Wednesday, February 26, 2014
I Cannot Help My Bad Taste
Cyrus Redding (1785-1870), Fifty Years' Recollections, Literary and Personal, with Observations on Men and Things, 2nd ed., Vol. I (London: Charles J. Skeet, 1858), pp. 45-46:
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The superiority of metropolitan society cannot be disputed, and its more enlarged and liberal modes of thinking and acting; but neither then nor now, had I or have I, any affection for blackened brick walls, interminable streets, rattling vehicles, howling costermongers, wretchedness, poverty, and vice, made more deplorable and vicious by close contact with dissipation, wealth, and luxury. The shady side of a wood in summer, a mountain-top, or the ocean-shore, the lodge in some irriguous valley by the dashing stream for me, before the architectual [sic] extravagances of Buckingham House, or the plaistered mansions and empty show of Belgravia. This may be want of taste for what the hour may deem superlative things; I cannot help my bad taste.
