Carlton House Terrace

“ Late as the hour was the alarming intelligence had spread like wildfire through London, and already a considerable crowd had collected in Whitehall. Fortunately, Castellan and I were able to slip out unrecognised, and then we set off in the direction of Trafalgar Square. The Colonial Secretary's residence, as all the world is aware, is in Carlton House Terrace. At the corner of the small thoroughfare that winds its way from Cockspur Street into Carlton House Terrace, we stopped, and stood for some moments conversing there together. ”

“ Pall Mall is a modern spelling of paille maille, the title of a French game at ball, somewhat similar to our croquet, first played in this thoroughfare—then open to St. James’s Park—about the year 1621. Carlton House Terrace stands on the site of Carlton House, the palace of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the father of George III. King Street, St. James’s Street, and St. James’s Square were designated in honour of James I. Bury Street is properly “Berry Street,” after the name of its builder. ”

“ The history of Carlton House has not been written. It is probably just as well that no one has attempted to record [Pg 53] the annals of that mansion, for what we know of it from the innumerable memoirs and diaries of the period covering the better part of George III.’s reign and the Regency, is not particularly edifying.
Carlton House was built in 1709, by Lord Carlton, or Carleton, as it was then spelt, on whose death, in 1725, the house came into the possession of his nephew, the Earl of Burlington. ”

“ The next turning to Carlington Road was a queer terrace, very quiet except that it overlooked the railway, very quiet and melancholy and somehow wicked. Nothing ever turned down here except an occasional dog or cat; no servants stood gossiping by area-gates, and at the end of it loomed the tumble-down house whose garden Michael had already seen near the post office. He used to think as he left Padua Terrace behind him that one day for a great adventure he would like to walk along under its elm-trees to discover if anyone did live in those dark houses ”

“ And Terrace Hill Mansion was a very handsome place, exciting the envy and admiration of the villagers, who could remember a time when it had looked better even than it did now—when the house was oftener full of city company, when high-born ladies rode up and down in carriages, or dashed on horseback through the park and off into leafy woods—when sounds of festivity were heard in the halls from year’s end to year’s end, and the lights in the parlors were rarely extinguished, or the fires on the hearth put out. ”

“ STATUE OF SIDNEY HERBERT, BY FOLEY.
conception had a perfect airiness and magnificence; and we may be certain forms the ideal of London for persons at a distance. It is curious to think that within living memory there was a stately palace standing where the terraces now are—the well-known Carlton House, which displayed an open colonnade somewhat of the pattern of the Duke of Westminster’s house in Grosvenor Street. The problem set to the architect, Nash, was to make an attractive thoroughfare up to Portland Place, and thus join the new Regent’s Park with the Green Park. ”

“ Villiers was some time in finding Angelina Terrace. The neighbourhood was a very new one; two or three old mansions, with their pleasant lawns and cedars, had been "developed"; the result was a maze of brand new streets and terraces, street like to street, and terrace to terrace, and every house built after the same pattern in blinding white brick, with red facings and green Venetian blinds. ”

“ For smaller houses with pedimented fronts, however, a sort of terrace-house plan was increasingly popular, with stair-hall at one side, two principal living rooms one behind the other, and a narrower kitchen wing extending to the rear. A planning innovation that first appeared in America in the 1790s, by no means unknown earlier in England but rare except in terrace-houses, was the opening together of two rooms—front and back parlours—by means of broad sliding doors. ”

“ Before the Flint House came first its meadow and then its garden wall, with the gate left open, and a rude drive twisting through trees to the side of the house. "This way," said Carlton; and in half a minute they were at the side door. This also had been left open. Carlton lowered his voice, his hand upon the latch.
"You wait here, like a good fellow. If he will not let me say one word—if he orders me out—then you must come up instead. If he is so ill that his wife goes herself at midnight for the doctor, then he is too ill to be left with no one in the house but a child of five!" ”

“ The house was of the stately era of Anne, with a heavy portico and clumsy pediment on the garden side, all the windows of the suite of rooms opening on a broad stone terrace, whence steps descended to the lawn, neatly kept, but sombre, for want of openings in the surrounding evergreens.
It was early March, and a lady wrapped in a shawl was seated on the terrace, enjoying the mild gleam of spring, and the freshness of the sun-warmed air, which awoke a smile of welcome as it breathed on her faded cheek, and her eyes gazed on the scene, in fond recognition. ”

“ The English people will endure no second season of Carlton House, no letting down of manly reserve and womanly character by the spectacle of royal favorites, bankrupt at the fireside, but current in the world. ”

“ The apartments also, desolate and stripped as they have been, are worth a hundred of Carlton or Buckingham House; but the singular and native good-breeding of the people, who never saw a court, is the most remarkable of all. ”

“ Perhaps no one thing contributes more to a sense of dignity than long residence in one house, and it was natural enough that the Terrace should shrug its shoulders at the row of toy dwellings that sprang up almost magically on Pleasant Street. ”

“ The table is, in most houses, laid in a central hall, looking into a garden; the floors are all painted, that they may not absorb the damp when washed, as they are almost daily: the beds are tolerably good, and the apartments of a moderate size. Before every house, is an elevated terrace, on a level with the ground-floor, having at each end a seat, usually of masonry also. ”

“ The house was one of a row of twenty perky, gabled, two-storied little villas, each coyly shrinking to the farthermost limit of its tiny front garden, and each guarding the privacy of its interior by means of muslin curtains at the windows, tied back by ribbons, the resultant triangle of transparency being obscured by a fat-leafed plant. The terrace bore the name of “Tregarthion Villas,” and the one inhabited by Miss Lindon was called “The Oaks.” It was a sham little terrace full of sham little gentilities. John hated it. ”

“ Katherine waited, her eyes full of laughter, until Mr. Caryll's footsteps died away on the stone quarries of the great hall within. Then she gently drew the heavy door to, and stepped out on to the centre of the terrace. The grass slopes of the park—dotted with thorn trees and beds of bracken,—the lime avenue running along the ridge of the hill, the ragged edge of the fir forest to the east, and the mass of the house, all these were softened to a vagueness—as the landscape in a dream—by the deepening twilight. ”

“ It was said that, never since the allied sovereigns visited London in 1814 had such a concourse of human beings made the parks alive, as on this wet February morning, when a dismal solitude was changed to an animated scene, full of life and motion. The Times described the mass of spectators wedged in at the back of Carlton Terrace and the foot of Constitution Hill, and the multitude of chairs, tables, benches, even casks, pressed info. ”

“ Portrait of John Carlyle's mother, Rachel Carlyle, which hung always above her son's bed
Inside, a large hall divides the house. A stairway that has neither the appearance nor character of so old a house, and is doubtless an "improvement," winds up to the second floor. Four rooms open into this hall—fine rooms, too—but the blue or drawing room is the gem, architecturally and historically. This is paneled from floor to ceiling. There are three windows with low window seats and heavy paneled blinds which become a part of the jambs when closed. ”

“ Smith. "You have quite deserted the backyard and the garden."
"We like the green better, mother dear," Jimmie had replied gently, and the innocent lady had not dreamed of the import of his eye-twinkle.
Perturbation reigned in the other five houses of the Terrace; one or two of the families, as well as the Westgarths, began to talk seriously of removing, for their children were absolutely miserable. The little girls moped in the house near the windows, or carried their dolls in a melancholy fashion up and down the pavement, and looked out of their eye-corners all the time at the green. ”

“ The exterior of Tavistock House (pulled down 70 in 1901) presented a plain brick structure of two stories in height above the ground-floor, with attics in the roof, an open portico or porch being added by a later tenant; it contained no less than eighteen rooms, including a drawing-room capable of holding more than three hundred persons. On the garden side, at the rear, the house had a bowed front somewhat resembling that at Devonshire Terrace. ”

“ A brick terrace always makes me think of some old country house in England, with its dark red walls buried among the brilliant green foliage. So many of those houses have terraces like this, partly roofed like yours, and wide enough to be really an extra room.”
“Aunt Louise’s terrace is really two extra rooms,” said Ethel Blue, “because it opens from the drawing room and also from the dining room.”
“We’re going to have all our meals out here in pleasant weather, whenever it’s warm enough,” said Dorothy.
“I can see you’re sufficiently afraid of New Jersey mosquitoes to have a part screened.” ”

“ He groped his way across the terrace, and from the terrace went on to the lawn. Overhead the stars looked down and studded the lake with innumerable lights. The night insects were singing. The fireflies glimmered in the shrubbery. The perfume from the syringa thicket was heavy on the still air. Ordinarily these [Pg 149] things did not appeal strongly to Mr. Carteret; but to-night they thrilled him. A few steps across the grass and he stopped and looked back. The house was silent. From the library windows the lamplight streamed out upon the terrace lawn. ”

“ To me, the most pleasing part of the old hall is the terrace and lawn, back of the house. A flight of broad stairs, with stone balustrades, leads to Dorothy Vernon's Walk, which is shaded by the thick foliage of oaks, limes, sycamores, and other forest trees, for which the park was once famous. Grassy mounds mark the boundaries of the lawn, and the castle walls, with their wide windows and luxurious mantle of deep green ivy, add a delightful charm to the picture. ”

“ On the following morning, before breakfast, I went into the High Street to buy a pennyworth of hairpins. The short cut from our road into the High Street is down Bloodstone Terrace.
It was in Bloodstone Terrace that I witnessed a sight which pained and surprised me very much. It disgusted me. It was a disgrace to the district, and amounted to a public scandal. St. Augustine's—which is the third house in the terrace—had taken in washing, and not only had taken in washing, but were using their front garden as a drying-ground! An offensive thing of that kind makes my blood boil. ”

“ Wooden staircases and bits of terrace link and loop the odd little perches together; bright green pepper-trees, sometimes tall enough to shade two or three tiers of roofs, give a graceful plumed draping at the sides, and some of the steep fronts are covered with bloom, in solid curtains, of geranium, sweet alyssum, heliotrope, and ivy. These terraced eyries are not the homes of the rich: the houses are lilliputian in size, and of cheap quality; but they do more for the picturesqueness of the city than all the large, fine, and costly houses put together. ”

“ The bare boards of the great oak staircase have a well-scrubbed appearance, and everywhere was silence, a dead magnificence, and chill austerity. One can imagine the brothers' rooms, homelike in the cheerful blaze of their fires, but Norfolk House, with its great staircase, its library and tapestry room, its tiny picture gallery and terrace, possesses the tragic aloofness of things which, having survived their uses, remain to be stared at as relics. ”

“ At either end of the terrace is a doorway, one leading to the kitchen approach, the other to the garden, which is reached down another flight of semicircular steps. The paths in the vicinity of the house are straight, and the rise of the ground necessitates still more steps, which give access eventually to a long, straight walk beneath a south-west wall. Away from the house the treatment has lapsed into less formality; but the house itself, together with the court, the terraces, and the flights of steps, the whole gay with flowers, makes a very attractive picture. ”

“ The gardens at Harrington Hall, though modest in extent, make delightful wandering, with their ample walks and old-fashioned flower-beds, formal and colourful, the colours being enhanced by a background of ivy-covered wall and deep-green yew hedge. But what charmed us most here was a raised terrace with a very wide walk on the top. From this we could look down on the gardens on one hand and over the park-like meadows on the other, the terrace doing duty as a boundary wall as well as a raised promenade—an excellent idea. ”