FAMOUS HOUSES
AND
LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON

FAMOUS HOUSES
AND
LITERARY SHRINES
OF LONDON

BY
A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK

WITH SEVENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
BY FREDERICK ADCOCK
AND 16 PORTRAITS

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS, LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1912

All rights reserved

Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

[Pg v]

PREFATORY NOTE

Nothing could well be deader or emptier than an unoccupied house of whoseformer inhabitants we have no knowledge; and it is impossible to take areal interest in a house now occupied by strangers, even though it wasaforetime the residence of some famous man, unless we are acquainted withthat man’s personality, and know what he thought and did and said whilsthe was living there. I have attempted to do little more than supply thatinformation here as the complement of my brother’s drawings, and to thisend have been less concerned to give my own descriptions and opinions thanto bring together opinions and descriptions that were written by suchfamous residents themselves or by guests and visitors who saw and knewthem. As far as possible I have quoted from contemporary Diaries andMemoirs, especially from letters that were written in or to these houses,or from Journals that their tenants kept whilst they dwelt there,supplementing all this with a narrative of incidents and events that mighthelp to recreate the life and recapture the atmosphere that belonged tosuch places in the days that have made them memorable. Whenever I haveadventured into[Pg vi] any general biography, or expressed any personal opinion,it has been merely with the object of adding so much of history andcharacter as would serve to fill in the outline of a man’s portrait, giveit a sufficient fulness and colour of life, and throw into clear reliefthe space of time that he passed in some particular house that can stillbe seen in a London street.

I think I have throughout made due acknowledgment to the authors ofvarious volumes of Recollections and Table Talk from which I havedrawn anecdotes and pen-portraits, and I should like to mention at theoutset that for biographical facts and much else I have been particularlyindebted to such books as Elwin and Courthope’s edition of the Poems andLetters of Pope; Austin Dobson’s William Hogarth, and H. B. Wheatley’sHogarth’s London; Boswell’s Johnson, of course, and Forster’s Livesof Goldsmith and of Dickens; Gilchrist’s Life of Blake; Leslie’s andHolmes’s Lives of Constable; Arthur B. Chamberlain’s George Romney;Lord Houghton’s Life and Letters of Keats, and Buxton Forman’s CompleteWorks of John Keats; Leigh Hunt’s Autobiography; De Quincey’s EnglishOpium Eater; Hogg’s and Peacock’s M