Castaway Author:Edmund Hodgson Yates Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. THE WOMAN OF THE WORLD. A Country cousin taken by his metropolitan host down Biffen-street, Park-lane, and told that the houses in that narrow ... more »and somewhat dingy locality were among the most tempting lots offered by fashionable house- agents to moneyed commerce desiring to establish itself in the regions of fashion, would surely be very much surprised. True that there is about them that surrounding of mews and small public-house seemingly inseparable from desirable residences. True that they are situate in the heart of that exclusive quarter, which is, as it were, the Faubourg St. Germain of London, concentrating within its limits the old families, and looking down with contempt upon Belgravia and Tyburnia.True that the drainage is imperfect, and that the rates are enormous. Granting all these advantages, the country cousin might yet be excused for wondering at there being anything like a struggle for the possession of a residence in Biffen-street. For what he would see would be short rows of high-shouldered, tall houses, separated by a narrow, ill-paved street, with—- running across it at right angles — another street, in which are horse-dealers' yards, and small chandlers' shops, and struggling dairies, and other attempts at domestic commerce on a very small scale. The doors of the houses in Biffen-street are so tiny, that one wonders how the enormous giants in plush, who, on fine summer evenings, are to be seen sunning themselves at the portals, manage to squeeze through them ; the windows looking upon the street are old-fashioned and airless, with small panes frequently not too clean, and sashes from which the paint is worn away; the areas are deep and narrow black tanks, and the houses, so far as outward appearanceis concerned, are certainly not more desi...« less