She had indeed many
disappointments, and London at large suffered from her vivid
remembrance of the strong points of the American civic idea; but she
made the best of its dingy dignities and only heaved an occasional
sigh and uttered a desultory "Well!" which led no further and lost
itself in retrospect. The truth was that, as she said herself, she was
not in her element. "I've not a sympathy with inanimate objects,"
she remarked to Isabel at the National Gallery; and she continued to
suffer from the meagreness of the glimpse that had as yet been
vouchsafed to her of the inner life. Landscapes by Turner and Assyrian
bulls were a poor substitute for the literary dinner-parties at
which she had hoped to meet the genius and renown of Great Britain.
"Where are your public men, where are your men and women of
intellect?" she enquired of Ralph, standing in the middle of Trafalgar
Square as if she had supposed this to be a place where she would
naturally meet a few. "That's one of them on the top of the column,
you say- Lord Nelson? Was he a lord too? Wasn't he high enough, that
they had to stick him a hundred feet in the air? That's the past- I
don't care about the past; I want to see some of the leading minds
of the present.
Pages:
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246