Dined at Lyons

‘London - walked to Evans’ the booksellers - dined at Lyons.’ This from a diary kept by John Nash, born 270 years ago today. He was one of Britain’s foremost architects of the early 19th century, being the designer of Regent Street, Buckingham Palace and the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. Considering his importance as a historical figure, it comes as a disappointment to find, firstly, that only two of his diaries have survived, and, secondly, that they are filled only with the scantest of entries - entries which are considered to have ‘little value where major biographical issues are concerned’.

Nash was born on 18 January 1752 in London. From the mid-1760s to the mid-1770s, he trained with the architect Robert Taylor. He married Jane Kerr in 1775, and they had two children. Around 1777, he established his own architectural practice, and invested inherited money in building projects. However, these were unsuccessful and left him bankrupt. At the same time, relations with his wayward and adulterous wife were deteriorating, leading, eventually, to legal proceedings and, in 1787, divorce. He moved to live in Carmarthen in 1784, and over the next decade re-established himself as a country house architect. In the late 1790s, he returned to London as an informal partner of the landscape gardener Humphry Repton. He married Mary Anne Bradley (then 25 years old) in 1798.

In the coming years, he designed many now famous country houses, public buildings and groups of houses. From 1813, he served as an official architect to the Office of Works, and as such advised on the building of many new churches. On commission by the Prince Regent, he laid out Regent’s Park and the Regent Street area (from land that had reverted to the Crown) complete with canal, lake, wooded areas, a botanical garden, shopping arcades and residential terraces. He re-landscaped St James’s Park, and transformed the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. He was involved with building two theatres on London’s Haymarket. Other commissions included the remodelling of Buckingham House (Palace) and the building of Marble Arch.

However, when George IV died in 1830, Nash was dismissed before he could complete Buckingham Palace, and he faced an official inquiry into the cost and structural soundness of the project. Because of the controversy, Nash received no further official commissions, nor was he awarded a knighthood. He retired to East Cowes Castle, a mansion he had built for himself earlier. He died in 1835, after which his wife had to sell the castle and much of its contents to clear debts. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica and the BBC.

Nash probably kept a diary or ‘pocket journal’ throughout his adult life, but only two of these have survived, both from the last years of his life. They were published in a small spiral-bound pamphlet by Malcolm Pinhorn in 2000 as The Diaries of John Nash Architect - 1835 and 1835. The British Library has a copy (but, as far as I can tell, there are no secondhand copies available online). A preface in the booklet states: ‘In the 1980’s Mr Peter Laing, a great, great, grandson of Mrs John Nash’s relative Sir James Pennethorne, through whom they had descended, allowed the late Sir John Summerson, former Curator of the Soane Museum in London and Nash’s biographer, the loan of the surviving diaries of the architect John Nash for 1832 and 1835.’ 

And, in his introduction, Summerson says the diaries are of ‘little value where major biographical issues are concerned’. However, he adds, ‘they do give a lively picture of the aged architect (he was eighty-two when he began the first diary) in retirement, surviving comfortably among his friends, his books and flowers, his architectural perspectives and his Turner landscapes at East Cowes Castle on the Isle of Wight.’

Indeed, Nash’s entries in the diaries are rarely more than a sentence or two, and banal in the extreme. Here are a few examples.

14 May 1832
‘London - went to the exhibition with Mrs Nash & Anne and drove around the parks -’

15 May 1832
‘London - not out - the Vaughans, Lyons, Hopkinsons & Miss Tierney dined with us - Lord Grey & his colleagues sent for by the Kind - teh Duke of Wellington having failed to make a Cabinet -’

18 May 1832
‘London - called upon Lord Wenlock - read the Papers at the Atheneum - went to Evans the bookseller - and in the Evening to the German opera - Lord Grey announced that he & his colleagues had resumed office -’

19 May 1832
‘London - walked down to the office of Woods - went to the Zoological Gardens -’

23 May 1832
‘London - walked to Evans’ the booksellers - dined at Lyons.’

31 October 1832
‘Cowes - Estimated the value of Lady Lucy Foley’s House in London & wrote to her on the subject - dined at Mr Oglanders - took Mr Hewett & Mrs Smith & brought them home at night - ’