HANOVER SQUARE MEMORIES

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 140, 14 June 1924, Page 16

HANOVER SQUARE MEMORIES

ST. GEORGE'S '20th ANNIVERSARY.

Much of the social history of London might be recalled by the fact that that most aristocratic of churches, jewel of an aristocratic parish—has just attained its two-hundredth birthday (says .. the " Daily Telegraph ")< Any romance depicting the fashionable life of the metropolis throughout a long period would scarcely bo complete if n 0 wedding ceremony in St. George's were recorded in its pages. How familiar has become the picture presented in his " Vers de Societo " by-F. Locker:

" She passed up the aisle on the arm of her sire, A delicate lady in bridal attire."

Here Nelson's beloved Emma was married, on 6th September, 1791, to Sir Vvilliam Hamilton; and Horace Walpole, who was even more industrious than Mme. de Sevigne in his epistolary distribution "of news of the day, wrote to' Miss Eerrys that " Sir William has just married his gallery of statues "— an allusion to the fact that Emma Harte usedvto sit as an 'artist's model. Here, too, was married, In 1839, the Marquis Bouro, and in the register may be seen tho signature, as one of tho witnesses, of the bridegroom's illustrious, father, the first Duke of ■• Wellington. St. George's onjoyed practically a monopoly of fiiimionablo weddings from the time of George 11. to the middle of last century. For a long period the institution known as "St. George's Marrow Bone and" Cleaver Club " exacted a fea —generally a sovereign—in respect of c.very wedding celebrated; it was shown in the hearing of an action for alleged extortion . from her newly-married daughter brought by a dowager peeress that " His Majesty's Royal Peal," as the club grandiloquently styled 'itself (''greasy fellows" its members are rudo'.y termed by a contemporary chronicler), gathered in £416 during'one year lor their attendance at the weddings of distinguished persons. Formerly. Hanover "square was in the immense parish .of St.": Martiri-in-the-Fiolds, and tho ecclesiastical edifice which was to b'ecdme its leading ornament and pride was one of the fifty, churches which, according to the observation of "Pennant, were voted by Parliament " to give this part of the town the air of the .capital of a Christian country." Its noble Corinthian portico is the most striking feature of. the building, which was designed by John James. Noteworthy in the interior decorations of the church is the large altar picture of the Last Supper, attributed to Sir James Thomhill, and a fine sixteenth century painted window which is said to have belonged' to a convent at Malines. ..Many memories are evoked by in St. Georges or a wandering amid its surroundings. * During . his residence in .Brooke street,' Handel was a regular worshipper here. And, among the graves that one may see in the parish burial ground, on the road tib Bayswater, is that of Laurence Sterne; it was among the few left undisturbed when the cemetery was turned into a recreation ground.' Here, too, lay for a while the remains,, afterwards removed to St Paul's Cathedral, of Sir Thomas Picton who fell at Waterloo.