'MY dear Henry, - What you said I had told you about snipe-
shooting is quite true, though I think I ought to have
mentioned a space rather nearer the river than Eaton Square.
In the year 1815, when the battle of Waterloo was fought,
there was nothing behind Grosvenor Place but the (-?) fields
- so called, a place something like the Scrubbs, where the
household troops drilled. That part of Grosvenor Place where
the Grosvenor Place houses now stand was occupied by the Lock
Hospital and Chapel, and it ended where the small houses are
now to be found. A little farther, a somewhat tortuous lane
called the King's Road led to Chelsea, and, I think, where
now St. Peter's, Pimlico, was afterwards built. I remember
going to a breakfast at a villa belonging to Lady
Buckinghamshire. The Chelsea Waterworks Company had a sort
of marshy place with canals and osier beds, now, I suppose,
Ebury Street, and here it was that I was permitted to go and
try my hand at snipe-shooting, a special privilege given to
the son of the freeholder.
'The successful fox-hunt terminating in either Bedford or
Russell Square is very strange, but quite appropriate,
commemorated, I suppose, by the statue there erected.
Yours affectionately,
'E.'
The successful 'fox-hunt ' was an event of which I told Lord
Ebury as even more remarkable than his snipe-shooting in
Belgravia. As it is still more indicative of the growth of
London in recent times it may be here recorded.
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