Sloane Street

“ But this is the unvarnished record of an odious hour, and it passed without further aggravation from without; only, as I drove to Sloane Street, the news was on all the posters, and on one I read of "a clew" which spelt for me a doom I was grimly resolved to share.
Already there was something in the nature of a "run" upon the Sloane Street branch of the City and Suburban. A cab drove away with a chest of reasonable dimensions as mine drove up, while in the bank itself a lady was making a painful scene. ”

“ From Knightsbridge, formerly a suburb, and now part of London, the main roads to Fulham and Hammersmith branch off at the north end of Sloane Street (about a quarter of a mile west of Hyde Park Corner) , thus:—
And at the south termination of Sloane Street, which is 3,299 feet in length, the King’s Road commences from Sloane Square. ”

“ As for Knightsbridge, if we imagine all the great modern buildings such as Sloane Court and the Barracks done away with, and picture a long unpaved road stretching away into fields and open country westward, with a few small houses of the brick box type on both sides, we get some idea of the district. Sloane Street was then in fact quite the end of London; not long before it had been dangerous to travel to the outlying village of Chelsea without protection at night, and it was not until another fourteen years had passed that the Five Fields were laid out for building. ”

“ Most elusive, very lordly, [140]
To unbend enough to take them
(At a price) as far as Sloane Street.
In that hard-won London taxi,
Speeding down dim Piccadilly
On its way to darkened Sloane Street
I will leave my Tiadatha
On his first sweet night in England—
Leave him feeling very happy,
Drugged with a divine contentment,
Feeling life was paying interest
On the days he had invested
In those dreary Balkan trenches.
Leave him with the things he’d ached for
In those two long years of exile,
Leave him to his well-loved London
And the arms of green-eyed Phyllis. ”

“ Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, or All Saints, Margaret Street, may be beautifully ornate, and the congregation what Lord Beaconsfield called "sparkling and modish"; but they can never have the romantic charm of the Village Church where you were confirmed side by side with the keeper's son, or proposed to the Vicar's daughter when you were wreathing holly round the lectern. There is a magic in the memory of a country home with which no urban associations can compete. ”

“ Forty years since, there was neither draper’s nor butcher’s shop between Hyde Park Corner and Sloane Street, and only one in the whole locality where a newspaper could be had, or writing paper purchased. There was no conveyance to London but by a kind of stagecoach; the roads were dimly lighted by oil, [30] and the modern paving only to be seen along Knightsbridge Terrace. ”

“ It led, at first, through what, I take it, was some part of Walham Green; then along the Lillie Road, through Brompton, across the Fulham Road, through the network of streets leading to Sloane Street, across Sloane Street into Lowndes Square. Who goes that way goes some distance, and goes through some important thoroughfares ”

“ Sloane was not without an object in life.
In fact, he had two objects in life: the happiness of his daughter, Lucille, and the study of crime and criminals. The latter interest had brought Hastings to the Sloane country home in Virginia. Judge Wilton, an old friend of the wrecked and wealthy Mr. Sloane, had met the detective on the street in Washington and urged:
"Go down to Sloanehurst and spend Saturday night. I'll be there when you arrive. Sloane's got his mind set on seeing you; and you won't regret it. His library on criminology will be a revelation, even to you." ”

“ Here they discharged it; and inquiring of a policeman where Moor Street was, received the intelligence that it lay down behind, but that they had better take the first turning to the right, and then inquire again. 154Accordingly they turned off from Sloane Street and entered the network of small lanes lying between Hans Place and Knightsbridge. Densely populated as the neighbourhood was, there were few signs of business, or the bustle of every day life. The place seemed entirely deserted by grown up people, and handed over bodily to children. ”

“ Mr. Fairholt, the distinguished artist and antiquary (at No. 10) , Mr. Walter Lacy (38) , Dr. Morison (27) , and the Rev. Mackenzie Walcot, to whose writings on the city of Westminster I owe several obligations, are among its residents.
New Street, built, I believe, about 1773, was a new street across the fields to Sloane Street, and is the point dividing Knightsbridge and Brompton—formerly, according to the landladies, a very “respectable” street; it has in our day sadly changed. At No. ”

“ Those of its modest brick houses which remain have not been ruined by too many modern improvements; they are prim and respectable, clad in a sedate secluded sobriety, not at all of this day. Their little front gardens are unpretending and almost sad. Between them and the street are fine specimens of old wrought iron in railings and in gates, in last century brackets for lamps, in iron extinguishers for the links they used to carry. The name “Hans Sloane House” is wrought in open iron letters, in the gate of No. ”

“ Both Hubbard and Mackwith had appointments for which they were already late, the one at the Admiralty, the other in the Temple. I therefore parted from them at Sloane Square Station, and, being in no great hurry myself, turned back along King's Road. What I was in search of was a representative public-house. We have all heard of "the man in the street." You often get even closer to the heart of things when you listen to the man in the pub. ”

“ He also held the appointment of physician to the Prince of Wales, which he resigned, and abruptly quitted London for Jamaica in 1734. Writing to Sir Hans Sloane from Kingston in that island on 3 June 1736, he says : 'My misfortunes came so fast upon me, and my brother's provocations were so frequently repeated, that I was hurried in a manner to death about 'em' (Sloane MS. 4041, f. 9) . He died a few weeks afterwards, leaving no issue by his wife, Sarah Banckes, daughter of a merchant in Leadenhall Street. ”

“ About a mile westward from the village of Danvers, Mass., a grassy road, named Summer Street, branches off to the right and north. It is a pleasant, winding road, bordered by picturesque old stone fences and lined with barberry and raspberry bushes and gnarled old apple-trees. On either side are cultivated fields. ”

“ Whittier was staying at the house of Rev. Samuel J. May. His sister had gone to the lecture, and Mr. Whittier, on hearing of the disturbance, had fears for her safety, and went out to seek her. He said to the writer that when he reached the City Hall he saw before him the best dressed mob imaginable. Presently he heard a cry, "They've got him!" After a short, sharp scuffle Garrison was got into a carriage by the police, and taken to the Leverett Street jail, as the only place where he could be safe that night in Boston. Mr. Whittier and Mr. May immediately went down to the jail to see him. ”

“ But I passed one letter-box, then another, and in the end found myself going up Collins Street with the letter still in my pocket—against my heart. Collins Street at four o’clock in the afternoon is not exactly a desert solitude; but I had never felt more isolated from the rest of mankind as when I walked that day its crowded pavement, battling desperately with my thoughts and feeling already vanquished. ”

“ History repeats itself, and every city is bound by all the laws of civilization to have one special street wherein the votaries of fashion may congregate. Collins Street is not, of course, such a grand thoroughfare as those above mentioned, but the people who stroll up and down the broad pavement are quite as charmingly dressed, and as pleasant as any of the paripatetics of those famous cities. ”

“ Yes—in all Sloane Square, on that damp and foggy Christmas Eve in the year 1913, I doubt if a more morose, self-satisfied, cynical human being plunged into the mists than I. I was unhappy, and reveled in my very unhappiness. If it had been in my power, I would have sent a cloud of gloom into every home and over every hearth in London. There was something splendid, something classical, in my melancholy; it was like Hamlet's, but greater than Hamlet's, for he knew the reason of his mood, while mine was born of an intangible superiority to my day! ”

“ Sloane Square, indeed, gave me the impression, not so much of a suburb as of the suburban portion of a great London railway terminus. It was positively pretty. People were shopping with comparative leisure, omnibus horses were being rubbed down and watered on the west side of the Square, out of the way of the main stream of traffic. A postman, clearing the letter-box at the office, stopped his work momentarily to read the contents of a postcard. For the moment I understood Caesar’s feelings on the brink of the Rubicon, and the emotions of Cortes “when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific.” ”

“ Though the streets are to-day much changed from those which the poet walked alone save for the company of his Muse, you can walk them even now, until you come to a thoroughfare noticeable because it is so short and winding, tucked away at the edge of the city's business section. And if you do walk into Stone Street, you must of necessity come to a bend from which both ends of the street curve out of sight, while you stand in a kind of huge well, closed in by iron-shuttered warehouses. Here in this bend you are standing on what was the garden of Jacob Steendam's checker-fronted house. ”

“ Brand let his inscrutable gaze fall on the young man, appraised him a tailor's model and a saphead—somewhat unjustly it must be admitted—and let his gaze drift into space. Mr. Sloane had been weighed and found wanting, tried by the standards of the man from the West. ”

“ Like it, it is decorated with the brass plates of physicians and the red lamps of surgeons, but, just as the medical men in Harley Street, in keeping with that thoroughfare, are broad, open, and with nothing to conceal, so those of Sowell Street, like their hiding-place, shrink from observation, and their lives are as sombre, secret, and dark as the street itself. ”

“ Sloane’s mental vigour long outlived his power of bodily locomotion. For years he could move from room to room, or on very bright days from room to garden, only by the aid of an invalid chair. In other respects, his health gave a weighty sanction to the counsel which he had been wont to give, not infrequently, in lieu of an invited but superfluous prescription. ‘I advise you’ he would say, ‘to what I practice myself. I never take physic when I am well. ”

“ As she drifted down the west side of Second Avenue, her thoughts so absorbed her that she was oblivious of the slushy sidewalk, even of the crossings where one had to pick one's way as through a shallow creek with stepping stones here and there. There were many women alone, as in every other avenue and every frequented cross street throughout the city—women made eager to desperation by the long stretch of impossible weather. Every passing man was hailed, sometimes boldly, sometimes softly. ”

“ Foul slums there are in the East End, of course, as there are in the West; want and misery there are, as wherever a host is gathered together to fight for food. But they are not often spectacular in kind.
Of this street there are about one hundred and fifty yards—on the same pattern all. It is not pretty to look at. A dingy little brick house twenty feet high, with three square holes to carry the windows, and an oblong hole to carry the door, is not a pleasing object; and each side of this street is formed by two or three score of such houses in a row, with one front wall in common. ”

“ For, in this garden Hans Sloane studied, and when he became rich and famous and bought the manor of Chelsea, he gave the freehold of this place to the Apothecaries’ Company on condition that it should be devoted for ever to the use of all students of nature.
Westward a little way, we come to “Swan House.” This modern-antique mansion stands on the site of, and gets its name from, the “Old Swan Tavern,” which has been gone these fifteen years now, and which stood right over the river, with projecting wooden balconies, and a land entrance from Queen’s Road. ”

“ Slone had asked that question every day, more than once.
"Yes, he could—to-day. I know it," replied Lucy. "Oh—I get so—so excited. I—I make a fool of myself—over him. But to ride him—going like that—Lin! it's just glorious!"
"You sure can ride him," replied Slone. "I can't see a fault anywhere—in him—or in your handling him. He never breaks. He goes hard, but he saves something. He gets mad—fierce—all the time, yet he WANTS to go your way. ”

“ Collins Street corresponds to New York's Broadway, London's Regent Street and Rotten Row, and to the Boulevards of Paris. It is on the Block that people show off their new dresses, bow to their friends, cut their enemies, and chatter small talk. ”

“ Sloan's mouth was close to the lawyer's ear. "There is another explanation. If the fellow is game, and anxious enough to reach the train to risk his neck for it, there's a path he could have taken which would get him there without his coming round this turn. I never thought it a possible thing till I saw his horse trotting on ahead of us without a rider." Then as Reuther came ambling up, "Young lady, don't let me scare you, but it looks now as if the young man had taken a short cut to the station, which, so far as I know, has never been taken but by one man before. ”

“ And Mrs. Sloane went on her way smiling. “Diana! Diana!” she said to herself, “oh, to be young again! How you must enjoy it all!” She stopped. “Well, well, my dear! I never expected to see you rioting like this. Why are you so shy in some gardens? What’s this about not growing unless you are put in a draughty place?” And she lifted a trail of Tropæolum and put it on its right way.
Just outside Elsie’s gate Mrs. Sloane met Mr. Watkins. “You are coming in?”—and she held the gate open.
“Not to-day, I think,” said the weary Mr. Watkins, adding something about his soul’s solitude,—“not to-day!” ”