IMPROVEMENT OF THE METROPOLIS.
When once a giant invests himself in his sevenleagued boots, it is impossible to speculate conerning the extent of his line of march. A few years ago, people used to talk of Regent street like the Tories of Reform as ‘a final measure;’ and it appears that, like a tailor’s measure, it presented only the first step towards a general refit, Carlton Terrace already far surpasses the pasteward glories of the Regent’s Park., and Belgrave square of Waterloo place;, nay! when I muse my way along the new region of the Strand and Charing-Cross, I sometimes fancy I must have broken into the canvass of one of Martin’s gorgeous pictures, to wool-gather among the by-ways of Babylon!, The grumblers of the metropolis, insatiable of concessions, forget from day to day the deformities and meannesses which are gradully disappearing from their city :, quoting the banquetting-house at Whitehall as a proof of the rail-like progress of architectural improvement, without deigning to recollect that it was ever an insulated monument; and that the mere streetage of London afforded, only twenty years ago, the meanest spectacle of any capital in Europe.
Tangible confirmation of this assertion yet remains. We musers have often occasion to measure by the standard of some new Triton upstarting among the minnows, a wondrous aggrandizement of style in the private buildings of the west-end ; and it needs only to cast an eye on the mansion in New Norfolk street recently erected, adjoining that of the Duke of Somerset, to perceive that, since the commencement of the present century, we have learned to raise our lordly roofs twice as near the sky as our progenitors., In Seymour street, also, Phillips, the Gunter of Marylebone, has lately constructed a shop of the proportions of those planned for the new Strand: and all the private residences in the street (but a few years ago esteemed handsome and fashionable) have, consequently, assumed the appearance of almshouses.
At the time of the visit of the Allied Sovereigns, Mr Henry Baring’s house, in Berkeley square, was considered magnificent. A year or two before, Lord Kinnaird’s, in Brook street, now overlooked, attracted universal admiration. Again retrogressing, the Duke of Norfolk’s mansion, in St James’s square, was one of the wonders of the metropolis;, and yet the transition from all this to Stafford House, and Lord Grosvenor’s squares passes as a thing without mark or interest !
I was musing the other day at the St George’s gate of the two parks ;, and wishing that Brummel could be transplanted thither (packed in a pâté of Amiens) to give his opinion on the whereabout of his fastidious youth,, and weigh in the balance the tortuous dinginess of Bond street, his Appian way, against the unique magnificence of the causeway of Regent street., What would the Lucullus of the Cocoa Tree say to the proportions of the Travellers’ ?, How would he,, to whom the shapeless parlour at White’s was an Alhambra,, exclaim, after a survey of the saloon at Crockford’s, or the classical halls of the Athenaeum !, Brummel flourished not even in time to die of a rose in aromatic pain beside the glorious counters of Howell and James :, the Schneider who suffered in his immortal cause boasted no villa in the Regent’s Park ;, nor did the Japanese empire, coeval with his reign, issue its resplendent nigrescence from a Doric temple;, those bottle conjurors, Day and Martin, were still corked down in a brick-built dwelling, like their neighbours.
Byron has commemorated that
” Saving Covent Garden, he could hit on ,
No place that’s called Piazza in Great Britain!’
We remember, too, when we might have mused our way from Aldgate pump to Piccadilly, without discovering such an exotic invention as a mezzanine story! But there are now almost as many entresols in London as in Paris: and the consequent elevation of style in our façades, produces the happiest effect:, the new ranges of shops in Piccadilly and Pall-mall have afflicted the Earl of Burlington, of Vitruvian memory, with a fit of St Vitus’s Dance !, Everything, in short, connected with the hod, trowel, and plummet, is in a state of active progress. We glance from Connaught place to St George’s row, and laugh at our former infatuations ; and could find it in our hearts to die, for the comfort of lying within the lofty walls of the new cemetery. Like the ancients, we are beginning to make it our duty to ‘adorn Sparta, our birthplace;’, and since the foundations of Tadmor are still so much in dispute, are determined to solve the difficulty by erecting a new Palmyra on the banks of the Thames. It would be a mighty pleasant thing to link ourselves arm-in-arm with the author of ‘Fonthill;’ and, while musing our way along the new borough, elicit his enlightened verdict upon the improvements of the metropolis.
From: The Court Journal. Gazette of the Fashionable World. No. 199, February 16, 1833, p. 106.