THE CITIES OF ENGLAND
There are so many great cities and historic towns in England that a mere
guide-book enumeration of the chief of them would fill many pages--in
rather a dull fashion. I shall not attempt that, but will take the reader
for a brief glance at some of the more notable centres of population.
In the beginning there is, of course, London--the capital of the world, the
centre from which has sprung most of the great movements of the Christian
era for the betterment of humanity, the magnet which draws to-day the best
of the world's thought and energy. To have the best introduction to London
I should like to think of the visitor coming upon it, as I did for the
first time, in the "small hours" of a clear May morning. A drive through
its streets then was a sheer delight. Hushed they were and solemn, the
torrents of trade stilled for a few hours. But the soul of London was
awake, though its busy material life for a brief time was asleep. The great
grey old city was peopled with ghosts. Through the empty streets paced
London's great men since Caesar, some native and to the land born, others
foreign, finding in England hospitality whether they came as poor refugees
or as noble visitors. From the houses walked out memories and traditions in
spectral hordes. The buildings themselves, mostly of the white freestone of
Bath, which with London smoke becomes a dull black, and then with London
showers learns to show here and there a patch of ghostly white, lent
themselves to the fancy of a city of dreams. The architecture was
disembodied, and floated in the air; the shadows of venerable churches and
institutions were a background to shadows of great men and noble women.
In time I came in front of the Houses of Parliament, the shrine of
representative government. Yonder, looming high in the pale early morning
light, was the Nelson Monument, and stretching from it the Strand, leading
to Fleet Street, whence issued the first newspapers of European
civilisation. Near by Westminster Abbey lifted its grey fane in praise and
prayer. This indeed seemed the very centre and capital of the world.
If you cannot so enter London for the first time, when its busy traffic is
hushed, and the first pale glow of a spring dawn is in the sky, be heedful
that some night you will give up thoughts of your couch to taste that joy.
Wander then down Pall Mall, home of magnificent clubs, after the last late
reveller has been taken to his cab, past the National Gallery, the Church
of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields (a wondrous beautiful church by moonlight or
first-dawn light), through Trafalgar Square, and along the Strand to
Wellington Street. Cross the Thames by Waterloo Bridge, turning a blind eye
to the electric signs that are now allowed to disfigure the south river
front, and see the great sweep, right and left, of the Thames Embankment,
and then look up in the sky to see the dome of St. Paul's afloat there.
Recrossing the bridge, go to the left until Westminster Bridge is reached,
and look there for the Houses of Parliament and, a little away from the
river, the Abbey of Westminster. Then turn into Bird-Cage Walk by the side
of St. James's Park and cross that park by the only path open at night,
which will take you across the lake by a little footbridge. From the middle
of that footbridge, looking towards the Horse Guards, there is, by night, a
view as poetic as any that Venice can show: of the still lake fringed with
woods, and--apparently rising up from its very marge--the Horse Guards, and
the palaces which shelter the officials of the great public departments.
[Illustration: DEAN'S YARD, WESTMINSTER]
Most of London is beautiful at any hour. All of it, even to the most sordid
parts, is beautiful at the fall of evening or the first glance of the
morning. And there is always intruding into the commonplace of the
twentieth century some touch of ancientry, some hint of romance. I can
recall once finding a note of beauty in that least likely of all places,
London Dock. It was an autumn dawn so grey and chill that the pungent smell
of a cargo of pepper from one of the wharves brought a welcome sense of
warmth. I was wandering about aimlessly when, in a dirty little basin of
muddy water in the Wapping corner of the docks, I suddenly came upon a
white swan swimming with placid disregard of its utter incongruousness
there. In the grey morning, in that grey water, surrounded by the murk of
industrialism at its ugliest, the white swan was as startling as a ghost.
When, as I looked upon it, the air was suddenly pierced by the crisp,
urgent note of a bugle calling the _reveille_, I felt sure for a moment
that this was an uneasy dream bringing into the sordid grey of life a
thread of white and silver from the days of jousts and pageantry. But no,
the swan was real enough; the mystery of the bugle-call was that the docks
were under the shadow of the Tower of London, which relieves with its
splendidly preserved Norman keep a busy quarter of London from
architectural dullness.
But the chief charm of London is, without a doubt, its parks and open
places, of which there are some three hundred. Indeed, of the total area of
London a full tenth is park land, and the civic authorities are adding to
the park area, not lessening it.
Nothing that one could say would exaggerate the beauty of these parks in
spring and summer. The grass lawns--delicately smooth, of a glowing green
that seems to be suffused with light and starred with little white daisies,
suggest a bright firmament, the emerald sky of a fairy tale with daisies
to make its Milky Way. The trees are full of their own rustling song and of
the clear soprano notes of crowding birds. The flower-beds flaunt a
constantly changing bravery of colour. All the plants are bedded out in
full bloom. The cost must be enormous, but the Londoner pays it cheerfully,
and these city parks provide the people with gayer gardens than have any of
the great nobles.
For the gardens are the people's. On the dainty grass the children of the
poor sprawl and play contentedly. In the ponds and streamlets, beside
which, in the old days, kings sauntered, the youngsters of the slums fish
with bent pins or scoop with small nets for small fish. The rangers are the
friends of the people, and will help a little kiddie to a patch where
daisies may be picked for daisy-chains. The trees are all a-twitter with
songsters. In the ponds and streams a gorgeous variety of water-fowl
display themselves--giant white pelicans, filled with a smug and
hypocritical satisfaction at the mistaken reputation they have won for
benevolence; black swans from Australia and white swans of this country;
all manner of ducks and geese and teal. Children bring crumbs and feed
these birds, and also the pigeons, which in consequence reach a bloated
size and can hardly waddle out of the way of the horsemen who canter along
the soft tracks laid out for cavaliers in Hyde Park.
[Illustration: SAILING BOATS ON THE SERPENTINE, HYDE PARK, LONDON]
The aloofness from the city's turmoil of the London parks is wonderful.
Matthew Arnold noted it in Kensington Gardens:--
In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!
Birds here make song, each bird has his,
Across the girdling city's hum.
How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!
Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.
Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.
The art of designing city parks of this kind seems to be exclusively
English. In other parts of the world there are magnificent parks, but
nowhere the little bit of woodland planted in the heart of a city.
Though London is the greatest industrial city of the world, it does not
succeed in being sordid-looking or mean. But the Midlands--where are the
new great manufacturing cities--are frankly horrible, grimy city following
grimy city, the pavements seeming never to end, the suburbs of one town
stretching out lank arms to greet those of another.
When rain sets in, the sordidness of these towns is complete. Thickly
growing chimneys take the place of trees, and from the tops of their great
harsh trunks float thin wisps of black foliage. The streets are of a
miserable muddiness which bemires without softening the hardness of the
pavements. Through the smoky, dirty, wet air pallid faces loom. The very
meat in the shops has no red wholesomeness, but looks pallid and anaemic;
that, I suppose, is really due to the fact that the Midlands so largely eat
pork, but it pleases me to imagine that the inanimate stuff also feels the
depression of this smoke-palled district and knows not the red of life.
But much of the evil is curable. Sheffield is a brighter, more sunny town
than most in the Midlands because its authorities insist on something being
done to mitigate the smoke nuisance. In most of the other towns factory and
workshop can pour out unchecked their defiling streams, poisoning the air
and darkening the sky so that the birds leave the district in despair, and
no green thing flourishes and men grow pale and unwholesome. Now that is
being changed, and the Midland cities are beginning to claim their share of
the heritage of English beauty.
Away from the actual new manufacturing towns there are none without some
beauty. Durham in the north perches grandly on its river, and the
river-front shows off well the impressive Cathedral. York, with its famous
Minster, has been already noted in another chapter. To Stratford-on-Avon,
the birthplace of Shakespeare, all visitors to England go, but some English
people are beginning to resent the commercial spirit which makes it purely
a "show" town, with fees payable for this and that at every turn.
A town not too "hackneyed" but full of historical interest is St. Albans,
the Verulam of the Romans, with its fine Abbey Church overlooking hill and
field. The path past that church was a wide-paved Roman road once, and by
the vicarage foundations of Roman chambers and mosaics are found. Some two
thousand years ago St. Albans was a stronghold of the Britons, protected
naturally on two sides by marsh and river; adding to those natural defences
an artificial ditch, earthworks, and a palisade. It had to stand an
onslaught of the Roman invaders, and, of course, fell. Before that
Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, had laid the town waste--Boadicea of whom
Cowper sang:--
When the British warrior Queen,
Bleeding from the Roman rods,
Sought, with an indignant mien,
Counsel of her country's gods.
Poor Boadicea: if she suffered all that is said, "an indignant mien" would
seem to be a weak description of her state of mind; but a rhyme was
necessary. This more or less historical Amazon of early Britain has now a
statue to her memory on Westminster Bridge. (And, by the way, London has
yet to learn--and might learn from Paris--how to utilise the artistic
possibilities of bridges.)
[Illustration: WATERGATE STREET, CHESTER]
But to return to St. Albans. The Watling Street of the Romans from London
to Chester ran through this town. After the departure of the Roman legions,
St. Albans suffered a long siege at the hands of the Anglo-Saxon invaders.
Sacked and left in ruins it became a stronghold for outlaws. Then the
Church came with holy balm, and the foundation of a monastery gave St.
Albans peace.
Chester, where the Watling Street of the Romans ended, is to-day one of the
most picturesque of English cities. Its old timbered houses and arcaded
streets give it a mediaeval air, which is jealously preserved in all
restoration work. Bath is another city of Roman antiquity. Portions of the
Roman baths still exist there, and the existence of a great modern spa
shows that the doctors of to-day endorse the opinion of their colleagues of
the days of Caesar. Apart from its medicinal waters, Bath is a very
beautiful town, the architectural treatment of its hill-sides being most
effective. In an earlier century it was a great resort of fashion, and
there reigned Beau Nash, the Exquisite. To-day Bath is less popular, but
not less deserving of favour, and an effort is being made to restore its
old glories. Winchester, another Roman town, an old capital of the
kingdom, and the reputed capital of King Arthur, where the "curfew bell"
still rings, should be among the first three of the cities of England
visited. From there it would be well to go west to ramble through Plymouth,
a naval port full of memories of Francis Drake and other gallants of the
glorious Elizabethan days. Bristol then claims a day; also Rochester, which
has the second oldest cathedral in England, and which has a new source of
interest in that it is emphatically, after London, the Dickens city.
Canterbury should have more than a day, for it is a link between Briton
England and Roman England, and then between Briton England and Saxon
England. (Between Dover and Canterbury was the first line of resistance to
the Roman invaders, and again to the Saxon invaders.) There Bertha, the
first Christian Queen of Kent, worshipped in the little Church of St.
Michael. There St. Augustine christened Ethelbert of Kent, founded a
monastery, ordained a bishop (1300 years ago), and set the foundations of
the first Christian cathedral in England. There, too, A Becket shed his
blood; and there is the shrine of the Black Prince.
Salisbury, with its cathedral, must not be missed. It was a great fortified
town once, and Pepys records in his Diary:--
So over the plain by sight of the steeple to Salisbury
by night; but before I came to the town, I saw a great
fortification, and alighted, and to it, and in it, and
find it so prodigious so as to fright me to be in it
all alone at that time of night, it being dark. I
understand since it to be that that is called Old
Sarum.
The remains of Old Sarum are the fragments of a great feudal castle and
keep. It was these ruined walls and yawning ditches which sent two members
to Parliament until the Reform Act of 1832. To the present day Salisbury is
a central point in the military defences of England, the chief
training-grounds for troops being at Salisbury Plain.