London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
STRANGERS IN LONDON.
IT has taken quite fifty years to forget the impression created by John Leech, of In it was considered a picture of an actuality to show a group of French Counts regarding with astonishment a wash-hand-stand ewer. "What is this strange machine?" asked foreign nobleman No. 1. was the reply of his friend. This was the general idea of typical Continental conversation in the year of the Great Exhibition, and I am afraid that even now, when we have come to the end of the nineteenth century, amongst the mob the same notion prevails. | |