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‘You’d think they would try to turn a profit,’ she harrumphed. ‘That’s a very American concept,’ Henley could not resist putting in. ‘Sometimes, things are done simply for their cultural value.’
‘What’s it like, then, to see your creation transformed, shifted from a page to a proscenium?’ ‘Strange,’ I replied, keeping my voice, like Stoker’s, low. ‘It’s as if you were seeing a lady with whom you were once in love, now strolling on the arm of another man.’
‘If you reduce people to savage circumstance,’ I said, ‘then savagery may indeed erupt.’ ‘Perhaps,’ he replied, ‘or else the savagery is inborn.’
as well as for the intellectual rigour of its illustrious membership (Dickens had ended his feud with Thackeray on its grand staircase; Darwin was often seen scratching his beard in the well-stocked library; Michael Faraday had once served as the club’s secretary), the Athenaeum exuded an effortless superiority over its neighbours and peers.
