Mall

“ Let us hope that we may live to throw up our caps, and cry God bless them!
Great lords and ladies sweep the Mall no more with hoops and flowing trains of brocaded paduasoy, nor jingle on the gravel with silver spurs, nor crunch the minute pebbles with red heels. Broughams and chariots now convey the salt ones of the earth to their grand assemblies and solemn merry-makings; and the few aristocrats who may yet pedestrianise within the precincts, are so plainly attired that you would find it difficult to distinguish them from plain Brown or Jones walking from Pimlico to Charing Cross. ”

“ I grant the clown, the dunderheaded moneyspinner who votes that books are “rubbish,” the cobweb-brained fop who languidly declares reading to be a “bore,” will find in the broad smooth Mall, just a Mall, broad and smooth, and nought else—even as Peter Bell found in a primrose by the river’s brim a yellow primrose, and nothing more. At eight o’clock in the morning, to clown, dunderhead, and cobweb-brain, the Mall is a short cut from Marylebone to Westminster; the water-carts are laying the dust; mechanics are going to work ”

“ Pall Mall is made glad with the produce of the vineyards of France and Spain; and the Italian peasant goes clad in the labours of the Leicester artisan. The golden chain revolves, the silver buckets rise and fall; and one to the other passes on, as it fills and overflows, the stream that pours from Nature's cornucopia! ”

“ There is no more life in Patrick Street than in Russell Square of a sunshiny day; and as for the Mall, it is as lonely as the chief street of a German Residenz.
I have mentioned the respectable quarter of the city—for there are quarters in it swarming with life, but of such a frightful kind as no pen need care to describe; alleys where the odours and rags and darkness are so hideous, that one runs frightened away from them. ”

“ Vanhomrigh's, then walk up the Pall mall, through the park, out at Buckingham house, and so to Chelsea a little beyond the church: I set out about sunset, and get here in something less than an hour: it is two good miles and just five thousand seven hundred and forty-eight steps; so there is four miiles a day walking, without reckoning what I walk while I stay in town. When I pass the mall in the evening it is prodigious to see the number of ladies walking there, and I always cry shame at the ladies of Ireland, who never walk at all, as if their legs were of no use, but to be laid aside. ”

“ The Mall is full of couples, families waiting for the music to begin. It smells of children and dress-shields and talcum powder. A balloonman passes them trailing red and yellow and pink balloons like a great inverted bunch of grapes behind him. ”

“ I was delighted with the wildness of the scenery,—it equalled my expectations. In front of Mussoorī you are in high public, the road called the Mall is from eight to ten feet wide, covered with children, nurses, dogs, and sickly ladies and gentlemen, walking about gaily dressed. I always avoid the Mall; I go out for enjoyment and health, and do not want to talk to people. The children! it is charming to see their rosy faces; they look as well and as [230] strong as any children in England; the climate of the Hills is certainly far superior to that of England. ”

“ Every Londoner knows the Pall Mall by sight, the restaurant one door above the Haymarket Theatre, and is familiar with the lace-curtained window of its buffet, its entrance and the line of five French windows with flowers before them on its first floor, and there are few playgoers who have not, before spending an evening at the Haymarket or His Majesty's over the way, dined at one time or another at the Pall Mall Restaurant. ”

“ The ladies of the place, jealous of the Sappho of Saint-Satur, were wont to walk on the Mall, looking down this Longchamp of the bigwigs, whom they would stop and engage in conversation—sometimes the Sous-prefet and sometimes the Public Prosecutor—and who would listen with every sign of impatience or uncivil absence of mind. As the turrets of La Baudraye are visible from the Mall, many a younger man came to contemplate the abode of Dinah while envying the ten or twelve privileged persons who might spend their afternoons with the Queen of the neighborhood. ”

“ Nothing can be more dreary than a large station in the hot weather—unless it is an equally forsaken hill station in the depths of winter, when the mountains are covered with snow, the mall no longer resounds with gay voices and the tramp of Jampanies, but is visited by bears and panthers, and the houses are closed, and, as it were, put to bed in straw! ”

“ A shaded mall wanders at the foot of the rampart; beside this passes a narrow canal, with locks and barges and burly watermen in smocks and breeches; while the venerable pair of towers, with their old red sandstone sides peeping through the gaps in their green mantles, rest on the soft grass of one of those odd fragments of public garden, a crooked strip of ground turned to social account, which one meets at every turn, apparently, in England—a tribute to the needs of the "masses." ”

“ We rode along the bustling mall, crowded with men and women on horse back, with numbers of gorgeously arrayed native servants and chuprassies of the Government offices hurrying on their respective errands, or dawdling for a chat with some shabby-looking acquaintance in private life; we passed by the crowded little shops on the hill below the church, and glanced at the conglomeration of grain-sellers, jewellers, confectioners, and dealers in metal or earthen vessels, every man sitting knee-deep in his wares, smoking the eternal "hubble-bubble;" ”

“ Visitors to the national capital usually carry away pleasant memories of the quiet old building among the trees in the mall, with its mediæval battlements and turrets of brown stone conspicuous from every point of view, and the multitude who enter its halls are at least impressed with the fact that the national treasure houses are becoming filled with valuable collections rather faster than the available money and space will allow to be properly arranged and displayed. ”

“ The ladies ran all to the side of the Mall, and I helped my lady to stand upon the edge of the boards on the side of the Mall, that she might be high enough to see; and took the little one and lifted her quite up; during which, I took care to convey the gold watch so clean away from the Lady Betty, that she never felt it, nor missed it, till all the crowd was gone, and she was gotten into the middle of the Mall among the other ladies. ”

“ If great people have left their mark on the street, some curious individualities have also been connected with it. Think of four women racing down Pall Mall for a prize, to wit, “a holland smock, a cap, checked stockings, and laced shoes!” ”

“ We breakfasted together, afterwards there were lessons and a promenade along the upper Mall, tiffin in the dining-room with Colonel and Mrs. Hooper—unless there was company; then more lessons and another walk, supper, and to bed. Our outings were restricted to the wooded hillsides of two upper Malls; from whence we caught occasional glimpses of the gleaming “Tal” a thousand feet beneath us; we were never permitted to descend and mix with the gay and giddy crowd who were playing [67] tennis or polo, boating, shopping, or riding. ”

“ On a rising ground at the end of the town is the Mall; at the entrance of which the earth reverberates to the tread of horses' feet in a manner similar to that produced by riding over a bridge or hollow. ”

“ THE TURNPIKE AT HYDE PARK CORNER, 1706.
[Pg 29]
CHAPTER II. ST. JAMES’S STREET AND PALL MALL.
“O bear me to the paths of fair Pall Mall,
Safe are thy pavements, grateful is thy smell.”
—Gay’s “Trivia.”
Can we do better, after the surfeit of bricks and mortar which we have just undergone, than relax our jaded senses and relieve our wearied eyes by loitering for a few moments in the Green Park? See! it is just across the way, and a convenient entrance helps to tempt our steps. ”

“ The Brewer Fountain, the Deer Park and the Tremont and Beacon Street Malls complete the list of conspicuous attractions on the Common. The Beacon Street Mall is perhaps the finest, being heavily shaded by thickly-set rows of American elms. ”

“ The townsfolk thronged the Mall to gaze at the linen which covered the bronze figure and the stone pedestal. Outsiders installed themselves on the ramparts. On the booths set up under the quincunxes the refreshment-sellers were nailing up bands of calico bearing the legends: Véritable bière Jeanne d’Arc.—Café de la Pucelle.
At sight of this, M. Bergeret remarked that one ought to rejoice in this concourse of citizens assembled to pay honour to the liberator of Orleans.
“The archivist of the department, M. Mazure,” added he, “stands out from the crowd. ”

“ By this time the coolies have had a rest and food, and now they return to the works, and either lift up the mall in earthen jars and take it to the mall tank, or—as is now more commonly done—they run it along a channel to the tank, and then wash out and clean the vat to be ready for the renewed beating on the morrow. When all the mall has been collected in the mall tank, it is next pumped up into the straining room. ”

“ The Mall was the fashionable lounge, or the Parade, where smoking was not allowed. [132] 'From thence we walk'd into the Parade, which my Friend told me us'd, in a Morning, to be cover'd with the Bones of Red Herrings, and smelt as strong about Breakfast Times as a Wet Salter's Shop at Midsummer. But now, says he, its perfum'd again with English Breath; and the scent of Oroonoko Tobacco no more offends the Nostrils of our squeamish Ladies.' And there were the ducks to feed on the canal. But the Mall was the place. Ward goes into ecstasies over it: never was there such a sight. ”

“ I observed the biggest had a fine gold watch on, and a good necklace of pearl, and they had a footman in livery with them; but as it is not usual for the footman to go behind the ladies in the Mall, so I observed the footman stopped at their going into the Mall, and the biggest of the sisters spoke to him, which I perceived was to bid him be just there when they came back. ”

“ They play cards in the evening, dance with the same partners for twelve years running, in the same rooms, at the same dates. This delightful life is varied by solemn walks on the Mall, visits of politeness among the women, who ask each other where they bought their gowns. ”

“ Martin, with other relics. The Mall without comparison is the noblest in Europe for length and shade, having seven rows of the tallest and goodliest elms I had ever beheld, the innermost of which do so embrace each other, and at such a height, that nothing can be more solemn and majestical. Here we played a party, or party or two, and then walked about the town walls, built of square stone, filled with earth, and having a moat. No city in France exceeds it in beauty, or delight. ”

“ They were walking through a mall and he was thinking how long ago in boyhood he and his brothers had entertained the thought of this man really being family to ease the pain of routine constricting them in noodles. In the hallucination they left the mall and went into an adjacent 80-story building and then took a high-speed elevator to the top of that skyscraper. There the couple sat in the opulence of the Baiyoke Sky Lounge revolving around glass windows and ordering their cappuccino. ”

“ Adjoining the buildings in the middle of the mall are sidewalks for the use of pedestrians going to and from their cars and from building to building. In the parking areas, roadways for the use of vehicular traffic entering and leaving the mall are clearly marked out. The general public has unrestricted access to the mall property. The shopping center here is clearly the functional equivalent of the business district of Chickasaw involved in Marsh. ”

“ James's Park was the Mall, which Monsieur Sorbiere tells us was a walk "eight hundred and fifty paces in length, beset with rows of large trees, and near a small wood, from whence you may see a fine mead, a long canal, Westminster Abbey, and the suburbs, which afford an admirable prospect." ”

“ I am lodged in the street called Pall Mall, the ordinary residence of all strangers, because of its vicinity to the Queen's Palace, the Park, the Parliament House, the theatres, and the chocolate and coffee houses, where the best company frequent. If you would know our manner of living, 'tis thus:—We rise by nine, and those that frequent great men's levées find entertainment at them till eleven, or, as at Holland, go to tea tables. ”

“ Any of the principal walks will conduct the visitor all over the grounds, and afford him a fine view of the principal objects of interest.
All the entrances on Fifty-ninth street lead to the handsome marble arch near the eastern side. Passing through this archway, and ascending a broad flight of stairs, the visitor finds himself in the great mall, which, beginning near the principal entrance on Fifth Avenue, leads to the terrace, which is one of the chief attractions. ”

“ On the right-hand side as you go from Pall Mall there are most respectable shops, but the wonder to me is how they manage to attract custom sufficient to enable them to pay what must be their very heavy rents. ”

“ The schoolmistress knew nothing about all this, of course, as yet.
It was on the Common that we were walking. The mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in different directions. One of these runs down from opposite Joy Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it.
I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. ”

“ Real people dispute the passage of the Mall with imaginary personages. The encampment of ’Eighty, the Temple of Concord, and the Humane Society’s drags, are inextricably mixed up with scenes from Wycherley and Etherege ”

“ Phileas Fogg, having shut the door of his house at half-past eleven, and having put his right foot before his left five hundred and seventy-five times, and his left foot before his right five hundred and seventy-six times, reached the Reform Club, an imposing edifice in Pall Mall, which could not have cost less than three millions. ”