160 Pre-Bailway Life in London, 



fields and meadows interspersed with villa residences and 

 rural retreats. Piinlico and Chelsea were comparatively 

 small suburban towns — in fact tea gardens stood on the 

 site of the present Post Office outside Buckingham Palace, 

 and from Battersea Bridge to Wimbledon the foot-passenger 

 found himself amid corn-fields and market-gardens, where 

 now a network of railways and Clapham Junction Station 

 occupy the ground ; and the beautiful park of Battersea 

 was a large swampy district, where, in hard winters, the 

 sportsman would not ba surprised to find the plover, the 

 snipe, or even an occasional wild duck. The fashionable 

 quarter of London might be included within an area roughly 

 defined by imaginary lines drawn from Belgrave Square to 

 Portman S.][uare, thence eastward to Cavendish Square, 

 thence southward to Palace Yard, the base being a line 

 drawn from that point back to Belgravia. Almost the 

 whole of modern South Kensington w\is in the hands of 

 market gardeners, and in the Bayswater district beyond 

 Kensington Gardens Gate semi-rural places of entertain- 

 ment still existed, in Avhich on Sunday afternoons the cheap 

 dandy shop-boy would smoke his Cuba cigar and imbibe his 

 beer, whilst the faithful Anna Maria, his fiancee^ w^ould 

 consume her tea and shrimps. 



For some reason or another the London season proper 

 never set in until after Easter, in consequence of a prejudice 

 against the fashionable world going to balls or operas, or 

 marrying or intermarrying in Lent; and "Society" being 

 more restricted than now, the dread of " what Mrs, Grundy 

 would say " prevented people from doing as they pleased to 

 a great extent. 



Possibly at the period of which we write, which was 

 within a year or two of the commencement of the reign, 

 and the early married life of the present Queen, London 

 en fete ^vas a spe3tacle which it is dilfioult to realise now 



