Produced by Al Haines [Frontispiece: 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 CHAPTER PAGE I First Glimpses of London . . . . . . . 1 II London in the Late Seventies . . . . . 9 III A Norman Interlude . . . . . . . . . . 18 IV I Take the Plunge . . . . . . . . . . . 28 V Browning and Moscheles . . . . . . . . 42 VI Patti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 VII John Stuart Blackie . . . . . . . . . . 79 VIII Lord Kelvin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 IX Tennyson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 X Gladstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 XI Whistler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 XII Henry Drummond . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 XIII Sir Henry Irving . . . . . . . . . . . 185 XIV Henry M. Stanley . . . . . . . . . . . 205 XV George Meredith . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 XVI Parnell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 XVII "Le Brav' Général" . . . . . . . . . . 260 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 {1} 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. {2}