OCR Text |
Show j1' IMPRESSIONS OLD AND NEW ! j Soho The Little Colonies of London Piccadily, Houses and Shops, Covent Garden, Old Part of London Will's Coffee House. I ". , ' I Soho. why the name I do not now. It is an old !! cry of the harriers, but why applied to that particular par-ticular part of London which lies between Warwick War-wick street and Leicester Square. Charing Cress Road and Oxford Street, is a thing difficult to Folye. It is a strange fact that the most of the residents of Soho proper are exclusively French, but still there is nothing strange about it when you ;' consider that every nationality under the sun has a certain part of the great city all its own, a little colony as it were. Do you want to find real downright down-right Americans, well, go to Hampstead and "I i guess" you will come across people there from all j parts of the land of the Stars and Stripes. You want to borrow money; well, don't go to White-! White-! . chapel; the poor Jews live there. Go to Bayswater t Y "r ida Vale, and you will get what you want if I ' you pay big interest and your security is good. j- You have a hankering after ice cream. Just take a trip to Saffron Hill. You will get any quantity a of tins commodity there. You are a German; set- t lie down north of Oxford street, and after a while f ' V you will never know but you are living in the 5- V Fatherland. Everybody has heard of Scotland Yard. There are eute detectives there, and if you 1 want to steer clear of them and wish not your name. . age and so forth inserted in their books of refer- once, keep away from Cleveland street and Percy I street, for these two latter places are the home of anarchists from all parts of the world. 1 remem-I remem-I her a funny incident which happened me once. I " was in a certain part of London and I wanted a shave. I entered a barber's shop and a foreigner did the necessary for me. I emerged from the said shop, and as the day was very warm and I felt ) thirsty. 1 sought a bar nearby and asked for a glass v of beer. . I was enjoying the beer and the conver sation of four men standing close by. Thev were I speaking in French and Italian, and as I knew a 3 little about both languages, I was endeavoring to make my knowledge more perfect by listening. My i friend, the barber, entered, and nodding to me, he joined the group. I never knew how it happened. It was done in a twinkling, but when I recovered :j from my astonishment. I found my five men in I irons and a rough hand on my shoulder asking my j! name and place of residence and all that. It was ' only when my detective friend escorted me to my hotel and found out from the proprietor there I i -was not an anarchist, that I was let out of his gen- I tie custody. It was a "close shave" certainly, and f I never want another like it. Soho is just a conti- s nenlal city living her own life within 'London City. 1 remember well what a prominent Irish member f Parliament said to me as he escorted me through Soho and its surrounding. We stood outside a restaurant, res-taurant, and tapping me on the shoulder, he said: "We are on the Rue St. Honore now (meaning a streel in Paris famous for its restaurants). Come in; ihe food is delicious, but the worst of it is you never know what you are eating." , The Englishman eats and never asks, and these I foreigners' eater to his appetite and grow rich, and .ill because they know how to cook frogs and such ir like genera. Great men at one time or another 1 have Jived in Soho and its neighborhood. Mon mouth. Admiral Shovel, Botanist Banks, Cardinal ' , Wiseman, Edmund Burke, Ilocrarth. Reynolds, Gainsborough, Koan. Macready, Hazlitt and many more names famous for all time in art, science, religion, re-ligion, war and politics. I mentioned a short time ngo ihat every nationality had its little piece of ground or colony in London, so the professional men hare theirs, too. The great doctors live in Harley street, the literary men in Kensington, the srti-ls in Chelsea, St. John's Wood and Hamp-stead, Hamp-stead, the musicians in Baker street, the music hall performers in Leicester Square, the lawyers and bookmen about Chancery Lane and Temple Bar. Having said so much and so little about Soho, let me t.nke you now to Piccadily. It is a magnificent magnifi-cent street, and there are certain shops in it the like of v hieh you would not find anywhere else in the world, and were it not for the traffic, omnibus, cabs hansomes, vegetable carts and such like run- ning all day and long past midnight, Piccadily would be an ideal spot for a residence. Piccadily is never quiet at any hour of the day or night, or at any season of the year. The shops in Piccadily are. as I have said, unique, especially two, the con-. con-. dimcnt house and the taxidermists? Sydney Smith, speaking about the former, said that if England is ever under invasion, the gourmets of the country will make their lat stand there. There are many i famous houses, too, in Piccadily, including Apsley .i House, the residence of the great Duke of Wel- I lingion. It was here that the survivors of Water- ' . loo used to congregate for their yearly banquet. .' Opposite the house is a statue of the Duke watch-' watch-' i'ff ing and keeping guard over his old home, and as . we look 'upon him we seem to hear these words fall L from his lips, these words of another day: Jf , '1'P- Guards, and at them." " ' The house is desolate now; no, not desolate, for within its walls are four of Steen's greatest pictures, pic-tures, the finest Corregio. I suppose, in the world, and a portrait of Velasquez painted by himself. The Rothschilds, too. have a fine mansion m Pie-cadilv Pie-cadilv and with the 'bus drivers that home of the Rothschild is looked upon with a very gracious eye Indeed, because of the owners, and whenever a hrfrse owned bv the greatest force in European finance is victorious, you are quickly made aware of it by, the ) blue and yellow pieces of silk (the colors of the Rothschild) tied to the 'bus drivers whips. The Marquis of Qucensbcrrry, Lord Palmerston. JIis I . - - .-j . t . . hUt Mmmmll w im'in.im ,T..J... WWII II m. " T 1 1 m " llll II ji " """"" Mellon, better known as the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Burdett-Coutts, had a residence here at one time or another. an-other. And here, too, lived General Wolfe, Ar-buthnot, Ar-buthnot, Sheridan and Skenside. A 'bus ride down Piccadily is one of the most enjoyable experiences that I know of. Covent Garden, with its flowers, fruit and greenery, is a remarkable place to visit. If you are up in the early hours of the morning, you will see carts laden with every kind of fruit and vegetables make their way to Covent Garden, and many of the great merchants in these articles from all parts of England, Ireland and Scotland fre quent the Covent Garden mart to buy their goods. Covent Garden is a very old part of London and a very interesting one to boot; interesting if it were only for the fact that Will's Coffee House had its site there. The associations connected with this latter house would fill a volume, and some of Addison's Addi-son's essays give you a little notion of the great men that dis'cussed there at one time or another. In the house next Will's once resided Charles and Mary Lamb. It is now a fruiterer's shop. The flower girls of London buy their flowers in Covent Garden, and then hasten to different .parts of the great city to make what they can out of their purchase. pur-chase. Xext week we shall have a word to say about the Xatioual Gallery, the theatres and restaurants. res-taurants. XAPPER TANDY. London, May 1, 1909. |