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PREFACE TO THE PAGEANT OF
PEN AND INK SKETCHES
HROUGHOUT this book the reader will find a pageant
of history from i860 to the present day. These
sketches depict the days when the French emigre
met his fellow fugitives from their beloved France, the
age of wild night life of the eighties and early nineties,
the Edwardian days of splendour, the terrible Great War
and the sober age of modern London as it is to-day.
The Cafe Royal made a good background for the
idiosyncrasies, capers, tricks, jests, practical jokes, wrangles
and debates, besides the everyday lively chit-chat and
conversation of the little world of poets, painters, journalists
who frequented the place, and the solid background of men
of affairs, diplomatists and officials who helped to enjoy and
support it. So it became, duly, a London institution and
took a premier place in the Quadrant end of Regent Street,
the corner where Regency liveliness had yet continued.
Outside its doors flowed, full-tide, the surges of popular
demonstration at times of general excitement, whether about
the Boat Race or the Relief of Mafeking; and as the
bewhiskered generation went out, the newest devices on
wheels, bicycle and motor-car, swung past. At the same
time costume changed from crinoline to bustle and from
pre-war high-shouldered leg-of-mutton sleeves and train-
trailing skirts came, by gradual degrees, the knee-high
garments with silk stockings and high-heeled shoes which