ography
of Chelsea. He knew that the Fulham Road upon which he was now walking
was a boundary of Chelsea. He knew that the Queen's Elm public-house had
its name from the tradition that Elizabeth had once sheltered from a
shower beneath an elm tree which stood at that very corner. He knew that
Chelsea had been a 'village of palaces,' and what was the function of
the Thames in the magnificent life of that village. The secret residence
of Turner in Chelsea, under the strange _alias_ of Admiral Booth,
excited George's admiration; he liked the idea of hidden retreats and
splendid, fanciful pseudonyms. But the master-figure of Chelsea for
George was Sir Thomas More. He could see Sir Thomas More walking in his
majestic garden by the river with the King's arm round his neck, and
Holbein close by, and respectful august prelates and a nagging wife in
the background. And he could see Sir Thomas More taking his barge for
the last journey to the Tower, and Sir Thomas More's daughter coming
back in the same barge with her father's head on board. Curious! He
envied Sir Thomas More.

"Darned bad tower for a village of palaces!" he thought, not of the
Tower of London, but of the tower of the Workhouse which he was now
approaching. He thought he could design an incomparably better tower
than that. And he saw himself in the future, the architect of vast
monuments, strolling in a grand garden of his own at evening with other
distinguished and witty persons.

But there were high-sounding names in the history of Chelsea besides
those of More and Turner. Not names of people! Cremorne and Ranelagh!
Cremorne to the west and Ranelagh to the east. The legend of these
vanished resorts of pleasure and vice stirred his longings and his
sense of romantic beauty--especially Ranelagh with its Rotunda. (He
wanted, when the time came, to be finely vicious, as he wanted to be
everything. An architect could not be great without being everything.)
He projected himself into the Rotunda, with its sixty windows, its
countless refreshment-boxes, its huge paintings, and the orchestra in
the middle, and the expensive and naughty crowd walking round and round
and round on the matting, and the muffled footsteps and the swish of
trains on the matting, and the specious smiles and whispers, and the
blare of the band and the smell of the lamps and candles.... Earl's
Court was a poor, tawdry, unsightly thing after that.

When he had passed under the Workhouse tower h