Grosvenor Square

“ They sat at the well-spread dessert-table in Grosvenor Square, those two gentlemen, the sole partners of almost the wealthiest house in London; keen, honourable, first-rate men of business, yet presenting somewhat of a contrast in themselves. He at the table head, Francis Grubb, was fine and stately, wearing in his countenance, in its expression of form and feature, the impress of true nobility—nature's nobility, not that of the peerage—and young yet. ”

“ On my arrival in Grosvenor Square I told my parents that I must go home to Glen, as I felt suffocated by the pettiness and conventionality of my late experience. The moderate teaching and general atmosphere of Gloucester Crescent had depressed me, and London feels airless when one is out of spirits: in any case it can never be quite a home to any one born in Scotland. ”

“ He walked from his rooms in Jermyn Street to Grosvenor Square every night, and paced the pavements within view of Lady Perivale's windows, steering clear of the houses where there were parties, with awnings, and blocks of bystanders, and policemen, and linkmen. He saw the lighted windows of the morning-room, and sometimes saw a graceful shadow flit across the blind, and knew that she was there, and alone. No masculine form ever passed between the lamp and the windows. ”

“ As to-day nearly every house in Grosvenor Square is occupied by some influential or notable individual, so in the past has, practically, each been the home of an interesting personality. The great Earl of Chesterfield was living [Pg 118] here in 1733, until he moved to the new mansion he had erected for himself facing the Park, and here it was that Johnson was “repulsed from his doors” or “waited in his outward rooms.” ”

“ The owners of Belgrave Square and Grosvenor Square [125] and Portman Square and Cavendish Square and Berkeley Square—the Squares, par excellence, of fashionable London—have kept their seigniorial rights untouched. Pascal told us of some very human but very unregenerate children who said "This dog belongs to me," and "That place in the sun is Mine," and Pascal's comment was, "Behold, the beginning and the image of all usurpation upon earth!" ”

“ Many men in the City are aware of the great fortune that has come to me, and you yourself are perhaps acquainted with the white exterior of one house in Grosvenor Square, yet none assuredly know the strange facts which I have here for the first time put on record. ”

“ London contains in the West End many squares surrounded by handsome residences, among them probably the best known being Belgrave, Russell, Bedford, Grosvenor, Hanover, and Cavendish Squares. Eaton Square is said to be the largest of these, Grosvenor Square the most fashionable, and Cavendish Square the most salubrious and best cultivated. The line of streets leading by Oxford Street to the Marble Arch entrance to Hyde Park is London's most fashionable route of city travel, and on Tottenham Court Road, which starts northward from Oxford Street, is the "Bell Inn" at Edmonton. ”

“ Our shops are there and our mansions are elsewhere, far away, in what we call residential quarters—such as Park Lane, Queen's Gate, Mayfair, the Bayswater Road, and Grosvenor Square. To turn out of Fifth Avenue into the quiet streets where people live is to receive a distinct impression of sedateness such as New York is never supposed to convey. One has the same feeling in the other great American cities. ”

“ Full and ample forgiveness on the part of Grosvenor Square seemed to be indicated, provided that a proper humility and a reversion to the status quo ante was forthcoming on the part of the erring. Let the young woman be received in the Family, provided that the heir to the barony withdrew his odious candidature for Blackhampton, had said in effect the Leader of the Opposition; and a tolerably easy constituency should be provided for the young man. ”

“ But Berkeley Street and the Square [Pg 195] following were a back-water of the flooded river-way, and he went with his own volition, not with the dictation of the tides, through into Grosvenor Square. Still without purpose other than that born of habit, he rang the bell of that house he frequented on so many days, and at so many and different hours, and was admitted.
Mildred was not in the room when he entered, and he walked up and down with a step of caged violence. It was a room, one would have said, which was lived in by a woman of some individuality. ”

“ In Soho, once a fashionable quarter, in Gerrard Street and in Dean Street, there are some fine examples. There are some hundreds, in short, to be discovered in London; and they are well worth searching for.
At No. 8, Grosvenor Square, will be noted some airy and elegant treatment of old-fashioned iron railings, and which have been but little restored. It is not, moreover, limited to the doorway, but extends along the area. There are many doorways in London where a bit of “flourish” connects the brick wall next the door with the iron railing of the area with not unpleasing effect. ”

“ She took an elegant suite of apartments in Brook-street, Grosvenor-square, and having ample means at her disposal, she lived in good style, and in the due course of time contrived to get introduced into society, as it is termed—​that is, she became acquainted with people who moved in the upper circles. ”

“ I keep the boards standing, just to let people know that the ground is to let,—though, as I say, it won’t be for another twenty years, when it’ll be for the erection of high-class mansions only, same as there is in Grosvenor Square,—no shops or public houses, and none of your shanties. ”

“ Lord Arthur had another engagement, which prevented him coming with us, and so I went with them.
They had a private brougham in waiting, which took us to Grosvenor Square.
A. very sedate and elderly footman ushered us upstairs to a dressing-room, which formed part of the Earl's own special apartments, a suite of six or seven rooms, rigorously set apart from the rest of the house, where none but his confidential servants and pages were ever allowed to enter. ”

“ An interesting speculation might be found in considering the different ways persons have looked on the great aggregate of London. For those of fashion it is little more than an enlarged Grosvenor or Belgrave Square: it has few associations, historical or otherwise; while its “curios” may be useful as a sort of raree-show for the crowd. As the excellent Boswell put it, “I have often amused myself with thinking how different a place London is to different people. They whose narrow minds are contracted to the consideration of some one particular pursuit, view it only through that medium. ”

“ Charles’s square, a small neat square near Pitfield street, Hoxton: a grass plat in 94the area is surrounded with wooden rails, and a row of trees on each side, all cut in the manner of a cone, or sugar loaf. The houses, which take up only two sides and a part of a third, are handsome buildings; and the rest of the square is separated from the neighbouring gardens by rows of pales.
Charles street, 1. Black Friars. 2. Bridgewater gardens. 3. Covent garden. 4. St. James’s square. 5. Grosvenor square. 6. King’s street, Westminster. 7. Long Acre. 8. Old Gravel lane. 9. Oxford street. 10. ”

“ Beside the parks and gardens, London has an infinity of squares, commons, and crescents, which are surrounded by private residences and inclosed by railings and walls—such as Trafalgar Square (public) , Bedford, Cavendish, St. George's, Grosvenor, Leicester, Soho, Belgrave, Euston, Finsbury, Fitzroy, Portman, Russell, Wellclose, Hanover, Brunswick, Eaton, Berkeley, Golden, Mecklenburg, Red Lion, Tavistock, and a great number of other squares which I do not now call to mind. ”

“ Several clubs, notably the Turf, the Green Park Club, and the New Club, have their headquarters in Grafton Street, the latter club in the house, No. 4, in which Lord Brougham lived and died in 1848, after he had left Berkeley Square.
Another great statesman also once resided in Grafton Street, in the person of Charles James Fox, who was here, in 1783, before he moved to his temporary lodging at an hotel in Berkeley Square, and afterwards to the house in which we have met him in Clarges Street. When Mrs. Fitzherbert left Upper Grosvenor Street she came to live in Grafton Street in 1796 ”

“ Shaftesbury Avenue and the new Charing Cross Road are showing their influence right and left of them, and the whole of that part of London is becoming new, while their existence has already altered the character of life in the celebrated Seven Dials neighbourhood.{154}”
CHAPTER XV.
OLD TOWN MANSIONS. THE old mansions of nobles and gentlemen in Grosvenor Street, Brook Street, Hill Street, Cavendish Square and Portman Square are generally of a fine and dignified pattern. There is an imposing air about the halls. The staircase is laid out in a noble style. ”

“ Close by Grosvenor and Manchester Squares, and lying between them and Bond Street, are a number of places in which it was dangerous, as the writer once found to his cost, for a respectably-dressed person to set his foot. There, congregated tier above tier, in small, dark, unwholesome rooms, are whole classes of people, in comparison with whom the denizens of Saint Giles's may be looked upon as aristocracy. ”

“ There can be nothing in the world more charming than the way the Square receives its friends. Let it number amongst its guests a Duchess, that is no reason why it should scorn "Colonel Harry" or "Mouldy Jim," the singer of hymns. Scorn, indeed, cannot be found within its grey walls, soft grey, soft green, soft white and blue—in these colours is the Square's body clothed, no anger in its mild eyes, nor contempt anywhere at its heart.
The Square is proud, and is proud with reason, of its garden. It is not a large garden as London gardens go. It has in its centre a fountain. ”

“ Do you know Abingdon Square? It is a small, irregularly shaped triangle of asphalt situated on the lower West Side, and at the intersecting-point of Eighth Avenue and Hudson Street. The houses that front upon it have seen better days. Many of them are now the quarters of cheap political clubs or centres of foreign revolutionary propaganda. It is a neighborhood that has finally lost all semblance to gentility and has become frankly and unreservedly shabby. A square, mind you, and not a park, for there is neither blade of grass nor tree in all of its dreary expanse. ”

“ We may glance up Bond Street, the Rue de la Paix of London, at the house occupied by Messrs. Agnew. Bond Street is specially devoted to the craze for picture exhibitions, where there are a half-dozen, including the Grosvenor and Doré Galleries. The portico of the Grosvenor Gallery was originally that of some palace in Italy, and is admired for its elegance. It was purchased by the owner, and set up here. In the South Kensington Museum is the screen and balcony of a church, a beautiful work, which had been torn down and condemned, and was rescued in the same manner. ”

“ Now a broad red wall is one of the most dreary objects of modern civilisation, and, indeed, the side of a square, broken only by rectangular windows, as exhibited in London squares, has doubtless had a depressing and injurious effect on the duration of human life. Russell Square and Bedford Square are familiar instances of this; and how unfavourably they contrast with old Lincoln’s Inn buildings, in the same city, the engraving will show, yet the same architecture that prevails in Lincoln’s Inn would abundantly serve all the purposes of a London square of modern times. ”

“ Let me confess at once that we are a bit supercilious in our attitude toward the sister Square far to our West, across the Alps of Broadway. Our Square was an established center of the social respectabilities when the foot of Fifth Avenue was still frequented by the occasional cow whose wanderings are responsible for the street-plan of Greenwich Village. Our Square remains true to the ancient and simple traditions, whereas Washington Square has grown long hair, smeared its fingers with paint and its lips with free verse, and gone into debt for its inconsiderable laundry bills. ”

“ He thought of The Public Square, of Pidge Musser at the desk there, of Harrow Street. Death had to come some time, but life wasn’t boring him just now. The sunlight of the open stretch stung his eyes with great weariness. ”

“ There is scarcely a plot of ground below Fourteenth Street without its story and its associations, its motley company of memories and spectres both good and bad, its imperishably adventurous savour of the past, imprisoned in the dry prose of registries and records. Let us just take a glance, a bird's-eye view as it were, of that region which we now know as Washington Square, as it was when the city of New York bought it for a Potter's Field. ”

“ Indeed the aspect of Bedford Square, where the great institution of the basement and area still flourished in perfection, and wealthy menials with traditional manners lived sensually in caves beneath the spacious, calm salons of their employers and dupes,—the aspect of Bedford Square gave the illusion that evolution was not, and that Bloomsbury and the whole impressive structure of British society could never change. ”

“ Three fine squares alone break the monotony of all these parallelograms of streets: Washington Square, Union Square, and Madison Square.
On the north, Central Park, with its fine avenues, its hillocks, its valleys, its lakes, and its magnificent terrace over the Hudson, is a very lovely pleasure ground. It is the only place where one can see trees, turf, and flowers. New York does not possess a single garden, public or private, if one excepts the three squares I named just now.
That which strikes the visitor to New York is not the city itself, but the feverish activity that reigns there. ”