Saint James's Palace

“ ST. JAMES’S PALACE.
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the Palace is that of a great collection of chambers and offices built as they were required, for convenience and comfort, rather than for beauty or picturesqueness. There are no towers, cloisters, gables, or carved work. It is essentially—like St. James’s, like Hampton—a palace of brick.
The greater part of Whitehall Palace was destroyed by fire in 1691 and 1697. After the deposition of James II. it ceased to be a royal residence. Then the site of the Palace was gradually built over by private persons. The Banqueting Hall was for a long time a Chapel Royal ”

“ James’s Park, which seem to be the only advantage 215this edifice enjoys, above many others devoted to charity. This palace claims a print, as it is the dwelling of a British Monarch, having otherwise not the least beauty to recommend it. The print shews both sides of it.
In other kingdoms the attention of foreigners is first struck with the magnificent residence of the Sovereign, on which all the decorations of architecture are lavished without the least regard to expence. The outside is grand and noble ”

“ James's Palace, because that building, less commodious for honest purposes than Whitehall, had some rooms and passages well suited for the purpose of the Jesuits. There, amidst a circle of zealots who thought nothing a crime that tended to promote the interests of their Church, and of courtiers who thought nothing a crime that tended to enrich and aggrandise themselves, a new born child had been introduced into the royal bed, and then handed round in triumph, as heir of the three kingdoms. ”

“ He also built the palace of St. James’s, inclosed a fine spot of ground which he converted into a park, for the accommodation of both palaces, and this was no sooner finished, than he erected the stately gate lately near the banquetting house, and added to it a magnificent gallery for the accommodation of the royal family, the nobility and gentry, to sit in, in order to see the [280] justings and other military exercises in the tilt yard; and soon after the same Prince erected, contiguous to the said gate, a tennis-court, cock-pit, and places for bowling. ”

“ Yet a Palace may it long continue; for not until the government of England shall be that of some revolutionary parvenu, will it cease to be a speaking symbol of the genuine dignity of the British Crown! The Queen of England can afford to hold her Court in an old, worn-out mansion, and to let the opulence of her subjects erect the most striking contrast at its side. Build as they may—St. James is not cast into the shade: it is historical and royal. There are few illustrations to be found more à propos to the superiority of a mental over a physical grandeur. ”

“ A photograph would give the idea of very rich antiquity, but as it really stands, looking on a gravelled court-yard, and with "CANTEEN" painted on one of its doors, the spectator does not find it very impressive. The great hall of this palace is now partitioned off into two or three rooms, and the whole edifice is arranged to serve as barracks. Of course, no trace of ancient magnificence, if anywise destructible, can be left in the interior. We were not shown into this palace, nor into the Parliament House, nor into the tower, where King James stabbed the Earl of Douglas. ”

“ The residence of the Queen, when in London, is generally supposed to be Buckingham Palace, a long gloomy looking building in St. James Park, not a stones' throw from the Marble Arch in Hyde Park or Westminster Abbey. The same big flashy looking soldiers in red coats, and hideous grenadier bearskins are to be seen marching up and down opposite this palace gate just as they do about St. James Palace, or at the Horse Guards in Parliament street. ”

“ The first thing which he planned was the design for an immense palace for James on the site of Whitehall. There is a simple grandeur in the drawings of it which are left, which may fairly entitle him to a reputation for the introduction of an elegant domestic architecture, but does not warrant the extravagant terms of eulogy as a gigantic genius, which have been lavished on him. ”

“ Nor is it easy to fancy the brilliance of the scene in the quiet place when it was lined from floor to ceiling with tier upon tier of seats for the noblest in the land, when every inch of standing-room had its fit occupant, and a princely gathering was grouped before the glittering altar to hear a Queen plight her troth.
St. James's has still a royal resident in the sole surviving member of the great family of George III., the venerable Duchess of Cambridge, who lives in the north wing of the palace. ”

“ There are plenty of these ghostly chambers in London, and the feeling on disturbing their antique solitude is a curious one. It is specially present when we invade the repose of the now disused Palaces, some of which are interesting places enough, but have a particularly forlorn and faded air.
No building has been so rudely, even coarsely, treated as the venerable old Palace, St. James’s, whose gate tower is so interesting and piquant a monument. Portions have been burnt and re-built; but the “restorations” seem always to have been carried out on the meanest and shabbiest fashion. ”

“ James’s palace, and her Majesty’s new building fronting the gardens at Somerset House in the Strand; the church and piazza of Covent Garden; the first of which is universally allowed to be a master-piece of the Tuscan order, the portico at the west end, majestic in its plainness, 250and the roof so happily contrived, by extending itself beyond the wall, as both to cast a shade, which adds to the solemnity of the sacred edifice, and at the same time serves to strengthen the wall, by resting thereon its center of gravity. ”

“ Near the fine chaste cross at Charing--which stood hard by the spot where the grand libel upon British taste, called Trafalgar Square, now stands--Woodville paused for a moment, and letting his eye run past its grey fretwork, gazed down in the direction of the palace and the Abbey, hesitating whether he should take the shorter road by the convent of St. James, or, once more passing through Westminster, ride under the windows of fair Mary Markham, for the chance of one parting glance. ”

“ James's Palace, dash you through the City, and land you, within twenty minutes, breathless and bewildered, in the very spot where Sir John climbed from his steed. There is little now that is naughty and light-hearted. There is much that is sombrely wicked, and there are numbers of unsweetened ladies attached to the churches ”

“ On the firm edge of the palace, from bracketed base to grey-capped summit against the sky, where grows a tall slim tower which soars and soars till it has given notice of the city’s greatness over the blue mountains that mark the horizon. It rises as slender and straight as a pennoned lance planted on the steel-shod toe of a mounted knight, and keeps all to itself in the blue air, far above the changing fashions of the market, the proud consciousness or rare arrogance once built into it. ”

“ Before our eyes rose majestically the colossal shell of a palace, with carved golden walls, a vast courtyard, cyclopean round towers, and wonderful windows full of sky and dreams. Close by was the noble church where James IV had his vision warning him not to go to war with England.
Somerled had talked to Barrie about Linlithgow, doubtless in the hope of making her think of him when there. He had called it the "finest domestic architectural ruin in all Scotland," and told her of Lord Rosebery's suggestion to restore and make of it a great national museum. ”

“ He watched little brisk figures, figures whose movement was as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from point to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with art, something that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef. The palace was gone; Strether remembered the palace; and when he gazed into the irremediable void of its site the historic sense in him might have been freely at play—the play under which in Paris indeed it so often winces like a touched nerve. ”

“ James’s Park to his palace of Whitehall, before which a scaffold draped with black has been erected. All marvel at the calm dignity which he displays.
The scaffold is hedged round with soldiers, and the headsman stands beside the block. The king, with head erect, steps through an opening in the wall of the banqueting hall on to the scaffold. He addresses himself to the bystanders, and in the last words he utters he shows clearly that he has not abandoned his fatal theory of kingship. ”

“ The Walks are kept in good Order, and especially that call’d the Mall, which is the longest of all: On the Right Hand of this Walk going from Whitehall stands St. James’s Palace, which is now the ordinary Residence of the Monarchs of England: ’Tis a very ancient Building, which was formerly a Convent, and has still very much the Appearance of one; so that, were it not for the240 Guards about it, a Stranger would hardly imagine it to be the Palace of a Sovereign Prince: There are Two Entrances to it, one on St. ”

“ Opposite stands the huge flat-roofed palace, putting forward two great rectangular arms and looking, with its closed windows and its foundations of almost unreduced rock, like some ghost of a sample of a ruder Babylon. In the wide court-like space between the wings is a fine old white marble fountain that never plays. Its dusty idleness completes the general air of abandonment. ”

“ Evening was closing, when a brilliantly-attired cavalier caracoled his horse from the palace porch, past the high Flemish gables of an ancient edifice, which was then the Mint of Scotland, past the strong round archway known as the Water Gate, because it led to the great horsepond of the palace, and throwing a handful of groats (twenty to king James's golden penny) among the poor dyvours who clustered round the girth cross of the Holy Sanctuary, rode up the Canongate. It was Sir Roland Vipont, the master of the king's ordnance. ”

“ Entering the esplanade, I happened to meet the commanding officer, who inquired if I was a stranger, and politely escorted me to every part of the extensive fortification. 'In that room,' said he, 'James VI. was born;' [44] this palace was built by James V., (the 'Knight of Snowdon, James Fitz James,') who often travelled alone in various disguises, etc. The views from the ramparts of the castle are very extensive, and in many respects have been pronounced unrivalled. ”

“ James’s Palace with its beautiful old sixteenth-century brick gateway in Cleveland Row. Skirt the Palace to the right and you will come to Stable Yard, and in Stable Yard is Lancaster House.
It is a stately place. Queen Victoria once said to the Duchess of Sutherland: “I come from my house to your palace,” but shorn of the groups of chairs and tables and the stately company moving up and down the magnificent staircase, the yellow and red marble walls seem cheerless and repellant. ”

“ He was often to be seen walking about with his dogs in the park, which had been made public eight years after he had come to the throne. James, [pg 53] Duke of York, once ventured to suggest greater caution, but Charles, with sly humour, replied: "Brother James, take care of yourself, for no one would kill me to make you King!"
On his accession, James II. left St. James's for Whitehall, though his Queen much preferred the palace in which she had lived as the Duchess of York. His only son, the unfortunate Old Pretender, was born in St. ”

“ The greed of man on every page;
No matter whether young or old,
His strife in life is search for gold!
[236]
King James left Edinburgh on the 5th of April with a royal escort for London, and by easy stage from town to town and castle to castle, made a triumphal march to London, where he arrived on the 7th of May, 1603, putting up at the Whitehall Palace. The lords of the realm and millions of faithful subjects gave James their loyal adhesion and support, lauding him to the skies as monarch of the realm and defender of the Faith. Hope had no thorns in her crown. ”

“ The masonry is by a master-mason, Nicholas Stone, several of whose works we have seen in other parts of London. "Little did James think that he was raising a pile from which his son was to step from the throne to a scaffold." The plan of Inigo Jones would have covered 24 acres, and one may best judge of its intended size by comparison with other buildings. Hampton Court covers 8 acres; St. James's Palace, 4 acres; Buckingham Palace, 2-1/2 acres. It would have been as large as Versailles, and larger than the Louvre. Inigo Jones received only 8s. ”

“ After the time of Flodden Field, the monarchs very seldom used the castle for anything but a stronghold against their enemies, Holyrood Palace becoming their favourite residence. The last Prince to be born in the [pg 76] castle was James VI., his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, having chosen to be within the protection of its strong walls. ”

“ Here, in the high arcade, half Venice was crowded close, while, on the Molo, at the limit of the expanse, the old columns of St. Mark and of the Lion were like the lintels of a door wide open to the storm. It was odd for him, as he moved, that it should have made such a difference—if the difference wasn't only that the palace had for the first time failed of a welcome. ”