THE HEART OF WEST LONDON.*

WE welcome the volume before us, not on account of any par- ticular originality in its conception or remarkable ability in its execution, but because it is another attempt to create a feeling of distinctive character and continuous life with respect to a very im- portant portion of unorganized London. Until within the last thirty years, the history of the brick-and-mortar of the metropolis has lain entombed in great folios of the purely antiquarian and most nninvitiog class, and its civic and social life has been buried in neglected Municipal Records, or was to be found only in the dis-

• connected and incidental notices of the gossip-writers of the last two centuries. To Mr. Charles Knight, Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Leigh Hunt, and others belongs the merit of shaping and popularizing

• our knowledge of Loudon ; and Mr. Wheatley, following in their 'track, has given us a useful and readable book on what we may -call the Heart of West London. We all know what is the Heart of the City Proper,—of the London of the City Corporation ; and just what the vicinity of the Royal Exchange, the Bank, and the Mansion House is to the "City," Pall Mall and Piccadilly, with their immediate neighbourhood, are to West London,—the centre and source of their social existence. Neither Belgravia, nor Tyburnia, nor New Kensington, nor the Portman-Square district could exist in its isolated dignity ; they all become living features of Society, when brought into connection with the great centre of West Loudon thought and action within this comparatively limited district of clubs, exhibitions, and shops. Here the social ideas and canons are generated and promulgated. Here is the real point of contact and mutual influence of the conflicting powers of wealth, station, and intellect. Here the man-about-town, the great landowner, the millionaire, and the politician have their "place of business," and learn the daily fluctuations and tone of the • Round about Piecadilly and Pall Mall: or. a Ramble from the Haymarket to Hyde Park. consisting of a Retrospect of the Various Changes that hare Occurred in the Court End of London. By Henry B. Wheatley. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1870.

" things that go up and down" in the West End, and carry the impression and report back to their respective habitations and distinct circles of life ; here alone, in short, is made up that daily bulletin of opinion which is circulated at the dinner-tables and in

the drawing-rooms of the same evening, the answer to the inquiry, " What does the West End say ?" or, " What does Society think?"

A history of the main features and variations of this West of London unwritten law would make quite as curious a book, and probably a more generally interesting one, than the history of the Money Market during a corresponding period of time ; and the two together would give us the kernel of a History of London. To write such a book would indeed require an unusual combination of powers, the patient research of the antiquary, the social knowledge,

and aptitudes, and light touch of the West-End habitué, and the skill of the accomplished man of letters. Till such a phenomenon appears in an approximate degree, we must receive with thank- fulness such instalments of social reminiscences in connection with places and local habits at such writers as Mr. Wheatley take the trouble to supply us with.

The locality of the Heart of West London has, of course, been shifted from time to time, in correspondence with the growth of the buildings of London ; but it has always preserved the same general

position of being between the Royal Palace and the City, the Palace proper being down to the reign of Henry VIII. at Westminster,

though the Tower of London was also a royal residence, and several houses of the nobility were situated to the immediate west of that palatine tower, and between it and the heart of the City proper.

The transference of the Royal London residence from Westminster

to Whitehall (Scotland Yard then becoming the eastern boundary of the Palace), led, no doubt, to the gradual transference of the

heart of West London from the banks of the Thames, the Cockpit, and the vicinity of the Strand, to the Pall Mall side of St. James's Park. In Faithorne'a Map of London, just before the Restoration (in 1658), we "find a country road marked from Knightsbridge unto Piccadilly Hall;' this is the present Piccadilly. South of this is a road from Charing Cross to St. James's Palace, now called Pall Mall, with two rows of trees on its north side in St. James's Fields, and an alley where was played the game of pall mall. St. James's Park is shown with trees dotted about it, and Goring House and another house annexed, at its west end, with the Mulberry Garden behind them. St. James's Street has a few houses at the south end of its east side, and its west side is occupied by the gardens of Barkeshire House. The Haymarket has a hedge on the west side and wall on the east side. A few houses stand at the south-west corner where it joins Pall Mall, and the Gaming House is at the north- east corner. Opposite is Windmill Street, with houses on both sides all the way up to ' the way to Paddington,' now Oxford Street." With the Restoration properly begins the history of the present Heart of West London, though the site was ultimately fixed by the transference of the Royal residence

by Queen Anne to the Manor House or secondary Palace

of St. James's, and cannot be said to have been affected by the change to Buckingham House in the present reign; and its present peculiar character may be fairly attributed to the social habits of the reign of Anne. From this time, though the district increased in size, and houses sprang up more and more continuously on the ground on each aide of Piccadilly and its continuation (then called Portugal Street), the central point in this part of London may be said to have been already fixed, and the life of modern West-End society to be thenceforward continuous, and identified in its main features. Bond Street, which was built in 1686, is described in 1708 as "a fine new street, mostly inhabited by

nobility and gentry," and as early as 1717 " Bond Street loungers" are spoken of. Mayjhir was not finally abolished as a fair until late in the reign of George III., though its existence had been more than once suspended, and the struggle for its pos- session between fashion and the roughs was long and for some time doubtful in issue. The misfortunes of Clarendon and the spendthrift course of Monk's son had long before opened the way to the erection of the network of streets of which Albe- marle Street is one. The position of St. James's Park and its continuation, now called the Green Park, with respect to Picca- dilly and Portugal Street, defined and screened the erection of the intermediate districts of houses on that side of James Street.' St. James's Square sprang into existence in the reign of Charles II. In the same reign Pall Mall became a street, called at first Catherine Street, from Catherine of Braganza, but receiving its present name from the avenue next to it. The clubs and coffee-rooms of its immediate vicinity were already in existence at the Restora- tion, but received their great expansion in the reigns of Anne and the first two Georges. Then came what we may call the gambling era of Club life, that in which the two Foxes distinguished and ruined themselves, and at the close of the Georgian period this subsided into the present club life, more decorous and convenient, but less social, the business element of social life predominating over the epicurean and leisured. The " shopping " history of the West End also has its eras and revolutions, and Old and New Bond Street have their traditions and vicissitudes, and not the least curious point in this narrative would be the story (not at- tempted to be told in this volume) of the early fortunes, or rather misfortunes, of Regent Street, as an aspirant for fashionable pat- ronage, and the danger it encountered of subsiding into something like the condition of the south side of Oxford Street. But we have said enough to indicate the sort of interest attaching to the volume before us, and we must leave it now to the more special attention of our readers, who will find it pleasant and instructive, without the dictionary character of Mr. Cunningham's volumes, though without pretension to the sauntering grace of Leigh Hunt.