Arthur Warren

LONDON DAYS

A BOOK OF REMINISCENCES

BY

ARTHUR WARREN

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1920

Copyright, 1920,
BY ARTHUR WARREN.

All rights reserved
Published September, 1920


Norwood Press
Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co.
Norwood, Mass., U. S. A.

CONTENTS

LONDON DAYS

CHAPTER I

FIRST GLIMPSES OF LONDON

One day at dusk, in the autumn of 1878, when I was eighteen, I arrived at the heart of the world.

I was fresh from New England, and had left Boston, my native city, seventeen days before, embarking at New York on the Anchor liner Alsatia three days later; disembarking at Tilbury after a turbulent voyage that lasted two weeks to the hour. What was left of me passed from the Fenchurch Street Station into Leadenhall Street, the least of three passengers in a four-wheeled cab. Through the cab windows, and the ghost of fog which simmered over gas lamps, flashed glimpses of the city, splashes of light on the pavements illuminated windows bound in brass, cumbrous drays and 'busses, and great grey horses, and glistening pubs. The air was heavy with smoke. I heard the tramp of thousands and thousands of persons, all homeward bound, and all wearing top hats. And, of all names, there at the right on a clothier's sign, the enamelled legend: "Dombey and Son!" My head was packed with Dickens, and in a pocket was a linen-backed map.

In one way and another, by books and maps and imagination, I was already on familiar terms with the world-city which I had never seen. I had read it up, studied it, knew intricate maps of it, and stories of its traditions. At a time when the youth of my country and generation were expected to follow Horace Greeley's advice, "Go West and grow up with the