St. James's Palace

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 which he never occupied, and thereupon the queen rented for her mother Ingestre House, Belgrave Square, at 2,000l. a year ; but on the death of the Princess Augusta in September, Clarence House, St. James's Palace, was made over to her, together with Frogmore Lodge at Windsor. Hardly a day passed without the exchange of visits. As a rule, the duchess both lunched and dined with her daughter. The Baroness Lehzen left England in October 1842 for her native country of Hanover, finally settling with a sister at Bückeburg (cf. Bloomfield, Reminiscences, i. 215) . ”

“ 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 ”

“ The cup of an exquisite experience—a week in that enchanted palace, a week of such immunity from Lomax Place and old Crook as he had never dreamed of—was at his lips; it was purple with the wine of romance, of reality, of civilisation, and he couldn’t push it aside without drinking. He might go home ashamed, but he would have for evermore in his mouth the taste of nectar. He went upstairs under the eye of the butler and on his way to his room, at the turning of a corridor, found himself face to face with Madame Grandoni. ”

“ Though I say it is of but small social advantage to an Englishman to be presented, yet undoubtedly the greatest people in the empire attend court, and are to be seen at the ceremonials and festivities at Buckingham and St. James's Palaces. At present the queen holds drawing-rooms and levees at Buckingham Palace, and the prince of Wales at St. James's Palace. The latter are attended only by gentlemen, and, though not so grand as the queen's, are pleasanter. Trousers are allowed, instead of the knee-breeches and stockings which must be worn at all court ceremonials where there are ladies. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ James's and St. Anne's parishes, and a great part of St. Martin's and St. Giles's. I have met with several old persons in my younger days who remembered that there was but a single house, a cake-house, between the Mews-gate at Charing Cross and St. James's Palace Gate, where now stand the stately piles of St. James's Square, Pall Mall, and other fine streets. They also remembered the west side of St. Martin's Lane to have been a quickset hedge; yet High Holborn and Drury Lane were filled with noblemen's and gentlemen's houses and gardens almost a hundred and fifty years ago. ”

“ The place is as intricate as it is vast, and as desolate as it is dirty. The imagination has, for some reason or other, to make more than the effort usual in such cases to restore and repeople it. The fact, indeed, is simply that the palace has been so incalculably abused and altered. ”

“ On the face of the matter, I know, there is often no very salient peg to hang a romance on. A sort of dusky blankness invests the establishment, which has often a rather imbecile old age. But a hundred brooding secrets lurk in this inexpressive mask, and the Chigi Palace did duty for me in the suggestive twilight as the most haunted of houses. Its basement walls sloped outward like the beginning of a pyramid, and its lower windows were covered with massive iron cages. ”

“ Here stood York House, where Bacon was born, and Durham Place, where Raleigh lived, with his study in a turret overlooking the river; there also were Arundel House and Essex House, where great men pined and plotted.
At Whitehall stood Wolsey's Palace, enlarged by Henry VIII., and Elizabeth's favourite residence when not at Nonsuch in Surrey, Windsor, Greenwich, or Richmond. The tilt-yard stood where the Horse Guards now stands. St. James's Palace, also built by Henry VIII., where the Queen's melancholy-bigot sister had died, was seldom inhabited by the Court ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ King James affectionately embraced them both, as sad and sorrowful he bade them a mournful farewell; and wept most bitterly at this parting scene, in which affliction his royal consort fully participated. His Majesty then intrusted them both to the loyal charge of the noble and faithful count, who taking the royal infant under one arm, while he assisted the queen with the other, they set forth from the palace to pursue their perilous and melancholy journey.
Stormy and tempestuous was the night, the wind blew with violence, and rain impetuously descended in torrents. ”

“ But it merely meant that James was having the time of his life. He was drawing out announcements. First was a batch of vermilion strips, with the mystic script, in big black letters: Houghton’s Picture Palace, underneath which, quite small: Opens at Lumley on October 7th, at 6:30 P.M. Everywhere you went, these vermilion and black bars sprang from the wall at you. Then there were other notices, in delicate pale-blue and pale red, like a genuine theatre notice, giving full programs. ”