[1] This has turned out a singularly accurate prophecy. Chippendale’s work now fetches an enormous sum whenever it appears at a sale by auction. It lately brought close on £30.

[2] Few are aware of the number of these mediÆval obstructions, of which there are some 250 in London. “In most parishes there are two or three; in some the number reaches thirty or forty. The whole metropolitan area is dotted with them. There are nine in Marylebone; thirty in St. Pancras, principally on the Camden Estate and Crown property. St. George’s, Hanover Square, has a dozen; St. Mary, Islington, twenty; St. Giles’s, Camberwell, sixteen. There are four each in St. James and St. John, Clerkenwell, in Chelsea, and in Woolwich. Paddington has five; but the number increases, sometimes by leaps and bounds, until we reach such totals as 27 for Wandsworth, 28 for Lewisham, and 36 for Fulham. Poplar has only one, but it reconciles the deficiency to its self-respect by levying a toll. The privilege of shutting out vehicles is highly prized in some parts of St. Pancras, and highly paid for. It makes a substantial addition to the rent, and it constitutes a sort of permanent charge on the rates, in the form of payment on the original cost of the roads.”

[3] Of the wealth of the late Earl an incidental proof carelessly escaped on the occasion of the fire at Cortachy Castle, when it was stated that his lordship had brought sixty servants and some four or five thousand pounds’ worth of furniture for this summer excursion, just as an ordinary family would take a few articles to complete the furnishing of a house taken at the seaside! Further, it was mentioned that fifty sovereigns belonging to her ladyship were saved; they had been left on her table just as “the gentle reader” himself might leave some pence on the chimney-piece.

[4] But, as I write, this memorial is being removed, and the whole faÇade is being cased with stone.

[5] Lately died Selby, the Liston-faced coachman, with his low-crowned hat, who drove to Brighton and back in the surprisingly short time of seven hours 51 minutes, for a wager. His funeral was an extraordinary spectacle, followed by more than a score of coaches, laden with wreaths, and driven by “the fancy.” This recalls the interment of “Tom Moody.”

[6] Mr. Dickens used to relate how, at one of his last dinners when in this senile state, the servant, who had the whole rÉpertoire by heart, would suggest and prompt. “Tell the gentlemen, sir, about Mr. Selwyn and the Duke of Queensberry, sir,” etc., on which the old man, set a-going like some musical-box, would start off on his narrative. He was a sad spectacle.

One of the best stories told to us by Mr. Dickens in a railway carriage—unpublished, too—we must repeat; but the voice cannot be supplied: it was that of Justice Stareleigh, as given at the “readings,” very slow and funereal:—

“The Honour-a-ble Augustus Stanhope, one of the most fashionable bloods of his day, fell in love with the lovely Miss Beauclerk, who did not re-turn his passion. He bribed her maid to secrete him in her cheea—mber. When she came up to attire herself for a ball, he emerged from his concealment. She looked at him fixedly. ‘Why don’t you begin?’ she asked, after a pause. She took him for the ’airdresser!”

[7] It was in December, 1848, that the Quadrant colonnade, “one of the most elegant architectural features of the Metropolis,” and certainly an effective addition to the pretentious glories of Regent Street, was removed. There were, however, sound utilitarian reasons for the step, the colonnade being the resort and shelter of disorderly characters at night. Each of the columns, it was stated by the auctioneer, who sold them in lots, weighed 35 cwt., and had cost £35 to put up. There were 270 in all, and 144 realized about £1,000. These now form unsuspected portions of other buildings in various parts of the country.

[8] Lately, passing near Camden Town, I noticed a crowd staring vacantly at the top of a very lofty old tree, and was delighted to note an immense nest in process of construction, with a couple of the “inky-coated” on solemn guard.

[9] In the room in which I now write he has often sat, and often has it re-echoed to his jocund laugh. His paper-knife and paper weight marked C. D. are beside me. His ghost should flutter near at hand.

[10] The architect of the bridge, Sir John Rennie, gives a curious account of the plans that were proposed towards the beginning of this century for the improvement of the river:—“A committee,” he tells us, “called the Committee of Taste, was appointed, in order to design such improvements as were imperatively required in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross, the Strand, and Holborn and Oxford Street. This Committee consisted of the late Lord Farnborough, John Wilson Croker, Sir John Soane, Sir Robert Smirke, Nash, and others. To its labours we are indebted for Trafalgar Square and the improvements in the Strand, Cockspur Street, the Haymarket, the old Opera House, and those between Oxford Street and Holborn, which are really very good, and the architecture, although not altogether faultless, is nevertheless, taken as a whole, very effective; in fact, nothing like these improvements has been effected since. The new street from Waterloo Bridge to Oxford Street, undertaken soon after, has been a miserable failure; instead of taking a direct line, they availed themselves as far as they could of the old miserable intervening streets, so that this thoroughfare, which ought to have been one of the best in London, is now one of the worst, and the increase in the value of the property on each side has been very little. But if this street had been made in a straight line, and of ample width, the shops and buildings on both sides would have been of a superior character, and would have yielded far higher rents, which would have gone a long way towards paying part of the expenses, if not the whole.

“About this time Sir F. Trench, who moved in the most fashionable circles, and was a great amateur in architecture and fine arts, was seized and enraptured with the idea of constructing quays along the banks of the Thames between Whitehall and Blackfriars Bridge, and converting the space so recovered from the shore of the Thames into a handsome carriage-drive and promenade ornamented with gardens and fountains. He applied to the late Mr. Philip Wyatt and myself to assist him in preparing the designs and in obtaining an Act of Parliament to carry it into effect. Trench said he had no doubt that sufficient money would be obtained. He accordingly, with his great influence and indefatigable activity, formed a committee of the highest class; neither were the ladies excluded; amongst others, the beautiful Duchess of Rutland took the greatest interest in the undertaking, and at the first meeting, which took place at Her Grace’s house, she was unanimously voted to the chair, and conducted everything in the most business-like manner. Lord Palmerston, then Secretary for War, took a leading part, and it is singular that many years later his Lordship, then Premier, should have proposed a similar measure, and the continuation of the coal duties for carrying it into effect, which was adopted; but when we proposed the undertaking and the mode of raising the funds, notwithstanding our powerful committee, the idea was considered chimerical. For this and other reasons the project fell to the ground.”

[11] As the great Duke was the first to pay the halfpenny toll, it might be interesting to know who was the last passenger to pay it; for, of course, there must have been a halfpenny received which was the last. I understand that the late Mr. Thomas Purnell—whose incisive criticisms in the AthenÆum some years, “fluttered the dovecots” of the dramatists, and which were signed “Q.”—claimed the distinction of being positively the last passenger that paid the halfpenny.

[12] A piece of Irish wit may be quoted here. It was proposed to erect a monument to a well-known Dublin physician in one of the public cemeteries, and the inscription was debated. Some one suggested this of Wren’s!

[13] There has been an enemy working underground during the past years—an ogre more wholesale and omnivorous than has yet appeared. This arises out of the burrowing of the underground lines in the City—the grand teredo, such as bored its way to the Mansion House Station from the Tower. It has been stated “that there has been no such general demolition since the days of the Great Fire. No less than 130 houses, some of them the oldest in London, and two of the City halls, have been pulled down in order to construct the new thoroughfare which continues Gracechurch Street to Tower Hill. The general destruction is added to by the tunnelling of the link line from the Tower to the Mansion House.”

[14] With such rapidity are the blows struck, and so capricious too is the spoiler in his work, now hurrying on, now suspending altogether, that it becomes difficult to bring the record “up to date,” as it were.

[15] It was sold “in lots” in 1882 for about £10,000; the grand marble staircase, which cost £11,000, went to Madame Tussaud’s for £1,000, where a portion may be seen. The massive gilt grille, or railing that faced the street, cost £3,500, and was bought for Sandown for 300 guineas. Being all levelled and cleared the ground was laid out and sold, when it was found there was room for seventy-five houses.

[16] Many will have noted the curious iron posts fixed in the ground in front of one of the corner houses. These are real cannon, captured in one of Admiral Keppel’s victories, and presented to his family.

[17] Since writing the above, the “White Hart” has been demolished.

[18] “The fate of the Cock Tavern was decided yesterday, when a special jury at the Recorder’s Court in the Guildhall awarded £9,000 for the freehold, and nearly £11,000 to the lessee and occupier, in all about £20,000. It was proved that the profits were £2,000 a year. A casual visitor would have great difficulty in believing the fact. The ancient dinner haunt was a small, dingy snuggery, greasy with the steam of fifty thousand dinners. It hardly seated a score guests, and served nothing but steaks, chops, and kidneys with ale and stout for liquor. Counsel for the lessee, in addressing the court on the amount of award, said he had himself seen only that day three of Her Majesty’s judges at luncheon hour in the neighbouring law court sitting over their chop and pewter of London stout in The Cock. The only articles reserved in the old place are the mantelpiece, a massive work in oak, of the time of James I., and the sign of the house, which was carved by Grinling Gibbons.”

[19] A sympathetic frequenter of the “Cheshire Cheese” has sent me a glowing account of its alternations, which I can cordially endorse. “The ‘Cheese’ is really the last of our old taverns, conducted on genuine principles, which one wishes to cherish. When genial spring has brought forward vegetation the waiter’s cheerful intimation that ‘Asparagus is on, sir,’ recalls the fact forcibly to your notice. When later, ‘’Am and peas’ can be secured, the vision of early summer is perfect, and is not even disturbed by boiled beans and bacon. In the hot, sultry days, cool salads are appropriate, and when these disappear there is a closing in of daylight and a general warning that the year is past its prime. Then does the ‘Cheese’ draw its blinds and light its gas, stoke up its fires and announce its great puddings. Yet, further ahead, when raw November days come upon us, the savoury smell of Irish stew—that fine winter lining for the hungry—pervades the place, and so the season goes round. Of all the changes brought about by the rolling year, however, none is so popular as the advent of the pudding, though it means frost, and damp, and cold winds. The pudding (italics for ‘the,’ please) has no rival in size or quality. Its glories have been sung in every country, even the Fort Worth Texas Gazette having something to say on the subject. The pudding ranges from fifty to sixty, seventy, and eighty pounds weight, and gossip has it that in the dim past the rare dish was constructed to proportions of a hundredweight. It is composed of a fine light crust in a huge china basin, and there are entombed therein beefsteaks, kidneys, oysters, larks, mushrooms, and wondrous spices and gravies, the secret of which is known only to the compounder. The boiling process takes about sixteen to twenty hours, and the smell on a windy day has been known to reach as far as the Stock Exchange. The process of carving the pudding on Wednesdays and Saturdays when it is served is as solemn a ceremony as the cutting of the mistletoe with the golden sickle of the Druids. The late proprietor, Mr. Beaufoy A. Moore, could be with difficulty restrained from rising from his bed when stricken down with illness to drive to the ‘Cheese’ and serve out the pudding. No one, he believed, could do it with such judicious care and judgment as he did. The dining-room is fitted with rows of wooden benches and wooden tables without the slightest pretence of show. But the cloths are white and clean, and the cutlery bright, while the china service is of that ancient and undemonstrative blue design which delighted our forefathers, and is known as the willow pattern. The glasses are large, thick, and heavy, and might be used with effect in an argument. But the silver is silver, not Brummagem, and has seen more service than would destroy half the property of modern public-houses. On the walls hang three prominent objects (in addition to the usual advertisements of brands of champagnes and clarets), viz., a barometer, a print of Dr. Johnson, and an old oil painting by Wageman, representing the interior of the room with a gentleman trying his steak with his knife, a waiter holding up a port wine cork in the well-known attitude ‘two with you’; and a cat rubbing her oleaginous hide in anxious expectation against the leg of the settle. This picture, like one in the bar, is an heirloom, or rather a fixture, which cannot be sold, but must pass from landlord to landlord. The fireplaces are huge and commodious, capable of holding a hundredweight of coal at a time. On a cold winter’s day, when their genial warmth penetrates every portion of the room, and the merry flames dance and leap after each other up the capacious chimney space, a man listens to the howling wind without, or hears the rain pattering on the paved courts. Here gather poets, painters, lawyers, barristers, preachers, journalists, stockbrokers, musicians, town councillors, and vestrymen, with just a soupÇon of sporting celebrities, and a decided dash of the impecunious ‘Have beens.’ The latter represent in the ‘Cheese’ colony the Irish division in Parliament. Up-stairs there are extensive ranges of kitchens, where burnt sacrifices are being perpetually offered up in the shape of mutton and beef; a dining room, and a smoke-room, dark-panelled and cosy, where a man may forget the world and be lost to it during a much-coveted midday rest. The privileged few who are allowed to go into the wondrous cellars—redolent of sawdust, cobweb-coated, and covered with dust—wander amidst avenues of wine-bins with wonder and astonishment at the space occupied underground as compared with the upper regions.”

[20] They gave an entertainment on St. Luke’s Day, and we find that on May 17th, 1635, Mr. Inigo Jones, the King’s surveyor, was invited to dinner, and very willingly came and dined with the company. Some of the invitations have the signature of Verrio and Sir Godfrey Kneller. The ancient pictures on the wall are mostly gifts from the painters, who were living men of the company. One of the minutes in the books has justly furnished considerable entertainment from its quaint simplicity: “On the 10th March, 1673,” is pronounced this censure: “That the painter of Joseph and Pottifer’s Wife and the Fowre Elements be fined £3 6s. 8d. for such bad work.”

[21] It may be added that the difficulties in getting admission to see old monuments in London seem insuperable. As a general rule they are rarely open—or open at awkward hours. No one about appears to know where the person in charge is to be found, and he is usually “out,” being busy with other functions. The old City Halls are jealously guarded, and we recall how shocked the old lady housekeeper was at one of these places when admission was proposed. Application must be made to high officials, who, however, are gracious enough in according permission. The result, however, is long delay and loss of opportunity.

[22] It was thus that passing by St. Magnus’s on one Sunday afternoon, the door open, the organ pealing out, we expected the usual “Sunday service” in the City, with its dozen or so of congregation—the few old women, the sleeping old men, who had turned in for the purpose. Who could have thought of realizing so perfectly the traditional Swift story of “Dearly Beloved Roger”? For there was literally the minister and his clerk, reading and responding, the pew-opener sitting by the door, and not a soul besides! The pew-opener rose, making a piteously imploring, despairing appeal to remain; the incumbent glanced over, half-ashamed—but the intruder fled!

[23] Some time ago there was a controversy in the papers as to the propriety of opening the churches, City and others, “for private prayer.” Mr. Brook, the rector of this pretty church of St. Mary Woolnoth, gave his experiences of an experiment he made in this way. “The abuse,” he said, “of the privilege had been very great, though certainly, by reason of constant watchfulness, not as bad as it used to be. Your readers will scarcely believe it when I mention that dozens and dozens of times men and women have actually made a public convenience of the sacred building; others have come in and stripped themselves nearly naked in the darker corners, for what reason no one can say; others come for the sole purpose of altercation with the attendant, and one lately even struck and seriously hurt her; indeed, if it were not for the friendly policeman on the neighbouring point, such incidents would be of daily occurrence. It was only a few weeks since a child was born on the mat in the entrance of the church, though this is not so common as it used to be in days gone by; and when I first became rector of the parish the church, between one and two o’clock, was regularly used as a luncheon room.”

[24] This relic is now on the eve of being demolished.

[25] All his visions therefore faded away: the “cloud-capp’d towers and gorgeous palaces” dwindled gradually and shrank: prose, and questions of convenience, took the place of this baseless fabric of a vision.

[26] A prelate once applied to Pugin for a design for a new church. It was to be very large, he said, the neighbourhood being very populous; it must be very handsome, as a fine Protestant church was close by; and it must be very cheap—they were very poor, in fact had only £—. When could they expect the design? The architect wrote back promptly: “My dear Lord, say thirty shillings more, and have a tower and spire at once. A. W. P.”

[27] As a specimen of the unconsidered artistic trifles to be found in London by those who search for them, the simple railing that runs outside in front of the grille of the British Museum is worth a moment’s attention. The low posts, or standards, are capped with a little sitting lion, exceedingly quaint and spirited in design. This has often been sketched or hastily modelled by the sculptor, for it is the work of the unfortunate Alfred Steevens, who is only now being appreciated as he deserves to be.

[28] On the old familiar green cover of “Pickwick,” Mr. Pickwick is shown seated in a punt, fishing, and in the background is seen the old Putney Church, with the quaint bridge.

[29] “There is one apartment,” says a visitor, “looking out on an old-fashioned garden of circular laurel-beds and well-groomed hedges, which has interest as the nursery of Queen Victoria—now bare like the rest, save that it contains the toys that amused our Queen’s childhood. Here they repose, a little dusty to be sure, but not much the worse for their sixty and odd years of life. On the mantelpiece is a headless horsewoman who still keeps her seat; in a box, carefully folded in tissue paper, is a doll clothed in a muslin dress of fine quality, with a delicately-worked lace cap tied under the chin, almost hiding her bright fluffy hair. Then against the wall stands a three-masted, fully-rigged ship, six feet long, its last voyage done. By the side of the vessel is a large red doll’s house of many furnished rooms, with a kitchen, containing a well-stocked dresser and a miniature wooden cook who had fallen on her face, on whom I took pity and seated before the kitchen range. I left the nursery, and soon came to the room where the Queen was born—an apartment of mirrors, with paper (one of the few rooms with wall decoration intact) of a pleasing tint, picked out with an heraldic device. Hard by is found the apartment where the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham kicked their heels till the timid attendant could make up her mind to rouse the sleeping Princess, and tell her she was Queen of England.”

[30] Many years ago the town was excited by the description of a room which that clever, erratic artist, Mr. Whistler, had designed and painted for a gentleman of fortune, Mr. Neyland. It was known as “the Peacock Room,” and is all painted in blues and gold, after the pattern of tints in the peacock’s tail. The dado is blue on a gold ground, and above it the scheme is reversed, being gold on a blue ground. This rich and gorgeous arrangement is now, probably enough, somewhat faded.