Category: History - British
LONDON in the sixties was so different from the London of to-day that, looking back through the long vista of years, one is astonished at the gradual changes—unnoticed as they proceed. Streets have been annihilated and transformed into boulevards; churches have been removed an...
THE providential success of Playfair in the Cambridgeshire of ’72 had released more than one of our clique from the jaws of the usurer, and Bill Stourton, by the judicious inves...
11. CHAPTER X.THE Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, at the time of which I am writing, was as crotchety a specimen of the old school as the Peninsular had ever turned out. Clean shaved, with a W...
10. did. One cannot follow the ups and downs of this unhappy sport ofFortune without comparing the cheers that everywhere greeted him up to ’67 with the execrations with which he was assailed by the same rabble at Epsom the following year, and al...
6. CHAPTER VI.BEFORE the Embankment came into existence, Salisbury Street and Cecil Street—where the hotel now stands—consisted for the most part of lodging houses. Overlooking the river, sta...
23. CHAPTER XXII.THE death of the Duke of Cambridge recalled many instances of the kindly nature of the old warrior. Abused and ridiculed by the ignorant and unwashed for actions—more or less im...
15. CHAPTER XIV.THE tercentenary of Shakespeare in ’64 suggested an experience that many of us were anxious to participate in. That we were likely to be successful was by no means certain, for...
19. CHAPTER XVIII.THE craze for “table-turning,” “spirit-rapping,” and every conceivable trash connected with the occult sciences, was in full blast in the long-ago Sixties, and old ladies would...
1. CHAPTER I.LONDON in the sixties was so different from the London of to-day that, looking back through the long vista of years, one is astonished at the gradual changes—unnoticed as they p...
5. CHAPTER V.IF any of the Bucks of the sixties were suddenly brought to life and placed in the centre of Piccadilly Circus, no labyrinth could more completely puzzle them than the structura...
2. CHAPTER II.ABOUT this time all England was ringing with what was known as the “Trent affair”; 10,000 troops had been ordered to Montreal, of which a considerable portion were Guards, and s...
16. CHAPTER XV.IN the long-ago sixties the Artillery Ball at Woolwich was the most select and the most sought after function that the dancing community yearned for, and about the same time Maj...
3. CHAPTER III.LONDON in the sixties possessed no music-halls as at present except the London Pavilion and a transpontine establishment unknown to the West End. This former had not long previo...
8. CHAPTER VIII.WHILE racing men have gained by the railway’s close proximity to the course, others are now deprived of many of the sights there used to be seen along the road. From Westminster...
4. CHAPTER IV.“Don’t go yet, dear,” appealed a sweet siren as Bobby, looking at his watch, swore that when duty called one must obey, but eventually succumbed to a voice like a foghorn shouti...
22. CHAPTER XXI.I am not of a cruel disposition, but I confess that certain sights afford me a morbid gratification, the more so as I know that one witness more or less can in no way affect the...
13. CHAPTER XII.IN the sixties “hangings” were done in public, and anything of an unusual kind attracted large parties from the West End; this was as recognised a custom as the more modern fash...
21. CHAPTER XX.PERHAPS no ingredients are more certain to produce an explosion in a limited space than a Post Captain proceeding as a passenger on the ship of an officer some months his junior...
14. CHAPTER XIII.LONG’S Hotel, in Bond Street, as it appeared in the sixties, was a species of adjunct to half the clubs in London. Men playing till three or four in the morning in clubs that as...
18. CHAPTER XVII.SIR Henry De Hoghton, a wealthy baronet who was above the horizon in the Sixties, though possessed of a fine estate and a palatial residence, preferred the hand-to-mouth existen...
7. CHAPTER VII.SOME months had elapsed since the regiment landed in Ireland, when one of those inscrutable ways of Providence gave another opportunity of renewing one’s London experiences, and...
24. CHAPTER XXIII.WE must pass back to the fifties to introduce a personage who figures conspicuously in the sixties and seventies, both in comedy and tragedy, and then shuffled off this mortal c...
17. CHAPTER XVI.WHEN “Purchase” was in full blast the chosen race had some data to go upon as regards the “possibilities” of their clients, who for the most part were Army men, and when the mys...
25. CHAPTER XXIV.I WILL now relate as a fitting end to these long reminiscences what I witnessed forty years ago in the island of Mauritius, when death was having a fine harvest by the ravages o...
9. CHAPTER IX.A VISIT I once paid to Castle Donington had initiated me into many of the mysteries of racing of which I had hitherto been in profound ignorance. I had learnt that heavy plunger...
12. CHAPTER XI.Card-sharping—pure and simple—is such a low and contemptible subject that we would not presume to present it to our readers were it not occasionally reduced to a “fine art,” and...