Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
If you look up you will see radio masts on the roof. In the early nineteenth century a
telegraph in the same location sent messages down a relay of stations to the fleets at Ports-
mouth and Deal - a remarkable continuity of function, if not of technology. Regency visit-
ors could see inside the rooftop telegraph huts if they tipped the porters - security seems to
have been rather laxer in those days, or perhaps the authorities were confident that French
spies could not read the codes.
It was to this building that Lieutenant Lapenotière, captain of HMS
Pickle
, brought
the news of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson (21 October 1805). There are information
plaques at the southern end of the Screen.
Frank Austen, to his lasting chagrin, was on escort duty to Malta and missed Trafalgar.
He wrote, 'To lose all share in the glory of a day which surpasses all which ever went be-
fore, is what I cannot think of with any degree of patience.'
A trooper on guard at the gates onto Whitehall patiently ignores the
tourists.
In
Mansfield Park
Admiral Crawford uses his influence at the Admiralty to secure Wil-
liam Price a post as Second Lieutenant of H.M. Sloop
Thrush
.
Continue up Whitehall to the Charles I statue and turn sharp left into Pall Mall. Ahead
is Admiralty Arch (1908-11). Turn into Spring Gardens, the remnant of a pleasure garden
dating from Elizabethan days, which originally covered a considerable area at this end of
St James's Park.
The Picture of London
(1807) recommends Wigley's Royal Promenade rooms here.
They were open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; admission was one shilling. The visitor could
'meet' two invisible girls who spoke or sang on demand, or listen to a performance on the
panharmonium, a mechanical orchestra.
Rather more intellectual were the exhibitions of The Society of Painters In Water Col-
ours. On 24 May 1813 Jane wrote of a visit with her brother Henry and reported that she
was well-pleased with what she saw, especially with:
… a small portrait of Mrs Bingley … exactly herself, size, shaped face, features & sweetness; there
never was a greater likeness. She is dressed in a white gown, with green ornaments, which convinces me
of what I had always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her.
