s
quite the same, notwithstanding, and this good the popular newspaper has
wrought, to wit--that the exponent of the arts, media of culture as they
are, is no longer dependent upon the caprices and whims of isolated
patrons, nor hampered in his freedom of expression by canons of theirs."
And so on ad infinitum. The present writer confesses in all humility
that he has not the least idea as to what the eloquent gentleman meant.
But remember that it was the age that produced the "St. Elmo" of Augusta
Evans Wilson.

CHAPTER VIII

_Literary Landmarks and Figures_

Literary Landmarks and Figures--A Vision of Pall Mall--The Paris of the
Forties--Mark Twain's Fifth Avenue Home--In the Time of Poe--Where Henry
James was Born--The Old University Building--An Encounter in Washington
Square--Clinton Place--Memories of the Past--Irving, Cooper, Halleck,
Drake, Dickens, and Trollope as Shades of the Avenue--A Home of
Janvier--The "Griffou Push"--The Tenth Street Studio Building--The Tile
Club--The Cary Sisters--Stoddard, Whittier, Aldrich, and Ripley--"Peter
Parley"--"Fanny Fern"--James Parton--Some Figures of the Recent Past.

If, of a day of the fifties of the last century, I had been an arrival
in London, my first thought would probably have been of a sole at
Sweeting's or a slice of saddle of mutton at Simpson's in the Strand,
provided, of course, that the establishments named then existed, and the
dishes in question were as delectable as in later years, when I came to
know them in the life. The baser appetite satisfied, the first
pilgrimage would have been, not to the Tower, or to Lambeth Palace, or
the British Museum, but to Pall Mall, in the hopes of catching a
glimpse, in a club window or on the pavement, of the "good grey head" of
Thackeray. The first impression might have been disappointing. There
was in the spectacles and high-carried chin something pompous and
supercilious. The great man, had he noticed them at all, would probably
have been quite contemptuous of my admiring glances, his mind occupied
with the idea of winning a nod from a passing duke; but I would have
seen the "good grey head," and thrilled at the memory of "Vanity Fair"
and "Henry Esmond." Similarly, in the Paris of that time or of a little
earlier period, I would have considered the day well spent if in the
course of it I had seen Victor Hugo with his umbrella, riding on the
Imperiale of an omnibus, or the good Dumas exhibiting his woolly