222 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



space approached by shady lanes from Cavendish Square 

 for some fifty years after that was built. The houses in 

 Manchester Square were not begun till 1776 — some ten 

 years after the commencement of Portman Square. This 

 district was all very semi-rural and unfinished until much 

 later. Southey, in a letter, writes of Portman Square as 

 "on the outskirts of the town," and approached "on 

 one side by a road, unlit, unpaved, and inaccessible by 

 carriages." The large corner house, now occupied by 

 Lord Portman, was built for Mrs. Montagu, *' Queen 

 of the Blue Stockings," and during her time " Montagu 

 House " was the salon to which the literary celebrities 

 of the day flocked. When Mrs. Montagu moved 

 there from Hill Street she wrote to a friend, " My 

 health has not been interrupted by the bad weather 

 we have had ; I believe Portman Square is the Mont- 

 pellier of England." In the centre of the Square garden 

 was planted a " wilderness," after the fashion of the day, 

 and early in the nineteenth century, when the Turkish 

 Ambassador resided in the Square, he erected a kiosk in 

 this " wilderness," where he used to smoke and imagine 

 himself in a perfumed garden of the East. It is still 

 one of the best kept-up of the squares. 



Berkeley Square dates from nearly the same time as 

 Grosvenor, having been begun in 1698, on the site of the 

 extensive gardens of Berkeley House, which John Evelyn 

 so much admired, and where flourished the holly hedges 

 of which he advised the planting. The central statue 

 here was one by Beaupre and Wilton of George III., 

 which was removed in 1827, and the base of the statue 

 made into a summer-house. In the place of the usual 

 statesman, a drinking fountain, with a figure pouring 

 the water — the gift of the Marquess of Lansdowne — 



