RETURNING now from these delightful suburban walks, we find ourselves once more at the West End. The London traveller, if he but learn the habit of diligently using his eyes as he walks, is certain to find at every turn something to entertain him, or something novel that he has not before observed. On the other hand, by cultivating incurious habits, the careless observer will come to look on the streets as merely tedious places of passage from one point to another—and the more speedily the monotonous transit is effected the happier he is.

Lately, passing through King Street, St. James’s, I paused before a familiar building, passed by thousands in their daily rounds without its exciting speculation or notice. Yet what curious memories it excites! “Chinnock, Galsworthy, and Chinnock ... To be sold ... fifty-five years’ lease ... 8,000 square feet, etc.” And had it actually come to this? Set out, too, upon an ominous black board hung on the old wall! And this the once-famous Almack’s! It had been offered already for sale in April on a fixed day, but the bidders were not sufficient; and so we have come to Chinnock, Galsworthy, and Chinnock, as per board, who are willing to treat with private parties. Shade of Lady Jersey! Shade of Lady Tankerville! Ghost of Princess Lieven! and spirit of the Iron Duke, once refused admission because he had not on a white cravat or the suitable breeches!

It was in King Street, St. James’s. Here was the long, well-grimed, dingy waste of bricks, prison-like, and recalling Mrs. Cornelys’ old rooms, now a chapel, close to Soho Square. Yet that Newgate-looking structure, how it contrasted with the brilliant festivals inside! A hundred and fifteen years of gaieties and revels—such is the exact life of Willis’s Rooms. We must feel sorry that they are now to “go,” for they are the last surviving “Rooms,” as they are called, of the good old pattern left in London. For a time we had the old Hanover Square Rooms for concerts and dances; good rococo things; but they have been nibbled away into a sort of club or hotel. But behind that old dingy waste of wall what balls, festivals, charity dinners, bazaars!

It was in 1765 that a Scot who came up to London conceived the design of erecting fashionable rooms on the pattern of the casinos abroad. His name was McCall, the syllables of which he ingeniously reversed into the celebrated “Almack”; and he brought his countryman, the renowned Neil Gow, from Edinburgh, to lend the music. The building was erected hurriedly, from the designs of Robert Mylne, of course another Scot, who had built Blackfriars Bridge. On the opening night, in February, the rooms were half empty, for the fashionable world was suffering from colds and was afraid to go. The walls were imperfectly dried, and the rich ceilings were dripping; though Almack protested that hot bricks and boiling water had been used in the structure. The place, however, grew into fashion, and at the suppers, Almack himself, “with his broad Scotch face and in a bag-wig,” was seen attending; while his wife, in a sack, “made tea and curtseys to our duchesses.” This worthy man died in 1781. How Almack’s passed to Willis is not clear. The Willises were a musical firm in their day. Gambling was carried on in the Rooms, and enormous sums were lost and won in a night. Its greatest days, however, were during the Regency, when the famous “Almack’s Balls” were given under the haughty control of “Ladies patronesses,” the Jersey, the Lieven, and others, and when the most exclusive system was in vogue. Gronow and Raikes tell many stories of the arrogance of these dames, when to obtain a “voucher” became a matter of favour and delicacy. The Almack’s Balls were continued in some shape, and under less exclusive conditions, until recently, when they were finally given up.

It is a curious feeling to enter and promenade through these forlorn and ghostly chambers. The doors stand open, and we can wander in and up the grand stone stair—the banisters oddly encased in crimson velvet. Everything is laid out on a noble, spacious scale. Gloomy and even dismal now seems the great ball-room on the first-floor—scene of so many “festival dinners” and dances—with its fine chimney-piece, floridly embroidered ceilings, “set-off,” as it was fancied, with hideous modern colouring, now faded and inexpressibly shabby. The old scheme was white and gold. But here are still the fine old English mirrors, with their garlands and carvings; and the tall pillars behind which Neil Gow and his fiddlers played; and the chandeliers, of Venetian glass apparently, with their chains and lustres and bulbous drops, elegant enough. Here are all the old-fashioned “rout” seats and chairs and tables huddled together and piled up on top of one another. Many a “bad quarter of an hour” has been spent here whilst awaiting nervously the chairman’s signal to “reply to the toast”; and here is the very spot where I once sat “peppering,” as it is called, in an

unpleasant mood of suspense; the long tables spreading away and crowded with unfeeling diners, hundreds “feeding like one,” who would desire nothing better than a “break-down.” It is a curious, agitating feeling when, on a sudden hush, one has to rise with a “Mr. Chairman!” For a second every face is turned to see and wonder, and ask whose the face is seen indistinctly afar off.

Below is the “concert-room,” a fine, well-proportioned apartment. Around are many vast chambers: one where the gambling went on, and Charles Fox and Lord Carlisle lost huge sums. It is difficult to give an idea of the dismal impression left as we promenade these ghostly chambers. On the walls are a score and more of portraits—all of the one “Kit-kat” size, many by a forgotten artist—Knapton. These represent members of the still existing “Dilettante Society,” who used to meet in one of the rooms. Three of these pictures, of a large size, and exhibiting full-length groups, were the work of Sir Joshua, and are to be seen in the National Gallery. A history of this elegant club, which has published splendid folios, has been written by my friend, the late Sir F. Pollock.

And so we come out into old King Street again, to read once more on the prosaic board that the whole will be sold as “a going concern,” with its licence, goodwill, etc., and that this and a great deal more may be learned from the worthy auctioneers aforesaid.

There are plenty of these ghostly chambers in London, and the feeling on disturbing their antique solitude is a curious one. It is specially present when we invade the repose of the now disused Palaces, some of which are interesting places enough, but have a particularly forlorn and faded air.

No building has been so rudely, even coarsely, treated as the venerable old Palace, St. James’s, whose gate tower is so interesting and piquant a monument. Portions have been burnt and re-built; but the “restorations” seem always to have been carried out on the meanest and shabbiest fashion. Witness the meagre, skimpy colonnade in the courtyard; the wretched brickwork; the poor, “starved” rooms; the tottering chimneys “stuck on” outside, and the patched air of the whole. The old chambers within, though spacious and imposing enough, are strangely dingy, and seem not to have been painted or “refreshed” for a century. The place looks as though it were abandoned altogether, which no doubt it is. Yet a small sum judiciously laid out in the way of trimming or restoration would do much; were even mullioned windows substituted for the present unsightly and incongruous “sashes.”

Hard by is that great modern pile, Buckingham Palace, the work of George IV., which took the place of the pleasant old Buckingham House, which, as we can see from the prints, was something after the pattern of Marlborough House. This lumbering, uninteresting mass, though built of stone, is made more unattractive still by being painted over, owing to the decay of the material. Within there are many vast chambers of state which, on rare occasions of high festival, are lit up and crowded with rank, beauty, and fashion. The ball-room is a fine and richly-decorated apartment, and the grand staircase is “monumental” enough. No one who has not visited them can have an idea of the size, or apparent size at least, of the gardens and pleasure grounds behind, which have been artfully protected from vulgar observation by large raised banks and thick planting. It is a pity that this sacred preserve is not, as in continental cities, opened to the crowd; it would be an addition to the few agrÉments of London. It is now almost forgotten that in front of the palace, before the erection of the present faÇade, stood the Marble Arch, that curious freak of George IV., who, however, intended that it should be enriched with a spirited group on the top. The present situation, where it is useful as an omnibus station, seems unsuitable.

Another of these old derelict places is Kensington Palace. This, with its “dependences,” still remains a very “lively” bit of architecture, rather original in its design; the irregular faÇade being judiciously broken up. The various offices, stables, guard-houses, etc., even the little entrance gate on the Kensington Road, have a welcome piquancy, and are most effective in their way. Here we have the true old-fashioned tone. A portion is inhabited; and, with the pretty gardens, has the air of a flourishing country house; but the state chambers are all chilly, darkened, and given over to desolation. It is truly a pity that these fine old places could not be utilized as picture galleries or museums, like Hampton Court; the very fact of free circulation, and the visits of the public, would preserve them and save them from rusting away.[29]

The wanderer or walker in London will find a district close by the Palace very welcome and pleasing—the well-known Campden Hill. For a spot so embedded in town it has a curious rural note of its own, an old-fashioned air, as though it declined altogether to go with the times. The air, too, is tempered and softened; there are numbers of pretty places, with their spreading grounds, old trees, and older villas. Those persons who have been fortunate enough to secure ground here in good time are to be envied. The curious part is that it is bounded all round by the most uninviting prosaic districts—on one side by the frowsy Notting Hill Gate, on the other by the common high road to Hammersmith, all crowded with omnibuses and carts. But ascend the gentle hill, from whatever direction, and you find yourself puzzled by the antique simplicity and suburban air of the place. Of course there are eyesores and blemishes—the dreadful waterworks in the very centre, to say nothing of numerous modern “Follies,” fantastic freaks in the way of enormously tall houses, and other monstrosities. Coming up the broad cross road which joins Notting Hill and Kensington, we ascend a sort of sheltered lane, with all sorts of ancient tenements, somewhat “shaky,” each with its garden and enclosing wall, such as one might encounter at Kew or Chiswick. Many of these have been judiciously adapted and added to by the thriving artist or littÉrateur. This portion may be called the town side of Campden Hill; and here are also the modern builders’ terraces.

Here stands the modern Campden House; but a far more interesting structure is the old, “Little Campden House,” with its heavy roof and eaves, and old-fashioned air, but with an abandoned look, presenting no tangible idea to the present generation, yet in its day it and its enterprising owner furnished much talk and speculation in artistic circles. Mr. Wooler was passionately fond of theatricals, and the private theatre in his house became celebrated, the owner himself gravitating towards the genuine stage.

A striking evidence of the luxury of our time is found in the magnificent, and even sumptuous, workshops in which our painters pursue their labours. This was prompted by the great artistic revival which occurred nearly twenty years ago, when there was the “sensation” auctions at “Christie’s,” and the works of modern artists were fetching enormous prices. All the great painters designed and built themselves these luxurious temples. Unluckily, many of lesser light, and lesser ability, followed the example, often with disastrous results. The craze abated; prices have fallen rapidly, and numbers of these handsome structures now stand tenantless. Holland Park, and the district adjoining Melbury Road, etc., is the locality favoured; and there is undoubtedly a kind of old-fashioned, semi-rural tone about the place that justifies the selection. There are also a few in St. John’s Wood.

The House of the President of the Royal Academy is, as might be expected from one of such taste and training, the most striking and effective. Here we see the effect of a marked personality; and there is even something sympathetic in the structure. It has often been described, by Mrs. Haweis and others; but more as though it were some glittering museum, of whose treasures an inventory is given. As we stand before it, in Holland Park Road, we are struck by the fashion in which it harmonizes with the locality; the sequestered lane, the old-fashioned scraps of garden, where the good old trees live and thrive, and the lingering old houses. There is a kind of gentle tone over the scene, and a pleasant, retired air. The house, though not large, has an air of monumental solidity; severe in style, built of bricks, which are beautiful from their rich and almost roseate hue—though we are inclined to make a somewhat diffident protest against the overhanging room, supported on iron columns, which has lately been projected at one side. This somewhat enfeebles the solid and stately air of the whole. Behind there is a delightful garden, not walled round, or “trimmed” up, but separated by a hedge or paling from the road. There are old trees and grass, and a general rustic laissez faire.

The interior is a poetical dream, Oriental or Moorish in its magnificence. With exquisite art the studio is planned as the “note” or central feature of the whole; the stairs, the halls, and vestibule all prepare the visitor for the main attraction.

“Turning aside,” says Mrs. Haweis, “from the foot of the stairs, we pass through peacock-green arches, with deep gold incisions, into the third Hall, called of Narcissus, which strikes a full deep chord of colour, and deepens the impression of antique magnificence. A bronze statuette of the fair son of Cephisus, from that in the Naples Museum, stands in the midst of it. Here the walls are deepest sea-blue tiles, that shades make dark; the floor is pallid (the well-known mosaic of the CÆsars’ palaces), and casts up shimmering reflected lights upon the greeny-silver ceiling, like water itself. The delicate tracery of the lattices brought bodily from the East, and which rise to right and left, having the complexity and colour of the skeleton of a leaf, and guarded by glass outside; the fine alhacen of carved wood which lines the central alcove facing us, with its four rare Persian enamels of women’s figures, and its shelves of Persian plates; the brilliant little windows that break the sunshine into scarlet and gold and azure flame; the snow-white columns of marble that stand against red at every angle; the fountain that patters and sings in its pool of chrysolite water—most perfect colophon to all the colours and the outer heat. We wander round and enjoy the toss of its one white jet from a bed of water wherein descending ridges, step-wise, have the semblance of the emerald facets of a great green stone.

“The hall takes the form of a Greek cross, with slender columns as aforesaid at the angles, set against rose-red slabs. But the entrance is flanked with columns of a larger girth, made of red marble, with golden capitals. The walls are lined with Syrian azulejos of soft and varying blue and white arranged in panels, surmounted by a broad frieze, as yet unfinished, designed by Walter Crane, in a beautiful running pattern of fawns and vines, carried out in gold Venice mosaic. Above it rise courses of black and white marble, and above again the golden dome.

“Over the entrance we see the overhanging black of the Zenana we have not yet visited, that Eastern nest that juts like a closed-in balcony high up the wall. Between it and the doorway lies a great purple panel blazoned with a verse of the Koran in Arabic, and through the arch we see the distant staircase winding beyond the purple shadows of the intervening hall.”

The studio itself is of a business-like, practical sort, though it is stored with choice treasures and inspiring bits of antique colour. In short, the artistic feeling of the accomplished man who prompted the whole is felt everywhere.

There is a good deal of the “peacock blue,” and other colouring that combines with it. This somewhat “barbaric” scheme of colour is scarcely suited to our country; and the rich tint is likely enough to fade, or grow darker and yet darker, with time. We select this studio as a typical one, though it exceeds its fellows in magnificence and eastern luxe.[30]

At Palace Gate, at the entrance to Kensington, Sir John Millais has his studio, in a substantial house, designed by Mr. Hardwicke. The studio, however, is a simple building, attached to the house. Mr. Alma Tadema’s studio was an old house in Porchester Terrace, on the banks of the canal, which he had fitted up and adapted to his purposes. He has now, however, built himself a new one. Mr. Hubert Herkomer’s is down at his well-known artistic colony at Bushey.