It is not without melancholy that I wander among my
recollections of the world of letters in London when first,
bashful but eager, I was introduced to it. It is long since I
frequented it, and if the novels that describe its present
singularities are accurate much in it is now changed. The
venue is different. Chelsea and Bloomsbury have taken the
place of Hampstead, Notting Hill Gate, and High Street, Kensington.
Then it was a distinction to be under forty, but now to
be more than twenty-five is absurd. I think in those
days we were a little shy of our emotions, and the fear of
ridicule tempered the more obvious forms of pretentiousness.
I do not believe that there was in that genteel Bohemia an
intensive culture of chastity, but I do not remember so crude
a promiscuity as seems to be practised in the present day.
We did not think it hypocritical to draw over our vagaries the
curtain of a decent silence. The spade was not invariably
called a bloody shovel. Woman had not yet altogether come
into her own.
I lived near Victoria Station, and I recall long excursions by
bus to the hospitable houses of the literary.
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