farce of Lethe, in which he introduced the character of an ungrateful Jew. He afterwards said he found the coldness of the distinguished audience very depressing, for it was as if a wet blanket had been thrown over him. In 1775, Buckingham House was settled upon the Queen, in lieu of Somerset House, and was usually called the Queen's House. It was here she held her Drawing-Rooms, and the King his Councils, and they lived quietly for many years in this unostentatious house, where all their children, excepting George IV., were born, and where several of them were married. When the house came into the King's possession, the colonnades connecting the wings with it were filled in with brickwork, and windows pierced through; but otherwise very little alteration was made until George IV. thought he would transform it into a palace. He knew that Parliament would never grant money for an entirely new building, and therefore alterations were commenced in 1825, by Nash. In 1827, 1828, and 1829, 334,481 was paid for building, and then 160,000l. was still owing. This money was wasted upon a building which was ugly in itself, but doubly ugly from the shape of the old house having been followed in its reconstruction. Nash acknowledged that he did not expect the dome, which was likened to an inverted slop-basin," would have been seen from the Park-side, and he also allowed that he did not expect the wings to have looked so bad. When the building was finished, the wings were altered and the Marble Arch was added. "These are the wings which by estimate round And which not quite according with Royalty's taste, One might have imagined that nothing could be uglier than 45" This is the beautiful ball in the cup Which the tasteful committee in wisdom set up On the top of the palace that N[as]h built." -The Palace that N[as]h Built, by I. Hume. 12mo. London [1829 ?]. Nash's building, but Mr. Blore has succeeded in proving that "The force of bad taste could still further go In the new side which joins the other two." It was in 1847 that the appearance of the palace was thus completely changed by the erection of the present façade by Mr. Blore, in front of, and connecting the two wings, by which means an inner court-yard has been formed. These changes necessitated the removal of the Marble Arch, which was reerected at Cumberland Gate, Hyde Park. In the Art Journal for March, 1868, there is a very curious account of what the Marble Arch was intended to be, and how wofully its beauty has been destroyed. George IV. wished it to be a monument to Nelson; and in accordance with this wish Flaxman designed for it colossal statues and bas-reliefs, all of which were sculptured in marble at great expense. A seated figure of Britannia, with spear and shield, on the latter of which was a head of Nelson, was to be placed on the top of the arch, and was to be supported by winged Victories and colossal figures round. George IV. died; Nash was removed from his office; and the marble statues were given away to save the expense of stone figures being cut. Britannia, turned into Minerva by chipping Nelson's head off her shield, was set up over the keeper's entrance to the Royal Academy, at the east end of the National Gallery. The Victories and three of the Colossal figures were placed in niches under the portico. The bas-reliefs were placed along the façade of the palace and are now hidden by Blore's front. It is not known where the other statues went to. The solid brass scroll-work, which was intended to fill up the arch over the gate, remained in the Government stores till it was quite black, and then no one knowing what it was, was sold as old iron to some lucky Jew. During her Majesty's reign, many extensive alterations have been made in Buckingham Palace; but although large sums have been spent upon it, its appearance is peculiarly mean and ugly, and it has become a laughing-stock to foreigners, and a disgrace to the country. Between Buckingham House and the houses in James Street, Westminster, stood Tart Hall, which was built in the year 1638, by Nicholas Stone, for Alathea, wife of Thomas, twentieth Earl of Arundel, the collector of the Arundelian Marbles. After her death it became the property of her second son, Sir William Howard, afterwards Viscount Stafford, who fell a victim to the vile Popish Plot, and was beheaded in 1680. How this house obtained its odd name it is difficult to tell, unless it had anything to do with the tarts sold at the Mulberry Gardens close by; the key to its origin seems lost in the same way as the names of Piccadilly and Pimlico remain an enigma to us. In Cox's Magna Britannia (1724) it is called Stafford House. Stafford Row, which is now itself swept away, was built on the site of the garden of the house. CHAPTER XII. PALL MALL. "In town let me live, then, in town let me die ; ST. JAMES'S FIELD adjoined the Park, and remained a large open space until after the Restoration, when the present street, Pall Mall, St. James's Square, and various other streets were built upon it. The place where the game of Pall Mall was played, and from which the street takes its name, was formed about the year 1630. It was situated on the site of the south side of St. James's Square, and on either side of it was a row of elmtrees, numbering altogether one hundred and forty, which are valued at seventy pounds in the survey of the Commissioners for the Crown Lands in 1650. About 1630 one David Mallard, shoemaker to the King, erected a dwelling-house on a piece of ground in St. James's Field, which had been taken previously by a Frenchman named John Bonnealle, "under pretence of making a Pall Mall." Mallard, or Mallock, as he is also called, was ordered to demolish it, and he undertook to do so by Candlemas Day, 1632. In March of that year the King expressed his pleasure that, the house being taken, the garden should be Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1631-33, p. 240. suffered to remain entire, "with the trees and pales about it, to the benefit of the poor widow that possesses it." 2 In September, 1635, a grant was made to Archibald Lumsden "for sole furnishing of all the malls, bowls, scoops, and other necessaries for the game of Pall Mall within his grounds in St. James's Fields, and that such as resort there shall pay him such sums of money as are according to the ancient order of the game." In 1660 Isabella, the daughter of this Lumsden, petitioned for one of the tenements in St. James's Field, "as promised to her father, who spent 425/. 145. in keeping up the sport of Pall Mall." Attached to the petition is an account of this sum expended "for the late King in bowls, malls, and scopes, 1632 to 1635," &c. There had long been a highway between St. James's and Charing Cross, with a few houses at its east end, but it was not until the Restoration that a street was laid out. A grant was made to Dan O'Neale, groom of the bedchamber, and to John Denham, surveyor of the works, "of a piece of ground 1,400 feet in length and twenty-three in breadth, between St. James's Park and Pall Mall." This is endorsed, "Our warrant for the building of the new street to St. James's." This street was called Catherine Street in honour of the Queen, Catherine of Braganza, but it was more generally known by the name of Pall Mall Street, which it took from the avenue next to it. About this time Charles laid out the Pall Mall in the Park, and the street was very generally called the Old Pall Mall. There were originally clusters of houses on the south side of the road. The Rookery formed one of a group of small monkish buildings, belonging to Westminster monastery, which stood at the east end of Pall Mall, but were swept away at the Reformation. There is a tradition that in one of these places there was a forge erected for Henry VI., when he attempted to fill his empty coffers by an unsuccessful 2 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1631-33, p. 286. 4 3 Ibid. 1635, p. 404. Ibid., 1660-61, p. 292. 5 Ibid., p. 203. |