Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

makes mention in his will of "Rivers House, in Great Queen Street, in the parish of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields." Sir Godfrey Kneller came here from the Piazza in Covent Garden. He writes to Pope "from Great Queen Street, June 16, 1719," and sends his "humble respects to Lady Mary Whortly." Walpole and others have wrongly assigned the scene of his wit combat with Dr. Radcliffe to this residence. It really took place when Kneller was living in the Piazza, and the Doctor on the west side of Bow Street. Thomas Hudson (d. 1779), the portrait painter, in the house west of Freemasons' Hall, now divided and numbered 55 and 56, and which it seems certain was the one previously occupied by Kneller. Here, on October 18, 1740, the young Joshua Reynolds came to him as a house pupil, and remained under his roof till July 1743. Thomas Worlidge, the portrait painter and engraver (best known by his etchings), afterwards lived in it.1 Hoole, the translator of Ariosto and Dante (d. 1803), was then its occupant, and after him it was rented by Chippendale the cabinetmaker, whose furniture has during the last few years been so eagerly sought after and imitated. Sir Robert Strange, the engraver, in No. 52; here he engraved his Charles I. with the horse, and the companion print of Queen Henrietta Maria; and here he died, July 5, 1792. His widow continued to reside in the house. No. 34 was in 1796 the residence of James Basire, the engraver, with whom William Blake passed his apprenticeship. According to Mr. Gilchrist, the house was No. 32 (31), the more western of the two houses occupied by Messrs. Corben the coachbuilders. Blake was fond of describing a visit paid by Goldsmith to Basire at this period. Fuseli the painter was living at No. 7 in 1803. Twenty years earlier John Opie, R.A., was a resident in this street. Our great classic landscape painter, Richard Wilson, had at one time apartments in Queen Street, which were afterwards occupied by Theed, the sculptor.3 The beautiful Perdita, when she first became Mrs. Robinson, lived here in "a large old-fashioned house, which stood on the spot where the Freemasons' Tavern has been since erected."4 Her house was probably that in which William Hayley, the poet and friend of Cowper, resided for some years previous to his retirement to Eartham in 1774. Hayley believed his house to have been Kneller's. R. Brinsley Sheridan was living in this street in July 1780. Dr. Francklin, the translator of Lucian, in March 1784. About the same time Dr. Wolcott [Peter Pindar] was a resident. The concealed author of Lyrick Odes, by Peter Pindar, Esquire, is one Woolcot, a clergyman who abjured the gown, and now lives in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, under the character of a physician.—Maloniana (Prior's Life of Malone, P. 364).

1 Smith (Nollekens, vol. ii. p. 220) says he died here; but he died at Hammersmith, and was buried in Hammersmith Churchyard, where a table records that "Here lies the body of Thomas Worlidge, painter, who died the 23d of September, 1766, aged 66 years."

Yet tho' his mortal part inactive lies,
Still Worlidge lives-for Genius never dies.

2 Life of Blake, vol. i. p. 22.

3 Wright's Wilson, p. 4.
4 Life, vol. i. p. 74.

On the south side of this street are Freemasons' Hall and Tavern [which see], and a little east of it the once popular Great Queen Street Chapel, erected 1818, and the portico added in 1840. On the opposite side is the unfortunate Novelty Theatre.

The old west-end gateway entrance to this street, taken down in January 1765, was by a narrow passage under a house, familiarly known as "The Devil's Gap," or "Hell Gate."

Queen Street (Little), LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. William, Lord Russell, was led from Holborn into this street on his way to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

As we came to turn into Little Queen Street, he said, "I have often turned to the other hand, with great comfort, but I now turn to this with greater," and looked towards his own house; and then, as the Dean of Canterbury [Tillotson] who sat over against him told me "he saw a tear or two fall from him."-Bishop Burnet's Journal.

"His own house," Southampton House (subsequently called Bedford House), he inherited through his wife, the virtuous Lady Rachel Russell, daughter of Charles II.'s Lord Treasurer, and granddaughter of Shakespeare's Earl of Southampton. No. 7 was the residence of the father and mother of Charles Lamb, September 23, 1796; and here it was that Mary Lamb, his sister, in a sudden fit of insanity-she had frequently experienced similar but less violent attacks before-stabbed her mother to the heart with a case knife snatched from the dinner table.

Queen Street (Little), now part of LANGHAM STREET, PORTLAND ROAD. No. 45 was long the residence of James Watson, the excellent engraver of the last century. Here he executed some of his best mezzotints, after Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Queen Street, MAYFAIR. At No. 12 dwelt Mrs. Elizabeth Harlow, and from here her son, George Henry Harlow, sent his first picture to the Exhibition of 1804, before he had completed his seventeenth year.

Queen Anne Square, the name given in some old maps to the square which was commenced at the south end of the present Portland Place, in front of the Langham Hotel. [See Portland Place.] In other maps it is called Bentinck Square.

Queen Anne Street East, CAVENDISH SQUARE, was the name of the street leading from Langham Place to Cleveland Street. It was afterwards named Foley Place, and now the western portion, from Langham Place to Great Portland Street, is called Langham Street, and the portion east of Portland Street, Foley Street. Eminent Inhabitants. -Edmond Malone, the Shakespearian commentator, went in 1779 to live at No. 55, where he remained the rest of his life; his house every year "became more and more that of a bachelor-an accumulation of books; rooms not in spruce order; furniture rather in the rear of the

fashion of the age "1 and here he died, May 25, 1812.

[ocr errors]

His very

choice collection of books illustrating the Elizabethan drama is now among the cherished treasures of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Fuseli, the painter, at No. 72, between 1788 and 1792; and in 1800 at No. 75.

Queen Anne Street, formerly QUEEN ANNE STREET WEST, CAVENDISH SQUARE-Welbeck Street to Chandos Street. Edmund Burke removed from Wimpole Street to Queen Anne Street, "next door to Mr. Fitzherbert," in 1760.2 Richard Cumberland was living here in 1770, when his best play, the West Indian, was produced.

I had a house in Queen Anne Street West, at the corner of Wimpole Street, I lived there many years; my friend Mr. Fitzherbert lived in the same street, and Mr. Burke nearly opposite to me.-Cumberland's Memoirs, 4to, 1806, p. 238.

William Windham was living here in 1782-in March 1794 he was in Hill Street. Boswell wrote to his daughter Euphemia, December 19, 1788, "I have taken a neat, pretty, small house in Queen Anne Street West, quite a genteel neighbourhood." He was at this date busy over his Life of Johnson, and he found his residence in Queen Anne Street West very convenient in preparing it for the press.

February 8, 1790.—I still keep on my house in Queen Anne Street West, having taken it till Midsummer, upon my finding that chambers in the Temple, which I thought I had secured, were let to me by a person who had not a right. It is better that I am still here, for I am within a short walk of Mr. Malone [living in Queen Anne Street East] who revises my Life of Johnson with me.-Boswell to Temple (Letters, p. 319).

Among the imitations in the "Rejected Addresses" is one of a Dr. Busby,―much quizzed by the wits of that day,-of whom Horace Smith records that on his publishing a translation of the De Naturâ Rerum there appeared a paragraph among the Domestic Occurrences-"Yesterday at his house in Queen Anne Street West, Dr. Busby of a still-born Lucretius."

No. 48 was for nearly forty years (1812-1851) the residence of the greatest of our landscape painters, Joseph Mallord William Turner, and here the finest perhaps of his imaginative works were produced. His "gallery" was on the first floor. He painted in the drawing-room. The house has been rebuilt for the Duke of Portland's Estate Office. No. 31 was the town house of the late Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Gilbert (d. 1870). There was nothing to distinguish it from its plebeian neighbours. It would have been more conspicuous if he had blazoned his "bearing" over the door-"A Prester John sitting on a tombstone, with a sword in his mouth."

Queen Anne's Bounty Office, and First Fruits and Tenths' Office, 3A DEAN'S YARD, WESTMINSTER.

Queen Anne's Gate. [See Queen Square.]

1 Prior's Life of Malone, p. 300.

2 Prior's Life of Burke, chap. iii.

140

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S GRAMMAR SCHOOL

This

Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, SOUTHWARK. school was founded in 1560 by certain inhabitants of St. Olave's parish (Henry Leeke the brewer being worthy of special note), and situated in Tooley Street. It was incorporated in 1571 and named after the reigning Queen. There are in Wilkinson's Londina (vol. ii.) two views and a plan of the buildings. The site being required for the approaches of New London Bridge, the building was cleared away in 1830 and a new one erected on the south side of Bermondsey Street. This was also removed in connection with some railway extension, and the present handsome and greatly enlarged building placed in Back Street Horsleydown (now named Queen Elizabeth Street). The institution is styled at present the Grammar School of St. Olave and St. John, and has an income of about £10,000. It furnishes "a liberal and useful education for the sons of parents engaged in professional, trading, or commercial pursuits." Boys are not admitted before seven or after fifteen years of age, except under very special circumstances. A new scheme is (1890) under the consideration of the Charity Commissioners.

Queen Victoria Street, CITY, from the north foot of Blackfriars Bridge to the Mansion House, forming the continuation eastward of the Thames Embankment. This noble street, one of the finest in the City, was commenced in 1867, and formally opened for traffic throughout, November 4, 1871. It proceeds in a nearly straight line from the Mansion House to Cannon Street, and thence with an easy curve to New Bridge Street, opposite the entrance to the Thames Embankment. Its width throughout is 70 feet, except by Little Earl Street, where it is somewhat narrower. Beneath it runs the Metropolitan District Railway; and along it is carried a subway for gas and water pipes. Through nearly its whole extent it is lined on both sides with large, lofty, solidly built and ornamental buildings, most of them having stone fronts, and several being structures of considerable architectural pretension. Among the larger blocks of buildings there are-starting from the Mansion House-on the north, Mansion House Buildings; Imperial Buildings; Queen's Buildings; Crown Buildings; the New Civil Service Stores; College of Arms; British and Foreign Bible Society; the church of St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe; the Times Advertisement Office. On the south, the remarkable structure built for the National Safe Deposit Company; Mansion House Chambers; Victoria Buildings; Albert Buildings; the Mansion House Station of the Metropolitan District Railway; Metropolitan Buildings, and Balmoral Buildings; besides on both sides many private commercial establishments.

Queen's Arms Tavern, Bow-IN-HAND COURT, between Nos. 77 and 78 CHEAPSIDE. The second floor of the houses which stretched over the passage leading to this tavern was the London lodging of John Keats, the poet. Here he wrote his magnificent sonnet on Chapman's Homer, and all the poems in his first little volume.

Queen's Arms Tavern, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD.

Garrick kept up an interest in the city by appearing, about twice in a winter, at Tom's Coffee House in Cornhill, the usual rendezvous of young merchants at 'Change time; and frequented a Club, established for the sake of his company at the Queen's Arms Tavern in St. Paul's Churchyard, where were used to assemble Mr. Samuel Sharpe the surgeon, Mr. Paterson the city solicitor, Mr. Draper the bookseller, Mr. Clutterbuck a mercer, and a few others; they were none of them drinkers, and in order to make a reckoning called only for French wine. These were his standing council in theatrical affairs.-Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 433.

Here, after a thirty years' interval, Johnson renewed his intimacy with some of the members of his old Ivy Lane Club.1 There is no Queen's Arms in St. Paul's Churchyard now.

Queen's College, 43 and 45 HARLEY STREET, so named by royal permission and under royal charter, for general female education of a high class, and for granting to governesses certificates of qualification. Incorporated 1853.

Queen's Gardens, BAYSWATER, are built on the exact site of the old Pest House. See Roque's Map, 1745.

Queen's Gardens, KENSINGTON. Thomas, tenth Earl of Dundonald, better known as Lord Cochrane, died at No. 12, October 31, 1860, in his eighty-fifth year. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Queen's Head Alley, now Queen's Head Passage, PATERNOSTER Row to NEWGATE STREET, was so called from an inn or tavern with such a sign, wherein were lodged the canonists and professors of spiritual and ecclesiastical law, before Doctors' Commons was provided for them, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. [See Doctors' Commons.] In this alley, in the reign of Charles II., Richard Head, author of The English Rogue, followed the profession of a bookseller.2 Here, No. 8 on the west side, was Dolly's Chop House. [See Dolly's.]

Queen's House, another name for Buckingham House, so called after Queen Charlotte, Queen of George III., on whom it was settled by Act of Parliament in 1775.

It was

Queen's Library, THE STABLE YARD, ST. JAMES'S PALACE, SO called from having been built by Caroline, wife of George II. pulled down by Frederic, Duke of York (second son of George III.), to make way for his new house. [See Stafford House.] It is described as a noble room, designed by Wm. Kent, 60 feet by 30 feet, and 30 feet high. It was furnished with a choice collection of 4500 handsomely bound volumes in the various modern languages. The books were placed on the shelves in 1737.

The King [George II.], the Duke [of Cumberland], and Princess Emily saw it [the Celebration of Peace by fireworks in St. James's Park] from the Library, with their Courts; the Prince and Princess [of Wales] with their children, from Lady Middlesex's; no place being provided for them, nor any invitation given to the Library.-Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, May 3, 1749.

1 Boswell, by Croker, p. 45:

2 Winstanley's Lives of the Poets, p. 208.

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »