Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

On the etymology of the word Piccadilly, Mr Smith expends much erudite research, without, as it appears to us, arriving at a very definite or satisfactory conclusion. A pickadill is defined by Blount, in his Glossography, as "the round hem of a garment, or other thing; also a kinde of stiff collar, made in fashion of a band." Hence Mr Smith infers, that the famous ordinary near St James's, which first bore the name of Piccadilly, may have received it because at that time it was the outmost or skirt-house of the suburb. The derivation is ingenious, but rather far-fetched. Another notion is, that a certain Higgin, a tailor, who built the house, had acquired his money by the manufacture of pickadills, then in great vogue. The orthography of the name has varied considerably. Evelyn mentions in his memoirs, that, as one of the commissioners for reforming the buildings and streets of London, he ordered the paving of the road from St James's North, "which was a quagmire," and likewise of the Haymarket about "Pigudello." In the same year, however, 1662, it is found inscribed in tradesmen's tokens as Pickadilla; and this appears to be the most ancient mode of spelling it. In Gerard's Herbal, published in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, (1596,) the author, talking of the "small wild buglosse," says that this little flower "growes upon the drie ditch bankes about Pickadilla."

Where Bennet and Arlington Streets now stand, was formerly the celebrated mulberry gardens, referred to by Malone as a favourite haunt of Dryden, who loved to eat tarts there with his mistress, Anne Reeve. To the polite ears of the nineteenth century, the very name of a public garden is a sound of horror; and to see the cream of the ton taking their evening lounge at Cremorne, or the "Royal Property," and battening upon mulberry tarts and sweetened wine, would excite as much astonishment as if we read in the Moniteur that the Duchess of Orleans had led a galop at Musard's masquerade. In the easy-going days of the second Charles, things were very different, and a fashionable company was wont to collect at the Mulberry Garden, to sit in its pleasant arbours, and feast upon cheesecakes and syllabubs. The ladies frequently went in masks, which was a great mode at that time, and one often adopted by the court dames to escape detection in the intrigues and mad pranks they so liberally permitted themselves. "In The Humorous Lovers, a comedy written by the Duke of Newcastle,4 and published in 1677, the third scene of Act I. is in the Mulberry Garden. Baldman observes to Courtly, ''Tis a delicate plump wench; now, a blessing on the hearts of them that were the contrivers of this garden; this wilderness is the prettiest convenient place to woo a widow, Courtly.'" One can hardly fancy a wilderness in the heart of St James's, except of houses; but the one mentioned in the above passage had ceased to exist at the time the play appeared, at least as a place of public resort. Five years previously, the King had granted to Henry Earl of Arlington, "that whole piece or parcel of ground called the Mulberry Gardens, together with eight houses, with their appurtenances thereon," at a rent of twenty shillings per annum. Goring House, in which Mr Secretary Bennet, afterwards Earl of Arlington, resided, was probably one of these eight houses. Two years subsequently to the grant, it was burnt down, and the earl removed to Arlington House, which stood on the site of Buckingham Palace. Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, bought the former, pulled it down in 1703, and erected a new mansion, which was sold to the crown by his son, and allotted, in 1775, as a residence for the Queen, instead of Somerset House.

We are glad to learn from Mr Smith, that there is a plan on foot for the removal of the confined, dirty, and unwholesome district between Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, now one of the vilest parts of the metropolis, the favourite abode of thieves, beggars, pawnbrokers, and gin-sellers. The streets adjacent to the palace have at no time been of the most spacious or respectable description, although Pimlico is vastly improved from what it was in the days of Ben Jonson, who uses the name to express all that was lowest and most disreputable. In his play of The Alchymist, he says, "Gallants, men and women, and of all sorts, tag-rag and bob-tail, have been seen to flock here in threaves, these ten weeks, as to a second Hoxton or Pimlico." And again, "besides other gallants, oysterwomen, sailors' wives, tobacco-men – another Pimlico." Apropos of the gin-palaces which have replaced the old-fashioned public-houses that abounded some twenty years ago in Westminster, Mr Smith makes a digression on the subject of drunkenness, and quotes some curious particulars from an old treatise, called The London and Country Brewer. "Our drunkenness, as a national vice," says the writer, "takes its date from the restoration of Charles the Second, or a few years later." It may be questioned whether drunkenness was not pretty well established as an English vice long before the period here referred to. We have the authority of various writers, however, for its having greatly increased about the time of the Stuarts' restoration. "A spirit of extravagant joy," says Burnet, in his History of his own Times, "spread over the nation. All ended in entertainments and drunkenness, which overrun the three kingdoms to such a degree, that it very much corrupted all their morals. Under the colour of drinking the King's health, there were great disorders, and much riot every where." This was no unnatural reaction after the stern austerity of the Protectorate. "As to the materials, (of drunkenness,") continues The Brewer, "beer and ale were considerable articles; they went a great way in the work at first, but were far from being sufficient; and then strong waters came into play. The occasion was this: In the Dutch wars it had been observed that the captains of the Hollanders' men-of-war, when they were about to engage with our ships, usually set a hogshead of brandy abroach afore the mast, and bid the men drink sustick, that they might fight lustick; and our poor seamen felt the force of the brandy to their cost. We were not long behind them; but suddenly after the war we began to abound in strong-water shops." Even the chandlers and the barber-surgeons kept stores of spirituous compounds, for the most part of exceeding bad quality, but sweetened and spiced, and temptingly displayed in rows of glass bottles, under Latin names of imposing sound. Aniseed-water was the favourite dram; until the French, finding out the newly-acquired taste of their old enemies, deluged the English markets with brandy, which was recommended by the physicians, and soon acquired universal popularity. It was sold about the streets in small measures, at a halfpenny and a penny each; and the consumption was prodigious, until a war broke out with France, when the supply of course stopped, and the poor were compelled to return to their aqua vitæ and aqua mirabilis, or, better than either, to the ale-glass. When speaking of the royal cockpit at Whitehall, Mr Smith tells us of "Admiral M'Bride, a brave sailor of the old school, who constantly kept game-cocks on board his ship, and on the morning of an action, endeavoured, and that successfully, to animate his men by the spectacle of a cock-fight between decks." This, if not a very humane expedient, according to modern notions, was at any rate an improvement upon Dutch courage, with which British seamen of the present day would scorn to fortify themselves.

St James's Park, originally a swamp, was first inclosed by Harry the Eighth, but little was done towards its improvement and embellishment until after the Restoration. It was within its precincts, that in July 1626 Lord Conway assembled the numerous and troublesome French retinue of Queen Henrietta Maria, and communicated to them the king's pleasure that they should immediately quit the country. The legion of hungry foreigners, including several priests and a boy bishop, scarcely of age, had hoped long to fatten upon English soil, and they received their dismissal with furious outcry and loud remonstrance. Their royal mistress also was greatly incensed, and broke several panes of glass with her fists, in no very queenly style. But Charles for once was resolute; the Frenchmen had, to use his own expressions, so dallied with his patience, and so highly affronted him, that he could no longer endure it. They found, however, all sorts of pretexts to delay their departure, claiming wages and perquisites which were not due, and alleging that they had debts in London, and could not go away till these were discharged. L'Estrange, in his Life of Charles I., and D'Israeli in his Commentaries, gives many curious particulars of the proceedings of this troop of bloodsuckers. Under pretence of perquisites, they pillaged the queen's wardrobe and jewel-case, not leaving her even a change of linen. The king accorded them a reasonable delay for their preparations, but at last he lost all patience, as will be seen by the following characteristic letter to the Duke of Buckingham, dated from Oaking, the 7th of August 1626:

"Steenie, – I have received your letter by Dic Greame, (Sir Richard Graham.) This is my answer: I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of the towne, if you can by fair means, (but stike not long in disputing,) otherways force them away, dryving them away lyke so manie wilde beastes, until ye have shipped them, and so the devil goe with them. Let me heare no answer, but of the performance of my command. So I rest your faithful, constant, loving friend, C. R."

Thereupon the debts of the obnoxious French were paid, their claims, both just and unjust, satisfied, presents given to some of them, and they set out for Dover, nearly forty coaches full. "As Madame St George, whose vivacity is always described as extremely French, was stepping into the boat, one of the mob could not resist the satisfaction of flinging a stone at her French cap. An English courtier, who was conducting her, instantly quitted his charge, ran the fellow through the body, and quietly returned to the boat. The man died on the spot, but no further notice appears to have been taken of the inconsiderate gallantry of the English courtier."

The Stuarts were commonly plagued with the foreign attendants of their wives. When Charles the Second's spouse, Catherine of Braganza, arrived in England, she was escorted by a train of Portuguese ladies, who highly disgusted the king and his court, less, however, by their Papistry and greediness, than by their surpassing ugliness and obstinate adherence to the fashions of their country. "Six frights," says Anthony Hamilton in his memoirs of Count Grammont, "who called themselves maids of honour, and a duenna, another monster, who took the title of governess to these extraordinary beauties. Among the men were Francisco de Melo, and one Tauravedez, who called himself Don Pedro Francisco Correo de Silva, extremely handsome, but a greater fool than all the Portuguese put together; he was more vain of his names than his person; but the Duke of Buckingham, a still greater fool than he, though more addicted to raillery, gave him the name of Peter of the Wood. He was so enraged at this, that, after many fruitless complaints and ineffectual menaces, poor Pedro de Silva was obliged to leave England; while the happy duke kept possession of a Portuguese nymph more hideous than the queen's maids of honour, whom he had taken from him, as well as two of his names. Besides these, there were six chaplains, four bakers, a Jew perfumer, and a certain officer, probably without an office, who called himself her highness's barber." Evelyn also tells us, that "the queen arrived with a train of Portuguese ladies in their monstrous fardingals or guard-infantas, their complexions olivader, and sufficiently unagreeable;" and Lord Clarendon talks of "a numerous family of men and women, that were sent from Portugal" – the women "old and ugly and proud, incapable of any conversation with persons of quality and a liberal education; and they desired, and indeed had conspired so far to possess the queen herself, that she should neither learn the English language, nor use their habit, nor depart from the manners and fashions of her own country in any particulars." Although the Infanta herself was by no means ill-looking, her charms did not come up to those of the flattered portrait which her mother, the old Queen of Portugal, had sent to Charles; and it is possible that the selection of plain women for her retinue had been intentional, that their ugliness might serve as a foil to her moderate amount of beauty. After a short time, however, the majority of these uncomely Lusitanians were sent back to their native country.

To return to Mr Smith and St James's Park. After his Restoration, Charles the Second, who, as worthy Thomas Blount says in his Boscobel, had been hunted to and fro like a "partridge upon the mountains," became very casanier, decidedly stay-at-home, in his habits, and cared little to absent himself from London and its vicinity. He had had buffeting and wandering enough in his youth, and, on ascending the throne of his unfortunate father, he thought of little besides making himself comfortable in his capital, careless of expense, which, even in his greatest need, he seems never to have calculated. He planted the avenues of the park, made a canal and an aviary for rare birds, which gave the name to Bird-Cage Walk. Amongst other freaks, and to provide for a witty Frenchman who amused him, he erected Duck Island into a government. Charles de St Denis, seigneur of St Evremond, who had been banished from France for a satire on Cardinal Mazarine, was the first and, it is believed, the last governor. He drew the salary attached to the appointment, which was certainly a more lucrative than honourable one for a man of his talents and reputation. According to Evelyn, Charles stored the park with "numerous flocks of fowle. There were also deer of several countries – white, spotted like leopards; antelopes, as elk, red deer, roebucks, staggs, Guinea grates, Arabian sheep," &c. In the Mall, also made by him, Charles played at ball and took his daily walk. "Here," says Colley Cibber, "Charles was often seen amid crowds of spectators, feeding his ducks and playing with his dogs, affable even with the meanest of his subjects." Mr Smith regrets the diminished affability and less accessible mood of sovereigns of the nineteenth century, although he admits that the populace of France and England are at the present day too rude for it to be advisable that kings and queens should walk amongst them with the easy familiarity of the second Charles. Of that there can be very little doubt. Even Charles, whose dislike of ceremony and restraint, and love of gossip and new faces, were cause, at least as much as any desire for popularity, that he thus mingled with the mob, occasionally experienced the disagreeables of his undignified manner of life. Aubrey the credulous, Mr Smith tells us, relates in his Miscellanies the following anecdote of an incident that occurred in the Park. "Avise Evans had a fungous nose, and said that it was revealed to him that the king's hand would cure him: and at the first coming of King Charles II. into St James's Park, he kissed the king's hand, and rubbed his nose with it, which disturbed the king, but cured him." It was whilst walking on the Mall that the pretended Popish plot of Oates and Bedloe was announced to Charles. "On the 12th of August 1678," says Hume, "one Kirby, a chemist, accosted the king as he was walking in the Park. 'Sir,' said he, 'keep within the company; your enemies have a design upon your life, and you may be shot in this very walk.' Being asked the reason of these strange speeches, he said that two men, called Grove and Pickering, had engaged to shoot the king, and Sir George Wakeman, the queen's physician, to poison him." Charles, unlike his grandfather, the timid James, was little apprehensive of assassination, and, when sauntering in the Park, preferred the society of two or three intimates to the attendance of a retinue. On one occasion, however, as a biographer has recorded, an impudent barber startled him from his usual happy insouciance. Accustomed to chat familiarly with his good-humoured master, the chin-scraper ventured to observe, whilst operating upon that of the king, that he considered no officer of the court had a more important trust than himself. "Why so, friend?" inquired the king. "Why," replied the barber, "I could cut your majesty's throat whenever I chose." Charles started up in consternation, swore that the very thought was treason, and the indiscreet man of razors was deprived of his delicate charge.

In the Daily Post for October 31st, 1728, is an order of the Board of Green Cloth for clearing St James's Park of the shoe-cleaners and other vagrants, and sending them to the House of Correction. This reminds us of what has often excited our surprise, the absence from the streets of London of an humble but very useful class of professionals, who abound in many continental towns, in all French ones of any size. Abundant ingenuity is displayed in London in the discovery and invention of strange and out-of-the-way employments. Men convert themselves into "animated sandwiches" by back and breastplates of board, encase themselves in gigantic bottles to set forth the merits of some famed specific or potent elixir, or walk about with advertisements printed on their coats, peripatetic fly-sheets, extolling the comfort and economy of halfpenny steamers, and of omnibuses at a penny a mile. Some sweep crossings, others hold horses; but none of the vast number of needy industrials who strain their wits to devise new means of obtaining their daily ration and nightly shelter, have as yet taken pattern by the French décrotteur and German stiefel-wichser, and provided themselves for stock in trade with a three-legged stool, a brace of brushes, and a bottle of blacking. No one has been at Paris without finding the great convenience of the ateliers de décrottage which abound in the passages and in the more frequented of the streets, where, for three or four sous, the lounger who has had boots and trousers bemired by rapid cab or lumbering diligence, is brushed and polished with unparalleled rapidity and dexterity. But a very moderate capital is required for the establishment of these temples of cleanliness, and we recommend the subject to the consideration of decayed railway "stags."

"Duke Street Chapel, with a flight of steps leading to the Park, formed originally a wing of the mansion of the notorious Judge Jeffries. The house was built by him, and James the Second, as a mark of especial favour, allowed him to make an entry to the Park by the steps alluded to. The son of Jeffries inhabited it for a short time." It was this son and successor of the infamous Jeffries, who, with a party of rakes and debauchees, mohocks as they were at that time called, insulted the remains of the poet Dryden, and the grief of his widow. They happened to pass through Gerrard Street, Soho, when Dryden's remains were about to be conveyed from his house, No. 43, in that street, to Westminster Abbey. Although it was in the daytime, Jeffries was drunk; he swore that Dryden should not be buried in so shabby a manner, (eighteen mourning coaches waited to form the procession,) and that he would see due honour done to his remains. After frightening Lady Elizabeth, who was ill in bed, into a fainting fit, these aristocratic ruffians stopped the funeral, and sent the body to an undertaker in Cheapside. The bishop waited several hours in Westminster Abbey, and at last went away. When Jeffries became sober, he had forgotten all about the matter, and refused to have any thing to do with the interment. The corpse lay unburied for three weeks. At last the benevolent Dr Garth had it taken to the College of Physicians, got up a subscription for the expenses of the funeral, and followed the body to Westminster Abbey. The poet's son challenged Jeffries, but Jeffries showed the white feather, and, to avoid personal chastisement, kept carefully out of the way for three years, when Charles Dryden was drowned near Windsor.

Mr Smith is most indulgent to the blunders and blockheadism of our modern architects and monument-makers, far too much so, indeed, when he speaks approvingly of Trafalgar Square and its handsome fountains, and without positive disapprobation of the vile collection of clumsy buildings and ill-executed ornament defacing that site. There has been a deal of ink spilt upon this subject, and we have no intention of adding to the quantity, especially as there is no chance that any flow of fluid, however unlimited, shall blot out the square and its absurdities. But we defy any Englishman, with the smallest pretensions to taste, to pass Charing Cross without feelings of shame and disgust at the mismanagement and ignorance there manifest. Such an accumulation of clumsiness was surely never before witnessed. The wretched National Gallery with its absurd dome, crushed beneath the tall and symmetrical proportions of St Martin's portico, overtopped even by the private dwelling-houses in its vicinity; the dirty, ill-devised, and worse-executed fountains, with their would-be-gracefully curved basins, the steps and parapets, which give the whole place the appearance of an exaggerated child's toy. Well may foreigners shrug their shoulders, and smile at the public buildings of the great capital of Britain. A fatality attends all our efforts in that way. In regard to architecture and ornament, we pay more and are worse served than any body else. So habituated are we to failure in this respect, that when a public building is completed, scaffolding removed, and a fair view obtained, we wonder and exult if it is found free from glaring defects, and in no way particularly obnoxious to censure. As to its proving a thing to be proud of, to be gazed at and admired, and to be spoken of out of England, or even in England, after the fuss and ceremony of its inauguration is over, we never dream of such a thing. The negative merit of having avoided the ridiculous and the grotesque, is subject for satisfaction, almost for pride. Assuredly we love not to exalt other countries at the expense of our own, to draw invidious comparisons between things English and things foreign. But the difference between public buildings of modern erection in London and in Paris is so immense, that it can escape no one. Take, for instance, the Paris Bourse and the London Exchange. The former, it has been objected, is out of character; a Greek temple is no fitting rendezvous for the sons of commerce; a less classic fane were more appropriate for the discussion of exchanges, for sales of cotton and muscovado. The objection, according to us, is flimsy and absurd, and must have originated with some Vandalic and prejudiced booby, with whom consistency was a monomania. Nevertheless we will, for argument's sake, admit its validity. Is that a reason that the traders and capitalists of London should meet in a building which, for heaviness and exaggerated solidity, rivals a South American Inquisition? Do the Barings and the Rothschilds anticipate an attack upon their strong boxes, and intend to stand a siege within the massive walls of the Royal Exchange? Assuredly the narrow doorways may easily be defended; for a time, at least, the ponderous walls will mock the cannonade. The curse of heaviness is upon our architects. There is total want of grace, and lightness, and airiness in all their works. Behold our new Senate House! Do its florid beauties and overdone decorations, unsparingly as they have been lavished, and convenient as they will doubtless be found as receptacles for bird's nests, contrast favourably with the elegant and dignified simplicity of the Chamber of Deputies? The two, it will be said, cannot be assimilated: the vast difference of size precludes a comparison. We reply, that the buildings are for the same purpose; but were they not, proportion at least should be observed. The Parliament House is far too low for its length. Want of elevation is the common fault, both in the ideas and in the productions of our architects.

Are we more successful in statues than in buildings? Mr Smith has some sensible remarks on this score. Speaking of the equestrian statue of George III. in Cockspur Street, he says, that "critics object to the cocked hat and tie-wig in the royal figure; but, some ages hence, these abused parts will be the most valuable in the whole statue. It may very reasonably be asked, why an English gentleman should be represented in the dress of a Roman tribune? Let the man appear, even in a statue, in his habit as he lived; and whatever we may say, posterity will be grateful to us. We should like to know exactly the ordinary walking-dress of Cæsar or Brutus, and how they wore their hair; and we should not complain if they had cocked hats or periwigs, if we knew them to be exact copies of nature." It is certain that modern physiognomy rarely harmonises with ancient costume. What is to be said of the aspect of the "first gentleman of Europe," wrapped in his horsecloth, and astride on his bare-backed steed, in the aforesaid Square of Trafalgar? Assuredly nothing in commendation. There are portraits of Napoleon in classic drapery, and, even with his classically correct countenance, he looks a very ordinary, under-sized Roman. But, in his grey capote and small cocked hat, the characteristic is preserved, and we at once think of, and wonder at, the hero of Austerlitz and Marengo.