BEFORE setting down my impressions of the great English metropolis; a
phrase which I have thought out as a designation for London; I think it
proper to offer an initial apology. I find that I receive impressions
with great difficulty and have nothing of that easy facility in picking
them up which is shown by British writers on America. I remember Hugh
Walpole telling me that he could hardly walk down Broadway without
getting at least three dollars' worth and on Fifth Avenue five dollars'
worth; and I recollect that St. John Ervine came up to my house in
Montreal, drank a cup of tea, borrowed some tobacco, and got away with
sixty dollars' worth of impressions of Canadian life and character.
For this kind of thing I have only a despairing admiration. I can get an
impression if I am given time and can think about it beforehand. But
it requires thought. This fact was all the more distressing to me in as
much as one of the leading editors of America had made me a proposal,
as honourable to him as it was lucrative to me, that immediately on my
arrival in London;--or just before it,--I should send him a thousand
words on the genius of the English, and five hundred words on the spirit
of London, and two hundred words of personal chat with Lord Northcliffe.
This contract I was unable to fulfil except the personal chat with Lord
Northcliffe, which proved an easy matter as he happened to be away in
Australia.
But I have since pieced together my impressions as conscientiously as I
could and I present them here. If they seem to be a little bit modelled
on British impressions of America I admit at once that the influence
is there. We writers all act and react on one another; and when I see a
good thing in another man's book I react on it at once.
London, the name of which is already known to millions of readers of
this book, is beautifully situated on the river Thames, which here
sweeps in a wide curve with much the same breadth and majesty as the St.
Jo River at South Bend, Indiana. London, like South Bend itself, is
a city of clean streets and admirable sidewalks, and has an excellent
water supply. One is at once struck by the number of excellent and
well-appointed motor cars that one sees on every hand, the neatness
of the shops and the cleanliness and cheerfulness of the faces of the
people. In short, as an English visitor said of Peterborough, Ontario,
there is a distinct note of optimism in the air. I forget who it was who
said this, but at any rate I have been in Peterborough myself and I have
seen it.
Contrary to my expectations and contrary to all our Transatlantic
precedents, I was not met at the depot by one of the leading citizens,
himself a member of the Municipal Council, driving his own motor car.
He did not tuck a fur rug about my knees, present me with a really
excellent cigar and proceed to drive me about the town so as to show me
the leading points of interest, the municipal reservoir, the gas works
and the municipal abattoir. In fact he was not there. But I attribute
his absence not to any lack of hospitality but merely to a certain
reserve in the English character. They are as yet unused to the arrival
of lecturers. When they get to be more accustomed to their coming, they
will learn to take them straight to the municipal abattoir just as we
do.
For lack of better guidance, therefore, I had to form my impressions of
London by myself. In the mere physical sense there is much to attract
the eye. The city is able to boast of many handsome public buildings and
offices which compare favourably with anything on the other side of the
Atlantic. On the bank of the Thames itself rises the power house of the
Westminster Electric Supply Corporation, a handsome modern edifice in
the later Japanese style. Close by are the commodious premises of the
Imperial Tobacco Company, while at no great distance the Chelsea Gas
Works add a striking feature of rotundity. Passing northward, one
observes Westminster Bridge, notable as a principal station of the
underground railway. This station and the one next above it, the Charing
Cross one, are connected by a wide thoroughfare called Whitehall. One
of the best American drug stores is here situated. The upper end of
Whitehall opens into the majestic and spacious Trafalgar Square. Here
are grouped in imposing proximity the offices of the Canadian Pacific
and other railways, The International Sleeping Car Company, the Montreal
Star, and the Anglo-Dutch Bank. Two of the best American barber shops
are conveniently grouped near the Square, while the existence of a tall
stone monument in the middle of the Square itself enables the American
visitor to find them without difficulty. Passing eastward towards the
heart of the city, one notes on the left hand the imposing pile of St.
Paul's, an enormous church with a round dome on the top, suggesting
strongly the first Church of Christ (Scientist) on Euclid Avenue,
Cleveland.
But the English churches not being labelled, the visitor is often at a
loss to distinguish them.
A little further on one finds oneself in the heart of financial London.
Here all the great financial institutions of America--The First National
Bank of Milwaukee, The Planters National Bank of St. Louis, The Montana
Farmers Trust Co., and many others,--have either their offices or their
agents. The Bank of England--which acts as the London Agent of The
Montana Farmers Trust Company,--and the London County Bank, which
represents the People's Deposit Co., of Yonkers, N.Y., are said to be in
the neighbourhood.
This particular part of London is connected with the existence of that
strange and mysterious thing called "the City." I am still unable to
decide whether the city is a person, or a place, or a thing. But as a
form of being I give it credit for being the most emotional, the most
volatile, the most peculiar creature in the world. You read in the
morning paper that the City is "deeply depressed." At noon it is
reported that the City is "buoyant" and by four o'clock that the City is
"wildly excited."
I have tried in vain to find the causes of these peculiar changes of
feeling. The ostensible reasons, as given in the newspaper, are so
trivial as to be hardly worthy of belief. For example, here is the kind
of news that comes out from the City. "The news that a modus vivendi
has been signed between the Sultan of Kowfat and the Shriek-ul-Islam
has caused a sudden buoyancy in the City. Steel rails which had been
depressed all morning reacted immediately while American mules rose up
sharply to par."... "Monsieur Poincar, speaking at Bordeaux, said
that henceforth France must seek to retain by all possible means the
ping-pong championship of the world: values in the City collapsed at
once."... "Despatches from Bombay say that the Shah of Persia yesterday
handed a golden slipper to the Grand Vizier Feebli Pasha as a sign that
he might go and chase himself: the news was at once followed by a drop
in oil, and a rapid attempt to liquidate everything that is fluid..."
But these mysteries of the City I do not pretend to explain. I have
passed through the place dozens of times and never noticed anything
particular in the way of depression or buoyancy, or falling oil, or
rising rails. But no doubt it is there.
A little beyond the city and further down the river the visitor finds
this district of London terminating in the gloomy and forbidding
Tower, the principal penitentiary of the city. Here Queen Victoria was
imprisoned for many years.
Excellent gasoline can be had at the American Garage immediately north
of the Tower, where motor repairs of all kinds are also carried on.
These, however, are but the superficial pictures of London, gathered by
the eye of the tourist. A far deeper meaning is found in the examination
of the great historic monuments of the city. The principal ones of
these are the Tower of London (just mentioned), the British Museum and
Westminster Abbey. No visitor to London should fail to see these. Indeed
he ought to feel that his visit to England is wasted unless he has seen
them. I speak strongly on the point because I feel strongly on it. To
my mind there is something about the grim fascination of the historic
Tower, the cloistered quiet of the Museum and the majesty of the ancient
Abbey, which will make it the regret of my life that I didn't see any
one of the three. I fully meant to: but I failed: and I can only hope
that the circumstances of my failure may be helpful to other visitors.
The Tower of London I most certainly intended to inspect. Each day,
after the fashion of every tourist, I wrote for myself a little list of
things to do and I always put the Tower of London on it. No doubt the
reader knows the kind of little list that I mean. It runs: