File:A wanderer in London (1906) (14579854520).jpg

Identifier: wandererinlondon00luca (find matches)
Title: A wanderer in London
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall), 1868-1938
Subjects: Art -- England London London (England) -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : The Macmillan company London, Methuen & co.

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poleons dressing-case ; a painted mask of Voltaire, sardonic and alert, verynigh hfe; a lace collar of Marie Antoinette; the death-mask of Sainte-Beuve; Louis XVIs signed order to thedefenders of the Tuileries to cease firing; several of Ma-dame de Sevignes letters; Napoleons death-mask; Bal-zacs bedroom-door; relics of Madame Roland; and soforth. At every turn one is brought face to face with somevivid fact. After half a dozen visits to the Carnavalet onewould know Paris intimately in all her stages and havealso a quickened interest in her greatest sons. One is often much less struck in a museum by what ispreserved than by what is absent. If these httle thingshave been preserved, one thinks, where are the more con-siderable ones ? For example, when one sees such anarticle as the handle of Marats bathroom, which personallyI do not greatly care for or value, and which perhapsmight as well be at Madame Tussauds, our national mu-seum of morbid relics, one asks oneself the question. Where
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2a H< o O ao HX 55 J*! r H H 33 O :3 s PERSONAL RELICS 175 is the bath itself ? If any tangible reminder of CharlotteCordays crime had to be kept, why was it the bathroomhandle ? It is true that she had to turn it with heravenging hand (one would give something to know howlong her hand paused on it), but had she not a weapon ?And was not the squat individual in a bath — a greatindestructible vessel of metal ? Where is that ? No mat-ter : I do not want to see Marats bath, or the Cordaysknife. None the less one does want to know what hasbecome of certain imperishable things, and perhaps theestablishment of a London museum might bring some ofthem to light. Where are Dr. Johnsons cudgels ? Whereare his wigs ? Where are the other old signboards ? Theiron figures of St. Dunstans in Fleet Street, which used tobeat out the hours — the figures the removal of whichbrought Charles Lamb to tears — are now, I believe, in agfarden in Regents Park. They would, I have no doubt,be ceded to th

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