The best of Chelsea by the people who know - Cadogan

21 | STREETS & SIGHTS |
The station is usually decked with
plants when the RHS Chelsea Flower
Show (see Events) is running.
Sloane Street
• Jane Austen stayed with her brother
at 64 Sloane Street (see Hans Town
panel on page 23).
• Statesman and author Sir Charles
Wentworth Dilke (1843-1911) lived at
16 Sloane Street. He had been tipped as
a future prime minister, but a high-profile
divorce case in which he was cited as
the seducer of an MP’s young wife,
ruined his career. He spent much of his
life trying to clear his name.
• Actor and theatre manager Sir Herbert
Tree (1852-1917) lived at 76 Sloane
Street, where a plaque now marks the
fact. Tree changed his surname from
Beerbohm so it was easier for audiences
to call for an encore.
He managed the Haymarket Theatre
and helped fund the rebuilding of Her
Majesty’s Theatre (then known as His
Majesty’s Theatre), which he later managed.
He also played Henry Higgins in
the premiere of Pygmalion there. He also
founded the famous Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art in 1904, and was knighted
for his contributions to theatre.
Swan Walk
Swan Walk was named after The Swan,
a pub visited by Samuel Pepys and
mentioned in his diaries. It was the
original finishing place of the Doggett’s
Coat and Badge Race.
• The Doggett’s Coat and Badge Race
is a rowing race for the young Freemen
of the Company of Watermen and
Lightermen along the River Thames from
London Bridge to Chelsea. The race is
four miles and seven furlongs long, and
in recent years has included women.
The Watermen and Lightermen still work
the Thames – the Watermen are concerned
with passenger transport, and
the Lightermen with the carriage of goods.
The race was founded in 1715 by
Thomas Doggett – actor, comedian and
manager of Drury Lane Theatre – and
until 1873 was rowed against the tide.
The prize is a scarlet coat, breeches and
a silver badge, based on the original
costume of 18th-century Watermen. It is
still run each year, but the finishing point
is now Cadogan Pier.
• Mary Astell (1666-1731), a pioneering
feminist writer, lived on Swan Walk.
• Elizabeth Blackwell (1707-1758) lived
at 4 Swan Walk. She was a botanical
illustrator who recorded many of the
unusual plants in the Chelsea Physic
Garden, a career she turned to after her
doctor husband, Alexander, ended up in
a debtor’s prison.
St Leonard’s Terrace
• Bram Stoker (1847-1912), author of
Dracula, lived at 18 St Leonard’s Terrace.
Oscar Wilde
Royal Borough of Kensingon & Chelsea, Family & Children’s Service
Royal Borough of Kensingon & Chelsea, Family & Children’s Service
Tite Street
Tite Street runs down from Redburn
Street to Royal Hospital Road and is
best known for being the home of Oscar
Wilde. It was named after William Tite,
an architect who was a member of the
Metropolitan Board of Works, which was
largely responsible for the creation of
Chelsea Embankment. The numbers
have changed over the years and today’s
numbers are given here (for example, 34
Tite Street was known as number 16
when Wilde lived there).
• Landscape and portrait painter John
Singer Sargent (1856-1925) lived at 31
Tite Street. Henry James, who lived in
nearby Carlyle Mansions, was one of his
sitters.
• Irish writer, poet and wit Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900) lived in Tite Street, first at
number 44 and then at today’s number
34 after he married Constance Lloyd in
1884. They had two sons, Cyril (1885)
and Vyvyan (1886). The house was
transformed by Edward William Godwin,
who had also designed a house in the
street for James Abbott McNeill
Whistler – although Whistler never got to
enjoy it because of his costly libel action
(see Art).
Many of Wilde’s greatest successes
happened while he lived here, including
the publication of his novel The Picture
of Dorian Gray (1891) and the staging of
Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and A
Woman of No Importance (1893). Salomé,
which he wrote in French, was refused a
licence by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office
and was first performed in 1896 in Paris.
In 1895, An Ideal Husband and The
Importance of Being Earnest were staged,
but at the height of his fame, Wilde sued
the Marquess of Queensberry, the father
of his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, for libel
over an insulting note that read ‘For
Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite’ [sic]. It
was a disastrous decision – the evidence
that the case unearthed led to Wilde
being arrested for gross indecency with
men (see The Cadogan in Hotels for
more about Wilde’s arrest). He was
eventually convicted and sent to prison,
sentenced to two years of hard labour.
By chance, the judge who decided his
fate also lived in Tite Street.
After Wilde was released in 1897, he
fled to Paris and died there in 1900. His
remains lie in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
Constance Wilde changed her and
her sons’ surname to Holland after
Wilde’s conviction.
• The composer Peter Warlock
(a pseudonym of Philip Arnold Heseltine,
1894-1930), lived at 30 Tite Street.
Tedworth Square
• Samuel Clemens (1835-1910), better
known by his pen name Mark Twain,
lived at 23 Tedworth Square in 1896-97.
He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Upper Cheyne Row
• Journalist and poet Leigh Hunt (1784-
1859) lived at 22 Upper Cheyne Row.
He was a Chelsea resident from 1833
and published poets including Keats and
Shelley in his weekly periodical The
Examiner. However, it landed him in
prison after he printed an insulting
description of the Prince Regent.