One could, of course, go loitering over reams of paper in Piccadilly, for nearly every house or its site has had a history; every stone has echoed the footsteps of the illustrious and interesting for many a generation. All the great pageants of London have passed between its shops and houses into the night. And now, as we turn into the bustle of its chief and richest artery, let us exclaim with Phil Porter:—“Farewell, my dearest Piccadilly.”
CHAPTER IV.
BOND STREET.
“And now our Brothers Bond Street enter
Dear Street of London’s charms the centre.”
—Lytton.
BOND STREET.
Bond Street is really as much the centre of the charms of London to-day, as it was when Lord Lytton wrote the lines quoted above; if by charms we mean fine shops, about which Lord Beaconsfield once waxed eloquent, and a segregation of brilliant humanity; otherwise it is curious that a thoroughfare of such importance should be at once so narrow and so cut up by tributary streets, in some cases, wider than it is itself, which make it crowded and inconvenient to a degree only possible in a City as old and as relatively unchanged in outline as London; for Bond Street, although not of any great age, as we understand the word, would probably be considered by those not so familiar as ourselves with antiquity, as having a decent pedigree, for it dates from 1686, and forms perhaps the most important portion of the scheme of development associated with Sir Thomas Bond.