One cannot leave the subject of music without
a reference to the promenade concerts that came into being about this period at
the Queen's in Long Acre.
It was here that the first public exhibition of the telephone
was given, and when a series of grunts had vibrated through the hall and a
bald-headed old patriarch had told us that the sound actually came from
Westminster, the surprise and delight of the enraptured audience was intense, and
we marvelled where such discoveries would end.
'One of the Old Brigade' (Donald Shaw), London in the Sixties, 1908