. A wanderer in London. obablytoo ambitious too; but there is a house at the corner ofCheyne Walk and Beaufort Street, in whose top windowsover-looking the grey and pearl river one could be veryserene. Other Cheyne Walk houses are very appealingtoo: No. 15, with a sundial, and No. 6, square and grave,and No. 2, with its httle loggia, and Old Swan House, thatriparian palace. If however I was to overlook the ThamesI think I would choose one of the venerable residences onthe walls of the Tower, from which one could observe notonly the river but, at only one remove, the sea itself. I have sometime
. A wanderer in London. obablytoo ambitious too; but there is a house at the corner ofCheyne Walk and Beaufort Street, in whose top windowsover-looking the grey and pearl river one could be veryserene. Other Cheyne Walk houses are very appealingtoo: No. 15, with a sundial, and No. 6, square and grave,and No. 2, with its httle loggia, and Old Swan House, thatriparian palace. If however I was to overlook the ThamesI think I would choose one of the venerable residences onthe walls of the Tower, from which one could observe notonly the river but, at only one remove, the sea itself. I have sometimes amused myself by jotting down theaddresses of the houses I have liked, intending to find outwho lived in them; but the London Directory seems to behopelessly beyond the reach of anyone not in an office or apubhc-house. But I do happen to know who it is thatowns some of the most desirable houses in my bag. Iknow, for example, the pretty white and green house wherethe author of Peter Pan Uves; I know that the little low. < W 2 Ed ^ s S ST. ^ a - as •I a 5 * 03 a: w as D H THE HOUSE OPPOSITE 11 house facing St. Jamess Park by Queen Annes Gatebelongs to Sir James Knowles; and there is a beautifulwhite house on the south side of Hyde Park, in KensingtonGore, — an old house within its own gates, with a gardenbehind it, which I have discovered to belong to a certainLord; but everyone that I know seems to want that. If ever I were found in these houses it would not befor theft, but to sec if their Chippendale was really worthyof them, and how blue their china was, and if they hadany good pictures. Perhaps many a burglar has begunpurely as an amateur in furniture and decoration. I rather think it is Charles Kingsley who says, in oneof the grown-up digressions in Water Babies, that thebeauty of the house opposite is of more consequence thanthat of the house one lives in: because one rarely sees thehouse one is in, but is always conscious of the (if it was Kingsley
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