Colonel McCabe is a link between present-day Richmond and the traditions
and associations of England. He was the friend of Lord Roberts, he
introduced Lord Tennyson to Bull Durham tobacco, and, as is fitting
under the circumstances, he speaks and writes of a hotel as "_an_
hotel."
Henry Sydnor Harrison did his first writing as book reviewer on the
Richmond "Times-Dispatch," of which paper he later became paragrapher
and daily poet, and still later editor in chief. It is commonly reported
in Richmond that the characters in his novel "Queed," the scenes of
which are laid in Richmond, were "drawn from life." I asked Mr. Harrison
about this.
"When the book appeared," he said, "I was much embarrassed by the
disposition of Richmond people--human and natural, I suppose, when you
'know the author'--to identify all the imaginary persons with various
local characters. Some characteristics of the political boss in my story
were in a degree suggested by a local celebrity; Stewart Bryan is
indicated, in passing, as Stewart Byrd; and the bare bones of a historic
case, altered at will, were employed in another connection. But I think
I am stating the literal truth when I say that no figure in the book is
borrowed from life."
* * * * *
The recent residential development in Richmond has been to the west of
the city in the neighborhood of Monument Avenue, a fine double drive,
with a parked center, lined with substantial new homes, and having at
intervals monuments to southern heroes: Lee, Davis, and J.
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