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'd When Waller read his ditty; Where Byron lived and Gibbon died And 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 doubtless largely contributed to by his regular business, since he charged five shillings for cutting hair.