JOHN LEECH 



where they may be seen to this day by the cyclist 

 who wheels through Eslier, down the Portsmouth 

 Eoad. 



There still stands, off High Street, the grimy 

 double -bayed house, now numbered 16, Young 

 Street, but formerly No. 13, in which Thackeray wrote 

 "Vanity Fair ; " but most others of the old literary and 

 artistic haunts of the " Old Court Suburb " have been 

 demolished. "The Terrace" — that Ion o; row of old- 

 fashioned houses extendins; from Wright's Lane west- 

 ward — was pulled down but six years ago. Those 

 houses were not beautiful, but they were at least 

 pleasingly old-fashioned, and 

 in No. G lived and died John 

 Leech, an early victim of that 

 j)eculiarly modern malady, 

 " nerves." Some amazingly 

 up-to-date shops now- occupy 

 the s})ot. 



Longj ag-o, the other old- 

 fashioned houses on this side 

 of the road lost their forecourt 

 gardens, over which other 

 shops w^ere built ; and beyond 

 the memory of any one now 

 livinsf there stood a little 

 country inn at the corner of 

 what is now the Earl's Court 

 Road ; a rural retreat called 

 the " White Horse," to which Addison withdrew from 

 the cold splendours of Holland House opposite. 

 He had contracted an unhappy marriage with the 





THE " WHITE HOUSE. TRA- 



DITIOXAL KETKEAT OF ADDISON. 



