The Black District
was a practical education, but it was infinitely far in the
distance. The boy ran away from it, as he ran away from
everything he disliked.
Had he known enough to know where to begin he would have seen
something to study, more vital than the Civil Law, in the long,
muddy, dirty, sordid, gas-lit dreariness of Oxford Street as his
dingy four-wheeler dragged its weary way to Charing Cross. He did
notice one peculiarity about it worth remembering. London was
still London. A certain style dignified its grime; heavy, clumsy,
arrogant, purse-proud, but not cheap; insular but large; barely
tolerant of an outside world, and absolutely self-confident. The
boys in the streets made such free comments on the American
clothes and figures, that the travellers hurried to put on tall
hats and long overcoats to escape criticism. No stranger had
rights even in the Strand. The eighteenth century held its own.
History muttered down Fleet Street, like Dr. Johnson, in Adams's
ear; Vanity Fair was alive on Piccadilly in yellow chariots with
coachmen in wigs, on hammer-cloths; footmen with canes, on the
footboard, and a shrivelled old woman inside; half the great
houses, black with London smoke, bore large funereal hatchments;
every one seemed insolent, and the most insolent structures in
the world were the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England.
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