Shunned by his friends Sheridan was arrestedfor debt on his deathbed and but for his physician who declared that his removal would be fatal would have been moved away. In contrast to his lonely deathbed, his burial in Westminster Abbey was attended by a great concourse of people of the highest rank who gathered to do homage to the genius of the man whom living they forgot.
Queer Albany Courtyard lies close by Sackville Street and is entered from bustling Piccadilly, passing from a thoroughfare of busy shops to a courtyard of asphalt, quiet and dignified. After a few yards the space widens and a moderate sized square brick building looms up. This is the "Albany," with no external suggestion of the many memories within. Byron lived here, and Lord Lytton, Monk Lewis, Canning and other great folk.
In St. James's Church in Piccadilly almost opposite the "Albany," is buried the eccentric Duke of Queensberry, better known as "Old Q,"and Charles Cotton, the friend of Izaak Walton, fisherman. A tablet on the outer wall reads:
Tom D'Urfey
Dyed February 26
1723
This was the poet who wrote "Pills to Purge Melancholy," and whose name crept into history more because of his friendship for Charles II. and of the king's for him than for the actual merit of his verse. Addison wrote of him: "Many an honest gentleman has got a reputation in his country, by pretending to have been in company with Tom D'Urfey." Lord Chesterfield, the letter writer, was baptised here.
St. James's Street off Piccadilly and terminating at the gateway of St. James's Palace is the street in which Lord Byron lived, at No. 8, when the world acclaimed him a poet. Of St. James's Street Frederick Locker Lampson wrote:
Why that's where Sacharissa sigh'dWhen Waller read his ditty;Where Byron lived and Gibbon diedAnd Alvanley was witty.
Sir Christopher Wren died at his home in this street in 1723. Close by the Pall Mall end the Conservative Club stands on the site of the house where Gibbon, the historian of the Roman Empire, died in 1794. Next door to Gibbon's home, set well back from the street, stood the Thatched House Tavern, for two centuries a meeting place for littérateurs, and such famous clubs as the Dilettanti and the Literary. The Brothers Club, of which Dean Swift was one of the organisers, also met in the Thatched House Tavern and concerning this club Swift wrote to Stella: "The end of our Club is to advance conversation and friendship, and to reward learning without interest or recommendation. We take in none but men of wit, or men of interest; and if we go on as we began, no other Club in this town will be worth talking of." But the time came before long when he wrote again to Stella that there was much drinking and little thinking at the Brothers and that the business the members met to consider was usually deferred to a more convenient season. In one of the shops beneath the wall of this tavern was the hair-dressing establishment of the great Rowland who made a fortune with his Macassar Oil—a fortune doubtlesslargely contributed to by his regular business, since he charged five shillings for cutting hair.
St. James's Street ends at the gateway to St. James's Palace. This gateway designed by Holbein is one of the few survivals of the original palace where in the open fields was once a hospital for lepers founded in 1190. The royal palace took the place of the hospital buildings under Henry VIII., who had Holbein design the structure. It was a royal abode until the time of George IV. Here Queen Mary died; here Charles I. slept the night before he walked through St. James's Park to Whitehall and to death, and here Charles II. and James II. were born. This, too, was the refuge for Marie de Medici in some of her unhappy wanderings.
In Bury Street beyond St. James's Street, Steele lived after his marriage. Horace Walpole also had lodgings here and so had Crabbe and Tom Moore. Dean Swift lived in this thoroughfare for a time, and it was from his Bury Street quarters that he wrote to the unfortunate Stella:"I have the first floor, a dining room, and a bed chamber, at eight shillings a week, plaguy dear."
Willis's restaurant in King Street stands on the site of Almack's the famous club opened in 1765, of which strange stories have been recounted. It is told that when a man dropped ill before the door and was carried inside club members made bets on his chances of life or death. When a doctor arrived his ministrations were interfered with because the members said that any medical aid would affect the fairness of the bets. So this must have been a great gaming place indeed.
Pall Mall now the thoroughfare of fashionable clubs got its name from the Italian game ofpalle-malleplayed with a palla and maglia—otherwise ball and mallet—which Charles I. introduced into England about 1635. Pall Mall was a suburban promenade until 1689 when it was laid out as it is to-day. At first it was called Catherine Street in honour of Catherine of BraganzaQueen of Charles II. Nell Gwynne lived in this street from 1671 until her death in 1687 where No. 79 now is, and it was over the wall of the surrounding garden that she used to talk with Charles II. Here gas was first experimented with as a street illuminative, when in 1807 a row of lamps were set up before the colonnade of Carlton House.
The Smyrna Coffee House celebrated in the days of Queen Anne for the group of writers who gathered here to talk politics in the evenings was in Pall Mall close to Waterloo Place on the south side. Prior and Swift came here much together. Thomson the poet was a regular visitor and put up a notice announcing that subscriptions would be taken by the author for "The Four Seasons."
St. James's Square is a reminder of the times of Charles II. who had it laid out. In a house on the east side, now London House, Lord Chesterfield was born in 1694. Next door at the south-east corner now part of Norfolk House, iswhere George III. was born in 1738. It was around this square that Savage and Johnson brimful of much patriotism but having little money used to walk together.
Where now stands the York Column in Waterloo Place leading to Waterloo Steps and The Mall was the main entrance to Carlton House, built for Henry Boyle, Lord Carlton, in 1709, and afterwards occupied by the Prince Regent who became George IV. When the old building was demolished in 1827 the columns of the entrance were saved and used in 1832 to form the façade of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.
The name of the Haymarket has clung to it since the reign of Elizabeth when it was a mart for the sale of hay and straw and which existed until 1829.
The short and crooked street called Suffolk, off Pall Mall East, began its existence in themiddle of the 17th century and marks the site of one of the homes of the Earl of Suffolk. It was in this street that Esther Vanhomrige lived for several years—Vanessa, the story of whose life is inseparable from that of Dean Swift. It was here also that Moll Davis lived in a house fitted up for her by King Charles II.
North of Trafalgar Square stands St. Martin-in-the-Fields, on the foundations of an older church which Henry VIII. built literally in the fields. Henry VIII., living at Whitehall, objected when the people of the parish of St. Margaret's at Westminster had the bodies of the dead carried by the palace. So he had St. Martin's built. The first church was a small one and being found quite too small the present St. Martin's took its place. The burial ground that once surrounded the church was gradually encroached upon to make way for the widening of the street and was done away with in 1829. Francis Bacon was christened here and in the old burial ground were laid to rest many whose names are familiar—Jack Sheppard, John Hunter, famous as a surgeon, Nell Gwynne, andLord Mohun, a duellist, concerning whom much may be read in Thackeray's "Henry Esmond." It was beside St. Martin's that David Copperfield one wintry night came upon Martha Endell who had once been the companion of little Em'ly at Mr. Omer's.
St. Martin's Lane leading from Trafalgar Square to Long Acre was famous when it was called Crooked Lane. Here at different times lived Sir John Thornhill whose decorations adorn the interior of St. Paul's and whose daughter married Hogarth; Fuseli, a famous artist; Sir Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith, Roubiliac, the French sculptor; and Thomas Chippendale the cabinet maker who published "Gentlemen and Cabinet Makers' Directory."
The Music Hall centre, Leicester Square, has gradually grown out of Leicester Fields the garden of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester whose mansion stood close by where Daly's Theatre is now. On a house facing the square on the west is a tablet telling that Sir Joshua Reynoldsonce lived there; and another on the east side shows where Hogarth lived.
Around the corner from Leicester Square in Rupert Street Robert Louis Stevenson, in the "New Arabian Nights," places the Bohemian Cigar Divan conducted by Theophilus Godall, the Prince Florizel, formerly one of the magnates of Europe, whom a revolution hurled from the throne of Bohemia in consequence of his continued absence and edifying neglect of public business, and who, exiled and impoverished, embarked in the tobacco trade.
The plain brick building numbered 37 Gerrard just to the south of Macclesfield Street now occupied by a restaurant was long the home of Edmund Burke the philosopher and statesman. On the house-front is a tablet reading:
Edmund Burke
Author and Statesman
Lived Here
B 1729
D 1797
Close by at No. 43 Dryden lived for fourteenyears until his death in 1701. Within a few doors on the same side of the way Dickens places the home of Jaggers, the criminal lawyer of "Great Expectations." The street itself takes its name from Gerrard, Earl of Macclesfield, whose mansion stood on the south side facing the present Macclesfield Street. Here in 1694 he died. The house was afterwards occupied by Lord Mohun and his body was brought here after the fatal duel with the Duke of Hamilton.
The Turk's Head Tavern was to be found in Gerrard Street at the Greek Street corner. In the tavern, in 1764, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Samuel Johnson founded the Literary Club, an association of scholars, authors and statesmen which has been called "the formidable power in the commonwealth of letters." The club met here until 1783. In its early days it was limited to forty members among whom were Boswell, Gibbon, Oliver Goldsmith and George Colman the elder. It was most exclusive in those days and for years David Garrick struggled for admittance but finally became one ofthem. Many men of note were blackballed, including the Bishop of Chester and Lord Camden.
Just off busy Shaftesbury Avenue in Wardour Street is the square brick church of St. Anne's, seeming for all the world to be passing a contented old age. Well up from the street, behind a wall and an old iron fence, there is about it still a remnant of green sward but hemmed in by asphalt spaces that have engulfed the few tombstones. One tablet tells that William Hazlitt, painter and critic, was buried here in 1830; another how Theodore, King of Corsica, found a last resting place in 1756 beside the church near which the last years of his life had been spent in poverty. On the outer wall of the church the tablet erected by Horace Walpole can yet be deciphered:
Near this place is interred Theodore, King of Corsica, who died in this parish, December 11, 1756, immediately after leaving the King's Bench Prison, by the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, in consequence of which he resigned his kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors.
Near this place is interred Theodore, King of Corsica, who died in this parish, December 11, 1756, immediately after leaving the King's Bench Prison, by the benefit of the Act of Insolvency, in consequence of which he resigned his kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors.
His funeral expenses were paid by an oilman who declared himself willingfor onceto pay the funeral expenses of a king.
Regent Street was at first part of an elaborate plan to provide a wide and systematic street system for London—a plan that failed and left to time merely a name for this thoroughfare and for Regent's Park in honour of the Prince Regent who afterwards became George IV.
Golden Square a space of commonplace residential houses now given over to business is hidden away in the labyrinthian streets to the east of Regent Street. It was here that Dickens placed the home of Ralph Nickleby, in the house No. 2 on the east side, now a small hotel.
Hanover Square was first laid out in 1731 and was the cause of changing the place for execution of criminals from Tyburn to Newgate. The square and its surroundings being intended for the homes of wealth and fashion it was fearedthat the sight of the criminals passing in carts from Newgate to Tyburn would be annoying to them.
In Brook Street near Bond Street is a tablet on the house numbered 25 marking it as the one time home of George Frederick Handel. Here he rehearsed his oratories. Brook Street is a reminder of the old Tye Bourne Brook the course of which followed its direction.
Lord Byron was born in 1788 at No. 28 Holles Street, between Oxford Street and Cavendish Square, in a house now given over to trade.
So high above the roadway that its inscription can hardly be made out is a tablet on the house numbered 50 Wimpole Street on the west side above New Cavendish. It sets forth that this was the house of Mrs. Browning's father, from which she went secretly to marry Robert Browning. In this house she wrote her "Cry of the Children" and other poems.
A narrow dingy thoroughfare of small shops called Poland Street extends south from Oxford Street. In 1811 Percy Bysshe Shelley then a young man lived hereabouts attracted to the street by Hogg his biographer who liked it because of its name which reminded him of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" and the cause of freedom. William Blake, the painter-poet, also lived in this street when he depicted "Visionary Portraits" and wrote the "Songs of Experience."
The "Berners Street Hoax" carried quiet Berners Street into history. This was brought about by Theodore Hook, a novelist, dramatic writer and celebrated wit, in this wise. He laid a wager that he could make the quiet dwelling No. 54, occupied by a demure widow, Mrs. Tottingham, the talk of the town. Then he wrote hundreds of letters to merchants of every line, ordering everything from candles to a hearse, and all reached the street at the same hour. The thoroughfare was blocked and the story stirred London for a day. Hook after a meteoric career, at times the friend of royalty and fashion,finally died in 1841 lonely and miserable. Berners Street was long the home of artists. John Opie, Royal Academician, author, and painter of "The Slaughter of James I. of Scotland," lived at No. 8; at No. 13 lived Henry Fuseli the famous portrait painter and critic of the early part of the 19th century; Henry Bone the painter of miniatures lived at No. 15. It was here, too, that the painter of cathedrals David Roberts suffered the apoplectic stroke that resulted in his death.
In Newman Street jutting from Oxford to the north Benjamin West the Anglo-American painter lived at No. 14 and here he died. Fanny Kemble the actress was born in this street.
The Soho neighbourhood lies enclosed by Charing Cross Road, Leicester Square, Warwick Street and Oxford Street. The name is a reminder of the old cry of the harriers—Co, ho! The Square of Soho was part of the garden of the Duke of Monmouth whose home was whatis now the south side of the square and occupied almost the entire space between the present Greek and Frith streets.
Frith Street extending south from Soho Square has an air of genteel poverty. In the block below the square on a low house of brick numbered 6 is a tablet:
William Hazlitt
1778-1833
Essayist
Died Here
Here he wrote some of his most notable essays and it was from this house that his body was taken to the quiet little churchyard of St. Anne's in Wardour Street.
In the block below the Hazlitt house at No. 7 Mozart lived when eight years old during the two years he remained in London with his father.
Beyond New Oxford Street to the south in High Street is the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields.The fields of this day are the massed and dreary houses standing so close about the old church that they seem like to crowd it out of existence. But there is still a bit of green in the churchyard and among the tombstones a most interesting one telling that the body of Richard Pendrell lies buried here since 1671, and further reciting the story of how this Richard Pendrell was the preserver of the life of King Charles II. after the Battle of Worcester. St. Giles was built in 1734 and its spire Hogarth has put in his picture of "Beer Street."
Bloomsbury the heart of the boarding house district where Americans most congregate is enclosed by Tottenham Court Road, Southampton Road, Euston Road and on the south by Oxford Street and High Holborn. The name is a corruption of Blemundsbury, which was the manor of the de Blemunds when Henry III. was king.
There was formerly a graveyard beside St. George's church in Hart Street but it has beenmade into a recreation ground. Munden the actor whom Charles Lamb wrote of was buried here. It was the spire of this church that Hogarth incorporated into his fearful picture of "Gin Lane." The statue on the steeple top is a representation of George I., and inspired the lines:
When Henry the Eighth left the Pope in the lurch,The Protestants made him the head of the Church;But George's good subjects, the Bloomsbury people,Instead of the church, made him head of the steeple.
Great Russell Street on which the British Museum borders has been the home of many well-known men. John Philip Kemble the great actor lived here in the years after 1790 when Drury Lane came under his direction. His house was demolished when the west wing of the Museum was added.
Gower Street, monotonous in the regularity of its houses, is where, in the building numbered 110, Charles Darwin lived and where he wrote about "Coral Reefs." Peter de Wint thepainter of English cornfields lived at No. 40 and Millais at No. 87.
When Sherlock Holmes first came to London by invitation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle he lived in one of the staid looking brick houses with a prim stoop in Montague Street opposite the British Museum. The house is mentioned in the "Musgrave Ritual."
To Bloomsbury Square in 1780 the Gordon rioters dragged the documents, paintings and books of Lord Mansfield and made a bonfire of them. The house, too, of the famous judge which faced the square was burned. It was a fashionable locality in those days, unlike to-day when for the most part the houses are used for business offices. The founder of the British Museum Sir Hans Sloane long lived in this square; and at No. 6 Isaac d'Israeli wrote his "Curiosities of Literature."
In broad Kingsway just a few steps south of High Holborn is the church of Trinity, contractedand ill kempt. There is nothing pleasant or romantic about its appearance and it is noteworthy only because of being on the site of the home in which in 1796 Mary Lamb while temporarily insane stabbed her mother to death.
Dingy Red Lion Street near by the square of the same name in the house numbered 9 William Morris started to make the furniture that was to leave its mark on all such work in future times. Rossetti and Burne-Jones lived at No. 15.
At 48 Doughty Street Charles Dickens lived and here he finished "Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist," wrote "Nicholas Nickleby," and began to write "Barnaby Rudge."