Pall Mall

“ On every side of the route down Ludgate Hill, Fleet Street, and the Strand, and more westward still, through Pall Mall, St. James’s, and Mayfair, iridescent stars and crowned monograms glowed like titanic jewels from a thousand buildings.220 Fleet Street and the Strand were garlanded across with festoons of many-coloured globes, and the streets of this part of the town resembled nothing so much as an unending triumphal arch of rainbow-hued fire. Observed from Waterloo Place, Pall Mall seemed literally ablaze with general conflagration, so lavishly were the Clubs illuminated. ”

“ Every Londoner knows the Pall Mall by sight, the restaurant one door above the Haymarket Theatre, and is familiar with the lace-curtained window of its buffet, its entrance and the line of five French windows with flowers before them on its first floor, and there are few playgoers who have not, before spending an evening at the Haymarket or His Majesty's over the way, dined at one time or another at the Pall Mall Restaurant. ”

“ Pall Mall is as much Pall Mall to him as it was when he trod it in considerably tighter boots, never mind how many years ago. At his club the same waiter (waiters never die) will bring him the paper, and stir the fire for him, just as he used to do when the Reform Bill was a thing unheard of, and he can contemplate his bald head in the very same mirror that once reflected locks of Hyacinthine cluster. ”

“ In the court-yard are the state-carriages of the nobility; and the streets around the park are thronged with crowds of anxious spectators.
These are the moments when that gloomy building is lighted up with the splendour of modern royalty; at all other times, night and day, red grenadiers pace to and fro in front of the dark walls. The court-yards are given up to the gambols of birds, cats, and children; but every morning, a military band of music plays in the colour court.
Pall Mall is one of the most splendid streets in London; its splendour is chiefly owing to the club houses. ”

“ But the Junior Carlton Club, facing Pall Mall, has removed this stigma; it is a fine specimen of architecture. Demolition, previous to reconstruction, has already begun next to it. After this as far as John Street is a row of comparatively insignificant narrow houses of various heights and [Pg 54] styles. Some of the houses on the north side of Pall Mall were built before the completion of the square, so that there was no room for large mansions here. At the corner of John Street and Pall Mall is what is called "Ye Olde Bull Tavern," a square box-like stuccoed house. ”

“ Vanhomrigh's, then walk up the Pall mall, through the park, out at Buckingham house, and so to Chelsea a little beyond the church: I set out about sunset, and get here in something less than an hour: it is two good miles and just five thousand seven hundred and forty-eight steps; so there is four miiles a day walking, without reckoning what I walk while I stay in town. When I pass the mall in the evening it is prodigious to see the number of ladies walking there, and I always cry shame at the ladies of Ireland, who never walk at all, as if their legs were of no use, but to be laid aside. ”

“ Then the road goes beside the graveyard and again through corn to the general store of John Marion Rains, which with five houses in sight—and one of these the York home—marks the western confine of Pall Mall.
One can be in the center of Pall Mall and not know it, for the residents live in farm houses that dot the valley and in cabins on the mountainsides. The little church, which sits by the road with no homes near it, is the geographical as well as the religious center of the community—it is the heart of Pall Mall. ”

“ Where the palace once stood, a hundred little children are paddling up and down the steps to St. James's Park. A score of grave gentlemen are taking their tea at the Athenæum Club; as many grisly warriors are garrisoning the United Service Club opposite. Pall Mall is the great social Exchange of London now—the mart of news, of politics, of scandal, of rumour—the English forum, so to speak, where men discuss the last despatch from the Crimea, the last speech of Lord Derby, the next move of Lord John. ”

“ If great people have left their mark on the street, some curious individualities have also been connected with it. Think of four women racing down Pall Mall for a prize, to wit, “a holland smock, a cap, checked stockings, and laced shoes!” ”

“ The lapidary has from the first felt himself at home with Nature, and has found room for many of her devices and eccentricities, which he could not now bear to turn out of doors. Neither are we inclined to quarrel with him about his arrangements, though his shop exhibits nothing which will remind us of a frontage in Pall Mall or Bond Street. Moreover, when we look a little closer, he is not such a mere dreamer after all. Commerce has not been forgotten, nor is a certain kind of elegance lacking. ”

“ THE TURNPIKE AT HYDE PARK CORNER, 1706.
[Pg 29]
CHAPTER II. ST. JAMES’S STREET AND PALL MALL.
“O bear me to the paths of fair Pall Mall,
Safe are thy pavements, grateful is thy smell.”
—Gay’s “Trivia.”
Can we do better, after the surfeit of bricks and mortar which we have just undergone, than relax our jaded senses and relieve our wearied eyes by loitering for a few moments in the Green Park? See! it is just across the way, and a convenient entrance helps to tempt our steps. ”

“ Pall Mall, the centre of club-land, in the eighteenth century was the "ordinary residence of all strangers," probably on account of its proximity to the fashionable chocolate and coffee-houses (the forerunners of the clubs) , which, as Defoe wrote, "were all so close together that in an hour you could see the company at them all." In Pall Mall itself were the "Smyrna," the "King's Arms," and the "Star and Garter." At the "King's Arms" the Kit Cat Club met when it had quitted its quarters in Shire Lane, and at the "Star and Garter" the "Brothers" were presided over by Swift. ”

“ The Pall Mall has an exceedingly comme il faut clientele, and any man who did not wear evening clothes or a dinner jacket in the restaurant would feel himself rather a fish out of water there at dinner-time, and would probably take cover in the gallery. I see at the Pall Mall very much the same people whom I see at the Savoy and the Carlton, and the lady who dines at the smaller restaurant before going to a theatre to-day, probably to-morrow, when a dinner constitutes the entertainment for the evening, is taken to dine at one of the larger restaurants. ”

“ The pavements of Pall Mall were full of gentlemen in black coats and top hats, with here and there a white waistcoat and a button-hole to light up the throng; the sentry in scarlet and bearskin outside the War Office stood presenting arms to the passage of a field officer ”

“ A second great fire, on December 6th, 1867, again destroyed the building, which was subsequently re-erected with its principal frontage in Pall Mall, at a great cost; this in its turn we have seen disappear, and the new “His Majesty’s Theatre” rise on its site, with its chief entrance in the Haymarket, and a long frontage to Charles Street. Luckily, the old arcade is embodied in the new building, and here are still to be seen those dear little shops that look so clean and prosperous and yet so diminutive—like a sort of Tom Thumbs among business establishments! ”

“ On the right-hand side as you go from Pall Mall there are most respectable shops, but the wonder to me is how they manage to attract custom sufficient to enable them to pay what must be their very heavy rents. ”

“ Waterloo Road and Blackfriars Road, "over the water," as they trend southwards pass through strange and often unsavoury purlieus. Every district has its special idiosyncrasies. Piccadilly and St. James's are always aristocratic. Pall Mall has a severe and solid dignity; while the Strand and its continuation, the narrow and tortuous Fleet Street, are instinct with ancient honour and literary association. Yet, even here, if the visitor have not the "seeing eye" that discerns the past through the present, he may "walk from Dan to Beersheba and find all barren." ”

“ He was a fashionable upholsterer in Pall Mall, and not only sold, but manufactured, those tapestry arras hangings which, paper-staining being in embryo, were still conspicuous ornaments of the walls of palaces, the nobility’s saloons. Morris kept a shop much frequented by the noble tribes, at the sign of the “Golden Ball,” in Pall Mall. There seems to have been a plethora of Golden Balls in London about this time, just as though all the Lombards had quarrelled among themselves, and set up in business each man for himself, with no connection with the golden ball over the way. ”

“ The club houses in Pall Mall, St. James's Street, and elsewhere, were elegantly and most appropriately illuminated, with one solitary exception—the Reform club house in Pall Mall, in front of which was exhibited the word "Victoria" in variegated lamps. Some wags doubted the propriety of this display, and, looking at the Parliamentary events of the preceding night, were sceptical as to the fitness of the word at such a moment. ”

“ The Pall Mall, until then a sedate chronicle and review of the day's events, suddenly became the initiator of all kinds of new programmes and movements, political and social, besides astonishing people by its dash and unconventionality. In January 1884 General Gordon, who had been on the point of resigning from the army, was dispatched on his fateful mission o Khartoum, as the direct result of an ‘interview’ with him published in the Pall Mall and reinforced by a leading article in which Stead urged this step upon the government. ”

“ He made an aviary on the south-east side of the park, thence called Birdcage Walk; turned the north side into a mall for the enjoyment of the pastimes so called, in which he excelled; introduced skating from Holland on the canal and Rosamond's Pond (which was another branch of it on the south-west) ; had mistresses in lodgings east and west of him (Cleveland at Whitehall and Nell Gwyn in Pall Mall) ; and saw, in the course of his reign, new streets rising and old places of entertainment flourishing in other quarters of his favourite district ”

“ When Maggy spoke of the stage she generally meant the Pall Mall Theater. Just now it was in her thoughts more than any other, perhaps because she had met Alexandra there, but also because she was inclined to think that Alexandra and she had made a favorable impression on its stage-manager.
The Pall Mall, De Freyne, its lessee and manager, and the Pall Mall chorus are a trinity known the world over. Productions at the Pall Mall invariably enjoy success. Long runs prevail there. That was one of the reasons why Maggy looked forward to an engagement at that theater. ”

“ From the form of the simple implements preserved in the picture, Pall Mall may certainly be considered as the ancestor of Croquet, for the idea of a ball driven by a mallet was doubtless derived from it.
The best mall for this game is a hard concrete or gravel walk seven feet in width and forty feet in length. Doubtless after this game becomes widely known through the great circulation of Harper's Young People, malls for this purpose will be made on many pleasure-grounds ”

“ Phileas Fogg, having shut the door of his house at half-past eleven, and having put his right foot before his left five hundred and seventy-five times, and his left foot before his right five hundred and seventy-six times, reached the Reform Club, an imposing edifice in Pall Mall, which could not have cost less than three millions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And so long as each must keep her separate establishment, it will not be found possible to reduce living much below the present figures. But London has more wisely met the pressure of the times in those magnificent clubhouses, which have made Pall Mall almost a solid square of palaces hardly inferior to the homes of the nobility themselves. Each of these houses has its hundreds of members, who really fare sumptuously, having all the luxuries of wealth on the prices that one pays here for poverty. The food is furnished by the best purveyors, and charged to the consumers at cost ”

“ Faithorne and Newcourt's map of London, 1658, shows us open ground from a double row of trees at Pall Mall to Piccadilly; Piccadilly is marked "from Knightsbridge unto Piccadilly Hall." Opposite the palace, at the foot of the present St. James's Street, are a few houses, including Berkshire (now Bridgewater) House, and there are a few more at the eastern extremity of Pall Mall. At the north-eastern corner of what we call the Haymarket is the "Gaming House," and at the corners adjacent one or two more buildings. ”

“ Nature had, undoubtedly, done much for the old gentleman, but art little, so far as his personal appearance was concerned; for nothing could have been more quaint and out of keeping with Pall Mall and its fashionable surroundings than his eccentric costume.
The upper part of his person was habited in a rough shooting-jacket, considerably the worse for wear, such as a farmer or gamekeeper might have donned in the country, away from the busy haunts of men, when out in the coverts or engaged thinning the preserves ”

“ There is no lack of interest, past and present, in the district about which our author discourses. Piccadilly is notorious for its ‘ghosts’; and St. James’s Street, Park Lane, Grosvenor Square, Pall Mall, Albemarle Street, to name a few places at random, have an abundant population of the same kind. ”