Memories of London in the 'Forties, ' (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1908 Excerpt: ... 211 IV. A LONDON CLUB.1 One evening in the year 1844, when I was in London, George Henry Lewes took me with him to a kind of literary club, or rather a gathering of literary acquaintances of his, which met from time to time in a house at the foot of Northumberland Street, that narrow street which struck off from Charing Cross and ran down from the Strand to the riverside. In an upper room of this house I found a number of men seated, some on chairs, 1 These memores were dictated to me by my father, on winter evenings, six years ago. When they were written I read them aloud to him; and as they stood then, they are now printed.--P'. M. some on wooden benches, talking and smoking, --not more than twenty, perhaps, altogether. Lewes pointed out some of them to me. One was Douglas Jerrold, whom I had not seen before. There was a good deal of talk going on among them, but nothing of any special interest to me. I do not know what may have been the case on other occasions, but that evening was rather dull, though I had an impression that Douglas Jerrold was the talker most in request. That was my sole experience of this little gathering, which continued, I suppose, for a year or two after that. But in 1847, when I was again in London, I found that this occasional meeting of friends in the upper room in Northumberland Street had transmuted itself into a more regular club, called the Museum Club, probably because some of its chief members were readers in the British Museum. It rented a house in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, on the right side of the street as you go down from St Martin's Lane, and near the Market; and it was a club of the usual sort, open all day as well as in the evenings, and where members could breakfast and dine. I became a member of this club. T..