S.S,§t/i£jet. 
 
_v^^ 
 
 <- n I 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 DA 685.P5S91 
 
 Ghosts of Piccadilly 
 
 3 1924 028 066 680 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028066680 
 
THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
mv 
 
THE 
 
 GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 BY 
 
 G. S. STEEET 
 
 AUTHOR OP ' THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP A BOY ' 
 
 'THE TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS ' 
 
 'A BOOK OF essays' 
 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 NEW YOEK 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 1907 
 
/ 
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 
NOTE 
 
 Several of the chapters of this book 
 have appeared in The Monthly Review, 
 and some of them ia Putnam's Monthly, 
 and the usual acknowledgments are 
 offered. G. S. S. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 When prefaces are read at all they are read 
 most often after the rest of the book. And 
 nearly always, I imagine, they are written 
 after it. But I am writing this before a 
 line else of my book is done, and on this 
 ground I venture to approach the courteous 
 reader with the hope that he also, if this 
 beginning should catch his eye, will be 
 tmusual and read the preface before the 
 book. I wish to place before myself, as well 
 as before him, precisely, more or less, what I 
 shall try to accomplish. 
 
 There is no new, salient fact to be told of 
 Piccadilly. The keen eyes of the late Mr. 
 Peter Cunningham and of Mr. H. B. Wheat- 
 ley have noted practically every house where 
 a great man lived, and have told us the 
 complete story of Piccadilly's origin and 
 
viii THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 early eventfulness. I wish at the outset to 
 express my great and essential obligation to 
 them and to other writers on the subject, 
 more especially to Mr. Wheatley's Round 
 about Piccadilly and Pall Mall, to which 
 book my own is indebted for a great many 
 facts and references. At this point, too, I 
 wish to thank the Rev. W. J. Loftie for 
 many useful hints in my work. But other 
 writers, occupying a much wider field than 
 mine, have had of necessity to confine them- 
 selves, for the most part, to telling us that 
 in such and such houses lived such and such 
 men, of whom such and such anecdotes are 
 told. My local limitation enables me to 
 attempt something more, and that is to 
 recall in some fashion, if I may, the 
 atmospheres that were about these men, 
 and the tales told of them. I have space 
 to elaborate and gossip, and so I propose 
 to fill it. 
 
 I trust there is no immodesty in avowing 
 this desire to add something, in a sense, to 
 the work of men much superior to me in 
 antiquarian knowledge. The rest of the 
 book will show if the hope was foolish. 
 But I would claim the antecedent excuse 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 of fairly wide and constant study in our 
 social history since Piccadilly began to be 
 built, of a great love for these associations, 
 and — for this helps, I think — that my feet 
 have trod its pavement most days for 
 years whose number is beginning to de- 
 press me. 
 
 A local limitation of this sort may not be 
 obviously useful. On a gossip, however, 
 some limit must be put, and this one sug- 
 gests a more variously interesting book than 
 if I had chosen a wider space and a shorter 
 period. Having taken it, I shaU keep to it 
 strictly. We shall walk up no streets on 
 the right or left. The Albany, I think, one 
 may take as a single house rather than a 
 street : if that be an exception, it is the only 
 one. And surely, if any part of any city 
 deserves a book to itself, it is Piccadilly. 
 We shall stand, the reader and I, before some 
 house in the hours when the traffic is stilled, 
 and I shall tell him of its history, of the 
 men and women who dwelt there, and talked 
 and loved and gambled and lived and died. 
 And since to interest him I must interest 
 myself, I shall follow the lines of my tem- 
 perament and tastes rather than those of 
 
X THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 completeness and impartiality : it is likely I 
 shall be voluble about Byron and reticent 
 about Macaulay. If the tale bores him, he 
 can to bed without discourtesy. 
 
 G. S. STREET. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. A GENERAL VIEW 
 II. CONTRASTED FATES 
 
 III. ANOTHER CONTRAST OF NEIGHBOURS : 81 
 
 AND 82 . . . 
 
 IV. OLD Q. . 
 V. THE GHOSTS OF ALBANY . 
 
 VI. BYRON .... 
 
 VII. OF BURLINGTON HOUSE . 
 
 VIII. THE PALMERSTONS AND CAMBRIDGE 
 HOUSE .... 
 
 IX. 105, 106, AND 107 
 
 X. THE GREAT DUKE 
 
 XI. EMMA HAMILTON . 
 
 XII. SIR WALTER IN LONDON . 
 
 1 
 
 17 
 
 41 
 58 
 75 
 91 
 107 
 
 126 
 141 
 157 
 176 
 192 
 
xu 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XIII. HARRIOT MELLON. 
 
 XIV. SOME OTHER PEOPLE 
 XV. SOME OTHER HOUSES 
 
 XVI. THE SHOPS AND THE TAVERNS 
 XVII. THE CHURCH AND THE END 
 INDEX 
 
 PACE 
 
 205 
 221 
 237 
 254 
 269 
 279 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 'OldQ,' . . . . 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 Geoegiana, Duchess of Dbvonshiee, 
 
 facing page 30 
 
 Beat: Beummell, 
 
 43 
 
 Lady Ashbtteton, 
 
 56 
 
 Byeon, .... 
 
 91 
 
 Mrs. Gaeeick, . 
 
 „ 117 
 
 Lady Paimeeston, 
 
 „ 134 
 
 LoED Palmeeston, 
 
 „ 140 
 
 Madame db Flahatjlt, 
 
 „ 151 
 
 The Duke op Wet.ltngton, 
 
 „ 157 
 
 Lady Hamilton, 
 
 „ 176 
 
 The Duchess oe St. Albans, . 
 
 „ 205 
 
CHAPTEE I 
 
 A GENERAL VIEW 
 
 Standing to-day in Piccadilly, in any 
 ordinary hour of the trafl&c, or sitting in a 
 room facing it with the window open, we 
 remark that we cannot hear ourselves speak. 
 So my book is in some measure an epitaph ; 
 for a place where we cannot hear ourselves 
 speak is not likely to be favoured with fresh 
 associations of the sort I commemorate. 
 People will cease to live in it or to walk in 
 it for pleasure. Even clubs will disappear 
 from it, and hurry up side-streets in search 
 of comparative quietude. The advocates 
 of motor-omnibuses claim that the main 
 thoroughfares must be given up to them, and 
 people who value peace live elsewhere. 
 Either that, or the machines must be made 
 noiseless, which even their advocates do 
 
2 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 not contemplate, or our nerves must become 
 Insensible. It is true that a hundred years 
 ago, with the innumerable street cries and 
 the freer voices of our ancestors — nay, even 
 thirty years ago, when the cobble-stones 
 were still used— the actual volume of sound 
 was greater. But one can grow used to the 
 continual rumble over stones, and cries 
 which irritate the nerves do not deafen the 
 ears ; spasmodic machinery, suddenly grunt- 
 ing and shrieking, defeats and routs us 
 finally. It is probable, then, that the 
 melancholy prophecy is right, and that the 
 true Piccadilly of history is fast dying. Let 
 us leave it forthwith and go back to the day 
 when that history was beginning. Let us 
 stand at the top of St. James's Street, enter 
 Mr. Wells's Time Machine, and go back to 
 the year 1664. 
 
 I choose that year (let me say as we go) 
 because then began the building of great 
 houses in Piccadilly, and its entrance into 
 the main current of our social history. The 
 name, of course, is older ; and here it be- 
 hoves me, I suppose, to give an account of 
 it — reluctantly, and overcoming a tempta- 
 tion to refer my readers to the authorities 
 
PICCADILLY HALL 3 
 
 and leave them alone in that company, 
 for the facts are obscure, without being 
 interesting. 
 
 In the early part of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, then, there vras a house in this district 
 — near the top of the Hay market — known 
 as Piccadilly Hall. It belonged to one 
 Robert Baker, who made a will, dated April 
 14, 1623, in which he left two pounds ten 
 shillings in money and ten shillings in bread 
 to the poor of the parish, namely, that of 
 St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. In this will he 
 speaks of a tenement in his own occupation, 
 with its garden and cow-house, and land of 
 the extent of two acres ' in two fields behind 
 the Mews,' all enclosed with a brick wall, but 
 without a name. In the entry of the charity 
 in the accounts of the Overseers of the Poor, 
 the donor is described as ' Robte Baeker of 
 Pickadilley Hall,' and from this it is possible 
 to infer that Robert Baker did not care for 
 the name, which must in that case have been 
 a nickname. 
 
 There was also a gaming-house hereabouts 
 also known as Piccadilly, and otherwise as 
 Shaver's Hall. That is, according to Mr, 
 Wheatley, who thinks that Piccadilly Hall 
 
4 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 was a private house, and that, the district 
 having got the name of Piccadilly, the 
 gaming-house was also so called. If, how- 
 ever, there is anything in Mr. Baker's 
 omitting the name from his will, it seems 
 probable that his house was in some way 
 public, otherwise it would hardly have been 
 given a nickname he regarded as derogatory. 
 Be that as it may, I think it is clear that 
 Shaver's Hall was not originally called 
 Piccadilly, because George Garrard writes 
 to Lord Conway, May 30, 1636 — 'Simone 
 Austbiston's house is newly christened. It 
 is called Shaver's Hall, as other neighbour- 
 ing places thereabouts are nicknamed Tart 
 Hall, Pickadell Hall ' ; and he goes on to say 
 that the nickname was not derived from the 
 builder's profession— he was barber to Lord 
 Pembroke — but because Lord Dunbar lost 
 £3000 at a sitting and was said to be shaved. 
 Well, but in 1641 Lord Clarendon, then 
 Mr. Hyde, went to ' a place called Piccadilly, 
 which was a fair house for entertainment 
 and gaming, with handsome gravel walks 
 with shade, and where were an upper and 
 lower bowling-green, whither very many of 
 the nobility and gentry of the best quality 
 
SIR JOHN SUCKLING 5 
 
 resorted both for exercise and conversation.' 
 I opine that either this was a development 
 of Baker's house, or that Shaver's Hall had 
 come later to be confused with it and called 
 Piccadilly, or that this was a house distinct 
 from both. To it, at any rate, resorted Sir 
 John Suckling — ' natural, easy Suckling,' as 
 Millamant calls him in The Way of the 
 World — the poetical gallant who was famous 
 for bowling and card-playing. ' He did use,' 
 says Aubrey, ' to practise by himselfe a-bed, 
 and then studyed the best way of managing 
 the cards.' That has something of a sinister 
 air, but in spite of it we find his sisters 
 ' comeing to the Peccadillo bowling-green 
 crying, for feare he should lose all their 
 portions,' and the end of it all was suicide 
 in Paris. Other gallants of less interest 
 came to grief ' at Piccadilly,' but we need 
 not linger over their fortunes. 
 
 Very early the name seems to have been 
 extended to the district, for in the second 
 edition of Gerarde's Herbal, published in 
 1633, we have 'The little wild Buglosse 
 grows upon the drie ditche banks about 
 Pickadilla, and almost everywhere.' It 
 grew, that is, in the fields by the Western 
 
6 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Road, on the way to Reading — fields that in 
 1633 came up to Piccadilly Circus. 
 
 Yes; but still, why Piccadilly? Well, 
 pickadil, says Thomas Blount in 1656, was 
 ' the round hem, or the several divisions set 
 together about the skirt of a garment, or 
 other thing ; also a kind of stiff collar made 
 in fashion of a band. Hence, perhaps, that 
 famous ordinary near St. James, called 
 Pickadilly, took denomination ; because it 
 was then the outmost or skirt house of the 
 suburbs that way. Others say that it took 
 its name from this, that one Higgins, a 
 tailor, who built it, got most of his estate 
 by Pickadilles, which, in the last age, were 
 much worn in England.' Higgins, says Mr. 
 Wheatley, is a myth, and the former deriva- 
 tion the more probable. I confess it seems 
 to me unlikely that a house should be called 
 the skirt house because it was the outmost 
 house, and it hardly amounts to a nickname, 
 as Piccadilly seems to have been. On the 
 other hand, without wishing to revive 
 Higgins, I think it more or less natural to 
 nickname a place of resort from an obtrusive 
 piece of fashionable raiment, like a stiff 
 collar, worn by its frequenters. I remember 
 
PECCADILLO 7 
 
 that in my boyhood there was a popular 
 satirical song called ' Captain Cuff,' from the 
 habit of shooting out the cuffs alleged to 
 mark military officers. In the same way, I 
 can imagine a place frequented by gallants in 
 remarkably stiff pickadilles coming to be 
 called Pickadille or Pickadilly Hall. (In the 
 impartial spelling of the seventeenth century 
 it was written Pakadilla, Pickadilla, Pecka- 
 dille, Pickedille, and even Piccadilly.) But 
 it is not an attractive explanation. 
 
 More so is the idea that a Spaniard, 
 coming over with Philip in Queen Mary's 
 time, opened a gambling-house and called it 
 — as with a shrug and a smile — his pecca- 
 dillo. Unfortunately there is no more 
 evidence for the Spaniard's existence than 
 for Higgins's. That Aubrey, as we have seen, 
 writes Peccadillo, and Evelyn on one occasion 
 Piqudillo, does not signify much. But I 
 cannot help thinking that some association 
 in people's minds with peccadillo and its 
 pleasant suggestions helped the rapid popu- 
 larity and extension of the name. From 
 being originally confined to what is now 
 Coventry Street and the extreme east of 
 Piccadilly — the part west to St. James's 
 
8 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Street being called Portugal Street in com- 
 pliment to Catherine of Braganza — it was 
 rapidly applied to the whole thoroughfare, 
 as it was built over, to Hyde Park Corner. 
 It is, indeed, a pleasant sound, Piccadilly, 
 conveying to us the idea of a sunny spring 
 morning and what lightness and gaiety there 
 was in English life and manners. 
 
 And now, clearing our minds from these 
 intricacies of origin — which are not much in 
 my way to expound, but which I trust are 
 tolerably clear in this brief statement — let 
 us descend from our Time Machine, at the 
 top of St. James's Street, in 1664. 
 
 Into a clearer air than now, although the 
 sootiness of it was already a matter of com- 
 plaint. As the sense of greater space and 
 clarity refreshes our eyes, the noise of 
 building and the cheerful voices of Caroline 
 workmen strike our ears. For directly 
 opposite us, where now is the bottom of 
 Albemarle Street, my Lord Chancellor 
 Clarendon is building him the great house 
 whose sad fortune I shall talk to you 
 about presently. And hard by this im- 
 posing edifice, with its projecting centre 
 
IN 1664 9 
 
 and extremes, if we look eastwards we see 
 Burlington House also a-building, less 
 ornately than it was afterwards made, but 
 clearly destined for a great man's occupation. 
 If we walk to the east we shall notice some 
 ordinary houses and shops of the period, 
 notably one at the corner of Sackville Street, 
 now Lincoln Bennett's, the hatters, where 
 dwells Sir William Petty, great at the Ad- 
 miralty and a friend of Mr. Pepys. If we 
 like to go so far as the site of the Criterion, 
 we shall find that Stuart London, too, 
 thought it a good place for refreshment, and 
 may enter the White Bear Inn, unless you 
 be so nice about dates as to object (to fore- 
 stall my critics) that the first mention of it 
 is 1685. 
 
 In this eastern part of Piccadilly there 
 are many people afoot, bustling and talk- 
 ing, sometimes kissing one another on 
 meeting, all alert with that determination 
 to enjoy life which marked the early years 
 of the Bestoration. I am sorely tempted 
 to bid you mark yonder tall, dark man, 
 with harsh features oddly contrasting with 
 his good-humoured laugh as he talks with 
 his companions, walking swiftly— bid you 
 
10 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 mark him and uncover as he passes. It is 
 the King, going without ceremony to look 
 at his Chancellor's new house ; the King to 
 whose love of mixing with his people we 
 owe it that St. James's Park has been free 
 to the public since his day. The women are 
 prettily dressed, and so for that are the 
 men, though their dress has already declined 
 from the punctilious elegance of Charles the 
 First's time to overmuch lace and finery. 
 The King was to try to change it for a 
 plain Persian vest, but in clothes English- 
 men have been always intractable. On the 
 verge of the open country, however, as we 
 are, we may well see a country gentleman 
 or so coming into town in his manly and 
 sensible country habit — his Devonshire 
 kersey suit, his Dutch felt hat, his worsted 
 stockings and his strong shoes. 
 
 We walk westwards again. If we had 
 come a year later Berkeley House, which is 
 now Devonshire House, would be building 
 also, but to gain it we should have to pass 
 the turnpike at the corner of Berkeley 
 Street. Thenceforward is open country, the 
 Western Road, without pavement and apt 
 to be miry. The mud gets worse as we 
 
THE STONE BRIDGE 11 
 
 pass what now is Brick Street, at the side 
 of the Isthmian Club, where the Tyburn 
 stream flows right across Piccadilly. But 
 that we may not leave Piccadilly, we might 
 follow the course of the stream up for a 
 little way and understand why the pave- 
 ment still rings hollow in Lansdowne 
 Passage. There is a stone bridge over the 
 Tyburn in Piccadilly, with an evil reputa- 
 tion. For the historian Norden had written 
 in 1593, of ' Kinges-bridge, commonly called 
 Stonebridge, near Hyde Park Corner, where 
 I wish no true man to walke too late 
 without good garde, unles he can make his 
 partie good, as did Sir H. Knyvet, Knight, 
 who valiantlye defended himselfe, there 
 being assaulted, and slew the master theefe 
 with his own handes.' If it happens to be 
 May Day we might cross the bridge and go 
 on to Hyde Park, where the people will be 
 flocking from all parts near. Otherwise it 
 is hardly worth our while, unless you would 
 like to go to one of the many public-houses 
 near Hyde Park Corner, built to assuage the 
 outlying thirst of Knightsbridge. 
 
 Let us, then, move forward into the third 
 decade of the next century. We shall find 
 
12 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 the eastern quarter mucli the same, but 
 many more houses and consequent bustle in 
 the western. Devonshire House conceals its 
 front from us— mercifully or not — ^by the 
 unbroken brick wall we remember before the 
 present Duke fetched his gates from Chis- 
 wick. It has lost what it had when it first 
 was built — the most splendid and spacious 
 gardens in London, stretching all over the 
 site of Lansdowne House and Berkeley 
 Square. Clarendon House is gone, and 
 Bond Street, Albemarle Street, and Dover 
 Street are come. The turnpike is gone 
 from the end of Berkeley Street ; it was 
 taken to Hyde Park Corner in 1721. But 
 our Stone Bridge over the Tyburn remains : 
 in the hollow where the Isthmian Club is 
 there was a flood in 1726, and carriages 
 overset there. Piccadilly is not yet urban 
 enough to be free from highwaymen, and of 
 course it is dark at night ; we had best walk 
 down it in the morning. Just as we cross 
 our bridge there is a yard for statuary, at 
 the corner of Engine Street, now stupidly 
 called Brick Street. We notice several more 
 of these depressing places, where now are 
 famous houses, exhibiting the contemporary 
 
IN 1730 13 
 
 English taste in statues and most offensive 
 to Mr. Horace Walpole. They are now 
 happily gone to the decent obscurity of the 
 Marylebone Eoad. But other houses than 
 warehouses — and of course public-houses — 
 there are in plenty, mostly mean, however, 
 and devoted to lodgings. Houses enough 
 to attract street-criers, each with his tune, 
 more or less melodious ; men and women 
 offering to sell us everything and do almost 
 anything for us — apple-women, bandbox 
 men, bellows-menders, heaven knows what. 
 With luck we shall see a tumbler and a 
 dancing-girl, and may listen to a ballad- 
 singer. We may get a speedy cure for 
 agues of all sorts from William Denman at 
 ' The Golden Ball, near Hyde Park Corner, 
 and nowhere else,' as an advertisement tells 
 us ; and, by the way, as late as 1834 I have 
 noticed in Boyle's Guide that Piccadilly was 
 a great place for surgeons. As we walk 
 thither we may see all kinds of people : 
 powdered and patched ladies in sedan-chairs, 
 and men too in them, powdered also and 
 elaborately dressed, for the careless fashion 
 set by Fox (who had been a Macaroni) and 
 his friends is still some fifty years off. We 
 
14 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 may see the earliest umbrellas carried 
 abroad — perhaps the Duchess of Bedford 
 with a black holding one over her, as she is 
 seen in a print of 1730. 
 
 But let us speed our machine some forty 
 years onwards and come at length to the 
 true glory of Piccadilly. It is a comely 
 street now, indeed. The statuaries have 
 disappeared, and in their place stand many 
 fair houses, much as we know them now — 
 Coventry House, which is now the St. James's 
 Club ; and Egremont House, which be- 
 came Cholmondeley House, and Cambridge 
 House for George the Third's son, and is 
 now the Naval and Military or ' In-and-Out ' 
 Club, and many another. They look over 
 the slope down the Green Park, with no 
 other side of the street to block the view, 
 only the 'sulky side' — 'Sulky Terrace' as 
 the late Admiral Macdonald called it — 
 where one might stroll when one would not 
 be greeted. In the Green Park itself, oppo- 
 site Dover Street, stands the Banger's 
 Lodge, which is gone. Humbler houses, too, 
 there are still, like the lodging - house 
 whither Fielding's Squire Western was sent 
 by the landlord of ' The Pillars of Hercules ' 
 
THE GLORIOUS TIME 15 
 
 at Hyde Park Corner — ' The Pillars of 
 Hercules,' where Sheridan went when he 
 was interrupted in his duel with Captain 
 Mathews over the beautiful Miss Linley. 
 
 From this time onwards Piccadilly be- 
 comes a centre, and by far the fairest, of 
 our articulate history. Great names, greatly 
 suggestive to all who care for that history, 
 it may claim for its own, dotted up and 
 down it, by right of housing them ; and if 
 we add the men and women who for clubs 
 or their friends' houses frequented it, there 
 is hardly a great name that is absent. In 
 my pages only those who had an essential 
 connection with Piccadilly may appear, but 
 they may serve the purpose of the least 
 continent gossip. 
 
 ' A Piccadilly Beauty 
 Went out on canvassing duty,' 
 
 in 1780, for Charles Fox — Georgiana, 
 Duchess of Devonshire, the most admired 
 and perhaps the best-loved woman of her 
 time. She goes out from Devonshire House ; 
 and we, strolling down Piccadilly, pass 
 Fanny Burney's lodgings at 89, and go on 
 to the Duke of Queensberry's house at 138. 
 
16 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 We might wait twenty years or more for 
 our stroll back and still ' old Q.' is at 138 — a 
 very old man leering on his balcony ; and we 
 may see Scott going into his friends the 
 Dumergues' house, 96 (it was 15 Piccadilly, 
 West) ; and, three doors off, Nelson's won- 
 derful Emma coming out of her husband 
 Sir William Hamilton's. Yet a few years 
 and Brummell, finally ' dished,' is leaving 
 Watier's famous club at 81, or Lady Byron 
 is leaving, for good or evil, the same house 
 where ' old Q.' died. Or we turn our 
 machine another half- century, and Palmer- 
 ston is living at Cambridge House, and the 
 Ashburtons at Bath House are entertaining 
 Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle, and — but it 
 is time to be more particularly local and to 
 take the houses in detail. 
 
CONTRASTED FATES 17 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CONTRASTED FATES : CLARENDON HOUSE 
 AND DEVONSHIRE HOUSE 
 
 Three years or less from its building 
 Clarendon House was a monument of fallen 
 greatness. Within twenty years it was 
 gone for ever. Devonshire House, built a 
 year later, has been for two hundred years 
 the home of one of the very few most pros- 
 perous families in England, and shelters still 
 perhaps the most distinguished head of that 
 family. For eighteen years they stood side 
 by side. I do not know that there is any 
 moral in particular to be drawn from the 
 circumstance, unless that it is safer to go 
 slowly, but the contrast must needs arrest 
 the eye of a moralist. 
 
 The building of Clarendon House in itself 
 seemed to show a man whose head was 
 turned by high position. In 1664 Hyde 
 
18 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 was at the summit of his power, Lord Chan- 
 cellor of England, and still overawing his 
 sovereign. His daughter was wife to the 
 heir-apparent. But Charles was already 
 wearying of this tutelage, and anxious to 
 escape from it ; and two great shadows were 
 on their way, the arrival of an unhappy war 
 and the non-arrival of a child to the Queen, 
 which were to darken the Chancellor's head 
 in the eyes of the people. ' He has married 
 his daughter to the Duke of York, and looks 
 to be grandfather of kings, curse him,' said 
 the people. 
 
 However, in 1664, Charles granted him a 
 large tract of land eastwards to Swallow 
 Street, which now is, and uncertainly but 
 generously, westwards; and later, the City of 
 London gave him (practically) a lease of the 
 Conduit Mead, covered now by New Bond 
 Street, Brook Street, and so forth. He 
 chose the spot at the top of St. James's 
 Street, fronting St. James's Palace, which 
 to the envious this upstart palace might 
 seem to rival, and began building with the 
 stones intended to repair old St. Paul's — 
 in itself a tactless proceeding. The admir- 
 ing Pepys and the complimentary Evelyn 
 
CLARENDON 19 
 
 recorded the erection in diaries and letters. 
 Evelyn wrote to Lord Cornbury, Clarendon's 
 son, a most eloquent panegyric on it, and 
 pronounced it ' the first palace in England, 
 deserving all I have said of it, and a better 
 encomiast,' and ended with the pious wish 
 that when Clarendon ' shall have passed to 
 that upper building not made with hands,' 
 his posterity ('as you, my Lord') might 
 inherit the palace — and the rest of his great- 
 ness. Alas for the builder, so soon to be 
 ruined, and his posterity to be impoverished ! 
 In 1667 the deluge began. The Dutch 
 sailed up to Gravesend, and the mob broke 
 the windows of Clarendon House. They 
 called it HoUand House, suggesting bribes 
 from the Dutch ; Dunkirk House, with the 
 idea that Clarendon was bribed to sell 
 Dunkirk ; and Tangier Hall, because they 
 had no use for Tangier, which he had 
 acquired for England. A most unpopular 
 edifice. ' They have cut down the trees 
 before his house,' writes Pepys, ' and broke 
 his windows ; and a gibbet either set up 
 before or painted upon his gate, and these 
 words writ : " Three sights to be seen — 
 Dunkirke, Tangier, and a barren Queen." ' 
 
20 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 This last accusation, as Mr. Wheatley 
 says, was unjust, because Clarendon could 
 not help it, had even opposed the marriage 
 with Catherine of Braganza. But the mob 
 was not alone in giving him the blame of 
 the unlucky non-result. The Court did so 
 too, and Rochester, challenged by the King 
 to find a rhyme to Lisbon, fired off: 
 
 ' Here 's health to Kate, 
 Our Sovereign's mate. 
 
 Of the royal house of Lisbon : 
 But the devil take Hyde, 
 And the Bishop beside, 
 
 Who made her bone of his bone.' 
 
 An impromptu, let us hope, for then the 
 rhyme is brilliant. 
 
 Two months later. Sir William Morrice was 
 sent to the fine new house to demand the 
 Great Seal from its owner. 
 
 So he sat in his great house, with its 
 wings and its turret in the middle, and its 
 low wall running along Piccadilly, and its 
 fine gates ; sat there and wondered how long 
 he might sit there still. The workmen were 
 not yet out of the place altogether, and I 
 dare say Clarendon guessed with what gibes 
 they were building for him. Evelyn visited 
 
CLARENDON 21 
 
 him in December, and found him ' in his 
 garden, at his new-built palace, sitting in 
 his gowt wheel-chayre, and seeing the gates 
 setting up towards the north and the fields. 
 He looked and spoke very disconsolately.' 
 The picture is pathetic enough, for if Claren- 
 don fell short of being a great man, he was 
 at least a zealous and strenuous man ; he 
 had shared his master's exile, and had seen 
 the cause of his master triumph, only him- 
 self to fall. He was impeached for high 
 treason, and wrote humbly to Charles, ' I do 
 upon my knees beg your pardon for any 
 over-bold or saucy expressions I have used 
 to you ... a natural disease in old servants 
 who have received too much countenance.' 
 For a sensualist Charles was not hard- 
 hearted, but Clarendon had gone too far 
 and too long against his comfort, and he let 
 his old servant's enemies have their way. 
 
 Clarendon fled to Calais, to die in exile 
 seven years later, and pious versifiers took 
 care to dwell on the affair of those unlucky 
 stones. ' God,' wrote one, 
 
 ' Grod will revenge, too, for the stones he took 
 From aged Paul's to make a nest for rooks.' 
 
 The house was leased by his sons, Cornbury 
 
22 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 and Lawrence Hyde — who was a favourite 
 and companion of Charles — to the Duke of 
 Ormonde. There, again, is a figure sorrow- 
 ful in a way, though not disastrous. At the 
 Court of Charles the Second Ormonde was 
 out of date. He was a great noble — too 
 great, unless indeed he had overtly com- 
 bated the Government — to be sent the way 
 of Clarendon, a new man ; and Charles 
 himself never failed in respect to this old 
 and potent servant of his father. It is 
 recorded that Buckingham once asked him 
 whether the Duke of Ormonde had lost his 
 favour or he the Duke's, since it was the 
 King who was embarrassed when they met. 
 But this was a parvenu Court. His ancient 
 nobility fatigued the King, and he set about 
 him new people, male and female, who could 
 amuse him. The Duke of Ormonde must 
 have chafed at the upstarts and foreigners 
 who were more powerful than he, and must 
 have known that there was something 
 ironical in their deference to him ; that his 
 stateliness and older fashion were ridiculed 
 behind his back. It was fated that no 
 happy man should be master in Clarendon 
 House. 
 
THE DUKE OF ORMONDE 23 
 
 It was while he lived there that a most 
 extraordinary outrage was done on him, 
 and that perhaps the most extraordinary 
 scene that ever happened in Piccadilly took 
 place ; it was finished there, if it was be- 
 gun in St. James's Street, and so comes 
 scrupulously into my pages. 
 
 In the year 1670, less than two centuries 
 and a half ago, this powerful noble, driving 
 up St. James's Street towards his house 
 fronting it, in his coach with six footmen 
 attending him, was set upon by ruffians, 
 seized and hurried along Piccadilly towards 
 Tyburn, where they proposed to hang him. 
 
 I am tempted to digress into the history 
 of Colonel Blood, that most melodramatic 
 villain with the most convenient name — a 
 history which no romancer would have dared 
 to invent. It would colour my quiet pages 
 to relate how he stole the crown from the 
 Tower, and very nearly got off with it, and 
 other surprising feats. But it is not in the 
 bond, and the reader may go to no more 
 recondite a source than Scott's notes to his 
 Peveril of the Peak, and the adventure I 
 may tell is startling enough. 
 
 The Duke of Ormonde had been dining 
 
24 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 in the City, in attendance on the Prince of 
 Orange, then in England, and was returning 
 home. It was a dark night. He always 
 took six footmen abroad with him, but did 
 not allow their weight on his coach, having 
 spikes on it to prevent their clambering up ; 
 they went on either side of the street. 
 Blood's ruffians contrived to stop the foot- 
 men, while Blood and his son dragged the 
 Duke from the coach. 
 
 And now, if Blood had been content with 
 simple murder he might have done it. But 
 the Duke was his old enemy ; he had 
 attributed to Ormonde the Act of Settle- 
 ment in England of 1663 which had in- 
 convenienced Lieutenant Blood, as he was 
 then, and by a plot had nearly captured 
 Dublin Castle, and Ormonde, the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant of the time, within it. Like a proper 
 villain of melodrama, Blood never quite 
 succeeded in his fell purposes. So now his 
 artist villainy prompted a finer revenge 
 than mere stabbing. He would hang the 
 Duke at Tyburn. They forced him on 
 horseback, and buckled him to one of the 
 ruffians, and then Blood rode off, saying he 
 would tie a rope to the gallows. The 
 
AND COLONEL BLOOD 25 
 
 coachman, meanwhile, drove on to Clarendon 
 House and gave the alarm, telling the 
 porter — all this is from Thomas Carte, who 
 wrote a history of Ormonde, — * that the Duke 
 had been seized by two men who had carried 
 him down Pickadilly.' 
 
 Blood's swagger undid him. For the 
 Duke, though sixty, which was old age in 
 those days, was still a man of his hands, and 
 struggled valiantly, so that the ruflSan in 
 front of him made but slow progress. They 
 had got a good way past Devonshire House, 
 however, on the road between the fields 
 towards Knightsbridge, when the Duke 
 cleverly got his foot under the ruffian's and 
 fell with him into the mud. By now the 
 neighbourhood was alarmed, and rescue was 
 arriving, and the ruffian made off, so that 
 Blood coming impatiently back from Tyburn 
 to meet his victim, found his followers in 
 flight. The Duke, exhausted, had to be 
 carried home to Clarendon House, and lay 
 ill there for some days. I fear Piccadilly is 
 no pleasant haunting-place for his ghost. 
 
 No happy person ever possessed Claren- 
 don House. It was sold, after Clarendon's 
 death, to the young Duke of Albemarle — 
 
26 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 the second, Monk's son — and he was a 
 spendthrift and a drunkard. (Clarges 
 Street, by the way, is called after his uncle. 
 Sir Thomas.) He went out to Jamaica to 
 seek a sunken Spanish galleon, found his 
 galleon, but lived not to enjoy the gold. 
 His widow was a madwoman, whose illusion, 
 that she should marry the Grand Turk, 
 made the fortune of the first Duke of 
 Montagu ; but her history belongs not to 
 Piccadilly. 
 
 The Duke of Albemarle sold Clarendon 
 House, which he had called Albemarle 
 House, to a ' little syndicate ' — as we now 
 affectionately call such bodies — which gave 
 £35,000 for the house and the ground about 
 it. The syndicate seems to have known its 
 business, since Evelyn tells us that it re- 
 covered this money by the sale of the old 
 materials alone. Its leading spirit was Sir 
 Thomas Bond, of Peckham. 
 
 So the ill-fated house was pulled down, 
 and four new streets — Dover, Albemarle, 
 Bond, and Stafford — were built on its site ; 
 the name of one of the earliest of those 
 speculators who are the pride of our country 
 immortalised among them. It was being 
 
THE CAVENDISHES 27 
 
 pulled down when Evelyn drove by with 
 Lord Clarendon, the Chancellor's son, and 
 tactfully, as he tells us, turned his head the 
 other way. Evelyn, too, moralises very 
 beautifully over the demolition. ' See,' says 
 he, and so say I, ' the vicissitudes of earthly 
 things ! ' 
 
 Turn we to a happier theme. Devonshire 
 House was at first Berkeley House, built 
 in 1665 for Lord Berkeley of Stratton, who 
 has left both these names to the streets on 
 either side. With him I need not linger, 
 nor do more than mention the fact that 
 Queen Anne lived here in 1695. 
 
 The Cavendishes began their long posses- 
 sion in 1697 with William, the first Duke of 
 Devonshire. 
 
 There seems ever to have been a sort of 
 dignified reticence about this family, which 
 greatly impresses me as a man, but rather 
 bafl9.es me as a scribbler. 
 
 'The roaring generations flit and fade,' 
 
 and there is ever a Devonshire filling his 
 eminent position, calm, retiring, imperturb- 
 able, and never an amusing thing to tell of 
 any one of them. The first Duke, to be 
 
28 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 sure, is said by Horace Walpole to have 
 been ' a patriot among the men, a Corydon 
 among the ladies,' and a lady complimented 
 him in a poem as one 
 
 ' Whose soft commanding looks our breasts assailed,' 
 
 but those dashing qualities resulted in no 
 history we can chuckle over now. He did 
 indeed cause a public scandal, but it was in a 
 curiously lugubrious manner. Being a very 
 religious man — as Major Pendennis said of 
 his friend who played piquet all day except 
 on Sundays — the Duke insisted on putting 
 up a monument in a church to the memory 
 of his mistress, Miss Anne Campion, the 
 singer. The public was indignant, and 
 Pope's ready lash fell on the Duke, who was 
 dead by then, and probably would not have 
 paid much attention had he been alive. 
 
 The third Duke had the pleasure of re- 
 building the house, which was destroyed by 
 fire in 1733, after a design by William 
 Kent. Many severe criticisms have been 
 passed on it, and ironical compliments on 
 the wall which till lately hid it. Mr. Max 
 Beerbohm once wrote an eloquent essay 
 protesting against the insertion of the gates 
 
GEORGIANA 29 
 
 in the wall, but his reason, I think, was that 
 the unbroken brick conveyed an agreeable 
 air of mystery. For my part, the ugliness 
 of Devonshire House, if it is ugly, does not 
 displease me. Plainness and severity of 
 design suit the climate, the atmosphere, the 
 tone and temperament generally, of London. 
 If architecture, as Goethe said, is as frozen 
 music, then that of London should be solemn 
 marches and simple airs, not roulardes and 
 fandangoes. Devonshire House is well 
 enough. 
 
 And so, I do not doubt, were the third 
 Duke and the fourth ; but there is nothing 
 to say of them. 
 
 But the fifth Duke has a lustre about him 
 time cannot dim, for he married Lady 
 Georgiana Spencer. 
 
 I wonder no one as yet has written a 
 'Book of Duchesses.' The very title would 
 make it popular, and it might really be 
 full of the most excellent differences. To 
 my mind, the most interesting figure in it 
 would not be Georgiana, Duchess of Devon- 
 shire. Force of character, strength of will, 
 and single-hearted selfishness of purpose 
 
30 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 exalt the great Sarah, Duchess of Marl- 
 borough, beyond all other duchesses. I 
 sometimes fancy that she, with her harsh 
 common sense and her overbearing ways, 
 created that popular tradition of a duchess 
 which humorists and comedies have fixed 
 in the public mind. But most fascinating 
 of duchesses to imagine — far more so than 
 any of those jolly but a little coarse wantons 
 who were made duchesses by Charles the 
 Second — Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, 
 beyond question was. 
 
 Lineally descended from the great duchess 
 I have named, she is said to have been like 
 her, but assuredly must have had a kindness 
 and softness in her face which the other 
 lacked. Faultlessly beautiful she was not, 
 though that ' her hair was not without a 
 tinge of red,' as Sir Nathaniel Wraxall re- 
 marked, would not now prevent our thinking 
 her so. But with her freshness and grace, 
 her sensitive, intelligent features, we can 
 picture the outward setting as fit enough for 
 the soul that led and sweetened and held 
 the hearts of that great aristocratic society. 
 
 And what a society it was ! Many 
 writers, this one among the least of them, 
 
^^. ^za^^.^^^^s^^x^-:^^';':'^^ 
 
A GREAT SOCIETY 31 
 
 have tried to express it, but none has quite 
 succeeded. A society, coherent, small, as 
 it were a large family, of unquestioned 
 authority and power, and therefore free 
 from the nervous assertiveness which marks 
 aristocracies apparent but unreal ; punc- 
 tilious in a way, but to our conception free- 
 spoken to the last degree ; sure of itself, and 
 therefore not superficially exclusive, as in- 
 deed the best of English society has seldom 
 been ; cultivated sometimes, and always 
 wishing to be thought so, which is at least 
 a better mood than the pride of ignorance so 
 common in England now; amorous, adven- 
 turous, free-living, and with the humour 
 ever running to eccentricity, which till 
 lately was always characteristic of our 
 people, ' high or low ' — can any one deny 
 the charm of such a society ? It had the 
 vices, I know, which have characterised 
 leisure and abundance in every age. It 
 gambled persistently, and not infrequently 
 broke its marriage vows. Indeed, one may 
 regret that certain preachers of our day were 
 not alive then for a proper field for their 
 abilities. The 'smart set' they castigate 
 now is a trivial bogey. Our society is an 
 
32 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 incoherent mass split up into coteries, and 
 possibly of one coterie or another it may be 
 said with truth that it practises the vices 
 named as a regular habit. But not — and 
 this is the important point — a coterie with 
 power and prestige. Our society is special- 
 ised, and the people with political influence 
 are hard-working, innocently recreating folk. 
 What the unimportant ' smart ' people do 
 may matter to themselves, but is not the 
 national concern the preachers would have 
 it. The evils of our community are not to 
 be found in such matters — they are evils 
 beside which these are trumpery. 
 
 In this eighteenth century it was other- 
 wise. It was the men ruling the country, 
 or at least having its ear, who were the 
 gamblers and libertines. The Duke of 
 Grafton and Lord Sandwich were important 
 politicians ; Charles Fox was the most reck- 
 less prodigal of his age. Even matched 
 with our own delinquents, not with our 
 statesmen, these sinners were dreadful. 
 Two years ago there was a great scandal 
 in London because a young man lost ten 
 thousand pounds at a club, playing ecarte ; 
 but when Fox and FitzPatrick held their 
 
GEORGIANA AND CHARLES 33 
 
 faro-bank at Brooks's — the now so impres- 
 sively respectable Brooks's — such losses were 
 daily or nightly events. 
 
 Ah, well ! I am a socialist, and am far 
 from setting up this old English society as 
 an ideal state of things. Yet it was not in 
 itself more harmful than many a ring of 
 respectable plutocrats now, and that it had 
 an agreeable tone — an ironical, tolerant, 
 life-loving tone — all its letters show, not 
 only those of intellectual connoisseurs of life 
 like Horace Walpole, but those of all the 
 casual sporting men and women who wrote 
 to George Selwyn. 
 
 It was, of course, the Whig branch of it 
 over which her Grace of Devonshire pre- 
 sided, a more charming hostess, one imagines, 
 than a little later Whig society found in the 
 imperious Lady Holland. One of her closest 
 intimates was Charles Fox himself, and that 
 alliance must have been pleasant indeed to 
 watch — Charles with his heavy frame and 
 his big-featured, swarthy face, lit up with 
 that indescribably gay twinkle of fun and 
 good temper his best portrait shows us ; and 
 she, blonde and arch and eager — what would 
 not one give to listen to them ? 
 
 c 
 
34 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 She came of a clever and spirited family. 
 Her cousin and friend was the Lady Diana 
 who was divorced by the second Lord Boling- 
 broke, the ' Bully ' of the Selwyn letters, 
 and married Topham Beauclerk, Dr. John- 
 son's strangely chosen companion — the Lady 
 Diana who was so clever at drawing Cupids. 
 She was loved at home, and there is a touch- 
 ing anecdote told by Wraxall of her sister 
 Lady Bessborough's grief for her death. So 
 we picture her, gay, clever, a little spoiled 
 perhaps, marrying at seventeen the fifth 
 Duke of Devonshire. ' She is a lovely girl,' 
 wrote Horace Walpole, 'natural and full of 
 grace; he, the first match in England.' 
 
 And what was he besides ? Calm — that 
 is the note struck in the accounts of him 
 beyond all others. ' A nobleman,' Wraxall 
 describes him, ' whose constitutional apathy 
 formed his distinguishing characteristic. 
 His figure was tall and manly, though not 
 animated or graceful ; his manners always 
 calm and unruffled. He seemed to be in- 
 capable of any strong emotion, and destitute 
 of all energy or activity of mind.' This 
 apathy, it would seem, did not yield to the 
 charms of conversation in Devonshire House; 
 
THE CALM DUKE 35 
 
 the Duke, to rouse himself, had to repair to 
 Brooks's and play at whist or faro. It is 
 agreeable to know, however, that he ' pos- 
 sessed a highly improved understanding,' 
 and was regarded as an infallible referee at 
 Brooks's when there was any dispute about 
 passages in the Roman poets or historians. 
 (What place in our day combines gambling 
 with discussions on the Roman poets ?) He 
 possessed, also, 'the hereditary probity 
 characteristic of the family of Cavendish,' 
 which perhaps was made a little easier by 
 the more than comfortable circumstances 
 also characteristic of that family. George the 
 Fourth passed a severe judgment on him in 
 his famous criticism of the way in which 
 people had come forward to be invested with 
 the Garter, saying that ' the Duke of Devon- 
 shire advanced up to the Sovereign with his 
 phlegmatic, cold, awkward air, like a clown.' 
 We may as well take the more complimen- 
 tary view, and believe that he was simply 
 calm. But even so, it seems a figure of 
 somewhat excessive calmness, and it is 
 almost a relief to learn that beneath all 
 this apathy he was not 'insensible to the 
 seduction of female charms.' 
 
36 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 It might be supposed that a woman so 
 active and emotional as his Duchess would 
 not be happily joined to a man normally so 
 unruffled, and roused only by cards and 
 female charms, which, unfortunately, it 
 seems were not necessarily those of his 
 wife, and we might look for scandal. 
 Happily, however, these contrasting tem- 
 peraments not infrequently agree well 
 enough, and it is not on record that the 
 Duke's calm was unpleasantly ruffled by his 
 wife. That she was wild and inclined to be 
 dissipated is true. There is a letter from 
 Lady Sarah Bunbury, in which the writer 
 laments the Duchess's preposterous hours, 
 but there is no hint in it of the mistake 
 into which Lady Sarah herself, alas ! was 
 soon to fall. She played cards, of course, 
 like all her world ; but the play does not 
 seem to have been serious enough to keep 
 the Duke at home, or perhaps he preferred 
 masculine methods at the card-table. Also, 
 if we may believe the writer of a Second 
 Letter to the Duchess of Devonshire, a pam- 
 phlet which the curious will find in the 
 British Museum, she sometimes made un- 
 desirable acquaintances. It must have been 
 
THE DUCHESS AND DR. JOHNSON 37 
 
 agreeable to have such kind and intimate 
 things printed and published about one as 
 this : ' I am disposed to think, nay, I have 
 very substantial reasons for thinking, that 
 your Grace places an unreserved confidence 
 in persons whom the Duke of Devonshire 
 does not approve, and from whom Lady 
 Spencer has in vain endeavoured to separate 
 you.' But I think we need gather only 
 that even this Duchess of Devonshire did 
 not please everybody. While the curious, 
 by the way, are in the British Museum, 
 they might ask also for a poem of the period, 
 called ' The Duchess of Devonshire's Cow,' 
 and admire the appalling insipidity from 
 which the print of no age is free. 
 
 I trust the censor quoted above did not 
 allude to Dr. Johnson. ' I have seen the 
 Duchess of Devonshire,' writes Wraxall 
 again, ' then in the first bloom of youth, 
 hanging on the sentences that fell from 
 Johnson's lips, and contending for the nearest 
 place to his chair.' Is there any man of 
 letters on whose sentences duchesses hang 
 now ? If there be, I doubt he is not so 
 sound as Dr. Johnson. Let us remember, 
 when we think of this lady and her friends, 
 
38 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 that their homage to genius was not a mere 
 fashion ; that they read and understood and 
 thought ; it is a quality which we may surely 
 set against much else that they did unwisely. 
 As the English aristocracy has been gradu- 
 ally commercialised, its sport has been con- 
 tinued with enthusiasm, but its culture has 
 sadly fallen away. As for vices, they were 
 never very difficult to learn. It is a pleasant 
 side to this duchess, who had ' far more of 
 manner, politeness, and gentle quiet' than 
 Fanny Burney had expected in so dashing a 
 great lady. 
 
 Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, is 
 chiefly remembered now as the prototype of 
 lady canvassers, for her exertions in behalf 
 of Charles Fox in the Westminster election 
 of 1784. When 'the Piccadilly Beauty' 
 had done her work, 
 
 ' The butchers and the bakers. 
 The grocers, undertakers, 
 The milliners and toymen. 
 All vote for Carlo Khan.' 
 
 She entered, the Cornwallis Correspondence 
 tells us, ' some of the most blackguard houses 
 in the Long Acre,' and as we all know — but 
 I am not afraid of being hackneyed — bought 
 
THE KINDEST HEART ... 39 
 
 Steel the butcher's vote with a kiss. She 
 had then one of the finest compliments ever 
 paid a woman, when an Irish mechanic ex- 
 claimed, ' I could light my pipe at her eyes ! ' 
 Which, madam, would you like best : that, or 
 the famous compliment which Steele — not 
 the butcher, but Dick Steele — paid another 
 woman ? Would you rather a pipe could be 
 lit at your eyes, or that to love you were a 
 liberal education ? I wonder. 
 
 Four years earlier, in the Gordon Riots, 
 she had to flee from Devonshire House to 
 Lord Clement's in Berkeley Square, where 
 she slept in the drawing-room on a sofa or 
 small tent-bed. 
 
 She died in 1806, and Charles Fox said 
 they had lost the kindest heart in England. 
 There is nothing, I think, to be added about 
 the calm Duke, except that he married 
 again — the Elizabeth, Duchess of Devon- 
 shire, about whose portrait by Gainsborough 
 there was a fuss some years ago. She let 
 Byron his house in Piccadilly, and I regret 
 to say had some difficulty in getting the 
 rent paid. 
 
 So Clarendon House, with nothing to its 
 memory but the story of a fall, is gone ; and 
 
40 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Devonshire House, the scene of a thousand 
 great festivals, the home of important dukes 
 in unfailing line, stands still, lordly and 
 prosperous. Yet I doubt if any ghost but 
 one comes from its gates and haunts Picca- 
 dilly with an interest for us so arresting as 
 that of the beaten old statesman, whom we 
 may picture in some solitary night sitting 
 somewhere in Albemarle Street, where his 
 garden was, in his ' gowt wheel-chair,' look- 
 ing disconsolately. 
 
 Which of those calm, unrufRed dukes 
 appeals to us now ? They had character, 
 for the most part, to stand well with their 
 contemporaries, and sense not to fling away 
 the gifts which by accident of birth were 
 theirs. A worthy and impressive line, it 
 cannot fascinate our imagination. One 
 gracious and fair ghost comes out of Devon- 
 shire House and rewards our homage with a 
 smile. I am sure if she goes his way, and 
 sees poor Clarendon in his wheel-chair, she 
 says something kind to him. 
 
ANOTHER CONTRAST OF NEIGHBOURS 41 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ANOTHER CONTRAST OF NEIGHBOURS : 
 81 AND 82 
 
 I WOULD not weary the reader with con- 
 trasts, but when side by side, with only the 
 width of Bolton Street between them, there 
 stand two houses in Piccadilly, of which one 
 is most famous as a ruinous gambling club, 
 and the other as a scene of blameless 
 lionising, with Thomas Carlyle for the chief 
 king of beasts — why, then, I cannot help 
 myself. 
 
 Captain Gronow, whose reminiscences no 
 lover of gossip about great names and no 
 student of strange differences in manners 
 should miss reading, gives the following 
 account of Watier's Club. He says that 
 some members of White's and Brooks's were 
 dining with the Prince Regent, and were 
 
42 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 asked by him what sort of dinners they got 
 at their clubs. They grumbled, of course, as 
 members of clubs are wont to grumble, and 
 Sir Thomas Stepney told him that their 
 dinners were always the same : ' the eternal 
 joints, or beefsteaks, the boiled fowl with 
 oyster sauce, and an apple tart — this is 
 what we have, sir, at our clubs, and very 
 monotonous fare it is.' The Prince, ' without 
 further remark,' continues Gronow — no 
 doubt he was too deeply moved to speak — 
 ' rang the bell for his cook, Wattier, and in 
 the presence of those who dined at the 
 royal table, asked him whether he would 
 take a house and organise a dinner club. 
 Wattier assented, and named Madison, the 
 Prince's page, manager, and Labourie, the 
 cook, from the royal kitchen.' (The usual 
 accounts, by the way, speak of Watier's 
 Club as one originally established, in 1807, 
 by Lord Headford and other young men, for 
 musical concerts. But it can hardly have 
 been ' Watier's ' before the advent of the 
 Prince's cook.) 
 
 Hence the famous Watier's Club, where 
 the dinners were exquisite — ' the best Paris- 
 ian cooks could not beat Labourie ' — and 
 
c.^?^ka:,r^ ',,-^U^^?9t'?. 
 
GEORGE BRUMMELL 43 
 
 where Captain Gronow had the happiness 
 of frequently seeing his Royal Highness the 
 Duke of York. And hence, alas ! many tears, 
 for the play was terrible, and in a few years 
 had ruined most of the members, among 
 them the prince of all dandies. 
 
 George Brummell was made perpetual 
 president of the club. One cannot say that 
 justice has never been done to Brummell — 
 is there not Barbey d'Aurevilly's classic, 
 Du Dandy sme et de Georges Brummell f — but 
 in English, at least, he has more often been 
 written about in a slighting manner, which 
 seems to me to show little judgment of 
 character. It is absurd to suppose that 
 Brummell, whose grandfather let lodgings 
 in Bury Street, achieved his position in the 
 English society of that time by foppery and 
 impudence. It is possible that to strive and 
 care for such a position is hardly the mark 
 of a great mind ; that is another question ; 
 the point is that it was most difficult to 
 achieve, and that Brummell achieved it. 
 True, that the best of English society has 
 seldom been superficially exclusive, but it 
 did not in the early nineteenth century open 
 
44 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 its doors to men of ' no birth ' merely because 
 they knocked at them in smart clothes. 
 Also, it is one thing to dine with or visit a 
 society, and another to lay down laws for it 
 and be really intimate with its governing 
 members. Even after Brummell had been 
 cut by the Eegent, he continued to stay 
 with his brother the Duke of York at Oat- 
 lands, and was the friend of the Duchess till 
 her death. The Duchess of Devonshire, 
 Georgiana herself, Erskine, Sheridan, Fitz- 
 Patrick (Charles Fox's greatest friend), 
 William Lamb, afterwards the Prime Minis- 
 ter, Lord Melbourne, and Byron all wrote 
 verses for Brummell's album — which is 
 quite a different thing from his writing in 
 theirs. Beyond doubt he was a popular 
 leader of the society he lived in. He did 
 not achieve this by foppery. Brummell's 
 foppery, indeed, consisted merely in a quite 
 artistic effort to improve the ugly dress of 
 his time, and in seeking something of grace 
 and elegance in the common things men 
 used. The Regent was his enthusiastic 
 pupil in these matters, and was for ever 
 trying his bulky person in coats designed 
 by Mr. Brummell and executed by Mr. 
 
A MODE OF HUMOUR 45 
 
 "Weston of Old Bond Street, the artist 
 whom Mr. Brummell favoured. Alas ! As 
 the delightful Captain tells us, ' The hours 
 of meditative agony which each dedicated 
 to the odious fashions of the day have left 
 no monument save the coloured caricatures 
 in which these illustrious persons have 
 appeared.' But Brummell's ideal of dress 
 was never extravagant, rather was it a sort 
 of finished simplicity — ' exquisite propriety ' 
 was Byron's phrase for it — and his leading 
 maxim, ' fresh linen and plenty of it,' might 
 be commended to the sternest of rationalists. 
 Nor did he gain his position by impudence. 
 Impudent he was on occasion, no doubt, with 
 that sort of comical self-exaggeration, or 
 emphasis of the foibles accredited to him, 
 which has been the gay humour characteristic 
 of other poseurs on the surface — Irishmen, as 
 a rule, and I cannot help thinking that 
 nobody who had not Irish blood in him 
 could push folly with a serious face as did 
 Brummell now and then. Only a man's 
 enemies, or too intensely Saxon people, call 
 that kind of humour effrontery. As for a 
 different sort of impudence, the sort of the 
 famous ' Who 's your fat friend ? ' given the 
 
46 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 circumstances, I call that courage and a kind 
 of practical wit. 
 
 Brummell was handsome — he hroke his 
 nose, being thrown from his horse, at 
 Brighton, while his regiment, the 10th 
 Hussars, was being reviewed, but that did 
 not signify — handsome and well-made, and 
 with an address that commended him to 
 women. At Eton he was an Admirable 
 Crichton — apparently both a wet bob and a 
 dry bob — ' the best scholar, the best boat- 
 man, the best cricketer,' and laid there the 
 foundation of his social success. He was a 
 man of taste in other things than dress : 
 could sing and draw, dance beautifully, and 
 write agreeable verses. Recorded jokes of 
 another age are always stupid, and Brum- 
 mell's are no exception. Real wit that 
 endures, cut and dried, is rare. I am happy 
 to have known some of the wittiest people 
 of my time, and don't remember half a dozen 
 jokes that were worth writing down : it is 
 always the manner, the humour of the occa- 
 sion, the right touch of folly, that makes 
 one's merriment. It is little against the wit 
 of another age that we, who were not there, 
 cannot laugh at it, and it is certain that 
 
'DISHED' 47 
 
 George Brummell had the essentials of good 
 company. 
 
 Beyond all that, however, I think we 
 must credit him with some genuine force of 
 character, and a sense of perspective and 
 values which kept his head steady where 
 another's might have been easily turned. 
 I grant the triviality of the ambition to 
 which these qualities were applied. Yet I 
 cannot imagine Brummell as the ordinary 
 aspiring snob, rather would I say that he 
 collected dukes and duchesses as he collected 
 snuff-boxes — and there 's a difference. Cer- 
 tainly he had character. Lady Hester 
 Stanhope — she who led that strange life in 
 the East — a woman of independent judg- 
 ment, and the last person to be in- 
 fluenced by fashion and foppery, wrote 
 that ' the man was no fool,' and ' I should 
 like to see him again.' 
 
 Brummell died mad, as we know, and it 
 is likely that his affliction was coming on 
 him before his ruin in London. The reck- 
 lessness of his latter course there looks like 
 it, and it is quite possible that when his 
 saner balance was gone the gay mock- 
 assertiveness became bare impudence, and 
 
48 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 the wit buffoonery. He was ruined at 
 Watier's, in the same year that saw Byron's 
 voluntary but inevitable banishment. Scrope 
 Davies, the buck and ' man about town,' who 
 was Byron's intimate, had this letter from 
 him at the last. ' My dear Scrope, lend me 
 two hundred pounds ; the banks are shut, 
 and all my money is in the three per cents. 
 It shall be repaid to-morrow morning. — 
 Yours, George Brummell.' And Scrope 
 Davies answered : ' My dear George, 'tis 
 very unfortunate, but all my money is in 
 the three per cents. — Yours, S. Davies.' 
 One is disposed to like Scrope Davies because 
 he stuck to Byron, with Hobhouse, Lady 
 Jersey, and very few more, in the time of 
 the scandal, but the heartlessness of that 
 note offends taste as much as sentiment, 
 and one remembers that even in Byron's 
 case many stories of absurdities came from 
 this same Scrope Davies. 
 
 The two most famous stories about Brum- 
 mell illustrate the uncertainty of such 
 traditions. There is that about his telling 
 the Regent to ring the bell, and the Prince's 
 doing so and ordering his guest's carriage. 
 He denied it, and Jesse in his lAfe gives the 
 
OLD STORIES 49 
 
 explanation, that being asked at Carlton 
 House by tbe Prince to ring the bell, and 
 being deep in talk with Lord Moira at the 
 moment, he said without thinking, 'Your 
 Royal Highness is close to it,' whereupon 
 the easily enraged Prince rang the bell 
 and ordered Brummell's carriage, but was 
 placated by Lord Moira. Captain Gronow, 
 however, gives a different story, which was 
 told him by Sir Arthur Upton, present at 
 the time. The Regent heard that Brummell 
 had won £20,000 from George Drummond 
 — a partner in the famous bank, and turned 
 out for this exploit — playing whist at 
 White's, and, characteristically impressed, 
 asked the Beau to dinner. They had 
 quarrelled, but Brummell, I suppose, who 
 was certainly the better gentleman of the 
 two, thought it a reconciliation and went. 
 The Prince's bad blood and bad breeding — 
 I call his great champion Mr. Beerbohm's 
 attention to these phrases, which are mine, 
 not Gronow's — came out in full force : he 
 took advantage of Brummell's growing a 
 little gay with wine to say to the Duke of 
 York, ' I think we had better order Mr. 
 Brummell's carriage before he gets drunk.' 
 
50 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Both stories, of course, may be true. As 
 for the ' fat friend ' anecdote, Jesse says the 
 Prince was walking with Lord Moira and 
 Brummell with Alvanley ; but Gronow makes 
 the scene a ball and the Prince's companion 
 Lady Worcester, in which case ' Prinney's ' 
 wrath is the more intelligible. 
 
 Poor Brummell ! We get a last vivid 
 glimpse of him at Calais in 1830 in the 
 memoirs of Charles Greville, who must have 
 met him often at Oatlands. ' I found him 
 in his old lodging, dressing : some pretty 
 pieces of old furniture in the room, an 
 entire toilet of silver, and a large green 
 macaw perched on the back of a tattered 
 silk chair with faded gilding,' and he adds 
 in a phrase of rare eloquence, ' full of gaiety, 
 impudence, and misery.' He was to sink 
 lower, in the ten years left of his existence, 
 to a debtor's prison at Caen, and its asylum 
 of the Bon Sauveur. God rest him ! but if 
 his ghost walks he shakes his fist at 81 
 Piccadilly. 
 
 It is time that we returned there. Byron 
 was a member, as he tells us in his ' detached 
 thoughts.' ' I liked the Dandies ; they were 
 
BYRON AT PLAY 51 
 
 always very civil to me. ... I knew them 
 all more or less, and they made me a 
 member of Watier's (a superb Club at that 
 time), being, I take it, the only literary man 
 (except two others, both men of the world, 
 M. and S.) in it.' He means Thomas Moore 
 and William Spencer, and the passage is a 
 little odd, since to a 'literary man,' qua 
 that, Watier's could hardly have been a 
 desirable resort. Byron, however, did not 
 play then, or not to any extent. He had 
 given it up since cards replaced dice, and 
 macao was the game at Watier's. ' I was 
 very fond of it when young, that is to say, 
 of "Hazard"; for I hate all card games, 
 even Faro. When Macco (or whatever they 
 spell it) was introduced, I gave up the 
 whole thing ; for I loved and missed the 
 rattle and dash of the box and dice, and the 
 glorious uncertainty, not only of good luck 
 or bad luck, but of any luck at all, as one 
 had sometimes to throw often to decide at 
 all. . . . Since one and twenty years of age, 
 I played but little, and then never above a 
 hundred or two, or three,' which would not 
 have gone far at Watier's. 
 
 So it was not all gambling there ; some 
 
52 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 men, no doubt, went for the good eating as 
 some went in later years to Crockford's. 
 We hear also of a masquerade given by 
 Watier's to the Duke of Wellington and the 
 conquering sovereigns — ' Wellington and 
 Co.' is Byron's irreverent phrase — in 1814. 
 There was a curious representation of this 
 masquerade given at Drury Lane a year 
 later, when some of the Drury Lane Com- 
 mittee — it was run something as Covent 
 Garden is now — Byron included, went on 
 the stage among the supers. 
 
 Watier's came to an end in 1819 ; 
 apparently the members had succeeded in 
 ruining each other. But the association of 
 gambling with 81 Piccadilly was not over, 
 and one great name yet illustrates the 
 house. That is none other than Crockford 
 himself It is not quite certain, but I 
 believe is almost so, that among other hells 
 in which this financial genius was interested, 
 en route from the fish-shop where his fortunes 
 began to the most famous of all English 
 gambling places in St. James's Street, was 
 one held at 81 Piccadilly. It was a ' French 
 hazard' bank, and the partners cleared 
 £200,000. The use of false dice was charged 
 
'LOKD FANNY' 53 
 
 against them ; indeed actual false dice, said 
 to have been used at 81, were exhibited 
 later in Bond Street. 
 
 So much for 81 Piccadilly. I know not 
 who lives there now, but I trust that in 
 honour of "Watier's an occasional game of 
 cards is played on the premises. 
 
 We cross from the east to the west side 
 -of Bolton Street, and come to 82, which was 
 and is Bath House. The original house was 
 built by the Earl of Bath, William Pulteney, 
 the statesman of George the Second's time. 
 Sir Robert Walpole's opponent. His is not 
 a personality of much interest to me, but I 
 am glad he lived in Piccadilly, because by 
 virtue of a quarrel he gives me fair ground 
 to linger for one brief moment over an old 
 study of mine, John, Lord Hervey. Besides, 
 they fought their duel in the Green Park 
 opposite. 
 
 John, Lord Hervey — Baron Hervey of 
 Ickworth, the second title of Lord Bristol, 
 whose eldest son he was, not Lord John 
 Hervey, as inaccurate writers have called 
 him — has left us some of the best memoirs 
 in the language. You must skip the details 
 
54 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 of politics no longer alive for us, but you 
 have left one of the most real and living 
 pictures of a Court and society round it ever 
 penned. He was most intimately of the 
 world he shows us, but by gift of intellect 
 and an ironical temperament could stand 
 apart and take a view of it. Something of 
 a pessimist and with a native scorn of 
 humanity, he offended the sentiment of 
 Thackeray. ' There is John Hervey, with 
 his deadly smile and ghastly, painted face — 
 I hate him.' I cannot hate people who 
 interest and amuse me so much, and I doubt 
 if he was hateful. A man intellectually and 
 personally fastidious in a coarse age is sure 
 to be accused of effeminacy. Hervey married 
 a famous beauty, Molly Lepel, and fought 
 his duel — though he thought it a silly 
 custom — like a man ; and as for painting his 
 face, he did it to save his friends the horror 
 of the intense white illness had painted it 
 first. Truly a remarkable family, those 
 eighteenth-century Herveys. ' God made 
 men, women, and Herveys,' as Lady Towns- 
 hend said. One of them was said by rumour 
 to be the real father of Horace Walpole, 
 another was the first husband of the 
 
LORDS OF FINANCE 55 
 
 bigamous Duchess of Kingston — there were 
 giants of scandal in those days ! — and another 
 was the Tom Hervey who printed rude 
 advertisements about his wife, but was so 
 beloved by Dr. Johnson that ' if you called 
 a dog Hervey,' said the Doctor, ' I should 
 love him.' 
 
 I come back with a sigh and an apology 
 to my Lord Bath. Hervey wrote the dedi- 
 cation to a pamphlet attacking him ; he 
 replied with another, in which Pope may 
 have found hints for his own epithets for 
 Hervey — ' Sporus,' the Emperor Nero's 
 eunuch, and ' Lord Fanny ' ; Hervey had no 
 option but to fight him, and a bloodless duel 
 in the Green Park followed, and Lord Bath 
 had only to cross the road to be at home 
 again. 
 
 The Barings succeeded the Pulteneys, and 
 Alexander Baring, the first Lord Ashburton, 
 built the house we know — or at least can 
 see for a moment if we turn up Bolton 
 Street when its gates are open — in 1821. 
 He was, of course, the head of Baring 
 Brothers, so that with Sir Julius Wernher, 
 the present occupant, Bath House does but 
 continue a tradition of successful finance. 
 
56 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 It is from Harriet, the wife of the second 
 Lord Ashburton, that Bath House has its 
 celebrity ; the Lady Ashburton who, there 
 and at the Grange, was the admired hostess 
 of all the literati and illuminati, poets, 
 philosophers, men of science, of her day — or 
 ' Lady Ashburton's printers,' as Lady Jersey, 
 quite sublimely exclusive, preferred to call 
 them. She, truly, is a gracious presence 
 among the shades of Piccadilly. Her name 
 sounds in a chorus of praise through the 
 letters of the time. ' A magnanimous and 
 a beautiful soul,' said Carlyle ; and Monkton 
 Milnes, that ' one hardly knew whether it 
 was the woman or the wit that was so 
 charming.' It is provoking of Charles 
 Greville to have dropped his acid into this 
 cup, to have left us his opinion that she was 
 capricious and quarrelsome. Let us be sure 
 that their quarrel was his fault ; he had the 
 grace to admit her goodness when she was 
 dead. 
 
 Lady Ashburton's ghost has a right to 
 walk in Piccadilly. But I am doubtful 
 about her society of geniuses. It was, on 
 the whole, so sure that the wisdom of all 
 the ages had flowered in it, so convinced of 
 
_S^^d^u4.^'yz^' 
 
OUT OF PLACE 57 
 
 the golden time of 'progress,' so truly 
 respectable and really good, that I doubt it 
 would frighten away some other shades we 
 have met, and, still more, some of whom 
 later on I shall remind you. That is, it 
 ought to frighten them ; but I fear they 
 would be stubborn, have their point of view, 
 and hold their ground. No ; Tennyson and 
 Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle and Bishop 
 Wilberforce do not belong to Piccadilly. 
 More peaceful spaces, less worldly memories, 
 are theirs. 
 
58 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 OLD Q. 
 
 If one wanted to fix, among the eminent 
 figures of our history, on a presiding genius 
 for Piccadilly, one might wish, in a soft 
 and gracious mood, to choose the Duchess 
 Georgiana. Or if one wanted a world-wide 
 name, that left a deep mark on England 
 and Europe, one might think of the Duke 
 of Wellington. One might wish and one 
 might think, but one would have to fix on 
 Old Q. He is there by right of familiarity 
 and inveterate tradition. Old Q.'s is alto- 
 gether too strong a case, and, in fact, over 
 some less lovely aspects of Piccadilly Old 
 Q.'s is quite the proper spirit to preside. 
 Devonshire House and Apsley House must 
 give way to No. 138.^ Half a century ago 
 
 * And 139. They were one house in his day ; the famous 
 outside stairs to the first floor, and the lift for his senile con- 
 venience being at 138. It was at 139, then ' 13 Piccadilly 
 Terrace,' Lord Byron lived. 
 
A FAMOUS SIGHT 59 
 
 there were scores of Londoners living who 
 remembered the figure of him as he sat on 
 a balcony of the house close to Hyde Park 
 Corner, a parasol in his hand if the sun was 
 hot, intent on observation since he could 
 no longer act, up to the last moment of his 
 life : a ruined monument of such open licence 
 as London could never see again. 
 
 From the middle of the eighteenth 
 century until ten years after its close, first 
 as Lord March and Raglan, and after 1778, 
 when he succeeded his cousin, husband of 
 Prior's ' Kitty, beautiful and young,' as 
 Duke of Queensberry, he stood high, ad- 
 mired or ofiending, against the gaze of the 
 world. It is only fair to state, however, 
 that in the prime of life his conduct was not 
 more scandalous than that of many contem- 
 poraries. Horace Walpole was afraid he 
 had scandalised his neighbourhood by har- 
 bouring Lord March and ' the Rena,' the 
 Italian singer who was his mistress at the 
 time ; but then Strawberry Hill was a quiet 
 and decorous place. Lord Sandwich, the 
 Duke of Grafton, the second Lord Boling- 
 broke, and many others, were quite as open 
 in their unblessed amours in London and at 
 
60 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Newmarket. Old Q.'s excessive reputation 
 came merely from his continuing these 
 manners into a generation which saw no 
 other exemplars of them. Nor was he a 
 man of uniquely extravagant passions at 
 all. Many men in all ages and countries 
 have led and lead essentially the same life, 
 only no man of any position in this country 
 has led it openly since he died. Monster 
 for monster, for example, we may find a 
 worse in the Lord Hertford who was the 
 Regent's friend, ' Red Herrings,' the original 
 of Thackeray's Steyne and Disraeli's Mont- 
 fort, and who married Old Q.'s daughter 
 ' Mie Mie.' A bad man, an immoral man, 
 this Old Q. no doubt was, but I do not 
 think his memory calls for any especial 
 effort of denunciation on my part. I much 
 prefer the elegant deprecation of Sir 
 Nathaniel Wraxall : ' Unfortunately, his 
 sources of information' — he is speaking of 
 the Duke's good judgment — 'the turf, the 
 drawing-room, the theatre, the great world, 
 were not the most pure, nor the best 
 adapted to impress him with a favourable 
 idea of his own species.' That is really the 
 nice way of putting these things. 
 
THE TURF 61 
 
 Not profligacy but racing made him 
 famous as a young man. At this pursuit 
 he was indefatigable, as the long series of 
 his letters to George Selwyn constantly 
 shows. He is always just come from New- 
 market, or is at Newmarket, or going to 
 Newmarket — with the Rena or the Zam- 
 perini, to be sure, but still in a spirit of 
 business. He was a gentleman jockey in 
 his early days, riding his own horses in the 
 matches which were so prominent a part 
 of the racing in these times. He seems to 
 have been generally lucky, but not always. 
 ' My dear George, I have lost my match 
 and am quite broke,' begins a letter undated, 
 but apparently from Newmarket. He gave 
 up the turf when he succeeded — at fifty- 
 three — to the Queensberry title and estates, 
 but he was still associated with it in the 
 public mind. Two years later, when there 
 was a rumour that he was to marry Lady 
 Henrietta Stanhope, there was a lampoon 
 of him full of puns on his late avocation. 
 
 ' Say, Jockey Lord, adventurous Macaroni, 
 So spruce, so old, so dapper, stiff, and starch. 
 Why quit the amble of thy pacing pony 1 
 Why on a filly risk the name of March ? 
 
62 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Ah ! think, squire Groom, in spite of Pembroke's 
 tits 
 
 An abler rider oft has lost his seat ; 
 Young should the jockey be who mounts such bits. 
 
 Or he '11 be run away with every heat.' 
 
 And so forth — all very hard on a man of 
 fifty-three, who was to live another thirty 
 years. 
 
 Betting, of course, went on in this sport- 
 ing set all day. They bet about most things, 
 but their favourite subjects, as any one who 
 has read the Betting Book at White's or 
 Brooks's will remember, were marriage and 
 death. One would bet that a number of his 
 friends would all be married before him — 
 ' or dead ' is cautiously inserted in one such 
 bet — or that old So-and-so would survive 
 another year, and so on. It was about a bet 
 of this last dismal kind that Old Q., then 
 Lord March, and a friend went to law. Lord 
 March bet Mr. Pigot five hundred guineas 
 that Sir William Codrington would outlive 
 Mr. Bigot's father. He did ; but Mr. Bigot's 
 father was actually dead when the bet was 
 made, though, of course, neither wagerer 
 knew it ; and Mr. Bigot refused to pay, and 
 Lord March sued him before Lord Mansfield 
 
A SHOCKING SCENE 63 
 
 in the Court of Queen's Bench. In our time, 
 of course, no such action would lie. The 
 case was of great interest to the betting 
 world, and Lord Ossory and other eminent 
 sportsmen gave evidence. Mr. Pigot argued 
 that his deceased father was in the position 
 of a horse which had died before the day 
 of a race : the wager in that case would be 
 invalid. But Lord Mansfield charged the 
 jury otherwise, and poor Pigot lost five 
 hundred guineas, costs, father, and all. 
 
 Precisely when Old Q. settled in Picca- 
 dilly I have been unable to discover, but 
 certainly by 1767, though perhaps not at 
 138. Neither precisely do I know when 
 he enacted in the drawing-room there his 
 famous reproduction of the scene on Mount 
 Ida, with three of the most beautiful women 
 in London to represent the goddesses (in 
 the same dress, so to speak), and himself 
 as Paris to give the apple. As Wraxall 
 remarks, it was a scene would have been 
 appropriate to the days of Charles the 
 Second, though when he marvels at it in 
 the ' correct days of George the Third,' we 
 marvel also at the epithet. 
 
 He seems never to have been really keen 
 
64 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 about politics, though the details of ap- 
 pointments are frequent in the news parts 
 of his letters. He was a Lord of the Bed- 
 chamber for twenty-eight years, but lost 
 that post in 1788, in consequence of a rare 
 error in judgment. George the Third was 
 insane, and Old Q., after careful inquiries 
 among the doctors — with the caution of an 
 old sportsman — thought it safe to bet on 
 his not recovering. So he had conferences 
 with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of 
 York in Piccadilly, regaling them, we are 
 told, with ' plentiful draughts of champagne,' 
 and finally went over to the side of the 
 Prince and Fox. But George the Third 
 did recover, and the Duke was dismissed. 
 
 That seems to have been his one personal 
 move in politics, but political interest brought 
 him under the satire of Robert Burns, who 
 seems to have had a virtuous horror for the 
 Duke's libertine character. Old Q. went 
 down to canvass for the Dumfries Burghs, 
 and Burns, who was on the other side, let 
 him have it. 
 
 ' I '11 sing the zeal Drumlanrig bears, 
 Wha left the all-important cares 
 Of Princes and their darlin's,' 
 
DENUNCIATIONS 65 
 
 — on ' Drumlanrig ' the editor of my Burns 
 has 'the fourth Duke of Queensberry, of 
 infamous memory,' which is harsh. Burns's 
 memory is, of course, immaculate. And again : 
 
 ' The laddies by the banks o' Nith 
 Wad trust his Grace wi' a', Jamie ; 
 But he '11 sair them as he sair'd the King, 
 Turn tail and rin awa', Jamie. 
 
 The day he stood his country's friend, 
 
 Or gied her faes a claw, Jamie, 
 Or frae puir man a blessin' wan, 
 
 That day the duke ne'er saw, Jamie.' 
 
 Wordsworth, by the way, denounced the 
 ' degenerate Douglas ' for felling the trees 
 at Drumlanrig. 
 
 And now for his character ; for no man's 
 character is really summed up in calling 
 him a profligate, or saying that his memory 
 is infamous. 
 
 It was agreed among his friends that from 
 early days this voluptuary was remarkable 
 for strong common sense. The letters are 
 full of it — a sort of rough sagacity, and a 
 cynicism that was not of the affected type, 
 a usual green sickness of youth, but the 
 clear-eyed recognition of certain unfortunate 
 
 E 
 
66 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 facts in the humanity surrounding him. So 
 when George Selwyn, who was rather given 
 to many words about misfortune, wrote to 
 tell him of losing a thousand pounds, he re- 
 plied — and I quote a little fully, because 
 here certainly the style is the man — ' When 
 I came home last night I found your letter 
 on my table. So you have lost a thousand 
 pounds, which you have done twenty times 
 in your lifetime, and won it again as often, 
 and why should not the same thing happen 
 again ? I make no doubt that it will. I 
 am sorry, however, that you have lost your 
 money ; it is unpleasant. In the meantime, 
 what the devil signify the le fable de Paris 
 or the nonsense of "White's ! You may be 
 sure they will be glad you have lost your 
 money ; not because they dislike you, but 
 because they like to laugh.' And here is a 
 glimpse of the punishment which comes to 
 every clear-headed sensualist, that sentiment 
 falls away from his emotions. He writes 
 to George of the Zamperini : ' You see what 
 a situation I am in with my little Buffa. 
 She is the prettiest creature that ever was 
 seen : in short, I like her vastly, and she 
 likes me because I give her money. I wish 
 
LOGIC 67 
 
 I had never met with her' — because she 
 broke his heart, or anything of that kind ? 
 Well, no — ' because I should then have been 
 at Paris with you, where I am sure I should 
 have been much happier than I have been 
 here.' To be sure, my Lord March was over 
 forty by then, — a fact, by the way, which 
 made Sir George Trevelyan, in his Life of 
 Fox, very rightly angry for these frank- 
 nesses. 
 
 But the Duke of Queensberry was some- 
 thing more than merely shrewd and cynical. 
 He carried a sense of logic to an extreme 
 point, and applying it to an unusual sphere 
 of human activity gained thereby a reputa- 
 tion of eccentricity which was not properly 
 his. There is a logic of the passions, I know, 
 which even commonly is sterner than the 
 logic of the intellect ; but this last, which is 
 usually at war with the passions, Old Q. 
 made their active and vigilant servant. He 
 made up his mind that certain pleasures 
 were, for him, the highest good in life, and 
 to have them in abundance and for the 
 longest possible time he used every means 
 at his disposal — wealth, a great position, 
 and all his faculties. All this calmly, relent- 
 
68 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 lessly, even with a certain Scotch canniness, 
 and with an indifference to the world's 
 opinion so complete that even in an 
 eighteenth - century duke it should gain 
 him some credit for courage. I do not 
 know of any voluptuary in history quite 
 of this distinction in his profession. One 
 or two in the early Roman Empire come 
 to mind, but in them one finds a sort of 
 headstrong savagery, a vulgarity of magni- 
 ficence, which you may parallel in some of 
 our own millionaires but not in the Duke 
 of Queensberry. He, at least, was a man 
 of taste, and if you can waive the moral 
 point, a gentleman. At the very last, worn 
 out and diseased, we find him writing an 
 apology to a friend for a passing touch of 
 irritation. An evil type of aristocracy, it 
 may be, but at least an authentic aristocrat. 
 Few men indeed, even sensualists, go 
 through life without some softness of feel- 
 ing, and this one had one real afiection — for 
 his friend George Selwyn. In letters so 
 curt and business-like and intolerant of 
 affectation as his, a touch of feeling carries 
 its truth with it. In the letter about the 
 thousand pounds from which I have quoted, 
 
THE ONE FRIENDSHIP 69 
 
 after saying that he would put it right at 
 
 the bank, and ' there will be no bankruptcy 
 
 without we are both ruined at the same 
 
 time ' — this, remember, was long before Lord 
 
 March came into his kingdom, in days when 
 
 he himself could be * quite broke ' — he goes 
 
 on : ' How can you think, my dear George, 
 
 and I hope you do not think, that anybody, 
 
 or anything, can make a tracasserie between 
 
 you and me ? I take it ill that you can 
 
 even talk of it, which you do in the letter 
 
 I had by Ligonier. I must be the poorest 
 
 creature upon earth — after having known 
 
 you so long, and always as the best and 
 
 sincerest friend that any one ever had — if 
 
 any one alive can make any impression upon 
 
 me, where you are concerned. I told you, 
 
 in a letter I wrote some time ago, that I 
 
 depended more upon the continuance of our 
 
 friendship than anything else in the world, 
 
 which I certainly do, because I have so many 
 
 reasons to know you, and I am sure I know 
 
 myself.' He could make this last statement 
 
 with more truth than most of us. 
 
 But sensualists harden, and the Rev. Dr. 
 Warner found him, many years later, most 
 unfeeling on the subject of Mie Mie. The 
 
70 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 reader, I do not doubt, knows all about Mie 
 Mie, but perhaps he will forgive me if, in 
 the interest of scientific thoroughness, I tell 
 him an oft-told tale. Mie Mie was the 
 daughter of the Marchesa Fagniani ; and 
 George Selwyn, who loved all children, con- 
 ceived for her a devotion which touched and 
 amused and slightly bored his friends. Gos- 
 sips of that day and a later have said it was 
 doubtful whether he himself or the Duke of 
 Queensberry was her real father. I think, 
 however, that nobody who knows the world, 
 and reads the Selwyn correspondence, can 
 doubt that George could not have believed 
 he was her father, and that, whoever it was 
 in fact — and let us hope it was the Marquis 
 Fagniani after all — he, and the Duke too, 
 believed it was his friend. Letters from 
 Warner to Selwyn assume the parentage of 
 Old Q. Well, Selwyn wanted the child to 
 be given up to him, to adopt her, and 
 Madame Fagniani refused, and half accepted, 
 and refused again, and led poor George a 
 cruel dance over Europe in his pathetic and 
 slightly ridiculous quest. In all this Old 
 Q. — who certainly professed no parental 
 interest in the child — was sympathetic, 
 
MIE MIE 71 
 
 though his common sense could not but be 
 in arms, and he pointed out that the more 
 eager George showed himself, the more 
 Madame Fagniani, a capricious woman who 
 thought herself a neglected beauty, would 
 torment him ; also that he, the Duke, was 
 the last person who profitably could inter- 
 fere. 
 
 However, when George at last succeeded, 
 and the child was given up to him, the 
 Duke began a little to pooh-pooh his friend's 
 excessive tenderness and the fuss that was 
 made over Mie Mie. Dr. Warner used to 
 call on him in Piccadilly with accounts of 
 her progress, and was indignant at his want 
 of tenderness. Warner, by the way, was a 
 good man strangely maligned by Thackeray, 
 who said he was a parasite and licked Old 
 Q.'s boots ; whereas he said plainly he dis- 
 liked Old Q., and only frequented him to 
 oblige Selwyn, for whom it is quite clear he 
 had a sincere regard. Warner's letters are 
 by far the wittiest in the whole collection. 
 
 'Well, and how does Mie Mie go on?' 
 asked the Duke, and Warner expatiated on 
 her talents, ' in the fond hope to please 
 him,' and said she was learning everything. 
 
72 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 ' Pshaw ! she will be praised for what the 
 child of a poor person would be punished. 
 Such sort of education is all nonsense,' and 
 so on. In this I detect an unwillingness on 
 the Duke's part to let the Rev. Dr. Warner 
 assume too much. Another time George 
 had written from the country to Warner 
 about * the little flannel petticoat ' Mie Mie 
 was wearing, and Warner read the letter to 
 Old Q., 'with which he ought to have been 
 pleased, but which he treated with a pish 
 or a damn.' 
 
 Dr. Warner was severe on him for this 
 levity. 'I have many acquaintance,' says 
 he, 'in an humbler sphere of life, with as 
 much information, with as strong sense, 
 and, as far as appears to me, with abund- 
 antly more amiable qualities of the heart, 
 than his Grace of Queensberry.' 
 
 Well, I am fond of children, and am not 
 a wicked duke, but I confess that if my 
 morning avocations were interrupted by 
 clergymen reading letters about little flannel 
 petticoats, even my own daughter's, I might 
 pish too. Selwyn and Warner expected 
 too much of a voluptuary. 
 
 Old Q., however, left Mie Mie a fortune. 
 
THE LAST YEAKS 73 
 
 And that brings me betimes, since I grow 
 garrulous, to the end. 
 
 George Selwyn and all his old friends were 
 long dead. He was blind of an eye and 
 deaf of an ear, toothless and infirm. For 
 his estates in Scotland he had never cared ; 
 Amesbury in Wiltshire, a place of most 
 beautiful surroundings, he had ceased to 
 visit ; even his villa at Richmond, where he 
 had grown tired of the Thames with its 
 ' flow, flow, flow,' he had given up ; Picca- 
 dilly was his home, and there he sat in the 
 sun under his parasol. But this old man, 
 m.uch over eighty, was still keen to see life, 
 still ready to talk if he could not hear. 
 
 ' Never did any man,' says Wraxall, who 
 saw him much in these days, ' retain more 
 animation, or manifest a sounder judgment. 
 Even his figure, though emaciated, still 
 remained elegant ; his manners were noble 
 and polished ; his conversation gay, always 
 entertaining, generally original, rarely in- 
 structive, frequently libertine, indicating a 
 strong, sagacious, masculine intellect, with 
 a thorough knowledge of man.' And the 
 statesman Windham notes in his diary two 
 years before Old Q.'s death, how he 'went 
 
74 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 in to the Duke of Queensberry, whom I saw 
 at his window ; full of life but very difficult 
 to communicate with, and greatly declined 
 in bodily powers.' 
 
 There he sat on his balcony, and the world 
 saw him as it went by and moralised over 
 him. Leigh Hunt, for example, often saw 
 him there, ' and wondered at the longevity 
 of his dissipation and the prosperity of his 
 worthlessness.' Many tales of him went 
 about. They said he took baths of milk, 
 and quite a prejudice against drinking milk 
 arose in the neighbourhood. It seems to 
 be true that he kept a groom, Jack Radford, 
 ready mounted to follow ladies whose ap- 
 pearance interested him as he looked down 
 on Piccadilly. 
 
 There he sat, with his neat peruke, and 
 his strong-featured, lively, sharp old face. It 
 seemed as though he would sit there for ever ; 
 but at last, in 1810, at the age of eighty-six, 
 he died, and was buried under the altar in 
 St. James's Church, Piccadilly, and his will, 
 with its various bequests to favourites, caused 
 much more sensation than that of Mr. Cecil 
 Rhodes. ' The Star of Piccadilly,' as a rhyme 
 of the day called him, was set. 
 
THE GHOSTS OF ALBANY 75 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE GHOSTS OF ALBANY 
 
 Not 'The Albany': the definite article, 
 though now universal, was not used by the 
 earliest tenants of the chambers, and it 
 becomes a writer who gossips about them to 
 respect their custom. 
 
 We need not linger overmuch on the 
 history of the building. There were origin- 
 ally three houses on the site, and the most 
 eastern of them was occupied by the third 
 Lord Sunderland, son of that arch-traitor 
 whose elaborate disloyalty to James the 
 Second is one of the darker studies in the 
 psychology of politics. He bought the other 
 two houses and made one of the three, with a 
 fine room for a finer library now at Blenheim. 
 Stephen Fox, the second Lord Holland, lived 
 here afterwards, who was like his brother 
 Charles in most things save genius, fat, good- 
 
76 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 natured, fond of cards and a bottle. It was 
 the birth of a son to him that brought the 
 Jews upon poor Charles, no longer next heir 
 to the large family fortune, ill-gotten by their 
 father, who speculated with the country's 
 money (in his possession as paymaster) on 
 his knowledge as a minister. By no means 
 an unamiable ghost to collogue withal on a 
 quiet night, Stephen Fox, a little breathless 
 with bulkiness and good living, crossing 
 Piccadilly, where his house was, to haunt 
 Brooks's in St. James's Street. He sold it 
 to the first Lord Melbourne, who rebuilt it 
 with a ballroom ceiling by Cipriani, and 
 then changed houses with the Duke of York 
 and Albany, son of George the Second, 
 and hence the name. It was turned into 
 chambers for bachelors, the garden being 
 built over for more profit, in 1804. 
 
 There is a rare and unaffected dignity 
 about Albany still. The courtyard and the 
 house do much to shut out the railway- 
 station noises of contemporary Piccadilly, 
 and Vigo Street at the other end is tolerably 
 quiet, so that it is possible to muse there, 
 even in the daytime. Walking through the 
 arcade with its low roof I have often agreed 
 
MAT LEWIS 77 
 
 with Macaulay's remark when he went to 
 live there, that it was a college life in the 
 West End of London. That is to say, for 
 Macaulay and for me, if I were rich enough 
 to live in Albany ; other famous tenants 
 have led lives there not possible in colleges, 
 
 ' If ancient tales say true nor wrong those holy men.' 
 
 Many an interesting man has hved in 
 Albany, One of the most attractive of 
 them all to me, and one who more than most 
 of the others may be supposed to haunt 
 Piccadilly, is Mat Lewis, 'the Monk,' and 
 since his fame is something dimmed now I 
 will treat him with some circumstance. 
 
 Most of us, as we grow older, abandon 
 any feud we may have had, or been thought 
 to have, with Mrs. Grundy. Now and then, 
 however, I still feel a stir of my young dis- 
 like of her exploits, and it is an attraction 
 for me in poor Mat Lewis that he was notable 
 among Mrs. Grundy's victims. 
 
 Matthew Gregory Lewis was born in 1775, 
 the son of a rich man, and was sent to 
 Westminster and Christ Church, and after 
 that to Weimar and Paris. He plunged 
 into writing early, and had written poems. 
 
78 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 a novel, a comedy — all by seventeen, and all 
 forgotten. He was an attach^ at the Hague 
 in 1794, and there he wrote his most famous 
 work, now also forgotten, Ambrosio, or the 
 Monk, which was ultimately to destroy him 
 socially. At first, however, it made him 
 fashionable — very fashionable, and that pre- 
 cisely was what Mat Lewis, a harmless, 
 vain, good-natured creature, most wished to 
 be. A literary lion in 'Society,' he was a 
 fashionable lion among authors. It was a 
 great event for an aspiring author to be 
 presented to Mat Lewis, as we know from 
 the confession of one of them, namely — who 
 do you think it was ? — Walter Scott. Of 
 all the revenges of time in the matter of 
 authorship I think this one of the oddest — 
 that Walter Scott was proud to know Mat 
 Lewis, and to receive his quite good-natured 
 patronage. 
 
 Mat was bringing out his Tales of Wonder, 
 and Erskine told him that one Walter Scott, 
 a young advocate in Edinburgh, had trans- 
 lated some stirring things from the German. 
 A correspondence followed, and later Mat 
 went down to Edinburgh and asked Scott 
 to dinner, and Scott confessed — with the 
 
LITTLE WEAKNESSES 79 
 
 utter absence of conceit native to that noble 
 cbaracter— confessed, thirty years later, that 
 he had never felt such elation before. He 
 had seen Burns when he was seventeen, and 
 this was the first poet he had seen since. 
 Poor Mat ! 
 
 So Mat Lewis was a lion in the literary 
 world and the fashionable, enjoying it vastly, 
 being, as Scott tells us, 'fonder of great 
 people than he ought to have been, either 
 as a man of talent, or as a man of fashion. 
 He had always dukes and duchesses in his 
 mouth, and was pathetically fond of any one 
 that had a title. You would have sworn he 
 had been a parvenu of yesterday, yet he had 
 lived all his life in good society*' Byron, 
 too, has a story of Lewis crying at Oatlands 
 because the Duchess of York had 'said 
 something so kind ' to him. ' Never mind, 
 Lewis, don't cry. She could not mean it,' 
 said a brutal listener. 
 
 Mat was also a bore ; ' a good man,' says 
 Byron, ' a clever man, but a bore, a damned 
 bore, one may say.' Scott tells us — and it is 
 something for a man's memory that it is kept 
 alive, so far as it is so, by Scott and Byron 
 — of Charles Fox in his latter days, very 
 
80 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 fat and lethargic, enduring an attack from 
 Lewis, lying 'like a fat ox which for some 
 time endures the persecution of a buzzing 
 fly, rather than rise to get rid of it ; and 
 then at last he got up and heavily plodded 
 his way to the other side of the room.' 
 
 Yet this absurd little snob and bore was 
 the kindest creature alive, sharing his in- 
 come with his mother, who was separated 
 from his father, and when his father, enraged, 
 cut it down by half, sharing that, and doing 
 good by stealth. Imagination he had, not 
 of a broad and sweeping kind, fantastic, 
 weird, rather morbid, but yet imagination, 
 and after all the hobgoblin terrors which 
 seem childish to us struck a serious note 
 for those days. Clever, too, was Mat Lewis, 
 and a man of taste, with a notable ear for 
 rhythm. 
 
 We can see him in Albany, K. 1, in his 
 glory; an extremely small and boyish figure ; 
 ' the least man I ever saw to be strictly 
 well and neatly made,' says Scott, with 
 queer eyes which ' projected like those of 
 some insect, and were flattish in their orbit.' 
 He had the panels of his bookcases filled with 
 looking-glasses, and kept a black servant. 
 
MAT AND MRS. GEUNDY 81 
 
 It was cruel and wanton in Mrs. Grundy 
 to persecute this harmless little personage, 
 with his snobbery and tediousness, and pro- 
 jecting eyes and kindly heart — cruel because, 
 for a clever man, he must have felt it so 
 bitterly, and wanton because she really 
 could not have cared. Mathias, in the 
 Pursuits of Literature, attacked his famous 
 book The Monk on the score of blasphemy 
 and indecency, and Mrs. Grundy, who had 
 never read it, but had exalted Lewis on the 
 strength of its brilliant reputation, took 
 alarm. There was a fierce outcry against 
 Mat ; an injunction was moved for against 
 his book, and — oh dear ! oh dear I — ' young 
 ladies,' says the invaluable Captain Gronow, 
 'were forbidden to speak to him.' The 
 Monk, one remembers, though a wealthy, 
 was not a marrying man, and conceivably 
 the matrons had a spite against him. It was 
 all very like Mrs. Grundy, but it was hard 
 in her to do it to Mat Lewis who so loved 
 her smiles. 
 
 Perhaps the Monk was embittered by this 
 treatment, or perhaps he hated Sheridan 
 anyhow, but his verses on Sheridan were 
 not characteristic of his good-nature. 
 
82 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 ' For worst abuse of finest parts 
 
 Was Misophil begotten ; 
 There might indeed be blacker hearts, 
 But none could be more rotten.' 
 
 I am sure it was not because Sheridan had 
 scored off him about his play Castle Spectre 
 — a fine name, is it not ? — replying to Mat's 
 offer to bet on some occasion what Sheridan 
 owed him for it as manager, that he never 
 made large bets, but would bet him what 
 it was worth. 
 
 Mat's kindliness, however, co-existed with 
 some capacity for quarrelling, and indeed 
 one commonly finds the two qualities to- 
 gether : he who never quarrels is apt to be 
 a little cold-blooded or so, and not much 
 given to active benevolence. Lord Mel- 
 bourne told Charles Greville an odd tale of 
 the Monk's quarrel with Sir Henry Lush- 
 ington. It was convenient to Mat to stay 
 with Lushington and his sister at Naples ; 
 so he wrote to suspend the quarrel, and after 
 the visit wrote to resume it — the status quo 
 ante pacem — and did so ' with rather more 
 acharnement than before.' There is a sugges- 
 tion of character in this, I think — of some- 
 thing solid below the folly and vanity. 
 
POOR MAT 83 
 
 The Monk's father died in 1812, leaving 
 plantations in the West Indies, whither Mat 
 journeyed in 1815. He made Byron a 
 parting present of some preserved ginger, 
 which his affectionate friend said he could 
 never eat without tears— it was so hot. He 
 visited Byron at Venice on his return, and 
 went riding with the poet by the Brenta, 
 the greater and absent-minded poet leading 
 the way, the lesser and short-sighted poet 
 following — into a ditch, and into the river, 
 and into collision with the diligence, but 
 all the time 'talking without intermission, 
 for he was a man of many words.' On an 
 expedition with Walter Scott poor Mat 
 grew weary, and had to be carried, ' in his 
 shooting array of a close sky-blue jacket, 
 and the brightest red pantaloons I ever saw 
 on a human breech. He also had a kind of 
 feather in his cap.' 
 
 This dear, ridiculous creature went again 
 to Jamaica in 1817, with the characteristic 
 intention of improving the condition of the 
 slaves, and died on the voyage home of 
 yellow fever. They buried his body at sea, 
 but his spirit must have gone on to England, 
 and stayed awhUe in Albany, K.l, with the 
 
84 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 mirror-panelled bookcases. It is strange 
 that this sham great author, with his bubble 
 reputation of a day, should be yet alive for 
 us, not pilloried by some Pope, but gently 
 and affectionately recorded and pictured by 
 two authentic giants of his trade. 
 
 ' I would give many a sugar cane, 
 Monk Lewis were alive again ! ' 
 
 said Byron, and ' I would pay my share,' 
 added Scott. They are gone to him now, 
 and one fancies their ghosts in Piccadilly, 
 stumping with the limp both had in life, 
 smiling protectingly, and this absurd little 
 figure, wonderfully dressed, strutting garru- 
 lous between them. 
 
 Another vanished memory, so far as work 
 of his own is concerned, is that of Henry 
 Luttrell, who lived in 1.5. But Albany and 
 Piccadilly seem to belong more to our social 
 than our literary history, and from no gossip 
 that has to do with the social life of his time 
 can Henry Luttrell be omitted. Yet there 
 is little to say of him now. ' Where are the 
 snows of yester year ? ' one may ask of dead 
 wits almost as surely as of dead beauties. 
 
HENRY LUTTRELL 85 
 
 Luttrell was a great wit of his day, the first 
 half or so of the nineteenth century, and one 
 meets him in memoirs far more respectfully 
 noticed than poor Mat Lewis. He was one 
 of those men, unhappily less frequently met 
 now than then, who are of real and definite 
 account in the society of their day for purely 
 social merits — without position or money, 
 or a mob-acclaimed repute. He was the 
 author, it is true, of the Letters to Julia, 
 which had a fashionable vogue, and were a 
 guarantee of mental parts in the eyes of his 
 contemporaries, but his reputation could not 
 have endured long on this one achievement. 
 By birth he was illegitimate— a son of Lord 
 Carhampton. His means were slender, and 
 he had no political importance. 
 
 Luttrell owed his social position simply 
 to his social qualities : he was agreeable, a 
 good talker, and had a fund of sound sense 
 at the service of his friends. He and Samuel 
 Rogers hunted in couples ; it was said they 
 were seldom seen apart, but that when they 
 were, either abused the other. But if he 
 abused Sam Rogers he abused no one else : 
 his wit was said to be as kind as the banker- 
 poet's was malignant. It is a pleasant 
 
86 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 memory to have left behind one. Pity it 
 should be faded. 
 
 Greater men, of course, than Mat Lewis 
 or Henry Luttrell have lived in Albany. Of 
 Byron I shall write elsewhere. Bulwer 
 Lytton afterwards lived in Byron's rooms, 
 A. 2, as no doubt he was delighted to live. 
 You can picture him, if you like, putting on 
 the stays which so greatly annoyed Tenny- 
 son, and otherwise making the most of him- 
 self Other men, too, whose names mean 
 something, but either I do not see their 
 ghosts in Piccadilly, or I have nothing to 
 say of them in this sort of light narration. 
 It is clearly impossible, however, to pass 
 over Thomas Babington Macaulay. 
 
 I do not pretend to believe, personally, 
 for a moment, that Macaulay 's ghost wastes 
 time in haunting any scene of his labour on 
 earth. Wherever he is, I am sure he is 
 talking hard, or writing earnestly, for the 
 instruction of his companions, and has no 
 leisure to muse on the accidents of his past. 
 He is ready to furnish, I am sure, the exact 
 and complete dates of his residence in 
 Albany, the amount of his rent — it was £90, 
 
MACAULAY 87 
 
 by the way, if you care to know — and a 
 vigorous analysis of its advantages and 
 defects. You cannot expect any hovering 
 from this matter-of-fact intelligence, and 
 your illusion of his presence must be entirely 
 subjective. Still, if you like to imagine 
 him in Albany, it is easy to do so. 
 
 We know the furniture of his sitting- 
 room in E.l, when he went to live there in 
 1840. He had. Sir George Trevelyan tells 
 us, * half a dozen fine engravings from his 
 favourite great masters ; a handsome French 
 clock, provided with a singularly melodious 
 set of chimes, the gift of his friend and 
 publisher, Mr. Thomas Longman; and the 
 well-known bronze statuettes of Yoltaire 
 and Rousseau (neither of them heroes of his 
 own) which had been presented to him by 
 Lady Holland as a remembrance of her 
 husband.' And we can imagine the his- 
 torian himself seated at his desk amid these 
 agreeable surroundings — a short, stout man, 
 with a homely face and a fine forehead. 
 There he wrote the first two volumes of his 
 history, and there he got for them the 
 £20,000 at which later historians marvel 
 and weep. We can imagine him, further, in 
 
88 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 his dressing-room, making clumsy efforts to 
 tie his neckcloth, and trying to shave with 
 an unskilful hand, since these physical 
 peculiarities are recorded of him. Complet- 
 ing his toilet and looking round his apart- 
 ment, he reflected with pleasure on the 
 college life in the West End of London, to 
 which I have already referred, and also — I 
 quote from the same letter of his — to the fact 
 that it was ' in a situation which no younger 
 son of a duke would be ashamed to be put on 
 his card.' It was rather a trivial reflection 
 for a philosopher, but the greatest of us 
 have our trivial moments. 
 
 Perhaps it is best, however, to imagine 
 Macaulay at one of his famous breakfasts. 
 There he sits, and if you have the critical 
 temper of Mr. Charles Greville, you would 
 notice that his voice was unmusical and 
 monotonous, and his face heavy and dull — 
 with nothing about him, in fact, to bespeak 
 the genius and learning within. But much 
 evidence of the genius and learning would 
 have been given you had you really been 
 there. Any subject you mentioned your 
 host would know all about, and tell all 
 about, until some one who might take 
 
TABLE-TURNING 89 
 
 liberties, like Lady Holland, would say it 
 was enough, when he wpuld stop as one re- 
 places a book on the shelf, and take down 
 another. If you put a question to him 
 while the conversation was general, he would 
 wait for a pause, and then repeat it, and 
 give his answer to the table : that, at least, 
 was Mrs. Brookfield's experience. Presently, 
 if you were lucky, you would enjoy one of 
 his ' brilliant flashes of silence,' as Sydney 
 Smith called them. One of Macaulay's 
 breakfasts is described by the late Duke 
 of Argyll. (It is pleasing to know that so 
 very cocksure a personage as Macaulay was 
 admired by the Duke, who was not difii- 
 dent.) It was the day of table-turning, and 
 they tried the experiment with a heavy 
 table. Macaulay pooh-poohed the idea, but 
 for all that the table had the temerity to 
 turn violently. Did any one give it a push ? 
 was the question put to each guest by the 
 host. One of them was Bishop Wilberforce, 
 ' Soapy Sam,' renowned for saying the com- 
 forting thing, and so when all the rest 
 denied, he admitted that he might have un- 
 consciously given a slight push. It would 
 have been quite insufficient for the efiect. 
 
90 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 but Macaulay's great mind was relieved. 
 A scene for an observer of comic character. 
 
 I notice with regret that I have not 
 written of Macaulay so genially as I am 
 wont to write. His personality does not 
 attract me, I fear ; and then he was a par- 
 tisan in history, and in my own little read- 
 ing I incline to be a partisan on the other 
 side. Well, we all have our prejudices, 
 and Macaulay's memory can afford mine. 
 Besides, as I said, I am in no fear of meeting 
 his ghost. 
 
S£u/ i^ 
 
BYRON 91 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 BYRON 
 
 Albany saw the last of Byron's bachelor 
 life, and 139 Piccadilly the last of his life in 
 England. 
 
 He went to live in Albany, in the original 
 house on the ground floor, set A. 2, on March 
 28, 1814. 'This night,' he writes in his 
 journal of that date, ' got into ray new 
 apartments, rented of Lord Althorpe, on a 
 lease of seven years. Spacious, and room 
 for my books and sabres. In the house, too, 
 another advantage.' His landlord was about 
 to be married. March of the following year 
 saw him also married at 139 Piccadilly, and 
 so many references to him in other people's 
 memoirs and stories refer to his rooms in 
 Albany, where he lived only this one year, 
 that I imagine they are confused with his 
 other lodgings — in Bennet Street and St. 
 
92 THE GHOSTS OP PICCADILLY 
 
 James's Street — about town. His life in 
 Albany is typical, however — unhappily, the 
 reader may suppose — of his bachelor life in 
 London. 
 
 He continued there his alternation be- 
 tween excess and a frightened — lest he 
 should grow fat — and unwise abstinence. 
 The very night before he settled in Albany, 
 he dined tete-a-tSte with his friend, Scrope 
 Davies, at the Cocoa Tree — 64 St. James's 
 Street, where there is still a club of the 
 name — and, he tells us in the journal, ' sat 
 from six till midnight — drank between us 
 one bottle of champagne and six of claret, 
 neither of which wines ever affect me.' 
 Poor Scrope was less immune (it was Scrope 
 Davies, by the way, who said that Byron 
 was only 'a fair holiday drinker'), for he 
 became ' tipsy and pious, and I was obliged 
 to leave him praying to I know not what 
 purpose or pagod.' And his first letter from 
 Albany, April 9, to Thomas Moore, con- 
 tains an account equally distressing to us. 
 ' I have also been drinking, and on one 
 occasion ' — he was so proud of it ! which I 
 think in itself proves it was no habit, and 
 remember, censor, he was only twenty-six — 
 
DIETETICS 93 
 
 ' on one occasion, with three other friends at 
 the Cocoa Tree, from six till four, yea, unto 
 five in the matin. We clareted and cham- 
 pagned till two — then supped, and finished 
 with a kind of regency punch composed of 
 madeira, brandy, and green tea, no real 
 water being admitted therein. There was a 
 night for you ! ' It would have been a last 
 night for me ! 
 
 Then he would live for days on biscuits 
 and soda-water, which he ordered in two 
 dozen at a time — there is a bill for it yet 
 extant — and drank copiously. Byron's 
 genius as a poet came at the right moment 
 for its full efiect on Europe, but his stomach 
 was born out of due time. Were he living 
 in our day, the apostles of new diets would 
 have found in him their most attentive 
 listener, their most enthusiastic practi- 
 tioner. 
 
 Whether claret or soda-water was his 
 drink, however, he satisfied a large part of 
 our contemporary morality by severe phy- 
 sical exercise. He boxed for an hour a day 
 in Albany with Gentleman Jackson, and 
 practised the broadsword with Henry 
 Angelo. This famous master records an 
 
94 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 occasion when they were so engaged and 
 Hobhouse entered the room ; how Byron, 
 characteristically, ' did not desist from ad- 
 vancing on me, but seemed more determined 
 to show his friend how well he could beat 
 his broadsword master.' And he adds this 
 curious account : ' His preparation for his 
 exercise was rather singular ; first stripping 
 himself, then putting on a thick flannel 
 jacket, and over it a pelisse lined with fur, 
 tied round with a Turkish shawl. When he 
 had taken a sufficient gymnastic sodorific, 
 if he did not go directly and increase it 
 between the blankets, he had his valet to 
 rub him down.' There is a picture for you 
 to imagine, if you visit Albany, A. 2. 
 
 All such things are significant in the life 
 of a great man, as we know on Carlyle's 
 authority ; but let us turn to matters more 
 immediately of the spirit — although the 
 boxing was done ' to keep up the ethereal 
 part of me.' There is not much to be gained 
 from the journal, however. He wrote no 
 more in it, having kept it some five months, 
 after April 19. There is a passage no 
 bookish man can read without sympathy in 
 praise of solitude and getting home to one's 
 
FROM THE JOURNAL 95 
 
 own room. 'I do not know that I am 
 happiest when alone ; but this I am sure of, 
 that I never am long in the society even of 
 her I love (God knows too well, and the 
 devil probably too), without a yearning for 
 the company of my lamp and my utterly 
 confused and tumbled-over library.' Veniinus 
 larem ad nostrum. That big room in Albany 
 was a comfort to the poet, though 'Lara' 
 and ' The Ode to Napoleon ' was all the 
 poetry he wrote there. It was the time of 
 the first abdication, and Napoleon was much 
 in Byron's mind. He and other Whigs were, 
 of course, ' pro-Boers,' and expressed their 
 feelings with an immunity at which our 
 extreme Imperialists to-day must marvel. 
 ' April 8. — Out of town six days. On my 
 return, found my poor little pagod, Napo- 
 leon, pushed off his pedestal ; — the thieves 
 are in Paris.' . . . And the journal ends 
 excitedly on the same subject : I cannot 
 help wondering if the poet had been in the 
 society of Scrope Davies. ' And to prevent 
 me from returning, like a dog, to the vomit 
 of memory, I tear out the remaining leaves 
 of this volume, and write, in Ipecacuanha, 
 "that the Bourbons are restored!!!" — 
 
96 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 " Hang up philosophy ! " To be sure, I 
 have long despised myself and man, but I 
 never spat in the face of my species before 
 — " O fool ! I shall go mad ! " ' Some faint 
 touch of the Cocoa Tree there, one is forced 
 to think, but in no mental condition did 
 Byron forget his Shakespeare. 
 
 At this time the rage of his lionising was 
 over, but he was still going much into 
 society, sending verses to Lady Jersey, 
 mixing with Rogers and Moore ; making 
 love unwisely, and I think, in spite of the 
 turmoil he professed to dislike, taking more 
 pleasure in life than it gave him often. 
 Lady Caroline Lamb's affair was over ; Lady 
 Oxford's and Lady Frances Webster's had 
 been since. According, however, to a letter 
 from Lady Caroline to Captain Medwin — 
 Thackeray's Captain Sumph, with his banal 
 stories of the poet — written after Byron's 
 death, it was in Albany they parted for the 
 last time. 'But it is also true, that, the 
 last time we parted for ever, as he pressed 
 his lips on mine (it was in the Albany), he 
 said, " Poor Caro, if every one hates me, 
 you, I see, will never change — no, not with 
 ill-usage ! " And I said, " Yes, I am changed, 
 
THE TWO BYRONS 97 
 
 and shall come near you no more." For 
 then he showed me letters, and told me 
 things I cannot repeat, and all my attach- 
 ment went. This was our last parting scene 
 — well I remember it. It had an effect upon 
 me not to be conceived — three years I had 
 worshipped him.' It is touching, but I hope 
 the lady's warm imagination played her 
 false — at least about the telling things and 
 the showing letters. And yet, I know, 
 there were two Byrons — he who felt and 
 thought deeply, and acted generously ; and 
 the unworthy Byron, who was fanfaron de 
 ses vices and wanted to startle and shock : 
 it is possible, this showing of letters, but I 
 hope she was mistaken. Here, in any case, 
 is another scene in Albany for the reader's 
 fancy. 
 
 The letters of Byron from Albany are not 
 of any especial interest. They are charac- 
 teristic, however ; there is the authentic 
 Byron in them, egotistical, unselfish, vain, 
 modest, generous — we find him giving 
 £3000 to his sister Augusta — humorous, 
 affectionate. Much of his tenancy of these 
 rooms he spent in the country, and, as 
 we know, his ill-fated proposal of marriage 
 
98 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 to Miss Milbanke was written from New- 
 stead, and there he received his answer. On 
 March 31, 1815, he writes from Piccadilly 
 a married man. 
 
 '13 Piccadilly Terrace' was half of Old 
 Q.'s house, and is now 139 Piccadilly. Old 
 Q., who died in 1810, left it to 'Mie Mie,' 
 Lady Hertford ; but Byron rented it from 
 Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire. The rent 
 was £700 a year, and the payment in- 
 volved some correspondence when Byron 
 was settled in Italy. A short while after- 
 wards the house passed to the family of 
 Lord Bosebery, to whom, I believe, it still 
 belongs. Old Q., Byron, Lord Bosebery — 
 to be sure, a house of varied distinctions. 
 
 While Byron lived there he wrote ' Parisina' 
 and 'The Siege of Corinth,' met Walter 
 Scott for the first time, served on the Drury 
 Lane Committee, was served with sixteen 
 writs, had an execution in his house, and 
 separated from his wife. 
 
 Of all these experiences, perhaps the best 
 to tell of are those on the Committee, of 
 which Byron had a lively recollection, and 
 wrote of years afterwards in his ' Detached 
 Thoughts.' His letters of the time are full 
 
THE COMMITTEE 99 
 
 of the Committee's perplexities, which, as 
 any reader with a knowledge of theatres 
 may guess, were many and various. 
 
 His colleagues on the Committee were 
 Lord Essex, George Lamb, Douglas Kin- 
 naird, and Peter Moore — 'all very zealous 
 and in earnest to do good, and so forth.' Of 
 course they were ; and the experiment, not 
 often seen since, of a theatre run by edu- 
 cated people with an interest in contem- 
 porary literature, was certainly an attractive 
 one. Committees seldom do much, however, 
 and this had an intractable subject-matter. 
 ' We were but few, and never agreed I 
 There was Peter Moore, who contradicted 
 Kinnaird, and Kinnaird, who contradicted 
 everybody.' 
 
 It was not from the actors that their 
 troubles chiefly came. In Byron's time 
 actors did not expect all the reverence which 
 is not paid to cabinet ministers, and Byron's 
 bonhomie and humour no doubt conciliated 
 them. ' Players,' says he, ' are said to be 
 an impracticable people. They are so. But 
 I managed to steer clear of any disputes 
 with them ; and, excepting one debate with 
 the Elder Byrne about Miss Smith's Pas de 
 
100 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 (something — I forget the technicals), I do 
 not remember any litigation of my own. I 
 used to protect Miss Smith, because she was 
 like Lady Jane Harley in the face ; and 
 likenesses go a great way with me ' — Byron's 
 idea of impartial casting in the interests of 
 the theatre seems to have been odd. His 
 colleagues reproved him for 'buffooning 
 with the Histrions, and throwing things 
 into confusion by treating light matters 
 with levity.' Edmund Kean was their star, 
 and for him Byron had an enthusiasm ; his 
 emotion over Kean's ' Sir Giles Overreach ' 
 is an old story. 
 
 I am sorry to say it was the authors, not 
 the players, who gave most trouble. The 
 Committee, and Byron in particular, were 
 anxious to induce writers of reputation to 
 do something for the stage. But even then 
 it seemed already fated that the stage in 
 England could only be served by — how can 
 one put it inoffensively ? — well, by people 
 who were not otherwise of account as 
 writers. Here, however, was a rare oppor- 
 tunity for writers of account at least to be 
 considered with a bias in their favour, and 
 not the other way, and it was a thousand 
 
THE POOR STAGE 101 
 
 pities it was not taken. Walter Scott 
 would do nothing, neither would Thomas 
 Moore, nor, indeed, Byron. There was, to 
 be sure, a consideration which now has an 
 opposite reason: to a popular author the 
 stage offered nothing like the money he 
 could make in other ways. Walter Scott 
 wrote a note on the passage in the 'De- 
 tached Thoughts ' in which Byron laments 
 that he was asked in vain, recollecting the 
 occasion, and how he declined, partly from 
 the probability of not succeeding, and partly 
 from dislike of being kept in subjection by 
 ' the good folks of the green room : ceteraque 
 ingenio non suheunda meo,' and how Byron 
 emphatically agreed with him. Whereon 
 Lockhart has a note of his own, saying that 
 this was nonsense : 'neither player nor 
 manager has lived in our time that durst 
 have stood erect' — they are braver in our 
 time 1 — ' in the presence of either of these 
 men,' etc. : that ceteraque meant 'to say 
 nothing of money matters.' It may have 
 been so, but times are altogether changed in 
 this respect, and yet our best men have 
 nothing to do with the theatre. The trend 
 of their thought and labour had set away 
 
102 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 from it then, and still so sets, though there 
 may be signs of a return. 
 
 However, Byron tried Coleridge also, 
 and Maturin, recommended by Scott, sent 
 Bertram, which afterwards succeeded, and 
 'Mr. Sotheby obligingly offered all his 
 tragedies,' and Byron got Ivan accepted, 
 and had a long correspondence with the 
 author, and then Kean didn't like it, and 
 the author was angry, and so forth and so 
 on. It is odd to think of a man who — criti- 
 cise his poetry as you will — had beyond 
 cavil one of the greatest and most masculine 
 intellects England has known, frittering 
 away his time over these futilities. But he 
 seems to have enjoyed them. ' Then the 
 scenes I had to go through ! The authors 
 and the authoresses, the Milliners, the wild 
 Irishmen, the people from Brighton, from 
 Blackwall, from Chatham, from Cheltenham, 
 from Dublin, from Dundee, who came in 
 upon me ! . . . Miss Emma Somebody, with 
 a play entitled the "Bandit of Bohemia," 
 or some such title or production ; Mr. 
 O'Higgins, then resident at Richmond, with 
 an Irish tragedy, in which the unities could 
 not fail to be observed, for the protagonist 
 
O'HIGGINS 103 
 
 was chained by the leg to a pillar during 
 the chief part of the performance.' Mr. 
 O'Higgins was 'a wUd man, of a salvage 
 appearance,' and Byron was afraid to laugh. 
 Social pressure was of course applied to him, 
 and we find him writing to Mrs. George 
 Lamb, who had written to him on behalf 
 of some protege, and said she would ' try to 
 soften ' his colleagues, Kinnaird and George 
 Lamb, that he was the most obdurate, and 
 insisted on being softened first. It was 
 altogether an amusing game. 
 
 More so than the writs, though from 
 these too Byron managed to get instruction 
 and amusement. When the bailiff" descended 
 on 139 Piccadilly Byron wanted to know if 
 he had nothing for Sheridan. ' Oh, Sheridan ? 
 Ay, I have this,' and a ' dismal pocket- 
 book,' as Thackeray called it, was produced. 
 ' But, my Lord, I have been in Mr. Sheri- 
 dan's house a twelvemonth at a time ; a 
 civil gentleman — knows how to deal with 
 us.' Byron took the hint, and happily did 
 not have the bailiff for a year with him. 
 Of Sheridan, by the way, he was seeing 
 much at this time — Sheridan woefully in 
 his decline, drunken, maudlin, quarrelsome. 
 
104 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Byron always liked and admired him, and 
 said 'his very dregs are better than "the 
 first sprightly runnings " of others,' but as 
 he appears in the records of this day there 
 seems to me little to value in him. He 
 never laughed ; he would sit silent for long, 
 and then attack some fellow-guest ; and he 
 would weep and complain that he had never 
 had a shilling of his own — though, as Byron 
 said, he had extracted a good many of other 
 people's. There have been more amiable 
 ruins than this ; but, no doubt, when you 
 have supported a man in his cups ' down a 
 damned corkscrew staircase, which had cer- 
 tainly been constructed before the discovery 
 of fermented liquors,' you feel kindly towards 
 him. How strange now and boyish seem 
 these orgies of orators and poets ! The 
 dinner - party in question had been ' first 
 silent, then talky, then argumentative, then 
 disputatious, then unintelligible, then alto- 
 gethery, then inarticulate, and then drunk.' 
 What a life! 
 
 Well, it was soon to end for Byron. On 
 the 10th of December 1815 his daughter Ada 
 was born, and on the 25 th of April 1816 he 
 sailed for Ostend. There has been too much 
 
THE EVIL TIME 105 
 
 of debate and theory about Byron's separa- 
 tion from his wife that I should add to it in 
 this casual place. A dreadful reason in the 
 background may or may not have decided 
 Lady Byron ; it is difficult to believe from 
 her letters that it was so. But tempers 
 which could not agree, which were doomed 
 never to agree, were reason enough for the 
 separation. Many an argument, shot through 
 with pain and heart-burning, must there 
 have been in that house in Piccadilly ; many 
 a sad and anxious debate when she had 
 gone, and his sister and his friends came to 
 him. If houses harbour the passions and 
 sorrows of the dead, I should not like to live 
 there. A great heart and a great brain 
 stabbed by great trouble, racked by little 
 troubles — it is an evil memory. 
 
 In those last days Byron wrote the 
 beautiful verses to his wife, ' Fare you well,' 
 and the bitter verses on her confidante, 
 Mrs. Clermont, ' Born in the garret, in the 
 kitchen bred' — which some fool or traitor 
 sent to the newspapers, and which was the 
 signal for the public outcry on him. The 
 private outcry had been long set going, 
 and had barred him from every great house 
 
106 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 in London but Lady Jersey's. In these last 
 days, too, that the inevitable touch of farce 
 should not be absent, little Nathan the Jew 
 singer was continually in the house — Nathan, 
 who had persuaded him to write the * Heb- 
 rew Melodies,' and drew Tom Moore's chaff 
 on him ; ' Sun-burn Nathan,' says Byron 
 in a letter — and Nathan got £50 from him 
 and sent him a present of Passover cakes. 
 Byron's polite acknowledgment of this gift 
 seems to be the last letter he wrote in 
 London. 
 
 Byron had signed the deed of separation, 
 delivering it as ' the act and deed,' as a rare 
 bit of gossip in a dull book of letters pub- 
 lished lately tells us, not of himself but ' of 
 Mrs. Clermont.' He had parted from Au- 
 gusta, ' almost the last being,' as he wrote 
 to his wife, ' whom you have left me to part 
 with,' and the end of his life in England 
 came. There is a last scene from 139 Picca- 
 dilly : you see him come out, his beautiful 
 pale face without the light that made it, 
 said Walter Scott, ' a thing to dream of,' 
 and limp into his carriage. 
 
OF BURLINGTON HOUSE 107 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 OF BURLINGTON HOUSE 
 
 The memories of Burlington House are 
 mostly commingled with the arts, so much 
 so that as one muses on its history an im- 
 pression rather of art than of humanity is 
 predominant. One thinks of one art or 
 another, exampled in varying degrees of 
 excellence, from the time of its first renown 
 until now when the art of painting flourishes 
 or languishes in its halls. Indeed, if horrid 
 rumour be credited, its first existence is 
 made lurid by an ancient art, that of poison- 
 ing, to wit. As a practitioner or patron of 
 an art almost everybody who lived in Bur- 
 lington House is known, if known at all. 
 Yet from the haze of dilettantism or achieve- 
 ment some humanity does emerge, enough 
 to furm'sh me a chapter. 
 
 The first Lord Burlington was living here 
 in 1668, and the house was not built until 
 
108 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 1665, so that it seems likely that he was 
 the first occupant. According to Pepys, 
 however, the house was built by Sir John 
 Denham, and if that was so, and if he did 
 not build it for the earl, he may have lived 
 there a year or two. In that case the house 
 began with a note of humanity only too 
 sharp and recognisable — the comedy or 
 tragedy of an old man and a young wife 
 and a lover. The third person was a king's 
 brother, which for some minds may give a 
 touch of romance to a squalid story of human 
 weakness and vice. 
 
 It is all in Grammont, a story most con- 
 genial to that lively Count, or to Hamilton 
 his biographer. Sir John Denham was an 
 old man. Grammont says seventy-nine, and 
 rather tiresome research says only fifty; still, 
 fifty counted for old in love-affairs when 
 Charles the Second was king. In May 1665 
 he married Margaret Brook, who was only 
 seventeen. She was a pretty toy. The 
 Duke of York had been in love with her, on 
 and off, other ladies intervening, for some 
 time. His latest mistress had been Lady 
 Chesterfield, whose lord — it was an act 
 which amazed and disgusted Grammont — 
 
A SAD STORY 109 
 
 carried her off into the country. So he was 
 on with the old love again, and Lady Den- 
 ham was to be given a place in the Duchess's 
 household, and the usual routine of these 
 affairs was to be followed. Only she died 
 in January 1667. Grammont says that Sir 
 John Denham, unable to follow Lord Ches- 
 terfield's example for lack of a country 
 house, sent her on a longer journey. The 
 populace thought he had poisoned her, and 
 was infuriated — why it should have cared I 
 know not — and had to be appeased with a 
 large distribution of burnt wine at her 
 funeral. It also accused the Duchess of 
 York, or at least Andrew Marvell did, who 
 should have known better. Perhaps it was 
 rather sad, as the pretty toy was so young, 
 and had only acted after her kind. Anyhow, 
 she was dead, and the Duke of York 
 promptly fell in love with some one else. 
 
 When I was a very young man I used to 
 read such stories as those in Grammont's 
 memoirs with much pleasure. Nowadays I 
 find them a little banal and monotonous, 
 too unrelieved by fancy or subtlety. They 
 are disagreeable, but this one of Sir John 
 Denham and Margaret Brook and the Duke 
 
110 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 of York seems more so than probably it was, 
 for one need not suppose she really was 
 poisoned. In the seventeenth century there 
 were many cases of alleged poisoning which 
 might have been only cases of medical ignor- 
 ance. People had appendicitis and were 
 bled for it, and naturally expired, Henrietta 
 of England, Duchess of Orleans, the most 
 fascinating woman of her days, who was 
 thought to have been poisoned with the con- 
 nivance of that wretched cretin, her husband 
 — Charles the Second, her brother, refused 
 to open the Duke's letter announcing her 
 death — probably died of peritonitis. As for 
 Lady Denham, that simple wanton, if her 
 ghost emerges from Burlington House into 
 Piccadilly, save for its dress it will be quite 
 undistinguished in the crowd. 
 
 The original house seems to have been 
 large, but comparatively plain, built of red 
 brick. It had a big garden behind, which 
 of course touched the open country. Horace 
 Walpole has been censured for attributing 
 to the first Lord Burlington the wish to 
 have no building beyond him ; that is said 
 to be absurd, since Clarendon House and 
 
ARCHITECTURE 111 
 
 Berkeley House in the west were already 
 standing, but he might well have referred 
 to the north. There is nothing to say of 
 this Lord Burlington, hut I should like to 
 think that his brother Eobert Boyle, that 
 gentle and lovable man of science, the in- 
 ventor of the air-pump and first President 
 of the Royal Society, came sometimes from 
 Pall Mall, where he lived, to dine in Picca- 
 
 amy. 
 
 It was the third earl, great-grandson of 
 the first, who renewed and embellished and 
 made everything of Burlington House, with 
 the assistance of Colin Campbell and in 
 imitation of Palladio. I do not propose to 
 go into architectural merits and differences. 
 The reader can go look for himself: that is 
 to say, he can still see the first floor, which 
 with the ground floor (only that is hidden 
 by a portico) was left in 1866, when the 
 rest of the buildings and a beautiful colon- 
 nade were destroyed, and the present wall 
 and wings, such as they are, were built. 
 For my part, in my bigoted love for the 
 plain and simple in London houses, I wish 
 the old house of red brick had been left 
 exposed to view : it was left, encased in 
 
112 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 stone, as the nucleus of tlie grander mansion. 
 The new Burlington House and its art-loving 
 owner were the theme of much eulogy and 
 satire. The satire in Martial, of the fine 
 house with nowhere to eat or sleep, was 
 Englished for Burlington House as it had 
 been for Blenheim ; and Hogarth drew two 
 plates caricaturing the ' Taste of the Town,' 
 and 'The Man of Taste.' In the latter 
 Pope is spattering the Duke of Chandos 
 (whom he had depreciated as an amateur to 
 exalt his own patron) with whitewash, and 
 Burlington is going up a ladder like a 
 workman. 
 
 This third Earl of Burlington was the 
 patron of Pope and Gay and Handel. He 
 was intimate with Swift, but you can hardly 
 be said to be the patron of a man whom you 
 allow to bully your wife. The characteristic 
 anecdote of the Dean is something musty. 
 ' Lady Burhngton, I hear you can sing : sing 
 me a song.' She refused, and Swift said, ' I 
 suppose you take me for one of your poor 
 hedge parsons ; sing when I bid you.' She 
 wept and left the room. . . . ' Pray, madam, 
 are you as proud and as ill-natured as when 
 I saw you last ? ' ' No, Mr. Dean ; I will 
 
ANOTHER SAD TALE 113 
 
 sing to you, if you please.' No modern 
 thinks more of Swift's greatness as a writer 
 than I, but I wish the lady had answered 
 differently. 
 
 She was Lady Dorothy Savile, a clever 
 daughter of a clever family, and I think the 
 most interesting memories of Burlington 
 House are of her and two other women 
 — her unhappy daughter, Dorothy, and 
 Mademoiselle Violette, who became Mrs. 
 Garrick. 
 
 Poor Lady Dorothy Boyle's is the story 
 of a foolish marriage, which ended tragic- 
 ally, of bitter sorrow and untimely death. 
 It is something of a coincidence for the 
 house that she, like Margaret Brook, was 
 seventeen when she married, and died not a 
 year afterwards, and that her death was 
 laid at her husband's door. But here the 
 charge was all too probable, and here the 
 victim was innocent. 
 
 She fell in love with Lord Euston, heir of 
 the second Duke of Grafton, and therefore 
 great-grandson of Charles the Second, whose 
 kindly qualities of heart were, alas ! sadly to 
 seek in him. He was, in fact, a brute of the 
 worst reputation. Report had it that he 
 
114 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 wanted to marry his brother's widow, Lady 
 Augustus FitzRoy, but he did marry, un- 
 happily for her, this poor Lady Dorothy 
 Boyle. Horace Walpole and others agree 
 about the softness and gentleness of her 
 character, and the attraction of opposites — 
 which may be an excellent provision of 
 Nature in the main, but when it takes an ill 
 turn is red-hot iron on our nerves — may 
 have worked in both at the beginning. Of 
 her affection, at least, there seems to be no 
 doubt, and one wishes to believe it was 
 that, and not the dukedom, which persuaded 
 her parents. If worldliness it was in them, 
 then worldliness has seldom been punished 
 so savagely and so swiftly. Horace Walpole 
 writes to his friend, Horace Mann : ' I wrote 
 you word that Lord Euston is married ; in 
 a week more I believe I shall write you 
 word that he is divorced. He is brutal 
 enough, and has forbad Lady Burlington his 
 house, and that in very ungentle terms. 
 The whole family is in confusion ; the Duke 
 of Grafton half-dead, and Lord Burlington 
 half-mad. The latter has challenged Lord 
 Euston, who accepted the challenge, but 
 they were prevented. . . . Do you not pity 
 
MOTHEE AND DAUGHTER 115 
 
 the poor girl? of the softest temper, vast 
 beauty, birth, and fortune ! to be so 
 sacrificed I ' 
 
 In less than a year this soft, affectionate 
 wife was dead of her husband's brutality. 
 We read of her from time to time in the 
 interval, meeting Horace Walpole here and 
 there, dancing and supping, and on one 
 occasion 'quite honey-moonish ' with her 
 husband — which shows us that the cleverest 
 of social observers do not always observe. 
 When she was dead her mother drew her 
 picture and sent it among her friends with 
 an inscription Pope was said to have written 
 for her. 
 
 Lady Dorothy Boyle, 
 
 Born May the 14th, 1724. 
 
 She was the comfort and joy of her parents, the 
 
 delight of all who knew her angelick temper, and 
 
 the admiration of all who saw her beauty. 
 
 She was marry'd October the 10th, 1741, and 
 
 delivered (by death) from misery 
 
 May the 2nd, 1742. 
 
 This picture was drawn seven weeks after her death 
 
 (from memory) by her most affectionate mother, 
 
 Dorothy Burlington. 
 
 So Lady Burlington fell back on her art 
 — for which she had a genuine taste ; 
 
116 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Horace Walpole attributed the design of 
 one of Hogarth's prints to her — on her art 
 and her artistic proteges, and, let us hope, 
 found consolation. It is some slight comfort 
 to know that Lord Euston died young, in 
 his father's lifetime. 
 
 It would be little reproach to human 
 nature if this fate of her daughter had 
 soured Lady Burlington's nature. Sour she 
 appears in Walpole's letters, but he may 
 have had some personal spite against her, 
 since magnanimity does not shine among 
 his virtues. He announces her death in 
 1758 in a spirit his best friends must 
 deplore. ' You know that the wife of Bath ' 
 — Lord Bath's wealthy spouse— 'is gone to 
 maunder at St. Peter, and before he could 
 hobble to the gate, my Lady Burlington, 
 cursing and blaspheming, overtook t'other 
 Countess, and both together made such an 
 uproar . . .' Shocking bad taste, is it not ? 
 
 One gathers the idea of a masterful 
 woman who hated her foes and managed 
 her friends. Such women are apt to be but 
 poorly requited, for the foes return the 
 hatred, and the friends may forget the kind- 
 ness and staunchness while they remember 
 
THE VIOLETTA 117 
 
 the criticism and regiment. Lady Burling- 
 ton had many favourites among artists, but 
 the most famous, and I think interesting, of 
 them is ' the Violetta.' 
 
 This fascinating dancer was one of that 
 numerous band of foreigners who have taken 
 London by storm, been petted by its society, 
 and finally have had the kindness to settle 
 in comfort among us — in spite of the climate 
 and cold manners they have continued to 
 reproach us withal. There seems to me to 
 be some lack of balance in this matter, for 
 we so seldom hear of English people taking 
 other countries by storm and being furnished 
 with comfortable livelihoods in them by 
 their admirers. I mean, that it is almost 
 unjust to themselves that other countries 
 should export to us so much attractive 
 humanity and leave us all our own as well. 
 Mademoiselle Violette came to us in 1744, 
 and was welcomed by Lady Burlington, who 
 gave her quarters in Burlington House and 
 took her everywhere. 
 
 Who was she? Mr. Joseph Knight, in 
 his excellent book on David Garrick, says 
 that probably she herself was in the dark 
 as to her origin and early history. But 
 
118 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 contemporary gossips, of course, had plenty 
 of light. One obvious story was that she 
 was Lord Burlington's natural daughter, 
 and they said her mother was an Italian of 
 position. And, of course, they said this was 
 absolutely confirmed when on her marriage 
 Lady Burlington settled £6000 on her, 
 though the reasoning appears a little faulty 
 in psychology. She always denied this 
 origin, but according to ' Eainy Day Smith ' 
 she admitted, late in life, to one of her 
 husband's relations that, although Lord 
 Burlington was not her father, she was of 
 noble birth. In that case she could not 
 have approved of the other story the gossips 
 had, which was that she was the daughter 
 of a Viennese citizen called Veigel. Veigel 
 = Veilchen = violet, and hence her name at 
 the request, so they said, of Maria Teresa 
 herself. The Empress admired her, and so, 
 unfortunately, did the Emperor Frederick i., 
 on which account she was packed off to 
 England, travelling in male attire, and so 
 seen on the packet by Dr. Carlyle. The 
 latter part of this story, at least, the Violetta 
 seems to have admitted. However these 
 things were, and whether she came from 
 
SYMBOLIC 119 
 
 Florence or Vienna or elsewhere, she must 
 have had, as Mr. Knight points out, some 
 experience as a dancer, since she was en- 
 gaged immediately for the Haymarket. 
 
 The King was present at her first per- 
 formance, and she was soon the rage. She 
 had the fine advertisement of a riot, when 
 she gave an audience two dances instead 
 of the three promised. 'The fame of the 
 Violetta,' writes Horace Walpole in 1740, 
 ' increases daily ; the sister-countesses of 
 Burlington and Thanet exert all their stores 
 of sullen partiality in competition for her.' 
 And two years later : ' The old monarch at 
 Hanover has got a new mistress. . . . Now 
 I talk of getting, Mr. Fox has got the ten 
 thousand pound prize ; and the Violetta, 
 so it is said, Coventry for a husband. It 
 is certain that at the fine masquerade he 
 was following her, as she was under the 
 Countess's arm, who, pulling ofi" her glove, 
 moved her wedding ring up and down her 
 finger . . . which it seems was to signify 
 that no other terms would be accepted.' 
 I rather like this homely significance on the 
 part of my Lady Burlington. The Coventry 
 mentioned, by the way, is not the earl who 
 
120 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 married the beautiful Maria Gunning, but 
 plain Mr. Coventry, who was no great parti. 
 She did better when she married David 
 Garrick in 1749. His wooing, however, 
 had not been all roses, for Lady Burlington 
 seems not to have approved him at first. 
 Mr. "Walpole writes to George Montagu 
 that, at another entertainment, ' Lady Bur- 
 lington brought the Yioletta, and the Bich- 
 monds had asked Garrick, who stood ogling 
 and sighing the whole time, while my Lady 
 kept a most fierce look out.' But married 
 they were, and it was a marriage of marriages. 
 Garrick's lines on his wife are well known : 
 
 ' 'Tis not, my friend, her speaking face, 
 Her shape, her youth, her winning grace, 
 Have reached my heart ; the fair one's mind, 
 Quick as her eyes, yet soft and kind — 
 A gaiety with innocence,' 
 
 and other delightful qualities he enumerates. 
 She seems really to have deserved the praise. 
 Sir Theodore Martin, in his monograph on 
 Garrick, has collected quite a bouquet of 
 nice things said of her by famous men. To 
 be praised — and cordially and sincerely 
 praised — by Wilkes and Sterne and Gibbon, 
 a woman must have been worth knowing. 
 
A HAPPY MARRIAGE 121 
 
 We must be allowed to follow her for one 
 moment into her married life, though she 
 passes from Piccadilly after her honeymoon j 
 which was partly spent in Burlington House. 
 Contemporaries were very hard on David 
 Garrick's vanities and foibles. The moderns 
 I have lately mentioned have defended him 
 ably, and so, as was right and proper, has 
 Mr. H. B. Irving. He had his share of 
 the conceits and jealousies common in his 
 vocation — and not unknown in others — but 
 as a man there was more to respect in him 
 than by ordinary standards we find in 
 many great artists. And whatever virtue 
 he lacked, in love and care for his wife he 
 was not lacking. For twenty-eight years 
 they were never a day apart. She went 
 with him on his famous tour in Europe, 
 and whatever and wherever his triumphs 
 his wife enjoyed and sweetened them. We 
 must not linger over them, but one last 
 glance at Yioletta we will have — in 1795, 
 eighteen years after her husband's death. 
 We see her thoroughly domesticated, in 
 Horace Walpole's neighbourhood (having 
 conciliated the regard of that exigent expert 
 in society), with ' an hundred head of nieces 
 
122 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 with her,' of whom, ' an elderly fat dame 
 a£Fected at every word to call her Aunt.' 
 It is pleasant to chronicle a good fortune 
 and domesticity so complete and so well 
 deserved. And now we must go back to 
 Burlington House. 
 
 It seems unkind to have lingered over 
 Lady Burlington and her friendships and 
 to say nothing of her lord, who was much 
 considered by so many considerable men. 
 He was a splendid host, housing Handel for 
 three years, and William Kent, the architect, 
 for thirty-two — a sort of hospitality I regret 
 has become obsolete. But beyond his hos- 
 pitality and his interest in art little emerges 
 of personal quality, and we may let the 
 sands of time run on. After his death 
 Burlington House passed to the Cavendishes. 
 Lord George of that family bought it from 
 the current Duke in 1815, and lived there 
 many years, latterly with the revived title 
 of Burlington, and with his son-in-law, Lord 
 Charles FitzRoy — thus establishing for the 
 house a happier connection with the family 
 from which poor Lady Dorothy had her 
 atrocious husband. A daughter of Lord 
 Charles remembers that in her girlhood at 
 
CALM CAVENDISHES 123 
 
 Burlington House bloodhounds went loose 
 
 in the court at nights, — terrific beasts, 
 
 chained up by day. Lord George was a 
 
 fine example of the taciturnity remarkable 
 
 in the Cavendishes, and I take a charming 
 
 story of him and his brother, the fifth Duke 
 
 — famous for his calmness and as the husband 
 
 of Georgiana — from the reminiscences of 
 
 Sir Algernon West. They stopped for the 
 
 night at an inn on their way north, and 
 
 were shown into a room with three beds, 
 
 one of which had its curtains drawn. Both 
 
 brothers in turn went and looked into the 
 
 curtained bed and chose another. Not a 
 
 word they said until late in the next day 
 
 as they continued their journey. Then at 
 
 last : ' Did you see what was in that bed 
 
 last night 1 ' asked the Duke. ' Yes, brother,' 
 
 said Lord George, and again they were 
 
 sUent. The bed had contained a corpse. 
 
 It was Lord George who made the Bur- 
 lington Arcade, to prevent people from 
 throwing things over his garden wall, and, 
 as the Gentleman's Magazine rather curiously 
 puts it, ' for the gratification of the publick, 
 and to give employment to industrious 
 females.' When I was a boy at college it 
 
124 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 was the custom, if one went to London for 
 the day, to take a turn in this Arcade, which, 
 I am afraid, we called the ' drain-pipe,' of 
 an afternoon, but I doubt no very gracious 
 ghosts come out of it into Piccadilly. 
 
 I think there are no other personal 
 memories about Burlington House. It was 
 a great Whig centre at one time, but even 
 ghosts cannot be in two places at once, and 
 Devonshire House claims Fox and Burke 
 far more insistently. We fall back on art 
 again. The Elgin Marbles were once in a 
 shed in the courtyard, and the pictures of 
 Messrs. X, Y, and Z, with more distinguished 
 artists, have hung regularly on its walls 
 since the Royal Academy of Arts was housed 
 there. Does the noise of past ' soirees,' 
 interesting and miscellaneous, revive in the 
 nights ? Or the passions and rivalries and 
 exclusions and tardy admissions which have 
 made such a coil in its history — does the 
 atmosphere of them hang about the house ? 
 Let us hope that the ghosts of dead banquets 
 and stereotyped speeches walk not. But 
 one likes to think of Disraeli lauding the 
 pictures he had just been abusing to his 
 neighbour, with a hypocritical humour Mr. 
 
OF BURLINGTON HOUSE 125 
 
 Gladstone thought 'devilish.' Hogarth 
 caricatured the builder of the house. I 
 wonder what he would have thought of its 
 present possessors — mixed thoughts, it is 
 probable. 
 
126 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PALMERSTONS AND CAMBRIDGE HOUSE 
 
 Walking along Piccadilly with my reader, 
 I stop him at No. 94, the Naval and 
 Military, or ' In and Out ' Club, and, press- 
 ing his arm with one emphatic hand, I point 
 with t'other through the open gate across 
 the courtyard to the plain stone house, and 
 'Here,' says I to him, 'here, reader, for fifteen 
 years lived an Englishman and English- 
 woman than whom you may search history 
 through to find two examples more satisfying, 
 more splendidly and completely true, of our 
 national type. Other dwellers in Piccadilly 
 may or may not impress you more acutely. 
 There 's Emma Hart, and Byron, and Old Q., 
 and the great Duke ; there 's romance and 
 passion, poetry and wickedness and military 
 glory, matters in which from time to time 
 we English have been great; but if you 
 
A GLIMPSE OF AN UGLY FACE 127 
 
 would reflect to what fine pass the quite 
 ordinary qualities of our countrymen may 
 arrive, how noble a show may come of mere 
 genial tempers and solid understandings, 
 stand here in front of Cambridge House 
 and muse on the Palmerstons.' 
 
 Before the reader does that, however, we 
 must make our bow to chronology and 
 attend a moment to Pam's predecessors in 
 Cambridge House, of whom one was a great 
 noble and another a royal duke — the third 
 Earl of Egremont, to wit, and the Duke of 
 Cambridge. The house was buUt for the 
 Egremonts in 1760 or so, and had the 
 honour, during the reign of the second Earl, 
 of receiving John Wilkes after the arrest of 
 that firebrand for No. 45 of the North Briton. 
 He had been arrested by the Earl's order, 
 and the interview, we may be sure, was 
 lively. Wilkes wrote an energetic account 
 of the business to the Duke of Grafton from 
 Paris. But this is only a brief incident, and 
 Wilkes's ugly face, which, as he said, was 
 only half an hour's handicap in the rivalries 
 of love, is but a flash on the canvas. With 
 the third Lord Egremont we may stay 
 longer. It is true that his name belongs 
 
128 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 more to Petworth, that beautiful old place 
 in Sussex, than to Piccadilly : it was there 
 he lived almost entirely in his later life, 
 practising that hospitality, at once casual, 
 lordly, and kindly, for which he was re- 
 nowned. But in his younger days he had 
 been a leader of London fashion, and this 
 house in Piccadilly knew him at intervals 
 through most of his long life. 
 
 George O'Brien Wyndham, who was born 
 in 1751 and died in 1837, was a type of 
 what a great English noble, with fine taste, 
 much intelligence, sincere public spirit, but 
 little aptitude for party politics, can be in 
 these latter days. Perhaps this does not 
 amount to very much. Even in his time, and 
 still more in ours, the position is something 
 of an empty survival. ' Your nobles,' said 
 the German professor to Harry Richmond, 
 ' are merely rich men.' That may be nearly 
 true, but it is not quite true. Enough flesh 
 remains on the bones of a system that in its 
 day was logical and efficient to make a 
 wealthy noble potentially a more useful 
 person than a bare representative of indivi- 
 dualist success in making money. His direct 
 beneficence — given our traditions — may be 
 
THE LAST LOKD EGREMONT 129 
 
 easier and more graceful, and his example 
 shines. Easy for him to be beneficent, but 
 then, as it seems, it is easier still not to be. 
 Lord Egremont, for instance, gave away 
 £20,000 a year in charity. His income was 
 £80,000 a year, and so of course he did 
 not miss the money : the gift was less to 
 him than if I gave away sixpence. Still, he 
 gave it, and might not have given it, and 
 many a richer man has been honoured for 
 smaller gifts. He was a magnificent and 
 helpful friend of painters, who were at home 
 at Petworth, and whose works are now its 
 distinction. In particular he cherished 
 Turner. They agreed well, and naturally 
 so, for there was in both the simplicity of 
 life and of attitude to life which belongs to 
 true art and true aristocracy. This simplicity 
 shone at Petworth, where host and guests 
 went their own way all day, and met at 
 dinner, at which Lord Egremont in the 
 cordial — if rather dilatory — old fashion 
 carved for each guest himself. In one 
 matter, indeed, he fell short of a model 
 nobleman, though convention was not out- 
 raged by his conduct so much then as it 
 would be now : he was an avowed father 
 
130 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 without being a husband. He was not a 
 rake ; on tbe contrary, was an affectionately 
 domestic man. His children lived with him, 
 and inherited all but his title after him. 
 Pity that circumstances left the relation 
 short of complete fitness. His not marrying 
 in early life made Horace Walpole describe 
 him as a worthless young fellow. The fact 
 was that he had been going to, but did not, 
 marry Horace Walpole's niece. Pity, as I 
 said, that in this matter he defied conven- 
 tion, but that he did so shows at least that 
 his virtues of charity and kindness were his 
 own, not assumed in compliance with it. 
 
 On the monument in Petworth church to 
 his predecessors, the Percies, is the inscrip- 
 tion Mortuis moriturus. I hope that he 
 thought of it ; in any case he adopted it, and 
 you may search wide for an inscription of a 
 moral taste, so to say, so perfect and final. 
 There was much to say of the Percies and 
 himself, but in that place what was fitting 
 to say was just that : they were dead and 
 he would die. I would trust the feeling for 
 art in a man who felt that propriety. Lord 
 Egremont, however, would not have been a 
 type of ' a great English noble ' if the art of 
 
THE OLD DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE 131 
 
 painting and the cherishing of painters had 
 been all his interests. He was not energetic 
 in poHtics, though he was ready to back his 
 views with his purse. But, to fill the 
 popular ideal of his position (which takes 
 little account of the arts) he was a good 
 sportsman, and, above all, a splendid patron 
 of the turf. Mr. Theodore Cook, in his de- 
 lightful history of that great institution, has 
 much to say of Lord Egremont. Take him 
 all in all, then, he was a worthy possessor of 
 a great Piccadilly house, and his name must 
 be honoured as we stand before it. 
 
 The same may be said in a way of the 
 royal duke who lived there afterwards (Lord 
 Cholmondeley intervening) till 1850. The 
 Duke of Cambridge was not conspicuous 
 among the brothers of George the Fourth, 
 who went the pace so merrily as young men, 
 and were so eccentric, laughable, and on the 
 whole amiable as old ones. He was not 
 clever, which perhaps was just as well, since 
 the Duke of Cumberland, who — with the 
 slightly dubious exception of George himself 
 — ^had the brains of that royal generation, 
 was detested. All the stories of these royal 
 dukes are of homely, innocent, individual 
 
132 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 oddities, the amusement of their society, 
 which had little of the reverence for royalty 
 now so fashionable. Those of the Duke of 
 Cambridge are not remarkable. The best of 
 them are of his conduct in church, where he 
 was accustomed to give a cordial and audible 
 support to the officiating clergyman. ' Let us 
 pray,' said the clergyman : 'By all means, by 
 all means,' said the Duke of Cambridge. On 
 one commandment his comment would be, 
 ' Quite right, quite right ; but very difficult 
 sometimes,' and on another — I won't say 
 which — ' No, no ; it was my brother Ernest 
 did that.' Rather a dear old gentleman, he 
 should not be omitted from a talk about the 
 house which bears his name, but there is little 
 to say of him. 
 
 And now we come to the Palmerstons. I 
 join them in my gossip, even as they were 
 so thoroughly joined in life, for both were 
 splendid examples, as I said, of our ordinary 
 national type at its best. It may be that 
 the spirit of Palmerston's policy lives here 
 and there among our politicians, but his 
 actual politics is dead, is as a wind that has 
 blown by, so that the figure of the man, as a 
 man, is the greater part that is left of him, 
 
LADY PALMERSTON 133 
 
 and so his wife, as a woman, stands by his 
 side in history, as in her way almost equally 
 remarkable. The secret of both was in a 
 vitality and cheerfulness that never so much 
 as faltered. Hour after hour in the House 
 of Commons the old man — he was old when 
 he comes into the story of Piccadilly — could 
 attend to the dullest business, patient, 
 business-like, polite. Hour after hour at 
 the famous receptions at Cambridge House, 
 he could stand with a smile and kindly 
 handshake for innumerable guests, repeating 
 the handshake in forgetfulness now and 
 then (it is recorded) as he grew older, but 
 never flagging in cordiality. And so Lady 
 Palmerston filled up her countless invitation 
 cards with her own hand, and kept her 
 visiting-book, says Abraham Hay ward, 'as 
 regularly as a merchant's ledger.' But the 
 formal part was the least of her tasks : she 
 had to please all the good, dull people when 
 they came. 'Her good-nature,' says Hay- 
 ward again — and the tribute of the eulogy 
 he wrote of her in the Times at her death 
 is great, for it came from a critical temper — 
 ' her good-nature was inexhaustible, nor was 
 it ever known to give way under any extent 
 
134 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 of forwardness or tiresomeness . . . instead 
 of interrupting or abruptly quitting weari- 
 some or pushing visitors, she would listen 
 till they ceased of their own accord, or were 
 superseded and went away.' All this must 
 have been trying indeed to her. She was the 
 daughter of a clever house — sister to Lord 
 Melbourne — and had lived all her life in a 
 lively, well-bred, and intimate society, a 
 society which is most familiarly reflected, I 
 think, in the letters of Harriet, Lady Gran- 
 ville. These are some of the best woman's 
 letters in English, and they paint the best 
 of the society which followed the genera- 
 tion of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, 
 who was Lady Granville's mother : a society 
 unaffected, conversible, given to jokes and 
 games. To come from that to the enter- 
 taining of average Members of Parliament 
 and their womenkind must have been a 
 discipline much more severe than the r61e of 
 an ambassador's wife in Paris, which greatly 
 tried the patience of Lady Granville. Nor 
 did Lady Palmerston care for politics, apart 
 from personalities. She was her husband's 
 invaluable ally, but only as another ear and 
 mouth. When politics were brought to her. 
 
r?„-^ .^' 
 
 ..JZa^a^ ^.^;^<^2^-^-i^^^ 
 
A FALSE PROPHECY 135 
 
 she made a careful note or sent at once for 
 the great man. Devotion to him and his 
 interests was all her inspiration, and a good 
 heart, good wits, good manners, and — one is 
 glad to know — good health and digestion, 
 carried her through. 
 
 There had been stories about them — ' old 
 stories, my dear ! ' — in other days. She 
 was the widow of Lord Cowper, and there 
 was trouble about her second marriage. 
 Palmerston was volage and gay, and was 
 not (as a young man) called Cupid Palmer- 
 ston for nothing. Her friends prophesied 
 unhappiness. Lady Granville wrote : ' Lady 
 Cowper has courage to face her angry 
 children. I cannot say how much I blame 
 them for telling what they feel, but I 
 wonder she can encounter their antipathy. 
 What a happy mother she might have been, 
 and what an unhappy existence will she 
 have, I fear I Her understanding never 
 has been of the slightest use to her.' Well, 
 well, the wisest of us are poor prophets. 
 Her existence was most happy, and her 
 understanding exceeding useful, and her 
 children came dearly to love Lord Pam. 
 
 He was a lovable man. A hearty, un- 
 
136 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 affected, easy, joyous man. Really a con- 
 summate type of good average qualities. 
 Not interested in art or literature (which 
 was easily forgiven him) but interested in 
 almost everything else ; a man of whom it 
 was characteristic that he never passed a 
 dish at table, and played a bad game of 
 billiards with infinite zest — loving much to 
 win, and especially if his wife were looking 
 on. The affection of his countrymen gener- 
 ally was won by their rough appreciation 
 of this simple nature perhaps almost as 
 much as by their belief that he stood for 
 England, and the rights and dignity of 
 England, without compromise or exception. 
 The respect and prestige he had in Parlia- 
 ment and among those who came in contact 
 with him were founded, above all, on his 
 absolute command of his business. He 
 was like the late Lord Randolph Churchill 
 in this, that being a pleasure-loving man, 
 and having lived hard as a man of pleasure, 
 when ambition sent him to business he gave 
 himself wholly to it and lived hard as a 
 man of business. He was something of a 
 gourmet, yet when Parliament was sitting 
 he dined at three, and but for some tea at 
 
PAM 137 
 
 the House touched nothing more till he came 
 home to bed at one o'clock. As a result, 
 he knew what he was about when he rose 
 to answer questions or make a speech, and 
 he could express his knowledge lucidly and 
 in that easy conversational tone which to 
 Englishmen, and especially in the House, 
 is most acceptable. Many an English 
 statesman has been wrecked in public life 
 from sheer inability to get on with his 
 colleagues at close quarters : that, of course, 
 was not the case with Palmerston, yet it 
 is not true to say that the reverse was the 
 case. People who are offended by down- 
 rightness and occasional hrusquerie — timid 
 and punctilious people like Lord John 
 Russell — he scandalised. His success came 
 not from any one quality, as was shrewdly 
 remarked of him, but from an unusual 
 combination of qualities — gaiety and sense, 
 lucidity and fire — but he had the defects 
 of those qualities too. 
 
 That reminds me that he had critics in 
 private life, and that I have been straying 
 to the House of Commons from Cambridge 
 House. His jollity and fun and laughter 
 could grate on the fastidious, Henry 
 
138 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Greville, for example, as fastidious, though 
 not as articulate, a critic as his brother 
 Charles, has recorded his exceptions. 
 'Although he was a most cordial and 
 courteous host, he never struck me as 
 an agreeable man ; he was always good- 
 humoured and ready to talk, but his style 
 was too jocose, and his jests were for the 
 most part flat, and one felt in his society 
 a constant disappointment that the con- 
 versation of a man who was playing so 
 important and conspicuous a part in the 
 world, and who must necessarily have so 
 much to communicate, should be made up 
 of puns and bad jokes,' etc., etc. The idea 
 crosses one's mind that possibly Pam had 
 not ' much to communicate ' to Mr. Henry 
 Greville, and preferred to chaflP him. Still, 
 one knows too well that high spirits and 
 empty jests — a mere expression of high 
 spirits to the jester, like singing in his 
 bath — may be a bore when one is not 
 attuned to them, and no doubt Pam may 
 so have sinned. I think, however, had I 
 been there, that delight in an octogenarian 
 vitality, in a humour and kindness which 
 had survived so much toil, so many rows 
 
PAM 139 
 
 in public, and so much zest of life in private, 
 would have reconciled me to any number of 
 puns and bad jokes. 
 
 Alas ! I was not there. As I write 
 of these ghosts in Piccadilly I strain my 
 imagination to visualise them as they were. 
 The help is all too little. Letters and 
 diaries of contemporaries, however graphic 
 and acute they may be, seem ever to leave 
 out those simple, elementary things we seek. 
 Familiar with appearances, and voices, and 
 manners, they forget to describe them, or 
 not having our interests in mind have no 
 reason for the description. "We are left 
 guessing and inferring. Palmerston, too, 
 perhaps, died too lately for his vie intime 
 to be easily at our service. I get a picture 
 or two of him at Cambridge House from 
 Lord Lome's (the present Duke of Argyll) 
 book on him. One (sent to Lord Lome by 
 a correspondent) is of Palmerston in his 
 workroom, standing at a high desk, 'almost 
 unapproachable from the fortification of 
 office boxes piled around him.' And then 
 Lord Lome, more careful than most bio- 
 graphers, gives us some details of his looks, 
 and — yes — I can see him at the top of 
 
140 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 the staircase in Cambridge House, shaking 
 hands with his guests, an upstanding figure, 
 neither short nor tall, very neatly dressed, 
 the head erect on the shoulders, framed 
 with grey, short hair, brushed forward, and 
 grey whiskers, greyer close to the cheek — 
 the hair was black and the face round when 
 he was ' Cupid Palmerston.' He whispers 
 to one man an account of a famous prize 
 fight, which happened that day, not admit- 
 ting that he was there, and greets another 
 cordially for the second time, and I hear his 
 jolly laugh as he repeats a bad pun to the 
 disappointed Henry Greville. 
 
105, 106, AND 107 141 
 
 CHAPTEK IX 
 
 105, 106, AND 107 
 
 I WONDER if my reader is fond of practical 
 jokes. I hope not : I should not despise 
 him for it — necessarily or altogether — but I 
 should pity him, because they are almost 
 passed out of our manners, and he will find 
 but few, and with difficulty, to share his 
 merriment. They were still rife a genera- 
 tion ago, especially in theatrical society, 
 but now they are dead, and few of us in 
 an age of nerves are sorry for their passing. 
 For my part — nerves or no nerves — I dislike 
 them extremely, because my mind craves 
 lucidity and simple dealing, and hates 
 mysticism and uncertainty and confusion 
 and make-believe. If, however, the reader 
 should be fond of practical jokes, he will 
 be interested in the Lord Barrymore for 
 whom 105 (now the Isthmian Club) was 
 
142 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 built in 1780, on the site of one of those 
 statuary yards (that of John Van Nost) 
 which used to deface Piccadilly. 
 
 An agreeable family, the Barrys, of whom 
 this gentleman was the head. Hellgate and 
 Cripplegate (one brother was lame) were 
 of their nicknames, and there was a sister 
 whose mode of conversation caused the 
 Regent to call her Billingsgate. They 
 appear to have lived for the object of doing 
 extravagant and eccentric things with the 
 maximum of discomfort and annoyance to 
 other people, and, of course, they were great 
 devotees of the practical joke. Lord Barry- 
 more, indeed, deserves to rank as the prince 
 or patron saint of the custom. One finds 
 mention of him from time to time in memoirs 
 and letters ; contemptuous mention, as a rule, 
 and if laudatory, then a little parasitical. 
 He was the sort of roystering, uncontrolled 
 creature who fatigues his equals, and whose 
 friends are apt to be parasites. Henry 
 Angelo, the famous fencing-master, is, I 
 think, the chief authority for the practical 
 jokes, and on him the mark of the parasite 
 is pretty clear. Most of the jokes were 
 enacted at Wargrave, but no doubt the 
 
THE BARRY FAMILY 143 
 
 house in Piccadilly must have seen a good 
 many. One or two were rather amusing. 
 To ask a respectable tradesman to your 
 house as your guest and then make your 
 other guests greet him as somebody else, 
 and insist that he is somebody else, until 
 you yourself say you don't know what to 
 think, is not the perfection of hospitality, 
 but one can imagine that the confusion of 
 the victim might be entertaining. As a 
 rule, however, I find the stories merely 
 tedious, my boredom relieved only by dislike 
 of the jokers and sympathy with the jokees. 
 Barrymore and his brothers and friends and 
 parasites called themselves the Humbugging 
 Club and invited people to be humbugged. 
 
 ' I see no worth in the hob-nailed mirth,' 
 but, if the reader does, I refer him to The 
 Last Earls of Barrymore, by Mr. J. R. 
 Robinson, where he will find all about it. 
 
 Lord Barrymore, however, was more than 
 a mere practical-joking bufibon. He was 
 distinguished as a gambler with cards and 
 horses, and in the twenty-four years of his 
 life got through £300,000. Eemembering 
 his age, poor boy, perhaps I was wrong to 
 be superior about his practical jokes. The 
 
144 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 one really interesting thing about him is 
 that he was one of the first, if not the first, 
 of our aristocracy to act in public. His 
 enthusiasm for the stage, like all genuine 
 enthusiasms, should be noted with respect. 
 He built a theatre next to his house at 
 Wargrave, and made up mixed companies of 
 amateurs and professional players. But he 
 by no means confined his histrionic gifts — 
 which seem really to have existed — to his 
 private theatre. George Selwyn writes, 
 rather testily, of ' that etourdi Lord Barry- 
 more playing the fool in three or four differ- 
 ent characters upon our Richmond theatre.' 
 There is a print of him as ' Scrub,' a black- 
 a-vised, impish-faced young fellow with 
 bushy eyebrows. Just before his death he 
 went into the Berkshire Militia — for another 
 diversion, or to begin a reform, I know not — 
 and was becoming a zealous and efficient 
 officer when a gunshot accident finished 
 him. More than one young man of his 
 class has run much the same course in our 
 time. We may deplore the end of him or 
 not, remembering that profligates sometimes 
 settle into happiness, and also that pigeons 
 sometimes turn into ineffectual rooks. On 
 
IMPERIAL STRATEGY. 145 
 
 the whole it is fitting, I think, that such 
 boys should never grow old. The revenge of 
 such a youth is most often painful to endure 
 and ugly to see. 
 
 As for 105 Piccadilly, it was dismantled 
 in 1792 and sold by auction, with the 
 stables, where was room for twenty-one 
 horses and two coach-houses. Mr. Christie 
 knocked down house and stables (for 3050 and 
 1300 guineas) to the representative of Old 
 Q., who had known better than to die at 
 twenty-four. Old Q. left the house to Lady 
 Hertford, but we find it, after being burnt 
 and repaired, as the ' Old Pulteney Hotel.' 
 And as such it was witness of an intrigue 
 among 'exalted personages' in 1814. This 
 is to be found in the Recollections from 1803 
 to 1837, which were given to a not much 
 interested world by the Honourable Amelia 
 Murray in 1868. It is rather an insipid 
 little work, to be sure, but this story of the 
 Pulteney Hotel — which she does not name, 
 but it is identified by Mr. Wheatley — sug- 
 gests a plot, and a plot attracts most of us. In 
 1814 London was simply swarming with po- 
 tentates and their relations, and among them 
 were Prince Leopold of Coburg, the Prince 
 
 K 
 
146 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 of Orange, the Czar of Russia and his sister, 
 the Grand Duchess Catherine of Olden- 
 burg. Now the Princess Charlotte of Wales 
 was engaged to the Prince of Orange, but 
 the Duchess of Oldenburg, for political 
 reasons, wished the marriage not to take 
 place, but contrariwise that the Prince of 
 Orange should marry a sister of her own, and 
 the Princess Charlotte should marry Prince 
 Leopold of Coburg. Poor Princess Char- 
 lotte ! an avowed sentimentahst cannot but 
 lament her in passing. To be the child of 
 parents both deplorable in their different 
 ways, who loathed one another and tore her 
 between them ; to be the centre of these 
 miserable intrigues ; to be withal an amiable 
 and high-spirited girl, on whom England, 
 even the Whigs — you remember Byron's 
 lines — looked with some affection and hope 
 when she should be queen ; to gain a little 
 happiness, and to die painfully after so brief a 
 spell of it — assuredly it was a pathetic for- 
 tune. Well, the Prince of Orange was not 
 ' particularly attractive,' says Miss Murray — 
 it was indeed common rumour that the Prin- 
 cess disliked him — and Prince Leopold was 'a 
 handsome young man.' The Duchess deter- 
 
AN EFFECT OF CHAMPAGNE 147 
 
 mined to aid these favourable circumstances 
 with a little art. ' She took a hotel in 
 Piccadilly,' our Pulteney Hotel, to wit, ' she 
 earnestly sought the acquaintance of Miss 
 Elphinstone, who was known to be on 
 intimate terms with the Princess. She 
 gave grand dinners, and took care to invite 
 the Prince of Orange the night he was to 
 waltz in public with the Princess, as her 
 fianc^. The Grand Duchess plied him well 
 with champagne, and a young man could 
 hardly refuse the invitations of his hostess ; 
 he was made tipsy, and of course the Princess 
 was disgusted. Then, in Miss Elphinstone's 
 apartments, the charming Prince Leopold 
 was presented.' And so this delicate 
 scheme was accomplished. 
 
 Number 105 has something better in its 
 history than Lord Barry more's practical 
 jokes and the Duchess of Oldenburg's cham- 
 pagne, for when it became a private house 
 again the Lord Hertford who made the great 
 collection lived there for some time and kept 
 there his beautiful possessions. Sir Julian 
 Goldsmid was its last private tenant, a 
 figure of respectability to balance its first 
 owner. 
 
148 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Number 106 narrowly missed being a 
 most interesting house. It might have 
 harboured, but for an untimely death, one 
 of the most famous beauties in the social 
 history of England, and so have given to the 
 history of Piccadilly a pendant to Lady 
 Hamilton. It, or rather its site, was origin- 
 ally an inn called ' The Greyhound,' and was 
 bought by the sixth Earl of Coventry from 
 Sir Hugh Hunlock in 1764 for ten thousand 
 guineas with a yearly ground-rent of seventy- 
 five pounds. He bought it soon after his 
 marriage. But, alas and alas ! this was his 
 second marriage and not his first, which had 
 been to Maria Gunning. For once I chafe 
 against the limitations of my theme. There 
 is so much that is interesting, amusing, 
 pathetic to be written of the Gunnings, 
 those Irish girls who by sheer force of beauty 
 — for it seems they had neither wit nor 
 manners — sent all London mad about them, 
 caused people to crowd and stand on chairs 
 to have a glimpse of them, and had their 
 choice of coronets and fortunes. What 
 unobservant fool first called the English 
 cold and phlegmatic ? In what other country 
 of Western civilisation have mere good looks 
 
NOT MARIA GUNNING 149 
 
 brought such aplendour to their possessors ? 
 and why, why did neither Gunning live in 
 Piccadilly ? I would rather have written 
 about Elizabeth, who maxried duke after 
 duke, and according to her grandson, the 
 late Duke of Argyll, was a woman of courage 
 and character. But I should have been con- 
 tent to write about Maria, Countess of 
 Coventry only, and only a beautiful, foolish, 
 ignorant, good - natured creature, whom 
 Horace Walpole laughed at and rather liked. 
 George Selwyn was devoted to her and to 
 her daughters ; for George, a passionately 
 paternal man who was never a father, seems 
 always to have loved his friends' children 
 more than his friends. As it is, however, I 
 must write of neither. 
 
 The actual Lady Coventry who lived at 
 106 may or may not have been an interest- 
 ing person : we do not know. Miss Mary 
 Townshend wrote to Selwyn : ' The beauty 
 of the new countess was for some days set 
 above that of your old friend, and at present, 
 with equal injustice, she is scarcely allowed 
 to be pretty.' If her portrait by Sir Joshua 
 was like her, I fear I should have inclined 
 to the latter verdict. Pretty or not, I can 
 
150 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 only dislike her for not being Maria. Lord 
 Coventry himself seems to have been no 
 great matter. Horace Walpole hated him 
 for some reason or other, and is severe 
 on his character and intelligence. He was 
 remarkable for gaucherie in Paris, it would 
 appear, but probably, like many another 
 good Englishman, he was only struggling 
 with the French language. We have a 
 picture of him, also in Horace, chasing his 
 wife (Maria) round a dinner-table to rub 
 off the rouge he accused her of wearing ; 
 but I do not object to people romping, so 
 they do not bump against me, so much as 
 did Horace. Et voila pour the sixth Lord 
 Coventry, who probably was just an ordinary 
 fool. 
 
 The history of 106 is at least varied. 
 From an inn it became a ' nobleman's man- 
 sion,' as we have seen, and then it was 
 turned into a gambling club. This was 
 the ' Coventry House Club,' an attempt to 
 revive the glories and profits of Crockford's : 
 happily or unhappily, it was not a success, 
 and came to an end in 1854. After that 
 106 was for a short time the residence of 
 the French Ambassador, and now, of course, 
 
1 
 
 i 
 
 .1 
 
BYRON'S MISS MERCEE 151 
 
 it still has a diplomatic atmospliere about it 
 as the St. James's Club. 
 
 The Comte de Flahault, French Am- 
 bassador here in 1860, was a man of distinc- 
 tion, a handsome and attractive man. He 
 began life as aide-de-camp to the first 
 Napoleon, and ended it as Chancellor of the 
 Legion of Honour. It is his wife, however, 
 who comes naturally into these pages, who 
 may be supposed to have come to Piccadilly 
 with joy and to have quitted it with re- 
 gret. She was a Scotswoman, Margaret 
 Mercer, who became Baroness Keith in her 
 own right, and afterwards Baroness Nairne. 
 B,ather a superfluity of titles : she had to 
 sign herself M. M. de Flahault, K. N., and 
 Harriet, Lady Granville, who lived much 
 with her in Paris, calls her in her letters 
 indifferently Meg, Mercer, Madame de Fla- 
 hault, and Lady Keith. Called by whatever 
 name, she was, if not a sweet woman, a clever, 
 sincere, and staunch one, and it is perhaps 
 one of the many pities of Byron's life that 
 he did not marry her. Idle to guess, no 
 doubt, and it may not have been in Byron's 
 character to live happily with any wife. 
 Yet I think it is one's experience of life that 
 
152 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 where two poor human things who must live 
 together obviously exasperate one another, 
 the trouble comes not of any glaring fault of 
 character or conduct on this side or that so 
 often as from some subtle opposition of view 
 or temper beyond recognition and analysis. 
 Miss Mercer (as she was then) and Byron 
 might not have agreed together as he, too 
 late, thought they would have, but there was 
 the chance. In any case, there was a tim e when 
 the world gave them to one another, and the 
 lady, it seems, would not have refused. She 
 was one of the few who stood by him when 
 the world took his separation from his wife 
 so indignantly. There is a story that at 
 Lady Jersey's, when the other women drew 
 back their skirts — those virtuous skirts of 
 1816 ! — to avoid touching him, she said, ' You 
 ought to have married me.' It is certain 
 that when he took ship at Dover he turned 
 to Scrope Davies and gave him a little parcel 
 for Miss Mercer, and said, ' Tell her that if 
 I had been fortunate enough to marry a 
 woman like her, I should not now be obliged 
 to exile myself from my country.' I 
 wonder : certainly she was a woman of 
 kindness and spirit. 
 
MANNERS 153 
 
 These qualities are well attested by 
 Harriet, Lady Granville, whose long periods 
 as ambassadress in Paris led to an intimacy 
 with her countrywoman. A bond between 
 them must have been a secret dislike — or 
 expressed only to their friends at home — of 
 the French society of the Bestoration, and 
 afterwards of the Louis Philippe regime, in 
 which they lived perforce. One is so used 
 to hearing the manners of English people 
 sharply criticised by foreigners — who like 
 to take this odd method of showing the 
 excellence of their own — that it refreshes 
 one to find in Lady Granville's correspon- 
 dence the tables turned. I take it, her 
 authority is unquestionable. She was a 
 most popular and successful ambassadress, 
 and cannot have written out of piqiie ; and 
 her good-nature, the kindly humour she had 
 for all, or very nearly all, her acquaintance 
 is evident on every page. But she could 
 not abide the airs and rudenesses of French 
 aristocracy in those periods, and gives 
 instances of atrocities which more than 
 justify her. One of these concerns Madame 
 de Flahault. 'I think Lady Keith,' she 
 writes, ' is more popular than she was, and 
 
154 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 she deserves to be so, for she is very civil 
 and very sensible, and is always delighted 
 to open her house ; but her manner is hard, 
 and the French part of the society evidently 
 go to see Flahault and not her. Some of 
 the pretty women treat her with a neglect 
 that makes my blood boil. The other even- 
 ing I went there to a small soiree of about 
 a dozen people. One of these impertinent 
 women came, shook hands with Flahault, 
 came straight up to me with a profound 
 curtsey and pretty speech, and then sat 
 down with her back turned to Margaret. 
 It was so marked that she had the good sense 
 to burst into a loud laugh, which made the 
 woman turn round and apologise, during 
 which Margaret nodded to me as much as 
 to say, "You see now all I told you is true." 
 I think Madame Boni de Castellane felt 
 ashamed of herself.' Flahault did much to 
 atone for the hitises of his countrywomen. 
 ' He pays her the greatest attentions, and 
 left many an anxious sufferer after dinner 
 yesterday to go and sit two hours with her,' 
 when she was ill. Still one cannot doubt 
 she was glad to be among her old friends 
 again when she came to 106 Piccadilly, 
 
107 155 
 
 though I fear many of them must have been 
 dead by then. Lady Granville describes 
 her in 1842 (she had lost a child) as 'much 
 softened in manner, very much subdued in 
 spirits, very agreeable, and a handsome 
 woman, the asperity of her countenance 
 gone, and the finest teeth in the world.' 
 So we can imagine her fairly well at 106 
 Piccadilly, a shrewd, sensible woman, as I 
 take it, with a touch of hrusquerie probably 
 — a Scotswoman of the rather severe type, 
 contrasted effectively with a very lively 
 and engaging French husband, perpetually 
 young. I wish she had lived forty years 
 earlier at 139 with Byron. 
 
 The last of this trinity, 107, I would had 
 all the romantic and glorious associations of 
 Piccadilly in itself. For, reader, it happens 
 now to be a club, to which I have most 
 resorted these dozen years and more. 
 Associations are being made for it, doubt 
 you not, and have been since the club was 
 there : perhaps if my reminiscences are pub- 
 lished in the middle of this century you 
 shall read of them. Meanwhile, all there is 
 to say of the house is that it has a delight- 
 ful association with Lord Eosebery, since it 
 
156 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 was a present to him on his marriage from 
 his father-in-law, Baron Meyer de Roths- 
 child, and that otherwise it is connected 
 wholly with that great family. Shall I try 
 my hand at the romance of money 1 Well, 
 I confess I find the humanity of the subject 
 a thought too difficult. Nathan Meyer 
 Rothschild, for example, who was the third 
 son of the founder, and who lived at 107 
 till his death in 1836, was the sort of man 
 whom a previous generation held up to the 
 reverence and imitation of the young. He 
 was entirely engrossed in making money. 
 He told Spohr that the only music he cared 
 for was the rattle of money. He also said 
 (if I remember rightly) that he could not 
 afibrd to know an unlucky man. That he 
 had the humour to say ' take two chairs ' to 
 a self-important visitor is to his credit, but 
 I am not disposed at the moment to write 
 an * appreciation ' of him. 
 
i_^/L^ ..J^JmA^:, 
 
THE GREAT DUKE 157 
 
 CHAPTEE X 
 
 THE GREAT DUKE 
 
 My concern with the Duke of Wellington is 
 not as he moved in battle or the council- 
 chamber, but in drawing-rooms and dining- 
 rooms and the public street ; as he appeared 
 to his friends and others who sought him 
 in Apsley House, or to the world at large 
 as he rode or walked in Piccadilly ; I am 
 concerned to picture him, if I may, in his 
 habit as he lived familiarly. Even so, I 
 might well be fearful that the range of my 
 local theme had brought me to a point 
 where I had best make a silent reverence 
 and pass on. The weight of so forceful a 
 tradition as this lies heavy on one still. 
 This man has stood to England as a very 
 incarnation of eminence and greatness, and 
 in truth he was, in character as in achieve- 
 
158 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 ment, emphatically and beyond question a 
 great man. 
 
 ' civic muse, to such a name, 
 To such a name for ages long, 
 To such a name, 
 
 Preserve a broad approach of fame, 
 And ever-echoing avenues of song.' 
 
 But who am I that I should gossip of 
 him in conversational prose? Well, he 
 comes into the subject I have chosen, and 
 would have been the last man living to be 
 patient with me if I stand niggling before 
 it. I can say that whether or no I interest 
 my readers in my view, at least I am pro- 
 foundly interested myself. 
 
 One word of the background. The first- 
 known occupant of the site of Apsley House 
 was, appropriately enough, an old soldier 
 named Allen, to whom (so tradition goes) 
 George the Second gave a piece of ground 
 at Hyde Park Corner, having recognised 
 him as an old acquaintance of Dettingen, of 
 which battle George was not unreasonably 
 proud. Allen's wife kept a stall here, and 
 when Lord Chancellor Apsley, afterwards 
 Lord Bathurst, started building in 1771 
 
HIS EYES 159 
 
 (from designs by the Adams) slie brought 
 an action against him, and forced him to 
 compensate her handsomely. It was un- 
 kindly said to be a suit between two old 
 women. That is all the pre-Wellington 
 history of Apsley House. The Duke en- 
 larged it, and cased the old house, which 
 was of red brick, with Bath stone. I will 
 not cavd at his taste : it was characteristic 
 of him to be enchanted with his possessions, 
 and his opinion of this result was extremely 
 high. At anyrate he could hardly have had 
 his dwelling on a more delightful spot, 
 parked on two sides, and in his day with a 
 much more open run than now to Kensington. 
 ' Number 1, London,' was then an appropriate 
 description of it. 
 
 Let us first look hard at the Duke in the 
 mind's eye. Happily in this case the light 
 is good, for we have portraits and minute 
 descriptions, and the memory of living men. 
 The late Duke of Argyll, who went to call 
 on him at Apsley House in 1847, tells us 
 that ' what struck one most in his appearance 
 was not his high aquiline nose, which is so 
 prominent in all the pictures, but his 
 splendid eyes. They were blue in colour, 
 
160 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 and very round and very large . . . the 
 eyelids cutting across them very high up, 
 but not leaving them uncovered. They 
 arrested all one's attention in a moment. 
 One thought no more of the beaky nose, or 
 of the small and firm mouth. . . .' I do 
 not remember any other description that 
 insists so exclusively on his eyes, but with 
 a copy of the engraving after Lawrence 
 before me as I write I can well believe in it. 
 Splendid, forthright, well-opened eyes they 
 are, with the fine prominence of their own 
 quality, not at all protruding. 'Blue,' 
 simply says the Duke of Argyll ; ' a dark 
 violet blue or grey,' says Mr. Gleig, his 
 biographer : exact agreement about eyes is 
 rare to find, but a deep blue we may take 
 them to have been. Then, of course, there is 
 the aquiline nose : ' beaky,' even too beaky, 
 on a mean face, but merely giving point and 
 command to his. The eyebrows straight 
 and thick, but not bushy ; the forehead 
 almost low, but broad and square ; the mouth 
 small, a little tight at the corners ; the jaw 
 strong, the chin prominent and firm. A 
 grave expression habitually, a winning smile 
 on occasion. He was five feet nine inches 
 
HIS DRESS 161 
 
 high, very erect, at least until his latter 
 years, when observers differ : probably he 
 bore himself like a soldier still by instinct, 
 and drooped in inattention. He was broad- 
 shouldered and deep-chested, with finely 
 made hands and feet. 
 
 Then you must regard his dress. Pro- 
 bably Thackeray — in Pendennis, you re- 
 member, when he stops to speak to the 
 Major walking with Pen — describes him as 
 he was most familiar to Londoners, 'in a 
 blue frock-coat and spotless white duck 
 trousers, in a white stock, with a shining 
 buckle behind.' Mr. Gleig adds to this, as 
 his civilian dress in summer, a low- crowned, 
 narrow-brimmed hat, and a white waistcoat. 
 In winter the hat and stock and frock-coat 
 remained the same, but the trousers were 
 blue, and blue or red the waistcoat. Sir 
 William Fraser tells us that the hat had a 
 very clean lining of pale yellow leather : I 
 like to think of Sir William taking it up in 
 the hall and making his note on it. He 
 confuses us a little about the trousers— 
 surely this does not bore you? — with the 
 statement that they were of ' Oxford mix- 
 ture,' except on the first of May, when they 
 
162 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 were white : I believe he is wrong, but for- 
 give him for the knowledge that the Duke 
 always carried two cambric pocket-handker- 
 chiefs. . . . You are watching the Duke 
 in Piccadilly, and you are to add to your 
 observation the curiosity and deep respect 
 with which all his fellow-citizens regarded 
 him in passing. Pen, for example, on the 
 occasion I have quoted, was in ecstasy over 
 the encounter. 'The Duke gave the elder 
 Pendennis a finger of a pipe-clayed glove to 
 shake, which the Major embraced with great 
 veneration ; and all Pen's blood tingled, as 
 he found himself in actual communication, 
 as it were, with this famous man (for Pen 
 had possession of the Major's left arm, whilst 
 that gentleman's other wing was engaged 
 with his Grace's right), and he wished all 
 Grey Friars School, all Oxbridge University, 
 all Paternoster Row and the Temple, and 
 Laura and his mother at Fairoaks, could be 
 standing on each side of the street, to see 
 the meeting between him and his uncle, and 
 the most famous duke in Christendom.' A 
 friend of mine remembers seeing the Duke 
 in 1851, the year of the exhibition, and the 
 year before his death, cantering along Picca- 
 
HIS SOCIETY 163 
 
 dilly on a small white cob, upright in the 
 saddle, with his cane held to his hat in 
 salute, and the people uncovering as to 
 royalty. 
 
 Even the late Duke of Argyll felt diffi- 
 dent and nervous when, as a young man, he 
 went to ask a favour of the venerable hero. 
 He takes us with him, by the way, into 
 Apsley House, into ' a large room on the 
 ground floor, to the eastern side of the Picca- 
 dilly front. It was full of articles in much 
 confusion — of writing-tables with blue-books, 
 of articles of clothing hung on screens, and 
 of furniture with no definite arrangement. 
 The Duke presently entered by a side 
 door. ..." 
 
 And what manner of man, truly and 
 intimately, was it behind the white stock 
 and the blue frock-coat? Had we been 
 present invisible at this interview, we should 
 have heard him putting his nervous visitor 
 at ease, giving sound advice on the matter 
 in question, readily promising his aid. Yes ; 
 but the Duke of Argyll was of his own class 
 and society. It is certain that he lived, by 
 choice, almost exclusively in that class. 
 Even his biographer — Mr. Gleig again — 
 
164 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 admits that ' the circle in which he chiefly 
 moved was that of fashionable ladies and 
 gentlemen, who pressed themselves upon 
 him.' It is said that he liked their flattery, 
 which is true to some extent, no doubt, and 
 it is hinted that he was something approach- 
 ing to a snob, which is ridiculous. He was 
 born in that class, he had a strong sense of 
 caste, which in his time was a reality, and 
 he was most at home in it : that is all. But 
 it is curious to note the different reports of 
 him from those in and outside it. When 
 we have allowed for the immense prestige of 
 him from Waterloo onwards, we still must 
 think there was something of superficial 
 coldness and aloofness in his personality to 
 leave so much awe in the minds of those 
 who merely spoke with him, as it were, at a 
 distance. And then turn for contrast to his 
 letters to ' Dearest Georgy ' — the late Lady 
 de Ros, who died a nonagenarian, and was 
 one of his girl-favourites — about the romping 
 at Mont St. Martin, the men harnessed and 
 dragging the ladies about on rugs : ' The 
 night before, the ladies drew me the petty 
 tour, and afterwards Lord Hill the grand 
 tour, but the "fat, fair, and forty" and M. 
 
HIS MANNER 165 
 
 were so knocked up that some of us were 
 obliged to go into the harness, although 
 we had already run many stages.' Or follow 
 him through Lady Granville's letters : ' the 
 Duke as merry as a grig,' ' the bonhomie 
 and adorable qualities of the Duke,' the 
 Duke acting in charades, or ' the poor Beau,' 
 his significant nickname, ' is much hurried, 
 being considered to go along with favours 
 and cakes when a Tory marries,' and so 
 forth. And then my mind goes back to 
 Haydon's account of him at Walmer, reading 
 the paper after dinner, while the painter sat 
 gazing at his grey head in silent reverence, 
 admiring him as something near divine. 
 
 Again : the popular tradition of him, much 
 supported by evidence, is of a stern man, 
 something hard, curt, a foe to emotion. 
 Even some of those who knew him more or 
 less familiarly report him blunt, matter-of- 
 fact, and if not unfeeling, certainly this side 
 sensibility. There is Thomas Creevey's 
 interview with him in Brussels, immediately 
 after Waterloo. ' He made a variety of 
 observations in his short, natural, blunt 
 way, but with the greatest gravity all the 
 time, and without the least approach to 
 
166 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 anything like triumph or joy. " It has 
 been a damned serious business," he said. 
 " Blucher and I have lost 30,000 men. It 
 has been a damned nice thing — the nearest 
 run thing you ever saw in your life. . . . 
 By God 1 I don't think it would have done 
 if I had not been there.'" That is not 
 exactly unfeeling, and it is thoroughly of his 
 nation and class in its sporting metaphor 
 and its plain statement. One admires the 
 absence of personal triumphing on the one 
 side, of false modesty on the other. But 
 one misses the imaginative feeling for the 
 horror of all that slaughter. Well, it merely 
 was not for Mr. Creevey. We know from 
 Eaikes that when, at this same time, the 
 Duke went to the rooms of his niece. Lady 
 FitzRoy Somerset, he burst into a flood of 
 tears. When Mrs. Arbuthnot, his most 
 intimate friend among women, died, he was 
 called unfeeling because, as Charles GreviUe 
 says, ' he had the good taste and sense to 
 smooth his brow and go to the House of 
 Lords with a cheerful aspect.' But we know 
 how he could feel the death of a friend : he 
 who sat with the tears streaming down his 
 cheeks at the funeral service for Arbuthnot. 
 
BENEATH THE SURFACE 167 
 
 We know, too, from Gleig how, when that 
 friend's fatal illness was told to him, he 
 seized the doctor's hand and protested 
 brokenly, ' No, no ; he 's not very ill, not 
 very bad — he '11 get better, he '11 not die,' 
 
 One remembers these and many stories 
 like them, and one looks at the portrait and 
 one sees surely that those eyes and that 
 mouth are not of an unfeeling man. Very 
 greatly otherwise. It is no wild guess that 
 this was a man who felt both strongly and 
 readily ; and, living in high places with 
 curious eyes ever on him, had the habit of 
 cloaking his feehngs as best he might. 
 Many appeals to feeling were not for him, 
 of course. He was blind to art and books. 
 Also — that, too, is in the eyes — he was 
 proud and by nature contemptuous of what 
 to him was little. Those were intellectual 
 limitations to feeling : when the passage 
 was clear there was no hard substance of 
 nature to check it. 
 
 And if one thinks of his pride of class, of 
 his contempt for the mob, one should re- 
 member some facts about him and it. All 
 his life he had done his duty to his country 
 single - heartedly, with immense personal 
 
168 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 success, to be sure, but also with much 
 hardship and strain of energies, and in 
 the teeth of calumny. In 1831 he was 
 honestly opposed to reform. The King was 
 to dissolve Parliament, but the Duke could 
 not go to the House of Lords because 
 his wife was dying in Apsley House. She 
 died as the guns in the Park began to fire. 
 And presently came a yelling crowd before 
 Apsley House, and in a while stones crash- 
 ing through the windows, breaking them in 
 pieces and destroying pictures within. What 
 wonder that he kept the iron shutters to his 
 windows to the day of his death ? Twelve 
 years later an immense mob, cheering this 
 time, followed him up Constitution Hill. 
 The Duke took no notice whatever, but 
 trotted leisurely to Apsley House : then he 
 stopped at the gate, pointed to those iron 
 shutters, bowed to the mob, and silently 
 rode into the court. He was not a demo- 
 cratic politician. 
 
 Remember also that if he despised the 
 common man, he was punctiliously courteous 
 to him. No great man ever took so much 
 trouble about small men as he. Those in- 
 numerable autograph letters beginning 'F.M. 
 
MR. TOMKINS 169 
 
 the Duke of Wellington presents his compli- 
 ments to ' Mr. Buggins, or Master Brown, or 
 what not! His peculiar humour, half play- 
 ful, half grim, no doubt made him sometimes 
 rejoice in his answers. ' Field-marshal the 
 Duke of Wellington has received a letter 
 from Mr. Tomkins, stating that the Marquess 
 of Douro is in debt to his mother, Mrs. 
 Tomkins. The Duke of Wellington is not 
 the Marquess of Douro. The Duke regrets 
 to find that his eldest son has not paid his 
 washerwoman's bill. Mrs. Tomkins has no 
 claim upon the Duke of Wellington. The 
 Duke recommends her, failing another appli- 
 cation, to place the matter in the hands of 
 a respectable solicitor.' In this case he 
 was hoaxed : Mr. Tomkins, the distressed 
 washerwoman's son, was a collector of auto- 
 graphs. And of course he was often hoaxed 
 over his charities, which were large and 
 incessant : he admitted once that an officer 
 of the Mendicity Society had given him the 
 severest scolding he had ever had in his life. 
 If he despised common people, he never 
 pandered to great personages. It was to the 
 credit of George the Fourth that he always 
 had a great respect for the Duke, whom he 
 
170 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 called ' Arthur ' ; it is not much to the dis- 
 credit of the Duke that he had little or no 
 respect for George the Fourth, of whom he 
 once told Creevey — condemning the Regent's 
 bulk and blasphemy in pretty forcible lan- 
 guage of his own — that he was ashamed to 
 enter a room with him. And he told Lady 
 de Ros that when George and Charles the 
 Tenth were together, George, with ' his 
 flourish and display, might have passed for 
 his valet.' I must not repeat stories at large, 
 but, if the reader has not heard it, this one 
 — it is irrelevant, I know — helps to fix the 
 Duke's manner and humour : ' Were you 
 surprised at Waterloo, Duke ? ' asked some 
 fool at a dinner. 'No,' with his charming 
 smile, ' but I am now.' 
 
 And now I come to what, after all, is most 
 to the purpose in my sketch of the Duke in 
 his social side — his relation with women. He 
 was susceptible, as it used to be called, in an 
 extreme degree ; and, like most susceptible 
 people, he was inconstant. His marriage 
 was finely characteristic. The lady's family 
 disapproved of the engagement, and he, serv- 
 ing abroad, had not seen her for years. She 
 suffered disfigurement from the smallpox, and 
 
MORALS 171 
 
 wrote to release him. Whatever the senti- 
 mental traditions of romance might require, 
 I fancy that most men, given the circum- 
 stances, would have acquiesced in their free- 
 dom. But, though another person might 
 release Arthur Wellesley from a promise, 
 he could not release himself ; he returned to 
 England and married the lady, and they lived 
 unhappily, more or less, ever after. I hope 
 that this conduct may balance, in my moral- 
 ising reader's mind, something at least of 
 conduct he wUl condemn. I believe that 
 most of the Duke's intimacies with women 
 were ' innocent ' ; he was soft about them, 
 was amused by them, liked to indulge them. 
 But there is no use in pretending that he 
 thought much of chastity, or that his life 
 was chaste. We will not pursue an argu- 
 ment which might annoy the reader, and to 
 me would be stupid and tiresome. As we 
 study great men of the active and command- 
 ing sort in history, we find that most of 
 them seem not to have been naturally mono- 
 gamous ; if we must judge, we should judge 
 comparatively ; our modern habit of reticence 
 and silence has induced a false perspective : 
 that is all I feel disposed to say. The great 
 
172 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Duke got himself into little scrapes, no doubt 
 whatever. He never escaped the conse- 
 quences of a fault by committing what he 
 would have considered a greater one. We 
 know the famous answer to the threat of 
 exposure : ' Publish, and be damned I ' 
 
 In the year 1825 there were published 
 the memoirs of Harriet Wilson, a celebrated 
 courtesan. Walter Scott notes the occur- 
 rence in his journal, and says it had 'kept 
 the gay world in hot water.' He recollects 
 having met Miss Wilson, and congratulates 
 himself that her memory was not so good as 
 his. It is, I must confess, a most amusing 
 book, written really, I suppose, by some 
 hack of letters from Harriet's confidences 
 and suggestions, but its attempts at pathos 
 and sentiment are exceedingly nauseous. 
 The Duke figures largely in it. In 1816 
 Lady Frances Webster, Byron's old friend, 
 was accused by one, Baldwin, of misconduct 
 with the Duke ; she prosecuted for libel, 
 and got £2000 damages, but I fear the 
 world must have smiled. There were other 
 scrapes, but I am sure it was softness and 
 kindness, not libertinism, which most often 
 involved him. Lady Caroline Lamb, also 
 
LADY CAROLINE 173 
 
 Byron's old friend, set her cap at him in 
 1815. 'Nothing is agissant' writes Lady 
 Granville from Paris, ' but Caroline WilHam 
 in a purple riding habit, tormenting every- 
 body, but I am convinced ready primed for 
 an attack upon the Duke of Wellington, 
 and I have no doubt but that she will to a 
 certain extent succeed, as no dose of flattery 
 is too strong for him to swallow or her to 
 administer.' There it was, you see : he had 
 this reputation for softness and accessibility 
 to women. Once, when he left Woburn 
 prematurely, on the plea of Cabinet business 
 in London, the indignant Duchess of Bed- 
 ford wrote after him : ' Dear Duke, — For 
 Cabinet read boudoir. — Yours, G. B.' Yes ; 
 I fear he had this reputation. Charles Gre- 
 ville, who knew him well, and whose brother 
 Algernon was his secretary for thirty-five 
 years, writing about his intimacy with 
 Madame Grassini, adds that ' these habits of 
 female intimacy and gossip led him to take a 
 great interest in a thousand petty affairs, in 
 which he delighted to be mixed up and con- 
 sulted.' A pity, perhaps, that he so wasted 
 valuable time, but I do not think there was 
 much harm in it all. 
 
174 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 And what return did women make him 
 for all this interest and devotion ? One of 
 low degree made ' copy ' out of him, as we 
 have seen. Another, of high degree, accord- 
 ing to Sir William Fraser — but then Sir 
 William was wrong about the trousers — 
 threatened him with an action. But on 
 the good side ? ' I suppose, Duke,' said a 
 woman to him once, ' you have inspired a 
 great deal of admiration and enthusiasm 
 among women during your life ? ' ' Oh, yes, 
 plenty of that ! plenty of that ! But no 
 woman ever loved me : never in my whole 
 life.' It is a sad commentary on all the 
 stories and scandals. Likely as not, he 
 spoke the truth. For the Duke's nature 
 was above all things masculine, one of 
 which that very softness about women is an 
 indication ; and masculine men, when they 
 achieve great things before the world, have, 
 as he said, admiration and enthusiasm from 
 women in plenty : but women are fond of 
 men most commonly, as I believe, for weak- 
 nesses they understand and share. I may 
 be wrong, and I rather fear to pursue the 
 analysis ; let us hope the Duke was 
 deceived. ' I was the only thing he ever 
 
THE LAST SCENE 175 
 
 loved,' said the complacent Lady Jersey 
 after his death. Let us hope that some- 
 where or other lived a woman who might 
 have said the converse. 
 
 So we see the great Duke as he was for 
 his chosen friends, gay, affectionate, gener- 
 ous, loving a simple joke, loving flattery a 
 little overmuch, loving women a few too 
 many. We may fancy him in his dining- 
 room at Apsley House, courteous, talking 
 freely, without the least preoccupation with 
 his own reputation or position, downright, 
 prejudiced, and, to the best of his under- 
 standing, just. We may follow him in his 
 daily habits, methodical, simple, temperate, 
 and withal hearty. We may imagine him 
 with strangers and slight acquaintances, 
 punctilious, humorous, a little oddly blunt 
 and grim at times. And, thanks to painted 
 and written records, we see him vividly all 
 the time. And so we part with him, but 
 Piccadilly has a memory of him other than 
 of the living man : a great memory of one 
 of the two great funeral processions of our 
 time : a vast and reverent crowd, the strains 
 of the Dead March, and, more solemn than all 
 else, the silent tramp, tramp of his soldiers. 
 
176 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 CHAPTEE XI 
 
 EMMA HAMILTON 
 
 From the Duke, it is natural to pass to our 
 greatest sailor. He himself, to be sure, has 
 little part in London. For our memories 
 his place is on the sea, almost wholly ; away 
 from the sea he bore no such part in our life 
 as Wellington bore, nor could he have borne 
 it had he lived after Trafalgar. For our 
 national purpose, so to say, he had his great 
 intellectual gift of consummate seamanship, 
 his great moral gift of devotion to his 
 country, but he can never stand for such a 
 rounded type of Englishman as stands the 
 Duke. The men had one thing in common, 
 that both were quickly emotional; but 
 "Wellington was the lord of his emotion, and 
 Nelson was the slave of his. The only 
 occasion of their meeting, when Nelson 
 exposed the childlike boastfulness which 
 
J^^^^^a^ cyuz.99-z^^ny. 
 
CONGENIAL 177 
 
 was a weak if amiable side of him to the 
 Duke's grim observation, is sad to think 
 on, but not surprising. The greatest of our 
 sailors could never have played a great part 
 in the broad world of affairs. For us his 
 place is on the sea. And if his spirit might 
 be supposed to seek the land, it would 
 hardly seek Piccadilly : it would go, of 
 course, to that peaceful Merton where he 
 longed to rest. 
 
 But with his Emma it is otherwise. 
 The bustle of Piccadilly may well be 
 imagined congenial to her. Of her life in 
 England, after all, this was the most active 
 and interesting part, so far as social things 
 went, and Emma loved social things. Here, 
 too, she gave birth to Horatia. I think she 
 must be supposed to visit Piccadilly — I 
 don't think the traffic would prevent her at 
 all — and so I write of her. And, writing of 
 her, I must perforce write of Nelson. 
 
 I really cannot admit that there is any 
 reasonable doubt of Emma Hamilton's char- 
 acter. Men have sometimes written of her 
 as though she were a problem like Mary 
 Queen of Scots — of whom also, by the way, 
 I have quite a definite view. Mr. Walter 
 
 M 
 
178 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Sichel, for example, to whose copiously 
 informed book I am greatly indebted, writes 
 with a fine air of defending a much wronged 
 woman. He seems to tilt, lance in rest, in 
 her defence, like some champion of legendary 
 chivalry. I admire the attitude, but I can- 
 not induce my old bones to adopt it. I 
 remember (with no disrespect to Mr. Sichel) 
 what Thackeray said, in another connection, 
 of the defence of Nell Gwynne made by her 
 footman, that after all ' the jade was inde- 
 fensible, and it is pretty certain her servant 
 knew it.' Not that Emma was a courtesan, 
 or anything like it. She was the mistress 
 of two men in her youth, and after her 
 marriage became the mistress of another. 
 Poverty in the early cases, passion in the 
 other, may or may not be held a sufficient 
 excuse. For my part, I do not care. I am 
 far from agreeing with Dr. Johnson, who 
 assured the chivalrous Bozzy, pleading 
 extenuating circumstances for some other 
 lady, 'the woman's a' — so-and-so — 'and 
 there's an end of it.' There is not an end 
 of it. It is a narrow view, an unprofitable 
 exaggeration of a part into the whole. Still, 
 one can hardly say that on her record Emma 
 
HER QUALITIES 179 
 
 is one's idea of a fine character. Putting 
 common frailty aside, one does not find in 
 her any clearly noble qualities of heart or 
 head. She was a warm, generous, kindly 
 creature, loving to have dependants, but 
 loving also to cherish them, loyal, courage- 
 ous. She was clever and appreciative. But, 
 the gods be praised, there are hundreds of 
 thousands such women whose conduct is 
 defensible as well. On the other hand, she 
 was vain and vain-glorious, a little intoxi- 
 cated with her power as the wife of an 
 ambassador, the friend of a Queen- — though 
 it was but the Queen of Naples — and the 
 love of a hero. It was a strange fate that 
 turned a serving-wench into all this, but 
 happily for the colour of life in all ages such 
 fates have waited from time to time on 
 beauty with no very wonderful qualities to 
 aid it. 
 
 Such as she was, you must imagine her 
 at the beginning of 1801, soon after her 
 return from Naples, setting up house with 
 her husband at what was then 23 Piccadilly 
 — a small house between the Savile Club 
 and Down Street. You imagine her, of 
 course, a very beautiful woman. How 
 
180 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 many portraits of her have you seen ? A 
 host by Romney, no doubt. To my mind 
 the most sympathetic of these are those he 
 did of her in youth, and in a simple mood. 
 There is a reproduction in Mr. Sichel's book 
 of a sepia study, done in 1784, which shows 
 one a girl of compelling loveliness and grace. 
 I could have fallen in love with her as she 
 sat for it more easily than with Sir Joshua's 
 'Bacchante,' though that perhaps is the 
 most beautiful picture of her we have. In 
 1801 she was thirty-six, a very beautiful 
 woman still, but started on the road to cor- 
 pulence — that sad journey so many beauti- 
 ful women must take. Second-rate painters 
 often give good likenesses, and I dare say 
 Masquerier's portrait of her at this time 
 shows her much as she was— with large 
 eyes and fine features and a mass of hair 
 grown darker since her youth, rather heavy 
 withal, and with something of a Jewish look 
 about her. Graceful she remained, almost 
 perfectly so, I do not doubt. You imagine 
 her bustling about her new abode, arranging 
 the furniture she had sold jewels to buy — in 
 comparative wealth or in poverty, Emma 
 was always hard up — and singing as she 
 
SIR WILLIAM 181 
 
 worked and directed. Sir William, her 
 husband, smiles approval, and both expect 
 with eagerness the coming of the hero, who 
 has a lodging near by, in St. James's Street. 
 It is not polite altogether to ignore this 
 lady's husband. He is a little in the back- 
 ground, to be sure, sitting there rather 
 pathetically, planning how to get himself 
 rewarded for his services to his country, 
 interested in art, enthusiastically admiring 
 his beautiful wife and her heroic lover. 
 They in turn respected and liked him. I 
 do not think there is any obligation upon us 
 to go about to inquire precisely how much 
 Sir William Hamilton knew. I confess that 
 to me it seems a thing almost incredible, in 
 all the circumstances, that he did not know 
 everything — a thing quite incredible that 
 he did not know much. He acquiesced in 
 much, and for this acquiescence you are at 
 liberty, if you choose, to find many hard 
 words. But, unless you take your know- 
 ledge or ignorance of life from novels and 
 plays, you cannot think it monstrous or 
 unique. He was an old man with a fatherly 
 love for the beautiful woman he had so 
 generously — perhaps so foolishly — married, 
 
182 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 with an affectionate admiration for her 
 lover ; I am not seeking to excuse, but 
 merely to suggest to you how he may be 
 explained without any positive necessity for 
 execrating him. Poor Sir William Hamil- 
 ton ! He is a figure of immemorial comedy, 
 of course, a pathetic figure, not altogether 
 unlovable. 
 
 Only for a short time was Nelson able to 
 frequent 23 Piccadilly. Soon he had hoisted 
 his flag for the expedition which was to end 
 at Copenhagen. But there was no lack of 
 visitors there. Queen Charlotte naturally 
 refused to receive Lady Hamilton, and she 
 was not ' in society ' as the respectably ex- 
 clusive understood it, but there were many 
 distinguished people who did not consider 
 her interesting career a bar to acquaintance. 
 Old Q., for example, did not mind it in the 
 least. She was a great favourite with that 
 ancient voluptuary, and was not omitted 
 from his famous will. Those accomplished 
 cousins, Lady Diana Beauclerck and Geor- 
 giana, Duchess of Devonshire, had for her 
 that admiration which women (so often 
 maligned in this regard) are wont to have 
 for the beautiful of their sex, when they 
 
GREVILLE 183 
 
 themselves have wit as well as looks. 
 Various other fashionable but less important 
 ladies came to her. Walter Savage Landor 
 came and wrote verses about her. Mrs. 
 Billington came — a pretty creature whose 
 society unhappily could not increase Emma's 
 respectability. Crowds of refugee Italians, 
 crowds of humble relations, were delighted 
 to come. George, Prince of Wales, wished 
 to come, but there was a terrible fuss about 
 that, which we will attend to in a minute, 
 and he came not. Greville, Sir William's 
 nephew and her old ' protector,' came, with 
 cynical thoughts, it may be, but (I am con- 
 vinced) quite good-naturedly. It is the 
 custom of Lady Hamilton's champions to 
 say harsh things of Greville, but I think 
 their zeal outruns their judgment. Even 
 the professed morality of his day would 
 hardly have condemned his relation with 
 Emma Hart, or Lyon, when the friendless 
 girl, cast out by another man, threw herself 
 at his head with her ' What shall I dow ? 
 Good God, what shall I dow ? ' He treated 
 her kindly and educated her attentively, if 
 with incomplete success. It is really absurd 
 to suppose that by any standard of conduct 
 
184 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 known to him — we have much better stan- 
 dards now — he ought to have married her, 
 or that he ought to have welcomed her as 
 an aunt with reverent joy. They remained 
 friends, and that should be enough for the 
 champions. 
 
 All these people Emma Hamilton enter- 
 tained with her impulsive kindness and her 
 great powers of amusement. She struck 
 her famous ' attitudes ' for them, and she 
 danced the tarantella. Wraxall gives us a 
 vivid account of this treat. It happened on 
 the evening of the day that the news of 
 Copenhagen came, the 15th of April 1801. 
 He looked in at 23 Piccadilly about ten 
 o'clock, and found Old Q. there, and the 
 Duke of Gordon, Calonne, the Duke de 
 Noia from Naples, John Kemble and his 
 wife, Greville, and Nelson's brother the 
 parson — an interesting company. Emma, 
 radiant with victory, sang to the harpsichord 
 and danced the tarantella, and it is pleasant 
 to note that what apparently impressed 
 Wraxall, even more than the lady's grace, 
 was the agility of her veteran husband. 
 
 ' Sir William began it with her, and main- 
 tained the conflict, for such it might well be 
 
THE TARANTELLA 185 
 
 esteemed, for some minutes. When, unable 
 longer to continue it, the Duke de Noia 
 succeeded to his place ; but he too, though 
 near forty years younger than Sir William, 
 soon gave in. Lady Hamilton then sent for 
 her own maidservant; who, being likewise 
 exhausted, after a short time, another female 
 attendant, a Copt, perfectly black, whom 
 Lord Nelson had presented her, on his 
 return from Egypt, relieved her companion. 
 It would be diflBcult to convey any idea of 
 this dance; but the Fandango and Segue- 
 dilla of the Spaniards present an image of it. 
 We must recollect that the two performers 
 are supposed to be a Satyr and a Nymph ; 
 or, rather, a Fawn and a Bacchant. It was 
 certainly not of a nature to be performed, 
 except before a select company ; as the 
 screams, attitudes, starts, and embraces, 
 with which it was intermingled, gave it a 
 peculiar character. I only mentioned it ' — 
 I forgive him freely — ' in order to show Sir 
 WilHam Hamilton's activity and gaiety at 
 that advanced period of life.' 
 
 Such doings at the little house in Picca- 
 dilly ! But life then was not all singing 
 and dancing for Emma Hamilton. On Janu- 
 
186 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 ary 29 she had given birth to Horatia, and a 
 fortnight later she was playing hostess, as 
 though nothing had happened ; not three 
 months later, as we have seen, she was wear- 
 ing down four successive partners in the 
 tarantella. Wonderful pluck, and a won- 
 derful constitution truly ; and if they alone 
 made character one would join with the 
 most fervid of her eulogists. Nelson's cor- 
 respondence with her about this event is 
 surely as curious as any letters ever hero 
 penned. They arranged an elaborate system 
 of deceit — could it really have deceived ? — 
 according to which Nelson had an anxious 
 officer called Thomson, whose wife, befriended 
 by Emma, was expecting her confinement. 
 Letters come addressed to 'Mrs. Thomson,' 
 and the expedient is further used in his 
 avowed letters to her by frequent mention 
 of the Thomsons. 'I believe dear Mrs. 
 Thomson's friend ' — when Horatia had been 
 born — ' will go mad with joy. He cries, 
 prays, and performs all tricks, yet dares not 
 show all or any of his feelings, but he has 
 only me to consult with. He swears he will 
 drink your health in a bumper ... he does 
 nothing but rave about you and her.' So 
 
ALAS! 187 
 
 he wrote to her whom he thought, as a later 
 letter has it, his 'wife in the eye of God.' 
 The dried bones of a passion are always sad 
 to see, but a dead passion which was debased 
 by deceit and subterfuge is pitiable. 
 
 And this passion was debased by some- 
 thing worse than deceit. It is worth while, 
 since we are on the subject, that our idea of 
 Nelson and Lady Hamilton should correspond 
 to the truth ; and the truth was not, as one 
 would suppose from sentimental reflections, 
 that their passion — apart from its unhappy 
 conflict with convention and customary 
 standards — was an ennobling and ideal one. 
 Take the most tolerant view, which is the 
 wisest as a rule, and suppose that what is 
 finest in the relation between a man and 
 a woman may co-exist with that which in 
 the eye of the world is wrong. Those of us 
 who will admit this probably know of cases 
 where they are certain of it. Yes ; but the 
 least this assumes is that the man and the 
 woman are sure of one another. Can it 
 possibly be an ideal and ennobling passion 
 when the man is racked with fear of the 
 woman's unfaithfulness ? 
 
 The Prince of Wales intimated his wish 
 
188 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 to dine with Sir William and Lady Hamilton. 
 It was obviously difficult to refuse, and Sir 
 William, moreover, wanted the Prince's aid 
 in getting a pension. When Nelson heard 
 of the project he was beside himself with 
 rage and anxiety, and wrote letter after 
 letter of hysterical protest. He assumes 
 that the Prince's intention was to make 
 Lady Hamilton his mistress, and for that 
 assumption there was unfortunately only 
 too much reason. But his letters, further, 
 mean nothing if he was not afraid that she 
 would consent. ' Do not sit long at table. 
 Good God I He will be next you and telling 
 you soft things. . . . His words are so 
 charming that, I am told, no person can 
 resist them. . .■ . Hush, hush, my poor 
 heart ! keep in my breast, be calm, Emma is 
 true. . . . But no one, not even Emma, 
 could resist the serpent's tongue. . . . Did 
 you sit alone with the villain ? No ! I will 
 not believe it. Do not let the rascal in.' 
 And so forth : a medley of entreaty and fear, 
 and protestations of faith, which truly pro- 
 test too much. One hardly knows whether 
 to laugh or cry. Here was a great hero, 
 writing to the woman who was the love of 
 
MAGIS AMIGA 189 
 
 liis life, and he fears lest the attractions of 
 a licensed debauchee, 'a star-coated rap- 
 scallion,' as Squire Beltham has it, should 
 be too much for her ; that it was not safe 
 for her to sit next him at dinner. Alas ! 
 One can only suppose that there was little 
 heroic in the woman to whom he wrote. 
 His fear may have been baseless — she had 
 to appease it by giving up the dinner — but 
 that he had it tells us too much for any but 
 a confirmed sentimentalist . to go on rhap- 
 sodising about their passion. I like the 
 woman, but there is an old tag about liking 
 and truth. 
 
 Yet Nelson's love for Emma Hamilton, 
 ennobling or otherwise, was the thing nearest 
 his heart, and no view of her character can 
 acquit the English Government — or the 
 nation, in so far as it knew and made no 
 protest — of the blackest ingratitude and 
 treachery to Nelson in leaving her to starve. 
 I trust if I have seemed cold about her my 
 sincere warmth in this regard may partly 
 excuse me to the sentimentahsts. The 
 stupid, ghastly irony of it ! ' Remember 
 that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter 
 to my country ' ; those were almost his last 
 
190 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 words. He had lived for his country, and 
 he had died for it. His country loudly 
 acclaimed that he had saved it. And his 
 country made his brother, who had saved no 
 one unless in his calling as a clergyman, an 
 earl, and gave him £120,000. And his 
 country entirely ignored the necessities of 
 the woman and child he had left to its 
 care. By the time they were actually in 
 want it was thinking of other matters, to be 
 sure. Yet with all her faults Emma Hamil- 
 ton had not done the country ill -service. 
 She might have hindered Nelson from his 
 devotion to it, but she ever added fuel to 
 that fire. The country might have remem- 
 bered her, but it was content with that 
 magnificent piece of irrelevance in regard to 
 Nelson's brother. Besides, when a strict 
 regard for morality positively pays ... I 
 suppose it is ingenuous to be surprised. 
 
 The black days were yet distant when 
 Merton Place was bought, and Piccadilly 
 ceased to be Lady Hamilton's constant 
 abode. Sir William kept on the house, it 
 is true, and she was there sometimes. She 
 lived just out of Piccadilly, in Clarges 
 Street, for some years later on. Keeping 
 
EMMA HAMILTON 191 
 
 strictly to my theme and its limitations, 
 however, I confine her association with Pic- 
 cadilly to that eventful year of 1801, when 
 Copenhagen was fought, and Horatia was 
 born, and she danced the tarantella to Old 
 Q. and the Kembles. We take leave of her 
 at the end of it^the gay, generous, clever, 
 coarse, beautiful creature. 
 
192 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SIR WALTER IN LONDON 
 
 We wKo are tired Londoners, tired with too 
 much work or too much play or too much 
 sauntering, know the effect upon us of a 
 hearty visitor from the country. It is not 
 always exhilarating, to be sure. If our tired 
 feeling has gone too far, or if the visitor is 
 unsympathetic and intent only on enjoying 
 himself — if he takes up our time unreason- 
 ably, himself holiday-making, and insists on 
 taking us whither we would not — then no 
 doubt he is a nuisance. But if we like him, 
 and he duly remembers that the life he 
 rushes into has for us the limitations of 
 normality, then how refreshing is his hearti- 
 ness ! How jolly are his ruddy face and 
 strong voice and firm grip and zest in our 
 common experiences — nay, how pleasant it 
 is merely to watch his remarkable meals ! 
 Walter Scott must have been the prince 
 
SIR WALTER IN LONDON 193 
 
 of such visitors from the country. (Dear 
 Scottish reader, I know he lived partly in 
 Edinburgh, and that it was and is a great 
 city : still, for Londoners he came from the 
 country, and though Abbotsford was not his 
 at the time of his first few visits, Lasswade 
 and Ashestiel were.) Pleasant indeed to 
 his London friends must have been the sight 
 of his friendly face and the sound of his 
 friendly voice, with the northern accent 
 which can be so charming when the northern 
 lips obey a rich mind and a kind heart. His 
 gaiety and bonhomie and humour must have 
 been infectious. His interest in all that was 
 going on, and his simple, modest pleasure in 
 the lionising of himself, must have done one 
 good to behold. Had I happily been a 
 Londoner of his acquaintance, I can imagine 
 hardly any news it would have been more 
 grateful to hear than that Walter Scott 
 was in town and I was to meet him at 
 dinner. As it is, I welcome his incursion 
 into these pages, where the atmosphere is 
 perforce at times a little close, as a whole- 
 some breeze. I rejoice that in most of his 
 visits — and the best and longest — he was 
 housed in Piccadilly. 
 
194 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Walter Scott came first to London at the 
 age of four, on his way to Bath, where it 
 was hoped — alas ! in vain — that the waters 
 might cure his lameness. It was twenty- 
 five years before he came again, and then, 
 he tells us, he had kept an accurate recollec- 
 tion of "Westminster Abbey and the Tower. 
 (No doubt he tells us truly, but we whose 
 memories begin later are apt enviously to 
 suppose that people deceive themselves over 
 this gift.) Mat Lewis introduced him ' to 
 some literary and fashionable society,' says 
 Lockhart, but gives us no names, adding 
 only that Scott was ' much amused ' with it 
 — not patronisingly, from a superior Edin- 
 burgh standpoint, I am sure. Nor are we 
 told where he stayed on this occasion, and 
 so have no right to linger over it. The 
 death of his father sadly cut it short. 
 
 Four years later, in April 1803, he was 
 established at 'No. 15, Piccadilly West.' 
 This was a bay-fronted house at the corner 
 of Whitehorse Street, where now stands the 
 Junior Naval and Military Club, numbered 
 96 Piccadilly. It was the residence of 
 Monsieur Charles Dumergue, an old and 
 intimate friend of Scott's wife and her 
 
M. DUMERGUE 195 
 
 family. Scott married, if you will forgive 
 my reminding you, Miss Charlotte Car- 
 penter, whose mother, the widow of Jean 
 Charpentier of Lyons, fled to England with 
 her children at the beginning of the Revolu- 
 tion. M. Dumergue was a great friend of 
 his exiled fellow-countrymen, and befriended 
 Madame Charpentier on this occasion with 
 especial warmth, for he had known her and 
 her husband well in his early days in France. 
 I wish there were more to be said of M. 
 Charles Dumergue, who deserves record as 
 a Piccadilly worthy, as does his sister, Miss 
 Sophia, whom I find living at No. 96, in 
 Boyle's Court Guide, as late as 1825. But 
 beyond the facts of his kindness and hospi- 
 tality, and his being surgeon-dentist to the 
 royal family, I fear I have nothing to say 
 about him. But Scott made this house in 
 Piccadilly his London home until a child of 
 his own was established there, and seeing that 
 he was the last man in the world to accept 
 favours from one he did not like, we know 
 much to the credit of M. Charles Dumergue. 
 It must have given a cosmopolitan touch to 
 Scott's London visits that in this house he 
 found an interesting French society. 
 
196 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 The time of his lionising in London dates 
 from 1809, when he came in February and 
 stayed two months. Marmion was out, and 
 he was seated firmly on that poetical throne 
 he was to occupy until Byron, with perfect 
 good humour on both sides, displaced him. 
 London society threw itself at him, of course. 
 Then, as now, notoriety was the chief thing 
 it cared for. I think, however, that its 
 homage then was rather more of a compli- 
 ment than it is now, and that Walter Scott 
 was quite right to value it, as undoubtedly 
 he did. It was a proof, at any rate, that 
 his fame had reached the herd, and as a 
 practical man who had an ardent wish, 
 neither unnatural nor discreditable for one 
 of his tastes and opinions, to live as a 
 country gentleman of means, of course he 
 valued the proof Social success, for its 
 own sake, he was far too shrewd to over- 
 value : ' It may be a pleasant gale to sail 
 with,' he said, 'but it never yet led to a 
 port that I should like to anchor in.' But 
 no doubt, too, he liked the ornamental side 
 of it. He liked titles and ancient names, 
 which were found together a little more 
 commonly then. Why not ? It is really 
 
A LESSON FOR LIONS 197 
 
 absurd to suppose that a man of his genius 
 could have had a mean admiration for them, 
 or a mean pleasure in association with them. 
 He had a passion for historical memories and 
 a keen eye for the picturesque : that was 
 all, unless we may say that his mind (like 
 Dr. Johnson's, who was of opinion that ' the 
 Duchess of Newcastle may do what she 
 pleases '), leant to fixed positions and privi- 
 leges, as on the whole the happiest condition 
 for humanity. If Scott was happy in 
 London society, London society was doubly 
 happy in him. Its lions are so often dull 
 dogs, who repay civility with growls or 
 awkward pretences of intimacy, that it must 
 have been genuinely charmed to happen on 
 a lion who roared when required and as it 
 expected. He used the familiar metaphor 
 himself ' Well/ he would say to his friend, 
 Mr. Morritt, who lived in Portland Place, 
 ' do you want me to play lion to-day ? I 
 will roar, if you like it, to your heart's 
 content.' And he roared with gusto. ' If 
 people are amused,' said he, ' with hearing 
 me teU a parcel of old stories, or recite a 
 pack of ballads to lovely young girls and 
 gaping matrons, they are easily pleased, and 
 
198 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 a man would be very ill-natured who would 
 not give pleasure so cheaply conferred.' 
 What a gay, benevolent, unaffected attitude 
 it was ! To watch a great man go through 
 his hoops is not an ideal theory of social 
 intercourse ; but since one side had it, how 
 sweet and how rare it was in the other to 
 adopt it with such simple urbanity. ' Then, 
 as the party dwindled,' Mr. Morritt says, 
 ' and we were left alone, he laughed at him- 
 self, quoted — " Yet know that I one Smug 
 the joiner am — no lion fierce," etc., and was 
 at once himself again.' What a lesson for 
 lions was there ! 
 
 Now go forward to the spring of 1 8 1 5 and 
 watch M. Dumergue's house in Piccadilly, 
 one fine morning in April — the 7th, if you 
 will be exact. Comes out a tall, big man 
 with a broad, intellectual, humane face. He 
 turns up Piccadilly, leaning heavily on a 
 stick and limping, a dog at his heels. I am 
 sure there was a dog, though Camp, the 
 bull-terrier, who was with him when he first 
 stayed in Piccadilly, was dead. He hobbles 
 up Piccadilly to Albemarle Street, turns up 
 it and goes in at No. 50, where he has 
 an important engagement. Mr. Murray, 
 
SCOTT AND BYKON 199 
 
 the publisher, is to make him known to 
 Byron. 
 
 Every one, I suppose, has read about that 
 meeting, and knows how quickly the poets 
 took to one another ; how John Murray the 
 second, then a boy, remembered them 
 stumping downstairs side by side ; how they 
 met almost daily in Albemarle Street and 
 talked for hours at a time, and how when 
 they had parted for the last time they ex- 
 changed gifts, ' like the old heroes in Homer,' 
 as Scott himself says. He gave Byron a 
 Turkish dagger, and Byron gave him a silver 
 vase full of dead men's bones, with a kind 
 letter which Scott cherished in the vase 
 until some accursed guest or unbidden 
 tourist stole it. A meeting of heroes, to be 
 sure, and I think we may easily mistake 
 its nature for that reason, fancying a solemn 
 sort of occasion. Really, I suspect these 
 meetings at John Murray's were hilarious : 
 neither man, in my opinion, would have 
 sought them so often for intellectual or 
 literary entertainment. Scott was only 
 forty - three, after all, and Byron only 
 twenty-seven ; both had humour and a love 
 of fun, and both knew much of the world ; 
 
200 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 I am sure they laughed heartily. They 
 laughed, Scott tells us, over those gloomy 
 and ominous gifts, and what the public 
 might think of them ; indeed, it would be 
 very like the public not to know that only 
 gaiety could prompt that vase of dead men's 
 bones even at twenty-seven. It is certain 
 that they had merrymakings in general 
 society. Our friend Captain Gronow tells 
 us how he met them together at dinner at 
 Sir James Bland Burgess's, in Lower Brook 
 Street, in the autumn of this year. Scott 
 was ' quite delightful, full of fire and anima- 
 tion ' ; Byron was ' in great good humour, 
 and full of boyish and even boisterous 
 mirth ' ; even John Wilson Croker was 
 agreeable on this occasion. They sat late, 
 and drank a great deal of wine, and Walter 
 Scott recited some of his old ballads. It 
 was Byron's gaiety, too, which most im- 
 pressed Scott when he saw him for what 
 proved to be the last time at Long's, in 
 Bond Street, lunching or dining, with 
 Charles Mathews the comedian to help 
 the fun, and we may be sure that Scott 
 responded. If they never stumped down 
 Piccadilly homewards together, assuredly 
 
'WALTER, MY MAN' 201 
 
 Byron must sometimes have given Scott a 
 lift in his ' vis ' ; they were such near neigh- 
 bours. Picture it stopping at 96, and 
 Scott turning round on the pavement with 
 a parting joke. 
 
 It was during this visit to London that 
 he made an acquaintance which with all 
 his loyalty I hope he valued less. He was 
 presented to the Regent, and asked im- 
 mediately afterwards to dinner at Carlton 
 House. There is no doubt that George 
 could do this sort of courtesy with a winning 
 grace when he chose, and we know that he 
 captivated Scott. He called him ' Walter ' 
 before the evening was over ; drank to the 
 ' Author of Waverley ' ; and when Scott dis- 
 claimed the honour, to the 'Author of 
 Marmion.' ' Now, Walter, my man, I have 
 checkmated you for ance ' — alluding to the 
 brutally humorous Scotch story of the judge 
 and his old chess-playing friend in the dock, 
 which Scott had just told him. A delightful 
 evening, certainly, though I would rather 
 have been at Sir James Bland Burgess's. 
 And altogether an interesting stay in Picca- 
 dilly for Walter Scott, this of 1815. 
 
 He was there in 1820 when an uproar 
 
202 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 about Sir Francis Burdett, who lived at No. 
 80, was going forward, and he writes to his 
 wife of the ' hellish, — yes, literally hellish, 
 bustle. My head turns round with it. The 
 whole mob of the Middlesex blackguards pass 
 through Piccadilly twice a day, and almost 
 drive me mad with their noise and violence.' 
 He writes to James Ballantyne, also — 
 dating, by the way, from ' 96 Piccadilly,' 
 no longer ' 1 5 Piccadilly West ' : ' I cannot 
 write much in this bustle of engagements, 
 with Sir Francis's mob hollowing under the 
 windows. I find that even this light com- 
 position demands a certain degree of silence, 
 and I might as well live in a cotton mill.' 
 Possibly this note about the noise shows 
 that his nerves and spirit were not quite so 
 wonderful as they had been. That is more 
 clearly suggested by a waning fascination 
 of the London world and its habits. 'I 
 find,' he writes, ' I cannot bear late hours 
 and great society as well as formerly ; and 
 yet it is a fine thing to hear politics talked 
 of by Ministers of State, and war discussed 
 by the Duke of Wellington.' He had been 
 dining at Arbuthnot's to meet the Duke, 
 and took his son Walter, the Cornet, with 
 
UP AT SEVEN 203 
 
 him, to hear ' the great Lord in all his glory- 
 talk of war and Waterloo.' 
 
 Three notable things happened to him 
 during this visit : he was made a baronet, 
 and had his portrait done by Lawrence, and 
 his bust by Chantrey. Lawrence relates 
 that Scott — like the Duke — chose seven in 
 the morning for his sittings, and would talk 
 about all sorts of subjects — at that hour ! 
 What a man ! — and the painter found it 
 difficult to make him look solemn, though 
 he used to lure him by quoting poetry at him. 
 The Chantrey business was prefaced by a 
 characteristic incident. Chantrey sent Allan 
 Cunningham — his clerk of the works and a 
 poet, who had started life as a stonemason, 
 and had walked from Nithsdale to Edin- 
 burgh for the sole purpose of seeing Scott — 
 to ask him for a sitting, and Cunningham 
 has left a fine impression of his hearty, 
 genial way. ' It was about nine in the 
 morning that I sent in my card to him at 
 Miss Dumergue's, in Piccadilly. It had not 
 been gone a minute, when I heard a quick, 
 heavy step coming, and in he came, holding 
 out both hands, as was his custom, and say- 
 ing as he pressed mine — " Allan Cunningham, 
 
204 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 I am glad to see you." I said some- 
 thing about the pleasure I felt in touching 
 the hand that had charmed me so much. 
 He moved his hand and, with one of his 
 comic smiles, said: "Ay — and a big brown 
 hand it is.'" And then he put Allan at 
 his ease and praised his ballads and won 
 his heart. 
 
 I think I will leave Walter Scott at this 
 moment, at the height of his fame and 
 happiness, talking with his devoted country- 
 man at 96 Piccadilly. Great troubles were 
 in store for that kind heart, as we know : 
 the loss of his wife, and the crash of his 
 material fortunes. We need not distress 
 ourselves by thinking of them. They were 
 some years off, and it happened that this 
 visit to London in 1820 was the last he 
 spent in Piccadilly. Only memories of 
 kindness and joy, and zest in life, and a 
 multitude of honours and interests, had the 
 bay- fronted house at the corner of White- 
 horse Street for him, and only on these need 
 we muse as we think of him in Piccadilly. 
 
HARRIOT MELLON 205 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 HARRIOT MELLON 
 
 Heads I may, tails I mayn't. Heads it is. 
 When you have to settle a point in casuistry 
 for practical purposes, and really cannot 
 make up your mind, the spin of a coin is 
 as good a method as another. Deliberately 
 to break my rule against turning up side- 
 streets would make the whole affair chaotic 
 and amorphous. If in this case, why not in 
 others ? But then there had been material 
 for a book five times as long, which it was 
 not convenient for me to write. In the case 
 of the Coutts house, however, it was doubt- 
 ful if the rule applied. It is numbered No. 
 1 Stratton Street, but it might just as well 
 have had a number in Piccadilly, even as 
 Bath House, which has its entrance in 
 Bolton Street. Its portly side bulges along 
 the Piccadilly pavement. I think any doubt 
 
206 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 of its proper inclusion was one fairly to be 
 submitted to a coin ; but perhaps if we have 
 occasion to look inside, we ought to clamber 
 up the railings in Piccadilly and not go in 
 by the Stratton Street door. 
 
 It would have been hard to forego such 
 a glorious, gorgeous creature as Harriot 
 Mellon, who became Mrs. Coutts, and after- 
 wards Duchess of St. Albans. Her bright, 
 comely face and jolly presence are, in their 
 way, as joyful a memory of Piccadilly as 
 Walter Scott's wiser geniality, whom it is 
 meet that she should follow in my pages, 
 since they were great friends in their lives. 
 
 To write much of her earlier history is 
 beyond my province, but something of it 
 you must know if you are rightly to ap- 
 preciate her. If you would know more, I 
 commend to you the two volumes about her 
 published in 1839, soon after her death, by 
 Mrs. Cornwall Barron- Wilson, reasonably 
 well written, and full of curious glimpses 
 of the life led by poor strolling players and 
 successful London players of those days, 
 with their patrons and parasites. There's 
 her mother, for example, a character I 
 wonder Thackeray never made his own — 
 
MATER PULCHRIOR 207 
 
 an Irish peasant turned hanger-on of the 
 boards, enormously vain, violent, greedy, 
 exceeding beautiful, not -without a sense 
 of duty towards her daughter, and full of 
 great ambitions for her. She was the more 
 beautiful of the two, as Harriot always 
 maintained, a brunette like her daughter, 
 but with a fine oval face, whereas Harriot's 
 was of a merry Irish roundness ; like her 
 daughter she had beautiful teeth, and black 
 hair, and a sweet voice. As for Mellon pere, 
 he was an agreeable mystery. The known 
 fact was that a handsome young man, calling 
 himself Lieutenant Mathew Mellon, came to 
 Cork, where Harriot's mother was a girl in 
 a mantua shop, and became the father of 
 Harriot. The mother said, firstly, that he 
 made her an honest woman, and secondly, 
 that his name was not really Mellon at all, 
 but that he was a great young man incog- 
 nito. Harriot, a person of sense, liked to 
 believe the former statement, and laughed 
 at the latter. But her mother, though she 
 never saw Mr. Mellon again, insisted always 
 on his noble birth — why did not Thackeray 
 draw her ? — and would end her scoldings of 
 Harriot with ' You to do so, Harriot, with 
 
208 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 such high blood in your veins ! ' Like many- 
 other excellent comedians in private life, 
 she was no use on the boards, never in fact 
 got beyond being dresser and money-taker. 
 Whether she married Mr, Mellon or not, 
 it is certain that she married, a few years 
 later, one Mr. Entwistle, who is pleasantly 
 described by Mrs. Barron-Wilson as 'the 
 son of a very respectable person, who 
 occasionally played the organ at Wigan.' 
 Music ran in the family, more or less, for 
 our Mr. Entwistle performed in the orchestra 
 at the theatre. Otherwise, he was not of 
 much account. When Harriot became pros- 
 perous she got him the position of post- 
 master at Cheltenham, where he passed his 
 declining years in the neglect of his duties 
 and the consumption of beer. I must not 
 linger over these good people, but it is to 
 be said for them that though they were not 
 always kind to poor Harriot — the mother 
 was often brutal — and were always eager to 
 sponge on rich Harriot, they educated her 
 as well as they could, and were efficient 
 guardians of her respectability. 
 
 Few young women have been better fitted 
 than Harriot Mellon was to make the best 
 
AT THE LANE 209 
 
 of the rough and tumble in a strolling 
 player's life. She had health and high 
 spirits. Like her mother, she was hot- 
 tempered, but, at this period at least, she 
 was placable and, then and always, the 
 soul of good-nature. She was popular with 
 her comrades, and made good friends with 
 ' respectable ' people, whom her playing first 
 attracted, and her merry, kindly nature con- 
 firmed, in affection. She was bred to live 
 hardly when it was needful, and born to 
 live heartily when it was possible. Yes, 
 beyond question, Harriot enjoyed herself 
 very well as a strolling player. Also, she 
 was a good girl. 
 
 It was at Stafford that the great Mr. 
 Sheridan saw her, and promised her an 
 engagement at Drury Lane. He was mem- 
 ber for Stafford then, in 1794, and had 
 come down to act as steward for the races. 
 But Sheridan's promises were frail things, 
 and it took much reminding from con- 
 stituents who loved Harriot before he kept 
 this one. Eventually, however, he kept it ; 
 and three years later she was installed in 
 Drury Lane. And there she stayed for 
 twenty years. It is improbable that she 
 
210 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 was anything like a great actress. She was 
 fortunate in having been brought up to read 
 for herself, and to admire, and in having a 
 quick and retentive memory. A 'quick 
 study ' was, in those days, when plays 
 changed so often, more valuable than now, 
 and Miss Mellon profited much by the 
 accidental or unforeseen abstention of others. 
 Then she was clever, and had constitution 
 and good looks. Not that she was a great 
 beauty : she was, a contemporary player 
 records, ' merely a countrified girl, blooming 
 in complexion, with a very tall, fine figure, 
 raven locks, ivory teeth, a cheek like a 
 peach, and coral lips.' Ah well, these be 
 good things truly, even though, as he says, 
 all they put you in mind of was ' a country 
 road and a pillion.' Naturally, though she 
 played a multitude of parts, she was best 
 in country, bouncing ones — was a famous 
 Audrey, and a splendid Peggy in The 
 Country Qirl. 
 
 I cannot keep my hands ofi" one behind- 
 the-scenes story, because it gives one the 
 air and atmosphere of the life, and brings in 
 Dicky Suett, a comedian whom Charles 
 Lamb has made a lovable memory. She 
 
'PEGGY child; 211 
 
 was playing Lydia Languish, and deter- 
 mined to make up fair, for like other 
 brunettes, as Mrs. Barron - Wilson says, 
 Harriot, of all things, admired a transparent 
 complexion. So she covered her face with 
 powder, and covered the powder with rouge, 
 and made herself a perfect fright, and so 
 played a couple of acts. Dicky, who was 
 to act later in the evening, watched her 
 from the front, and came round to remon- 
 strate. ' Why, Peggy child,' — I suppose he 
 called her Peggy from her famous part — 
 ' what a fright you have made yourself ! Your 
 little nose, glaring with white, looks broader 
 than it is long, and as for your fat cheeks, 
 they look like two of your landlady's muffins. 
 How dare you put on so much white paint 1 ' 
 Harriot said indignantly that it was only a 
 little powder, but Dicky persisted. ' J ust 
 let me lengthen the corners of your mouth 
 upwards, and then you will be ready to act 
 as clown in the pantomime. Go and wash 
 your pretty face, Peggy ; go and wash your 
 nice, brown, merry face ! ' And Harriot, 
 furious, but knowing that Dicky knew, went 
 to do as she was told. Alas ! washing only 
 made the matter worse, for the powder 
 
212 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 turned into little rolls all over her face. 
 She was barely made presentable in time, 
 but Dicky Suett applauded. ' You bear a 
 scolding very well, Peggy, and you 've played 
 your character very well also. Now go home 
 and eat some muffins.' One has the idea of 
 a cheerful, homely little society behind the 
 scenes of the great theatre, and that leading 
 ladies of those days did not adopt what they 
 believed to be the airs of great ladies. 
 
 Yet a great lady ' Peggy child ' was to be ; 
 for towards the end of her time at the Lane 
 there entered the figure of Mr. Coutts, the 
 great banker. Of himself I have not very 
 much to say. His record is one for Mr. 
 Samuel Smiles's pages rather than for mine. 
 Men who come from Scotland young and 
 poor, and die enormously rich in London, 
 command my respect, but not necessarily 
 my affection. It is to be said in Thomas 
 Coutts's favour that since his first wife was 
 a housemaid, and his second an actress, he 
 seems to have had the courage to ' live his 
 own life,' which should be possessed by 
 those who live in Piccadilly. He was not a 
 vulgarian either. Rich and self-made men 
 of his generation were frankly proud of 
 
ENTER COUTTS 213 
 
 their riches (and, on the whole, I prefer that 
 to the bland irony about money practised by 
 their successors) ; but if Thomas Ooutts 
 made no secret of his wealth when he enter- 
 tained his friends — and I think the joyous 
 Harriot helped to reveal it — he was a man 
 of taste and dignity. He loved to be taken 
 for a poor man. In those happy days for 
 millionaires, charity might be promiscuous 
 and casual, and unscientific ; you could go 
 out in poor array, and some charitable and 
 really poor man would press a guinea on 
 you, and you, slyly chuckling, would go 
 home and drop him a handsome cheque. 
 Such things are recorded of Thomas Coutts. 
 A lean, ailing, shabbily-dressed figure with 
 a kind face — that is Thomas Coutts if you 
 meet his ghost at the corner of Stratton 
 Street. 
 
 He was a very old man when he en- 
 countered Harriot Mellon. It might not 
 be unfair to speak of senile passion, but I 
 think his love was mainly a strong fatherly 
 affection. And if it is not uncharitable, 
 either, to suppose that she looked with joy 
 to marrying this wealthy old man when his 
 wife, who was a lunatic, should die, she 
 
214 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 certainly had for him a true affection. Her 
 manner towards him and her tone in speak- 
 ing of him were always perfect, always 
 dutiful and grateful. When at last his wife 
 died, he was for marriage at once, but she 
 would not. She consented at length to a 
 private marriage in order to nurse him 
 through a serious illness, and the marriage 
 was publicly announced and celebrated on 
 March 2, 1815. She had taken leave of 
 Drury Lane for ever, where one of her last 
 actions was secretly to relieve the necessities 
 of Edmund Kean at the beginning of his 
 career. 
 
 So behold Harriot installed at No. 1 
 Stratton Street, Piccadilly. It is pleasant 
 to think of her there, frankly enjoying her 
 wealth and splendour and the good things 
 of life, generously sharing them with her 
 friends. She was nearing forty now, and 
 the fine figure was something filled out, but 
 she was handsome and Hvely and hearty. 
 Great was the hospitality in Piccadilly, and 
 at Holly Lodge, Highgate, and at Brighton : 
 hospitality sometimes abused, but taken 
 very kindly by the great world. Royal 
 Dukes came, but old friends were not sent 
 
EXIT COUTTS 215 
 
 away. There are various stories of the 
 Coiitts's menage. Gronow has one of the 
 eminent jeweller, Hamlet, being brought 
 into the dining-room while they were at 
 dinner, and showing a magnificent diamond 
 cross, which had been worn the day before 
 at the coronation of George iv. by the Duke 
 of York. Harriot admired it, and Hamlet 
 wanted for it £15,000. 'Bring me a pen 
 and ink,' cried Thomas Coutts. Well, we 
 should call it vulgar now ; but it is pleasant 
 (as we stand on the railings in Piccadilly 
 and look in at the window) to observe the 
 smiling old gentleman, the grateful Harriot, 
 the admiring guests. Very likely, though, 
 there is a touch of malice in Gronow here. 
 There 's another story of Harriot's dressing 
 up as Morgiana and prancing about with a 
 dagger. All very joUy and gay. 
 
 Mr. Coutts was eighty when he married, 
 but he enjoyed Harriot's society till 1822, 
 when he left her his fortune. She continued 
 her generous, expansive, somewhat flam- 
 boyant life. It was not all untroubled : the 
 lives of those who have shot up like rockets 
 are seldom untroubled. Blackmailers marked 
 her for their prey, especially blackmailing 
 
216 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 ' literary ' blackguards. One of them wrote 
 The Secret Memoirs of Harriot Pumpkin, 
 which, was bought up. As a rule she 
 resisted these gentry with a stout front, 
 and affected a brave indifference, keeping on 
 her table the rags which printed paragraphs 
 about her. Another trouble was that her 
 health was no longer so splendid as it had 
 been, and she lamented that she might no 
 more drink a glass of bitter beer — even as 
 Byron, much about the same time, was 
 lamenting the absence of beer in Italy. 
 But I think we can be sure that she enjoyed 
 herself pretty thoroughly. She gave much — 
 much openly, and more in private — as kind 
 in her way, though far less wisely, as the 
 beneficent lady, her husband's granddaugh- 
 ter, who died in Stratton Street so lately. 
 But it is idle to pretend that the good Mrs. 
 Coutts was not ostentatious, and indeed I 
 think it more fitting to the jolly, radiant 
 picture of her that she should have been. 
 Walter Scott, her friend, said she was 
 'without either affectation or insolence in 
 the display of her wealth,' and no doubt he 
 spoke truly. There was no insolence in the 
 display : she just enjoyed her wealth frankly 
 
HARRIOT IN EXCELSIS 217 
 
 and openly, but display there was. Lock- 
 hart describes her arrival at Abbotsford. 
 ' Although she was considerate enough not 
 to come on him with all her retinue (leaving 
 four of the seven carriages with which she 
 travelled to Edinburgh), the appearance of 
 only three coaches, each drawn by four 
 horses, was rather trying to poor Lady Scott. 
 They contained Mrs. Coutts, her future lord, 
 the Duke of St. Albans, one of his Grace's 
 sisters, a dame de compagnie, vulgarly called 
 a " toady," a brace of physicians, for it had 
 been considered that one doctor might him- 
 self be disabled in the course of an expedi- 
 tion so adventurous ; and besides other 
 menials of every grade, two bedchamber 
 women for Mrs. Coutts's own person, she 
 requiring to have this article also in dupli- 
 cate, because in her widowed condition she 
 was fearful of ghosts, and there must be one 
 Abigail for the service of the toilette, a 
 second to keep watch by night.' If Dicky 
 Suett could have foreseen all this when he 
 told ' Peggy child ' to go and wash her pretty 
 face ! The superstition, by the way, — if in 
 these obscurantist days one is allowed to 
 call anything superstition — is truly alleged : 
 
218 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 she had many superstitions, not being born 
 of an Irish peasant and bred on the stage 
 for nothing. I like the story of this Abbots- 
 ford visit. There were several ladies ' of 
 high birth and rank ' in the house, and these 
 were sniffy and stuffy, as we say, with poor 
 Mrs. Coutts. Happily for her, Walter Scott 
 was a gentleman : he took a marchioness 
 aside after dinner and told her plainly that 
 if she and the others were not disposed to 
 be agreeable to his guest they ought to have 
 left before she came. She told the others 
 and they came to heel, and presently Mrs. 
 Coutts, her sensitiveness appeased, was 
 telling stories of the stage, and joining in 
 the ' Laird of Cockpen.' 
 
 But we must get back to the corner of 
 Stratton Street, which was soon to have a 
 new inmate in the Duke of St. Albans. 
 Mrs. Barron- Wilson gratifies sentiment in 
 saying that he fell in love with Mrs. Coutts 
 And why not ? I, too, might have fallen in 
 love with her— at his age, for he was much 
 younger than she : at mine, if the dogmatists 
 about these things say true, one would have 
 loved her better when she was ' Peggy child.' 
 And if the sentimentalists demand it, there 
 
TWO WORLDS 219 
 
 is no reason why she should not have loved 
 the duke. Let us suppose that the fair 
 exchange of rank and money was merely a 
 convenient addition to a union of hearts. 
 In our days, when rank means so much less, 
 a renowned mistress of millions would not 
 be thought to have made a tremendous 
 advance in becoming a duchess. Then, of 
 course, it was a nine days' marvel, and even 
 now it seems a pretty, picturesque end to an 
 old tale — the old tale, eternally new, of the 
 humble being exalted. 
 
 However much she may have loved her 
 duke, Harriet cared little for his milieu. 
 She contrasted it with the atmosphere of 
 the boards, where it was ' all cheerfulness, 
 all high spirits, all fun, frolic, and vivacity,' 
 whereas here, everything was ' weary, stale, 
 flat, and unprofitable.' The friend she was 
 speaking to made the tactless suggestion 
 that the difierence was only that she was 
 older, but Harriot would not have it : 'In 
 high life,' said she, ' there is no such thing 
 as youth ; people are old when they first 
 come out ; they are too fine and fastidious 
 to enjoy anything.' Since youth is always 
 youth, it would seem that the youth of her 
 
220 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 new circle was not frank and familiar with 
 Harriot, which was stupid on its part and a 
 great pity. 
 
 Ten years of her duke and his milieu she 
 had, and then she died, in 1837, at the age 
 of sixty. She fell ill at Holly Lodge, but 
 insisted on being taken to Stratton Street. 
 They made her bed in the drawing-room, for 
 the advantage of the air, but she bade them 
 take her to Mr. Coutts's room, to die on his 
 bed. When Lady Guilford, one of Mr. 
 Coutts's daughters, came to her, she said 
 that he had taken the shape of a little bird, 
 singing at her window, just as he said he 
 would if he could, and it is related that the 
 old man had really made her this strange 
 promise on his death-bed, and that even 
 when well and strong she had believed in 
 it, and would be happy when a bird had 
 fluttered near her window. The vulgar 
 cynics had laughed, but here at least we 
 are, I think, at one with the biographer in 
 seeing true love and kindness. Yes, it is 
 a strange and true romance, that of old 
 Tom Coutts and his Harriot, a strange and 
 gracious memory for Piccadilly. 
 
SOME OTHER PEOPLE 221 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 SOME OTHER PEOPLE 
 
 Had I been willing to pad my book, this 
 chapter, with a tolerably plausible demand 
 on the reader's patience, might have served 
 me for three or four. A long chapter, 
 assuredly, might have been written on 
 Charles Fox, who had a Piccadilly lodging 
 with his friend, Richard FitzPatrick, for a 
 while in his youth. But it would not really 
 have been fair. It is only for that while in 
 his youth that Charles belongs by right of 
 domicile to Piccadilly, and I really must not 
 take you through his career and discourse 
 on his matured character. Then there is 
 George Selwyn in exactly the same case. 
 And Beckford, that weird, wonderful, morbid 
 creature — he, too, is said to have lived here 
 for a time, but he does not truly belong to 
 our theme. Yet I hope you will not grudge 
 me a short chapter between them. 
 
222 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 I permit myself, then, a rough sketch of 
 Charles Fox as he was when he and Fitz- 
 Patrick took lodgings at one Mackie's, an 
 oilman. Precisely where Mackie's was, I 
 have not been able to discover, but we may 
 take it to have been east of St. James's 
 Street, and handy for Brooks's. It was 
 prophesied that Charles and his friend would 
 ruin the unfortunate oilman, but George 
 Selwyn said no, they would make his for- 
 tune, 'for he will have the credit of having 
 the finest pickles in his house of any man in 
 London.' So he had — no doubt whatever. 
 Never lived a finer pickle than Charles Fox 
 in his youth since Mark Antony in his ; 
 but Antony was a less agreeable mixture. 
 Never was there such a gay and sanguine 
 and splendid plunge into all the pleasures of 
 life, as when Charles Fox came upon the 
 town in 1767 or so. It makes one almost 
 young and ardent to think on it. He had 
 inextinguishable spirits, a beautiful tem- 
 perament, an iron constitution ; he was in- 
 dulged and adored by his friends, men and 
 women alike ; he had ambition and a certainty 
 of achieving it ; he had a zeal for pleasure 
 both hot and catholic, learning and taste 
 
CHARLES FOX 223 
 
 withal, judgment and humour ; life opened 
 before him many- coloured and dazzling, 
 and he was not yet twenty. Picture him 
 coming out of Mackie's of an afternoon, 
 only just up, belike, having gone to bed at 
 a dreadful hour, but fresh and happy ; his 
 black eyes twinkling and bright with the 
 thought of the speech he is to make in the 
 House, or the money he is sure — alas, poor 
 Charles ! — he will win at Brooks's, or the 
 woman who will never resist him ; with the 
 swarthy face and the heavy, harsh features 
 that so belied his nature ; with a smile on 
 his lips and his whole aspect radiating 
 health and good temper. He, who was to 
 be known for his slovenly dress, is still in 
 his Macaroni period, and is wonderfully 
 and laboriously attired, wearing, very pro- 
 bably, the pattern of embroidered waist- 
 coat he had driven all the way from 
 Paris to Lyons to acquire. A gay figure 
 altogether. Oh yes, trouble is to come 
 upon him, long years of disappointment, 
 many waves of debt sweeping over him. 
 But the swarthy face will ever come up 
 smiling, and with him, truly, a cheerful 
 heart goes all the way. Like his contem- 
 
224 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 poraries, we will repress our insurgent 
 morality, realising that Charles is unique, 
 and being thankful so rich and genial a 
 nature should be. 
 
 It is interesting to note the influences 
 which had gone to fashion this prodigy of 
 genius and kindness and recklessness, who 
 was now freely to try his powers on so great 
 a stage at a time of life at which, nowadays, 
 he would be called a boy for the next ten 
 years or so. He was the son of a capable, 
 unscrupulous, kindly man and a high-spirited 
 woman. His mother (Lady Caroline Lennox) 
 was a great-granddaughter of Charles the 
 Second, and a fanciful writer has indulged 
 in a parallel between the King and the later 
 prodigal, remarking traits common to both, 
 such as a love of walking and a power of 
 ready sleep, and hard features contradicting 
 a soft nature. There may not be much in 
 the speculation, but these alleged ' throw- 
 backs ' are a rather attractive study. Another 
 point in Charles's parentage is that his grand- 
 father, old Stephen Fox, who started life as a 
 choir-boy, saw the execution of Charles the 
 First, and begot Henry, Charles's father, 
 when, he was seventy-six. He had married 
 
A JUDICIOUS PARENT 225 
 
 his first wife when young, and a daughter 
 of that marriage died a baby. Lady Sarah 
 Lennox, Lady Caroline's sister, whom George 
 the Third wished to marry, and who was the 
 mother of the Napiers, did not die till 1826; 
 consequently, as Sir George Trevelyan says, 
 the tradition may well be true that Charles 
 Fox had two aunts who died a hundred and 
 seventy years from each other. (My apolo- 
 gies : I know it is irrelevant, but I cannot 
 resist that sort of anecdote.) Henry Fox 
 and Lady CaroHne made a runaway match 
 of it, and the affair was a great scandal. 
 They did not repent at leisure, but lived in 
 unbroken happiness for more than thirty 
 years, so that Charles had the unspeakable 
 advantage of living his babyhood and boy- 
 hood in a peaceful and affectionate home. 
 
 And then we come to the strange and 
 almost unique facts of his upbringing. There 
 have been other indulgent fathers besides 
 Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland, but 
 none, so far as records go, who carried in- 
 dulgence so far as he. His theory of the 
 proper management of children was, that 
 they should have everything they wanted, 
 and do whatever they chose. An old story. 
 
226 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 true or false, really epitomises his treat- 
 ment : Charles said he was going to destroy 
 a watch ; and ' well, if you must, I suppose 
 you must,' said his judicious father. Charles 
 decided for himself that he would go to 
 school at Wandsworth and later to Eton, 
 and so forth. For my part, I think all this 
 a fault on the right side, given a sensible 
 and affectionate child, as Charles was ; 
 another might have grown into a monster of 
 selfishness and callousness, but Charles (reck- 
 less and unthinking as he might be at the 
 moment) was never that. And the mischief 
 had surely much to compensate it in that 
 atmosphere of fondness which was the 
 quality of Lord Holland's defect, and than 
 which parents can give their children no 
 more precious memory. ' I dined at home 
 to-day tete-a-tite with Charles, intending to 
 do business, but he has found me pleasanter 
 employment. I grow immoderately fond of 
 him.' Charles was rising three when that 
 was written. 
 
 Unfortunately, Lord Holland's theory was 
 not followed just when it should have been. 
 When Charles first went to Eton he was a 
 good boy, anxious to learn ; his affectionate 
 
AND HIS SYSTEM 227 
 
 father took him away from his books to Spa, 
 sent him nightly with a pocket of gold to 
 the gaming-table — that pretty, gaudy, gay 
 room, I suppose, which Belgian kill -joys have 
 lately abolished : I can see the boy punting 
 in it — and if Charles's biographer. Lord John 
 Russell, recorded truly, arranged for him to 
 take a still more serious step in a man of the 
 world's education. It is not surprising to 
 learn that the discipline of Eton suffered on 
 Charles's return. The same thing happened 
 with Oxford. He wanted to read, but his 
 reading was interrupted in the same manner. 
 ' Charles is now at Oxford, studying very 
 hard, after two months at Paris, which he 
 relished as much as ever. Such a mixture 
 was never seen, but, extraordinary as it is, it 
 seems likely to do very well.' So wrote the 
 judicious parent, and presently followed the 
 two months with two years on the Conti- 
 nent. The wonder is that Charles read at 
 all; but read he did, and gained scholarship 
 enough to give him a solace and pleasure ail 
 his life. You cannot calculate the effects of 
 system on genius, and I do not doubt that 
 Lord Holland could have made a lively 
 defence of his. If the reader would know 
 
228 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 more about it all, he must go to Lord John 
 Russell, or preferably, I think, to the fine 
 and sagacious work (granted its Whiggery) 
 of Sir George Trevelyan. I shall be accused 
 of padding, as it is. 
 
 So, this strange education over, his 
 novitiate in gambling and raking done, 
 ardent for more, a store of scholarship in 
 his head, more than one foreign language 
 fluent and correct on his lips, hearty and 
 brilliant, in a way a finished man of the 
 world, not yet twenty, Charles Fox came 
 to the shelter of Mackie the oilman, in 
 Piccadilly. With him came Richard Fitz- 
 Patrick, like him in tastes and habits, of 
 creditable parts, distinguished for a peculiar 
 sweetness and grace of manner — Old Q. 
 left him a legacy merely as a recognition 
 of it — but remembered chiefly as Fox's 
 bosom friend. I may add a word about 
 his after life, since it is, I fear, more or less 
 forgotten. He served with credit in the 
 American War, of which he disapproved, 
 but put his duties as a soldier before his 
 opinions as a politician, and was of some 
 account as a writer, being author of the 
 
FITZPATRICK 229 
 
 best part of the Rolliad. Also he spoke 
 on occasion in Parliament. But mostly he 
 was a man of pleasure — his own and others', 
 for he was universally popular. He could 
 not stand the pace as Charles stood it. The 
 gossip Creevey was present in 1803 at a 
 meeting of Fox's friends, including Fitz- 
 Patrick, and says they had ' all the air of 
 shattered debauchees ' — all but the indomit- 
 able Charles ; for ' the old leader of the 
 gang might really pass for the pattern and 
 effect of domestic good order.' However, he 
 lived till 1813, and we have it on the same 
 authority that his last words were ' la pifece 
 est finie,' uttered in the usual cool and 
 determined tone. Creevey adds that he 
 was ' by far the most clever of the quiet 
 class I have ever seen, and the most perfect 
 judgment of any class.' 
 
 How did the gay and humorous Charles, 
 and the quiet and sweet-mannered Richard, 
 pass their time when they lived in Picca- 
 dilly? Cards, as we know, consumed a 
 terrible amount of it, and all the money 
 they could borrow. Remembering their 
 youth and their persistent ill luck, one 
 can hardly doubt that they were plundered, 
 
230 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 especially since it was at games of pure 
 chance that they always lost : had he stuck 
 to whist and piquet, Charles, it was said, 
 would have made an income by his skill. 
 Then, as a consequence, there were hours 
 spent in the dismal offices of the cent, 
 per cent, fraternity, arranging complicated 
 systems of bonds and annuities, and heaven 
 knows what devices. Then the bottle, I 
 am afraid, consumed time and health to a 
 deplorable extent, and much time went in 
 wagering ^ — not always unconnected with 
 the former pursuit, as the signatures in 
 the betting-book at Brooks's occasionally 
 testify. Horse-racing, if not less obnoxious 
 to morality, was at least an amusement less 
 harmful to health. And, of course, it would 
 be absurd to pretend that there was not 
 on the scene an appearance, now and then, 
 of some Perdita Robinson or other. The 
 House of Commons had to take its chance 
 with all this, but political ambition was 
 less exigent in those days than it is now. 
 At this time, Charles was in his chrysalis 
 state as a supporter of the wicked Duke 
 of Grafton — whose vices, I regret to say, 
 failed to shock him — and a bulwark of 
 
AMATEUR ACTORS 231 
 
 privilege and corruption. It was a colt's 
 exercising canter; when he took to real 
 racing he found out what he really thought. 
 There remains one occupation to notice, 
 which is agreeably innocent in the midst of 
 all this rakishness. Charles and his friends 
 were devoted to 'amateur theatricals,' and 
 took them with the profound gravity and 
 sense of importance which that fashion 
 seems always to impose on its followers. 
 They worked at acting with enthusiasm, 
 frequently exchanging parts. FitzPatrick 
 was the better of the two in ' genteel 
 comedy,' Fox in tragedy. It is probable, 
 by the way, that the training of memory 
 and voice his acting involved was of great 
 service to Fox afterwards as an orator, 
 because, as Sir George Trevelyan acutely 
 and truly remarks, he was the last man in 
 the world consciously to study for effect in 
 speaking. There is a tradition that Garrick 
 snubbed amateurs, and Sir George surmises 
 that Fox dropped acting when he became 
 a friend of the master. In any case, he 
 gave it up when he was twenty-four. But at 
 the period we are concerned with he took it 
 with immense seriousness, rebuking his elder 
 
232 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 brother for a falling oflP in enthusiasm and 
 persuading people to act wherever he went. 
 And so, gaily squandering his time and 
 money and splendid abilities in these various 
 distractions, I take my leave of the young 
 Charles Fox. 
 
 George Selwyn's sojourn in Piccadilly 
 was when he also was a young man, some 
 twenty years earlier than Charles Fox. In 
 1746, a correspondent writes to ' George 
 Selwyn, Esq., in Piccadilly opposite St. 
 James's Church,' and another in 1747 to 
 him 'at Mr. Lane's, in Piccadilly,' and I 
 think we may suppose it was the same 
 lodging. I trust the nearness of the church 
 profited George, but I am inclined to doubt 
 it. This was soon after the time when he 
 was ' sent down ' from Oxford for a prank 
 which the donnish view of the day con- 
 sidered blasphemous, and which in any case 
 was probably tipsy. In London he lived 
 the life of a man-about-town, and it was 
 long before the day when he gave up cards 
 as consuming too much of three good things, 
 time, health, and money. It was indeed 
 much the same life as Charles Fox's, only 
 
GEORGE SELWYN 233 
 
 led more indolently and ironically, and with 
 much less zest. 
 
 I think the evidence of the Selwyn cor- 
 respondence — those delightful four volumes 
 of letters to him, I mean ; for his own 
 letters, which the Historical MSS. Com- 
 mission unearthed some years ago, are all 
 of his later years — shows that he was much 
 the same as a young man as he always 
 was — a calm, amused, mocking, but not 
 unkindly George Selwyn, needing excite- 
 ment, and so gambling, but extremely vexed 
 with his folly when he lost ; a good friend, 
 an exceedingly inactive citizen. He can 
 hardly have developed at this time that 
 extraordinary worship of children which 
 later on distinguished him, but he had 
 already, I think, that morbid interest in 
 crime and criminals, and executions and 
 death generally, which report probably ex- 
 aggerated — as he, almost vehemently for 
 him, once protested — but which certainly 
 existed in him. ' If Mr. Selwyn calls,' said 
 the first Lord Holland, on his death-bed, 
 ' show him up : if I am alive, I shall be glad 
 to see him, and if I am dead, he will be glad 
 to see me.' It was a really curious trait, 
 
234 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 really hard to reconcile with his devotion to 
 youth and freshness and innocent gaiety. 
 Another he had — and paid a heavy toll in 
 chaff for — was rare in young men of that 
 day, or indeed of any day : except as friends, 
 he was absolutely indifferent to women. 
 Altogether, the psychology of George Selwyn 
 presents the attraction of the abnormal. He 
 is a graver ghost than the general for Picca- 
 dilly, even in his early days when he lived 
 there — a benevolent figure, greatly loved, 
 full of humour, and yet having about him 
 withal a faint, vague, intangible suggestion 
 of the sinister. 
 
 Any abnormality there may have been in 
 George Selwyn is slight indeed beside that 
 of William Beckford, who wrote Vatheh 
 so wonderfully well, and built ' Fonthill ' so 
 wonderfully foolishly. There was a strain 
 of madness in Beckford, we can hardly 
 doubt ; and by the way, George Selwyn 
 himself (seeing him, of course, when Beck- 
 ford was a very young man), prophesied 
 he would die in a madhouse. As a fact, 
 he only built one — for surely to impoverish 
 an immense fortune by building an enormous 
 
FANNY BURNEY 235 
 
 pile and stuffing it full of rare things, is an 
 action less than sane. A weird and definitely 
 sinister figure this, for all his imagination 
 and taste, one with whom it is not pleasant 
 to dwell. We need not, for he is only 
 vaguely said to have lived in Piccadilly, 
 and he does not belong to London at all. 
 He was one whose life the world was quite 
 content should be spent in privacy, and 
 Piccadilly is not a private place. 
 
 I want a nicer person to end the chapter 
 sweetly. Fanny Burney comes into mind. 
 Did she really live at No. 89, at the corner 
 of Half Moon Street ? I have Mr. Wheatley's 
 authority for saying so, but her biographers 
 are silent about it. Certainly she lived in 
 the neighbouring Bolton Street in the last 
 years of her life. But Mr. Wheatley says 
 she lived at 89 Piccadilly at the corner of 
 Half Moon Street — a house which had been 
 a tavern, giving its name to the street, 
 was in her time a linendraper's, and now, 
 after being a ' brush warehouse ' when Mr. 
 Wheatley wrote, is a linendraper's again, — 
 and I refuse to disbelieve him. It must 
 have been in her old age when she was 
 
236 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 M. D'Arblay's widow. The wit which had 
 inspired Evelina and her far more memor- 
 able diary no doubt remained with her, 
 though active no longer. Walter Scott, 
 who met her at this time, describes her as 
 ' an elderly lady, with no remains of personal 
 beauty, but with a simple and gentle manner, 
 a pleasing expression of countenance, and 
 apparently quick feelings. She told me 
 she had wished to see two persons — myself, 
 of course, being one, and the other George 
 Canning. This was really a compliment to 
 be pleased with — a nice little handsome 
 pat of butter made up by a " neat-handed 
 Phyllis" of a dairymaid, instead of the 
 grease fit only for cart-wheels, which one is 
 dosed with by the pound.' A charming old 
 lady to talk with, one cannot doubt, tell- 
 ing one demurely humorous stories of that 
 appalling dull Court of George the Third, 
 at which she had a post for some depressing 
 years, and commenting cleverly on things 
 in general. A nice, lady-like, and religious 
 person to stand beside and throw into relief 
 the irresponsible Charles, and the worldly 
 George, and the wonderful, weird Beckford. 
 
SOME OTHER HOUSES 237 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 SOME OTHER HOUSES 
 
 This is a book of personalities more than of 
 anything else, but one must not be too 
 exigent in the matter, or omit altogether 
 this or that building or event, because no 
 decisively individual person comes out of it. 
 Buildings, too, may have a personality of 
 their own, which, provided they are gone 
 from our visible life, may fit these pages. 
 There's the St. James's Hall, for example, 
 which stood for something definite while it 
 lived, and is now no more. ' When the lute 
 is broken, sweet sounds are remembered 
 not,' says Shelley, but many a lover of good 
 music must sigh as he passes in Piccadilly 
 the place where it stood. More often she 
 than he, I suppose, since one's recollection 
 of Monday Pops is of audiences mostly 
 feminine. For my part, I fear my associa- 
 tion with the hall chiefly relates to the 
 
238 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Christy Minstrels, whose agreeable mixture 
 of sentimental ballads and comic songs, 
 interspersed with the lively dialogue of the 
 funny man at the corner, and the serious 
 man in the middle, delighted my youth. 
 Dear creatures, I can stUl see the whites of 
 their eyes. Then there was the Egyptian 
 Hall on the other side of the way, so lately 
 abolished, where an earlier generation flocked 
 to Albert Smith, and a later to Maskelyne 
 and his wonders — happily still with us 
 somewhere else. And now am I rewarded 
 for my latitude, for by right of the Egyptian 
 Hall there comes to haunt Piccadilly a per- 
 sonality most distinct — sad, touching, and 
 tragical. I mean poor Haydon, the painter. 
 In 1846 he exhibited here his 'Burning 
 of Rome by Nero ' and ' The Banishment of 
 Aristides,' and at the same time, as the 
 luck of his life had it, Tom Thumb was 
 being shown here to our enthusiastic and 
 intelligent public. Poor Haydon ! ' They 
 rush by thousands,' he wrote in his diary, 
 ' to see Tom Thumb. They push, they 
 fight, they scream, they faint, they cry help ! 
 and murder ! and oh ! and ah ! They see 
 my bills, my boards, my caravans, and don't 
 
POOR HAYDON? 239 
 
 read them. Their eyes are open, but their 
 sense is shut. It is an insanity, a rabies, a 
 madness, a furor, a dream ! Tom Thumb 
 had 12,000 people last week. B. R. Hay- 
 don, 133|- (the |- a little girl). Exquisite 
 taste of the English people.' Two months 
 later he killed himself in his studio. Well 
 may his spirit linger here, where this last 
 failure — with the rejection of his cartoon for 
 the decoration of the Palace at Westminster 
 — finally broke his heart. 
 
 And yet I do not know if one should 
 speak of * poor Haydon,' for all his dis- 
 appointments and embarrassments. He 
 was a born and incessant fighter, and such 
 men generally find a pleasant savour in life. 
 Fighting debt and disappointment may be 
 sad work, but fighting people is glad work, 
 and Haydon was always fighting people. 
 Moreover, he was fighting Academicians, and 
 artists who fight Academicians always seem 
 to have a peculiar zesfc and delight in the 
 business. Nor, whatever his personal for- 
 tune, was he always unsuccessful in a cause. 
 When Lord Elgin brought the Marbles 
 which go by his name to London, and stored 
 them in Gloucester House — which was 137 
 
240 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Piccadilly — the Academicians pooh-poohed 
 them, and Haydon took the lead in en- 
 thusiastic eulogy, and, as we know, it was 
 Haydon who prevailed. Then, too, he 
 had a complete and indomitable belief in 
 himself, in all that he did and all that 
 he said. His theory of the painter's art— 
 which, to put it simply, was that portrait- 
 painting was rubbish, and that imaginative 
 historical pictures were ' high art,' the real 
 thing, has gone the way of other dead 
 'theories, and of his practice a specimen or 
 two may remain obscurely — one hangs in 
 a Strand restaurant — but he believed 
 thoroughly in both, and that alone is enough 
 to make a normally healthy man a happy 
 one. Again, his method of fighting debt, 
 which was simply incurring fresh debt, from 
 friends or patrons or money-lenders indiffer- 
 ently, however much it may prolong the 
 deplorable situation, does not involve, on 
 the whole, the maximum of discomfort. He 
 is said, with verisimilitude, if not with truth, 
 to have been the original of Charles Lamb's 
 great borrower, the man who went splendidly 
 forth borrowing and to borrow, who ' antici- 
 pated no excuse and found none.' The 
 
GLOUCESTER HOUSE 241 
 
 description of his appearance— ' a cheerful, 
 open exterior, a quick, jovial eye, a bald 
 forehead, just touched with grey (cana 
 fides) ' — applies to Haydon's, and can such 
 an appearance be that of an unhappy man ? 
 One pities the last moments, the tragic end, 
 which a definite malady of the brain induced, 
 but on the whole this was a happy man. I 
 revise my description of his ghost. Even in 
 Piccadilly, outside the scene of his defeat at 
 the Egyptian Hall, I think he still carries 
 himself bravely ; angry, no doubt, and per- 
 haps violent, but not ' poor Haydon.' 
 
 Being on this subject, we may as well go 
 down to the corner of Park Lane, where 
 stood Gloucester House until only the other 
 day. There was a scene of pleasant en- 
 thusiasm there when Haydon took Fuseli 
 to see the Elgin Marbles, and the latter 
 capped everything t'other enthusiast would 
 say, with his ' De Greeks were Godes ! de 
 Greeks were Godes ! ' Otherwise this house 
 was remarkable only as that of the late 
 Duke of Cambridge. As indomitable as our 
 painter in his way, he had happily — since 
 the Crimea — nothing personal to fight 
 against but Time, and Time had seldom a 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 tougher antagonist. It is agreeable to 
 think of this fine octogenarian, enjoying his 
 happy life, his stiff opinions, and his splendid 
 Guelph constitution to the last. 
 
 Let us cross the road. The Green Park 
 is not, as a whole, part of our subject, but 
 the Eanger's Lodge, or more properly the 
 Deputy-Ranger's Lodge, which stood inside 
 it, opposite Down Street, until 1841, was 
 numbered 150 Piccadilly. A cheerful, not 
 uncomely house to live in; white, with a 
 dome over part of it, surrounded by trees, 
 built in 1768 by Robert Adam, but designed, 
 according to a popular and rather improbable 
 belief, by George the Third. George Selwyn 
 wanted the Deputy-Rangership, so that he 
 might live opposite his friend Old Q., but 
 it was given to Lord William Gordon, one 
 of three remarkable brothers. 
 
 Really an interesting trio, those three 
 Gordons. The third, Lord George, dwarfs 
 the others in notoriety, for he was the Lord 
 George of the Gordon Riots. Of course, it 
 may not be the kind of distinction a famUy 
 would most care about, that a member of it 
 should incite a mob of bigots, assisted by a 
 
DIVERS DISTINCTIONS 243 
 
 mob of criminals, to terrorise London for 
 days, and burn an immense amount of pro- 
 perty, and that he should subsequently be 
 sentenced to Newgate for a libel on the 
 Queen of France, and die there, a convert to 
 Judaism : the distinction, however, cannot 
 be denied. The eldest brother, the third 
 Duke of Gordon, wrote that excellent and 
 famous song, ' There 's cauld kail in Aber- 
 deen,' and ducal poets are not frequent. 
 Also, he was the husband of Jane, the rival 
 on the Tory side — an inferior rival, it must 
 be said, but still a rival — of Georgiana, 
 Duchess of Devonshire, on the Whig : a 
 handsome woman, this Duchess of Gordon, 
 and a very potent lady. A fair woman 
 illumines the life of our Lord William also, 
 none other than Lady Sarah Lennox, who 
 ran away with him from her first husband, 
 Sir Charles Bunbury, the father of the Turf 
 Their union was but temporary, and divorce 
 is not perhaps so rare an incident as poetry 
 — certainly was not then — in the life of 
 the aristocracy ; still, to run away with the 
 most beautiful woman of one's time, the 
 beloved of a king and the mother of heroes, 
 is a distinction — however much to be re- 
 
244 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 gretted, reader, by you or me — in the life of 
 any man. There is no mention of Lord 
 William in Lady Sarah's charming letters. 
 Her worthy and. affectionate husband and 
 her sons, the Napiers, may well have 
 banished from her mind all sentimental 
 regret for this lover of her youth ; whether 
 she left him, or he her, does not appear ; a 
 romantic reader is permitted to fancy her 
 sighing in after years when she went along 
 Piccadilly and passed the Ranger's Lodge. 
 Lord William did not die until 1823, when, 
 if I remember rightly. Lady Sarah was living 
 in London, old and blind. 
 
 We return to paint and painters for a 
 moment. Lord William Gordon had a 
 lovely daughter who sat to Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds for his ' Heads of Angels,' of which 
 most of us have seen a print, in 1786. The 
 picture was in the Lodge until Lord 
 William's death, and is now in the National 
 Gallery. It is somewhat melancholy to 
 relate that the original of the lovely child 
 in the picture died in the Lodge, an old maid, 
 in 1831. Ten years later. Lady William, 
 the last survivor of the household, died also, 
 and then the house was pulled down. Two 
 
SIR FRANCIS BURDETT 245 
 
 figures of fallow deer which adorned it, cast 
 in the old sculpture-yard in Engine Street 
 (now Brick Street), are all that remain of it, 
 or, so far as I know, of the famous yard 
 itself They are to be seen on either side 
 of Albert Gate, as you go into Hyde Park 
 at Knightsbridge. And of the Deputy- 
 Ranger's Lodge let so much have been 
 said. 
 
 We go up Piccadilly again as far, nearly, 
 as Stratton Street, because I have not yet 
 discoursed on the stirring and noisy event 
 which happened at No. 80 in 1809. 
 
 Sir Francis Burdett had married a 
 daughter of Thomas Coutts (by whom, as 
 everybody knows, he was the father of the 
 Baroness Burdett-Coutts), and lived next 
 door to his father-in-law. It is to the 
 credit of Thomas Coutts that he supported 
 his son-in-law in his political activity, by 
 which he had nothing to gain : on the con- 
 trary, it is said George the Third withdrew 
 his account from Coutts's bank when Thomas 
 had paid Sir Francis's election expenses. 
 Burdett was a sincere and disinterested 
 reformer of undoubted abuses, and even in 
 
246 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 his hey-day would have seemed to us a very 
 mild politician. In his later years he was 
 on the Conservative side. But up to 1830 
 or so he was regarded as a dangerous 
 Radical. 
 
 ' Who are now the people's men, 
 My boy Hobby ? 
 There 's I and Burdett — Gentlemen, 
 And blackguard Hunt and Cobby 0,' 
 
 as Byron said in the ballad which so in- 
 furiated his friend Hobhouse. The trouble, 
 which ended in one of the greatest uproars 
 Piccadilly has known, arose simply from 
 Burdett's printing and selling as a pamphlet 
 (after it had appeared in Cobbett's Register) 
 a speech he had made in the House of 
 Commons. The Government saw a chance 
 of annoying Sir Francis, who had so often 
 annoyed the Government ; he was accused 
 of breach of privilege, and the Speaker 
 issued a warrant for his arrest. 
 
 Then the fun began. Burdett refused to 
 surrender, and entrenched himself in No. 80, 
 which was garrisoned by volunteers. The 
 Government was not sure of its position, and 
 its lawyers did not know what to advise. 
 
AND HIS ADMIRERS 247 
 
 The very troublesome body known as ' the 
 Westminster mob ' — Westminster was Bur- 
 dett's constituency — saw its opportunity for 
 a congenial row and flocked to Piccadilly. 
 Then the Government turned out Life 
 Guards, in spite of the prayer of the Sheriff 
 Matthew Wood, and the Westminster Com- 
 mittee went to support Sir Francis with the 
 ingenious idea that the civil powers should 
 arrest the ofl&cers. What with this and 
 that, it is not surprising that there was a 
 riot, and Windham notes in his Diary : 
 ' Found Life- Guards hunted by and hunting 
 the mob ; good deal of disturbance.' There 
 must have been nearly as much noise and 
 hubbub in Piccadilly as the motor- omnibuses 
 make now. The Guards charged, and the 
 mob retaliated with the nickname ' Picca- 
 dilly butchers.' On the fourth day after 
 the issue of the warrant, No. 80 was forcibly 
 entered, and Sir Francis — who evidently 
 had a sense of drama — was found in an 
 attitude of studied calm, teaching one of 
 his children the provisions of Magna Charta, 
 and supported by the ladies of his family. 
 A verse of the day commemorates the 
 scene. 
 
248 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 ' The lady she sate and she played on her lute, 
 And she sang, " Will you come to the bower 1 " 
 The sergeant-at-arms had stood hitherto mute, 
 And now he advanced like an impudent brute. 
 And said, " Will you come to the Tower ? " ' 
 
 To the Tower they took him, and there 
 he stayed for several weeks, and when he 
 came out, Piccadilly enjoyed another rumpus. 
 People lined the streets all the way from 
 the Tower to Stratton Street, scaflFolding 
 was put up in Piccadilly, banners were made 
 ready with ' Magna Charta,' ' The Constitu- 
 tion,' ' Burdett for ever,' and so forth, in- 
 scribed on them, and the crowd looked 
 forward to an entertaining procession. Sir 
 Francis, however, seems to have had enough 
 fuss, and went away secretly from the Tower 
 by water, a neglect of a politician's first duty 
 which brought upon him much unpopularity. 
 But the crowd was not to be cheated ; it 
 expected a procession, and a procession it 
 would have. So an empty car, accompanied 
 by the banners, was dragged along to 
 Stratton Street, which it reached about 
 eight o'clock, and later on the mob really 
 enjoyed itself; it ordained a general illumi- 
 nation, and smashed the windows of those 
 
M. DE CALONNE 249 
 
 who refused to light up. So all ended 
 happily. 
 
 Sir Francis Burdett continued to be a 
 reforming member, and his house in Picca- 
 dilly was more than once the centre of an 
 uproar. Walter Scott was plagued by one 
 in 1820, as was told in the chapter on him. 
 Gradually, however, he ceased, becoming a 
 model fox-hunting country gentleman ; and 
 quiet, but for the cobble-stones and the 
 traffic, would have reigned outside No. 80. 
 
 I protest I have wellnigh exhausted the 
 private houses in Piccadilly which give us 
 personalities or events. I shall be grieved 
 if I am proved mistaken, but I think only 
 two remain. One was a very splendid 
 house, built on the sites of 146 and 147 
 towards the end of the eighteenth century, 
 and it housed a very splendid personage. 
 Monsieur Charles Alexandre de Calonne had 
 been Comptroller of Finances in France, and 
 brought with him something more material 
 than financial knowledge when he removed 
 to England in 1787. For he was able, his 
 excellent taste leading him to Piccadilly, to 
 take the two numbers mentioned, one not 
 
250 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 contenting him, and. to make a fine house of 
 the two, and to set about furnishing it in a 
 manner conforming. Unfortunately, he had 
 not time to finish a noble gallery for his 
 pictures, when the Hevolution broke out, 
 and loyalty sent him to Coblentz to join the 
 princes. His property also he devoted to 
 the cause, and his pictures were sold by 
 auction. So brief was the period of his 
 splendour in England, but he gives a fine 
 touch to 146 and 147. 
 
 The other house gives a dramatic and 
 lurid finish to this chapter. I have gone 
 for my knowledge about it, by the way, to 
 a source so little lurid and dramatic as The 
 Economic Journal for 1891, in which Mr. 
 Henry Higgs has an essay on Richard Can- 
 tillon. Richard Cantillon's importance for 
 the study of economics need not concern us : 
 it is enough to mention that he was of im- 
 portance among the Physiocrats, and had a 
 considerable influence on Adam Smith — in a 
 word, that he was distinctly somebody from 
 an intellectual and scientific point of view. 
 Like Calonne, a financier, like him also he 
 was a magnificent man. He was of an 
 ancient Irish family, but was always asso- 
 
MURDER AND ARSON 251 
 
 dated with France, where he made his money, 
 and he wrote his economic work in French. 
 He grew enormously rich by banking — his 
 enemies said by usury ; in fact, they went 
 so far as to prosecute him both in France 
 and England on this count. He won his 
 cases, but there is no doubt that he made 
 large sums by taking advantage of other 
 people's need for ready money : we won't 
 quarrel about names. In any case, he gained 
 much money and spent it splendidly. After 
 1720 he lived chiefly in London, but his 
 residence among us does not concern my 
 pages until 1734, when he was living in 
 Piccadilly, at the corner of Albemarle Street. 
 Having got him there, unlike Calonne we 
 need not, so to speak, let him go again, for, 
 in his house at the corner of Albemarle 
 Street, he was both murdered and burned. 
 
 On May 14— a Monday— 1734, Cantillon 
 supped in Queen Square, Westminster, and 
 at ten o'clock was set down at his own door. 
 The evidence of a servant tells us (in the 
 Old Bailey Sessions Papers) that 'for 
 about three weeks past his master had 
 taken the key of the street-door up into his 
 Bed-Chamber ; and (the Examinant) believes 
 
252 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 his reason for so doing was upon some Dis- 
 taste lie took to a Servant discharged three 
 weeks ago ; but that last night he left the 
 key, together with his watch, below in the 
 Parlour ; and believes it was on account of 
 this Examinant's being to go early in the 
 morning to take a Box for him in the Opera ' ; 
 a glimpse of his artistic tastes — ' because 
 that he gave him directions for that purpose 
 . . . his master last Night . . . undressed 
 himself in the Parlour as usual,' — I conjec- 
 ture the coldness of an English May — ' took 
 his candle and Book, and went up to Bed 
 soon after ; and told the Examinant he 
 would read.' 
 
 And then there was a fire, which consumed 
 the house and Cantillon with it. At first 
 his blameworthy practice of reading in bed 
 was supposed to have been the cause, but it 
 was found out afterwards that the discharged 
 servant of the narrative, one Joseph Denier, 
 alias Le Blanc, had entered the house with 
 the connivance of the other servants, had 
 murdered Cantillon, and set fire to the house, 
 after robbing it, to conceal the crime. He 
 escaped to Holland : the others were tried 
 and acquitted. Cantillon had had a great 
 
ON A MAY MORNING 253 
 
 reputation for wealth, and the Londoners of 
 that day thought his house must have been 
 full of money. And so we have a weird 
 picture for a Piccadilly May morning — 
 people bending over the ashes, sifting, sift- 
 ing them for gold. 
 
254 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE SHOPS AND THE TAVERNS 
 
 The prejudice against trade is quite a 
 modern sort of snobbishness. Down to 
 the eighteenth century — and there are later 
 instances still — it was common for country- 
 gentlemen to apprentice their younger sons 
 to tradesmen in the nearest town, and 
 every one knows that the City merchants 
 of old days were very often men of ancient 
 family and gentle breeding. When there 
 was a Court party in bitter opposition to 
 the City party, the prejudice had some 
 natural and excusable reason in it ; now- 
 adays, I imagine, its chief motive force is 
 the desire of people, in our tiresome and 
 incessant social scramble, to make the most 
 of their own advantage by insisting on a 
 social disability in others, and it exposes 
 its meanness and futility by ceasing im- 
 
WRIGHT'S 255 
 
 mediately when the trading is on a large 
 scale. Happily, it is nearly dead among the 
 intelligent, but its stupidity annoys me, and 
 I am sorry, therefore, that I cannot help to 
 slay it, in my remarks on the old shops of 
 Piccadilly, by pointing to a number of by- 
 gone tradesmen with beautiful, or at any 
 rate interesting qualities. Alas ! I cannot. 
 Men who build up and run successful 
 businesses have intelligence and strength 
 of character, and most often prudence and 
 temperance. But these are cold virtues, 
 not striking or picturesque. Their useful 
 lives are necessarily a little humdrum or so. 
 Nothing very passionate or romantic is likely 
 to be recorded of them. So one falls back 
 on the characters of the shops, which, of 
 course, may have an individuality of their 
 own, partly made up of association with 
 famous customers. Their present functions 
 — where they still exist — are of course beside 
 my theme, but they have ghostly memories. 
 Among the shops of Piccadilly, booksellers 
 have been from very early days honourably 
 prominent. There was Wright's at 169, 
 for example, where the Anti- Jacobin was 
 published, and where, indeed, the editors 
 
256 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 laboured on the first floor. I fear that few 
 of my readers, to whom this is news, are 
 likely to go and gaze reverently on the 
 building. Social satire, when it is really 
 good, is more or less for all time, but 
 political satire dies. "We all know 'The 
 Needy Knife-grinder,' but how many of us 
 know anything else which appeared in the 
 Anti- Jacobin'^ However, George Canning 
 was greater than the paper he inspired, and 
 Wright's shop (as Hatchard's a little later) 
 must have known him well. He lived, for 
 a while, nearly opposite, in Albany, and 
 must have been a famiHar figure crossing 
 Piccadilly. 
 
 In and outside Wright's shop there took 
 place a famous row — one might have had 
 a separate chapter on the rows of Piccadilly. 
 A violent row, but not on a great scale, like 
 Sir Francis Burdett's, or a romantic attempt 
 at murder, like Blood's on the Duke of 
 Ormonde, or even a gentlemanly row, like 
 my Lords Bath and Hervey's duel just inside 
 the Green Park ; only one of those unseemly 
 scuffles which were all that literary men — 
 in past ages, of course, I mean — were 
 generally able to accomplish. Gilford was 
 
A PAINFUL SCENE 257 
 
 a great critic and editor, as you know, and 
 Wolcot, known as ' Peter Pindar,' was also 
 a great critic, and they hated one another. 
 Gifford wrote an ' Epistle to Peter Pindar,' 
 in which he remarked that 
 
 ' Thou canst not think, nor have I power to tell 
 How much I scorn and loathe thee — so farewell.' 
 
 It was rather a boyish insult, and I can 
 lay my hand on my heart and say that if 
 any one said it to me I should laugh. Wolcot, 
 however, was furious, and waited for Gifford 
 outside Wright's, and rushing after him into 
 the shop gave him one on the nob with a 
 stick. But Gifford, who in boyhood had 
 used his hands at sea, and in a bootmaker's 
 shop, was too strong for Wolcot, and rolled 
 him in the gutter. I hope he did it without 
 assistance, but there is a regrettable mention 
 of a bystander's seizing Wolcot's arm. He 
 was really very silly to mind Gifford's loath- 
 ing him. 
 
 No such painful scene ever troubled the 
 peace of Hatchard's, which was originally 
 hard by, at 173. For my knowledge of 
 this famous shop's history, I am indebted 
 to an interesting book about it written by 
 
268 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Mr, Arthur Humphreys, who does well to 
 be proud that the business over which he 
 presides has such a long and full tradition. 
 01 the original Hatchard, however, who had 
 his training as a bookseller with the cele- 
 brated Tom Payne, and set up for himself 
 at 173 in 1797, paying £31, 10s. for the 
 goodwill, and £40 rent, I do not find much 
 to repeat. In fact, I think the most inter- 
 esting thing Mr. Humphreys gives us about 
 the man himself is a detailed description of 
 his dress, for that allows us to picture him 
 accurately as he moved among his customers. 
 ' He was invariably dressed in black. His 
 coat was of the style of a Bishop's frock- 
 coat, waistcoat buttoning to the throat with 
 an entirely plain front, and knee-breeches 
 and gaiters.' A most respectable figure 
 indeed. He did a thriving business in 
 pamphlets, publishing, in the very first 
 year, one which was an immense success, to 
 wit. Reform or Ruin: Take your Choice! 
 which appears to have been a spirited 
 exhortation to respectability, and was 
 written by no less a person than John 
 Bowdler, father of the more notorious 
 Thomas. Hatchard moved to 190 in 1801, 
 
HATCHARD'S 259 
 
 and later to, 187, where the business now is. 
 The political pamphlets were in the Tory 
 interest, and the people who frequented 
 Hatchard's to loaf and gossip there in the 
 pleasant fashion of that day, were mostly 
 on the Tory side. Sydney Smith glanced 
 at them with unkind humour in an Edin- 
 burgh Review article in 1810. 'There is 
 a set of well-dressed, prosperous gentlemen 
 who assemble daily at Mr. Hatchard's shop, 
 clean, civil personages, well in with the 
 people in power, delighted with every 
 existing institution, and almost with every 
 existing circumstance, and every now and 
 then one of these personages writes a little 
 book, and the rest praise that little book, 
 expecting to be praised in their turn for 
 their own little books, and of these little 
 books thus written by these clean, civil per- 
 sonages so expecting to be praised, the 
 pamphlet before us appears to be one.' We 
 have heard of such societies, mutually help- 
 ful in the book-pushing way, since that date 
 — equally clean and civil, let us hope. 
 
 Hatchard's was also the rendezvous of 
 societies more formally constituted. ' The 
 Royal Horticultural Society ' was formed 
 
260 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 there, and so was a much more amusing 
 society called the ' Outinian.' This was a 
 body for the promotion of marriages, an 
 object it was to attain by the dubious 
 process of inquiring into the suitability of 
 the contracting parties and supplying helpful 
 information to members who intended to 
 marry. It began its meetings by the con- 
 sumption of tea and buns. John Hatchard, 
 it appears, lent his initials as well as his 
 premises to this agreeable little institution, 
 and Mr. Humphreys wonders how he could 
 have mixed himself up in so absurd an affair. 
 I hope I may suggest, without disrespect to 
 the notoriously altruistic nature of publishers, 
 that John charged something. As for the 
 appearance of Hatchard's when the clean 
 and civil personages and the Outinians met 
 there, it was much as it is now, with a porch 
 outside for servants, a fireplace — those 
 features restored by Mr. Humphreys — a 
 table with the daily papers on it, and chairs 
 for the weary and sleepy. It was lit, of 
 course, by oil lamps. One may imagine 
 all sorts of celebrities buying books at 
 Hatchard's ; of those more particularly as- 
 sociated with it were Macaulay, who used 
 
SHOP AGAINST SHOP 261 
 
 to be sent in his youth to buy books there 
 by Hannah More ; Hannah herself, who 
 longed as a girl ' to go to London to see 
 Bishops and booksellers,' and William Wil- 
 berforce. 
 
 Booksellers, like brave men, need a bard 
 if their memories are to live, and it is thanks 
 to Mr. Humphreys that I have lingered over 
 Hatchard's. But there are others who at 
 least must be mentioned. Ridgway's was 
 already established when Hatchard went 
 to Piccadilly. Almon, opposite Burliagton 
 House also, was gone, succeeded by Debrett, 
 who had been in partnership with him. A 
 'Letter to Edmund Burke' in 1782, refers 
 pleasantly to ' that common sink of filth and 
 fiction, the shop of Almon and Debrett in 
 Piccadilly.' The reason of this description 
 was that Almon's, a great Whig firm, had 
 published the Letters in Favour of Wilhes, 
 etc., in 1764. I wish we had stiU those 
 political antagonisms in shops. 
 
 A shop which has followed Mr. Hum- 
 phreys' good example and issued an account 
 of itself, is that of Fortnum and Mason 
 — ministering to the body as Hatchard's 
 to the mind. ' A. M. B. ' has written an 
 
262 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 informing little brochure, with interesting 
 pictures, about Piccadilly and this ancient 
 house of good things to eat. It beats 
 Hatchard's, indeed, in point of antiquity, 
 for the business was started, appropriately, 
 in the days of Queen Anne, who, as we 
 know, liked tea — and things to eat and 
 drink generally — and it has been in Picca- 
 dilly for a hundred and fifty years. Stewart's, 
 too, the confectioner's at the corner of Bond 
 Street, is an ancient affair. But I want a 
 hero, as Byron says, or at least a character. 
 . . . ' I '11 therefore take our ancient friend ' 
 Hoby, the bootmaker, who was deservedly 
 thought a character in his day. My seem- 
 ingly irrelevant quotation was in fact a 
 sub-conscious inspiration, for there is a 
 reference to Hoby in one of Byron's letters. 
 It was in 1820, at the time of Queen 
 Caroline's trial, and Byron writes ; ' I hear 
 Mr. Hoby says that it makes him weep to 
 see her — she reminded him so much of 
 Jane Shore.' Jane Shore was a popularly 
 pathetic part in the theatre of the time, 
 but certainly it was not a happy simile for 
 Hoby to make, and Byron wrote a verse 
 on it. 
 
HOBY THE BOOTMAKER 263 
 
 ' Mr. Hoby the Bootmaker's soft heart is sore, 
 For seeing the Queen makes him think of Jane 
 
 Shore, 
 And in fact — ' 
 
 He has two lines more, but in another letter 
 he omits them, and so will I, on the whole. 
 Hoby was in business at 160 Piccadilly in 
 1808, as an advertisement in The Stranger's 
 Guide to London of that date informs us. 
 He was a humorist, Hoby, as well as a man 
 of sentiment. When a dissatisfied young 
 ensign threatened to leave him, he turned to 
 his shopman with an order to put up the 
 shutters, for that all was over, he was a 
 ruined man. A king among bootmakers 
 was Hoby. To discourse much further of 
 shops might bring me too near to writing a 
 stranger's guide to London of my own. But 
 I must not forego a compliment to Lincoln 
 Bennett's hat-shop, for the distinction of 
 standing where stood the house of Sir 
 William Petty, founder of the Lansdowne 
 family, and friend of Samuel Pepys. 
 
 One might think in one's haste that 
 taverns would make a livelier subject, but 
 the thoughtful reader is aware that few 
 reflections are more melancholy than those 
 
264 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 suggested by long-gone feasting and drink- 
 ing. It is sadder to think that those who 
 laughed, than that those who wept, are 
 dead. Happily, however, the local associa- 
 tions of good cheer have a way of persisting. 
 ' The White Bear Inn,' for example, had a 
 history of nigh two hundred years before it 
 disappeared, and the ' Criterion ' restaurant 
 keeps up the general association on its site. 
 ' The White Bear ' had memories of art about 
 it. Benjamin West lay there when he 
 arrived from America, and Luke Sullivan, 
 who engraved Hogarth's 'March to Finchley,' 
 died there. So died another engraver, one 
 Chatelain, in 1744. He had in excess what 
 I suppose the enemies of artists mean by the 
 artistic temperament. He engraved for Mr. 
 Toms, who paid him a shilling an hour ; 
 having worked for half an hour, he would 
 demand his sixpence, and spend it forthwith 
 in drink. As Mr. Wheatley says, this was 
 a very improvident man. Deus sit pro- 
 pitius. ... It was fitting he should die in 
 a tavern. There was a ' Black Bear ' as well 
 as a ' White Bear ' at this end of Piccadilly. 
 The black rival was nearly opposite until 
 1820 ; not knowing its exact site, I am fain 
 
TAVERNS 265 
 
 to hope some restaurant or other stands 
 on it. 
 
 There is no such doubt about ' The Gloster 
 Coffee-house and Hotel,' for that was at the 
 corner of Berkeley Street, where is now 
 'The Berkeley,' sometime called 'The St. 
 James's Hotel.' 'The Gloster' was a very 
 old house, and I find it flourishing in 1805, 
 when a dear little book, called The Picture 
 of London, advertises it as supplying 'good 
 soups, dinners, wines, and beds.' The soups 
 suggest a warm refreshment before starting 
 by coach in the morning, and of course these 
 Piccadilly inns were famous for coaching 
 connections. There was * The Three Kings ' 
 at No. 67, whence General Palmer started 
 the first mail-coach to Bath, and where 
 stands the present Hatchett's. There was 
 'The Old White Horse Cellar' at 155 ; the 
 ' Bitz ' now occupies that site. It is men- 
 tioned by Strype in 1720, and my Picture of 
 London tells us that ' this house is well 
 known to the public on account of the great 
 number of stage-coaches which regularly call 
 there. In a pleasant coffee-room passengers 
 can wait for any of the stages, and travellers 
 in general are well accommodated with beds.' 
 
266 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 One imagines, of course, a great deal of 
 bustle in these taverns and coffee-houses of 
 old : it has been called to life in books often 
 enough. The English, it is said — and truly, 
 I think — have grown more reserved in 
 manner, and certainly have grown more to 
 a pattern. One must imagine many more 
 eccentrics, much more shouting and advice 
 and protest and argument than one can hear 
 now at a railway station, more variety and 
 colour of dress, too, and altogether a livelier 
 and gayer scene. 
 
 While we are imagining, too, we must not 
 forget the commonplace that the taverns 
 were crowded with folk well acquainted with 
 one another and talking intimately together, 
 who now would go to clubs. That is still to 
 some extent the case with the ' lower classes,' 
 but with no others. Even Bohemia has left 
 the tavern for the club, although I have 
 known more than one public-house where 
 artists of one sort or another were to be 
 regularly found. Certainly no Squire 
 Western of to-day, coming to London, 
 would drink and collogue with the landlord 
 of an inn, as Fielding's Squire Western did 
 with him of 'The Hercules Pillars.' That 
 
WINSTANLEY'S 267 
 
 famous inn was at Hyde Park Corner, and 
 stood there as late as 1797, being mentioned 
 as early (by Wycherley, in his Plain Dealer) 
 as 1676. The great Marquis of Granby, 
 who gave his name to so many other inns, 
 used to frequent it ; and, as I said in my 
 first chapter, Sheridan and Captain Mathews 
 went there when they were interrupted in 
 their duel about the melodious Miss Linley. 
 There was many another tavern at Hyde 
 Park Corner — a ' Red Lion ' and a ' Golden 
 Lion,' and so forth — and, by the way, at the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century, a place 
 called ' Winstanley's Water Theatre,' where 
 mechanical contrivances astonished our 
 simple ancestors. It advertised as its great 
 attraction — in a Guardian of 1713 — '6 
 sorts of wine and brandy, to drink the 
 
268 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 a ghost started up before him. Winstanley's 
 ghost, if it walks, must pass from the scene 
 of his entertainment at Hyde Park Corner 
 up Piccadilly to the site of the Egyptian 
 Hall, and muse over conjuring improvements. 
 Man and his marvels pass away, and it is 
 not strange that Water Theatre and Egyp- 
 tian Hall should be gone. But it does seem 
 odd that of the eight, or so, public-houses 
 at Hyde Park Corner, not one remains. The 
 fact must sadden many a ghostly toper. 
 
THE CHURCH AND i THE END 269 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE END 
 
 It completes, so to say, the dignity of Picca- 
 dilly that St. James's Church should stand in 
 it. And it is fitting, I think, that with the 
 church my book should end. For whatever 
 better and happier thoughts a church may 
 suggest to others, to me at least it means, first 
 and last, an insistence on mortality. It is 
 always sad to come to the end of a thing one 
 loves, and in parting from Piccadilly, which 
 has been a labour of love to me to write 
 about, I cannot but feel a sorrow not alto- 
 gether sweet. St. James's Church and the 
 memorials of its dead are not an unfit theme 
 for my last chapter. 
 
 Not that the personal associations of the 
 church are all melancholy, by any means. 
 Harry Jermyn, who owned the ground on 
 which it is built, was only sad in another 
 
270 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 sense, and so was Charles the Second, who 
 issued the letters patent for it. Yet Death, 
 in a way, presided over its beginning, for 
 both Harry Jermyn (made Earl of St. Albans 
 and privately married to Henrietta Maria) 
 and Charles himself died while it was build- 
 ing. It was finished and consecrated in 
 1685. 
 
 To enter on an architectural disquisition 
 on its merits is happily not part of my duty. 
 The reader probably knows them, or he can 
 go see for himself I do not think it Sir 
 Christopher Wren's masterpiece, or fancy 
 that his ghost haunts it in preference to St. 
 Paul's. Quite the other way, in fact, for he 
 had architectural troubles in connection with 
 it. The steeple he designed was judged to 
 be too expensive, and one designed by a 
 carpenter in the parish, called Wilcox, which 
 cost £100 less, was preferred. Bitter 
 thoughts of Wilcox must occur to Wren if 
 he revisits his work. But he was proud of 
 the interior, and surely with justice. I 
 know many churches more sympathetic to 
 me, but the symmetry of the columns and 
 roof, the whole fashioned with a sort of fine 
 simplicity to seat as many worshippers as 
 
ST. JAMES'S CHURCH 271 
 
 possible with the means at the architect's 
 command, contents our vision. The adorn- 
 ments I care for less, but will not dogmatise 
 about taste. 
 
 From the first St. James's Church was 
 fashionable, and its memories are mainly of 
 fashionable folk and their ways. In Sir 
 John Vanbrugh's Relapse, which was pro- 
 duced ten years or so after the church was 
 finished, Lord Foppington, the type of all 
 that was modish, tells us what sort of con- 
 gregation sat there. 
 
 Foppington. Why faith, Madam, Sunday is a vile 
 day, I must confess ; I intend to move for leave 
 to bring in a Bill, that players may work upon it, 
 as well as the hackney-coaches. Tho' this I must 
 say for the Government, it leaves us the churches 
 to entertain us. But there again, they begin so 
 abominably early a man must rise by candle-light 
 to get dress'd by the psalm. 
 
 Beeinthia. Pray which church does your lordship 
 most oblige by your presence ? 
 
 Foppington. Oh, St. James's, madam : there 's much 
 the best company. 
 
 Amanda. Is there good preaching too ? 
 
 Foppington. Why, faith, madam, I can't tell. A 
 man must have very little to do there, that can 
 give an account of the sermon. 
 
272 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Berinthia. You can give us an account of the ladies, 
 at least. 
 
 FOPPINGTON. Or I deserve to be excommunicated. 
 There is my Lady Tattle, my Lady Prate, my 
 Lady Titter, my Lady Leer, my Lady Giggle, and 
 my Lady Grin. These sit in the front of the boxes, 
 and all church-time are the prettiest company in 
 the world, stap my vitals. Mayn't we hope for 
 the honour to see your ladyship added to our 
 society, madam ? 
 
 Amanda. Alas, my lord, I am the worst company 
 in the world at church : I 'm apt to mind the 
 prayers, or the sermon, or 
 
 FoppiNGTON. One is indeed strangely apt at church 
 to mind what one should not do. But I hope, 
 madam, at one time or other, I shall have the 
 honour to lead your ladyship to your coach 
 there. 
 
 I have copied out the whole passage, 
 because it gives us, more vividly and truly 
 than I can hope to, an idea of the church 
 and its worshippers as it was when it first 
 was used. We see the fine ladies sitting 
 under Grinling Gibbons's altar-piece, and 
 my lord ogling them, and leading his 
 favourite to her coach, carefully the while — 
 how curious are those changing afiectations 
 — mispronouncing his o's. He led her, by 
 
OLD RECTORS 273 
 
 the way, not into Piccadilly, but into 
 Jermyn Street, on which the church then 
 fronted, as the more important street of the 
 two. 
 
 It is possible that if my Lord Foppington 
 had listened to the sermon he would not 
 have understood it, but it is probable he 
 would have heard a good one. The prefer- 
 ment has usually been held one of the prizes 
 of the Church, and many of the incumbents 
 have been made bishops — a few archbishops. 
 Archbishop Tenison was the first Rector. 
 Lord Foppington sat under Dr. William 
 Wake, D.D., who also became Archbishop 
 of Canterbury in due time. None of these 
 incumbents, I hope and think, is likely to 
 haunt the worldly scene of Piccadilly, 
 though perhaps some of them like to linger, 
 now and then, in the pleasant Rectory 
 House, which suggests a dignified domes- 
 ticity and seems out of place in that part of 
 Piccadilly, now so little domestic. One of 
 the curates, however, was so much at home 
 in Piccadilly or wherever else Fate be- 
 stowed him, that I must, by no manner of 
 means, exclude him from my pages. I mean 
 the late Prebendary Brookfield, that gay 
 
274 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 and accomplished humorist, father of Mr. 
 Charles Brookfield, the player and play- 
 wright, who was curate under John Edward 
 Kempe.^ 
 
 Those of my readers — and I hope this 
 means all of them — who have read the book 
 Mr. Charles Brookfield and his wife wrote 
 about the former's parents, will perceive at 
 once that Prebendary Brookfield's — I say it 
 without the least offence to his clerical 
 character — is one of the most delightful 
 ghosts they could meet in Piccadilly, and 
 quite in touch with most of the spirits I 
 have imagined there ; so human was he, so 
 sympathetic and debonair. His sermons in 
 the church drew London ; one of them, in 
 which some incautious mistrust of the literal 
 acceptance of divine writ was expressed, 
 caused almost a scandal, and the good Lord 
 Shaftesbury protested that 'the man's an 
 atheist.' They were strikingly dramatic in 
 tone, as one who used to hear them has told 
 
 1 Prebendary Kempe died, at the age of ninety-seven, on 
 the day I wrote this chapter. He used to relate how the 
 Lord Derby, who was Prime Minister, sat in a gallery pew 
 right over the pulpit, and would write notes for a speech 
 there, sometimes looking over the rector's shoulder to see if 
 the sermon was near its end. 
 
A LAUGHING PARSON 275 
 
 me, and indeed, in Mr. Brookfield the father 
 a fine actor was lost to the stage. It is 
 recorded that he once kept a party in 
 Trinity, Cambridge — it included the great 
 Dr. Thompson and other serious and mature 
 persons — rolling on the floor in laughter for 
 an hour with his comic deliveries. He was, 
 of course, an eagerly sought guest at great 
 men's tables, and among others, that in 
 Bath House, Piccadilly, saw him often. 
 There was a touch of the abb^ parson about 
 him, just a suggestion of Thackeray's 
 Reverend Sampson — ^our le hon motif, as it 
 were. Could I leave out such a jolly 
 spirit as this ? The reader would never 
 forgive me. 
 
 But he must forgive me if I do no more 
 than mention a few of the celebrated people 
 who were christened or buried in St. James's 
 Church. Their connection with Piccadilly 
 is not sufficient for my rules. If the reader's 
 imagination is equal to the picture of Lord 
 Chesterfield — him of the letters and the 
 manners and morals Dr. Johnson so bitterly 
 described — of the famous Lord Chesterfield 
 as a polite baby, I can gratify him with the 
 knowledge that here Lord Chesterfield was 
 
276 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 christened. So was the first WilHam Pitt, 
 who should have been a still more remarkable 
 baby. Mrs. Delany, who lived so long and 
 knew so many people, was buried here in 
 1788. James Dodsley the bookseller lies here, 
 and James Gilray the caricaturist, who threw 
 himself from the window of Miss Humphry's 
 print-shop, in St. James's Street hard by. 
 Tom D'Urfey was buried here and Dick 
 Steele had placed a tablet with ' Honest 
 Tom D'Urfey' on it at the entrance 
 to the church in Jermyn Street. Mr. 
 Wheatley tells us that ' the tablet was taken 
 down some years ago as unsuited to the 
 sanctity of the place.' It is not recorded, 
 however, that the remains of Old Q. have 
 been removed from underneath the altar. 
 K.I.P. 
 
 And now I come to the end. Like most 
 good-byes, this, too, is best said quickly. I 
 confess to some sentiment in the moment. 
 In spite of the horrors which an evilly 
 inspired and absurdly called civilisation 
 inflicts on the place now, I still feel some- 
 thing of the charm of Piccadilly, and I have 
 laboured my best in gratitude. Well or ill. 
 
THE END 277 
 
 the work is done, and the ghostly figures 
 fade. One looks after them as they go, 
 sadly, oneself to fade also, sooner or later, 
 and belike — since the life of the dead is in 
 the memory of the living — to fade far more 
 completely. Harriot Mellon and Emma 
 Hamilton, Fox and Byron, the Duke and 
 Palmerston and Old Q., I take my leave of 
 them, and Frederick Locker-Lampson gives 
 me a too sadly fitting envoi. For it 's 
 
 ' Heu annifugaces I The wise and the silly, 
 Old P. or Old Q., we must quit Piccadilly.' 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbotsford, 193, 217, 218. 
 Adam, Kobert, 242. 
 Albany, 75-106, 256. 
 Albemarle, Duke of, 25, 26. 
 
 House, 26. 
 
 Street, 8, 12, 26, 40, 198, 
 
 199, 251. 
 Albert Gate, 245. 
 Allen, 158. 
 Almon's, 261. 
 Althorpe, Lord, 91. 
 Alvanley, 50. 
 Amesbury, Queensberry's 
 
 place at, 73. 
 Angelo, Henry, 93, 94, 142. 
 Anne, Queen, 27. 
 Anti-Jacohin, the, 255, 256. 
 Apsley House, 157-159. 
 
 Lord Chancellor, 158. 
 
 Arbuthnot, Mrs., 166. 
 
 Arbuthnot, 166. 
 
 Argyll, Duke of, 89, 149, 159- 
 
 163. 
 Ashburton, Harriet Lady, 16, 
 
 56. 
 
 Lord, 55. 
 
 Ashestiel, 193. 
 d'Aureville, Barbey, 43. 
 Austbiston, Simone, 4. 
 
 Baker, Egbert, 3. 
 Baldwin, 172. 
 BaUantyne, James, 202. 
 
 Baring, Alex., 55. 
 
 Brothers, 55. 
 
 Barron-WUson, Mrs. Oomwall, 
 
 206, 208, 211, 218. 
 Barrymore, Lord, 141-145. 
 Barrys, the, 142-145. 
 Bath, first mail-coach to, 265. 
 
 Walter Scott at, 194. 
 
 House, 16, 53, 57, 205, 
 
 275. 
 
 Lady, 116. 
 
 Lord, 53. 
 
 Bathurst, Lord, 158. 
 Beauclerck, Lady Diana, 182. 
 Beauclerk, Topham, 34. 
 Beckford, WiUiam, 234, 235. 
 Bedford, Duchess of, 14, 173. 
 Beerbohm, Max, 28. 
 Bennett Street, 91. 
 Bennett's, Lincoln, 9. 
 'Berkeley, the,' 265. 
 
 House, 10, 27, 111. 
 
 Lord, 27. 
 
 Square, 12, 39. 
 
 Street, 10, 265. 
 
 Bessborough, Lady, 34. 
 BiUington, Mrs., 183. 
 Black Bear Inn, 264, 265. 
 Blood, Colonel, 23-25. 
 Blount, Thomas, 6. 
 Bolingbroke — ' BuUy ' — Lord, 
 
 34, 59. 
 Lady Diana, 34. 
 
 279 
 
280 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Bolton Street, 41, 53, 205, 
 
 235, 
 Bond, Sir Thomas, 26. 
 
 Street, 12, 26, 200, 262. 
 
 Boswell, 178. 
 Bowdler, John, 258. 
 
 Thomas, 258. 
 
 Boyle's Guide, 13. 
 
 Boyle, Lady Dorothy, 113, 114, 
 
 115. 
 
 Robert, 111. 
 
 Brick Street, 11, 12, 245. 
 Brighton, Brummell at, 46. 
 
 Harriot Mellon at, 214. 
 
 Bristol, Lord, 53. 
 
 Brook, Margaret, 108, 113. 
 
 Street, 18. 
 
 Brookfield, Mrs., 89. 
 
 Prebendary, 273-275. 
 
 Brooks's Club, 33, 35, 41, 222, 
 
 223. 
 Brummell, Beau, 16, 43-50. 
 Buckingham, Duke of, 22. 
 Bulwer Lytton, 86. 
 Bunbury, Lady Sarah, 36. 
 
 Sir Charles, 243. 
 
 Burdett, Sir Francis, 202, 245, 
 
 249. 
 Burdett-Ooutts, Baroness, 245. 
 Burgess, Sir James Bland, 200, 
 
 201. 
 Burke, Edmund, 124. 
 Burlington Arcade, 123, 124. 
 
 House, 9, 107-125. 
 
 . Lady, 116, 117, 118-121. 
 
 the first Lord, 107, 110, 
 
 111. 
 Burney, Fanny, 15, 38, 235, 
 
 236. 
 Burns, Eobert, 64, 65, 79. 
 Bury Street, 43. 
 Byrne, 99. 
 Byron, Ada, 104. 
 
 Byron, Augusta, Mrs. Leigh, 
 97, 106. 
 
 Lady, 16, 105. 
 
 Lord, 39, 44, 46, 50, 51, 
 
 52, 58, 79, 83, 84, 91-106, 
 172,196,199,200,246, 262. 
 
 Caen, Brummell at, 50. 
 Calais, BrummeU at, 50. 
 
 Clarendon at, 21. 
 
 Calonne, Charles de, 184, 249, 
 
 250. 
 Cambridge, the Duke of, 131, 
 
 132. 
 
 the late Duke, 241. 
 
 House, 14, 16, 127. 
 
 Campbell, Colin, 111. 
 Campion, Anne, 28. 
 Cannmg, George, 236, 256. 
 CantiUon, Eiohard, 250-253. 
 Carhampton, Lord, 85. 
 Carlton House, 49. 
 Carlyle, Dr., 118. 
 
 Thomas, 16, 41, 56, 67. 
 
 Caroline, Queen, 262. 
 Carpenter, Charlotte, 195. 
 Carte, Thomas, 25. 
 CasteUane, Mme. Boni de, 154. 
 Catherine of Braganza, 8, 18- 
 
 20. 
 of Oldenburg, Grand 
 
 Duchess, 146. 
 Cavendish family, the, 27-29. 
 
 . Lord George, 122-124. 
 
 Chandos, the Duke of, 112. 
 Ohantrey, the sculptor, 203. 
 Charles i., 270. 
 
 II., 18-22, 110, 224. 
 
 X., 170. 
 
 Charlotte, Princess, 146, 147. 
 
 Queen, 182. 
 
 Charpentier, Jean, 195. 
 Chatelain, engraver, 264. 
 
INDEX 
 
 281 
 
 Cheltenham, 208. 
 Chesterfield, Lady, 108. 
 
 Lord, 275. 
 
 Chiswick, 12. 
 Cholmondelev House, 14. 
 
 Lord, 131. 
 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 136. 
 
 Cipriani, 76. 
 
 Clarendon House, 12, 17-27, 
 
 111. 
 
 Lord, 4, 8, 17-21. 
 
 Clarges Street, 16, 190. 
 
 Sir Thomas, 26. 
 
 Clement, Lord, 39. 
 Clermont, Mrs., 105, 106. 
 Cocoa Tree, the, 92, 93. 
 Codrington, Sir W., 62. 
 Coleridge, S. T., 102. 
 Conduit Mead, 18. 
 Conway, Lord, 4. 
 Cork, 207. 
 
 ComlDury, Lord, 19, 21. 
 Coutts, Mr. Thomas, 212-220, 
 
 245. 
 
 Mrs., 205-220. 
 
 Coventry House, 14. 
 
 ■ Club, the, 150. 
 
 the sixth Earl of, 148, 
 
 150. 
 Maria, Countess of, 148, 
 
 149. 
 
 Mr., 119, 120. 
 
 Street, 7. 
 
 Cowper, Lord, 135. 
 
 Creevey, Thomas, 165, 166, 
 
 170, 229. 
 Criterion, the, 9, 264. 
 Crockford's Club, 52. 
 Croker, John Wilson, 200. 
 Cumberland, Duke of, 131. 
 Cunningham, Allan, 203, 204. 
 
 D'Arblat, M., 236. 
 
 Davies, Scrope, 48, 92, 95, 152. 
 Debrett's, 261. 
 Delany, Mrs., 276. 
 Denham, Sir John, 108, 109. 
 Denier, Joseph, 252. 
 Denman, William, 13. 
 Derby, Lord, 274, note. 
 Devonshire,Elizabeth,Duchess 
 of, 39, 98. 
 
 Georgiana, Duchess of, 
 
 15, 16, 29-40, 44, 182, 243. 
 
 House, 10, 12, 15, 17, 
 
 27-40. 
 William, first Duke of, 
 
 27, 28. 
 Dodsley, James, 276. 
 Dover Street, 12, 14, 26. 
 Down Street, 179, 242. 
 Drumlanrig, Queensberry at, 
 
 64, 65. 
 Drummond, George, 49. 
 Drury Lane, 52. 
 
 Committee, the, 
 
 98-108. 
 
 Harriot Mellon at, 
 
 209. 
 
 Dublin Castle, Colonel Blood 
 at, 24. 
 
 Dumergue, M. Charles, 194, 
 195. 
 
 Sophia, 195. 
 
 Dumergues, the, 16. 
 
 Dumfries Burgh, Queens- 
 berry at, 64, 65. 
 
 Dunbar, Lord, 4. 
 
 D'Urfey, Thomas, 276. 
 
 Egebmont,Eablop, 127, 129- 
 131. 
 
 House, 14. 
 
 Egyptian Hall, the, 238. 
 
 Elgin, Lord, 239-241. 
 
 Marbles, the,124,239-241. 
 
282 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Elphinstone, Miss, 147. 
 Engine Street, 12, 245. 
 Entwistle, Mr., 208. 
 Brskine, 44, 78. 
 Essex, Lord, 99. 
 Eton, Brummell at, 46. 
 Euston, Lord, 113-115. 
 Evelyn, 18, 19, 20, 26, 27. 
 
 Fagniani, the Marohesa, 72, 
 
 73. 
 Fielding, Henry, 14. 
 Fitzpatrick, Eichard, 32, 44, 
 
 221, 222, 228, 229, 231. 
 FitzEoy, Lady Augustus, 114. 
 
 Lord Charles, 122. 
 
 Flahault, the Oomte de, 151. 
 Fortnum and Mason's, 261, 
 
 262. 
 Fox, Charles, 13, 15, 32, 33, 
 
 38, 39, 75, 76, 79, 119, 124, 
 
 221-232. 
 
 Henry, 224. 
 
 Stephen, Lord Holland, 
 
 75, 76, 224. 
 Fraser, Sir William, 161, 174. 
 Frederick i., the Emperor, 
 
 118. 
 ' French hazard ' bank, 52. 
 Fuseli, 241. 
 
 Garrard, Georoe, 4. 
 Garrick, David, 117, 120, 121, 
 
 231 
 
 Mrs., 113. 
 
 Gay, John, 1 12. 
 Gentleman Jackson, 93. 
 George ii., 158. 
 III., 63, 64, 225, 242, 
 
 245. 
 IV., 35, 41-43, 48-50, 
 
 131, 169, 170, 183, 187, 
 
 188, 201. 
 
 Gibbon, 120. 
 
 Gibbons, Grinling, 272. 
 
 Gilroy, James, 276. 
 
 Gifford, 257. 
 
 Gleig, Mr., 160, 161, 164, 
 
 167. 
 Gloster Coffee - House and 
 
 Hotel, 265. 
 Gloucester House, 239, 241. 
 ' Golden Ball,' the, 13. 
 ' Golden Lion,' the, 267. 
 Goldsmid, Sir Julian, 147. 
 Gordon, Duke of, 184. 
 
 Jane, Duchess of, 243. 
 
 Lord George, 242, 243. 
 
 Lord William, 242-245. 
 
 Riots, the, 39. 
 
 Grafton, Duke of, 32, 59, 113, 
 
 114, 127, 230. 
 Grammont, memoirs of, 108. 
 Granby, Marquis of, 267. 
 GranviUe, Harriet, Lady, 134, 
 
 135, 151, 153, 155, 165, 
 
 173. 
 Grassini, Madame, 173. 
 Gravesend, Dutch at, 19. 
 Green Park, the, 14, 53. 
 Greville, Algernon, 173. 
 ■ — — Charles, memoirs of, 50, 
 
 56, 82, 166, 173. 
 
 Henry, 138. 
 
 ' Greyhound, the,' 148. 
 Gronow, Captain, reminis- 
 cences of, 41-43, 81, 200, 
 
 215. 
 Guilford, Lady, 220. 
 Gunning, Elizabeth, 149. 
 
 Maria, 120, 148, 149. 
 
 Gwynne, Nell, 178. 
 
 Half Moon Street, 235. 
 Hamlet, the jeweller, 215. 
 
INDEX 
 
 283 
 
 Hamilton, Emma, Lady, 16, 
 
 176-191. 
 
 Horatia, 177, 186. 
 
 Sir W., 16, 181-191. 
 
 Handel, 112, 122. 
 Harley, Lady Jane, 100. 
 Hatchard's, 256-261, 265. 
 Haydon, B. R, 238, 241. 
 Hayward, Abraham, 123. 
 Henrietta Maria, Queen, 270. 
 Herbal, Gerarde's, 5. 
 ' Hercules Pillars, the,' 266. 
 Hertford, Lord, 60, 98, 145. 
 Headford, Lord, 42, 147. 
 Hervey, John, Lord, 53-55. 
 
 Tom, 55. 
 
 Higgs, Henry, 250. 
 
 Higgins, a tailor, 6. 
 
 Hill, Lord, 164. 
 
 Hobhouse, 94, 246. 
 
 Hoby, the bootmaker, 262, 263. 
 
 Hogarth, 112, 125. 
 
 HoUand, Henry Fox, Lord, 
 
 225, 226. 
 
 Lady, 33, 87, 89. 
 
 the first Lord, 233. 
 
 Stephen, Lord, 75, 76. 
 
 HoUy Lodge, Highgate, 214, 
 
 220. 
 Humphreys, Arthur, 258. 
 Humphrys, Miss, print-shop 
 
 of, 276. 
 Hunlock, Sir Hugh, 148, 
 Hunt, Leigh, 74. 
 Hyde, Lawrence, 22. 
 Hyde Park Comer, 8, 11, 12, 
 
 13, 59, 158, 267. 
 
 ' In-and-Out ' Club, 14. 
 Isthmian Club, 11, 12, 141. 
 
 Jambs ii., 75. 
 
 Jermyn, Harry, 269, 270. 
 
 Jermyn Street, 273, 276. 
 Jersey, Lady, 48, 56, 96, 106, 
 
 175. 
 
 Lord, 152. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 34, 37, 55, 178, 
 
 197. 
 Junior Naval and Military 
 
 Club, 194. 
 
 Kean, Edmund, 100, 102, 214. 
 Kemble, John, 184. 
 Kempe, John Edward, 274. 
 Kent, Waiiam, 28, 122. 
 King's-bridge, or Stonebridge, 
 
 11. 
 Kingston, Duchess of, 55. 
 Kinnaird, Douglas, 99, 103. 
 Knightsbridge, 11, 25, 245. 
 Knyvet, Sir H., 11. 
 
 Labourie, cook at Watier's, 
 
 42. 
 Lamb, Charles, 210, 240. 
 
 George, 99, 103. 
 
 Lady Caroline, 96, 172, 
 
 173. 
 
 William, 44. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 183. 
 Lane's, Mr., 232. 
 Lansdowne House, 12. 
 
 Passage, 11. 
 
 Lasswade, 193. 
 
 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 203. 
 
 Lennox, Lady Caroline, 224, 
 
 225 
 
 Lady Sarah, 225, 243. 
 
 Leopold, Prince, of Coburg, 
 
 145. 
 Lepel, Molly, 54. 
 Lewis, Matthew, 77-84, 194.] 
 Liacoin Bennett's, 263. 
 Linley, Miss, 267. 
 Littlebury, 267. 
 
284 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 Locker-Lampson, Frederick, 
 
 277. 
 Lockhart, 101, 194, 217. 
 Longman, Thomas, 87. 
 Lome, Lord, 139. 
 Lower Brook Street, 200. 
 Lushington, Sir Henry, 82. 
 Luttrell, Henry, 84-86. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 77, 86-90, 
 
 260. 
 Macdonald, Admiral, 14. 
 Mackie's, 222. 
 Madison, manager ofWatier's, 
 
 42. 
 Mann, Horace, 114. 
 Mansfield, Lord, 62. 
 March and Kaglan, Lord (Duke 
 
 of Queensberry), 59. 
 Maria Theresa, the Empress, 
 
 118. 
 Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess 
 
 of, 30. 
 MarveU, Andrew, 109. 
 Mary, Queen, 7. 
 Marylebone Road, 13.' 
 Maskelyne's, 238. 
 Mathias, attack of, on Lewis, 
 
 81. 
 Mathews, Captain, 15, 267. 
 
 Charles, 200. 
 
 Maturin, 102. 
 Medwin, Captain, 96. 
 Melbourne, Lord, 44, 76, 82, 
 
 134. 
 Mellon, Harriot, 205-220. 
 
 Lieutenant Mathew, 207. 
 
 Mercer, Margaret (Mme. de 
 
 Flahault), 151-155. 
 Merton, 177. 
 
 Place, 190. 
 
 'Mie Mie,' daughter of 
 
 Queensberry, 60, 69-73, 98 
 
 Millamant, 5. 
 
 Millbanke, Miss (Lady Byron), 
 98. 
 
 Milnes, Monkton, 56. 
 
 Moira, Lord, 49, 50. 
 
 Monk, General, 26. 
 
 Montagu, Duke of, 26. 
 
 Montagu, George, 120. 
 
 Moore, Peter, 99. 
 
 . Thomas, 5, 92, 96, 106. 
 
 More, Hannah, 261. 
 
 Morrice, Sir W., 20. 
 
 Morritt, Mr., 197, 198. 
 
 Murray, Hon. Amelia, recol- 
 lections of, 145. 
 
 John, 198, 199. 
 
 Nathan, 106. 
 
 Napoleon Buonaparte, Byron 
 
 and, 95. 
 Naval and Military Club, 14, 
 
 127. 
 Nelson, Admiral Lord, 16, 176- 
 
 191. 
 New Bond Street, 18. 
 Newmarket, 60, 61. 
 Noia, the Duke de, 184, 185. 
 Norden, historian, 11. 
 
 Oatlands, 44, 79. 
 O'Higgins, 102, 103. 
 Old Bond Street, 45. 
 Old Pulteney Hotel, 145. 
 Old White Horse Cellar, the, 
 
 265. 
 Orange, Prince of, 24, 146. 
 Orleans, Henrietta, Duchess 
 
 of, 110. 
 Ormonde, Duke of, 22-25. 
 Ossory, Lord, 63. 
 ' Outinian Society,' the, 260. 
 Oxford, Lady, 96. 
 
INDEX 
 
 285 
 
 Palladio, 111. 
 Pall Mall, 111. 
 Palmer, General, 265. 
 Palmerston, Lady, 133-135. 
 
 Lord, 16, 135-140. 
 
 Palmerstons, the, 126. 
 Park Lane, 241. 
 Pembroke, Lord, 4. 
 Pepys, Samuel, 9, 18, 19, 108, 
 
 263. 
 Peroies, the, 130. 
 ' Peter Pindar,' 257. 
 Petty, Six Williain, 9, 263. 
 Petworth, 128, 129, 130. 
 Philip II., 7. 
 Piccadilly Hall, 3, 4. 
 Pigot, Mr., 62, 63. 
 'Pillars of Hercules,' the, 14, 
 
 15. 
 Pitt, Sir WiUiam, 276. 
 Pope, Alexander, 55, 112. 
 Portland Place, 197. 
 Portugal Street, 8. 
 Pulteney Hotel, 147. 
 . William, 53. 
 
 QUEBNSBERRT, DuKB OP, 15, 
 
 16, 58-74, 98, 145, 182, 184, 
 228, 242, 276. 
 Queen Square, Westminster, 
 251. 
 
 Radfoed, Jack, 74. 
 
 Ranger's Lodge, 14, 242. 
 
 Rectory House, the, 273. 
 
 'Red Herrings' (Lord Hert- 
 ford), 60. 
 
 ' Red Lion,' the, 267 
 
 'Rena,' the, 59, 61. 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 244. 
 
 Richmond, Queensberry's villa 
 at, 73. 
 
 Ridgway's, 261. 
 
 'Ritz,' the, 265. 
 Rochester, Earl of, 20. 
 Rogers, Samuel, 85, 96. 
 Ros, Lady de, 164, 170. 
 Rosebery, Lord, 98, 155. 
 Rothschild, Baron Meyer, 156. 
 
 Nathan Meyer, 156. 
 
 Royal Horticultural Society, 
 
 the, 259. 
 Russell, Lord John, 137, 227, 
 
 228. 
 
 Sackvillb Street, 9. 
 Sandwich, Lord, 32, 59. 
 Savile Club, 179. 
 - — Lady Dorothy, 113-115. 
 Scott, Walter, 16, 23, 78, 79, 
 
 83, 84, 98, 101, 102,192- 
 
 204, 216-218, 236, 249. 
 
 ■ Lady, 217. 
 
 Selwyn, George, 33, 61, 66, 
 
 68, 69, 70-73, 144, 149, 221, 
 
 222, 232-234, 242. 
 Shaver's Hall, 3, 4, 5. 
 Sheridan, 15, 44, 81, 82, 103, 
 
 104, 209, 267. 
 Sheridan's duel, 15. 
 Sichel, Mr., 180. 
 Smith, Adam, 250. 
 
 Albert, 238. 
 
 Miss, 99. 
 
 Sydney, 87, 259. 
 
 Somerset, Lady Fitzroy, 166. 
 Spencer, Lady Georgiana, 
 
 Duchess of Devonshire, 29, 
 
 37. 
 
 William, 51. 
 
 Spohr, 156. 
 
 St. Albans, the Duke of, 217- 
 
 219. 
 Harriot, Duchess of, 
 
 205-220. 
 Jermyn, Earl of, 270. 
 
286 THE GHOSTS OF PICCADILLY 
 
 St. James's Church, 74, 269- 
 
 276. 
 
 Club, 14, 150, 151. 
 
 Hall, 237. 
 
 Hotel, the, 265. 
 
 Palace, 18. 
 
 Street, 7, 18, 23, 92, 181, 
 
 276. 
 St. Martin's in the Fields, 3. 
 St. Paul's Cathedral, old, 18. 
 Stafford, 209. 
 
 Street, 26. 
 
 Stanhope, Lady Henrietta, 61. 
 
 Lady Hester, 47. 
 
 Steele, Richard, 276. 
 Stepney, Sir Thomas, 42. 
 Sterne, Lawrence, 120. 
 Stewart's, 262. 
 Stone Bridge, 11, 12. 
 Stratton Street, 205, 213, 214, 
 
 245, 248. 
 Strawberry Hill, 59. 
 Strype, 265. 
 Suckling, Sir John, 5. 
 Suett, Dick, 210, 211. 
 ' Sulky Terrace,' 14. 
 Sullivan, Luke, 264. 
 Sunderland, Lord, 75, 76. 
 Swallow Street, 18. 
 Swift, Dean, 112. 
 
 Tenison, Archbishop, 273. 
 Tennyson, Lord, 16, 57, 86. 
 Thackeray, 54, 161. 
 Thompson, Dr., 275. 
 ' Thomson,' 186. 
 ' Three Kings,' the, 265. 
 Toms, Mr., 264. 
 Tom Thumb, 238, 239. 
 Townshend, Mary, 149, 150. 
 Trevelyan, Sir George, 67, 87, 
 225, 228, 231. 
 
 Turner, 129. 
 
 Tyburn, Duke of Ormonde's 
 
 adventure, 23. 
 Stream, 11. 
 
 Upton, Sir Arthur, 49. 
 
 Van Nost, John, 142. 
 Vanbrugh, Sir John, 271. 
 Vigo Street, 76. 
 Violette, Mile., 113, 117-121. 
 
 Wake, Dr. William, 273. 
 
 Walmer, 165. 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 13, 28, 33, 
 
 54, 59, 110, 114, 115, 120, 
 
 121, 130, 149, 150. 
 
 Sir Robert, 53. 
 
 Wargrave, 142, 144. 
 Warner, Rev. Dr., 69-72. 
 Watier, 42. 
 
 Watier's Club, 16, 41-53. 
 Webster, Lady Frances, 96, 
 
 172. 
 Wellington, Duke of, 52, 157- 
 
 175, 202, 203. 
 Wemher, Sir Julius, 55. 
 West, Benjamin, 264. 
 Sir Algernon, memoirs 
 
 of, 123. 
 West Indies, Matthew Lewis 
 
 in the, 83. 
 Western Road, 10. 
 Western, Squire, 14. 
 Weston, the tailor, 45. 
 White Bear Inn, 9, 264. 
 White's Club, 49. 
 Whitehorse Street, 194, 204. 
 Wigan, 208. 
 Wilberforce, Bishop, 57, 89. 
 
 William, 261. 
 
 WUcox, 270. 
 
 Wilkes, John, 120, 127. 
 
INDEX 
 
 287 
 
 Wilson, Harriet, 172. 
 Windham, 73, 247. 
 Winstanley, Henry, 267, 268. 
 
 Water Theatre, 267, 268. 
 
 Woburn, 173. 
 
 Woloot (Peter Pindar), 257. 
 Wood, Sheriff Matthew, 247. 
 Wordsworth, 65. 
 Worcester, Lady, 50. 
 Wraxall, Sir Nathaniel, 30, 60, 
 
 184. 
 Wren, Sir Christopher, 270. 
 
 Wright's, booksellers, 255-257. 
 Wycherley, 267. 
 Wyndham, George O'Brien, 
 128. 
 
 York, James, Duke of, 18, 
 
 108, 109. 
 William, Duke of, 43, 44, 
 
 215. 
 and Albany, Duke of, 76. 
 
 Zamperini, the, 61, 66, 67. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press