Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The house is now a small hotel. There is no record that Jane visited No. 24 but Cassandra
stayed here during February 1801 and Jane wrote to her, 'I hope you will see everything
worthy notice, from the Opera House to Henry's office in Cleveland Court.'
Return to cross Great Cumberland Place and continue along Upper Berkeley Street. Turn
right into Berkeley Mews. London was full of mews to provide stabling for the thousands of
horses and carriages - perhaps Henry kept his here.
The Mews leads to Seymour Street where we turn left onto Portman Square, begun in
1761. 'The residence of luxurious opulence,' according to Priscilla Wakefield, this was one
of the most fashionable addresses in London.
Lord Castlereagh lived here at one time and he was closely associated with Lord Liver-
pool's repressive government. Shelley wrote of him in
The Mask of Anarchy
:
I met Murder in the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Henry Austen's house at 24 Upper Berkeley Street. It has lost some of
its Georgian detail but the house next door shows how the windows and
fanlight would have looked.
Following the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 a furious mob attacked his house and smashed the
windows.
Walk around the square clockwise to admire the remaining traces of its splendour until
you reach Orchard Street. This is where Jane's aunt, Mrs Hancock, and her cousin Eliza were
living in 1788 and she dined with them here in August of that year during her first recorded
visit to London.
Wigmore Street leads out of the square at this point, but originally this section was Ed-
wards Street, the location of Parmentier's, confectioner to high Society and royalty. Given
her liking for everything fashionable, and with her French taste, Henry Austen's wife Eliza
may well have ordered from them when she lived nearby. Here were sold preserves, jellies,
jams, fruit pastes, fruits in French brandy, comfits, lozenges, macaroons and rout cakes, as
well as ices and creams.
