Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... reasonably connected with the many houses, with the very stones of the Squares, nearly all the great ones of the past who have made London their home, and whose footsteps must so often have echoed on the pavements or in the rooms, from Devonshire Square in the east to St. James's in the west. But although I have not attempted any such rehabilitation of life in the past as this, I have noticed the residence in various Squares of such real personages as Esmond and Sir Charles Grandison, Ralph Nickleby and Amelia Sedley; and even if these names are not to be found in the Rate Books, their ghosts must surely haunt the Squares where their actual presence seems hardly less real than does that of the many famous men and women whom we shall meet with in the following pages. Apart from the intrinsic interest attaching to the various Squares,1 we must remember that they all form part of that great organic whole, that wonder and mystery, that microcosm of the universe, London! Johnson once said that "London is nothing to some people; but to a man whose pleasure is intellectual, London is the place." If my readers agree with the great lexicographer, to borrow Miss Pinkerton's phrase, I shall hardly want a further inducement to tempt them into a perambulation of these lesser lungs to which the innumerable arteries of this great organism lead, and they will be more ready to find excuses for the many imperfections and shortcomings in the following pages, because these pages try to tell, however inadequately, something of the City they love. NOTE During the writing of this book a few alterations have taken place in the occupancy of some of the houses in the various squares, apart from the changes of private ownership which are constantly occurring, and...
