Cecil Street, named for William Cecil (Baron Burghley) whose family developed the neighborhood, was laid in 1695. 200 years later it faded into a nameless private lane reaching from the Strand, between Adam Street and Carting Lane, to the Embankment directly opposite Cleopatra’s Needle (erected 1878).
No. 17 was a boarding house built in the early 1700s. In the 1880s it was owned by Mrs. Priscilla Harding. George and Augustus Moore lived there in 1881-1882 while launching their careers as creative writers and journalists.
George recalled the house: “It was uncomfortable, hideous, and not very clean” (Confessions of a Young Man, p. 206). The brothers’ rooms were on the second floor, consisting of a long narrow sitting room, a large bedroom and another small bedroom. The rent with meals was £2/week, evenly split.
Miss L — , an actress at the nearby Savoy Theatre, lived on the third floor; the first floor was usually vacant and Mrs. Harding occupied the ground floor.
Priscilla Harding was the namesake of Moore’s fictional characters Priscilla Loft and John Harding; her maidservant Emma may have partly inspired the character Esther Waters. Augustus may have been a model for the character Mike Fletcher.
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