He strolled around. The place had always struck him as slightly inhuman. Yet for generations of Englishmen it had aroused images of fortunes won overnight, intrigue under the palms, buckets of champagne, King Solomon's own mine of high life. In its heyday, they told you, it had been "wonderful." But Hood found it hard to imagine the spectacle there, even at the height of its mode, when the place had been filled with the tarts and the nobility of Europe. Perhaps the cupids had been a bit more furbished then and you could flirt in the poetic flickering of the gas jets.
1967.