Belgravia] THE WEALTH OF THE GROSVENORS. ne removed and burned into bricks, and by building upon the substratum of gravel, he converted this spot from the most unhealthy to one of the most healthy in the metropolis, in spite of the fact that its surface is but a few feet above the level of the river Thames at high water, during spring-tides. This mine of wealth-the present suburb, or rather city, of Belgravia, for such it has become passed into the possession of the Grosvenor family in 1656, when the daughter and sole heiress of Alexander Davies, Esq., of Ebury Farm, married Sir Thomas Grosvenor, the ancestor of the present Duke of Westminster. This Mr. Davies died in 1663, three years after the Restoration, little conscious of the future value of his five pasturing fields. "In Queen Elizabeth's time," observes a writer in the Belgravia magazine, "this sumptuous property was only plain Eabury, or Ebury Farm, a plot of 430 acres, meadow and pasture, let on lease to a troublesome 'untoward' person named Wharle; and he, to her farthingaled Majesty's infinite annoyance, had let out the same to various other scurvy fellows, who insisted on enclosing the arable land, driving out the ploughs, and laying down grass, to the hindrance of all pleasant hawking and coursing parties. Nor was this all the large-hearted queen alone cared about; she had a feeling for the poor, and she saw how these enclosures were just so much sheer stark robbery of the poor man's right of common after Lammas-tide. In the Regency, when Belgrave Square was a ground for hanging out clothes, all the space between Westminster and Vauxhall Bridge was known as 'Tothill Fields,' or 'The Downs.' It was a dreary tract of stunted, dusty, trodden grass, beloved by bull-baiters, badger-drawers, and dog-fighters. Beyond this Campus Martius of prize-fighting days loomed a garden region of cabbage-beds, stagnant ditches fringed with pollard withes. There was then no a Penitentiary at Millbank, no Vauxhall Bridge, but haunted house half-way to Chelsea, and a halfpenny hatch, that led through a cabbage-plot to a tavern known by the agreeable name of 'The Monster.' Beyond this came an embankment called the Willow Walk (a convenient place for quiet murder); and at one end of this lived that eminent public character, Mr. William Aberfield, generally known to the sport ing peers, thieves, and dog-fanciers of the Regency as 'Slender Billy.' Mr. Grantley Berkeley once had the honour of making this gentleman's acquaintance, and visited his house to see the great Spanish monkey 'Mukako' ('Muchacho') fight Tom Cribb's dogs, and cut their throats one after the other apparently, at least-for the 'gentleman' who really bled the dogs and the peers was Mr. 3. Cribb himself, who had a lancet hidden in his hand, with which, under the pretence of rendering the bitten and bruised dogs help, he contrived, in a frank and friendly way, to open the jugular vein. A good many of the Prince Regent's friends were Slender Billy's also. Mr. Slender Billy died, however, much more regretted than the Regent, being a most useful and trusty member of a gang of forgers." The Grosvenors, as already mentioned by us,* are one of the most ancient of the untitled English aristocracy, their ancestor having been the chief hunter (Le Gros veneur) to the Dukes of Normandy before the Conquest. It was not till a century ago that they condescended to bear a title, but since that time their growth to the very foremost rank in the peerage has been steady and wellearned, if personal worth and high honour, combined with immense wealth, are to be reckoned as any claim to a coronet. The chief wealth of the Grosvenors, prior to the marriage of their head with Miss Davies, of Ebury Farm, was drawn out of the bowels of the earth in the north of England. Hence Pope writes "All Townshend's turnips, and all Grosvenor's mines." Manor of Ebury, the Duke of Westminster enjoys There can be little doubt that, in right of his one of the largest rent-rolls, if not the very largest, sets it down at £1,000 a day, or £365,000 a in the kingdom. The current rumour of the day Sutherland, Buccleuch, and Northumberland, are year. Other noblemen, especially the Dukes of thought to approach very nearly to a like rental. As far back as the year 1819, the head of the Grosvenors was returned to the property-tax commissioners as one of the four richest noblemen in the kingdom, the three others being the Duke of Northumberland, the Marquis of Stafford (afterwards Duke of Sutherland), and the Earl of Bridgewater, the annual income in each case being in excess of £100,000. No other peers exceeded that sum at that time; but now, owing to the increased value of land in London, and the steady and mining industries, the owners of the above growth of the productiveness of the agricultural properties have much larger rent-rolls; and the probability is that there are ten or, perhaps, a dozen other peers whose incomes would reach the above-mentioned standard. A very different state when Charles II. was on the throne, if Macaulay of things, it must be said, from that which prevailed may be trusted when he writes of the year 1683:— "The greatest estates in the kingdom then very See Vol. IV., p. 371. little exceeded twenty thousand a year. The Duke its new purposes. A report of the governors for of Ormond had twenty-two thousand a year. The the year 1734, for which we are indebted to Duke of Buckingham, before his extravagance had Maitland, tells us that "the hospital is now fitted impaired his great property, had nineteen thousand up, and made much more complete than could six hundred a year. George Monk, Duke of have been expected out of a dwelling-house. It Albemarle, who had been rewarded for his eminent will at present contain sixty patients; but, as the services with immense grants of crown land, and boundaries of their grounds will admit of new who had been notorious both for covetousness and buildings for several spacious and airy wards, the for parsimony, left fifteen thousand a year of real subscribers propose to erect such buildings as soon estate, and sixty thousand pounds in money, which as their circumstances shall enable them." These probably yielded seven per cent. These three extra wards have since been supplied at a condukes were supposed to be three of the very siderable expense, and in process of time the richest subjects in England." The building of this entire building has been reconstructed. From great city of Belgravia, for such we are compeiled its commencement the hospital has been mainly to call it, fully justified William IV. in bestowing dependent upon voluntary contributions, not being on his lordship the territorial title of "Marquis of richly endowed like Guy's, St. Bartholomew's, and Westminster," which has blossomed into a duke- St. Thomas's. Fifty years after its foundation, the dom under Queen Victoria. subscriptions amounted to a little over £2,000 a year. The hospital was aided by one-third of the proceeds of musical entertainments in the Abbey. In its first half century it had numbered 150,000 patients. The present edifice was commenced towards the end of the reign of George IV., by William Wilkins, R.A., the architect of the National Gallery, University College in Gower Street, and other important buildings; but several additions have since been made to the original design, the latest being the erection of a new wing on the south-west side, in Grosvenor Crescent, which was completed about the year 1868. Viewing the great metropolis as a world in itself, as Addison and Dr. Johnson, and, indeed, all observant and thoughtful persons for these two centuries past have done, Belgravia and Bethnal Green become, both morally and physically, the opposite poles of the sphere of London-the frigid zones, so to speak, of the capital: the former, icy cold, from its stiff and unbending habit of fashion, form, and ceremony; the other, wrapped in a perpetual winter of never-ending poverty and squalor. But it is now time for us to proceed with our perambulation. Close by Hyde Park Corner, at the north end of Grosvenor Place, stands St. George's Hospital. It was built upon the site of a pleasant suburban residence of the first Lord Lanesborough, who died in 1723. Here he was out of the sound of the noisy streets, and could enjoy in private his favourite amusement of dancing. The reader will not forget the line of -Pope, in which he is immortalised as "Sober Lanesborough, dancing with the gout." Mr. Jesse writes: "So paramount is said to have been his lordship's passion for dancing, that when Queen Anne lost her Consort, Prince George of Denmark, he seriously advised her Majesty to dispel her grief by applying to his favourite exercise." But this may be possibly a piece of scandal and a canard of the day. Lord Lanesborough's house was beyond the turnpike gate, and Pennant says it was his lordship's "country house." In 1733, Lanesborough House was converted into an infirmary by some seceding governors of Westminster Hospital. The old house for many years formed the central part of the hospital, two wings having been added to it when it was converted to The principal front of the hospital, facing the Green Park, is now nearly 200 feet in length, and forms a rather handsome elevation. The building contains a lecture theatre and an anatomical museum. The expenses of the institution are defrayed by voluntary contributions, and by the interest of funded property arising from legacies. In the year 1880, including some special gifts, its income amounted to upwards of £23,000; and the number of persons benefited during the year was above 20,000. Mr. John Timbs, in his "Curiosities of London," mentions an "ingenious telegraph," which has been devised here for the transmission of orders through the different wards. "In the hall," he writes, "is a column three feet high, with a dial of engraved signals, and on the walls of the different wards are corresponding dials; so that when the pointer to the hall dial is moved to any signal, all the others move accordingly, and a little hammer strikes a bell, by which means about fifty signals are transmitted daily to each ward, without the possibility of error or the least noise." The Atkinson Morley Convalescent Home at Wimbledon is connected with this hospital, and there is also a medical school in connection with the institution. Of the many celebrated men whose names are more or less intimately associated with St. George's Hospital, may be mentioned those of Dr. Baily, Dr. W. Hunter, and his brother, John Hunter (who died here suddenly, having been violently excited by a quarrel in the boardroom, while suffering under disease of the heart), Sir Benjamin Brodie, Sir Everard Home, and Dr. James Hope, the author of "A Treatise on the Diseases of the Heart," and on "Morbid Anatomy," who was chiefly instrumental in overcoming the prejudice that formerly existed in England, and especially at this hospital, against the use of the stethoscope in the examination of diseases of the chest. In June, 1876, a curious accident occurred here. Through the bursting of a large tank on the roof, several tons of water suddenly broke through and deluged the lower floors, injuring some of the patients and the medical students, and causing the death of two or three of the patients. It need scarcely be added that, in the sanitary arrangements of the hospital, and also more especially in the important matter of ventilation, recourse has been had to the latest scientific improvements and discoveries. Like other London hospitals, St. George's draws its patients very largely from the most unfriended classes in its vicinity, very much from the poor of all parts of London, and in no small degree from the poor of all parts of England. In 1870, an inquiry showed that there were above 330 inpatients. Of these, 100 resided within a mile of the hospital; 150 beyond that radius, but within four miles of Charing Cross; while the remainder came from all parts of the country. 5 and horse-fanciers. On the left, an open gateway led into a garden-like enclosure, with a single tree in the centre rising from the middle of a grass-plot, surrounded by a circular path of yellow sand or gravel. Immediately beyond the gateway was the subscription-room; this building, though small, was admirably adapted for the purposes for which it was designed, and it contained merely a set of desks arranged in an octagonal form in the centre, where bets were recorded, and money paid over. On the right of the passage, a covered gateway led into the court-yard, where the principal business of the place was carried on; this was surrounded on three sides by a covered way, and at the extremity of one side stood the auctioneer's rostrum, overlooking the whole area. The stables, where the horses to be sold were kept in the interim, were close at hand, and admirably arranged for light and ventilation. In the centre of the enclosure was a domed structure to an humble but important appendage-a pump, and the structure itself was crowned by a bust of George IV. About the year 1864, "Tattersall's "-as this celebrated auctionmart was familiarly called throughout Europe-was removed further westward to Knightsbridge, where we shall come to it shortly. The public days at old "Tattersall's" were the Mondays in each week through the year, with the addition of Thursday during the height of the season. The horses of the chief sale, that of the Monday, arrived on the Friday previous. "When the settling-times arrive," observes a writer in the Penny Magazine for 1831, "great is the bustle and excitement that prevails throughout Tattersall's. Vehicles of all kinds dash to and fro in incessant. motion, or linger altogether inactive in rows about the neighbourhood, while their masters are bidding for a good hunter or a pair of carriage-horses. A more motley assemblage than the buyers or lookers-on at such times it would be impossible to find. Noblemen and ambitious costermongers, bishops and blacklegs, horse-breeders, grooms, jockeys, mingling promiscuously with the man of retired and studious habits fond of riding and breeding the wherewithal to ride; tradesmen about to set up their little pleasure-chaise or businesscart; and commercial travellers, whose calling has inoculated them with a passion for dabbling in horseflesh, and who, in their inns on the road, talk with great gusto and decision of all that pertains to Tattersall's, on the strength of some occasional half-hour's experience in the court-yard." At the south-eastern corner of St. George's Hospital, where now is Grosvenor Crescent, was formerly the entrance to Tattersall's celebrated auctionmart, "so renowned through all the breadth and length of horse-loving, horse-breeding, horse-racing Europe," which from all parts sends hither its representatives, when the more important sales are going on, and, with a confidence justified by the known character of the house, commissions the proprietor himself to procure for the nobles and gentry of the Continent fresh supplies for their studs of the finest English horses. The building itself, at the back, occupied part of the grounds of Lanesborough House. The entry was through an arched passage and down an inclined "drive," at the bottom of which was a public-house or "tap," desig- Richard Tattersall, the founder of the above nated "The Turf," for the accommodation of the establishment, was training-groom to the last Duke throngs of grooms, jockeys, and poorer horse-dealers of Kingston, brother of Lady Mary Wortley Mon tagu, and husband of the notorious duchess. On the death of his patron, in 1773, he appears to have opened his auction-mart; but the foundation of his fortune was laid by his purchase of the racehorse "Highflyer," for the enormous sum of £2,500, and, it is supposed, on credit-an evidence of the high character for integrity which he must have already acquired. "Of his personal qualities," it has been observed, "perhaps the establishment itself is the best testimony; what Tattersall's is now, it seems to and extended as far as the Alexandra Hotel. Here Dr. Parr used to stay when he came up to London from his parsonage at Hatton. Here, too, lived for some years John Liston, the comedian, who had removed hither after his retirement from the stage. "He had long outlived the use of his faculties," writes Leigh Hunt, "and used to stand at his window at the Corner' sadly gazing at the tide of human existence which was going by, and which he had once helped to enliven." Mr. have essentially been from the very outset a place | Planché, who was one of his most intimate friends, where men of honour might congregate without breathing, or, at all events, in but a greatly lessened degree, the pestilential vapour that usually but too often surrounds the stable; where men of taste might enjoy the glimpses afforded of the most beautiful specimens of an exquisitely beautiful race, without being perpetually disgusted with the worst of all things-that of the jockey or horsedealer." We shall have more to say of "Tattersall's," however, when we come to Knightsbridge. St. George's Place, or Terrace, now a series of princely mansions, was, till lately, a long row of low brick houses, of only one or two storeys, on the west side of the hospital, fronting Hyde Park, writes thus of this singular monomaniac: "His sole occupation was sitting all day long at the window of his residence, timing the omnibuses, and expressing the greatest distress and displeasure if any of them happened to be late. This had become a sort of monomania; his spirits had completely forsaken him. He never smiled or entered into conversation, and eventually he sunk into a lethargy, from which he woke no more in this world." In this terrace, probably, was the school to which Pope was sent at ten or eleven years of age, and where, as he tells us, he forgot nearly all that he had learnt from his first instructor, a worthy priest; |