The churchyard, Lady Gregory tells
us, gave him pause on first seeing the rooms. "I should not like
to live here, I should be afraid of ghosts." "Oh no, sir, there is
always a policeman round the corner." {24} "Pleaceman X." has not,
perhaps, before been revered as the Shade-compelling son of Maia:
"Tu pias laetis animas reponis
Sedibus, virgaque levem coerces
Aurea turbam."
Here he worked through the morning; the afternoon took him to the
"Travellers," where his friends, Sir Henry Bunbury and Mr. Chenery,
usually expected him; then at eight o'clock, if not, as Shylock
says, bid forth, he went to dine at the Athenaeum. His dinner seat
was in the left-hand corner of the coffee-room, where, in the
thirties, Theodore Hook had been wont to sit, gathering near him so
many listeners to his talk, that at Hook's death in 1841 the
receipts for the club dinners fell off to a large amount. Here, in
the "Corner," as they called it, round Kinglake would be Hayward,
Drummond Wolff, Massey, Oliphant, Edward Twisleton, Strzelecki,
Storks, Venables, Wyke, Bunbury, Gregory, American Ticknor, and a
few more; Sir W.
Pages:
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115