Some trifling inaccuracies may be remarked in the ensuing brilliant
little chapter; but it must be remembered that the author wished to
present an age at a glance: and the dialogue is quite as fine and
correct as that in the “Last of the Barons,” or in “Eugene Aram,” or
other works of our author, in which Sentiment and History, or the True
and Beautiful, are united.
CHAPTER XXIV.
BUTTON'S IN PALL MALL.
Those who frequent the dismal and enormous Mansions of Silence which
society has raised to Ennui in that Omphalos of town, Pall Mall, and
which, because they knock you down with their dulness, are called Clubs
no doubt; those who yawn from a bay-window in St. James's Street, at a
half-score of other dandies gaping from another bay-window over the way;
those who consult a dreary evening paper for news, or satisfy themselves
with the jokes of the miserable Punch by way of wit; the men about town
of the present day, in a word, can have but little idea of London some
six or eight score years back. Thou pudding-sided old dandy of St.
James's Street, with thy lacquered boots, thy dyed whiskers, and thy
suffocating waistband, what art thou to thy brilliant predecessor in the
same quarter? The Brougham from which thou descendest at the portal of
the “Carlton” or the “Travellers',” is like everybody else's; thy
black coat has no more plaits, nor buttons, nor fancy in it than thy
neighbor's; thy hat was made on the very block on which Lord Addlepate's
was cast, who has just entered the Club before thee. You and he yawn
together out of the same omnibus-box every night; you fancy yourselves
men of pleasure; you fancy yourselves men of fashion; you fancy
yourselves men of taste; in fancy, in taste, in opinion, in philosophy,
the newspaper legislates for you; it is there you get your jokes and
your thoughts, and your facts and your wisdom--poor Pall Mall dullards.
Stupid slaves of the press, on that ground which you at present occupy,
there were men of wit and pleasure and fashion, some five-and-twenty
lustres ago.
We are at Button's--the well-known sign of the “Turk's Head.” The crowd
of periwigged heads at the windows--the swearing chairmen round the
steps (the blazoned and coronalled panels of whose vehicles denote the
lofty rank of their owners),--the throng of embroidered beaux entering
or departing, and rendering the air fragrant with the odors of pulvillio
and pomander, proclaim the celebrated resort of London's Wit and
Fashion. It is the corner of Regent Street. Carlton House has not yet
been taken down.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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