Another resident was that Admiral Byng, whose infamous execution called
forth a well-known sarcasm from Voltaire; while others who lived here
in the past were Lord Camden, the great Lord Chief Justice; Lord
Brougham, before he received his title; the Earl of Malmesbury, whose
four volumes of entertaining memoirs record his diplomatic experiences
and successes at half the courts of Europe; and Lords Lyttelton and
Carlisle, both poets of distinctly minor attainments. Other names
might be added; but to be exhaustive would be to hamper the wings of
imagination.
[Sidenote: HAYES STREET.]
Passing by Hayes Street, now used as mews by the exigencies of fashion,
and where, at the corner, a public-house with its sign bearing the
inscription, “I am the only running Footman,” will recall to our minds
this former appendage to fashionable state, of which “Old Q.” was the
last to make use, we come to Charles Street, thus named after Charles,
Earl of Falmouth, a brother of Lord Berkeley, the ground-landlord.
[Sidenote: CHARLES STREET.]
This is the last of what I call “the gridiron,” and is generally known
as Charles Street, Berkeley Square, from its entering the square at its
south-west corner.
Royalty in the person of William IV., when Duke of Clarence, has been
represented in this street; while Sydney Smith, when he was incumbent
of Berkeley Chapel close by, was residing here, at No. 33, the house
in which the daughter of Lord Hervey was burnt to death, in 1815.
It was about the purchase of this house that Smith once wrote “the
lawyers discovered some flaw in the title about the time of the Norman
Conquest, but, thinking the parties must have disappeared in the
quarrels of York and Lancaster, I waived the objection!”
Among other residents I find the names of Lord Ellenborough, once
Governor-General of India; Beau Brummell, at No. 42, in 1792; Lady
Grenville, after the death of her husband, the Prime Minister; and
Bulwer Lytton. The latter, in 1839, fitted up his house in a most
lavish style, and one of the rooms was made to represent, as closely
as might be, one of the chambers in Pompeii. James Smith, one of the
authors of the “Rejected Addresses,” has left an amusing account of a
visit he once paid here.
[Sidenote: CURZON STREET.]
A few steps brings us into Curzon Street. It is curious to notice the
difference between the two ends of this fashionable thoroughfare, or
rather it was till the Duke of Marlborough set up his splendid mansion
amidst the small shops and public-houses which distinguish the eastern
part, where Bolton, Clarges, and Half Moon Streets dwindle away into
it, and Lansdowne Passage forms an exiguous connection between it and
Berkeley Street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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