The houses in the quarter behind these, built by the Earl of Pembroke, made way, sixty years back, for the present handsome set of buildings called the Adelphi, from the Messrs. Adam, brothers, who built it.[180] The principal front faces the Thames, and is almost the only public walk left for the inhabitants of London on the river side. The centre house was purchased when new, by Garrick in 1771, and was his town house for the rest of his life. He died there about nine years after; but Mrs. Garrick possessed it till a late period. Mrs. Garrick had been a dancer in her youth, with a name as vernal as need be--Mademoiselle Violette: she died a venerable old lady, at the age of ninety odd. Boswell has recorded a delightful day spent with Johnson and others at her house, the first time she re-opened it after Garrick's death. Sir Joshua Reynolds was there, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Boscawen, and others. "She looked well," says Boswell; "talked of her husband with complacency; and while she cast her eyes at his portrait, which was hung over the chimney-piece, said, that 'death was now the most agreeable object to her.'"[181] It is no dishonour to her, that her constitution was too good for her melancholy. She spoke enthusiastically of her husband to the last, and used to decide on theatrical subjects, by right of being his representative. On the same terrace had lived their common friend Beauclerc. On coming away after the party just mentioned, Boswell tells us that Johnson and he stopped a little while by the rails of the Adelphi, looking on the Thames; "and I said to him," says Boswell, "with some emotion, that I was now thinking of two friends we had lost, who once lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerc and Garrick." "Ay, sir," said he tenderly, "and two such friends as cannot be supplied."[182]