Marlborough house and its occupants, present and past . cky,ten and ninepence per week within twenty milesof London, decreasing in proportion to the distancefrom town, until, 170 miles away, the wage dwindleddown to but six shillings and three-pence. At Midsummer, 1711, the house was finished,and occupied by the Duke and Duchess. It didnot present any very imposing appearance, beingmerely a fair-sized, very plain one-storied building,little more than one-half the height it is at present,with long narrow windows—not unlike its neigh-bour, the Palace—and without any portico entrance,but its situ
Marlborough house and its occupants, present and past . cky,ten and ninepence per week within twenty milesof London, decreasing in proportion to the distancefrom town, until, 170 miles away, the wage dwindleddown to but six shillings and three-pence. At Midsummer, 1711, the house was finished,and occupied by the Duke and Duchess. It didnot present any very imposing appearance, beingmerely a fair-sized, very plain one-storied building,little more than one-half the height it is at present,with long narrow windows—not unlike its neigh-bour, the Palace—and without any portico entrance,but its situation in the midst of the rapidly growingwest-end was undeniably excellent. Its weak pointwas the approach from Pall Mall—inconvenient andcramped as it is to this day—and must often haveexcited wonder that an abode so important couldhave been so defective in the matter of avenueand entrance gates. A certain curate of St. James Church, Piccadilly,the Rev. M. E. C. Walcott, who wrote a handbookto his parish in 1854, gives the following plausible. o OO Z < tdO i-J< •? o 3 5 o z £ Marlborough House. 237 explanation of this anomaly, which has apparentlybeen accepted by almost every writer on the subjectsince. It was the Duchesss wish, he says, tomake an entrance for her house, then called PrioryCourt, into Pall Mall, but Sir Robert Walpole, havingquarrelled with her, bought the house in front of itin the main street, and so frustrated her purpose. That the Duchess intended to improve theapproaches after Sir Robert Walpoles resignationand retirement in 1742 is evident from a block planin existence at Blenheim, dated 1744, v/hich showsthe proposed enlargement of the entrance by 111feet, to be obtained by the demolition of fournarrow houses which stood in the way in Pall Mall:but her death ensuing in the same year, the ideawas obviously abandoned, and the requisite crownlease never applied for. Far from desiring tofrustrate her purpose, Sir Robert Walpole —although h
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