If you have a few minutes, here's a little something all about St James'
The district of London commonly known as St James's is enclosed by Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street, Pall Mall, and the east side of Green Park. In days gone by it was an area designed to meet the requirements mainly of bachelors and members of West End clubs, for here you could acquire mellow cigars, fine wines, monogrammed silk shirts, hand-made shoes, beautifully-cut suits, ludicrously expensive guns and rare works of art.
For centuries, St James's was notable for the comparative absence of women, and all shops dealing with feminine requirements. Indeed, in the 18th century, no respectable woman would set foot on St James's Street because it was, as it is today, the home of a number of elegant gentlemen's clubs. These clubs evolved from the coffee and chocolate houses that became fashionable for gossip and gambling in mid-seventeenth century London. By Regency times, St James's Street was the hangout of the dandies and the beaus, who would mercilessly ogle any female who came into view.
St James's Street, a broad and handsome thoroughfare, was laid out in the seventeenth century, but not built up until St James's Square was completed in 1675. It was originally called Long Street. As it is situated on rising ground, the Surrey hills can, on a clear day, be seen from the top of the street, just above St James's Palace
For centuries, street markets have been a popular feature of London life, but the stalls were exposed to the weather, stock could be damaged and there was little comfort for the stallholders. Many seventeenth century stallholders decided to move indoors - the downstairs rooms of their homes were turned into a shop while the shopkeeper and his family lived upstairs.
The shopkeeper now had to advertise his presence and attract people into his premises. A hanging sign was a necessity and a show of products in the shop's window desirable. Soon shop windows were enlarged to increase the area of display. Before the nineteenth century, only small panes of glass could be made, but the introduction of the bow window enabled large windows to be made with small pieces of glass.
By opening a shop away from home, London's merchants created new advantages. Their shop could be sited close to other attractive premises so that together they formed an attractive shopping centre. Also, if accommodation was not needed above the shop, the extra rooms could be used as an extension of the trading area.
London's elegant eighteenth century shops in St James's owe their existence to these factors. Enterprising shop-keepers came here to be near the Court, which had moved to St James's Palace after the Palace of Whitehall had been burnt down in 1698. Today, this district and nearby, fashionable Bond Street, are still enhanced by the presence of a number of distinguished firms, including James J Fox & Robert Lewis, at 19 St James's Street
St James's Street itself leads down from Piccadilly to Pall Mall, and is crowned at its southern end by the picturesque gateway of St James's Palace, a red and blue brick mini-palace commissioned by Henry VIII (who had coerced the landlords, Eton College, into exchanging the hospital for land of lesser value in Suffolk) as a magnificent home for himself and Anne Boleyn. St James's Leper Hospital for Women had previously occupied the site. The 12th century hospital was originally founded for the upkeep, and detention (to stop the disease spreading) of 14 leprous maidens. They lie buried in one of the inner courtyards, where their graves, marked by small crosses, can still be seen.
Only the clock tower, the Chapel Royal, and the sentry station remain from Tudor times. From the balcony of the Palace, each new monarch is proclaimed.
St James's Palace is also the official headquarters of the Yeomen of the Guard, and tourists often gather at the gateway to photograph the sentry. Because of the increase in terrorism, you can no longer go inside the Palace, except to attend Sunday services at the Chapel Royal. Off the stable yard are offices of the Royal Household, including that of the Lord Chamberlain, who used to censor all plays in England.
St James's has not been used as a royal palace since the early 1800s, although foreign ambassadors are still officially credited to the Court of St James's. Some of the Palace's contemporary functions are to provide offices for part of the Royal Household and a home for HRH The Queen Mother.
If you walk past the entrance to Stable Yard on the left and go through the passage to the right of the small car park into Queen's Walk, turn left and then almost immediately into Green Park (opposite Milkmaid's Passage on your left), then take the left-most of the four tarmac paths, you will find yourself heading towards Buckingham Palace, the Queen's London home. If the flag is flying, the Queen is in residence.
Also behind St James's Palace, with its dark stone, turrets and sentry, along the tree-lined Mall, under the column supporting the Brave Old Duke of York - perched there, some said, to evade his creditors - is St James's Park, where Charles II, like Jonathan Swift after him, loved to walk. Charles II had the lake laid out and filled with what Samuel Pepys described as, "a great variety of fowl which I never saw before."
Today, pelicans, mandarin ducks, and flamingos can occasionally be seen on the lake, during summer months. In winter, you will often see walking over St James's Park's lake bridge, many politicians and government officials from 10 Downing Street, and the Houses of Parliament - which are both just a short walk away.
Centuries ago, Samuel Pepys was often in St James's Park. In 1668, he recorded, "So I to the Park, and there to walk and hour or two; and in the King's garden, and saw the Queen and ladies walk, and there I did steal some apples off the trees; and there did see my Lady Richmond, who is of a noble person as ever I did see, but her face worse than it was considerably by the small-pox." Here too, Pepys saw, "one man basted by the keeper for carrying some people over on his back through the water".
No doubt, he wouldn't have been invited to White's at numbers. 37-38, St James's Street, with its elegant iron railings and entrance lamps. Founded in 1693 as a chocolate house, this is the oldest London club, and the most famous. Indeed, White's is considered to be the model for every other gentleman's club in London. The bow window, which was added in 1811, was a cause of wonder in many Regency novels. During the Regency period, White's was one of the most important clubs that was being fed with scandal. It was certainly the most popular club among Regency upper-class men, who made an election to membership fairly difficult.
White's reputation was (and some say still is) for Conservative arrogance and hard drinking. It was appropriate, some would say, in 'Whose Body?', for Dorothy L Sayers to have her surgeon, Sir Julian Freke, belong to White's.
Once known as "the Common Rendezvous of infamous Sharpers and noble Cullies," White's moved to its present site forty years after it was founded. It was then a notorious gambling 'hell', and it was said that the members would rather have left a passer-by who had collapsed in front of their windows to his fate than risk voiding the bets they had laid on his recovery.
One member, Lord Alvanley, bet three thousand pounds on two drops of rain running down a window, and was enraged when the bet was nullified by their merger. Another staked himself to remain under water for twelve hours (he lost!).
Perhaps the strangest of all the Club's bets concerned an enthusiastic golfer named Milbanke who challenged any member to drive a golf ball from a designated spot in the City to the steps of the Club in less than two thousand strokes. The challenge was accepted and the 'round' completed one thousand eight hundred and thirteen strokes under 'par'.
In 1827, a fish merchant from Temple Bar, William Crockford, came to St James's and founded yet another club. The gambling at Crockford's was almost as heavy as at White's, and by the time its owner died in 1844, he was a millionaire. Unfortunately, Crockford's departure proved very inconvenient in certain quarters. On the day of his death his corpse had to be propped up for several hours in a chair positioned before a first-floor window at the Club in order to maintain confidence in one of his horses which would have been withdrawn from an important race if his death had become known prior to 'the off'.
At No.60 St James's Club, long composed of 'the first men for rank and talent in England', the English composer, Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934), often used to telephone his Worcestershire home from Brook's, just to hear the sound of his barking dog.
A short walk from Brook's are the offices of Chubb and Sons, locksmiths. The company was founded in 1817 by a Portsea ironmonger, Jeremiah Chubb, who is that year devised a burglar-proof lock. He was so confident that it could not be picked that he arranged for it to be given to a London burglar lying in one of the prison-hulks off Portsmouth. The convict was provided with all the necessary tools and promised £100 and a free pardon if he could open it. After nearly three months he had to confess himself beaten.
Boodles is just down the street from White's, at No.26. It was founded as a coffee house in 1762. It, too, has a bay window, which was added in 1824. Boodles originally was a betting club where the Regency fashion arbiter, Beau Brummell, liked to gamble.
Continue south along St James's to No.69 (on the west side of the street). This is the site of the Carlton Club, originally known as Arthur's because it was founded in 1832 by Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington.
Walk through the archway to the north of Berry Brothers and Rudd, the wine merchants firm established in 1680 (although their current premises date only from 1730) and you will find yourself in a courtyard. You have to keep your eyes peeled for the entrance and, if the gate is closed, you will only know that you are at Pickering Place by the number 3. The narrow alleyway still retains its eighteenth-century timber wainscoting, on which a plaque notes that the diplomatic office of 'The Republic of Texas Legation 1843' was located here.
Pickering Place is a relatively unspoilt Georgian backwater at the end of a narrow passage, off St James's Street, and is easily missed. It was built by William Pickering, founder of a coffee business in premises now occupied by Berry Bros and Rudd, who, in their 18th century shop, have been wine merchants since the time of Queen Anne.
In the 18th century, Pickering Place was notorious for its gambling dens. Its seclusion also made it a favourite dueling place - including one fought by the Regency Rake, Beau Brummel. It's said the last duel in London took place here. Pickering Place was also the base of the independent Texan Republic's legation, until Texas joined the Union in 1845.
It was in this small square that the last duel in England was fought. Graham Greene lived in a flat here and placed one of his characters, Colonel Daintry, who was investigating security in the novel, 'The Human Factor', in the same location. Daintry (possibly like his creator, Greene), had a two-roomed flat looking out over the tiny, ancient courtyard with its sundial. There is also a back entrance into Overton's, at 5 St James's Street, well known for its oyster bar and club-like atmosphere. Colonel Daintry usually ate here.
Back at the shop of Berry Brothers and Rudd - one of the oldest wine merchants in London - you will see an old set of scales, a reminder of the days when condiments were sold here. In the last three hundred years or so they have weighed about thirty thousand customers, including Lord Byron, Beau Brummell and, not least, 'Fighting' Fitzgerald.
On the day that Fitzgerald came to Berry Brothers, one of his acquaintances popped his head in the door of the shop and remarked, "I smell the blood of an Irishman." Fitzgerald leapt out of the scales, drew his sword and cut off the man's nose, crying, "I'll be damned if you'll ever smell another."
A familiar figure around St James's, 'Fighting' Fitzgerald was a psychopath who drank copious draughts of his own blood in the belief that it would prolong his life by a thousand years. In his youth, he kidnapped his brother, and once imprisoned his father in a cave with a wild bear. At least some of his madness may have been inherited, because his uncle, the Bishop of Derry, appears to have had no wits at all. On a visit to Italy, the Bishop insisted on peering into an erupting volcano, sustaining injuries which killed him.
His body was brought home for burial in a small ship. In order to conceal from a superstitious crew that he had a corpse on board, the captain packed the Bishop in a crate which he labeled 'Antique Statue'.
The eighteenth century shop at No.6 St James's Street houses Lock's the hatters, who in 1850 gave the world the bowler hat, named after the employee who designed it. It was commissioned by a hunting man named Coke who wanted a practical sort of hat which would not come off when he jumped fences. When Mr Bowler handed it to him, Coke placed it on the floor and jumped on it. Apparently satisfied with the result, he jammed it on his head and left the shop without uttering a word.
Another of Lock's stocks-in-trade was the top hat, first introduced into London in 1797 by a man named James Heatherington. It caused such consternation that Heatherington was arrested and fined £50 for going about in a manner "calculated to frighten timid people". Class distinction being what it is, only the less informed still call it a top hat. The middle classes referred to as a 'silk hat'. A gentleman always asked for a 'topper'.
Ryder Street, a turning to the east out of St James's Street, commemorates Captain Richard Ryder, a royal master carpenter, who was involved in the street's initial construction in 1674. Not long ago at number 9 was the Eccentrics Club, chiefly remarkable for a bar clock which worked in reverse, a cunning device which caused many a new member to miss his train. Notices stating that 'Ties Will Be Worn At All Times' had a tendency to be left leaning against oil paintings of voluptuous nudes.
Just further south west is St James's Place, a quiet little backwater memorable for having once been the home of William Huskisson, the politician, who lived at number 28. Osbert Sitwell described Huskisson as, "â?¦unequalled in nonentityâ?¦a nonentity to which Providence added, as a decoration, a ruthless flower of the grotesqueâ?¦since it killed him in the presence of his mortal enemy, the Duke of Wellington.
"Intent on making up his quarrel with the Duke, Huskisson was run down by Stephenson's 'Rocket' while rushing across the line at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, in 1830. Ironically, he had always been a champion of the railways and a prime mover of the Enabling Act which had helped to further their increase. His career was studded with calamity and he was probably accident prone. During his honeymoon, a horse fell on him.
In the opening years of the nineteenth century, Pall Mall, at the top of Marlborough Road, and just around the corner from St James's, became the first London street to be lit by gas - although at first even the great Sir Humphrey Davy ridiculed the idea. "It would be as easy to bring down a bit of the moon to light London," he said, "as to hope to do so by gas."
Distinguished Residents of St James's
At first, few people or rich men lived in St James's Street, it being better known for its fashionable shops than its great houses.
However, St James's Street has had several distinguished residents, over the centuries. These included:
â?¢ Ben Jonson
â?¢ John Evelyn
â?¢ Sir Christopher Wren
â?¢ Nell Gwynne
â?¢ Alexander Pope
â?¢ John Cleland
â?¢ Duke of Queensbury
â?¢ Edward Gibbon
â?¢ Charles James Fox
â?¢ Lord Frederick North
â?¢ Edmund Burke
â?¢ James Gillray
â?¢ Thomas Creevey
â?¢ George 'Beau' Brummell
â?¢ Lord Byron
â?¢ Graham Greene
