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CHAPTER VIII

BERKELEY SQUARE

O SUCH changes have fallen upon this—the court end of the town, since it was laid out in the middle of the eighteenth century under Robert Walpole, then Prime Minister. At No. 11, so the records show, lived his son Horace chiefly from 1779 to 1797; at No. 13 the Marquis of Hertford began to collect what is now the Wallace Collection; at No. 25 lived Charles James Fox; at No. 28 Lord Brougham entertained as Lord Chancellor; at No. 38 Lady Jersey's dinners and balls were the talk of the town; at No. 45 Lord Clive committed suicide in 1774, and in the corner house on Bruton Street Colly Cibber lived and died.

In fact, many houses of the period are still identified by these names, and some of them have the iron torchextinguishers hanging at their doorposts. And even at this late day the carriage of his Majesty the King can be found outside the stoops of the great people whose doors open on the Square.

That which drew me to it was the fact that on this very square was set up one of the most brilliant booths in all Vanity Fair.

"All the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace stands in Gaunt Square, out of which Great Gaunt Street leads, whither we first conducted Rebecca in the time of the departed Sir Pitt Crawley. Peering over the railings and through the black trees into the garden of the square, you see a few miserable governesses with wan-faced pupils wandering round and round it, and round the dreary grass-plot in the centre of which rises the statue of Lord Gaunt, who fought at Minden, in a three-tailed wig, and otherwise habited like a Roman Emperor. Gaunt House occupies nearly a side of the square. The remaining three sides are composed of mansions that have passed away into dowagerism; tall, dark houses, with window frames of stone, or picked out of a lighter red. Little light seems to be behind those lean, comfortless casements now; and hospitality to have passed away from those doors as much as the laced lacqueys and link-boys of old times, who used to put out their torches in the blank iron extinguishers that still flank the lamps over the steps. Brass plates have penetrated into the Square doctors, the Diddlesex Bank, Western Branch the English and European Reunion, etc.—it has a dreary look -nor is my Lord Steyne's palace less dreary. All I have ever seen of it is the vast wall in front, with the rustic columns at the great gate, through which an old porter peers sometimes with a fat and gloomy red faceand over the wall the garret and bedroom windows, and the chimneys, out of which there seldom comes any smoke now."

While there is some conflict over the exact location of this noble mansion, all authorities agree that Gaunt Square was

really Berkeley Square, and that Great Gaunt Street is none other than the Hill Street of to-day - a little street which according to Mr. Thackeray himself runs east of the park, halfway up the hill, as can be seen in my sketch. I therefore pin my faith to the word of the man who should have known best. Certainly, there can be no question that the blackened old relic on the left of my drawing is of the period; nor can there be any doubt of its spaciousness and aristocratic bearing and dignity. On its rails, too, there still can be found "black iron extinguishers" which the link-boys used, and from one of whose torches Rawdon Crawley lit his cigar the night he and Wenham left this same porch together.

And so I had Evins manoeuvre his taxi until the overhanging trees shaded my canvas, my eye on Hill Street as well as the great house on my left. Indeed, from no other part of the Square can there be seen, in conjunction with Hill Street, a mansion big and pretentious enough to have housed so distinguished an aristocrat. That His Imperial Majesty King George had dined the night before with Lord Rosebery, whose house is near the top of the hill (and Evins confirmed it from the morning paper he was reading), was interesting of course, although I had not been invited, but not half so interesting to me as identifying the town palace in which Mistress Becky Sharp was entertained on the night of her triumph, when she was "introduced to the best of company."

She would have left her Rawdon "at home, but that virtue ordained that her husband should be by her side to protect the timid and fluttering little creature on her first appearance in polite society."