A few score yards down New Gaunt Street, and leading into Gaunt Mews indeed, is a little modest back door, which you would not remark from that of any of the other stables. But many a little close carriage has stopped at that door, as my informant (little Tom Eaves, who knows everything, and who showed me the place) told me. "The Prince and Perdita have been in and out of that door, sir," he had often told me; "Marianne Clarke has entered it with the Duke of ------. It conducts to the famous petits appartements of Lord Steyne--one, sir, fitted up all in ivory and white satin, another in ebony and black velvet; there is a little banqueting-room taken from Sallust's house at Pompeii, and painted by Cosway--a little private kitchen, in which every saucepan was silver and all the spits were gold. It was there that Egalite Orleans roasted partridges on the night when he and the Marquis of Steyne won a hundred thousand from a great personage at ombre. Half of the money went to the French Revolution, half to purchase Lord Gaunt's Marquisate and Garter--and the remainder--" but it forms no part of our scheme to tell what became of the remainder, for every shilling of which, and a great deal more, little Tom Eaves, who knows everybody's affairs, is ready to account.
Besides his town palace, the Marquis had castles and palaces in various quarters of the three kingdoms, whereof the descriptions may be found in the road-books--Castle Strongbow, with its woods, on the Shannon shore; Gaunt Castle, in Carmarthenshire, where Richard II was taken prisoner--Gauntly Hall in Yorkshire, where I have been informed there were two hundred silver teapots for the breakfasts of the guests of the house, with everything to correspond in splendour; and Stillbrook in Hampshire, which was my lord's farm, an humble place of residence, of which we all remember the wonderful furniture which was sold at my lord's demise by a late celebrated auctioneer.

A hundred yards down New Gaunt Street is a little modest back door, which you would not distinguish from any other. But many a closed carriage has stopped at that door, and many a lady has been seen going in and out; for it leads to the famous petits appartements of Lord Steyne - one fitted up in ivory and white satin, and another in ebony and black velvet; there is a little banqueting-room and a private kitchen.
Besides his town palace, the Marquis had various other castles - Castle Strongbow, in Ireland; Gaunt Castle, in Wales; the grand Gauntly Hall in Yorkshire, and Stillbrook in Hampshire, which was my lord's farm, a humble residence, of which we all remember the wonderful furniture which was sold on my lord's death.
