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Sloane Street, c. 1900, a short walk north of the townhouse where Woolson stayed during her first winter in London. The dominant building at the end of the street is an apartment block built in 1882, the year before she arrived. After a fire in 1904, it reopened as the Hyde Park Hotel (currently the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park). The horse-drawn omnibus at center boasts then-ubiquitous advertisements for Pears Soap and Oakey’s Knife Polish. In her story, which is set in 1892, Woolson describes omnibuses passing by on Sloane Street: “their sides bore advice (important in the blackest of towns) about soap.” (Photo by LL/Roger Viollet via Getty Images)
from In Sloane Street (Originally published in Harper's Bazar, June 11, 1892.
“WELL, I’ve seen the National Gallery, and that’s over,” said Mrs . Moore, taking off her smart little bonnet and delicately drying with her handkerchief two drops which were
visible on its ribbons . “And I think I’m very enterprising . You would never have got Isabella to go in such a rain .”
“Of course not . Isabella likes to stay at home and read Me- morials of a Quiet Life; it makes her feel so superior,” answered Gertrude Remington .
“Superior?” commented Mrs . Moore, contemptuously . “Mary would not have gone, either .”
“No . But Mary—that’s another affair . Mary would not touch the Memorials with the tip of her finger, and she wouldn’t have minded the rain; but she doesn’t care for galleries . With her great love for art, she prefers a book, or, rather, certain books, about pictures, to the pictures themselves . For she thinks that painters, as a rule, are stupid—have no ideas; whereas the art critics—that is, the two or three she likes—really know what a picture means .”
“Better than the painters themselves?”
“Oh, far!” answered Miss Remington . “Mary thinks that the work of the painters themselves is merely mechanical; it is the art critic—always her two or three—who discovers the soul in their productions .”
“The only art critics I know are Mrs . Jameson and Ruskin,” remarked Mrs . Moore, in a vague tone, as she drew off her closely fitting jacket by means of a contortion .
“To Mary, those two are Tupper and Sandford and Mer- ton,” responded Miss Remington . “And I agree with her about Ruskin; all his later books are the weakest twaddle in the world —violent, ignorant, childish .”
