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Maiden Lane
Covent Garden. (WC2) Supposed to take its name from an image of the Virgin, which formerly stood here. In 1677 Andrew Marvell, the poet, lodged here. Voltaire, during his visit to England in 1727, resided here at the sign of the " White Peruke"; and here, at the house of his father, a hairdresser (No. 26) , lived the great painter J. M. W. Turner. (Reference: Jesse's London, vol. I, p. 358) Here is Rule's Restaurant, a great resort of actors, etc., since about 1750. In later days Henry Irving, Toole, and William Terriss were constant visitors. Here Besant and Rice discussed the plot of The Golden Butterfly, etc. Burnand, when less famous as a punster than he afterwards became, paid Rule's the following encomium: "To get anything indifferent here would be the exception, not the rule "-S-a fair example. On a wall at Rule's may be seen the bill of a wonderful charity performance of Lord Lytton's Not so Bad as we Seem, in which Dickens, Forster, Douglas Jerrold, Mark Lemon, Westland Marston, Peter Cunningham, Chas. Knight, Wilkie Collins, and John Tenniel took part.
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