Paul Siau
(1830-1870)

[The sitter is reading a copy of the French weekly journal Le Monde Illustré, first published in Paris in 1857.]

Paul Siau appears on the 1861 census, a visitor at 20 Albemarle Street in Mayfair, next door to the Royal Institution. The head of the household is Charles Grillion, born in Staffordshire, a ‘Hotel Keeper.’ Other members of the household are listed as boarders, but Paul is listed as a visitor, so was presumably a friend. Born in or about 1830 in France, he was a ‘Proprietor of Houses.’

This was, since the previous year, the address of Grillion’s Hotel, the meeting place of the dining club Grillion’s, founded at 7 Albemarle Street in 1812, the club taking its name from the hotel where its members met. Many of Silvy’s clients attended a special 50th-anniversary dinner there in 1863, including Lords Acland, Monteagle, Clinton, Northbrook and Taunton, as well as the Duke of Newcastle, the Marquess of Salisbury, the Earl of Derby, Richard Monckton Milnes and Samuel Wilberforce.

Paul Prosper Siau ‘formerly of Hatfield in the County of Hertford but late of Limoux in the Department of Aude in France’ died on 2 November 1870 at Limoux. The abstract of his will describes him as a ‘Hotel Keeper’ and a ‘Bachelor.’ His estate was valued at £600. Administration was granted to his brother Jean Raymond Siau, a ‘Provision Merchant’ of 32 Sussex Place, Kensington.

Raymond died less than a year later on 29 July 1871 at his residence in Sussex Place. His estate was valued at £12,000. His will was proved by his widow Isabella Louisa Siau, manager of the Charing Cross Hotel; the other executor was Charles Grillion, whom Paul had been staying with at the time of the 1861 census, now described as ‘of Carlton Chambers, 8 Regent-street,’

In 1861 Paul’s older brother Raymond had been the ‘Club Manager’ at 11 Stafford Street, Mayfair. The 1871 census, taken shortly before Raymond’s death, records him as a ‘Foreign Provision Merchant’ from France, living with his London-born wife Isabelle, their two young children, and Isabelle’s father, Louis Lartizanti, also from France.

According to Raymond’s 1867 marriage certificate, his and Paul’s father was Raymond Siau, a ‘Gentleman.’