In the early part of 1851 he took Gore House, the famous home of Lady Blessington at Kensington, and fantastic skill and showy decoration soon made the old-fashioned stucco-fronted building the wonder of a London as yet unfamiliar with palatial restaurants. The newspapers and a prospectus printed on satin paper with green-tinted edges announced the advent of ‘Soyer’s Universal Symposium,’ a single ticket for which was to cost a guinea, and a family ticket—your family might consist of five—three guineas. Every room in the house was provided with a seductive name: the Blessington Temple of the Muses; the Salle des Noces de Danae; the glittering Roscaille of Eternal Snow; the Bower of Ariadne; and the Celestial Hall of Golden Lilies. The Grand Staircase had its walls painted with a ‘Macédoine of all Nations,’ a monstrous medley of animals, politicians, and artists, the _chef d’œuvre_ of George Augustus Sala, who for a time acted as Soyer’s assistant. The Cabinet de Toilette à la Pompadour (Lady Blessington’s boudoir) led to the Danae saloon, which was embossed in gold and silver with showers of ‘tears’ or ‘gems.’ The Bower of Ariadne was painted with vines and Italian landscapes, and the Celestial Hall was in the Chinese taste. The garden—a delightful adjunct to a London restaurant—contained some fine trees, walnut and mulberry trees among them, which had been the pride of the good William Wilberforce when he lived in Gore House, before the coming of the gorgeous Countess. The meadow or ‘park’ of the domain—really a grazing-meadow hired from a Kensington cow-keeper—was adroitly styled the Pré d’Orsay, and here was erected the Encampment of All Nations, which was the public dining-hall, 400 feet long, ‘with a monster tablecloth, 307 feet long, of British manufacture.’ The garden, reached by flights of steps from the back of the house, had natural beauties of its own—Lady Blessington’s great rose-tree and Wilberforce’s thick-foliaged trees, Soyer added fountains and statuary, a grotto of Ondine, a little pavilion of many-hued stalactites with a crystal roof, and a statue of Hebe dispensing ambrosial liquors through the shafts of the temple. Here also stood the Baronial Hall, a building (not unsuggestive of Rosherville) 100 feet long, with a stained-glass roof. It was hung with pictures by Soyer’s wife (Emma Jones), and with the more interesting crayon portraits by Count d’Orsay. The American Bar and the Ethiopian Serenaders were perhaps more suited to Cremorne.