Of course it is too much to say that all the satisfaction of life in
London comes from literally living there, for it is not a paradox that
a great deal of it consists in getting away. It is almost easier to
leave it than not to, and much of its richness and interest proceeds
from its ramifications, the fact that all England is in a suburban
relation to it. Such an affair it is in comparison to get away from
Paris or to get into it. London melts by wide, ugly zones into the
green country, and becomes pretty insidiously, inadvertently—without
stopping to change. It is the spoiling perhaps of the country, but it
is the making of the insatiable town, and if one is a helpless and
shameless cockney that is all one is obliged to look at. Anything
is excusable which enlarges one’s civic consciousness. It ministers
immensely to that of the London-lover that, thanks to the tremendous
system of coming and going, to the active, hospitable habits of the
people, to the elaboration of the railway-service, the frequency and
rapidity of trains, and last, though not least, to the fact that much
of the loveliest scenery in England lies within a radius of fifty
miles—thanks to all this he has the rural picturesque at his door and
may cultivate unlimited vagueness as to the line of division between
centre and circumference. It is perfectly open to him to consider the
remainder of the United Kingdom, or the British empire in general,
or even, if he be an American, the total of the English-speaking
territories of the globe, as the mere margin, the fitted girdle.
Is it for this reason—because I like to think how great we all are
together in the light of heaven and the face of the rest of the world,
with the bond of our glorious tongue, in which we labour to write
articles and books for each other’s candid perusal, how great we all
are and how great is the great city which we may unite fraternally
to regard as the capital of our race—is it for this that I have a
singular kindness for the London railway-stations, that I like them
æsthetically, that they interest and fascinate me, and that I view them
with complacency even when I wish neither to depart nor to arrive? They
remind me of all our reciprocities and activities, our energies and
curiosities, and our being all distinguished together from other people
by our great common stamp of perpetual motion, our passion for seas and
deserts and the other side of the globe, the secret of the impression
of strength—I don’t say of social roundness and finish—that we produce
in any collection of Anglo-Saxon types. If in the beloved foggy season
I delight in the spectacle of Paddington, Euston, or Waterloo,—I
confess I prefer the grave northern stations,—I am prepared to defend
myself against the charge of puerility; for what I seek and what I
find in these vulgar scenes is at bottom simply so much evidence of our
larger way of looking at life. The exhibition of variety of type is in
general one of the bribes by which London induces you to condone her
abominations, and the railway-platform is a kind of compendium of that
variety. I think that nowhere so much as in London do people wear—to
the eye of observation—definite signs of the sort of people they may
be. If you like above all things to know the sort, you hail this fact
with joy; you recognise that if the English are immensely distinct
from other people, they are also socially—and that brings with it,
in England, a train of moral and intellectual consequences—extremely
distinct from each other. You may see them all together, with the rich
colouring of their differences, in the fine flare of one of Mr. W. H.
Smith’s bookstalls—a feature not to be omitted in any enumeration of
the charms of Paddington and Euston. It is a focus of warmth and light
in the vast smoky cavern; it gives the idea that literature is a thing
of splendour, of a dazzling essence, of infinite gas-lit red and gold.
A glamour hangs over the glittering booth, and a tantalising air of
clever new things. How brilliant must the books all be, how veracious
and courteous the fresh, pure journals! Of a Saturday afternoon, as
you wait in your corner of the compartment for the starting of the
train, the window makes a frame for the glowing picture. I say of a
Saturday afternoon, because that is the most characteristic time—it
speaks most of the constant circulation and in particular of the quick
jump, by express, just before dinner, for the Sunday, into the hall of
the country-house and the forms of closer friendliness, the prolonged
talks, the familiarising walks which London excludes.
There is the emptiness of summer as well, when you may have the town
to yourself, and I would discourse of it—counting the summer from the
first of August—were it not that I fear to seem ungracious in insisting
so much on the negative phases. In truth they become positive in
another manner, and I have an endearing recollection of certain happy
accidents attached to the only period when London life may be said to
admit of accident. It is the most luxurious existence in the world,
but of that especial luxury—the unexpected, the extemporized—it has in
general too little. In a very tight crowd you can’t scratch your leg,
and in London the social pressure is so great that it is difficult
to deflect from the perpendicular or to move otherwise than with the
mass. There is too little of the loose change of time; every half-hour
has its preappointed use, written down month by month in a little
book. As I intimated, however, the pages of this volume exhibit from
August to November an attractive blankness; they represent the season
during which you may taste of that highest kind of inspiration, the
inspiration of the moment.
This is doubtless what a gentleman had in mind who once said to me,
in regard to the vast resources of London and its having something
for every taste, “Oh, yes; when you are bored or want a little change
you can take the boat down to Blackwall.” I have never had occasion
yet to resort to this particular remedy. Perhaps it’s a proof that I
have never been bored. Why Blackwall? I indeed asked myself at the
time; nor have I yet ascertained what distractions the mysterious
name represents. My interlocutor probably used it generically, as a
free, comprehensive allusion to the charms of the river at large. Here
the London-lover goes with him all the way, and indeed the Thames is
altogether such a wonderful affair that he feels he has distributed
his picture very clumsily not to have put it in the very forefront.
Take it up or take it down, it is equally an adjunct of London life, an
expression of London manners.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL’S, FROM THE WATER]
From Westminster to the sea its uses are commercial, but none the less
pictorial for that; while in the other direction—taking it properly
a little further up—they are personal, social, athletic, idyllic. In
its recreative character it is absolutely unique. I know of no other
classic stream that is so splashed about for the mere fun of it.
There is something almost droll and at the same time almost touching
in the way that on the smallest pretext of holiday or fine weather
the mighty population takes to the boats. They bump each other in the
narrow, charming channel; between Oxford and Richmond they make an
uninterrupted procession. Nothing is more suggestive of the personal
energy of the people and their eagerness to take, in the way of
exercise and adventure, whatever they can get. I hasten to add that
what they get on the Thames is exquisite, in spite of the smallness
of the scale and the contrast between the numbers and the space. In a
word, if the river is the busiest suburb of London, it is also by far
the prettiest. That term applies to it less of course from the bridges
down, but it is only because in this part of its career it deserves
a larger praise. To be consistent, I like it best when it is all dyed
and disfigured with the town, and you look from bridge to bridge—they
seem wonderfully big and dim—over the brown, greasy current, the barges
and the penny-steamers, the black, sordid, heterogeneous shores. This
prospect, of which so many of the elements are ignoble, etches itself
to the eye of the lover of “bits” with a power that is worthy perhaps
of a better cause.
The way that with her magnificent opportunity London has neglected
to achieve a river-front is of course the best possible proof that
she has rarely, in the past, been in the architectural mood which at
present shows somewhat inexpensive signs of settling upon her. Here
and there a fine fragment apologises for the failure which it doesn’t
remedy. Somerset House stands up higher perhaps than anything else on
its granite pedestal, and the palace of Westminster reclines—it can
hardly be said to stand—on the big parliamentary bench of its terrace.
The Embankment, which is admirable if not particularly interesting,
does what it can, and the mannered houses of Chelsea stare across
at Battersea Park like eighteenth-century ladies surveying a horrid
wilderness. On the other hand, the Charing Cross railway-station,
placed where it is, is a national crime; Milbank prison is a worse
act of violence than any it was erected to punish, and the water-side
generally a shameless renunciation of effect. We acknowledge, however,
that its very cynicism is expressive; so that if one were to choose
again—short of there being a London Louvre—between the usual English
irresponsibility in such matters and some particular flight of
conscience, one would perhaps do as well to let the case stand. We know
what it is, the stretch from Chelsea to Wapping, but we know not what
it might be. It doesn’t prevent my being always more or less thrilled,
of a summer afternoon, by the journey on a penny-steamer to Greenwich.
[Illustration: THE TERRACE, RICHMOND]