouth House in particular, thus : “ The Square, commonly call’d Soho, 
 is the next place which claims any regard, and that too, like most of the 
 other things of the like nature in this city, only because it is a square. 
 The buildings round it are not scandalous, ’tis true, but they have not 
 the least pretention to taste or order : it has besides a little contemptible 
 garden in the middle of the area, and a worse statue, if it be possible, in 
 the middle of that. The place, indeed, is not so entirely neglected as 
 many others of the same sort about town, and therefore deserves the less 
 
 1 Possibly by Grinling Gibbons, to whom Charles II. gave a place in the Board of Works, 
 and otherwise employed ; or of his pupils, Watson, Dievot, or Laurens. 
 
 2 Smith adds that his father had made a drawing of the front of Monmouth’s house, which 
 he engraved in his Antiquities of London. 
 
r 
 
1 
 
 V 
 
 
 PLAN 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
SOHO SQUARE 113 
 
 censure, if it is not entitled to praise. My Lord Bateman’s house on the 
 south side is built at a good deal of expense, and was meant for some- 
 thing grand and magnificent, but I am afraid the architect had a very 
 slender notion of what either of them meant : there is nothing very 
 striking in any part of this structure ; but if the lower order could 
 boast of beauties ever so exquisite, the upper is so gothique and absurd 
 that it would destroy them all, and invective would get the start of 
 approbation ! ” 
 
 In the year 1717, we find a portion of Monmouth House being used 
 as an auction-room, and Walpole records the sale here of a collection of 
 pictures by Charles Lucy and others, the property of Mr. Comyns, on 
 February 5th of this year. The mansion was subsequently let by the 
 successor of Lord Bateman to the Comte de Guerchy, the French 
 Ambassador who came to London in that capacity, in October, 1763. He 
 is frequently mentioned in Horace Walpole’s Letters, and Miss Berry, 
 writing to Marshal Conway, 1 on July 2, 1764, says, “There was iast 
 night at Guerchy’s a daughter of Lord Dillon, just come out of a convent, 
 who is to be the future Duchess of Norfolk.” At the expiration of 
 Comte de Guerchy’s tenancy about 1773, the site of Monmouth House 
 was let on building leases, when a row of houses known as Bateman’s 
 Buildings was erected on a portion of the property, and as I have noticed, 
 Nollekens and Smith saw the last of the fine house which once lent so 
 much distinction to Soho Square. It is probable that the houses must 
 have been taken up quickly, and many of them, on the south side of the 
 Square, built immediately, probably much of the material of Monmouth 
 House being used in their construction, especially as the Hospital for 
 Women, now Nos. 29 and 30, shows, as Besant says, “some traces of 
 former grandeur in panelled rooms and decorated cornices.” As this 
 hospital was only established in 1851, it is highly probable that the 
 premises were formerly occupied by fashionable people. 
 
 Another house built on the same site, probably about 1773 , the 
 Rectory House (now No. 28). The chief point in this residence is a 
 ceiling decorated by Flaxman, but beyond this the house contains many 
 constructive and decorative features of eighteenth-century architecture. 
 
 It is difficult to identify the former noble residents in the Square with 
 the present houses, 2 although some of these latter still retain many of the 
 
 1 Conway was also an inhabitant of the Square, and his name is given by Boyle, in 1795, 
 at No. 25. 
 
 2 The Duke of Portland once owned property here, and in the Crace collection, is a “ Plan 
 of the estate belonging to the Duke of Portland in Soho Square and its neighbourhood, sold 
 in the years 1794-9, with a schedule of rents of the various houses and the sum they each sold 
 for,” by John White, senior, 1799. 
 
 H 
 
1 1 4 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 characteristics of former grace and dignity, but from the parish of St. 
 Anne’s registers, the better part of the eighteenth century seems to have 
 been the heyday of fashion in this quarter, and Smith notes that between 
 the years 1708 and 1732, Lords Berkeley, Byron, Carlisle, Grimstone, 
 Howard, Leicester, Macclesfield, Morpeth, Nottingham, Onslow, Peter- 
 borough, Pierrepoint, and Pigot all resided here at one time or another, 
 to which I can add the names of Lords Bateman, Mansel, and Dartmouth, 
 which are given in a Directory for 1728 ; as well as that of Sir George 
 Colebrooke, whose library, removed from his house in Soho Square, was 
 sold by Messrs. Christie on February 20, 1777, and ten following days. 1 
 It was also a favourite spot for Ambassadors, and Nollekens told Smith 
 that when he was a boy (he was born on August 11, 1737), living in 
 Dean Street, “ no fewer than four Ambassadors lived in the Square, and 
 that at that time it was the most fashionable place for the nobility.” We 
 shall see that still more famous people than these I have mentioned, have 
 at various times resided here, but before referring to them I must say 
 something of another remarkable mansion, which at one time almost 
 rivalled Monmouth House and at another became the hunting-ground of 
 that adventuress, Mrs. Cornelys — I mean Carlisle House. 
 
 This mansion was situated on the east side of the Square, south of 
 that point where Sutton Street joins it. It was built of red brick, and on 
 the cisterns was the date “ 1669,” not indicating the year of the erection 
 of the house, but of the creation of the title of the Earldom of Carlisle. 
 The Roman Catholic chapel of St. Patrick occupies a portion of its site. 
 It was formerly the town residence of the Earl of Carlisle, and the 
 Catholic chapel in Sutton Street was in those days the banqueting-room, 
 connected with the main building by a passage known as “ the Chinese 
 Bridge.” Notwithstanding the noble origin of the house, it is best known 
 to us as having been the scene of Mrs. Cornelys’s 2 strange assemblies. This 
 Teresa Cornelys was a German by birth, but about the year 1761, she 
 settled in this country, and obtaining a lease of Carlisle House she opened 
 it as a place of entertainment such as was not uncommon in the Georgian 
 era. Here was instituted a series of balls, concerts, and masquerades, and 
 for twenty years Mrs. Cornelys carried on a successful business, having 
 been able in some way to attract the patronage of the most fashionable 
 people in town. In an interesting Diary of a Journey to England in 
 1761-62, Count Kielmansegge, the author, mentions receiving tickets 
 
 1 Me?norials of Christie's , vol. i. p. 35. The Lord Mansel mentioned would appear to have 
 been the son of the first Lord Mansel, formerly Sir Thomas Mansel, Comptroller of the House- 
 hold to Queen Anne, who died in 1723. 
 
 2 There is in Mr. T. F. Blackwell’s possession a curious water-colour by J. Breun, dated 
 1829, showing Carlisle House — or what then remained of it— from Sutton Street. 
 
SOHO SQUARE 115 
 
 from the Duke of Richmond “for the ball this evening” (December 31, 
 1761), in Soho Square; and on January 28, 1762, he writes, “I went to 
 a ball, which takes place every fortnight in a house in Soho Square.” This 
 seems to indicate that these entertainments were commenced at an earlier 
 period than has been generally supposed. The newspapers of the day bear 
 frequent evidence to the indefatigability and resource of Mrs. Cornelys ; 
 thus we read on February 1 8, 1763 : “ On Saturday last Mrs. Cornelys gave 
 a ball at Carlisle House to the upper servants of persons of fashion, as a 
 token of the sense she has of her obligations to the nobility and gentry 
 for their generous subscriptions to her assembly.” We further learn that 
 no less than 220 persons were present, and that those who did not dance 
 played cards. 1 
 
 The most usual entree to Carlisle House was by tickets given in return 
 for annual subscriptions. These tickets were transferable provided the 
 owners wrote “the name of the person upon the back of the said 
 ticket to whom they had lent it, to prevent any mistake,” a notice which, 
 if not very grammatical, was probably well understood if not always 
 strictly attended to. There is but little doubt that these entertain- 
 ments were frequently of a most questionable character ; hard drinking and 
 immodest singing, “ which no lady need leave save those who are too 
 immodest to stay,” as an advertisement phrased it, were de rigueur in these 
 assemblies, where it was the fashion to fling open the windows and to 
 throw the remains of the refreshments provided, to the hungry crowd 
 which invariably waited below in expectation of such largesse. One of 
 the Queens of Beauty at these routs was Miss Conway, niece of General 
 Conway and daughter of the first Marquis of Hertford, who had then 
 but recently been married to the Earl of Grandison. She it was who 
 largely increased the popularity of entertainments which were not only 
 conducted in the most extravagant fashion, but were also characterised 
 by gross indecency and by “ mockery of the most solemn feelings and 
 principles.” 2 
 
 These goings on were taken advantage of by competitors who saw 
 with concern all their business sapped away by Mrs. Cornelys’s enterprise. 
 At first, we may suppose, the actual conduct of her entertainments was 
 not attacked ; her opponents began, it would seem, in a more insidious 
 way, as the following advertisement communicated to the papers by Mrs. 
 Cornelys seems to indicate : “ Whereas it has been industriously reported, 
 
 1 Timbs, in his Romance of London , gives a long account of Mrs. Cornelys, from which 
 many of these details are taken. 
 
 2 Oxford Magazine for 1 770, and London and County Magazine between 1770 and 1774, 
 quoted by Davis in his Memorials of K 7 iightsbridge. 
 
1 16 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 to the disadvantage of Mrs. Cornelys, that she has expressed herself dissatis- 
 fied with a subscription now on foot to build a large room in opposition 
 to her ; she esteems it her duty, in this public manner, to declare that she 
 never once entertained a thought so unjust and unreasonable, &c.” The 
 “ large room” here mentioned was in reality to be the afterwards so celebrated 
 Almacks’, and Horace Walpole, writing to George Montagu, thus refers 
 to the matter : “ Mrs. Cornelis (sic), apprehending the future assembly at 
 Almacks’, has enlarged her vast room and hung it with Blue Satin, and 
 another with Yellow Satin, but Almacks’ room, which is to be ninety feet 
 long, proposes to swallow up both hers as easily as Moses’ rod gobbled down 
 those of the magicians.” Notwithstanding her public repudiation of any 
 anxiety, Mrs. Cornelys nevertheless spent some ^2000 on improving the 
 room at Carlisle House in the following year. One of the new attractions 
 seems to have been “ the most curious, singular, and superb ceiling that 
 ever was executed or even thought of,” to quote the evidently inspired 
 account in a contemporary newspaper, as well as “a new gallery for the 
 dancing of cotillons and allemandes, and a suite of rooms adjoining,” and 
 to obviate the complaints made as to the heat of the rooms, we are in- 
 formed that she has arranged to have “ tea below stairs and ventilators 
 above,” and that there is no fear of catching cold. 
 
 To inaugurate these improvements Mrs. Cornelys gave a grand fete 
 on February 26, 1770. 1 The rooms then must have inspired Walpole to 
 note in one of his letters, that Strawberry “with all its painted glass and 
 gloomth, looked as gay when I came home as Mrs. Cornelys’ ball-room.” 
 It is to Walpole’s untiring pen that we owe a long description of the great 
 fancy dress ball which this fete seems to have been. For it, he writes, 
 “the House of Commons literally adjourned”; the ball, he adds, “was 
 more magnificent than the King of Denmark’s. The Bishops opposed : 
 he of London formally remonstrated with the King, who did not approve 
 it, but could not help him. The consequence was, that four divine vessels 
 belonging to the holy fathers, alias their wives, were at this masquerade.” 
 The Duke of Gloucester was there, garbed as Edward IV., and Walpole’s 
 niece, Lady Waldegrave, as Elizabeth Woodville, who, as their later 
 history proved, emulated their prototypes in more than dress. Walpole 
 was present himself, “with more pleasure to see them” (various Conways and 
 Cholmondeleys whom he had provided with dresses) “ pleased than when I 
 
 1 Besant states that “sometimes as many as 500 were present at her masquerades. All 
 the windows of the Square were blocked with people who came to see the fine dresses, and 
 would not allow a carriage to pass till they had looked at the ladies inside,” and a notice of 
 these assemblies is contained in Casanova’s curious Memoirs. In the Victoria and Albert 
 Museum is a picture by John Raphael Smith entitled “ Carlisle House, Soho Square,” repre- 
 senting the interior of one of the rooms, evidently during the Cornelys regime. 
 
SOHO SQUARE 117 
 
 formerly delighted in the diversion myself.” All the fashion of the town 
 appears to have been present. Lady Pembroke, the Duchess of Hamilton, 
 Mrs. Crewe, and Sir Richard Phillips as a double man, half miller, half 
 chimney-sweep, Lord Carlisle as a running footman, Mr. James, the 
 painter, as Midas ; “ Lord Edgecombe, in the character of an old woman, was 
 fully as lovely as his lady ; ” Lady Stanhope as Melpomene, Lady Augusta 
 Stuart as a Vestal, &c. ; but Miss Monckton, daughter of Lord Galway, 
 seems to have put all in the shade “ as an Indian Sultana in a robe of cloth 
 of gold, and rich veil . . . the jewels she wore were valued at ,£30,000.” 
 Mrs. Cornelys was not, however, satisfied with these ephemeral trifles ; 
 she inaugurated what she called “ Harmonic Meetings,” 1 with the help of 
 the Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Harrington, and other leaders of 
 fashion. Their share seems to have been taken rather to spite Mr. Hobart, 
 brother of Lord Buckinghamshire, who was manager of the Haymarket and 
 had affronted the singer Guadagni, who was a protige of theirs, than for 
 any particular wish to render a service to Mrs. Cornelys. This seriously 
 affected the Haymarket, and the managers of other theatres took fright, 
 and although Mrs. Cornelys, to avoid outwardly transgressing the act, 
 pretended she took no money, that her concerts were for charity, &c., 
 she was informed against by Mr. Hobart, and the justices pronounced in 
 his favour, Mrs. Cornelys being convicted before Sir John Fielding for 
 performing dramatic entertainments without a licence. As misfortunes 
 are said never to come singly, Mrs. Cornelys had to sustain a fresh com- 
 petition in the form of the Pantheon or winter Ranelagh, which opened 
 in 1772, with similar attractions to her own; and still worse, an indictment 
 was presented to the Grand Jury intimating that “ she does keep and 
 maintain a common disorderly house, &c.” Even her resource could not 
 withstand this concurrence of ill fortune, and in the London Gazette for 
 November 1772, we find among the list of bankrupts “Teresa Cornellys 
 (sic), Carlisle House, St. Ann, Soho, dealer ” ; and as a consequence, Carlisle 
 House and all its gorgeous fittings and furniture was advertised to be 
 sold in one lot in the following month. A curiously worded advertise- 
 ment thereupon appeared as follows : “ The curiosity of many to see the 
 house, to prevent improper crowds, and the great damage that might 
 happen therefrom (and the badness of the season), by admitting indifferent 
 and disinterested people, must be an excuse to the public for the assignees 
 ordering the catalogues to be sold at five shillings each, which will admit 
 two to see the house.” 
 
 1 It is interesting to note that Goldsmith’s “ Lament for the Death of the Princess Dowager 
 of Wales,” written in 1772, and announced in the papers as composed for the purpose by a 
 gentleman of acknowledged literary merit, was recited and sung with music at Mrs. Cornelys’s 
 fashionable rooms in Soho Square. 
 
1 18 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Here seemed indeed the end of this enterprising woman ; but no ! two 
 years later the public was informed that “ the assemblies at Carlisle House 
 will commence soon, under the conduct and direction of a new manager.” 
 It was our old friend again, but her day was nearly over, and after another 
 couple of years’ struggle, Carlisle House was again advertised for sale by 
 private treaty or to be hired as usual. It soon fell from its high estate ; 
 used for some time as an exhibition for Monstrosities, anon as a School of 
 Eloquence, and finally as an “ Infant School of Genius,” in all which 
 characters the sceptic might perhaps have seen a resume of its original 
 vocation, it was finally closed by public order in 179 7, and about five 
 years later was demolished, two houses being built on its site — one, Jeffrey’s 
 Music Warehouse, and the other, Weiffert’s Ouadrille Office ; so that even 
 
 1 7 7 
 
 in its debacle there seemed to be something Phoenix-like in its constitution. 
 On its demolition some of the curiously painted banqueting scenes were 
 preserved. 1 
 
 The presiding genius of the place, whose name is to be met with in 
 much of the literature of the day, who had been referred to by Murphy 
 and castigated by Combe, fell from bad to worse. She attempted to re- 
 organise her clientele , and for this purpose took a house known as Knights- 
 bridge Grove, near where Lowndes Terrace stands, and then known as 
 Porters Lane, but she met with no success and gave it up in 1785. Ten 
 years later she reappeared as a Mrs. Smith, vendor of asses’ milk, in 
 Knightsbridge, but this new attempt met also with no success, and the 
 once brilliant director, if not leader, of fashion died in the Fleet Prison on 
 August 19, 1797. 2 
 
 As the Earls of Carlisle had their town residence in Soho Square, so, 
 too, did the Bellasyses, Lords Falconberg, or Falconbridge, as it is some- 
 times written. Viscount Falconberg, whom Noble describes as of “very 
 amiable manners and enterprising genius,” married Mary, third daughter 
 of Oliver Cromwell, who was the last of the family to inhabit Falconberg 
 House. Granger tells us that when in Soho Square she always attended 
 service at St. Anne’s close by, and Burnet alliteratively calls her “ a wise 
 and worthy woman.” She died in 1712, and so we may regard that date 
 as marking the end of the Falconberg family’s connection with the house 
 in Soho, she having survived her husband just twelve years. This house, 
 
 1 In 1847, a Mr. Mackinley of Soho Square printed a private account of Mrs. Comelys’s 
 entertainments, and in the British Museum is preserved a large collection of bills, pamphlets, 
 See., connected with these performances. 
 
 2 Davis, Memorials of Knightsbridge, p. 158. It would seem that Josiah Wedgwood once 
 thought of taking the rooms, for writing to Bentley on November 14, 1772, he says, “What has 
 become of Mrs. Cornelleys’ (sic) Rooms ? She is I hear, to remain in prison, and I cannot 
 think anybody else will venture to take up her place. Soho Square is not a bad situation, I 
 think, but you know better than I do.” (Meteyard’s Life of Wedgwood.) 
 
SOHO SQUARE 119 
 
 with its fine and characteristic facade, still exists, and is now known as 
 No. 20 Soho Square, forming part of the extensive premises of Messrs. 
 Crosse & Blackwell. In one of the rooms may still be seen a very richly 
 carved and gilded ceiling and wall, while another, which was formerly 
 oval in shape, contained an oval ceiling panel painted by Angelica Kauff- 
 mann ; when this room was altered in shape, and divided, this painting 
 was carefully removed and now exists in Mr. Blackwell’s country house. 
 
 Although the connection of the Falconberg family with this mansion 
 was ended with the death of Lady Falconberg, another notable individual 
 resided in it at a somewhat later date, in the person of the celebrated 
 naval commander, Sir Cloudesley Shovel. From here it was that he set 
 out on his expedition to Toulon in 1707; on his return from which 
 abortive attempt he was drowned off the Scilly Isles. His body was 
 eventually recovered and brought to his house in Soho Square, where it 
 lay in state until it was conveyed to Westminster Abbey for interment. 
 Some years later, to be exact in 1726, the celebrated Spanish Minister 
 Ripperda was living here in great splendour. 1 This unscrupulous but 
 able man, a fitting follower of Alberoni, whom Lord Hervey calls “a 
 prospecting, speculating, enterprising, inconsiderate, hot-headed fellow,” 
 was fresh from the great Treaty of Vienna, which he had initiated and 
 signed in the previous year ; but his triumph was short-lived, and the man 
 who had intrigued consistently against his country was glad to seek an 
 asylum in England from the Spanish people who had learned to hate him. 
 It would appear that the house (No. 20) under consideration had, among 
 others, the Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Bradford, and Speaker Onslow 
 as tenants, and that it was originally built by Colin Campbell, the architect 
 of Wanstead, for the Earl of Tylney, who once lived at No. 5 St. James’s 
 Square, but its later unfortunate reputation has overwhelmed such memories, 
 for it was notorious as “ The White House,” a place given over to dissipa- 
 tion of all kinds, when it was frequented by such past masters in the art as 
 the Prince of Wales, “ Old Q.,” and Lord Hertford. It had an entrance 
 with iron gates in Sutton Street, and some of those who entered its ill- 
 fated portals are said never to have emerged alive. Its apartments, 
 tradition has it, were known as the Gold, Silver, and Bronze rooms, from 
 the various prevailing tones of their decorations, and all were fitted with 
 mirrors set into the panelling of the walls ; other rooms were designated 
 “the Painted Chamber,” “ the Grotto,” “ the Coal Hole,” and weirdest of 
 all, “ the Skeleton Room ” — where by a mechanical contrivance a skeleton 
 was made to issue from a cupboard ! 
 
 The house, after these things had been put a stop to, was empty for 
 1 Lord Mahon’s History of England, quoted by Jesse. 
 
120 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 some time, but was subsequently occupied by Messrs. D’Almaine & Co., the 
 pianoforte makers, who are mentioned as being here in London in 1851 ; 
 it was later incorporated in Messrs. Crosse & Blackwell’s premises. 
 
 In a clever water-colour drawing by T. Richardson, dated 1826, 
 Falconberg House and the adjoining premises, forming Nos. 20 and 21 
 Soho Square, are shown ; the entrance to the latter being in Sutton Street, 
 and there being no outlet into the Square. On its being rebuilt, as we 
 have seen in 1837, it was altered to its present appearance. 1 
 
 A later resident in the Square was Sir Joseph Banks, who died in 1820, 
 at No. 32, 2 then No. 30. Miss Sarah Sophia Banks, an eccentric lady, 3 
 who, to quote Smith, 4 “ was looked after by the eye of astonishment 
 wherever she went,” on account of the strangeness of her dress, which was 
 distinctly that of the old school, kept house for her brother Sir Joseph, 
 when he lived in Soho Square. Here she helped him entertain at the Sunday 
 evening conversaziones which he established ; reunions mentioned by Sir 
 Henry Holland in his Recollections, and referred to by Gilford when he 
 once said to Moore that the Banks’ mansion was to science what Holland 
 House was to literature. Cavendish and Wollaston were honoured guests 
 here, and although Horace Walpole laughed at the host and Peter Pindar 
 scribbled verses about his entertainments, this scientific salon was not with- 
 out its influence, and its advantages to those who were bidden as guests. 
 
 No. 32 is one of the noticeable houses at the south-west corner of 
 the Square, and is now occupied by the Hospital for Diseases of the 
 Heart ; here the Linnaean Society (about whom Knight is so flippant) had 
 its headquarters before it removed further westward. The house is 
 distinguished not only by some very fine ceilings, but one room, now a 
 female ward, is, says Besant, worthy of special notice, it having “ a very 
 lofty arched ceiling of rather unusual construction beautifully decorated, 
 and an overmantel and fireplace which are exquisite.” Here Sir Joseph 
 Banks used to hold receptions, at which all the scientific men of the day 
 were to be met. He was followed in the occupation of the house by 
 Sir J .E. Smith and Mr. Robert Brown, both eminent naturalists ; and the 
 Linnasan Society, which had been founded in 1788. 
 
 1 This water-colour is in possession of T. F. Blackwell, Esq., J.P., who showed it to the 
 author and supplied him with much interesting and valuable information. There is in exist- 
 ence a small print of one of the “ Cries of London ” headed Soho Square ; it is the cry of “ Chairs 
 to mend,” and shows a portion of the centre of the Square, with a lamp, and at the corner, 
 through which the central garden is seen, a public-house, but I have failed to identify this 
 hostelry. 
 
 2 Boyle, for 1795, gives one Fowler as then living at No. 32, and Sir Joseph at No. 30. 
 
 3 See an account of her, with a reproduction of a contemporary print of her as “An old 
 maid on a journey,” in Timbs’s Eccentrics and Eccentricities. 
 
 4 Book for a Rainy Day , p. 229. 
 


SOHO SQUARE 12 1 
 
 The inception of this Society is indeed connected with this very house, 
 for it was when Sir J. E. Smith, then a medical student, happened to 
 breakfast with Sir Joseph Banks on one occasion, that the latter said he 
 had had the offer of the MSS. and botanical collections of Linnaeus offered 
 him for ^iooo, but that he had declined to purchase them. Young 
 Smith, full of zeal and interest, thereupon prevailed on his father to 
 advance the necessary sum. The treasure arrived in London in 1784, 
 packed, we are told, in twenty-six cases. Smith was rewarded by being 
 made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and on his death in 1828, his 
 collections were acquired by the Linnaean Society, which he had helped 
 to found. 1 
 
 It is interesting to find that Sir Joseph Banks’s old house was exempted 
 from the poor-rate in 1852 on account of its being used for the purposes 
 of science. 2 
 
 Among the first residents in the Square were mentioned the names of, 
 among others, Lord Stamford and Colonel Rumsey. Both these figure in 
 those intermittent plots against Charles II. in which Monmouth was more 
 or less deeply implicated, and for which Algernon Sydney suffered a 
 shameful death. 3 Indeed in 1683, Rumsey was one of the witnesses 
 against the Duke and Lord Stamford ; anon we find the informer himself 
 informed against by one Goodenough, and finally we hear of his being 
 deported to Nicholas Island, near Plymouth, there to be confined during 
 life. 4 Lord Stamford acted a more manly part, in that he was no 
 informer ; indeed Luttrell mentions preparations for his trial for high 
 treason, but delays occurred, and in the 1688 Revolution he appears to 
 have become an important personage at the Court of the “ little Dutch- 
 man.” Another one-time sojourner — one can hardly identify him 
 sufficiently long with the Square to call him an inhabitant — here, was 
 John Evelyn, who notes under date of November 27, 1690, that “ I went 
 to London with my family to winter at Soho in the great Square.” 
 Evelyn appears to have been accustomed, when coming to London, to take 
 various houses: thus in 1658, we find him at the Three Feathers in 
 Russell Street, Covent Garden; in 1662, in lodgings “ neere the Abbey 
 of Westminster”; in 1686, at Whitehall, “in the Lord Privy Seal’s 
 Lodgings,” and in 1699, he writes, “Am now removing my family to a 
 more convenient house here in Dover Street where I have the remainder 
 of a lease.” Thus, like all the world, he moved gradually westward ! 
 
 1 See Old and New London , vol. iii. p. 191. 2 Curiosities of London, p. 783. 
 
 3 In the well-known engraving of Lord Russell’s trial, Rumsey is shown seated beneath the 
 
 jury-box with his hand before his mouth whispering to Shepherd. 
 
 4 Luttrell’s Diary. 
 
122 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Some years later another diarist and antiquary was visiting here, for 
 Thoresby in his Journal for January 22, 1709, writes: “Walked to 
 Soho Square, to the Bishop of Salisbury’s, who entertained me most 
 agreeably with the sight of several valuable curiosities, as the original 
 Magna Charta of King John, supposed to be the very same that he 
 granted to the nobles in the field, it wanting that article about the Church, 
 which, in the Exemplars afterwards, was always inserted first ; it has part 
 of the Great Seal also remaining. He showed me also his strong box, 
 with many noble medals of silver and gold, presented to him by the 
 Princess Sophia and other foreign princes of the House of Hanover, &c., 
 several of them worth about ^30 apiece, as to the intrinsic value. But 
 what was best of all was his pious and excellent converse; for, notwith- 
 standing the censures of a malignant world that hates everything that is 
 serious, he is, doubtless, an admirably holy and good man, and has one of 
 the best regulated houses in the world.” 1 Such is the evidence of a 
 discerning contemporary on Bishop Burnet, who, before removing to 
 Clerkenwell, lived in the house in Soho 2 in which he entertained Thoresby 
 with curiosities and pious converse. 
 
 Another notable resident in Soho Square, at the corner of Greek 
 Street, was that Alderman Beckford whose monumental speech is more 
 famous than his double tenure of office of Lord Mayor. His illustrious 
 son, the author of Vathek and creator of Fonthill — art critic, book collector, 
 and eccentric — must often have been here ; while it is probable that 
 Chatterton on his arrival in London called to see his patron in Soho 
 Square. Beckford died here on June 21, 1770, and on the termination of 
 his tenancy the house became the office of the old Commissioners of 
 Sewers, and was subsequently occupied by the Board of Works ; later, in 
 1863, it was purchased by “The House of Charity” for ^6400, 3 which 
 institution still occupies it. Like many of the other remaining houses 
 in this Square, the interior repays attention, for there are still preserved 
 the beautifully designed chimneypieces, architraves, and window dressings 
 and decorated ceilings. The room now used as a Council Chamber is 
 especially noteworthy, the ceiling being oval in form “with the figures 
 of four cherubic boys in relief, carrying respectively flowers, a bird, fire, 
 and water, to represent the four elements.” 4 
 
 It was probably when residing in this house that Beckford heard of 
 the destruction by fire of the first mansion at Fonthill in 17 55, which is 
 said to have meant a loss to him of ^30,000. When he was told of the 
 
 1 Diary , vol. ii. p. 27. 
 
 2 At first Burnet rented a house on the north side, but later he lived on the south side, next 
 door south of Carlisle House. See Men and Women of Soho, p. 102. 
 
 3 Walford ( Old and New London ) says ^3000. 4 Mitton. 
 
SOHO SQUARE 123 
 
 disaster he calmly took out a pocket-book and began to write ; on being 
 asked what he was doing; “Only calculating,” he replied, “how much 
 it will cost to rebuild it.” “ I have,” he added, “ an odd fifty thousand 
 in a drawer, and, if I rebuild, it will only mean a thousand apiece less to 
 my charity children.” Fonthill, as is well known, was rebuilt and became 
 a wonder to all the county. It was into the house in Soho Square that 
 Lord Chatham forced himself the day before Beckford’s death, and came 
 away with all the letters he had written the demagogue Alderman. 1 
 
 The association of several other well-known men with Soho Square 
 can be substantiated. Thus at No. 27, now occupied by a Benefit Society, 
 Brunell, the money-lender’s disreputable attorney, who was, however, 
 towards De Quincey “ obliging and to the extent of his power, generous,” 
 once lived, and here it was that De Quincey, on his arrival in London, 
 stayed “ in miserable lodgings,” according to Hutton. 
 
 Readers of De Quincey will remember the description of the house as 
 it was in 1802. 2 “The house was not in itself,” says the Opium-Eater, 
 “supposing that its face had been washed now and then, at all dis- 
 respectable. But it wore an unhappy countenance of gloom and unsocial 
 fretfulness, due in reality to the long neglect of painting, cleansing, and 
 in some instances of repairing .... it could hardly be called large, that 
 is, it was not large on each separate storey, but, having four storeys in all, 
 it was large enough to impress vividly the sense of its echoing loneliness.” 
 Here it was that with his companion “ Ann,” as he himself says, he 
 sat down on the steps of a house “ which to this hour I never pass 
 without a pang of grief,” and here, as he wrote years later, “ about ten 
 o’clock this very night (August 15, 1821) I turned aside from my evening 
 walk along Oxford Street in order to glance at it.” 
 
 At No. 31 (formerly 29), in the south-west corner of the Square, at 
 its junction with Frith Street, Charles Kemble, the father of Fanny 
 Kemble, was living in 1824; but later, after Miss Kemble’s return from 
 school in Paris, he took a cottage at Weybridge and another house in Soho 
 Square — this time, No. 5, which is described in The Records of a Girlhood 
 as “a handsome, comfortable, roomy house.” I find Sir Charles Bell, 
 the celebrated surgeon — of whom Cockburn once said, “ If ever I knew a 
 generally and practically happy man, it was Sir Charles Bell,” and whose 
 work on The Hand is a classic — residing, in 1812, at No. 36, then No. 
 34 ; while both the George Colmans once lived in the Square. Angelo in 
 his Reminiscences mentions their residence here, and Peake in his Memoirs 
 of the Colman Family gives two letters from Colman the elder to Garrick, 
 dated ‘Soho Square, 1776.’ In the following year O’Keefe the actor 
 1 Timbs’s Eccentrics and Eccentricities. 2 Memorable London Houses , p. 90. 
 
124 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 paid him a visit here, in an account of which he thus incidentally describes 
 the position of the house : “ The next morning I was punctual to appoint- 
 ment, and posted to Soho Square, where, at the left-hand corner of 
 Bateman’s Buildings, I knocked at the door of a fine-looking house, and 
 was ushered into the library.” 
 
 In a house in the south-east corner once resided, for a time, Mr. Barnes, 
 the editor of the Times , and it was here he laid down the terms on 
 which that paper would support the Wellington Ministry in 1828. 
 J. T. Smith, the engraver and gossiping writer, was also living in Soho 
 Square previously to the year 1 800, in which year his Antiquities of London 
 was published, a book on which he had been engaged ten years ; and it was 
 probably in connection with this work that he returned to London from 
 Edmonton, first lodging in Frith Street and afterwards in Soho Square, 1 
 while another antiquary in the person of Richard Payne Knight, assembled, 
 in a house in the Square, his magnificent collection of ancient bronzes and 
 Greek coins, valued at ^50,000, which he subsequently bequeathed to the 
 British Museum. 2 
 
 From the recollections of one 3 who has known the Square for many 
 years past and whose knowledge of it has been further augmented by 
 what a member of his family of a bygone generation has told him, I learn 
 that Dr. Jones, the father of the well-known “Cavendish,” formerly lived 
 at No. 21 a ; also that Pickersgill, the artist, resided in the corner house 
 next door to what are now Messrs. Burroughs and Watts’ premises, and 
 my informant remembers, as a boy, seeing the horses which Pickersgill was 
 accustomed to use as models, being led down a passage which divided the 
 houses at that time. Pickersgill painted here his portrait of Wordsworth, 
 and we find the poet writing to Crabb Robinson in 1833, and saying, 
 “ In passing through Soho Square it may amuse you to call in upon 
 Mr. Pickersgill the portrait-painter, where he will be gratified to introduce 
 you to the face of an old friend. Take Charles and Mary Lamb there 
 also.” This advice was followed, for Crabb Robinson notes that he went 
 on the following 30th April, with Mrs. Aders, to see the picture ; while, 
 two years later, he paid the painter another visit in Soho Square, in the 
 company of the Wordsworths, for the purpose of seeing a smaller portrait 
 of the poet which Pickersgill was painting. “We sat there a couple of 
 
 1 I may mention that Mr. James Adair, a wealthy linen-factor, and a one-time protector 
 of the notorious Mrs. Rudd, was formerly connected with Soho Square; and readers of the 
 Spectator will remember that, when in London, the immortal Sir Roger de Coverley lodged 
 there. 
 
 2 Another inhabitant at one time was Samuel Beazley, the dramatist and architect, re- 
 membered as having designed both the Lyceum and St. James’s Theatres. His house seems 
 to have been to the right of Bateman’s Buildings. 
 
 3 J. S. Burroughs, Esq., F.R.G.S. 
 
SOHO SQUARE 125 
 
 hours,” the Diarist adds, “enlivening by chat the dulness of sitting for a 
 portrait.” In No. 19, which, before it was rebuilt, was fitted with old oak 
 carvings, all the windows being of stained glass, resided for a time a 
 painter of our own day, J. Sant, Esq., R.A. 
 
 In defiance of chronology, I must here record the name of another 
 one-time artistic inhabitant of the Square in the person of Jacques 
 Rousseau, 1 a painter who was invited to this country by the Duke of 
 Montagu, in order that he might decorate Montague House, then being 
 rebuilt by his Grace. Rousseau seems to have enjoyed this patronage but a 
 short time, for after only two years’ work he died in Soho Square, about 
 the year 1694, aged sixty-eight, and was buried in the neighbouring church 
 of St. Anne. 2 
 
 It would also appear that either the Venetian Embassy was once 
 situated in Soho Square or that the envoy had lodgings there, for 
 Dr. Johnson, in a letter to Mr. Chambers dated November 21, 17 54, 3 in 
 which he desires Mr. Warton to inform him of the cost of transcribing a 
 manuscript in the Bodleian, asks that the answer may be directed “ to His 
 Excellency Mr. Zon, Venetian Resident, Soho Square,” and it is therefore 
 probable that Johnson was desired to seek this information by the envoy 
 himself. 
 
 Mention must now be made of the Soho Academy, a commercial school 
 established in the eighteenth century, not later than 17 19, 4 by Martin 
 Clare, who appears to have been the first master. The school was situated 
 on the north side of the Square where the French Protestant Church now 
 stands. Many were the pupils turned out by this excellent school ; some 
 of them indeed became famous. Under Clare was George Onslow, son 
 of the Speaker who, as I have mentioned, himself once resided in the 
 Square; he was probably the “show boy” of the place, for when Clare 
 published his Youth's Introduction to Trade and Business , he dedicated it to 
 “ Master George Onslow, only son of the Right Hon. Arthur Onslow, 
 Speaker of the Honourable House of Commons.” 5 
 
 Succeeding Clare in the mastership was Cuthbert Barwis. Under this 
 master, the school attained fame for the histrionic instruction imparted to 
 the pupils, with the result that we find Holman and Fawcett, the actors, 
 and Morton, the dramatist, all schoolfellows here under the Barwis regime. 
 In contemporary literature there are frequent references to this charac- 
 teristic ; thus Angelo writes : “ The first time I saw Holman, the per- 
 
 1 It may be mentioned here that some tapestry, designed by Zuccarelli, that used formerly 
 to hang in Northumberland House, is said to have been worked in Soho Square in 1758. 
 
 2 Walpole’s Anecdotes. 3 Boswell’s Johnson , vol. ii. p. 23. 
 
 4 Men and Women of Soho, p. 1 1 7. 6 Ibid., p. 1 1 8. 
 
126 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 former, was when at school in Soho Square, at the Rev. Dr. Barwis’s. 
 Hamlet was the character. It was in the Christmas holidays ; there was 
 afterwards a dance in the schoolroom ; ” while Fanny Burney records, on 
 November 15, 1768, going “to see the play of Tamerlane acted by young 
 gentlemen at an Academy in Soho Square.” “ The play,” she adds, 
 “ was much better performed than I expected, and the dresses were 
 superb.” 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Barrow succeeded Dr. Barwis as master in 1785. He 
 does not seem to have shared his predecessor’s love of theatrical exhibi- 
 tions, for in a work on the art of education, he has these direct words about 
 the matter : “ When I first engaged the Academy in Soho Square, I found 
 that the annual performance of one of the Dramas of Shakespeare had 
 been an established custom for many years ; and for four years longer it 
 was continued ; and then, from a conviction of its impropriety, finally 
 relinquished .... our performances obtained an extraordinary degree 
 of excellence, or at least of celebrity, which exposed us the more to the 
 censures which I have passed upon such performances in general .... 
 and it was soon found that the only effectual remedy for its various 
 evils was a total abolition.” 1 Under Dr. Barrow’s rule I find that one 
 of the sons of James Boswell was here. 2 Bozzy himself refers to the 
 circumstance on one occasion : “ My second son is an extraordinary boy,” 
 he writes ; “ he goes in the day to the Academy in Soho Square kept 
 by the Rev. Dr. Barrow, formerly of Queen’s, Oxford, a coarse north- 
 countryman, but a very good scholar ; and there my boy is very well 
 taught.” It is to be feared that James Hook, the father of Theodore 
 Hook, could hardly say the same of his son, for, from the “green- 
 doored, brass-plated establishment ” in Soho Square, as Theodore himself 
 calls it, he was continually playing truant, and it is probable took little 
 away from it to Harrow beyond his own curiously incomparable powers. 
 One of these occasions was the night of the illuminations for the Peace of 
 Amiens, when Theodore determined to spend the day at home in order 
 presumably the better to prepare for the fatigue of viewing the fireworks 
 in the evening. He therefore gave out that a whole holiday had been 
 granted ; but his elder brother happening to pass through Soho Square 
 observed signs at the Academy denoting that work was in progress as 
 usual, and going in found that Master Theodore had not put in an 
 appearance for three weeks ! Alarums and excursions in the Hook 
 household were, as may be imagined, the result of this discovered 
 delinquency. 
 
 1 Men and Women of Soho, p. 123. 
 
 2 As was also that eccentric baronet, Sir Lumley Skeffington. 
 
SOHO SQUARE 127 
 
 Another one-time scholar at the Soho Academy was the litterateur 
 and bookseller, Sir Richard Phillips. 1 He is probably best known by his 
 little book A Morning Walk to Kew ; but besides this he published a 
 number of works, and was concerned in the compilation of several 
 others, and as an editor of the Monthly Magazine , contributed to that 
 periodical many papers under the signature of “ Common-sense,” of which 
 he seems to have had a full share. 
 
 Turner, the painter, is also said to have been at one time at the Soho 
 Academy, but Thornbury’s account of this period of the great man’s life 
 is too confused to allow us to identify the actual years of his entry and 
 departure. Another biographer, Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse, is more cir- 
 cumstantial, for he states that Turner in 1786 or 1787 , was sent to 
 Mr. Palice, a floral drawing-master in an Academy at Soho. Dr. Barber 
 would appear to have succeeded Barrow in the mastership of the Soho 
 Academy, and it was in his house, “ in a handsome first floor,” that 
 Macready lodged with his brother in 1817. The house was, according 
 to Macready, a boarding-house kept by Dr. Barber, “ the master of what 
 still retained the name of Soho School.” 
 
 Unlike the majority of London squares, that of Soho has two churches 
 in it ; one, the French Protestant Huguenot Church of London, stands on 
 the site of what used to be No. 8 Soho Square ; while the other is St. 
 Patrick’s Catholic Church and Presbytery. 2 An earlier chapel dedicated 
 to St. Patrick was formed out of the banqueting-hall of old Carlisle 
 House, and as Besant remarks, “ where masqueraders had revelled priests 
 heard confession.” This, however, was eventually absorbed in Messrs. 
 Crosse & Blackwell’s premises ; and the present church of red brick, with 
 a campanile 125 feet high, was opened in 1893. Within it, is a noticeable 
 marble group of a dead Christ supported by an angel, as well as some 
 pictures of unusal value and beauty, such masters as Murillo, Vandyck, 
 and Carlo Dolci being represented. It was here that Father O’Leary 
 ministered with such zeal and success for the ten years of his life in 
 London. He it was who, on the passing in 1791, of an Act of Toleration 
 for the Roman Catholics, initiated the taking of the banqueting-hall 
 attached to Carlisle House and then turning it into a chapel, which 
 was opened by Bishop Douglas in 1791, the sermon on that occasion 
 being preached by Father O’Leary, of whom Grattan once said in 
 the House, “A man of learning, a philosopher, a Franciscan, he did 
 
 1 See Timbs’s Walks and Talks in London , p. 94, for an account of Phillips. 
 
 2 In the Jerningham Letters I find a solemn service for the repose of the soul of the Due 
 D’Enghien taking place here on April 26, 1804, and Lady Jerningham, writing to Lady 
 Bedingfield, says, “ It is said that about 1400 people were present. The whole Square is in an 
 Embarras of coaches, for the Protestants, I believe, exceeded the Catholicks.” 
 
128 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 the most eminent service to his country in the hour of its greatest 
 danger.” 1 
 
 Two equally zealous and pious successors were found in the persons 
 of Canon Long and the Rev. Thomas Barge, both of whom left the mark 
 of their individuality on the religious work of their times. 
 
 The Soho Bazaar was once a well-known feature of Soho Square, and 
 indeed still exists in another milieu. It was started by Mr. John Trotter, 
 with whom Jerdan was acquainted, and in the Autobiography of the latter 
 the fact is stated, and a letter from Trotter dated March 15, 1818, 
 from Soho Square, printed. 2 
 
 The centre garden in the Square was formerly graced by a stone 
 statue of Charles II. in armour, on a pedestal enriched with crowns and 
 foliage, the work of Caius Gabriel Cibber, the father of Colley Cibber, 
 who, Cunningham says, “ must be regarded as the forerunner of whatever 
 is poetic in the sculpture of Great Britain.” He also designed the 
 elaborate base, on the four sides of which were emblematical figures, with 
 inscriptions, of the Thames, Severn, Tyne, and Humber, each figure 
 serving as a fountain. Subsequently the fountain basins were filled up 
 and used as flower-beds, and finally the statue of Charles himself was re- 
 moved, it having become damaged and generally disreputable. The 
 original railings around the centre garden were of wood, and Mr. Clinch 3 
 mentions a document, dated 1748, recording the subscriptions made by 
 the inhabitants to replace them with iron ones. The Duke of Portland 
 headed this list with ^300. 
 
 From an eighteenth-century print of the Square, probably dating 
 about 1700 (in which we find Frith Street and Greek Street given as 
 Thryft Street and Greg Street), the centre garden is shown enclosed by rail- 
 ings on a dwarf wall, while the space within is divided into four grass-plots, 
 each having a border of flowers; some truly Dutch-looking trees form a 
 sort of central avenue, and at the extreme four corners are four stone 
 ornaments on pedestals ; the centre forms a circular path surrounding a 
 small basin of water, in the middle of which rises the statue of Charles II. 
 with its ornamental base. 4 
 
 There was at one time a movement on foot to throw open this space, 
 and in 1874, the matter went so far that a meeting was held and a com- 
 mittee formed to try and induce the then Duke of Portland, in whom 
 
 1 Men and Women of Soho, p. 192. 
 
 2 In Boyle’s Court Guide for 1795 Messrs. J. and S. Trotter are given as living at No. 7 
 
 Soho Square. 3 Soho and its Associations. 
 
 4 Another print of the Square is given in Some Prospects of Publick Buildings in London. 
 1724, and is also reproduced in Strype’s edition of Stow, 1755. These prints are headed 
 “ Sohoe, or King’s Square.” 
 
3>, VJT})gi ([•[()*') 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
GOLDEN SQUARE 129 
 
 the fee-simple of the land was vested, to surrender his rights ; but the 
 duke did not respond to these overtures, although Baron Grant, who is 
 remembered as a benefactor to Leicester Square, offered to lay out the 
 garden and to endow it with a sum sufficient for its maintenance. 1 
 
 GOLDEN SQUARE 
 
 “ It is one of the squares that have been — a quarter of the town that has gone 
 down in the world.” — Dickens. 
 
 Golden Square, now a quiet oasis almost in the midst of the rush of 
 Regent Street, is known, except to those interested in the manufacture of 
 woollen goods, rather by name then by actual contact. Hatton even in 
 1708, spoke of it as “being not exactly in anybody’s way, to or from 
 anywhere,” and it still preserves this characteristic, although it abuts now 
 on the finest street in London, while in the eighteenth-century Swallow 
 Street (not the smaller Swallow Street now known to us, which was 
 then called Lower Swallow Street), Marybon Street, and Tichborn Street 
 occupied the site of the present Regent Street. 
 
 If one looks through a modern Directory of London one will find 
 that nearly the whole of Golden Square is occupied by woollen manu- 
 facturers’ offices, in place of such people of importance as Lord Blundel, 
 Viscount Falconberg, the Bishop of Lichfield, Lords Stawell and Yar- 
 mouth, &c., who, according to the New Review of London , published in 
 1728, were living there at that period; while the appearance of many of 
 the houses, both within and without, can easily succeed in transferring 
 the imaginative to those still more distant times when the heroic Craven 
 might have been seen in the vicinity, or when, later, Lord Bolingbroke 
 and Mrs. Cibber trod its stones; or later still, when Angelica Kauffmann 
 — Reynolds’s Miss Angel — plied her brush in a room in one of the houses ; 
 or — for here all is now romance — when Matthew Bramble and Humphrey 
 Clinker and Winifred Jenkins took up their abode in the Square ; to 
 when Ralph Nickleby lived in one of the larger houses and entertained 
 such guests as Lord Frederick Verisopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk. 
 
 1 Angelo in his Re?ninisce?ices mentions that when a petition for the pardon of Dr. Dodd 
 was set on foot, he remembered “ Dr. Kennedy and the elder Mr. Sheridan, with the Rev. Bate 
 Dudley, with a long roll of parchment, pens and ink-bottles in their button-holes, going from 
 house to house in Soho Square to obtain signatures ” (vol. i. p. 355). It may be mentioned that 
 that excellent institution, the Cabdrivers Benevolent Association, of which H.M. the King is 
 Patron, has its headquarters at No. 15 Soho Square. 
 
 I 
 
130 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 The name of “ the most melancholy of all the squares in this region,” 
 as Knight 1 calls it, has given rise to some dispute. Jesse says that it 
 was originally Golding 2 Square, and it certainly so appears on the “New 
 View of London ” by Morden and Lea, dated 1707 ; and Hatton in 1708 
 speaks of its being so named from its first builder. The probability of 
 this is heightened by the fact that the west side was formerly called 
 John Street and the east side James Street, possibly analogously to the 
 naming of streets in the Adelphi. Timbs on the other hand thinks it 
 more probable that the name was formerly Gelding, adapted from the 
 sign of a neighbouring inn, which certainly confirms Pennant’s story, 
 as told to a friend of his by the Earl of Bath, to the effect that the 
 inhabitants were disgusted with so vulgar an appellation, and changed it 
 to its present name. 3 This story has, however, now been generally dis- 
 carded, and so it is probable that whether the name was originally Golding 
 or Golden, it was derived from some individual, especially as the general 
 aspect of the Square can hardly be thought to have given rise to the 
 latter designation, although it is called “ The Golden Square ” in an 
 advertisement in the London Gazette for the year 1688, and in the New 
 Review of London of 1728. 
 
 The Square was formed soon after the Revolution of 1688, on a 
 portion of what was then called Pest-House Fields, a dreary waste of 
 land taking its name from the Lazaretto used as a pest-house during the 
 Great Plague, and built by that interesting seventeenth-century figure 
 Lord Craven, whom Pennant rightly calls “ the intrepid soldier, the gallant 
 lover, the genuine patriot.” The actual site of this pest hospital, which 
 consisted of thirty-six small houses and a cemetery, was what was once 
 known as Carnaby Market, which is to-day bounded by Carnaby Street 
 on the west, and is divided from Golden Square by Beak Street, known 
 in 1755 as Silver Street and even so called in Luffman’s Map of London 
 for I816. A portion of the western end of Silver Street was called Beak 
 Street in 1733, as the Daily Journal for March 23rd of that year, 
 mentioning the death of Thomas Beake, Esq., one of the Clerks of the 
 Council, at his house in Beak Street, proves; and even in the 1755 plan 
 it is still so given. 
 
 The connection of Golden Square with Lord Craven’s philanthropic 
 erections is therefore only that of contiguity. Strype, indeed, states 
 the position of the pest-houses thus specifically : “ On the east side of 
 
 1 History of London, vol. vi. p. 199. 
 
 2 Part of Poland Street and Great Marlborough Street was called Little Golding Field, and 
 this was granted to Eliza Dodington in the eighteenth year of Elizabeth’s reign. 
 
 3 Both Hunter and Nightingale in their Histories of London perpetuate this error as to 
 Gelding. 
 
GOLDEN SQUARE 13 1 
 
 this (Carnaby) Street are the end of Craven’s pest-houses, seated in a large 
 piece of ground, enclosed with a brick wall, and handsomely set with trees, 
 in which are buildings for the entertainment of persons that shall have 
 the plague, when it shall please God that any contagion shall happen.” 
 When the immediate neighbourhood began to be covered with private 
 dwellings, these pest-houses were removed to that part of Paddington 
 now known, in consequence, as Craven Hill. This occurred in 1734, 
 and an Act of Parliament was passed to effect it. 
 
 Although, as we have seen, Golden Square was at one time considered 
 out of the way and dreary, there are yet many interesting associations 
 connected with it, and it has numbered not a few notable people as 
 residents. One of its earliest inhabitants, 1 and certainly its most illustrious, 
 was Lord Bolingbroke, who is known to have resided here for four years 
 (1704-8), during which time he was Secretary of War; that he was 
 here later during the period when he was Secretary of State (1710-1714), 
 is proved by an entry in Swift’s Journal to Stella , in which the Diarist, 
 under date October 16, 17 11, writes, “I dined to-day with Mr. Secretary 
 at Dr. Coatesworth’s, where he now lodges till his house be got ready in 
 Golden Square.” On February 12, 1712, Bolingbroke entertained at 
 dinner, in Golden Square, Prince Eugene with about seven or eight 
 General Officers and Foreign Ministers. Swift was not present at this 
 function, which perhaps accounts for his remarking to Stella, when he 
 writes her the news, that “ they will be all drunk, I am sure.” 2 
 
 It was in this same house that Bolingbroke for the last time gave 
 a dinner to his former colleague, Harley. Among the other guests was 
 the Duke of Shrewsbury, Earl Poulett, and Lord Rochester ; but the 
 meal does not seem to have gone off quite smoothly, for we are told that 
 the latter, “ taking pains to calm the spirit of division and ambition,” 
 made a vain attempt to effect a reconciliation between the rival poli- 
 ticians. 3 As Mrs. Oliphant says, “ the bond between Harley and St. 
 John (Bolingbroke), men strangely unlike each other, began to slacken 
 when the struggle for power was over, until at last the brilliant Boling- 
 broke got the upper hand of the duller Oxford.” One more entertain- 
 ment is recorded as having been given by Bolingbroke while living in 
 Golden Square ; when he received at dinner the Duke of Marlborough ; but 
 his tenure of the house was now to be a short one, for it was soon after 
 that he departed hence in disguise to the Continent, on the death of Queen 
 Anne ; an event that effectually wrecked his already tottering fortunes. 
 
 1 In the Rate Books for 1714, Lord Luxborough is given as residing on the west side, and 
 Sir Edward Hulse on the east, and they are rated respectively on ^40 and .£45. 
 
 2 Journal to Stella , February 17, 1712. 3 Jesse, Memorials of London^ vol. i. p. 23. 
 
132 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Indirectly, Golden Square is connected with another great figure of the 
 Augustan age, for it was while she was living here that Miss Anastasia 
 Robinson, famous as a dramatic singer, was married to Lord Peterborough, 
 known for his naval exploits and his eccentricity. Miss Robinson made 
 her debut in 1714, her appearance in public being due to the fact that 
 her father, a portrait-painter of a good Leicestershire family, had become 
 afflicted by partial blindness, which prevented his supporting his family. 
 Miss Robinson, who had a naturally fine voice, improved it by lessons 
 from the best masters, and soon gained the favour of the public and the 
 support of many influential friends. Her father, encouraged by this 
 success, took a house in Golden Square, and established there a sort of 
 weekly concert, at which Lord Peterborough was one of the fashionable 
 visitors. From this time till the year 1724, she was a regular performer, 
 her first- appearance in Opera being in Creso , a compilation from the 
 works of various composers. Dr. Burney states that she received no less 
 than ^1000 a year for her services, besides benefits, &c. — a large sum 
 in those days ; but on her marriage with Lord Peterborough she quitted 
 the stage. 1 
 
 Mrs. Delany, an intimate friend of Lord Peterborough’s, communi- 
 cated to Dr. Burney a lengthy account of Miss Robinson and the details 
 of her marriage, in which is mentioned the fact that Lord Peterborough 
 first met her in Golden Square. The manner in which he intimated the 
 fact of his marriage to his relations is characteristic, and may be given in 
 Mrs. Delany’s own words : “ He appointed a day for all his nearest relations 
 to meet him at the apartment over the gateway of St. James’s Palace, 
 belonging to Mr. Poyntz, who was married to Lord Peterborough’s niece. 
 Lie also appointed Lady Peterborough to be there at the same time. 
 When they were all assembled, he began a most eloquent oration, enume- 
 rating all the virtues and perfections of Mrs. A. Robinson and the recti- 
 tude of her conduct during his long acquaintance with her, for which 
 he acknowledged his great obligation and sincere attachment, declar- 
 ing he was determined to do her that justice which he ought to 
 have done long ago, which was, presenting her to all his family as his 
 wife. He spoke this harangue with so much energy, and in parts 
 so pathetically, that Lady Peterborough, not being apprised of his 
 intentions, was so affected that she fainted away in the midst of the 
 company.” 
 
 There is another account of how Lord Peterborough made known his 
 marriage to the general public, which was by ordering a servant to call 
 out in a loud voice, in the Pump-Room at Bath, “ Lady Peterborough’s 
 
 1 Hogarth’s Memoirs of the Opera. 
 
GOLDEN SQUARE 133 
 
 carriage waits ; ” upon which, we are told, all present rose and offered 
 their congratulations. 
 
 Although this eccentric nobleman thus delayed the notification of 
 his marriage, he could not forget that he had the right to defend his 
 wife when occasion arose, and this might have once given to the world, 
 which was in ignorance of their relationship, an equivocal reason for the 
 friendship between them, for he horse-whipped the singer Senescino, who 
 had been brought to this country by Handel, for some rudeness to the 
 Countess at a rehearsal. As we know that Senescino returned to the 
 Continent in 1726, that year probably marks the date of this occurrence. 
 
 Swift describes Lord Peterborough as 
 
 “ A skeleton in outward figure, 
 
 His meagre corpse though full of vigour 
 Would halt behind him, were it bigger ; ” 
 
 and Pope, writing to Swift in 1735, says of Lord Peterborough, “ No body 
 could be more wasted, no soul can be more alive ; ” while the portrait 
 of him by M. Dahl confirms what Macky says : “ that he had a very brisk 
 
 look.” 
 
 We have every reason to suppose that Handel was a visitor at the 
 Robinsons’ house in Golden Square, for we know that the great com- 
 poser admired Miss Robinson’s voice and wrote various airs expressly to 
 suit it. 1 
 
 Mrs. Cibber, who has the glory of lying amidst the mighty dead in 
 Westminster Abbey, once lived in Golden Square, and in 1746, I find 
 her writing to Garrick and desiring him, in his reply, to “ direct to me 
 at the centre house in Golden Square, for I have left Craven Street.” 2 
 Mrs. Cibber was not only herself a noted actress, but was related to 
 the two Cibbers whose name she bore, Theophilus, her husband, and 
 Colley, her father-in-law ; while Dr. Arne was her brother. She appeared 
 first in 1732, in the opera of Amelia, and her fame rested for some 
 time chiefly on her singing, but in 1736, she made her first appearance 
 as a tragic actress in the part of Zarah, in Hill’s version of Voltaire’s 
 Zaire, and at once achieved so great a success in this form of drama, that 
 on hearing of her death, Garrick is said to have exclaimed, “ Mrs. Cibber 
 dead ! then tragedy has died with her.” 
 
 Although the connection of Bolingbroke with Golden Square was but 
 a fortuitous one, the Square is more closely associated with a statesman 
 of a later date, for at a house here on May 3, 1750, was born William 
 
 1 See Hogarth’s Annals of the Opera. 
 
 2 Garrick Correspondence , vol. i. p. 40. 
 
134 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Windham, who held high posts in various administrations and was 
 prominent as one of the managers of the impeachment of Warren 
 Hastings, in which connection readers of Fanny Burney’s Diary will 
 remember her amusing references to him. He was originally a Whig, 
 but on the differences which occurred in that party over the French 
 Revolution, he took the side of Burke. In 1801 he joined Pitt’s 
 Administration as Secretary of War, and three years later was one of the 
 Ministry of “All the Talents,’’ under Fox. He was not only an ardent 
 politician, but a polished and accomplished man, as the diary he has left 
 is alone sufficient to prove. 1 
 
 The house in Golden Square where Windham was born was the 
 residence of his father, Colonel Windham, who, having quarrelled with 
 his father, enlisted in the Hungarian Hussars in the days of the Empress 
 Maria Theresa. He is described as being a fine horseman and swordsman, 
 very handsome in person, slightly made, but athletic, and so fond of 
 adventures that he accompanied the traveller Pococke, in 1741, to some 
 of the higher valleys of the Alps, and even ascended Mont Blanc, which 
 in those days was a feat worth recording. It was due indeed to these 
 explorers that the first practical information about the Valley of Chamouni 
 was made public." We are further told that he delighted in theatrical per- 
 formances, and that Garrick and others were his constant guests ; and there- 
 fore his house in Golden Square, as well as that of Mrs. Cibber, must 
 often have received the great actor. 3 
 
 Another resident in the Square about this time was Robert Bright 
 of Badsworth in Yorkshire, a member of that important family so long 
 connected with this county. He was a rich man, as was proved by the 
 dowry he gave his daughter when she married the second Marquis of 
 Rockingham on February, 22, 1752, the public prints of the day, in 
 alluding to the match, describing the bride as “ Miss Bright of Golden 
 Square, with £ 60,000 .” 
 
 Lord Rockingham is remembered as the peer — “ a sporting man of 
 sound sense and large possessions, but with no power of language or 
 popular government ” 4 — who was put forward by the great Whig families 
 to form a Ministry in 1765, at the instigation of the Duke of Cumberland ; 
 a Ministry which barely lasted a year. Quite unfitted for the high post to 
 which he was called, he seldom even spoke in the House, and it was to him 
 that a friend of Lord Sandwich referred, when that nobleman was on one 
 
 1 See Burney’s Diary ; Miss Berry’s Diary, &c., as well as his own Diary , published by 
 Mrs. Baring, of 11 Berkeley Square, in 1866. 
 
 2 The Story of Mont Blanc , by Albert Smith, where there is a chapter devoted to the visit 
 of Messrs. Pococke and Windham. 
 
 3 Introduction to Windham’s Diary. 4 Bright’s History of England. 
 
GOLDEN SQUARE 135 
 
 occasion attacking him, with the remark, “ How could you worry a poor 
 dumb creature so ? ” Lord Rockingham, after having filled various other 
 offices, died in 1782, his wife surviving him twenty-two years. 
 
 Only a few months before the fall of the Rockingham Ministry, 
 London was startled by the trial for forgery of Robert Perreau and his 
 brother Daniel, 1 more particularly because they had held respectable posi- 
 tions, Robert being an apothecary, which we should now call a general 
 practitioner, residing in Golden Square ; and because the great banker, 
 Henry Drummond, deposed to knowing him in his position of medical 
 attendant to several families with whom he (Drummond) was connected. 
 The case was however a clear one, and both brothers were executed, as the 
 barbarous custom of the times then permitted, on January 17, 1766. 
 
 Associated with the forgers was the celebrated, or perhaps we should 
 say the notorious, Mrs. Rudd, whom it will be remembered Boswell 
 went to visit on one occasion ; indeed Dr Johnson himself intimated that 
 he would have done so, but that “ Now they have a trick of putting 
 everything in the newspapers,” and once remarked that he envied Boswell 
 his acquaintance with her ; although this may have been said with the 
 object of putting out of countenance a lady who had expressed disapproval 
 of Boswell’s visit ; a thing Johnson was rather fond of doing. The reason 
 of all this interest in Mrs. Rudd was because she was “ universally celebrated 
 for extraordinary address and insinuation.” 2 In a note to this passage 
 Croker conjectures that this reputation was probably very unfounded ; “ it 
 arose,” he says, “ from this, she betrayed her accomplices and they in return 
 charged her with being the real author of the forgery, and alleged that 
 they were dupes or instruments in her hands, and to support this allega- 
 tion they and their friends, who were numerous and respectable, exagge- 
 rated in the highest degree Mrs. Rudd’s supposed powers of address and 
 fascination.” 
 
 Whatever were the lady’s characteristics, they did not suffice to impose, 
 except in the way of curiosity, on many apparently, for some years later 
 (177 9) she herself died in very reduced circumstances. 3 
 
 The year after her death occurred the Gordon Riots, which left few 
 parts of London where there was any sign of Roman Catholicism un- 
 
 1 For a full account of this famous trial see Mr. Bleackley’s Some distinguished Victims 
 of the Scaffold. In Boyle’s Court Guide for 1795, Mrs. Perreau is given as then residing at 
 No. 31. 
 
 2 Boswell’s Johnson , vol. vi. p. 80. 
 
 3 Mrs. Papendiek mentions going to visit Newgate and seeing the three rooms occupied by 
 the notorious Dr. Dodd ; these were afterwards inhabited by Mrs. Rudd who had neatly 
 furnished them, and on her acquittal left them just as she used them (Diary, vol. i. p. 124). An 
 account of the latter was published in two volumes, in 1776, under the title of Authentic 
 Anecdotes of the Life and Transactions of Mrs. Rudd. It is somewhat scarce. 
 
136 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 scathed, and unfortunately for Golden Square, the chapel of the Bavarian 1 
 Legation was situated in it ; the consequence being that the mob was 
 directed by its leaders to this point, and the chapel broken into and 
 plundered ; but even the rioters must have been surprised at what they 
 found, if we are to believe a passage in one of Walpole’s letters to Mann, 
 dated June 1780, which runs thus: “Old Haslang’s Chapel was broken 
 open and plundered, and as he is a prince of Smugglers as well as Bavarian 
 Minister, great quantities of rum, tea, and contraband goods were found in 
 his house.” There is a mention of this Chapel in the Jerningham Letters ; 
 thus Lady Jerningham, writing to her daughter on March 18, 1800, says : 
 “ The abbess went with me to High Mass in Golden Square : there we 
 met Lord and Lady Petre and all the Beau monde'' 
 
 At this time Golden Square was a fashionable place of residence, and 
 people of quality not only lived in it, but in the small streets which adjoined 
 it, and we are able to trace Mrs. Delany to Hog’s Lane, and Lady Falmouth 
 and Mrs. Vernon to Catherine Wheel Street and Dean Street, close by ; 
 while it was from Golden Square that Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope in 1774, 
 published those celebrated letters of her father-in-law, Lord Chesterfield, 
 which drew forth the well-known criticism from Dr. Johnson. It may 
 have been its fashionable reputation which actuated Angelica Kauffmann 
 in taking a house in the Square in the spring of 1767. The residence 
 settled upon was the centre house on the south side, now No. 16, which 
 outwardly preserves much the same appearance as it must have done during 
 that time, although its old-world look is sadly marred by the house next 
 door, which has been rebuilt and wholly modernised. This, and the large 
 premises on the east side which have also undergone so-called improve- 
 ment, prevent the Square from retaining much of its primitive appearance ; 
 but, with these exceptions, it probably looks very much as it did when 
 “ Miss Angel ” went to live in it. We know what popularity was enjoyed 
 by the young artist, a popularity rather perhaps due to curiosity and 
 her sex than to the intrinsic merit of her paintings ; and her biographer 
 has told us how “Golden Square was blocked by carriages.” 2 “She was 
 doubly, trebly, fashionable ; one day a royal carriage drove up to the 
 tall door, and the King’s mother, the Princess of Wales, alighted. Angelica 
 was delighted, writing to her father : ‘ Never, oh ! never has any painter 
 received such a distinguished visitor ! ’ ” Had she remembered something 
 
 1 By the Rate Books for 1714, I find the Bavarian Envoy paying rates on two houses, in 
 the case of one on £%°, and in the other on .£150, at the rate of is. 6d. in the £. 
 
 2 Smith in his Book for a Rainy Day , records how he remembers being taken by his father 
 to Angelica Kauffmann’s studio, when she was residing in Golden Square. Angelo mentions 
 another painter, one Chandler, whom he met at La Sabloni&re’s Hotel in Leicester Square, as 
 living at that time in the Square. 
 
GOLDEN SQUARE 137 
 
 of the history of the Art she practised, she might have chastened her 
 exuberant spirits by reminding herself that Titian had his Charles V. ; 
 Andrea del Sarto his Francis I. ; and Vandyck his Charles ! But Angelica 
 was naturally excited at the fact that Royalty had deigned to notice her ; 
 she was not prepared to take such patronage in the way Northcote did 
 when some one told him that the Prince of Wales remarked on one 
 occasion that he knew him. “Ah, that’s his bragging,” said Northcote. 
 
 Angelica’s father soon joined her in her new house. He is described 
 as a “ rather pompous old man, much inflated by his daughter’s success. 
 He spent most of his time arranging the house and studio for the recep- 
 tion of the distinguished sitters and patrons, who, as was the fashion in 
 those days, had free entree , and lounged away whole mornings in an artist’s 
 studio.” 1 Unfortunately, there was included in this miscellaneous crowd 
 a smooth-tongued rascal, who called himself Count Frederick de Horn, 
 but who was in reality the valet of the real Count de Horn, and bore 
 the name of Buckle. He seems to have entirely fascinated one with 
 whom the great Sir Joshua affected to be in love, and they were married 
 on November 22, 1767, at St. James’s, Piccadilly. How he was prevailed 
 upon to attend a court, and was there unmasked by the real count, and how 
 Queen Charlotte’s sympathy went out to the deluded girl, are known to 
 readers of Angelica Kauffmann’s Life ; what may be added is that on the 
 subsequent death of the deceiver in 1781, “Miss Angel” gave her hand 
 to an old friend, one Zucchi ; her name being entered in the marriage 
 settlement as “ Angelica Kauffmann of Golden Square, Painter, Blooms- 
 bury, spinster.” 
 
 There are not many other notable persons recorded as having lived in 
 Golden Square, but mention may be made of Mrs. Armistead, who after- 
 wards became the wife of Charles James Fox, because her sojourn here 
 is indicated by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his engagement book, under date 
 June 9, 1772, thus: “To Mrs. Armistead at Mr. Mitchell’s, Upper John 
 Street, Golden Square,” this John Street having been the name of the 
 west side of the Square, as I have previously noted. 
 
 Jerdan, in his entertaining Autobiography, mentions, too, that Mr. 
 Kerr, the inheritor of Kippilaw, who was an eminent Scottish lawyer 
 and Parliamentary agent, 2 and one of the Diarist’s oldest and most valued 
 friends, lived in the Square ; and it was at his house here that Jerdan dined 
 on the night before he set out for his walk from London to Edinburgh ; a 
 
 1 Gerard, Life of A. Kauffmann. 
 
 2 In 1852, one of the Parliamentary polling-stations was situated in Golden Square, for I 
 find Lord Macaulay, in an entry in his Diary for July 8 of that year, writing that he went to 
 Golden Square and polled for Shelley and Evans. 
 
138 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 walk undertaken for a mere whim, and not as a wager, as the pedestrian 
 thought fit to give out. 
 
 I may also record the fact that Anthony Morris Storer, the corre- 
 spondent of George Selwyn — who will be found referred to in connection 
 with Delme and Grosvenor Square — and the owner of a fine and curious 
 library, which he subsequently left to Eton College, was known to be 
 residing in Golden Square in the year 1786. 1 
 
 Mrs. Montagu, who is so closely identified with Portman Square, 
 also stayed at the house of her cousin, Mrs. Knight, in Golden Square 
 while she was awaiting the completion of another of her one-time town 
 residences, in Hill Street. 
 
 Of late years, as I have before indicated, the Square has fallen out 
 of favour with private occupiers ; but one notable man did live here in 
 our own day, for Cardinal Wiseman — Browning’s Bishop Blougram — 
 resided for a time at No. 3 5, 2 the large house in the centre of the north 
 side of the Square. Lord Houghton tell us that “ a decorous precedenee 
 was willingly given to him in Protestant houses, and he was becoming 
 gradually esteemed as an author, although naturally his books were re- 
 ceived with more favour and less criticism among those who sympathised 
 with his opinions and objects, than by the general reader.” 3 He died 
 in 1865, and his obsequies were of unwonted grandeur, and even quasi- 
 royal in their importance. “ A great funeral ceremony was got up the 
 other day for the interment of Cardinal Wiseman, who died last week, 
 after a long illness,” writes Henry Greville in his Diary. The house the 
 Cardinal occupied had been for many years previously, the residence of 
 the Roman Catholic Vicars-apostolic of the London district, as they were 
 designated previous to 1850; and here in 1 8 3 5 , were living Bishops 
 Bramston and Griffiths, who held that office in turn. 4 
 
 We are reminded by Sir Walter Besant 5 that it was in Golden Square 
 that De Quincey took leave of Ann, whom he was never destined to see 
 again. Readers of the Confessions of an Opium-Eater will remember the 
 passage which refers to his parting. “ Having time enough before us, we 
 bore away, until we came into Golden Square. There, near the corner 
 of Sherrard Street, we sat down, not wishing to part in the tumult and 
 blaze of Piccadilly. I had told Ann of my plans some time before, and 
 now I assured her again that she should share my good fortune, if I met 
 
 1 The two witnesses to Nollekens’ will are given as Henry Jeaumeret and Edward Cary 
 Grogan of Golden Square ; and G. G. Babington, Esq., a director of the Clerical and Medical 
 Assurance Co., was living here in 1831. 
 
 2 In 1795, one James Wallace was living in this house. 
 
 3 Monographs , p. 53. 1 Old and New London , vol. iv. 
 
 6 Fascination of London : “ The Strand,” p. 41. 
 
GOLDEN SQUARE 139 
 
 with any, and that I would never forsake her, as soon as I had power to 
 protect her. ... I kissed her at our final farewell ; she put her arms 
 about my neck and wept, without saying a word.” 
 
 The immortal pen of Dickens has given a vivifying touch, which it 
 now sadly needs, to Golden Square, for here, readers of Nicholas Nickleby 
 need hardly reminding, lived the surly, ill-conditioned Ralph Nickleby. 
 So potent is the novelist’s pen, that the topography of his novels has 
 that same fascination for inquirers as if actual people lived in the houses 
 he mentions, and it is not therefore surprising to find solemn conjecture 
 exercised as to which house was once the residence of old Nickleby. 
 
 Mr. Rimmer, whose excursions into Dickensian topography are well 
 known, gives in his work 1 an illustration of the house which must have 
 been indicated by the novelist. It was a double house, and this is, or 
 rather was (for it has recently been demolished), the only double house 
 in the Square. No. 35, once, as we have seen, the residence of Cardinal 
 Wiseman, has been pointed out as the house in which Ralph Nickleby 
 lived and carried on his business, but the one preferred by Mr. Rimmer 
 is undoubtedly the one that Dickens had in his eye. 
 
 What the Square must have been like in or about 1838, we learn from 
 the Magician’s own pen. This is how he saw it, and those who see it 
 to-day will have little difficulty in recognising the picture : “ It is one of 
 the squares that have been — a quarter of the town that has gone down in 
 the world, and taken to letting lodgings. Many of its first and second 
 floors are let, furnished, to single gentlemen, and it takes boarders besides. 
 It is a great resort of foreigners. The dark-complexioned men who wear 
 large rings, and heavy watch-guards, and bushy whiskers, and who con- 
 gregate under the Opera Colonnade, and about the box-office in the season 
 between four and five in the afternoon, when they give away the orders — 
 all live in Golden Square, 2 or within a street of it. Two or three violins 
 and a wind instrument from the opera-band reside within its precincts. 
 Its boarding-houses are musical, and the notes of pianos and harps float in 
 the evening-time round the head of the mournful statue — the guardian 
 genius of a little wilderness of shrubs, in the centre of the Square.” 3 
 It will be remembered, too, that Golden Square is mentioned in a greater 
 book than Nicholas Nickleby , for it was here that Esmond first paid his 
 respects to Major-General Webb, when the latter was lodging here. 
 
 1 About England with Dickens. It was the last house to the east, in the middle block on 
 the south side. 
 
 2 In the Imitation of Crabbe in the Rejected Addresses, it will be remembered that James 
 Smith refers to “Bankrupts from Golden Square” as forming part of the audience in the 
 Theatre. 
 
 3 Nicholas Nickleby. 
 
i + o THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 An engraving of the Square in 1750 1 gives a good idea of its general 
 appearance at that time. The houses forming it are, with a few excep- 
 tions, of uniform elevation, and posts (reminding one of Dr. Johnson and 
 his invariable habit) skirt the edge of the pavement. The central space 
 is enclosed by railings forming an octagon with lamps at the eight angles; 
 within is a circular space, which looks in the print, 2 like water, but is more 
 probably intended to represent grass, and in the centre stands on a 
 pedestal the invariable statue — this time of George II. habited “ as an 
 antique Roman,” which was formerly at Canons, the Duke of Chandos’s 
 seat near Edgware. 
 
 With regard to the lamps mentioned above, there is a curious error in 
 Besant’s London in the Eighteenth Century. It is there stated that Golden 
 Square is the only one in which lamps on the railings are shown in old 
 engravings. But if we look at Pollard’s “ View of Hanover Square,” 
 published in 17 87, we shall see that lamps of large dimensions are there 
 also given. 
 
 1 Which is reproduced in Strype’s edition of Stow, 1755. 
 
 2 In Several Prospects of Publick Buildings in London , by John Bowles, published in 1724, 
 the central garden is shown as a square laid out in four grass-plots, surrounded by trees, and 
 intersected by paths, with wooden railings. In this plan all the south side houses are uniform 
 except the third from James Street, which is also fifth from John Street. There is, too, a view 
 of the Square, looking north, by Sutton Nicholls, dated 1731, and, in the Crace collection, a 
 “ Prospect of the Original H ouse built by the Surgeon Norton,” on the south side of the 
 Square, engraved by Long, and dated 1740. 
 
| y.H'K- : KR 'Akt; 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 LEICESTER SQUARE 
 
 “ Leicester’s busy Square.” 
 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 U NLIKE the other squares dealt with in this volume, Leicester 
 Square is one of which the characteristics have entirely changed. 
 Soho, Golden, and Red Lion Squares have each passed from 
 their glorious days of splendour and fashion into com- 
 mercial or professional centres ; many of the squares of 
 Bloomsbury have fallen from their one-time high estate ; even some of 
 the more westerly squares cannot claim to be the “glass of fashion ” which 
 we know they once were. But if, so far as their inhabitants are concerned, 
 they have suffered a certain eclipse in the whirligig of time, outwardly 
 they bear a not remote resemblance to what they did in the “ snows of 
 yester-year.” With Leicester Square, however, the case is different ; not 
 only are its inhabitants (if it can, indeed, be said to have inhabitants in the 
 true sense of the word, other than caretakers) of a far different order from 
 those who once lived in its houses or flaunted their splendour or beauty 
 in its ample enclosure, but its very aspect has undergone a radical change, 
 and with the possible exception of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s old house, there 
 is not a single building but has been rebuilt out of all recognition ; and 
 not only this, but such rebuilding has been carried out with a view to the 
 transformation of the various habitations into houses of very different 
 objects than were dreamed of in the past, so that where once stood a royal 
 palace, the Empire Music Hall and hotels of flaunting grandeur now rear 
 their massive proportions ; where Hogarth lived and painted, is an Institu- 
 tion with a very modern exterior ; where demure dwellings once sheltered 
 bewigged gentlemen and hooped ladies , 1 restaurants and shops of all sorts 
 have their being ; and above all the central space, which was formerly as 
 jealously reserved for the particular use of the residents as those in 
 Berkeley or Grosvenor Squares, is now the resort of the profanum 
 
 1 It is interesting to find that some fine vases in the gardens of Penshurst, with sea-horses 
 for handles, came originally from an old house in the Square. 
 
 141 
 
142 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 vulgus, on whose heads Reynolds and Hogarth, Hunter and Newton in 
 marble, look down in wonder, and Shakespeare, in full length, seems to 
 find in the scene but another proof that “ all the world’s a stage, and all 
 the men and women merely players.” In a word, from being as much a 
 private square as those of St. James’s or Bloomsbury, Leicester Square has 
 become as much a public “ place ” as Trafalgar Square or the Place de la 
 Concorde. 
 
 A process of gradual development and evolution is responsible for this 
 remarkable change, and it will be of interest to note what various phases 
 in the Square’s history have brought it about. Unlike all the other 
 squares, with the exception of St. James’s, Leicester Square has had its 
 painstaking historian, and the most determined investigator into the by- 
 ways of antiquarian topography will hardly be able to add much to what 
 Mr. Tom Taylor brought together in his Leicester Square: its Associa- 
 tions and Worthies , which must always be the standard work on this 
 particular spot, and to which I shall be greatly indebted for what I have 
 to say, at far less length, in this chapter. Tom Taylor’s book was 
 published over thirty years ago, and has of course long since been out of 
 print, but a small brochure by the late John Hollingshead, published in 
 1892, carries the history of the Square down to practically our own times, 
 and is, naturally, chiefly valuable for the facts it relates with regard to the 
 houses of amusement, with which its writer was so closely connected, and 
 through which, to many, the Square is solely known. 
 
 Few squares have had, in the past, so many interesting associations, 
 or have been the home of more illustrious men. The busts which stand 
 at the corners of its central garden help to remind the passers-by of its 
 connection with such worthies as Newton and Reynolds, Hogarth and 
 Hunter, while if the immortal Shakespeare cannot claim to have been 
 in any way connected with this particular locality, we must remember 
 that his province is universal, and that hardly a spot could be chosen in the 
 capital of his own land where his marbled presence would seem out of 
 place ; indeed, with its cosmopolitan reputation, perhaps no place in London 
 could be more appropriate than Leicester Square for him to ponder over, 
 when we remember that, as Matthew Arnold phrased it, 
 
 “ All pains the immortal spirit must endure, 
 
 All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow, 
 
 Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.” 
 
 In the time of Elizabeth we know, from Ralph Aggas’s Map of 
 London, that the ground on which Leicester Square stands was divided 
 into open fields : these fields once belonged to the hospital of St. Giles, 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 143 
 
 although lammas rights were enjoyed over them; in 1537, however, the 
 Warden of St. Giles, in consideration of receiving the Manor of Burton 
 St. Lazar in Leicestershire, had granted to the Crown the property in the 
 parish of St. Giles, held by the hospital, in which was included the site 
 of the Square. About eight years later the land and hospital buildings 
 were granted to Lord Lisle, who converted the latter into a dwelling for 
 himself, but does not seem to have been satisfied with it as a home, for 
 two years later we find him conveying it to one John Wymonde Carewe, 
 Esq. The lammas rights over the land appear to have been the cause of 
 various disputes ; but they were subsequently adjusted, when Sydney Earl 
 of Leicester succeeded Carewe in the occupancy of the land ; and a domestic 
 paper which Mr. Taylor found in the Record Office, under date 1630, 
 gives a clue as to the nature of the compromise arrived at. It runs thus : 
 “ Henry Earl of Manchester, Lord Privy Seal, Thomas Earl of Arundel 
 and Surrey, and Secretary Dorchester to the King, have viewed the place 
 and heard the parties interested, and to accommodate the Earl of Leicester 
 and benefit the parish of St. Martin’s have set down fit limits for the wall 
 and appointed a way across the fields, and set apart a portion thereof to 
 be turned into walks and planted with trees, and spaces left for the in- 
 habitants to dry their clothes. These alterations to be made at the Earl’s 
 expense, besides which he is to pay to the parish in perpetuity £3 P er 
 annum in recompense of the lammas common to which the parishioners 
 were entitled.” The wall here mentioned evidently refers to that of the 
 garden attached to the house which Lord Leicester was about to erect, 
 and which is shown in Faithorne’s map of 1658, with large ornamental 
 gardens behind it stretching to another enclosure called “Military Yard.” 
 It is curious that this “Military Yard,” 1 which, by-the-bye, was used for 
 exercise by Henry, Prince of Wales, should have given its name to the 
 northern portion of the Square, but that it did so is proved by the fact 
 that both Lord Leicester’s and Lord Newport’s names appear in “Military 
 Street.” 
 
 An entry, quoted by Mr. Wheatley, refers to the Earl of Leicester’s 
 :enancy ; it is taken from the Overseers’ Book of St. Martin’s, and runs 
 :hus : “To received of the Honourable Earl of Leicester, for ye Lamas 
 )f the ground that adjoin to the Military Wall— £3 . . . The Rt. 
 tionourable the Earl of Leicester, for the Lamas of the ground whereon 
 fis lordship’s house and gardens are, and the field that is before his house 
 aeare to Swan Close.” 2 
 
 1 Also shown on the map is Newport House, at the north-east corner of what is now 
 .eicester Square, built by the first Earl of Newport. 
 
 2 The identity of this is not known. 
 
i 4 4 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 There appears to be some doubt as to the exact site of old Leicester 
 House, because if absolutely accurate Faithorne’s map would bring it to 
 about the centre of the present Square, and there is a certain confirma- 
 tion in this, in the fact that the architect of the present centre of the 
 Square, Mr. (now Sir James) Knowles, told Mr. Taylor that extensive 
 foundations were found on that site during the alterations. In any case 
 its gardens extended to Gerrard Street, where Dryden, who, in his dedi- 
 cation of his Don Sebastian to Lord Leicester, describes himself as “a poor 
 inhabitant of your lordship’s suburb, whose west prospect is on the garden 
 of Leicester House,” lived ; but this description would be quite consis- 
 tent with Lord Leicester’s house occupying the site of the later Leicester 
 House, as we see from a view of the Square, which shows the back 
 windows of the house Dryden occupied looking on to the garden attached 
 to it. 
 
 The original house, as shown by Faithorne, is a large building having 
 three wings and a comparatively narrow main portion projecting in the 
 centre of these wings, the whole occupying the four sides of a square and 
 enclosing a quadrangle. 1 Lord Leicester’s property was, on the fall of the 
 monarchy, 2 sequestrated, but through the efforts of the Earl of Northum- 
 berland, his brother-in-law, this was set aside. During the usurpation 
 of Cromwell and the early days of the following reign, Lord Leicester 
 was alternately here and at Penshurst ; and we find him noting the various 
 events of his life in his Diary ; as that in March 1652, he observed from 
 Leicester House the great eclipse of the sun, when the streets were totally 
 deserted, the people keeping at home, “ as the Egyptians did during their 
 darkness,” says the Earl ; or later, when Charles sent for him from 
 Leicester House, to be sworn of the Privy Council. After he finally 
 left the place to reside permanently at Penshurst, Leicester House was 
 occupied by Lady Sunderland or any other member of Lord Leicester’s 
 family who might require the use of a town house ; and when not 
 used for this purpose, was occasionally let to Foreign Ambassadors as 
 a temporary residence. 
 
 An incident which occurred during Lord Leicester’s time at Leicester 
 House, is thus given in the Publicke News for January 11, 1642: “The 
 Earl of Leicester having invited the Earl of Essex (Lord Chamberlaine), 
 the Earl of Holland and some other great personages to a supper, 
 which was performed at his house in St. Martin’s Lane neere the Strand, 
 
 1 It must be remembered however that as, when Faithorne published his map, the house 
 was not actually erected, both its proportions and site must have been largely conjectural. 
 
 2 During the imprisonment of Charles I., the Duke of Gloucester and the Princess Eliza- 
 beth were placed at Leicester House under the care of Lord Leicester, by order of the 
 Parliament. 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 145 
 
 and being set at supper there came in a hellish and bloody-minded 
 fellow, a Frenchman (and it is conceived) backed into that wicked in- 
 tention by some of the popish faction. . . . This Frenchman being come 
 into the place where these noble Peeres did sup that night, he privately 
 whispered with the cooke of the Earle of Leicester, who also was a 
 Frenchman, and could not speak a word of English, and told him in 
 his own language, that if he would undertake to poyson the second 
 course that was to be set before these worthy and honourable person 
 ages, he would for his reward and secresy therein give him ^3000 in 
 ready gold.” The cook seems to have been proof against this infamous 
 proposal, a proposal probably emanating from Richelieu, whose plans were 
 not likely to be looked upon favourably by such “ worthy and honourable 
 personages” as Leicester, Holland, and Essex. 
 
 In 1662, the Ambassador from the United Provinces was housed here, 
 but not for long, for on January 28th of that year Charles sent Dr. Fraser 
 to Penshurst to ask Lord Leicester if he would let the house to his aunt, 
 Elizabeth of Bohemia — “The Queen of Tears,” as she has been called. 
 Two days later his Majesty was informed by the Earl that his “poor 
 house, himself, and all that he calls his,” was at his Majesty’s service. 
 
 The Queen of Bohemia thereupon took up her residence here, practi- 
 cally at once, for on the following 8th of February we find her devoted 
 friend Lord Craven writing to the Earl notifying that the £200 required 
 for a three months’ tenancy had been paid to Mr. Spencer (Lord Leicester’s 
 steward), and hoping that this prompt quittance of her indebtedness would 
 induce the Earl to leave open some rooms “for the better convenience of 
 the Queen’s ladies,” which rooms had apparently been reserved for stowing 
 away Lord Leicester’s surplus furniture ; indeed by the Earl’s reply this 
 is proved to be so, for he says, in the course of it, that if it had been 
 known that the uppermost rooms or garrets could have been useful to 
 them, “my servant Spencer could not have proposed the reservation of 
 them for any use of mine. But they were thought unserviceable to 
 persons of that condition and fit only to keep such pictures, furniture, &c., 
 as were not worthy to be left in the Queen’s sight. But now I hope the 
 ladies are as well accommodated as they can be in that little house, which 
 was not built for a Levee, but only for a private family.” 
 
 The Queen was not to be a tenant for long, however. Seriously 
 unwell when she took up her residence there, she rapidly became 
 worse, haemorrhage of the lungs being further complicated by signs 
 of dropsy, to which she succumbed on February 13, 1 1662, at the age 
 
 1 Pepys, in an entry in his Diary dated 13th February, says, “ Last night died the Queen 
 of Bohemia.” 
 
 K 
 
146 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 of sixty-five, so that her sojourn here extended little more than one 
 week ! 
 
 After the Queen’s death — which Lord Leicester notified to the Earl of 
 Northumberland with the words, “ My royal tenant is departed. It seems 
 late did not think fit I should have the honour, which indeed I never 
 much desired, to be landlord to a Queen,” — Leicester House returned 
 to its old use as an occasional lodging for ambassadors, and a London 
 house for members of Lord Leicester’s family. In its former capacity 
 it was occupied by Colbert, not the great Finance Minister but his brother, 
 who came to this country in October 1668. On the 21st of that month 
 Pepys records going with Lord Brouncker and several others to pay 
 the Ambassador a visit, but the Diarist was too late, “ they being gone 
 before,” he writes. This visit would appear to have been a ceremonial 
 one on the part of certain members of the Royal Society, of which 
 Brouncker was President and Pepys a distinguished member. The other 
 great Diarist of the period paid a visit to Leicester House four years later, 
 as the guest of Lady Sunderland, whose husband had just been appointed 
 Ambassador Extraordinary to the French Court, for Evelyn, writing 
 under date of October 8, 1672, has this entry in his Journal: “I took 
 
 leave of my Lady Sunderland, who was going to Paris to my Lord, now 
 Ambassador there. She made me stay dinner at Leicester House, and 
 afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fire-eater. He devoured 
 brimstone in glowing coals before us, chewing and swallowing them ; he 
 melted a beer glass and eat it quite up.” Evelyn relates a variety of 
 further wonders performed by Richardson; but could he have looked with 
 prophetic eye down the centuries, his amazement at Richardson’s per- 
 formance might have been tempered by the sights of wonder which, on the 
 same spot, were, a couple of hundred years later, to make the “ Empire ” 
 famous. 
 
 The old Earl of Leicester died in 1677, when Viscount Lisle succeeded 
 him in the possession of Leicester House. His successors only occupied 
 the place temporarily, letting it as the old Earl had done before them, 
 and with this additional reason that the estate had been heavily charged 
 by this peer in favour of Henry Sidney, a younger son, a favourite of his 
 father as he had been of his mother, who by her will, made in 1659, had be- 
 queathed him a variety of personal objects then lying at Leicester House. 
 
 One of the later tenants was the Imperial Ambassador, 1 who occupied 
 it in 1708, and for some years subsequently; and here in January 1710, 
 he received as a guest Prince Eugene, who had come to this country on 
 
 1 While Leicester House was let to the Imperial Ambassador, Lord Leicester took up his 
 residence on the north side of Soho Square. 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 147 
 
 a secret mission to prevent peace from being arranged between Great 
 Britain and France. Swift in his Journal to Stella (January 6th) refers to 
 the august visitor thus : “ I went to Court which I found very full, in 
 expectation of seeing Prince Eugene, who landed last night, and lies at 
 Leicester House ; ” while Narcissus Luttrell notes that on “ Saturday 
 night Prince Eugene arrived here, landed at Whitehall, and went directly 
 to his lodgings at Leicester House.” 1 
 
 How Leicester House became, as Pennant alliteratively calls it, “ The 
 Pouting Place of Princes,” must now be told. When the quarrel between 
 George I. and the Prince of Wales came to a head — over the appointment 
 by the King of the Duke of Newcastle as one of the godfathers to the 
 Prince’s son, George William, who was born at St. James’s in 1717 — 
 Prince George shaking his fist in the Duke’s face, and the King ordering 
 thereupon his arrest — he went temporarily to Lord Grantham’s in Albe- 
 marle Street, but in the course of the following January took Savile 
 House, then lately occupied by Seymour Portman, Esq., but with an eye 
 on Leicester House next door, where Lord Gower was then living ; the 
 latter, 2 however, agreed to give up possession to the Prince on the follow- 
 ing 25th March at a yearly rental of ^500; this being arranged, the heir 
 apparent moved in, but still kept Savile House, between which and 
 Leicester House a communication had been made, for the use of the 
 royal children and their attendants. 
 
 It will be obvious to any one who has examined the representation of 
 old Leicester House on Faithorne’s map that that building differs essen- 
 tially from the mansion shown in the later views of the Square ; and even 
 Taylor’s remark that of the former house “the front towards the Square, 
 with the projecting loggia, had been removed,” not only insufficiently 
 accounts for the entirely different appearance of the new building, but 
 also fails to tell us when these drastic alterations took place ; a lacuna in 
 the history of Leicester House which other topographers have also been 
 unable to fill up. It seems probable, however, that the alterations were 
 made when George, Prince of Wales, took up his residence here in 1718. 
 Here, until 1727, an opposition Court was held, and here the enemies 
 of the King, George I. — and they were neither few in number nor despic- 
 able in power and influence — assembled, probably rather to show their 
 contempt for the first of the Georges than to exhibit their regard and 
 loyalty to his heir. 
 
 Walpole and Hervey and Lady Cowper have left us reminiscences, 
 
 1 See also Strickland’s Lives of the Queens , vol. viii. p. 459. 
 
 2 So Taylor, yet in another part of his Leicester Square ; he says that “ John, heir of the 
 Earl of Romney, in 1717, let Leicester House to the Prince of Wales.” The Earl of Romney 
 here indicated was Henry Sidney, son of the Earl of Leicester. 
 
148 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 more or less exact, of the vie intime of Leicester House, and from what we 
 can gather, George II. seems to have been even less estimable as a prince 
 than he was as a king. But at any rate many wits and beauties whose 
 names are identified with the quarrels of the father and son made Leicester 
 House a rendezvous, where, if the beautiful Bellenden did toss the Prince’s 
 money on to the floor, bored to extinction by perpetually seeing him 
 count it ; yet such as Chesterfield and Scarborough, Hervey (the brother 
 of “Sporus”), Mrs. Selwyn, and Mrs. Howard, could find in their royal 
 hostess that capacity of intellect and power of discernment which was far 
 to seek in her heavy, saturnine husband. 
 
 On the accession of the prince, as George II., the first council of his 
 reign was held here on June 14, 1727, and the new King’s “ Declaration ” 
 was dated “At the Court at Leicester House,” on that day. “The 
 Square,” we are told, “ was thronged with multitudes of the meaner sort, 
 and resounded with huzzas and acclamations, whilst every room in the 
 house was filled with people of higher rank, crowding to kiss hands, and 
 to make the earliest and warmest profession of zeal for the new King’s 
 service ; ” and during the four days that his Majesty stayed in town, for 
 he had been apprised of his accession, as all the world knows, by Sir 
 Robert Walpole while at Richmond, whither he was anxious enough to 
 return, “ Leicester House was thronged from morning to night, like the 
 ’Change at noon,” says Hervey. 
 
 It is unnecessary to recall all the unsavoury details of the perpetual 
 quarrels which took place between George and his eldest son Frederick, 
 Prince of Wales ; except for their causes they form a fairly accurate replica 
 of what had occurred during the previous reign, and it is only necessary to 
 refer to them inasmuch as, on their becoming acute in 1743, the Prince 
 took up his residence at Leicester House, as his father had done before him 
 in 1718. Here a fresh opposition Court was established ; here Pulteney 
 and Cobham and the egregious Bubb Dodington were the chief ad- 
 visers of a prince who was so weak that it would seem, from a national 
 point of view, a mercy that he never succeeded to the crown. His 
 eldest son, afterwards George III., had been born on June 4, 1738, at 
 Norfolk House, St. James’s Square, which Frederick was then inhabit- 
 ing, it having been lent him by the Duke of Norfolk during the carrying 
 out of some repairs at Carlton House, which he had purchased in the 
 previous year. When exactly, or why, the Prince moved his establishment 
 to Leicester House is not quite apparent, although it is certain he was 
 established there by April 1743, and on December 15th of the same year 
 Walpole mentions “going to Leicester House, where the Princess sees 
 company from seven to nine on her lying in.” 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 149 
 
 For accounts of the life led at Leicester House by the Prince and his 
 Court, a life made up of trifling amusements and perpetual intrigues, the 
 pages of Walpole, Hervey, and Dodington contain practically all there 
 is to know, and much that were better not known. Frederick had many 
 foreign tastes, and here, as at Cliveden and Kew, theatricals and masques 
 and music alternated with milk-and-water plotting, and political intrigues 
 that had little that was really serious in them except, perhaps, the self- 
 seeking of parasites like Bubb Dodington, or the activity of men like Lord 
 Egmont. Croly, however, takes a very rosy view of the life here, and 
 certainly, compared with that at St. James’s, there is something in what he 
 says : “ In the one was all the freedom of private life, all the festivity of 
 wit, all the elegance of literature ; in the other little but the gloomy 
 pomp of state and court etiquette,” he writes; and as Frederick did suc- 
 ceed in surrounding himself with men like Lyttelton, Thomson, Mallet, 
 Quin, and “ Leonidas ” Glover, as well as with his political adherents, the 
 “elegance of literature” is not exactly an empty phrase in this connection. 
 
 Walpole inaccurately states that the Prince added Savile House to 
 Leicester House for the use of the royal children, or as Sir John Fielding, 
 according to Timbs, expressed it, “ for the more immediate intercourse 
 of the royal family,” but, as we have seen, this junction of the two houses 
 took place in the time of the Prince’s father. Under Frederick, however, 
 the latter mansion was used as a nursery-house, as it had been in the 
 previous reign ; and it was here that the royal children performed Addison’s 
 Cato on January 4, 1749, in which we know that Prince George, after- 
 wards George III., sustained the role of Portius and also spoke the 
 Prologue. Here, too, in 1743, or at Leicester House, occurred the incident 
 of the Princess Augusta mistaking Sir Robert Reed for Sir Robert Walpole, 
 and addressing him in a manner both characteristic of her precocity as a 
 child, and of the freedom of speech indulged in by her elders. 1 To 
 Leicester House, two years later, came the wife of Lord Cromartie impli- 
 cated in the ’45, leading her four little children, to try and soften the 
 heart of the Princess of Wales, and thus obtain her husband’s pardon, 
 when, says Gray, “ the Princess saw her, but made no other answer than 
 by bringing in her own children, and placing them by her.” 
 
 Even Dodington sometimes records pleasanter pictures than those of 
 jealous royalties and self-seeking politicians. Here, for example, is a more 
 homely vignette, for writing on November 17, 1753, he says: “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 music, but 
 found nobody but her Royal Highness. She made me draw a stool and 
 1 Doran’s Queens of England of the House of Hanover , vol. i. p. 412. 
 
150 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 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, unreservedness, and 
 unconstraint, as if one had dropped into a sister’s house, that had a family, 
 to pass the evening.” 1 
 
 Frederick died at Leicester House rather suddenly at 9.45 on the 
 evening of March 20, 1751 ; and the reception of the news by George II. 
 forms one of the dramatic incidents recorded by Lord Hervey. According 
 to Wraxall, 2 Desnoyers, the celebrated dancing-master, was playing on 
 the violin to amuse the Prince by the side of his bed, when the abscess, 
 which had been long forming as the result of a blow from a cricket-ball, 
 burst, and Frederick expired in his arms. 3 George II., although never 
 actually calling, sent several times to inquire after his son’s health, and on 
 the whole seems to have shown something more of natural feeling over 
 the matter than was, perhaps, to be expected from his long-standing 
 enmity to his son and heir ; indeed on the first visit he paid the Princess 
 after Frederick’s death, he refused the chair of state which had been set 
 up for him, but placing himself next the Princess on her sofa he kissed 
 her and wept with her, and showed other signs of a decent sorrow which, 
 it is probable, he felt little enough. 
 
 After the Prince’s decease, the Princess of Wales continued to reside 
 here, and with her, her son George who in 1760, was proclaimed King in 
 front of the mansion, and who here received “ in the most gracious and 
 pleasing manner,” says Lord Holland, the crowd which came to do him 
 homage. On the accession of George III., the Princess of Wales remained 
 here till 1766, when she removed to Carlton House, where she died six 
 years later. Before she left Leicester House, the marriage of her daughter 
 the Princess Augusta to the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick had taken 
 place ; and the reception held on that occasion was the last royal function 
 which is connected with the Square, if we except the death and funeral of 
 Prince Frederick William, George III.’s youngest brother, who expired at 
 Leicester House on December 29, 1765. 
 
 Savile House, which during the lengthened royal tenancy of Leicester 
 House is so closely associated with that mansion, was the residence of Sir 
 George Savile. In a view of the Square ( circa 1700) it is shown adjoining 
 
 1 According to Angelo, in order that the Princes might be close to their mother, while they 
 were finishing their education, “ a house was provided for them on the east side of the Square 
 within two doors of the present La Sabloniere Hotel” ( Reminiscences , vol. i. p. 7). 
 
 2 Wraxall is followed in this account by Croly in his George III. : His Court and Family, 
 
 but Walpole, who gives an account of the Prince’s last moments in a letter to Mann, does not 
 mention it. 3 Historical Memoirs , vol. i. p. 408. 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 15 1 
 
 the courtyard of Leicester House, with a broad flight of steps to the street, 
 and standing practically in the centre of the north side of the Square; it 
 was sometimes known as Ailesbury House, and it was here, in 1698, that 
 Peter the Great was entertained by the Marquis of Carmarthen, the eldest 
 son of the Duke of Leeds, who was then occupying the house, and of 
 whose drinking bouts with the Autocrat of all the Russias it was the 
 principal scene. 
 
 The mansion passed into the hands of the Savile family through the 
 marriage of Lord Ailesbury’s son, the third and last Earl of that creation, 
 with Lady Ann Savile, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Sir William Savile, 
 second Marquis of Halifax ; and the Sir George Savile who owned the 
 house in 1780, 1 was a descendant of that peer. 
 
 During the Gordon Riots, Savile House was one of the many mansions 
 marked out for destruction by the fury of the mob, and not only were its 
 valuable contents burnt in the middle of the Square, but the iron railings 
 in front of it were torn up and used as weapons by the infuriated crowd. 
 Mr. Wheatley quotes a letter from Burke, a close friend of Sir George 
 Savile, to Shackleton, in which he refers to the defence of Savile House : 
 “ For four nights I kept watch at Lord Buckingham’s or Sir George 
 Savile’s, whose houses were garrisoned by a strong body of soldiers, 
 together with numbers of true friends of the first rank who were willing 
 to share the danger;” while Walpole in a letter to Cole, dated June 15, 
 1780, recounts with horror the doings on what he calls the “Black 
 Wednesday,” when Leicester Square was filled with the infuriated popu- 
 lace; “the most horrible sight I ever beheld,” he says, “and which, for 
 six hours together, I expected to end in half the town being reduced 
 to ashes.” 
 
 George III., on his accession, had handed over the apartments he 
 occupied in Savile House, of which the royal family had a lease, to his 
 brother the Duke of York, who held them until he removed to his new 
 house in Pall Mall. 2 Both Leicester House and Savile House soon after 
 passed from their high estate ; for, some years subsequent to the death of 
 Prince Frederick William (Duke of Gloucester), the former was let to Sir 
 Ashton Lever, 3 in 1771, for the exhibition of his fine collection, which 
 he called the Holophusikon, of objects illustrative of natural history, 
 which Pennant describes as “ the most astonishing collection of the 
 subjects of natural history ever collected in so short a space, by any 
 
 1 See Old and New London. 
 
 2 George III. left here on November 4, and took up his residence in St. James’s Palace, 
 occupying the apartments which William III. had previously used. 
 
 3 A great-uncle of Charles Lever. See Dictionary of National Biography. 
 
152 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 individual,” and in the Morning Post of November 1 6, 1778, we read the 
 following advertisement referring to it : “ Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum 
 containing many thousand articles, displayed in two galleries the whole 
 length of Leicester House, is open every day from ten o’clock till four. 
 Admittance <s. 3d. each person.” 1 
 
 On the death of Sir Ashton,' 2 in January 1788, the collection was re- 
 moved, and, after being refused by the Government to whom it had been 
 offered at a nominal sum, it was sold in 1806, when the number of the 
 lots, says Pennant, many of which contained several articles, amounted to 
 no less than 4194 ; the sale lasting for forty days. 3 
 
 Leicester House was subsequently demolished, although the building 4 
 in Lisle Street which now houses the Ecole de Notre Dame de France 
 has, in its architecture, some affinity to what the original palace of Prince 
 George and Prince Frederick must have looked like. On the site of 
 Leicester House, so early as 1790, it had been proposed to erect a theatre, 
 for a contemporary advertisement says, “ The site of the new Opera House 
 is settled — Leicester Square — the mound occupied by Leicester House.” 5 
 This was not carried into effect ; but on the site of the gardens New 
 Lisle Street was formed in 1791, and as we shall see, when speaking of 
 the Square, the ground on which Leicester House stood is occupied to-day 
 by places of entertainment 6 and other buildings. Although the most 
 important of the houses in Leicester Square, neither Leicester House nor 
 Savile House sheltered such illustrious ones as some of the smaller 
 dwellings, as we shall see in our perambulation. 
 
 The Square itself, called originally Leicester Fields, appears to have 
 grown gradually around Leicester House from about 1635 to 1 67 1 , in 
 which latter year the south side was completed. By the view of it taken 
 about 1700, the uniformity of the buildings appears to have been carefully 
 preserved so far as the east and west sides were concerned, but the north 
 was somewhat broken up by the fact of Leicester House lying back from 
 the roadway, which the low range of small shops or booths flanking the 
 gateway does not tend to improve. The general appearance of the Square 
 
 1 Quoted in Lo)idon Past and Present. 
 
 2 An account of Lever was given in the European Magazine for August 1784, and is re- 
 printed in Tom Taylor’s book. 
 
 3 Thus Pennant in a footnote. In London Past and Presetit , however, as if to increase our 
 wonder, the lots are given as numbering 7879, and the days of sale as sixty-five ! 
 
 4 On it are the words New Lisle Street, which thoroughfare was formed on the site of the 
 gardens of Leicester House. 
 
 5 Lady's Magazine , 1790. 
 
 6 A view of the house is given in the “View of Leicester Square” in the 1754 edition of 
 Stow, and the “ View of the Square ” (1700) also shows it ; but the only actual picture of it was in 
 the Strawberry Hill sale, and is now in the Gardner collection. 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 153 
 
 in this plan is one of dignified comfort and prosperity, and the central 
 garden is as tidy and precise as the formal Dutch method of tree-planting 
 can make it. Strype’s description of it in 1720, confirms this, for he writes 
 that “ Leicester Fields (is) a very handsome, large square, enclosed with 
 rails, and graced on all sides with good built houses, well inhabited, and 
 resorted unto by the gentry, especially the side towards the north, where 
 the houses are large.” 
 
 Among some of the earlier residents whose names have come down to 
 us, I find Dr. Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, who was residing for a time 
 here, probably in one of the four houses adjoining Savile House, till 
 April 1681, on the 11th of which month Evelyn writes in his Diary 
 that he took leave of the Bishop “ at his house in Leicester Fields, on his 
 going to reside in his diocese ” ; and the second Earl of Strafford, who 
 is proved to have been here in 1683, by a letter he wrote from here to 
 the second Lord Clarendon. 1 Another illustrious inhabitant was Lord 
 Somers, sometime Lord High Chancellor, whose fine collection of 
 pamphlets was partly reprinted in the Somers Tracts. Whichever house 
 Lord Somers resided in, and it was probably also on the north side, it 
 must have been one of those first erected in 1635, f° r > on death in 1716, 
 an advertisement in the Daily Courant for the 1st of August of that 
 year, tells us that it was to be disposed of, and adds, “ There are about 
 18 years to come of the lease,” which would bring its termination to 1734 
 — just ninety-nine years (a usual ground lease) from 1635. 2 Besides Lords 
 North and Grey, who on the authority of J. T. Smith we know both once 
 lived in the Square, may he mentioned Speaker Onslow, who was residing 
 here in 1728, and Lady Howard and the Marquis of Rockingham, in 1714, 
 in which year the latter was created a marquis. 
 
 Although, as we have seen, royalty has been in the past largely, and 
 ecclesiastics and statesmen in a somewhat lesser degree, connected with the 
 Square, it is with painters pre-eminently that the spot is most closely identi- 
 fied, and among these are two whose names occupy the highest place in the 
 annals of British art. Before, however, I say anything of Hogarth and 
 Reynolds, who are the artistic tutelary deities of Leicester Square, it will 
 be convenient to mention some of the lesser-known painters who have lived 
 and worked in its precincts. Of these, one of the earliest was William 
 Aikman, a portrait-painter of some importance in his day ; who was born 
 in 1682, and became the pupil of Sir John Medina. Aikman visited 
 Italy and Turkey, and on his return lived for a while in Edinburgh, where 
 
 1 London Past and Present. 
 
 2 Lord Somers who is found in the Rate Books for 1714 as Lord Somars, paying rates of 
 ^3, ios., once lived at Powis House, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which he left at the end of 1700, 
 when he took Winchester House, 21 St. James’s Square, for about a year. 
 
i5+ THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 he was patronised by the Duke of Argyll. In 1723 he came to London 
 and settled himself in a house in Leicester Square. His portraits of Gay, 
 Thomson, and Fletcher of Saltoun are considered some of his best works, 
 but his limitations will be apparent when it is remembered that he took 
 Kneller as his model. Besides his talent as a painter, he must have 
 possessed many attractions as a man, if we can judge by his friends, among 
 whom were numbered such men as Swift, Pope, Thomson, Allan Ramsay, 
 Somerville, and Mallet. Aikman died in June 1731 ; Mark Noble, by 
 some unaccountable error, placing the date of his decease just ten years 
 later. 
 
 About the same time Sir James Thornhill, a decorative artist of merit, 
 but perhaps now chiefly remembered as Hogarth’s father-in-law, was also 
 living in the Square. 1 He was born at Melcombe Regis in 1676, and was 
 a nephew, on his mother’s side, of the well-known Dr. Sydenham. His 
 chief works were the decoration of the dome of St. Paul’s, for which 
 undertaking Laguerre had previously been selected, and ceilings at Manor 
 Park, Blenheim, Hampton Court, and particularly in the hall of Greenwich 
 Hospital, upon which he was engaged for nearly thirty years. He was 
 made Sergeant-Painter to Queen Anne, and was knighted by George I., 
 while he represented his native town in Parliament, succeeding Sir 
 Christopher Wren in that capacity. He died in 1734 ; and although Dr. 
 Young affirmed that “ Raphael’s pencil lives in Thornhill’s hands,” other 
 more competent critics have not endorsed this exaggerated praise ; and if 
 Thornhill may be considered, in his particular style, the best English painter 
 of his time, when we consider the state of art at that period, it is not saying 
 so much as one might at first be inclined to imagine. 
 
 Another painter whose reputation as an artist has been obscured by 
 the notoriety which attached to him as a murderer, lived in the Square, 
 at the south-east corner; this was Theodore Gardelle, a French enamellist 
 and portrait-painter of repute, and a companion of Hogarth and the various 
 French engravers who worked in this country, such as Grignion, Scotin, 
 Ravenat, Baron, and others. The Newgate Calendar has more to say of 
 Gardelle than has the history of the art he practised, and he remains one 
 of those anomalies, a man whose life-work is forgotten, and whose one best- 
 forgotten deed is alone remembered. The atrocious act, for which he 
 was hanged in the Haymarket opposite Panton Street, was the murder 
 of his landlady in Leicester Square on February 19, 1761 ; and in that 
 he cut the body up and burnt it piecemeal, he anticipated Greenacre’s 
 
 1 The ceiling, copied from Rubens’s famous one at Whitehall, which J. T. Smith saw at No. 41 
 Leicester Square, and which had been reported to him as an original Rubens, may conceivably 
 have been the work of Thornhill. See Nollekens and his Times , by T. T. Smith. 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 155 
 
 later awful crime. In the Newgate Calendar is a portrait of him fear- 
 fully bestowing portions of his victim on the fire, and in the Gentleman s 
 Magazine for 1761, is an account of the nefarious act. Foote in his Mayor 
 of Garratt incidentally mentions the gibbet on which the murderer was 
 hanged ; while a portrait of Gardelle in a white cap, and holding a book, 
 is the work, certainly of doubtful authenticity, of his one-time friend and 
 companion, Hogarth. 
 
 The landlady whom Gardelle did to death was one Mrs. King, a 
 woman of but questionable reputation, and certainly of easy ethics. Her 
 home was No. 37, on the south side of the Square, and here on the 
 morning of February 19, 1761, the murder was committed. According 
 to Gardelle’s own story, he got into an altercation with Mrs. King, and 
 in the quarrel pushed her violently, causing her to strike her head against 
 the edge of her bed. She began to vomit blood and charged him with 
 killing her ; whereupon in his terror he seized a tail-comb from the 
 toilet-table, and struck her with it, hoping thus to silence her ; when he 
 found, to his horror, that she had really succumbed. 1 
 
 Nine years after Gardelle’s execution another painter was born, who 
 in time was to become one of the celebrated, although critics of our day 
 will hardly allow him the term of great, portrait-painters of his time, in 
 the person of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who came to London in 1787, and 
 lived for a time in the Square, at No. 4, “ in a suite of handsome first-floor 
 apartments.” 2 His residence here was, however, but a temporary one, 
 and he is chiefly identified with Russell Square, where I shall have some- 
 thing more to say of him. As, however, we know that on his first 
 arriving in the Metropolis he was kindly received by Sir Joshua, we may 
 reasonably suppose that the residence of the latter in Leicester Square may 
 have had something to do with his choosing it as his resting-place, apart 
 from the fact that it was at that time a recognised centre of artistic activity. 
 
 Another branch of the art — that of engraving — has had in the past 
 several exponents who also resided here ; among these may be mentioned 
 first, the name of David Loggan, who is said to have studied under Simon 
 Pass, and who lived here during the latter years of his life, and died in the 
 Square at the close of the eighteenth century — to be precise, in 1693. His 
 engraved portraits, of which he produced a great number, are well known, 
 and his work was not only painstaking but fine, and shows a thorough 
 knowledge of his art and a distinct advance on the works of the majority 
 of his predecessors — better, indeed, than all but the best. 
 
 Another engraver, Edward Fisher, who worked chiefly in mezzotint, is 
 
 1 See for fuller account, which need not be given here, the Appendix to Tom Taylor’s 
 book. 2 Timbs’s Anecdote Biography. 
 
1 56 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 associated with the Square, where he appears to have been living in 
 1762, 1 when he produced his fine reproduction of Reynolds’s portrait of 
 “ Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy ; ” the Portrait of Lady Tavistock ; 
 and other works known to collectors, and in these days sternly contended 
 for at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. Fisher’s address is given as “ at the 
 Golden Head on the south side of Leicester Square.” This must not 
 be confused with the house bearing the same sign on the east side, in 
 which, as we shall see, Hogarth lived for many years, and died in 1764. 
 In view of this last date, it will be seen that the two houses bearing 
 the same address were in existence at the same period, the only dis- 
 tinctive feature being that they were on different sides of the Square. 
 
 Another artist — for so I think we may describe the architect of that 
 beautiful production, the Tower of Magdalen College, Oxford — also 
 resided in a house near the Square. This was John Gwynn, who, besides 
 his fine work at Oxford, was also responsible for Shrewsbury Bridge, 
 and is known as the author of a book entitled London and Westminster 
 Improved, in which work he would appear to have anticipated many of the 
 architectural improvements in London which were subsequently carried 
 out, probably through the publicity he gave to their desirability ; he also, 
 says Mr. Wheatley, “suggested others which remain to be achieved.” 
 He is known, too, as the friend of Dr. Johnson, which indicates that 
 his talents were not merely confined to his professional work. An- 
 other artistic personality, to be thus described rather than an actual 
 artist in the more extended acceptation of that much ill-used term, was 
 James Stuart, known to us as “Athenian” Stuart, from his share in 
 the Antiquities of Greece , a work which he produced in collaboration 
 with Revett. 2 His house was on the south side of the Square, near that 
 occupied by Fisher, and here, according to J. T. Smith, 3 he caused to be 
 erected “ a large room at the back, in which were several of his drawings, 
 particularly those he had made for a continuation of his work : they were 
 in body colours, and in style resembled those of Marco Ricci.” 
 
 Before I say anything of the two great painters connected with the 
 Square, mention must be made of another artist in a different medium, 
 who once lived and carried on his work here. This was William Tassie, 
 who succeeded, in 1799, his more celebrated uncle James Tassie, in the 
 manufacture of those reproductions of ancient gems with which their 
 joint names are associated. This work consisted in the making of 
 medallion portraits as well as in the copying of antique cameos and 
 
 1 London Past and Present. 
 
 2 He was also the author of Critical Observations on the Bieildings, £rv., of London. 
 
 3 Nollekens and his Times. 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 157 
 
 intaglios in a soft white paste, well known to collectors and often to be 
 met with in sale-rooms and curiosity-shops. James Tassie, the inventor 
 of this work, was a Scotchman descended from Italian refugees, who in 
 1 763, went to Dublin and became known to Dr. Quin, a lover of the arts 
 and a munificent patron of artists. Three years later Tassie established 
 himself in London, and made such progress that we find him a regular 
 exhibitor at the Royal Academy from 1769 onwards, for the space of 
 some twenty years. In 1775, he issued his first catalogue, and five years 
 later received a command from Catherine of Russia, to supply that 
 remarkable woman with a set of his pastes. From an account of his 
 work, his charges are found to have ranged from is. 6d. to 2s. 6d. for 
 “Intaglio Pastes, the size of seals and rings;” from 5s. to 21s. for “large 
 Intaglios and Cameos.” On James Tassie’s death in 1799, William 
 Tassie continued his work till his death in i860. In 1816, he published 
 two more catalogues of pastes, with the following title : “ Descriptive 
 Catalogue of a Collection of Devices and Mottoes from Engraved Seals, 
 formed in Composition Paste, and sold by W. Tassie, Leicester Square.” 
 A small work on the Tassies was published by Mr. J. M. Gray in 1894, 
 and an interesting article on them and their work appeared in the Queen 
 (for December 5, 1905), from the pen of Mr. Martin Hardie. An 
 anecdote of William Tassie, as given by this gentleman, tells that a 
 poor artist once called on him with a ticket he had taken for the 
 lottery of Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, which he found he could ill 
 afford. Tassie, at the artist’s request, bought the ticket out of charity, 
 and lo ! when the numbers were drawn, he found the ticket bore the 
 
 lucky number, and himself the possessor of the Shakespeare Gallery in 
 
 Pall Mall ! 
 
 On the east side of Leicester Square, at the south corner, there stands 
 to-day a red-brick building with stone facings, known as Archbishop 
 
 Tenison’s Schools. On the front is one of the Society of Arts tablets 
 
 indicating that here once lived William Hogarth. In Hogarth’s time it 
 was, as we have seen, known as “ The Golden Head,” and the sign was 
 formed, says Tom Taylor, by “pieces of cork, cut, glued together, and 
 gilded by Hogarth himself.” The original house, numbered 30, was the 
 last but two on the east side, which afterwards became part of the well- 
 known Sabloniere Hotel, which Mirabeau, Countess Guiccioli, Kosciusko, 
 and so many other interesting people, particularly foreigners, used to 
 frequent, and which was more recently rebuilt for its present purpose. 
 Here in 1733, Hogarth, who, it will be remembered, had served an 
 apprenticeship to Ellis Gamble, the silversmith in the neighbouring 
 Cranbourne Alley, established himself with his wife, with whom he had 
 
158 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 eloped 1 from her father, Sir James Thornhill’s house three years before. 
 At the time of Hogarth’s migration to Leicester Square, the place was 
 described by Ralph 2 3 as having “ nothing remarkable in it, but the enclosure 
 in the middle,” which, says the writer, “ affords the inhabitants round 
 about it, something like the prospect of a garden, and preserves it from 
 the rudeness of the populace too ; ” while in Seymour’s Survey we have the 
 additional information that at this time the buildings were very good, 
 “ well inhabited, and frequented by the gentry.” 
 
 Hogarth’s actual house, with the sign which Smith well remembered 
 as being “ placed over the street door,” is shown in an engraving of the 
 Square by Parr. :i According to the Rate Books, Hogarth is found in 1756, 
 paying a poor-rate on £ 60 per annum ; but by that time he had enlarged 
 the house by the addition of a painting-room at the back, which apartment 
 afterwards became the billiard-room of the Sabloniere Hotel. Here the 
 great satirist produced that long series of works which gives us, better 
 perhaps than anything else ever attempted in writing or painting, a picture 
 of the age in which he lived, and has established his claim to the title of 
 the castigator morum of his country and placed him, mutatis mutandis , by the 
 side of Juvenal and Petronius ; here he held, on two different occasions, 
 those sales of the pictures on his hands which had such unsatisfactory 
 results, when, on the first occasion, in 1745, “The Harlot’s Progress” sold 
 for fourteen guineas a picture, and “The Rake’s Progress” for but eight 
 guineas more ; while at the second venture, five years later, the superb 
 “ Marriage a la Mode ” found but a single bidder at £1 10, at which price 
 Mr. Lane secured the canvases which, just under half a century later, were 
 bought by Mr. Angerstein for ^1386. Here he was selling, at a shilling 
 each, impressions of his well-known likeness of Lord Lovat ; here he en- 
 dured the storm raised in 1753, by t ^ ie publication of his Analysis of Beauty ; 
 here he painted his unlucky “ Sigismunda ” for Sir Richard Grosvenor, 
 who refused to pay the price, ^400, asked for it ; and from hence he 
 dated the subsequent acrimonious correspondence which he addressed to 
 the critics of the work. It was at the house in Leicester Square that he 
 returned to die, from one of his regular visits to his country house at 
 Chiswick, in 1764, after he had put the finishing touches to his last work 
 — his “ Bathos.” Mr. Taylor records the story of this picture. At one 
 of his last dinners, he said he would execute one more engraving. “ What 
 is to be the subject ? ” asked one of his guests. “ The end of all things,” 
 replied the painter. “ In that case, your business will be finished, for 
 
 1 He married her on March 23, 1729, at Paddington Old Church. 
 
 2 A Critical Review of the Publick Buildings in Lo?idon , 1734. 
 
 3 London Past and Present . 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 159 
 
 there will be an end of the painter,” rejoined his friend. “ There will be 
 so,” answered Hogarth, with a sigh, “ and therefore the sooner my work 
 is done the better.” The next day he commenced this gloomy allegory, 
 and, it is said, did not leave it till he had put to it the final touches. 
 
 On October 25th he came up to town from Chiswick, cheerful but tired 
 by the journey, and after answering a letter from Dr. Franklin, he went to 
 bed. Soon after, a violent ringing of his bell startled his housekeeper, 
 Mary Lewis, 1 who ran to his room, and found him in the agonising 
 paroxysms of angina pectoris. Two hours later he had ceased to 
 struggle. 
 
 After his death Mrs. Hogarth continued to live in Leicester Square, 
 and at her death a sale of the remaining pictures and prints was held 
 at the Golden Head on April 24, 1790. Lot 52 was the “ Sigismunda,” 
 which was purchased by Boydell for fifty-six guineas, and represents 
 perhaps the only true piece of “bathos” which the great satirist ever 
 produced. 
 
 The subject of one of Hogarth’s most celebrated portraits, Captain 
 Coram, was lodging in Leicester Square, when he died on March 29, 1751. 
 The picture was painted in 1739, in which year a charter was granted to 
 the Foundling Hospital, established through the exertions of this gallant 
 old sea-captain. Hogarth always referred to this work as being that which 
 had given him most pleasure to execute. The fact was that he not only 
 greatly admired Coram’s character, on the humanitarian side of which it 
 was so similar to his own, but he found in the strong, benevolent face of 
 his sitter a subject made to his hand, and he was no doubt perfectly well 
 aware that when he had laid down his brush he had produced as fine a piece 
 of work in portrait-painting as even the other great artist of the day, who 
 was to be his opposite neighbour in the Square during his latter years, 
 could have produced. It is doubtful, indeed, if Reynolds ever did 
 anything finer. 
 
 Sir Joshua came to live in Leicester Square, at No. 47, in the summer 
 of 1760, being then thirty-six, and at the height of his fame. To 
 attempt to say anything, in the least detail of his life and marvellous 
 work, would lead me into extending this chapter to an inordinate length ; 
 material for the proper appreciation of his career is, too, so full that to 
 embark on anything beyond a few words on the subject would be 
 superfluous. 
 
 Northcote, Leslie, Allan Cunningham, and how many others, have 
 written of that life so full of honour and glory, and of that genius so 
 
 1 Mrs. Hogarth’s niece, who lived on with the widow in Leicester Square till the death of 
 the latter in 1789. 
 
160 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 illustrious that it has helped more than any other to place English 
 portrait-painting in the first rank of artistic endeavour. 
 
 Northcote was, indeed, not always fair to his subject, and Leslie’s 
 better-known Life was admittedly written to correct various errors which 
 the former biographer had intentionally or unintentionally permitted himself 
 to perpetuate, but I may at least make one extract from the earlier Life, 
 as giving an excellent description of the studio in which the great man 
 worked. 
 
 “ His painting-room,” says Northcote, “ was of an octagonal form, 
 about 20 feet long, and about 16 in breadth. The window which gave 
 light to the room was square, and not much larger than half the size 
 of a common window in a private house, whilst the lower part of this 
 window was 9 feet 4 inches from the floor. The chair for his sitters was 
 raised 1 8 inches from the floor and turned round on castors. His palettes 
 were those which are held by a handle, not those held on the thumb. 
 The sticks of his pencils were long, measuring about 19 inches. He 
 painted in that part of the room nearest to the window, and never sat 
 down when he worked;” to which, as a pendant, may be added Cunning- 
 ham’s remark that Reynolds “ rose early, breakfasted at nine, entered his 
 studio at ten, examined designs or touched unfinished portraits till eleven 
 brought a sitter, painted till four, then dressed, and gave the evening to 
 company.” If such a workroom might well startle a great painter of our 
 own day, used to his vast studio filled with properties, with its large 
 window admitting a north light, and furnished with all the necessary 
 accessories as well as so many merely to give an artistic atmosphere to the 
 room, what would he say to the prices which the greatest of English 
 portrait-painters, at the zenith of his renown, received for his masterpieces ; 
 twenty-five guineas for a head ; fifty for a half-length ; and a hundred for 
 a full length ? But if the painting-room was limited and the payments 
 small, what a constellation filled the one, and what beautiful and illustrious 
 hands paid the other ! We have only to glance through the memoirs and 
 diaries of the time, from Boswell and Fanny Burney downwards, to realise 
 what famous voices have echoed in those walls and what illustrious feet 
 have passed up that old staircase whose steps, to-day, show themselves 
 worn away by statesmen and poets, beautiful women and famous men. 
 And then those “symposia” where Sir Joshua received his more intimate 
 friends in the evenings which “he gave to company”; they must have 
 equalled sometimes the meetings of “ the Club ” itself ; the talk must 
 have been an echo of that at the Mermaid ! It is a hopeless task to 
 try and rehabilitate such scenes from a mere list of names ; but take the 
 most illustrious statesmen, writers, painters, beauties, of the better part of 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 161 
 
 George the Third’s long reign, and then remember that the best of them 
 were the friends of Sir Joshua, and you will not only gather some idea of 
 the conversation of the guests, but will have gone a long way towards a 
 proper appreciation of the character of the host who could, by his genius 
 and fine qualities, gather around him, in his house in Leicester Square, so 
 notable a constellation; as Mr. Taylor justly says, “Of all the leading 
 personages of London life of all classes and both sexes, in that eventful 
 forty years, both in politics and pleasure, in arts and arms, in letters and 
 science, Reynolds knew more than any man of his generation ; and the 
 walls of 47 Leicester Fields, if walls had tongues as well as ears — could 
 tell more than any walls now standing in London.” 
 
 It is not infrequent for the biographers of illustrious men to take the 
 names of their most notable contemporaries, and generally, with much 
 contrasting of noble and illustrious personalities and the help of allitera- 
 tion, to build up a somewhat fancy picture, with a little leaven of fact, of 
 the numbers of their friends ; but, in the case of Sir Joshua, not only 
 contemporary records but the entries referring to his various sitters in 
 his pocket-books, attest that what has been here indicated represents no 
 more than the plain facts, and proves that these adumbrations are reflected 
 from actual bodily presences. 
 
 Reynolds took No. 47, on a forty-seven years’ lease, giving ^1650 
 for it, and in his pocket-book, under the date of July 3rd, are the words, 
 “ House bought ; ” and under the 1 ith of September, “ Paid the remainder 
 of purchase-money, ^1000.” Shortly after taking possession, he added 
 to the original building a gallery and the painting-room 1 which has been 
 mentioned, as well as other rooms for his pupils, copyists, &c., of whom 
 he employed quite a staff ; of these Northcote was one, and therefore his 
 description of the vie intime here is given from personal observation, and is 
 more correct than are, perhaps, some of his deductions from, or his 
 estimate of, the character of his illustrious master. He tells, for instance, 
 of the grand ball given by Reynolds as a “ house warming ” ; of the 
 carriage he set up, with its panels painted by Catton, the great coach- 
 painter of the day and one of the original Royal Academicians ; of his 
 insisting on his sister driving about in it, attended by his servants in 
 silver-laced liveries, he himself having no time for such pleasures ; of 
 Sterne coming to No. 47, fresh from the success of Tristram Shandy , and 
 being made the subject of one of Reynolds’s most glorious portraits ; of 
 his long painting hours and his famous dinners, a mere scrambling sort of 
 picnics in fact, where the deficiency of forks and knives was more than 
 counterbalanced by the efficiency of the host and the glory of the talk ; 
 
 1 These additions cost Sir Joshua ^1500. 
 
 L 
 
162 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 of his looking from his window and seeing the gutting of Savile House 
 by the Gordon Rioters, and fearing for the fate of so many of his friends 
 and sitters, some of whom were particular objects of fury to the maddened 
 rabble ; and of his engagement-book for that terrible week, with a pen- 
 mark through the names of those who were to have given him sittings — 
 Strahan the publisher, Lady Betty Delme, Lady Laura Waldegrave, and 
 Mrs. Campbell. 
 
 While painting on July 26, 1789, Sir Joshua was sensible for the 
 first time of failing sight, and within a few weeks the power of his left 
 eye was gone for ever ; about six months later he resigned his Presidency 
 of the Royal Academy, although, in deference to the King’s express wish, 
 he resumed his tenure of the post for a time; on the 10th of the 
 December of 1790, he delivered his last discourse, when, as he wished, 
 the last words he uttered was the name of Michael Angelo, and Burke 
 addressed to him, as he left his chair, those beautiful lines of Milton : — 
 
 “ The angel ended, and in Adam’s ear 
 So charming left his voice, that he awhile 
 Thought him still speaking, still stood rapt to hear ; ” 
 
 and on July 23, 1792, after a comparatively short illness, he expired in 
 Leicester Square, calmly and without pain, in the sixty-ninth year of his 
 age. The notice of his death, written by Burke in Sir Joshua’s own 
 house while his body was still lying awaiting its last resting-place, is in 
 existence, and the manuscript can be seen, blotted by the tears of true 
 friendship. On February 29th the body was removed from No. 47, to 
 Somerset House, whence on the 3rd of the following month it was 
 borne to St. Paul’s ; the procession being so long, that it is said the first 
 carriage arrived at the Cathedral before the last had left the Academy. 
 
 Some twenty years after Sir Joshua’s death his house was occupied by 
 the Earl of Inchiquin , 1 who married Miss Palmer, Reynolds’s favourite 
 niece, and who is given by Boyle as residing there in 1795;” 2 3 later, 
 about 1821, it became the home of the Western Literary and Scientific 
 Institution, when a lecture-room designed by Godwin was added to it ; 
 and it is now in the occupation of Messrs. Puttick & Simpson, the 
 well-known auctioneers of literary, musical, and philatelic property ; the 
 first-floor rooms being occupied by the Oxford and Cambridge Musical 
 Club. The back portion has been recently rebuilt, but the front remains 
 
 1 Subsequently created Marquis of Thomond, and died in 1808 ; his widow surviving him 
 
 about thirteen years. 
 
 3 In which year John Downman is given as at No. 5 ; Sir Benjamin Tibbs at No. 18 ; and 
 the Eaxd of Lauderdale at No. 25, Leicester Square. 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 163 
 
 practically as it was in Reynolds’s time; as does the staircase with its 
 balustrades rounded to admit the passage of Georgian hoops, and its steps 
 worn away by generations of illustrious feet. 
 
 At least three great surgeons have lived in Leicester Square, one of 
 whom may, indeed, be regarded as perhaps one of the greatest in the 
 world — John Hunter, who in 17 83 came to reside at No. 28, on the 
 east side, next door to Hogarth’s old home. Hunter purchased not only 
 No. 28, but the ground behind it “as far as a house in Castle Street,” 
 says Mr. Taylor, on which ground he erected, during the next two years, 
 the building in which he subsequently placed his unrivalled Museum of 
 Comparative and Pathological Anatomy. In 1785, the installation took 
 place, and some idea of the size of the new buildings may be gathered 
 from the fact that the hall was 52 feet long and 28 feet wide, lighted by 
 a large skylight, with a gallery around it ; a lecture theatre and another 
 large room in which the society known as the Lyceum Medicum held 
 its meetings. At this time, we are told, Hunter was earning £ 6000 a 
 year, most of which went to house and increase his wonderful collections, 
 in adding to which he was untiring — spending large sums of money, and 
 even, when hard-up, borrowing for the purpose ; a propos of which, the 
 story is told of his once going into the bookseller’s shop of Nicol, a friend 
 of his and brother-in-law of another famous surgeon Cruikshank who also 
 lived in Leicester Square, and asking him if he had any money in his 
 pocket ? “ Yes,” replied Nicol. “ Have you got five guineas ? Because 
 
 if you have, and will lend it me, you shall go halves.” “ Halves in 
 what?” “Why halves in a magnificent tiger now dying in Castle Street.” 
 The story of how he became possessed of the gigantic corpse of the giant 
 O’Brien also makes good reading, but it is too long to be given here. 
 Mr. Taylor tells it together with many other interesting details of the 
 life of the father of scientific surgery, and on the more technical side of 
 Hunter’s personality, my old friend, the late Sir Richard Owen, was 
 eloquent ; while other sources of information are Ottley’s and Foot’s Lives 
 of the great surgeon, and the Reminiscences of his amanuensis Clift. 
 Hunter died with tragic suddenness from a spasm of the heart brought 
 on by an altercation with another surgeon at St. George’s Hospital, on 
 October 16, 1783, and his body, placed in a chair, and followed by his 
 empty carriage, was carried thus to his house in Leicester Square, where, 
 we are told by Foot, he had been used “ to send out cards of invitation to 
 the faculty to attend on Sunday evenings during the winter months at his 
 levee, and they were regaled with tea and coffee, and treated with medical 
 occurrences.” 
 
 The portrait of Hunter which Sir Joshua Reynolds painted in the 
 
1 64 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 May of 1785, probably gave the great painter more trouble than any 
 other of his pictures, for Hunter was a troublesome sitter, and it was only 
 when he happened to fall into a reverie one day in Sir Joshua’s studio 
 that the artist caught that abstracted air which was so characteristic of 
 the man when following out some deep train of thought. The picture 
 now hangs, in the midst of Hunter’s Museum, in the Royal College of 
 Surgeons. 
 
 Another great surgeon, who was a contemporary of Hunter’s, and 
 indeed succeeded him as lecturer in anatomy, was William Cumberland 
 Cruikshank ; he lived next door to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and attended both 
 his illustrious neighbour as well as Dr. Johnson in their last illnesses ; but 
 great and skilful as he was, there was yet a prevalent idea at the time that 
 his treatment in the former case was not so successful as it ought to have 
 been, and that in paying too much attention to his patient’s eye he over- 
 looked a liver complaint from which Reynolds had long suffered and 
 which caused his death. Cruikshank himself died in Leicester Square, 
 on June 27, 1800. Four years after his decease there came to London 
 from Scotland another surgeon of no less renown ; this was Charles Bell, 
 celebrated as the discoverer of the distinction between the nerves of sensa- 
 tion and motion, a discovery which Muller considered almost as important 
 as Hervey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood. 
 
 Bell, says Taylor, “united the artist and the poet with the philosopher 
 and surgeon,” and properly remarks that “ there is no more interesting or 
 lovable personality among the British men of Science.” When he arrived 
 in London he went into lodgings, but soon after took a house in Leicester 
 Street, which must then have been known as 1 Leicester Square, as is 
 proved by a curious circumstance. Bell himself thus tells the story : 
 “ When 1 got into this house, the first night I slept in it, I had put out 
 the candle and was leaping into bed, when the floor gave way under my 
 feet, and I found I had displaced the board. On examining this in the 
 morning, I discovered a tube under the loose board — it was the house 
 where the invisible girl was exhibited.” 1 I shall have a word to say of 
 this mysterious illusion, one of the early shows of the Square, later on. 
 
 Bell left Leicester Square on his marriage in 18 11, and went to 34 
 Soho Square. He died on April 28, 1842, curiously enough of angina 
 pectoris, which had claimed as victims two other Leicester Square worthies, 
 Hogarth and Hunter. He lies in the churchyard of Fallow, near Wor- 
 cester, where he was on a visit ; and his epitaph, written by his lifelong 
 friend Lord Jeffrey, fittingly, as do not all such memorials, perpetuates 
 his amiable character, great gifts, and blameless life. 
 
 1 She is known to have been on exhibition at No. 1 Leicester Square. 
 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 165 
 
 Among the busts which stand now at the four corners of the central 
 garden of Leicester Square is one of Sir Isaac Newton, who, if we allow 
 that his residence in St. Martin’s Street entitles him to be considered an 
 inhabitant of the Square itself, and the house he lived in is so close as 
 almost to do so, must be considered as its most illustrious resident. The 
 house still stands, marked by one of the Society of Arts tablets, but its 
 original brick front has been covered with stucco, and its present appear- 
 ance is neither attractive nor particularly interesting. 
 
 In 1709, the house was occupied by the Danish Envoy, apparently for 
 a short time only, as Sir Isaac Newton took it in the following year, when 
 his name appears in the Rate Books, where it is to be found till 1727, in 
 which year it is crossed out and the word “Empty” written against the 
 house. 1 
 
 During the seventeen years of Newton’s tenancy, hardly another house 
 in London, with the possible exception of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, received 
 within its walls so many illustrious representatives of politics, science, and 
 literature. Here, assisted by his niece, Mrs. Catherine Barton, Newton, 
 who we must remember was not only the greatest natural philosopher of 
 his day, indeed probably of all time, but also President of the Royal 
 Society and Master of the Mint, entertained such great ones as Arbuthnot 
 and Mead, Wren and Bentley and Whiston ; Sloane and Burnet and Butler. 
 Hither came, too, Harley and Halifax and St. John ; Swift, Prior and 
 Congreve; Addison and Gay; the noble Bathurst and the glittering Chester- 
 field ; the gay Lady Betty Germaine and the Duchess of Queensberry, the 
 friend and patroness of Gay. That remarkable woman Queen Caroline, 
 then Princess of Wales, loved to talk with Newton, and he had but to cross 
 the Square to Leicester House to give her this gratification, when he could 
 tear himself away from revising the third edition of his Principia , which 
 appeared during the years 1723-1725. And it can be well understood 
 how interesting the conversation of this great man must have been, apart 
 from its scientific side, when we remember that he was born so early as 
 1642. Dim memories of the Civil War and the death of the King; 
 clearer recollections of the Commonwealth and the reign of the Merry 
 Monarch ; until the short rule of James and of William ; the glorious years 
 of crowded life under Anne ; and the inauguration of an entirely new order 
 of things under the first of the Georges, must have been an open book to 
 that active and receptive mind. Newton died on March 20, 1727, having 
 removed to Kensington shortly before the end, and is buried in the Abbey ; 
 one of the greatest dead who lie within its venerable walls. 
 
 One Paul Dominicque succeeded Sir Isaac in the occupation of the 
 
 1 Lotidon Past and Present. 
 
i66 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 house; and it afterwards for a time (1770-1789) became the home of 
 Dr. Burney, and here Fanny Burney wrote her Evelina. In her Memoirs 
 of her father, Miss Burney gives the following description of the house at 
 that time : “ The observatory, which overlooked all London, still remained 
 in the same simple state in which it had been left by Sir Isaac,” she writes, 
 “ namely, encompassed completely by windows of small old-fashioned panes 
 of glass, so crowded as to leave no exclusion of the glazier, save what was 
 seized for a small chimney and fireplace, and a cupboard probably for 
 instruments. Another cupboard was borrowed from the little landing- 
 place for coals.” This observatory was eventually removed, and at the 
 beginning of the last century a wooden room on the roof was erected 
 by some speculator and shown for money as Newton’s study ; but this too 
 disappeared, having, it is said, been purchased and taken away to America, 
 Mr. Hollingshead shrewdly supposes. 
 
 The visitors to the house in Dr. Burney’s time must have formed 
 almost, not quite, as notable a circle as was gathered together there in 
 Newton’s day ; Macaulay, with his love of antithesis, indeed remarks that 
 “ few nobles could assemble in the most stately mansions of Grosvenor 
 Square or St. James’s Square, a society so various or so brilliant as was 
 sometimes to be found in Dr. Burney’s cabin.” 1 2 
 
 In so large a square as that under consideration, it is almost 
 impossible not to overlook some notable resident, especially as Leicester 
 Square is essentially one where as many interesting people have lodged 
 temporarily as have lived more or less permanently. Thus I should 
 have, perhaps, mentioned the great name of Swift, as a one-time resident 
 as well as a visitor to Sir Isaac Newton, for I find him telling “ Stella,” 
 that he took lodgings, for which he paid 10s. a week, and which 
 “don’t smell ill,” here in 1711; and Sir Andrew Fountaine, who also 
 resided here and whom both Swift and Ralph Thoresby visited ; as well as 
 Mrs. Inchbald, who began writing plays “in humble apartments” in 
 Leicester Fields until she left in 1 803 ; Daniel Lambert, the fat man, who 
 resided here for a time and “ felt inconvenienced by the atmosphere of the 
 metropolis ” ; and Dick England, the notorious gambler, who resided during 
 the latter years of his life at his house in the Square, where he died at the 
 age of eighty, after having miraculously escaped death by the guillotine 
 while living in France." 
 
 Many, too, will come under this category as staying for more or 
 less lengthy periods in the various inns and hotels in the Square, once 
 
 1 An interesting account of the house in Dr. Burney’s time will be found in The House in 
 St. Martin's Street , by Constance Hill. 
 
 2 See Timbs’s Eccentrics and Eccentricities. 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 167 
 
 fashionable and always much affected by foreigners. Thus I find 
 Robert Nelson “putting up” at the Blue Posts in the Square, when he 
 came to London in 1699, in order that his wife might benefit by the 
 advice of the famous Dr. Radcliffe ; and to make a great leap through 
 time, the Countess Guiccioli both at the Sabloniere Hotel and also at 
 the Hotel Jannay, at which latter house she was staying in August 1835. 
 The Blue Posts, the Feathers, 1 the Sabloniere, and other houses of enter- 
 tainment have disappeared, but how many have not taken their place, 
 from, in point of time, the Cavour downwards ! These we must pass 
 by, in order to say a word about the other sorts of “entertainment,” for 
 which the Square has long been famous, even from Evelyn’s day, when 
 he wondered, as we have seen, at the marvels of Richardson, “ the famous 
 fire-eater.” 
 
 Mr. Hollingshead in his brochure on the Square, has given, with a 
 good deal of detail, a description of the many shows, music-halls, pano- 
 ramas, poses plastiques, exhibitions, &c. which have followed one another 
 in quick succession here. Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum has been men- 
 tioned earlier in this chapter, but I must not forget the little theatre 
 — called the Sans Souci — which Charles Dibdin built in the short space 
 of twelve weeks, at Nos. 2 and 3, on the east side of the Square, on the 
 site of the old Feathers Inn, a house much frequented by Hogarth. 
 The theatre had a more or less successful career from 1796 to 1805, when 
 it was closed. Then there was that very mild sort of entertainment, 
 Miss Linwood’s Gallery of Needlework Pictures 2 — sixty-four in number 
 — copies, in coloured worsted on linen, of celebrated works of art, which 
 followed Lever’s Museum at Savile House, where it existed for no less 
 than forty years — 1806 to 1846 — in which latter year the pictures were 
 publicly sold. Miss Linwood’s tenancy has another sort of interest, for 
 it gave rise to the celebrated Chancery case of Page (the architect of 
 Savile House) versus Linwood, which lasted forty years, and may have 
 given Dickens a hint for his attacks on the law’s delay. 
 
 In the Gardner collection of playbills, largely drawn upon by Tom 
 Taylor, may be found quite a series of documents tracing the various 
 entertainments which followed Miss Linwood’s disappearance. First there 
 was Madame Warton’s “Unequalled Tableaux Vivants and Poses Plas- 
 tiques,” under the comprehensive title of Walhalla , from 1846 to 
 
 1 In the back parlour of this house used to meet a club of artists and amateurs, among 
 whom were “ Athenian ” Stuart ; Scott, the marine painter ; Grose and Hearne, the antiquaries ; 
 N. Smith, father of J. T. Smith ; Luke Sullivan, the miniature painter ; and John Ireland. 
 ( History of Signboards!) 
 
 2 One of these, a portrait of Napoleon I., is still preserved in the Victoria and Albert 
 Museum. 
 
i68 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 1 848 ; then Risley’s Panorama, and Gompertz’s Panorama, in the fol- 
 lowing year ; and still another, under the direction of one Cambon, in 
 1851; exhibitions of giants — the Lapland Giantess, 7 feet 2 inches, 
 and the Italian Giant, 7 feet 7 inches ; opera bouffe , by real negroes 
 “direct from the cotton-fields of America”; a collection of Greek and 
 Etruscan Antiquities; and, in 1852, the inevitable bearded lady, in this 
 case Madame Fortunne, whose hirsute appendages reached “from ear to 
 ear, yet without impairing her beauty” ! Mention should also be made of 
 that ridiculous hoax, Mary Tofts, the rabbit-breeding woman of Godai- 
 ming, who was brought, in 1726, to “the Bagnio in Leicester Fields, 
 to be delivered in the presence of Sir Hans Sloane and other medical 
 worthies,” as noticed in London Past and Present. Lady Suffolk 
 writing to Swift thus notices the circumstance, “A yahoo of Sussex (sic) 
 has brought forth four black rabbits ; ” and there is no doubt but that all 
 the town, from high to low, was filled with wonder and credulity at this 
 freak. 
 
 One of the curious characteristics of the Leicester Square shows was 
 the mixture of pure amusement and educational purpose which they 
 attempted to combine ; thus with the bearded lady we can bracket 
 Cantelo’s egg-hatching apparatus, which was carried on from 1849 to 
 1852; with the “Industrious Fleas,” an exhibition of Louis David’s 
 pictures ; with Bree’s Panorama of New Zealand, and the Living Marion- 
 ette Troupe, Professor Krosso’s “antique athletic sports,” and Reimer’s 
 anatomical and ethnological Museum ; besides a host of other entertain- 
 ments far too numerous to mention, and not particularly interesting to 
 read of. 
 
 Savile House, the home of so many of these ingenious devices, was 
 destroyed by fire in 1865. At that time it was being carried on as the 
 El Dorado Music Hall, and on the evening of March 1st, an explosion was 
 heard here, and fire and smoke issued in volumes from the basement, then 
 used as wine shades, where the application of a lighted candle to an 
 escape of gas is said to have caused the fire. So great was the explosion 
 that the whole front of Ward’s furniture manufactory was blown out, 
 and fears were entertained that Messrs. Stagg & Mantle’s premises (still 
 existing) would have shared the same fate. Savile House, which, says 
 Taylor, “extended some 300 feet from the Square to the back of 
 premises in Lisle Street,” was entirely gutted. About 1880, a Panorama 
 was built on the spot which is now occupied by the “Empire,” a suc- 
 cessful undertaking which the projected “Alcazar,” and “Pandora,” had 
 they reached the stage of practical schemes, would have attempted to 
 anticipate. 
 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 169 
 
 As will have been noticed, Panoramas have had a great vogue in 
 Leicester Square in the past ; the greatest of these was Burford’s, which 
 was situated at the north-east corner of the Square, and was erected in 
 1793, and opened in the June of that year. It had “three circles, the 
 largest ninety feet in diameter and forty in height,” and here were shown 
 for many years a variety of scenes representing “ every war by sea and 
 land, every scene of interesting incident or discovery, every locality of 
 special natural beauty, every great ceremonial.” Between thirty and 
 forty years since, it was demolished, and its site is now occupied by the 
 school of Notre Dame de France and its attendant chapel. 
 
 In 1862, the Alhambra took the place of the old Panopticon, a 
 sort of rival to the Polytechnic, which had been inaugurated in 1854, by 
 a committee armed with the dignity of a Royal Charter, but which, not- 
 withstanding this state aid, had but a comparatively short-lived career. 
 On the south side of the Square still stands the Dental Hospital, recently 
 enlarged, the offices of the Odontological Society, and St. John’s Hospital 
 for Diseases of the Skin. 
 
 A word must be said finally about the centre of the Square. In the 
 days of Charles II. and his immediate successors it was, in common with 
 many such open spaces, a favourite place for duels, the most famous one 
 being that between Captain Coote and Mr. French, in which Lord Mohun 
 and the Earl of Warwick were associated, and which ended fatally for 
 the captain. 1 Highway robberies also took place in the precincts, with 
 some frequency, and at least one political murder was attempted there, 
 for we read in Luttrell’s Diary , under date of October 15, 1679, that 
 “ Mowbray, the late discoverer of the plott in the north against Sir 
 Thomas Gascoign, goeing over Leicester feilds, was sett on and attempted 
 to be stab’d, but haveing a pair of bodice on, and falling down as if really 
 dead, the assassinate fled.” 2 That the Square was used as a place of 
 execution is also proved by the same authority, who mentions that on 
 March 2, 1688, “ Mary Awbry, the french midwife, was burnt in Leicester 
 Fields, for murdering her husband.” 
 
 The central garden is not the least interesting part of the Square ; 
 indeed in the vicissitudes it has experienced it forms a reflex of the 
 larger surrounding area. It was, of course, originally laid out when 
 the Square itself was formed, and the various descriptions of the latter 
 embrace it ; while from an old print we see what its former appearance 
 was in the first year of the eighteenth century. Nearly half a century 
 
 * Luttrell mentions the duel, under date of November 1, 1698. 
 
 2 Tom Taylor gives a long and interesting account of the incident, in his book on Leicester 
 Square. 
 
170 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 later, the gilt equestrian statue of George I., which had originally stood 
 in the grounds of Canons, “ the ostentatious transitory seat of the 
 Duke of Chandos,” as Noorthouck calls it, was placed in the centre by 
 Frederick, Prince of Wales, according to Walpole, as a petty attempt to 
 annoy George II. It was the work of Van Nost, who was also re- 
 sponsible for the other statue of George in Grosvenor Square, and was 
 ceremoniously unveiled on November 19 (the anniversary of the birth of 
 Frederick, as it was also of Charles I., 1 which day may have been selected 
 as an additional annoyance to the King), 1748. About ten years before 
 this, the central garden, which had fallen into great neglect, was put in 
 order, and a new dwarf wall with railings and a basin in the centre 
 added. 2 
 
 When subsequently the Square fell from its high estate, the centre 
 garden again became a wilderness, a receptacle for rubbish, and a last resting- 
 place for dead cats and, as a Mr. Packer, who remembered the Square at 
 the accession of George III., told J. T. Smith, “ a dirty place, where ragged 
 boys assembled to play chuck ” ; while the statue was treated to all sorts 
 of indignities, the most notable of which occurred on October 17, 1866, 
 when some idle persons, with more time on their hands than wit in their 
 heads, painted the horse white with black spots, put a fool’s cap on the 
 head of King George, and placed against his shoulder (for he had already 
 lost an arm, as his horse had a hind leg and a fore foot), a broomstick, 
 and otherwise further disfigured what had already become a disfiguring 
 object. On February 24, 1874, the disjecta membra, for little else remained, 
 were removed, and in Mr. Taylor’s book is a sketch made by the artist 
 O’Connor, from the window of his studio in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s old 
 house, showing the now riderless horse with its trunk, in which a large gap 
 appears in which royalty once sat, supported by a pole, and surrounded by 
 workmen about to consign it to the limbo of rubbish. 
 
 This was not, however, the first time the statue had been removed, for 
 it was temporarily taken away in 1851, when the vast building known as 
 “ Wyld’s Great Globe” was built up in the enclosure. This erection was 
 the project of Wyld the geographer, and was built for him by Mr. Myers 
 from the designs of Mr. Abrahams. Wyld supposed that he had purchased 
 the freehold, but finding he was unable to do so, entered into an agreement 
 with the Tulk family, the ground landlords, to whom the freehold of 
 the Square had passed from the Sidneys by purchase in 1789 together 
 with Leicester House, to make over the ground on certain terms of re- 
 
 1 Curiously enough, the horse had been modelled from Le Sueur’s beautiful statue of Charles 
 at Charing Cross. 
 
 2 The original sketch for the basin is preserved in the British Museum. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ’ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
UW M® 
 
LEICESTER SQUARE 17 1 
 
 purchase should they then wish to exercise this option ; this they did, 
 and consequently in i 8 6 1 , the Great Globe, in which dioramas, exhibitions 
 of curiosities, a military museum, and all sorts of other shows had 
 been exhibited, was taken down, and the statue, in an even then sadly 
 incomplete state, again set up to serve as an object of derision for another 
 decade. 
 
 The garden being in the desolate state 1 have mentioned, the Metro- 
 politan Board of Works stepped in and took possession of it; not, as may 
 be supposed, to the satisfaction of the Tulk family, who brought an action 
 against the Board, on the ground that it had taken possession of the land 
 illegally. This case they won ; but it indirectly led to negotiations with 
 Baron Albert Grant, who eventually purchased the site, laid out the garden 
 in its present form under the direction of Mr. (now Sir) James Knowles, 
 and presented it to the Board of Works in perpetuity for the use and 
 enjoyment of the public. 
 
 The statue of Shakespeare which stands in the centre was the work of 
 Signor Fontana, and is copied from the cenotaph in Westminster Abbey, 
 while of the four busts which are placed at the corners of the garden, that 
 of Reynolds is by Weeks; that of Newton by Calder Marshall; that of 
 Hogarth by Durham ; and that of Hunter by Woolner. 
 
 On July 2, 1874, the garden was formally handed over to the public 
 by Baron Grant, who is popularly supposed to have spent no less than 
 ^30,000 in endowing London with one of the most badly needed of its 
 many nineteenth-century improvements. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 RED LION SQUARE 
 
 “ Green is the plane-tree in the Square.” 
 
 Amy Levy, A London Plane-Tree. 
 
 W HEN the industrious Pennant wrote his book on London, 
 he could find nothing further to say about Red Lion 
 Square, which Noorthouck calls a “ neat, small square, 
 much longer than it is broad,” than to record an in- 
 scription on a monument which formerly stood in its 
 centre. “I shall just mention Red Lion Square, not far to the south of 
 this house,” 1 he says, “ merely for the sake of some lines written on the 
 occasion of the erection of the clumsy obelisk lately vanished : 
 
 OBTUSUM 
 
 OBTUSIORES INGENII 
 MONUMENTUM. 
 
 QUID ME RESPICES, VIATOR 
 VADE. 
 
 Thus Pennant, who further informs us that there was formerly a 
 stone watch-house at each corner ; which does not add much to the 
 otherwise scanty information he gives us about this Square, the houses 
 of which would seem to promise almost as much of interesting associa- 
 tions as those of Soho or Golden Squares. 
 
 The ubiquitous but hypercritical Ralph is overcome by more than his 
 usual gloom when approaching the subject of this Square, for it is a sad, 
 but according to his own statement a true, fact that he never entered it 
 without being reminded of his latter end ; it recalled too forcibly a 
 cemetery for him to view it with equanimity. “ The rough sod that 
 heaves with many a mouldering heap,” he writes, “the dreary length of 
 its sides, with the four watch-houses like so many family vaults at the 
 corners, and the naked obelisk that springs from amid the rank grass . . . 
 
 1 Powis House. 
 
RED LION SQUARE 173 
 
 form together a memento mori , more powerful to me than a death’s head 
 and cross marrow-bones.” 1 
 
 This is a sad enough picture, but by a view of the Square published 
 about 1800, some fifty years after the good Ralph wrote his descrip- 
 tion, we can see that so great an improvement had taken place that it 
 then compared not unfavourably with those in other parts of the town. 
 The obelisk has disappeared, and although the corner watch-towers still 
 remain, they merely help to form a finish to the railings supported by a 
 low stone wall which surround the centre garden. This garden is laid 
 out somewhat in the formal style beloved by the Dutch, access to it 
 being by two gateways ; the whole forming a striking antithesis to the 
 rank grass which Ralph complains of as surrounding the departed obelisk. 2 
 
 The Square would seem to have derived its name from the Red Lion 
 Inn in Holborn, for many years the largest and best known hostelry in 
 that quarter ; and besides, having an historical interest from the fact that 
 when the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were disinterred at 
 Westminster, on the Restoration, they were carried hither from the Abbey, 
 preparatory to their final removal to Tyburn.” 3 
 
 Stow and Aubrey both mention the Inn, while Cunningham quotes 
 the Baptismal Register of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, to give this entry : 
 “ Thomas, a child borne under the Redd Lyon Elmes in the fields in 
 High Holborn, baptised iii of August 1614.” The Red Lion Fields, 
 in which these “ Elmes ” most probably stood, formed indeed the site 
 on which Red Lion Square was presently to be erected. 
 
 Cunningham gives the year of the formation of the Square as 1698, 
 but I have every reason to believe that an earlier date should be assigned. 
 My conjecture is based on an entry in Narcissus Luttrell’s Diary under 
 date of June 10, 1684, in which the Diarist writes thus: “Dr. Barebone, 
 the great builder, having sometime since bought the Red Lyon Feilds, 
 near Graies Inn walks, to build on, and having for that purpose employed 
 several workmen to goe on with the same, the gentlemen of Graies Inn 
 took notice of it, and, thinking it an injury to them, went with a con- 
 siderable body of one hundred persons ; upon which the workmen as- 
 saulted the gentlemen, and flung bricks at them, and the gentlemen 
 at them again ; so a sharp engagement ensued, but the gentlemen routed 
 
 1 Critical Observations on the Buildings of London. 
 
 2 See print in Old and New London, vol. iv. p. 547. See also the print published by Bowles 
 in his Prospects of Publick Buildings in London , 1724, and those by Sutton Nicholls, and J. 
 Harris, 1727. 
 
 8 Additional MS. 10,116, and Woods’ Ath. Oxon., art. Ireton, both quoted by Cunningham, 
 vol. ii. p. 695. Sir John Prestwick in his Republica states that Cromwell’s remains were interred 
 on the spot where the obelisk in Red Lion Square, mentioned by Pennant, once stood, which 
 spot was then a small paddock ; but there is no other authority for this statement. 
 
17 + the SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 them at the last, and brought away one or two of the workmen to Graies 
 Inn : in this skirmish one or two of the gentlemen and servants of the 
 house were hurt, and severall of the workmen.” 
 
 I think it probable that building operations were quickly resumed, as 
 had some settlement not been arrived at and the case carried to the 
 Courts, Luttrell, who was a lawyer and careful to record matters con- 
 nected with his profession, would, we may be sure, have taken care to 
 notice the case. It may also be regarded as certain that Dr. Barebone was 
 the original constructor of the Square. Nicholas Barebone, son of Praise- 
 God Barebone, seems to have been a remarkable man ; besides being a 
 great builder, it was he who instituted the insurance of property against 
 fire, and we find Luttrell remarking that if the motion made at the Guild- 
 hall on October 13, 1681, “that the City should undertake the business 
 of insuring houses from fire be proceeded with, it will be a great injury 
 to Dr. Barebone who first invented it, and hath set up an office for it, 
 and is likely to gett vastly by it.” 1 Eleven years later we read that 
 Barebone “ hath undertaken to pull down the six clerks office in Chancery 
 Lane, and build a new one on arches in the new square adjoining Lincoln’s 
 Inn.” In 1695, was associated with a Mr. Brisco in a Land Bank as well 
 as an Orphans’ Bank, which latter proved so successful that Lord Godolphin 
 removed his account from the Bank of England to it, thus largely helping 
 in its prosperity, and raising its credit 10 per cent. ; indeed so substantial 
 became the position of these two banks that Barebone and Brisco eventu- 
 ally amalgamated them, and in 1696, offered to advance to the King no 
 less than two millions towards the expenses of carrying on the war. Dr. 
 Barebone eventually became a Member of Parliament, and Luttrell records 
 his death in the April of 1698. 2 
 
 Before the advent of the Square, the Red Lyon Fields were used as 
 an open space for recreation and amusement ; one form of the latter, had 
 it ever been put in practice, threatened to introduce into this country 
 the national sport of Spain, for in what was then termed the artillery 
 ground there was erected “ a large four-square house, with three galleries 
 round, for the killing of wild bulls by men on horseback, after the manner 
 as in Spain and Portugal, which was about this time to have been per- 
 formed.” 3 The discovery of the Popish Plot (1685) seems to have inter- 
 fered with this scheme, which may possibly have had a patroness in 
 Charles II. ’s queen, Catherine of Braganza. 
 
 As was often the case in such open spaces, duels were frequently 
 
 1 Diary , vol. i. p. 135. 
 
 2 He was the builder of the original No. 4 St. James’s Square, which he erected in 1676-7 
 
 for the Earl of Kent. 3 Luttrell, vol. i. p. 263. 
 
RED LION SQUARE 175 
 
 fought here, and Luttrell mentions some of them. Thus we read of “ a 
 duell in Red Lyon Fields, between Burton and Tankard, but the latter 
 killed the former basely before he drew his sword, and is sent to Newgate ” ; 
 again, “ a duell in Red Lyon (sic) between a person called the Earl of 
 Banbury and Captain Lawson of the Guards, his brother-in-law, and the 
 latter was killed on the spot : his lordship was seized and committed to 
 Newgate ” ; but he seems to have escaped the capital penalty, after some two 
 years’ delay on the part of the House of Lords on the question of his rights 
 as a peer, &c. It was in the same month in which this duel took place, 
 that Lord Mohun murdered Mountfort the actor, a matter which the 
 House of Lords also had to take under its consideration, and which may 
 have helped in the delay in Lord Banbury’s case. A more mysterious case 
 was that of Captain Butler, who was found murdered in Red Lyon Fields 
 on July 27, 1695. 
 
 In a later entry in Luttrell’s Diary , we have a reference to an event 
 which happened in the Square itself, for on January 18, 1700, it is 
 recorded that “last night a fire hap’ned in Red Lyon Square; burnt 2 
 houses, viz. Mr. Aislaby’s, a member of parliament for Rippon (in which 
 his lady perished); as also Mr. Knightley’s, where Mr. Sellars the non- 
 juring parson’s library, with a great number of choice and scarce manu- 
 scripts, were (sic) consumed, and two adjoining houses much damaged.” 
 
 It is interesting to be able to identify Aislabie as an inhabitant of Red 
 Lion Square, for he is a well-known eighteenth-century figure. He it 
 was who became Treasurer to the Navy in 1745, and in the same year 
 moved the impeachment of Lord Strafford ; later he became Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer at that stormy period when the South Sea Bubble broke 
 and overwhelmed him in company with so many others. He was one 
 “ who loved to tread the path lighted by his own impressions as to his 
 own interests,” says Mr. McCarthy. 1 This led him to champion the cause 
 of the South Sea Company, when he assured the House that its proposi- 
 tions were likely to be more beneficial to the nation than those of the 
 Bank of England; and finally landed him in the Tower, on the motion 
 carried without a dissentient voice in the House that “John Aislabie, 
 Esquire, a Member of this House and one of the Commissioners of his 
 Majesty’s Treasury, is guilty of most notorious, dangerous, and infamous 
 corruption.” 
 
 Mr. Knightley, whose house we have seen shared the fate of Mr. 
 Aislabie’s, led also an eventful life, if not so much in the public view as his 
 neighbour in Red Lion Square, for he was one of those implicated in 
 the plot to assassinate William III. on his way to hunt in Richmond 
 
 1 Four Georges. 
 
176 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Park, on February 15, 1696. Knightley was indeed sentenced to death 
 at the King’s Bench on the following 25th May; a report then spread 
 that he was to be pardoned ; however, an order subsequently arrived from 
 Flanders, where William then was, for his execution, “ but the Lord 
 Chief Justice Holt has given his opinion,” writes Luttrell, “that, he being 
 tryed at the King’s Bench barr, a rule of that court must be had for his 
 execution ; so that (he) is respited till next term.” He subsequently 
 appears to have escaped the extreme penalty of the law and to have been 
 banished the country, for a final entry by Luttrell states that “ Mr. 
 Knightley, one of the assassinates with Charnock, and condemned for it, 
 pleaded his pardon at the King’s Bench barr; and it was allowed, on 
 condition he depart the realm in ten days from the date.” 1 
 
 In 1708, Hatton describes Red Lion Square as a “pleasant square of 
 good buildings, between High Holborn south, and the fields north.” 
 Were the good topographer to revisit the glimpses of the moon and see 
 what “ the fields north ” now look like, he would have some food for 
 reflection. The Square must have been of some importance in the earlier 
 part of the eighteenth century, which period was probably the heyday 
 of its fashion, for we are told that in 1737, an Act was passed for 
 beautifying it, it having become somewhat neglected ; and the author of 
 one of those numerous Tours through Great Britain, of which so many 
 appeared about that time, opines that “ Leicester fields and Golden 
 Square will soon follow these good examples.” A few years before this 
 Act was passed, Lord Chief Justice Raymond was living here. 2 It may 
 be remembered that he was one of the counsel appointed to defend Dr. 
 Sacheverel, but the doctor having declined to take his advice on a certain 
 point, he refused to continue acting for him. We find him later on (in 
 1710) kissing hands on his appointment as Solicitor-General. 
 
 Another name which presents itself, as belonging to one who once lived 
 in the Square, is that of james Rotier, a member of that remarkable family 
 of medallists who almost rivalled the unrivalled Simon. At the end of a 
 busy life he retired, rich but very infirm and suffering from a complication 
 of diseases, to a house in Red Lion Square, and it is probable that he died 
 there, although Walpole does not specifically state the fact. Here, how- 
 ever, both lived and died, at No. 2 3, 3 Jonas Hanway, the traveller and 
 philanthropist. Hanway was a remarkable man, not only on account of 
 his many adventures, but also for his far-sighted benevolence. He was 
 
 1 Diary for October 25, 1698. 
 
 2 At what are now Nos. 18 and 19, then a single house, once lived, it is said, Blackstone, 
 the celebrated author of the Commentaries. 
 
 3 Now occupied by Messrs. Bridges, Sawtell, & Co. 
 
 

 PLAN OF THE PARISH OF ST GILES. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ; 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
RED LION SQUARE 177 
 
 born at Portsmouth in 1712, and when thirty-one became partner with an 
 English merchant in St. Petersburg ; in the same and following year he 
 made a journey into Persia, in connection with his business, but suffered 
 a variety of misfortunes, an account of which he published in 1753. He 
 subsequently brought out a less successful work entitled An Eight Days' 
 Journey from Portsmouth to Kingston, which caused Johnson to say on one 
 occasion that “Jonas acquired some reputation by travelling abroad, but 
 lost it all by travelling at home.” Copies of this work the author was in 
 the habit of presenting to his friends, and Mr. Austin Dobson notes that 
 these, with Hanway’s inscription therein, are still occasionally to be met 
 with. In the later years of his life Hanway seems to have given himself 
 almost entirely to the elaboration of various philanthropic schemes, chiefly 
 connected with the amelioration of the lot of poor children, in which con- 
 nection he anticipated Raikes’s establishment of Sunday-schools. He 
 died in Red Lion Square on September 5, 1786, when he was accorded a 
 public funeral. It is well to repeat the fact of his being the first man to 
 habitually carry an umbrella in the streets of London, for such a daring 
 innovation deserves to be recorded. 
 
 From an account of Hanway, we learn incidentally some interesting 
 details of his house in Red Lion Square. Thus, the principal rooms were 
 decorated with emblematical designs at his direction ; and for this reason : 
 “ I found,” he used to say, referring to these paintings, “ that my country- 
 men and women were not au fait in the art of conversation ; and that 
 instead of recurring to their cards when the discourse began to fail, the 
 minutes between the time of assembling and the placing of the card-tables 
 are spent in an irksome suspense. To relieve the vacuum in social inter- 
 course, and prevent cards from engrossing the whole of my visitors’ minds, 
 I have presented them with objects the most attractive I could imagine ; 
 and when that fails there are the cards.” 1 
 
 These attractive objects consisted of portraits of the famous actress 
 Adrienne Lecouvreur together with five other beauties famous in their day, 
 “in frames,” says Mr. Austin Dobson in his Eighteenth-Century Vignettes , 
 where there is one of its author’s charming little essays on Hanway, 
 “ united by a carved and gilded ribbon incircled with passages in praise of 
 beauty.” These were surmounted by a statue of Humility, and below 
 them was a mirror around the frame of which were these words : 
 
 “Wert thou, my daughter, fairest of the seven ; 
 
 Think on the progress of devouring time, 
 
 And pay thy tribute to Humility.” 
 
 1 Life of Hanway. 
 
 M 
 
178 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 It is somewhat of an anomaly that, although Hanway’s bust is in West- 
 minster Abbey, his body lies buried at Hanwell. 
 
 A few years before Hanway’s decease, Dr. James Parsons, one of the 
 first members of the Spalding Society, died in the Square, where he had 
 passed many years of his life, and in the London Chronicle for April 5, 1770, 
 is his obituary notice ; while in the same paper for March 29th, of the 
 same year, we read that “ on Monday evening, Sir Gilbert Heathcote was 
 married, by a special licence, to Miss Hodson, of Red Lion Square.” 
 
 To come to a later date, we find Sharon Turner, the historian of the 
 Anglo-Saxons, as well as a solicitor, living at No. 13, in the Square, a 
 house in which he died in 1847, and which was subsequently occupied by 
 the Mendicity Society ; 1 while Timothy Shelley, the father of the poet, 
 was born in the Square in September, 1753. The “old lady of quality” 
 who astonished Leigh Hunt by a somewhat informal manipulation of that 
 portion of her mouth which she owed to art rather than to nature, also 
 resided in the Square, and it was at her house that his father once met 
 Wilkes, who, sitting gazing on the floor, was not recognised by the visitor 
 until the latter made a remark other than flattering to the friend of 
 liberty, when the good-humoured Wilkes looked up, and seeing Hunt’s 
 confusion, burst into jovial laughter. 
 
 Walford mentions the existence of an ancient Baronial Court held 
 under the authority of the Sheriffs of Middlesex, in the house at the north- 
 east corner of the Square. Quoting from the Gentleman' s Magazine of 
 1829, h e adds that “it is held monthly before the Sheriff or his deputy. 
 Its power in judgment is as great as that of the present Courts at West- 
 minster. It is more expeditious and less expensive ; persons seeking to 
 recover debts may do so to any amount at the trifling expense of only six 
 or seven pounds. Nor is it confined to actions of account ; it extends to 
 detenue, trover, scandal, &c., and personal service of process is unnecessary. 
 This court was instituted by King Alfred on dividing the kingdom into 
 shires, and subsequently continued and sanctioned by Canute, by William 
 the Conqueror, and various statutes, including Magna Charta ; and is 
 treated upon by several eminent legal authorities, as Judge Hale, Judge 
 Lambert, and many others.” 2 
 
 Looking through a Directory we shall see that there are still many 
 public and charitable causes represented in houses which once were the 
 abode of private and even fashionable people. Artists have also lived in 
 the Square, as for instance Henry Meyer, to whom Charles Lamb once sat 
 
 1 Walford, in his Old and New London, gives the number of the house as 32. 
 
 2 Old and New London , vol. iv. p. 549. No. 24 is now the home of the Sheriff of London ; 
 and formerly at No. 27 resided Charles Chabot, the well-known handwriting expert. 
 
RED LION SQUARE 179 
 
 for his portrait, a portrait which forms the frontispiece to Talfourd’s 
 Memorials , and the painting of which Crabb Robinson refers to in his 
 Diary thus: “Called on Meyer of Red Lion Square, where Lamb was 
 sitting for his portrait. A strong likeness ; but it gives him the air of a 
 thinking man, and is more like the framer of a system of philosophy than 
 the genial and gay author of th t Essays of Elia." 1 It is to Meyer that 
 Lamb himself refers in a letter to Bernard Barton, as “ an artist who 
 painted me lately ” ; and proceeds to tell how this same artist, “ had painted 
 a blackamoor praying, and not filling his canvas, stuffed in his little girl 
 aside of Blackey, gaping at him unmeaningly, and then didn’t know what 
 to call it. Now for a picture to be promoted to the exhibition as 
 historical, a subject is requisite. What does me ? I but christened it the 
 ‘Young Catechist’ and furbish’d it with dialogue following, which dubb’d 
 it an Historical Painting.” 2 
 
 But Red Lion Square can boast a past association with more illustrious 
 exponents of the arts than Henry Meyer, for not only did Rossetti and 
 Walter Henry Deverell 3 once live here ; but later Burne-Jones and William 
 Morris came to reside in the same house ; such a constellation, indeed, as 
 can be matched by no other residence, it is probable, in all London. It 
 was under the roof of No. 17 Red Lion Square that these four men 
 worked, although between the occupancy of the former two and the latter 
 there was a slight interval. 
 
 The first mention we appear to have of Rossetti’s connection with Red 
 Lion Square occurs in an entry in the P.R.B. Journal, under date of 
 December 7, 1850, where we read that “ Woolner, having written at 
 Gabriel’s request to know the price of the rooms in Red Lion Square lately 
 occupied by Harris, called with a note from North Senior, the landlord, 
 saying that he will submit to 4s. monthly or 20s. a week. He stipu- 
 lates that the models are to be kept under some gentlemanly restraint, 
 ‘as some artists sacrifice the dignity of art to the baseness of passion.’ 
 This seems a very advantageous prospect for Gabriel and Deverell, on 
 whom we called to acquaint him.” 4 The matter appears to have been 
 arranged by about the middle of the following month, for another entry 
 tells us that “ Gabriel has, with Deverell, taken the first floor of North’s 
 house, 17 Red Lion Square.” Rossetti’s tenancy was not a long one, 
 for we find his brother recording, on May 24th of the same year, that 
 “ Gabriel, who has given notice to quit his present studio in Red Lion 
 
 1 Diary for May 26, 1826. 2 Lamb’s Letters , vol. ii. p. 193. 
 
 3 Whose leaning to the theory and practice of the Pre-Raphaelites would probably have 
 enrolled him as a member of the brotherhood but for his early death. ( Burne-Jones , by 
 Malcolm Bell.) 
 
 4 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's Journal, kept by W. M. Rossetti, 1849-53. 
 
1 80 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Square, has received from Brown the offer of a share of his ; and purposes 
 to accept it.” 
 
 Five years later the rooms were to have their further phase of artistic 
 celebrity, for it was in 1856 that, happening then to be vacant, Rossetti 
 himself suggested that Burne-Jones and Morris should take them. The 
 day following this suggestion they went to look at the rooms, and before 
 the evening they were taken, Rossetti writing to Allingham and telling 
 him that he had been to look at his old rooms and found them dusty and 
 unused, with an address that either he or Deverell had written on the 
 wall of one of the bedrooms still there ; the only sign, said the poet, of 
 any life left in this place, “ so pale and watery had been all subsequent 
 inmates, not a trace of whom remained.” 1 
 
 Morris’s biographer thus describes the rooms at this time : “ It was a 
 first-floor set of three rooms,” he says ; “ the large room in front looked 
 north, and its window had been heightened up to the ceiling to adapt it to 
 use as a studio; behind it was a bedroom (occupied by Burne-Jones), and 
 behind that another small bedroom (used by Morris) or powdering closet.” 2 
 Some French feather-dressers named Fauconnier were renting the whole 
 house and carrying on their business on the ground floor at this time. 
 
 Flere the brother artists continued to reside till the spring of 1859, 
 and we are told that it is “ round Red Lion Square that much of the 
 mythology of Morris’s earlier life clusters.” A variety of amusing inci- 
 dents of their daily routine either actually occurred there or were invented 
 by Morris’s fertile brain and formed a sort of legendary surrounding to their 
 happy existence. The maidservant of the house — known to readers of 
 the Lives of Burne-Jones and Morris under the name of Red Lion Mary — 
 was the heroine of a number of these traditions, and as she served as a sort 
 of model on which Morris hung his merry stories, so the walls and sparsely 
 furnished rooms of No. 1 7 formed the background for some of his earlier 
 efforts in decoration and furniture contrivance. The difficulty at that 
 period of getting anything made from designs not redolently Victorian, 
 caused Morris to turn his attention to this branch of craftsmanship, and 
 the room in Red Lion Square gradually became filled with, as Rossetti 
 humorously phrased it, “ intensely mediaeval furniture, tables and chairs 
 like incubi and succubi ; ” and there is one great description of the arrival 
 of a sort of giant settle. “ We were out when it reached the house,” says 
 Burne-Jones, “but when we came in all the passages and the staircase 
 were choked with vast blocks of timber, and there was a scene. . . . but 
 set up it was finally, and our studio was one-third less in size. Rossetti 
 
 1 Memorials of Burne-Jones, vol. i. p. 146. 
 
 2 Mackail’s Life of William Morris , vol. i. p. 212. 
 
RED LION SQUARE 181 
 
 came. This was always a terrifying moment to the very last. He laughed 
 but approved.” 
 
 Rossetti indeed was so interested in this scheme for beautifying his old 
 rooms that he once made designs for oil paintings on the panels of the 
 cupboard doors and the side of this very settle. Some such scheme of 
 decoration seems to have been foreseen by Burne-Jones, for in a letter to 
 Miss Sampson notifying their change of lodgings he writes: “We are 
 quite settled here now. The rooms are so comfortable, not very furnished 
 at present but they will be soon ; when I have time I will make a rough 
 drawing of the place and send it down. To-day (Morris) has had some 
 furniture (chairs and table) made after his own design ; they are as beautiful 
 as mediaeval work, and when we have painted designs of knights and 
 ladies upon them they will be perfect marvels.” He fulfilled his promise 
 of a sketch of the room, which he sent on a half sheet of note-paper, with 
 a caricature of the painter himself gazing in rapt admiration at the back 
 of one of the chairs which Rossetti had painted and Morris designed. 1 
 But furniture was not the only importation, for Morris, who loved 
 birds and used to imitate, we are told, an eagle, with considerable skill and 
 humour “ climbing on to a chair and, after a sullen pause, coming down 
 with a soft heavy flap,” kept, much to the annoyance of Rossetti, an owl, 
 for some time in Red Lion Square. 
 
 In 1857, Morris was in Oxford, and Burne-Jones, who had also been 
 there with him, after finishing his Death of Merlin, returned to No. 17, 
 where he lived practically alone until the spring. 2 However, Morris 
 was occasionally back in Red Lion Square until his marriage with Miss 
 Burden, when the establishment here was finally broken up, he going with 
 his wife to temporary furnished rooms at No. 41 Great Ormond Street, 
 and Burne-Jones moving to lodgings in Charlotte Street. The rooms were 
 then passed on to Mr. Swan, whose acquaintance Burne-Jones and Morris 
 had made at Oxford when they were engaged in decorating the Union. 
 Mr. Swan’s appearance seems to have warranted Red Lion Mary’s ex- 
 clamation, on his first call, of, “ Oh, sir, here’s a gentleman out of Byron 
 come to see you ! ” 
 
 To-day No. 17 Red Lion Square is to all appearance a private house, 
 but a card indicates that apartments may still be secured there, as in the 
 
 1 Memorials of Burne-Jones, vol. i. p. 147, where a facsimile of the sketch is given. The 
 likeness of Burne-Jones is there so like those of Ruskin that we can readily credit the story 
 that, on the latter once calling at 17 Red Lion Square, the maidservant announced him to 
 Burne-Jones as “Your father, sir.” 
 
 2 Except that a Mr. Price, who was reading for his degree, stayed there during most of the 
 Long Vacation of 1858, and Rossetti, who had been driven from his studio at Blackfriars by the 
 smell of the river, was also therewith Burne-Jones for a time. {Memorials of Burne-Jones, 
 vol. i. p. 187.) 
 
1 82 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 days when the Pre-Raphaelites lived there and raised the Square to its 
 artistic apotheosis. 
 
 The church on the west side of the Square, dedicated to St. John, 
 was commenced in 1874, being the work of Pearson, and is generally 
 regarded as his masterpiece, 1 not only from its actual architectural merits, 
 but also because of the difficulties he had to contend with on account of 
 the limited space at his command ; by constructing the vestries in a 
 crypt, however, he was able to combine the double advantages of a raised 
 chancel and the allocation of greater space to the church itself. The 
 exterior, though fine, hardly gives an indication of the beauty and 
 symmetry of the internal proportions, but had Pearson’s intention of 
 placing a lofty brick tower and stone spire above the porch in Fisher 
 Street, been carried out, as for lack of funds it was unfortunately found 
 impossible to do, the exterior would have more nearly approximated to the 
 interior in grace and completeness. 
 
 From a most interesting, but to the general reader somewhat tech- 
 nical description of the church, communicated to me by J. B. Chubb, 
 Esq., F.R.I.B.A., architect to the Foundling Hospital, it would seem 
 that the general idea of the church was inspired by the choir of Lincoln 
 Cathedral, where Pearson worked for many years with such excellent 
 results ; the chancel and chapel on the south side, with its charmingly 
 arranged apsidal east wall, having much in common with that highly 
 representative example of thirteenth-century work. “The building,” 
 says Mr. Chubb, “ is perhaps unique amongst modern London churches 
 in its conformity to the accepted Gothic principles of ‘Arcade,’ ‘Tri- 
 forium,’ and ‘ Clerestory,’ ” and, although the nave is practically square 
 in plan, and thus departs from the pure Gothic, the aisles of unequal 
 width give a very mysterious and impressive feeling to the whole. 
 
 The Clergy House is on the north of the building, and the main 
 entrance to the church is by an arched passage over which the residence 
 extends. The church is rich in modern stained glass and other features, 
 largely the gifts of private individuals or of the congregation. 
 
 To-day Red Lion Square can hardly be said to preserve many, if any, 
 of its original characteristics. Its houses, many of them rebuilt, are 
 occupied almost wholly by professional and commercial undertakings. 
 One block of new buildings is called Halsey House, after one of the 
 ground-landlords, the other two being Earl Brownlow and Mr. Strickland. 
 The Square has indeed undergone a change as radical and complete as 
 that which is to be observed in the case of Soho and Golden Squares, with 
 
 1 The Dean of Westminster was so struck by Pearson’s work here, that he appointed him 
 architect to Westminster Abbey. 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 183 
 
 which it has much in common in its decline as it had in the period of its 
 prosperity, as will be seen from such old views of it as are extant, 
 showing a Dutch regularity in the buildings as well as in the formal 
 arrangement of the central garden. Most of its houses are freehold, and 
 a once well-known conveyancer was wont to say, when looking at the some- 
 what untidy state in which the Square was kept, that it was an example 
 of the evils attendant on this sort of tenure — a point of view which does 
 not generally present itself to those who look upon “ freehold ” as the 
 best of all holdings. 
 
 BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 
 
 “ What ? Russell Square ! ” 
 
 There’s lilac there ! 
 
 And Torrington 
 And Woburn Square 
 Intrepid don 
 The season’s wear. 
 
 In Gordon Square and Euston Square — 
 
 There’s lilac, there’s laburnum there ! 
 
 In green and gold and lavender. 
 
 Queen Square and Bedford Square, 
 
 All Bloomsbury and all Soho 
 With every sunbeam gayer grow, 
 
 Greener grow and gayer.” 
 
 Holiday and other Poems, by John Davidson. 
 
 This Square, formed on a site called Bloomsbury, or as it was written 
 originally, Lomsbery, appertaining to the Crown, and where it seems the 
 Royal Mews were situated prior to their removal to Charing Cross, is, 
 if we except the more ancient City squares, one of the oldest in London. 
 It would appear to have been first formed in 1665, its originator being 
 Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, from whom it was first called 
 Southampton Square. The town mansion of this nobleman was situated 
 on what is now the north side of the Square ; and the Square itself, that 
 “ magnificent area ” as Noorthouck calls it, was probably intended to form 
 a sort of adjunct to the residence. Evelyn, writing on February 9, 1665, 
 notes that he “dined at my Lord Treasurer’s, the Earle of Southampton, 
 in Bloomsbury, where he was building a noble square or Piazza, a little 
 towne ; his owne house stands too low, some noble roomes, a pretty cedar 
 chapel, a naked garden to the North, but good aire.” In Aggas’s plan of 
 
1 84 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 1591, Southampton House is shown surrounded by open country, and 
 thus it must have existed for many years, for the original house was 
 built in the reign of Henry VIII., practically on the site of the present 
 Bedford Place. This mansion was eventually pulled down and one 
 erected in its place, probably between the years 1652-1660. In any case 
 the assumption that Inigo Jones, who died in 1652, was its architect 
 appears to be incorrect. Strype describes the house as a “ large building 
 with a spacious court before it for the reception of coaches, and a curious 
 garden behind, which lieth open to the fields, enjoying a wholesome and 
 pleasant air”; and the view of Bloomsbury Square about 1746, showing 
 Southampton House, bears out this description. 
 
 The formation of the Square was something of an innovation, for 
 both St. James’s and Soho Squares were yet to be built, and we can there- 
 fore understand the interest which such a work excited in the mind of 
 the grave Evelyn ; and that Pepys should have called it, as if with some- 
 thing of awe, “ a very great and noble work,” shows that he also was 
 alive to its importance. 
 
 As was not unusual on the first building of the squares, the sides of 
 Southampton Square were given distinctive names ; thus the south side 
 was called Vernon Street ; the east, Seymour Row ; and the west, Allington 
 Row ; and the north side, erected so late as 1 800, after the demolition of 
 Bedford House, and consisting of ten houses, completed the Square ; while 
 just as the great house became Bedford House, from the original South- 
 ampton House, on its passing into the hands of the Russell family, so 
 the name of the Square itself was changed from Southampton to Blooms- 
 bury, although for a considerable period it appears in views and descrip- 
 tions as Southampton or Bloomsbury Square. 
 
 Ralph, as is usual, can find nothing to praise in the Square; in fact • 
 he is, even for him, particularly severe on its demerits ; “ Bloomsbury 
 Square is at present remarkable for nothing but its being a place capable 
 of great improvements,” he writes ; “ there is not one tolerable house 
 in it, and the area in the middle is almost as much neglected as the 
 buildings.” 
 
 For many years both Southampton, or Bedford House, and the 
 Square were sights of London. The Grand Duke Cosimo during his 
 stay in this country, was shown the former as a matter of course ; and 
 De Saussure 1 speaks of the Square in 1725, as being one of the finest in 
 the Metropolis, a description which a later traveller, Count Kilmansegge, 2 
 in 1761, confirms, adding an interesting account of the house, which he 
 
 1 England under the Reigns of George 1. and George II. 
 
 2 Diary of a Journey to England. 
 
BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 185 
 
 calls “ one of the best in London,” at that period : “ The hall, or gallery, 
 on the ground floor, is a fine room, although it does not equal that of 
 Northumberland House. In the place of tapestry there are fine copies 
 of the nine large cartoons by Raphael in the gallery at Hampton Court. 
 The courtyard in front of the house, which is so large that a great many 
 carriages have room to stand there, is separated by a wall from the street, 
 and, as there are two large -gateways, this house has the great convenience, 
 which is wanting at Northumberland House, viz. of enabling you to get 
 away whenever you like without having to wait from two to three hours 
 for your carriage.” 
 
 The copies of the cartoons mentioned by Kilmansegge were the 
 work of Sir James Thornhill, and were originally hung in one of the 
 wings of the mansion, in a gallery specially prepared for them by the 
 Duke of Bedford. They had occupied Thornhill three years in painting, 
 and were worthy of being housed in this stately isolation. When the 
 contents of the house were disposed of by auction, on May 7, i 800, 
 they, together with all the furniture and pictures, were sold ; the 
 cartoons, for which the Duke of Bedford had paid £ 200 at the sale of 
 Thornhill’s collection, being purchased by the Duke of Norfolk for 
 ^450; so at least says Mr. Clinch, but Taylor in his Fine Arts in 
 Great Britain states that they were bought in by the Duke of Bedford, 
 and presented by him to the Royal Academy, then at Somerset House. 
 The furniture and pictures realised about £6000, and some of the 
 prices of the more important lots have been preserved ; thus a “St. John 
 Preaching,” by Raphael, fetched 95 guineas; “ The Archduke Leopold’s 
 Gallery,” by Teniers, 210 guineas; “An Italian Villa,” by Gainsborough, 
 90 guineas ; a landscape, by Cuyp, 200 guineas ; and a set of battle-scenes, 
 by Casanova, 1 which are said to have cost the Duke ^1000, only realised 
 60 guineas ; bronzes and marbles went for similarly ridiculous sums, and 
 the contents of Bedford House may truly be said to have been given 
 away. Among the pictures thus disposed of were probably examples of 
 the work of Isaac Whood, an artist much patronised by the Duke of 
 Bedford, who is mentioned by Walpole as having died in Bloomsbury 
 Square, on February 24, 1752. In the gardens of Bedford House were 
 a double row of lime-trees, which stood on the site of Russell Square, 
 and which Sorbiere in his Voyage en Angleterre refers to when he says that 
 “ on voit les arbres du Palais de Bethfordt par dessus la muraille.” These 
 trees were sold at the same time that the furniture was disposed of ; one 
 
 1 He was born in London of Venetian parents in 1732, was a pupil of Simonini, and like 
 his master painted battle pieces and landscapes. De Loutherbourg was a pupil of his. The 
 Annual Register calls him Cassanovi. 
 
i86 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 row fetching £90, and the other £$o, while the acacia-tree mentioned and 
 praised by Walpole, in his Essay on Landscape Gardening , was also sold. 1 
 Bedford House itself was pulled down and the material put up for auction, 
 the houses on the north side of the Square being subsequently erected 
 on its site. 
 
 There is a good view of the old house in Wilkinson, and a painting of 
 it by Scott, taken from Lord Mansfield’s house in the north-east corner. 
 Other representations of the mansion are to be found in Dodsley’s Environs 
 of London , and also in one of Gillray’s caricatures ; 2 while a drawing of an 
 old carved staircase formerly in Southampton House is given in Archer’s 
 Vestiges of Old London. 
 
 The fields behind Bedford or Southampton House were well known 
 as a spot where duels were of frequent occurrence. “ Where you wretches 
 go and fight duels,” cries Mrs. Steele to Mr. St. John, in Esmond. “Of 
 which the ladies are the cause,” replies her entertainer. Mountfort, the 
 dramatist and actor, who himself met an untimely fate at the hands of the 
 notorious Lord Mohun, refers to this in the epilogue to his play of 
 Greenwich Park , where he says : — 
 
 “ If you’re displeased with what you’ve seen to-night, 
 
 Behind Southampton House we’ll do you right ; 
 
 Who is’t dares draw ’gainst me and Mrs. Knight ?” 
 
 In Luttrell’s Diary there is a reference to one of the numerous en- 
 counters here during the reign of William III. “A duel was yesterday 
 fought between one Mr. Lawes and Mr. Wilson in Bloomsbury Square,” 
 writes the Diarist, under date of April 10, 1694; “the latter was killed 
 upon the spot and the other is sent to Newgate.” Luttrell throws a further 
 light on the identity of the victim, adding, “ ’Tis that Mr. Wilson who for 
 some years past hath made a great figure, living at the rate of ^4000 per 
 annum, without any visible estate ; and the several gentlemen who kept 
 him company, and endeavoured to find out his way of living, could never 
 effect it.” Lawes was subsequently convicted of murder on the following 
 19th of April ; and in the October of the same year, we read of his trying 
 to escape from prison by “filing down 4 bars, but was discovered” ; how- 
 ever, he seems to have eventually succeeded in getting away, for Luttrell 
 mentions a report (January 22, 1695) of his being apprehended in 
 Leicestershire riding fast towards Scotland ; which news is quickly followed 
 by the intelligence that the wrong man had been caught; and as we hear 
 
 1 Dodsley’s Annual Register for May 1800, gives an account of the sale ; and Dobie has 
 printed an extract in a footnote to his work on Bloomsbury. 
 
 2 Note in London Past and Present. 
 
~~ 
 
BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 1 8 7 
 
 nothing more of the culprit, it would seem that he made good his escape. 
 Thus far Luttrell — but the antagonists in this quarrel were no ordinary 
 men, for the Mr. Wilson was the once celebrated Beau Wilson ; the Mr. 
 Lawes no less a person than the great John Law himself, who eventually 
 received a full pardon in 1719. The cause of the quarrel, according to 
 Evelyn, “arose from his (Wilson’s) taking away his own sister from 
 lodging in a house where this Law had a mistress, which the mistress of 
 the house, thinking a disparagement to it, and losing by it, instigated Law 
 to this duel.” 1 
 
 Evelyn appears to have been equally intrigue with Luttrell as to the 
 source of Wilson’s income, which he says was “ a subject of much dis- 
 course.” The spot where these encounters took place was that “ vast area 
 renowned in the seventeenth century for peaches and snipe.” 2 It was 
 indeed, at one time, as Gray says in a letter to Wharton, who had come to 
 live in the vicinity, “ a region of air and sunshine.” 
 
 Southampton or Bedford House, which Noorthouck describes as 
 “ elegant though low, having but one story,” housed in its time some 
 notable people. There was the fourth Earl of Southampton, that staunch 
 supporter of Charles I., whom Clarendon described as “ in his nature 
 melancholic and reserved in his conversation,” who became Lord Treasurer 
 in 1660, and died at Southampton House, which, as we have seen, he 
 built, on May 16, 1667. The mansion then passed into the possession of 
 his daughter, Lady Rachel Wriothesley, who, marrying William, Lord 
 Russell, became that Lady Rachel Russell who is known as an example of 
 pious and courageous womanhood, and, as it has been observed, was “alike 
 exemplary in prosperity and adversity, when observed by multitudes, or 
 hidden in retirement.” The history of herself and her noble husband is 
 too well known to require recapitulation here. These two were certainly 
 the most illustrious of those who, at various times, lived in Southampton 
 House. It is said that the proposal was made by the Duke of York that 
 William, Lord Russell, should be beheaded in Bloomsbury Square, but that 
 the King, to his honour, refused to listen to such a proposal, and so this 
 true patriot was executed in Lincoln’s Inn Fields ; but on his way to 
 execution he passed his old home and for a moment his fortitude forsook 
 him; then overcoming it, he exclaimed, “The bitterness of death is now 
 passed,” and Dr. Tillotson saw a tear gather in his eye. His son suc- 
 ceeded to the Dukedom of Bedford in 1700, and the mansion thus passed 
 into the Russell family, and became known as Bedford House. Lady 
 Rachel continued to reside here in what she termed “ that desolate habita- 
 
 1 Diary for April 22, 1694 ; also see Timbs’s Romance of London. 
 
 2 Macaulay. 
 
1 88 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 tion of mine ... a place of terror to me,” till her death in the reign of 
 George I. (1723), and as some of her celebrated letters from here are 
 headed “ Russell House,” it would seem that the mansion must have been 
 so called for a short time before its name was changed to Bedford 
 House. 
 
 It was during Lady Rachel’s occupancy of Bedford House that 
 Montague House, close by, was burnt to the ground in January 1686. 
 In a letter to Dr. Fitzwilliam, she thus mentions the occurrence : “ If you 
 have heard of the dismal accident in this neighbourhood, you will easily 
 believe Tuesday night was not a quiet one with us. About one o’clock 
 in the night I heard a great noise in the Square, so little ordinary, I called 
 up a servant, and sent her down to hear the occasion ; she brought up a 
 very sad one, that Montague House was on fire ; and it was so indeed ; 
 it burnt with so great violence, the house was consumed by five o’clock. 
 The wind blew strong this way, so that we lay under fire a great part of 
 the time, the sparks and flames covering the house and filling the court. 
 My boy awoke and said he was almost suffocated with smoke, but being 
 told the reason, would see it, and so was satisfied without fear.” 
 
 It was a son of the “boy” here mentioned, who became fourth Duke 
 of Bedford and succeeded to the possession of the mansion ; and he it was 
 whom Junius subsequently lashed with such biting invective. Looking 
 back with more equanimity and a greater sense of proportion than con- 
 temporaries could be expected to bring to the contemplation of political 
 disputes, the Duke does not seem to have deserved either the unpopularity 
 he laboured under or the abuse Junius poured upon him. It was he 
 who, in 1748, gave a great masqued ball at Bedford House, at which 
 the King and the Duke of Cumberland were present together with a most 
 brilliant company; and, as a proof of the then rural conditions obtaining 
 around the mansion, his Duchess on one occasion sent out cards of 
 invitation to her friends to “ take tea and walk in the fields.” A con- 
 temporary notice records the death of the first wife of this Duke thus, 
 “Died September 1734, at Southampton House, Bloomsbury Square, in 
 the twenty-sixth year of her age, of a consumption, the most noble Diana, 
 Duchess of Bedford, &c., sister of the present Duke of Marlborough, 
 youngest daughter of the late Earl of Sunderland.” 
 
 Bedford House was demolished two years before the death of the fifth 
 Duke, who had succeeded his grandfather in 1771. 
 
 As we have seen, the Parliamentary forces raised a fortification in 
 Grosvenor Square, so in Bloomsbury Square, “two batteries and a breast- 
 work ” were erected in the gardens of Bedford House in 1642. 
 
 Besides the successive owners of Bedford House, Bloomsbury Square 
 
BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 189 
 
 has numbered amongst its residents several very distinguished men. Of 
 these was Sir Charles Sedley, one of that group of Restoration poets 
 who clothed very questionable sentiments in unquestionably simple and, 
 on occasion, fine and beautiful language. If not so grossly indecent as 
 Rochester or Etheridge, he was if possible more insidious and therefore 
 more dangerous. In which part of the Square he lived is not recorded, 
 but we know he was residing here in the January of 1691, for on the 
 13th of that month, Luttrell enters in his Diary the fact that, “Sir Charles 
 Sedley’s House in Bloomsbury Square was lately searched upon an infor- 
 mation that the Bishop was harboured there.” Surely an inappropriate 
 dwelling-place for a bishop, when we remember that it was the residence 
 of the hero of the infamous frolic at the Rose Tavern in Covent Garden. 
 But, morals apart, Sedley must have been a man of brilliant parts. “ No 
 one,” says Jesse, “was more sought after for his society or admired for 
 his talents,” 1 and Shadwell goes so far as to affirm that he has heard him 
 “speak more wit at a supper, than all his adversaries could have written 
 in a year.” He died here on August 20, 1701. 2 
 
 Pennant says that “ Bloomsbury Square was the residence of many of 
 our nobility ; in later times, that of the more wealthy gentlemen of the 
 long robe.” In support of the former part of this statement I find a 
 record of the Earl of Lincoln dying at his house here, on November 25, 
 1692; 3 while the latter is substantiated by the following entry in 
 Luttrell: “May 2nd (1682), at night, that learned lawyer Sir William 
 Jones, at his house in Southampton Square of a feavour, much lamented 
 by most persons.” The conjunction of Sedley and an administrator of 
 the law is not altogether inappropriate, but there does seem an anomaly 
 in having to place the name of the good Richard Baxter so close to 
 that of the profligate rhymester. It is, however, a fact that the learned 
 divine was dwelling in Southampton Square at that particular period 
 when he was being harried by the notorious Jefferies. Here he was living 
 when he lost his wife, who died in his “ most pleasant and convenient 
 house,” 4 on June 14, t 6 8 1 : here, too, on October 21, 1682, he was seized 
 at his house, and carried to prison on the Five Mile Act, for staying within 
 five miles of a corporation, 5 for which heinous offence and for “writing 
 and publishing scandalous and seditious notes on the New Testament,” 
 he was fined 500 marks, bound to find sureties for his good behaviour 
 for seven years, and committed to prison till this was done. 
 
 Some years later, in 1728, we learn from the New Review of London 
 
 1 Court of England under Stuarts , vol. iv. p. 265. 
 
 2 London Past and Present. 3 Luttrell, vol. ii. p. 625. 
 
 4 Literary Landmarks of London. 6 Luttrell, vol. i. p. 230. 
 
190 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 that the Earl of Nottingham and Lord Compton were living in the 
 Square; while Walford adds to these the names of Lords Northampton, 
 who died at his house here in 1721, Paget, and Carleton ; but the lady 
 of quality referred to in the following advertisement from the London 
 Gazette for 1674, No. 946, 1 is not so well known, although she is thus 
 proved to have lived here : — 
 
 “ Lost from my Lady Baltingglasses house in the great square of 
 Bloomsbury, the first - of this instant December, a great old Indian spaniel 
 or mongrel, as big as a mastiff ; he hath curled and black hair all over, 
 except in his forefeet, which are a little white ; he hath also cropt ears, 
 and is bowed and limps a little in one of his forefeet. If any can bring 
 news thereof, they shall have twenty shillings for their pains.” 
 
 If we are unable to identify the owner of this equally obscure quad- 
 ruped, we shall have no difficulty in recognising another illustrious 
 dweller in the Square. For here lived for a time, and died, Philip Stan- 
 hope, second Earl of Chesterfield. So well known was his grandson, 
 the great Earl, that he himself has been forgotten, but in the reign of 
 Charles II. he made no inconsiderable figure, and de Grammount, who 
 says of him “ il avait le visage fort agreable, la tete assez belle, peu de 
 taille, et moins d'air,” makes frequent mention of him in his Memoirs. 
 Like his illustrious grandson, the second Earl was a writer of letters, and 
 these were given to the world, so late as 1829, in a now rather scarce 
 volume entitled Letters of Philip , second Earl of Chesterfield , to several 
 celebrated Individuals of the time of Charles II., James II . , Gfc. He also 
 left in manuscript a short diary of events occurring to himself, on which 
 is based a prefatory memoir by the editor of the Letters. He was a 
 devoted adherent to the royal family, and in 1658, was thrown into 
 prison three several times for his loyalty to its then exiled members. 
 When the Restoration was brought about, it is pleasant, therefore, to find 
 his services receiving recognition, for he was appointed, with Lord Dorset, 
 Sewer at the Coronation of Charles II., which office he also filled at the 
 Coronation of James II. ; and he was made Lord Chamberlain to Catherine 
 of Braganza, besides filling other posts of importance under the last 
 two Stuarts. It is gratifying to find, that, unlike the time-serving traitor 
 Marlborough, Chesterfield did not transfer his allegiance to William, 
 although, had he done so, he would have been serving a better master than 
 his last. He died in 1713, in his eightieth year; and as we learn that 
 the best part of his latter years was spent amid the charms of his country 
 estate, Bretley, it would seem that his occupancy of the house in Blooms- 
 bury Square was but fitful, although his death took place within its walls 
 1 Quoted in Cunningham’s Hatidbook of Londoti. 
 
BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 191 
 
 on January 28, 1 7 1 3 - 1 He was married three times, and on each occasion 
 added an important link to his own great family ; his first wife being a 
 daughter of the tenth Earl of Northumberland ; his second, of the first 
 Duke of Ormond ; and his third, of the second Earl of Carnarvon. 
 
 A letter from Lord Arlington to Lord Chesterfield, dated Octo- 
 ber 20, 1681, and containing a reference to the house in Southampton 
 Square, is contained in the volume before mentioned : “There (London) I 
 shall with great impatience wait your Lordships arrival,” says Arlington, 
 “ wishing in the meantime you would give me commission to let your 
 house in Southampton Square, and hire you another very near Whitehall, 
 that I might, with less trouble to you, enjoy the honour and satisfaction of 
 a frequent conversation with you.” 
 
 But a more famous even than Lord Chesterfield, in spite of himself and 
 his great alliances, once lived in the Square, for hither came, in 1712, Dick 
 Steele, to reside “ in the prettiest house to receive the prettiest woman,” at 
 what he describes as “ the fifth door ” ; 2 “ having a small house in Jermyn 
 Street for which he couldn’t pay, and a country house at Hampton on 
 which he had borrowed money.” 3 Here it is said he once gave a grand 
 dinner-party, the servants’ places being taken by bailiffs who were in the 
 house at the time, and who probably enjoyed their, perhaps, not unprece- 
 dented duties and the perquisites attending them. Writing to Addison, 
 good-tempered, easy going Sir Richard thus alludes to the circumstance : 
 “ I fared like a distressed prince, who calls in a powerful neighbour to his 
 aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I 
 could not subsist without dependence on him.” “ Poor, needy Prince of 
 Bloomsbury ! ” adds Thackeray, “ think of him in his palace, with his 
 allies from Chancery Lane ominously guarding him.” 4 Here Steele re- 
 mained for three years, living from hand to mouth ; with a town mansion 
 and a country house, and immortality at the end of his pen. 5 
 
 Another writer is connected with Bloomsbury Square, for here, through 
 the kindly offices of his friend Dyson, Mark Akenside was established as a 
 physician, either in 1749 or the following year. “ Mr. Dyson,” says Park, 6 
 
 1 An interesting article on the second Earl of Chesterfield appeared in Temple Bar for 
 October, 1876. 
 
 2 Hutton’s Literary Landmarks of London, p. 268. 
 
 3 Thackeray, English Humorists. 
 
 4 “ Do you know Bloomsbury Square ?” asks Mrs. Steele of Mr. St. John in Esmond. “ Do 
 I know the Mall ? Do I know the Opera ? Do I know the reigning toast ? Why, Bloomsbury 
 is the very height of the mode,” says Mr. St. John. “ ’Tis rus in urbe , you have gardens all the 
 way to Hampstead, and palaces round about you, Southampton House and Montague House.” 
 
 5 See Aitken’s Life of Steele, where these letters are given, dated from his house in Blooms- 
 bury Square ; while one to the Lord High Treasurer, dated Bloomsbury Square, June 4, 1713, 
 is given in Bisset’s Life of Steele. 
 
 6 History of Hampstead ( 1 8 1 8), p. 331. 
 
192 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 “ parted with his villa at North End, and settled his friend (Akenside) in 
 a sensible house in Bloomsbury Square, assigning him, with unexampled 
 liberality, ^300 a year, which enabled him to keep a chariot and make a 
 proper appearance in the world.” Akenside had returned to England 
 about five years earlier from Leyden, where he had been pursuing his medi- 
 cal studies, and had at first begun to practise in Northampton, in 1744, 
 in which year his magnum opus, The Pleasures of Imagination, appeared. 
 Johnson tells how Dodsley once informed him that when a copy of that 
 work was offered him, the price demanded, viz. ^120, appeared to him 
 to be too much for such a production, but on showing it to Pope the latter 
 advised him to make no niggardly offer, for it was the work of no everyday 
 writer.” 1 
 
 In Northampton, Akenside had to contend with a well-established prac- 
 titioner, Dr. Stonehouse, against whom he struggled vainly to build up 
 a practice. Giving up the attempt, he removed to Hampstead, and thence, 
 by the help, as we have seen, of Mr. Dyson, to London. Here, although 
 known as a poet, he had a keen struggle to become a flourishing doctor. As 
 Johnson says, “ a physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of 
 fortune,” and had it not been for the timely help of his patron it is probable 
 that he would have died worsted in the contest ; as it was, he never attained 
 any great degree of popularity, although the fact that he was admitted a 
 Fellow of the Royal Society, took a medical degree at Cambridge, and 
 became a member of the College of Physicians, proves that he must have 
 made some mark in his profession ; which is further attested by the fact 
 that he was appointed Physician to the Queen, and to St. Thomas’s Hospital, 
 and made some reputation for himself by several series of lectures which 
 he delivered. The fact remains, however, that he is enshrined, on a com- 
 paratively low niche it is true, among poets, and has ceased to be remem- 
 bered as a doctor. He died at the early age of forty-eight, on June 23, 
 1770, although not, apparently, as Bucke, one of his biographers, seems to 
 infer, in Bloomsbury Square, but in a house in Old Burlington Street ; and 
 is buried in St. James’s Church, Piccadilly. 
 
 But although Akenside could hardly be said to adequately represent 
 physic in its highest form, in Bloomsbury Square, another one-time resident 
 here fully did so, in the person of the celebrated Dr. Radcliffe. This 
 eccentric man is chiefly remembered now by his magnificent donations 
 of money and books to the University of Oxford, but in his own day he 
 was the fashionable physician, and his house, No. 5 Bloomsbury Square, 
 was thronged by those who sought his skilful aid. He was physician to 
 William III., and there is a well-known story of the King, on his return 
 
 Life of Akejiside. 
 
BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 193 
 
 from Holland in 1697, sending for Radcliffe and showing him his ankles, 
 which were very much swollen, and inquiring, “ What think you of these ? ” 
 whereupon the doctor, who was admittedly no courtier, exclaimed, 
 “ Why truly I would not have your Majesty’s two legs for your three 
 kingdoms,” a reply which is said to have cost him the King’s patronage. 
 His connection with William’s successor might have had still more serious 
 consequences, for on Anne’s being taken with her last illness, Radcliffe 
 was sent for, but coolly replied that he had himself taken physic, and 
 could not attend. A few hours afterwards the Oueen expired, and it 
 was seriously considered by Parliament whether the recalcitrant physician 
 should not be summoned and censured, on public grounds. He seems him- 
 self even to have seen the advisability of retiring into the country for a 
 time ; for, writing from Carshalton to Dr. Mead, he says that he believes 
 that if he went to London he would be torn in pieces by the enraged 
 populace. Great as his reputation was, it was generally believed, according 
 to Burnet, that his treatment of Queen Mary, who died of smallpox in 
 1694, was responsible for her death. Among other eccentricities, Radcliffe 
 had a great dislike to pay his debts — how many similar eccentrics have 
 lived in all ages ! — and the Dr. Mead mentioned above tells a story in 
 point, in his Richardsoniana : “ A paviour, after long and fruitless at- 
 tempts, caught him just getting out of his chariot at his own door in 
 Bloomsbury Square, and set upon him. ‘ Why, you rascal ! ’ said the 
 doctor, ‘ do you pretend to be paid for such a piece of work ? Why, 
 you have spoiled my pavement, and then covered it over with earth to 
 hide your bad work.’ ‘Doctor,’ said the paviour, ‘mine is not the 
 only bad work the earth hides ! ’ ‘ You dog, you ! ’ said the doctor, 
 
 ‘ are you a wit ? You must be poor, come in ’ . . . and paid him.” 1 Dr. 
 Mead succeeded his friend in the occupancy of the house in Bloomsbury 
 Square. 
 
 But a still more illustrious scientific man lived in the Square, and one 
 who, like Radcliffe, was a benefactor to the national collections of literary 
 treasures, for here Sir Hans Sloane, who may be regarded as the founder 
 of the British Museum, lived in a house on the south side of the Square, 
 “ at the corner of Southampton Street next Bloomsbury Square,” in which 
 way the naturalist Ray addresses him in 1696, while another friend, 
 writing to him about five years later, directs “ to Sir Hans Sloane, at his 
 house at the corner of Southampton Square, Bloomsbury.” Here he 
 collected, in vast quantities, those curiosities and books which at last, in 
 1725, numbered 26,200 specimens of natural history, as well as 200 
 
 1 Cunningham’s Handbook of London, vol. i. p. 100. 
 
 N 
 
i9+ THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 volumes of preserved plants. 1 His library of manuscripts, now known as 
 the Sloane collection at the British Museum, consisted of 4100 volumes; 
 and his library of printed books, numbering no less than 50,000 volumes, 
 also adorns the national collection. 
 
 It is probable that the house in Bloomsbury Square was insufficient 
 in size to contain these vast accumulations, for we find Sir Hans Sloane, 
 in February 1742, beginning to remove his collections to Sir Thomas 
 More’s old house at Chelsea, which he had purchased in 1736, for £2500, 
 and which, unfortunately, “ the father of Natural History ” pulled down. 
 The famous gates, the work of Inigo Jones, he presented to the Earl of 
 Burlington, who placed them at the entrance of Chiswick House, whence 
 they were removed, only a few years ago, to the front of Devonshire 
 House, Piccadilly. Sir Hans Sloane became subsequently the owner of 
 a large portion of the parish of Chelsea, in the old church of which he 
 is buried under an ugly monument on which the inscription tells us 
 that “ the President of the Royal Society and of the College of Physi- 
 cians died in the year of our Lord 1753, the ninety-second year of his 
 age, without the least pain of body and with a conscious serenity of 
 mind.” 2 It was at Sir Hans Sloane’s house in Bloomsbury Square 
 that he once received a visit from Benjamin Franklin, who came to 
 see his curiosities, “for which,” says Franklin quaintly, “he paid me 
 handsomely.” 
 
 Angelo also records that the famous Dr. De Manneduke, “who was at 
 the head of that class of visionaries who practised animal magnetism, lived 
 in some style in Bloomsbury Square. Here he held conversaziones in his 
 well-furnished drawing-rooms on Sunday evenings which were numerously 
 attended for several seasons,” and where were carried on what the same 
 authority terms, “ absurdities and tomfooleries.” 3 
 
 If Bloomsbury Square is not so closely identified with the legal calling 
 as Russell Square, it has nevertheless had three illustrious lawyers dwelling 
 in it in past times. One of them, Lord Ellenborough, lived at the house 
 at the corner of the Square where it is joined by Orange Street. Lady 
 Ellenborough, then the beautiful Miss Towny, is mentioned by Smith in 
 his Book for a Rainy Day , and his last editor, in a footnote, recalls the fact 
 that “ her beauty was so great that passers-by would linger to watch 
 her watering the flowers on the balcony of their house in Bloomsbury 
 
 1 Clinch’s Bloomsbury and St. Giles , p. 138. Thoresby, in his Diary , mentions visiting 
 Dr. Sloane here on several occasions and inspecting many of these treasures. 
 
 2 See Blunt’s Handbook to Chelsea , p. 53. 
 
 3 Among those living in the Square in 1795, ma y be mentioned the Duke of Bedford, Baron 
 Hotham, Richard Meux, Esq., Lady Davenport, Craven Ord, Esq., Dr. Coornbe, E. Ommaney, 
 Esq., and Lady Duckenfields. 
 
BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 195 
 
 Square.” 1 It was this lady, who figures in the anecdote told by Rogers, 
 who desired on one occasion to accompany her lord on circuit, to which 
 Lord Ellenborough agreed, providing she did not encumber the carriage 
 with bandboxes — a special abhorrence of his. During the first day’s 
 journey, his Lordship’s legs struck against something under the carriage 
 seat, which he found, to his annoyance, was a bandbox. Furious at a 
 contravention of his express wishes, he opened the carriage window and 
 threw the box to the four winds. The carriage stopped, and the foot- 
 man, thinking the box had tumbled out by accident, got down to replace 
 it, when Lord Ellenborough thundered out, “ Drive on ! ” and on they 
 drove, leaving the bandbox in the ditch. Arrived at their destination, the 
 Judge proceeded to robe himself for court, presently demanding his wig. 
 “Your wig, my Lord ?” said the servant; “it was in the box which fell 
 out of the carriage window ! ” 
 
 In 1802, Lord Ellenborough was made Lord Chief Justice, and some 
 years after this event, 2 he removed to St. James’s Square, where he rented 
 Lichfield House before purchasing No. 13 in the Square, and where I 
 have already had occasion to refer to him. In the house in Bloomsbury 
 Square there was a special room reserved for Dr. Paley, whenever he 
 was in town, but whether this privilege was continued in St James’s 
 Square I do not know. 
 
 Another Lord Chief Justice who once resided here was Trevor, who 
 inhabited a house on the west side of the Square ; 3 while Chief Justice 
 Willes died here in 1761 ; and Charles Yorke died in a house in the 
 Square three days after he had been practically forced by the King to 
 accept the Great Seal, on January 20, 1770. But the most illustrious 
 legal figure connected with Bloomsbury Square is that of the great Lord 
 Mansfield, not only from his own personality but from the untoward 
 circumstance attending his residence here. 
 
 His house was in the north-east corner of the Square. Here it was 
 that the Gordon Rioters, in 1780, put a climax to their work of senseless 
 destruction by setting fire to his house and burning the entire contents, 
 which were thrown into the Square in order to make a better bonfire, and 
 thus more effectually to “glut the ire ” of the frenzied rabble. Angelo 4 
 says he “ only saw the walls of his Lordship’s house, the inside was totally 
 bare,” and Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, who was an eye-witness of this holocaust, 
 
 1 In Louis of Bavaria’s famous “ Gallery of Beauties ” at Munich, is a portrait of a Lady 
 Ellenborough. Little or nothing appears to be known of the original of this picture, which 
 may possibly be a portrait of the Lady Ellenborough mentioned in the text. 
 
 2 That he was still here in the early part of 1806, is proved by a letter of his written to Lord 
 Eldon on January 6th of that year. 
 
 3 Walford’s Old and New London, vol. iv. p. 538. 4 Reminiscences , vol. ii. p. 115. 
 
196 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 thus describes what he and the friends who accompanied him, witnessed on 
 that fearful night : “ Having got into a hackney coach,” he writes, “ we 
 drove to Bloomsbury Square ; attracted to that spot by a rumour, generally 
 spread, that Lord Mansfield’s residence, situate at the north-east corner, 
 was either already burnt, or destined for destruction. . . . Quitting 
 
 the coach, we crossed the Square, and had scarcely got under the wall 
 
 of Bedford House, when we heard the door of Lord Mansfield’s house 
 burst open with violence. In a few minutes all the contents of the 
 apartments, being precipitated from the windows, were piled up, and wrapt 
 in flames. A file of foot-soldiers arriving, drew up near the blazing 
 pile ; but without either attempting to quench the fire or to impede 
 the mob, who were indeed far too numerous to admit of their being 
 dispersed, or even intimidated, by a small detachment of infantry. The 
 populace remained masters ; while we, after surveying the spectacle for a 
 short time, moved on into Holborn.” 1 The whole of Lord Mansfield’s 
 magnificent library and his invaluable papers fell a prey to the fury 
 of the insensate populace ; but what, we are told, his Lordship most 
 
 regretted, was the loss of the MS. of a speech he had once delivered 
 
 on the Privilege of Parliament, in which was embodied, as he himself 
 once said to “ Single Speech ” Hamilton, all the eloquence and legal know- 
 ledge of which he was master ; 2 and once in the House of Lords he 
 pathetically referred to the incident, when giving his opinion on a legal 
 question : “ I speak not this from books ; for books I have none.” A 
 fragment of one of these treasured volumes we know to have been rescued 
 and perhaps still preserved, for Dr. Warner, writing to George Selwyn, 
 says, “The fire, they say, is stopped, but what a rueful scene it has left 
 behind ! Sunt lachryma rerum indeed ; the sentiment that struck me upon 
 picking up a page of Lord Mansfield’s Virgil yesterday in Bloomsbury 
 Square.” 
 
 It is probable that Lord Mansfield and his wife saved their own lives 
 by escaping through a back door, for had they fallen into the hands of 
 the infuriated people, it is impossible to sav to what lengths their enemies 
 would not have gone, particularly when we remember that it was a 
 religious animosity which prompted their attack on the house, and such 
 hostility is proverbially the most bitter and cruel. It is hardly necessary 
 to remind the reader of the vivid description of the work of destruction 
 given in Barnaby Rudge. Two of the rioters, mere boys, were subse- 
 
 1 Historical Memoirs, vol. i. p. 320-21. 
 
 2 Robert Smith, father of James and Horace, used to relate how he remembered, the 
 following morning, seeing the smouldering remains of Lord Mansfield’s furniture. See 
 Beavan’s James and Horace Smith, p. 33. 
 
BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 197 
 
 quently hanged in Bloomsbury Square, and Dickens notes how, “ as the 
 cart was about to glide from under them, it was observed that they stood 
 with their faces from, not to, the house they had assisted to despoil, and 
 their misery was protracted that this omission might be remedied.” 1 
 
 Lord Mansfied is too well known for it to be necessary to enlarge on 
 his career or attainments, but I may note that his countenance was 
 said to have been indescribably beautiful. “ It was an assemblage of 
 genius, dignity, and good nature, which none could observe without 
 reverence and regard.” 2 Even Walpole, who was not particularly friendly 
 to him, says, “ his figure was engaging from a decent openness ; ” while in 
 the Malmesbury Letters, he is described as “dignity and reason itself,” 
 a character which the portrait that Sir Joshua has left of him fully bears 
 out. After having filled the offices of Solicitor and Attorney General, 
 Lord Chief Justice, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Speaker of the 
 House of Lords, &c., he died in 1773, at the great age of eighty-eight. 
 His house in Bloomsbury Square was afterwards replaced by three separate 
 houses, Nos. 28 and 29 Bloomsbury Square, and No. 9 Bloomsbury Place. 
 
 Among other notable residents in the Square was Isaac Disraeli, who 
 lived at No. 6, within a stone’s throw of his beloved British Museum 
 Library, for a number of years, 1818 to 1829, before he finally settled 
 at Bradenham House. Isaac Disraeli is known as the author of those 
 interesting compilations, the Curiosities of Literature, Amenities of Literature, 
 Calamities of Authors, and a variety of other works of a like nature, but his 
 magnum opus, for which he received the honorary D.C.L. at Oxford, his 
 Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles /., appears, somewhat unjustly, 
 to be forgotten, notwithstanding that it is a work of great charm and 
 shows a remarkable amount of original research ; it is, too, refreshing in 
 that it makes out a case for probably, with the exception of Richard III., 
 the most maligned monarch who has sat on the throne of Great Britain. 
 It was, too, Disraeli, who anticipated Forster in throwing light on the 
 hitherto obscure but great and pathetic figure of Sir John Eliot. Rogers, 
 who was fond of saying spiteful things, once said of Isaac Disraeli, 
 “ There is a man with only half an intellect, who writes books that must 
 live.” 
 
 No. 6 Bloomsbury Square has thus a claim to be remembered, but 
 another cause makes it famous, for here were spent some of the early 
 years of Benjamin Disraeli ; 3 wit, dandy, author, Member of Parliament, 
 
 7 1 Cowper’s two short poems on this event will be remembered by those, probably now few, 
 who still read his works. 
 
 2 Reminiscences , by C. Butler, vol. i. p. 131. 
 
 3 He stayed occasionally with his father here, and a letter from him is extant dated from 
 here on March 19, 1828. 
 
198 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, Prime Minister of England, and Earl of 
 Beaconsfield ! whose career was the wonder of his time ; who first 
 taught this country to think imperially, and was the first minister who, 
 not by force of arms but by force of genius, made foreign nations to 
 realise that the British Empire was as much to be feared and respected, 
 as when Marlborough led the charge at Blenheim, or Wellington broke 
 the power of Napoleon at Waterloo. Bloomsbury Square is the centre 
 of many memories ; as we have seen, it has been the abode of great per- 
 sonalities, but surely no memory can be brighter or no personality more 
 illustrious than that of the great man, who as a boy walked in its garden, 
 and in later life extended the fame of his country throughout the civilised 
 world. 
 
 There was at one time a tradition that Benjamin Disraeli was actually 
 born at No. 6, but this was effectually disposed of by Mr. Hutton in 
 his Literary Landmarks of London , where the question is carefully dis- 
 cussed ; and as the result of these investigations does not place Blooms- 
 bury Square as the scene of Disraeli’s birth, 1 I need not recapitulate 
 the pros and cons here. The story, which, if it did not actually give rise 
 to the report helped to keep it alive, may, however, be again told. It 
 was first related in S. C. Hall’s Retrospect of a Long Life , and I may 
 merely remind the reader that Lord Beaconsfield was not averse from 
 flights of imaginary retrospect, and also that great men have often been 
 notoriously uncertain as to the actual place of their birth. This is what 
 Mr. Hall sets down : 2 “ Montagu Corry (Lord Rowton) told me that 
 not long ago Lord Beaconsfield visited the house (in Bloomsbury Square) 
 and asked leave to go over it, which was granted, although the attendant 
 had no idea that the courtesy was extended to the Prime Minister. He sat 
 for some time pondering and reflecting — a grand past and a great future 
 opening before his mental vision — in the room in which he was born.” 
 
 According to Cunningham, this house, which was described by Smith 
 as “ the first house from Hart Street,” was built by Isaac Ware, who 
 published a Palladio , and built Chesterfield House. But Mr. Rutton, 
 in an interesting article cn the subject, inclines to the belief that it 
 was the next house, No. 5, which was built by the eminent architect; 
 although Mr. Rutton’s researches have not brought to light any actual 
 reference to Ware in the old leases, &c. of No. 5, which was devised in 
 1744, to one John Deval. 3 Ware, who it will be remembered had once 
 
 1 The elder Disraeli paid rates on this house from 1817 to 1829, so Benjamin would have 
 been about twelve when his father came here. 
 
 2 The story is also given by Mr. Hutton. 
 
 3 See “ Bloomsbury Square : Isaac Ware and Isaac D’ Israeli Residents.” By W. L. Rutton, 
 Esq., F.S.A., in the Home Counties Magazine. 
 
BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 199 
 
 been a sweep’s boy, and according to Nollekens had been rescued from 
 this employment by a gentleman who saw him making drawings of the 
 elevation of Whitehall on the flagstones, himself resided in the Square, 
 but whether his death in 1766, occurred here or at a country house he 
 had at Westbourn, north of Bayswater, is not recorded ; it is however 
 said that he retained the stain of soot in his face to the day of his 
 death ! 1 
 
 One of the few painters who once lived in the Square was Isaac Whood, 
 who painted portraits in oils, 2 and curiously enough in black lead on 
 vellum, who died in his house here, on February 24, 1752. While 
 another, who also lived in the Square, was Isaac Fuller, who executed 
 portraits and historical subjects, and among other things the altar-piece 
 at Magdalen, Oxford, and the altar-cloth at Wadham. He died here 
 on July 17, 1672 ; and Walpole mentions, too, one Sevonyans who painted 
 a staircase in a house called Little Montague House, at the corner of the 
 Square. 
 
 Among other residents here was Sir Anthony Panizzi, who as an 
 Italian exile had, through the good offices of Lord Brougham, procured an 
 appointment in the British Museum in 1839, to which institution he was 
 appointed Chief Librarian in 1856, an office he held for a number of 
 years ; when, on his retirement, he took No. 3 1 Bloomsbury Square, where 
 he died in 1879; having solaced his latter days reading his favourite 
 Virgil and Dante. Dr. Garnett thus speaks of him : “ Panizzi was a 
 truly great man, of immense force of character, daring and magnificent 
 conceptions, southern passions tempered by northern acuteness, and enough 
 administrative talent to have governed a kingdom. He was imperious and 
 despotic, but large-hearted and magnanimous.” 3 
 
 Another gentleman connected with the British Museum once lived in 
 the Square, in the person of the Rev. Thomas Hartwell Horne, afterwards 
 Rector of St. Edmund the King and St. Nicholas Aeon, 4 who went to the 
 Museum as a cataloguer in 1842, and died at his house in the Square on 
 January 27, 1862. He is mentioned by Smith in his Book for a Rainy Day 
 as a great authority on old books ; for, speaking of a copy of a rare work 
 entitled The Post Angel or Universal Entertainment , published in 1702, 
 Smith says that it is not mentioned by Watt, the compiler of Bibliotheca 
 
 1 Century of Anecdote. 
 
 2 One of Archbishop Wake, by Whood, is now in Lambeth Palace. 
 
 3 Celebrities of the Century , quoted by Harrison in Memorable London Houses. I may 
 here note that William Bowyer, the printer, and once a member of the Club at Tom’s Coffee 
 House, resided for a time in the Square. 
 
 4 So stated in a note to the last edition of Smith’s Rainy Day , but Cunningham says that 
 this church was destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt. 
 
200 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Britannica , and “ what is more remarkable, the Rev. Hartwell Horne, of 
 the British Museum, never heard of it.” 1 
 
 Edmund Lodge, the well-known author of Memoirs of Illustrious 
 Personages of Great Britain , which, on account of the fine plates with which 
 that work was adorned, is known more popularly as Lodge s Portraits , also 
 lived in Bloomsbury Square, and died at his house there on January 1 6, 
 1839. He had originally been in the army, but a love of historical inquiry 
 led him to seek admission into the Heralds’ College, where he became 
 eventually Clarenceux King at Arms, and was created a Knight of the 
 Guelphic Order. His researches resulted in other works besides the one 
 named, such as his Life of Sir Julius Caesar and his Illustrations of British 
 History. Sir Walter Scott, who frequently consulted this latter work, 
 once wrote of him, that his “ talents as an Historian and Antiquary are 
 well known to the public,” and refers to his “ patient powers of collecting 
 information from the most obscure and hidden sources . . . and the 
 talent for selecting the facts which are the rarest and most interesting, 
 and presenting them to the general reader in a luminous and concise 
 manner.” One other resident 2 in this Square must be mentioned in the 
 person of Miss Sarah Booth, who as an actress attracted in her day no 
 small amount of attention, one of her most successful parts being that 
 of “Juliet,” in which role she was painted. This full-length portrait used 
 to hang on the staircase of the house she occupied in Bloomsbury Square, 
 and here Mrs. Crosland notes that she frequently saw it. Macready acted 
 in a benefit performance on behalf of Miss Booth on June 30, 1818, 
 enacting the part of Posthumus in Cymbeline to the Iachimo of Young. 
 
 Miss Booth is said to have been both “ well informed and a thorough 
 gentlewoman, and her talents versatile.” She often acted with the young 
 Roscius, of whom she said that “ though apparently inspired on the stage, 
 he was still the child off it.” 3 
 
 Bloomsbury Square is to-day largely given up to offices and institutions. 
 Architects and solicitors greatly affect it, and although some of the houses 
 still retain that residential character which they had in the past, its day 
 as a fashionable centre seems to have irrevocably gone. No. 17, in the 
 north-west corner, is now the headquarters of the Pharmaceutical Society, 
 which was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1843 5 an d * n th e same house, 
 
 1 A copy is stated by Mr. Whitten to be now in the Museum Library, however. 
 
 2 Among the Vestrymen, given in a list by Dobie for the parish of St. George, Blooms- 
 bury, James Loch (1818) ; Samuel Brown (1828) at No. 24 ; and James Donaldson (1825) at 
 No. 8, were residents in the Square. 
 
 3 Landtnarks of a Literary Life , by Mrs. Crosland, and Macready’s Reminiscences. It is 
 interesting to know that Miss Olier, a maternal aunt of Sydney Smith, opened a ladies’ school 
 in Bloomsbury Square, when her father, a F rench emigre, was forced to fly from his native 
 country. Creswick the actor is also stated to have lived in the Square. 
 
BLOOMSBURY SQUARE 201 
 
 till the year 1862, the Royal Literary Fund had its home ; while at No. 2, 
 the College of Preceptors carries on its educational work. 1 
 
 That Bloomsbury Square in its early days was not entirely residential 
 in character, is shown by a curious advertisement in the London Gazette 
 for October 11— 15, 1667, which helps to link the Square indirectly with 
 the Great Fire of London, and runs as follows: “Such as have settled 
 in new habitations since the late fire, and desire for the convenience of 
 their correspondence to publish the place of their present abode, or to 
 give notice of goods lost or found, may repair to the corner house in 
 Bloomsbury Square, or on the east side of the Great Square (Bloomsbury 
 Square) before the house of the Rt. Hon. the Lord Treasurer, where there 
 is care taken for the receipt and publication of such advertisements.” 
 
 From the present well-ordered quiet of the Square, what a long cry it 
 seems to the day when Luttrell could enter in his Diary (September 28, 
 1693), that on “Friday night several rogues got into the house of Dr. 
 Ridgley in Southampton Square, pretending to carry him to a patient, but 
 being unwilling to goe, they bound him and wounded him and his servants, 
 and carryed off £600 in plate and money ” ! 
 
 The central garden, which is laid out in grass-plots planted with trees 
 and shrubs, was formed under an Act 46 of George III., session 1806, in 
 the year 1807. By this Act the owner of the freehold (the Duke of Bed- 
 ford) and the occupiers of the houses for the time being were appointed 
 Commissioners for carrying out its provisions ; the Commissioners were 
 empowered to lay out the garden and maintain it, the rates for so doing 
 not to exceed 9d. in the ^1 on the yearly rental or values of the various 
 houses. 2 
 
 In 1806, a fine statue in bronze of Charles James Fox was erected on 
 the north side of the garden. It is of great size, and represents the illus- 
 trious statesman seated and habited as a Roman consul, with amply flow- 
 ing robes. It is the work of Westmacott, and, from the natural pose of 
 the figure and the excellent likeness of the face, is considered one of that 
 sculptor’s most successful productions. 3 
 
 1 George Pinkard, Esq., M.D., the Chairman, and Ashley Smith, Esq., M.D., one of the 
 Directors, of the Clerical, Medical, and General Life Assurance Co., were both living in the 
 Square in 1831. 
 
 2 Information kindly given by the Bedford Estate Office. 
 
 3 A view of the Square showing the statue mentioned above was engraved by Greig from a 
 drawing by Morland, for Hughson’s Walks through Londonj and Sutton Nicholls in 1746, 
 J. Harris in 1727, and E. Dayes in 1787, produced views of the Square. 
 
202 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 BEDFORD SQUARE 
 
 “ Enough for me in yonder Square 
 To see the perky sparrows pair, 
 
 Or long laburnum gild the air 
 
 In Bloomsbury.” 
 
 Wilfred Whitten. 
 
 Bedford Square, although one of the larger squares on the Bedford 
 estate, is not so extensive as Russell Square ; it was originally formed 
 between the years 1775 and 1780, at which time the central garden was 
 laid out. In Horwood’s plan of 1799, it is shown, the site being marked 
 as formerly St. Giles’s Ruins ; as a matter of fact the Square covers a 
 portion of the notorious “ rookery ” of St. Giles ; 1 Dobie, indeed, speaks 
 of its arising “from a cow-yard to its present magnificent form,” a form 
 which even Ralph approves — which is praise indeed ! 
 
 The Square was originally maintained by those who held building 
 leases from the ground landlord, the Duke of Bedford, and it was not 
 till 1 874, 2 that these leases expired, and the Duke took over the Square, 
 which has since been maintained by the Bedford estate ; the tenants of 
 the houses being allowed the use of the central garden during the Duke’s 
 pleasure. 3 
 
 During the reigns of George IV. and William IV., Bedford Square 
 was practically given over to the legal profession, and, as we shall see, 
 some very notable lawyers once resided here ; by far the most illustrious 
 of these being Lord Eldon, who lived at No. 6, from 1804 till 1819. 
 This mansion was the official residence of the Lord Chancellor, and 
 formed what are now Nos. 6 and 6a, the house having been subsequently 
 divided. Lord Loughborough preceded Lord Eldon here, and he is said 
 to have occupied this house from 1787 to 1796. 4 Lord Loughborough, 
 it will be remembered, was Lord Chancellor from 1793 to 1801, in 
 which year, on the resignation of his predecessor, Lord Eldon received 
 the Great Seal. 
 
 Twiss, in his Life of Lord Eldon , gives the following story in that 
 
 1 In Aggas’s map (1591) the sites of Bedford Square and the adjoining squares and streets 
 in the parishes of St. Giles and St. George are shown as open fields. 
 
 2 If these were the ordinary ninety-nine years’ leases, it would show that they were granted 
 in 1775. 
 
 3 From information kindly afforded me by A. R. O. Stutfield, Esq., Steward to the Duke 
 of Bedford. 
 
 4 In Boyle’s Court Guide for 1795, be is given as residing here. 
 
BEDFORD SQUARE 203 
 
 portion of his work which deals with the year 1801, and from this we 
 might be inclined to place Lord Eldon’s occupancy of No. 6 Bedford 
 Square at least three years earlier than the date (1804) generally assigned ; 
 but his biographer may have merely selected this particular juncture to 
 insert a characteristic anecdote. Here is the story in Lord Eldon’s own 
 words, as he related it to Mrs. Forster : — 
 
 “ They used formerly to hang for street robberies. That was a time 
 when hanging was more in fashion than it is now. In one of the Recorder’s 
 reports, there was one man condemned for a robbery in Bedford Square. 
 The King, George III., consulted his council whether this man’s sentence 
 should be executed, and all the ministers, except one, advised that it should. 
 ‘ I observe,’ said the King, ‘ that Lord Eldon has not yet spoken ; what 
 says he ? ’ I answered, ‘ I will tell your Majesty my opinion : it has been 
 the custom to hang for street robberies, and a very bad crime it is ; but 
 I think a distinction might fairly be made between those cases which are 
 attended by personal violence, and those which are not ; therefore, as this 
 man did not use any violence, I differ from the other lords, and think he 
 is not an improper object for your Majesty’s clemency.’ ‘ Well, well,’ 
 said the King, ‘ since the learned Judge, who lives in Bedford Square, does 
 not think there is any great harm in robberies there, the poor fellow shall 
 not be hanged.’ ” 1 2 
 
 Taking 1804 s as the actual date of Lord Eldon’s commencing his 
 residence here, it was not long before the house was one of mourning and 
 the Lord High Chancellor one of the unhappiest men in the kingdom, 
 for here, after an illness of very brief duration, his eldest son expired on 
 December 5, 1805, on the very eve of the birth of his eldest son. Some 
 most pathetic letters from the grief-stricken father to his brother, Sir 
 William Scott, show how cruelly he had been smitten, while Lady Eldon’s 
 sorrow was so poignant that, for a time, those around her hardly knew 
 what to do to assuage it. “ Things grow worse in Bedford Square instead 
 of better,” is an expression in one of Sir William Scott’s letters to his 
 daughter. In Cheshunt churchyard the Hon. John Scott was buried, at 
 his own request, and his epitaph was written by his uncle, Sir William 
 Scott, 3 afterwards Lord Stowell. 
 
 As we know, Lord Eldon was a man of simple tastes and, equally 
 with his wife, with whom he had run away, averse from entertaining 
 
 1 Life of Eldon, vol. i. p. 399. 
 
 2 Harrison, in Memorable London Houses , says 1800-1813; Walford, 1804-1816; Twiss, 
 1804-1819; Clinch, 1809-1815; Cunningham, 1804-1815. This will give some idea of the 
 divergence of views on a point not perhaps of great importance, but which in the interests of 
 accuracy should be settled once for all. 
 
 3 Life of Eldon, vol. i. p. 500. 
 
204 the SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 company at his house; this rule laid him open to a somewhat unjust 
 charge of parsimoniousness, but did not prevent him from occasionally 
 giving dinner-parties, and at one of these, in 1812, the Prince Regent 
 was present, “ dining in Bedford Square with a man whom he had hated 
 more than any other in his father’s dominions, according to his unre- 
 served confession,” writes Lord Eldon himself to his old friend Dr. 
 Swire. 1 
 
 But a better-known visit was paid Lord Eldon here by the Prince 
 Regent, and as the Lord Chancellor has left an account of it in his own 
 words, they shall be here given ; premising that his Royal Highness’s 
 object was to overcome Eldon’s scruples as to making Jekyll a Master 
 in Chancery. 2 “He came alone to my door in Bedford Square,” says 
 Lord Eldon. “Upon the servants going to the door, the Prince Regent 
 observed that, as the Chancellor had the gout, he knew he must be at 
 home, and he therefore desired he might be shown up to the room 
 where the Chancellor was. My servants told the Prince I was much too 
 ill to be seen. He, however, pressed to be admitted, and they, very 
 properly and respectfully, informed him that they had positive orders to 
 show in no one. Upon which he suddenly asked them to show him the 
 staircase, which you know they could not refuse to do. They attended 
 him to it, and he immediately ascended, and pointed first to one door, 
 then to another, asking, ‘ Is that your master’s room ? ’ they answering, 
 ‘No,’ until he came to the right one; upon which he opened the door 
 and seated himself by my bedside. Well, I was rather surprised to see 
 his Royal Highness, and inquired his pleasure. He stated that he had 
 come to request that I would appoint Jekyll to the vacant Mastership 
 in Chancery. I respectfully answered that I deeply regretted his Royal 
 Highness should ask that, for I could not comply. He inquired why 
 I could not, and I told him, simply because in my opinion Mr. Jekyll 
 was totally unqualified to discharge the duties of that office. He, how- 
 ever, repeated his request, and urged very strongly. I again refused ; 
 and for a great length of time he continued to urge, and I continued to 
 refuse, saying Mr. Jekyll was unfit for the office, and I would never 
 agree. His Highness suddenly threw himself back in his chair, ex- 
 claiming, ‘ How I do pity Lady Eldon ! ’ ‘ Good God ! ’ I said, ‘ What 
 
 is the matter ? ’ ‘ Oh, nothing,’ answered the Prince, ‘ except that she 
 
 never will see you again : for here I remain until you promise to make 
 Jekyll a Master in Chancery.’ Well, I was obliged at length to give in, 
 I could not help it.” And adds his lordship, somewhat naively : “ Others 
 ought really to be very delicate in blaming appointments made by persons 
 1 Life of Eldon, vol. ii. p. 225. 2 Ibid., vol. ii. pp. 267-8. 
 
BEDFORD SQUARE 205 
 
 in authority, for there are often many circumstances totally unknown to 
 the public.” Was ever office in this manner won ? 1 
 
 In the same year in which this curious incident took place, a Bill 
 for imposing a duty on the importation of foreign corn was on its 
 way through Parliament. This Bill was greatly resented by the lower 
 orders in London, who, as usual, saw only one side of the question, 
 and on the 6th of March popular feeling had risen to such a pitch 
 that an attempt was made by the mob to enter the Houses of Parliament ; 
 being repulsed by the police, assisted eventually by troops which had 
 been called out, the angry crowd set off for the house of Lord Eldon, 
 obnoxious to it both as being one in authority and a Tory. Here the 
 mob arrived about ten o’clock at night, and immediately proceeded to 
 break the windows, and to tear up some of the area railings, which they 
 used as crowbars to burst in the front door. Succeeding in this, they 
 flooded the hall and staircase and one of the ground-floor rooms, but 
 finding further ingress barred, they began to destroy what they could 
 around them. Luckily for Lord Eldon and his family, the premises in 
 the rear of No. 6, adjoined the gardens of the British Museum, and here 
 they sought shelter and gave the alarm to the soldiers who then guarded 
 the Museum. These rushed through the back of Lord Eldon’s house 
 and quickly drove out the mob, but not before the whole of the hall 
 furniture and that of the adjoining rooms had been destroyed. The mob 
 being dispersed from Bedford Square, created further disturbances in the 
 neighbourhood of Great Russell Street and other parts of the town during 
 the following three days, at the end of which time the military was able 
 to put a stop to further riots. Lord Eldon, in his anecdote book, has 
 left a more detailed account of the occurrence, by which he appears to 
 have actively assisted the troops ; and the story is told of how, having 
 collared one of the intruders, he said to him, “ If you don’t mind what 
 you are about, my man, you’ll be hanged ; ” on which the fellow replied, 
 “ Perhaps so, old chap, but I think it looks now as if you would be 
 hanged first ” ! “ and, ” added Lord Eldon with an arch smile, when telling 
 the story, “ I had my misgivings that he was in the right. 2 
 
 I have incidentally remarked that Lord Eldon ran away with his 
 future wife, and Mr. Twiss gives an illustration of the house of that 
 lady’s father, Mr. Surtees, at Newcastle, whence the pair eloped. It is 
 then a somewhat curious circumstance that his daughter Elizabeth, not 
 
 1 “The Prince’s favour has procured him (Jekyll) that appointment,” says Sir S. Romilly, 
 truly enough. 
 
 2 Mr. Wheatley reminds us that the wits said, on Lord Eldon’s windows being broken, that 
 “ now he at last kept open house,” in allusion to his reputation for inhospitality. 
 
206 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 being able to gain his consent to her marriage with Mr. George Repton, 
 followed her mother’s example by escaping from the house in Bedford 
 Square on November 27, 1817, and joining her lover, who, having made 
 the necessary arrangements, was married to her by special licence at St. 
 George’s, Hanover Square. Not till three years after would Lord Eldon 
 consent to be reconciled to his child, who had but followed the precedent 
 set by himself. 
 
 In 1819 Lord Eldon quitted No. 6 Bedford Square to take up his 
 abode at the house he had built, No. 1 Hamilton Place, Piccadilly, where 
 he died nearly twenty years later. Of the two houses, now Nos. 6 and 6a, 
 which originally formed his residence ; the former was, about twenty years 
 since, the residence of Sir George Donaldson, the well-known art expert, 
 who was followed by some of the Winchelsea family, and subsequently by 
 the Hon. Mrs. O’Grady; and is now occupied by William Harris, Esq., 
 who kindly gave me this information ; while No. 6a is in the occupation 
 of Felix Amies, Esq. 
 
 At No. 1 lives the well-known actor Weedon Grossmith, Esq., who 
 has most kindly sent me information of great interest regarding the house. 
 I learn from him that it was built by the Adam brothers in 1770, for 
 Sir Lionel Lyde, the well-known special pleader. By the Rate Books it 
 appears to have passed into the occupancy of George Gosling, Esq., the 
 banker, in 1791 ; and subsequently till 1846, Mrs. Gosling 1 resided there; 
 while in 1859 Miss Lydia Gosling’s name appears in the Rate Books. 
 In 1861 I find Jabez Hogg, Esq., M.D., there, and in 1896, Louis 
 Marcy, Esq., until 1902, when Mr. Weedon Grossmith came to reside 
 in the house, which still contains the original mantelpieces designed by 
 the Adams, and a ceiling said to be the work of Angelica Kauffmann. 
 It is further distinguished, unlike other houses in the Square, by a 
 large square hall occupying nearly the whole of the ground floor, which is 
 also adorned by characteristic Adams work. 
 
 Next door to Lord Eldon’s house, at No. 5, now occupied by John 
 Hopper Baker, Esq., M.D., where was living in 1795, a Dr. Nichols, 
 subsequently resided another legal luminary, Mr. Justice Littledale, who 
 died in 1842. It was in his office in Gray’s Inn that Crabb Robinson 
 became a pupil, “ by presenting him with the usual fee of 100 guineas, 
 and by entering at once on my employment.” 2 Robinson had been intro- 
 duced to Littledale by Serjeant Rough, and an entry in Crabb Robinson’s 
 Diary tells us that “ the beauty of Littledale’s chambers and his capital 
 library ” excited the admiration and envy of his pupil. Next door again 
 
 1 In Boyle’s Court Guide for 1795 it is given as No. 1 — Gosling. 
 
 2 Diary , vol. i. p. 193. 
 
BEDFORD SQUARE 207 
 
 to this, viz. at No. 4, now occupied by G. P. Willoughby, Esq., Sir 
 Henry Lushington resided from 1799-1804; and Sir George Wood, a 
 Baron of the Exchequer, from 1813-1824. Mention, too, may here be 
 made of John Hunter, Esq., a Governor of the East India Company, who 
 was one of the earlier residents of the Square, being given as living here, 
 in a Directory for 1798. Another lawyer inhabiting a house, No. 43, in 
 Bedford Square was Chief Justice Sir Nicholas Tindal ; he it was who 
 recognised the gifts of Talfourd, praising him highly for judgment and 
 skill in the management of legal business ; and next door at No. 42, 
 once lived Butterfield, the well-known architect. Among the numerous 
 other legal lights once residing here may be mentioned the names of Justice 
 Lawrence, at No. 16; Judge Heath, at No. 39; and Baron Thomson, 
 at No. 44, who were all resident here in 1795 ; and at a later date, 
 Mr. Justice Burrough ; Mr. Justice Bayley ; Sir John Richardson; Mr. 
 Justice Pattison, at No. 33, whom as a simple barrister Crabb Robinson 
 notes as meeting at a New Year’s Eve party at Edgar Taylor’s; Lord 
 Chief Justice Best, afterwards Lord Wynford, at No. 29 ; Sir James Allan 
 Park, at No. 32 ; and Baron Graham. One or two good stories are told 
 of the last judge, once a Baron of the Exchequer. Of him it is related 
 that, in a case concerning certain parish rights, in which the parish of 
 “A. B.” was continually being referred to, he said in his address to the 
 jury, “ Gentlemen, there is one circumstance very remarkable in this case, 
 that both the plaintiff's and defendant’s counsel have talked a great deal 
 about one A. B., and that neither of them has thought proper to call 
 him as a witness ! ” And he it was who once, at the Old Bailey, omitted 
 to pass sentence of death on a prisoner, and on being reminded of the 
 oversight, said gravely : “ Dear me, I beg his pardon, I am sure ; ” had 
 the unhappy man recalled, and proceeded to pass on him the extreme 
 penalty of the law. 
 
 The house on the other side of Lord Eldon’s, No. 7, now in the 
 occupation of Frank Wilson, Esq., and in 1795 occupied by D. Davidson, 
 Esq., was for many years the residence of Sir Robert Harry Inglis, at one 
 time Member of Parliament for Oxford University. Crabb Robinson met 
 him at the Wordsworths’, when he breakfasted there on one of his ex- 
 cursions to town, and remarks that there was “ something highly respect- 
 able in his appearance,” and that “ benevolence and simplicity are strongly 
 expressed in his countenance.” Some years later he had the satisfaction 
 of introducing Emerson to Sir Robert at a meeting of the Antiquarian 
 Society. A well-known Fellow of this Society also once resided in 
 Bedford Square, for on January 15, 1869, at No. 24 died, at the great age 
 of ninety-one, Sir Henry Ellis. He is chiefly remembered for his monu- 
 
208 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 mental edition of Dugdale’s Monasticon , which he brought out during the 
 years 1817-30. He filled, too, the important position of Chief Librarian 
 at the British Museum from 1827 to 1857. His house is now occupied 
 by G. W. Prothero, Esq. Among other residents in 1829, were the 
 Rev. J. E. Tyler, D.D., Rector of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and James 
 Carden, Esq., at the same address; Richard Woodhouse, Esq., at No. 17 ; 
 J. F. Pike, Esq., at No. 30 ; James Parkinson, Esq., at No. 46 ; Thomas 
 Wakley, Esq., one of the Churchwardens, at No. 35 ; and Mr. Luke G. 
 Hansard, at No. 10. 1 
 
 Music in the Square has been represented in the person of Sir George 
 Smart, who lived for a time at No. 12, a house that is now the residence 
 of J. C. F. Naumann, Esq., M.D., and was in 1795, that of John Chalie, 
 Esq. Sir George, who lived to the great age of ninety-one, being born in 
 1776, was known for many years not only as a musical instructor 
 and organist, but as a fine conductor, and it was he who first pro- 
 duced Mendelssohn’s St. Paul in this country. Besides publishing 
 several volumes of glees and anthems, he edited Orlando Gibbons’ 
 Madrigals , and the Dettingen Te Deum. He died in Bedford Square 
 on February 23, 1867. 
 
 Next door to Sir George Smart’s old house, at No. 13, resided about 
 fifty years since Dr. Black ; he was followed in his occupancy by 
 Mr. Beeston, the architect, who subsequently let it to Mr. Clarence 
 Harcourt, a solicitor ; its present tenant, Halsey Ricardo, Esq., tells me 
 that the back windows of the house, in common with those of his two 
 adjoining neighbours, look on to the studio once used by Millais when he 
 was living with his family in Gower Street. Here it will be remembered 
 he produced some of his earlier and, if we agree with Ruskin, his more 
 memorable work ; while Mr. Holman Hunt was often his companion and 
 fellow-worker. 
 
 The next house, No. 14, now in the occupation of A. R. Guest, Esq., 
 is believed to have been built by James Baillie, Esq., a brother of Baillie 
 of Dochefour, in 1776, and was apparently sold to his son in 1797. 
 In the early part of the nineteenth century, Sir William Munro, 2 Sir 
 Alexander Fraser, and Mrs. Larking occupied this house successively, 
 and after the latter’s tenancy it passed into the hands of Mr. William 
 Oliver, who lived here from about 1830 to i860; the present tenant 
 took it, he informs me, from the executors of W. A. Jones, Esq., in 
 1905. 
 
 1 Dobie’s History of St. Giles and St. George’s, Bloomsbury. At this house, No. 10, was 
 living in 1795, Charles Shaw Lefevre, Esq. 
 
 2 Boyle, in 1795, gives the owner as Sir A. Munro. | 
 
BEDFORD SQUARE 209 
 
 On the other side, at No. n, lived and died the Hon. Henry 
 Cavendish, third son of the second Duke of Devonshire, the natural 
 philosopher who discovered nitric acid, and was the first who, by in- 
 ductive experiments, combined oxygen and hydrogen into water. Born 
 at Nice in 1731, he died in Bedford Square in 1810. A tablet on the 
 house commemorates his residence here. 
 
 It was at the house of Mrs. Basil Montagu in the Square that Fanny 
 Kemble first met Mrs. Jameson, in 1828. This was at No. 25, where the 
 well-known actress Miss Florence St. John now resides ; and here it was 
 that B. W. Procter and his wife, a daughter of Mrs. Montagu’s, came 
 to reside in 1825, during the course of which year a daughter was born 
 to them, to be known later as Adelaide Anne Procter. It would probably 
 be difficult to point to any house which has, from time to time, echoed 
 the voices of more illustrious or interesting people than No. 25 Bedford 
 Square ; as Carlyle said, “ it might be defined as a most singular social 
 and spiritual menagerie ; which, indeed, was well-known and much noted 
 and criticised in certain literary and other circles.” 1 There was Mr. Basil 
 Montagu, an interesting figure in that he was a son of Lord Sandwich 
 and that Miss Reay, whom Hackman afterwards murdered and for which 
 he was executed at Tyburn in 1776, and the story of whose infatuation 
 was given in the work entitled Love and Madness , or Story too True , 
 Cfc., published in 1780. 2 Mr. Montagu, besides this extraneous reputa- 
 tion, made a name for himself as a legal and miscellaneous writer of great 
 power. Educated at Charterhouse and Christ’s College, Cambridge, at the 
 expense of Lord Sandwich, who acknowledged him as his son, he eventually 
 entered Gray’s Inn, and was afterwards made a Commissioner in Bankruptcy. 
 The friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, his name appears in practically 
 all the literary memoirs and diaries of the time in which he lived (1770- 
 1851). Then there was his eminent son-in-law, known, under his 
 pseudonym of Barry Cornwall, as a man of the finest literary attain- 
 ments, whose friendships were as various and whose fame more extended 
 than that of his father-in-law ; and added to these came the daughter whose 
 Legends and Lyrics , the recognition of which was due to Dickens, has 
 placed her in a high position among the female poets of this country, and 
 gave promise, had she but lived beyond her thirty-nine years, of something 
 greater still. Of such a household, with such a circle of friends, a book 
 of daring conjecture might well be filled. What talk the chimes at 
 midnight must have heard from the poets dead and gone who gathered 
 round that board ! 
 
 1 Reminiscences, p. 3. 
 
 2 See an account of the circumstance, in Timbs’s Romance of London. 
 
 O 
 
210 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Literature and the Drama 1 are still represented in Bedford Square. 
 As we have seen, Miss Florence St. John resides at No. 25, Lady 
 Monckton at No. 33, and Mr. and Mrs. Seymour Hicks at No. 53 ; 
 while Mr. Anthony Hope lives at No. 41. Art, too, is represented by 
 Mr. Norman Forbes Robertson, and until recently by the veteran James 
 Orrock ; while many of the houses have now become the offices of archi- 
 tects and solicitors. 
 
 Some of the houses in the Square are examples of Adams work, 
 notably No. 47, the residence of H. Sefton Jones, Esq. ; but at the same 
 time, there is no doubt that some of them, as one of the residents patheti- 
 cally notes, were built rather for display than comfort, as is evidenced 
 by the great superiority of the reception-rooms over those on the upper 
 floors. One of the chief characteristics of the Adams work is well indicated 
 in the Square by the centre houses on the four sides, which are similar 
 in design. Thus on the south side Nos. 46 and 47 are in outward 
 appearance one house; so are 6 and 6a on the east; and 18 and 19 on 
 the north side ; while on the west side No. 32 is, although somewhat 
 smaller, analogous in its characteristics. All these houses are painted 
 in the same (cream) colour, and thus form four keynotes to the general 
 scheme of the Square. 
 
 1 H. J. Byron, the playwright, formerly resided in a house on the east side of the Square ; 
 and other former residents include J. Raine, Esq., M.D., and Richard Richards, Esq., Directors 
 of the Law Life Assurance Co., in 1831, and Miss Kearsley, noted for her collection of Blake’s 
 drawings, mentioned by Mrs. Gilchrist, in 1862. 
 

1 
 
 BWSSIKJUk S^WAJRJK, AW TO ST^TTO OF TTOE MUME OF BBJOFOBB.. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 RUSSELL SQUARE 
 
 “ Russell Square . . . has, from its first formation, been a favourite residence of the 
 highest legal characters . . . the air and situation uniting to render it a pleasant retreat from the 
 cares of business.” — Dobie, History of St. Giles in the Fields. 
 
 T HE Right Honourable John Wilson Croker once solemnly pro- 
 pounded the question in the House of Commons : “ Where is 
 Russell Square ? ” It was the fashion then, when coachmen 
 raised their eyebrows on being told by noble masters to drive 
 into the City, and asked where they should change horses, or 
 when Brummell was horrified at being found by Sheridan so far east as 
 Charing Cross, to affect a superior ignorance of localities not actually 
 within the purlieus of Mayfair. Such an attitude, if affected now, would 
 hardly have the merit of paradox, for Russell Square is just one of those 
 large open spaces which do not lie in the way of the general public ; and 
 for every one who knows it, it is probable that three Londoners would 
 not be able to find their way to it without the aid of direction. 
 
 Within recent years one side, the east, of the Square has become 
 altered in a very striking way, for quite half that side has been 
 absorbed in one of those vast hotels which appear to be springing up 
 with the same frequency as new theatres, all over London. In this case, 
 it is the sumptuous Hotel Russell; while next to No. 65, on the same 
 side, several houses 1 have been demolished to make way for the Imperial 
 Hotel, now (1906) in course of erection. The Hotel Russell is constructed 
 in terra-cotta, or brick which resembles it, and nearly all the houses on 
 the north side and some in other parts of the Square have been refaced 
 with the same material, which, perhaps artistically, carries out the scheme 
 of the dominant building, but has not greatly conduced to the preservation 
 of the otherwise Georgian appearance of the houses, and inevitably suggests 
 
 1 In one of these, No. 62, William Cowper lived when he was at Westminster School. 
 Mr. Swan Sonnenschein, who informs me of this, bought it in 1887. It was demolished 
 in 1905. 
 
 211 
 
2 12 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 the idea that the surplus material, after the erection of the hotel, has been 
 thus carefully utilised. 
 
 Russell Square, if not as modern as some I shall have to notice, is 
 not one of the old ones; its genesis dating from 1801, in which year it 
 was laid out under the provisions of an Act of 39 & 40 George III. 
 cap. 50. By this the owner of the fee-simple in the Square, to- 
 gether with certain other specified persons, was appointed for five years 
 to carry out the Act ; and afterwards the owner of the land and the 
 occupiers of the houses in the Square were appointed Commissioners 
 for regulating the central gardens, &c., the exclusive use of which is 
 vested in the owner and the aforesaid occupiers. Towards the formation 
 of the garden the Commissioners were empowered to levy a rate upon 
 the houses not exceeding is. in the £ per annum on the yearly rentals 
 or values of the houses, and for its maintenance a further rate not exceed- 
 ing 6d. in the £ per annum. 1 
 
 In old maps we find that this part of the town was, practically 
 till the middle of the eighteenth century, open fields; indeed another 
 square, Queen Square, which was formed in the reign of Queen Anne, 
 was left open on its north side in order that the inhabitants might have an 
 uninterrupted view of the high ground about Highgate and Hampstead. 
 The particular ground covered by Russell Square was formerly known as 
 Southampton Fields, and later as Long Fields. These fields were an 
 open dreary waste till the beginning of the nineteenth, century, but in the 
 vicinity were two important mansions of the greatest interest ; one being 
 Bedford House, surrounded by fine grounds, which lay to the south ; the 
 other Baltimore House, which bounded it on the east ; while to the north 
 were some nursery grounds ; and to the westward land occupied by the 
 Toxophilite Society. 
 
 As in the case of Queen Square, when first formed Russell Square 
 had a magnificent view towards Hampstead. It was practically completed 
 in 1 804, and with the possible exception of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which 
 by-the-bye is said to be of the same dimensions as the base of the great 
 Pyramid, it is the largest square in London, its measurements being, on 
 the north and south sides, just over 665 feet ; 672 on the west, and 66 7 
 on the east, which is in the aggregate 140 feet square less than Lincoln’s 
 Inn Fields. Dobie, writing in 1829, speaks of the north and west sides 
 having a higher elevation than the others ; which, besides giving a bad 
 architectural effect, “ renders the carriage pavement so unequal,” he says, 
 
 1 From information kindly afforded me by A. R. O. Stutfield, Esq., Steward to the Duke of 
 Bedford. 
 
RUSSELL SQUARE 213 
 
 “ that no one can prevent it overflowing with wet in various parts, at 
 certain seasons of the year ” ! 
 
 Southampton or Bedford House mentioned above belongs properly 
 to Bloomsbury Square, and has been already noticed, but Baltimore House, 
 at the corner of Guildford Street, was once an integral part of Russell 
 Square. It was erected in 1763, by Frederick, seventh Lord Baltimore, 
 who succeeded his father in 1751, having married a daughter of the Duke 
 of Bridgewater. The mansion would seem to have been erected on an 
 eccentric plan, for Noorthouck, writing in 177 6, says of it that “it was 
 either built without a plan, or else has had very whimsical owners ; for 
 the door has been shifted to different parts of the house, until at last it 
 is lost to all outward appearance, being now carried into the stable-yard.” 1 
 
 Baltimore House is connected with an incident apparently but too 
 characteristic of its profligate owner’s tastes and habits. Timbs has 
 given us a somewhat detailed account of the circumstance, and from 
 his story the following facts have been extracted. It appears that Lord 
 Baltimore had agents who pandered to his pleasures by seeking out 
 objects likely to gratify their employer. One of these scoundrels, a 
 woman named Mrs. Harvey, in 1767, heard of a young Quaker 
 milliner named Sarah Woodcock, who kept a shop in Tower Hill, 
 as being remarkably beautiful, and Lord Baltimore having visited the 
 place and approved of her appearance, she was decoyed into his carriage 
 by another accomplice named Isaacs. Pretending that he was taking his 
 dupe to a lady who wished to purchase some millinery, he drove away 
 with her to Baltimore House. There she was taken through numerous 
 reception-rooms, until in one of them the owner of the mansion made his 
 appearance. Remembering him immediately as having visited her shop, 
 the girl became alarmed, but on his pretending that he was the steward 
 of the lady who wished to give Miss Woodcock some orders, she became 
 calmer. Lord Baltimore then withdrew and a Mrs. Griffinburgh (surely 
 an ominous name) made her appearance in the character of mistress of 
 the house, and succeeded, under one pretence and another, in detaining 
 the girl till a late hour, although she had made various efforts to depart. 
 Lord Baltimore now again made his appearance, and after showing her 
 several other rooms in the house, induced her to have some supper, after 
 which his conduct became too unequivocal for his victim to longer doubt 
 his real intentions. She resisted all his advances, however, notwithstanding 
 that both Mrs. Griffinburgh and her husband, as well as Mrs. Harvey, 
 endeavoured to assist him in overcoming her scruples. Finally she was 
 locked in a bedroom, where she is said to have continued walking about 
 
 1 Noorthouck’s History of London. 
 
214 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 till morning in a state of the greatest distress. Next day Lord Baltimore 
 attempted every art, cajolery and menace, to overcome her obduracy, but 
 ineffectually, and she was finally placed in a coach and conveyed to 
 Woodcote Park, near Epsom, 1 his Lordship’s family seat, and there she 
 is stated to have yielded to his importunities. In the meantime Miss 
 Woodcock’s friends had obtained a clue to her whereabouts, and immedi- 
 ately secured a warrant against Lord Baltimore and his accomplices, who 
 were tried at the Kingston Assizes, on March 25, 1768. After a long 
 trial, Lord Baltimore, in consequence of some informality in the evidence, 
 was acquitted ; but the trial had one excellent result, for his Lordship, 
 in consequence of the notoriety which it had attached to his name, dis- 
 posed of his property in this country, and went to Italy, where he died in 
 Naples, three years after. He was altogether an unsatisfactory person, 
 but he had some claim to literary attainments, and one of his works, 
 A Tour to the East in 1763-64, with Remarks on the City of Constantinople — 
 a subject in which he should have been perfectly at home — was published 
 in 1767, and may still be occasionally met with. After his death his 
 body was brought to this country, and was buried at Epsom. 2 
 
 When Noorthouck opined, as we have seen, that Baltimore House has 
 had “ very whimsical owners ” he was perfectly right, for after Lord 
 Baltimore had given it up, it became the residence of a hardly less 
 eccentric nobleman, in the person of the sixth Duke of Bolton, who is 
 supposed to be indicated as Captain Whiffle in Roderick Random ; he 
 certainly had been a midshipman, but although Wraxall says that in the 
 navy “ he gained no laurels,” he became in due course Admiral of the 
 White ; besides which he represented Winchester in Parliament from 
 1762 to 1765, and was Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire and Governor of 
 the Isle of Wight in 1782. Mr. Walford states that his mother was 
 the well-known actress Lavinia Felton, celebrated as the original “ Polly 
 Peacham,” but this is quite erroneous, as that lady was married en second 
 noces to Charles Paulet, the third Duke, uncle of the sixth Duke whose 
 mother was Catherine, daughter of Charles Parry, Esq., of Oakfield, in 
 Berkshire, his father being the fourth Duke, brother of the third Duke, 
 while he himself succeeded his brother the fifth Duke in 1765. 
 
 Russell Square has always been noted as a favourite dwelling-place 
 for those learned in the law, and it is therefore fitting to find that the 
 successor to the Duke of Bolton, in what was originally Baltimore but 
 
 1 It had been built by the sixth Lord Baltimore. It was a fine building in the classic 
 style, and a good representation of it is to be found in Brayley’s History of Surrey , vol. iv. 
 p. 362. 
 
 2 For an account of the foregoing incident see Dobie, and Timbs’s Romance of London. 
 
RUSSELL SQUARE 215 
 
 later Bolton House, should have been the very distinguished lawyer and 
 politician, Wedderburn, first Earl of Rosslyn, but better known as Lord 
 Loughborough, who was Solicitor-General in 1 77 1 , Attorney-General in 
 1778, Lord Chief Justice from 1780-93, and Lord Chancellor from the 
 latter year till 1801. A man, according to Lord Campbell, “ of a handsome 
 as well as a dignified presence ” ; it was on his abilities, says Wraxall, that 
 “ the systematic opposition to government principally reposed,” and 
 referring to his influence over the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., 
 he adds that “the elevation of his mind, aided by the attainments of his 
 comprehensive intelligence, personal, no less than professional, entitled 
 him indeed to be consulted at such a juncture,” i.e. the Regency 
 question. The judgments of contemporaries are notoriously various ; and 
 we find Sir Egerton Brydges, 1 stating that although “ Lord Rosslyn was a 
 subtle reasoner, he had no strength, closeness, or rectitude about him, 
 and convinced no one.” As to his personal charm there is a greater 
 unanimity of opinion, and Beloe may be quoted to prove that he was 
 “ a most polished gentleman, conciliating all who approached him by his 
 affability and graciousness of manner ” ; 2 while Brougham is a witness that 
 “ his manners were courteous and even noble, polite in his demeanour, 
 elegant, and dignified in his habits.” 3 
 
 During the tenancy of Lord Rosslyn, Bolton House was honoured by a 
 royal visit; for here, on June 21, 1799, came George III., where he was 
 joined by Queen Charlotte and some other members of the royal family, 
 and after being entertained by the owner at a grand collation, proceeded 
 to inspect the Foundling Hospital in the neighbouring Guildford Street ; 
 with this visit was also incorporated a great review of all the corps of 
 volunteers in and about London. In the Foundling Chapel, at the singing 
 of the National Anthem, the spectators, we are told, “were affected, 
 even to tears of loyal joy ” ; while the King was so pleased with the latter 
 part of the day’s proceedings, that he gave especial orders to the Duke of 
 York “ to express the heartfelt satisfaction which every part of the conduct 
 of those patriotic troops had excited in his mind.” 4 
 
 Lord Rosslyn lived only a few years longer in Bolton House, re- 
 moving to 12 St. James’s Square in 1803, and expiring at Windsor on 
 January 2, 1805; upon which event his royal master was pleased to 
 exclaim, “Then he has not left a greater rogue behind him.” George III. 
 had a tenacious memory, and he evidently did not forget the part played 
 by Rosslyn with regard to the Regency Bill. Subsequently Bolton House 
 
 1 Autobiography , vol. i. p. 292. 2 
 
 3 Statesmen of Time of George III., first series. 
 
 4 George III. : His Court and Family, vol. ii. p. 258. 
 
 The Sexagenarian , vol. i. p. 305. 
 
2 1 6 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 was occupied in turn by Sir John Nicholl, Sir Yicary Gibbs, and Sir 
 Charles Flower, Bart. 
 
 Smith, in his Book for a Rainy Day , makes a curious mistake with regard 
 to this mansion, in stating that it was subsequently demolished and 
 several houses built upon its site. As a matter of fact, as Mr. Whiffen, 
 in his illuminating notes to the last edition of Smith’s book points out, 
 the house is still standing, but has been divided into several smaller 
 residences. Timbs, when writing his Romance of London , mentions its 
 being cut up into two houses, 1 one of which preserved the name of Bolton 
 House ; while the unity of the original mansion was preserved in the 
 pitch of the slate roof. So open was the house in 1777, that Smith 
 remembered going with his father on a sketching expedition to Pancras 
 Old Church, which was then so rural that its only enclosure was a low 
 and very old railing, in some parts entirely covered by docks and nettles, 
 and from thence having an uninterrupted view of Bolton House. 
 
 We have seen that Noorthouck waxed satirical over the formation of 
 Bolton House, and as it survives to-day, cut up into two houses, it 
 somewhat preserves this characteristic, except that the entrances to 
 Nos. 66 and 67, which are its present-day equivalents, face boldly on to 
 the Square; but No. 71, 2 which is occupied jointly with No. 67 by the 
 National Union of Teachers, of which J. H. Yoxall, Esq., M.P., is the 
 Secretary, joins the house, probably originally as a wing, behind and gives 
 to the premises something of the shape of the letter T. 
 
 The interior of No. 67 is still imposing by reason of its extent, and 
 interesting on account of the decorations and carvings which have happily 
 been preserved. Thus the great size of the rooms and of the well- 
 staircase, as well as of the back stairs which alone occupy the space which 
 would be considered sufficient for an ordinary London house, help to 
 carry us back to the days when superficial area had not the importance 
 which it enjoys to-day in the City of London ; while the beautifully 
 decorated ceilings, in the manner of Angelica Kauffmann ; the richly 
 carved and gilded over-doors ; and the classic elegance (the word must be 
 forgiven me, for I am speaking of Georgian style) of the cornices and 
 ceilings, somewhat in the Adams manner, though perhaps rather to be traced 
 to a copyist of the famous brothers than to the Adelphi themselves, help 
 to carry out the illusion that on passing the threshold we have stepped 
 
 1 Now Nos. 66 and 67, still distinguished by handsome carved mantelpieces, and a ceiling 
 said to have been painted by Angelica Kauffmann. No. 67 is now occupied by the National 
 Union of Teachers, and No. 66 by the Royal Photographic Society, the Secretary of which has 
 kindly given me this information. 
 
 2 Mr. D’Oyly Carte is stated to have once occupied this house when it was a separate 
 tenement. 
 
RUSSELL SQUARE 217 
 
 back at least a century. Some of the mantelpieces are extraordinarily fine, 
 one particularly noticeable representing on the entablature the Death of 
 Socrates, flanked on each side by almost life-sized figures of the great 
 Philosopher himself and his most famous pupil Plato. In another marble 
 mantelpiece the carving of a lion set in the centre would seem to indicate 
 the work of a master and to have been added to the original framework 
 of the fireplace. In some of the mantelpieces and cornices we find the 
 crest and supporters of the Duke of Bolton introduced, thus proving that 
 these were placed here during his possession of the house. These are 
 described technically thus : Crest — On a wreath a mount vert, from 
 whence a falcon rising or, gorged with a ducal coronet gules. Sup- 
 porters — Two hinds purpure, semee of estoiles argent, gorged with a 
 ducal coronet or. 
 
 At No. 21 in the Square lived, and tragically died, Sir Samuel 
 Romilly. He was a great lawyer, but it would be as true to say a great 
 philanthropist, for so much of his life’s work was given up to the 
 attempted reform of the scandalous criminal law of that period, that he 
 certainly merits the double title, although he unfortunately did not live 
 to see the realisation of his humane efforts, which resulted in the 
 abrogation of the death penalty for such trivial offences as petty thefts. 
 Romilly made a large fortune at the Bar, but it was at the expense of his 
 happiness, and we are told in his Memoirs that “ though by nature gifted 
 for the delights and comforts of a domestic circle, and for the intercourse 
 of social life, he saw little of his family or of his friends.” 1 The death of 
 his wife, whom he only survived three days, seems to have entirely un- 
 hinged his mind, which had been already unduly strained by his legal 
 studies and his enforced abstinence from congenial pleasures, with the 
 result that he committed suicide at his house in Russell Square on 
 November 2, 1818, in his sixty-second year. Creevey, writing in the 
 following month to the Hon. A. G. Bennett, thus refers to the sad 
 event: “I must advert to the great calamity we have all sustained in the 
 death of poor Romilly. His loss is perfectly irreparable. By his 
 courageous and consistent public conduct, united with his known private 
 worth, he was rapidly acquiring an authority over men’s minds that, had 
 his life been spared a few years, would, 1 think, have equalled, if not 
 surpassed, even that of Mr. Fox.” 2 Sydney Smith, in a sermon on the 
 “ Meditation of Death,” voiced the grief of all thinking people at the loss 
 of so much genius and integrity. The pleasant, but somewhat sad and 
 wistful face of Romilly looks out from the canvas which another famous 
 inhabitant of the Square painted, and it is probable that there is more 
 
 1 Life of Sir Samuel Romilly. 3 The Creevey Papers , vol. i. p. 290. 
 
2l8 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 thought in Lawrence’s portrait of that great man than in any other 
 picture from his hand. 
 
 Sir Thomas Lawrence is more closely connected with Russell Square 
 than any of the notable people who have dwelt in it : for he lived here, 
 at No. 65, 1 during the last twenty-five years of his busy life, from 1805 
 to 1830. If we call to mind the numbers of famous people whose 
 portraits were transferred to canvas by Sir Thomas, we shall have a 
 good idea of the company that from time to time entered the doors of 
 this house and helped to make famous the name of an unequal but at 
 one time fashionable painter. One such visit created quite a stir in the 
 Square, and Mitford, referring to it, notes that he would never forget, 
 in 1818, “the Cossacks mounted on their small white horses, with their 
 long spears grounded, standing sentinels at the door of this great painter, 
 whilst he was taking the portrait of their general Platoff.” 
 
 Here in Russell Square Lawrence collected that fine assemblage of 
 works of art, the nucleus of which had been formed by purchases at the 
 sale of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s efFects. The collection, to which Sir Thomas 
 never ceased adding — which led on one occasion to his being in such 
 straitened circumstances that Rogers 2 found him at his door in St. 
 James’s Place, in a state of great agitation, begging for the loan of a 
 few thousands and offering pictures as security, which the poet induced 
 Lord Dudley to advance the next day — was particularly rich in drawings 
 by the great masters. It included indeed no less than 180 by Raphael, 
 100 by Michael Angelo, 75 by Leonardo, 150 by Rubens, 60 by Titian, 
 90 by Rembrandt, &c., while nearly all the famous artists were represented 
 in a similarly abundant manner. It was truly, as Smith said, “ a princely 
 collection,” and well might Sir Thomas, as he did in his will, declare it 
 to be in value and completeness unequalled in Europe. 3 This collection, 
 after having been offered to and refused by George IV. and the Trustees 
 of the British Museum, at the comparatively trivial sum of ;£ 18,000, 
 named in Lawrence’s will, was subsequently purchased, in 1834, by Messrs. 
 Woodburne for £ 20,000 , at which amount the executors were empowered 
 to sell, although it represented less than half what the pictures and draw- 
 ings had originally cost the painter. 
 
 But Sir Thomas’s house contained specimens of earlier art than these 
 pictures, for we find Smith noting “ the splendid and inestimable collection 
 of early Greek and Roman foliated ornaments liberally and tastefully 
 
 1 Now the residence of David Sinclair, Esq., but modernised as to its exterior, and showing 
 a memorial tablet on its front. 
 
 2 Clayden’s Rogers , vol. i. p. 423, and Crabb Robinson’s Diary , vol. ii. p. 132. 
 
 3 Taylor’s Fine Arts in England , vol. ii. p. 375. 
 
RUSSELL SQUARE 219 
 
 displayed on the walls of the staircase and painting-rooms of Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence, in his house in Russell Square.” 1 Smith acted as agent for 
 Lawrence in the acquisition of some of the treasures of sculpture, &c., with 
 which No. 65 was filled. 2 
 
 Lawrence died somewhat suddenly of an ossification of the heart, 
 in Russell Square, on January 7, 1830; and Etty, writing to Bodley, 
 describes calling to inquire, on the very night his “ friend and honoured 
 master” died. “I knocked three times; but as I had not knocked loud, 
 got no answer. I then rang : a little boy came. I asked if it was true 
 Sir Thomas had been unwell. ‘ He had been some days.’ I asked if he 
 kept his bed. ‘ Not exactly : he kept his bedroom, and sat by the fire.’ 
 I told him to take my compliments, and I wished much to know how he 
 was. ‘ I can’t go into the room, sir : his doctor is with him ; but he is 
 a great deal better to-day.’ Gracious and merciful God ! ” adds Etty, 
 “ he was dying about that very moment : about nine o’clock, in a small 
 bedroom, in the upper part of his house.” 3 On the previous 31st 
 December, Lawrence’s friend Miss Croft had called in Russell Square, 
 and found the painter apparently as well as usual. 4 
 
 No. 65 appears to have remained unoccupied for a considerable time 
 after the painter’s death, for I find Haydon, on May 25, 1832, entering 
 these words in his Journal: “I passed Lawrence’s house. Nothing could 
 be more melancholy or desolate. I knocked and was shown in. The 
 passages were dusty, the paper torn, the parlours dark, the painting-room 
 forlorn, the very paint on the door green with mildew. I went into the 
 parlour which used to be instinct with life ! ‘ Poor Sir Thomas, always in 
 
 trouble,’ said the woman who had the care of the house. ‘ Always some- 
 thing to worrit him.’ I saw his bedroom, small ; only a little bed ; the 
 mark of it was against the wall. 5 Close to his bedroom was an immense 
 room (divided), yet open over the partitions. It must have been five or 
 six rooms turned into one large workshop. . . . His painting-room was 
 a large back drawing-room : his showroom a large front one. He occupied 
 a parlour and a bedroom ; all the rest of the house was turned to business. 
 And this was the home of one of those whose patrons were ‘ kings and 
 princes, and peers and peeresses his companions,’ one whose accquaintance 
 not a genius in England but reckoned a pleasure if not an honour ! ” 6 
 
 1 Nollekens and his Times , p. 350. 
 
 2 Besides what Woodburne purchased, the collection of casts from the antique and some 
 models, &c., were sold at 65 Russell Square, by Christie’s, on July 6, 1830, and realised the small 
 sum of ,£732, 10s. 
 
 3 Gilchrist’s Life of Etty, vol. i. p. 283. 
 
 4 Timbs’s Anecdote Biography , second series, p. 269. 
 
 5 If only Haydon had put some of the realism of his writing into his pictures ! 
 
 Cunningham’s Life of Lawrence. 
 
220 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Two doors from Sir Thomas Lawrence’s old house, at No. 67, 1 lived 
 Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, who became Judge of the Court of Common 
 Pleas, but is better known as the author of Ion and Glencoe , the friend of 
 Dickens and nearly all the literary and artistic people of the day, and 
 according to the general idea, as the original of the immortal Traddles ; 
 and above all, perhaps more likely than anything else to carry his name 
 to posterity, as the friend to whom Pickwick was dedicated. 
 
 It was while dining with Talfourd here, in company with Forster, that 
 Macready found, to his delight, that an anonymous play called Glencoe , 
 which had been submitted to him, was the work of his host. The 
 incident is graphically described in the great actor’s Diary for December 
 12, 1839 : “After dinner the conversation turned on plays. I mentioned 
 one I had of a striking character upon a popular subject. Talfourd 
 asked me the title. I told him Glencoe. He questioned me about its 
 possible melodramatic tendency. I told him that the treatment avoided 
 the melodrama of the stage ; that the style was an imitation of his 
 writing, but without the point that terminated his speeches ; that the 
 story was well managed and dramatic ; and that I intended to act it. At 
 last, to my utter astonishment, he pulled out two books from his pocket 
 and said, ‘Well, I will no longer conceal it — it is my play;’ and he 
 gave each of us a copy.' 2 Talfourd died with tragic suddenness while 
 charging the Grand Jury at Stafford, on March 13, 1854. 
 
 Serjeant Ballantine recalls the social gatherings that took place at 
 Talfourd’s, which “included not only those who had obtained eminence 
 in their profession, but the young who were striving to do so,” which 
 perhaps, as much as anything, points to the amiable and friendly qualities 
 of the host. 
 
 Another lawyer, Chief Justice Abbott, afterwards Lord Tenterden, once 
 resided at No. 28 3 Russell Square. The son of a barber at Canterbury, 
 he rose to the highest position in the law, and became an authority, still 
 followed, on mercantile law ; his book on the Law Relating to Merchant 
 Ships and Seamen , published in 1 802, being a text-book on the subject. 
 Even the critical Charles Greville allows that he “ was a remarkable 
 man,” and that “ his elevation did great credit to the judgment which 
 selected him ”... and he adds, “ He was a profound lawyer, and appears 
 to have had a mind fraught with the spirit and genius of the law, and 
 
 1 Mentioned before as being part of old Bolton House. 
 
 2 Macready’s Reminiscences , vol. ii. p. 155. 
 
 3 Two doors off at No. 26, now the Rev. Bramley Moore’s, lived Beverley the scene-painter, 
 and the ceilings of the first-floor rooms were painted by him, so I am informed by the present 
 occupier. 
 
RUSSELL SQUARE 221 
 
 not narrow and trammelled by its subtleties and technicalities.” 1 2 3 Lord 
 Tenterden died on November 4, 2 1832 ; and Denman, another resident in 
 the Square, at No. 50, was immediately selected to fill the office of 
 Lord Chief Justice, thus rendered vacant. Besides being a great lawyer, 
 Denman is remembered as having helped to defend Queen Caroline, at 
 whose deathbed he was present in 1820. It will be recalled that at the 
 trial, when the Treasury suggested that even if the Queen’s name were 
 not added to the Liturgy, it might be inferred that she was included 
 in the prayer for the royal family, it was Denman who retorted with, 
 “ If her Majesty is included in any general prayer, it is in the prayer for 
 all who are desolate and oppressed ; ” a while his celebrated parallel between 
 George IV. and his Queen and Nero and Octavia was, as Creevey 4 says, 
 “ perfect in all its parts ; ” and was almost as daring as Sir John Eliot’s 
 comparison of Buckingham with Sejanus, when the offended Charles 
 exclaimed, “ He must mean me for Tiberius.” 
 
 Four doors from Lord Denman’s house resided another lawyer, Mr. 
 Justice Holroyd, who was living for a time at No. 46 ; and an amusing 
 story is told by Horace Smith, a propos of his brother James Smith, which 
 may be given here. It appears that James Smith was desired on one 
 occasion by his father to get an affidavit sworn at a judge’s chambers ; 
 but being engaged to dine at Russell Square at the house next to 
 Sir George Holroyd, he thought he might combine business with pleasure, 
 and save himself a journey, by calling at the judge’s residence and getting 
 it done there — especially as in emergencies this was then customary ; 
 accordingly on his way to dinner he called at No. 46, boldly knocked at 
 the door, and desired to see Sir George on particular business. It happened 
 that the latter had just sat down to dinner, but on receiving the message, 
 he promptly left the table, and swore the affidavit. This being done, he 
 asked Smith what was the pressing emergency in the matter. Smith tried 
 to think of a good excuse, but ignobly failing, he came out with, “ The 
 fact is, my Lord, I am engaged to dine at the next house — and — and — ” 
 “ And, sir, you thought you might as well save your own dinner by 
 spoiling mine?” “Exactly so, my Lord, but — ” “Sir,” replied the 
 
 irate lawyer, “ I wish you a good evening.” 5 
 
 As we have seen, Russell Square has been, as it is largely now, the 
 home of lawyers, but there remain to be noticed one or two people 
 famous in other walks of life who have at one time or another resided here. 
 
 1 Diaries , first series, vol. iii. p. 331. 
 
 2 He was, at his own request, buried in the Foundling Hospital close by. 
 
 3 The Creevey Papers , vol. i. p. 304. 1 Ibid. 
 
 5 The story is given in Mr. Beavan's James and Horace Smith. 
 
222 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 One of these was indeed a lawyer, but his name is associated with literary 
 men so largely, and his interests were so averse from legal matters — indeed 
 he once said that the two best things he ever did were, “going to the bar 
 and leaving it,” with an obvious sense of relief at the latter step — that one 
 hardly thinks of him as a gentleman of the long robe. Henry Crabb 
 Robinson, who is here referred to, came to reside at No. 30, Russell Square, 
 on September 25, 1839. In his well-known Diary , he thus notes the 
 circumstance : “ I left my chambers in Plowden’s Buildings, and went to 
 my apartments in Russell Square, No. 30. I am to pay for this, my new 
 domicile, £100 per annum. It gives me no vote, subjects me to no 
 service. I have no reason to complain of my surroundings. Fellows has 
 the second floor.” Here we find him, in 1 843, entertaining that “ flaming 
 zealot for the new doctrines,” Faber, author of a strange book then lately 
 published — Lights , &c., in Foreign Lands. “ I got up a small dinner party,” 
 says Crabb Robinson, “ being a little put to it whom to invite, as my 
 connections do not lie among the apostles of religious persecutions or the 
 Anglo-papistical Church.” He did manage to make up a little party 
 however, and he tabulates their various leanings thus humorously: “ 1. a 
 Clergyman with Oxford propensities — this was Harness ; 2. a Unitarian 
 Puseyite, who was Hunter; 3. a Layman whose life is spent in making 
 people happy — Kenyon, the friend of the Brownings ; and the fourth was 
 Fellows, ‘a traveller in the East,’ who professes that among the best 
 practical Christians he has met with are the followers of Mahomet.” 1 
 
 Later in life, when his friends thought that he should not be so 
 much alone as he necessarily would have been in rooms, it was arranged 
 that Mr. and Mrs. Talfourd Ely, close friends in whom he took great 
 interest, should live with him, and he therefore, after looking at various 
 other houses in the neighbourhood, which for one reason and another 
 were found unsuitable, arranged to rent the whole of No. 30, in the 
 year 1864. Three years later, on February 5, 1867, he died in this 
 house, where he had lived off" and on a little over twenty-seven years. 2 
 
 The Fellows mentioned above as occupying the second floor, when 
 Crabb Robinson first installed himself in rooms in No. 30, was Sir Charles 
 Fellows, the well-known traveller and archaeologist in Asia Minor, who 
 discovered, among other remains, the ruins of Tlos and Xanthus in 
 Lycia. His collections are now in the British Museum, to which he 
 left them on his death in i860. 
 
 By Crabb Robinson’s Diary , we incidentally learn of another interest- 
 ing resident in the Square in the person of John Walter, the third John 
 1 Diary , vol. ii. p. 238. 2 Diary , vol. ii. p. 385. 
 
RUSSELL SQUARE 223 
 
 Walter of the Times , who so largely increased the size and business of 
 that great paper by the inauguration of the Walter Press. He appears 
 to have come to live in Russell Square about the year 1846, for the 
 Diarist, in an entry for that year, writes, “ I called this morning on 
 young John Walter’s, who has taken a house on the opposite side of 
 Russell Square, and I was induced to accept an invitation to join a 
 family party there in the afternoon.” It will be remembered that at 
 one time Crabb Robinson was on the staff of the Times, and was a close 
 personal friend of John Walter the second, as well as of his son. 
 
 Another acquaintance of Crabb Robinson once lived at No. 12. 
 This was William Took, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and a writer 
 on currency and political economy, who also represented Truro in 
 Parliament from 1835 to 1837. We find Robinson desiring him to buy 
 on his behalf a share in the London University, afterwards University 
 College ; and he was a colleague with him on the Committee of manage- 
 ment of the College in later years. 
 
 At No. 56 in the Square, now the residence of R. W. Dibden, 
 Esq., F.R.G.S., Miss Mitford was staying in 1836, and it is probable 
 that when here she made one at the supper party, “ largely attended 
 by actors, lawyers, and dramatists,” which was given by Macready after 
 the first performance of Ion. Crabb Robinson, who was there, records 
 that he sat by Miss Tree and near Miss Mitford ; and when Kenyon 
 took the author of Our Village , in May 1836, to see the giraffes at the 
 Zoological Gardens and called for Miss Barrett, “ a hermitess in Gloucester 
 Place,” 1 Miss Mitford was possibly staying at Russell Square. We know 
 she received Wordsworth here among the many visitors who came to 
 see her, for she refers to the circumstance in a letter, thus : “ Mr. Words- 
 worth, Mr. Landor, and Mr. White dined here. I like Mr. Wordsworth, 
 of all things. . . . Mr. Landor is a very striking-looking person, and 
 exceedingly clever. Also we had Mr. Browning, a young poet, and Mr. 
 Procter, and Mr. Morley, and quantities more of poets ; Stanfield and 
 Lucas were also there.” What a constellation ! 
 
 We now come to the last notable resident in Russell Square in past 
 days — to Frederick Denison Maurice, the Christian Socialist, who from 
 1856 to 1862, occupied No. 5, which has now disappeared to make way for 
 the magnificent Hotel Russell. Here, rising nearly always at six o’clock, 
 he would take his habitual cold bath ; and from breakfast-time till his 
 frugal dinner at 6.30, he was almost invariably engaged in dictation to 
 Mrs. Maurice, pouring out floods of words which found their ultimate 
 expression in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana ; in his Ancient , Medieval , 
 1 Friendships of Miss R. Mitford , vol. ii. p. 15. 
 
224 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 and Modern Philosophy , or in one of the numerous books or articles which 
 he produced in such quick succession. Crabb Robinson was a friend of 
 his, and they must have seen a great deal of each other when living so 
 near one another in Russell Square. It was during that year of general 
 upheaval, 1848, that Maurice became the leader of the so-called Christian 
 Socialists ; while his Theological Essays , published five years later, raised 
 such a storm of criticism that he was forced to resign the professorship 
 which he held at King’s College. A year later, however, he became 
 Principal of St. Mary’s Hall, Queen Square; and in 1866 he was selected 
 as Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge. This last appointment he 
 held for about six years, dying on April 1, 1872, in his sixty-seventh 
 year. There seems to be a general consensus of opinion about Maurice’s 
 charming personality. From many such references, I may quote Mrs. 
 Brookfield as saying that she not only liked him greatly, but “felt a 
 reverence for him, and yet not the same stammering awe I have of 
 Trench ; not that I thoroughly liked Maurice’s writings, but he seems 
 broad-minded and earnest.” 
 
 As identifying certain bygone residents with particular houses, I 
 note that among the Vestrymen of St. George’s, Bloomsbury, who lived 
 here, and are given by Dobie in 1829, are the following: Lord Tenter- 
 den, at No. 28 Russell Square; William Pratt, Esq., at No. 59; John 
 Rawlinson, Esq., at No. 38 ; William Groom, Esq., at No. 24 ; and Barry 
 Hutchinson, Esq., at No. 52 ; 1 while a director of the Clerical, Medical, 
 and General Life Assurance Co., Samuel Miles, Esq., was residing here 
 in 1831, as were two of its trustees, the Rev. G. Shepherd and Andrew 
 Mia’Ville, Esq. ; as well as a director of the Albion Fire and Life Insur- 
 ance Co., in the person of Thomas Sterling Benson, Esq., in 1825. One 
 more house deserves notice, No. 13, for here lived for over a quarter 
 of a century, till his death in November 1905, Sir George Williams, the 
 founder of the Young Men’s Christian Association in 1844; an organisa- 
 tion which to-day numbers no less than 7000 branches, in forty countries, 
 with a roll of members exceeding 700,000. The house in Russell 
 Square was naturally a rallying-point for all those interested in this great 
 work, and deputations as well as individuals from all parts of the globe 
 were wont to wait on Sir George at No. 13. It is therefore appropriate 
 that this house will in future be occupied by the National Council, as the 
 headquarters of the Y.M.C.A., Sir George’s family having assigned the 
 lease for that purpose. 
 
 1 Thomas Yates, a wholesale tobacco manufacturer, father of the actor Frederick Hemy 
 Yates, and grandfather of the late Edmund Yates, lived in Russell Square ; as Mr. Yates in his 
 Recollections informs us. 
 
RUSSELL SQUARE 225 
 
 The central garden contains, 1 on its south side, a colossal statue of 
 Francis, fifth Duke of Bedford, whom a writer in the Gentleman' s 
 Magazine , 2 once describod as “ tall, well formed, elegant in his person, and 
 polished in his manners.” The statue was erected seven years after his 
 Grace’s death, and is the work of Westmacott. It is of bronze and stands 
 on a granite pedestal, on which is cut simply the Duke’s name and the 
 date of the year in which it was put up. The whole is no less than 
 twenty-seven feet in height, and represents the Duke resting one hand 
 on a plough, while with the other he holds some ears of corn, in allusion 
 to his well-known agricultural tastes. The four seasons are personified 
 by children at the base of the figure, while on the sides of the pedestal 
 are bas-reliefs in bronze representing agricultural subjects ; and the whole 
 recalls, as Walford phrases it, “ one of those illustrious statesmen of 
 ancient Rome, whose time was divided between the labours of the Senate 
 and those of their Sabine farms.” 3 
 
 There is to-day, beyond what I have before noticed, not much 
 alteration in the Square from what it was at the time of its formation ; 
 this arises, of course, from the fact that that event dates from relatively 
 recent times. It was, too, a period when spaciousness was one of the 
 chief merits of domestic architecture, 4 and there has therefore been little 
 necessity, as there has frequently been found to be with houses of an 
 earlier period, to entirely demolish them in order to conform to more 
 modern requirements. 
 
 Many notable people still reside in Russell Square, which seems to be 
 again resuming its position as a fashionable locality. The legal profession 
 is still largely represented, and to the legal has been added the theatrical, 
 a combination which has become traditional ; and we find among the 
 present owners or occupiers of houses here, such well-known names as 
 those of George Grossmith, Esq., at No. 55 ; Edwin Freshfield, Esq., at 
 No. 35 ; and Lionel Monckton, Esq., at No. 69. 
 
 Russell Square has the honour of figuring in the finest story in the 
 
 1 Fanny Kemble, in her Records of a Girlhood , states that when staying in Great Russell 
 Street she had a key of this garden given her, and records how with a book in her hand, 
 generally Shakespeare, she used to mechanically pace the gravel walks, and ever after associ- 
 ated certain readings of Othello and Macbeth with that place; while Lady Burne-Jones, in her 
 Memorials of Burne-Jones , states that “the garden of Russell Square furnished the marigolds 
 that fill the space in the foreground beneath the wayside shrine,” in Burne-Jones’s Merciful 
 Knight. 
 
 2 Vol. lxxii. p. 285. 3 Old and New London , vol. iv. p. 565. 
 
 4 The principle introduced by the Adam Brothers of making rows of houses appear as a 
 single erection, by uniting several residences under one uniform faqade, will be found exempli- 
 fied here on the west side, where Nos. 31-37 have this characteristic ; the middle house, No. 34, 
 now the home of the Auctioneers’ Institute, being the keynote to the scheme. 
 
 P 
 
226 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 world, for the readers of Vanity Fair will remember that here dwelt in 
 the days of their prosperity the Sedleys, and here it was that Rebecca 
 Sharp was first introduced into that family and commenced the conquest 
 of the egregious Joseph — the collector of Boggley Wollah ; here, too, 
 dwelt the Osbornes and hither, about three weeks after June 18, 1815, 
 came Sir William Dobbin and brought the letter from George Osborne 
 to his bereaved and wretched father, a letter which Mr. Osborne dropped 
 “ with the bitterest, deadliest pang of balked affection and revenge,” for 
 “ his son was still beloved and unforgiven.” 
 
 QUEEN SQUARE 
 
 “ A walk round Queen’s Square is as pleasant as any of the public gardens.” 
 
 Noorthouck (1773). 
 
 Like the majority of London squares, Queen Square when formed was 
 not properly a square at all, for three sides of it only were built upon, the 
 north side being left open in order that an uninterrupted view towards 
 Hampstead might be enjoyed by the residents. A view of the Square 
 taken in 1787, shows its formation in this respect, and enables us to 
 realise, better than pages of description would do, what an extraordinary 
 change has taken place in this part of London during the hundred odd 
 years that have elapsed since the view of it was taken. We find, by a 
 plan of London published by Luffman, that even so comparatively soon 
 after that event as 1819, houses and streets had taken the place of 
 the open fields of 1787, but even this increase in building represents 
 but an insignificant fraction of the miles of bricks and mortar which 
 have arisen since. 
 
 The Square was originally made at the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, and was first called Devonshire Square, a name altered about 
 1706, to Queen Square in compliment to Queen Anne ; and in the view of 
 it just referred to is shown a church at the south-west corner. This was 
 St. George the Martyr’s, which had been erected in 1706, by private sub- 
 scription about the time of the formation of the Square, and was destined 
 to serve as a chapel of ease for St. Andrew’s, Holborn, but was declared a 
 
 1 Probably one of the houses on the site of which the Hotel Russell stands was in 
 Thackeray’s mind. 
 
QUEEN SQUARE 227 
 
 parish church just seventeen years later. 1 The burial-ground attached to 
 the church was behind the Foundling Hospital, and it is said, such was 
 the prejudice against being laid in virgin ground, that no one was buried 
 here till a grave was dug for Nelson, the well-known author of Fasts and 
 Festivals , when the superstition was effectually combated and the ground 
 used for the purpose for which it had been formed. 
 
 We are told by Noorthouck, 2 that the church was dedicated to St. 
 George, in compliment to Sir Streynsham Master, one of its founders, 
 who had been Governor of Fort St. George ; and the same authority says 
 that, “ the persons who built it intended to reimburse themselves by the 
 sale of pews, but the commissioners for erecting fifty new churches, re- 
 solving to make this one of them, purchased it and caused a certain 
 district to be appointed for its parish.” He adds, what we can see for 
 ourselves, with the aid of the 17 87 view, that it is a common brick build- 
 ing without style or elegance, but that it was conveniently arranged and, as 
 he quaintly terms it, “ well enlightened ” ; while Maitland, writing in 
 1756, says, “The church is ... a perfectly plain and most inelegant brick 
 building, but the inside is of the composite order, and the enrichments are 
 beautiful.” 
 
 Anne’s reign was hardly the heyday of ecclesiastical architecture, and 
 thus the churches which are now frequently to be met with, built to be 
 uniform with modern Queen Anne houses, are seldom quite satisfactory. 
 
 The genesis of the church was in this wise. In 1693, an unsuccessful 
 attempt had been made to divide the parish of St. George’s from that of 
 St. Andrew’s, Holborn ; and although a petition had been presented to Par- 
 liament, nothing was done until some years later, when the increase in 
 houses and inhabitants caused the Sir Streynsham Master mentioned before, 
 with several other gentlemen, to be appointed trustees for a chapel of ease 
 to be erected “ for the convenient performance of their religious duties.” 
 Among the names recorded in connection with this matter are those of 
 Sir William Milman ; Daniel Child, Esq. ; Robert Nelson, Esq. ; the Hon. 
 Captain Gore ; the Hon. Colonel Lowe ; and Paul Jodrell, Esq. The 
 result of their efforts was that an agreement was entered into between 
 them and one Arthur Tooley, who had on February 26, 1705, taken on 
 lease from Nathaniel Curzon a certain plot of land for a term of sixty- 
 one years, to build them a chapel and two houses. The sum allocated 
 for this purpose was ,£3500, which money was to be raised by the sale 
 
 1 In 1723, says Noorthouck. A view of the Square, looking north, was engraved by Pollard 
 in 1787, from a drawing by E. Dayes, a copy of which is in the Crace collection, where there 
 is also a coloured print of the Square, dated 1812. 
 
 2 History of London, p. 745. 
 
228 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 of pews in the new chapel which appears to have been finished by July 
 1706, for on the first day of that month the trustees settled certain 
 stipends “ for the maintenance of a chaplain, an afternoon preacher (who 
 was likewise a reader), and a clerk ; to the first and second one hundred 
 pounds each, and to the clerk fifty pounds” ; Dr. J. Marshall having been 
 already nominated first chaplain on April 9, 1706. From the Trustees’ 
 Minute Book, the sale of pews on April 21, 1707, amounted to ^2780 
 — while on March 3, 1708, is an entry which reads, “To be paid to 
 Mr. Tooley for chapel and two houses and vestry house, ^4200.” It 
 would appear that the trustees soon after disposed of one of these houses, 
 for on July 9, 1708, is the entry, “ House sold for ^400.” 1 
 
 In 1721, the church passed into the jurisdiction of Queen Anne’s 
 commissioners, who had at once to expend ^2000 on necessary repairs. 
 It must have been badly built originally, for in 1720 it appears to have 
 been in such a state that many people were actually afraid of attending 
 it, fearing, presumably, that it might fall about their heads. Again, in 
 1772, nearly £ 1000 was spent in putting it in order; while in 1813, it 
 underwent a thorough renovation; and in 1867, it was completely con- 
 structed at a cost of between ^3000 and ^4000. 
 
 A list of the rectors may be interesting and useful ; it is as follows : — 
 
 1. Dr. Marshall, 1706-1730. 
 
 2. Dr. Samuel Green, 1730-1747. 
 
 3. Dr. Stukeley, 1747-1765. 
 
 4. Rev. S. Eaton, 1765-1782. 
 
 5. Rev. J. Luxmore, 1782-1806. 
 
 6. Rev. J. Lea Martyn, 1806-1836. 
 
 7. Rev. W. Short, 1836-1858. 
 
 8. Rev. J. Back, 1858-1877. 
 
 9. Rev. Dacre Craven, 1878. 
 
 10. Rev. Edwin Bedford. 2 
 
 Dr. Stukeley, the antiquary, and third rector of St. George’s, to which 
 he was appointed in 1747, in his MS. diary makes many references to the 
 rural character of Queen Square in his time, and the open “ exposure ” of 
 one side of the Square, an “ exposure ” which Noorthouck properly says, 
 renders it “remarkably airy and agreeable to the inhabitants of the other 
 three sides.” Dr. Stukeley, whose particular province in antiquarianism 
 was that of early British archaeology, from which circumstance he gained 
 the name of “ The Arch-Druid,” 3 and in which investigations, as Mr. 
 Clinch says, “he sometimes allowed his speculations to be unduly in- 
 fluenced by his imagination,” 4 5 lived at one of the houses in Queen 
 Square, and died here on March 3, 1765. He received the living 
 
 1 J. Lewis Miller. 2 See Lewis Miller’s account of church and parish. 
 
 3 Walford. 
 
 4 Marylebone and St. Pancrasj apropos of Stukeley’s supposing certain earthworks at 
 Somers Town to be the remains of a Roman encampment (p. 116). 
 
QUEEN SQUARE 229 
 
 of St. George’s from the Duke of Montagu, on November 12, 1747, 
 and there is extant a curious letter from his Grace offering him the 
 gift, in the course of which he says that he desires the doctor to 
 keep to himself the fact that the living “is not in what they call 
 the King’s books, and consequently may, he believes, be held with any 
 other living ; ” and he adds, “ The reason why I would have you keep 
 this to yourself is, that you know I have a good many people who hold 
 livings of me, and some pretty good ones, who would not, maybe, care to 
 exchange what they have for this ; but, if they were aware that they 
 could hold what they have and this into the bargain, I should have them 
 all upon my back for it.” Such is the penalty of patronage ! 
 
 Jesse, in his London , tells a story of the death of Stukeley, to the effect 
 that, returning home on the 27th of the previous month, he went to his 
 sitting-room to lie down and await the coming of his housekeeper, whose 
 custom it was to read to him. Having left him for a few minutes, she 
 was greeted on her return with, “Sally, an accident has happened since 
 you have been absent.” “Pray what is that, sir?” “No less than a 
 stroke of the palsy!” “I hope not, sir,” replied the woman, beginning 
 to cry ; “ Nay, do not trouble yourself,” said the doctor, “ but get some 
 help to carry me upstairs, for I shall never come down again but on 
 men’s shoulders.” His prediction was soon verified, for he died just four 
 days later, in his seventy-eighth year, which, says his biographer Collinson, 
 “ he attained by his remarkable temperance and regularity.” 1 
 
 There have been in past times several not only interesting but notable 
 residents in this Square, which is now so comparatively little known. 
 Besides Lord Windsor and the Bishops of Chester, Chichester, and Carlisle, 
 who are all given as residing here in the Review of London for 1728, 
 there also lived here Alderman Barber, the printer, and friend of Swift, 
 who refers to him as “Johannes Tonsor,” and as his “very good and old 
 friend.” Barber was Lord Mayor of London in 1732 ; and that he was a 
 personage of importance in his day is proved by Swift, who, as we all 
 know, on occasion addressed Cabinet Ministers as if they were lacqueys, 
 thus referring to him in his Journal to Stella : “I dined with no less a 
 man than the City printer. There is an intimacy between us, built upon 
 reasons which you shall know when I see you.” 2 There are very frequent 
 references to Barber in the pages of the Journal , but though Swift often 
 speaks of dining with him, these festivities appear to have taken place 
 
 1 Jesse’s London and its Remarkable Characters. Mr. J. Lewis Miller, in his monograph on 
 the church of St. George the Martyr, says, on the authority of the Universal Magazine , that 
 the doctor caught a chill in the vestry-room when giving a casting vote for Mr. Hollingbury’s 
 candidature as a Lecturer of St. George’s. 
 
 2 December 26, 1710. 
 
230 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 invariably in the City, and when Swift on one occasion mentions having 
 dinner with “ an authoress and a printer,” it does not appear to have 
 been in Queen Square ; for the lady indicated was Mrs. Manley, who was 
 Barber’s mistress, and who died at his “ printing office,” where he pro- 
 bably kept a second establishment. Barber himself died at his residence 
 in Queen Square in 1741, and some thirty years later we find Dr. Burney 
 occupying his old house. 
 
 It was during the doctor’s absence abroad in 1770, that his wife found 
 their old home in Poland Street too small, and accordingly moved to 
 Queen Square, to Barber’s house, which was situated in the upper or 
 northern end of the Square. The Burney household, Mr. Dobson 
 tells us, had a fond tradition that Swift must have frequently dined here 
 during the time of their predecessor, but this, as we have seen, appears 
 hardly likely. The house was “well fitted up, convenient, and hand- 
 some,” and in a small room up two pairs of stairs, Miss Burney was 
 wont to write up her Diary — that earlier Diary which is not so well 
 known as her later Journal , but in some respects as interesting. 
 
 Dr. Burney returned to England in 1772, and having had a very bad 
 passage across the Channel, he no sooner arrived in Queen Square than 
 he was taken seriously ill, and required the constant attendance of his 
 wife and daughters, who acted in turn as nurses ; but his natural energy 
 
 was not abated, and during the intervals of his illness he dictated to 
 
 his nurses, turned secretaries, his new Tour which, continued at 
 
 Chessington Hall, 1 when he was able to be removed thither, appeared in 
 print in the May of the following year. Not many months later, through 
 some difficulties which arose as to the title of the house in Queen Square, 
 it was given up and the family moved to Leicester Fields. 
 
 The learned Dr. Anthony Askew, one of the principal medical 
 practitioners of the Georgian era, was another one-time resident in 
 
 Queen Square. He practised originally at Cambridge, but eventually 
 came to London, and through the introduction of the celebrated Dr. Mead, 
 soon became known and sought after. He seems to have been no less 
 notable in the world of physic than in that of books, and his library was 
 particularly rich in the classics ; indeed Nichols says that at its dispersal 
 it was “ one of the best, rarest, and most valuable ever sold in Great 
 Britain.” His house in Queen Square was filled with books from base- 
 ment to attic, and the sale, in 177 5, 2 occupied no less than twenty 
 days, and was regarded as a literary event; it realised ^5000, which 
 
 1 Then the residence of “ Daddy ” Crisp, and now of Horatio Chancellor, Esq., whose father 
 purchased it many years since. 
 
 5 Jesse says 1784, but this is inaccurate. 
 
QUEEN SQUARE 231 
 
 seems a comparatively small sum in these days of monstrous biddings, 
 but was then considered a large amount. A subsequent sale of his 
 manuscripts, in 1789, also brought a substantial sum of money. 
 
 But books were not the only things collected in Queen Square by 
 Askew, for he loved to gather around him the many notable people with 
 whom he was acquainted, such as Dr. Mead, Hogarth, Archbishop 
 Markham, Sir William Jones, Dr. Parr, Dr. Farmer, ‘Demosthenes’ 
 Taylor, and Roubiliac. The latter he employed to produce a head of 
 Dr. Mead, which he presented to the College of Physicians. The price 
 for this piece of sculpture was agreed at £$o, but on receiving it, Askew 
 was so pleased with it that he sent Roubiliac a further ^50; on this, 
 if it will be believed, the sculptor, grumbling that he was underpaid, sent 
 in a bill for ^108, 2s. od., which Askew indignantly paid, forwarding 
 the receipt to Hogarth. Askew removed subsequently to Church Row, 
 Hampstead, where he died in 1771. 
 
 Two other well-known men in their day lived in Queen Square, in 
 the persons of the two Richardsons, father and son. Jonathan Richardson 
 the elder is usually termed “the painter,” although he was as much a 
 literary man as an artist : he died in his house here in 1745, aged eighty. 
 It appears that some time before his death he had had a paralytic stroke, 
 which, however, did not prevent him indulging in his customary exercise. 
 One day, having walked to St. James’s Park and back, he probably over- 
 exerted his strength, for he expired suddenly on his return to his house, 
 on May the 28th. He is said by Walpole to have been a fine draughts- 
 man so far as the heads of his subjects were concerned, but to have 
 signally failed in his attitudes, draperies, and backgrounds, which the same 
 authority terms “ totally insipid.” He published, in collaboration with 
 his son, several works, one of which Hogarth ridiculed in a drawing, but 
 he seems to have had no mean critical acumen, as is particularly shown in 
 some of his remarks on the work and genius of Milton. After his death 
 his collection of pictures and drawings was disposed of (in February 1747), 
 the sale lasting no less than eighteen days and producing as much as 
 £^ 190 } 
 
 The son, generally called “ the younger Richardson,” also practised the 
 two arts, although as regards literature not professionally ; he died in the 
 same house on June 6, 1771, aged seventy-six. 1 2 It was to him that Pope 
 applied to find out who was the author of a new poem then (1738) just 
 published, and entitled London. Richardson, after some search, reported 
 
 1 Walpole’s Anecdotes, vol. iv. pp. 30-38. 
 
 2 This is recorded on his grave, according to Smith, who also states that Nollekens was 
 one of those invited to his funeral. ( Nollekens and his Times , p. 40.) 
 
232 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 that the name of the writer was Samuel Johnson, and that he was some 
 obscure man, adding that that was all he was able to discover about him ; 
 on which Pope’s reply, given on the authority of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who 
 had heard it from Richardson himself, was, “ He will soon be deterred 1 
 On the death of the younger Richardson, the remainder of his father’s 
 collection, together with his own accumulations, was sold ; and among 
 the pictures Walpole enumerates hundreds of portraits of both of them, 
 bearing the dates when they were executed ; for it seems that the old 
 man occupied much of his leisure by writing a short poem and drawing 
 his own or his son’s portrait every day. “The son, equally tender, had 
 marked several of them with expressions of affection on his dear father 2 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller was a friend of both father and son, and frequently 
 visited them in Queen Square, when he himself was living in the neigh- 
 bouring Great Queen Street. It is also probable that Gray, the poet, 
 visited them here, when about thirteen years of age, for at that time 
 Richardson painted his portrait, which is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum. 
 
 Dr. John Campbell, the author of The Lives of the Admirals , Hermippus 
 Redivivus and other books, and the sometime editor of the Biographica 
 Britannica , once lived in Queen Square, and here he wrote many of those 
 voluminous works by which he realised a considerable fortune. Johnson 
 once said to Dr Joseph Warton that Campbell was “the richest author 
 that ever grazed the common of literature.” His house was the large 
 and then newly-built residence at the north-west corner of the Square, 
 and here, on Sunday evenings, he was in the habit of receiving his 
 literary and scientific friends; among the former was Dr. Johnson, but 
 the doctor did not take kindly to the numbers of Scotchmen whom he 
 there met : “ I used to go pretty often to Campbell’s on a Sunday 
 evening,” he once remarked, “ till I began to consider that the shoals of 
 Scotchmen who flocked about him might probably say, when anything 
 of mine was well done, ‘Ay, ay, he has learnt this of Cammell.’ ” 
 
 It was to Campbell that Johnson once uttered his obiter dictum on 
 the colonists of America, whom he did not love : “ Sir, they are a race of 
 convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of 
 hanging,” a coarse and foolish phrase, which, while doubting its authen- 
 ticity, Croker properly reprobates. Johnson thought highly of Campbell’s 
 attainments, styling him “ a man of much knowledge.” The worthy 
 doctor was also a sincerely religious man, according to Boswell, who says 
 that Lord Macartney, who knew Campbell well, once told him that when 
 he called on him on a morning he found him reading a chapter in the 
 Greek New Testament, “ which he informed his Lordship was his constant 
 1 Boswell’s Johnson , vol. i. p. 141. 2 Walpole’s Anecdotes , vol. iv. p. 38. 
 
QUEEN SQUARE 233 
 
 practice ” ; and Johnson once said, “ He was a solid orthodox man : he 
 had a reverence for religion.” It was, however, he who once told Boswell 
 that he drank thirteen bottles of port at a sitting, at which the worthy 
 laird of Auchinleck, who confesses himself “ a lover of wine,” showed 
 some natural incredulity. Campbell died in his house in Queen Square 
 in December 1775, an d i s buried in the churchyard of St. George the 
 Martyr, where he lies in company with Jonathan Richardson, Robert 
 Nelson, Nancy Dawson, the famous hornpipe dancer — the date of whose 
 burial is given in the Parish Register as June 12, 1767 — and the learned 
 Zachary Macaulay. 
 
 At or about the time when these various persons I have mentioned 
 were residing in the Square, the whole of the houses were not occupied by 
 private people, for besides the fact that there was here, about the middle 
 of the eighteenth century, a much-frequented bookseller’s shop, bearing 
 the sign of the “ Golden Head,” where in 1 762, a portrait 1 of Cunneshote, 
 one of the Cherokee chiefs then visiting this country, was exhibited for 
 sale, a “ seminary for young ladies ” was carried on in two of the houses — 
 Nos. 24 and 25 — which seminary, famous in its day, and indeed termed 
 “The Ladies’ Eton,” where, it is said, a carriage was kept in one of the 
 rooms for the “ young ladies ” to practise getting in and out gracefully, is 
 interesting for two reasons, one being that it was in all probability here 
 that Fanny Burney came to school when her father was living in Queen 
 Square, and the other because here for a time Charles Churchill, that 
 most unseemly of clergymen, added to the meagre stipend he received as 
 curate of St. John the Evangelist in Smith Square, by acting as tutor. 
 Those who know the history of Churchill’s career will hardly be surprised 
 to learn that his habits were so irregular that he was obliged to give up 
 his tutorship and his curacy in a very short time. It is, however, a not 
 uninteresting speculation to suppose that the satirist of Dr. Johnson may 
 have imparted instruction to one whose fame as a writer was first perceived 
 and advertised by the “ great Lexicographer ” himself. 
 
 A latter-day resident in Queen Square was the Rev. George Croly, 
 who lived at No. 9. Although he is one of the great band of forgotten 
 writers, he made some noise in his day in the quadruple character of 
 clergyman, poet, novelist, and biographer. His chief work of fiction, 
 Salathiel, appeared in 1827; ten years before he had published a poem 
 entitled Paris in 1815; while among his miscellaneous works his Life 
 and Times of George IV. is still to be met with. Although he is described 
 as a man of “ massive form and grave, inflexible countenance,” he appears 
 
 1 It was probably the portrait painted by Francis Parsons, which was also exhihited in the 
 Spring Gardens Rooms in the following year. See Pilkingto?i , vol. ii. p. 564. 
 
234 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 to have been popular in society. He died quite suddenly at the age of 
 eighty, while walking near his home, in Holborn, in i860. 
 
 Among other residents in the Square was, according to Mr. Lewis 
 Miller, Robert Nelson, the well-known author of the Fasts and Festivals , of 
 which 10,000 copies were sold in a little over four years. He died in 
 1714, and we are told, in his funeral sermon, preached by Dr. Marshall, 
 that “ he had lived like a lamb, without commotion or struggle, sub- 
 missive to the will of God, and entirely resigned to His holy Providence.” 
 Mr. Miller also informs us that Edmund Hoyle, the great authority on 
 whist, 1 was also living in the Square about 1761 ; and Sir John Kerslake, 
 once Attorney-General, was born here, where his father was an old and re- 
 spected resident ; while another one-time inhabitant’s identity is evidently 
 hidden in the alliterative name of the lady whose share in an amusing 
 satire published in 1792, and called A Sketch of the Rights of Boys and 
 Girls , by Launcelot Light of Westminster School and Letitia Lookabout 
 of Queen’s Square, Bloomsbury, is indicated. 
 
 In 1865, William Morris came to live in the Square, at No. 26, one 
 of the houses on the east side which were subsequently pulled down to 
 make place for the large establishment now known as the National 
 Hospital. Morris took the house partly for his own use but chiefly 
 as the headquarters of the artistic firm of Morris & Co. which he had 
 founded, and it was occupied by this firm during the following seventeen 
 years. The ground floor was converted to the joint uses of an office and 
 a show-room ; and a large ball-room at the back, which was connected with 
 the main building by a wooden gallery, became the chief workshop. In 
 the small back-yard subsidiary workshops were set up, and as the business 
 increased, further room was found in the neighbouring Ormond Yard. 2 
 The same sort of work as had been carried on in Red Lion Square was 
 continued here, and in course of time were added the “ weaving, dyeing, 
 and printing of cloth — which afterwards became the staple production of 
 the firm.” 3 Mr. Mackail, in his excellent Life of Morris, records how 
 some of the earlier patrons paid visits to the Square, and how one in 
 particular, in 1865, found Morris himself “ in a dark blue linen blouse,” 
 who “ showed the patterns and made out the bill ” ; while another, in the 
 following year, came upon the painter-poet at work on his famous 
 Pomegranate wall-paper. 
 
 In Queen Square, Morris not only attended to these artistic matters ; 
 
 1 Hoyle was practically the creator of whist, in which game he gave lessons. For his 
 Short Treatise on Whist , published in 1742, he is said to have received ^1000. He also, as is 
 well known, wrote on other games. 
 
 2 Mackail’s Life of Morris. 3 Ibid. 
 
QUEEN SQUARE 235 
 
 he was, too, at work on The Life and Death of Jason , published in 1867 ; 
 while he also wrote some poems, one of which is still unpublished ; 
 Orpheus and Eurydice ; and one never finished, Aristomenes ; but, greatest 
 of all, The Earthly Paradise , written during 1865-1870, occupied him 
 during the first five years of his life in Queen Square. One of the great 
 industries instituted by Morris in the Queen Square establishment was 
 tapestry-weaving, and as he found from personal experience that such 
 work was best done by “ small flexible fingers,” “ he had another loom 
 built at Queen Square,” Mr. Mackail was informed by Mr. Wardle, 
 “ where he taught what he knew to William Deasle, who was then a 
 boy willing to adapt himself to anything which gave him a chance of 
 employment. The first piece Deasle accomplished was the Goose Girl, 
 designed by Walter Crane.” At the end of 1881, Morris moved the 
 headquarters of his firm to Merton, in Surrey, and we learn, on the 
 authority again of Mr. Wardle, that “before Christmas everything had 
 been cleared out of Queen Square and its annexes, and the new works were 
 fairly set agoing.” 1 
 
 One of Morris’s early associates in his ventures, both in Montpelier 
 Square and Red Lion Square, Faulkener, who had returned to Oxford the 
 year before his friend moved to Queen Square, was however much here 
 during the vacations, as his mother and sisters, with whom he stayed, 
 occupied a house a few doors from No. 26, and, says Mr. Mackail, “at 
 these times his intercourse with Morris was constant, and his share in the 
 conduct of the business not inconsiderable.” 
 
 It is interesting to find that the Square, as is the case with several 
 others, has its material connection with literature, in that one of its 
 houses has served as model for the delineation of a quasi-imaginary 
 dwelling. The house in question, No. 11, was occupied by the late 
 Mrs. Buckle, daughter of James Payn, and wife of the editor of the 
 Times , who recognised certain features of her home in the description of 
 that occupied by the fair Cuban in Stevenson’s Dynamiter. She, through 
 her father, laughingly remonstrated with Stevenson on this, whereupon 
 the latter wrote a long serio-comic reply to his brother novelist, in the 
 course of which he begs to explain “ how it came about that I took her 
 house,” and thus proceeds : “ The hospital was a point in my tale ; but 
 there is a house on each side. Now the true house is the one before the 
 hospital: is that No. 11 ? If not, what do you complain of? If it is, 
 how can I help what is true ? . . . Everything in the Dynamiter is not 
 true ; but the story of the Brown Box is, in almost every particular. . . . 
 Perhaps your daughter’s house has not a balcony at the back ? I cannot 
 1 Mackail’s Life of Morris, and see Life of Bur ne-f ones, by Lady Burne-Jones. 
 
236 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 answer for that ; I only know that side of Queen Square from the 
 basement and the back windows of Brunswick Row,” and so on in his 
 pleasant quizzical way. 1 
 
 As in so many of the Squares in this district, we find in Queen Square 
 several philanthropic institutions ; in fact this particular spot seems to be 
 a favourite one for charitable purposes. Thus at No. 6 is the Alexandra 
 Institution for the Blind, established in 1865 ; at the corner of Brunswick 
 Row, the Hospital for Hip Diseases of Childhood, founded two years 
 later, has its headquarters ; and the London Homoeopathic Hospital, which 
 was established in 1849, is also in the Square. No. 22 is occupied by the 
 oldest Ladies’ Charity School, inaugurated so long ago as 1702, for the 
 purpose of “ educating, clothing, and maintaining the daughters of 
 respectable parents in reduced and necessitous circumstances.” Another 
 large and fine building, but sadly out of character with the remainder of 
 the Square, once three separate residences, is now the Hospital for the 
 Paralysed and Epileptic, the inception of which dates from 1859. From 
 an interesting little pamphlet issued by the hospital, I learn that it had 
 its origin in a public meeting at the Mansion House, at the instance of 
 the Chandler family. For the first twenty-five years of its existence its 
 work was carried on in a small way in the old houses which formerly 
 stood on the site of the present fine building. It was not till 1880, that 
 the Duke of Westminster laid the first stone of one portion of this new 
 home, which was opened by H.R.H. the Princess Christian in the 
 following year. In 1882, the Duke of Albany publicly declared the 
 intention of the authorities to proceed with the main building, which was 
 opened in 1885 by H.M. the King — then Prince of Wales. The portion 
 known as the Westminster Wing was inaugurated by the late Duke in 
 1 89 1. 2 At No. 29, the College for Men and Women, an offshoot of 
 the Working Men’s College, associated with the name of Frederick 
 Denison Maurice, is housed ; while Nos. 32 and 33 are occupied by some 
 Roman Catholic institutions of a charitable nature. 
 
 In Old and New London a view of Queen Square, dated 1810, is given ; 
 it is taken looking south, and shows one of the larger houses, evidently 
 that which in the 1787 view is depicted as having a more elaborate eleva- 
 tion than those adjacent, and is there the last house on the north-east 
 side, having an entrance with a ■porte-cochere opening immediately into the 
 garden. This is now known as Queen Square House, and the garden 
 on which it abuts is the strip that forms the north side of the Square, 
 
 1 Stevenson's Letters to his Family and Friends, 2 vols. 
 
 2 From a pamphlet entitled Then and Now, kindly sent me by Godfrey H. Hamilton, Esq., 
 the secretary to the Hospital. 
 
QUEEN SQUARE 237 
 
 and divides it from Guilford Street, and is separate from the central 
 garden. 
 
 The Square is nowadays one of the most retired in London ; from 
 Guilford Street it is entirely cut off, only being seen through the garden 
 just referred to ; on the west it is approached by the narrow entry known 
 as Cosmo Place ; while on the east side alone it has an adequate opening 
 to the outside world, in Great Ormond Street. 
 
 Of the houses, several present the characteristics of Queen Anne and 
 earlier Georgian architecture, and a few are distinguished by fine speci- 
 mens of the over-doors of those periods, notably No. 4 ; while No. 3 is 
 an excellent example of Adams work. Nos. 11 and 12 have been de- 
 molished, and as yet (1906), there is no sign of rebuilding them. 1 
 
 1 Readers of Bleak House will not forget that Richard Carstone was living in furnished 
 lodgings in Queen Square, when he was studying law in the offices of Messrs. Kenge and 
 Carboy. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 TAVISTOCK, GORDON, BRUNSWICK, MECKLEN- 
 BURGH, WOBURN, TORRINGTON, REGENT, 
 AND ARGYLE SQUARES 
 
 “ Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be 
 satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares.” — Dr. Johnson. 
 
 S OMEWHAT to the north-west of Russell Square are what may 
 be described as two sets of twin squares. Those nearest Russell 
 Square and running parallel with each other are Woburn and 
 Torrington Squares ; while divided from them by Gordon Place 
 are two larger ones also parallel with each other, and known as 
 Gordon and Tavistock Squares. 
 
 If from Russell Square we proceed eastward along Bernard Street, we 
 shall come to Brunswick Square, which lies immediately to the west of 
 the Foundling Hospital, and just beyond that institution Mecklenburgh 
 Square, which forms a companion to Brunswick Square. Behind the 
 grounds of the Foundling Hospital, to the north, is the smaller Regent 
 Square, and beyond that again Argyle Square. 
 
 Although only the first four of these Squares are situated in the 
 Bedford Estate, it will be convenient to thus group together the eight 
 mentioned, as by their propinquity they lend themselves to this more 
 comprehensive form of treatment. 
 
 None of them can be said to be associated with much of historical 
 or traditional interest ; they are all comparatively modern, and only here 
 and there am I able to trace the residence of interesting people in them. 
 
 TAVISTOCK SQUARE 
 
 Tavistock Square is the notable exception, for here once lived Charles 
 Dickens, and for this reason I will say a word about it first. 
 
 This square (as well as Gordon Square) was originally formed in 1800, 
 
 238 
 
TAVISTOCK SQUARE 239 
 
 the central garden being laid out under an Act 39 & 40 George III. 
 cap. 49, and known as “The Bedford Paving Act, St. Pancras.” The 
 owner of the fee-simple (the Duke of Bedford) and certain other specified 
 persons were appointed by it to act as Commissioners for five years for 
 the purpose of carrying out its provisions ; and on the expiration of this 
 period, the owner or owners of the land were appointed Commissioner 
 or Commissioners for ever ; and it was further provided that on and 
 after June 24, 1805, the householders were to elect annually twenty-one 
 other Commissioners according to certain specified qualifications. It 
 was ordered that the area of the Square was to be enclosed and to be 
 wholly under the power and direction of the Duke of Bedford. By 
 section 48 of this Act, the Commissioners are authorised to indemnify 
 the Duke for any monies he may expend in the formation of the Square, 
 while they were empowered to levy a rate not to exceed is. in the £1 
 for “forming, making, enclosing, ornamenting, and embellishing the 
 centres, areas, or middle spaces of the said squares ” mentioned by the 
 Act. 
 
 Although Tavistock and Gordon Squares were formed in 1800, 
 the gardens in their centres were not made till 1825 ; indeed in Luffman’s 
 plan for 1816, both these Squares are outlined, and the former mentioned 
 by name, but they are not shown as being in any way completed ; and 
 considering that, by the plan for 1732, all the land surrounding is 
 marked as pasture land, it says something for the enterprise of our 
 forefathers that as much should have been done as it was towards build- 
 ing, in this relatively short space of time. 
 
 The Square is named after the second title of the Duke of Bedford, 
 that of Marquis of Tavistock, and, as I have said, practically its sole 
 interest clusters round Tavistock House, which stands somewhat back 
 on the north-east side, from the fact that this house was the home, for 
 nearly ten years — 1851-1860 — of Charles Dickens. It had formerly been 
 occupied by James Perry, the editor of the Morning Chronicle , who had 
 succeeded William Woodfall, and introduced the system, in vogue ever 
 since, of reporting verbatim the Parliamentary debates. It is an interest- 
 ing fact that it was in the pages of the Morning Chronicle that the 
 Sketches, by Boz first appeared, Dickens, it will be remembered, re- 
 porting for the paper from 1829 until 1835 when he joined the staff. 
 I may mention here that Eliza Cook, a once well-known poetess, also 
 resided at Tavistock House ; and more recently Mrs. Georgina Welldon 
 and her husband occupied it, during which time the great French com- 
 
 1 From information kindly given me by A. R. O. Stutfield, Esq., Steward to the Duke of 
 Bedford. 
 
240 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 poser Gounod stayed here for a period, and held singing-classes in the 
 drawing-room ; the house being eventually used as a Jews’ College. 1 
 
 Dickens, as I have said, came to live here in 1851. No. 1 Devon- 
 shire Terrace, which he had been occupying, was found to be too small 
 for his growing requirements, and he cast about for some more convenient 
 residence. That the move was at first a wrench, is proved by a remark 
 he made to Forster. “ I seem,” he said, “ as if I had plucked myself out 
 of my proper soil when I left Devonshire Terrace, and could take root 
 no more until I returned to it.” The house in Tavistock Square was at 
 this time, and had been for many years, the residence of Frank Stone, 
 A.R.A., one of the artists who illustrated the Christmas books, and in 
 the autumn of 1851, an exchange of houses took place, Mr. Stone going 
 to Devonshire Terrace (which, by-the-bye, became subsequently the home 
 of the late George Du Maurier) and Dickens coming to Tavistock House. 
 Here various alterations were carried out, and an amusing letter from 
 Dickens to his brother-in-law, Henry Austin, is extant wherein the 
 author bemoans the shortcomings, or rather »<?-comings, of the British 
 workman, in his proverbially amusing way. In another humorous epistle 
 he says, “ I dream that I am a carpenter and can’t partition off the hall. 
 I frequently dance in the drawing-room and fall in the kitchen for want 
 of a pillar. ... I dream, also, of the workmen every night,” and so on 
 in the inimitable strain. 
 
 It was here that Bleak House was begun in the following November, 
 and here soon after came Hans Christian Andersen on a visit. Andersen’s 
 account of Dickens’s house here is interesting, not only as being descrip- 
 tive of the place as it then was, but also as being the impression of a 
 foreigner : “ In Tavistock Square stands Tavistock House. This and the 
 strip of garden in front of it are shut out from the thoroughfare by an 
 iron railing. A large garden with a grass-plot and high trees stretches 
 behind the house, and gives it a countrified look. In the passage from 
 street to garden hung pictures and engravings. Here stood a marble bust 
 of Dickens ; and over a bedroom door and a dining-room door were in- 
 serted the bas-reliefs of Night and Day, after Thorwaldsen. On the first 
 floor was a rich library with a fireplace and a writing-table, looking out 
 on the garden ; the kitchen was underground, and at the top of the 
 house were the bedrooms.” 2 Hard Times , Little Dorris — which its author 
 had so much difficulty in beginning, that he writes to Wilkie Collins 
 describing himself as “wandering up and down my room with the first 
 pages of my new book before me in a restless condition that defies 
 description” — and Hunted Down , were all, or at least a portion of them, 
 
 1 Kitton’s Life of Dickens. 2 Ibid. 
 
TAVISTOCK SQUARE 241 
 
 written here, and here too took place those amateur theatricals, with 
 Stanfield and Telbin as scene-painters ; Mark Lemon, Egg, Jerrold, and 
 Planche as fellow-actors or assistants ; and Lytton, Thackeray, Carlyle, 
 and Macready 1 among the audience, which have become almost as closely 
 identified with Dickens as his works. 
 
 In i860, the lease of Tavistock House expired, and Dickens, in the 
 midst of writing Great Expectations , transferred his penates to Gads 
 Hill, which had for some time past been his country residence. Among 
 other things removed were the famous imitation book-backs with their 
 inventive and humorous titles, which rivalled those concocted by Tom 
 Hood for the library at Chatsworth, and which appropriately included a 
 History of a Short Chancery Suit , in twenty-one volumes ! Dickens’s own 
 letters and the various lives of him, from those of Forster and Kitton 
 downwards, are full of descriptions of “The Tavistock House Theatre,” 
 “The Smallest Theatre in the World,” and the fun that went on there, 
 and an interesting paper on “Amateur Theatricals at Tavistock House” 
 once appeared in Macmillan' s Magazine , from the pen of one who had 
 taken part in them. It was, as readers of The Tale of Two Cities are 
 aware, when acting here in Wilkie Collins’s Frozen Deep, that the first 
 idea of that powerful story first presented itself to its author. Dickens 
 was full of initiative himself and, a rarer attribute, always ready to take 
 advice on matters connected with these amateur play-actings, and on one 
 occasion, being anxious to make more room in his tiny theatre, he applied 
 to Mr. Cook of Astley’s, who, he had been told, was the man to help 
 him, with, as Mr. Forster 2 records, quoting Dickens’s own words, the 
 following result : “ One of the finest things I have ever seen in my life 
 of that kind was the arrival of my friend Mr. Cook one morning this 
 week, in an open phaeton drawn by two white ponies with black spots 
 all over them (evidently stencilled), who came in at the gate with a little 
 jolt and a rattle, exactly as they come into the ring when they draw any- 
 thing, and went round and round the centre bed of the front court 
 apparently looking for the clown,” and so on ; while the sounds in the 
 house reminded Dickens of Chatham Dockyard as to the present, and the 
 building of Noah’s ark as to the past. 3 
 
 Three other well-known men once lived in Tavistock Square ; one of 
 them, Prince Hoare, the art critic and dramatic writer, resided at No 3, 
 in 1 807 ; during which time he was editing his Academic Annals , which 
 
 1 Macready mentions in his Diary looking at a house in the Square with a view to taking 
 it, but the matter fell through. 
 
 2 Life of Dickens. 
 
 3 Forster’s Life of Dickens. Mr. Hughes, in his Tramps in Dickens's Land, gives a facsimile 
 of the play-bill for June 19, 1855, of the performance at Tavistock House. 
 
 Q 
 
2+2 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 appeared periodically during the years 1805 to 1809. I n the same house 
 some years later (1816-1821) lived John Braham, the singer, “ that com- 
 pound of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel,” as Lamb calls him; 
 while at No. 51, Charles Knight, who in his day did so much towards the 
 diffusion of knowledge, writing, or causing to be written works in all 
 classes of literature, lived in 1828. 
 
 GORDON SQUARE 
 
 Gordon Square dates from the same period as Tavistock Square, and the 
 conditions under which it was laid out, &c. (by the Act 39 & 40 George III.), 
 are identical. It took its name from the fourth Duke of Gordon, whose 
 daughter married, as his second wife, John, sixth Duke of Bedford, who 
 succeeded to the title in 1802, during the time the Square was in process 
 of formation ; although the east side was not built till so late as 1858. 
 
 There is little of interest in Gordon Square, with the exception of the 
 gothic building known as the “ Catholic and Apostolic Church,” which 
 owed its inception to Edward Irving. The edifice is situated in the 
 south-west corner, and was commenced in the year 1853, after designs 
 by Messrs. Brandon & Ritchie. The description of it given by Mr. 
 Walford still holds good, in that its exterior is Early English and its 
 interior Decorated. It has a triforium in the roof of the aisle appropriate 
 to this scheme of architecture, and Timbs considers that, as an adapta- 
 tion of the Early English style of architecture, the church is one of the 
 most successful of modern works. But an anomaly exists in the fact that 
 a side chapel is called the “Lady Chapel,” or rather the author of Old 
 and New London considers it so, but we may remember the innumerable 
 churches in this country where “ Lady Chapels ” exist, and where, no more 
 than in the Irvingite creed, is the Virgin Mary worshipped. 
 
 Although named after him and intimately associated with his person- 
 ality, the Catholic and Apostolic Church was not actually founded by 
 Edward Irving, but he accepted its particular creed and did more than 
 any one to further its aims and influence. Its organisation is elaborate, 
 and is based on the first set of twelve apostles founded in 1835. Broadly, 
 its tenets may be summed up as the recognition of the order of apostles, 
 prophets, evangelists, pastors or angels, elders, deacons &c. ; it relies 
 largely on the early creeds, the eucharist, prophecies, and gifts of tongues ; 
 its services are highly ritualistic and its liturgy elaborate. 
 
 Irving himself was a remarkable man, with a commanding personality 
 
GORDON SQUARE 243 
 
 and a figure, we are told, that attracted old and young alike. His ap- 
 pearance was gaunt, tall, and ascetic, and as he had a habit of walking 
 with his hat in his hand, and had a head of very black hair, while his 
 dress was eccentric, he was one of those who are inevitably liable monstrari 
 digito. In 1835, Irving died, and readers of Carlyle will remember the 
 words the sage wrote on the occasion ; how he called Irving’s “ one of 
 the noblest natures,” and how he describes him as being “ so loving, full 
 of hope, so simple-hearted . . . making all that approached him his.” 1 
 Timbs, in his Curiosities of London, mentions an interesting fact which 
 he quotes as having been communicated to the Builder , and which would 
 seem to link Gordon Square with the greatest invention of the age, for 
 near the spot now occupied by it, “ a circular enclosure was constructed, 
 about the year 1803, for the exhibition of the first locomotive, the pro- 
 duction of Trevithick.” “ Its performance,” he adds, “ was then so 
 satisfactory that a bet was offered by the proprietors to match the engine 
 to run a greater number of miles in twenty-four hours than any horse that 
 could be produced, but there were no takers ! ” 
 
 Macready was nearly taking a house in the Square, as we have seen he 
 was in Tavistock Square, for on June 15, 1837, he notes in his Diary the 
 fact that he inspected houses in both squares. That in Gordon Square 
 seems to have appealed to him, and two days later we find him calling 
 “on Pearsall and Jordan about the house,” but what he calls an “im- 
 pertinent letter ” from the landlord, so annoyed him that he refused to 
 negotiate further, subsequently agreeing to rent 8 Kent Terrace. 
 
 BRUNSWICK SQUARE 
 
 If there is little to be said about Gordon Square, there is not much 
 more to be related about Brunswick and Mecklenburgh Squares, although 
 they are grouped together in Macaulay’s reference to “ the quiet folk ” 
 who lived in them, in his day, and formed such a contrast to the alerter 
 society that was focussed in Holland and Lansdowne Houses. Brunswick 
 Square was built during the early years of the nineteenth century and 
 named after the reigning family. Part of it only — about twelve houses 
 — is in the Bloomsbury parish, the remaining portion being in that of 
 St. Pancras, and Dobie observes that it is “ elegant and pleasant, and that 
 it has always been most respectably inhabited by merchants and others.” 
 
 1 There is another church in the Square, built about 1842, from the designs of Professor 
 T.L. Donaldson, who I believe brought the Marble Arch to England. The church is a plain 
 one in the Greek style, and is dedicated to All Saints. 
 
244 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 It can boast of two illustrious residents, one of whom, John Leech, 
 spent ten years at No. 32, apparently from about 1850 to i860, or co- 
 terminous with Dickens’s occupancy of Tavistock House. As, however, 
 Miss Leech, writing to Mr. Harrison, 1 says, “ I think my brother was a 
 longer time at Brunswick Square than at the other houses. He had two 
 children born there, and I think when they left they were about eleven 
 years of age,” it would seem that Leech’s occupancy of the house was a 
 somewhat longer one. 
 
 The other interesting figure connected with the Square is that of 
 Bryan W. Procter (Barry Cornwall), who was living at a house in it in 
 1816, eight years before his marriage with the daughter of Basil Montague, 
 the year after which event we find him residing in his father-in-law’s 
 house, No. 25 Bedford Square. 
 
 One of the houses in the Square formerly contained an interesting 
 assemblage of pictures, books, and manuscripts, the property of a Mr. 
 Rooper who lived here ; 2 and Crabb Robinson records a visit he paid on 
 December 13, 1831, in company with the Masqueriers, to see the treasures. 
 Among these was a picture of Dr. Johnson by Sir Joshua which greatly 
 delighted Mr. Masquerier ; it appears to have been the identical work 
 painted for Mr. Thrale which Johnson rejected because he considered 
 that Reynolds had given too much prominence to his defective eye ; 3 
 which shows that Johnson was not another Cromwell. There was 
 another striking picture there, a portrait of Sir Joshua by himself which 
 he bequeathed to Mr. Malone ; and a fine collection of MS. letters 
 written by various eminent people and all addressed to Mr. Malone, 
 which came from that gentleman’s family into the possession of Mr. 
 Rooper. These greatly interested Crabb Robinson, who quotes the 
 following epigram against Dr. Parr, which he found amongst them : — 
 
 A RECIPE 
 
 “To half of Busby’s skill in mood and tense, 
 
 Add Bentley’s pedantry without his sense ; 
 
 Of Warburton take all the spleen you find, 
 
 And leave his genius and his wit behind ; 
 
 Squeeze Churchill’s rancour from the vein it flows in, 
 
 And knead it stiff with Johnson’s heavy prosing ; 
 
 Add all the piety of saint Voltaire, 
 
 Mix the gross compound — Fiat Dr. Parr.” 
 
 1 Memorable London Houses, p. 1 15. ■ 
 
 2 W. Lewis, Esq., Auditor to the Clerical and Medical Assurance Co., is given as residing 
 in the Square in 1831 ; and Miss Anne Manning, the authoress of Mary Powell , &c., was 
 living here with her family until their removal to Chelsea in 1813. 
 
 3 Note to Crabb Robinson’s Diary. 
 
MECKLENBURGH SQUARE 
 
 245 
 
 MECKLENBURGH SQUARE 
 
 Walford, in his Old and New London, states that the fronts of the 
 houses in Brunswick Square are so uniformly monotonous that they 
 have been described as “ brick walls with holes in them,” a description 
 which might certainly stand for many other squares and streets in 
 London, for example, portions of Mecklenburgh Square, which is only 
 relieved from this uniformity by the grounds of the Foundling Hospital 
 which bounds its west side. 
 
 This square has so little of interest to recommend it that Cunning- 
 ham does not mention it in his Handbook for London , nor is it even 
 referred to in Mr. Wheatley’s London Past and Present, while Walford’s 
 notice is contained in a short sentence. I may, however, note that 
 Nos. 42 and 43 are now used as the King’s College Theological Hostel, 
 of which the Rev. G. E. Newson, M.A., is Warden, and the Rev. 
 Stanley Charles E. Legg, M.A., Sub-Warden; while at No. 25 is the 
 West Central Collegiate School for Girls. 
 
 WOBURN AND TORRINGTON SQUARES 
 
 Of the former of these Squares there is little to be said, for, like a 
 happy country, it has no history ; and when I have stated, on the 
 authority of Dobie, 1 that it was originally intended to be called Rothesay 
 Square, and that its present name is derived from the Duke of Bedford’s 
 well-known seat, Woburn Abbey, and have reminded the reader that 
 the church, known as Christ Church, on its east side, is the work of 
 Vulliamy, I have practically exhausted anything of interest that there 
 may be attaching to it. It has, however, had one once well-known in- 
 habitant, in Mrs. Bentley, the actress, who died here on January 14, 1850. 
 The central garden was laid out about 1830, by the ground landlord, 
 the Duke of Bedford, the occupants of the houses having the use of it 
 and paying a proportionate rate for its maintenance. 
 
 Torrington Square, which was formed by Mr. Sims, the “ industrious 
 and worthy builder ” as Dobie calls him, and is to-day practically com- 
 
 1 History of the Parish of St. Giles, p. 199. 
 
246 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 posed of boarding-houses or apartments, is, if not particularly notable 
 in itself, at least interesting as to the ground it stands on, for its site 
 was formerly, till about the year 1 800, known as “ Long Fields’ ” and 
 afterwards as “Southampton Fields.” It was in these “Long Fields” 
 that Aubrey, the antiquary, records seeing on St. John the Baptist’s Day, 
 in 1694, at midnight, twenty-three young girls looking for a coal beneath 
 the root of a plantain tree, in order that whoever might find it, should 
 place it beneath her pillow and thus be led, as their superstition supposed, 
 to dream of her future husband. The particular ground is also associated 
 with the story of a mortal fight between two brothers for the possession 
 of a girl, who, from a short distance, calmly watched the fray. Both 
 men were mortally wounded, and the marks of their footprints, as they 
 struggled to and fro, were said to have remained in the ground and to 
 have prevented the growing of grass in those spots, from which circum- 
 stance this part of “ Long Fields ” was subsequently known as “ The 
 Field of Forty Footsteps.” The incident was used by Miss Porter as 
 the motif of a novel, and Southey refers to it in his Commonplace Book ; 
 while another compiler of a similar work, Joseph Moser, records visiting 
 the place in June in 1800, and counting more than the traditional forty 
 footprints, which he accounts for by the presence of workmen and build- 
 ing materials, thus confirming the date of the formation of Torrington 
 Square and the adjacent streets and houses. The “footsteps” were well 
 known to Smith, who, in his Book for a Rainy Day , mentions that he 
 frequently passed over them. 
 
 The central garden in Torrington Square was not laid out till between 
 the years 1821 and 1825, when it was formed by the ground landlord, 
 the Duke or Bedford. The occupants of the houses have to pay a pro- 
 portion of the cost of its maintenance and have the right of using it, 
 as is usual with the gardens in the London Squares ; should these tenants 
 cease to maintain it, the ground landlord can do so, and obtain indemnifi- 
 cation from the inhabitants of the Square. 
 
 The land on which the houses on the west side of the Square now 
 stand, once formed part of the grounds of the Royal Toxophilite Society, 
 which rented them from the Duke of Bearord in 1791. The Society re- 
 mained here till about 1805, when the building operations which had for 
 some time been in progress encroached on its premises and caused its 
 removal to Bayswater. 
 
 A few past residents of this square demand some notice. Of these 
 by far the most illustrious was Charles Kean, who occupied No. 3, from 
 1853 to 1856, during which time he was managing the Princess’ Theatre, 
 and producing Shakespeare’s plays, with an elaborate completeness that 
 
TORRINGTON SQUARE 247 
 
 had hitherto been unknown. Like so many sons of illustrious fathers, 
 Kean was weighted by a greater personality than his own, but without 
 the glamour of that great name it is probable that he would never have 
 been given the opportunity of attracting public attention at all. As 
 an actor he seems to have laboured under all the disadvantages which 
 could possibly be attached to such a profession — a bad figure, voice, and 
 enunciation — but he had a fine taste and an indomitable will, and if 
 he failed in portraying great characters, he knew how such characters 
 should appear on the stage ; in a word, he had talent where his father 
 possessed genius, or as Dickens once pithily put it, “If you can imagine 
 port wine, and port wine without its flavour, you have a fair comparison 
 between the elder Kean and his son.” 
 
 Another past “worthy” of the Square was Sir Nicholas Harris 
 Nicolas, who resided at No. 55. Besides editing Nelson’s Despatches and 
 writing a Chronology of History , Nicolas is known as an eminent antiquary 
 who produced much work of lasting value, and rescued from oblivion, at 
 a time when such things had a remarkable knack of getting lost or 
 destroyed, many documents of importance as illustrating the history of 
 the country; and as he was but forty-nine when he died in 1848, it is 
 highly probable that what he did in this direction is but a tithe of what 
 he would have done had he lived to the usual span. 
 
 Another antiquary, the Rev. Joseph Hunter, also resided in Torrington 
 Square, at No. 30; he it was who, in 1830, edited the valuable and in- 
 teresting Diary of Ralph Thoresby, the Yorkshire topographer. Ten 
 doors from Nicolas’s House, at No. 65, lived Sir John Taylor Coleridge, 
 the nephew of the poet, and father of the late Lord Coleridge. An English 
 jurist of renown, Sir John was Justice of the King’s Bench from 1835 to 
 1858. He had made a name by his edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries 
 published in 1825, when he was but thirty-five years of age, and like 
 many lawyers he combined with his legal studies the cultivation of 
 literature, and in 1824, Murray offered him the post of editor of the 
 Qjuarterly Review ; he did not hold this appointment long, for we find 
 him wishing to resign it in the following year on account of the increase 
 of his practice on the western circuit. This he did soon after, and as he 
 succeeded Gifford in the editorship, so in turn was he succeeded by 
 Lockhart. Next door, at No. 66, John Baker, one of the Vestrymen of 
 the parish of Bloomsbury, was living, according to the list given by 
 Dobie, in 1825. 
 
248 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 REGENT AND ARGYLE SQUARES 
 
 As I have said, these two squares lie, one behind the other, to the north 
 of the Foundling Hospital, and what interest is connected with both of 
 them is centred in the churches they contain. In the case of Regent 
 Square, it is the Scotch Presbyterian Church which stands at the corner 
 of the Square where Compton Street joins it. It was built during the 
 years 1824-1827, 1 in the Gothic style, from designs by Mr. (afterwards 
 Sir William) Tite, who took for his model the west front of York 
 Minster. It is capable of holding 3000 persons, and is stated to have 
 cost ^25,000, but this sum included the purchase of the freehold ground 
 on which it is erected. The foundation-stone was laid in 1824, by the 
 Earl of Breadalbane, acting as proxy for the Duke of Clarence. There 
 are two towers to the church, which are 120 feet high, and from 
 Hampstead are sometimes mistaken for those of Westminister Abbey. 2 
 The church was built for the Rev. Edward Irving, in consequence of the 
 Caledonian Church in Hatton Garden being too small for the large 
 numbers that flocked to hear him; and here the Unknown Tongues, and 
 Irving’s well-nigh interminable sermons, were listened to by large and 
 fashionable congregations, before Irving moved to the Catholic and 
 Apostolic Church in Gordon Square. In Clinch’s Marylebone and St. 
 Pancras , an elevation and ground plan of this, as well as the following 
 church, is given. 3 
 
 The other church in this square is situated on the east side, and is 
 dedicated to St. Peter, but is better known as “ Regent Square Church.” 
 It was designed by Messrs. Inwood, the architects of St. Pancras Church, 
 and erected during the years 1824-6, at a cost of about ^i6,ooo. 4 It has 
 a front of Ionic columns, and a steeple surmounted by a cross rises 
 directly from the centre, giving it somewhat the appearance of the 
 Audley Street Chapel. 6 
 
 It seems almost superfluous to state that Regent Square was named 
 after the Prince Regent. 
 
 Proceeding northward we come to Argyle Square, the formation of 
 which took place about the same period as that of Regent Square. Now- 
 
 1 Walford says 1824-5, ar) d Mr. Wheatley 1827-8. 2 London Past and Present. 
 
 3 An account of the church is given in Regent Square : Eighty Years of a Lotidon Congre- 
 gation, by John Hair, published in 1899. 
 
 1 London Past and Present. 
 
 5 St. Peter’s has, quite recently, been transformed from, as the public prints say, “ one of the 
 ugliest and dirtiest buildings in London to a bright and well-arranged place of worship.” 
 
 
HARRINGTON SQUARE 249 
 
 adays it is chiefly composed of “apartments” and small private hotels, 
 while at No. 30, the Salvation Army has one of its headquarters. The 
 central garden is planted with trees and laid out in grass lawns, and forms 
 a pleasant oasis amidst the surrounding mass of bricks and mortar. 
 
 The place of worship in this square is known as the New Jerusalem 
 Church, which was formed for the use of the Swedenborgians in 1844, 
 and opened on August nth of that year. It was designed by Mr. 
 Hopkins in the Anglo-Norman style, and with its two towers and 
 catherine-wheel windows has a somewhat unusual appearance. It will 
 be remembered that Swedenborg died in London in 1772, and that six 
 years later his followers were first regularly organised, under the title 
 of the “Society of the New Church signified by the New Jerusalem.” 
 
 HARRINGTON, AMPTHILL, AND OAKLEY 
 
 SQUARES 
 
 Together with the squares just mentioned it will be convenient to 
 notice three others which are somewhat outside this particular district, 
 but stand on ground of which the Duke of Bedford is the ground land- 
 lord, as he is of those previously referred to. These three are Ampthill, 
 Harrington, and Oakley Squares, which are situated in Camden Town, 
 lying to the north of the North-Western Railway’s terminus at Euston. 
 In dealing with them, however, I am faced by a more than usual 
 anomaly, in that they are not only not proper squares in their formation 
 (a characteristic common to nearly every square in London), but two of 
 them are little more than fragments of squares, triangular wedges, as it 
 were, which have survived a process of improvement in this neighbour- 
 hood. 
 
 They were originally formed about the same time as Tavistock and 
 Gordon Squares, and are subject to the same regulations as to the central 
 (if the word can with propriety be here used) gardens as these two better- 
 known Squares. Their gardens were not formed, however, till about 
 (Harrington Square) 1843, an d (Ampthill and Oakley Squares) 1845. 
 
 Harrington Square occupies two sides of a triangular piece of ground 
 facing Mornington Crescent, and adjoins Ampthill Square, which is on 
 its north side. It takes its name from an Earl of Harrington, one of 
 
250 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 whose daughters married the second Duke of Bedford. It is now chiefly 
 composed of houses where apartments are let ; and it is most conveniently 
 situated for those who use the North-Western line. 
 
 Ampthill Square is not only merely a triangle, but even this is inter- 
 sected by a deep cutting of the London and North-Western Railway at 
 its south-west corner. It takes its name from Ampthill Park, once a 
 seat of the ducal family of Bedford. Although at the present time it is, 
 like Harrington Square, composed of apartment-letting houses, it had 
 once one notable resident, for here lived, in his own house for a time, and 
 died so comparatively recently as 1874, Henry West Betty, known to 
 fame as “The Infant Roscius.” Betty’s theatrical triumphs began so 
 early in life (he was born in 1791) that we look upon him as a Georgian 
 figure only. His first appearance was on August 19, 1803, in the part of 
 Osmyn in Zara , and during the two following years he enacted such 
 various roles as Hamlet, Romeo, Tancred, Douglas, and Rolla, with 
 stupendous success. He left the stage — he was only fifteen — in 1806, 
 but returned to it, as is not unusual with actors who have bidden a final 
 farewell to the public, about six years after. His initial success was 
 extraordinary, not only in London but in the chief towns in Ireland ; 
 in Glasgow and Edinburgh, where, says Doran, “ Lords of the Court of 
 Session presented him with books and gave him old men’s blessings, and 
 the critics said that he excelled Kemble ; ” in Birmingham and at Sheffield, 
 where a “ theatrical coach to carry ‘ six insides,’ to see the young Roscius,” 
 plied between that town and Doncaster racecourse. When he arrived in 
 London, a regular Betty craze overcame the town ; royal dukes petted him ; 
 crowds which had to be regulated by detachments of Guards and cordons 
 of police, besieged the theatre where he was performing ; Kemble called 
 him the tenth wonder, and paid him first ^50 and then, after three per- 
 formances, ^100 a night; and he is said to have made ,£17,000 in his 
 first season. On his return to the stage in 1812, after the death of his 
 father, his precocious success was not upheld, and he finally left the boards 
 in 1824, having realised the almost universal fate of remarkable precocity 
 in the reversal of the public’s original judgment. He afterwards went 
 to Cambridge University, and became subsequently a captain in a Shrop- 
 shire regiment, in which county his father had considerable property. 
 
 Oakley Square, on the east side of Harrington Square, is so called 
 after Oakley House, near Bedford, one of the seats of the Duke of Bed- 
 ford. It is composed of private residences and one church, dedicated to 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
FITZROY SQUARE 251 
 
 St. Matthew, a large Gothic building designed by J. Johnson, F.R.S., in 
 1854, and capable of seating 1200 persons. 
 
 I have been unable to trace the residence of any notable person in 
 this square, nor indeed is there anything distinguishing about it to 
 require a longer notice than these few lines. 
 
 FITZROY, TOLMERS, EUSTON, MUNSTER, PARK, 
 AND CLARENDON SQUARES 
 
 Somewhat to the north-west of the more important squares on the 
 Bedford estate are Fitzroy, Tolmers, Munster, and Park Squares, while 
 to the north of Tavistock Square lies Euston Square, and farther beyond, 
 to the west of Euston Station, is Clarendon Square. Some of these 
 squares divide, as it were, Oakley, Harrington, and Ampthill Squares from 
 the others on the Bedford estate, and I have grouped them together here 
 because they lend themselves to this comprehensive treatment both by 
 their situation and, in a lesser degree, by their characteristics. 
 
 Fitzroy Square, which I will first deal with, was commenced about 
 the year 1790, and owes its name to Charles Fitzroy, second Duke of 
 Grafton, grandson of Charles II. and the Duchess of Cleveland. The 
 ground, in the manor of Tottenham Court, on which the Square stands, 
 came into the Grafton family through the wife of the first Duke, Lady 
 Isabella Bennet, the daughter and heiress of the Earl of Arlington, 
 famous or infamous as one of the “ A’s ” of the Cabal Ministry. 
 
 Although the Square was begun at the close of the eighteenth century, 
 various circumstances concurred in hindering its complete development, 
 and in a work published in 1815, it is still spoken of as unfinished. 
 However, the south and east sides appear to have been completed about 
 this time, for we are told that “the houses are faced with stone, and 
 have a greater portion of architectural embellishment than most others in 
 the metropolis,” which distinction is readily understandable when we know 
 that it was derived from the brothers Adam, who built the stone-faced 
 houses in the Square during the years 1790 to 1794; although, in this 
 instance, their work has a heavier appearance than it generally presents, 
 and the tops of the houses a somewhat unfinished effect. The north side 
 of the Square does not appear to have been completed before 1825. An 
 
252 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 illustration of the east side, published early in the nineteenth century 
 by Malcolm and reproduced by Mr. Clinch in his Marylebone and St. 
 Pancras, shows the Adams work, and that distinctive characteristic 
 feature which they habitually aimed at, of giving to a whole row of 
 houses the appearance of a single large building. 
 
 By “ A correct Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster,” dated 
 1765, on which Walford based an article called “Modern Babylon” in 
 his Londoniana , we see that where Fitzroy Square now stands a pathway 
 called “ The Green Lane,” ran through fields more or less open, as they 
 appear in Morden and Lea’s earlier plan of 1732. 
 
 The central garden of Fitzroy Square is circular and is not adorned 
 by a statue or any ornament of that kind, but forms, in summer, “ a 
 sunny spot of greenery ” in the midst of the surrounding houses. 
 
 As this part of London has always been, to some extent, an artistic 
 quarter, it is not surprising to find that of the few persons deserving 
 remembrance who have lived in the Square in the past, the majority have 
 been painters — not pre-eminent painters, but still such as did good work 
 in the unfortunate period (artistically speaking) in which they lived. 
 
 Chief of these was Sir Charles Eastlake, once President of the Royal 
 Academy and Director of the National Gallery, who resided for a number 
 of years, from his marriage in 1849 till his death in 1865, at No. 7. In 
 the Memoirs of Lady Eastlake, we get glimpses of the friends whom the 
 brilliant Miss Rigby, as she was before her marriage, gathered round her 
 in Fitzroy Square ; and although on May 5th, after her marriage, she 
 writes, “ At present callers are not overpowering and we have quiet evenings 
 at home,” she was right in her subsequent remark, “ but these must soon 
 cease,” and I find, among many such records, one of Rogers calling on 
 May 9th, and assuring his hostess that “ no event, no great earthquake, 
 no French Revolution, nothing could have astonished all Europe more 
 than Eastlake’s marriage;” and on July 14, of a dinner party followed 
 by an “ At Home,” given by the Eastlakes, which went off “ excellently 
 well,” we are told, “thanks to our sweet singer” Mrs. Gartshore, who 
 charmed the guests and astonished the connoisseurs, among whom were 
 the Macaulays, Clives, Reeves, Mrs. Jameson, Lady Chantry, Landseer, and 
 a host of fashionable people. 
 
 On Sir Charles Eastlake’s death at Pisa on December 24, 1865, his 
 widow continued to reside in Fitzroy Square, until her own death in 1893. 
 Writing of her, the Hon. Mrs. Richard Boyle (E. V. B.) thus speaks of 
 “ that dear room of hers — the drawing-room of No. 7 Fitzroy Square,” 
 to which, as she tells us, she made many a pilgrimage. “ The room itself 
 was a gallery of art. There were two long Holbein Processions, in 
 
FITZROY SQUARE 253 
 
 grisaille , along the side wall. The end wall, opposite the fire, was entirely 
 covered with art treasures. There was a large Giovanni Bellini of the 
 Virgin and Child with Saints ; another Virgin and Child, with exquisitely 
 painted flowers of columbine ; some views of the Roman Campagna by Sir 
 Charles Eastlake, where the cypress spires and far blue distance carried one 
 back to Italy itself. Low down on an easel, where it best caught the 
 light, was a Luca della Robbia — one of his most beautiful, full of sweet 
 and tender feeling. A fine portrait by Opie of Dr. Rigby (Lady Eastlake’s 
 father) rested on a chair. The pianoforte, on which in the old days she 
 played so well, stood near the windows ; and between the windows was a 
 bust of the Queen (by Gibson) given by H.M. to Sir Charles; and on the 
 left a very large easel supporting a life-sized oil-painting by him, full of 
 refined and lovely colour. On the high, old-fashioned chimneypiece was 
 a Louis XVI. clock, which always went so much too fast on those 
 gracious evenings, bringing them to an end long before we had half done 
 all our say.” 1 
 
 During part of the time of the Eastlakes’ sojourn here, Sir William 
 Ross, the miniature-painter, was living at No. 38 Fitzroy Square, and here 
 he died in i860. We find him dining at No. 7, in July 1855, t0 meet 
 Rosa Bonheur, when only he and another guest, Munro, could muster a 
 little French. It was on this occasion that Landseer asked Lady Eastlake 
 to tell the distinguished Frenchwoman that he would be only too happy 
 to become “Sir Edwin Bonheur.” 
 
 Another artistic inhabitant of the Square was Ford Madox Brown, 
 who came here about 1866. Here such friends as Burne-Jones, Ros- 
 setti, Morris, &c., were welcomed, and form, mutatis mutandis , a com- 
 panion circle, if, “with a difference,” to that which gathered round the 
 Eastlakes. Christina Rossetti, writing to Mrs. Gilchrist, speaks of the 
 Madox Browns’ house as a large and handsome one, and adds that she 
 went there one day to see Mr. Brown’s fine picture of “ The Coat of 
 Many Colours,” which she apostrophises as “ a very noble work.” 2 
 
 For about ten years from 1868, Ford Madox Brown lived in Fitzroy 
 Square, and so numerous were his callers, that he is continually com- 
 plaining, in his letters, of having no time for anything. In July he 
 writes, full of an “ At Home ” that is about to take place here, and 
 speaks of those who can and cannot come. Among the former, he hopes 
 will be Christina Rossetti, but the picture we have seen she subsequently 
 admired, was then on exhibition at Leeds. One guest must have startled 
 the Square not a little, for Joaquin Miller, the American poet, was wont 
 to arrive at the gatherings there, in a bright red, cowboy’s shirt with 
 1 Memoirs of Lady Eastlake , vol. ii. p. 315. 2 Memoirs of Mrs. Gilchrist, p. 161. 
 
254 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 wideawake hat and mud-bespattered riding-boots. In March 1879, 
 the Madox Browns moved to Manchester, hardly sorry to leave a 
 house in which their son Oliver had died, and which had become still 
 more desolate through the marriage of their daughters. Their furniture 
 was not actually removed to Manchester, owing to the difficulty of finding 
 a fresh tenant, till the following year. 1 
 
 Another one-time resident deserves to be recorded, as, although not 
 an artist, he was the friend and patron of that remarkable painter-poet 
 William Blake, I mean Thomas Butts, who “ for nearly thirty years con- 
 tinued (with few interruptions) a steady buyer at moderate prices of 
 Blake’s drawings, temperas, and frescoes,” and whose house in Fitzroy 
 Square became, as time rolled on, “ a perfect Blake gallery.” 2 It was Mr. 
 Butts who, calling one day on his eccentric friend, found him and Mrs. 
 Blake sitting in their summer-house “freed from those troublesome dis- 
 guises which have prevailed since the Fall,” says Gilchrist. “ ‘ Come in ! ’ 
 cried Blake, ‘ it’s only Adam and Eve, you know ! ’ Husband and wife,” 
 adds Gilchrist, “ had been reciting passages from Paradise Lost , in 
 character.” It is pleasant to know that “ Mr. Butts was no believer in 
 Blake’s madness.” 
 
 Other bygone inhabitants of Fitzroy Square who may be remembered 
 for a moment, were the Stracheys, friends of Carlyle, who in his Reminis- 
 cences speaks of Mrs. Strachey as “a singular pearl of a woman, pure as 
 dew, yet full of love,” and who lived in what the philosopher terms “a 
 fine enough house,” whence Strachey, “a genially abrupt man, a utilitarian 
 and democrat by creed. . . walked daily to the India House.” 
 
 To-day Fitzroy Square has become largely the home of hospitals and 
 institutions of various kinds. Thus on the east side, at No. 1, is the 
 Working Boys’ Home; at No. 2, the Oxygen Hospital; at No. 7, the 
 Mount Vernon Hospital for Consumption ; at No. 8, the Home for 
 Working Girls in London; next door, the Honor Club for Working 
 Girls; while at No. 10, the West London Mission has its headquarters. 
 On the north side, at No. 11, is housed the Association for the Oral 
 Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, of which Lord Avebury is Treasurer; 
 at 16, 17, and 18, the Home Hospitals Association, and at No. 19 the 
 Gonville Institute and Club. On the west side, the British and Foreign 
 Sailors’ Society, of which the Rev. C. Parkhurst Baxter is Secretary, is at 
 No. 21, and the Francis Joseph Institute at No. 30. While on the south 
 side, at No. 38, the West Central Jewish Working Lads’ Club has its 
 home; at No. 39, St. Christopher’s Working Boy’s Club; at No. 40, the 
 London Skin Hospital ; and at No. 41, the French Benevolent Society. In 
 1 Life of Ford Madox Brown, passim. 2 Gilchrisfs Life of Blake, vol. i. p. 115. 
 
EUSTON SQUARE 255 
 
 fact as a residential centre Fitzroy Square has, in common with so many 
 others in this quarter, become almost a thing of the past. 
 
 Divided from Fitzroy Square by the Euston Road and rather to the 
 north-east are two squares — one known as Tolmers Square and the other 
 as Euston Square. The former is a small enclosure formed by two semi- 
 circles of exceedingly dreary-looking houses, and presents no particular 
 point of interest. The two low iron pillars protecting the lamp-post 
 at its entrance bear the crown and name of George IV., which probably 
 indicates the approximate date of the Square’s formation, although the 
 houses look rather Victorian than later Georgian. 
 
 In the centre of the Square stands the St. Pancras Congregational 
 Church, a comparatively modern erection calling for no detailed description. 
 
 The other square is rather an excrescence from the Euston Road 
 than a proper square, and has an analogy in shape, though in nothing 
 else, to such curious apologies for squares as Hereford and Alexander 
 Squares. Its quaint and dreary houses, many with the old wooden lattice- 
 work verandahs to the first-floor front windows, are now chiefly occupied 
 by small hotels and “ apartments,” presumably on account of their 
 proximity to Euston Station ; but in past days, thirty or forty years since, 
 they were tenanted by people of some standing if not of any particular 
 importance, and its gardens, connected by a passage beneath the roadway 
 joining the Euston Road and terminus, was the favourite promenade of 
 the younger generation and their attendants. 
 
 In earlier days still the site of the Square and these gardens was 
 occupied by nurseries belonging to one Montgomery ; in a cottage at- 
 tached to which Dr. Wolcot, known better by his pseudonym of “Peter 
 Pindar,” died on January 14, 1819. He first came here in 1807, at- 
 tracted by the rural conditions obtaining in this spot, and here he put in 
 practice his receipt for a long life, i.e. having a fire continually in his 
 room, wearing flannel throughout the year, and drinking nothing but 
 brandy ; which, however his particular constitution could stand it, is 
 hardly the regimen that would be popularly thought conducive to length 
 of days. 
 
 Euston Square was formed about 1825, and takes its name, of course, 
 from the second title of the Duke of Grafton, the ground landlord, whose 
 eldest son is known as the Earl of Euston. The Euston Road, which 
 bounds it on the south side (it can hardly be said to pass through it, 
 as Walford affirms), 1 was formed about the middle of the eighteenth 
 
 1 This is not substantially wrong, however, for it was only in 1880, that the south side was 
 re-named Endsleigh Gardens. 
 
256 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 century (1754-6), and was then called the New Road, which title it 
 retained, curiously enough, for about a century afterwards. When pro- 
 jected, it was strenuously opposed by the then Duke of Bedford, although 
 its merits were freely canvassed in the Public Advertiser for February 20, 
 1 7 5 6 - 1 Horace Walpole refers to the Duke’s action in the matter, in 
 one of his letters. “A new road through Paddington has been pro- 
 jected to save the stones,” he writes ; “ the Duke of Bedford, who is 
 never in town in the summer, objects to the dust it will make behind 
 Bedford House, and to some buildings proposed, though if he were in 
 town he is too short-sighted to see the prospect.” The Duke’s opposition 
 to the bill for the new road, although powerless to prevent its actual 
 construction, was sufficiently strong to cause the insertion of a clause 
 whereby no houses were to be erected within fifty feet of the thoroughfare, 
 and thus the unusual depth of the gardens in front of the houses is accounted 
 for ; giving them, to use Smith the historian of Marylebone’s words, “ a 
 most pleasing and picturesque appearance.” 
 
 There does not appear to be any record of any really notable person 
 living in Euston Square, but one who came in contact with celebrities, and 
 who if not the rose lived near it, in the person of Charles Aders, resided 
 once at No. 1 1. His house, we are told, was filled with pictures, “ chosen 
 with excellent judgment, of a class not commonly selected in those days, 
 viz. examples of the early Italian, and above all, early Flemish and 
 German schools. It was as much a picture-gallery as a house,” and 
 Gilchrist (in his Life of Blake), who is my authority, details at some 
 length a few of the more notable artistic treasures that Aders had gathered 
 around him. Passavant, the biographer of Raphael, came to see the collec- 
 tion, when in this country in 1831 ; and here, too, Blake, of whose work 
 Aders was an admirer and collector, met the German painter Gotzenberger 
 — who afterw r aras once said that on his visit to England he saw “ many 
 men of talent, but only three men of genius — Coleridge, Flaxman, and 
 Blake ; and of these Blake was the greatest.” Here, too, Crabb Robinson 
 first met Blake, on December 10, 1825, when he dined with Aders; and 
 notes in his Diary , that it was “ a very remarkable and interesting evening. 
 The party at dinner included Blake the painter and Linnell, also a 
 painter.” Blake, as we know, subsequently exercised a remarkable fascina- 
 tion over Crabb Robinson, who devotes much space in his Journal, , as well 
 as in a paper of recollections written for Gilchrist’s Life of the painter, to 
 a criticism and eulogy of the man and his work and temperament. 
 
 Crabb Robinson has, too, many references in his Diary to Aders, whom 
 he knew at Altona, and whom he calls “ a very clever agreeable man ” ; for 
 1 See Clinch’s Marylebone and St. Pancras. 
 
EUSTON SQUARE 257 
 
 instance we find him on December 21, 1822, spending the afternoon in 
 Euston Square : “A large party,” he writes, “a splendid dinner, prepared 
 by a French cook, and music in the evening. Coleridge was the star of 
 the evening. He talked in his usual way, though with more liberality 
 than when I saw him last some years ago. But he was somewhat less 
 animated and brilliant and paradoxical. The music was enjoyed by 
 Coleridge, but I could have dispensed with it, for the sake of his con- 
 versation ; ” and again, on April 15, 1823, we get this glimpse of another 
 symposium here: “Went to a large musical party at Aders’s in Euston 
 Square. This party I had made for them. Wordsworth, Monkhouse, 
 and the ladies, the Flaxmans, Coleridge, Mr. and Mrs. Gilman, and 
 Rogers, were my friends. I noticed a great diversity in the enjoyment 
 of the music, which was first-rate. Wordsworth declared himself per- 
 fectly delighted and satisfied, but he sat alone, silent, and with his face 
 covered, and was generally supposed to be asleep. Flaxman, too, confessed 
 that he could not enjoy fine music for long. It exhausted him. But 
 Coleridge’s enjoyment was very lively and openly expressed.” 
 
 On April 26, 1839, the Diarist records the dispersal of the Aders 
 
 collection of pictures ; and among those purchased by himself, was 
 
 a “ Holy Family ” attributed to Perugino, which, however, Landor 
 told him was by Credi ; but, says its purchaser, “Raphael did not paint 
 
 better;” also a “St. Catherine” by Francia, which obtained Landor’s 
 
 unqualified praise and with which Crabb Robinson confesses himself 
 delighted. Other purchases included a Memling and a Ruysdael and 
 a “Virgin and Child” on gold by Van der Weyde, which Wordsworth 
 so much admired that his friend presented them to him. 
 
 Lamb apostrophises Aders as “ friendliest of men,” in a poem in 
 which he thus refers to the house in Euston Square : — 
 
 “ Whoever enters here, no more presume 
 To name a parlour or a drawing-room ; 
 
 But bending lowly to each holy story, 
 
 Make this thy chapel and thine oratory ” — 
 
 than which, it is probable, worse lines were never penned by a man of 
 genius. Mrs. Aders also had a poem addressed to her, but it was “ The 
 Two Founts,” by Coleridge ! 
 
 Munster Square, which is intersected by Osnaburgh Street, consists 
 of tiny two-storied houses, built probably at that terrible period of 
 domestic and all other architecture in this country, the decade from 
 1830 to 1840. The two central gardens are of a bare and desolate 
 
 R 
 
258 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 appearance, but form a refuge for the inhabitants from their dwellings, 
 and for the casual wanderer (for they are open to any one) 1 to contem- 
 plate the exiguous habitations by which they are surrounded. 
 
 On the south side of the Square stands the church dedicated to St. 
 Mary Magdalene, and erected from designs by R. C. Carpenter, in the 
 geometric style of the fourteenth century. It consists of a nave with 
 south aisle, large and lofty chancel and tower, and the interior has a 
 solid gabled roof of Baltic fir. The east window, of seven lights, cost 
 ^400, and is the work of Hardman of Birmingham, from the designs, 
 some of the last he was engaged on, of Pugin. For those interested in 
 church architecture, the following additional facts, given by Timbs in his 
 Curiosities of London, will be of some value: — 
 
 “ The lower part of the chancel is adorned by richly carved arcades, 
 with shafts of St. Anne’s marble, and panels in the spandrels. The 
 arcades and the chancel roof are highly enriched with colour and gilding, 
 executed by Crace. The arcade on the south side of the chancel is 
 varied, to form sedilia for the officiating clergymen, and the floor is 
 raised three steps above that of the nave, and is separated from it by a 
 stone septum. The west window of the nave, a fine one of five lights, 
 has been filled with stained glass in memory of the architect.” 
 
 Munster Square takes its name from one of the lesser titles 
 belonging to the Crown, which William IV. conferred on his eldest son 
 by Mrs. Jordan ; and Osnaburgh Street, which, as I have said, passes 
 through it, is named after the Bishop of Osnaburgh, another Royal 
 Hanovarian distinction which the Duke of York, George III.’s second 
 son, was the last to hold. 
 
 Park Square, facing Park Crescent, Portland Place, was formed on 
 the site of what was intended to be a gigantic circus of houses, the design 
 of which is shown in Luffman’s Plan of London for 1816, of which the 
 half, now Park Crescent, was alone completed. It was finished in 1826, 
 and consists of two rows of houses extending from the Marylebone Road 
 to the Regent’s Park, and divided by a large square garden enclosed by 
 very massive iron railings. The houses are of that solid character, with 
 pillar ornamentations between the windows, so characteristic of the 
 period at which they were built ; but the beauty of the garden and the 
 proximity of the park (from which of course the Square takes its name), 
 gives them quite a green and suburban effect, which even the busy 
 Marylebone Road is unable to greatly affect. 
 
 1 They were taken over by the London County Council, and opened to the public in 
 June 1906. 
 
PARK SQUARE 259 
 
 At No. 7 Park Square lived, for some years, Sir Peter Laurie, once 
 an alderman of the city and Lord Mayor, of amiable character, but of 
 somewhat eccentric habits, who became head of the firm of Laurie & 
 Marner, the well-known coachbuilders, and died in 1 8 6 1 . Beyond this, 
 there is no record of any other person of note residing here ; but mention 
 may be made of the Diorama built by Messrs. Morgan & Pugin and 
 opened in 1823, which stood on the east side of the Square, and which, 
 after a successful career, was sold in 1852, to Sir Morton Peto, who 
 turned it into a Baptist Chapel ! 
 
 Between Park Crescent and the garden of Park Square there is a tunnel 
 beneath the Marylebone Road, known as “ Nursery-maid’s Walk,” on 
 account of its being used by these guardians of the children resident in 
 Park Crescent when passing thence to the more ample garden of Park 
 Square. It is said that so tenacious were the residents of their rights in 
 this subway, that when the railway which runs beneath was contem- 
 plated, gradients of 1 in 100 had to be resorted to in order that the 
 line might pass below this tunnel, and thus not affect the amenities of 
 the younger generation and their attendants. 
 
 Clarendon Square lies to the east of the North-Western Railway 
 Station, and is both of large extent and unique character, for within it 
 stands a circle of houses called “ The Polygon,” which takes up the room 
 that would otherwise have probably been formed into a central garden. 
 The Square to-day is not a very exhilarating locality, but at the end of 
 the last century, when one of its most illustrious past residents came to 
 live here, the Polygon was but newly built, and surrounded by fields 
 and nursery gardens. 
 
 William Godwin, who is here indicated, took a house in the Square just 
 before his marriage with Mary Wollstonecraft, which took place on 
 March 29, 1797, at Old St. Pancras Church. 1 Here Mrs. Godwin died on 
 the following 10th September, after having given birth to the daugher 
 who was afterwards to become the wife of Shelley, and authoress of 
 Frankenstein. From here, too, the grief-stricken husband, a few hours 
 after her death, wrote those letters to his various friends, announcing the 
 sad event ; which he probably hoped would be evidence of his stoicism. 
 Godwin continued to live in the Polygon, whither he removed his books 
 from 25 Evesham Buildings, and where he made his late wife’s sitting- 
 room his study, for about ten years. Here, in 1801, he was rather wooed 
 by than wooed, his second wife, a widow named Mrs. Clairmont, whose 
 
 ■ 1 Kegan Paul’s Life and Letters of Godwin. 
 
260 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 grotesque flatteries, such as her “ Is it possible that I behold the immortal 
 Godwin ! ” uttered from the balcony of the adjoining house in the Polygon 
 which she had taken, Godwin was only too ready to swallow — as he ever 
 was flattery of any sort. Here the Godwins continued to reside, not 
 always in a state of ideal happiness, till August 1807, when they re- 
 moved to a house in Skinner Street. 1 
 
 But the Polygon had had a still more illustrious inhabitant than 
 Godwin, for John Dickens and his family are stated on the authority 
 of Mr. John Lear — a fellow-clerk with Charles Dickens in Messrs. Ellis 
 and Blackmore the attorneys’ office — to have resided here between the 
 years 1827 and 1828. Kitton, who mentions this, states that the name 
 of Dickens does not appear in the Rate Books for those years, but that 
 No. 17 is given as “Let to lodgers”; and as such an entry is very un- 
 usual and, Kitton was informed, hitherto unknown to the authorities, 
 and as the comparatively high rents in the Polygon would doubtless 
 have been beyond the means of John Dickens at that time, the as- 
 sumption of Kitton that the Dickens family merely lodged at No. 17 
 is most probable. 2 
 
 The Polygon was a good deal affected by artists in its earlier days, 
 probably on account of the open ground then stretching away to the 
 north ; and here I find, at No. 23, J. T. Willmore, the line engraver, 
 living for many years ; 3 while another well-known engraver, Scriven, 
 and De Wilde, the artist of the pictures appearing in Bell’s English 
 Theatre , praised by Dibdin, both resided here, as did various painters 
 whose names have been forgotten and are only to be rescued from the 
 oblivion of old Academy catalogues and similar compilations. 
 
 In Clarendon Square is a Roman Catholic chapel dedicated to St. 
 Aloysius, founded in 1808, by the Abbe Carron, for the use of such 
 of the French refugees who had settled themselves in this district. 
 Closely associated with Carron in this good work was the Rev. J. 
 Nerinckx, who carried on his ministrations here for over fifty years ; 
 commencing his duties alone, in 1815, on the return of the Abbe 
 to France. Carron, while in this country, occupied a house in the 
 Square formerly inhabited by the builder Leroux, and here he estab- 
 lished schools 4 for boys and girls, of which the present St. Aloysius’ 
 
 1 London Past and Present. 
 
 2 Kitton’s Life of Dickens. It will be remembered by readers of Bleak House , that Harold 
 Skimpole once lived in Clarendon Square, in a house so dilapidated that “two or three of the 
 area railings were gone ; the water-butt was broken ; the knocker was loose ; the bell-handle 
 had been pulled off a long time, to judge from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints 
 on the steps were the only signs of its being inhabited.” 
 
 3 London Past and Present. 
 
 4 Gentleman' s Magazine for 1813, quoted in Old and New London. 
 
CLARENDON SQUARE 261 
 
 Convent in the Square and the Convent School for ladies at No. 50, 
 are survivals. In the chapel itself are busts of the Abb6 Carron and 
 the Bishop of St. Pol, and a memorial tablet, erected in 1857, to the 
 Rev. J. Nerinckx, who had died in 1855. According to Walford the 
 chapel was altered and repaired in 1850, “the altar and sanctuary 
 being decorated in an elaborate arabesque style.” 
 
 Reference to the Abbe Carron will be found in the Jerningham 
 Letters , and I find the Chevalier Jerningham, in a letter to Lady 
 Bedingfield, dated 1803, speaking of him as “un homme de meritte (sic), 
 qui n’a d’effrayant que le nom ! ” 1 
 
 1 Vol. i. p. 225. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 PORTMAN, MONTAGU, BRYANSTON, DORSET, 
 MANCHESTER, HAREWOOD, AND BLAND- 
 FORD SQUARES 
 
 “ Fountains and trees our wearied pride do please, 
 
 Even in the midst of gilded palaces ; 
 
 And in our towns the prospect gives delight, 
 
 Which opens round the country to our sight.” 
 
 Sprat, quoted in Wren s “ Parent alia.” 
 
 T HE Portman property, viz. that belonging to the family of 
 which Lord Portman is the head, forms one of the large estates 
 of London, for besides consisting of various streets of houses, 
 it embraces in its area no less than five squares, one of which is 
 of great interest ; while another, as containing the mansion 
 wherein is housed a collection second to none in the kingdom, which 
 now forms one of the chief gems of our national collections, takes its 
 place, for this reason alone, among those squares which are best worth 
 attention. 
 
 PORTMAN SQUARE 
 
 But the one to be first considered because for a variety of reasons it 
 is the most interesting, besides being the largest and most important, is 
 Portman Square. It takes its name from William Henry Portman of 
 Orchard Portman in Somersetshire, who owned the large estate of 
 Marylebone extending to no less than 270 acres, which had at an earlier 
 date appertained to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. From an 
 extract from an old lease quoted by Cunningham, this property appears 
 to have comprised “ Great Gibbet Field, Little Gibbet Field, Hawkfield, 
 Brock Stand, Tassel Croft, Boy’s Croft, and twenty acres called Furse- 
 croft, and two closes known as Shepcott Haws ” — the Gibbet alluded 
 to being that which gave such a sinister significance to the name of 
 Tyburn. The whole estate covers ground to the west of the land 
 purchased by the Duke of Newcastle in 1708, which will be found 
 
 262 
 
PORTMAN SQUARE 
 
PORTMAN SQUARE 263 
 
 noticed in the chapter on Cavendish Square. Lysons states that the 
 Square was commenced about 1764; the north side being then only 
 built, and that the whole was not completed till twenty years later. But 
 the central garden must have been formed in 1780, for in that year an 
 Act was passed by which trustees were appointed for its regulation and 
 maintenance and for other contingent purposes. 1 The comparatively 
 lengthy period which elapsed between the commencement and completion 
 of the Square is accountable, perhaps, for the want of uniformity in the 
 houses which Lambert complains of 2 when describing the Square as “one 
 of the largest and handsomest in the Metropolis,” in 1806. The posi- 
 tion was excellently selected, for the Square stands on high and salubrious 
 ground, and merits the appellation of the “ Montpelier of England,” 
 which Mrs. Montagu once bestowed upon it ; indeed that illustrious lady 
 affirmed that she “ never enjoyed such health as since she came to 
 live in it.” 
 
 The majority of the houses in Portman Square appear to have been 
 erected by builders who had obtained building leases from the ground 
 landlord, among these speculators being Mr. J. T. Parkinson and one 
 or other of the Adam Brothers ; but a few leases were obtained by 
 private individuals, among whom were the Hon. C. Greville, Countess 
 Howe, and Countess Harcourt; while it is uncertain whether Edward 
 Hulse, Esq., a Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, who is given in 
 a Directory for 1798, as living in the Square then, was an original lessee, 
 or rented a house from one or other of the builders mentioned. We 
 shall probably be right in assuming that these leases were granted on 
 behalf of the north side of the Square, which, as we have seen, was the 
 first to be built. 
 
 Among those who secured subsequent leases of other sites or houses, 
 about the year 1820, were Lord Teignmouth, Harvey Coombe, Esq., 
 Lord Kenyon, the first Earl Manvers, the fourth Duke of Newcastle, 3 
 J. M. Elwes, Esq., and the sixth Earl of Cardigan (at No. 3, then No. 2), 
 while two years later I find, besides these, that the residents included 
 Lord Clifford, the first Earl of Beverley ; Lord Loraine (son of the 
 preceding) ; Lord Petre ; the sixth Earl of Scarborough ; the Countess of 
 Pomfret ( nee Miss Draycot, and widow of the second Earl) ; Earl Nelson, 
 the elder brother of Lord Nelson ; the Dowager-Duchess of Roxburgh, 
 the Dowager-Countess of Clonmell ; and Thomas Assheton Smith, Esq. ; 
 
 1 Information kindly given by F. W. Hunt, Esq., of the Portman Estate Office. 
 
 History of London. 
 
 In Hayward’s Correspondence are letters from the fifth Duke to Hayward, dated from 
 Portman Square in 1854 and 1855. 
 
264 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 and at a later date still Spencer Perceval, Esq. ; Sir William Sterling, 
 Bart. ; Lord Leigh ; and the first Earl of Ducie. Apart from the historic 
 interest of the noble families here represented, several of the foregoing 
 are personally to be ranked as people of importance in one way or 
 another. The Hon. Francis Greville, second son of the Earl of Brooke 
 (afterwards Earl of Warwick) by Elizabeth Hamilton, a sister of Sir 
 William Hamilton, was born in 1749, and became in time noted for 
 his refinement and cultivation, as a collector of objects of art and 
 a connoisseur. His portrait by Romney shows us a finely formed head 
 and face with a good brow, expressive eyes, and well-shaped nose and 
 mouth ; he was wont to assist his celebrated uncle in the acquirement 
 of objects of beauty and interest, and it was through him, indirectly, 
 that Sir William became the possessor of that human epitome of these 
 characteristics in the person of Emma Lyons — the celebrated Lady 
 Hamilton. Greville had been attracted by the perfect face and form 
 of this siren when she was at Dr. Graham’s, and she lived under his 
 protection until 1789, when Greville’s affairs fell into disorder and he 
 was obliged to part with his collection, in which Emma Lyons may be 
 regarded as the chef d' oeuvre ; an arrangement seems to have been 
 arrived at between the uncle and nephew, by which the former took 
 the lady, and, if report can be believed, the latter received a cheque. 
 
 Mr. Sichel, in his elaborate Life of Lady Hamilton , pictures Greville 
 — the punctilious and elegant — in Portman Square “ in the dainty 
 chamber of his mansion,” where “ swung the pet monkey and hung 
 the loaned ‘Venus’ by Correggio, slightly retouched with applied water- 
 colours by Henry Morland.” This was in January 1782, when Greville 
 had but newly arrived here from his earlier abode, in Charles Street or 
 at his father’s house in St. James’s Square. 
 
 Spencer Perceval is notable as being a descendant of the Prime 
 Minister of the same name, whose tragic fate at the hands of Bellingham 
 in 18 1 1, is part of the history of the country; while in J. M. Elwes, we 
 recognise one who almost made miserliness classic, although he would 
 appear to have come of a family noted in this respect, for the estate 
 and 1 50,000 which he inherited from his uncle Sir Hervey Elwes, M.P., 
 were the accumulation of that gentleman’s penurious existence, he living, 
 it is said, at the rate of £110 per annum; while John Elwes’s mother, 
 although possessing property to the value of £ 100,000 , is reported — I 
 do not vouch for the accuracy of this — to have starved herself to death. 
 All sorts of wonderful, some indeed well-nigh incredible, stories are 
 told of John Elwes’s extraordinary mania for saving money ; and these 
 tales are the more remarkable in that Elwes was a gambler of the first 
 
 
PORTMAN SQUARE 265 
 
 water, who, after playing for, and sometimes losing, thousands, would 
 walk from the Club in the early morning to Smithfield to meet the 
 cattle coming from his farm, Theydon Hall, in Essex, and would there 
 stand haggling with butchers for shillings. Beyond his gambling pro- 
 pensities his only known sacrifice of money to pleasure was the keeping 
 of a kennel of foxhounds and a stable of hunters ; but in this he even 
 sought to accomplish small savings, making his huntsmen rise at abnormal 
 hours to act as farm hands and to do domestic work in the house. 
 Acts of generosity can be placed to his credit, however ; and his acquire- 
 ment of leases in Portman Square was due to his desire to speculate 
 in London property. His unbusiness-like methods — for, like many who 
 save in small ways, he was often careless over large sums — resulted in his 
 losing, it is estimated, no less than ^150,000; but as, on his death in 
 1789, at the age of seventy-five, he left upwards of ^800,000, it could, 
 considering his habits of life, have made little difference to him. 1 
 
 Thomas Assheton Smith, who lived at No. 5, is a household word in 
 sporting circles, for he was a sportsman of the old type — the very “ glass 
 of fashion and mould of form ” of the modern Nimrod. 
 
 Among the names of residents mentioned, I do not find that of the 
 Earl of Kenmare, but from an extract in one of Lady Jerningham’s letters 
 to Lady Bedingfield, dated March 24, 1807, it was his house that was 
 subsequently occupied by Lady Clonmell. “ Lord Kenmare paid annually 
 j£8oo for his house in Portman Square,” says Lady Jerningham, “and 
 Lady Clonmell was very glad to take it off his hands at the same rate,” 
 adding that “some houses are a _£iooo a year.” 2 Lord Petre is also re- 
 ferred to in this interesting collection of letters; for Lady Jerningham, 
 writing this time to her daughter, on April 20, 1822, mentions the fact 
 that he “wishes to sell his house in Portman Square.” “He is now,” 
 she adds, “ in it, but told Edward he could no more enjoy himself 
 there.” 
 
 Lord Leigh’s house is now numbered 37, and is occupied to-day 
 by Arthur H. Renshaw, Esq., who informs me that it is believed 
 to have been one of the Adams’ original erections, and that there is a 
 tradition that one of the Georgian Princes once resided here. This I 
 am unable to verify, but at what was then No. 32, resided Lady Anne 
 Hamilton, who wrote that scandalous Secret History of the Court of 
 England ; and here came to stay with her, in June 1820, the unfortunate 
 Caroline of Brunswick, who had, during the few days after her return 
 
 1 An interesting account of Elwes is given in Timbs’s Century of Anecdote, and lives of him 
 have also been written. 
 
 2 Jerningham Letters , vol. i. p. 304. 
 
266 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 to England, been living at 77 South Audley Street, the residence of 
 Alderman Wood. This may conceivably have given rise to the Georgian 
 tradition, although the last people, one would have thought, to wish to 
 come in contact with the Queen would have been any member of George 
 IV. ’s family. It was at this time that the delegates from the House of 
 Commons waited on the Queen with those proposals of a large annuity 
 and an “ official announcement of her position,” on the condition that she 
 should forthwith leave the country and reside abroad, with the further 
 ultimatum that her name should not appear in the Liturgy, which Caroline 
 rejected “ sternly and haughtily.” When her decision was known, it is 
 said that the crowd which had assembled in the Square set up such a shout 
 of joy that it might have been heard at Charing Cross; and even the 
 Army became infected with the general feeling of compassion for the ill- 
 treated woman, so that Luttrell made his witty and memorable remark to 
 the effect that “ the extinguisher was taking fire.” 1 
 
 No. 37 contains some fine ceilings, and the front door is curiously 
 studded with massive iron nails. 
 
 No. 44 was once in the possession of Lord Hardwicke, from whom it 
 was taken by Sir John Arnory, who was the immediate predecessor of 
 its present owner, Francis Ricardo, Esq. ; and No. 13, where Miss Agnes 
 Zimmerman resides, was previously, since 1887, the residence of Louisa, 
 Lady Goldsmid, and before her, of Mr. and Lady Katherine Gaskell. 
 Tradition has been rife with regard to another house in the Square, 
 namely, No. 9, now occupied by Herbert C. Gibbs, Esq., for that gentle- 
 man, in an interesting letter on the subject, tells me that he has been 
 informed by several people that Lord Nelson once lived here ; one of 
 his informants being Mrs. Byron, the daughter-in-law of the Hon. and 
 Rev. W. Byron, who lived in the house many years since. As Mr. Gibbs 
 remembers that Lord Nelson dated a letter from Portman Square, and 
 as no record seems to exist of his actually having possessed a house here, 
 it is probable that he was staying with friends at the time. Mr. Bowen 
 of Merton, a friend of Lady Hamilton, also had a house in Portman 
 Square, and it is therefore not improbable that, if No. 9 was this house, 
 the report may have had its source in fact, and Lord Nelson may 
 have stayed here and have written the letter at that time. In this 
 connection it is interesting, at any rate, to know that there hangs in one 
 of the rooms 2 one of Romney’s representations of Lady Hamilton in 
 the most appropriate of all the characters in which he painted her, that 
 of Circe. 
 
 1 Wilkin’s Mrs. Fitzherbert and George IV. 
 
 2 It would appear from the Survey of 1799 that No. 9 once formed part of a larger house. 
 
PORTMAN SQUARE 267 
 
 A few doors from this house is what was No. 12, but has since been 
 renumbered 15, once the town residence of the Duke of Hamilton, who 
 died here on August 18, 1852. He had married the only daughter of 
 William Beckford, and here were once to be seen some of the remarkable 
 pictures and curiosities which that insatiable collector 1 gathered around 
 him at Fonthill, Bath, and elsewhere, and which came into the possession 
 of the Hamilton family through this marriage. This was not, however, 
 the only fine collection of pictures in the Square at that period, for at 
 No. 26, lived Lord Garvagh, the gem of whose gallery was the great 
 Aldobrandini Madonna, or Garvagh Madonna, as it is sometimes called, by 
 Raphael, which now hangs in the National Gallery. 2 
 
 No. 15, the Duke of Hamilton’s old house, was subsequently occu- 
 pied by the Duke of Leeds, and Timbs, in his Curiosities of London , 
 mentions, as particularly worthy of notice, the architectural embellish- 
 ments of the staircase and principal rooms, the rich mahogany doors, 
 and the sculptured chimneypieces, as well as the cornices and ceilings, 
 all in the characteristically classic style of the Adam Brothers. The 
 house is now the town residence of the Princess Royal, Duchess of 
 Fife, and the Duke of Fife ; which circumstance gives Portman Square 
 the distinction of being the only square in London containing the abode of 
 a member of the royal family. 3 
 
 Among other residents may be mentioned General Sir John Byng, 
 afterwards (1855) a Field-Marshal, in whose favour the extinct Earldom 
 of Strafford (of the Wentworth line) had been revived in 1847 > Sir John 
 having been the great-grandson of Thomas, the third Earl ; and at No. 
 40, the Right Hon. Hugh Elliot. An earlier resident was Sir William 
 Pepperell of Rhode Island, North America, whose loyalty to the Crown 
 procured for him a baronetcy. He is said to have been at one time the 
 richest subject in that country, but losses through the cause he espoused 
 diminished his property so greatly that a pension was granted him. 
 He died in Portman Square in December 1816. To these may be 
 added the Dowager Lady Westmorland ; Sir F. Graham Moon, Bart., 
 once Lord Mayor of London ; and Earl Grey, to whom we find Sydney 
 
 1 Apropos of art collections, I may remind the reader that the celebrated picture of Lady 
 Cockburn and her children, by Reynolds, one of the two pictures he is known to have signed, 
 and recently bequeathed to the nation by Alfred Beit, Esq., was formerly in the possession of 
 Sir James Hamilton, a son-in-law of General Sir James Cockburn, one of the boys in the picture, 
 at No. 6. Portman Square. 
 
 2 Reynolds’s portrait of Lady Ann Fitzpatrick, as a little peasant in a mountain landscape, 
 and engraved as “Collina,” was, in 1865, in the possession of Mr. Fitzpatrick of Portman 
 Square. 
 
 3 According to Hughson, in his Walks through London, the Duke of York, brother of 
 George IV., removed to a house in the Square after leaving Melbourne House. 
 
268 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Smith writing, in 1 8 1 8, “ I am truly sorry to receive such accounts of Lady 
 Grey. It strikes me she has a very good constitution, and I have no 
 doubt we shall have a very merry christening in Portman Square, to 
 which, I strongly suspect, you will invite me,” adding, in his whimsical 
 way, “ If Lady Grey wishes to see a child gracefully held, and to receive 
 proper compliments upon its beauty and to witness the consummation 
 of all ecclesiastical observances, she will invite me to perform the 
 ceremony.” 1 Byron in his Journal mentions going with Moore to dine 
 with Lord Grey here in 1814, and humorously discussing with him a 
 criticism that had appeared in the Java Gazette on their respective merits 
 as poets : “ It was amusing enough,” writes Byron, “ that we should be 
 proceeding peaceably to the same table, while they were squabbling about 
 us in the Indian seas. . . . But this is fame, I presume.” 2 
 
 Another friend of Moore’s, and one mentioned in his Diary , Miss 
 Johns, also had a house in the Square, as did Miss Thackeray, a cousin 
 of the Thackeray, whose house was on the Oxford Street side of the 
 Square. In his Letters to an American Family , Thackeray, in 1853, thus 
 refers to this lady : “ I went to a concert at the house of a cousiness of 
 mine who has a fine mansion in Portman Square, and £ 6000 a year to 
 bestow upon any one who marries her ; there were as many sneaks 
 about her as in the very politest circles, and people were as eager to 
 get to her party as to a Duchess’s.” 
 
 A lady, notable for her parties, who once lived in Portman Square 
 was the Mrs. Beaumont of whom Gronow tells in his Celebrities of 
 London and Paris. She appears to have been a person of low origin 
 but great wealth, and to have aimed at fame through the medium 
 of costly and ostentatious entertainments. Gronow became a frequent 
 visitor at her house, until, on one occasion introducing a distinguished 
 officer of the Guards at one of her reunions, she asked who he was, 
 and being told he was a captain in Gronow’s own regiment, she ex- 
 claimed, “I want no more captains at my balls: you should consider 
 yourself lucky in getting an invitation ! ” It is needless to say that 
 Gronow bowed, took his leave, and as he himself put it, “reflecting 
 on the injustice I had done Mrs. Beaumont in presuming to appear at 
 her assemblies,” never again entered her house. 
 
 It was in Portman Square that Lord Lyttelton was living, when he 
 removed to Grosvenor Place, and all his servants gave him notice, because 
 
 1 Letters of Sydney Smith. It is curious that Sir Algernon West in his Recollections 
 mentions that his wife, nee Miss Barrington, who was a grand-daughter of Lord Grey’s, 
 remembered being christened when four years old by Sydney Smith. 
 
 2 Moore’s Byron, vol. ii. p. 74. 
 
PORTMAN SQUARE 269 
 
 they could not think of going to such an outlandish locality ! Macaulay 
 mentions dining with Lyttelton in Portman Square in July 1831. 
 
 Two 1 Ambassadors at least have resided in the Square — one, the 
 Turkish, we shall meet when we come to Montagu House; the other 
 was M. Otto, who was over here for the Treaty of Amiens, the pre- 
 liminaries of which he signed with Lord Hawkesbury in Downing Street 
 on October 1, 1801. 2 When General Lauriston arrived from Paris with 
 the ratification of the treaty, so great was the joy of the people, that 
 he was met by vast crowds, the horses taken from his carriage, and the 
 envoy himself drawn in the vehicle to M. Otto’s house in a sort of 
 improvised triumph. A print is in existence showing the illuminations 
 in Portman Square in honour of the auspicious event ; with which illumi- 
 nations a curious incident is connected. They took the form of oil-lamps 
 representing the word “ Concord,” and on each side were the initials of 
 George III., “ G. R.,” 3 and of the French Republic, “ R. F.,” a unique 
 juxtaposition of these symbols. The crowd gathered in the Square, 
 unfortunately, mistook the word “ Concord ” for “ Conquered,” and with 
 that directness of action characteristic of mobs from time immemorial, 
 proceeded to smash the whole of the Ambassador’s windows in conse- 
 quence. Hastily was the offending word removed, and “Amitie” set up 
 in its stead ; but this was but adding fuel to the fire of popular resent- 
 ment, for it was construed into “Enmity,” and this had also to be 
 taken down. “ Ultimately,” wrote Mr. Planche, an eye-witness of the 
 scene, “ what ought to have been done at first was done : the word 
 ‘ Peace ’ was displayed, and so peace was restored to Portman Square 
 for the evening.” Allen in his History of London adds that the excessive 
 brilliancy of this illumination was probably never exceeded ; the sight 
 could hardly sustain the radiance, even at a distance of many yards. 
 “ The crowd,” he adds, “ was so immense that for a long time those 
 who had reached the Square could find no avenue for retreat, and many 
 carriages were jammed in for hours.” From another view of the illumi- 
 nations, they would appear to have eventually, at any rate, taken a 
 different form, for here we see the whole front of M. Otto’s house out- 
 lined with lamps, surmounted by a large star, beneath which in a central 
 compartment are two emblematical figures shaking hands apparently, and 
 
 1 Three — for on November 27, 1782, and two following days, the effects of H.E. Count 
 Belgioiox, Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of his Imperial Majesty, were sold at his 
 house in Portman Square. ( Memorials of Christie's, vol. i. p. 38.) 
 
 2 The actual treaty was signed in Paris on March 25, 1802, and the rejoicings in London 
 took place on the following 29th April. 
 
 3 Allen says that some sailors in the crowd discovered that the initials “ G. R.” had no 
 crown over them, and this had to be added to appease their demonstrative loyalty. 
 
270 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 beneath them again the not very appropriate word “ Victory.” On each 
 side are the initials “ G. R.” and “ C. R.,” obviously those of King George 
 and his Queen . 1 
 
 Another incident connected with the Square forms a companion pic- 
 ture to the above, for it arose from the news of that battle which brought 
 in its train a far more effective peace than the Treaty of Amiens had 
 been able to procure. Haydon tells the story, and when Haydon relates 
 a circumstance there is no bettering his graphic delineation, so it is 
 given in his own words : “ I had spent the evening with John Scott, 
 who lived in the Edgware Road. I had stayed rather late, and was 
 coming home to Great Marlborough Street, when in crossing Portman 
 Square a messenger from the Foreign Office came right up to me and 
 said, ‘Which is Lord Harrowby’s ? The Duke has beat Napoleon, 
 taken one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and is marching to Paris ! ’ 
 ‘Is it true?’ said I, quite bewildered. ‘True !’ said he, “which is Lord 
 Harrowby’s?’ Forgetting in my joy that this was not Grosvenor Square, 
 I said, ‘There,’ pointing to the same point in Portman Square as Lord 
 Harrowby’s house occupies in Grosvenor Square, which happened to be 
 Mrs. Boehm’s, where there was actually a rout. In rushed the messenger 
 through servants and all, and I ran back again to Scott’s .” 2 There is a 
 slight error here, for Mrs. Boehm’s house was not in Portman Square but 
 in St. James’s Square, where the incident of the arrival of the news of 
 Waterloo will be found mentioned. 
 
 It is said, however, that it was at a house in Portman Square that 
 occurred the incident of Brummell and his snuff-box, which has been often 
 and variously told. At a dinner party there, after the removal of the cloth 
 and the introduction of the snuff-boxes, as the fashion then was, Brummell’s 
 box was particularly admired, and was handed about for general inspection, 
 when a gentleman, finding it difficult to open — for the Beau, unlike the 
 great Napoleon, did not confine himself to rounded boxes that could be 
 opened easily with one hand — took up a dessert knife and attempted in 
 his rough and ready way to prise the box open ; when Brummell, who 
 had been watching the proceeding with ill-concealed impatience, suddenly 
 cried out to his host, “ Will you be good enough to tell your friend that 
 my snuff-box is not an oyster ? ” 
 
 It was, too, at a ball in Portman Square that Theodore Hook once 
 
 1 This illustration is given in an interesting article on “ Fireworks of the Past,” by Mr. Alfred 
 Whitman, in the Strand Magazine for November 1897. I cannot, however, but think that this 
 print indicates illuminations in honour of some victory — probably Waterloo — in which case the 
 mansion thus decorated would hardly be that of the French Ambassador ; although, inasmuch 
 as that victory placed the Bourbons again on the throne, it might be. 
 
 2 Haydon’s Diary for June 23, 1815. 
 
Mrs. MONTAGU'S HOUSE, PORTMAN SQUARE. 
 
PORTM AN SQUARE 2 7 1 
 
 came into collision with General Thornton — known, from his excessive 
 mania for dancing, as the “Dancing General,” and supposed to be the 
 original of Charles Matthews’ Major Longbow. Hook had a great 
 aversion from dancing, and he said or did something which demanded 
 instant satisfaction on the field of honour. Barham, in his Life of Hook, 
 says that the parties met and exchanged shots but that no damage was 
 done to either, but Captain Gronow’s version is that the General did 
 not demand the satisfaction which as a man of honour he should have 
 done, and that the affair getting wind, a committee of the Guards was 
 formed to inquire into the circumstances of the case, with the result 
 that General Thornton was asked to retire ; a proceeding that paved the 
 way to certain drastic changes in the personnel of the army, and the 
 removal of a number of old and useless officers in favour of those who 
 had seen service under Wellington. Hook’s witty comment on the 
 circumstance is well known. “ I rejoice to hear,” said he, “ that they 
 have adopted the Wellington overalls, and discarded their inexpressibles.” 
 It is almost needless to add that the new colonels were afterwards known 
 as “Wellington overalls.” 1 
 
 The most important house in the Square is, of course, No. 22, or 
 Montagu House, now the town residence of Viscount Portman, the 
 ground landlord. Built by the celebrated Mrs. Montagu, it has a halo 
 of associations around it which make it second in interest to few 
 mansions of a similar age in London. It was designed by James Stuart 
 — better known as “Athenian” Stuart, from his share in Revett’s 
 Antiquities of Athens — for Mrs. Montagu in 1760. But it was 
 obviously not commenced till some years later, for, as we have seen, 
 the Square itself was not begun till 1764, and so much later as 
 November 21, 1781, I find Mrs. Boscawen writing that “Mrs. 
 
 Montagu is very busy furnishing her new house,” adding that “ part 
 of her family is removed into it.” 2 Mrs. Montagu had been living in 
 Hill Street, Berkeley Square, previously to the death of her husband, but 
 a few years after that event, being left very well off, she removed to 
 what came to be known as Montagu House, but is now numbered 
 22 Portman Square. The year after she moved in, Horace Walpole 
 writes that on February 22nd, he “dined at Mrs. Montagu’s new palace, 
 and was much surprised.” “ Instead of vagaries, it is a noble, simple 
 edifice,” he says, adding, “ When I came home I recollected that although 
 I thought it so magnificent a house, there was not a morsel of gilding. 
 It is grand, not tawdry, nor larded and embroidered and pomponned 
 
 1 See Barham’s Life of Hook and Gronow’s Reminiscences. 
 
 2 Mrs. Delany’s Autobiography , vol. vi. p. 65. 
 
272 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 with shreds and remnants, and clinquant like all the harlequinades of 
 Adam, which never let the eye repose for a moment.” 
 
 Apart from the side-hit at the brothers Adam, Walpole seems to 
 have been justified in his praise ; not only had great care been taken 
 with the design by Stuart, but Mrs. Montagu herself superintended the 
 building and decoration of the mansion ; she watched its gradual develop- 
 ment with loving and critical eyes ; it was, as she once said, “ an excellent 
 house, finely situated, and just such as I have always wished, but never 
 hoped to have ; ” indeed it became an obsession with her, and we find 
 her on another occasion, in one of her letters, protesting that : “ I will 
 get the better of my passion for my new house, which is almost equal 
 to that of a lover to a mistress whom he thinks very handsome and 
 very good, and such as will make him enjoy the dignity of life with 
 ease.” 
 
 There must have been an almost child-like delight in the anticipation 
 of inhabiting the new possession, and we are hardly surprised to find 
 the “ Blue-stocking ” par excellence , the learned authoress of the Essay 
 on the Genius of Shakespeare , buying a large glass “ at the French Ambas- 
 sador’s sale,” and other things “ pretty cheap,” for the adornment of 
 her new abode. One of her “ fads,” if so brilliant a mind can be said 
 to have had “ fads,” was the decoration of one of the rooms with feather 
 hangings, and she begged birds’ feathers from all her friends ; to one 
 she hints that “ the brown tails of partridges are very useful,” at the 
 same time remembering that they are “ not so brilliant as some others ” ; 
 dare we think that she had, in one of her country visits, cast eyes of 
 envy on the tyrian hues of her correspondent’s peacocks ; to another — 
 from whom we may suppose she could hope for nothing better — she 
 remarks that “ the feathers of a goose may be better adapted to some 
 occasions than the plumes of the phoenix,” a figure that we can only hope 
 procured her another, if humbler, feathered victim. Cowper, one of 
 her friends, who may, for aught we know, have contributed something 
 from his rural Olney, wrote some lines on this unique form of mural 
 decoration ; they are well enough known, and begin with the assertion 
 that 
 
 “The birds put off their every hue 
 To dress a room for Montagu,” 
 
 although the wretched creatures could have had very little say in the 
 matter. Then there was her room of “ Cupidons,” which was painted with 
 roses and jessamine entwined with chubby cupids of decorative audacity, 
 which Mrs. Delany had in her eye when she wrote, “ How such a genius 
 
PORTMAN SQUARE 273 
 
 at her age, and so circumstanced, could think of painting the walls of 
 her dressing-room with bowers of roses and jessamine, entirely inhabited 
 by little cupids in all their wanton ways, is astonishing.” 
 
 But Mrs. Montagu’s interest in her house was not confined to the 
 decoration of its rooms or the adornment of its walls. Here she de- 
 lighted to assemble her friends ; and what friends she had around her ! 
 All, or nearly all, the witty, the clever, the noble, the fashionable, 
 thronged to her assemblies — from Horace Walpole, who praised her 
 “ palace,” to Dr. Johnson, who, although he would not allow that he 
 had been gratified by his visits there, confessed that he did not remember 
 “ to have passed many evenings with fewer objections.” Here, too, she 
 received George III. and his Queen ; and on another occasion gave a 
 breakfast to no less than seven hundred people. Here the Blue-stocking 
 Club, which Walpole called “ a charming poetic familiarity,” met. The 
 name had been given it, we are told, through Mr. Stillingfleet , 1 one of 
 its members, wearing blue stockings — and as his conversation was par- 
 ticularly witty and amusing, when he happened to be absent from the 
 meeting, it used to be generally remarked, “ We can do nothing without 
 Blue-stocking,” and hence the name came to be gradually adopted. If 
 any single individual was the author of the phrase it would seem to 
 have been Admiral Boscawen, who applied it in a pleasantry on Stilling- 
 fleet’s nether adornments. Among the members of this society were, 
 besides Mrs. Montagu herself, Mrs. Vesey, Miss Boscawen, and Mrs. 
 Carter — the learned translator of Epictetus — Mr. Pulteney, Horace 
 Walpole, and Stillingfleet ; while others who were to be met with at 
 Montagu House were Mrs. Chapone, who we remember corresponded 
 with Miss Pinkerton ; Lord Chatham, David Garrick, Fanny Burney, 
 who has left a description of a great breakfast here ; Seward, famed 
 for anecdotes ; and Lord Lyttelton, famed for nothing but his “ ghost 
 story.” 
 
 Mrs. Montagu was indeed practically the originator of a “ literary 
 salon ” in this country — she has been called the Madame du Deffand of 
 England, and as a hostess she deserves the distinction ; as Fanny Burney 
 describes her, “brilliant in diamonds, solid in judgment, critical in talk,” 
 she seems to have focussed within herself, if not every advantage obtainable 
 by mere mortals, at least those solid material pleasures which come from 
 wealth, wit, and wisdom. Dr. Beattie, who was an intimate acquaintance, 
 once said of her, although he had known several ladies in literature, “ she 
 excelled them all,” and that “ in conversation she had more wit than any 
 other person, male or female,” and he adds that she had far higher gifts : 
 
 * Forbes’s Life of Beattie. 
 
 S 
 
274 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 “ She was a sincere Christian, both in faith and practice, so that by her 
 influence and example she did good.” 
 
 Mrs. Montagu had, if not exactly enemies, at least those who were 
 antipathetic to her ; even the great Johnson was sometimes this, as some 
 of the anecdotes told of his conduct to her prove ; so was Cumberland, 
 who calls her Vanessa, in a skit he wrote on her assemblies, which he 
 termed Feasts of Reason ; but Cumberland was bitter against most people. 
 Considering, however, how many people partook of her hospitality, it is 
 curious how few have found fault with her conduct or have tried to belittle 
 her character. 
 
 Although she liked to gather around her the witty and fashionable 
 people of her day, Mrs. Montagu was one whose amiable character was 
 almost better pleased in making happy those who were not invariably 
 happy ; and the feast to the chimney sweeps which she annually, on the 
 ist May, gave in the grounds of Montagu House, is an exemplification of 
 this pleasant characteristic. That the sweeps — at that time, if not a dirtier, 
 chimney-sweeping was a very much more terrifying, and often dangerous 
 calling to its younger members — might enjoy one day of pure happiness 
 in the year, she regaled them with beef and plum-pudding and gave them 
 the run of her fine garden at Montagu House. There is a tradition that 
 the origin of the idea was the kidnapping of a young Montagu— some say 
 the son of Lady Mary Wortley — by chimney sweeps and his accidental 
 return to his family, by a sweep employed to clean the chimneys of the 
 house from which the child had many years before been stolen. If this 
 be correct, the fraternity, had it been composed of logical minds, might 
 well have deduced from such a return for such an act, almost an incentive 
 to fresh depredations on the youthful offspring of their patrons. 
 
 Mrs. Montagu continued to receive her many friends up to within two 
 years of her death, but she had ceased to leave her house, and indeed, 
 as Dr. Burney told his daughter, she had at last become “ almost wholly 
 blind and very feeble.” In 1799, a report that she was actually dead 
 gained some credence, but that event did not take place till the following 
 year, when she expired at the age of eighty, in the house which she had 
 loved and of which she was the distinguished ornament. 
 
 Montagu House passed, on her death, to Mr. Matthew Montagu, 
 her nephew and heir, who had taken her name in place of his original 
 patronymic of Robinson. It does not appear that he resided here, 
 however, for we learn that after Mrs. Montagu’s death her house was 
 occupied by the Turkish Ambassador, and he it was who erected in 
 the grounds a “ kiosk ” where, surrounded by his suite, he was wont to 
 smoke his pipe with Oriental complacency. 
 
PORTMAN SQUARE 275 
 
 In 1 8 3 5 Lord Rokeby — a member of the Montagu family — lived 
 here, and in that year the house is given as the address of the Right 
 Hon. Henry Goulburn, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Sir Rooert 
 Peel’s Administration, who had married one of Lord Rokeby’s daughters. 
 The Montagus continued to possess the property till the year 1874, 
 when the lease expired, and the ground landlord, Lord Portman, came 
 to reside here. The house was rebuilt and recased with red bricks some 
 years since, but many of its interior characteristic features remain as 
 they were in the time of Mrs. Montagu, whose memory is perpetuated 
 in the Square of that name. 
 
 It is difficult, if we think of Portman Square as it is to-day and call to 
 mind the great houses surrounding it, with their royal and noble occu- 
 pants, with the myriad of streets on all sides of it, to imagine it “ on 
 the outskirts of the town,” as Southey in his Esprielld s Letters describes 
 it, “approached on one side by a road, unlit, unpaved, and inaccessible 
 by carriage.” Its well-kept road and pavements and its carefully tended 
 central garden help to make such a mental retrospect still more 
 difficult. 
 
 The houses were renumbered in October 1858, the present No. 1 
 being formerly No. 8 Lower Seymour Street, and what is now No. 2 
 being then No. 1, and so on. Nos. 9 and 10 were, in the old days, 
 Nos. 11 and 10 Lower Berkeley Street, and No. 23, was then variously 
 No. 1 8a Portman Square or No. 79 Upper Berkeley Street; No. 33 
 was 1 Upper Seymour Street, and No. 34, 16 Portman Street; while 
 No. 47 was No. 40, or No. 8a Lower Seymour Street. The net result 
 being forty-seven houses with addresses in Portman Square as against forty 
 before the renumbering took place. 1 It is obviously important to bear 
 this in mind when trying to identify particular houses and residents. 
 
 MONTAGU AND BRYANSTON SQUARES 
 
 In the somewhat flippant way he has when dealing with the squares of 
 London, of which, by-the-bye, he tells us little or nothing, Knight calls 
 these two squares “ twin deformities,” adding that “ they are long, 
 narrow strips of ground, fenced in by two monstrous rows of flat 
 
 1 From information kindly supplied by F. W. Hunt, Esq., of the Portman Estate Office. In 
 the Crace collection, is a water-colour drawing by Gingal, which was engraved by Ackermann 
 in 1794, representing the north side of the Square. 
 
276 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 houses,” but the description is curiously misleading unless the fact of 
 their being anything but square may be considered a sufficient cause 
 for terming them deformities ; indeed by Luffman’s Plan of London for 
 1816, they are shown not even to be alike in shape, for whereas the 
 former is given approximately as it is to-day, the latter is depicted 
 as almost square, which was probably the form in which it was first 
 designed. Both the squares are on the Portman estate, and the former 
 was named after Mrs. Montagu ; it was commenced about the year 
 1800, and completed between then and 1813, the first lessees of the 
 ground being two builders ; one David Porter, who is said to have once 
 been a sort of official chimney-sweep to the village of Marylebone, and 
 the other J. T. Parkinson, whom we have met with as one of the first 
 builders of houses in Portman Square. 
 
 The ground on which the Square was built was formerly known as 
 Ward’s Field, and was the site of what was termed Apple Village — a 
 collection of cottages where, according to Mr. Clinch, one of the 
 murderers of Mr. Steele resided. 
 
 In 1813 an Act was passed for appointing trustees to regulate the 
 maintenance of the central garden and for other contingent purposes. 
 In the centre of this garden was what Knight irreverently calls “ a 
 pump with a flower-pot shaped like an urn on the top of it,” and it 
 must be confessed that it partakes to-day of that desolate look peculiar 
 to so many of the smaller central gardens of squares, given over, it 
 would seem, to perambulating nursemaids and exiguous cats ; it is 
 therefore the more interesting that we can connect it indirectly with 
 the Jubilee of George III., for on that auspicious occasion, the Square 
 being as yet uncompleted (1810), Mr. Porter entertained his workmen 
 in this area to a substantial feast, “ much conviviality and harmony ” 
 prevailing, we are told, “ around the festive board.” 1 There would 
 seem to be little of interest connected with the Square or its past in- 
 habitants ; indeed in Cunningham’s London , and what is more curious, 
 in London Past and Present , so fine an amplification of Cunningham’s 
 work, the Square is not even mentioned, nevertheless the connection of 
 one or two notable people with it can be traced ; thus Sir Charles 
 Warwick Bampfylde, a baronet of an old and distinguished Devonshire 
 family, was living here in the early part of the last century, and had 
 ust left his house on April 7, 1823, when he was shot and mortally 
 wounded by a man named Morland who had formerly been in his 
 service. The murderer, seeing that his first shot had taken effect, 
 pointed his pistol at his own head, fired, and fell dead. He was buried 
 
 1 Clinch’s Marylebone and St. Pancras. 
 
MONTAGU SQUARE 277 
 
 at cross roads in St. John’s Wood, and it is probable that this was the 
 last instance of a suicide’s body being so disposed of. 1 
 
 Another interesting resident was Mrs. Lytton-Bulwer, the mother 
 of the first Lord Lytton ; she was living here during part of the boy- 
 hood of her illustrious son, whom we can therefore claim as probably 
 the Square’s most illustrious bygone inhabitant. At a later day, however, 
 another notable literary man was more closely identified with it, for 
 here, from 1879 to ^82, lived Anthony Trollope, at No. 39, and 
 here, as elsewhere during his busy life, he produced his vast output 
 with a methodical regularity which is still the wonder of so many of 
 the genus irritabile, and. which, on its being made known by the 
 author himself in his Autobiography, it is safe to say, very considerably 
 lessened the appreciation of his works. Nobody could believe that such 
 clockwork methods could be productive of anything but mere hack- 
 work — and much of the round sixty volumes was hackwork. Trollope 
 himself never pretended it was work of a high class, but he did contend 
 that it was honest work, the best he could do, and he enjoyed recounting 
 his “ feats of literary productiveness,” as Mr. Frederic Harrison points 
 out ; and his total of sixty works in thirty-five years, representing a net 
 result of some ^70,000, gives him the credit of being if not a literary 
 artist, at least an industrious and honest worker. We must remember, 
 too, that included in that vast total was the remarkable Barchester series, 
 which seems at last to be coming into something like the popularity 
 that is its due. There is a photographic clearness about his charac- 
 ters and their talk which makes what Henley once said of Richard 
 Jefferies much truer of Trollope, that “ he was a reporter of genius.” 
 His best work was done before he came to live in Montagu Square, 
 and to the period of this residence can only be traced Cousin Henry , 
 The Duke's Children , and some of his later novels ; his undoubtedly 
 interesting but disappointing monograph on Thackeray ; and his Life of 
 Cicero , which nearly any one else might have done as well. “ It would,” 
 says Mr. Frith, 2 “ be impossible to imagine anything less like his works 
 than the author of them. The books full of gentleness, grace, and 
 refinement ; the writer of them bluff, loud, stormy, and contentious ; 
 neither a brilliant talker nor a good speaker, but a kinder-hearted man 
 and a truer friend never lived.” 
 
 Another resident 3 here was Sir Frederick (then Mr.) Pollock. I 
 
 1 Clinch’s Marylebone. Lord Poltimore is the present head of the Bampfylde family. 
 
 2 Reminiscences. 
 
 3 At No. 14 the Marquis d’Hautpoul resides, and next door until recently lived the Marquis 
 of Hamilton, while Rear-Admiral Sir Lambton Loraine, Bart., is at No. 7. 
 
278 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 can trace his occupancy of a house in the Square in 1853, when 
 Macready, writing from Sherborne, sends a present of books to him 
 and his wife; and again in i860, when the great actor called there and 
 found his friend and future biographer out. In the following year, 
 too, we find him writing to Mr. Pollock from Cheltenham, and ex- 
 pressing the wish that he had “ the wings of a dove,” to flee away and 
 spend two or three days in Montagu Square.” 1 
 
 Bryanston Square is named after Bryanston, near Blandford, in 
 Dorset, a seat of Lord Portman, the ground landlord ; it was built on 
 ground bearing the same name as its companion Montagu Square, and was 
 commenced about the year 1 810 — the Act for the regulation of its garden, 
 &c., being the same as that which provided for the maintenance of the 
 other. It was practically nearly all built by builders who had obtained 
 ground leases, they being, besides the ubiquitous J. T. Parkinson, 
 Henry Fauntleroy, J. H. Stracey, Harrison, and Edward Waddilove. 
 Mr. Clinch mentions David Porter as being the sole constructor of the 
 Square, but the records of the Portman Estate Office give the names 
 here mentioned only. 
 
 As Knight waxed facetious over the central garden of Montagu 
 Square, so with regard to that of Bryanston Square he has his harm- 
 less jest. “In the middle of the green turf which runs up the middle 
 of Bryanston Square,” says he, “ is a dwarf weeping ash, which re- 
 sembles strikingly a gigantic umbrella or toadstool.” Which, if we 
 think of it, a weeping ash, whether in square garden or not, fre- 
 quently does. 
 
 Some notable people have lived in the Square in the past, as many 
 fashionable people do to-day. Among the earlier inhabitants is to be 
 numbered Admiral Sir Richard Strachan, who died here in 1828. His 
 name will be remembered in connection with the ill-fated Walcheren 
 expedition, and is embodied in a well-known quatrain. Creevey speaks 
 of him as being one in the Service whom he estimated the highest, and 
 indeed, in the subsequent recriminations over the expedition, although 
 Chatham tried to throw the blame on Strachan, universal indigna- 
 tion was excited against the former and the Admiralty, and exone- 
 rated the latter from the blame which the Government tried to attach 
 to him. 
 
 In Bryanston Square, in 1855, died Henry Colburn, the well-known 
 publisher whose imprint is to be found on some of the best works 
 
 1 Macready’s Reminiscences , edited by Sir F. Pollock. 
 
BRYANSTON SQUARE 279 
 
 published in the thirties ; and on February 20th of the same year expired 
 a more notable man, Joseph Hume, who was then residing at No. 6. 
 Though Creevey censures his “stupid vanity,” there is little doubt that 
 Hume was one of those remarkable men who, without the spring-board 
 of advancement which has launched so many mediocrities farther than 
 their talents would have carried them, made his mark in the history of 
 the country ; but as it is the history of the country with which his name 
 is associated, it must be dismissed with this mere allusion. 
 
 From Jerdan’s Autobiography I can identify another, and one of 
 the earliest residents in the Square, for F. Freeling (afterwards Sir Francis 
 Freeling), Secretary of the General Post-Office, writing to Jerdan in 1815, 
 says, “Will you come and dine with us at six o’clock on Tuesday next, 
 at 42 Bryanston Square ? ” ; while we know from Ballantine’s Reminis- 
 cences, that James Clay’s house in the Square “ was the scene of many 
 pleasant gatherings.” Clay was, of course, the great authority on whist 
 — on which game he published one of the earliest manuals. He was, 
 besides, wonderfully proficient in all games of skill, being among other 
 things amateur billiard champion. Although his book on whist was 
 the recognised authority for many years, it was superseded by that 
 published by “ Cavendish,” which latter was, however, rather a supple- 
 ment to it than a new work. One person, however, would never 
 allow Clay’s superiority in the game, and that was Lord Henry Ben- 
 tinck — himself a fine player. Clay, on the other hand, had if anything 
 a still lower opinion of Bentinck’s skill ; indeed it came at last to 
 neither of them allowing that the other knew anything whatever about 
 the game. 
 
 One other temporary resident in the Square may be mentioned, for 
 here, in the spring of i860, the Millais’ took a house “at the corner 
 of Bryanston Square,” during which time the painter was busy on his 
 “ Black Brunswicker.” 1 
 
 Many notable people reside in Bryanston Square to-day, for, besides 
 the Turkish Embassy being located here, other occupants of houses 
 include the Earls of Lathom, Waldegrave, and Shaftesbury, the Right 
 Hon. G. J. Shaw Lefevre, now Lord Eversley ; and the well-known 
 portrait-painter, W. W. Ouless, Esq., R.A. 
 
 1 Leslie, in a note to his Life of Reynolds , opines that the portrait of “ Nelly O’Brien,” noted 
 by Walpole as “a very pretty picture,” may have been the beautiful front-face portrait in a 
 brown dress, leaning forward with clasped hands, now (1865) in the possession of C. Mills, Esq., 
 Bryanston Square. 
 
28 o 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 DORSET SQUARE 
 
 This square belongs to the Portman Estate and so demands a word, 
 but it has practically no history, and although a handsome square 
 enough, its interest centres in the fact that it stands on the site of the 
 original Lord’s Cricket Club, concerning which Mr. Andrew Lang thus 
 speaks: “The Club may be said to have sprung from the ashes of the 
 White Conduit Club, dissolved in 1787. One Thomas Lord, by the 
 aid of some members of the older association, made a ground in the 
 space which is now Dorset Square. This was the first Lord’s.” 1 The 
 present ground was substituted in 1814, which is about the date of the 
 commencement of the Square. 
 
 Dorset Square, which takes its name from the Duke of Dorset, is 
 now filled with private houses; in one of these, in 1830, Charles Barton, 
 the friend of John Sterling, was living; while to-day at No. 18 resides 
 Lewis Waller, Esq., the well-known actor. 
 
 MANCHESTER SQUARE 
 
 On the site of the present Manchester Square, 2 once known as “ Maribone 
 Gardens,” which extended to Wimpole and Harley Streets, and which 
 Pepys mentions as a “ pretty place situated in Marrowbone,” there was 
 once a project to build, in the latter years of Queen Anne’s reign, a square 
 which should bear the name of the reigning sovereign, 3 but the death of 
 the last of the Stuarts put an end to this idea, and the ground remained 
 waste land during nearly the next sixty years; then about the year 1770 
 a scheme was set on foot to form a square, and among the first who 
 obtained ground leases appears to have been the Duke of Manchester, who 
 took practically the whole of the north side, and certain builders, among 
 
 1 Quoted by Mr. Clinch. A water-colour drawing by Henry Matthews, reproduced in fac- 
 simile, is extant showing the 2nd Regiment of the Royal East India Volunteers receiving 
 their colours at the hands of Lady Dundas, on Lord’s Cricket Ground, Mary le Bone, on 
 July 27, 1797- 
 
 2 In Harrison’s map for 1 777, it is called Bentinck Square, but this was a daring anticipa- 
 tion indeed. It is possible that such a title may have been suggested, but it was never used. 
 
 3 It is curious that a square having the same name, viz. Queen Anne Square, had been 
 projected, but never built, at the foot of Great Portland Street. (Whitten, note to Smith’s 
 Book for a Rainy Day.) 
 
 
M A IS C I9IIS § TIE R S Q UA R 1- 
 
 north Side. 
 
MANCHESTER SQUARE 281 
 
 whom were the Adam brothers, John Dalrymple, John Pearson, and 
 Godfrey Wilson. 1 
 
 The Duke of Manchester — he was the fourth Duke, to whose noble 
 bearing and affable manners Wraxall bears witness — commenced the erec- 
 tion of the great house, now known as Hertford House, but formerly as 
 Manchester House, in 1776, and this probably gave those in authority 
 the idea of calling the Square after his Grace’s title. 
 
 It was not till 1784 that an Act was passed for the regulation and 
 maintenance of the Square and its central garden, and we can thus 
 approximately settle the date of its completion as taking place in that 
 year ; but as Knight and others place the date of its actual completion 
 four years later, there may have been a few houses unfinished till then. 
 
 The interest of the Square practically centres in the Duke of Man- 
 chester’s house (then No. 20), which on his death in 1788, was purchased 
 by the Spanish Government as its Embassy in this country, and in 
 Boyle’s Court Guide for 1795, t ^ le Marquis del Campo is given as living 
 here. Besant states that at one time, subsequent to the Spanish Embassy 
 being located here, the French Embassy used Manchester House as its 
 headquarters, and a writer in the Builder affirmed that Tallyrand re- 
 sided here, but Walford was unable to confirm this, and I can find no 
 grounds for the report ; it is more probable that it passed, as most 
 authorities state, from the Spanish Ambassador to the second Marquis of 
 Hertford — whence its present name of Hertford House. 
 
 The Lord Hertford here referred to was Francis Ingram Seymour, 
 who succeeded to the title in 1794, and of whose manners Wraxall tells 
 us that “they were noble yet ingratiating.” He was a close friend of 
 George IV., both when he was Prince of Wales and King, but Lady 
 Hertford was the loadstar that drew “ the old yellow chariot,” as Moore 
 termed it, daily to Manchester Square. 2 Lady Hertford was the 
 Marquis’s second wife, and was a daughter of Viscount Irvine ; there is 
 little doubt that together with Lady Conyngham she helped, as much as 
 George IV. ’s notorious life, to bring the monarchy into a state of disrepute 
 which it had hardly ever before experienced. Moore refers to her in the 
 lines beginning : — 
 
 “ Or who will repair unto Manchester Square, 
 
 And see if the lovely Marchesa be there ? ” 
 
 His Royal Highness the Prince Regent did so often repair on that quest, 
 
 1 Portman Estate Office Records. 
 
 2 Sir Samuel Romilly remarks in his Diary that “ The Prince does not pass a day without 
 visiting Lady Hertford.” 
 
282 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 that a facetious advertisement was inserted in a scurrilous print called 
 the Scourge for 1814, as follows: “Lost, between Pall Mall and Man- 
 chester Square, his Royal Highness the Prince Regent.” The Diaries 
 and Memoirs of the period are full of references to Lady Hertford, but 
 we have yet to learn that her sayings were witty or wise ; certainly her 
 actions were anything but edifying, and so they may well be left to the 
 merciful oblivion which covers the useless and inefficient. We may, 
 however, recall the fact that it was here, under Lady Hertford’s regime , 
 that Theodore Hook made his debut into fashionable life. His extra- 
 ordinary talent appears to have been brought to the notice of Lord and 
 Lady Hertford by Sheridan, and the lady was so delighted with his 
 manners and gifts that she introduced him to the Prince Regent at a supper 
 at Hertford House. Although somewhat awestruck at first, the Prince’s 
 natural good manners and condescension (for to do him justice he had 
 these in abundance ; they were his sole claim to be considered the first 
 gentleman of Europe, which a decadent court called him) soon overcame 
 Hook’s shyness, and he subsequently so delighted his Royal Highness 
 that, on leaving, the latter placed his hand familiarly on Hook’s shoulder 
 and said, “Mr. Hook, I must see and hear you again.” Had Hook 
 foreseen his future, he would probably have considered that evening as 
 the worst he ever spent in his life. 
 
 On Lord Hertford’s death in 1822, Hertford House passed to his 
 son and successor, the third Marquis, who had married Maria Fagniani, 
 the adopted daughter of George Selwyn ; he in turn died in 1842, when 
 the fourth Marquis inherited it. He, as we know, lived practically 
 wholly in Paris, where he died in 1870 ; and Hertford House was during 
 his life as largely used for diplomatic purposes as Dorchester House, to 
 take an instance, is to-day; Knight in 1843, mentions that it was then 
 occupied by the Count St. Aulaire, the French Ambassador. It had been 
 previously (in 1835) taken by General Sebastiani, the French Ambassador, 
 at ^1000 per annum, and although immediately after having done so he 
 was recalled to Paris, he returned to England a few weeks later and 
 represented France in this country till 1840. This may have given rise 
 to the statement of Besant mentioned above. 
 
 On the death of the fourth Marquis unmarried, the house was left, 
 with the remarkable collections amassed by three successive Lords Hert- 
 ford, all of whom were wealthy and, at least in their selection of beauti- 
 ful objects of art, wise, to Sir Richard Wallace, the lifelong friend and, 
 as is generally supposed, the kinsman of the fourth Marquis. Vast 
 quantities of pictures, furniture, and objets d' art had been temporarily 
 housed in various places, and the bulk exhibited at the Bethnal Green 
 
MANCHESTER SQUARE 283 
 
 Museum from 1872 to 1875, but ' n t ^ ie l atter year alterations and 
 improvements had been carried out at Hertford House, under the 
 supervision of Sir Richard Wallace, which enabled the mansion to ac- 
 commodate even these vast accumulations, and thither they were removed. 
 To them was added the beautiful things collected by Sir Richard himself, 
 particularly the superb collection of armour which was practically brought 
 together solely by him. 
 
 At his death he left the house and its contents to Lady Wallace, 
 on the understanding that at her decease (their only child, a son, having 
 died previously) she should, at her discretion, bequeath the whole to 
 the British nation. In 1897 Lady Wallace died, and by the provi- 
 sions of her will such an accumulation of wonderful and beautiful 
 works of art passed as an inheritance to this country as, it is probable, 
 never has nor ever will be again received by any nation in the world. 
 It is impossible to over-estimate the magnificence of this legacy ; 
 no hyperbole can do justice to its artistic importance, no words can 
 adequately express its extraordinary significance and value ; well may 
 Mr. Spielmann, in his monograph on the house and its contents, de- 
 scribe Hertford House as “a Mecca where every artistic soul shall find 
 refreshment and consolation, marvelling almost as much at the apprecia- 
 tion and energy that gathered these things together, as at the skill and 
 taste of the artists of every craft who have brought mind and hand to 
 such a pitch of cultivation.” 
 
 The absorbing interest of Hertford House would have cast into 
 the shade anything of the kind that might have been connected with 
 other residences in the Square, but, truth to tell, there are not many 
 such associations to record ; true, Lady Blessington when Miss Power 
 was living here in 1816, and again in 1818, on the eve of her marriage 
 with Lord Blessington; and later, at No. 12, William Beckford 1 — so 
 mighty a collector that he can take his place beside the creators of the 
 Hertford House collection — had one of his many residences ; while 
 Richard Bateman Robson, once M.P. for Honiton and afterwards for 
 Okehampton, a noisy patriot of his day, who is mentioned in some 
 lines which Robert Adair addressed to Lady Hunloke and which are 
 quoted in Jesse’s Life of Brummell , died in his house here on March 10, 
 1827; but that appears to be all. Lord Palmerston was once within 
 an ace of coming to live here, and in a letter written in 1808, he 
 mentions having seen “ a nice house in Manchester Square,” but adds, 
 
 1 Boyle for 1795 gives Captain Burnet and Lady Ann Lindsay as occupying this house; 
 while at No. 5 was Admiral Dalrymple ; at No. 10, Lady Blackwood ; at No. 16, Paul Methuen, 
 Esq. ; and at No. 17, Sir George Collier ; while Lady Glasgow was living at No. 2, in 1790. 
 
284 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 “To be sure it is sadly out of the way,” a verdict that seems to have 
 had its effect in depriving the Square of a more notable resident than 
 any it can boast. To-day Manchester Square is largely inhabited by 
 physicians, no fewer than fifteen can be counted in the Directory ; but 
 it is also a fashionable square, such well-known people as Lord Suffield, 
 the Dowager-Marchioness of Bath, the Dowager-Countess of Titchfield, 
 the Dowager-Countess of Mayo, Major-General the Hon. Sir Reginald 
 Talbot, Major-General Barrington Campbell, C.B., Viscount Ingestre, 
 and Sir John Pepys Lister-Kaye, Bart., appearing in the Court Guide ; 
 while the well-known clergyman and literary critic, the Rev. Stopford 
 Brooke, resides at No. 1. A few years since a still greater critic and 
 writer was staying at No. 7 a ; for on March 2, 1885, Matthew Arnold 
 writes to Mr. John Morley from this house and mentions in his letter 
 the fact that “ we are here for a few weeks.” 
 
 HAREWOOD AND BLANDFORD SQUARES 
 
 Two squares, not on the Portman estate but in such close proximity 
 to Dorset Square that it will be convenient to include them in this 
 chapter, remain to be noticed; one of them, Harewood Square, is no 
 longer in existence, but the other still remains intact, and is known as 
 Blandford Square ; although the adjoining Great Central Railway’s 
 terminus, which has swept away Harewood Square, has altered its 
 character very noticeably. Harewood Square, which was not finished 
 till about 1842, was in a direct line west of Dorset Square, and only 
 divided from it by Boston Place. The ground it occupied was known, 
 in 1804, as Lisson Grove. What was its eastern side is now known 
 as Harewood Avenue, in which the name, if nothing else, is thus 
 preserved. Two artists are known to have once lived there, one being 
 John Graham Lough, the sculptor, who resided here for between thirty 
 and forty years, and died in his house here in 1876; the other was Sir 
 George Hayter, the portrait-painter, who lived here previously to re- 
 moving to Blandford Square. 
 
 Lough, who was a self-taught man, first made an impression by his 
 “Milo,” exhibited in 1827, which Haydon calls “the most extra- 
 ordinary thing, considering all the circumstances, in modern sculpture,” 
 and sees in it “ another proof of the efficacy of inherent genius.” 1 
 1 Diary , vol. ii. p. 168 et seq. E. M. Ward, R.A., was living at No 33, in 1849. 
 
BLANDFORD SQUARE 285 
 
 Lough’s description of his early struggles, how he and his brother 
 were always making little clay figures, and how, finding a Pope’s Homer , 
 these resolved themselves into Greeks (his) and Trojans (his brother’s) ; 
 how, having read a description of the Colosseum in Gibbon, the two 
 boys built up a miniature amphitheatre with clay in the kitchen, after 
 the family had gone to bed ; and how a gentleman returning from 
 hunting and seeing hundreds of clay arms and legs lying in the garden 
 of the Loughs’ cottage, invited the young genius to his house to see 
 specimens of the work of Michael Angelo and Canova — all this and 
 an hundred other details make, through Haydon’s vivifying medium, 
 fascinating reading. No wonder the Diarist sums up the matter with 
 the words, “ Lough will be a great man. He has all the consciousness 
 of genius, with great modesty.” Ticknor mentions once meeting 
 Lough, whom he found “ quite amusing.” He told the Diarist that 
 returning from Italy, where he had married, with his children, he 
 had some difficulty in reconciling them to the appearance of things 
 in London ; and when they saw the sun through the fog, they 
 exclaimed, “Che brutta luna ” (“What an ugly moon ”). 
 
 Blandford Square, begun in 1827 (the south side was the first 
 portion built) and finished in 1833, is just to the north of the site on 
 which Harewood Square formerly stood. It appears to have been the 
 work, as was Harewood Square, of three builders named Unwin, Hutchins, 
 and Braine ; but it is said that the houses stood so long empty that, 
 during the great Exhibition of 1851, the owners were glad enough to let 
 them as Police barracks. 1 Hither, as we have seen, Sir George Hayter 
 removed. Sir George is known as the painter of innumerable portraits 
 of the royal family, and the author of the Appendix to the Hortus 
 Ericaus Woburnensis , on the classification of colours.' 2 Sir George died at a 
 house in the Marylebone Road in 1871. 
 
 But the most illustrious resident here was George Eliot, who came 
 to live at No. 16, in December i860. She had previously occupied 
 furnished lodgings at No. 10 Harewood Square, and did not retain 
 them for even the short period she had anticipated, for, in her Diary 
 under date September 27, i860, she writes: “To-day is the third day 
 we have spent in our new home here at 10 Harewood Square. It is a 
 furnished house, in which we do not expect to stay longer than six 
 months at the utmost.” Ten days less than three months later, she 
 
 1 See one of a series of interesting articles on Changing London , by J. G. Head, Esq., 
 
 published in the Estates Gazette. 2 Old and New London. 
 
286 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 writes: “ December 17th. We entered to-day our new house — 16 Bland- 
 ford Square — which we have taken for three years.” And in a letter 
 to Miss Sara Hennell, three days later, she says: “Your vision of us 
 as ‘ settled ’ was painfully in contrast with the fact. We are still far 
 off our last stadium of development, and so it has come to pass, that 
 though we were in the house on Monday last, our curtains are not up, 
 and our oil-cloth is not down.” 1 Here were written Romola and Felix 
 Holt; and George Eliot and G. H. Lewes left the Square for their new 
 home, The Priory, Regent’s Park, on November 5, 1863. 
 
 Aubrey de Vere, the poet, also once resided in Blandford Square, and 
 I find Tennyson writing to him from St. Leonards on September 17, 
 1843, and saying, “I suppose you are still in Blandford Square.” 2 While 
 Madame Bodichon, the friend of George Eliot, was occupying for a time 
 No. 5 in the Square. 
 
 In Blandford Square to-day is a Convent, first established near 
 Queen’s Square, Bloomsbury, in 1844, an d removed to its present locale 
 seven years later. It consists of thirty sisters and is primarily intended 
 for the needs of servants out of work, although, as is usual in such 
 establishments, nothing in the way of charity alienum a se putat. 
 
 1 Cross’s Life of George Eliot , vol. ii. p. 282. 2 Life of Tennyson , vol. i. p. 218. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SQUARES OF KENSINGTON 
 
 “ Never hermit in his cell 
 Where repose and silence dwell, 
 
 Human shape and human word 
 Never seen and never heard, 
 
 Had a life of duller calm than the indwellers of our Square.” 
 
 L. E. Landon. 
 
 T HE squares which this very general title embraces are those 
 lying between Sloane Street and Warwick Road, their east and 
 west boundaries ; and High Street, Kensington, and the Fulham 
 Road, which bound them on the north and south. What for 
 a better name I call the squares of Kensington are Cadogan, 
 Ovington, Trevor, Montpelier, Brompton, Alexander, Thurloe, Onslow, 
 Hereford, Redcliffe, Earl’s Court, Nevern, Edwards and Kensington 
 Squares. It will be at once seen how greatly these various squares differ 
 among themselves, in age, size, and importance ; how some have little 
 or no history, and how others are, from a variety of reasons, both interest- 
 ing and historical. 
 
 CADOGAN SQUARE 
 
 Cadogan Square 1 is one of those modern developments in building 
 which have done so much to improve this quarter of the town, and have, 
 at the same time, not detracted from its picturesqueness. Within the 
 memory of the comparatively young, the ground on which it stands 
 formed part of Prince’s Cricket Club grounds. This and the surround- 
 ing district was known, from so early as the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, as Blakelands or Blacklands, then forming part of the manor, 
 and being in the occupation of Sir W. Paulet, afterwards Marquis of 
 
 1 Technically in Chelsea, but placed here for reasons stated later on. 
 
 287 
 
288 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Winchester. Blacklands House is shown on a map, dated about 1625, 
 as being a little to the north of the present Duke of York’s Schools, or 
 roughly where Draycott Place is now. In a later plan, about the early 
 part of the eighteenth century, all this ground is called “Lord Cheyne’s 
 lands,” while in a map of the end of the eighteenth century, which gives 
 Hans Place by name, will be observed just south of this, “The Pavilion.” 
 This marks practically the spot where Cadogan Square now stands. 
 This Pavilion was built by Mr. Holland, who had taken a lease of 
 one hundred acres of ground from Lord Cadogan, in 1777, for building 
 development. About twenty acres of this he reserved for his own 
 use and erected the house, which, it is said, was designed as a model 
 for the more celebrated Pavilion at Brighton ; if this be the case, 
 the later erection was kept little to the design of the original, for, by 
 an elevation given in Beaver’s Memorials of Old Chelsea , the earlier 
 building would seem to have little or nothing in common with the 
 Brighton monstrosity. 1 The gardens of the Pavilion, from which, 
 by-the bye, Pavilion Road takes its name, were laid out by “ Capability ” 
 Brown, and from a view given in Old and New London , a lake, the 
 usual conventional ruin, which appears to have masked an ice-house, 
 the stonework of which is said to have been brought from Wolsey’s 
 demolished palace at Esher, and various statues and stone ornamenta- 
 tions formed part of Brown’s design. At Mr. Holland’s death the 
 Pavilion was purchased by Mr. Denys, whose wife, the Hon. Lady 
 Charlotte Denys, continued to occupy it after his decease. It was de- 
 molished in 1879, when the development of this portion of the Cadogan 
 estate was taken in hand, and Cadogan Square formed between 1882 
 and 1883. In 1886, Mr. Wheatley reminds us, a road was laid across 
 a portion of the Square, but was almost immediately done away with 
 and the central garden made in its place. Writing in 1892, Mr. Beaver 
 gives the following names of those then living in the Square : Viscount 
 Coke, at No. 13; Mr. C. Austen Leigh, at No. 35; Lord Balfour of 
 Burleigh, at No. 47 ; Mr. Hans Sloane Stanley, at No. 49 ; Mr. F. W. 
 Lawson, the artist, at No. 61 ; Lieut. -Colonel W. H. Walrond, M.P., 
 at No. 65 ; Admiral Sir George Willes, at No. 73 ; and Lord Elcho, at 
 No. 62. Only one of these, Lord Balfour, still lives in his old house; 
 although Lady Willes is given as residing at No. 73 ; but the Square 
 is a very fashionable one to-day. Among present (1906) residents I may 
 mention such well-known names as those of Sir Charles Tritton ; the 
 Earl of Kintore; the Right Hon. Evelyn Ashley; Judge Lumley Smith ; 
 
 1 Mr. Beaver notes that the designs for the house are in the British Museum; and see 
 Faulkner for a long account, as well as an illustration, of the Pavilion. 
 
OVINGTON SQUARE 289 
 
 Right Hon. Lord Allerton ; Geoffrey Drage, Esq.; Lord Belper; Sir 
 William des Vceux; Lord James of Hereford; Lord Valentia; Lord 
 Medway ; Sir William Carington ; the Due de Stacpoole ; Sir James 
 Joicey ; and Ralph Sneyd, Esq., of Keele ; to mention only these, who 
 form but a tithe of the notable inhabitants of the Square to-day. 
 
 OVINGTON SQUARE 
 
 To the north-west of Cadogan Square lies Ovington Square, which runs 
 from the Brompton Road to Walton Street, and stands practically on 
 the site of “ Heath Close,” marked in a map of Chelsea of the early 
 eighteenth century, as well as on the earlier plan, circa 1625. Ovington 
 Gardens, which forms the continuation of the Square to the Brompton 
 Road, stands where once was Grove House, sometimes called 1 1 Brompton 
 Grove, which was successively the residence of Sir John Macpherson, 
 Governor-General of India ; of William Wilberforce, who came here on 
 July 2, 1823 ; and of William Jerdan, at one time editor of the Literary 
 Gazette , and author of an interesting and amusing autobiography. The 
 house was demolished in 1846, and not long after the Square and gardens 
 were formed. There is little to be said with regard to Ovington Square, 
 but it is interesting to record that Edwin Long, the painter, was living at 
 No. 35, in 1869; and that at No. 23, once resided George Prince, Esq., one 
 of the originators of the once neighbouring Prince’s Club. 
 
 TREVOR SQUARE 
 
 On the opposite side of the Brompton Road are two small squares of 
 old-fashioned early Victorian houses, which form twin oases between that 
 thoroughfare and Knightsbridge ; these are Trevor and Montpelier 
 Squares. The former, named after Sir John Trevor, whose mansion 
 once occupied its site, was formed in 1818. Sir John Trevor, it will be 
 remembered, was once Speaker of the House Commons and sometime 
 Master of the Rolls ; he was, to use the words of Leigh Hunt, “ infamous 
 for bribery and corruption,” and on his death in 1711, was buried in the 
 
 T 
 
290 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 chapel of Clifford’s Inn, his epitaph being given thus : “ Sir J. T., M.R. 
 1717,” which Pennant concludes was done “wisely,” as it would have 
 taxed even the ingenuity of a professed maker of epitaphs to have said 
 much good of him. It was he who, as Speaker, had to put the question 
 and declare it carried on the vote accusing himself of receiving _£iooo to 
 forward the advancement of a local London Bill. He was deprived of 
 the Speakership and dismissed the House of Commons, but was allowed, 
 curiously enough, to retain the Mastership of the Rolls. The freehold 
 of Trevor Square is still vested in Sir John’s descendants. 
 
 The Square itself consists of small houses and an oblong central 
 garden of quite limited extent. There is little of interest to be said 
 about it unless the fact that at No. 1 once resided the notorious Harriette 
 Wilson, and that Mrs. Andr6e, descended from that Umfreville whom 
 the Conqueror dubbed his kinsman, died here in 1836, 1 can be said to 
 constitute any. 2 
 
 MONTPELIER SQUARE 
 
 Montpelier Square was so named from Montpelier in France, on 
 account of its healthy situation, and was formed about 1837 ; it is a small 
 square of forty-two houses, but of a quite different character to Trevor 
 Square, whose houses are smaller still. It has an air of quiet distinction 
 which, if it does not aim at being fashionable, is perhaps something better. 
 A few people of note have in the past lived within it ; thus at No. 
 11 resided, in i860, Frederick William Fairholt, an artist of no mean 
 capability, who, among other work, executed the charming little pictures 
 which illustrate Croker’s Walk from, London to Fulham , the drawings 
 and engravings of Lord Londesborough’s Miscellanea Graphica , Bryan 
 Faussett’s Inventorum Sepulchrale , and Halliwell’s Folio Shakespeare ; 
 and who was, besides, the author of A History of Costume in England , and 
 other works. 3 He died here in 1866. The well-known actor, Walter 
 Lacey, lived, too, in the Square, at No. 38, from 1852 to i860. Davis 
 also, notes that Dr. Morison lived at No. 27 ; and that the Rev. 
 Mackenzie Walcott, celebrated for his antiquarian researches with regard 
 to Westminster and its Abbey, was also one of its residents; while the 
 
 1 Davis, Memorials of Knightsbridge. 
 
 2 The Rate Books for 1850 reveal the fact that a certain mysterious “ Kockanowski ” in 
 
 that year occupied No. 9. 3 Croker’s Walk from Lo?idon to Fulham. 
 
BROMPTON SQUARE 291 
 
 Square is indirectly connected with William Morris and his interesting 
 circle, for we are told that in 1856, he gave his friend Fulford ^100 a 
 year to act as his deputy in the editorship of the Oxford and Cambridge 
 Magazine , which arrangement, says Lady Burne-Jones, in her Memorials 
 of her husband, brought Fulford to London, where he, together with 
 another of the set — Heeley, a Cambridge man — took a house, No. 20 
 Montpelier Square, which became a meeting-place for any of the circle 
 who might be in town. Burne-Jones refers to one of these meetings 
 when he writes, in a letter to Cromell, “ On Tuesday I dined at Brompton ; 
 Topsey (Morris) and Macdonald were there, five of us altogether, like old 
 times.” How long the tenancy of No. 20 lasted is uncertain, but as at 
 the end of the first year Morris was some hundreds of pounds out of 
 pocket through the non-success of the magazine, and as we find Burne- 
 Jones writing in the August of 1856, that “the magazine is going to 
 smash,” and that neither he nor Morris propose writing in it further as 
 “ the world is not converted and never will be,” it is probable that 
 Montpelier Square as its centre of energy did not last long. 
 
 BROMPTON SQUARE 
 
 A little further west is Brompton Square, which is peculiar from the 
 fact that it has now no opening at its north end, where it forms a crescent, 1 
 and no south end at all, as the Brompton Road forms its boundary on 
 that side. The Square seems to have recovered from the not very good 
 reputation it once suffered under, and its houses, though small, are 
 respectable. It was formed during the early years of the last century, 
 when so much building development took place all over the neighbour- 
 hood. 2 
 
 Actors and singers have much affected the Square, but whether “ in 
 consequence of the salubrity of the air,” as Walford surmises, or because 
 it was within striking distance of the theatres, and its houses reasonable in 
 rent, is a moot point. One of the best-known histrions who once resided 
 here, at No. 22, 3 was George Colman the younger. He came to this 
 house, says Croker, about 1826, having removed from No. 5 Melina 
 Place, Kent Road, and here he died on October 17, 1836, in his seventy- 
 
 1 There was formerly a way out here, but this has been closed, and on the wall which forms 
 the barrier may be read these words : “ This wall is built on Mr. Eiger’s freehold land, 1856.” 
 
 2 An act for the maintenance of the centre garden, is dated 1825. 
 
 3 A curious woodcut of this house is given in Diprose’s Book of the Stage. 
 
292 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 fifth year, with such equanimity that his medical attendant was able to say 
 that it had never fallen to his lot to witness, in the hour of death, “ so 
 much serenity of mind, such perfect philosophy, or resignation more 
 complete.” 1 
 
 Apart from his dramatic work, Colman’s fame, like Luttrell’s (another 
 resident in the Square) and Sydney Smith’s, largely rests on his jeux 
 cT esprit and witty sayings, some of which have survived ; as for instance 
 that, on the occasion of a young fellow in the company being pressed to 
 sing, and at last testily exclaiming that he thought they wanted to make 
 a butt of him, when Colman instantly replied, “ No, my good sir, we only 
 want to get a stave out of you.” Byron, as we know, met Colman occasion- 
 ally and found him “ extremely pleasant and convivial,” as he has himself 
 attested, preferring his wit to Sheridan’s more saturnine, if not savage, 
 humour ; but Colman, at least on one occasion at Carlton House, forgot 
 his dignity in his familiarity, when he induced the Prince Regent to sing 
 a song, and then with an oath said he had such a good voice that he would 
 engage him for his next season. Colman’s effects were sold in Brompton 
 Square on November 29, 1837, when some fine pictures were disposed of, 
 including Reynolds’s and Gainsborough’s portraits of the elder Colman, 
 and a crayon of the actor by Rosalba ; a portrait by Zoffany, once the 
 property of Garrick, and a miniature of Shakespeare by Ozias Humphrey, 
 together with engravings, books, and the MSS. of the two Colmans’ 
 dramatic and other works. 
 
 Later, in i860, James Vining, the actor, resided at No. 22 ; and from 
 1870 till his death, four years later, Shirley Brooks, the editor of Punchy 
 occupied it. 
 
 At No. 6 we find Buckstone, the actor, living at one time ; and in 
 1852 Mrs. Fitzwilliam, the actress, was residing here; while a namesake 
 of the latter, Edward Fitzwilliam, a musical composer of some note and 
 greater promise, lived at No. 14. Four doors from this house, at No. 19, 
 was the residence of Henry Luttrell (who, I may here mention, removed 
 later to No. 31), whose good sayings help to enliven the memoirs and 
 diaries of the period, and whose Advice to Julia has been ascribed to 
 so many other well-known men. 
 
 Luttrell was the friend of most of the fashionable and literary men of 
 his day, and among them of Rogers, of whose Italy his well-known 
 saying was that it would have been dished had it not been for the plates ; 
 in reference to Turner’s and Stothard’s exquisite illustrations to that very 
 mediocre work. It was he, too, who gave as his idea of the English 
 
 1 From the account of Dr. Chinnock, given in a letter in Peake’s Memoirs of the Colman 
 Family , vol. ii. p. 451. Croker gives the date of Colman’s death as October 26, in error. 
 
BROMPTON SQUARE 293 
 
 climate that it was, “ on a fine day, like looking up a chimney ; on a rainy 
 day, like looking down it ” ; and although he did not write the well- 
 known epigram on Lord Dudley’s speaking by heart, his version is almost 
 as good. 
 
 “In vain my affections the ladies are seeking : 
 
 If I give up my heart, there’s an end of my speaking.” 
 
 It was Luttrell, too, who, on some one telling him that a certain young 
 lady’s parents were afraid to let her off the premises, replied : “ For fear 
 that she should come to the conclusion ; ” and his excellent reply will 
 be remembered, to one who said of Sharpe’s (the retired hatmaker) 
 very dark complexion, that he “ looked as if the dye of his old trade 
 had got engraved on his face ” — “ Yes, darkness that may be felt ; ” 
 while his “ mot ” on the report that Sir F. Gould was used to eat 
 three eggs for breakfast, on which Gould replied, “ Oh no, on the 
 contrary ; ” and some one asking Luttrell what was the contrary of eating 
 three eggs, and receiving the unexpected reply, “Laying three eggs, I 
 suppose,” showed at least as much logic as wit. 1 No wonder Raikes 
 calls him a witty, entertaining man, and Greville, not generally an amiable 
 critic, notes that it was hardly possible to live with a more agreeable one. 
 
 In 1850 Luttrell’s old home was the residence of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Keeley, the latter of whom died not many years since in Pelham Crescent. 
 Her excellence as an actress is recorded by the older generation, and it 
 will be remembered that on the Jubilee of 1897, Her Majesty Queen 
 Victoria received her at Buckingham Palace, which is in itself a sufficient 
 proof of the irreproachable character of her life. 
 
 No. 21 was for a time the house of Paul Spagnoletti, the conductor 
 of the orchestra at the Royal Opera ; after he left, Mrs. Chatterly, an 
 actress renowned for the truth with which she represented French 
 characters, occupied the house, and after her marriage with Mr. Francis 
 Race they continued to live here, and were doing so in 1852, according 
 to Croker, who is our chief authority for Brompton Square. 
 
 At No. 23 the elder William Farren, the actor, who once owned 
 No. 25, was living in 1832, and again in i860, in which year he moved 
 to No. 30 ; and next door (No 24) resided for three years (1840 to 1843) 
 the great Shakespearian scholar and critic, John Payne Collier; while to 
 No 28, William Frogatt Robson, Comptroller of the Droits of Admiralty, 
 who had been living in Farren’s house, No. 25, in 1852, came in i860. 
 Nos. 30 and 31 were subsequently converted into one house and formed 
 
 1 See Moore’s Journal for many other instances of Luttrell’s ready wit. 
 
294 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 the Vicarage for the neighbouring Holy Trinity Church. At No. 40 
 John Liston once lived for a time, and at No 52 Charles Matthews was 
 residing in 1835. Mr. Frederick Yates, the actor, and father of the 
 late Edmund Yates, also lived at No. 57, and next door (No. 58) we 
 find John Reeve ; while Helen Faucit, Lady Martin, whom we shall find 
 living, as does her husband Sir Theodore Martin, in Onslow Square, was 
 also at one time one of Brompton Square’s most notable histrionic inhabi- 
 tants. Finally we have the Rev. W. H. Brookfield, on the nth July 
 1864, writing to his daughter from No. 30, which, as we have seen, 
 formed a portion of Holy Trinity Vicarage ; while another letter, to Lord 
 Lyttelton, from the same house is dated 22nd December of that year. 
 As we are told that the Brookfields, although so much out of London, 
 “ always kept a house there, for a country life suited neither of them,” 1 they 
 probably only occupied No. 30 for a short time, for two years later they 
 were living at No. 6 Sydney Place, Onslow Square, and, as we shall 
 see, Brookfield died in 1874, at No. 16 Hereford Square. 
 
 ALEXANDER SQUARE 
 
 To include Alexander Square among the squares of London may 
 seem a still greater anomaly than the inclusion of some others which 
 are but squares in name ; but as it is a square in name if in nothing else, 
 it must find a place among those that better fulfil the conditions of what 
 a square should be. As a matter of fact, Alexander Square is but a row 
 of houses, broken by Alfred Place in the centre, divided from the main 
 street by two oblong gardens, and lying on the left as we all but emerge 
 from the Fulham Road into Brompton Road, opposite the Oratory. 
 
 The Square consists of some two dozen houses, which were erected 
 between the years 1827 and 1830. Although I have been unable to 
 trace the residence of any one whose name has become either celebrated or 
 notorious in any of these twenty-four houses, we learn from Croker 2 that 
 at No. 19 once resided Captain Glascock, who commanded H.M.S. 
 Tyne, and was an inspector in Ireland under the Poor Relief Act, 
 besides being the author of several nautical novels ; and that at No 24 
 lived, in i860, George Godwin, the editor of the Builder and one of the 
 honorary secretaries of the Art Union ; and as the author of the Walk 
 has thought these individuals worthy of record, they may well take 
 
 1 The Brookfields and their Circle. 2 Walk from Lo7idon lo Fulham. 
 
ONSLOW SQUARE 295 
 
 their place here as representatives of Alexander Square. It is, besides, 
 interesting to find that Jerdan, as is duly recorded in his interesting Auto- 
 biography, had, in a time of monetary need, several houses in Alexander 
 Square, as well as some land and tenements on the river near Rich- 
 mond, assigned to him by his friend Dr. Anderson of Brompton, whose 
 generosity was the means of safely carrying him through what might 
 otherwise have been grave financial embarrassment if not disaster. 
 
 THURLOE AND ONSLOW SQUARES 
 
 A little further west is Thurloe Square which, as Walford properly 
 says, is of too modern a growth to have any historic associations, although 
 its name will help to carry our minds back to Cromwellian times, and 
 particularly to the Secretary of the Protector himself. Onslow Square, 
 however, which lies on the western side of South Kensington Station, as 
 Thurloe Square does on its eastern side, and which takes its title from the 
 Onslow family, whose punning motto, “Festina lente,” forms a Latin 
 equivalent to the family name, is, although equally modern, much more 
 interesting, for here once lived Thackeray. 
 
 The house he took was No. 36, on the south side, “ a pretty little house 
 looking into a very pretty square,” he writes to his American friends the 
 Baxters, in 1853. “The girls,” he adds, “are to keep a floor to them- 
 selves and a little bathroom. ... I can only make out at the most two 
 spare bedrooms.” 1 One of these “ girls ” — now Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie — 
 has given us a little vignette of the house : 2 “ Our old home,” she writes, 
 “ was the fourth, counting the end house, from the corner by the church 
 in Onslow Square, the church being on the left hand, and the avenue of 
 old trees running in front of our drawing-room windows. I used to look 
 up from the avenue and see my father’s head bending over his work in 
 the study window, which was over the drawing-room.” The “Avenue” 
 here referred to is that running across the central garden of the Square. 
 The “study” spoken of by Mrs. Ritchie was formed by the two front 
 rooms, one large and the other small, being thrown into one and used, as 
 to the front portion, for literary purposes by Thackeray, while the back 
 part formed his bedroom. Here in dressing-gown and slippers, and in 
 
 1 Thackeray’s Letters to an American Family, p. 187. 
 
 2 First printed by Mr. Hutton in his Literary Landmarks , and copied by Mr. Harrison in 
 his Memorable London Houses , and by others. 
 
296 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 his mouth the cigar which, as Hodder tells us, he would continually allow 
 to go out, the great writer produced part of The Newcomes, The 
 Virginians , his hectares on the Four Georges , and The Rose and the Ring ; 
 while living here, too, he contested Oxford constituency, with the result 
 which all the world knows. From here, too, he set out for his second 
 visit to America. Mr. Hodder’s description of the actual moment of 
 departure is an old story, but may be given here as being so closely identi- 
 fied with the house which has made the Square famous : — 
 
 “ A cab was at the door, the luggage had all been properly disposed 
 of, and the servants stood in the hall to notify by looks how much they 
 regretted their master’s departure. ‘ This is a moment I have dreaded,’ 
 said Thackeray, as he entered the dining-room to embrace his daughters ; 
 and when he hastily descended the steps to the door, he knew that they 
 would be at the window to ‘ cast one longing, lingering look behind.’ 
 
 ‘ Good-bye,’ he murmured, in a suppressed voice, as I followed him to 
 the cab ; ‘ keep close beside me and let me try to jump in unseen.’ The 
 instant the door of the vehicle was closed upon him he threw himself back 
 into a corner and buried his face in his hands.” 
 
 On his return, he wrote a letter to his friends in America, notifying 
 his safe arrival, and dated from “ Home (viz. 36 Onslow Square, 
 Brompton, London) on May 9, 1856, in which, inter alia , he says: “And 
 so here’s the old house, the old room, the old teapot by my bedside — 
 the old trees nodding in at my window : it looks as if I never had been 
 away, and that it’s all a dream I have been making.” 1 
 
 Four years later, in i860, he was made editor of the Cornhill 
 Magazine , and with the accession of wealth which this appointment, 
 coupled with his now established popularity as a writer, gave him, he 
 commenced building the house in Palace Green, Kensington, which was 
 destined to be his last home for so short a time. He left Onslow Square 
 in 1862, to take possession of his new house. 
 
 It seems a pity that no tablet marks either of these houses ; and it is 
 probable that in no city but London would so great a writer still be await- 
 ing whatever in the nature of an apotheosis a statue can give. 
 
 Next door to Thackeray’s old house, at No. 34, for the numbers run 
 thus intermittently, lived for a time his friend Baron Marochetti, the 
 Italian sculptor, whose work — because we have ourselves had so great a 
 lack of sculptors ! — is to be found in so many parts of London. Marochetti 
 settled in England in 1848, and died in Paris in 1867. He was responsible 
 for the monstrous statue of Prince Albert in the centre of the Memorial ; 
 for the Crimean Monument in Waterloo Place ; and for the equestrian 
 
 1 Melville’s Thackeray , vol. i. p. 321. 
 
HEREFORD SQUARE 297 
 
 statue of Richard I. outside the Houses of Parliament, one of his finest, if 
 not best known, works. 
 
 It was in Marochetti’s house that Millais’s picture of “The Woman 
 looking for the Lost Piece of Money,” came to such an untimely end. 
 In 1862 Millais exchanged the picture with the Baron for a bust of 
 Mrs. Millais executed by the latter, and one day an explosion of gas in 
 Marochetti’s residence shot the picture (frame and all) through the 
 window into the Square, and completely destroyed it. 1 
 
 On the other side of Thackeray’s house resided, in i860, Admiral 
 Robert Fitzroy, who is notable as having commanded the Beagle on the 
 two voyages undertaken for Government surveys, one of which Darwin, 
 who accompanied the expedition as naturalist, has rendered classic. 
 
 At No. 17 lived Sir Henry Cole, who is known both as a promoter 
 of exhibitions in general, and for his connection with that of South 
 Kensington in particular, and also as a writer of a pleasant sort of guide- 
 books, under his pseudonym of “Felix Summerly”; and at No. 31 
 still resides the veteran Sir Theodore Martin, in the house where he and 
 Lady Martin, better known as the great Shakespearian actress, Helen 
 Faucit, lived together for many years. 
 
 In the Square stands St. Paul’s Church, of which the Rev. Prebendary 
 Webb-Peploe is the vicar. It was built in i860, and is interesting by 
 reason of the fact that the chancel is at the west end of the building. 
 The pulpit is of carved stone inlaid with slabs of American onyx, 2 but 
 beyond this there is little of interest in the edifice or its architecture. 
 
 It may be noted that Onslow Square occupies the site of a large house 
 and its surrounding grounds ; which house was once used as a lunatic 
 asylum. 
 
 HEREFORD SQUARE, &c. 
 
 Hereford Square, rather an excrescence from Gloucester Road than 
 a proper square, having the same sort of anomalous right to that 
 description as has Alexander Square, is, however, not without interest. 
 Its small but regular houses, of quasi-Oriental design, were erected in 
 1 846, from the designs of J. Blore, and on the wall of No. 1 is a notice 
 to that effect. The ground landlord is Herbert Allen Day, Esq., and 
 several of the houses on his estate have had in the past interesting 
 1 Life of Millais, vol. i. p. 368. 2 Fascination of London: “Kensington.” 
 
298 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 inhabitants. In one instance, indeed, these included a celebrated man, 
 for here lived for a time George Borrow, whose works — The Bible in Spain , 
 Lavengro , and Wild W ales — have become household words. Borrow’s house 
 was No. 22, of which he took possession on September 25, i860, occupy- 
 ing it for fourteen years. Here Mrs. Borrow died in 1869, being buried 
 in Brompton Cemetery on the 4th of February of that year. Borrow had 
 as neighbours Mr. Collinson (at No 20) and Miss Frances Power-Cobbe, 
 who was then living together with Miss Lloyd at No. 26 ; and in Knapps’s 
 Life of Borrow a number of short letters from the latter to the author 
 of Lavengro are printed. They are for the most part invitations to 
 dinner or to spend the evening, and are obviously kind attempts to 
 enliven the solitary life of the widower. 
 
 Among lesser notabilities we find the Rev. W. H. Brookfield — 
 Tennyson’s “ Brooks ” and the friend of Carlyle, Thackeray, Macaulay, 
 and practically all the interesting personalities of his time, living here 
 during the last year (he died July 2, 1874) of his life. Although we 
 are told that “ his peculiar brightness was a little dimmed during his 
 later months owing to the nature of the malady by which he was attacked,” 
 this is in no way apparent in the amusing last letter he wrote to his son 
 Charles on March 24th, and which is dated from Hereford Square. 
 
 At another house, No. 26, resided, as I have said, for some years Miss 
 Frances Power-Cobbe, whose keen intellect was made manifest in the series 
 of works, notable for deep thought and true philanthropy, which she 
 produced for over thirty years of a strenuous life ; commencing with 
 An Essay on Intuitive Morals, 1855, and including The Scientific Spirit of the 
 Age, published 1888. Fanny Kemble also occupied No. 26 for a time, 
 after Miss Cobbe had left it, and the latter says in her Autobiography : 
 “In April 1884 I quitted London, having permanently let the house 
 in South Kensington to Mrs. (sic) Kemble.’’ This house she elsewhere 
 refers to when she says that in “ our pretty little house, we began soon 
 to enjoy many social pleasures of a quiet kind.” 
 
 At No. 20 once lived R. Collinson, for many years an exhibitor at the 
 Royal Academy, where such pictures as “ Light in the Cottage,” “ The 
 Evening Primrose,” and “ Peace with Honour ” attracted some notice. 
 He is, of course, not to be confounded with the better known James 
 Collinson, one of the original P.R.B.’s. The artistic traditions of the 
 Square were further kept alive by the Hon. E. Kenyon, also an exhibitor 
 at the Royal Academy, who lived for a time at No. 16, the house which, 
 as we have seen, Brookfield once occupied ; while its literary claims find 
 a representative in Mrs. Neish (No. 11), whose gracefully written short 
 stories may be known to some of my readers. 
 
EDWARDS SQUARE 299 
 
 Such squares as Redcliffe Square, Earl’s Court Square and 
 Nevern Square can hardly be said to have any history; 1 certainly not 
 any that would be of interest to record here. Nor indeed do the respective 
 sites on which they stand require any particular mention, for what of interest, 
 if any, can be associated with open fields, for they were little more till, as 
 history goes, comparatively recently, is shared equally by the myriads of 
 streets and houses which surround them ; and they can therefore be said 
 to have little of individual association connected with them. 
 
 The two squares which have now to be treated of are in every respect 
 the antithesis of these respectable but not highly stimulating, at least frorn 
 an antiquarian point of view, groups of houses. The former, althoug 
 not identified with many past celebrities, has an interest peculiar to 
 itself; it conveys a pleasant sense of that charm which is associated, 
 not with the powder and patches of the Georgian period so much as 
 with the crinolines and poke-bonnets of early Victorian days. The very 
 smallness of its houses acts as a wholesome corrective to the tendency 
 of that show of wealth and somewhat blatant exhibition of, shall 1 say, 
 automotorcratic prosperity which seems to be the prevailing character- 
 istic of this budding century. 
 
 EDWARDS SQUARE 
 
 In Edwards Square, which I here indicate, there appears . no pretence 
 in its small houses to be other than very modest dwellings inhabited, we 
 are to think, by those whose personal characteristics are thus admirably 
 reflected in the brick and mortar which compasses them about. Not 
 many of these squares are to be found, and it is not improbable that 
 Edwards Square may pass before long from its present retirement to a 
 metamorphosis of flats or a palingenesis of so-called Queen Anne houses 
 —so called probably from the fact that the Augustan age never saw 
 
 the like. _ . . . 
 
 Edwards or Edwardes Square, as it is sometimes written, takes its 
 name from that of the family of Lord Kensington who, up till recently, 
 was the ground landlord of the large estate of which the Square forms 
 a part. Although the houses on the east and west sides are small (those 
 
 1 It may be noted, however, that at No. 17 Nevern Square is the Servian Legation, and at 
 No. 21 the Consul-General of the Dominican Republic has his headquarters. 
 
300 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 on the north are the backs of Earls Terrace, while on the south are 
 various tenements not of a residential character at all), the Square is 
 of considerable extent, the central garden being extraordinarily spacious. 
 As the inhabitants of Earls Terrace have access to this enclosure, Mrs. 
 Inchbald must have used it when she was lodging at a Mrs. Voysey’s 
 at No. 4. Leigh Hunt, in describing this garden, speaks of the gardener’s 
 lodge “made to look like a spacious temple,” and of the “air of size, 
 greenness, and even elegance in the place, especially when its abundant 
 lilacs are in blossom, and ladies are seen on its benches reading,” and he 
 adds that the stranger will be “ curious to know how a square of any 
 kind, comparatively so large, and at the same time manifestly so cheap 
 (for the houses, though neat and respectable, are too small to be dear), 
 could have suggested itself to the costly English mind.” The solution 
 he gives is the tradition that it was formed by a Frenchman, at the time 
 when Napoleon was massing his legions at Boulogne for his descent 
 on these shores. So strong appears to have been the belief of this 
 speculator in the success of that greatest of all speculators, that he adapted 
 the relative size of the houses and the central garden to the taste for 
 promenading so characteristic of his countrymen, and in his magnificent 
 imagination he saw his tenements occupied by the poorer officers of that 
 vast army which was to be poured into this country. Who shall say 
 how many of these, instead of loitering in Watteau like groups in the 
 garden of Edwards Square, were to lie stiff and cold on the plain of 
 Austerlitz ! But if victorious Frenchmen were never destined to idle 
 away a summer’s day here, one whose sympathies were not alien to their 
 hopes and fears probably did so, for Coleridge is stated to have at one 
 time lived in the Square, and although no precise record exists of his 
 having resided here, a lady told Leigh Hunt that she remembered with 
 pride, as a child, how the poet had spoken to her in this spot, and given 
 her a kiss. We may surmise with Leigh Hunt that he was probably 
 on a visit to a friend at the time, either in the Square itself or in 
 Earls Terrace. 
 
 The place was well known to Leigh Hunt himself, for in 1840 
 he removed hither from Chelsea, taking up his residence at No. 32, 1 
 but although he spent some eleven years here, and as he himself attests, 
 “ loved Kensington for many reasons,” the place did not apparently 
 suit him, for he writes in his Autobiography, “ My health was not bettered, 
 as I hoped it would be by the change, but, on the contrary, was made 
 worse in respect to body than I ever experienced.” In environment, 
 however, he found an improvement, and we find him writing to Douglas 
 1 Cosmo Monkhouse, in his Life of Leigh Hunt , gives the number incorrectly as 51. 
 
EDWARDS SQUARE 301 
 
 Jerrold, asking him to pay a visit to the new house, and adding, “ It 
 will do your kindly eyes good to see the nice study into which I have 
 escaped out of all the squalidities at Chelsea.” Here, says S. C. Hall, 
 quoting Leigh Hunt’s son, “ he was usually seen in a dressing-gown, 
 bending his head over a book or over a desk,” and, adding from his own 
 observation, Hall says he gave the idea “ of a sturdy ruin that in donning 
 the vest of time had been recompensed for the gradual decay of strength 
 by gaining ever more and more of the picturesque.” 1 The work Hunt 
 did here was rather that of selection and criticism than of originality, 
 as will be recognised when I state that Imagination and Fancy , Wit and 
 Humour , A Book for a Corner , Stories from the Italian Poets , and A Jar of 
 Honey from Mount Hyhla were all produced here; although the neigh- 
 bouring Kensington Gardens gave him some scenes for The Palfrey. It 
 was, however, as Thornton Hunt points out, “ a period of great industry 
 and, upon the whole, of much more success than he had enjoyed for a 
 long time.” Mr. Harrison 2 states that Hunt wrote The Old Court 
 
 Suburb here also, but although he may have made use of his surroundings 
 to gather material for that work, the book did not appear till 1855, over 
 four years after he had left Edwards Square ; on the other hand The 
 Town was issued in 1848, and was therefore probably written during the 
 author’s residence here. Another work of this time, The Seer , produced 
 in 1841, is interesting on account of its brief but otherwise characteristic 
 preface, which runs thus : “ Given at this our Suburban abode, with 
 a fire on one side of us, and a vine at the window on the other, this 
 19th day of October, one thousand eight hundred and forty, in the very 
 green and invincible year of our life the fifty-ninth. — L. H.” 3 
 
 In Edwards Square, at No. 45, also lived Hunt’s eldest daughter, 
 Mrs. Gliddon and her husband, as well as Thornton Hunt and his wife, 
 so that the Square is peculiarly associated with the family, the head and 
 greatest of which has so closely identified himself with the old court 
 suburb in which it stands. 
 
 Although Earls Terrace is not in the Square, the backs of its houses 
 abut on it, and, as we have seen, the inhabitants have the right to use its 
 garden ; mention may therefore be made of the fact that besides Mrs. 
 Inchbald’s temporary residence in the lodging-house at No. 4, Walter 
 Pater also lived here for eight years from 1885, the year of the publica- 
 tion of Marius the Epicurean , at No. 12, where he was to be found gener- 
 ally during the vacations, being at his rooms in Oxford during term time. 
 In Earls Terrace, says his latest biographer, Mr. A. C. Benson, “ those who 
 
 1 Retrospect of a Long Life. 2 Memorable London Houses. 
 
 3 Monkhouse’s Life of Hunt. 
 
302 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 visited him were struck by the extreme quiet and simplicity of the house- 
 hold arrangements, ” and he adds that “ in London, as at Oxford, there 
 was never the least personal luxury in Pater’s menage , though there was 
 quiet and solid comfort.” 
 
 KENSINGTON SQUARE 
 
 We now come to the most interesting Square in Kensington — not only 
 from its age, but from the celebrities with whom it has been connected in 
 the past. Not inappropriately is it called Kensington Square, for it 
 focusses in its history those traditions with which the royal borough is 
 so intimately associated, and although it has now lost something of its 
 past glamour, not only by being surrounded by large business houses but 
 also by having been itself invaded by the modern builder, there is yet 
 about it that air of calm dignity and repose which its very proximity to 
 the High Street of Kensington accentuates ; and not many places in 
 London form a better background to an imaginary excursion into the 
 reign of Queen Anne and her immediate successors than this spot where 
 the ghost of the gentle Addison seems still to walk, and the gay laughter 
 of the careless Steele to echo in its precincts. 
 
 The Square was commenced in the reign of James II., and we can 
 therefore identify the actual date to within at least four or five years ; 
 at one time a plate, says Faulkner, 1 marking the year of its completion 
 (1698) was to be seen in the north-east corner; but this has since dis- 
 appeared. It would appear that originally it was called “ King’s Square,” 
 for there is a record of a plot of land “ neere King’s Square 2 in ye parish 
 of Kensington,” being sold to Thomas Young, a well-known builder from 
 whom the adjoining Young Street takes its name, in 1687; in the 
 following year, as early as August, Mr. Young had erected three, if not 
 more, houses on the “ Easte Row” of the Square, says Dr. Merriman, 3 
 who also states that in 1691, more land was added to one of these houses, 
 
 1 History of Kensington, 1820. 
 
 2 So late as 1804, I find some property described as being “in Kensington Square, hereto- 
 fore called King’s Square.” 
 
 3 See a most interesting little pamphlet by Dr. Merriman entitled Notes oti Kensington 
 Square and its Notable Inhabitants , printed in 1881, for private circulation only, of the existence 
 of which Lady Burne-Jones informed me, and a copy of which was most kindly lent me by 
 Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, who, as the daughter of Thackeray and the author of Old Kensington, 
 is particularly associated with the locality. 
 
KENSINGTON SQUARE 303 
 
 which abutted on “ground belonging to Mr. Wigan, the Vicar of 
 Kensington from 1672 to 1700.” 
 
 For a number of years the Square was almost surrounded by fields, and 
 it was not till after 1840, when the “ New Town ” of Kensington was com- 
 menced in 1851, and when Christ Church in the Fields was built, that this 
 open ground on the north and west began to be covered, while the later 
 development of South Kensington about i860, helped to hedge it round 
 on the other side with streets and houses. 
 
 The heyday of its prosperity and fashion was during the reign of 
 Queen Anne, George I., and George II. ; and when the court was in resi- 
 dence at Kensington Palace, the Square was so crowded with illustrious 
 people, that Faulkner mentions that not only were “ upwards of forty 
 carriages kept in and about the neighbourhood,” but “an Ambassador, 1 a 
 Bishop, and a Physician all occupied apartments in the same house,” a 
 spiritual and corporeal guardianship which one can but hope the illustrious 
 envoy duly appreciated. 
 
 During the reign of George III. the Square was more or less deserted, 
 owing to the fact that the King failed to appreciate the amenities of 
 Kensington Palace, and thus drew “the ton” to the precincts of St. 
 James’s and Buckingham House. When, however, the Act for lighting 
 and paving the Square was passed, something like a renewed prosperity 
 ensued, although it was never again destined to enjoy the vogue which 
 had once thrown a halo of fashion around it. Faulkner could, however, 
 note that “ some of the houses have been wholly, and others in part, rebuilt, 
 and it is now very respectably inhabited,” but the use of this particular 
 adverb is sufficient to indicate that its glory was a thing of the past. 
 
 Some of the houses rebuilt or altered can be identified; thus in 1838 
 Mr. Leake rebuilt No. 4 ; and Mr. Barlow was responsible for a like 
 transformation of the large house in which, as we shall see, Bishops 
 Hough and Mawson lived successively ; while Archbishop Herring’s 
 former residence, which with that of Bishop Hough can be seen in 
 Chatelaine’s South View of Kensington, published in 1750, was subsequently 
 treated in the same way, two houses, in each case, being erected on the 
 site of one large one. 
 
 A particularly interesting relic of the Square, showing how it must 
 have appeared in the time of William III., is extant in the decoration of 
 a fan in the fine collection of Miss Moss, 2 which represents the north, 
 
 1 In the Burials Register we meet with these entries : “ 1700, A servant from the Dutch 
 Ambassador’s in the Square, 28 April,” and “1717, The Dutch Envoy’s Lady, 17 January.” 
 
 2 Miss Moss very kindly allowed me to examine the fan, and to have the reproduction of it 
 made which appears in this volume. 
 
30 + THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 and portions of the east and west sides, with its quaint houses and the 
 centre garden planted with rows of trees in the precise Dutch manner 
 which was in vogue at that period ; in the middle of these trees rises a 
 tall obelisk surrounded at the base by railings, while figures (probably in 
 some cases portraits of the better-known inhabitants) promenade beneath 
 their shade. It is one of the few instances of a square being reproduced 
 in this somewhat unexpected manner, and as a record of dress and archi- 
 tecture is a particularly valuable and interesting “ document.” 
 
 In the view represented on this fan, the centre of the Square is shown 
 wholly unenclosed, but subsequently a paling surrounded the central 
 garden, in which, people then recently living informed Dr. Merriman, 
 they remembered seeing sheep grazing, and a box at each corner for 
 the protecting “ Charleys.” An avenue of twelve or fourteen lime-trees 
 also formerly existed in Young Street. We can well appreciate, under 
 these circumstances, Bowack’s enthusiastic description of the Square, 
 (in 1705), which, he says, is the most beautiful part of Kensington, and 
 which “ for beauty of buildings and worthy inhabitants, exceeds several 
 noted Squares in London.” 1 
 
 One of the earliest inhabitants of the Square, whose counterfeit pre- 
 sentment may possibly be reproduced on the fan, was the famous, or 
 otherwise, Duchess of Mazarin, who is given by Faulkner as living here 
 in 1692, and who remained here for some six years, when she removed 
 to Chelsea. Here she was visited almost daily by the illustrious French- 
 man, St. Evremond, who idolised her as much as ever did Charles II. ; 
 and who may have helped her to forget that she had once been, to use 
 her own words, “ the richest heiress and the unhappiest woman in 
 Christendom ” ; we know that she tried oblivion in another form, that 
 of usquebaugh, from which the devoted old Marquis tried in vain to 
 dissuade her. She might have been a queen, for Charles, when in exile, 
 sought the hand of the beautiful Hortensia Mancini, but her uncle 
 Mazarin did not foresee the Restoration, and refused to accede to wishes 
 which, however royal, seemed then to promise but empty glory. Not- 
 withstanding the praises of St. Evremond, whose partiality was in some 
 measure due to her beauty, but perhaps more to her appreciation of his 
 own wit, the Duchess must have been in most things the reverse of 
 respectable, and if she kept up in her forty-sixth year the “ frolic fun ” 
 of sixteen and twenty-six, and matched her daring gambols in her uncle’s 
 palace and the convent where her distracted husband at one time put her 
 en retraite, by her doings in Kensington Square, the residents must have 
 opened their eyes at her audacity, even if some of them sympathised with 
 1 Fresh trees were planted in the central garden in 1880. (Merriman.) 
 
KENSINGTON SQUARE 305 
 
 her conduct. Which house she actually occupied is unknown, but as 
 Nos. 10 and 1 1 in the south-east corner, originally one house, are said to 
 be the two oldest in the Square, it is not improbable that she resided 
 here. This house was subsequently allocated to the maids-of-honour when 
 the court was in residence at the neighbouring palace, and the wains- 
 coted rooms and powdering-closets are eloquent of its past associations, 
 as a recent writer has pointed out. 1 
 
 Jesse says that the house of the Duchess of Mazarin, 2 which he 
 places at Chelsea, became the most remarkable of its time, “ Her saloons 
 were the resort of the gay, the intellectual, and the beautiful : there were 
 to be found the pleasures of the table combined with the charms of 
 music, gaiety, and wit,” and he quotes St. Evremond as affirming that 
 “freedom and discretion are equally to be found there.” This must 
 have been in Kensington Square, for the Duchess dragged out the last 
 and very impecunious years of her life at Chelsea, and therefore, 
 although in Kensington there may have been freedom though certainly 
 not discretion, at Chelsea there was not much chance of either ! 3 
 
 In the Register of Burials, quoted by Faulkner, is the following entry : 
 “ 1692. 27th June, Mrs. Claudine de Bragelone, one of the Duchess of 
 Mazarin’s women, at Mrs. Margaret’s house in the Square.” 
 
 Another early inhabitant mentioned by Faulkner was Sir Robert 
 Hamilton, who is given as residing in the Square in 1693, and in the 
 Register of Births is entered the name of Robert, son of Sir Robert 
 Hamilton, “at his house in the Square 30th October” of the same 
 year. I find also the name of Sir Hele Hook, Bt., as living in one 
 of the houses in the early days of the Square’s formation ; indeed the 
 first mention we have of this worthy baronet, who is described as of 
 Tangier Park, Southampton, is that of his marriage with “ Mrs. Esther 
 Underhill of this Parish,” in 1683; while on the 31st January 1688, 
 the birth of a daughter, Elizabeth, is duly recorded ; as is that of a 
 son, Hele, “at his (Sir Hele’s) house in the Square” on December 28, 
 1696. The death of Sir Hele himself took place in the July of 1712, 
 for on the 12th of that month his interment is entered in the Register 
 of Burials. Sir Hele Hook was one of the six captains appointed to 
 the new regiment of horse of volunteer citizens formed in 1689, whose 
 strength numbered four hundred, and of whom William III. consented 
 to be the colonel, and the Earl of Monmouth lieutenant-colonel. 4 
 
 1 Fascination of London : “Kensington.” By G. E. Mitton. 
 
 2 She left Kensington in 1698, and died on June 2, 1699. 
 
 8 Memoirs of the Court of England under the Stuarts. For an account of the Duchess at 
 Chelsea, see Paradise Row, by Reginald Blunt, Esq. 
 
 4 Luttrell’s Diary. 
 
 U 
 
306 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 The Earl of Gainsborough was also living in Kensington Square in 
 1697 ; this was the third Earl, who succeeded his cousin the second 
 Earl in 1690, and who married Lady Dorothy Manners, second daughter 
 of John, first Duke of Rutland, an alliance duly noted by the industrious 
 Luttrell, on February 13, 1707. Lord Gainsborough died seven years 
 after his marriage. 1 
 
 Another peer who is mentioned by Faulkner as residing here was 
 Lord Clanricarde, although the house he lived in is not particularised ; 
 an entry, however, in the Register of Births runs thus: “ 1742. Henry, 
 Lord Dunhellin, son of the Right Hon. Smith Burke, Earl of Clanricarde, 
 and the Lady Hester, buried 7th January, in the Square.” With Lord 
 Clanricarde’s name, in the Parish Books, is coupled that of Mr. Pitt, an 
 ancestor of Earl Rivers, as Faulkner is careful to inform us. The period 
 of his residence can be but approximately inferred from the entry of 
 the birth of his son George, which took place at their house in the 
 Square on November 23, 1693 ; but another member by marriage of the 
 same remarkable family, the Hon. Mrs. Ann Pitt, who was Keeper of 
 the Privy Purse to the Princess-Dowager of Wales, who also lived in the 
 Square, is known to have died in February 1781, “at her house in Pitt 
 Place, Kensington Gravel Pits.” She was the sister of the first Earl of 
 Chatham and eldest of the five daughters of Governor Pitt — of Diamond 
 fame. She had been maid-of-honour to Queen Caroline before she held 
 an appointment in the household of that remarkable woman’s daughter- 
 in-law, and, even had we not the record of her “decision of character, and 
 sprightliness of conversation,” 2 we must have credited her with no little 
 tact in securing the friendship of two royal ladies so diametrically opposed 
 in interest and character as those in whose service she found herself in turn. 
 Among the letters of Lady Suffolk are included several from Mrs. Ann 
 Pitt, but none of them are dated from Kensington Square. It may 
 here be mentioned that Lady Suffolk herself, writing to Mr. Berkeley 
 in 1734 from Kensington, remarks that she was going to dine in “the 
 Square,” which obviously refers to Kensington Square, then at the 
 height of its fashion and popularity, and probably indicates the residence 
 of Mrs. Pitt. 
 
 It is said that a still more illustrious, although but a temporary, 
 resident in the Square was Joseph Addison, who is stated to have 
 lodged here four or five years before his marriage with Lady Warwick ; 
 but I confess that I am not satisfied that this was actually the case. 
 
 1 According to Luttrell, writing in his Diary for October 31, 1699, the Duke of Shrewsbury 
 had then just taken a house in the Square. 
 
 2 Lady Suffolk's Letters. 
 
KENSINGTON SQUARE 307 
 
 Faulkner, indeed, says that in 1716 “this manor became the property 
 of Mr. Addison, by his marriage with Charlotte, Countess of Warwick,” 
 and Swift, who has various references to dining and supping with 
 Addison “at Kensington” in his Journal to Stella (1710), never speci- 
 fically states that the house was in the Square ; while Hutton, giving in 
 his Literary Landmarks of London some notes on Kensington Square, 
 writes thus : “ The Parish Books do not give the name of Addison 
 in either row (houses were not numbered in London till 1764), so 
 that it is impossible to identify any particular dwelling now with the 
 house of one of the kindest benefactors that society ever had.” While 
 agreeing, therefore, with the writer of these “ notes ” that it is pleasing 
 to picture somewhere in the Square this great writer and amiable man, 
 we must remember that his name is given as living in this particular 
 part of Kensington too largely on mere assumption to make the fact 
 beyond question or dispute, if, however, we cannot affirm with certainty 
 that Addison lived in the Square, there is his own word for it that he 
 thought of taking a house there, for writing to Mr. Wortley on October 
 13, 17 1 1, he says: “If you will be my lodger, I’ll take a house in the 
 Square at Kensington, and furnish your chamber, not forgetting a cook 
 and other particulars ; ” to which Wortley replied on November 1 1, saying : 
 “ It will be near the middle of December before I get to Kensington, when 
 I am very glad to hear that I may be your lodger, if you will not be mine 
 as I proposed. Should you like any other place out of town better than 
 Kensington, I desire you will choose it, and I shall certainly be pleased with 
 it.” Miss Aikin, who in her Life of Addison gives these letters, adds that 
 he was “ still lodged in Kensington in the following year, perhaps led to 
 this choice by its nearness to Holland House, and thus saw much of 
 Swift, who was his neighbour” (in lodgings in Kensington Gravel Pits, in 
 1712). Considering, as I have before pointed out, the sparsely inhabited 
 character of Kensington at this time, when the Square was the place of 
 residence, it may be considered that this evidence is sufficient to prove 
 Addison’s one-time sojourn in the Square itself ; but it is at best circum- 
 stantial evidence, and as such the reader must draw his own deductions. 
 
 If there be a doubt on this point there is, however, none that 
 Addison’s friend and joint essayist, Richard Steele, once lodged here, 
 for we find him, in 1708, writing to his second wife to join him at the 
 house of Mrs. Hardresse “at the Square at Kensington, till all things 
 be ready for your greater ease in town.” If, therefore, we cannot claim 
 Addison with any certainty as an inhabitant of the Square, we can assume 
 with every degree of probability that he was a frequent guest at Dick 
 Steele’s, for we know that “ they associated together on terms of great 
 
3 o8 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 familiarity and confidence, and were frequent depositaries of the literary 
 projects of each other.” 1 
 
 Readers of Esmond will remember various references to Steele and 
 Addison and Kensington Square in its fascinating pages ; thus we are 
 told that Mrs. Scurlock — whom Steele courted and married — had a lodging 
 in the Square “hard by my Lady Castlewood’s house there,” where 
 Esmond was wont to pour out his love for Beatrice into the ears of her 
 so patient mother ; and where the Prince — James Edward — stayed, and had 
 that stormy interview with the heads of the family he did his best to 
 ruin. If this is but fiction, it is as convincing — more convincing than many 
 a dry record of fact ; and can any of us doubt but that Lady Castlewood 
 and Beatrix, Esmond and “James III.,” slept beneath a roof in the 
 Square or strolled within its central garden, any more than we can question 
 that the Duchess of Mazarin flaunted her exuberant beauty in its pre- 
 cincts, or that Dick Steele was witty and boisterous beneath its trees or 
 in “ Mrs. Hardresse’s lodgings ? ” 
 
 The Square seems to have been a favourite retreat of the clergy, 
 judging from the names of several bishops, and others less advanced in 
 the hierarchy, which we come across among the former residents. One 
 of the earliest of these was the Rev. Dr. Lamplugh, whose daughter 
 Mary was born here and died apparently a few days later ; the entry of 
 her birth being thus given in the Register: “1692. Mary, daughter of 
 Thomas Lamplugh, clerk, son of the Archbishop of York, deceased at 
 his house in the Square, 17th January.” Of Dr. Lamplugh himself little 
 is to be learned, but to his father, whose appointment to the see of 
 Canterbury was one of James II.’s last acts of regal authority, many 
 references are to be found in the various diaries of the period and in 
 the pages of Macaulay. 
 
 Of Dr. Mathias Mawson, Bishop of Ely, who for several years occu- 
 pied the house at the south-west corner of the Square, something more 
 has been left on record, and there is a memorial to him in Ely Cathedral. 
 The son of a brewer at Chiswick, he was educated successively at St. Paul’s 
 School and Corpus Christi, Cambridge, of which college he subsequently 
 became Master. In 1734 he was offered, but refused, the bishopric of 
 Gloucester, but afterwards accepted that of Llandaff in 1738, and two 
 years later was translated to Chichester; while in 1754 he was made 
 Bishop of Ely. How long he lived in the Square I have been unable 
 to trace, but we know that he died at his house there on November 23, 
 1770, at the age of eighty-seven. 
 
 Near him, “ somewhere about the south-west corner,” lived that curious 
 1 Lucy Aikin’s Life of Addison. 
 
KENSINGTON SQUARE 309 
 
 character, Sir Richard Blackmore, “ whose writings have attracted much 
 attention,” says Johnson, “ but of whose life and manners very little has 
 been communicated, and whose lot it has been to be much oftener men- 
 tioned by enemies than friends.” Blackmore’s name has certainly come 
 down to us wreathed about with no little amount of ridicule, and Leigh 
 Hunt speaks of him as “the butt of all the wits of the time” ; but there 
 must have been something in a man who could combine as he did the 
 various characteristics of a doctor, a poet, and a prose writer. About his 
 poetry there is little to be said, indeed the length of his productions was 
 only equalled by their dulness, and as has been well said, “ there is a 
 horrible facility of mediocrity ” about his work which took such preten- 
 tious form as The Creation , in seven books ; The Redeemer , in six books ; 
 Eliza , in ten books ; and Arthurian Legends , in books without number. 
 Nobody reads these things now, and if they were ever read, it was to give 
 an opportunity for the lighter horse of literature to cover his heavy batta- 
 lions with ridicule and defeat. He may be considered to have justified 
 his attempts in a practical direction by the fact that he is included in 
 Johnson’s Lives of the Poets , where an extract from his Prince Arthur is 
 given to the extent of two pages ! As a physician he claims notice, 
 although he is said to have taken seriously Sydenham’s advice to read 
 Don Quixote, when he asked that great man as to what authors he should 
 pursue towards the study of physics, by becoming physician to William III. 
 His prose works were confined to medical and theological treatises ; and 
 he may be said to have done his best to extend one of the many morals 
 which he possessed, that of patience, to a degree only possible in one who 
 lacked that greatest of gifts, a sense of humour. Born at Corsham in 
 Wilts in 1650, he died at Boxsted in Essex in 1729; and he has left a 
 name which, if it points a moral, can certainly not be said to adorn any 
 tale except that of dulness. 
 
 At the other (the south-east) corner of the Square lived Dr. Herring, 
 Bishop of Bangor, in the house which Faulkner, in 1820, speaks of as 
 “now being occupied by Charles Walker, Esq.” Herring, whose “gentle- 
 ness of principles and great merit” are recorded by Walpole, 1 afterwards 
 became in turn Archbishop of York and Canterbury. He was, says Leigh 
 Hunt, “grave yet insinuating, and had a sweet voice and a majestic 
 appearance.” Beyond his ecclesiastical celebrity he is remembered as 
 being the author of some of the best of the Elegant Epistles, and for 
 the attack he made on Gay’s Beggar s Opera, for which he called down 
 the wrath of Swift, who “ gave him a tremendous rebuke.” 
 
 1 Me?noirs of the Reign of George II. 
 
310 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 In the same house many years later (in 1793) resided Tallyrand, 1 of 
 whom Faulkner says that “ his character was marked by urbanity of 
 manners, and by strict punctuality in his payments,” which, considering 
 the way in which the Prince Bishop— for it is to be remembered that he 
 was, besides being a wit and a statesman, also a prelate — has been generally 
 depicted, is a pleasant tribute to his private character. 
 
 Still another bishop can be claimed as a former resident in the Square, 
 for here in, as Dr. Merriman says, “ a grand old brick house with large 
 windows, and full of fine oak staircases and carving, the rates of which 
 were £ 20 per annum,” for several years lived Hough, Bishop of Worcester, 
 whose name is familiar to the student of James II.’s reign as that of 
 the President of Magdalen, Oxford, who resisted the King’s unconstitu- 
 tional attempts to force on the Fellows of that college the Roman Catholic 
 Parker. The matter is not one to be entered into here, but it will be found 
 fully dealt with by Macaulay, and by Bishop Cartwright in his Diary . 
 Hough’s discretion and the temper and firmness with which he resisted 
 this arbitrary attempt to coerce the college authorities had, there is little 
 doubt, great weight in setting an example to the country in general and 
 in bringing about the bloodless revolution which followed. 
 
 Leigh Hunt, quoting Wilmot in his Life of Hough, records an anecdote 
 which may be given as an example of the good prelate’s equability of 
 temperament and habitual courtesy. “ A young clergyman, taking leave 
 of him one day, and making many awkward bows, ran against, and threw 
 down on the floor, a favourite barometer of the bishop’s. The man was 
 frightened and extremely concerned ; but the good old prelate, with all the 
 complacency possible, said to him, ‘ Don’t be uneasy, sir ; I have observed 
 this glass almost daily for upwards of seventy years, but I never saw it so 
 low before.’ ” Whether the incident took place in Kensington Square 
 or elsewhere, it seems, from the records of Hough’s life, to be highly 
 characteristic of his temperament and manners. 
 
 Hough, who was born in 1651 and died in 1743, was in turn Bishop 
 of Oxford, Lichfield (in which connection he is mentioned in Swift’s 
 Journal to Stella'), and Worcester (not Winchester, as stated by Leigh 
 Hunt) ; and in 1715 he was offered, but declined, the primacy. 
 
 Among other former residents in the Square may be mentioned, in 
 1721, the Right Hon. William, second Marquis of Montgomery, who 
 lived in what is now No. 45, the house being described as “ situate and 
 standing and being in the north side of King’s Square, Kensington,” 
 and the stables in Young Street ; the Rev. William Beloe, who lived next 
 door at No. 44, in a house on the north side, where he was succeeded by 
 1 A letter from him to Greville is dated from Kensington Square in this year. 
 
KENSINGTON SQUARE 3 1 1 
 
 the Rev. J. Potter, Archbishop Whately, Faraday, Babbage, &c., and 
 died here in April 1817. He was, in conjunction with Archbishop 
 Nares, the founder of the British Critic ; and had been, in 1796, 
 appointed Rector of All Hallows, London Wall. From 1803 to 1806, he 
 was Keeper of the Printed Books in the British Museum, and his indi- 
 vidual literary work includes The Sexagenarian , or Recollections of a Literary 
 Life , and his well-known collection of anecdotes. 
 
 About the same time Francis Douce, the antiquary and well-known 
 author of the Illustrations of Shakespeare , lived in the Square, and on the 
 death of Nollekens, whose residuary legatee he was, Smith mentions 
 that “ when the funeral was over, Douce returned to his house in 
 Kensington Square.” The property left him by the sculptor enabled 
 Douce to form a fine collection of books, manuscripts, prints, and coins, 
 which collection he subsequently left to the Bodleian, although he him- 
 self had been Keeper of the Manuscripts at the British Museum, and 
 had helped catalogue the Lansdowne MSS., and revise the old catalogue 
 of the Harleian MSS. Douce, who was a particular friend of Isaac 
 Disraeli, in whose Curiosities of Literature he is frequently mentioned, died 
 in London in 1834, in his seventy-seventh year. 
 
 Then there lived here that Dr. Veitch, a retired naval surgeon, who 
 was the first to employ the fine round silk ligature in tying severed 
 arteries, and who first introduced vaccine inoculation in the Navy, in 
 1800, under the auspices of the Earl of St. Vincent. Dr. Veitch resided 
 at No. 33, on the west side of the Square, from 1841 to 1847, 1 an d we 
 are told that “ his sitting-room had evidently been fitted up by some 
 courtier of the Georgian era, well-executed full-length portraits of the 
 royal family occupying the whole of the walls in place of hangings or 
 panelling.” It would appear that these were subsequently removed, for 
 another contributor to Notes and Qiueries writes that “after Veitch’s death 
 the house was empty for some time, and none of his successors in it 
 remembers any pictures on any portion of the walls, only painted 
 panels of the plainest description.” As, however, the writer of the 
 first description places the doctor’s house on the south side about the 
 middle, it is probable that his information as to the decoration of 
 the house was accurate, but of its being Dr. Veitch’s one-time residence, 
 incorrect. 
 
 John Stuart Mill was living at No. 18, in 1840, with his mother and 
 sister, and from here he was to be seen walking daily to and from the 
 India Office. Caroline Fox mentions, in her Diary for this year, that on 
 May 19th she attended one of Carlyle’s lectures on Heroes, and after it 
 
 1 See Notes and Queries , sixth series. 
 
312 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 “ returned with Harriet Mill to their house in Kensington Square, where 
 we were most lovingly received by all the family.” She found Mill 
 “quite himself” with, we may suppose, those amiable characteristics 
 which made Carlyle say of him on one occasion, that he fancied he was 
 “ a baying you can love.” After dinner they “ walked in the little garden, 
 and saw the Falmouth plants which Clara cherishes so lovingly, and 
 Henry’s cactus and other dear memorials ” ; finally Caroline Fox was 
 shown “John Mill’s charming library, and saw portions of his immense 
 herbarium ; the mother so anxious to show everything, and her son so 
 terribly afraid of boring us.” As we are informed that “ Jeremy 
 Bentham’s favourite pudding was served at dinner,” it was but natural 
 that several busts of the philosopher should be exhibited, Mill himself 
 saying, “ No one need feel any delicacy in canvassing his opinions in my 
 presence.” 
 
 Four doors from Mill’s house — at No. 14 — lived till his death 
 J. R. Green, the historian of the English people, that marvellous work 
 carried through with such resolution in the face of illness that might 
 well have incapacitated a lesser intellect and broken a less determined 
 spirit. In his own words, history was unpopular “ because it seems more 
 and more to sever itself from all that can touch the heart of the people.” 
 All the world knows what a splendid memorial he raised in his successful 
 attempt to write history according to his penetrating conception of what 
 it should be. From an interesting letter from Mrs. J. R. Green, I learn 
 further details of the great historian’s sojourn in the Square. He took 
 the house (No. 14) in 1879, two years after his marriage, having 
 during that period resided in lodgings, first at 25 Connaught Street, and 
 afterwards at 50 Welbeck Street ; the house in Kensington was, writes 
 Mrs. Green to me, “ therefore the only house of his own, and he was 
 deeply attached to it.” Here the four-volume edition of the History of 
 England was completed, as well as The Making of England ; The Conquest of 
 England being commenced here, and finished by Mrs. Green, after her 
 husband’s death, in the same house. Mrs. Green herself, so well known 
 for her share in her husband’s great work, and also for her own valuable 
 contributions to history, continued to live in Kensington Square till 1903 ; 
 and here she wrote her Henry IT. and English Town Life in the Fifteenth 
 Century , and edited the Illustrated Edition of the Short History of England , 
 and some volumes of Mr. Green’s Essays. Green died at Mentone in 
 1883, so that his occupancy of 14 Kensington Square was only of about 
 four years’ duration. 
 
 One of the most illustrious of past residents in Kensington Square 
 and, so far as I am aware, the only one representing art in its highest 
 
KENSINGTON SQUARE 3 1 3 
 
 form, was Burne-Jones, who came to live at No. 41 1 in 1865, and 
 remained about three years. Lady Burne-Jones, in her interesting 
 Memorials of her famous husband, writes that they hoped, on coming 
 into residence here, to continue without a break the life they had lived 
 in Great Russell Street, but pathetically explains the impossibility of 
 this, for “ something was gone, something had been left behind — it was 
 our first youth;” the “snows of yester-year” were not to come again. 
 Burne-Jones used to say that his memory of the time he spent here 
 was a vague one — especially as regarded his intercourse with William 
 Morris — but various circumstances combined to cause this, and the 
 place itself, says Lady Burne-Jones, “was not strange to us, for once, 
 when seeking rooms, we had gone as far as Kensington and seen its 
 old Square lying back undisturbed by the world, with nothing except 
 gardens between it and the narrow High Street.” The house they 
 selected, No. 41, was on the north side of the Square, an obvious draw- 
 back to a painter, as a full south light was the only one obtainable. 
 However, as Burne-Jones appears to have been anxious to be settled, 
 he put up with what many a lesser artist would have considered an 
 insuperable objection. Here, as everywhere, he was soon surrounded by 
 his many friends, but there was not too much room for them, and in 
 one of his letters, referring to his new house, he says “Topsy 2 has 
 given us a Persian carpet which amply furnishes one room. I have a 
 little crib which I call a library, because there I keep my tobacco and 
 my borrowed books. We have a garden, ever so long ; I am the veriest 
 cockney and know no times and seasons of planting, but I want a 
 quiet summer at the back here to pay me for all my bothers ; there I 
 will pitch a little pavilion on warm days and lie in the shade of it — I 
 must have a pavilion.” This garden was, according to Lady Burne- 
 Jones, just long enough for a game of bowls, and many a game was 
 played there. “ It was a pretty spot in springtime, when together 
 with its neighbour gardens it made a mass of fruit-blossom surrounded 
 by red roofs. Edward Poynter began a water-colour drawing of it, 
 which was never finished, but remains a faithful document so far as it 
 goes.” In June 1867 the Burne-Jones’s were still here, but their sojourn 
 was drawing to a close, as the house had been sold during their tenancy, 
 “ and as the new owner refused to extend our term,” writes Lady Burne- 
 Jones, “ we were compelled for the third time in seven years to seek 
 another home.” 
 
 1 A house which, as Lady Burne-Jones writes me, is now sadly changed, its character having 
 
 been entirely altered by the addition of another story. When Burne-Jones lived there it was 
 almost exactly like No. 42, next door. * A pet name for William Morris. 
 
314 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Miss Burt in her historical notices of Chelsea, Kensington, &c., 
 published in 1871, speaks of Kensington Square as containing “ some large 
 noble houses of a melancholy aspect, owing to their being built in a 
 fashion now gone by.” The whirligig of fashion in architecture is 
 responsible for this dictum being now reversed, and it is to-day the 
 modern erections in the Square, rather than the original houses, that 
 help to give, not a melancholy certainly, but a commonplace appearance 
 to some portions of this interesting spot ; among these more recent 
 buildings may be mentioned the Convent of the Assumption which 
 covers ground from No. 20 to No. 24, or part of where Bishops Mawson, 
 Herring, and Hough once lived ; in a chapel of the convent is a fresco 
 by Eastlake ; while its garden, formed by the absorption of those of 
 the various houses whose site it occupies, is about an acre in extent. 1 
 At No. 26 is the Kensington Foundation Grammar School. This 
 school was, according to Dr. Merriman, originated in the drawing- 
 room of No. 44. It began its work in No. 31 (since rebuilt), on the 
 west side of the Square, and three years later removed to No. 27, then 
 rebuilt with schoolrooms, &c., and a playground at the back, which 
 ground was bounded on the north by Cobbett’s garden, and on the 
 south by Barlow’s orchard ; on the east were the garden walls of the 
 Square, and on the west those of Scarsdale House. In those days it 
 was a Proprietary School, but it became a Foundation School in 1869, 
 under the guidance of the Rev. C. T. Ackland, M.A. Among its 
 past masters may be mentioned the Rev. T. S. Evans, 1831 ; the Rev. 
 Matthew Wilkinson, 1840; the Rev. Dr. Francis Hersey, 1843; the 
 Rev. R. Payne Smith, 1853 ; and the Rev. W. Haig Brown (of Charter- 
 house), 1857. At the corner of the south side is the woman’s depart- 
 ment of King’s College. 
 
 Faulkner gives (1820) the names of some of those who were living 
 in the Square at the period when he was writing his history, and in the 
 list of subscribers to his work others are mentioned. Thus he speaks of 
 the Rev. Dr. Hamilton and Richard Chase, Esq., J.P., as then residing 
 there — both of whom duly took copies of his book ; the Misses Burnet 
 are given as occupying the house in which Bishop Mawson lived, and as 
 keeping a ladies’ boarding-school ; while Miss Black kept another similar 
 establishment in a large house on the north side of the Square. These 
 ladies’ names are given among the subscribers to Faulkner’s Kensington , as 
 are those of Major Torriano, Commanding Officer of the Old Kensington 
 Volunteers, at No. 16, and Charles Walker, Esq., whom I have before 
 mentioned as living in the house once occupied by Bishop Herring. 
 
 1 Fascination of London : “ Kensington.” 
 
KENSINGTON SQUARE 315 
 
 Besides these, Dr. Merriman mentions some other inhabitants of the 
 Square, such as Nassau Senior, the Political Economist and Diarist who, 
 when a Master in Chancery, was living at No. 32, in 1826; Harrison 
 Gordon Codd, Chairman of the Kensington Bench, a D.L., and equerry 
 to the Duke of Sussex, who lived first at No. 14 and then at No. 16, 
 where he died in March 1840; John Simon, Esq., C.B., F.R.S., Medical 
 Officer to the Privy Council, at No. 40, in 1868 ; General Sir Thomas 
 Gore Browne, C.M.G., at No. 7, in 1876; and Anne Evans, who died 
 “in a pleasant rambling old house,” No. 16, in 1870, and whose poems 
 and music were edited with a memorial preface by Mrs. Ritchie. 
 
 It is invidious to pick out the names of present residents, but three 
 of them may be given as belonging to those who, in various ways, have 
 attained to what Dr. Johnson called “civil greatness,” and so I may 
 record Sir Charles Hubert Parry, the distinguished musician, as residing 
 at No. 17; Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the great actress, at No. 33; and 
 Vernon Lushington, Esq., K.C., the well-known lawyer, at No. 36. 1 
 
 SQUARES NORTH OF THE PARK 
 
 Hardly any less comprehensive title than the above would seem to be 
 applicable to the large group of Squares which stretch from Connaught 
 Square close to the Marble Arch, to St. James’s Square at the northern 
 end of Addison Road ; but to be strictly accurate only about eight of 
 these lie actually to the north of the Park, i.e. between the Edgware 
 Road and Westbourne Terrace, with Praed Street bounding them on 
 the north and the Bayswater Road on the south. This group comprises 
 Connaught, Oxford, Cambridge, Hyde Park, Gloucester, Norfolk, Talbot, 
 and Sussex Squares. The others, which stretch away to the far west, 
 lie either to the north of Kensington Gardens, or Holland Park, and 
 are variously in what may be called Westbournia, or Notting Hill ; 
 they are Cleveland, Porchester, Kensington Gardens, Orme, Leinster, 
 Princes, Pembridge, Ladbroke, St. Stephen’s, Powis, Colville, St. Charles’s 
 (on the west of Ladbroke Grove), St. Mary’s, Westbourne, Norland, and 
 (beyond Paddington Station) St. James’s Squares ; with Camden Hill 
 
 1 Mrs. Richmond Ritchie tells me that, as a child, she remembers two old ladies, with their 
 canes, high heels, and, she thinks, powdered hair, coming out of the old corner-house by what 
 is now Thackeray Street, and walking by the bow windows of her father’s (Thackeray’s) house ; 
 till so comparatively recently did the Georgian time and manners survive in Kensington 
 Square ! 
 
3 1 6 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Square on the south side of Notting Hill, opposite Ladbroke Grove. 
 While to the north again may be mentioned Alma Square, and far away 
 in the north-west, Kilburn Square. 
 
 Notwithstanding their number, and the varied character of the 
 houses forming them, it may be said that none of these squares have 
 any particular history, and the residence of interesting people can only 
 be traced to a comparatively few of them. The fact is that this part 
 of the town dates, as a residential quarter, from quite recent days, and 
 although the majority of the squares mentioned are able to trace a lineage 
 from the days of William — it is William IV. The very fact of this 
 recent growth enables them, in many cases, to boast of a large size, both 
 in superficial area and in the houses forming part of them, which is 
 often sadly to seek in older squares, but it at the same time detracts 
 from their interest as historical or antiquarian motifs. Such an important 
 aggregation of residences could not, however, obviously be passed over 
 without some notice, and if it be something in the nature of trying to 
 make bricks without straw, I must at least try to produce a semblance 
 of bricks, by collecting what evidence I can, of any notable people who 
 have lived in some of the squares here mentioned. 
 
 Connaught Square has, perhaps, an interest, certainly a lugubrious 
 one, not shared by the other squares of this district, for on its site 
 formerly stood Tyburn Tree and its accessories; indeed the actual 
 gallows is said to have been erected on the very spot where No. 49 
 Connaught Square once was, the fact being particularly mentioned in 
 an old lease of that house. 1 On this spot, then, took place those public 
 exhibitions when the last stage in a malefactor’s life was made the excuse 
 for a show of hardened brutality which seems almost incredible in a 
 civilised people. M. de Saussure, who visited this country in 1725, 
 and who has left an entertaining diary of what he observed here, gives 
 a graphic description of the scenes on such occasions, which I am sorry 
 to say he finds “diverting”; but he does not fail to note that “the 
 noise and confusion is unbelievable,” and he reminds us that the “ show ” 
 could be witnessed “from an amphitheatre erected for spectators near 
 the gibbet.” 2 This erection probably stood on the other side of the 
 Square, and is alone sufficient to give Connaught Square the right to 
 be considered the most characteristic of all those in the district known 
 
 1 London Past and Present. This square and much other property in this district once 
 belonged to the Bishop of London, but now to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. 
 
 2 The last plate of Hogarth’s “ Idle and Industrious Apprentice” gives a good idea of this 
 stand, and also of the general scene on occasions of execution. 
 
CONNAUGHT SQUARE 3 1 7 
 
 for so long as Tyburnia. To-day the Square is an eminently respectable, 
 even a fashionable one — so great has been the change which a century 
 and a half has wrought in this neighbourhood. 
 
 I can only trace one interesting person as having been a resident in 
 Connaught Square in the past. This was Fanny Kemble, whom I find 
 writing to a friend on March 27, 1877, thus : “ You ask if I have finally 
 concluded about the house in Connaught Square ? No, indeed ; for I have 
 not yet received any report from the agent . . . whether the gas, drains, 
 roof, &c., are in a condition to make it expedient for me to conclude 
 that bargain.” From certain unfortunate experiences of friends, Miss 
 Kemble seems to have had a wholesome dread of embarking on so serious 
 a matter rashly ; however, after the house had been put in repair, and 
 some delay occasioned by want of servants, she finally took possession, at 
 the end of April, of No. 15 Connaught Square, although in the first 
 letter dated from her new abode she speaks of not getting her cook or 
 housemaid “till next week,” adding pathetically that “she must then 
 tremblingly hope that they will not go away the same day,” as her last 
 cook appears to have done. Various letters are given in the Later 
 Records , dated from this house, and in one Fanny Kemble mentions Miss 
 Cobbe as living “at the furthest extremity of London,” i.e. in Hereford 
 Square, and adds, “We waste time in calling at each other’s houses and 
 finding us not at home.” It does not appear that Miss Kemble, or 
 Mrs. Butler as she ought properly to be styled, lived long here, for I 
 find her dating letters from Queen Anne’s Mansions in 1879, an d from 
 27 Grosvenor Street in 1883. 
 
 Oxford and Cambridge Squares are twins in size and shape, and 
 form the central portion of a large oval of which the ends are Norfolk 
 and Southwick Crescents ; the scheme of development is not without its 
 merit, but it has too much the appearance of a Haussmannising process 
 to be wholly commendable. At the West end stands a church, dedicated 
 to St. John, and erected from designs by Fowler the architect, who 
 followed, “ with a difference," the exterior of New College, Oxford. There 
 is a good stained-glass window representing the Twelve Apostles, but 
 beyond this the church calls for little comment. 
 
 Gloucester Square is but a little west of Connaught Square, and is, 
 as are most of those in this quarter, an oblong enclosure of good houses. 
 At No. 1 1 formerly lived John Sadleir, once a Member of Parliament, 
 
3 1 8 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 but subsequently connected with certain fraudulent concerns ; who, it may 
 be remembered, created a sensation by committing suicide on Hampstead 
 Heath in 1859. But the Square is connected with the name of a far more 
 notable man, for at No. 34, now marked with one of the London County 
 Council’s Memorial Tablets, lived Robert Stephenson, the great engineer, 
 from the end of 1847, till his death on October 12, 1859. 
 
 Stephenson had been residing previously at No. 1 5 Cambridge Square, 
 now the residence of Captain Oswald Ames, for at least three years. 
 During his residence in Gloucester Square, not only was he engaged in his 
 parliamentary duties, as member for Whitby, but his engineering works 
 included the scheme for uniting Christiania and the Miosen Lake ; the 
 construction of the Alexandria-Cairo railway ; the building of Conway 
 Bridge, the High Level Bridge at Newcastle, and the Britannia Bridge, 
 besides many other works of hardly less magnitude. 
 
 In 1850 he contemplated retiring from his more active pursuits; 
 but it was a difficult matter to accomplish, and Jeafferson 1 tells us how a 
 friend, “ calling in Gloucester Square to consult the master of the house 
 on urgent business, found every reception-room occupied by a crowd of 
 persons. Being much engaged, and wishing to employ his time with 
 correspondence till he could have an interview with Robert Stephenson, 
 he asked the servant to show him into a room where he could be by him- 
 self and write his lettters in quiet. “ If you want that, sir,” the man 
 answered, “ you must go upstairs into one of the bedrooms, for every 
 sitting-room is occupied with gentlemen who insist on seeing Mr. 
 Stephenson, although they know he is unwell. And the caller, acting 
 on the advice, went upstairs and sat in a bedroom till he could be ad- 
 mitted into the library.” 
 
 Of the interior of the house in Stephenson’s time Mr. Jeafferson 
 says, “ The drawing-rooms were so liberally stocked with works of curious 
 contrivance, and philosophical toys, that they had almost the appearance 
 of a museum ; ” and he adds that “ the cabinet of microscopic specimens 
 was most elaborate and extensive.” Nor was the human interest centred 
 in those rooms less notable ; Stephenson was a genial and painstaking 
 host, and at his “Sunday lunches” were to be met such men as Baden- 
 Powell, Murchison, and Sharpe the Egyptologist ; Bonomi and Brunei, 
 Lough the sculptor and Sir James Prior, besides hosts of other interesting 
 and interested people. 
 
 Stephenson’s last days have been graphically described by his bio- 
 grapher. He had been taken ill in Christiania where he had been feted 
 
 1 Life of Stephenson , quoted in the L. C.C.’s pamphlet on Houses of Historical Interest in 
 London , No. 5. 
 
NORFOLK SQUARE 319 
 
 on the completion of his railway scheme, and had been brought home 
 as quickly as possible. “ From the day of reaching Gloucester Square 
 till the following Sunday he seemed to improve,” says Jeafferson ; “ on 
 Sunday afternoon, without medical permission, he astonished the members 
 of his household by appearing in the drawing-room and declaring that 
 he had grown tired of his bedroom, and was resolved no longer to be 
 treated as a sick man. But the exertion and the excitement of conver- 
 sation were too much for him, and he was carried, rather than led, back 
 to the apartment in which he died.” At the time of his decease he 
 was only fifty-six, but a strenuous life had undermined his constitution, 
 and his death untimely robbed the country of one of its greatest men. 
 
 The house, on which he is said to have expended in purchase-money 
 and repairs ,£10,000, is now the residence of Henry Behrens, Esq. 
 
 At No. 13 Hyde Park Square, which practically adjoins Gloucester 
 Square, lived for many years the well-known sportsman Mr. T. Assheton- 
 Smith, probably one of the greatest “ M.F.H.’s ” of any day. Walford 
 records that a glass apartment which had been formed on the roof of 
 his house was after his death regarded by the credulous as the abode of 
 his ghost — as if a ghost, especially of such a country lover, could have 
 stood the noise and smoke of town in so exposed a position. Yet the 
 alarm was only gradually quelled by a systematic “ writing down ” in 
 the daily papers. Lady Georgiana Fullerton was also living in the 
 Square in 1850, as a reference in Mrs. Craven’s account of her proves. 
 
 Norfolk Square, rather to the north of Gloucester Square, must be 
 noticed on account of the church which stands at its east end. This 
 structure is dedicated to All Saints, and was built about 1847, * n that 
 so-called “ early pointed style ” which was the fashion in sacred edifices 
 at that period. It was intended to hold 1 500 people, and its cost was 
 estimated at £ 6000 , T4000 of which was borne by the rates, and 
 £2000 collected in subscriptions. As a matter of fact the total cost 
 exceeded this estimate by nearly T1500, although the interior decora- 
 tions and fittings were as plain as early Victorian taste and economy 
 could well make them. The site of the church — a portion of the old 
 reservoir — was given up by the Grand Junction Waterworks Company 
 to the Bishop of London and his lessees, according to an agreement 
 entered into, and formally incorporated in an Act of Parliament, 7 & 8 
 Vic. cap. 30. 
 
 Norfolk Square itself, beyond being a favourite residential quarter, 
 
320 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 is not interesting as having contained any illustrious inhabitants in the 
 past, but a glance at a current Directory will show that Professor Ayrton, 
 John Churton Collins, Esq., and Judge Addison to-day reside in it. 
 
 Proceeding farther west we come to Orme Square, built about 1815, 
 and forming a small excrescence, just west of the Broad Walk which 
 runs through Kensington Gardens, on the Bayswater Road, which 
 thoroughfare forms its southern side. Here, at No. 1, Rowland Hill 
 lived for a time, taking up his residence in 1839, a few months before 
 the Penny Postage Bill was passed, and continuing to occupy the house 
 till 1845; and here, too, came to reside, at No. 5, John Sterling in 
 the year 1855, when, as Carlyle records, he “took a house in Bays- 
 water, an airy suburb, half town, half country.” To still quote the 
 greater of Sterling’s biographers: “His house was in Orme Square, close 
 by the corner of that little place (which has only three sides of houses) ; 
 its windows looking to the east : the number was, and I believe still is, 
 No. 5. A sufficiently commodious, by no means sumptuous small 
 mansion ; where, with the means sure to him, he could calculate on 
 finding adequate shelter for his family, and live in a decent manner, in 
 no terror of debt, for one thing.” Further on, describing the house 
 and its surroundings, Carlyle writes, and I like to give his words as a 
 “purple patch” amidst these somewhat arid pages: “His study-room 
 in this house was perhaps mainly the drawing-room, looking out safe 
 over the little dingy grass-plot in front, and the quiet little row of 
 houses opposite, with the huge dust-whirl of Oxford Street and London 
 far enough ahead of you as background — as back curtain, blotting out 
 only half your blue hemisphere with dust and smoke. On the right, 
 you had the continuous growl of the Uxbridge Road and its wheels, 
 coming as lullaby, not interruption. Leftward and rearward, after some 
 thin belt of houses, lay mere country ; bright sweeping green expanses, 
 crowned by pleasant Hampstead, pleasant Harrow, with their rustic 
 steeples rising against the sky. Here on winter evenings, the bustle of 
 removal being all well ended, and family and books got planted in their 
 new places, friends could find Sterling, as they often did, who was delighted 
 to be found by them, and would give and take, vividly as few others, an 
 hour’s good talk at any time.” 1 
 
 Orme Square takes its name from a Mr. Orme, 2 once carrying on 
 
 1 Carlyle’s Life of Sterling. 
 
 2 “The names of Squares, Terraces, Streets, &c., have been for the most part furnished by 
 the names of the owners of property past and present, their native counties or country resi- 
 dences,” says Robins in his Paddington Past and Present , where I find it stated also that 
 Mr. Orme built the Bayswater Chapel just behind Orme Square. 
 
PEMBROKE SQUARE 321 
 
 business as a printseller in Bond Street, who purchased much ground 
 hereabouts, on a portion of which the Square was formed ; and who thus 
 became the ground landlord. 
 
 Rather to the north-west of Orme Square is Pembroke Square, occu- 
 pying a considerable space, and having a good-sized oblong garden down 
 its centre. The notable resident in this instance is Field-Marshal Sir 
 John Fox Burgoyne — the “ Moltke of England,” as he has sometimes 
 been called. He was living at No. 5 at the time of his death in 1871. 
 His most remarkable work was the scheme by which Sebastopol eventually 
 fell, through the initial capture of the Malakoff. It will hardly be 
 believed, but it is a fact, that he was recalled to England during the 
 actual progress of the siege. The post of Constable of the Tower and 
 the statue which stands opposite Carlton House Terrace were the atone- 
 ments which the country made to one who had been not only under- 
 rated but badly treated. 
 
 Still wandering westward along Holland Park Avenue, we come to 
 Norland Square, a small three-sided group of houses of which the 
 fourth (south) side is formed by the main thoroughfare ; the Square pre- 
 serves the name of Norland House, on the grounds of which it stands. 
 The residence belonged to one of the Drummond family, of Bank fame, 
 in the reign of William IV., and the Square formed part of the building 
 development which converted gardens and open ground in this neighbour- 
 hood into bricks and mortar, between the years 1850 and i860. 
 
 Ladbroke Square, a long open space with houses flanking its north 
 and south sides, is open on the west to Kensington Park Road and on the 
 east to Ladbroke Grove, and takes its name from the Ladbroke family 
 “who took it on a building lease,” according to Walford, who properly 
 speaks of its houses and central garden as falling “ but litttle short of 
 some of the more aristocratic squares of the West End.” I find no record, 
 however, of any particularly notable person having resided in it, and its 
 formation is too relatively recent for it yet to have any historical or 
 antiquarian importance. 
 
 The two most westerly squares to be noticed are St. Charles’s 
 Square and St. James’s Square. The former, an oblong enclosure, lies 
 to the west of Ladbroke Grove, which forms its east side, and within a 
 
 x 
 
322 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 triangle formed by the lines of the Great Western ; Hammersmith and 
 Metropolitan ; and the West London, Railways. The Square takes its 
 name from St. Charles’s College, a large building which was founded by 
 Cardinal Manning about 1863, which stands on its east side. From 
 small beginnings this establishment increased so greatly that in 1872 it 
 was found necessary to enlarge its headquarters, and after some difficulty 
 the present site was selected and the college erected here at a cost of 
 some ^40,000. The building, with its grounds, covers about eleven acres 
 and fills up the centre of the Square. It is of red brick with stone 
 facings, and has a central tower ; figures of saints, together with the 
 emblematical crossed keys and tiara, sufficiently indicate its tenets if not 
 its purpose. To be precise, this purpose is to bring education within 
 the reach of all at a minimum cost ; and so successful has it been that, in 
 1890 alone, no less than 1200 boys are said to have received instruction 
 here. 
 
 St. Charles’s Square contains nothing of interest beyond the college, 
 which practically absorbs it. 
 
 St. James’s Square forms a continuation, or really a terminus, to 
 Addison Road, and contains St. James’s Church, which was erected from 
 designs by Vulliamy, and consecrated in 1845. The chancel is a later 
 addition, but the tower, which rises to a considerable height, is part of 
 the original structure. 
 
 As there is nothing to be said of any particular importance concerning 
 the other squares mentioned in the group we have just been considering, it 
 will be seen that I had grounds for stating that they sadly lack historical 
 or antiquarian interest. It is, of course, an obvious fact that the more 
 modern the houses in a square, the less likely are they to be endowed 
 with memories or traditions, and therefore this part of London cannot in 
 any way compare, in this respect, with the other localities we have been 
 traversing. But when I say there is little interest about such houses, I 
 must not be understood to mean that many of them, nay, in a sense, all 
 of them, have no individual interest of their own ; for just as every 
 human being contains within his personality some striking attributes 
 which only intimate knowledge is likely to discover, so every house in 
 London can at least boast some interesting characteristic, and “ has had its 
 scenes, its joys and crimes ” ; some tender memory, some dramatic incident, 
 some feverish hour of crowded life, which endows it with vital interest, 
 if not for the historian or antiquarian, at least for the student of humanity 
 and the philosopher. It seems to me a wonderful thing to reflect on 
 
ST. CHARLES’S SQUARE 323 
 
 what “ hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving ” are centred in the four 
 walls of every dwelling, from a palace to a cottage ; it is as marvellous 
 as the microcosm of life which is reflected in the brain of every human 
 being who dwells within them. 
 
 Such investigation is, however, not permissible here, nor indeed, so 
 far as I understand the ethics of such things, anywhere ; and if we are 
 allowed to wonder at the glories of the reception-rooms in some great 
 houses and to take note of their former interesting owners, we must 
 certainly not violate such hospitality by trying to penetrate to the 
 “ private apartments and bedrooms too ” ; and when our perambulations 
 bring us to dwellings where we realise that all the rooms have the mark of 
 “ Private” upon them, we give but a glance at the knocker, and pass on. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE SQUARES OF WESTMINSTER, BELGRAVIA, 
 
 AND CHELSEA 
 
 “ Such was Belgravia once — a waste unknown ! 
 
 Behold that desert now — a gorgeous town ! 
 
 On every side, before admiring eyes, 
 
 New squares appear — fresh palaces arise.” 
 
 “ Belgravia : a Poem” by Mrs. Gascoigne. 
 
 T HE squares which I propose to group together in this chapter 
 number, with those of Chelsea, dealt with at the end, a score. 
 The more important of them form a portion of the Grosvenor 
 estate, such as Belgrave, Eaton, Chester, Ebury, Eccleston, and 
 Victoria Squares ; but I include Lowndes Square as being in the 
 vicinity, while what, for a better name, may be termed Westminster 
 Squares, are those of Smith, Vincent, Warwick, and St. George’s. 
 
 I speak of these latter first, because they are older than the others, 
 and because, although there is not much that is historically valuable 
 to be said about them, they are, for a variety of reasons, more interesting 
 than the larger and more fashionable ones. This indeed they might 
 easily be, for, as we shall see, the others are nearly all of modern growth, 
 and rely for their interest almost solely on the notable people who have 
 resided in them. 
 
 VINCENT SQUARE 
 
 Vincent Square, which is far removed from one’s ordinary conception 
 of a London square, covers indeed an area as large as that of Belgrave 
 Square, but instead of the umbrageous central garden surrounded by wide 
 roadways, the middle is a large bare field enclosed by the most uncom- 
 promising of iron railings. This space has, however, its use, for it forms 
 
 324 
 
VINCENT SQUARE 325 
 
 a really fine playing-field for the boys of Westminster School, to whose re- 
 quirements it is relegated. It is peculiarly appropriate that this should be 
 so, for the Square takes its very name from Dr. William Vincent, author 
 of the Voyage of Nearchus, a former Dean of Westminster, and Master of 
 Westminster School, who died on December 21, 1815. It was formed 
 during the early years of the last century, on that portion of Tothill 
 Fields which covers some nine or ten acres, and which the Bear Gardens 
 originally occupied. 1 In 1810, it was allocated to its present use as a 
 playground, Walford informing us that the sum of £2 was P aic ^ “for a 
 plough and a team of horses to drive deep furrows round the site, and 
 £2, 4s. od. more for the digging of a trench at the north-east end, to 
 prevent carts from passing over it, as it was then open and unfenced.” 
 It was subsequently levelled, but the ten acres of which the central 
 portion consists was not enclosed by railings till so late as 1842. Mr. 
 Thoms the antiquary used to regret the absorption of the old name of 
 Tothill in that of Vincent, for he said that Dean Vincent “was a ripe 
 scholar and worthy man who, if consulted, would never have consented 
 to the change.” 2 
 
 If we are to believe Luffman’s Plan of London for 1816 to be as 
 faithful as it professes, we find that the north-east and north-west sides 
 of the Square were first built on, and then not in rows of adjoining 
 houses, but in detached (Luffman shows four on each side) dwellings. 
 By the Rate Books for 1816, I find some sixteen people given as then 
 residing here, amongst whom the names of John Payne Collier, Andrew 
 Sturt, George Trollope, and J. Postlethwaite occur; while in 1823, the 
 Rev. George Greig and William Babbage were among the occupants of 
 houses in the Square. The tenements which now exist are for the most 
 part small but in some cases not unpicturesque buildings ; there are, 
 however, several important erections which overshadow their small pre- 
 tensions. Thus in one corner is the Hospital of the Coldstream Guards, 
 and next to it the Westminster Police Court, removed here in 1845 from 
 Queen Square. Then St. Mary’s Church, with its schools, is on the south 
 side. This edifice was erected from designs by Edward Blore, F.S.A., and 
 consecrated in October 1837; it stands on ground given by the Dean 
 and Chapter of Westminster, who also provided the site for St. Mary’s 
 Schools. 
 
 1 These grounds ceased to exist in 1793, according to Walford in Lo?idoniana. 
 
 2 See J. E. Smith’s Parochial Memoirs 0/ St. John's Parish. 
 
326 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 SMITH SQUARE 
 
 Another curious square in Westminster is Smith Square, which, ac- 
 cording to Walcott, derives its name from a person who was Clerk of 
 the Works at the time of its formation, although more probably, as stated 
 by Hutton, from Sir James Smith, the ground landlord ; one Henry Smith 
 having sold the ground on which the church stands, in 1713, to the 
 Commissioners, for £700. The Square lies between Wood Street and 
 Horseferry Lane, and is only separated from the river by Millbank Street 
 with which it communicates by the little Church Street. This thorough- 
 fare takes its name from the church dedicated to St. John the Evangelist 
 which stands in the midst of the central garden, and the Square itself was 
 known as St. John’s Churchyard until the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, as is proved by the record of the death of Thomas Newton, a 
 relative of the great Sir Isaac, who died “ at his house in St. John’s Church- 
 yard,” in February 1807. The church is an interesting edifice, for it was 
 the second of Queen Anne’s fifty churches commemorated by Tickell, we 
 are told by Besant, the cost of whose erection was defrayed by a duty 
 levied on coals brought into the port of London. It was commenced 
 towards the end of Anne’s reign, for by 1715, I find that £1000 had 
 already been spent in payments to workmen, the details of which are 
 given by Mr. j. E. Smith, who also states that the total cost of erection 
 was over ,£40,000. The district for it was not formed, however, until 
 the reign of Anne’s successor, in 1723, while the consecration of the new 
 church, which was named after an old chapel in Westminster Abbey, did 
 not take place till after the accession of George II. — to be precise, on 
 June 20, 1728 — when Dr. Bradfield, Bishop of Rochester, performed that 
 ceremony ; but the church was not thrown open for public worship till 
 the 10th of the following November. It was designed by Thomas 
 Archer, a pupil of Vanbrugh’s, 1 who had originally been a groom-porter 
 about the court, and whom Taylor calls “ a pseudo-architect.” The 
 same authority styles St. John’s Church “ his chef d'auvre of deformity” ; 
 and it certainly is very peculiar in appearance, from the fact that at each 
 corner is a tower and a lantern-turret, which Lord Chesterfield said re- 
 minded him of an elephant with its legs in the air, and Charles Matthews 
 likened to a dining-table in the same position. It is doubtful, however, 
 
 1 It was at one time stated that Vanbrugh was himself the architect, but this is proved to 
 be incorrect ; and the fact that Vanbrugh was one of the Commissioners and signed orders for 
 payments to the architect substantiates it. 
 
SMITH SQUARE 327 
 
 whether this absurdity should be wholly laid to Archer’s charge, for it 
 appears that these excrescences were added afterwards rather to balance 
 the foundations, which had begun to settle through the swampy nature 
 of the ground, than as a part of the original design ; it would seem, 
 too, that Archer intended further additions which would have balanced 
 these towers, for Elmes considers that they “ would have been beautiful 
 accompaniments to the central tower and spire intended by the archi- 
 tect.” As a matter of fact “ Mr. Archer’s design of St. John’s Church, 
 Westminster, as it was resolved upon by the Commissioners,” a print 
 of which is in the Crowle Pennant, is so different in plan from the 
 existing church that it is evident that the ridicule with which the 
 architect’s memory has been loaded is not altogether justifiable. Donald- 
 son points out that, in spite of some inaccuracies, it is a very striking 
 production of the Vanbrugh school — a school, we must remember, any- 
 thing but at its best in ecclesiastical architecture. Chamberlaine, in his 
 Survey of London and Westminster , 1769, thus refers to the church: 
 “ It is,” he says, “ remarkable for having sunk while it was building, 
 which occasioned alteration in the plan. On the north and south sides 
 are magnificent porticos, supported by vast stone pillars, as is also the 
 roof of the church. At each of the four corners is a beautiful stone 
 tower and pinnacle : these additions were erected that the whole might 
 sink equally, and owe their magnitude to the same cause. The parts 
 of this building,” he adds, “ are held together by iron bars, which cross 
 within the aisles.” 1 
 
 The interior of the church has an unusual air of spaciousness, arising 
 from the fact that it is without columns. One of the windows is interest- 
 ing as being filled with some old stained-glass brought from Normandy ; 
 and over the altar is a copy of Ribalta’s “ Christ Bearing the Cross,” the 
 original of which is at St. Mary Magdalen, Oxford. The font of marble 
 was designed by C. Barry, junior, and executed by J. Thomas, and was 
 placed in the church in 1847 ; while the organ is of German make, 
 (about 1727 ; it was repaired by Hill in 1840), and is considered a fine 
 and powerful instrument. 2 
 
 On September 26th, just before the morning service, a fire, which 
 practically gutted the building, broke out in the church which appears 
 not to have been restored, for lack of funds it is said, till 1758, 
 although after much negotiation the House of Commons voted 
 
 1 Quoted by J. E. Smith, who also reminds us that Pope refers to this sinking of the 
 foundation, in his second Satire. 
 
 2 In the church is a panel recording the fact that, in 1800, George III. and Queen Charlotte 
 stood sponsors here at the baptism of Thomas, second son of Viscount Belgrave. 
 
328 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 £4000 for the purpose, on February 20, 1744, 1 when the galleries 
 were added. In 1773, the roof was damagad by lightning; and fresh 
 additions were made in 1821, under the direction of William Inwood, 
 who was responsible for the new church of St. Pancras, of which the 
 first stone had been laid three years earlier. 
 
 An interesting, if not very edifying personality is connected with 
 St John’s, in the person of Charles Churchill, who was born in the 
 neighbouring Vine Street in 1731, and succeeded his father here as 
 curate and lecturer, in 1758. He appears to have been elected to the 
 post rather as a mark of respect to his father, who had held a similar 
 position in 1733, and whose memory was cherished in the parish, than 
 to personal capabilities ; but his notorious living at last caused the 
 parishioners to remonstrate ; and, perhaps not unwillingly, for he himself 
 said he had accepted the post from “ need, not choice,” he resigned 
 his curacy and lectureship. Toplady, the author of “Rock of Ages,” was 
 one of Churchill’s successors, holding the curacy and lectureship in 1769. 
 
 Walcott, in his Westminster , 2 tells us that in the burial-ground lie 
 “the ashes of an Indian chief, who died of small-pox in 1734, and 
 was buried in the presence of the Emperor Toma, after the custom of 
 the Karakee Creeks, sewn up in two blankets, between two deal boards, 
 with his clothes, some silver coins, and a few glass beads.” 
 
 On another tombstone, that of Donald Grant, D.D., is recorded 
 the fact that the whole of that ecclesiastic’s emoluments, “ during a 
 ministry of forty years in the Established Church of England, amounted 
 to £743, 8 s. 5 d.,” 3 which would make his annual income work out at 
 the princely sum of £16, 17s. lid., compared with which the “ £40 a 
 year ” of Goldsmith’s village pastor sounds like ostentatious magnificence. 
 
 The Churchwardens of St. John’s possess a snuff-box presented in 
 1801 4 by Thomas Gayfere, Esq., “Father of the Vestry,” which suc- 
 ceeding Vestrymen have embellished with silver plates and cases. Mr. 
 Smith gives the interesting history of this celebrated relic, known as 
 the “St. John’s Snuff-box,” or the “Westminster Tobacco-box,” and 
 
 1 A large picture of the church in ruins was presented to the parish by G. Crosse, Esq., 
 on February 8, 1787. It is reproduced by Mr. J. E. Smith in his Parochial Memoirs, and 
 shows how disastrous was the conflagration. It is interesting to note that in 1800, while 
 St. Margaret’s, Westminster, was under repair, St John’s was used by the House of Commons ; 
 and also that it was the first sacred edifice to be lighted by gas. 
 
 2 Page 314. 
 
 3 London Past and Present. 
 
 * It seems, however, to have been first presented to the “Past Overseers’ Society” by 
 Henry Monck in 1713, the first box having, it is said, cost but 4d. In the Rate Books for 
 1816 and 1823 Thomas Gayfere is given as a resident in the Square, as is a Charles Churchill, 
 and the Rev. D’Arcey Haggitt, besides many others. 
 
SMITH SQUARE 329 
 
 in his book are representations of its various component parts and the 
 engravings of names, pictures, and mottoes with which it has been from 
 time to time embellished. 
 
 Smith also records the fact that the depredations of the notorious 
 resurrection men were particularly audacious in the burial-ground 
 attached to St. John’s; and mentions that when in 1794, a search was 
 made, no less than two hundred coffins were found to be empty. Two 
 later burials which luckily escaped this fate were those of Mrs. Susannah 
 Churchill, an aunt of the satirist, who died in Smith Square, in June 
 1806; and of James Caldwall, a somewhat celebrated designer and en- 
 graver, who died on March 9, 1822, aged eighty-four, and was buried in 
 the church precincts. 
 
 Readers of Our Mutual Friend, will remember that Dickens gives a 
 whimsical description of St. John’s Church, when referring to the home 
 of Miss Jenny Wren — the doll’s dressmaker — in the vicinity : “ In this 
 region,” he writes, “are a certain little street called Church Street, and 
 a certain little blind square called Smith Square, in the centre of which 
 last retreat is a very hideous church, with four towers at the four 
 corners, generally resembling some petrified monster, frightful and 
 gigantic, on its back with its legs in the air.” Jenny Wren’s house, or 
 rather the house of her father, “Mr. Dolls,” as Eugene Wrayburn called 
 him, would appear to have been at the angle formed by the junction 
 of Church Street with the Square. 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield also shows an intimate acquaintance with the Square 
 in his novel of Sybil, or the Two Nations ; so minute a knowledge, indeed, 
 that Mr. J. E. Smith assumes that he may possibly have been accustomed 
 to seek refuge here from Lobbyists and the other terrors of Westminster. 
 
 Smith Square to-day (1906) is a scene of desolation except for a 
 few remaining Georgian houses with picturesque over-doorways and iron 
 railings, for the whole of the south and west sides has been demolished, 
 and where the houses stood are heaps of brick rubbish awaiting a final 
 levelling, and probably the erection of the inevitable flats. On the east 
 side are modern erections, a warehouse, and some apparently artisan 
 dwellings ; and even on the north, where a few of the old houses 1 still 
 remain, several of them are empty and are obviously prepared for the 
 handiwork of the housebreaker. When the whole Square is rebuilt, the 
 church which dominates it will appear, if not more unwieldy, certainly 
 more incongruous. 
 
 1 The houses in the Square were renumbered in 1869, but as half the Square has already 
 disappeared, the question of numbers becomes one of little interest. 
 
33 ° 
 
 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 QUEEN SQUARE 
 
 In old Directories and topographical works, brief references will be 
 found to “Queen Square, Westminster,” the addition of the name 
 of the locality being given in order to differentiate it from the better- 
 known Queen Square, Bloomsbury. You will seek long enough ere 
 you find such a square given in the plans and Directories of to-day, 
 however, because it is synonymous with what we now know as Queen 
 Anne’s Gate, and used in old times to be sometimes called, as Strype 
 for instance terms it, Queen Anne Square. 1 
 
 The original Square was a small oblong about 150 yards long, its 
 eastern extremity being marked by the statue of Queen Anne in the south- 
 eastern corner ; and apparently at one time a wall divided it from what 
 now forms the more easterly portion of Queen Anne’s Gate, which was 
 then known as Park Street, for we are told that when this street was 
 constructed the inhabitants, fearing that their square would become a 
 thoroughfare for much noisy traffic to Ranelagh and other westerly 
 resorts, obtained permission to erect this wall, which was thereupon 
 built by subscription. It was not till 1874, that Park Street and Queen 
 Square were made one and renumbered by the Metropolitan Board of 
 Works. There is perhaps hardly another collocation of houses which 
 bears so unmistakably the signs of the Augustan age as those in Queen 
 Anne’s Gate ; their red bricks, narrow windows, and in many cases 
 beautiful over-doorways, and the masks mentioned by J. T. Smith, 2 
 give them those picturesque characteristics which are identified with the 
 period (about 1706) in which they were erected; but the houses are, 
 after all, comparatively small, and though Hatton may be right in 
 terming the Square, as he does, “ a beautiful (though small) and new 
 one,” his authority for stating that it “ consists of very fine buildings ” 
 seems to be somewhat far-fetched. In this connection Hatton speaks 
 of the new street then (1708) being erected, by which, of course, he 
 refers to the Park Street mentioned above. 
 
 Queen Square was the freehold estate of Sir Theodore Jansen, 3 one of the 
 Directors of the South Sea Company, who is said to have made ,£243,000 
 
 1 The name of Queen Square is still preserved in the adjoining Queen Square Mews. A 
 square in this district which has disappeared was Marlborough Square, adjoining Great Peter 
 Street ; but it was so small that only nine houses are given in the Rate Books as being in it. 
 
 2 Book for a Rainy Day , p. 28. 
 
 3 His name is given as Theophilus Jansen in O/d and New London, and see Mackay’s 
 Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions. 
 
QUEEN SQUARE, WESTMINSTER 331 
 
 out of the scheme, but was only allowed, on the bursting of the bubble 
 and the subsequent investigation, to retain 10,000 out of his vast gains. 
 His property was confiscated, and the freehold of Queen Square sold 
 to help pay the debts of the company, by Commissioners appointed 
 by Act of Parliament for that purpose. 
 
 Among past residents in the Square may be mentioned the Earl of 
 Aylesford, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Warwick, and the Bishop 
 of Norwich, whose names are given in A New Review of London , pub- 
 lished in 1728 ; while, according to Walcott, Lords Grey and North 
 are said also to have possessed houses here at the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century. Besides these I find given in the Rate Books for 
 
 1728 the following: Madam Lowndes, the Bishops of Carlisle and 
 
 Chittester {sic), Lord Willoughby de Brooke, Lord Micklewaite, 
 
 Lady Humble, Lady Winchelsea, and Lord Windsor ; while in those 
 for 1758, the names occur of the Bishops of St. Asaph and St. David’s; 
 Sir Richard Lloyd, Knt. ; Captains Scott and Williams ; Colonel Caesar 
 and Colonel Crutchrods, which latter is apparently a daring attempt 
 to compass the name of Cracherode, probably a relative of the great 
 book-collector, who was born in the square, as we shall see. It was, 
 indeed, a distinctly fashionable locality then, as, in some senses, it 
 
 remains to-day, although many of the charming old houses are now 
 used for professional purposes. We are informed by Walcott, in his 
 Memorials of Westminster, that Admiral Vernon, the captor of Portobello, 
 was born in the Square on November 12, 1684, but as the Square 
 was not formed till some twenty years later, it is probable that “ in a 
 house on the site of the Square ” would be a more accurate description. 
 We are, however, able to identify several interesting people with this 
 interesting spot when there was no doubt as to its actually being a 
 square ; thus the Rev. C. M. Cracherode, the great book-collector, 
 whose library forms a part of the stupendous accumulations in the 
 British Musuem, was born here in 1729, and is given by Boyle as 
 living at No. 8 in 1795. Peg Woffington died here on March 28, 1760, 
 or so it is given in London Past and Present; but Teddington is generally 
 associated with her death, as Twickenham Church is with her burial. 
 There is no doubt, however, about Sir William Browne, the distinguished 
 physician who founded prizes at Cambridge for classics, having died in a 
 house here on May 10, 1774; 1 or of the decease of Miss Reynolds, Sir 
 Joshua’s sister, at her residence in the Square, on November 1, 1807. 
 
 1 According to Walcott, Thomas Francklin, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge 
 and sometime Usher at Westminster School, who has left translations of Sophocles and 
 Lucian, also died in the Square on March 15, 1784. 
 
332 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 But even in those days the Square was not wholly confined to private 
 residents, for the ubiquitous Coffee-House was present, and from one of 
 these, known as “ Long’s,” James Thomson wrote certain letters to 
 Speaker Compton, with regard to his Winter , in 1726. 
 
 To come to the last century, 1 I find, given in London and its En- 
 virons , or General Ambulator for 1820, the Public Police Office as having 
 its home here, and as being one of the eight established in 1792, “to 
 remedy the mal-practices of the trading Justices, as they were aptly 
 denominated.” 
 
 As we have seen, Queen Anne’s Gate has not only absorbed Queen 
 Square but also Park Street, which at first looks as if it had always 
 been an integral part of the Square ; it also extends round the corner 
 as far as the St. James’s Park Railway Station, and this portion was 
 formerly known as Queen Square Place. Not being actually in the 
 Square itself, I have nothing to do with it here ; but its proximity 
 leads me to remind the reader that on the site of that egregious and 
 hideous assemblage of dwellings known as Queen Anne’s Mansions, once 
 stood a white house known later as 1 Queen Square Place, which over- 
 looked the garden of Milton’s house in Petty France. Jeremy 
 Bentham purchased it in 1772, and here, after spending, as he has re- 
 corded, f 1 0,000 upon it, he died in 1832. In the same house, at a 
 later date, lived the great engineer Sir Isambard Brunei. 
 
 ST. GEORGE’S SQUARE 
 
 Another square situated in this district at its most southerly point is 
 St. George’s, built in 1850, which forms an oblong running from Lupus 
 Street to the Embankment. At its north end is St. Saviour’s Church, 
 a modern erection consecrated in 1864, which was built from designs by 
 T. Cundy, and restored in 1882. Its tower and surmounting spire is 
 exceptionally lofty, being no less than 190 feet high, which, as Walford 
 points out, is only twelve feet less than the Monument. The cost of 
 the church is said to have been £12,000, of which the greater portion 
 was contributed by the Marquis of Westminster. The first incumbent 
 was the Rev. John Walker, M.A., who held the living from 1864 to 
 1886, when he was succeeded by the present vicar, the Rev. Henry 
 
 1 In the Rate Books for 1850, Sir Alexander Duff Gordon is given as living at No. 8, 
 and the Right Hon. M. Talbot-Baines at No. 13. 
 

 PLAN OF THE GROSVENOR ESTATE. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ST. GEORGE’S SQUARE 333 
 
 Washington, M.A. This gentleman kindly informs me that the east 
 window is the work of Clayton & Bell, and that there is also another 
 by C. Ei Kemp to the memory of Sir John Tilley, K.C.B., a former 
 churchwarden. It is interesting to learn that St. Saviour’s was the first 
 church where the cremated remains of a parishioner were allowed to be 
 buried beneath the floor, a special faculty having to be obtained for this 
 purpose. 
 
 At No. 9 St. George’s Square, Sir Joseph Barnaby, the well-known 
 composer, died in 1896; and to-day several notable people reside in it, 
 such as, to mention but these, the Right Hon. J. W. Mellor, K.C. ; Judge 
 Smyly, K.C. ; Sir Albert de Rutzen ; Admiral the Right Hon. Sir 
 J. C. Dalrymple Hay, and Mr. and Mrs. Richmond Ritchie. 
 
 WARWICK SQUARE 
 
 Rather to the north-west of St George’s Square is Warwick Square, 
 which is bounded on the one side by Belgrave Road and on the other 
 by St. George’s Road, and in which a church dedicated to St. Gabriel, 
 designed by Thomas Cundy and consecrated in 1853, stands. The 
 Square, extending to about three acres, is of comparatively modern forma- 
 tion, being built as late as 1843, an< ^ ^ as no history, except what can be 
 allocated to it from the fact that it stands, as does St. George’s Square, 
 on the site of Tothill Fields. The almost exact position of the former 
 square was once called “Willow Walk,” while the latter occupies ground 
 originally forming part of the “ Neat Houses Gardens,” where Pepys 
 sometimes amused himself, and close by which Nell Gwynne’s mother 
 fell into the river and was drowned. 
 
 EBURY SQUARE 
 
 Although we are here on the Grosvenor estate, not till we come 
 to the tiny Ebury Square do we recognise, in the nomenclature of the 
 squares, the various titles belonging to the family of the ground landlord. 
 Ebury Square was formed in 1820, on the site of Ebury Farm. 1 The 
 
 1 By the Rate Books for 1714, I find the ‘Duke of Bucks’ and others given as paying 
 rates under the head of “Ebury Farme,” while the Neat Houses are rated at from 25s. to 
 30s. each. 
 
334 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 ground on which this farm stood can be traced back to Saxon times, for 
 the property derives its name, says Besant, from the Saxon “ey,” signi- 
 fying water, and “ burgh,” a fortified place. In 1307, we find permission 
 granted by Edward I. to John de Benstede to fortify it ; but it is in 
 Elizabeth’s time that it first appears as a farm, consisting then of 430 
 acres, which was let to one Whastre at an annual rental of ^21, credite 
 bosteri ! In a plan of the manor dated 1614, it is styled Eybury ; but it 
 was not till the reign of Charles II. that it came into the possession 
 of the Grosvenor family, through the marriage of Mary Davies, only 
 child of Alexander Davies, of Ebury Manor, with Sir Thomas Grosvenor. 
 The plan of the Grosvenor estate dated 1723, and reproduced in Mr. 
 Clinch’s excellent History of Belgravia and Mayfair , shows how all the 
 ground in the neighbourhood was divided. The homestead of the farm, 
 where tradition states that Queen Elizabeth paid several visits to partake 
 of syllabubs, stood on the site of the present Square. Later the ground 
 was used as a nursery garden. The Square was partially destroyed in 
 i860, but some of the original houses still remain. The south-west 
 corner is open to the junction of the Buckingham Palace and Pimlico 
 Roads, and here are situated St. Michael’s National Schools, which were 
 opened in 1870, being built on the site of the Pimlico Institution which 
 had been erected in 1830. 
 
 Some industrial dwellings, called Ebury Buildings, built in 1872, 
 occupy the position of the old Flask Lane which is shown in a plan of 
 1854, as bounding the east side of the Square. 
 
 VICTORIA SQUARE 
 
 Another small square — a tiny cul de sac , at the north-east end of Ebury 
 Street — is Victoria Square, which was formed about 1837, and derives its 
 name from Queen Victoria ; it has little or no interest in itself, but it is 
 distinguished in one of its past inhabitants, for Thomas Campbell lived 
 here, at No. 8, from 1841 to 1843. 1 It was his last residence in this 
 country, and in it he resided with his niece, Mary Campbell. Here he 
 entertained such friends as Rogers and Moore, Milman and Beattie ; the 
 latter of whom, at Campbell’s request, visited the house on one occasion 
 while the poet was abroad to get some money which had been left “in the 
 
 1 Besant and Harrison, but Hutton and Clinch say 1840. The matter, however, is not 
 of any particular moment. 
 
VICTORIA SQUARE 335 
 
 press in his bedroom.” Dr. Beattie gives in his Memoir of Campbell, an 
 account of an amusing incident that occurred during the search for the 
 specie. The press, he says, “ was opened without difficulty, for it appeared 
 doubtful whether it had been locked. The contents . . . were carefully 
 examined, but no money was discovered. ... In shutting the press doors, 
 however, the point of a red embroidered slipper — I shall never forget it — 
 stood in the way. Taking it out in my hand to push it back, it felt hard, 
 and, on looking nearer, I saw it was stuffed full of white paper matches — 
 such as are used to light candles. One of these, out of mere curiosity, 
 was unrolled — for it was twisted like a whipcord — and to our surprise and 
 delight turned out to be a ten-pound Bank of England note . . . and 
 at last, when both slippers had been fairly stripped of their precious lining, 
 we found that the product in genuine bank-notes amounted to upwards 
 of three hundred pounds.” Campbell disposed of many of his books 
 when he left Victoria Square to live in Boulogne, and he used to tell 
 how his grocer, to whom he sold the less valuable works, including 
 presumably copies of his own productions, “was a more insolent critic 
 of my works than the second-hand booksellers,” . . . the duodecimos 
 were quite at a discount, “ but here,” said the vendor of butter, placing 
 his hands on some folio sermons, “are some real good books.” “Yes,” 
 replied the poet, “most pious books.” “Yes, indeed,” rejoined the man 
 of cheese, “one leaf of them will wrap up a whole pound of raisins.” 
 To what base uses may not the learned Barrow or the judicious Hooker 
 come ! 
 
 Another interesting man was residing in Victoria Square, at No. 1 8, in 
 the forties in the person of Joseph Arnould, afterwards the well-known 
 Indian Judge, and friend of Browning and Alfred Domett ; while Chorley, 
 also an intimate friend of the Brownings, was living there at the same 
 time ; and we find Arnould, in a letter dated November 24, 1845, speak- 
 ing of dining at Chorley’s house in the Square, and meeting Browning, 
 Barry Cornwall, and other congenial spirits. 
 
 ECCLESTON SQUARE 
 
 Eccleston Square forms a twin square with that of Warwick, but there 
 is not much comparison between them as fashionable centres. The former 
 stands on what was the low swampy ground of this district till Cubitt, in 
 1827, raised its level by depositing the earth excavated from St. Katherine’s 
 
336 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Docks 1 here. The whole of this quarter of the town, although covered 
 by numerous squares and streets of fine houses and a favoured locality 
 with people of means and position, is from the antiquarian point of view 
 sadly lacking in interest, especially as even the ground on which it is 
 formed appears from earliest times to have been simply fields, more or 
 less, as time went on, bought for cultivation, until the whole, under the 
 magician hand of the great builder, gave place to the bricks and mortar 
 of Belgravia. Eccleston Square covers about four acres, and was formed 
 in 1835 ; it derives its name from Eccleston in Cheshire, where the ground 
 landlord, the Duke of Westminster, possesses large property. At the 
 present day its houses are occupied by people of light and leading, and 
 among them I may mention Sir Clement Markham, F.S.A. at No. 21 ; 
 Admiral Sir C. F. Flotham, at No. 67 ; at No. 74 the Earl of Galloway ; 
 at No. 64 the Marquis of Abergavenny, K.G. ; and at No. 41 the Marquis 
 of Sligo. The history of Eccleston Square would appear to lie in the 
 future, and its one interesting association seems to be that Matthew 
 Arnold was staying at No. 3 in March 1877; for on the 11th of that 
 month he dates a letter to the Rev. G. W. Boyle from here. 
 
 CHESTER SQUARE 
 
 Chester Square, named after the city of Chester, to the north-west of 
 Eccleston Square, dates roughly from the same period, having been formed 
 only a year earlier; although it covers some five acres of ground, its long 
 and narrow formation hardly gives it the appearance of this size. Unlike 
 most squares, instead of one it has three enclosed gardens down its centre, 
 Eccleston Street bisecting two of them. The houses are not of the 
 proportion and massiveness characteristic of so many of the Belgravian 
 buildings, but it is fashionable and, which is of more interest to us here, 
 has numbered among its past residents several notable people. Thus 
 at No. 19 died, on November 10, 1852, the well-known geologist 
 Dr. Mantell, who, from being a shoemaker’s son, rose to the proud 
 position of a Fellow of the Royal Society when he was but thirty-five. 
 His various works on geology are well known, and his fine collection of 
 fossils is still to be seen in the British Museum, which institution purchased 
 it on his death. 
 
 In the previous year the widow of Shelley, nee Mary Wollstonecraft 
 
 1 Fascination of London : “ Mayfair and Belgravia.” 
 
CHESTER SQUARE 337 
 
 Godwin, died on February 21st 1 at No. 24. Although she wrote much, 
 she is chiefly remembered as Shelley’s wife and as the author of that 
 remarkable work Frankenstein , which, as is well known, had its origin in 
 Byron’s suggestion that he, Polidori, Shelley, and Mrs. Shelley should 
 each write a ghost story. The lady appears to have been the only one of 
 the party to carry the idea into execution, Frankenstein being published in 
 1818. The originality of the conception and the literary style of the 
 narrative made it a wonderful success ; and Frankenstein himself and the 
 horrible monster he created have passed into proverbial expressions, those 
 who make use of their allusiveness not always carefully discriminating 
 between their identity. 
 
 Another literary lady, who, however, only attained to an ephemeral 
 fame, once lived at No. 31, in the person of Mrs. Romer, a friend of Lady 
 Blessington’s and a contributor to those Books of Beauty for which 
 the hostess of Gore House and Seamore Place was noted. Mrs. Romer 
 also produced in 1843 and 1846, two books of travel; while in 1847, The 
 Bird of Passage, in three volumes, and in 1852, Filia Dolorosa, appeared 
 from her pen. A letter from her to Lady Blessington, dated from Chester 
 Square, and conveying her thanks for one of the inevitable Books of 
 Beauty , is given by Madden in his work on Lady Blessington. 
 
 But the most illustrious literary figure connected with the Square is 
 that of Matthew Arnold, who lived at No. 2 for a considerable period ; 
 letters to his mother and sister are extant, dated hence at various times, 
 from December 1859 to April 1866; 2 3 thus approximately placing the 
 period of his residence here. His many journeys throughout the 
 country as an Inspector of Schools made his sojourns here necessarily but 
 fitful ones, but it is the chief glory of the Square that he should have 
 lived here at all. 
 
 Another literary man resided for a time at No. 76, for we find J. R. 
 Chorley writing to Ticknor from here, on February 24, 1864. This 
 Chorley was the Spanish scholar, “first-rate in knowledge,” Ticknor calls 
 him ; and brother to H. F. Chorley, the musical critic, who will be re- 
 membered as a great friend of the Brownings. Henry Reeve also lived in 
 the Square at one time, having taken No. 16, where he installed himself 
 on February 13, 1842 ; and his next-door neighbour was Charles Buller, 
 who died here of typhus ten days after an operation, on November 29, 
 
 1 848,® in his forty-first year. Reeve is chiefly known as the editor of 
 
 1 Madden in his Lady Blessington says February 1 st, but this is an error. Dowden gives 
 February 21st. 
 
 2 See Letters of Matthew Arnold , edited by W. E. H. Russell, Esq. 
 
 3 Reeve’s Diary. 
 
 Y 
 
338 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Greville’s Journals ; but he did other excellent work not only as editor 
 of the Edinburgh Review , but also as the translator of De Tocqueville’s 
 Ancien Regime and Democracy in America ; while his essays, published under 
 the title of Royal and Republican France , are full of information and 
 interest. Buller was rather notable for promise than fulfilment ; few of the 
 diaries and memoirs of the middle of the nineteenth century are without 
 some reference to him, and it will be remembered that when Carlyle first 
 came to London in 1824, he lodged with him at Kew Green. Greville 
 calls Buller a remarkable man, but recognises that his career was only just 
 beginning, and in a “ Character ” such as he was fond of giving in his 
 Journals , he speaks of his death as a great social and public loss, “ more 
 especially,” he adds, “ in days of mediocrity and barrenness like the 
 present. He was clever, amiable, accomplished, and honest ... his 
 abilities were of a very high order.” Thackeray, another friend, wrote 
 a pathetic little note to Lady Ashburton on the occasion of Buller’s 
 death, in which he says how “ pained and shocked ” he was at the news. 1 
 
 Chester Square possesses a church dedicated to St. Michael, and erected 
 during the years 1844 and 1846, from designs by Thomas Cundy, who 
 was responsible for several ecclesiastical edifices in this district. The 
 Marquis of Westminster laid the foundation-stone of the church, which is 
 designed in the early Decorated style, and the tower and spire at the west 
 end of which rise to a height of 150 feet. Additions were made to the 
 body of the building in 1874, which helped to give a greater air of 
 uniformity to it, and particularly to bring the spire into better pro- 
 portion with the rest of the edifice. 
 
 EATON SQUARE 
 
 Close by Chester Square is the largest square in Belgravia, viz. Eaton 
 Square, which covers an area of about fifteen acres and contains no less 
 than six gardens. The main road runs through the centre of the Square, 
 and two thoroughfares, one leading from Belgrave Road to Eccleston 
 Street, and the other joining Lyall Street and Elizabeth Street, intersect 
 it at equal distances from the two ends of the Square. The houses are 
 large and important, although at the south-western end there are some 
 smaller than the rest. The length of the Square is no less than 1637 
 
 1 Mrs. Brookfield and her Circle. 
 



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

EATON SQUARE 339 
 
 feet, while in width it extends to 371 feet. 1 It derives its name from 
 Eaton Hall in Cheshire, the seat of the Duke of Westminister, the 
 ground landlord ; and it occupies ground once known as The Five Fields. 
 Even so late as 1814, a map of Belgravia of that date shows the site, 
 as well as all the ground between Knightsbridge, Grosvenor Place, and 
 Cadogan Place to have been then open land on which the backs of the 
 houses in these thoroughfares looked. 
 
 The Square was commenced in 1827 (though not wholly completed 
 till 1853), by Cubitt, as part of that great scheme of development by 
 which he transformed what was little better than a swamp into one of the 
 most remunerative and fashionable quarters of London. This he effected 
 by the simple means, hitherto ignored until the building Columbus solved 
 the obvious, of removing the clay which formed the first strata and 
 burning it into bricks, and then building on the substratum of gravel. 
 Belgravia is therefore, although lying so low that it has been proved that 
 the attics in Eaton and Belgrave Squares are on the same level as the 
 ground floors of Westbourne Terrace, viz. seventy feet above the Thames 
 high-water mark, one of the healthiest spots in London ; as for much the 
 same reason is Chelsea, which such men as Drs. Arbuthnot, Sloane, and 
 Meade were not slow to find out.” 2 
 
 As we might expect from the size of the houses and the favour in 
 which the Square has always been held, some notable people are to be 
 numbered both among its past and present residents. 
 
 Two notable wits in their day occupied houses here, for Lord Alvanley, 
 of whom Captain Gronow was wont to say that he was awarded the 
 reputation of all the witticisms, good or bad, in the clubs, just as Sheridan 
 had been before him, and Sydney Smith since, lived at No. 62, and here 
 he died in 1850. Greville speaks of “his marvellous wit and drollery, 
 which made him the delight and ornament of society,” and most appropri- 
 ately quotes Biron’s words : 
 
 “ A merrier man, 
 
 Within the limit of becoming mirth, 
 
 I never spent an hour’s talk withal.” 
 
 The other, noted for his witty sayings and his priceless collections, was 
 Ralph Bernal, who died at what was No. 9 3, 3 the house where his treasures 
 
 1 These measurements are given in the Fascination of Lo?idon : “ Mayfair and Belgravia.” 
 
 2 See Timbs’s Curiosities of London. 
 
 3 Davis, in his Memorials of Knightsbridge (1859), says No. 75, and he has been followed 
 by Walford, Cunningham, &c., but Messrs. Christie’s Catalogue of 1855, gives it No. 93, which 
 would seem to be conclusive. 
 
34° THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 were displayed, in 1853. Two years later Messrs. Christie commenced, 
 on March 5th, the disposal of Bernal’s treasures at the house itself, where 
 for thirty-two days connoisseurs and dealers from all parts of the world 
 contended for the rare and beautiful objects which one who, to use the 
 words of Planch6, “ could be tempted by nothing that was inferior,” had 
 gathered together. 
 
 Another house of interest was No. 71, which was used as the official 
 residence of the Speaker of the House of Commons, during the rebuilding 
 of the Houses of Parliament, and of which Cunningham states that the 
 rent, rates, and taxes amounted to ^964 for one year; later it became the 
 residence of Mr. M. J. Higgins, the celebrated “Jacob Omnium” of 
 the Times. 
 
 Lawyers have greatly affected the Square, and among them we find 
 Lord Truro, once Lord Chancellor, who as Mr. Thomas Wilde was one 
 of the Counsel for Queen Caroline, and represented both Newark and 
 Worcester in Parliament, and who died here on November 1 1, 1855. Here 
 too lived, at No. 16, Mr. Justice Willes ; and at 75, Baron Martin; while 
 at No. 74, resided the Right Hon. Edward Cardwell, afterwards Lord 
 Cardwell, who, as President of the Board of Trade (1852-55), Secretary for 
 Ireland (1859-61), Colonial Secretary (1864-66), and Secretary for War 
 (1868-74), made a mark on the history of the country. A letter of his to 
 Abraham Hayward is dated from here, in November i860. 
 
 Among the notable soldiers who have lived in the Square, particular 
 mention must be made of General Sir William Codrington, who was 
 present at the Alma and Inkermann ; and was chief in command, having 
 succeeded Sir James Simpson, at the Siege of Sebastopol, who resided at 
 No. 10. He was second son of Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, who 
 commanded the Orion at Trafalgar; was with Cochrane at Chesapeake 
 Bay and New Orleans in 1814, and held chief command of the allied 
 fleets at Navarino. He died in the Square on April 27, 1851 ; and here, 
 so recently as 1890, also died Lord Napier of Magdala, at the ripe age 
 of eighty. His great services in the Mutiny, where he was chief engineer 
 with Sir Colin Campbell’s army; during the China War of i860; and 
 especially in the expedition to Abyssinia of 1868, are part of the military 
 history, as they form part of the glory, of the country. 
 
 Among other notable men who are given as living in the Square by 
 Davis, writing in 1859, are the first Earl of Ellenborough, son of the great 
 Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough, at No. 1 1 5 ; Sir Frederick Thesiger, 
 Lord Chelmsford, the victor of Ulundi over the Zulus under Cetewayo 
 in 1879, at No. 7; Sir John Pakington, who after holding several high 
 appointments under Conservative Governments from 1852 to 1868, was 
 
EATON SQUARE 341 
 
 created Lord Hampton in 1874, at No. 41 ; Sir Francis Baring, first Lord 
 Northbrook, who had filled such posts as Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 (1839-41), and First Lord of the Admiralty (1849-52), at No. 4; Mr. 
 Fielder, Commissioner-General in the Crimea, at No. 57 ; Colonel Tulloch 
 at No. 63 ; Sir Augustus Clifford, the well-remembered Usher of the 
 Black Rod, at No. 92 ; and Sir William Clay, at No. 93. 
 
 To these may be added the names of General Sir Thomas Bradford ; 
 Mr. Henry Redhead Yorke, at No. 81; Colonel Sibthorp, who died 
 here in 1856; and George Peabody, the well-known American philan- 
 thropist, who had settled in England in 1837, and who died at his house 
 in the Square, on November 4, 1869. Others include S. H. Walpole, who 
 dates from No. 109, in writing to Hayward in 1877 ; Sir Charles Ellice, 
 whose hospitable house in Eaton Square was once well known ; and Sir 
 George Gray, a devoted servant and friend of Queen Victoria. 
 
 Eaton Square well sustains its reputation to-day as the home of 
 notable people, and its 104 houses include the residences of so many 
 bearing old and historic names that the bare enumeration of them would 
 fill a page. 
 
 At the east end of the Square is the Church of St. Peter, one of the 
 most noted in London for fashionable marriages. It is a heavy build- 
 ing and architecturally not important, but within it is roomy and well 
 adapted for the crowds attending large weddings. It was built on ground 
 presented by Lord Grosvenor during the years 1824 and 1826 (the first 
 stone being laid on September 4, 1824), from designs by Henry Hake- 
 well, at a cost of just over £ 2 1,000, and was consecrated by Howley, 
 Bishop of London, on June 27, 1827. About ten years after its erection — 
 on December 30, 1836, to be precise — it was nearly burnt down, and 
 Hilton’s “ Christ Crowned with Thorns,” which had been purchased for 
 1000 guineas by the Directors of the Royal Institution in 1828, and 
 presented to the church for use as an altar-piece, was with difficulty 
 saved. This picture was subsequently bought from the church by the 
 Chantry Bequest in 1877. In the John Bull for January 2, 1837, is a 
 full description of the fire in which the organ, which had cost ^700, was 
 destroyed, as well as the whole interior fittings of the church, and stained 
 glass to the value of many hundreds of pounds ; the damage being estimated 
 at about ^10,000. The church was reopened on August 6, 1837. In 
 1872, it was restored and enlarged by the addition of a new chancel and 
 transepts in the Byzantine style, the work of Blomfield who, in 1874, was 
 again called in to remodel the interior of the nave. These improvements 
 have done something to rescue the church from Cunningham’s dictum, 
 that it is one of the ugliest in all London. In 1895, a handsome screen, 
 
3+2 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 with pulpit and a side chapel — dedicated to All Saints — was added. • In 
 the Mirror of Literature , Amusement , and Instruction for August 22, 1829, 
 there is an elaborate description of its architectural points, together with 
 a woodcut representing the west front ; and an interesting account of 
 the church, by the Rev. Herbert Mackean, M.A., is contained in the 
 St. Peter s Parish Magazine for July 1905. From the latter we learn that 
 the first incumbent was the Rev. Thomas Fuller, from 1827 to 1869 ; the 
 second the Rev. G. H. Wilkinson — subsequently the Bishop of Truro — 
 from 1870 to 1883, who was followed by the present vicar, the Rev. 
 Prebendary Storrs, appointed in 1883. It may also be noted that at first 
 St. Peter’s was but a chapel of ease to St. George’s, not having a separate 
 district assigned to it till 1830. 
 
 The body of Sir Edward Codrington whom I have mentioned as 
 dying in the Square in 1851, was buried in St. Peter’s. 
 
 It is interesting to note that Sir Algernon West’s mother remembered 
 going to a country house where St. Peter’s now stands, and crossing a 
 rustic bridge over a stream into the fields (The Five Fields) where the 
 cows were being milked and syllabub was being made. 1 
 
 BELGRAVE SQUARE 
 
 The most important square in the district generally termed Belgravia 
 is Belgrave Square, which takes its name from one of the titles borne 
 by the Duke of Westminster. It stands, like Eaton Square, on a 
 
 portion of the Five Fields, and was commenced in 1825; forming a 
 nucleus of Cubitt’s great scheme of development. For a London square 
 it is comparatively large, measuring about 700 by 630 feet, 2 or nearly ten 
 acres. The four sides are covered by large houses, the centre ones being 
 more imposing than the others ; these mansions were designed by George 
 Basevi, who was the architect of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, 
 and, it will be remembered, was accidentally killed while inspecting the 
 bell-tower of Ely Cathedral, on October 16, 1845. 
 
 At the corners of the Square are large detached mansions erected from 
 designs by Hardwick and Kendall ; the latter was responsible for the two 
 on the west side, now known as No. 12 Belgrave Square, the residence of 
 the Earl of Ancaster ; and Downshire House, occupied by the Right Hon. 
 
 1 Sir A. West’s Recollections , vol. i. p. 268. 
 
 2 Davis gives the exact measurements as 684 by 637 feet. 
 
 
BELGRAVE SQUARE 343 
 
 Lord Pirrie. Seaford House, Lord de Walden’s residence, at the south- 
 east corner, was the work of Hardwick ; and the remaining mansion, 
 No. 49, at the north-east corner, was for many years the town residence 
 of the Duke of Richmond, but has recently been acquired by Otto Beit, 
 Esq., of the firm of Wernher, Beit, & Co. Looking at these immense 
 houses, it is difficult to imagine them being called by older topographers, 
 as we find they are, “villas in Belgrave Square.” 
 
 As we enter Belgrave Square from Grosvenor Crescent, No. i is on 
 our right hand, a house once occupied by Reuben Sassoon, Esq., who had 
 a private synagogue here, on the site of which what is called No. ia, 
 not properly in the Square at all, stands ; while at No. 2 Mr. James 
 Goding, noted for the fine collection of pictures he brought together 
 here, was living in 1859. No. 3 is the town residence of Lord de 
 Ramsey; while two doors beyond at No. 5, formerly lived Lieut. -Gen. 
 Sir George Murray, who was Quartermaster-General during the Peninsular 
 War; and here he died in 1846. A later resident there was the well- 
 known philanthropist, the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, whose name is 
 synonymous with pity and charity; he died here in 1886; a great and 
 good man. Next door (No. 6), now Lord Newton’s, was formerly the 
 seventh Duke of Bedford’s, who died in 1861, but, as we shall see, 
 the present Duke lives in another house in the Square. W. Graham 
 Vivian, Esq., who lives next door, at No. 7, informs me that he pur- 
 chased the lease in 1859, and that the house has never changed hands 
 or been let since ; very nearly a record in this respect. No. 9, now 
 G. Harland Peck, Esq.’s, who is well known as an art connoisseur and 
 collector, and who has surrounded himself with a fine and valuable 
 collection of pictures and furniture, was formerly the residence of the 
 fifth Earl of Esssex — “gallant, good-natured, lively, and handsome,” as 
 Le Marchant calls him — and his celebrated Countess, the once well- 
 known singer Kitty Stephens, whom he married en second noces in 1838, 
 only a year before his death. Lord Essex was a friend of nearly all the 
 notable people of his day ; and Macaulay, writing to his sister Hannah in 
 1832, gives an amusing account of a dinner party at No. 9. “I dined 
 on Saturday at Lord Essex’s in Belgrave Square,” he writes, “ but never 
 was there such a take in. I had been given to understand that his 
 Lordship’s cuisine was superintended by the first French artists, and that I 
 should find there all the luxuries of the Almanack des Gourmonds. What 
 a mistake ! His lordship is luxurious, indeed, but in quite a different way. 
 He is a true Englishman. Not a dish on his table but what Sir Roger 
 de Coverley, or Sir Hugh Tyrold, might have set before his guests. A 
 huge haunch of venison on the sideboard, a magnificent piece of beef at 
 
344 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 the bottom of the table ; and before my lord himself smoked, not a 
 dindon aux truffes , but a fat roasted goose stuffed with sage and onions ! ” 
 
 Lord Essex had been one of the first to take a house in the Square, 
 and his friends were wont to call him the “Decoy Duck” in consequence, 
 as it was conjectured that his example would do much to bring the new 
 district into fashion. After his death, the Dowager-Countess continued 
 to reside here, with a niece as a companion, till her death, at the age of 
 eighty-eight, in 1882. Her name is not known nowadays as it was to a 
 past generation, whom she charmed by her magnificent voice and pleasant 
 manners, but her counterfeit presentment can be seen, painted by Jackson, 
 in the National Portrait Gallery, and the record of her successes read in 
 the pages of Oxberry. 
 
 Next door, at No. 10, now occupied by Viscount Baring, once 
 resided the celebrated M. Drouin de Lhuys, the French Ambassador in 
 this country in 1850. He was but a short time in this capacity in 
 England, and the reasons for his sudden recall will be found in Greville’s 
 gossiping pages; 1 his later visit in 1855, was a still shorter one. 
 
 No. 12, Lord An caster’s, is the first of the large corner-houses we 
 come to, and was originally the town house of the first Earl of Brownlow ; 
 it was designed by H. E. Kendall, but is rather commodious than 
 artistic. 
 
 Of the eleven houses on the west side of the Square, I may remind 
 the reader that No. 13 was once the home of Mr. Scrope, the last male of 
 a family illustrious in our historic annals, 2 who died here on July 20, 
 1852, aged eighty. Mr. Scrope is remembered as the author of Days of 
 Deerstalking and Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing , published in 1839, 
 and 1843, respectively. After his death, his son-in-law Poulett Scrope, 
 M.P., the author of a History of Castle Combe , lived here for a short 
 time, but afterwards removed to Princes Gate. No. 13 is now the 
 residence of the Dow r ager-Countess Beauchamp ; and Mr. Graham Vivian, 
 of No. 7 Belgrave Square, informs me that he lived with his parents at 
 No. 13 as a boy, which indicates that they were the first residents in 
 this particular house. 
 
 No. 15 is now occupied by the Duke of Bedford, and at No. 16 was 
 living in 1859, Sir Richard Murchison, the geologist, who died there 
 on October 22, 1871. No. 18, the centre house, is the Austro- 
 Hungarian Embassy, and was formerly the temporary residence of the first 
 Earl of Ellesmere, of the Leveson-Gower line, the son-in-law of Charles 
 
 1 Sir Henry Holland, in his Recollections , mentions dining with M. Drouin de Lhuys, in 
 
 Belgrave Square, on the very evening when the latter received the telegram recalling him to 
 
 Paris. 3 Davis. 
 
BELGRAVE SQUARE 345 
 
 Greville, until Bridgewater House, which he was then building, was 
 completed. Miss Kemble records that The Hunchback was acted here 
 in 1842, but remarks that though the house was large enough for social 
 purposes, it was far from being adapted to theatrical ones. 1 
 
 Downshire House, the detached residence in the south-west corner, 
 is numbered 24 ; it was the work of Kendall, and is lower, with a longer 
 frontage, than the other corner houses ; having two projecting wings. It 
 was built originally for Mr. Kemp, of Kemp Town; and subsequent 
 occupiers were Lady Harriett Drummond, and the Marquis of Tweed- 
 dale. In 1837, Viscount Hill, Commander-in-Chief of the British 
 Army, lived here. His ruddy face and modest demeanour are noted 
 by Lord Teignmouth in his Reminiscences , while his biographer, the 
 Rev. Edwin Sidney, speaks of his eye that was bright and full of 
 benevolence. Dawe has painted his portrait, and the annals of the 
 British Army record his fame. He died on December 10, 1842, when 
 his house was taken by the second Earl of Ducie, a lord-in-waiting to 
 Queen Victoria, at whose death in 1853, it was sold and subsequently 
 enlarged. 
 
 On the south side of the Square are twelve houses, Nos. 25 to 36 
 inclusive. No. 28 is the town residence of Lord Crewe, who informs 
 me that his father bought it in 1845, direct from the builder, and that 
 it has remained in his family ever since. His lordship thinks that his 
 family is the oldest, in point of residence, of any in the Square. Next 
 door (No. 29) is the residence of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 
 and I believe I am right in saying that this is the first time a Prime 
 Minister has resided in Belgrave Square. At No. 32 lives Admiral 
 the Earl of Clanwilliam ; and No. 36, now the Dowager-Marchioness of 
 Conyngham’s, was in 1840, the residence of H.R.H. the Duchess of 
 Kent. It was at one time called Ingestre House, and in 1859, I find 
 it occupied by Colonel Douglas Pennant. 
 
 Seaford House, numbered 37, at the south-east corner, is the largest 
 house in the Square ; it is almost palatial in extent. It was originally 
 the old town residence of the Earls of Sefton, but when its present 
 owner bought it he greatly added to the building, and practically re- 
 constructed it, giving it the name of a famous forbear of his own. 
 
 The east side of Belgrave Square contains the houses numbered 38 
 to 48 inclusive. Davis gives as living at No. 41, in 1859, the Archbishop 
 of York, and at No. 42, Sir Michael Shaw Stewart. No. 43, now the 
 residence of Charles M‘Laren, Esq., K.C., M.P., was, that gentleman 
 tells me, built for the Earl of Bradford, and was once known as Bradford 
 
 1 Records of Later Life. 
 
3+6 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 House. Mr. M‘Laren states that it is believed to be, from an archi- 
 tectural point of view, the best house in the Square, both the external 
 and internal decorations being unusually fine ; the fact that the name 
 of the architect Basevi is inscribed over the entrance helps to confirm 
 this, and possibly indicates that it was the first house to be erected 
 here. Next door is the residence (No. 44) of the Hon. Percy Wyndham; 
 and the interior is not only decorated with designs by G. Aitchison, 
 R.A., the paintings being by the late Lord Leighton ; but it contains a 
 remarkably fine collection of modern pictures by such masters as Watts, 
 Mason, Rossetti, Corot, Whistler, and Tissot. At the next house, No. 45, 
 lived and died (in 1895) the Duchess of Montrose — the “Mr. Manton ” 
 of the turf. It had been long in the Duke of Montrose’s possession, 
 and here Sir William Fraser records meeting, for the first time, Lord 
 Lytton. “ A thin, gaunt being, examining the pictures : his style of 
 dress was of a much earlier period. He wore a black satin stock buckled 
 at the back of the neck, and what was called a ‘fall,’ that is, two broad 
 bands of black satin covering the shirt front, and reaching the opening 
 of the waistcoat.” 1 At No. 48 the third Lord Combermere, grandson 
 of Waterloo Combermere, died in 1891. 
 
 The last house in the Square is No. 49, the corner residence, which 
 was built in 1850, for the Right Hon. Sidney Herbert. It subsequently 
 became, until quite recently, the town house of the Dukes of Richmond. 
 
 Among other one-time residents in the Square, I may mention the 
 Due de Bordeaux — better known, perhaps, as the Comte de Chambord — 
 who held, with his mother, a sort of court here, on his visit to England 
 in 1843. The Due de Guiche told Lord Malmesbury that he had 
 hired a house here for “the hope of the Bourbons,” and that he was 
 expected to arrive on November 25th, and intended “to give dinners 
 and to receive two or three times a week.” 2 
 
 A few years before, on May 23, 1836, the last Duke of Gordon is 
 recorded as dying in Belgrave Square ; and Sir William Molesworth, the 
 politician and friend of Grote and J. S. Mill, resided here at one time “ in 
 a fine house,” writes Maginn in his whimsical way, “ which is remarkable 
 as being also the residence of the Hon. Member for Westminster. These 
 two great statesmen (to use a polite phrase) pig together, and have their 
 mansion in common.” 3 The member for Westminster was Mr. Leader, 
 who with Sir William also kept joint house in Lowndes Square, as we 
 shall see. Sir Charles Wood, afterwards Lord Halifax, also once lived 
 in Belgrave Square ; and Sir Algernon West gives in his Recollections 
 
 1 Hie et ubique , p. 47. * Memoirs of an Ex-Minister. 
 
 3 Maclise Portrait Gallery. 
 
SPRING GARDENS, SITE OF LOWNDES SQUARE. 
 
LOWNDES SQUARE 347 
 
 a letter addressed by Wood to him from here dated June, 1 8 6 1 . Lady 
 Halifax died here on July 5, 1884, and Lord Halifax in the following 
 year. 
 
 It was, too, in Belgrave Square that Edward Thomas Delafield, once 
 a member of the brewing firm of Combe, Delafield, & Co., had a house, 
 the rent of which, including the stables, amounted to no less than ^1095 
 a year, in or about 1847. A man °f great wealth, he ran through a 
 large fortune, caused by the extravagance of his living, but particularly 
 by his connection with the opera, the management of which he joined in 
 1 848, after he had retired from the brewery and had drawn the whole of 
 his capital from the concern. In a little over three years, over ;£ 100,000 
 had been fooled away, and when he became bankrupt his only available 
 assets are said to have amounted to £2, 14s. 6dd 
 
 The central garden of Belgrave Square is of great extent, wooded 
 and shrubbed and intersected with paths, but there is no statue in the 
 middle, which, considering the general want of success of such effigies, is 
 perhaps a want not to be greatly deplored. 
 
 LOWNDES SQUARE 
 
 Not the least interesting of the squares of Belgravia is Lowndes Square, 
 which is not part of the Grosvenor property. If we examine a plan of 
 that estate, dated 1723, a copy of which is given in Mr. Clinch’s Bel- 
 gravia and Mayfair , we shall see that a piece of ground practically semi- 
 circular in shape lies between the Duke of Westminster’s land and the 
 river Westbourne, which divides it from what is called Chelsea Common. 
 On that piece of ground is marked the name “ Mr. Lownds,” 2 and it is 
 on part of this that Lowndes Square stands. This “ Mr. Lownds ” was 
 William Lowndes, Esq., of Chesham (a descendant of William Lowndes, 
 Secretary to the Treasury in Anne’s reign), and a friend and patron, by- 
 the-bye, of Haydon the painter ; he was the ground landlord, and it was 
 after him that the Square was named. In remote days the site once 
 belonged to a Benedictine convent, according to Dr. King, Rector of 
 Chelsea from 1694 to 1732, who left a MS. account of the parish which 
 Faulkner quoted and Davis refers to. But although it formed part of 
 Edward the Confessor’s gift to Westminster Abbey, it passed into the 
 
 1 Timbs, in his Romance of London^ gives a detailed account of the matter. 
 
 2 Rocque’s Plan of 1746, gives the ground as belonging to “ Lowndes, Esq. 1 
 
3+8 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 hands of the laity at the time of the Reformation. Davis says that the 
 well-known Spring Gardens, so often referred to in early diaries and plays, 
 was situated about where William Street joins Lowndes Square. “ The 
 World’s End,” mentioned by Pepys and Congreve, was probably a sign 
 used by the keeper of Spring Gardens, and would thus help to differ- 
 entiate it from other Spring Gardens about the town, some such dis- 
 criminating title being necessary, as many places of outdoor amusement 
 bore this title. The house which bore this sign appears to have been 
 inhabited from 1773 to 1805, by Dr. C. Kelly, who had an anatomical 
 museum here ; he was succeeded by one Bowes, and the museum was let 
 as an auction-room to a Mr. Herring. About 1818, according to Davis, 
 Warren the builder took the premises, and presumably the land on which 
 they stood, and used the former as a workshop. A few years later 
 Cubitt secured a lease of the whole from Mr. Lowndes, and proceeded to 
 lay it out. Building operations would appear to have been commenced 
 about 1836-7, following on the development of the Grosvenor estate, 
 but the Square was not entirely constructed till 1849. Cubitt is supposed 
 to have built the houses on the south side of the Square, which were 
 erected in 1843, with greater regard to architectural effect than anything 
 which had up to then been attempted in London. 
 
 Lowndes Square would appear to have always been a favourite 
 residential centre. It has the advantage of being in close touch with the 
 Park and Piccadilly, while at the same time it is quiet and retired, and 
 the neighbouring Sloane Street carries much traffic that might otherwise 
 have passed down the central roads of the Square. 
 
 Among the interesting people who have lived here in the past, I 
 find at No. 1, for a time, the inseparable Sir William Molesworth and 
 Mr. Leader, M.P. for Westminster ; following them came to the same 
 house M. J. Higgins — the “ Jacob Omnium ” of the Times — whom 
 Mrs. Gascoigne in her poem of “ Belgravia ” apostrophises as 
 
 “ A man whom rage and clamour ne'er withstood, 
 
 The well-known champion of the neighbourhood.” 
 
 Mrs. Gascoigne herself lived at No. 14, where she was not likely to 
 “ forget to sing thy Square, O Lowndes,” to use her own words. 
 
 Other notabilities living here at one time or another were Admiral 
 Sotheby, who died at No. 38, on January 20, 1854, and who had been 
 present at the Battle of the Nile ; Sir Henry Campbell ; Sir Willoughby 
 Cotton; Sir William Tite, M.P. for Bath and a well-known architect; 
 Thomas Brassey, the great contractor, and father of the present Lord 
 
LOWNDES SQUARE 349 
 
 Brassey ; Mr. Whiteside, M.P. ; Mr. R. B. Wingfield ; and Mr. Malins, 
 M.P. These names are given by Davis, and therefore represent inhabi- 
 tants anterior to 1859, the year in which his Memorials of Knightsbridge 
 appeared ; and to these may be added the names of Sir John Rennie, 
 the distinguished engineer ; the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, M.P., after- 
 wards Lord Sherbrooke ; and General Lord Airey, whom I find writing 
 to Abraham Hayward from No. 7, in May, 1878. It is curious that 
 Davis does not mention the fact of Lady Morgan (the “ Wild Irish Girl ”) 
 residing in the Square, for here she died on April 13, 1859, in the 
 seventy-seventh year of her age ; fifty-three years after her reputation had 
 been made by the political novel whose title is always identified with her 
 personality. 
 
 The central garden of the Square is long and narrow, and requires no 
 description. 
 
 THE SQUARES OF CHELSEA 
 
 The squares of Chelsea are not of great importance from a residential 
 point of view ; indeed they may be termed curious rather than interesting 
 from any point of view ; they are mostly small in area, and the houses 
 comprising them are exiguous in size and not particularly attractive in 
 appearance. But there is such a glamour of romance ; such a pleasant 
 air of old-world association, wreathed round any part of the borough, that 
 the squares contained in it take on themselves in the aggregate an interest 
 to which, individually, they hardly have a claim. Properly, of course, 
 Cadogan Square should find a place among them ; but the contrast between 
 this fashionable spot and these retiring and unfashionable centres is too 
 marked to allow me to place them in juxtaposition ; and so, leaving 
 Cadogan Square among other and more appropriate surroundings, I will 
 deal here with the nine (it would have been a pity, too, to spoil this 
 magic number) squares which are more homogeneous in their form and 
 character. 
 
 These Squares are known by the names of Camera, Carlyle, Gillray, 
 Markham, Marlborough, Paultons, Tedworth, Trafalgar, and Wellington. 
 The most easterly of them are the three small ones : Markham Square, 
 on the north of the King’s Road facing Smith Street, which connects that 
 main thoroughfare with Royal Hospital Road ; Marlborough Square, to 
 the north of Cale Street, and lying directly south of Pelham Crescent \ 
 
350 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 and Ted worth Square, which lies between the King’s and Queen’s Roads 
 and faces Christchurch Street on its south side. 
 
 Of Markham Square, all that Besant says is that therein is a large 
 Congregational Chapel opened in i860; which does not seem to promise 
 much in the way of antiquarian interest, or of interest of any kind for 
 that matter ; and indeed there is little to be said of the place as it stands 
 to-day, but a house in the adjoining Markham Street is mentioned by 
 Beaver as bearing a name-plate on which appear the initials “ H. I. A.,” 
 with the name Box Farm and the date 1686. The land attached to this 
 farm is now partly covered by the Square. This land is known to have 
 belonged to one Edward Green over a hundred years later, and at a later 
 date still was the site of Moore’s Nursery. A large area here between 
 the King’s Road and the Fulham Road was known as Chelsea Common, 
 and at a time when local authorities were not so careful in their guardian- 
 ship of these open spaces as they are to-day, it is probable that much of 
 it, particularly where it abutted on the King’s Road, was annexed, without 
 right or authority, by enterprising gardeners who were not slow to 
 recognise the advantages of its position and the richness of the ground ; 
 the number of market gardens formerly here helping to confirm this 
 supposition. It takes some stretch of the imagination to realise that 
 what we now consider a part, and that not an extremely western part of 
 the town, was two hundred years since a heath covered with furze, and 
 somewhat analogous to what Wimbledon Common (to take an example) 
 appears to-day. The first interference with this common generally, as 
 apart from those portions that may have been filched by the enterprising, 
 would seem to have been in the reign of George I., when an Act was 
 passed empowering the Surveyor of London Roads to dig gravel from 
 any common or waste lands which might be convenient to him for 
 making or repairing the highways. In 1736, the matter was, however, 
 after many complaints and indeed ejectments by force of the surveyors 
 by those locally interested and naturally indignant, adjusted, and I find 
 building operations commencing on the common some years later ; the 
 earliest building lease being dated 1790, and granted to the Hon. 
 George Cadogan. As various other individuals also obtained leases, the 
 varied character and want of uniformity in the streets and buildings erected 
 here is easily accounted for. 
 
 Of these building operations Markham Square, so denominated to 
 perpetuate the name of a family once owning land here, was one of the 
 later results ; the church in it, mentioned by Besant, was erected of Kentish 
 
WELLINGTON SQU ARE 3 5 1 2 
 
 rag with dressings of Bath stone, in i860, after the designs of John Tarring, 
 and is in the Decorated style 1 so beloved by architects of that period for 
 
 this sort of building. 
 
 Marlborough Square is named after the great Duke of Marl- 
 borough, of whose one-time residence in a house at the south end of 
 Marlborough Road there is a tradition, but probably only a tradition. 
 A statue, presumably of the great Captain, once stood, I am told, in the 
 centre of the Square, but has long since disappeared. 
 
 What I have said about the site of Markham Square applies practi 
 callv to Marlborough Square, which lies within a stone’s throw of it ; 
 and as there is no record of any interesting inhabitants in either, they 
 must perforce, be passed over in this somewhat summary manner. 
 
 If not for the same reason, yet for a very sufficient one, Tedworth 
 Square must also be dismissed with a mere allusion, for it has no 
 history, and beyond being a square, no particular interest for us here 
 except what can be attached to it through Mark Twain,- and Mrs. 
 Langtry both having sojourned in its precincts. 
 
 A little to the north-west of Tedworth Square is Wellington 
 Square, the north side of which is formed by Kings Road It is 
 named, of course, after the great Duke of Wellington, whose brother, 
 the Hon. and Rev. Dr. Wellesley, preceded, it will be remembered, the 
 
 Rev. Charles Kingsley as Rector of Chelsea. 
 
 The site of Wellington Square was formerly occupied by one ot the 
 best known of the many nurseries of Chelsea, that kept by Thomas Davey, 
 who died in 1833, and to whom a local poet, Samuel Shepherd, b.S.A., 
 addressed some lines quoted by Beaver. A certain greenness is still im- 
 parted to the spot by the double row of trees in the central garden, which 
 form a pleasant relief to the houses of which the Square is composed. 
 
 Between the Fulham Road and the King’s Road, just east of Church 
 Street, is the largest of the Chelsea Squares — Trafalgar Square, 
 named after Nelson’s crowning victory. The north side of the Square is 
 formed by what is called South Parade, while the continuation of its 
 eastern side is now known as Manresa Road. The Square is of consider- 
 
 1 Walford’s Old and New London, and Beaver’s Memorials of Chelsea. 
 
 2 It was here that Mark Twain gave his memorable reply to a reporter who had, as he 
 thought, seen an announcement of the humourist’s death : “Report greatly exaggerate . 
 
352 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 able size, and has a large central garden. It is interesting to record that 
 that fine landscape-painter Cecil Lawson, whose family lived in Carlton 
 House, Chelsea, from 1869, and whose artistic work is so identified with 
 this locality, painted a picture in 1876, which he called “ Rus in Urbe : 
 a Pastoral in Trafalgar Square, Chelsea.” 1 
 
 In various old maps the site of Trafalgar Square is shown as open 
 country adjoining Chelsea Common, but in an early eighteenth-century 
 plan it would seem that this ground was attached to a residence called 
 “ Mr. Watt’s house ” ; while by a map of the end of the eighteenth century, 
 although the land hereabout is divided into various enclosures, this house 
 is shown to have disappeared. 
 
 Almost adjoining Trafalgar Square is what is now known as Carlyle 
 Square, but was originally called Oakley Square, after a title in Lord 
 Cadogan’s family. In 1872, its name was changed to the present one, 
 in honour of the great philosopher who was then living in Cheyne Row ; 
 it has therefore the distinction, together with Wellington Square, of 
 being the medium of admiration shown to two great men during their 
 lives ; in which respect these two squares are unique. It is interesting 
 to know that the Sage appreciated this act, for Mr. Moncure Conway, 
 in an article on Carlyle, says, “One honour he did value — the naming of 
 a green space in Chelsea, Carlyle Square.” Although Carlyle Square is a 
 comparatively small one, it has a good oblong central garden, which is 
 bounded on its south side by King’s Road. 
 
 The site of this square was, in the eighteenth century, the inevitable 
 market garden, in this case in the occupation of Mr. Hutchings, we 
 
 learn from Beaver, who informs us further that the house was the scene 
 
 of a murder and robbery in 1771, for complicity in which four Jews 
 
 were hanged ; and so notorious became the circumstance that for some 
 
 time afterwards Jews were jeered at with the words “Chelsea” and 
 “ Hutchings.” Some illustrations of the crime were given in a con- 
 temporary number of the European Magazine . 2 
 
 It was on the site of Carlyle Square, when the ground was in the 
 possession of Mr. Hutchings, that Faulkner records seeing the finish of 
 a stag hunt ; I give his own words : — 
 
 “About the year 1796 I was present at a stag hunt in Chelsea. 
 The animal swam across the river from Battersea, and made for Lord 
 Cremorne’s grounds. Upon being driven from thence, he ran along the 
 
 1 Beaver. 
 
 2 Memorials of Chelsea , p. 324. 
 
PAULTONS SQUARE 353 
 
 waterside as far as the church, and turning up Church Lane, at last 
 took refuge in Mrs. Hutchin’s barn, where he was taken alive.” 1 
 
 The only person of note recorded as living in Carlyle Square is 
 Mrs. Kelly, the novelist, who kept a school here in a house on the 
 west side. 
 
 A little to the westward of Carlyle Square, on the south side of 
 King’s Road, is Paultons Square, named after the country seat of the 
 Sloane Stanley family ; the north side of which is open to the main thorough- 
 fare. Although but a small oblong square with a central garden, it has a 
 peculiar interest inasmuch as it stands on the site of the gardens of the 
 once celebrated Danvers House, one of old Chelsea’s landmarks. Aubrey 
 tells us that “ ’twas Sir John Danvers of Chelsey who first taught us 
 the way of Italian gardens ” ; and it is therefore not surprising to learn 
 that the gardens of Danvers House were of exceptional beauty and size. 
 Sir John himself is as notorious for having been one of those who 
 signed the death-warrant of Charles I., as he was celebrated for his 
 handsome face and his proclivity to squander money ; indeed his personal 
 beauty was such that we have Aubrey’s authority for the statement that 
 people would come after him in the street to admire him ; while his 
 regicide principles are sufficiently confirmed by the fact that his house 
 at Chelsea was, under his auspices, in a few years transformed from a 
 rendezvous of loyal gentlemen “to a very centre of sedition, and the 
 acknowledged meeting-place of those who were plotting against Church 
 and King.” 2 
 
 The garden walls at the back of Paultons Square and Danvers 
 Street are, Beaver thinks, undoubtedly those which separated the gardens 
 of Danvers House from those of Chelsea House, otherwise Beaufort 
 House, the well-known residence of the Dukes of Beaufort in bygone days. 
 
 Danvers House appears to have been altered and largely rebuilt by 
 Sir John, from an earlier and far more modest erection. Beaver is unable 
 to trace the date of this amplification, but is satisfied that it was anterior 
 to the year 1615. According to the same high authority, the house 
 itself stood in what is now Paultons Square, 3 which he says was, before 
 thus being transformed, a nursery garden in the occupation of a Mr. 
 Shepherd; and in 1822, remains of the original house were discovered, 
 but were thought by Mr. Shepherd to be too unwieldy to be removed 
 
 1 History of Chelsea. * Quoted by Mr. Blunt in his Handbook of Chelsea. 
 
 3 The Rev. A. G. L’Estrange in his Village of Palaces , however, says that “ the exact 
 
 position of Danvers House is not known. 
 
 Z 
 
354 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 and were covered up again, so that they still remain beneath the ground 
 of the Square. 1 
 
 Still a little further westward, now to the north of King’s Road, 
 is a tiny and most curiously shaped little square known as Camera 
 Square, which was formed roughly about 1832, on ground forming 
 part of Chelsea Park, where the rearing of silkworms was once carried 
 on with a great deal of vigour and some success by Henry Barham, and 
 others whom he persuaded to join with him in the venture, in 1716. 
 The adjoining Elm Park Gardens formed part of the same estate, and 
 there still survives in the centre garden 2 a single mulberry-tree of those 
 planted nearly two hundred years since. 
 
 Camera Square is to-day anything you like to call it — except a square. 
 Its houses of tiny proportions ; its ground of unequal elevation ; its shape 
 which might defy the most exact logician to properly define, all concur 
 in giving it the appearance which a collocation of diminutive residences 
 might conceivably assume, if some weird power had jumbled them to- 
 gether with the vague intention of giving them the semblance of that 
 which the designation they bear would in no way seem to justify. 
 
 And yet I can identify one bygone celebrity — a theatrical one — 
 with Camera Square, for here, at No. 1, was living at the time of his 
 death, May 9, 1835, William Blanchard, an actor who, if never attain- 
 ing greatness, was what is known as “ a useful comedian ” ; making the 
 most, says Crofton Croker, of whatever part was assigned to him and 
 appearing, after a seventeen years’ noviciate in the provinces, with some 
 success as Bob Acres, at Covent Garden, in 1800. 
 
 Opposite to where Park Walk joins King’s Road is the last of the 
 Chelsea Squares, Gillray Square, close to the Moravian burial-ground. 
 It is like Carlyle Square, one that has been twice named, for it was 
 originally known as Strewan Square, and was only comparatively recently 
 rechristened, at the suggestion, I believe, of Sir Charles Dilke, in honour 
 of the famous caricaturist, James Gillray, whose father was for forty 
 years sexton to the neighbouring cemetery, and who himself was in all 
 
 1 Sir John Danvers died here in 1655, and Danvers House was afterwards purchased by 
 the Hon. T. Wharton (who became Marquis of Wharton in 1714), said to have been the 
 author of the well-known political song of “ Lillibullero,” which “ sung a king out of three 
 kingdoms,” and was a favourite with Uncle Toby. See Beaver for a long account of 
 Danvers and his house. 
 
 2 In this year (1906) its companion in the east garden had to be removed as being dead 
 and unsafe. 
 
GILLRAY SQUARE 355 
 
 probability born in Chelsea in 1757, when his father was an out-pensioner 
 of Chelsea Hospital . 1 
 
 Beyond this interesting association, Gillray Square would appear, like 
 so many, if not practically all, of the Chelsea Squares to have no history. 
 Most of them would seem to be too modern to interest the learned 
 antiquaries from Faulkner to L’Estrange, Beaver, and Blunt, who have 
 dealt with this portion of the town ; for it is a curious fact that not one 
 of these has given any certain indication either of the date at which the 
 squares were formed, or the origin of the names by which they were 
 first known. This may not be of great importance, but it would 
 certainly add to the interest of some of them ; while in one or two 
 instances it would create an interest which is at present non-existent. 
 
 1 Beaver’s Memorials of Chelsea. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE SQUARES OF THE CITY AND THE 
 
 EAST END 
 
 “The time to see the City squares aright 
 
 Is when their pavements are with rain-drops bright, 
 
 For then they weep together with the sky 
 For their old glories which have long passed by.” 
 
 Anon. 
 
 T HE squares of the City and the further East End of London, 
 which it will be convenient to deal with together in this chapter, 
 have so many various characteristics as almost to defy logical 
 definition. Some, like Gough Square, are hardly to be called 
 squares at all, and owe their sole celebrity to the genius who 
 once resided there ; others, like Devonshire and Northampton Squares, 
 have long passed from the high estate which they once held as the 
 residences of old and historic families ; others again are rather connected 
 by fortuitous circumstances with any notable associations, than by the 
 presence in them of well-known people either in the past or the present ; 
 while a large number are known only by name to those who have cared 
 to browse into this particular phase of topography. Some investigation 
 into their history will, however, show that several of them are of great 
 interest ; while others, which at first sight would seem to promise little 
 in this direction, will be found to yield somewhat unexpected results. 
 
 Gough Square, which I will notice first, because it is the most 
 westerly of these squares, being in fact but a little way within the City 
 boundary, is associated almost wholly with the towering figure of Dr 
 Johnson. It was here, in “an upper room fitted up like a counting- 
 house for the purpose,” that he compiled part of the famous dictionary. 
 Either the spelling of the name must have been at that time variable, or 
 the worthy lexicographer (as Miss Pinkerton would have termed him) 
 must have been in a hurry and written phonetically, for we find him 
 
 3S 6 
 
GOUGH SQUARE 357 
 
 addressing a letter to Miss Lucy Porter, on July 12, 1749, from 
 “ Goff Square ” ; while one to Dr. Birch, on May 12th of the following 
 year, is dated from “Gough Square.’’ Two years later, after the death 
 of his wife, he was still living here, for Boswell learnt from Francis 
 Barber that “ he was in great affliction. Mrs. Williams was then living 
 in his house, which was in Gough Square ; ” and here one of his constant 
 guests was that Dr. Bathurst whom, he once told Mrs. Piozzi, “ he 
 loved better than he ever loved any human creature.” It was from 
 Gough Square, on March 16, 1756, that, having been arrested for 
 debt, he wrote to Mr. Richardson, entreating his assistance, which the 
 latter promptly responded to by sending the six guineas required to 
 ensure freedom. It must have been about 1758, that Johnson left his 
 “garret in Gough Square,” as he once subsequently termed it, and took 
 chambers in Staple Inn. 
 
 The house which Johnson occupied still exists; it is No. 17, in the 
 north-west corner of the Square. Carlyle once made a pilgrimage to the 
 spot, and in his essay on Boswell’s Johnson thus recounts the circumstance : 
 “ We ourselves, not without labour and risk, lately discovered Gough 
 Square, between Fleet Street and Holborn (adjoining to Bolt Court and 
 Johnson’s Court) ; and, on the second day of search, the very house 
 there, wherein the English Dictionary was composed. It is the first or 
 corner house on the right hand, as you enter through the arched way 
 from the north-west. The actual occupant, an elderly, well-washed, 
 decent-looking man, invited us to enter, and courteously undertook to be 
 cicerone; though in his memory lay nothing but the foolishest jumble 
 and hallucination. It is a stout, old-fashioned, oak-balustraded house: 
 ‘ I have spent many a pound and penny on it since then,’ said the worthy 
 landlord : ‘ here, you see, this bedroom was the doctor’s study ; that 
 was the garden ’ (a plot of delved ground somewhat larger than a bed- 
 quilt) ‘ where he walked for exercise ; these three garret bedrooms ’ (where 
 his three copyists sat and wrote) ‘ were the place he kept his pupils in.’ 
 Tempus edax rerum ! yet ferax also, for our friend now added, with a 
 wistful look, which strove to seem merely historical, * I let it all in 
 lodgings to respectable gentlemen, by the quarter or the month ; it is all 
 one to me.’ ‘To me also,’ whispered the ghost of Samuel, as we went 
 pensively our ways.” 1 
 
 Carlyle in his note-book, quoted by Froude, where is the rough draft 
 as it were of this passage, adds that the worthy landlord seemed to be 
 under the impression that Johnson was a schoolmaster. There is not 
 now the difficulty in finding the house that Carlyle experienced, for it is 
 
 1 Critical and Miscellaneous Essays , vol. ii. 
 
3S» the SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 marked by a commemorative tablet, and those who go into it will be 
 reminded by Leigh Hunt not only of the genius loci himself, but of those 
 who used to visit him there, such as “ Cave, Dr. Hawkesworth, Miss 
 Carter, Mrs. Macaulay (two ladies who must have looked strangely at 
 one another)^ Mr. (afterwards Sir Joshua) Reynolds, Langton, Mrs. 
 Williams (a poor poetess whom he maintained in his house), Mr. Levett 
 (an apothecary on the same footing), Garrick, Lord Orrery, Lord South- 
 well, and Mrs. Gardiner;” to which I may add Mr. Burney, who had 
 an interview with Johnson here, and dined and drank tea with him ; on 
 which occasion after dinner, ‘Johnson proposed to Mr. Burney to go up 
 with him into his garret, which, having accepted, he there found about 
 five or six Greek folios, a deal writing-desk, and a chair and a half. 
 Johnson gave to his guest the entire seat, and tottered himself on one 
 with three legs and one arm.” 1 
 
 Johnson left Gough Square on March 23, 1759, on which day he 
 wrote to Mrs. Lucy Porter thus : “ I have this day moved my things, 
 and you are now to direct to me at Staple Inn, London,” and he adds : 
 “ I am going to publish a little story-book, which I will send you when 
 it is out.” With which notification Rasselas (which was written in Gough 
 Square) is indicated. Besides this classic, Johnson, while living here, 
 gave to the world his Vanity of Human Wishes ; the Rambler ; and his 
 Essays, which appeared in Hawkesworth’s Adventurer ; and it was here 
 that he drew up the proposals for his edition of Shakespeare, the belated 
 appearance of which Churchill satirised in some well-known lines ; while, 
 lastly, it was from Gough Square that he addressed his ever-memorable 
 letter to Lord Chesterfield. 
 
 Although Maitland described Gough Square as fashionable, the 
 names of those who made it so have not come down to us ; in fact 
 the only other resident who is known even to topographers, and who 
 can hardly be described as fashionable, is Hugh Kelly, who died here 
 in 1777, at the early age of thirty-eight. It was of Kelly and his inordinate 
 vanity that Johnson was used to affirm that he “ was so fond of dis- 
 playing on his sideboard the plate which he possessed, that he added 
 to it his spurs”; and on his once paying the Doctor a visit, and 
 after a short time getting up to take his leave, fearing a long call 
 might be troublesome, Johnson cut him short with, “ Not in the least, 
 sir; I had forgotten that you were in the room.” 2 It is characteristic 
 of Johnson’s benevolence that after Kelly’s death he wrote a prologue 
 for the benefit of his wife and children. 
 
 It was in Gough Square that Theodore Hook edited John Bull , 
 1 Literary Landmarks of London. 2 Boswell’s Life of fohnson , vol. viii. p. 41 1. 
 
SALISBURY SQUARE 359 
 
 the first number of which appeared in December 1820; his biographer, 
 Barham, imagines him “ seated in a small parlour, situated in a silent, 
 traffickless spot enough, . . . denominated Gough Square ; torn news- 
 papers, sheets of copy, ‘ slips,’ ‘ revises,’ fresh or rather foul from the 
 printers’ hand, with all the many desagremens of an editor’s room, 
 scattered in confusion around. . . Within a few hours the town 
 was ablaze, we are told, “ orders arrived from every quarter and the 
 office was beset with applicants,” and the success of the venture was 
 so phenomenal that by the sixth week of publication it had reached an 
 issue of ten thousand copies. 1 
 
 Close by Gough Square, on the other side of Fleet Street, is Salisbury 
 Square, or, as it was once called, Salisbury Court. It was, too, known 
 as Dorset Court, and from here, under this name, Locke dated the 
 dedication to his Essay on the Human Understanding ; while Shadwell, 
 who lived here, uses the names indiscriminately. 2 The Square seems 
 to have derived its title from Salisbury House, once a residence of 
 the Bishops of Salisbury ; which subsequently passed to Lord Dorset, 
 whence the alternative names, and in the Calendar of State Papers , under 
 date of March 25, 1611, the following entry refers to this change of 
 ownership : “ Confirmation to Richard, Earl of Dorset, of a grant of the 
 manor of Salisbury Court, together with Salisbury House, alias Sack- 
 ville Place, alias Dorset House, and divers messuages in St. Bride’s and 
 St. Dunst, *’s, on his compounding for defective titles.” The grant 
 thus obtained was effected through exchange ; Lord Dorset giving in 
 return for it a piece of land near Cricklade in Wilts, which, however, 
 according to Seth Ward, who was Bishop of Salisbury from 1667 to 
 1689, “was not good, nor did the value answer his (Dorset’s) promise.” 
 In any case the land in Wilts must have been of vast extent to equal in 
 value property in such a position as Salisbury Square. 
 
 An early and notable resident in the Square was Bulstrode White- 
 locke, who settled here in 1634. 3 On his return from France, where 
 he had been on an embassy, he gave up his house ; but he was not 
 infrequently in the Square subsequently, for the Swedish Ambassador 4 
 
 1 Barham’s Life of Hook , p 144. 2 London Past and Present. 
 
 3 In the Little London Directory for 1677, one John Conine is given as residing in 
 
 “ Salisbury Court.” 
 
 1 The French Ambassador was also at one time a resident, as appears by the following 
 amongst the State Papers: “In 1579 a serious affray took place in Fleet Street between 
 Mr. Edmund Wyndham and Lord Rich, when Wyndham, being nearly overpowered by his 
 assailant, found refuge in the house of the French Ambassador in Salisbury Court.” ( Romance 
 of London.) 
 
360 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 was lodging here in 1655, and Whitelocke was his guest on several 
 occasions. 
 
 As Dryden is mentioned in the Rate Books of St. Bride’s, Fleet 
 Street, as living in that parish from 1673 to 1682, “on the water-side 
 of the street, in or near Salisbury Square,” he may, perhaps, be also 
 numbered among past worthies who have inhabited the Square — in fact 
 Jesse states the fact as a certainty, and as Mr. Wheatley confirms it, 
 we can hardly desire better authority ; and it is interesting to find that 
 he must have here written both parts of his Absalom and Achitophel , the 
 first of which appeared in 1681, and the second in the following year; 
 while among his plays, The Assignation (1673), Amboyna (1675), Troilus 
 and Cressida (1679), The Spanish Friar (1681), Aurungzebe (1676), 
 All for Love, or The World Well Lost (1678), Limberham , or 'The Kind 
 Keeper (1680), and CEdipus (1679), were all produced during their 
 author’s residence in Salisbury Square ; while here, too, he found himself 
 brought upon the stage in the character of Bayes in Buckingham’s 
 Rehearsal , first published in 1672. 
 
 Shadwell the dramatist also, as we have seen, lived here, and the 
 proximity of the Duke’s Theatre in Dorset Gardens made the Square a 
 favourite residence for actors, among whom we find Betterton, Cave, 
 Harris, Sandford, and Underhill; while Lady Davenant, the widow of 
 Sir William, also resided here for a time. 
 
 Sir William Davenant, it will be remembered, finding the theatre 
 in Portugal Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, too small for his requirements, 
 shortly before his death began the building of a more commodious one 
 near the spot on which the Salisbury Court Theatre stood. This earlier 
 theatre had been erected about 1629, by Richard Gunnell and William 
 Blagrove, both actors, on the site of a granary or barn which stood 
 at “the lower end of the great back yard or court of Salisbury House.” 1 
 Howes mentions it as being the “ seventeenth stage or common play- 
 house which hath been new made within the space of threescore yeres 
 within London and the suburbs.” It was eventually destroyed by the 
 puritanical zeal of the sectaries, on March 24, 1649. The site, and 
 probably what remained, if anything did, of the theatre was purchased 
 three years later by William Beeston, an actor, who rebuilt and reopened 
 it in 1660; and Davenant’s company played here until the new theatre 
 
 1 Cunningham. This was the theatre indicated in the MS. book of Sir Henry Herbert, 
 Master of the Revels to Charles I., which Leigh Hunt quotes in his Town , and which runs 
 as follows : “ I committed Cromes, a broker in Long Lane, the 16th February 1634, to the 
 Marsalsay for lending a church robe with the name of Jesus upon it to the players in 
 Salisbury Court. 
 
SALISBURY SQUARE 361 
 
 in Lincoln’s Inn Fields was ready for them. During the Great Fire, 
 Salisbury Court Theatre shared the fate of the better part of the town. 
 
 Davenant’s new theatre was incomplete at the time of his decease, 
 which took place in April 1668, it not being opened till November 1671. 
 The new playhouse, said to have been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, 
 was inaugurated with Dryden’s Sir Martin Mar-all ; and was under the 
 management of Sir William’s widow, Lady Davenant, which is sufficient 
 to account for that lady’s residence in the neighbourhood. 1 
 
 The most notable inhabitant, if we except Dryden, of Salisbury Square 
 was, however, neither an actor nor a playwright, but the printer novelist 
 Samuel Richardson. “He took,” we are told, 2 “a range of old houses 
 eight in number, which he pulled down, and built a commodious and 
 extensive range of warehouses and printing-offices.” His actual dwelling- 
 place was No. 11, in the north-west corner of the Square. This was in 
 1755, and Mrs. Barbauld, in her Life of the novelist, written in 1802, says 
 that “ at present it is concealed by other houses from common observation. 
 The dwelling-house was neither so large or so airy as the one he had 
 quitted.” As Richardson is stated to have originally had his establishment 
 in the centre of the Square before he moved to the north-west corner, it is 
 probable that it is to the former — “ the one he had quitted ” — that Mrs. 
 Barbauld here refers. Mrs. Richardson seems not to have been pleased 
 with the house, and we hear of Richardson accusing her of perverseness in 
 not reconciling herself to her new home ; “ Every one is more pleased with 
 what I have done than my wife,” is an expression we find him making use 
 of. A lady writing to Mrs. Barbauld gives this reminiscence of the 
 author’s first house here : “ My first recollection of Richardson was in the 
 house in the centre of Salisbury Square, or Salisbury Court, as it was then 
 called ; and of being admitted as a playful child into his study, where I 
 have often seen Dr. Young and others. ... I recollect that he used to 
 drop in at my father’s, for we lived nearly opposite, late in the evening to 
 supper ; when, as he would say, he had worked as long as his eyes and 
 nerves would let him, and was come to relax with a little friendly and 
 domestic chat.” 
 
 Particular interest centres in the association of Richardson with 
 Salisbury Square, for it was here that he wrote Pamela , which appeared 
 in 1741 ; and although he had later, before removing finally to Parsons 
 Green in 1754, what was then a country house at Hammersmith, it is 
 probable that parts of Clarissa (1747-8) and Sir Charles Grandison were 
 also composed within the sound of Fleet Street. 
 
 1 From a view by Hollar, the theatre, with its handsome faqade, is shown as facing 
 the Thames. 2 Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes, vol. iv. p. 594. 
 
362 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 It was in Richardson’s printing-office, in 1757, that Goldsmith cor- 
 rected proofs for his employer and was admitted now and then even to 
 the parlour of Richardson himself, and there grimly smiled upon by its 
 chief literary ornament, great poet of the day, the author of Night 
 Thoughts } 
 
 But Richardson had greater visitors than Dr. Young; for Dr. Johnson 
 used frequently to come to the house in Salisbury Square, and once, 
 although they did not know each other, he met here the not less illus- 
 trious Hogarth. Boswell, with his usual minuteness, gives an account of 
 the rencontre thus : “ Hogarth came one day to see Richardson soon after 
 the execution of Dr. Cameron for having taken arms for the house of 
 Stuart in 1745-6; and being a warm partisan of George II. he observed 
 to Richardson, that certainly there must have been some very unfavourable 
 circumstances lately discovered in this particular case, which had induced 
 the King to approve of an execution for rebellion so long after the time 
 when it was committed, as this had the appearance of putting a man to 
 death in cold blood, and was very unlike his Majesty’s usual clemency. 
 While he was talking, he perceived a person standing at a window in the 
 room, shaking his head, and rolling himself about in a strange, ridiculous 
 manner. He concluded that he was an idiot, whom his relations had put 
 under the care of Richardson. To his great surprise, however, this figure 
 stalked forward to where he and Mr. Richardson were sitting, and all at 
 once took up the argument and burst out into an invective against 
 George II . . .he displayed such a power of eloquence, that Hogarth 
 looked at him with astonishment, and actually imagined that this idiot 
 had been at the moment inspired. Neither Hogarth nor Johnson were 
 made known to each other at this interview.” 2 
 
 In this connection it is interesting to find that Salisbury Square was 
 the scene of a brawl occasioned by differences of opinion over the earlier 
 Jacobite rising of 1715, about which time mobs used to perambulate the 
 town with the cry of “ High Church and Ormond,” demolishing those 
 houses known as “ Mug Houses,” where the supporters of King George 
 were wont to foregather. One of the chief of these “Mug Houses” 3 
 was situated in Salisbury Square, and a Jacobite mob led by one Bean 
 burst into the premises on July 20, 17 16 , i and broke everything they 
 could lay hands on ; the landlord, Robert Read, in defending his property 
 shot a weaver named Vaughan. For this he was tried for manslaughter 
 but acquitted, whereas five of the rioters were, after a trial at the Old 
 
 1 Forster’s Life of Goldsmith, vol. i. p. 78. 2 Boswell. 
 
 3 For an account of them, see Malcolm’s Customs of L.ondon durijigthe Eighteenth Century. 
 
 * See Timbs’s Clubs of London. 
 
SALISBURY SQUARE 363 
 
 Bailey, sentenced to be hanged at the end of Salisbury Square, in Fleet 
 Street. 1 An account of this incident is given in the Whig paper, the Weekly 
 Journal for July 28, 1716, and by a subsequent issue (for August 4, 
 1716), I find that the inhabitants of the Square delivered a petition to 
 the Court of Aldermen, setting forth the frequency of these riots, and 
 showing that Read’s action was justifiable under the circumstances; three 
 gentlemen of worth and reputation going bail for him, namely, Mr. 
 Johnson, a Justice of the Peace, and Colonels Coote and Westall. 
 
 Salisbury Square has several precedents for its present business aspect, 
 for here in 1732, died Mrs. Daffy, an inventor of an elixir which is 
 associated with her name ; and here, too, was the printing-office of Gillett, 
 which Timbs states was twice destroyed by fire, once in 1805 and once in 
 1810, but rebuilt on each occasion. It was here that, in 1814, 10,000 
 copies of the Memoirs of Mrs. Mary Anne Clarke , whose name is asso- 
 ciated with Colonel Wardle and the Duke of York, were burned, on her 
 having her debts paid and receiving an annuity of ^400 ; a holocaust which 
 occupied no less than three days. 
 
 Here also, at one corner of the Square, Messrs. Peacock, Bampton, & 
 Mansfield, who initiated the pocket-book of to-day by their “ Polite 
 Repository” in 1778, much patronised by royalty, had their headquarters; 
 and mention may be made of Powell’s Puppet Show, which once enlivened 
 Salisbury Square and is frequently mentioned in the earlier numbers of the 
 Spectator} 
 
 As we have seen, Salisbury Square derives its name from an aristocratic 
 house which was once situated on or about its site ; the names of two 
 other squares east of Temple Bar are also thus derived — Devonshire and 
 Northampton Squares ; the former is situated in Bishopsgate Street and 
 the latter in Clerkenwell. 
 
 Devonshire Square takes its name from the original town residence 3 of 
 the Earls of Devonshire, who appear to have lived here for more than half 
 a century, from about 1625. Two members of this illustrious family are 
 known to have died at their house here ; the second Earl of Devonshire, 
 on June 20, 1628, and the Countess of Devonshire — probably the wife 
 of the third Earl, and a daughter of the Earl of Salisbury — in November 
 
 1 Burton’s New View, 1730, quoted in London Past and Present. Walford says they 
 were hanged at Tyburn Turnpike. 
 
 2 Thornbury’s Turner , p. 1 1 3, and Curiosities of London, p. 16. The Square seems to 
 have been partly, at least, residential so late as 1831, in which year William Green, Esq., 
 a Trustee of the Law Life Assurance Company, was living there. 
 
 3 It occupied the whole of the north side of the Square. 
 
364 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 1689. Here she was on one occasion visited by the King, for in the 
 Additional MS. 10,116, quoted by Mr. Wheatley, we read, under date 
 November 1660: “The King, the Queen, Duke of York and the rest of 
 the royal family, supped at Fisher’s Folly at the old Countess of Devon- 
 shire’s,” and from a broadside ballad of the same year, it would appear 
 that Lady Monk was also entertained here by the hospitable hostess. 
 
 Hatton, writing of the Square in 1708, describes it as being “pretty 
 though very small,” and notes that here was formerly a seat of the 
 Devonshire family, thus proving that by that time all trace of it had dis- 
 appeared ; while Strype mentions the Countess of Devonshire just referred 
 to as living in “ an airy and creditable place — in great repute for her 
 hospitality.” 
 
 The house, which was originally built by one Jasper Fisher, a clerk in 
 Chancery, a Justice of the Peace and a member of the Goldsmiths’ Com- 
 pany, is described by Stow as being both large and beautiful, with its 
 pleasure-gardens and bowling-alleys. Indeed it would appear that Fisher 
 was afflicted by the mania for building a palace when his means did not 
 permit of more than an ordinary residence, and, immemor sepulcri , he 
 ruined himself in erecting what became known as Fisher’s Folly. It was 
 but an early type of a mania which has affected men in all ages ; but it 
 gave Fisher the immortality of a line in Hudibras , for, during the Civil 
 Wars, the house being used as a conventicle, Butler thus notices it : 
 
 “Friends 
 
 To serve for members, to our ends, 
 
 That represent no part o’ th’ nation, 
 
 But Fisher’s Folly Congregation .” 1 
 
 According to Pennant the house had a quick succession of occupiers, 
 and the antiquary mentions that it belonged to Mr. Cornwallis, then to Sir 
 Roger Manners, and later to Edward, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Lord 
 High Chamberlain in the reign of Elizabeth. The last was a great favourite 
 of the Queen, who visited him here, and to whom he is said to have pre- 
 sented the first pair of perfumed gloves ever brought into this country. 
 Gilbert Talbot, writing to Lord Shrewsbury in 1573, says: “My Lord 
 of Oxford is lately growne into great credite ; for the Queen’s Ma tie 
 delitithe more in his personage and his dancing and valientness than 
 any other. . . .” adding, “ If it were not for his fyckle hed, he would 
 pass any of them shortly ; ” 2 while another writer speaks of him as 
 
 1 Hudibras , Part III. Canto 2. 
 
 2 Illustrations to British History. 
 
DEVONSHIRE SQUARE 365 
 
 being “ a man in minde and body absolutely accomplished with honourable 
 endowments.” 1 
 
 Fisher’s Folly, as we may now call Devonshire House, in the reign 
 of James I. came into the hands of the Campbells and subsequently of 
 the Hamiltons, and in connection with the former family, the follow- 
 ing extract 2 from the Calendars of the East India Company , under date 
 January io, 1 6 1 8, shows that there was a design on foot to dispose of it 
 at that time : “ The Lord of Argyle’s house, called Fisher’s Folly, offered 
 to the East India Company — held unfit for their service.” That it must 
 have changed hands within the next ten years is proved by the fact that 
 the body of the Marquis of Hamilton, who died “ of a pestilent fever,” 
 in March 1625, was carried “with much company and torchlight to 
 Fisher’s Folly, his house without Bishopsgate.” 3 The house passed into 
 the hands of the Devonshire family shortly after this. 
 
 After the house had been given up by the Devonshire family it was 
 used, as we have seen, as a conventicle, and Pepys on March 7, 1667, 
 mentions coming here “to a burial of a kinsman of Sir R. Viner’s,” and 
 there receiving a ring; but in 1670, on the passing of the “Act for the 
 Suppression of Conventicles,” it was sequestrated, and subsequently an 
 order was made that it should be “ used any Lord’s Day for the celebra- 
 tion of divine worship by approved orthodox ministers appointed by the 
 Bishop of London.” It must be assumed, I think, that these orders 
 referred to the chapel of Devonshire House only, although by the word- 
 ing it might be inferred that the whole mansion underwent this strange 
 metamorphosis. It is a curious fact that down to the year 1870, it 
 was used as a Baptist Chapel, a new chapel having been erected in 1829 ; 
 but in that year the premises were acquired by the Metropolitan Railway 
 Company. 
 
 From 1670 to 1680, the Quakers are said to have had a meeting- 
 house at “ Devonshire House,” but it is probable that this term 
 was used to denote Devonshire Square generally, and not merely the 
 noble mansion from which it took its name ; while a commercial under- 
 taking is associated with this once stately fabric, in the Penny Post in- 
 augurated by Mr. Robert Murray and Mr. Dockra in 1680, the office 
 of which concern was opened here. Cunningham draws on a manuscript 
 of Aubrey’s preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, and originally quoted 
 by Malone, for this information. There it is stated that this invention, 
 “a most ingenious and useful project,” was set up on our Lady Day, 
 Anno Domini 1680; that it was seized on by the Duke of York two 
 
 1 Harl. MS. 4189. 2 Quoted in Lottdon Past and Present. 
 
 3 Calendar of State Papers. 
 
366 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 years later, and that those “ depositing their goods and merchandise were 
 furnished with Bills of Current Credit, at two-thirds or three-fourths of 
 the value of the said goods.” We learn from Luttrell, however, that in 
 1699 “several articles were exhibited against Mr. Dockra,” in connec- 
 tion with the scheme, and in the following year the Lords of the Treasury 
 removed him from his post on the score of mismanagement. 
 
 In Bowles’s Several Prospects of Pub lick Buildings in London , published in 
 1724, an engraving of Devonshire Square is given, by which we see that 
 the Square was paved and surrounded by trees planted close to the houses, 
 while the latter communicated directly with this central court by means 
 of steps from the front doors. There are no railings in the Square, and 
 the entrances to it are under several of the houses, which thus form 
 archways. The Square is indeed more like one of the courtyards of 
 the Temple or Gray’s Inn, than the more elaborate enclosures we are 
 accustomed to associate with the name. 
 
 In a Directory for 1798, I find the names of Sir Francis Baring, a 
 Director of the East India Company, and Chandos Pole, Esq., a Governor 
 of the Bank of England, given as residents in Devonshire Square at 
 that time. 
 
 Material for even the meagrest account of the City squares is, in 
 most instances, sadly to seek; the squares in that region are rather the 
 outcome of older establishments than the fruit of any preconceived 
 design, and thus what history they once possessed is swallowed up, as 
 in the cases of Salisbury and Devonshire Squares, by the records of the 
 great houses to which they owe their being ; while in other cases their 
 formation has been the result of fortuitous circumstances, and they seem 
 to have been termed squares because that word approximated more nearly to 
 their shape and formation than any other. Thus Northampton Square 
 in Clerkenwell, takes its name from Northampton House, a former 
 residence of the Marquis of Northampton, on the site of the garden of 
 which mansion it was formed ; while Bridgewater Square in the Barbican, 
 was also formed on the site of the mansion and gardens once belonging to 
 the Earl of Bridgewater, which, says Strype, “ is neatly enclosed with 
 palisado pales, and set round with trees, which renders the place very 
 delightful.” But when was the former of these squares made? Who 
 was responsible for its genesis ? and above all, has any one worthy of 
 record dwelt within its calm precincts? To these questions there is no 
 reply, for there appears to have been no record kept ; while of the latter, 
 our information is of the scantiest. Thus all I can glean of Bridgewater 
 
MYDDELTON SQUARE 367 
 
 House is that it was destroyed by fire in April 1687, and that the two 
 sons of the third Earl perished at the time. 1 
 
 Myddelton Square, which is not far from Northampton Square, may 
 be disposed of in a few words. Its chief interest centres in the fact that 
 it takes its name from Sir Hugh Myddelton, on account of its being near 
 the New River, with the inception of which scheme his name is indis- 
 solubly connected. It is of modern growth, having been formed so 
 comparatively recently as 1821, and then it was only built piecemeal, as in 
 that year the west side was alone erected, on ground then known as 
 Mantell’s Field. This side of the Square was then christened Myddelton 
 Terrace, and it was only when the other sides were finished, about 1827, 
 that it was dignified by the title of “ square.” Two celebrities are connected 
 with it, for at No. 4, lived for a time Edward Irving, 2 and here in June 
 1824, Carlyle paid him a visit of some weeks’ duration. The sage has 
 left quite a little vignette, and what an accurate and careful one, of the 
 Square. “Irving,” he writes, “lived in Myddelton Terrace, hodie 
 Myddelton Square, Islington, No. 4. It was a new place : houses bright 
 and smart, but inwardly bad, as usual. Only one side of the new square 
 was built — the western side — which has its back towards Battle Bridge 
 region. Irving’s house was fourth from the northern end of that, which 
 of course had its left hand on the New Road. The place was airy, not 
 uncheerful. Our chief prospect from the front was a good space of green 
 ground, and in it, on the hither side of it, the big open reservoir of 
 Myddelton’s ‘ New River.’ ” 
 
 Next door to Irving lived Thomas Dibdin, the song-writer and 
 dramatist He too has left a picture of the place in his day, and as a 
 companion to Carlyle’s description it may be given. “ The house in which 
 I write this,” he says, “ is situated in a spacious square, the centre of which 
 is ornamented by a superb specimen of architecture in the form of a 
 handsome new church. 3 The site was, not five years since, an immense 
 field where people used to be stopped and robbed on their return in the 
 evening from Sadler’s Wells, and the ground floor of the parlour where 
 I sit was, as nearly as possible, the very spot where my wife and I fell over 
 
 1 The sites of the squares in this district were at one time quite rural, and it is in 
 reference to this that in a note to Evelyn’s Life of Mrs. Godolphin , Bishop Wilberforce 
 writes : “ Clerkenwell has long since ceased to be a suburb of great beauty and a fashion- 
 able neighbourhood, but in the seventeenth century it was both ... it possessed the 
 mansions of the Earls of Aylesbury, Berkeley, and Northampton, the Duke of Newcastle, 
 the Challoner family, &c. Bishop Burnet and many others attached to the court re- 
 sided here.” 
 
 2 Carlyle's Reminiscences. 3 This church was dedicated to St. Mark. 
 
368 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 a recumbent cow on our way home in a thunderstorm, and only regained 
 the path we had strayed from in the dark, by the timely aid of a flash of 
 lightning.” 1 
 
 Pinks mentions two other one-time residents here — the Rev. Jabez 
 Bunting, D.D. who lived at No. 30, and died there on June 16, 1858, 
 aged seventy-nine. He was an eminent Wesleyan minister, and was 
 Senior Secretary of the Missionary Society in 1833, and President of 
 the Theological Institute from 1834 till his death. He it was who 
 established the principle of associating laymen with the clergy in the 
 management of the Wesleyan Church; and at No. 29 2 lived, in 1865, the 
 Rev. Robert Maguire, a clever preacher of his day, who had been 
 preceded in his occupancy of the house by Stanley Lees Gifford, LL.D., 
 a barrister and journalist, who left here in 1857, and died at Folkestone 
 in the following year. He was the father of the Earl of Halsbury, 
 late Lord Chancellor of England. 
 
 St. Mark’s Church in this Square is described by Pinks as “ mixed 
 Gothic.” It was erected in 1827, from designs by W. C. Mylne, C.E., 
 and consecrated on January 1, 1828, by Howley, then Bishop of London. 
 It cost about ^16,000. 3 
 
 Of another City square, that known as Wellclose Square, the in- 
 formation is not considerable, but is something more in importance than 
 what has survived with regard to Northampton and Bridgewater Squares. 
 Wellclose Square is situated in George Street, Whitechapel. Noor- 
 thouck thus describes it : “ The south-east corner of Rosemary Lane 
 leads to Wellclose Square, situated between Knock Fergus and Ratcliff 
 Highway, and which is by some called Marine Square, from the number 
 of sea-officers who live there. It is a neat square of no great extent ; 
 its principal ornament is the Danish Church, situated in the centre, in 
 the midst of a churchyard well planted with trees, and surrounded by 
 a handsome wall adorned at equal distances with iron rails.” 4 This 
 church stood here, in the central garden, from 1696 till 1869, when it was 
 demolished, and on its site the Seamen’s Children Day Schools were erected 
 at a cost of £50, 000, 5 and opened in 1870, by the Prince and Princess of 
 Wales. The old Danish Church, which was later used as a Seamen’s 
 Church and had “ Bo’son Smith ” as its minister, is thus somewhat 
 
 1 Autobiography, 1826, quoted by Mr. Wheatley. 
 
 2 At No. 39 is to-day St. Katherine’s Convent School; and at No. 65 the Claremont 
 Women’s Hostel. 
 
 s History of Clerkenwell, p. 395. 4 History of London. 
 
 8 London Past a 7 id Present. 
 
WELLCLOSE SQUARE 369 
 
 minutely described by Noorthouck ; and as it is a thing of the past, 
 it will be interesting to transcribe the old topographer’s words : — 
 
 “ This church is a commodious and elegant structure,” he writes, 
 “ but though the architect appears to have understood ornaments, he 
 has not been too lavish in the use of them. The edifice consists of a 
 tall and handsome body, with a tower and turret. The body is 
 divided by the projection of the middle part, into a fore front in the 
 centre, and two smaller : at the west end is the tower, and at the east 
 it swells into the sweep of the circle ; the corners of the building are 
 faced with rustic. The windows, which are large and well propor- 
 tioned, are cased with stone with a cherub’s head at the top of the 
 arch, and the roof is concealed by a blocking course. The tower has 
 a diminution in the upper stage, which has on each side a pediment, 
 and is covered by a dome, from which rises an elegant turret supported 
 by composite columns.” With which obscure description it is to be 
 hoped eighteenth-century readers, as twentieth-century inquirers perforce 
 have to be, were satisfied and enlightened. 
 
 The church was originally erected by Caius Gabriel Cibber, the 
 son of the King of Denmark’s cabinetmaker, and father of the well- 
 known Colley Cibber, at the expense of Christian V. of Denmark, in 
 1696, as an inscription over the entrance stated. It was intended for 
 the use of such Danish merchants and seamen as might be visiting 
 London. In 1746, the church was rebuilt, and when Christian VII. 
 of Denmark was in this country in 1768, he attended service here. 
 The pulpit had four sand-glasses in a brass frame for the regulation 
 of the length of the sermon. On April 30, 1845, t ^ le church was 
 converted to the use of the British and Foreign Sailors’ Church. In 
 the vaults were the tombs of Caius and Colley Cibber ; and in the church 
 itself a mural tablet to the memory of Jane Colley, the wife of the 
 former and mother of the latter. 
 
 To return to the Square itself, this was, according to Hatton, 
 “very near a geometrical square, whose area is about 2f- acres.” Mait- 
 land’s account is much more specific and, as he mentions several old 
 residents, it will be worth transcribing what he writes concerning it. 
 “ It beginneth at the north-east end of Rosemary Lane, at the house 
 of Thomas Horne,” he says, “and from thence southward along the 
 place called the Salt Petre Bank, to the south-east corner of East 
 Smithfield, and is thirty-and-six pole, little more or less. From thence 
 eastward, along the King’s Highway, to a watch-house standing near the 
 sign of the Adam and Eve, where one Bezar now liveth, is thirty-and-six 
 pole, little more or less. From thence northward it is bounded by a 
 
 2 A 
 
370 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 ditch, which parts the said ground and the garden of Samuel Hurley, 
 and goeth to the sign of the Windmill and Key, now (1739) in the 
 possession of one Mr. Baker, up to the King’s Highway, being the 
 upper way to Ratcliff, is eight-and-thirty pole, little more or less. From 
 thence westward by the said Highway, to the house of the aforesaid 
 Thomas Horner, at the corner of Rosemary Lane, is forty-and-three 
 pole, little more or less.” 1 By the measurements carefully given by 
 Maitland, we see that, although it is not actually a square, it is as nearly 
 one as any we meet with in London. 
 
 Wellclose Square is connected with at least two men who have left a 
 more or less enduring mark, in widely different directions, on the history 
 of their time ; one of them was the notorious Dr. Dodd, who was chaplain 
 to the first Magdalen Chapel set up in this country, and situated in 
 Wellclose Square. Dodd, who it will be remembered was once a 
 chaplain to George III., but lost the appointment by an indiscreet bribe to 
 Lady Bathurst for preferment, and eventually forged the name of his 
 pupil, Lord Chesterfield, for a large amount and was executed notwith- 
 standing the most strenuous efforts to obtain his pardon, 2 on June 27, 
 1 7 7 7 , was one °f the promoters of the Magdalen Hospital (another being 
 the Jonas Hanway whom I have noticed as once living in Red Lion 
 Square), and preached a sermon in support of it on January 27, 1760, at 
 which Prince Edward, Horace Walpole, and a fashionable congregation 
 were present. “ Dr. Dodd, the unfortunate, preached entirely in the 
 French style, and very eloquently and touchingly,” writes Walpole to 
 Montagu. Five years before he met his fate at Tyburn, Dodd had, 
 by a singular coincidence, published a pamphlet on “The Frequency 
 of Capital Punishment inconsistent with Justice, Sound Policy, and 
 Religion.” 
 
 The other notability associated with the Square was Thomas Day, the 
 author of Sandford and Merton , who was born at No. 36, on June 22, 
 1748. It is probable that, with the exception of Robinson Crusoe , no other 
 “ boys’ book,” as it may termed, has obtained such a celebrity as this work. 
 It is in the nature of a classic, and, like so many classics, everybody 
 knows its name but nobody reads its pages ; but the egregious Mr. Barlow 
 is as sure of immortality as Dominie Sampson. 
 
 Thomas Day was educated at Charterhouse, Corpus Christi, Oxford, 
 and the Middle Temple, and was admitted to the Bar in 1775- Having 
 independent means he did not practise, but applied himself to the study 
 
 1 Maitland, History of London, book ii. p. 495. 
 
 2 Dr. Johnson drew up a petition for him, and wrote the sermon on The Convicfs 
 Address to his Unhappy Brethren , which Dr. Dodd preached in Newgate Chapel. 
 
PRINCE’S SQUARE 371 
 
 of philosophy and literature, and having married and settled himself 
 (1781) at Anningsley in Surrey (he had also purchased the estate ofVachery, 
 near Crawley, from Lord Onslow), he produced the work (1783-89) 
 which is far better known by name than its author. Whether the book 
 was the cause or no, is not recorded, but he had hardly finished it before 
 he died (on September 28, 1789), and lies buried in Wargrave Church, 
 where a monument still records his “talents and virtues”; but though 
 he is there spoken of as a “ friend of mankind,” we remember his answer, 
 when asked the cause of choosing so retired a spot to live in ; that it 
 was to “ exclude himself from the vanity, vice, and deceptive character of 
 man,” and we cannot also forget that he wrote Sandford and Merton and 
 Little Jack } 
 
 In a Directory for 1797, one of the Governors of the Phoenix Fire 
 Office, Mr. Andrew Kines, is stated to be living at No. 30 Wellclose 
 Square ; and W. B. Ward, who invented the medical apparatus known as 
 the Wardian Case, once practised here. The Square has also had its 
 theatre, for here Palmer, an unfortunate actor who was once engaged 
 by Garrick, but laughed at by Foote, built and opened the Royalty 
 Theatre in 1787 , but was soon compelled by the patentees to close it. 1 2 
 
 Near Wellclose Square, in an easterly direction, is Prince’s Square, 
 abutting on Ratcliff Highway, and, like Wellclose Square, formerly in- 
 habited, to use Noorthouck’s words, “ by the families of gentlemen who 
 belong to the sea.” The same authority calls it “ a neat place,” and gives 
 a description of the Swedish Protestant Church, which stands within it, 
 which he terms its chief ornament. The description is of some length, 
 and will hardly be found illuminating, so I will spare the reader a repeti- 
 tion of it. But besides what Noorthouck considered the chief interest of 
 the church, it acquired since the day he wrote an added lustre, for here, in 
 1772, was interred the body of the remarkable Swedenborg whom Emerson 
 chose as the type of the mystic in his Representative Men. About the year 
 1816, we are told, a certain Swedish captain, whose sense of the fitness of 
 things outweighed his reverence for the remains of his great countryman, 
 abstracted the cranium of Swedenborg, with the intention, we may at least 
 hope, of solemnly re-interring it in his own land ; this, however, was not 
 
 1 An account of Day will be found in Mr. Fyvie’s Some Literary Eccentrics. 
 
 2 A few old houses remain in the Square amid modern warehouses, &c. ; and No. 43 has a 
 good Adam over-doorway, while 'on Nos. 20 and 21 are some curious designs of Cupids, 
 emblematical of arts and industries, let into the wall. The old Court House, now disused, is 
 on the south side ; and a small dilapidated tenement, once known as “ Dublin Castle,” stands 
 at the south side of the central garden. 
 
372 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 carried out, and on the death of this Swedish captain the abstracted 
 portion of Swedenborg’s anatomy was reverently returned to its original 
 resting-place. In the vestry are a few portraits, including one of Dr 
 Serenius, Bishop of Stregnas ; while in the church is a tablet to the memory 
 of Swedenborg. 
 
 Two squares situated in the Clerkenwell district demand notice, not 
 so much for their importance as such, as from the interesting associations 
 connected with the spots on which they stand ; these are Charterhouse 
 Square and St. John’s Square. The former, which Howell in his 
 Londinopolis terms merely “ a yard,” contained, according to the same 
 authority, “ many handsome palaces,” among them being Rutland House, 
 and one “where the Venetian Ambassadors were used to lodge.” 
 
 That the yard or square was known as such from an early period is 
 proved by the fact that Howell, whose work appeared in 1657, speaks of 
 it as having then “ lately been conveniently railed, and made more neat and 
 comely.” It, of course, took its name from the neighbouring Charterhouse, 
 which owed its being to Thomas Sutton in 1611, and was named from a 
 monastery of Carthusians dating from 1371. Although practically abut- 
 ting on the Square, the Charterhouse has so long and important a history 
 that it cannot be dealt with here ; and I must confine myself to a few 
 words about the Square alone. An important print of it is given in Stow’s 
 Survey, by which we can see that the houses surrounding it are uniform 
 in elevation and in most cases important in size. The central garden is 
 there shown planted round with trees, and having a double row, in the 
 shape of a St. Andrew’s cross, from the four corners and intersecting at 
 the centre ; while on the east side only are trees planted, being placed just 
 beyond the pavement in front of the houses, with two posts between each. 
 
 The Square has three entrances, known as Carthusian Street, Charter- 
 house Street, and Charterhouse Lane, while there were once gate-houses to 
 the first and last of these thoroughfares ; and in the latter an iron gate- 
 way still remains. The ground on which the Square stands is supposed 
 to have been part of the burial-ground attached to the Charterhouse. 
 Among the “ palaces,” as Howell terms them, of the Square was that 
 of the Lord Roos, who ’verted to the Church of Rome and disposed 
 of his property and effects in order to enter it with becoming liberality. 
 An entry in the Calendar of State Papers, under date August 18, 1617, 1 
 records that “ Lord Roos has sold his house in Charterhouse Yard, pawned 
 his plate and jewels, and gone off secretly with his Spanish servant, Don 
 Diego.” 
 
 1 Quoted in London Past and Present. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
CHARTERHOUSE SQUARE 373 
 
 But a more important mansion seems to have been Rutland House, 
 the old town house of the Earls of Rutland, the site of which is comme- 
 morated by the present Rutland Place. Like so many old houses of the 
 nobility in the east of London — Salisbury House is another instance — this 
 mansion was subsequently converted to various uses before its demolition ; 
 thus we find Sir William Davenant setting up a playhouse at the rear of 
 Rutland House, probably in an outbuilding to which the mansion itself 
 formed an imposing entrance. This was in 1656, and this innovation to 
 the usual puritanical habit of the Cromwellian period appears to have been 
 brought about through the instrumentality of Bulstrode Whitelocke, who 
 obtained the Protector’s consent to a performance of a “Declamation and 
 Musick after the Manner of the Ancients,” under which solemn and 
 portentous-sounding title it is probable that plays of lighter character 
 were introduced to the public. The first performance, given on Septem- 
 ber 3, was, however, seemingly in character with “ the manners of the 
 ancients,” for it was, as its title runs, “The Siege of Rhodes made a 
 Representation by the Art of Prospective in Scenes, and the Story sung in 
 Recitative Musick, at the Back Part of Rutland House, &c.” The scenes 
 were executed by John Webb, a nephew and executor of Inigo Jones, whose 
 niece (his own first cousin) he had married. Walpole, in the slight sketch 
 he gives of Webb, makes no notice of this particular phase of his work. 
 
 The other worthies connected with the Square seem strangely placed 
 by the side of Davenant and his merry crew ; the most illustrious was 
 “good Richard Baxter,” who, towards the close of the year 1686, took a 
 house here ; he had indeed but just come out of prison, for students of 
 his life will remember that in the May of the previous year he had been 
 tried before the notorious Judge Jeffreys, on a charge of libel. The re- 
 mainder of Baxter’s life was spent in Charterhouse Square, and here he 
 died on December 8, 1691, being buried in Christ Church, Newgate Street. 1 
 Pink states that the house he formerly occupied was one of those which 
 were pulled down in 1 864, to make room for the Metropolitan Meat Market 
 and the railway extension ; its position was on the east side of Charter- 
 house Lane, near the Charterhouse itself. Another famous divine, John 
 Howe, also lived in Charterhouse Square, but whether his death, which 
 occurred on April 2, 1705, took place here is not recorded. 2 Howe, it 
 will be remembered, was domestic chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and settled 
 in London in 1675, in which year it is probable that he took up his residence 
 here. The third and last ecclesiastical worthy I am able to identify with the 
 
 1 History of Clerkenwell. 
 
 2 In London Past and Present his death is stated to have occurred here on December 8, 
 1691 ; but this is an error of date, as that day saw the decease of Baxter and not of Howe. 
 
374 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Square is William Wollaston, the author of Religion of Nature Delineated, 
 who resided here for no less than thirty years, during which time he is said 
 never to have spent a night away from his house. Clark, who wrote a 
 memoir of Wollaston, prefixed to his principal work, states that he died in 
 Charterhouse Square on October 29, 1724. 
 
 Hughson in his Walks through London , writing in 1817, mentions that 
 the Square 1 has been the residence — as we have seen for ourselves — of 
 several eminent persons, “ being considered,” he adds, “ rather as a retired 
 place, on account of the trees, &c.,” and he mentions that at No. 40, on 
 the south side, was “ The London Infirmary for the Eye,” which had been 
 founded in 1809. To-day I am only able to note that the Merchant 
 Taylors School is within its precincts. 
 
 St. John’s Square lies north of the Clerkenwell Road and west of 
 St. John’s Road, rather to the north-west of Charterhouse Square. In the 
 oldest maps it is called St. Jone’s Court, and although Hatton in his New 
 Remarks on London , 1708, calls it “a spacious pleasant place,” its chief 
 interest, as in the case of Charterhouse Square, centres in the historical 
 importance of its site rather than in itself as a square, for it occupies part 
 of the ground once covered by the buildings of the Priory of the Order of 
 St. John of Jerusalem. The Priory, of which St. John’s Gate at the south 
 entrance of the Square is the only remaining vestige, was one of great 
 importance in its day, and passed, like so many other monastic establish- 
 ments in this country, through many vicissitudes. It is not within the 
 scheme of this book to enter minutely into its history, 2 but as its courtyard 
 was the precursor of the present square, this must at least be outlined for 
 more curious inquirers to fill in with the wealth of material at hand for 
 that purpose. 
 
 It would appear that the Priory of St. John at Clerkenwell was founded 
 about the year 1100 by John Briset, one of the Norman Barons, together 
 with Muriel his wife ; but it was not till 1324, that its endowment with the 
 revenues of the Knights-Templars, between whom and the Knights of St. 
 John a long rivalry had existed, resulting in an open conflict in Palestine, 
 made it both famous and formidable. Jesse tells us that the Pope and 
 other Sovereigns of Europe gave to the victors in the struggle nearly the 
 
 1 Allen mentions that during the shock of earthquake felt on February 8, I 75 °> * n 
 London, a woman was thrown from her bed in Charterhouse Square and had her arm 
 broken. {History of London , vol. ii. p. 48.) 
 
 2 For which see Pinks’s History of Clerkenwell, &c., and particularly the Guide to the 
 Remains of the Ancient Priory and the Present Church of St. fohn at Clerkenwell , by the 
 Rev. Thomas W. Wood, Rector, and H. W. Fincham, Esq., Churchwarden, 1903. 
 
ST. JOHN’S SQUARE 375 
 
 whole of the property of the vanquished, included in which was the Temple, 
 which the Knights of St. John subsequently leased to the students of law 
 of that period. The order suffered severely during Wat Tyler’s rebellion, 
 and Stow specifies some of their more important losses, amongst which was 
 the Priory of St. John itself ; while the prior, Sir Robert Hales, fell a victim 
 to the fury of the rabble. 
 
 The Priory was gradually rebuilt, however, and the last prior but one, 
 Thomas Docwra, in 1504, erected the historic gateway which was subse- 
 quently to be connected with Sir Roger Wilbraham in 1604, and with 
 Dr. Johnson and Edward Cave at a later date, when the first number of 
 the Gentleman' s Magazine was issued in 1731. Here tradition has it that 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, the learned translator of Epictetus, lodged when 
 she was writing her articles, signed “Eliza,” for the Gentleman' s Magazine ; 
 here Johnson met Savage for the first time, and was made glad, as a well- 
 known ancedote tells us, by Harte’s commendation of his works ; here 
 Garrick made his debut as an actor in the very year (1737) in which John- 
 son first worked for Cave. In 1813 the gate was used as the parish watch- 
 house, and subsequently did duty as a tavern, during which period the 
 inception of the “Urban Club,” and the “Sette of Odd Volumes,” took 
 place within its walls. Although threatened by destruction, the gateway 
 was, in 1845, saved through the exertions of Mr. W. P Griffith, F.S.A., 1 
 whose name deserves to be commemorated by all who are interested in the 
 preservation of ancient and historic landmarks, and it is pleasant to know 
 that about twenty-five years later it was purchased by Sir Edward Lech- 
 mere for the resuscitated Order of St. John of Jerusalem, whose meetings 
 are held in the fabric identified with some of the earlier generations of 
 this notable association. 
 
 So far as the order is identified with the present Square, it would appear 
 that the houses of its knights were situated on the east and west sides, 2 taking 
 the present Square to be almost identical with the courtyard of the Priory, 
 while the chief entrance and guests’ rooms were on the south side, and the 
 church and prior’s lodgings on the north, where Jerusalem Passage now 
 runs. In 1878 certain alterations in the adjacent streets completely obliter- 
 ated the original character of the Square which, up to that date, had 
 practically retained many of the characteristics of its earlier formation. 
 
 1 London Past and Present. 
 
 2 Pinks states that the vaults beneath No. 19 abutted on the crypt formerly under the nave 
 of the chapel, on the north side next to Jerusalem Passage. The houses, he further states, 
 were built upon the foundations of the rubble wall that once enclosed the Priory court. 
 The earliest known view of the Priory is that by Hollar, in Dugdale’s Monasticon , dated 
 1661 ; and in Hone’s Everyday Book is a woodcut of “ St. John’s, Clerkenwell, 1508,” but this 
 has been proved not to be authentic. 
 
376 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Apart from the literary halo shed around the old gateway itself, I 
 am able to identify at least one illustrious inhabitant with St. John’s 
 Square, for here died, on March 17, 1715, in a house on the west side, 
 Gilbert Burnet, the historian of the Reformation, and delightful annalist 
 of His Own Times , in which work, speaking of the Sacheverell Riots, he 
 says : “ There happened to be a meeting-house near me, out of which 
 they drew everything that was in it and burned it before the door of the 
 house.” In the alterations of 1887, Burnet’s one-time residence was de- 
 stroyed. Pinks, whose History of Clerkenwell is the great authority for this 
 part of London, gives some interesting particulars of the bishop’s old house 
 (No. 44, formerly No. 36 St. John’s Square). It was originally a large 
 mansion of two stories, lighted by fourteen square-headed windows, and its 
 forecourt was formerly a garden, but this was built upon with shops in 
 1859. The grand entrance, now a bricked passage to Ledbury Place, 1 was 
 approached by steps, and had a portico consisting of two Tuscan columns 
 supporting a moulded entablature. The interior contained rooms in which 
 were very handsome mantelpieces of various designs, with ornamentation 
 in bold relief ; and a very curious fire-back representing Charles I. over- 
 coming the Spirit of Faction (a curiously unlucky prophecy), with the 
 date 1644, was in one of the grates. Pinks mentions, too, and gives an 
 illustration of, a very elaborate leaden cistern ornamented with emblematical 
 figures, and the date of its casting, 1682, and the initials “ Q. B. M.,” which 
 are thought to be those of an earlier occupier of the house than Burnet. 
 Another cistern, dated 1721, with the initial “ G.” surmounted by a mitre, 
 Pinks opines to have been recast from an earlier one, by a successor of the 
 bishop, as a memorial of that illustrious man. 
 
 Burnet’s house was subsequently occupied by Dr. Joseph Towers, who 
 failing as a bookseller turned Dissenting minister, and was once, it will be 
 remembered, arrested for his association with a society of which Sheridan 
 and Erskine were members with impunity. Towers died in the Square on 
 May 20, 1799. 
 
 St. John’s Square appears to have been largely connected with the 
 printing business, for besides Cave and Towers, the sons of the Rev. 
 Adam Clarke, whose Commentary on the Bible is still a “heavy” work 
 on booksellers’ hands, had their printing-office here at No. 45, on the 
 third floor, where their learned father frequently lodged, “ in,” as Pinks 
 says, “a suitably furnished room reserved for his especial use;” while the 
 
 1 In Pinks’s Clerkenwell , second edition of 1881, there is a view of the house showing 
 this passage ; but the premises are there shown as being rather the remains of what 
 was once a fine mansion than a fine mansion itself ; in the Builder , more recently, there 
 was an account of the house. 
 
ST. JOHN’S SQUARE 377 
 
 printing works of Messrs. Gilbert & Rivington were started here in 1757 ; 
 and at the south-west corner of Jerusalem Passage was the printing-office 
 of Mr. Dove, famous as the institutor of those Dove s Classics which 
 anticipated so many more ambitious, but not always more successful, 
 reprints. The north-west side of the Square was formerly known as 
 North’s Court, from its builder, a relation of Lord Keeper North ; and 
 Sir John North resided here in 1677 and 1680. 
 
 Among other residents in the Square, I may mention that Dr. 
 William Goddard who obtained from the Government, permission to 
 sell remedies during the Great Plague. He is not to be confounded 
 with Dr. Jonathan Goddard, who “filled” Pepys with “talk, in defence 
 of his and his fellow-physicians’ going out of town in the Plague time ; 
 saying that their particular patients had gone out of town, and they left 
 at liberty.” 
 
 Among the more fashionable of past residents in St. John’s Square 
 was numbered the first Earl of Carlisle (of the Howard branch) who 
 was living here in 1661. A great partisan of the monarchy, he was sent 
 as Ambassador Extraordinary to invest Charles XI. of Sweden with 
 the Garter in 1668, and was also at various times Ambassador in 
 Denmark and in Russia. In this latter Embassy he did not meet with 
 great success, the Czar complaining to Charles of his Ambassador’s con- 
 duct, with no other effect than to elicit from the King the remark that 
 having heard Lord Carlisle’s version of the matter, he saw no reason to 
 find fault with his conduct. Carlisle is frequently mentioned by Pepys, 
 Evelyn, and Luttrell, and a contemporary writes of him that “ he was 
 of a comely and advantageous stature, and a majestic mien ; had a 
 peculiar grace and vivacity in his discourse, and in his actions a great 
 promptitude and diligence.” So that Charles certainly ought to have 
 been content with him. 
 
 Here too lived, till 1670, Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, once Viceroy 
 of Ireland, and subsequently sent to the Tower on a charge of com- 
 plicity in the Rye-House Plot ; where, as I have mentioned in the 
 chapter on St. James’s Square, he committed suicide. Other names of 
 old residents are those of the first Lord Townshend, who was one of 
 those who went to the Hague to bring about the Restoration ; Sir 
 William Fenwicke, as staunch on the other side ; a Commonwealth man 
 to the backbone ; and earlier still than all Sir William Cordell, 1 Master 
 of the Rolls under Mary and Elizabeth, and Solicitor-General at the 
 trial of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Another one-time resident was the Earl 
 of Ailesbury, who is mentioned in the New Review of London for 1728, 
 1 See various notices of him in Machyn’s Diary. 
 
378 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 as living here at that time. This was the second Earl, who had acted 
 as page to James II. at that monarch’s coronation, and whom Macky 
 describes as “very tall and fair-complexioned.” John Wilkes is also 
 closely connected with the Square, for he was born here, at the house of 
 his father, Israel Wilkes, on October 17, 1727. The house in due course 
 passed to his elder brother Heaton Wilkes, a distiller ; and in the Public 
 Advertiser for September 9, 1770, the following notice records a visit of 
 the more celebrated man to his elder brother: “ Yesterday Mr. Alderman 
 Wilkes, with Miss Wilkes his daughter, arrived in town from Brightelm- 
 stone, and afterwards dined with Heaton Wilkes, Mr. Wilkes’s brother, in 
 St. John’s Square.” 1 
 
 St. John’s Square contains a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, situated next 
 to Bishop Burnet’s house, and erected in 1849, at a cost of £3800, by 
 the congregation which had previously been settled at the Wilderness Row 
 Chapel ; and a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The fabric of 
 the latter is modern, but the crypt is noteworthy as being part of the 
 original Priory of St. John, and Mr. Wheatley rightly calls it “ now 
 one of the most interesting of the remains of mediaeval buildings in 
 London.” It is also remembered as being the scene of the final detection 
 of that absurd hoax, the Cock Lane Ghost. The investigation took 
 place on February 1, 1762, and Dr. Johnson was present, as will be 
 remembered by those who have read Churchill’s Ghost , wherein the 
 worthy doctor is held up to ridicule under the title of “ Pomposo.” 
 Johnson printed an account of what took place round the coffin of 
 “ Miss Fanny,” as she was called, who had been the protagonist in 
 the Cock Lane deception. Timbs, in his Romance of London , gives a de- 
 tailed account of the whole matter, while in his Curiosities of London he 
 prints a communication from John Wykeham Archer, Esq., dated 1851, 
 which is so curious that it may be inserted here as follows : “ While 
 drawing in the crypt of St. John’s, Clerkenwell, in a narrow cloister on 
 the north side (there being at that time coffins, and fragments of shrouds, 
 and human remains 2 lying about in disorder), the sexton’s boy pointed 
 to one of the coffins, and said the woman in it was ‘ Scratching Fanny.’ 
 This reminded me of the business of the Cock Lane Ghost. I removed 
 the lid of the coffin, which was loose, and saw the body of a woman 
 which had become adipocere ; the face perfect, handsome oval, with 
 aquiline nose. She was said to have been poisoned, although the charge 
 
 1 Quoted by Pinks, who, I may mention, gives a long account of Messrs. Smith & 
 Son’s clock manufactory, which was then (1865) being carried on on the site of Wilkes’s 
 house, which had been previously demolished. 
 
 2 These remains, consisting of no less than 325 bodies, buried between 1738 and 1853 
 were removed to Brookwood in 1894, that of “ Scratching Fanny” being among them. 
 
ST. JOHN’S SQUARE 379 
 
 is said to have been disproved. I inquired of one of the churchwardens 
 of the time, and he said the coffin had always been understood to contain 
 the body of a woman whose spirit was said to have haunted the house in 
 Cock Lane.” 1 
 
 Before taking leave of St. John’s Square it may be interesting to give 
 two old advertisements referring to houses within it ; one, from the Flying 
 Post of December 1699, states that “At St. John’s House in St. John’s 
 Square, near Clerkenwell, are taught the Mathematics in French and Latin, 
 Rhetoric, History, Cosmography, French, Greek, with the Propriety of the 
 Latin tongue, pretended to by many and understood by few;” while the 
 other is an advertisement dated January 21, 1714, which Pinks also quotes, 
 without giving its genesis, thus: “To be Let, a new built brick house, fit 
 for any gentleman or person of quality, in St. John’s Court, near Clerken- 
 well, of 3 large rooms on a floor, and 2 little ones, besides small closets, 
 with fore-stairs and back-stairs. Very well fitted up and repaired, with a 
 court before the house and a garden ; with coach-house and stables for 
 4 horses and other conveniences.” 
 
 With regard to the description of the Square as St. John’s Court, it is 
 interesting to note that in Rocque’s Plan of London, 1747, the little square 
 is called St. John’s Square, and the square proper St. John’s Court. The 
 little square, as the contracted portion of the western side is sometimes 
 called, to use Pinks’s words, was formerly known as North’s Court. It 
 took its name, as we have seen, from John North, son of Dudley Lord 
 North, whose first wife “ left him an estate in St. John’s Court,” says Roger 
 North, “ upon ground where the chief house and garden was placed, and 
 now a set of fair houses are built, making three sides of a square, and is 
 called North’s Court.” 
 
 Finsbury Square, which lies in a direct line east of Charterhouse 
 Square, if not the most important of the East End squares, is the largest 2 
 and the most nearly approximating to the general conception of a square ; 
 indeed any one finding himself in Finsbury Square without a previous 
 acquaintance with it, might reasonably suppose that he was in one of the 
 West End squares ; and the fact that business rather than social life now 
 
 1 Restoration in the crypt has brought to light two segments of the ancient circular nave 
 which may now be seen. Noticeable, too, is the finely carved canopy over the west door, 
 Michell’s work, of 1723, who was also responsible for the brick front of the present church 
 which covers the original stonework of Sir Thomas Tresham, a former Grand Prior. The 
 stained glass arms of Robert Botall still remain in the east window. 
 
 2 The view of the Square in Hughson’s Walks through London gives a good idea of the 
 uniformity of the houses. 
 
380 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 animates the place has no power, when one remembers the analogous case of 
 Hanover Square, to destroy the illusion. Pennant remarks that Fins- 
 bury Square “ does not give place in beauty, and not much in size, to 
 the most boasted in the West End of the town,” but he adds that 
 “ to the disgrace of the builders, two houses on the south side fell down 
 almost as soon as they were built, and the rest of that side is in a most 
 perilous condition.” 
 
 The life of Finsbury Square is a particularly complex one. Here we 
 find to-day solicitors and doctors, architects and engineers and surveyors 
 largely predominating, while other businesses are interspersed among these ; 
 here is a hospital — that for Diseases of the Skin — at No. 12a ; a Consulate — 
 the Italian — at No. 44 ; the German Branch of the Y.M.C.A. at No. 23 ; 
 while a number of Building Societies, as well as hotels, are scattered 
 about within it, and, most interesting to most of us, at Finsbury House, 
 the Income Tax Recovery Agency, to the elbow of whose efforts let us 
 wish more power. 
 
 Finsbury Square on its west side is bounded by the City Road, and on 
 the other side of this thoroughfare is the Artillery Ground, 1 which thus 
 helps to give an additional airiness of situation to the Square, and one 
 rarely to be met with in the purlieus of the City. 
 
 The Square was planned by George Dance, the Royal Academician, 
 and completed in 1791, the west side having been the first portion to 
 be laid out, with the exception of two houses, in 1777; the north in 
 1789; the east in 1790; and the south in the following year. In extent 
 it covers about six acres, and it has the distinction of being, according to 
 Walker in The Original, the first public place to be lighted by gas, as 
 Grosvenor Square is notable as being the last of the squares to accept this 
 innovation — surely another proof that indeed the wise men do dwell in 
 the east. 
 
 The associations of Finsbury Square are not otherwise, however, 
 numerous or notable ; but it did, on one occasion, serve Dr. Johnson as 
 a sort of apologue ; for when Mrs. Burney “ wondered that some very 
 beautiful new buildings should be erected in Moorfields, in so shocking 
 a situation as between Bedlam and St. Luke’s Hospital,” the doctor re- 
 plied, “Nay, madam, you see nothing there to hurt you. You no 
 more think of madness by having windows that look to Bedlam, than 
 you think of death by having windows that look to a churchyard. . . .” 
 “I think,” he added, “a very moral use may be made of these new 
 
 1 In the Crace collection is a view of the Square taken from the Artillery Ground ; as 
 well as a print by S. Rawle, 1801, showing its north side ; and a water-colour by G. Shepherd, 
 1841, depicting its prospect “towards Moorgate.” 
 
FINSBURY SQUARE 381 
 
 buildings ; I would have those who have heated imaginations live there, 
 and take warning.” 1 With which sententious words it is to be hoped 
 that the few permanent residents there are comforted. Finsbury (or, as 
 it was sometimes written, Fensbury) Square and Circus and the adjacent 
 ground was originally Moorfields, which we learn, on the authority of 
 Stow, was such unprofitable property in the reign of Edward II. that the 
 whole of it was let for the small sum of four marks a year. The opening 
 of the City wall by the erection of Moorgate in 1415, however, seems to 
 have improved its prospects somewhat, although then, and for long after, 
 it was a sort of immense recreation-ground for the citizens and a play- 
 ground for their children, especially patronised in winter on account of a 
 large piece of water called by Fitzstephen “ the great Fen or Moor which 
 watereth the walls of the City on the north side.” 2 This was drained in 
 1527, and laid out in walks in the time of James I., but no buildings were 
 erected here till after the Great Fire of London. Immediately after that 
 disastrous event, the wretched inhabitants camped out as best they could 
 in the one spot at hand where no buildings attracted the fury of the flames. 
 Evelyn mentions, in his Diary for September 5, 1666, the sad sight that 
 here presented itself to his eyes. “The poore inhabitants,” he says, “ were 
 dispersed about St. George’s Fields and Moorefields . . . some under 
 tents, some under miserable hutts and hovells, many without a rag or 
 any necessary utensills, bed or board, who from delicatenesse, riches, and 
 easy accomodations in stately and well furnished houses were now reduced 
 to extremest misery and poverty.” 
 
 Building on Moorfields commenced soon after this, for we find Pepys 
 noting, on April 7, 1667, “that he went there and did find houses built 
 two stories high, and like to stand,” and he opines that “ it must become a 
 great place for trade, till the City be built.” The Diarist has several 
 earlier references to Moorfields ; thus we find him on several occasions 
 going to see the wrestling-matches which were held there ; and he notices 
 at some length a tremendous battle which took place on July 26, 1664, 
 between the butchers and the weavers, in which the latter were ultimately 
 victorious. From the Diarist’s pages we learn, too, that Killigrew intended 
 setting up a “Nursery for Actors” there, that is, “ is going to build a 
 house in Moorfields where he will have common plays acted,” but by a 
 later entry (February 12, 1667), we find that he was unable to carry this 
 intention into effect. 
 
 The curious will find mention of Moorfields not only in Ben Jonson’s, 
 Shadwell’s, and Davenant’s plays, but in the amusing pages of Bassom- 
 pierre ; while Garth and Tom Brown and Gray all make allusion to 
 
 1 Boswell’s Johnson. 2 Old and New London, vol. ii. p. 196. 
 
382 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 the spot in connection with the second-hand bookstalls that were set up 
 under the trees there. 
 
 That part of Moorfields known as Finsbury Fields — the site of 
 Finsbury Square and Finsbury Circus — has an older historical interest, 
 for here the Duke of Somerset after his return from Scotland, where 
 he had been victorious at the Battle of Pinkie, was met in solemn state 
 by the Lord Mayor and citizens of London on October 8, 1548 ; a 
 meeting duly chronicled by Holinshed. Another contemporary but less- 
 known Diarist, Machyn, notes various musters of train-bands at this 
 spot, and he also informs us that on “ The ix day of October was a 
 servyng-man, (the) penters broder that was bornyd at Staynes, was 
 bered in Morefeld be-syd the doge-howsse, be-caus he was not resseff 
 (to receive) ryctes of the chyrche and thys lawe.” A usual practice, 
 it would seem, in such cases, and in Fox’s Book of Martyrs there 
 is a striking illustration of a similar ceremony- Here, too, the same 
 chronicler mentions the appearance of the phenomenon known as march- 
 fires “in Fynsbere feyld and in Morefeld at the wynd-mylle ... by 
 mony men.” 
 
 At a later day, immediately indeed before the creation of Finsbury 
 Square and the adjacent buildings, the site was used by Wesley and 
 Whitfield for their field preaching, and vast congregations — numbering, 
 we are told, 20,000, 30,000, and even 50,000 assembled here to listen 
 to the eloquence of these remarkable men. These figures are probably 
 exaggerated, however, for although Wesley in his Journal speaks of 
 “ a huge multitude,” “ an immense congregation,” whenever he gives 
 approximate figures, he never mentions more than 10,000 being present 
 at a time in this spot. 1 
 
 According to Pennant, the ground on which Finsbury Square stands 
 was held from the Prebendary of Finsbury in the Cathedral of St. Paul’s, 
 and this official for the time being, in conjunction with the City authori- 
 ties, granted the leases. “ The late Prebendary,” says the same authority, 
 “got for himself and family about ^2000 for the remainder of his lease, 
 and it is said that the value of the rent to the Prebendary in possession, 
 and to the City, is at this time (about 1813) not less than f 6 ooo a year.” 
 What would the worthy antiquary say to its present value ! 
 
 If we cannot identify Finsbury Square with any illustrious resident, 2 we 
 can at least connect it with one whose sense of his own importance almost 
 
 1 See Wesley’s Diary , passim. 
 
 1 I may note that Jeremiah Harman, one of the Governors of the Bank of England, 
 was living here in 1797 ; while Dr. Birkbeck, the founder of the Mechanics’ Institute, lived 
 in a house in the north-east corner of the Square, and died there on December 1, 1841. 
 
FINSBURY SQUARE 383 
 
 bordered on eccentricity ; for here for a time Lackington, the bookseller, 
 kept what he termed “The Temple of the Muses,” 1 at a house in the 
 south-east angle of the Square, which had previously been occupied by 
 Mr. Caslon, who had here set up his letter-foundry, for which specific pur- 
 pose the premises were erected. At the sale of Mr. Caslon’s effects, Mr. 
 Lackington bought the house for ^4100. Lackington, it would seem, 
 never took a single step in life without calculating what measure of 
 advertisement he could extract from it, and consequently the opening of 
 his shop here was attended by a mild sensation carefully prepared by the 
 new owner, for he laid a wager that a coach and four could be driven in 
 and out of the house and round the interior of the shop, without being 
 hindered by height or breadth, and the feat was actually performed, we 
 are told, by the driver of the Yarmouth mail-coach ; in which way 
 Lackington was able to intimate to the public the spaciousness of his 
 “Temple.” Not content with this, he made his own coachman perform 
 the same feat subsequently, with himself and two friends as passengers. 
 
 A propos of this carriage, a characteristic anecdote has survived to 
 the effect that when he first set it up, he feared that the world would not 
 know of this important addition to his state, and so he caused an adver- 
 tisement to be issued to the effect that his coach-house and stables had 
 been robbed of ten thousand volumes, chiefly of Dr. Watt’s Psalms and 
 Hymns (as if any mortal person would select such a book to purloin) ; by 
 which he showed not only that he possessed a coach and horses, but also 
 that his business was so extensive that a vast number of books had to be 
 housed outside the premises in Finsbury Square. 
 
 There is no statue in the centre of Finsbury Square, but there was once 
 talk of erecting one. 2 No sooner did the egregious Lackington hear of 
 the proposed scheme, than he caused it to be known that he would bear 
 the cost of it and that it should be a fine one, on one condition : that the 
 authorities would allow it to be a statue of himself. 3 Even the taste of 
 the later Georgian era stuck at this. If not able to preside in the centre 
 of the Square in effigy, Lackington was at least determined that when he 
 
 1 An aquaforte by T. Tegg, dated 1789, shows this shop, with the following inscription, 
 “North-west Aspect of Lackington, Allen, & Co.’s ‘Temple of the Muses,’ Finsbury Square. 
 The finest shop in the world, being 140 feet in front.” An impression is in the Crace 
 collection. 
 
 2 It was originally intended to form a piece of water in the middle, but the fear that 
 this might prove insanitary, caused the idea to be abandoned, and a garden was substituted. 
 (Ellis, History of Shoreditch.) 
 
 3 It would be interesting if we could identify this egregious personage with the gentleman 
 who is said to have heard, at a public dinner, two royal brothers toasted as the “ Adelphi ” ; 
 whereupon he arose and said that as they were on the subject of streets “he would beg 
 leave to propose Finsbury Square.” See Leigh Hunt’s The Town. 
 
384 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 was there in propria persona, the whole district should know it; to which 
 end he caused a cupola to be added to the roof of his house, from which 
 sprung a flagstaff ; and on his arrival from his country house in the morn- 
 ing, the flag was hoisted, and when he left in the evening it was solemnly 
 lowered. Lackington wrote an account of his own life, and notices of 
 him are to be found in the various histories of booksellers, Curwen’s and 
 others, that have been written ; by all accounts he seems to have been that 
 curious compound, a shrewd business man and a conceited self-advertiser, 
 whose egregious vanity might have made even Malvolio smile. 
 
 In 1794 Lackington made over his business in Finsbury Square to 
 Messrs. George Lackington, Allen, & Co., and with the advent of the new 
 firm the flagstaff was removed and a weathercock, probably with no 
 motive of irony, fixed in its place. 1 
 
 I have mentioned that, among those inhabiting houses in the Square, 
 the medical profession is represented. Physicians are, however, now in 
 a small minority, but at one time Finsbury Square was one of the 
 fashionable quarters for doctors, who made large fortunes from patients 
 who then lived in the City, but at a later date migrated westward 
 after their day’s work was done. One of these medical practitioners 
 was Henry Jeaffreson, Senior Physician at St. Bartholomew’s, who lived 
 and died in a house in the Square ; while Dr. Wigan, the father of 
 Alfred and Horace Wigan, the well-known actors, also lived and 
 practised here. 2 
 
 Another City square that demands a short, but only a short, notice 
 is Billiter Square, 3 which Strype describes as the chief ornament of 
 Billiter Street, and as being in his day “a very handsome, open, and 
 airy place, graced with good new brick buildings, very well inhabited.” 
 Like most of the City squares, this description held good till about the 
 commencement of the nineteenth century, when the private houses gradu- 
 ally gave way to the encroachments of business. But before this change 
 took place some important, if not exactly illustrious, people resided 
 here. One of them was Mr. Cavalier, with whom Voltaire stayed when 
 in England, or so at least we may reasonably presume, from the fact 
 that the great Frenchman desired one John Brinsden to send him in- 
 
 1 This house was burnt down in 1841. See Old and New Londan. I may mention 
 that the offices of the London Friendly Society are in Finsbury Square, and the new 
 buildings that house it have some fine bronze-work by Alfred Drury, Esq., on the front. 
 
 2 Serjeant Ballantine’s Reminiscences. 
 
 3 The name was corrupted from Belzettar, either an owner or a builder, or both, of 
 houses in the street and square. Stow spells the name Belzeter. In Horwood’s map, 
 1799, twelve houses are given as constituting this square. 
 
BILLITER SQUARE 385 
 
 formation with regard to Lady Bolingbroke’s health, and to direct the 
 letter “ by penny post at Mr. Cavalier, Bellitery (sic) Square, by the 
 Royal Exchange.” Voltaire made his headquarters, while in England, 
 at the house of Sir Everard Fawkener, at Wandsworth, but as that 
 place was then regarded as almost country, it is probable that he stayed 
 at various times at the houses of friends in London itself, as for instance 
 here in Billiter Square, and, as we are told he did, at Lord Bolingbroke’s 
 in Golden Square, and further off, at Lord Peterborough’s at Parson’s 
 Green, where he first met Swift. 1 
 
 Another resident in Billiter Square was Nathan Basevi, the maternal 
 grandfather of Lord Beaconsfield. The register of the marriage of his 
 daughter with Isaac Disraeli runs: “January 13, 1802, Isaac D’Israeli, 
 Esq., of the Adelphi, to Miss Basevi of Billiter Square.” 2 Mrs. Basevi 
 was, to quote Lord Beaconsfield’s Memoir of his father, “ the beautiful 
 daughter of a family who (sic) had suffered much from persecutions (and) 
 had imbibed that dislike for her race which the vain are too apt to adopt 
 when they find that they are born to public contempt.” 
 
 About the same time was living here William Manning, 3 a Governor 
 of the Bank of England and a Member of Parliament, who married a 
 niece of Lord Carrington, and becomes to us notable, as the father of 
 Cardinal Manning. 
 
 Allen, 4 writing in 1828, mentions that the West India House, a 
 large edifice with offices attached for conducting the business of the 
 West India Docks, was situated in Billiter Square. This has since been 
 rebuilt in the Gothic style and is now known as the East and West 
 Indian Dock Company, and extends from the east side of the Square 
 to Billiter Street ; while the remainder of the Square is occupied by 
 private business houses. 
 
 Another square must receive a passing notice ; this is Haydon Square, 5 
 on the east side of the Minories. Nowadays it is practically monopolised 
 by the goods office of the North-Western Railway Company and the 
 offices of the Excise Bonded Spirit Warehouse, and what few other 
 houses are in it, for it is a small square, are mostly connected with these. 
 It is, as I say, a small square and has indeed always been so ; in 
 fact Strype merely calls it a yard ; and although the name has become 
 
 1 Life of Voltaire , by Espinasse. 2 London Past and Present. 
 
 3 A Directory for 1797, gives his name as a resident. 4 History of London. 
 
 6 It appears to stand on the site of a former Priory of the Holy Trinity, and a spring 
 
 of pure water, which once supplied this establishment, is mentioned by Timbs as existing 
 
 in 1867. 
 
3 86 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 known as Haydon, it was formerly Heyden, being so christened from 
 the owner of the land on which it stands, Alderman Heyden. With the 
 following description given in Strype’s edition of Stow, all there is to 
 be said of Haydon Square has been said : — 
 
 “ Heydon Yard, broad enough for coach or cart ; at the upper end is 
 a good large square, or open place railed about, with a row of trees, very 
 ornamental in the summer season, having on the east side coach-houses 
 and stables, on the west side a very handsome row of large houses, with 
 courtyards before them, and are inhabited by merchants, persons of 
 repute.” According to Timbs, in his Curiosities of London, one of these 
 “persons of repute” was no less than the great Sir Isaac Newton, who 
 resided here during the time that he was Master of the Mint ; the house 
 he occupied being pulled down in 1852. 
 
 Two squares in the Hoxton, 1 or, as it was called in Domesday, 
 Hocheston, district require a word. One of them, Hoxton Square, 
 shown in Harwood’s Plan of 1799, standing on ground once noted for its 
 gardens, is an old one, and was once affected by City merchants on account 
 of “the purity of the air.” It is to-day a large enclosure with no less 
 than 331 houses within its precincts, chiefly, if not wholly, occupied by 
 small shopkeepers of every conceivable kind. The Rev. Edmund 
 Calamy, the nonconformist, and grandson of the earlier Edmund Calamy, 
 once resided here; 2 and there is a tradition that Nell Gwynne occupied 
 one of the old houses, some of which still remain. 3 The Square itself 
 possesses some interest in that it formerly belonged to Israel Wilkes, the 
 father of John Wilkes, it having been part of his wife’s rich dowry. The 
 Roman Catholic Church of St Monica, in connection with the Irish 
 Augustinian Monastery, is situated here, as well as the Parish Church 
 dedicated to St. Peter. This was built through the munificence of the 
 Plaberdashers’ Company, which owns considerable property in Hoxton, 
 aided by the untiring energy of the Rev. F. Cardwell, the first vicar. The 
 church was designed in the thirteenth-century style, by the late R. W. 
 Drew, Esq., architect, and the total cost, including the purchase of the 
 site, was about ^12,000. The interior does not call for any particular 
 notice, but the fine organ by Speechly may be mentioned. 
 
 1 Ben Jonson writes it Hogsden, and Andrew Marvell, Hogsdon. It was then a 
 rural district largely affected, as was Moorfields, by holiday-making citizens. See also 
 Robinson’s History of Hackney, vol. i. p. 450. 
 
 2 Thoresby in his Diary, under date of January 12, 1709, mentions walking to Hoxton 
 Square, to dine with a Mr. Hackshaw who was then living there. 
 
 3 From information kindly supplied me by the Rev. J. L. E. Hooppell, the present vicar. 
 
CHARLES SQUARE 387 
 
 Until 1776, the freeholders had rights of common in the Square, but in 
 that year the centre portion was enclosed, and trustees for its maintenance 
 and preservation appointed by Act of Parliament. The central garden 
 once contained a remarkable elm ; and is large and noticeable. It is now 
 leased to the Borough Council, as an open space. 
 
 The other Square of this district is Charles Square; at No. 16 of 
 which is now the Shoreditch County Court, and at No. 24 the Shoreditch 
 Christian Mission House. Here once resided the Rev. John Newton, the 
 friend of Cowper. His life was a curiously complex one. Born in 1725, 
 his father was Governor of York Fort in Hudson Bay, and young Newton 
 served in his father’s ship and in others, and was also in the slave trade 
 till 1755, when he was appointed Tide Surveyor at Liverpool. Subse- 
 quently applying himself to the study of the classics, he was ordained in 
 1764, and became curate at Olney in or about 1767, under which cir- 
 cumstances he became acquainted with the poet, in conjunction with whom 
 he published the Olney Hymns in 1779. In the following year he was 
 presented with the living of St. Mary Woolnoth. An Authentic Narrative 
 of his early life, which he published in 1764, makes curious reading. He 
 died in 1807, in Coleman Street Buildings. After his departure from 
 Olney a voluminous correspondence with Cowper shows the closeness of 
 their friendship, and this is further attested by the fact that Newton wrote 
 the preface to the first edition of Cowper’s Poems, which foreword is dated 
 from Charles Square, Hoxton, on February 18, 1782. 1 
 
 Besides the squares of the City and the East End which are still in 
 existence, Maitland gives, among the forty-nine which he mentions, the 
 names of several which have disappeared. Some of these, it is probable, 
 were but courts taking their names from the adjacent thoroughfares on 
 which they abutted, such as Old Street Square, Petticoat Square, 
 and Plumb Tree Square; others were obviously named from in- 
 dividuals, probably their builders, as none of the names seem to belong 
 to any one who has obtained celebrity ; such as Baldwin’s, Cowper’s, 
 Cox’s, Gould’s, Nixon’s, Warren’s, and Webb’s Squares. Some of 
 „ these squares are not mentioned by other topographers, and may, I 
 think, be dismissed with this mere enumeration ; as may also such 
 squares as Cold Bath Square, named after the famous Cold Bath 
 discovered there in 1697, at Clerkenwell, where once resided that curious 
 eccentric known as “Lady Lewson of Clerkenwell,” whose strange mode 
 1 See Grimshaw’s Life a?id Works of Cowper. 
 
388 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 of attire was the wonder of the neighbourhood, and who died here 
 on May 28, 1816, at the credibly reported age of 1 1 6 1 ; as well as 
 Eustace Budgell from 1733 to 1736, whence he wrote articles for his friend 
 and relative Addison, in the pages of the Spectator ; Goulston Square, 
 Whitechapel, where, at No. 27, once lived William Herbert, the topog- 
 rapher; Haberdashers’ Square, Cripplegate, a plan of which, dated 
 1761, is extant; Jeffrey’s Square, St. Mary Axe, where the eminent 
 surgeon Sir Astley Cooper spent some early years (1792-1798) 2 of his 
 career in one of its eight houses; and Spital Square, Spitalfields, 
 where Thomas Stothard was apprenticed to a draughtsman of patterns for 
 brocaded silks, for seven years, and where after his day’s work he was 
 accustomed to read Homer and Spenser for amusement. 3 
 
 The German Synagogue, the Central Foundation School of London 
 for Girls, and the Home for Working Boys in London, are now to be 
 found in the Square where Stothard’s delicate genius gradually unfolded 
 itself ; and Georgian doorways carry us back to the days of hoops and 
 patches. 
 
 On the other hand, there will be found in the London Directory a 
 number of smaller squares which have been more or less neglected by 
 topographical writers, as containing nothing of interest either in their 
 buildings or past inhabitants; of these, although there are a variety 
 of others, may be mentioned, in the Clerkenwell district, Granville 
 Square, George Square, Wilmington Square, King Square, Lloyd 
 Square, Holford Square, Vernon Square, and Claremont Square; 
 and in the City and further East End, Ford, Sidney, Albert, Arbour, 
 Beaumont, Trafalgar, Victoria, and Tredegar Squares. 4 
 
 Of these, Granville and Wilmington Squares lie to the east of the 
 King’s Cross Road. The latter takes its name from one of Lord 
 Northampton’s titles, and was formed between the years 1821 and 1831. 
 At No. 7 was formerly the office of the Association for the Protec- 
 tion of Workers and Dealers in Precious Metals; and at No. 10, in 
 
 1 See an account other in Timbs’s Eccentrics a?id Eccentricities. 
 
 2 Timbs’s Doctors and Patients. 
 
 3 Mrs. Bray’s Life of Stothard. I may mention here that Ellis, in his History and 
 Antiquities of Shoreditch , speaks of a house in this square, then occupied by a Mr. Pearson, 
 and known as Spital House, where the great Bolingbroke is said once to have dwelt. It 
 certainly belonged to Sir Rowland Vaughan “of the Spittle,” whose daughter and heiress 
 married Sir Paulet St. John, an ancestor of Bolingbroke. 
 
 4 Some of these squares are now taken over by the L. C. C. Albert Square was opened 
 to the public in 1906; Ford and Sidney Squares, in 1904 ; and Beaumont and Arbour Squares 
 have been secured, by the Council, for a term of years. 
 
GRANVILLE SQUARE 389 
 
 1835, lived the Rev. W. J. Hall, M.A., the compiler of a favourite 
 collection of Psalms and Hymns. Granville Square 1 was formed in 
 1841, but had been projected in 1826, and was to have been called 
 Sharp Square, in compliment, it is thought, to the maiden name of the 
 builder’s (Baker) wife. At No. 30, then the residence of a Mr. Green, 
 Pinks, the author of the History of Clerkenwell, died. In the centre of 
 Granville Square stands St. Philip’s Church, which was erected at 
 Government expense from a grant to the Commissioners under an Act 
 of George III. for building additional churches in populous districts. 
 It was finished in 1832, and was designed by Mr. E. B. Lamb, the 
 architect. Although it has little to commend it from an artistic point 
 of view, it is interesting from the fact that in i860, it was the scene 
 of those anti-ritualistic riots, which occurred with some frequency at 
 that period, and with which the name of Mr. Kensit has since been 
 connected — riots that would seem to have for their object not only 
 the meddling with a form of devotion disapproved of by certain 
 noisy individuals, but the very abolition of toleration itself. It was, 
 too, at St. Philip’s that pew rents were first abolished and a weekly 
 offertory substituted. The church is surrounded by waste ground that 
 might well be utilised as a public garden, a scheme dear to the heart 
 of the present vicar. King Square is on the east — across Goswell 
 Road — of Northampton Square noticed before. It contains the Church 
 of St. Barnabas, and at No. 33 is the East Finsbury Conservative 
 Association’s headquarters. Holford and Lloyd Squares are close to- 
 gether, not far east from the junction of the King’s Cross and Pen- 
 tonville Roads; and Vernon Square has been lopped away, to increase 
 the adjoining road, and is no more a square ; while George Square is 
 just north of Hoxton Square and rather to the west of Kingsland Road. 
 Claremont Square is said by Pinks, in his History of Clerkenwell , to have 
 been formed between 1815 and 1825, the range of houses on the south 
 side being only finished in 1828, and thus completing the scheme. In 
 the centre of the Square were the reservoirs of the New River Company. 
 Arbour Square is on the north and Albert Square on the south, of 
 Commercial Road ; Trafalgar Square on the east of White Horse Lane, 
 Stepney; Tredegar Square north of Mile End Road, Stepney; Sidney 
 and Ford Squares are also on the north of Commercial Road, and 
 Beaumont Square communicates by Beaumont Street with the Mile End 
 
 1 Pinks, in his History of Clerkenwell , states that an early account of the ground on 
 which Granville Square stands is to be found in a drawing-book dated July 1775, which 
 shows what were known as Randell’s Lime Kilns, the excavations from which account for the 
 differences in the level of the Square. 
 
39© THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 Road. It has an extensive recreation-ground in the centre, and the 
 Beaumont Institute, the Tower Hamlets Conservative Club, and the 
 Stepney Conservative Association are situated in it. 
 
 There are perhaps another round two dozen of City squares to 
 be found in the London Directory, but there is little or no interest to be 
 attached to them. In order, however, that the curious may not have 
 the trouble of searching them out in the official and interminable lists 
 of streets, their names may at least here be set down. Taking those 
 in the E.C. division first, we find America, Cross Key, Falcon, 
 Lime Street, Ludgate, Mitre, Monument, New, Nicholl, Prujean 
 — which took its name from Sir Francis Prujean, President of the 
 College of Physicians, 1 650-54 1 — Paternoster, Queen’s, and War- 
 wick Squares ; while in the wilds of the further east are Fassett, 
 Duncan, Gun, Nichols (with St. Chad’s Church in it), Ratcliff, 
 Rectory, Patriot, St. Peter’s (also with a church in its precincts), 
 St. Thomas’s, Sion, Stepney, York, and Victoria Park Squares. 
 There are, besides these, three squares which I might have been expected 
 to deal with at some length, but which are judged to be outside the 
 scheme of this work. These are Crosby, Printing-House, and 
 Trinity Squares. The first has no interest except what attaches to 
 the well-known Crosby Place, 1 2 from which it takes its name ; and the 
 annals of that building, with its associations both historical and 
 Shakespearean, would alone, if adequately dealt with, fill at least a 
 small volume. Printing-House Square is solely identified with the 
 Times and the history that has grown up around that remarkable journal, 
 although it marks the site of the ancient King’s Printing-House, and 
 was rebuilt in the middle of the eighteenth century ; while the last 
 Trinity Square, although partly surrounded by houses, is too much 
 in the nature of a public square, such as Trafalgar and Sloane Squares, 
 to be included in this work. 
 
 Various as they are in size, position, and association, one characteristic 
 will be seen to be common to practically all the squares of the City and 
 the East End — they were originally inhabited by private individuals, and 
 they are now given over to business purposes. This is, of course, but 
 
 1 London Past and Present , where we are told that Gunner, a fashionable hairdresser, 
 lived, in 1783, at “Gunner’s Original Academy, No. 6 Prujean Court.” 
 
 2 Some fine illustrations of Crosby Place will be found in Wilkinson’s Londma lllustrata. 
 The square itself consisted of but eight houses, as we can see from Horwood’s Plan of 1799. 
 
ARUNDEL SQUARE 391 
 
 a reflex of the change which has taken place in the City generally, but 
 considering the vast number of squares which are still in existence, it 
 seems curious that there is not one which has retained its original char- 
 acter. Probably, were nine out of ten persons asked the reason of this 
 they would deem the question childish, and would reply that the self- 
 evident fact is that no one is so foolish as to live over their businesses as 
 they did in the old days, when the facilities for getting westward or 
 country-ward are so numerous and so constantly increasing. But there 
 is another reason for this migration of citizens, which is not always re- 
 membered ; it is that nowadays few people could afford to live over their 
 offices or shops. Now when every square inch in the City has a certain 
 value, the new buildings which are almost daily being erected must be 
 paid for by vast rents which would seem to only become possible for mere 
 residential purposes when we approach the giddy heights of the top 
 stories; and where premises are not erected on this sky-scraper principle, 
 then the rents are proportionately higher to meet the demands of ground- 
 rents which, in the eyes of our forefathers, would have seemed incredible 
 and preposterous. 
 
 NOTE ON THE SQUARES OF NORTH-EAST 
 AND SOUTH LONDON 
 
 With a single exception, the squares of these districts, which are ad- 
 mittedly large and somewhat vague ones, covering two vast areas, as we 
 look at them on a map of London, are of little or no interest. They are 
 left unnoticed by general topographers, and even those who have given 
 exhaustive attention to the particular districts in which they stand, have 
 little of interest to say about them, and it is probable that their very names 
 may be new to many readers. 
 
 The most westerly of those in the north-east is Rochester Square, 
 which lies just to the east of the Camden Road ; then there is Thornhill 
 Square, an oblong east of the Caledonian Road, and to the north-east 
 of this, Arundel Square. This square was formed on certain land 
 left without title, by a Mr. Samuel Pocock, which was maintained for a 
 few years by his trustees, as an open space. In March 1863, the trustees 
 handed over the upkeep of the central garden and square to a committee 
 of residents, in which manner it has since been maintained. The church 
 
392 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 connected with the Square is dedicated to St. Clement, and was built from 
 designs by Sir (then Mr.) Gilbert Scott in 1865, the cost being de- 
 frayed by Lord Ashcombe, the patron of the living. It is of brick with 
 dressings of Bath stone, and its interior is a handsome one, with a fine 
 chancel arch and an effective east window. In 1903, the decoration of 
 the chancel, pulpit, and font was carried out by the Rev. W. D. Fanshawe. 
 
 Barnsbury Square, which lies to the south of Arundel Square, 
 has a curious pear-shaped cul-de-sac at its north-west corner, and a 
 sort of vermiform appendix , called Mount Pleasant, on its south-west 
 side ; on the east it is bounded by the Thornhill Road. It is interesting 
 to note that excavations and discoveries have proved the existence of a 
 Roman Camp in this district. 
 
 A group of four squares consists of those called Lonsdale, Milner, 
 Gibson, and Cloudesley Squares. Of these there is little or nothing 
 to be said, although mention may be made of the fact that the last takes 
 its name from the ancient Cloudesley family who once possessed land 
 here, and that the Church of the Holy Trinity, which stands in the 
 centre, was erected in 1826-29, and was designed by Sir Charles Barry, 
 after the model of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. It is an imposing 
 and commodious Gothic structure, and cost £1 1,535. In 1902, it was 
 restored at a cost of over ^3000. At the east end of the church there 
 is a handsome window of painted glass which commemorates Sir Richard 
 Cloudesley. In the central compartment of the window is the portrait of 
 a gentleman in the costume of the sixteenth century, kneeling, and beneath 
 is the following inscription : — 
 
 RICHARD CLOUDYSLY 
 
 A parishioner of Islington, of pious memory, gave to this parish by will 
 dated the 13th of January 1 5 17, a certain parcel of ground called Stony- 
 Field, comprising about 16 acres, upon part of which this church is 
 built by the assistance of his Majesty’s Commissioners for building 
 churches, and dedicated to the service of Almighty God on the 19th 
 day of March, in the year of our Lord 1829. 
 
 To perpetuate the memory of so great a benefactor to the parish, the 
 feoffees of the said estate have caused this window 
 to be thus embellished. 
 
 Another square that takes its name from an old family is De Beauvoir 
 
CANONBURY SQUARE 393 
 
 Square, to the west of Kingsland Lane. Indeed not only this particular 
 square but the large surrounding district, known as De Beauvoir Town, 
 and lying to the north of Hoxton, has the same genesis of nomenclature, 1 
 where, as Thornbury says, streets, squares, and terraces are named from 
 the De Beauvoir or Tyssen family (also large landowners here), their 
 connections and alliances in endless succession. In De Beauvoir Square 
 itself, at its south-west corner, is a pseudo-Gothic church dedicated to 
 St. Peter, erected shortly before the formation of the Square, from designs 
 by W. C. Lockner, the architect. The church was built by the late 
 Mr. Binyon de Beauvoir, and was dedicated to St. Peter, to perpetuate 
 the memory of the Rev. Peter de Beauvoir, Rector of Downham in 
 Essex. It was consecrated by Bishop Blomfield, on July 29, 1841, and 
 cost upwards of ^10,000. 2 Other squares in this large area are known 
 as Alwyne, Albion, Carlton, Edward, Hammons, St. Thomas’s, 
 Tottenham (or, as it is written in Domesday Book, Totanam), and 
 Union Squares. But the London Directory is probably one of the few 
 books in which they are mentioned. 
 
 Canonbury Square possesses a little more interest in itself, on account 
 of the bibliographer George Daniel having lived at No. 18, and Samuel 
 Phelps having resided at No. 8, during his management of Sadler’s Wells 
 Theatre, which expired in 1862, but chiefly on account of its proximity to 
 the celebrated Canonbury Tower, the windows of some of the rooms of 
 which faced the Square. The Tower is the sole remaining portion of old 
 Canonbury or Canbury House, which is said to have been built in 1362, 
 but the Tower itself probably dates from over two hundred years later, as 
 it is supposed to have been the work of Sir John Spencer, 3 who took up 
 his residence here in 1599. Its chief interest lies in the fact that Gold- 
 smith once lodged here ; while among other occupants of the Tower, 
 which was let out in lodgings, was New'bury the bookseller, who died 
 here on December 22, 1767, 4 Speaker Onslow, Woodfall, the printer of 
 Junius , and other less distinguished individuals. Its history, an interest- 
 
 1 In Rocque’s map of 1745, the site of the Square is shown as fields divided by hedges. 
 The centre garden of the square was originally kept up by the tenants of the houses, 
 but about twelve years ago was opened by Lord Amherst as a public garden, to be maintained 
 by the Borough Council. 
 
 2 Robinson’s History of Hackney, vol. i. p. 180. 
 
 3 For an account of Spencer and Canonbury House, see Nelson’s History of Islington, 
 p. 217 et seq., where a fine engraving of the mansion, as well as one of a magnificently 
 carved mantelpiece once in the house, is given. 
 
 4 Mr. Austin Dobson, in his Eighteenth Century Vignettes, has an amusing account of 
 Newbury, who, he thinks, was probably the landlord of the Tower with, as contemporary 
 advertisements put it, “its superlative room, having a prospect into five counties.” 
 
39+ THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 ing one, does not here concern us, except in so far that its reflex is what 
 gives Canonbury Square an importance not shared by the other “ quad- 
 rates” — even Maitland could not have called them “ stately ” — which I 
 have mentioned. 
 
 THE SQUARES OF SOUTH LONDON 
 
 London south of the Thames is something of a terra incognita to 
 many people, for, unlike Paris, London has only one real side to its 
 river. True Bankside and Southwark take us back to Chaucerian and 
 Shakespearean days ; while the Borough and the New Kent Road are 
 reminiscent of Dickens at his earliest, and, as some will say, at his best ; 
 but to the ordinary Londoner, this part of his mighty City spells Waterloo 
 and London Bridge Stations, Lambeth Palace, and, above all, Kennington 
 Oval. Few parts are, however, more thickly populated, although it can 
 hardly be termed residential within the meaning of the word, as under- 
 stood in Mayfair or Belgravia ; indeed, not to mince matters, South 
 London is squalid and probably always will be, and yet it has wide 
 thoroughfares, many open and green spaces, and, which here interests us 
 and brings me to my subject, some squares. 
 
 These squares number nearly a score, at least I have only been able to 
 discover nineteen of them, and there may be others; but as even those 
 I shall mention have not much interest attaching to them, it is not 
 probable that those I have overlooked, if there be any, will have more 
 
 These South London squares are spread over a relatively large area, 
 for from Albert Square, south of the Oval and abutting on the Chatham 
 Road in the west, to Avondale and Leyton Squares in the east, must be 
 nearly two and a half miles as the crow flies ; and from Nelson Square in 
 the north to Brunswick Square in the wilds of Camberwell in the south, 
 is quite two miles. The remaining squares which lie within this boundary are 
 West Square, near the Bethlehem Hospital, Trinity Square, Merrick 
 Square, and St. Stephen’s Square, forming a small group near the 
 commencement of the Great Dover Road; Lorrimore Square, east of 
 Kennington Park ; Addington Square, on the west of the Camberwell 
 Road ; the tiny Mansion House Square, on the east of that thoroughfare 
 and rather to the south of Addington Square; Prince’s Square, 1 to the 
 
 1 Both West and Prince’s Squares are shown in Horwood’s Map of London, 1799, the 
 former having a highly ornamental central garden. 
 
TRINITY SQUARE 395 
 
 west of the Kennington Park Road ; Bonnington Square, near the Oval ; 
 Sutherland Square, east of Lorrimore Square; Surrey Square, near 
 the Bricklayers’ Arms Station; and Union Square, a little back square 
 of small houses; as well as St. Mary’s Square, Lambeth, and White 
 Hart Square, south of Lower Kennington Lane. 
 
 It is a sad fact, but few of these squares have any historical interest 
 attaching to them ; London Past and Present passes them by without an 
 allusion, and even Walford, who penetrated to these regions, one of the 
 first that ever burst into them, indeed, mentions only two — Trinity and 
 Nelson Squares. They are, in a way, outside London proper, but the 
 London Directory map includes them, although some of them, it is true, 
 will not be found in the pages of that monstrous work itself ; but in a 
 book like the present sins of commission are not, perhaps, so heinous as 
 those of omission, and I will therefore set down what I have been able to 
 glean about a few of these squares, and will leave the bare record of the 
 others to indicate that I at least recognise their existence. 
 
 Trinity Square is a comparatively modern one, dating from the days 
 of George IV. Once inhabited by well-to-do City people, its houses have 
 now become largely lodgings once affected by students at Guy’s Hospital, 
 and others — the “ others ” now being in the majority, as the medical student 
 has sought other fields. The metamorphosis of the Square is but indi- 
 cative of most of the rest in this neighbourhood. The fact that Horse- 
 monger Gaol once stood on its southern side formerly added to the sadness 
 that seems to have overtaken it ; and yet, anomalous as it may seem, the 
 prison has had more interesting, apart from notorious, inmates than, it is 
 probable, any of the tenements in the Square itself ever had ; for here 
 Leigh Hunt spent two years for calling the Prince Regent “ a fat Adonis 
 of fifty ” ; and here he was visited by Byron and Moore and Cyrus Redding 
 (who has left an account of his visit) and Shelley and Horace Smith. 
 Here Hunt wrote his Story of Rimini. It was in this gaol, too, that 
 Colonel Despard was executed in 1802, being hanged and beheaded — 
 surely an addition of insult to injury only possible in those unregenerate 
 days ; and here Dickens saw the Mannings executed in 1 849, of which 
 scene he has left a harrowing picture. A church dedicated to the Holy 
 Trinity stands in the Square. It was erected in 1824, from designs by 
 Francis Bedford, the architect, and although possessing no points of 
 architectural beauty, is not uninteresting from the fact that it had to be 
 built on piles as the borings showed a sort of quicksand, and also because 
 its large portico, consisting of six fluted Corinthian columns supporting a 
 
396 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 plain entablature, is placed on the north instead of the south side of the 
 building. The present vicar tells me that he has been informed that the 
 reason for this innovation was because “ it was thought the Square on the 
 whole would look better” ! 
 
 The vast interior of the edifice is roofed in one span, and has a 
 panelled ceiling, and galleries round three sides ; but there are no monu- 
 ments of interest in it, and only three modern stained-glass windows ; 
 beneath is a large crypt used for meetings, &c. The first stone was laid 
 by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Manners Sutton) on June 2, 1823, the 
 ground having been given by the corporation of the Trinity House. I 
 may add that a chancel and side-chapel were built, and the church reseated, 
 during 1 891-8. 
 
 In the centre of the Square stands a statue which Walford states to 
 be of King Alfred. Doubt has been thrown on its identity, however, and 
 even Notes and Queries invoked ; the children have been heard to call it 
 “Father Trinity,” which perhaps does as well as any other name. 
 
 Merrick Square takes its name from land known once as Merrick’s 
 Fields, on which it stands. It is still more modern than even Trinity 
 Square, and may be accounted happy in that it has no history ; this state 
 of felicity from the same causes may be predicated of the other squares 
 I have mentioned, including Nelson Square , 1 called obviously after the 
 great sea captain, and possessing a tavern known as the “ Lord Nelson,” 
 and, for the rest, small lodging-houses and petty tradesmen ; although 
 it should not be forgotten that Thomas Barnes, editor of the Times during 
 the Grey, Peel, and Melbourne Administrations, once lived in it. But 
 Nelson Square had once a far greater resident than Barnes ; for here, 
 at No. 13, lived Robert Browning, and here he wrote the lines entitled 
 A Forest Thought , which he inscribed to one of his early friends, William 
 Alexander Dow. The poem is dated November 4, 1837, and helps to 
 fix the approximate date of the poet's residence in the Square. 2 
 
 Lorrimore Square, however, requires a few words, because it not only 
 possesses a church where the first Harvest Festival ever celebrated in 
 London was held, but also because it perpetuates in its name Lowen 
 Moor, which once adjoined Kennington Common, on the site of which it 
 
 1 A number of the East End squares have been taken over by the L. C. C. A list of them 
 will be found in London Parks and Open Spaces — a pamphlet issued by the Council. 
 
 2 See Browning and Domett, by F. G. Kenyon. 
 
LORRIMORE SQUARE 397 
 
 was formed in the fifties. A brook is said to have formerly run through 
 the Square, and a pond existed where the Vicarage now stands ; while the 
 present parish clerk used to rent part of the Square as a cabbage-garden ; 
 so recently have the attributes of the country existed in this neigh- 
 bourhood. 
 
 Close to Lorrimore Square stood the Surrey Gardens, or Surrey 
 Zoological Gardens, as they were termed, which lingered till within 
 thirty years ago ; indeed many public pleasure-grounds were situated 
 in this district in past days, such as the notorious Dog and Duck 
 Tavern with its gardens close to where West Square now stands; the 
 Apollo Gardens to the north, and Lambeth Wells to the south, to 
 mention but these. 1 
 
 Lorrimore Square was once a favourite residential quarter, but to-day 
 it is a poor neighbourhood, and it is, perhaps, only by its superior size 
 and the presence of a church in its central garden that it is enabled to 
 take precedence of the neighbouring Sutherland Square and the little 
 Alpha Square with its odd blocks of buildings. 
 
 The church, dedicated to St. Paul, was erected in 1857, from the 
 designs of H. Jarvis, the architect. It is in the Early English style, with 
 transitional details, and its spire surmounting the tower at the north-east 
 angle is 122 feet high. It was in “Lorrimore Church,” as it was fre- 
 quently called, that under Mr. Goring, services with very High Church 
 ritual were held, at a time when such a revival was somewhat exceptional, 
 and a good deal of criticism was expended on the innovation by the less 
 tolerant of those who preferred a more sombre form of worship. The 
 Harvest Festivals, first held, as I have said, in this church, were regarded 
 by the Low Church party as an integral part of ritualism, and feeling ran 
 so high that it was not thought derogatory to parody the circumstance 
 in posters prepared and paid for by the protestants. In more recent 
 days, many of us have wondered at an equal display of intolerance, and 
 the strange and not always dignified manner in which dissentients made 
 known the bitterness of their feelings and the uncompromising nature of 
 their opposition. 
 
 In our perambulation, to use the pleasant old-fashioned word beloved 
 of earlier topographers, we have now passed through practically all the 
 squares of London ; paying them more or less attention as their varied 
 interests, whether historical or topographical, would seem to require. In 
 
 1 A full and interesting account of these places of entertainment will be found in Wroth’s 
 London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Ce?itury. 
 
398 THE SQUARES OF LONDON 
 
 the important ones we have loitered, perhaps over-much ; in many we have 
 quickened our steps, I hope not too hurriedly, as recognising nothing to 
 rivet our gaze or to repay minute investigation. The reader has, in truth, 
 been taken into some strange localities, and has been induced to, as Gay 
 phrases it, 
 
 “ The silent court and opening square explore ; ” 
 
 but I hope it has not been, for him, an altogether unamusing or unprofit- 
 able ramble, as I am sure it has been for me, his so inadequate cicerone , a 
 source of great interest and much pleasure. 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Abel, Charles F., 77 
 Abercorn, Marquis of, 40 
 Aberdeen, Lord, 17 
 Abergavenny, Marquis of, 336 
 Abingdon, Earl of, 77 
 Abrahams, Mr., 170 
 Ackermann, 104 
 Ackland, Rev. T, C., 314 
 Adair, James, 124 
 Robert, 283 
 
 Adam brothers, 3, 4, 6, 7, 64, 83, 101, 206, 
 210, 216, 237, 251, 252, 263, 272, 281 
 Adams, Governor Robert, 57 
 Addison, 149, 165, 191, 302, 306, 307 
 Judge, 320 
 
 Aders, Charles, 256, 257 
 Mrs., 124 
 
 Aggas, 1, 142, 183, 202 
 Aikin, Lucy, 307, 308 
 Aikman, William, 153 
 Aislaby, Mr., 175 
 Aitchison, G., 346 
 Aitkin, 191 
 
 Airey, General Lord, 349 
 Akenside, Mark, 1 91 , 192 
 Albany, Duke of, 236 
 Albemarle, Dowager Countess, 8 
 Earl of, 14, 15, 32, 100 
 Alberoni, 119 
 Allanson, Mrs., 40 
 Allen, 21, 39, no, 269, 374, 385 
 Allerton, Lord, 289 
 Allingham, 180 
 Allsop, 61 
 Almond, 28 
 Altamont, Earl of, 94 
 Althorpe, Sir H. G., 40 
 Athole, Duke of, 97 
 Alvanley, Lord, 34, 78, 339 
 Ames, Captain Oswald, 318 
 Amherst, Lord, 29 
 General Lord, 98 
 Amiconi, 87 
 Amies, Felix, 206 
 Amory, Sir John, 266 
 Ancrum, Earl of, 12 
 Ancaster, Earl of, 342, 344 
 
 Andersen, Flans, 240 
 Anderson, Dr., 295 
 Andrea del Sarto, 137 
 Andree, Mrs., 290 
 Andriani, Count, 76 
 Angelo, 28, 44, 123, 129, 150, 194, 195 
 Michael, 162 
 Angier, John, 89, 91 
 Angerstein, John, 87, 158 
 Anglesey, Earl of, 64, 1 1 1 
 Anson, Lord, 68, 69 
 Thomas, M.P., 86, 99 
 Apsley, Sir Allen, 82, 83, 101 
 Sir Peter, 82, 83, 101 
 Lord, 101 
 Arabin, Mrs., 40 
 Arbuthnot, Dr., 38, 39, 165, 339 
 Archer, John Wykeham, 378 
 Thomas, 45, 186, 326, 327 
 Argyll, Duke of, 26, 57, 119, 154 
 Arlington, Earl of, 82, 87, 103, 191, 251 
 Armistead, Lord, 106 
 Arne, Dr., 133 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 142, 284, 336, 3 37 
 Arnould, 335 
 Arran, Earl of, 94 
 Asgill, Sir Charles, 98 
 Ashburnham, Earl of, 85, 90 
 Ashburton, Lady, 338 
 Ashcombe, Lord, 392 
 Ashley, Right Hon. Evelyn, 288 
 Askew, Dr. Anthony, 230, 231 
 Asquith, Right Hon. H. H., 59 
 Assheton-Srnith, T., 319 
 Atterbury, 65 
 Aubrey, 173, 246, 353 
 Austin, Henry, 240 
 Avebury, Lord, 87, 88 
 Awbry, Mary, 169 
 Aylesford, Dowager-Countess of, 40 
 Earl of, 94, 331 
 Ayrton, Professor, 320 
 
 Babbage, William, 31 1, 325 
 Bach, John Christian, 77 
 John Sebastian, 77 
 
 399 
 
400 INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Bacon, 104 
 Baden-Powel], 318 
 Bailey, Sir J. Russell, 95 
 Bailie, James, 208 
 Matthew, 54 
 Baker, John, 247 
 
 Dr. John Hopper, 206 
 Balcarres, Earl of, 12 
 Ballantine, Serjeant, 220, 384 
 Ball, John, 98 
 Baltimore, Lord, 96, 213 
 Balzac, 78 
 
 Bamfylde, Sir Charles Warwick, 276 
 Banbury, Earl of, 175 
 Bancroft, Lady, 55, 57 
 Sir Squire, 55, 57 
 
 Bangor, Bishop of (Dr. Herring), 309 
 Banks, Sir Joseph, 67, 84, 120 
 Miss Sarah Sophia, 120, 121 
 Bannister, John, 34, 35 
 Barbauld, Mrs., 361 
 Barber, Alderman, 229 
 Dr., 127 
 Francis, 357 
 
 Barebone, Dr. Nicholas, 88, 173, 174 
 Barge, Rev. Thomas, 128 
 Barham, 271 
 Henry, 354 
 Barillon, Paul, 92 
 Baring, 17 . 
 
 Baring, Sir Francis, 341, 366 
 Viscount, 344 
 Barnaby, Sir Joseph, 333 
 Barnard, Lady Ann, 12, 14 
 Mr., 20 
 
 Barlow, Mr., 303 
 Barnes, Thomas, 124, 396 
 Baron, B., 106, 154 
 Barrett, Miss, 223 
 Barrington, Lord, 54 
 
 Shute, Bishop of Durham, 54 
 Barrow, Rev. Dr., 126 
 Barry, Sir Charles, 107, 392 
 C., junior, 327 
 “Barry Cornwall,” 209 
 Barton, Bernard, 179 
 Charles, 280 
 Mrs. Catherine, 165 
 Barvvell, Richard, M.P., 91 
 Barwis, Cuthbert, 125, 126 
 Basevi, George, 342, 346 
 Nathan, 385 
 Bassompiere, 381 
 Bateman, Sir James, 84 
 Lord, 1 12, 113, 1 14 
 Bath, Earl of, 130 
 Marquis of, 40, 41 
 Marchioness of, 284 
 
 Bathurst, Earl of, 101, 165 
 Dr., 357 
 Lady, 370 
 Lord, 38, 39 
 Sir Benjamin, 101 
 Baxter, Rev. C. Parkhurst, 254 
 Richard, 189, 373 
 Bayley, Justice, 207 
 Beaconsfield, Earl of, 197, 198, 329 
 Beake, Thomas, 130 
 Beattie, Dr., 74, 273, 334, 335 
 Beauchamp, Earl, 98 
 Countess, 344 
 Beaufort, Duke of, 40, 97 
 Duchess, 18, 40 
 Beauclerk, Lady Di, 91 
 Topham, 91 
 Family, 99 
 
 Beaumont, Sir George, 32, 33, 40 
 Mrs., 268 
 Beaupre, 21 
 
 Beauvoir, Rev. Peter de, 393 
 Beavan, 196 
 
 Beaver, 288, 351, 352, 354, 355 
 Beazley, Samuel, 124 
 Beckford, Alderman, 31, 122, 123, 283 
 Bedford, Dukes of, 2 q, 1 8 q, 188, 202, 22K, 239, 
 245, 246, 249, 250, 343, 344 
 Duchess of, 14, 188 
 Rev. Edwin, 228 
 
 Bedingfield, Lady, 67, 70, 261, 265 
 Beeston, 208 
 William, 360 
 Behrens, Henry, 319 
 Beit, Otto, 343 
 Belgioiox, Count, 269 
 Bell, Sir Charles, 123, 164 
 Malcolm, 179 
 
 Bellasis, Lord, Lady Anne, 82, 83, 85, 86 
 
 Bellenden, 148 
 
 Bellingham, 264 
 
 Beloe, 3, 215 
 
 Beltinglass, Lady, 191 
 
 Belzettar, 384 
 
 Benfield, Paul, 40 
 
 Bennet, Sir John (Lord Ossulton), 87, 88 
 Bennett, Hon. A. G., 217 
 Lady Isabella, 251 
 Benson, A. C., 301 
 Lord Bingley, 44 
 Thomas Stirling, 224 
 Benstede, John de, 334 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 332 
 Bentinck, Lord George, 59 
 Lord Henry, 279 
 
 William Henry, first Duke of Portland, 85 
 Bentley, 165 
 Mrs., 245 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 401 
 
 Benyon, Richard, 40 
 Beresford, Viscount, 49 
 Berkeley, Lord John, 1, 2 
 William, 2, 30, 1 14 
 Charles, Lord Dursley, 84 
 Hon. Grantley, 1, 11 
 Mr., 306 
 Lady, 2, 3 
 Lady, of Stratton, 4 
 Bernal, Ralph, 339, 340 
 Bernard, Lord, 36 
 Berry, Miss, 10, 49, 113 
 Bertie, Lady Betty, 77 
 
 Besant, Sir Walter, 65, 66, 113, 117, 120, 127, 
 138, 140, 281, 326, 334, 350 
 Bessborough, Lord, 50, 51, 52, 58 
 Best, Lord Chief Justice (Lord Wynford), 207 
 Bethell, Christopher, 40 
 Betterton, 360 
 
 Betty, Henry West, “ The Infant Roscius,” 250 
 Bingley, Lord, 58 
 Birch, Dr., 357 
 Mr., 54 
 
 Birkbeck, Robert, 12 
 Biron, 339 
 Black, Dr., 208 
 Rev. J., 228 
 Miss, 314 
 
 Blackmore, Sir Richard, 309 
 Blackwell, T. F., 119, 120 
 Blagrove, William, 360 
 Blake, William, 254, 256 
 Mrs., 254 
 
 Blanchard, William, 354 
 Blandford, Marchioness of, 27 
 Blane, Sir Gilbert, 106 
 Blanquefort, Marquis of, 83, 84 
 Bleackley, 135 
 
 Blessington, Lady, 17, 94, 95, 283, 337 
 Lord, 94, 95 
 Bligh, Captain, 20 
 Lady Theodosia, 20 
 Blomfield, Bishop, 393, 441 
 Blore, Edward, 325 
 
 J-, 297 
 
 Blount, Martha, 19, 24 
 Blundel, Lord, 129 
 Blunt, Reginald, 194, 305, 353, 355 
 Boccaccio, Valdafar, 64 
 Bodichon, Madame, 286 
 Bodley, 219 
 Boehm, Sir E., 99 
 Lady, 100, 270 
 Bolingbroke, Lord, 131, 133 
 Viscount, 91 
 Lady, 385 
 
 Bolton, Duke of, 64, 87, 214 
 Bonheur, Rosa, 253 
 
 Bonomi, 318 
 Boodle, Walter, 2 
 Booth, Miss Sarah, 200 
 Bordeaux, Due de, 346 
 Borrow, George, 298 
 Boscawen, Admiral, 271, 273 
 Mrs., 271, 273 
 “ Bo’sun Smith,” 368 
 
 Boswell, J., 29, 126, 135.232, 233, 357, 359 , 381 
 Bouverie, Hon. Edward, 20, 21 
 Bowack, 304 
 Bowen, Mrs., 266 
 Bowles, John, 104, 140, 173, 366 
 Boyle, 12, 70, 76, 88, 208, 283, 331 
 Rev. G. W., 336 
 Hon. Mrs. Richard, 252 
 Bradfield, Dr., 326 
 Bradford, Earl of, 119, 345 
 Countess of, 100 
 General Sir Thomas, 441 
 Bradshaw, 173 
 
 Bragelone, Mrs. Claudine de, 305 
 Braham, John, 242 
 Braine, 285 
 Braith waite, 25 
 Bramston, Bishop, 138 
 Brand, Thomas, M.P., 103 
 Brandenburg, Elector of, 1 10 
 Brassey, Lord, 348, 349 
 Thomas, 348, 349 
 Bray, Mrs., 388 
 Bray ley, 214 
 
 Breadalbane, Earl of, 248 
 Brettingham, Matthew, 84, 89, 102 
 Breun, J., 1 14 
 Bridgman, Sir Henry, 100 
 Sir Orlando, 100 
 Madame, 64 
 
 Bridgewater, Duke of, 107, 213 
 Earl, 88, 366 
 Bright, Miss, 27 
 Robert, 134 
 Brisco, 175 
 Brisit, John, 374 
 Muriel, 374 
 
 Bristol, Marquis of, 90, 91 
 Brook, Lord, 64 
 Brooke, Earl of, 264 
 
 Lord Willoughby de, 331 
 Rev. Stopford, 284 
 Brooks, Shirley, 297 
 Brookfield, Rev. W. H., 294, 298 
 Charles, 298 
 Mrs., 224 
 
 Brougham, Lord, 5, 12, 14, 15, 199, 215 
 Broughton, Miss, 23 
 Mr., no 
 
 Brouncker, Lord, 146 
 
 2 C 
 
402 
 
 INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Brown, “ Capability,” 73, 288 
 Brown, Ford Madox, 253, 254 
 Robert, 120 
 Tom, 381 
 
 Rev. W. Haig, 314 
 Browne, Sir Robert, 84 
 Mrs., 1 1 
 
 Harold, Bishop of Winchester, 102 
 General Sir Thomas, 315 
 Sir William, 336 
 
 Browning, Robert, 9, 222, 223, 335, 396 
 Brownlow, Lord, 52, 58, 182, 344 
 Lady, 100 
 
 Brummell, Beau, 78, 21 1, 270 
 Brunei, Sir Isambard, 123, 318, 332 
 Brunswick, Augusta, Duchess of, 67, 68 
 Brydges, Sir Egerton, 215 
 Buccleugh, Anne, Duchess of, 92 
 Bucke, 192 
 
 Buckingham, Earl of, 103, 117 
 Duchess of, 91 
 Buckle, Mrs., 235 
 Buckley, Lady, 64 
 Buckstone, 292 
 Budgell, Eustace, 388 
 Buller, Charles, 337, 338 
 Bunbury, Sir Charles, 30 
 Bunsen, Baron, 35 
 Bunting, Rev. Jabez, 368 
 Burden, Miss, 181 
 Burdett, Sir Francis, 8, 9, 74 
 Burke, Edmund, 69, 134, 15 1, 162 
 Burleigh, Lord Balfour of, 288 
 Burlington, Earl of, 89, 194 
 Burne-Jones, Sir E., 179, 180, 181, 253, 313 
 Lady, 291, 313 
 
 Burnet, Gilbert, 46, 118, 165, 193, 376 
 Bishop, 122, 378 
 the Misses, 314 
 
 Burney, Dr. and Miss, 126, 132, 134, 166, 230, 
 233> 2 73- 274 
 Mrs., 380 
 
 Burrough, Justice, 207 
 Burroughs, J. S., 124 
 Burt, Miss, 314, 
 
 Burton, J. H., 64, 175, 363 
 Bute, Earl of, 3, 4, 5 
 Lady, 50 
 
 Butler, Samuel, 28, 165 
 
 c., 197 
 
 Captain, 175 
 Mrs., 317 
 Butterfield, 207 
 Butts, Thomas, 254 
 Byerley, Thomas, 93 
 Byng, General Sir John, 267 
 Byron, Lord, 16, 18, 74, 75, 9 6 > IJ 4, 268, 292, 
 337, 395 
 
 Cadogan, Lord, 63, 98, 288, 352 
 Hon. George, 350 
 Caesar, Colonel, 331 
 Calamy, Rev. Edmund, 386 
 Caldwell, James, 329 
 Calthorpe, Lord, 40, 41 
 Calvert, Charles, 35 
 Camden, Earl of, 20 
 Camelford, Lord, 52 
 Cameron, Dr., 362 
 Campbell, Lord, 215 
 Sir Colin, 9, 340 
 Colin, 90, 1 19 
 Sir Henry, 348 
 Dr. John, 232, 233 
 Thomas, 72, 74, 334 
 Major-General Barrington, 284 
 Mary, 334, 335 
 Mrs., 162 
 Mrs. Patrick, 315 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 345 
 Canning, Earl, 33 
 Sir Stratford, 33 
 Canova, 7, 16 
 Canterbury, Lord, 17 
 Canute, 178 
 Carberry, Earl of, 97 
 Carden, James, 208 
 Cardigan, Earl of, 263 
 Cardwell, Right Hon. Edward, 340 
 Rev. F., 386 
 Carewe, John W., 143 
 Carington, Sir William, 289 
 Carlisle, Lord, 30, 31, 88, 114, 117, 377 
 Bishop of, 229, 331 
 Carlton, Lord, 191 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 299, 241, 243, 320, 338, 357 
 
 367 
 
 Carmarthen, Marquis of, 97, 1 5 1 
 Carnarvon, Earl of, 191 
 Caroline of Brunswick, 265, 266 
 Carpenter, Lord, 27, 64 
 General, 63 
 Carrington, Lord, 385 
 Carron, Abbe, 260, 261 
 Carstone, Richard, 237 
 Carter, Mrs., 273 
 Miss, 358 
 
 Cartwright, Bishop, 310 
 Casanova, 185 
 Caslon, 383 
 Cassel, Sir Ernest, 40 
 Castlemaine, Viscount, 90 
 Castlereagh, Lord, 37, 101 
 Castlewood, Lady, 308 
 Catherine of Braganza, 174, 191 
 of Russia, 157 
 Cavalier, 384 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 403 
 
 Cave, 358, 360, 375 
 
 Cavendish, William, Duke of Devonshire, 86 
 Hon. Henry, 209 
 Lord John, 20 
 Lady Margaret, 42 
 Mr., 120 
 
 Chabot, Charles, 178 
 Chalie, John, 208 
 Chalmers, Dr., 77 
 Chambers, Captain, 68 
 Sir William, 68 
 Mr., 125 
 
 Chamberlaine, 327 
 Chandos, Duchess of, 40 
 Duke of, 45, 46, 47, 50, 93, 94, 140 
 Chantrey, Sir Francis, 16, 78 
 Lady, 252 
 
 Chapone, Mrs., 273 
 
 Charles I., 25, 81, 87, 137, 144, 170, 187, 353 
 II., 80, 87, 90, 100, 107, 108, no, 121, 182, 
 169, 191, 221, 251, 304, 334 
 
 v., 137 
 XL, 377 
 XII., 75 
 
 Charleville, Countess of, 52, 53 
 Charnock, 176 
 Chase, Richard, 314 
 Chatelaine, 303 
 
 Chatham, Earls of, 8, 88, 123, 273, 278, 
 306 
 
 Chatterley, Mrs., 293 
 Chatterton, 122 
 Chaworth, Lady, 87 
 Cheere, John, 58 
 Chelmsford, Lord, 340 
 Chester, Bishop, 229 
 
 Chesterfield, Earls of, 25, 26, 65, 100, 136, 
 148,165,191,326,358,370 
 Chichester, Bishop of, 229 
 Child, Daniel, 227 
 Sir Richard, 90 
 Robert, 19 
 Sir Thomas, 89 
 Miss, 20 
 
 Chinnock, Dr., 292 
 Chisley, George, 89 
 Chittester, Bishop of, 331 
 Chorley, 335, 337 
 Christian V., 369 
 Christie, 98 
 Chubb, J. B., 182 
 Churchill, Arabella, 82, 102 
 Charles, 228, 233 
 Mrs. Susanna, 329 
 Cibber, Colley, n, 12, 39, 128 
 Mrs., 129, 133, 134 
 Caius, Gabriel, 269 
 Cipriani, 78, 83 
 
 Claneboyne, Lord Dufferine, 58 
 Clanricarde, Marquis of, 99, 306 
 Clanwilliam, the Earl of, 345 
 Clare, Martin, 125 
 Claremont, Earl of, 20 
 (artist), 89 
 
 Clarence, Duke of, 68, 248 
 Clarendon, Earl of, 3, 12, 98, 153, 187 
 Clarges, Sir Thomas, 81, 82, 96 
 George, 97 
 Lady, 97 
 
 Clark, Rev. Adam, 376 
 Sir Andrew, 55, 69 
 Sir James, 69 
 Godfrey, 14 
 Mr., 374 
 
 Clay, James, 279 
 Sir William, 441 
 Clay den, 218 
 
 Clermont, Lord and Lady, 17, 18 
 Cleveland, Duke of, 101 
 Duchess of, 107, 251 
 Clifford, Sir Augustus, 441 
 Lord, 263 
 Clift, 163 
 
 Clinch, 45, 57, 128, 185, 194, 203, 228, 248, 
 252, 276, 277, 334, 347 
 Clive, Lord, 13, 252 
 Cloete, Montrose, 20 
 Clonmel, Countess, 263, 265 
 Cloudesley, Sir Richard, 392 
 Clyde, Lord, 9 
 Coatesworth, Dr., 131 
 Cobham, Lord, 73 
 Lady, 73, 74 
 Mr., 148 
 Cochrane, 340 
 
 Cockburn, Sir Alexander, 57 
 Lady, 267 
 Cock, Edward, 2 
 Cocks, Robert, 7 7 
 Codd, Harrison G., 315 
 Codrington, Admiral Sir Edward, 340 
 General Sir William, 340 
 Coell, Sir John, 81 
 Coke, 20, 43 
 Edward, 89, 92 
 Viscount. 288 
 Colbert, 146 
 Colbourn, Henry, 278 
 Cole, 1 51 
 
 Sir Henry, 297 
 Colebrooke, Sir George, 114 
 Coleridge, S. T., 209, 256, 257, 300 
 Lord, 247 
 
 Sir John Taylor, 247 
 Collier, John Payne, 293, 325 
 Colley, Jane, 269 
 
40 + INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Collins, Anthony, 54 
 J. Churton, 320 
 Wilkie, 57, 240, 241 
 Collinson, James, 298 
 Colman, George, 123, 291, 292 
 Columbus, 339 
 Colyear, Beau, 102 
 Combermere, Lord, 346 
 Compton, Lord, 191 
 Sir Spencer, 103 
 Speaker, 332 
 Comyns, 1 13 
 Congreve, 73, 165 
 Connaught, Duke of, 69 
 Connolly, Lady Anne, 40 
 Conway, Earl of, 84 
 Hon. H. S., 14 
 Marshal, 113 
 General, 1 15 
 Miss, 1 1 5 
 Moncure, 352 
 
 Conyngham, Lady, 28 r, 345 
 Cook, 241 
 Coombe, Dr., 194 
 Harvey, 263 
 Cooper, Sir Astley, 388 
 Sir George, 58 
 Coote, Captain, 169 
 Coram, Captain, 159 
 Cordell, Sir William, 377 
 Cornbury, Lord, 12 
 Cornelys, Mrs., 77, 114-117 
 Cornwall, Barry, 335 
 Cornwallis, 364 
 Corot, 346 
 
 Corry, Montagu (Lord Rowton), 198 
 Cosimo, Grand Duke, 184 
 Cotes, Francis, 55, 58 
 Cotton, Sir Robert, 20 
 Sir Willoughby, 348 
 Colonel, 64 
 Courtin, 82, 91, 92 
 Courtney, 2 1 
 Viscount, 40 
 Coventry, Lord, 30, 64 
 Coverley, Sir Roger de, 343 
 Cowper, Lady, 24, 147 
 Lord, 34, 65, 66, 89 
 William, 21 1, 272, 387 
 Crace, 380 
 
 Cracherode, Rev. C. M., 331 
 Crane, Walter, 235 
 Craven, Lord, 44, 129, 130, 131, 145 
 Rev. Dacre, 228 
 Mrs., 319 
 
 Crawford, Earl of, 59 
 Crawley, Captain, 45 
 Creevey, 17, 21 7, 221, 278, 279 
 
 Cremorne, Lord, 352 
 Crewe, Lord, 345 
 Mrs , 1 17 
 Croft, Miss, 219 
 
 Croker, 26, 54, 135, 232, 290, 291, 292 
 Crofton, 354 
 J. Wilson, 21 1 
 Croly, 149, 150 
 Rev. George, 233 
 Cromartie, Lord, 149 
 Cromell, 291 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 1 1 8, 144, 173, 244, 373 
 Crosland, 200 
 Cross, 286 
 
 Cruikshank, Dr., 163, 164 
 Crutchrods, Colonel, 331 
 Cubitt, 335, 339, 348 
 
 Cumberland, Duke of, 58, 59, 134, 188, 274 
 Cundy, Thomas, 332, 333, 338 
 Cunningham, 2, 10, 12, 56, 72, 109, 121, 128, 
 159, 173) I9L 193, 198, 203, 219, 233, 262, 
 276, 360, 365, 441 
 Curzon, Hon. Miss, 22 
 Nathaniel, 227 
 Czarina Anne, 75 
 
 Daggenfelt, Count, 84 
 Dahl, 46, 133 
 Dalrymple, John, 281 
 Darner, Hon. Mrs., 29, 40 
 Dance, George, 380 
 Danvers, Sir John, 353 
 Danway, Sir John, 97 
 Darcy, Lord Conyers, 98 
 Darell, Sir Lionel, 36 
 Darley, Admiral, 58 
 Darnley, Earl of, 12, 20 
 Dartmouth, Earl of, 9, 87, 88, 90, 1 1 4 
 Dasent, Arthur, 80-104 
 Dash wood, Sir James, 27 
 Lady, 40, 64 
 
 Davenant, Sir William, 373 
 Davenport, Lady, 194 
 Davey, Thomas, 351 
 David, 104 
 Davidson, 207 
 Davies, Alexander, 334 
 Mary, 334 
 
 Davis, 74, 1 15, 290, 339, 34°, 345, 347, 349 
 Mrs. Mary, 82, 83, 102 
 Davison, Alexander, 95 
 Dawson, Edward, 40 
 Nancy, 233 
 Day, H. A., 297 
 Thomas, 370 
 Deasle, William, 235 
 Decker, Sir Matthew, 92, 93 
 Deffand, Madame du, 273 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 405 
 
 Delafield, Edward T., 347 
 Delamere, Lord, 58 
 
 Delaney, Mrs., 70, 73, 132, 136, 271, 272 
 Delavel, Lord, 66 
 Delm£, Peter, 27, 30, 31, 138 
 Lady Betty, 162 
 De Manneduke, Dr., 194 
 Denman, Lord, 221 
 Denton, Sir Edmund, 84 
 Denys, Hon. Lady Charlotte, 288 
 Mr., 288 
 
 Derby, Earls of, 31, 40, 86, 94, 95 
 Lady, 32 
 De Saussure, 184 
 Desnoyers, 1 50 
 Despard, Colonel, 395 
 Despenser, Lord Le, 74, 75 
 Deval, John, 198 
 De Vere, Aubrey, 86 
 Deverell, Walter H., 179 
 Devonshire, Dukes of, 2, 9, 88, 209, 363 
 Duchess of, 18, 363 
 Dewes, Mrs., 65 
 De Wilde, 260 
 Dibdin, Charles, 167 
 Dr., 64 
 R. W., 223 
 Thomas. 260, 367 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 57, 77, 139, 197, 209, 220, 
 238-247, 329 
 John, 26 
 
 Dickenson, Mrs., 57 
 Digby, Lord, 4 
 Dilke, Sir Charles, 354 
 Dillon, Lord, 1 13 
 Diprose, 291 
 
 Disraeli, Isaac, 197, 31 1, 385 
 Dobbin, Sir William, 226 
 Dobie, 202, 208, 212, 224, 243, 245 
 Dobson, Austin, 177, 393 
 Dockra, 365 
 Docwra, Thomas, 375 
 Dodd, Dr., 370 
 Dodimy, 52 
 
 Dodington, Bubb, 26, 148, 149 
 Eliza, 130 
 
 Dodsley, 46, 186, 192 
 Domett, Alfred, 335 
 Dominicque, Paul, 165 
 Donaldson, Sir George, 206 
 T. L., 243, 327 
 Donegal, Marquis of, 88 
 Lady, 54 
 
 Donnellan, Mrs., 66 
 Doran, Dr., 11, 12, 22, 83, 149, 250 
 Dorchester, Countess of, 102 
 Dorset, Earls of, 72, 191, 359 
 Duke of, 102, 180 
 
 Dove, 377 
 Dover, Lord, 14 
 Douce, Francis, 31 1 
 Douglas, Bishop, 127 
 Dow, W. A., 396 
 Dowden, 337 
 Downe, Viscount, 97 
 Downshire, Marquis of, 70 
 Drage, Geoffrey, 280 
 Drake, William, 40 
 Drew, R. W., 386 
 Drummond, Henry, 135 
 Lady Harriet, 345 
 Dryden, 72, 144, 360, 361 
 Dubost, 16 
 
 Ducie, Earl of, 264, 345 
 Duckenfield, Lady, 194 
 Dudley, Lord, 75, 218 
 Duff, Sir M. Grant, 21 
 Dufferin, Lord, 33 
 Duncombe, Sir John, 83 
 Dunmore, Lord, 4, 64 
 Durham, Lord, 40, 41 
 Bishop of, 64 
 Dyson, 191, 192 
 
 Eastlake, Sir Charles, 252, 253 
 Lady, 253, 253 
 Eaton, Rev. S., 228 
 Edgcumbe, Lord, 117 
 Hon. Richard, 30 
 Edward the Confessor, 347 
 I-. 334 
 II., 381 
 IV., 1 16 
 Edwards, 37 
 Egerton, Earl of, 91 
 Colonel, 40 
 William, 40, 91 
 Eglinton, Earl of, 96 
 Egmont, Lord, 149 
 Elcho, Lord, 288 
 Eldon, Lord, 38, 202-206 
 Eliot, Lord, 87 
 
 Sir John, 87, 197, 221 
 George, 285, 286 
 
 Ellenborough, Earls of, 17, 99, 194, 195, 340 
 Lord Chancellor, 97 
 Ellesmere, Earls of, 107, 344 
 Ellice, Sir Charles, 441 
 Elliot, Right Hon. Hugh, 267 
 Ellis, Sir Henry, 207 
 Mr., 383 
 Elmes, 327 
 
 Elwes, Sir Hervey, 264 
 J. M., 263 
 Ely, Talfourd, 222 
 Mrs., 222 
 
406 INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Emerson, 207, 371 
 Emperor Toma, 328 
 Empress Maria Theresa, 134 
 England, Dick, 166 
 Ernley, Sir John, 84 
 Espinasse, 385 
 
 Essex, Earls of, 64, 97, 101, 144, 145, 343, 344, 
 377 
 
 Etheridge, 189 
 Etty, 219 
 
 Evans, General, 63 
 Rev. T. S., 314 
 Anne, 315 
 
 Evelyn, John, 1, 2, 3, 121, 146, 153, 16 7, 183, 
 184, 187, 367, 3 77, 381 
 Eyre, Lieutenant-Colonel, 9 
 General, 9 
 Mrs., 9 
 
 Faber, 222 
 
 Fagniani, Maria, 51, 282 
 Fairfax, Sir William, 75 
 Lady, 75 
 
 Fairholt, F. W., 290 
 Fairthorne, 81, 143, 144 
 Falconberg, Lord, 118, 1 19 
 Viscount, 129 
 Falkland, Lord, 64 
 Falmouth, Lord, 88 
 Lady, 136 
 
 Fane, Lady Sarah, 19 
 Colonel John, 64 
 Fanshaw, Rev. W. D., 392 
 F araday, 3 1 1 
 Farran, Miss, 31, 32 
 William, 293 
 Farmer, Dr., 231 
 Farquhar, Lord, 40, 41 
 Fauconnier, 180 
 
 Faulkner, 235, 302, 303, 305, 310, 347, 353 
 
 Fauntleroy, Henry, 278 
 
 Fawcett, 125 
 
 Fawkes, Guy, 37 
 
 Fawkener, Sir Everard, 96, 385 
 
 Fellows, 222 
 
 Felton, Lavinia, 214 
 
 Fenwicke, Sir William, 377 
 
 Feversham, Earl of, 84 
 
 Fielder, 441 
 
 Fielding, Sir John, 117, 149 
 Henry, 5, 50 
 Fife, Duke of, 267 
 Duchess of, 267 
 Earl of, 55 
 Lady, 57 
 
 Finch, Lady Bell, 12 
 Lady Betty, 14 
 Lady Charlotte, 14 
 
 Finch, Lady Elizabeth, 44 
 Lady Isabella, 14 
 Saville, 58 
 Hon. William, 14 
 Findlater, Lady, 67 
 Fish, 22 
 
 Fisher, Edward, 155 
 Jasper, 364 
 Fitzgerald, 28 
 Fitzhardinge, Lord, 22 
 Fitzherbert, Mrs., 11, 18 
 Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmund, 33 
 Fitzpatrick, Lady Anne, 267 
 Fitzroy, Charles (Duke of Grafton), 251, 255 
 Admiral Robert, 297 
 Fitzwilliam, Earl, 40, 41, 91 
 Viscount, 93 
 Dr., 188 
 Edward, 292 
 Mrs., 292 
 
 Flaxman, 16, 113, 256, 257 
 Fletcher, of Saltoun, 154 
 Flower, Sir Charles, 216 
 Foley, Lord, 18, 64 
 Folkestone, Lord, 17 
 Fontana, 171 
 Foote, 155, 371 
 Forbes, 273 
 
 Forster, 197, 220, 240, 241, 362 
 Mrs., 203 
 
 Fortescue, J. B., 14 
 Fothergill, Dr., 13 
 Fountaine, Sir Andrew, 166 
 Fox, C. J., 4, 8, 9, 16, 18, 48, 134, 137, 201 
 Caroline, 31 1, 312 
 George, 57 
 Sackville, W. L., 88 
 
 Fox-Burgoyne, Field-Marshal Sir John, 321 
 Francis I., 137 
 Francis, Sir Philip, 95, 100 
 Francklin, Thomas, 331 
 Franklin, Dr., 159 
 Benjamin, 194 
 Fraser, Sir W., 38, 208, 346 
 Dr., 145 
 
 Frederick, Prince of Wales, 67, 84, 148, 149, 
 1 5°, DO 
 
 Freeling, Sir Francis, 279 
 French, 169 
 Freshfield, Edwin, 225 
 Frith, Richard, 56, 98, 277 
 Froude, 357 
 Fulford, 291 
 Fuller, Isaac, 199 
 Rev. Thomas, 342 
 Fullerton, Lady Georgina, 319 
 Furness, Henry, 64 
 Fyvie, 371 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 407 
 
 Gainsborough, Earl of, 49, 306 
 Thomas, 4 
 
 Gallini, Sir John, 76, 77 
 The Misses, 77 
 Galloway, Earl of, 336 
 Galway, Lord, 1 1 7 
 Gamble, Ellis, 1 57 
 Gardelle, Theodore, 154, 155 
 Gardiner, Mrs., 358 
 Garnett, Dr., 199 
 
 Garrick, David, 27, 123, 133, 134, 273, 358, 
 
 37 L 375 
 Garth, 381 
 Gartshore, Mrs., 252 
 Garvagh, Lord, 267 
 Gascoign, Sir Thomas, 169 
 Gascoigne, Mrs., 348 
 Gaskell, Lady Catherine, 266 
 Mr., 266 
 
 Gay, 39, 106, 154, 165 
 Gayfere, Thomas, 328 
 Gaze, Sir W., 64 
 Genest, 68 
 
 George I., 25, 39, 72, 104, 147, 154, 170, 188, 
 
 350 
 
 11., 25,47, 67,93, i°3> t °8, 1 12, 140, 148, 
 150, 326 
 
 111., 4, 21, 36, 67, 77, 148, 150, 1 5 1, 203, 
 215, 269, 273, 370 
 
 IV., 9, 20, 44, 70, 202, 218, 220, 255, 281 
 George William, Prince, 147 
 Gerard, 137 
 Germain, Sir John, 99 
 Lady Betty, 99, 165 
 Gibbon, 5, 28 
 Gibbons, Grinling, 112 
 Orlando, 208 
 Gibbs, Herbert C., 266 
 Sir Vicary, 216 
 Mr, 43 
 Gibson, 253 
 Gifford, 120, 247 
 Stanley Lees, 368 
 Gilchrist, 219 
 Mrs., 253 
 Gillett, 363 
 
 Gillray, James, 186, 354 
 Gilman, 257 
 Mrs., 257 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., 94 
 Glascock, Captain, 294 
 Gliddon, Mrs., 301 
 Gloucester, Duke of, 116 
 Glover, “ Leonidas,” 149 
 Goddard, Dr. William, 377 
 Godding, James, 343 
 Godolphin, Lord, 174 
 Godwin, George, 162, 259, 294 
 
 Godwin, William, 259, 260 
 Goethe, 7 
 
 Goldsmid, Lady Louisa, 266 
 Goldsmith, 4, 12, 362 
 Goodenough, 12 1 
 Gordon, Duke of, 242, 346 
 Duchess of, 99 
 Lord George, 106 
 Gore, Hon. Captain, 227 
 Charles, 15 
 Lady, 70 
 Goring, 397 
 Gosling, George, 206 
 Mrs., 206 
 Lydia, 206 
 Gotzenberger, 256 
 Goulbarn, Rt. Hon. Henry, 276 
 Gounod, 240 
 
 Gouvermet, Marchioness de, 98 
 Gower, Lord Ronald, 56, 147 
 Grafton, Duke of, 87, 97 
 Duchess of, 87, 88 
 Graham, Baron, 207 
 Dr., 264 
 
 Grammount, de, 190 
 Granby, Lord, 4 
 Grandison, Earl of, 1 15 
 Sir Charles, ix, 105 
 Granger, 1 18 
 Grant, Baron, 129, 17 1 
 Donald, D.D., 328 
 Grantham, Lord, 88, 97, 147 
 Granville, Lord, 53, 71, 72, 97 
 Grattan, 127 
 Gray, Sir George, 441 
 
 J. M., 73, 74, 157, 187, 232, 381 
 Greatorex, 77 
 Green, Edward, 350, 389 
 Dr. Samuel, 228 
 J. R., 312 
 Mrs. J. R., 312 
 Greig, Rev. George, 325 
 Granville, Thomas, 106 
 W. W., 102 
 Greville, Hon. C., 263 
 Charles, 17, 220, 345 
 Hon. Francis, 91, 264 
 Henry, 9, 10, 33, 37, 138, 293, 338, 339, 344 
 Grey, Anthony, 88 
 
 Earl, 15, 99, 153, 267, 268, 331 
 Griffinburgh, Mrs., 213 
 Griffith, Bishop, 138 
 W. P., 375 
 Grignion, 1 54 
 Grimshaw, 387 
 Grimston, Lord, 40, 114 
 Gronow, Captain, 339 
 Mr., 34, 102, 268, 271 
 
+ o8 INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Groom, William, 224 
 Grossmith, George, 225 
 Weedon, 206 
 Grosvenor, Earl, 40, 331 
 Hon. Thomas, 58 
 Sir Richard, 25, 39, 158 
 Sir Thomas, 334 
 Mrs., 40 
 Grote, 346 
 Guadagni, 117 
 Guerchy, Comte de, 1 13 
 Guernsey, Lord, 27 
 Guest, A. R., 208 
 Guiccioli, Countess, 157, 167, 
 
 Guiche, Due de, 346 
 Guildford, Earl of, 30 
 Countess of, 30 
 Guinness, Hon. Rupert, 95 
 Lady Gwendolen, 95 
 Gunnell, Richard, 360 
 Gunter, 20 
 Gurney, Hudson, 95 
 Gwynn, John, 156 
 Gwynne, Nell, 333 
 
 Hackett, 94 
 Hackman, 209 
 Haggitt, Rev. D’Arcey, 328 
 Hakewell, Henry, 441 
 Hallam, 7 
 Hale, Judge, 178 
 Hales, Sir Robert, 375 
 Lady, 58 
 
 Halifax, Earl of, 27, 82, 84, 98, 100, 346, 
 347 
 
 Countess, 84 
 Hall, Rev. W. J., 389 
 S. C., 198, 301 
 Halsbury, Earl of, 368 
 Halsey, Edmund, 74 
 Hamilton, Duke of, 85 
 Duchess, 12, 1 17 
 Marquis, 365 
 Lady Anne, 265, 266 
 Sir Robert, 305 
 Sir William, 264 
 Lady, 56, 264 
 Elizabeth, 264 
 Rev. Dr., 314 
 Antony, 98 
 Gavin, 7 
 Godfrey, 236 
 William G., 69 
 “Single Speech,” 196 
 Hampton, Lord, 441 
 Handel, G. F., 133 
 Hanover, Elector of, no 
 Hansard, Luke, 208 
 
 Hanson, 18 
 Miss, 18 
 
 Hanway, Jonas, 176, 177, 178, 370 
 Harcourt, Earl of, 44, 45, 58 
 Countess, 263 
 Clarence, 208 
 Hardie, Martin, 157 
 Hardman, 258 
 Hardwicke, Earl of, 88, 266 
 Lord Chancellor, 27 
 Mr., 342, 343 
 Hare, 21 
 
 Harewood, Earl of, 65 
 Harley, Lord, 43 
 
 Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holies, 43 
 Dr., 131, 165 
 Harness, 222 
 Harrington, Earl of, 249 
 Lady, 1 1 7 
 
 Harrison, 10, 199, 203, 278, 301, 334 
 Frederick, 277 
 Harris, William, 206, 360 
 Harrowby, Lord, 36, 37, 38, 270 
 Harte, 375 
 Harvey, Mrs., 213 
 Hastings, Warren, 134 
 Hatton, 80, no, 129, 131, 176, 330, 364, 374 
 Hawkesbury, Lord, 269 
 Hawksworth, Dr., 358 
 Haversham, Lord, 33, 34 
 Hay, Sir J. C. Dalrymple, 333 
 Haydon, 15, 20, 32, 33, 43, 56, 219, 270, 284 
 Hayley, 56 
 
 Hayter, Sir Arthur, 40 
 Sir George, 284, 285 
 Hayward, 4, 7, 8, 36, 53, 441 
 Abraham, 53, 349 
 Hazlitt, 107 
 Head, J. G., 285 
 Heathcote, Sir Gilbert, 178 
 Sir John, 100 
 Sir William, 94 
 Lady, 40 
 
 Heath, Judge, 207 
 Heatley, Tod, 22 
 Heneage, Earl of Aylesford, 44 
 Henley, 277 
 Hennell, Sara, 286 
 Henry VIII., 184 
 Henry, Prince of Wales, 143 
 Herbert, Right Hon. Sidney, 346 
 William, 346 
 
 Hereford, Lord James of, 289 
 Herring, Archbishop, 303 
 Mr., 348 
 
 Heron, Sir Richard, 40 
 Hersey, Rev. Dr. Francis, 314 
 Hertford, Earl of, 36, 119 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Hertford, Marquis of, 281, 282 
 Lady, 281, 282 
 
 Hervey, Lord, 25, 27, 47, 67, 119, 150 
 John, 90, 147, 148, 149 
 Hewers, Mrs., 64 
 Heyden, Admiral, 386 
 Hicks, Mr. and Mrs. Seymour, 210 
 Higgins, M. J., 340, 348 
 Hill, Clement, 70 
 Constance, 166 
 Rowland, 320 
 Mr., 327 
 Viscount, 345 
 Hillsborough, Lord, 64, 70 
 Hillyard, Francis, 2 
 Hilton, 441 
 
 Hoare, Sir Henry, 94, 95 
 Sir Richard, 95 
 Prince, 241 
 Hobart, Lord, 87 
 Mr., 1 17 
 
 Hobhouse, John Cam, 74 
 Hodder, 296 
 Hodson, Miss, 178 
 
 Hogarth, 6, 55, 141, 142, 153-1 59, 167, 231, 
 362 
 
 Hogg, Dr. Jabez, 206 
 Holdernesse, Lord, 66 
 Holinshed, 382 
 Holland, Earl of, 144, 145 
 Lord, 30, 47, 48, 103, 150 
 Sir Henry, 120, 344 
 Mr., 288 
 
 Hollingshead, John, 142, 166, 167 
 Holman, 125 
 Holroyd, Justice, 221 
 Holt, Lord Chief Justice, 176 
 Hood, Tom, 241 
 Hook, Sir Hele, 305 
 James, 126 
 
 Theodore, 17, 106, 126, 270, 271, 282, 358 
 Hooker, 335 
 Hope, Anthony, 210 
 Henry, 48, 49, 64 
 Thomas, 15, 16, 48 
 Hopetoun, Lord, 48 
 Hopkins, 249 
 Mrs., 249 
 
 Horn, Count Frederick de, 137 
 Horn, Rev. T. H., 199, 200 
 Thomas, 369 
 Horner, Thomas, 370 
 Miss, 76 
 
 Horwood, 40, 49, 202 
 Hotham, Admiral Sir F. C., 36 
 Baron, 194 
 Houghton, Lord, 138 
 Hough, Bishop, 303, 310 
 
 Howard, Lord, 114 
 Lady, 30, 153 
 Mrs., 148 
 
 Howe, Countess, 263 
 John, 373 
 
 Howell, John, 100, 372 
 Howes, 360 
 Howley, Bishop, 441 
 Hoyle, Edmund, 53, 234 
 Hughes, 241 
 
 Hughson, 64, 267, 374, 379 
 Hulse, Edward, 263 
 Humble, Lady, 331 
 Hume, Joseph, 279 
 Humphrey, Ozias, 292 
 Hunloke, Lady, 283 
 Hunt, F. W., 263 
 Holman, 208 
 
 Leigh, 28, 198, 289, 300, 301, 358, 395 
 Thornton, 301 
 
 Hunter, Dr. John, 142, 163, 164, 171, 207, 
 Rev. Joseph, 247 
 Hurd, Bishop, 27 
 Hurley, Samuel, 370 
 Hutchins, 285 
 Hutchings, 352, 353 
 Hutchinson, Dr. Jonathan, 53 
 Barry, 224 
 Mr., 20 
 
 Hutton, 10, 123, 198, 295, 326 
 Hyde, Henry (Earl of Oxford), 83 
 Henry (Earl of Clarendon), 89 
 Lawrence (Earl of Rochester), 83, 96 
 
 Inchbald, Mrs., 166, 300 
 
 Inchiquin, Earl of, 162 
 
 Ingestre, Viscount, 284 
 
 Inglesby, Sir Henry, no 
 
 Inglis, Sir Robert, 207 
 
 Inwood, William, 248, 328 
 
 Ireton, General, 173 
 
 Irvine, Viscount, 281 
 
 Irving, Rev. Edward, 242, 243, 248, 367 
 
 Irwin, Sir John, 103 
 
 Isaacs, 213 
 
 Jackson, 344 
 James I., 1 12, 365, 381 
 
 II., 59, 92, 100, 191, 302, 308, 378 
 James, Mr., 50, 17 1 
 Jameson, Mrs., 209, 252 
 Jansen, Sir Theodore, 64, 330 
 Jarvis, H., 397 
 Jefferies, Richard, 189, 277 
 Jefferson, 318, 384 
 Jekyll, 5, 204 
 Jennins, William, 40 
 Jephson, Miss, 16 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 410 
 
 Jerdan, William, 128, 137, 279, 289, 295 
 Jermyn, Henry (Earl of St. Albans), 81-89 
 Henry (Earl of Dover), 92 
 Hon. Thomas, 82, 83, 99 
 Jerningham, Sir Edward, 36 
 Lady, 67, 136, 265 
 Chevalier, 261 
 Jerrold, Douglas, 241, 301 
 Jersey, Earls of, 19, 20, 27, 40 
 Lady, 20, 48 
 Jervas, 6 
 
 Jesse, 3, 19, 30, 48, 50, 1 18, 130, 131, 189, 229, 
 360, 374 
 
 Jodrell, Paul, 227 
 Joicey, Sir James, 289 
 Johns, Miss, 268 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 26, 29, 72, 105, 125, 135, 
 136, 156, 164, 192, 232, 244, 273, 274, 356, 
 358, 362, 370, 375, 378 
 Brimley, 16 
 J. (architect,) 251 
 Johnston, Charles, 74 
 Jones, Dr., 124 
 
 Inigo, 49, 184, 194, 373 
 Sefton, 2x0 
 
 Sir William, 58, 189, 231 
 W. A., 208 
 Jonson, Ben, 381 
 Jordan, Mrs., 68, 75, 258 
 Joseph, 83 
 Junius, 188 
 
 Kaufmann, Angelica, 83, 129, 136, 137, 
 206, 216 
 
 Kean, Charles, 246, 247 
 Keeley, Mrs., 293 
 Kelk, Sir John, 101 
 Kelly, Dr. C., 348 
 Hugh, 358 
 Mrs., 353 
 
 Kemble, Charles, 35, 123 
 Fanny, 123, 209, 225, 250, 298, 317, 345 
 Kemp, C. E., 333, 345 
 Kendal, Duchess of, 25, 26 
 Kendall, H. E., 344, 345 
 Kenmare, Earl of, 265 
 Kennet, Bishop, 2 
 Kensington, Lord, 299 
 Kensit, John, 389 
 Kent, 2, 12, 14, 39, 222, 263 
 Kent, Duke ol) 88, 89, 98 
 Duchess of, 345 
 Kenyon, Hon. E., 298 
 F. G„ 396 
 Kerr, 137 
 
 Kerslake, Sir John, 234 
 Kildare, Earl of, 84, 98 
 Kilmansegge, Count, 62, 114, 184, 185 
 
 Kines, Andrew, 371 
 King Alfred, 178, 396 
 King John, 122 
 King, Gregory, no 
 Dr., 347 
 Mrs., 155 
 
 Kingsley, Rev. Charles, 351 
 Kinnaird, Lord, 95 
 Kintore, Earl of, 288 
 Kitton, 240, 260 
 Knapton, 55, 58 
 Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 232 
 Knight, Charles, 242 
 Payne, 8, 124 
 Thomas, 84 
 
 (author), 120, 130, 275, 276, 278, 281 
 Mrs., 138 
 
 Knightley, 175, 176 
 Knowles, Sir James, 144, 171 
 Knyvett, 77 
 Kosciusko, 157 
 
 Lackington, 383, 384 
 Lacy, Walter, 290 
 Laguerre, 154 
 Lamb, Lady Caroline, 51 
 
 Charles, vii, 124, 178, 179, 242, 257 
 Mary, 124 
 
 E. B., 389 
 Lambert, 43, 66 
 
 Daniel, 166 
 Judge, 178 
 
 Lamplugh, Rev. Dr., 308 
 Landor, W. S., 223, 257 
 Landseer, Sir E., 252, 253 
 Lane, 44, 158 
 Lang, Andrew, 280 
 Langham, Sir James, 54, 58 
 Langton, 358 
 Langtry, Mrs., 351 
 
 Lansdowne, Marquis of, 4, 5, 6, 7, 21 
 
 Larking, Mrs., 288 
 
 Lascelles, Beau, 65 
 
 Lathom, Earl of, 279 
 
 Laurie, Sir Peter, 259 
 
 Lauriston, General, 269 
 
 Lawes, 186, 187 
 
 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 6, 155, 218, 219 
 Justice, 207 
 Lawson, Captain, 175 
 Cecil, 352 
 
 F. W., 288 
 Layer, Lawyer, 65 
 Leader, M.P., 346, 348 
 Leake, 303 
 
 Lear, John, 260 
 Lechmere, Sir Edward, 375 
 Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 1 77 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 4 11 
 
 Lee, Sir George, 94 
 Jack, 78 
 
 Leech, John, 244 
 
 Leeds^Duke of, 40, 85, 88, 102, 151, 267 
 Lefevre, Rt. Hon. Shaw (Lord Eversley), -79 
 Dr., 103 
 
 Legg, Rev. Stanley, 245 
 
 Lefcester, Earls of, 4, 4°, 64, 96, ”4, *44, 
 
 145, 146 
 
 Leigh, Lord, 264 
 C. Austen, 288 
 Leighton, Lord, 6, 346 
 Leland, 69 
 Lely, Sir Peter, 98 
 Lemon, Mark, 241 
 Lennox, Lord W. Pitt, 7, 9, 7° 
 
 Lady Sarah, 48 
 Leroux, 260 
 
 Leslie, 15L I ^’°» 2 79 , 
 
 L’Estrange, Rev. A. G., 355 , 35 b 
 Le Sueur, 17° 
 
 Lewes, G. H., 286 
 Lewis, W., 244 
 
 Lever, Sir Ashton, 151, i5 2 > l6 7 
 Charles, 151 
 Levett, 358 
 
 Lichfield, Bishop of, 129 
 Liddell, Anne, 97 
 Lincoln, Earl of, 85, 189 
 Lindsay, Lady Anne, 12 
 Linnell, 256 
 Linwood, Miss, 78, 109 
 Lisburne, Lord, 30 
 Lisle, Lord, 1 43> *4-6 
 Lister-Kaye, Sir John, 284 
 Liston, John, 294 
 Litchfield, Lord, 64 
 Littledale, Justice, 206 
 Liverpool, Earl of, 9°, 91 
 Lloyd, Sir Richard, 351 
 Bishop, 153 
 Miss, 298 
 Locke, 359 
 Lockhart, 247 
 Lockner, W. C., 393 
 Lodge, Edmund, 200 
 Loggan, David, 155 
 London, Bishop of, 85 
 Londonderry, Lord, 64 
 Long, Canon, 128 
 Edwin, 289 
 Loraine, Lord, 263 
 Lord, Thomas, 280 
 Lough, John Graham, 284, 285, 318 
 
 Loughborough, Lord, 202 
 
 Louis Philippe, 71 
 Louis of Bavaria, 195 
 
 Louis XIV., 59 
 Loutherbourg, De, 185 
 Lovat, Lord, 158 
 
 Lowt C Rt E HL 0f Robert (Lord Sherbrooke), 
 
 349 
 
 Hon. Colonel, 227 
 Lowndes, William, 347 
 
 Madame, 331 _ . , 
 
 Lubbock, Sir John, 88. See Avebuiy 
 
 Lucas, 223 
 
 Lucy, Sir Fulke, 82, 97 
 Lady, 34 
 
 Charles, 1 13 
 Luffman, 325 
 
 Lushington, Sir Henry, 207 
 
 Lustre™ Varcissus, 84, 9 2, 94, 108, 1 1 1, 169, 
 173, 174, -75, 176, 186, 187, 189, 266, 292, 
 293, 305, 3°^, 366, 377 
 Luxmore, Rev. J., 228 
 Lyall, Sir Charles, 76 
 Lyndhurst, Lord, 17, 38 
 Lyons, Emma (Lady Hamilton), 264 
 Lyttelton, Lord, 49, 268, 269, 27 j, -94 
 Sir Richard, 47 , 
 
 Lytton, Lord, 23, 35, 241, 277, 34 3 
 Mrs. Bulwer, 277 
 Lysons, 263 
 
 Macarteney, Lord, 232 
 
 Macaulay, 7, 13, 98, i°8, l66 > l8 7> 343 
 Mrs., 358 
 Zachary, 233 
 
 Macclesfield, Earl of, 58, 95, IT 4 
 Macfarren, Sir Walter, 78 
 Machyn, 23, 377, 382 
 Mackail, 180, 234, 235 
 Maclcay, 4 2 
 
 Mackean, Rev. Herbert, 342 
 Mackworth, Sir Herbert, 54 
 Macky, 133, 378 
 Maclise, 346 
 
 Macpherson, Sir John, 289 
 
 Macready, 200, 220, 223, 241, - 4 j, 7 
 Madden, 52, 337 
 Maginn, 346 , , Q 
 
 Maguire, Rev. Robert, 308 
 Rochfort, 107 
 
 Maitland, 43, IIO > 22 ?> 35 8 , 370, 3»7 
 Malcolm, 25, 4°, 62, 73, 75, 3 02 
 Mallett, 149, 154 
 Malmesbury, Lord, 96, 340 
 Malone, 70, 244, 3 6 5 
 Manchester, Dukes of, 19, 28o > - 8l 
 Duchess of, 20, 4° 
 
 Manley, Mrs., 230 
 Mann, 136 
 
4-12 
 
 INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Manners, Sir Roger, 364 
 Lady, 40 
 
 Lady Dorothy, 306 
 Manning, Cardinal, 322, 385 
 Mansel, Lord, 1 14 
 Mansfield, Lord, 186, 195, 196, 197 
 Mantell, Dr., 336 
 Manvers, Earl, 263 
 Mapother, Dr. E. D., 57 
 March, Lord, 51 
 Marcy, Louis, 206 
 Markham, Sir Clements, 336 
 Archbishop, 231 
 
 Marlborough, Dukes of, 96, 131, 188, 198 
 Duchess, 50 
 Marochetti, Baron, 296 
 Marshall, Dr. J., 228, 234 
 Martin, Baron, 340 
 Sir Theodore, 294, 297 
 Lady, 294 
 
 Martyn, Rev. J. L., 228 
 Mason, 10, 21, 346 
 Masquerier, 244 
 Master, Sir Streynsham, 227 
 Matthews, Charles, 35, 36, 294, 326 
 Mauley, Lord de, 103 
 Maurice, Frederick Dennison, 223, 224, 2 
 Maurier, George du, 240 
 Mawson, Bishop, 303, 308 
 May, Hugh, 2 
 Maynard, Lord, 27 
 Mayo, Countess of, 284 
 Mazarin, Duchess of, 304, 305, 308 
 McCalmont, Colonel Henry, 95 
 McCarthy, Justin, 4, 15, 25, 66, 175 
 McLaren, Charles, M.P., 345, 346 
 Mead, Dr., 165, 193, 230, 231, 339 
 Medina, Sir John, 153 
 Medway, Lord, 289 
 Mee, Miss, 67 
 Meehan, J. F., 22 
 Mellor, Right Hon, J. W., 333 
 Melville, 296 
 Mendip, Lord, 64 
 Merriman, Dr., 302, 304, 314 
 Meryon, 33 
 Meux, Richard, 194 
 Meyer, Henry, 178, 179 
 Mia’Ville, Andrew, 224 
 Michaelis, Professor, 7 
 Micklewaite, Lord, 331 
 Mildmay, Lord, 78 
 Mr., 12 
 
 Miles, Samuel, 224 
 Mill, John Stuart, 31 1, 312, 346 
 Millais, Sir John, 6, 208, 279, 297 
 Miller, Sir John, 8 
 J. Lewis, 228, 234 
 
 Miller, Joaquin, 253 
 
 Milman, Sir William, 227, 334 
 
 Milton, 162, 231 
 
 Mitton, G. E., 305 
 
 Minto, Earl of, 74 
 
 Mirabeau, 157 
 
 Mitchell, 137 
 
 Mitford, Miss, 16, 218, 233 
 Mohun, Lord, 85, 175, 186 
 Molesworth, Sir William, 346, 348 
 Monckton, Lady, 210 
 Lionel, 225 
 Miss, 1 17 
 Monk, Lady, 364 
 Monkbarns, 64 
 
 Monkhouse, Cosmo, 127, 257, 300 
 Monmouth, Dukes of, 87, no, in, 121, 305 
 Monson, Lord, 30 
 Montague, Duke of, 125, 229 
 Viscount, 86 
 
 Lady Mary Wortley, 14, 16, 50, 66, 70 
 Wortley, 50 
 Basil, 244 
 George, 1 16 
 Matthew, 274 
 Mrs., 66, 138, 263, 271-276 
 Montalembert, 8 
 Montgomery, Marquis, 310 
 Mr., 255 
 
 Montrose, Duke of, 64, 346 
 Duchess, 346 
 
 Moon, Sir F. Graham, 267 
 Moore, 5, 26, 54, 76, 120, 268, 281, 295, 334 
 Dr., 103 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, 194 
 Morgan, Lady, 53, 349 
 Pierpont, 35 
 Mori son, Dr., 290 
 Morland, George, 103, 276 
 Morley, John, 223, 284 
 Morpeth, Lord, 114 
 
 Morris, William, 179, 180, 181, 234, 235, 25 
 29L 3 r 3 
 Morton, 125 
 Moss, Miss, 303 
 Mountfort, 175, 186 
 Mowbray, 169 
 Muller, 164 
 
 Munro, Sir William, 208, 253 
 Munsden, 35 
 
 Murchiston, Sir Richard, 344 
 Roderick, 318 
 Murray, Sir George, 343 
 John, 14, 74, 247 
 Robert, 365 
 
 Myddelton, Sir Hugh, 367 
 Myers, 22, 170 
 Mylne, W. C., 368 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 4i3 
 
 Napier, Lord, of Magdala, 340 
 Napoleon, 19, 198, 270 
 Nares, Archbishop, 31 1 
 Naumann, J. C., 208 
 Neeld, Joseph, M.P., 34 
 Neish, Mrs., 298 
 
 Nelson, Lord, 31, 54, 263, 266, 351 
 Robert, 167, 227, 233, 234 
 Nerinck, Rev. J., 260, 261 
 Neville, Lady Dorothy, 23 
 Newborough, Lady, 83 
 Newbury, 393 
 
 Newcastle, Dukes of, 15, 42, 61, 147, 262, 263 
 Newlands, Lord, 41 
 Newport, Lord, 143 
 Newson, Rev. G. E., 245 
 Newton, Lord, 343 
 Sir Isaac, 165, 386 
 Bishop, 27, 142, 326 
 Rev. John, 387 
 Nicholl, Sir John, 216 
 Nicholls, Sutton, 43, 104, no 
 Dr., 206, 230, 361 
 Nicol, 163 
 
 Nicolas, Sir Nicholas, 247 
 Nightingale, 58 
 Noble, 1 18, 1 54 
 
 Nollekens, 51, 52, 53, hi, 112, 113, 138, 199 
 Noorthouck, 108, 170, 172, 187,212, 213,227, 
 228, 369, 371 
 
 Norfolk, Dukes of, 25, 84, 85, 87, 92, 97, 101,148 
 North, Dudley, 27 
 
 North, Lord, 27, 28, 30, 44, 153, 331, 377, 379 
 Sir John, 377 
 
 Northampton, Lord, 191, 366,388 
 Countess of, 103 
 Northcote, 32, 137, 159, 160, 16 1 
 Northumberland, Duke of, 96 
 Duchess, 1 17 
 Earl, 144, 146, 191 
 Norwich, Bishop of, 331 
 Nottingham, Lord, 67, 114, 191 
 
 Oates, Titus, 105 
 O’Brien, Lady Catherine, 89, 90 
 Captain, 70 
 Ogilby, 2 
 
 O’Grady, Hon. Mrs., 206 
 O’Keefe, 105, 123 
 “Old Q.,” 1 19 
 O’Leary, Father, 127 
 Oliphant, Mrs., 131 
 Oliver, William, 208 
 Ommaney, E., 194 
 Onslow, Lord, 114 
 
 Right Hon. Arthur, 125 
 George, 125 
 Speaker, 46, 119, 153 
 
 Opie, 253 
 Ord, Craven, 194 
 William, M.P., 101 
 Orford, Lord, 10, 58 
 Orme, 320 
 
 Ormond, Duke of, 86, 93, 191 
 Orrery, Lord, 358 
 Orrock, James, 210 
 Osborn, Emily D., 19 
 Osborne, George, 226 
 Osnaburgh, Bishop of, 258 
 Ossory, Earl of, 88, 97, 101 
 Lady, 10 
 
 Ossulston, Lord, 103 
 Otto, 269 
 
 Oughton, Sir Adolphus, 64 
 Ouless, W. W., 279 
 Owen, Sir Richard, 163 
 Oxford, Earls of, 83, 88, 90, 95, 364 
 
 Packer, 170 
 Paget, Lord, 191 
 Pakington, Sir John, 340 
 Paley, Dr., 195 
 Palice, 127 
 Palladio, 2 
 Palmer, 371 
 Miss, 162 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 66, 67, 88, 283 
 Panini, 7 
 
 Panizzi, Sir Anthony, 199 
 Panton Colonel Thomas, 105 
 Papendiek, George, 9 
 Henry, 9 
 Mrs., 9 
 Park, 191 
 
 Sir James Allen, 207 
 Parker, 94 
 
 Parkinson, James, 208, 263, 276, 278 
 Parnell, 103 
 Parr, Dr., 231 
 Parry, Sir Charles H., 315 
 Catherine, 214 
 Parsons, Dr. James, 178 
 Pass, Simon, 155 
 Passevant, 256 
 Pater, Walter, 301 
 Pattison, Justice, 207 
 Paulet, Charles (Duke of Bolton), 214 
 Sir W., 287 
 Payn, James, 235 
 Peabody, George, 341 
 Peake, 123 
 Pearpoint, Lady, 57 
 Pearson, 182, 281 
 Peck, G. Harland, 343 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 49, 275 
 Pegge, S., 108 
 
4i4 INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Pembroke, Earl, 92, 95, 96 
 Countess, 36 
 
 Pennant, 60, 61, 108, 109, 130, 147, 151, 152, 
 172, 189, 290, 327 
 
 Colonel Douglas, 345, 364, 380, 382 
 Pepper, General, 64 
 Pepperell, Sir William, 267 
 Pepys, 82, 101, 109, 145, 146, 184, 333, 365, 
 377, 381 
 
 Perceval, Spencer, 264 
 Percy, 38 
 
 Perreau, Daniel, 135 
 Robert, 135 
 Perry, James, 239 
 Peter the Great, 1 5 1 
 Peterborough, Lord, 132, 133, 385 
 Lady, 132 
 
 Peto, Sir Morton, 259 
 Petre, Hon. Edward, 36 
 Hon. Robert, 40 
 Lord, 136, 263 
 Lady, 136, 263 
 Petty, Sir William, 6 
 Phillips, Ambrose, 72, 73, 100 
 Sir Richard, 77, 117, 127 
 Phipps, General, 17 
 Pickering, Sir Gilbert, 57 
 Pickersgill, 124 
 
 Pierrepoint, Lord Peterborough, 1 1 4 
 Mr., 78 
 Pigot, 1 14 
 Pike, J. F., 208 
 Pilcher, 1 10 
 Pilkington, 55, 233 
 Mrs., 69 
 
 “Pindar, Peter” (Dr. Walcot), 120, 255 
 Pink, 374, 375, 376, 378, 379, 389 
 Pinkerton, Miss, 273, 356 
 Piozzi, 76 
 Mrs., 76, 357 
 
 Pirrie, Rt. Hon. W. J., 343 
 Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 8, 36, 78, 79 
 94, 95, 134 
 Governor, 306 
 Hon. Mrs., 306 
 Planche, 241, 269, 340 
 Pocock, Samuel, 134, 391 
 Pole, Chandos, 366 
 Pollard, 39, 79, 140 
 Polidori, 337 
 
 Pollock, Sir Frederick, 277, 278 
 Pomfret, Earl of, 64 
 Lady, 14, 263 
 Pontefract, Lord, 64 
 
 Pope, 6 19, 24, 35, 46, 50, 72, 73, 96, i33> * 54, 
 192, 231, 232, 374 
 Porter, David, 276, 278 
 Mrs. Lucy, 358 
 
 Porter, Miss, 246 
 Lucy, 357 
 
 Portland, Dukes of, 9, 40, 41, 44, 45, 84, 97, 
 128, 129 
 
 Portman, Lord, 262, 268 
 Seymour, 147 
 Portmore, Earl of, 57, 102 
 Portsmouth, Earl of, 18 
 Duchess of, 90 
 Postlethwaite, J., 325 
 Pott, Perceval, 69 
 Potter, Rev. J., 31 1 
 Poulett, Earl, 131 
 Poussin, 44 
 
 Power-Cobbe, Frances, 298 
 Powis, Earl of, 12, 13, 14 
 Poynter, Sir Edward, 313 
 Poyntz, 132 
 Pratt, William, 224 
 Prestwick, Sir John, 173 
 Price, John, 46 
 Priestley, Dr., 5 
 Prince Albert, 296 
 of Brunswick, 150 
 Edward, 150, 370 
 Eugene, 94, 131, 146, 147 
 Frederick William, 150, 151 
 George, Esq., 289 
 
 Regent, 11, 72, 100, 204, 248, 281, 282, 292 
 Princes of Wales, 9, 18, 48, 50, 1 19, 137, 147, 
 150,215,236,368 
 Princess Amelia, 14, 21, 47, 48 
 Anne, 2 
 
 Augusta, 149, 150 
 Christian, 236 
 Emily, 14 
 Sophia, 122 
 
 of Wales, 136, 149, 150, 309, 368 
 Prior, 70, 165 
 
 Proctor, Adelaide Ann, 209 
 
 B. W. (“ Barry Cornwall ”), 209, 223, 244 
 Prothero, G. W., 208 
 Prujean, Sir Francis, 390 
 Pusey, Dr. E. B., 34, 35 
 Pulteney, 148, 273 
 Purbeck, Lord, 83, 87, 99 
 
 Quain, Sir Jonas, 57 
 Sir Richard, 57 
 
 Queen Anne, 58, 65, 88, 131, 154, 193, 212, 
 226, 280, 302, 303, 326, 330 
 Caroline, 66, 90, 100, 165, 221, 306, 340 
 Charlotte, 17, 77, 137, 215 
 Elizabeth, 142, 334, 364 
 of Bohemia, 145 
 Henrietta Maria, 81 
 Mary, 23, 193 
 Maria Antoinette, 17 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 + *S 
 
 Queen Victoria, 293, 345, 441 
 Queensberry, Duke of, 92 
 “ Old Q.,” 1 19 
 Duchess, 165 
 Quick, 35 
 
 Quin, Dr., 149, 157 
 Quincey, de, 123, 138 
 
 Race, Francis, 293 
 Radcliffe, Dr., 167, 192, 193 
 Radnor, Earl of, 90, 91 
 Raggett, George, 102 
 
 Raikes, Thomas, 33, 35, 36, 65, 70, 177, 293 
 Robert, 35 
 Miss Harriet, 33 
 
 Ralph, James, 24, 43, 60, 80, 81, 112, 158, 172, 
 184, 202 
 
 Ramsey, Lord de, 343 
 Ramsey, Allan, 154 
 Ranelagh, Earl of, 91, 96, 98 
 Raphael, 185 
 Ravenat, 154 
 Ravensworth, Earl of, 97 
 Rawlinson, John, 224 
 Ray, 193 
 
 Raymond, Lord Justice, 176 
 Read, Robert, 362 
 Reay, Miss, 209 
 Reading, Dr. Cyrus, 395 
 “Red Lion Mary,” 180 
 Redcliffe, Lord Stratford de, 33 
 Reed, Sir Robert, 149 
 Reeve, John, 294 
 Reeves, 252, 337 
 Reichstadt, Due de, 6 
 Rennie, Sir John, 349 
 Renshaw, Arthur, 265 
 Repton, George, 206 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 6, 29, 55, 56, 59, 68, 
 137, 141, 156, 159-163, 171, 197, 232, 244 
 Mr., 358 
 Miss, 331 
 Revett, 156 
 Ricardo, Francis, 266 
 Halsey, 208 
 Ricci, Marco, 156 
 Sebastian, 87 
 Richard I., 297 
 IH-, 197 
 
 Richardson, Sir John, 207 
 Jonathan, 65, 231, 232, 233 
 Samuel, 357, 361, 362 
 Fire-eater, 146 
 Richelieu, 145 
 
 Richmond, Duke of, 89, 90, 1 15, 343, 346 
 Duchess, 98 
 Ridgley, Dr., 201 
 Rigby, Miss, 252 
 
 Rigby, Dr., 253 
 Ripperda, 1 19 
 Ritchie, Richmond, 333 
 Mrs. Thackeray, 295 
 Rivers, Earl, 306 
 Robertson, Norman Forbes, 210 
 Robins, 320 
 
 Robinson, Crabb, 124, 179, 206, 207, 222, 244, 
 256, 257 
 Mrs., 16 
 Miss, 132 
 
 Robson, Richard, 283 
 William, 293 
 Rochester, Lord, 1 3 1 , 189 
 Rockingham, Earls of, 27, 30 
 Marquis of, 134, 135, 153 
 Rocque, 39 
 
 Rodney, Lord, 68, 69, 106 
 Rogers, Samuel, 7, 8, 17, 19, 48, 58, 195, 197, 
 218, 252, 257, 292, 334 
 Rokeby, Lord, 275 
 Romer, Mrs., 337 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 217 
 Romney, Earl of, 93, 99, 
 
 George, 56, 57, 264 
 Rooper, 244 
 Roos, Lord, 87, 372 
 Lady, 38 
 Rosalba, 55 
 Roscius, 200 
 Rose, Sir Hugh, 20 
 
 George Henry, M.P., 90 
 Rosebery, Lord, 19 
 Ross, Sir William, 253 
 Rossetti, 179, 181, 253, 346 
 Rosslyn, Earl of, 96, 215 
 Rotier, James, 176 
 Roubiliac, 231 
 Rough, Serjeant, 206 
 Rousseau, Jacques, 125 
 Roxburgh, Duke of, 64, 97, 100 
 Duchess, 263 
 Rudd, Mrs., 135 
 Rumford, Count, 67 
 Rumsey, Colonel, no, 121 
 Rundell, Philip, 34 
 
 Russell, Lord William, 86, 112, 187, 188 
 Lady Rachel, 187, 188 
 Hon. Henry, 103 
 W. E. H., 337 
 Rutland, Duke of, 306 
 Duchess, 18 
 Earl, 373 
 
 Rutton, W. L., 198 
 Rutzen, Sir Albert de, 333 
 
 Sacheverel, Dr., 176 
 
 St. Albans, Duke of, 89, 90, 92, 102, 103 
 
4i 6 INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 St. Asaph, Lord, 1 1 
 Bishop of, 331 
 St. Aulaire, Count, 282 
 St. Evremond, 304, 305 
 St. John, Dr., 165 
 Miss Florence, 209 
 St. Vincent, Earl of, 31 1 
 Sandleir, John, 317 
 Salisbury, Earl of, 363 
 Marquis of, 70 
 Bishop of, 122, 359 
 Sampson, Miss, 18 1 
 Sandford, 36 
 Sandon, Lord, 40 
 Sandwich, Lord, 134, 209 
 Sandwith, F. L., 57 
 Sant, J., 125 
 Sartorius, 55 
 Sassoon, Reuben, 343 
 Saussure, De, 316 
 Savage, Richard, 105, 375 
 Savile, Sir George, 150, 15 1 
 Henry (Lord Eland), 84 
 Sir William, 1 5 1 
 Lady Ann, 151 
 Sevonyans, 199 
 Scarborough, Earl of, 148, 263 
 Scarlock, Mrs., 308 
 Schwen, Thomas, 91 
 Schomberg, Duke of, 90 
 
 Meinhardt de (Duke of Leinster), 89 
 Schuster, Lady Isabella, 59 
 Scotin, 154 
 Scott, Sir Gilbert, 392 
 Sir Walter, 12, 200 
 Sir William, 203 
 Hon. John, 203, 270 
 Captain, 331 
 Scriven, 26 
 Scrope, 344 
 Scurlock, Mrs., 308 
 Sebastiani, General, 282 
 Sedley, Sir Charles, 189 
 Amelia, ix, 
 
 Sefton, Lord, 70 
 Earl of, 345 
 Sejanus, 221 
 Sellars, 175 
 
 Selvvyn, George, 30, 51, 96, 138, 196, 282 
 Mrs., 148 
 Senescino, 133 
 Senior, Nassau, 315 
 North, 179 
 Serenius, Dr., 372 
 Seward, 273 
 
 Seymour, Lord Hugh, 1 1 
 Lady Horatia, 1 1 
 Mary, n 
 
 Shackleton, 15 1 
 Shadvvell, 109, 359, 381 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 34, 279, 343 
 Countess of, 34 
 Shakespeare, 142, 17 1 
 Sharpe, 318 
 Shaw, Edward, 88, 103 
 Shee, Sir Martin Archer, 57 
 Mr., 52 
 
 Sheffield, Sir Charles, 95 
 Sir John, 95 
 
 Shelburne, Earl of, 3, 4, 5, 7 
 Lady, 4, 10 
 Sheldon, Mr., 64 
 Shelley, 395 
 Timothy, 178 
 Lady, 19 
 Mrs., 336, 33 7 
 Shepherd, Rev. G., 224 
 Samuel, 351, 353 
 
 Sheridan, R. B., 35, 36, 50, 51, 52, 211, 282, 
 292, 339, 376 
 Tom, 35 
 Mrs., 6 
 
 Short, Rev. W., 228 
 
 Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, 119 
 
 Shrewsbury, Duke of, 88, 89, 90, 131, 364 
 
 Sibthorpe, Colonel, 441 
 
 Sichel, 264 
 
 Sicldons, Mrs., 68 
 
 Sidmouth, Lord, 37 
 
 Sidney, Viscount (Earl of Romney), 99 
 Rev. Edwin, 345 
 Henry, 146 
 Simon, John, 315 
 Simons, 25 
 Simonini, 185 
 Simpson, Sir James, 340 
 Sims, 245 
 
 Skeffington, Sir Lumley, 126 
 Sligo, Marquis of, 336 
 Sloane, Sir Hans, 193, 194 
 Dr., 165, 339 
 Stanley family, 353 
 Smart, Sir George, 208 
 Smiles, 74 
 Smith, Albert, 134 
 “ Bosun,” 368 
 Henry, 326 
 Horace, 221, 395 
 Sir James, 326 
 Sir J. E., 120, 121 
 Mr. J. E., 325, 326, 327, 328, 329 
 J. T., 26, 51, 53, hi, 113, 124, 153, 154, 156, 
 170, 33° 
 
 Judge Lumley, 288 
 Rev. R. Payne, 314 
 Sir Sidney, 106 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Smith, Sydney, 71, 78, 79, 217, 268, 292, 339 
 Thomas Assheton, 263, 265; also 57, 112, 
 194, 198, 199, 216, 218, 219, 231, 246, 330 
 Mrs., 1 18 
 Smithers, 38 
 Smyley, Judge, 333 
 Sneyd, Ralph, 289 
 Somers, Lord, 102, 153 
 Somerset, Dukes of, 29, 41, 382 
 Duchess of, 27 
 Somerville, 154 
 Mrs., 75, 76 
 Sommers, Lord, 58 
 Sondes, Lord, 20, 30, 102 
 Sorbi&re, 6, 185 
 Sotheby, Admiral, 348 
 Southampton, Earl of, 187 
 Southey, 275 
 Southwell, Lord, 358 
 Spagnoletti, Paul, 293 
 Spanheim, 102 
 Spencer, Sir John, 393 
 Sir Robert, 20 
 Herbert, 21 
 Mr., 145 
 Spielmann, 283 
 Stacpoole, Due de, 289 
 Stael, Madame de, 8 
 Stafford, Lord, 107 
 Stamford, Earl of, no, 121 
 Stanfield, 223, 241 
 
 Stanhope, Philip (Earl of Chesterfield), 85, 
 191 
 
 Lord, 38, 100 
 Lady, 117 
 Mrs. Eugenia, 136 
 Stanley, Hans Sloane, 288 
 Staremberg Count, 64 
 Stawell, Lord, 129 
 
 Steele, Richard, 192, 276, 302, 307, 308 
 Stephens, Kitty 
 Stephenson, Robert, 318 
 Stewart, General, 64 
 Stirling, Sir William, 264 
 John, 280, 320 
 Sterne, 161 
 Stevenson, 235, 236 
 Steyne, Marquis of, 45 
 Stewart, General, 64 
 Sir Michael, 345 
 Stillingfleet, 273 
 Stone, Frank, 240 
 Stonehouse, Dr., 192 
 Storer, Anthony, 31, 138 
 Storrs, Rev. Prebendary, 342 
 Story, Abraham, 89 
 Stothard, Thomas, 388 
 Stow, 23, 152, 173, 364, 375 
 
 417 
 
 Stowell, Lord, 106, 203 
 Strachan, Admiral Sir Richard, 278 
 Stracey, J. H., 278 
 Mrs., 254 
 
 Strafford, Earl of, 89, 153 
 Countess of, 84 
 Strahan, 162 
 Strathcona, Lord, 40 
 Strathnairn, Lord, 20 
 Strickland, Miss, 83, 147 
 Mr., 182 
 
 Strode, Lieutenant-General William, 58, 59 
 Strype, 62, 65, 105, no, 128, 130, 184, 364, 
 366, 384 
 
 Stuart, Lady Augusta, 1 17 
 James, 156, 271 
 Stubbs, 55 
 Stukeley, Dr., 228 
 Sturt, Andrew, 325 
 Stutfield, A. R. O., viii, 202 
 Suffield, Lord, 284 
 Suffolk, Earl of, 99 
 Lady, 306 
 
 Sumner (Bishop of Winchester), 102 
 Sunderland, Earl of, 84, 96, 188 
 Lady, 144, 146 
 Surtees, 205 
 Sutton, Sir Richard, 64 
 Thomas, 372 
 Swan, 181 
 
 Swedenborg, 249, 371 
 
 Swift, 63, 72, 131, 133, 154, 165, 166, 229 
 230, 307 
 Swire, Dr., 204 
 Sydenham, Dr., 154 
 Sydney, Earl, 40 
 Viscount, 106 
 Algernon, 1 2 1 
 
 Talbot, Lord, 12 
 Lord Gilbert, 364 
 Major-General Sir Reginald, 284 
 John, 84, 85 
 
 Talfourd, Sir T. N., 207, 220 
 Tallard, Count, 94 
 Talleyrand, 70, 71, 281, 310 
 Tankard, 175 
 Tankerville, Earl of, 87 
 Tarring, John, 351 
 Tassie, James, 156, 157 
 William, 156, 157 
 Tavistock, Lady, 156 
 Taylor, “ Demosthenes,” 231 
 John, 11 
 
 Tom, 87, 142, 143, 144, 147 , 155 . > 57 , I 5 8 , 
 16 1, 163, 167, 169, 185, 218 
 Watson, 49 
 
 Teignmouth, Lord, 263, 345 
 
 2 D 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 418 
 
 Temple, Sir Richard, 73 
 Tennant, Sir Charles, 40, 41 
 Tennyson, 286 
 
 Tenterden, Lord, 220, 221, 224 
 Terri ck, Bishop, 86 
 
 Thackeray, 45, 191, 241, 295, 296, 297, 338 
 Miss, 268 
 
 Thanet, Countess of, 27, 89 
 Thesiger, Sir Frederick, 340 
 Thiers, 7 
 
 Thirlwall, Bishop, 22 
 Thistlewood, Arthur, 37, 38 
 Thomas, J., 327 
 Thoms, 325 
 Thomson, Baron, 207 
 James, 149, 154, 332 
 Thoresby, Ralph, 122, 166, 247, 386 
 Thornbury, 363, 393 
 Thornhill, Sir James, 154, 185 
 Thornton, General, 271 
 Samuel, M.P., 103 
 Thorvvaldsen, 16, 240 
 Thrale, Henry, 29, 244 
 Mrs., 29 
 
 Thurlow, Lord Chancellor, 100 
 Thynne, Thomas, 73 
 Lady Mary, 72 
 Tickell, 326 
 Ticknor, 285, 337 
 Tilley, Sir John, 333 
 Tillotson, Dr., 187 
 
 Timbs, 6, 44, 52, 5 8 , ”5. I2 6, 130, 137, 155, 
 166, 187, 209, 216, 232, 243, 258, 265, 339, 
 362, 363, 37«, 3 8 5, 3 8 6, 388 
 Tindal, Sir Nicholas, 207 
 Titchfield, Countess of, 284 
 Tite, Sir William, 248, 348 
 Tissot, 346 
 Tocqueville, de, 338 
 Todhardy, 22 
 Tollemache, Lord, 95; 
 
 Tomline, 8 
 Took, William, 223 
 Tooley, Arthur, 227 
 Toplady, 328 
 Torriano, Major, 314 
 Torrington, Earl of, 98 
 Viscount, 98 
 Towers, Dr. Joseph, 376 
 Townshend, Lord, 106, 377 
 Towny, Miss, 194 
 Travers, Samuel, 104 
 Tree, Miss, 223 
 Trench, 224 
 Trevithick, 243 
 Trevor, Sir John, 289 
 Lord Chief Justice, 195 
 Tritton, Sir Charles, 288 
 
 Trollope, Anthony, 277 
 George, 325 
 Trotter, John, 128 
 Truro, Lord, 340 
 Tulloch, Colonel, 341 
 Turner, 127 
 Sharon, 178 
 Twain, Mark, 351 
 Tweeddale, Marquis of, 85, 345 
 Twiss, 202, 203, 205 
 Tyrconnel, Lady, 66 
 Tyler, Dr., J. E., 208 
 Wat, 375 
 
 Tylney, Earl of, 119 
 
 Underhill, 360 
 Unwin, 360 
 
 Valentia, Lord, 289 
 Vanbrugh, 326 
 Vandyck, 137 
 Vanneck, Sir Joshua, 40 
 Van Nost, 39, 170 
 Veitch, Dr., 31 1 
 Velasquez, 6 
 Velasyse, William, 57 
 Vere, Aubrey de, 286 
 Verelst, Henry, 94 
 Vernon, Admiral, 331 
 Mrs., 136 
 Vesey, Mrs., 273 
 
 Villiers, Edward (Earl of Jersey), 84 
 Vincent, Sir Howard, 40, 41 
 Dr. William, 325 
 Vining, James, 292 
 Vioyse, 57 
 
 Vivian, Colonel Ralph, 40, 41 
 W. Graham, 343, 344 
 Vivre, Mrs., 20 
 Vceux, Sir William, 289 
 Voltaire, 384, 385 
 Vosey, Mrs., 300 
 Vuillamy, 245, 322 
 
 Waddilove, Edward, 278 
 Wakley, Thomas, 208 
 Walcot, Dr. (“Peter Pindar”), 120, 255 
 Walcot, Rev. Mackenzie, 290 
 Walcott, 326, 328, 331 
 Waldegrave, Earl of, 29, 279 
 Lady, 10, 11, 116, 162 
 Walderen, Count, 100 
 
 Wales, Princes of, 9, 18, 48, 50, 119, 137, 147. 
 150,215,236,368 
 
 Princesses of, 136, 149, 150, 306, 368 
 Walford, 31, 56, 67, 68, 78, 122, 178, 191, 195. 
 214, 225, 228, 242, 245, 248, 252, 281, 291, 
 295. 321, 325, 332, 35L 395 
 
INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 419 
 
 Walker, Charles, 314 
 Walker, Rev. John, 332 
 Mr., 59, 60 
 Wall, C. B., 14 
 
 Wallace, Sir Richard, 282, 283 
 Lady, 282, 283 
 Mr., 43 
 
 Waller, Edmund, 72 
 Lewis, 280 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 
 21, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 44, 47, 50, 55, 66, 70, 
 74,9L 94, 103, 106, 1 12, 1 13, 1 16, 120, 125, 
 136, 147, 148, 149, 1 5 1, 170, 176, 185, 186, 
 197, 231, 232, 256, 271, 272, 273, 370, 373 
 Sir Robert, 3, 149 
 S. H„ 341 
 
 Walrond, Lieutenant-Colonel, 288 
 Walsingham, Lady, 25 
 Walter, John, 222, 225 
 Walters, Lucy, no 
 Warburton, Bishop, 27 
 Ward, W. B., 371 
 Wardle, Colonel, 363 
 Mr., 235 
 
 Ware, Isaac, 198 
 Warner, 196 
 Warr, Lord de la, 27 
 Warren, 348 
 Warrender, John, 36 
 Warton, Dr. Joseph, 72, 232 
 Mr., 125 
 Madame, 167 
 
 Warwick, Earls of, 86, 169, 331 
 Countess of, 83, 85, 306, 307 
 Washington, Rev. Henry, 333 
 Watson, 30 
 General, 37 
 Watts, G. F., 346 
 Webb, Sir Thomas, 87 
 Major-General, 139 
 John, 373 
 
 Webb-Peploe, Rev. Prebendary, 297 
 Wedderbum, 215 
 Wedgwood, Josiah, 93 
 Welldon, Mrs. Georgina, 239 
 Wellesley, Marquis of, 100 
 Wellington, Duke of, 17, 19, 198, 351 
 Wenman, Lady, 58 
 Wesley, 382 
 
 West, Sir Algernon, 268, 342, 346 
 Westmacott, 201, 225 
 Westminster, Dean of, 182 
 
 Duke of, 236, 332, 336, 339, 347 
 Westmorland, Earl of, 19, 20 
 Lady, 267 
 
 Weymouth, Viscount, 98 
 Whalley, Sir Samuel, 49 
 Wharton, 73, 78, 187 
 
 Whastre, 334 
 Whately, Archbishop, 31 1 
 Wheatley, 2, 3, 12, 18, 21,60,92, 105, 143, 1 5 1, 
 156, 205, 245, 288, 360, 364 
 Whiffen, 216, 280 
 White, 223 
 
 Whitelocke, Bulstrode, 359, 360, 373 
 Whiteside, 349 
 Whitfield, 382 
 Whitman, Alfred, 270 
 Whiston, 165 
 Whistler, 346 
 Whood, Isaac, 185, 199 
 Wicklow, Earl of, 59 
 Wigan, Dr., 384 
 Wilberforce, Bishop, 102 
 William, 289 
 
 Wilbraham, Sir Roger, 375 
 Wilcox, Edward, 45 
 Wilkes, John, 28, 29, 40, 74, 178, 378 
 Israel, 386 
 Wilkie, 32 
 
 Wilkins, W. H., 11, 18, 105, 266 
 Wilkinson, Rev. G. H., 340, 390 
 William I., 178 
 
 III. , 90, 92, 100, 104, no, 175, 186, 192, 193, 
 303 
 
 IV. , 202, 258 
 
 Williams, Sir George, 224 
 Sir John, 96 
 Captain, 331 
 Gilly, 30 
 Helen M., 76 
 Mrs., 357, 358 
 
 Williamson, Sir Joseph, 90, 102 
 Wills, General, 63 
 Admiral, 288 
 
 Willes, Chief Justice, 195, 340 
 Willmore, J. T., 260 
 Willoughby, G. P., 207 
 Wilmot, 310 
 Wilson, Sir Robert, 54 
 Frank, 207 
 Godfrey, 281 
 Harriet, 290 
 Mr., 186, 187 
 
 Winchelsea, Earl of, 14, 58 
 Lady, 331 
 
 Winchester, Marquis of, 54 
 Bishop of, 102 
 Windham, William, 134 
 Windsor, Lord, 229, 331 
 Wingfield, R. B., 349 
 Winn, Sir Roland, 95 
 Winser, 26 
 
 Wiseman, Cardinal, 138, 139 
 Woffington, Peg, 6, 331 
 Wollaston, William, 94, 120, 374 
 
420 INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES 
 
 Wolseley, Sir W., 12 
 Wolstencraft, Mary, 259 
 Wood, Sir George, 207 
 Alderman, 266 
 Woodburn, 218 
 Woodcock, Sarah, 213 
 Woodfall, William, 239, 393 
 Woodhouse, Richard, 208 
 Woodhull, 18 
 Woodville, Elizabeth, 116 
 Woolner, 179 
 Wootton, John, 55 
 Worcester, Marchioness of, 85 
 Wordsworth, 61, 124, 207, 209, 223, 257 
 Worsley, 307 
 Wortley, Lady Mary, 274 
 Wraxall, 3, 8, 15, 28, 66, 106, 150, 195, 214, 
 281 
 
 Wrayburn, Eugene, 329 
 Wren, Sir Christopher, 105, no, in, 154, 
 . 165, 361 
 
 Wriothesley, Thomas (Earl of Southampton), 
 
 183 
 
 Lady Rachel, 187 
 Wroth, 397 
 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 23, 75, 377 
 Wyche, Sir Cyril, 82, 83, 92, 95 
 Wyck, John Van, 55 
 Wyld, 170 
 
 Wyndham, Hon. Percy, 40, 346 
 Wynn, Sir Watkin Williams, 83, 101, 102 
 
 Yarmouth, Lord, 129 
 Countess of, 87, 95 
 Yates, Edmund, 57, 224, 294 
 Frederick, 224, 294 
 Thomas, 224 
 
 York, Archbishop of, 38, 345 
 
 Dukes of, 66, 83, 92, 151, 187, 215, 258, 
 363> 365 
 
 Yorke, Charles, 195 
 Henry Redhead, 441 
 Young, Dr., 154, 362 
 Thomas, 302 
 Yoxall, J. H., MJL, 216 
 
 Zimmermann, Miss Agnes, 266 
 Zon, his Excellency Mr., 125 
 Zuccarelli, 125 
 Zucchi, 14, 83, 137 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson Co. 
 Edinburgh London 
 

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 GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 
 
 "HU I HI illii mini 1 1 in i| | 
 
 3 3125 00924 1262