The Lure of Old London

Travel > Europe > Great Britain

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by Sophie Cole

PREFACE

PEOPLE who are kind enough to read my stories sometimes tell me they like them on account of their London atmosphere. This is reassuring, because London is, to me, what "King Charles' head" was to "Mr. Dick," and when my publisher suggested that I should write this volume I mounted my hobby-horse with glee.

The objects of the journeys recorded were chosen haphazard. With a myriad places clamouring for notice, and each place brimful of interest, one takes the first that comes, reflecting that what one doesn't see to-day can be seen to-morrow, regretful only that, no matter how many to-morrows may remain, there will not be enough to exhaust the charms of London. London has moods for each hour and surprises round every corner. It may be the enchantress, or the "stony-hearted step-mother," but one part it can never play—that of the bore. "Strange stories," says Walter Thornbury, in his introduction to "Old and New London," "about strange men grow like moss in every crevice of the bricks." To people the streets with the shades of those "strange men" is a fascinating pastime which I owe, in large measure, to the guidance of that wonderful and inexhaustible book.

If, in this humble little volume of my own, I dared aspire to do anything more than please myself, it would be to share with some lovers of London those moods of curious happiness which one finds in the haunts of London's ghosts.

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