Park Lane

“ Someone suggests that we go up and see George Fitzmaurice, who lives in Park Lane. There we can get a drink and then go to bed. We jump in a cab and are soon there. What a difference! Park Lane is another world after the Elephant and Castle. Here are the homes of the millionaires and the prosperous.
Fitzmaurice is quite a successful moving-picture director. We find a lot of friends at his house, and over whiskies-and-sodas we discuss our trip. Our trip through Kennington suggests Limehouse, and 106 conversation turns toward that district and Thomas Burke. ”

“ As regards the Park Lane mansion, with the red-striped sun-blinds—the house you know well, without doubt—there is now no further mystery concerning it. The rumours regarding its beautiful interior, and the sounds of piano-playing were all of course, the outcome of gossip. The truth, however, is now common knowledge, and society during the past nine months or so has been amazed to see painters, decorators, and upholsterers so busily at work. It is evident that old Sam intends to entertain largely during this coming season. ”

“ On the site are a noticeable stone-fronted house, now a carriage warehouse, and the Royal Orthopædic Hospital, founded 1838 and removed here from Bloomsbury Square in 1856.
Park Lane, up to 1769 called Tyburn Lane, was in the reign of Queen Anne a desolate by-road, but is now a favourite place of residence for the [Pg 11] fashionable persons in the Metropolis. It is open to Hyde Park as far as Hamilton Place, whence it reaches Piccadilly by a narrow street. ”

“ It was certainly one of the finest in the whole of that select thoroughfare where rents alone were ruinous, and where the possession of a house meant that one’s annual income must run into six figures. The mere nobility of England cannot afford to live in Park Lane nowadays. ”

“ It was the Park Lane Review that he had picked up, and although it required no great intellectual effort for its perusal, his thoughts incessantly strayed to the skeleton letter.
Just as the faintest ray of light in a dark room is enough to indicate the position of an outlet, so a single syllable was the means of solving the riddle. Determined to concentrate his attention on the paper, he re-read a paragraph which his eye had skimmed without assimilating it. ”

“ In an absolutely charming chapter Chesterton writes of the literature of the servant girl, which is really the literature of Park Lane. It is the literature of Park Lane, for the very obvious reason that it is probably never read there; but the literature is about Park Lane, and is read by those who may live as near it as Balham or Surbiton. What he contends, and rightly, is that the general reader likes to hear about an environment outside his own. It is inherent in us that we always really want to be somewhere else ”

“ I don’t think any man of letters has ever rented a house in Park Lane, except Disraeli, and he went there as a successful politician; such glorious thoroughfares are reserved to more respectable stock-brokers and company-promoters, whilst those whom the gods love are driven to seek refuge in the cheap and shabby houses of meaner streets. Half the squalid squares and byways of Soho are in reality vestibules and aisles of the Temple of Fame. Blake, as we have seen in a former chapter, lived in Poland Street; and in the same street lived Flaxman, and, later, Shelley. ”

“ The fan-room overlooked the Park, and regardless of possible interpretations Arthur Whately had straw permanently put down in the roadway to deaden the noise of traffic. There had been a ruffle with the vestry on the subject of this straw. Men with pitchforks came and took it up. But as often as they took it up he had it renewed, and by now it had become as much a feature of Park Lane as the omnibuses. Occasionally a policeman, new to the beat and fired by professional enthusiasm, would question the straw-strewers, but the mystic whisper, “A friend of Mr. ”

“ The piecing together of this slender chain gave June the thing she needed most. At this signal manifestation of what Providence could do, hope revived in her. If only she could get to Park Lane—wherever Park Lane might be!—to Miss Babraham.
As if in answer to the half-formed wish, Maw’s dominant voice took up the parable. “Elbert, you’d better see this lidy as fur as Park Lane.”
[Pg 243]
XLVII Elbert did not welcome the prospect with open arms. Nature had not designed him for such a task. All the same, Maw was imaged clearly in his mind as one whose word was law. ”

“ The denizens of Friar Street and such localities, being in the habit of waking in the morning to the odour of melted tallow and boiling soap, and of going to sleep at night with the smell of burning bones under their noses, can of course have nothing of an external nature in common with the inhabitants of Park Lane and its vicinity ”

“ You don't save anything by taking the pink 'bus, nor any 'bus for that matter, down Park Lane when the traffic tumbles down every half-minute, in spite of cinders lavished by the authority, and can't really see its way to locomotion when it gets up. So you may just as well walk. Sally did so, and in ten minutes reached the queer little purlieu teeming with the well-connected, [Pg 244] and named after the great Mysteries they are connected with, that lies in the angle of Park Lane and Piccadilly. ”

“ The popular idea associated that long row of millionaires’ houses facing Hyde Park with luxuriant saloons, priceless paintings, old Persian carpets, and exquisite furniture. Who would believe that behind those windows with their well-kept curtains, and brisé-brisé of silk and lace, was a room arranged with such care, with the snowy road and moonlight shown beyond the false window?
“With what object, I wonder, is all this?” asked Charlie, speaking in an undertone, as though to himself. ”

“ My observations of No. 427 Park Lane did little to clear up the problem in which I was interested. The house was separated from the street by a low wall and railing, the whole not more than five feet high. It was perfectly easy, therefore, for any one to get into the garden, but the window was entirely inaccessible, since there was no waterpipe or anything which could help the most active man to climb it. ”

“ PARK LANE, FORMERLY MARSH LANE.
Near the High-road was an old house called “The Beggars’ Lodging-house.” It was a great boon to tramps, as they found accommodation here for a very small sum. A large fire was always burning brightly in the winter evenings.
The National School for Boys was built in 1841, and the Drill Hall in 1864. Here the Vestries were held for some years. There were two nurseries on the left hand side of the lane, and then on both sides fields till one came to Willoughby-lane. Here stood Willoughby House ”

“ The house they had was one of those small houses with large, ample, bow windows to the drawing-rooms, which give a sort of rustic, irregular simplicity to this street of the rich. Those people who are happy and well off and live in Park Lane must be happier and more well off than people anywhere else. ”

“ He would never have it said that a dying soldier, who owed neither him nor his daughter anything, had shown more charity than he.
Therefore, Lane went early to the Iden homestead, a picturesque cottage across the river from Riverside Park. The only change Lane noted was a larger growth of trees and a fuller foliage. It was warm twilight. The frogs had begun to trill, sweet and melodious sound to Lane, striking melancholy chords of memory. Joshua Iden was walking on his lawn, his coat off, his gray head uncovered. Mrs. Iden sat on the low-roofed porch. ”

“ Samuel Statham loved the Park. Often and often he would get into conversation with the flotsam and jetsam of London life—the unemployed, and the men who, in these days of hustle, alas! find themselves too old at forty. ”

“ Haggard and unshaven (in spite of the new safety-razor) , he was in Bond Street next morning early, with cheque-book and bank-notes in his pocket. The shop that dealt in old silver was only just open, and he went hurriedly in.
“I am Mr. Whately,” he said, “Mr. Whately, of Park Lane. Dear me, that is a very pretty tankard. A hundred pounds only! Please send it round to me to No. 93. The fact is, a rather curious thing has happened. I bought a Charles II. spoon here yesterday afternoon and paid for it in sovereigns. ”

“ Down that broad yet shadowy lane, between the park, dark with evergreens and dappled with deer, and the meadows where sheep, and cows, and horses are grazing under the tall elms; that lane, where the wild bank, clothed with fern, and tufted with furze, and crowned by rich berried thorn, and thick shining holly on the one side, seems to vie in beauty with the picturesque old paling, the bright laurels, and the plumy cedars, on the other;—down that shady lane, until the sudden turn brings us to an opening where four roads meet, where a noble avenue turns down to the Great House ”

“ They live longest. So I turn to give you my hand, dear boy,
[Illustration with caption: LANE PEAK IN RAINIER NATIONAL PARK]
I was most badly infected, but I really never felt better than when I stepped out of the auto on to the hospital steps. And it took some nerve for me to say, "Go to it," under such circumstances. (I am patting myself on the back a bit now.)
Well, Glory be!—that step is taken and now I must fight to get fit. They say I am making as good a record as a boy, as to recovery, so all my Scotch whiskies, and big cigars and late nights with you politicians have not ruined me. ”

“ Paul gave him fifteen cents, in an off-hand manner, and she thrilled at his careless prodigality and his air of knowing his way about.
The whole long day lay before them, bright with limitless possibilities. They left the suitcase with the cashier of the restaurant and walked slowly down the street, embarrassed by the riches of time that were theirs. Helen suggested that they walk awhile in the capitol grounds; she had supposed they would do that, and perhaps in the afternoon enjoy a car-ride to Oak Park. But Paul dismissed these simple pleasures with a word. ”

“ But his talent was for humorous subjects, and a series of thirty-six designs by him, entitled ‘The Life of an Actor,’ with letterpress by Pierce Egan, was published in 1825. Lane etched some clever prints of sporting and social life, such as ‘Masquerade at the Argyll Rooms,’ ‘Scientific Pursuits, or Hobby Horse Races to the Temple of Fame,’ and ‘A Trip to Ascot Races,’ a series of scenes on the road from Hyde Park Corner to the heath, which he dedicated to the king, 1827. ”

“ He thought that the Allies would strongly insist upon concerted action, putting aside the Pope's appeal, and that this had to be resisted, for we should play our own game. I find all I meet here strong for the war, but of course I only meet the high-spirited. There is much feeling that we are going about it too mechanically, with too little emotion and passion. ... As always,
LANE Toward the middle of August, Lane started for Mount Desert to inspect the proposed National Park created there through the public-spirited devotion of George B. Dorr. ”

“ At the rear of the cathedral, across the roadway, stands a low stone wall. Just over the wall the earth sinks like a precipice to a green valley bottom far below. Out here is a rugged slope of rock and verdure and forest growth which brings into the city an ancient presence, nature—nature, the Elysian Fields of the art school, the potter's field of the hospital, the harvest field of the church.
This strip of nature fronts the dawn and is called Morningside Park. Past the foot of it a thoroughfare stretches northward and southward, level and {5} wide and smooth. ”

“ Mark Lane, once Mart Lane, is mentioned in the thirteenth century; in 1276, Robert le Chaloner had a house in Mark Lane in the ward of William de Hadestocke, i.e. Town Ward. And the Calendar of Wills mentions the lane a little later and has many references to it. In 1750 it contained “divers large houses for merchants, though some of them are old timber houses.” The street escaped the Fire. ”

“ He recalled, with the approval of an aristocrat in taste, the daintiness of her movements, the delicacy of her hands as they lay open on the fence, even her indifference to him, to him, who was in no wise accustomed to indifference in women.
At twilight he went to the Chestnut Ridge, but Katrine was not there, nor did she come. The following day he went again with a similar resulting. The third day he saw her about noon on the river-bank, and she waved her hand to him in a cavalier fashion, disappearing into a small copse of dogwood, not to reappear. ”

“ He heard that an old woman had died who lived in Parker’s Alley and sold old clothes, old iron, bottles, and such like trash. Parker’s Alley was not very easy to find. Going up High Street from the bridge, you first turned to the right through Cross Street, and then to the right again down Lock Lane, and out of Lock Lane ran the alley, a little narrow gutter of a place, dark and squalid, paved with round stones, through which slops of all kinds perpetually percolated, and gave forth on the cleanest days a faint and sickening odour. Mike thought he could buy the stock for five shillings ”

“ I will try to do unto others as I would that others do unto me."
By the merest lifting of his eyebrows, Lane signified that he would make no attempt at detaining the doctor longer than he wished to stay. He awaited punctiliously the other man's pleasure, silently emphasising that the interview was not of his bringing about. "Thinks I'm a boor and a brute," mused Parkman.
"What I wanted to see you about," he began, "relates to Dr. Hubers."
"Ah, yes—poor Hubers. A remarkable man, in many ways. It is one of those things which make one—very sad. ”