SOME GOSSIP ABOUT LEICESTER SQUARE.

IN old-world London, Leicester Square played a much more important part than it does to-day. It was then the chosen refuge of royalty and the home of wit and genius. Time was when it glittered with throngs of lace-bedizened gallants; when it trembled beneath the chariot-wheels of Beauty and Fashion; when it re-echoed with the cries of jostling chairmen and link-boys; when it was trodden by the feet of the greatest men of a great epoch-Newton and Swift, Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a host of others more or less distinguished. Mr. Tom Taylor, in his interesting work entitled "Leicester Square," tells us that the vicissitudes of a London quarter generally tend downwards through a regular series of decades. It is first fashionable; then it is profes

sional; then it becomes a favourite locality for hotels and lodginghouses; then the industrial element predominates, and then not infrequently a still lower depth is reached. Leicester Square has been no exception to this rule. Its reputation in fact was becoming very shady indeed, when the improvement of its central inclosure gave it somewhat of a start upwards and turned attention to its early history.

Of old, many of these grand doings took place at Leicester House, which was the first house in the Square. It was built by Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, a staunch Royalist, somewhere about 1636. His sons, Viscount Lisle and the famous Algernon Sidney, grew up less of Royalists than he was; and to Leicester House, with the sanction and welcome of its head, came many of the more prominent Republicans of the day, Vane and Neville, Milton and Bradshaw, Ludlow and Lambert. The cream of history lies not so much in a bare notation of facts as in the little touches of nature and manners which reproduce for us the actual human life of a former age, and much of this may be gleaned from the history of the Sidneys. They were an interesting family, alike from their rank, their talents, their personal beauty, and the vicissitudes of their fortunes. The Countess was a clever managing woman; and her letters to her absent lord when ambassador in France convey to us many pleasant details of the home-life at Leicester House. charming is it to read the pretty little billets addressed to the Earl by his elder girls. Of these six beautiful daughters of the house of Sidney, four were married and two died in the dawn of early womanhood. Of

the

Still more

younger of these, Lady Elizabeth, the father has a touching entry in his journal. After narrating her death, he adds: "She had to the last the most angelical countenance and beauty, and the most heavenly disposition and temper of mind that I think were ever seen in so young

a creature."

With her death the merry happy family life at Leicester House drew

to a close. The active bustling mother, whose influence had brought the different jarring chords into harmony, died a few months afterwards; and the busy years as they sped onwards, while consummating the fall of Charles and consolidating the power of Cromwell, also put great and growing disunion between the Sidney brothers. At the Restoration, Algernon was in exile; Lord Lisle's stormy temper had alienated him from his father; the Earl's favourite son-in-law was dead; of the three who remained he was neither proud nor fond; and lonely and sick at heart, he grew weary of the splendid home from which the fair faces of his handsome children had gone for ever, and made preparations to leave it. He was presented to Charles II.; and immediately afterwards retired to Penshurst in Kent; and Leicester House was let, first to the ambassadors of the United Provinces; and then to a more remarkable tenant, Elizabeth Stewart, the ill-fated Princess and Queen of Bohemia. She had left England in 1613 a lovely happy girl, the bride of the man she loved, life stretching all rainbow-hued before her. She returned to it a weary haggard woman of sixty-five, who had drunk to the dregs of every possible cup of disappointment and sorrow. Her presence was very unwelcome, as that of the unfortunate often is. Charles II., her nephew, was very loath indeed to have the pleasure of receiving her as a guest; but she returned to London whether he would or not, and Leicester house was taken for her. There she languished for a few months in feeble and broken health, and there, on the anniversary of her wedding-day, she died.

The house immediately to the west of Leicester House belonged to the Marquis of Aylesbury; but in 1698 it was occupied by the Marquis of Caermarthen, who was appointed by King William III. cicerone and guide to Peter the Great when he came in the January of that year to visit England. Peter's great qualities have long been done full justice to; but in the far-off January of 1698 he appeared to the English as by no means a very august-looking potentate; he had the manners and appearance of an unkempt barbarian, and his pastimes were those of a coal-heaver. His favourite exercise in the mornings was to run a bar row through and through Evelyn's trim holly-hedges at Deptford; and the state in which he left his pretty house there is not to be described. His chief pleasure, when the duties of the day were over, was to drink all night with the Marquis in his house at Leicester Fields, the favourite tipple of the two distinguished topers being brandy spiced with pepper; or sack, of which the Czar is reported to have drunk eight bottles one day after dinner. Among other sights in London, the Marquis took him to see Westminster Hall in full term. "Who are all these men in wigs and gowns ?" he asked. Lawyers," was the "Lawyers!" he exclaimed. Why, I have only two in my dominions, and when I get back, I intend to hang one of them." In January 1712 Leicester House, which was then occupied by the imperial resident, received another distinguished visitor in the person of Prince Eugene, one of the greatest captains of the age. In appear

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ance he was a little sallow wizened old man, with one shoulder higher than the other. A soldier of fortune, whose origin was so humble as to be unknown, his laurels were stained neither by rapacity nor selfseeking; and in all the vicissitudes of his eventful life he bore himself like a hero, and a gentleman in the truest and fullest acceptation of the word. Dean Swift was also at this time in lodgings in Leicester Fields, noting with clear acute unpitying vision the foibles and failings of all around him, and writing to Stella from time to time after his cynical fashion, "how the world is going mad after Prince Eugene, and how he went to court also, but could not see him, the crowd was so great.' A labyrinth of courts, inns, and stable-yards had gradually filled up the space between the royal mews and Leicester Fields; and between 1680 and 1700 several new streets were opened through these; one reason for the opening of them being the great influx of French refugees into London, on the occasion of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Many of these exiles settled in and around Leicester Fields, and for their use several chapels were built. The neighbourhood has ever since been a resort of French immigrants.

In one of these streets opening into Leicester Square, St. Martin's Street, Sir Isaac Newton lived for the last sixteen years of his life. The house in which he lived looks dingy enough now; but in those days it was considered a very good residence indeed, and Like Leicester House was frequented by the best company in the fashionable world. The genius and reputation of its master attracted scientific and learned visitors; and the beauty of his niece, Mrs. Catharine Barton, drew to her feet all the more distinguished wits and beaux of the time."

Between 1717 and 1760 Leicester House became what Pennant calls "the pouting-place of princes," being for almost all that time in the occupation of a Prince of Wales who was living in fierce opposition to the reigning king. In 1718 the Prince of Wales having had a furious quarrel with his father George I., on the occasion of the christening of the Prince's son George William, left St. James's, and took Leicester House at a yearly rent of five hundred pounds; and until he succeeded to the throne in 1727, it was his town residence.

Here he held his court-a court not by any means strait-laced; a gay little court at first; a court whose selfish intrigues and wild frolics and madcap adventures and humdrum monotony live for us still in the sparkling pages of Horace Walpole; or are painted in with vivid clearness of touch and execution, but with a darker brush, by Hervey, Pope's Lord Fanny, who was a favourite with his mistress the handsome accomplished Caroline, Princess of Wales. Piloted by one or other of these exact historians, we enter the chamber of the gentlewomen-in-waiting, and are introduced to the maids-of-honour, to fair Mary Lepell, to charming Mrs. Bellenden, to pensive, gentle Mrs. Howard. We see them eat Westphalia ham of a morning, and then set out with their royal master for a helter-skelter ride over hedges and ditches, on borrowed hacks. No wonder Pope pitied them; and on their return, who

should they fall in with but that great poet himself! They are good to him in their way, these saucy charming maids-of-honour, and so they take the frail little man under their protection and give him his dinner; and then he finishes off the day, he tells us, by walking three hours in the moonlight with Mary Lepell. We can imagine the affected compliments he paid her and the burlesque love he made to her; and the fun she and her sister maids-of-honour would have laughing over it all, when she went back to Leicester House and he returned to his pretty villa at Twickenham.

As the Prince grew older his court became more and more dull, till at last it was almost deserted, when on the 14th of June 1727 the loungers in its half-empty chambers were roused by sudden news- -George I. was dead; and Leicester House was thronged by a sudden rush of obsequious courtiers, among whom was the late king's prime-minister, bluff, jolly, coarse Sir Robert Walpole. No one paid any attention to him, for every one knew that his disgrace was sealed; the new king had never been at any pains to conceal his dislike to him. Sir Robert, however, knew better; he was quite well aware who was to be the real ruler of England now; and he knew that the Princess Caroline had already accepted him, just as she accepted La Walmoden and her good Howard; and so all alone in his corner he chuckled to himself as he saw the crowd of sycophants elbow and jostle and push poor Lady Walpole as she tried to make her way to the royal feet. Caroline saw it too, and with a flash of half-scornful mischief lighting up her shrewd eyes, said with a smile: "Sure, there I see a friend." Instantly the human stream parted, and made way for her Ladyship.

In 1728 Frederick, the eldest son of George and Caroline, arrived from Hanover, where he had remained since his birth in 1707. It was a fatal mistake; he came to England a stranger to his parents, and with his place in their hearts already filled by his brother. It was inevitable that where there was no mutual love, distrust and alienation should come, as in no long time they did, with the result that the same pitiful drama was played out again on the same stage. In 1743 Frederick Prince of Wales took Leicester House and held his receptions there. He was fond of gaiety, and had a succession of balls, masques, plays, and supper-parties. His tastes, as was natural considering his rearing, were foreign, and Leicester House was much frequented by foreigners of every grade. Desnoyers the dancing-master was a favourite habitué, as was also the charlatan St-Germain. In the midst of all this fiddling and buf foonery the Prince fell ill; but not so seriously as to cause uneasiness to any one around him; consequently all the world was taken by sur prise when he suddenly died one morning in the arms of his friend the dancing-master. After his death his widow remained at Leicester House, and like a sensible woman as she was, made her peace with the king het father-in-law, who ever afterwards shewed himself very kind and friendly to her.

In October 1760 George III. was proclaimed king; and again a-crowd

of courtiers thronged to Leicester House to kiss the hand of the new sovereign. For six years longer the Princess of Wales continued to live at Leicester House; and there in 1765 her youngest son died, and the following year she removed to Carlton House.

While the quarrel between George II. and Frederick was at its fiercest, the central inclosure of Leicester Square was re-arranged very elegantly according to the taste of the day; and an equestrian statue of George L., which had belonged to the first Duke of Chandos and had been bought at the sale of his effects, was set up in front of Leicester House, where it remained, a dazzling object at first, in all the glory of gilding, which passed with the populace for gold; but latterly a most wretched relic of the past, an eyesore, which was removed in 1874 in the course of Baron Grant's improvements.

Leicester Square had other tenants beside Sir Isaac Newton, compared with whom courtiers and gallants and fine gentlemen and ladies look very small indeed. Hogarth lived in this street, and so did Sir Joshua Reynolds. Hogarth's house was the last but two on the east side of the Square. Here he established himself, a young struggling man, with Jane Thornhill, the wife with whom he had made a stolen Love-match. In this house, with the quaint sign of the Golden Head over the door, he worked, not as painters generallý do, at a multitude of detached pieces, but depicting with his vivid brush a whole series of popular allegories on canvas. When he became rich, as in process of time he did, he had a house at Chiswick; but he still retained the Golden Head as his town-house, and in 1764 returned to it to die.

In No. 47 Sir Joshua Reynolds lived, and painted those charming portraits which have immortalised for us all that was most beautiful and famous in his epoch. He was a kindly genial lovable man, fond of Society, and with a liking for display. He had a wonderful carriage, with the four seasons curiously painted in on the panels, and the wheels ornamented with carved foliage and gilding. The servants in attendance on this chariot wore silver-laced liveries; and as he had no time to drive in it himself, he made his sister take a daily airing in it, much to her discomfort, for she was a homely little lady with very simple tastes. He was a great dinner giver; and as it was his custom to ask every pleasant person he met without any regard to the preparation made to receive them, it may be conjectured that there was often a want of the commonest requisites of the dinner-table. Even knives, forks, and glasses could not always be procured at first. But although his dinners partook very much of the nature of unceremonious scrambles, they were thoroughly enjoyable. Whatever was awanting, there was always cheerfulness and the pleasant kindly interchange of thought. In July 1792 Sir Joshua died in his own house in Leicester Square; and within a few hours of his death, an obituary notice of him was written by Burke, the manuscript of which was blotted with his tears.

In No. 28, on the eastern side of the Square, the celebrated anatomist John Hunter lived. Like most distinguished men of the day, he sat to