Piccadilly

Piccadilly, is a large street so called, which extends from the north end of the Haymarket to Hyde-park-corner, and derives its name from being the place where formerly the Piccadilly or Spanish ruffs were sold.—[See Burlington House.

Piccadilly,—at the N. end of the Haymarket, where the numbers begin and end, viz. 1 and 142, it extends to Hyde-park-corner, about a mile in length.

Piccadilly. A street consisting of shops and fashionable dwelling-houses running east and west, which extends from the top of the Haymarket to Hyde Park Corner. The earliest allusion to it was thought to be in Gerard's Herbal, where we read "that the small wild buglosse grows upon the drie ditch bankes about Pickadilla," but the passage does not occur in the earliest edition, 1596, and is only to be found in that of 1633. The origin of the name is more than doubtful. Robert Baker, of the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, by his last will, dated April 14, 1623, bequeathed the sum of £2 : 10s. in money, and 10s. in bread, to the poor of the parish in which he lived. He had a wife and family and a good deal to leave. He speaks of his houses in the Strand, before Britain's Burse, of a tenement in his own occupation, with its garden and cowhouse, and of a piece of land of about two acres "in the fields behind the Mews," which he had enclosed with a brick wall. The entry of the £3 in the Accounts of the Overseers of the Poor of St. Martin's tells us who Robert Baker was, and how his nameless tenement was known.

Of Robte Backer of Pickadilley Halle gewen
by wille, iij^li.

Here, then, is the earliest mention of Piccadilly Hall which has yet been discovered, and the bequest and entry are additionally important, when we contrast the silence of Baker in his will when he refers to the tenement in his possession, known as Piccadilly Hall, with the particular description made by the overseers in the entry of the payment. There is reason to believe that Robert Baker did not care to have his tenement described as Piccadilly Hall; let us hear Blount:—

A Pickadil is that round hem, or the several divisions set together about the skirt of a garment or other thing; also a kinde of stiffe collar, made in fashion of a band. Hence, perhaps, the famous ordinary near St. James's, called Pickadilly, took denomination, because it was then the utmost, or skirt house of the suburbs, that way. Others say it took name from this; that one Higgins, a Tailor, who built it, got most of his estate by Pickadilles, which in the last age were much worn in England.—Blount's Glossographia, ed. 1656, first ed.

Minsheu, 1627, describes it as "a peece fastened about the top of the coller of a doublet." The word occurs in several of our old dramatic writers; thus Ben Jonson:—

Ready to cast at one whose band sits ill,
And then leap mad on a neat pickardill.
Epistle to a Friend (Master Colby); also The Devil is an Ass, Act ii. Sc. I.

His editor, Gifford, has a note upon the subject. "Piccadil," says Gifford, "is simply a diminutive of picca (Span. and Ital.), a spear-head, and was given to this article of foppery from a fancied resemblance of its stiffened plaits to the bristled points of those weapons." It was in fashion when Barnaby Rich wrote in 1614. "He that some fortie or fifty years sithens," says Rich, "should have asked after a Pickadilly, I wonder who could have understood him, or could have told what a Pickadilly had been, either fish or flesh."¹ Taylor the Water Poet speaks of a "Tyburn Pickadill."

Baker, it appears, had built on "the fields behind the Mews," and his widow increasing the number of tenements, the Overseers of the Poor of St. Martin's claimed Lammas money of her, for building on ground over which, after Lammas, the parishioners of St. Martin's had a right of common. In the books of the Overseers from April 18, 1640, to May 2, 1641, the sum is placed under the head of "Lamas Ground Receipts," and the entry is as follows:—

Of Mrs. Mary Baker, widdowe, in Lieu of the Lamas Common, of certaine grounds near the Wind Mill at the Cawsey head, builded upon by her late husband deceased, and now usually called Pickadilly, xxxd.

Windmill Street preserves a recollection of "the Winde Mill at the Cawseyhead; "Panton Square and Panton Street, the name of Colonel Panton, to whom Mrs. Baker sold Piccadilly Hall; and Coventry Street, the name of Mr. Secretary Coventry of the reign of Charles II., whose garden wall ran along part of Panton Street and Oxenden Street. The situation of Piccadilly Hall, at the north-east corner of the Haymarket, is laid down in the maps of London by T. Porter and W. Faithorne, both published before 1660; and these show that over against Windmill Street stood the Gaming-house or Shaver's Hall; and at the corner of Windmill Street and Coventry Street Piccadilly Hall.

In the afternoon of the same day [in 1641], Mr. Hyde going to a place called Piccadilly (which was a fair house for entertainment and gaming, with handsome gravel walks with shade, and where were an upper and lower bowling green, whither very many of the nobility and gentry of the best quality resorted, both for exercise and conversation), as soon as ever he came into the ground, the Earl of Bedford came to him, and told him "He was glad he was come thither, for there was a friend of his in the lower ground who needed his counsel."—Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, ed. 1826, vol. i. p. 422.

Sir John Suckling, the poet (d. 1641), was one of the great frequenters of Piccadilly Hall, Aubrey preserving a story of "his sisters coming to Peccadillo Bowling-green, crying for the feare he should lose all [their] portions." Another well-known person was Phil Porter.

Farewell, my dearest Piccadilly,
   Notorious for great dinners;
Oh, what a Tennis Court was there!
   Alas! too good for sinners.
Phil Porter's Farewell (Wit and Drollery), 12mo, 1682, p. 39.

Lammas money was paid on account of Piccadilly House and Bowling Green as late as 1670, and the house itself pulled down circ. 1685. The Fives Court attached to the Gaming-house remained standing in Windmill Street a very few years back. The Tennis Court of Shaver's Hall remained in James Street until 1887, when it was rebuilt; a tablet now marks the place.

February 7, 1638.—A sentence in the Star Chamber this term hath demolished all the houses about Piccadilly; by midsummer they must be pulled down, which have stood since the 13th of K. James [1615]: they are found to be great nuisances, and much foul the springs of water which pass by those houses to Whitehall and to the City.—Garrard, Strafford Letters, vol. ii. p. 150.

April 14, 1657.—The Clause about manners and loose persons was read. ... Sir William Strickland said, "Certainly this work is very requisite, and abundance of loose persons are about town; at Piccadilly and other nurseries of vice."—Journals of Parliament, Burton, vol. ii. p. 35.

July 31, 1662.—I sat with the Commissioners about reforming buildings and streets of London, and we ordered the paving of the way down St. James's north, which was a quagmire, and also of the Haymarket about Piquidillo.—Evelyn.

Cordelia. At last
Volscius the great this dire resolve embraced:
His servants he into the country sent,
And he himself to Piccadillé went,
Where he's inform'd by letters that she's dead.
. . . . . . . . . .
Baynes. So, let me see.
Enter Prince Volscius going out of town.
Smith. I thought he had been gone to Picadillé.
Baynes. Yes, he gave out so; but that was only to cover his design.
The Rehearsal (1671), Act. iii.

The first Piccadilly, taking the word in its modern acceptation of a street, was a very short line of road, running no farther west than the foot of Sackville Street, and the name Piccadilly Street occurs for the first time in the Rate-books of St. Martin's under the year 1673. Sir Thomas Clarges's house, on the site of the present Albany, is described in the London Gazette of 1675 (No. 982) as "near Burlington House, above Piccadilly." From Sackville Street to Albemarle Street was originally called Portugal Street, after Catherine of Braganza, Queen of Charles II., and all beyond was the great Bath Road, or, as Agas calls it (1560), "the way to Reding." The Piccadilly of 1708 is described as "a very considerable and publick street, between Coventry Street and Portugal Street;" and the Piccadilly of 1720 as "a large street and great thoroughfare, between Coventry Street and Albemarle Street."¹ Portugal Street gave way to Piccadilly in the reign of George I. That part of the present street, between Devonshire House and Hyde Park Corner, was taken up, as Ralph tells us, in 1734, by the shops and stone-yards of statuaries, just as the Euston Road is now a statement confirmed by Lloyd in The Cit's Country Box, and by Walpole in a letter to Mann of June 6, 1746.

And now from Hyde Park Corner come
The Gods of Athens and of Rome;
Here squabby Cupids take their places,
With Venus and the clumsy Graces.
Lloyd, The Cit's Country Box, 1757.

When do you come ? If it is not soon you will find a new town. I stared to-day at Piccadilly like a country squire; there are twenty new stone houses. At first I concluded that all the grooms that used to live there had got estates and built palaces.—Walpole to Montagu, November 8, 1759.

We may read the history of Piccadilly in the names of several of the surrounding streets and buildings. Albemarle Street was so called after Christopher Monk, second Duke of Albemarle, to whom Clarendon House was sold in 1675, by the sons of the great Lord Clarendon. Bond Street was so called after Sir Thomas Bond, of Peckham, to whom Clarendon House was sold by the Duke of Albemarle when in difficulties, a little before his death. Jermyn Street was so called after Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, who died 1683–1684; Burlington House after Boyle, Earl of Burlington; Dover Street after Henry Jermyn, Lord Dover (d. 1708), the little Jermyn of De Grammont's Memoirs; Berkeley Street and Stratton Street after John, Lord Berkeley of Stratton, Lord Deputy of Ireland in the reign of Charles II.; Clarges Street after Sir Walter Clarges, the nephew of Ann Clarges, wife of General Monk; and Arlington Street and Bennet Street after Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, one of the Cabal. Air Street was built in 1659; Stratton Street in 1693, and Bolton Street was, in 1708, the most westerly street in London. Devonshire House occupies the site of Berkeley House, in which the first Duke of Devonshire died (1707). Hamilton Place derives its name from James Hamilton, ranger of Hyde Park in the reign of Charles II., and brother of La Belle Hamilton. Halfmoon Street was so called from the Halfmoon Tavern. Coventry House, No. 106, was built on the site of an old inn, called the Greyhound, and bought by the Earl of Coventry of Sir Hugh Hunlock in 1764 for 10,000 guineas.¹ Apsley House was called after Apsley, Earl of Bathurst, who built it late in the last century; and the Albany from the Duke of York and Albany, brother of George IV. St. James's Church (by Wren) was consecrated on Sunday, July 13, 1684. The sexton's book of St. Martin's informs us that the White Bear Inn was in existence in 1685; and Strype, in his new edition of Stow, that there was a White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly in 1720; it was so named by Williams, the landlord, in honour of the accession of the House of Hanover. This house was widely renowned in coaching days, and is still the summer starting-place of the private four-horse stage-coaches. The two Corinthian pilasters, which stood one on each side of the Three Kings Inn gateway, in Piccadilly (they were removed in 1864), belonged to Clarendon House, and were thought to be the only remains of that edifice.

Sir William Petty, our first writer of authority on political arithmetic, died in a house over against St. James's Church (1687). Next but one to Sir William Petty, Verrio, the painter, was living in 1675. In the dark red-brick rectory house, at the north side of the church, pulled down 1848, and immediately rebuilt (now No. 197), lived and died Dr. Samuel Clarke, rector of St. James's, from 1709 till his death in 1729. Here he edited Cæsar and Homer; here he wrote his Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity and his Treatise on the Being and Attributes of God. In Coventry House, facing the Green Park, corner of Engine Street (now the St. James's Club), died in 1809, William, sixth Earl of Coventry, married, in 1752, to Maria, the elder of the two beautiful Miss Gunnings. In what was then No. 23, now No. 99, died, in 1803, Sir William Hamilton, the collector of the Hamiltonian gems, better known as the husband of Nelson's Lady Hamilton: they went there in 1800. From the house No. 80, Sir Francis Burdett was taken to the Tower, April 6, 1810; the arrest was made by forcing open the area windows, after a fruitless attempt to get in at the first floor by a ladder. They found Sir Francis in the drawing-room with his brother, his son, and some ladies. The coach in which they carried him off was escorted by the Life Guards, with the 5th Hussars leading the way. They went round by Portland Street and the City Road through Finsbury Square and the Minories to the Tower. Windham records in his Diary (p. 503), "Went late to Albemarle Street. Found Life Guards in Piccadilly hunted by and hunting the mob." No. 105 was the old Pulteney Hotel; here the Emperor of Russia put up during the memorable visit of the allied sovereigns in 1814; and here the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg (the Emperor Alexander's sister) introduced Prince Leopold to the Princess Charlotte. On its site the late Marquis of Hertford built, but never occupied, Hertford House. The large brick house, No. 1 Stratton Street, was the residence of Mrs. Coutts, afterwards Duchess of St. Albans, and is now that of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Lord Eldon's house, at the west corner of Hamilton Place, was built by his grandfather, Lord Chancellor Eldon. Nos. 138 and 139 were all one house in the old Duke of Queensberry's time.

In the balcony of No. 138, on fine days in summer, used to sit, some forty years ago, a thin, withered old figure, with one eye, looking on all the females that passed him, and not displeased if they returned him whole winks for his single ones. ... He had been Prince of the Jockies of his time, and was a voluptuary and millionaire. "Old Q." was his popular appellation. He died at the age of eighty-six. We have often seen him in his balcony

Sunning himself in Huncamunca's eyes;

and wondered at the longevity of his dissipation and the prosperity of his worthlessness.—Leigh Hunt.

Windham also mentions his habit of sitting at the window:—

September 25, 1808.—Went in to the Duke of Queensberry, whom I saw at his window; full of life but very difficult to communicate with, and greatly declined in bodily powers.—Windham's Diary.

He died in this house, December 23, 1810, aged eighty-six. The legacy duty on his property was £120,000.

At the corner of Park Lane, No. 137, then Lord Elgin's, the Elgin marbles were placed on their first arrival in this country. Later it was the residence of the Duchess of Gloucester. No. 94 was formerly Egremont House, then Cholmondeley House, afterwards the residence of the Duke of Cambridge (brother of George III.), and known as Cambridge House. It was then, from his first premiership, 1855, till his death, October 18, 1865, the residence of Lord Palmerston; and famed for Lady Palmerston's brilliant receptions. It is now the Naval and Military Club. Lord Palmerston, prior to 1855, lived for a short time at No. 114. The bay-fronted house which stood at the corner of Whitehorse Street was the residence of Mr. Charles Dumergue, the friend of Sir Walter Scott; until a child of his own was established in London, this was Scott's headquarters when in town. The London season of Lord Byron's married life was passed in that half of the Duke of Queensberry's house afterwards numbered 139 and pulled down in 1889. "We mean to metropolise to-morrow," says Byron, "and you will address your next to Piccadilly. We have got the Duchess of Devon's house there, she being in France." Here he brought his wife, March 18, 1815, and that hag of a housemaid, Mrs. Mule, of whom Moore has given an amusing account; and from here Lady Byron left him for ever in the middle of the following January. His affairs were so embarrassed that there had been no fewer than eight or nine executions in his house during this period. The letters of Lord Byron, written from this house, are one and all dated from No. 13 Piccadilly Terrace, and one and all of Scott's from Mr. Dumergue's, No. 15 Piccadilly West. Numbers are of little use to the local antiquary; they suffer from the caprice of the authorities. Two houses are thrown into one, the street is enlarged, or the even numbers are arranged on one side and the odd numbers on the other. Piccadilly Terrace and Piccadilly West no longer exist; and under the present system of numbering, Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner, is No. 149 Piccadilly. The Hercules Pillars public-house, where Squire Western put up his horses when in pursuit of Tom Jones, and where that bluff brave soldier, the Marquis of Granby (d. 1770), spent many a happy hour, stood long after Apsley House was built on what was Hamilton Terrace, now incorporated into Piccadilly. In Piccadilly, on the south side, facing Old Bond Street, was the shop of Wright (the publisher of the Antijacobin, the Baviad, etc.), now Ridgway's (No. 169), where Peter Pindar assaulted Gifford, and was bundled neck and crop into the muddy street for his pains. Peter Pindar, however, never ceased to assert both in print and conversation that he had "cudgelled, most soundly cudgelled" Gifford, in "one Wright's shop, a poor, ignorant and painstaking bookseller in Piccadilly." George Frederick Cooke was living at No. 9 Piccadilly West when, on February 5, 1803, he made a resolve to keep a journal, which he forgot the next day.

At the corner of Down Street was the house of Henry Thomas Hope, Esq., built 1848–1849, from the designs of M. Dusillon and Mr. T. L. Donaldson. The handsome iron railing in front was cast at Paris. The cost of the whole building is said to have been over £80,000. Here Mr. Hope kept the celebrated collection of pictures (Dutch especially) formed at the Hague by the family of the Hopes, and now chiefly at Deepdene. The Junior Athenaeum Club purchased the lease for £45,000. At "No. 22 Piccadilly, late the Fantoccini Rooms," Mr. Katterfelto exhibited in 1782 the wonders of his solar microscope, whereby the "insects which have threatened this kingdom with a plague ... and which by all accounts, caused a great plague in Italy in the year 1432 ... will be magnified as large as an ox, and are as tough."¹

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¹ A fresh etymology may be hazarded. In Spanish picadillo means hashed or minced meat, and it is as probable that Piccadilly Hall, which was a place of entertainment as well as a gaming-house, took its name from a popular dish as from a fashionable collar.

¹ Hatton, 1708; Strype, 1720.

¹ Carter the Antiquary in Gent. Mag. for March 1816, p. 230; Everyday Book, vol. i. p. 578; Selwyn's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 339.

¹ Katterfelto's Advertisement.