were not removed for some time after his death. Jack Radford, the Duke's faithful groom, remained on horseback under his window, always ready to carry about messages to any one he remarked in the street, as he sat with a parasol over his head, ogling the female passers-by. He was one of the last noblemen who kept a running footman. Once, when he was about engaging one, he made the man put on his livery and run up and down Piccadilly. The Duke watched the proceedings from his balcony, and called out: "That will do, you will suit me very well." The fellow answered: "And so your livery does me;" and then ran off, and was never heard of again. Old Q. was very fond of London, and seldom went into the country; a friend asked him whether he did not find town empty in September, and he answered: "Yes, but it is fuller than the country." Horace Walpole was of the same opinion, for, in a letter to Mann, he says: "Dull as London is in summer, there is always more company in it than in any one place in the country." The Duke died in 1806, at the great age of 86. "The King, God bless him! gave a whew! The Star of Piccadilly?" Mr. Fuller, the surgeon of Piccadilly, for some years attended the Duke, who paid him a large salary to keep him alive, but did not leave him anything at his death, although he left money to all the male members of his household. Mr. Fuller, from 1803 to 1810, slept 1,215 nights in the Duke's room, and made 9,340 visits of two hours each. He commenced an action against the executors for compensation, and laid his claim at 10,000l. The jury gave him a verdict for 7,500%. Lord Byron went to live at No. 139 in March, 1815, where he spent his early married life, and composed Parisina and the Siege of Corinth. He dated his letters from "13, Piccadilly Terrace," and described the house as "the Duchess of Devon's." He was living here when he was separated from his wife. No. 142 was the family residence of the late Lord Willoughby d'Eresby. The lease, which is held from the Crown for a term of forty years at a low rent, was sold, in 1866, for the large sum of 24,700/. No. 145 is Northampton House, where the late Marquis, as President of the Royal Society, gave his celebrated soirées to the élite of London society. Nos. 146 and 147 were thrown into one, and a handsome building erected by Charles Alexandre de Calonne, the celebrated Prime Minister and Comptroller of the Finances in France, from which country he fled in the year 1787. He furnished the house in a superb style, and was building a magnificent gallery for his fine collection of pictures when the Revolution broke out. He went at once to Coblentz to join the French princes and nobility, and mortgaged his property in order to assist them. His collection was sold by auction in March, 1795. He was a good-natured easy man, willing to oblige any one, and, it is said, that when Louis XVI. required a certain thing of him, he answered, "If what your Majesty requires is possible I engage it is already done, if it is impossible it shall be done." Calonne's house has been entirely destroyed to make room for the new houses of Sir Edmund Antrobus and Baron Lionel Rothschild. The latter is a handsome building of Portland stone, designed by Marsh Nelson, which towers over and dwarfs the adjoining Apsley House. The principal staircase and landings are of marble. Apsley House was built by Henry Lord Chancellor Apsley, afterwards second Earl of Bathurst, between the years 1771 and 1778, from a design by the Messrs. Adam. The building was not a very handsome one, but Lord Campbell considers its erection as the most memorable act in the life of one of the least distinguished of the Chancellors. The site of the house was occupied by the old Ranger's lodge and an apple-stall. It is reported that one day George II. recognized an old soldier, named Allen, as having served at the battle of Dettingen, and gave him this piece of ground at Hyde Park Corner, where his wife kept a stall, which is marked in a print dated 1766. Lord Bathurst had a controversy with this woman, and she filed a bill against him, on which he gave her a considerable sum of money to relinquish her claim. It was observed at the time that "here is a suit by one old woman against another, and the Chancellor has been beaten in his own court!" 18 The Marquis Wellesley purchased the house and was living in it in 1810. Afterwards it came into the possession of the Duke of Wellington, when it was remodelled and greatly enlarged. The old red brick house was cased with Bath stone, by S. and B. Wyatt, at a cost of 130,000l. for all the alterations. During the Reform Bill riots, in 1832, the windows were broken, and bullet-proof iron blinds were set up by the Duke, who used to point to them as an evidence of the gratitude of the mob. The French Ambassador, Count d'Adhémar, lived in Piccadilly, near Hyde Park Corner, in the year 1786. 13 CAMPBELL'S Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vol. v. p. 449. Sir John Irwin lived in an elegant house opposite the Green Park, before his great extravagance obliged him to fly to France. This general was a great favourite with George III., who once observed to him, "They tell me, Sir John, that you love a glass of wine." "Those," replied Irwin, "who so informed your Majesty, have done me great injustice, -they should have said a bottle." He was very magnificent in his displays when Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, and at one of the entertainments that he gave to the Lord-Lieutenant, in 1781, at Dublin, he provided as a principal piece in the dessert a representation of the siege of Gibraltar, in which the besiegers threw sugar-plums against the walls. This toy alone cost 1,500/. Following the numbering, we now cross the road and proceed from west to east. The Ranger's Lodge, in the Green Park, which was cleared away in the year 1841, was formerly No. 150, Piccadilly. It was for the pleasure of living in this house, opposite to his friend, the Duke of Queensberry, that George Selwyn was anxious to obtain the Deputy-Rangership of the Park.14 No. 155 is the old "Whitehorse Cellar." Strype, in 1720, mentions a "Whitehorse Cellar" in this street. No. 168 is now Reece's Medical Hall, which was formerly in the western wing of the Egyptian Hall. This was the shop of J. Owen, the publisher of Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord, who acted very disgracefully towards the orator, and pirated several of his tracts. No. 169 is now Ridgway's, the publisher. Here was the shop of Wright, the publisher of the Anti-Facobin, and the resort of the friends of the Ministry, as Debrett's was of the Opposition. The bibliographer, Upcott, was an assistant in Wright's shop, and is said to have been the amanuensis to the writers in the Anti-Jacobin. When Owen failed, the editors of the Anti-Facobin took his house "and gave it up to Wright, reserving to themselves the first floor, to which a communica 14 See Chapter X., on the Green Park, for a further notice of the Lodge, and for a view of it as it appeared from the Park. tion was opened through Wright's shop." 15 Gifford, the editor of the Anti-Facobin, wrote an "Epistle to Peter Pindar," ending thus: "For me why shouldest thou abortive toil, Waste the poor remnant of thy sputtering oil, Walcot was so galled at these lines that he rushed into Wright's shop when he saw Gifford enter, and aimed a blow at his head with a cudgel; a stander-by seized Walcot's arm and bundled him into the street, where he was rolled in the gutter. No. 170 is the Egyptian Hall. In 1812 this building was erected at a cost of 16,000l., from a design by G. F. Robinson, which was partly an imitation of the great Temple of Dendera, Upper Egypt. It was decorated with figures of Isis and Osiris by L. Gahagan. The Hall was built to receive Bullock's Liverpool Museum, which had been exhibited since 1805 in the room originally occupied by Astley for his evening performance of horsemanship. Astley's Amphitheatre at Lambeth was not roofed in until 1780, and, therefore, was not suited for anything but day exhibitions. Bullock attempted to combine instruction with amusement, and his exhibitions, among which were those illustrating Lapland and Ancient and Modern Mexico, were carefully got up. The following extract fully describes the place: "This museum contains curiosities not only from Africa but from North and South America, amphibious animals in great variety, with fishes, insects, shells, zoophytes, minerals, &c., ad infinitum, besides the Pantherion intended to display the whole of the known quadrupeds, in a state of preservation hitherto unattempted. For this purpose the visitor is introduced through a basaltic cavern, similar to the Giant's Causeway, or Fingal's Cave, in the Isle of Staffa, to an Indian hut. This hut is situated in a tropical forest, in which most of the quadrupeds described by 15 Edinburgh Review, vol. cviii. p. 111. |