Into my Camelot I can not only look, but come down, without webs flying
out and mirrors cracking, and better still, I might never stir beyond
its limits, and my daily life and domestic arrangements would suffer no
inconvenience. The Quarter is as "self-contained" as the flats
advertised by our zealous Agent who manages it. Every necessity and
many luxuries into the bargain are to be had within its boundaries. It
may resemble the Inns of Court in other ways, but it does not, as they
do, encourage snobbishness by placing a taboo upon the tradesman. We
have our own dairy, our own green-grocer, our own butcher, though out of
sympathy with Augustine I do my marketing in Soho. At one corner our
tobacconist keeps his shop, at another our tailor. If my drains go wrong
I call in the local plumber; when I want a shelf put up or something
mended I send for the local carpenter; I could summon the local builder
were I inclined to make a present of alterations or additions to the
local landlord. I but step across the street if I am in need of a
Commissioner of Oaths. I go no further to get my type-writing done. Were
my daily paper to fail me, the local gossip of the Quarter would allow
me no excuse to complain of dearth of news; the benevolent would exult
in the opportunity provided for benevolence by our slums where the
flower-girls live; the energetic could walk off their energy in our
garden where the County Council's band plays on summer evenings. There
is a public for our loungers, and for our friends a hotel,--the house
below the hill with the dingy yellow walls that are so shiny-white as I
see them by night, kept from time immemorial by Miss Brown, where the
lodger still lights himself to bed by a candle and still eats his meals
in a Coffee Room, and where Labour Members of Parliament, and South
Kensington officials, and people never to be suspected of having
discovered the Quarter, are the most frequent guests.
The Quarter has also its own population, so distinct from other
Londoners that I am struck by the difference no further away than the
other side of the Strand. Our housekeepers are a species apart, so are
our milkmen behind their little carts. Our types are a local growth.
Nowhere else in London could I meet anybody in the slightest like the
pink-eyed, white-haired, dried-up little old man, with a jug in his
hand, whom I see daily on his way to or from our public-house; or like
the middle-aged dandy who stares me out of countenance as he saunters
homeward in the afternoon, a lily or chrysanthemum, according to the
season, in one hand and a brown paper bag of buns in the other; or like
the splendid old man of military bearing, with well-waxed moustache and
well-pointed beard, whose Panama hat in summer and fur-lined cloak in
winter have become as much fixtures in the Quarter as our Adam houses or
our view of the river, and who spends his days patrolling the Terrace in
front of our frivolous club or going into it with members he happens to
overtake at the front door,--where his nights are spent no native of the
Quarter can say. Nor is any other crowd like our crowd that collects
every Sunday evening as St. Martin's bells begin to ring for evening
service, that grows larger and larger until streets usually empty are
packed solid, and that melts away again before ten. It is made up mostly
of youths to whom the cap is as indispensable a symbol of class as the
silk hat further west, and young girls who run to elaborate hair and
feathers. They have their conventions, which are strictly observed. One
is to walk with arms linked; a second, to fill the roadway as well as
the pavement, to the despair of taxicabs and cycles endeavouring to
toot and ring a passage through; a third, to follow the streets that
bound the Quarter on three sides and never to trespass into others. How
the custom originated, I leave it to the historian to decide. It may go
back to the Britons who painted themselves blue, it may be no older than
the Romans. All I know with certainty is that the Sunday evening walk is
a ceremony of no less obligation for the Quarter than the Sunday morning
parade in the Row is for Mayfair.
We are of accord in the Quarter on the subject of its charm and the
advantage of preserving it,--though on all others we may and do disagree
absolutely and continually fight. I have heard even our postman brag of
the beauty of its architecture and the fame of the architects who built
it more than a century and a half ago, and I do not believe as a rule
that London postmen could say who built the houses where they deliver
their letters, or that it would occur to them to pose as judges of
architecture. Because we love the Quarter we watch over it with
unceasing vigilance. We are always on the look-out for nuisances and
alert to suppress them. In fact, if not in name, we constitute a sort of
League for the Prevention of Dirt and Disorder in the Quarter. There is
a distinct understanding that, in an emergency, we may rely upon one
another for mutual support, which is the easier as we all have the same
Landlord and can make the same Agent's life a martyrdom until the evil
is remedied. The one thing we guard most zealously is the quiet, the
calm, conducive to work. We wage war to the death against street noises
of every kind. No "German Band" would invade our silent precincts. The
hurdy-gurdy is anathema,--I have always thought the Suffragettes'
attempt to play it through our streets their bravest deed. If we endure
the bell of the muffin man on Sunday and the song of the man who wants
us to buy his blooming lavender, it is because both have the sanction of
age. We make no other concession, and our severity extends to the native
no less than to the alien. When, in the strip of green and gravel below
my windows, the members of our frivolous Club took to shooting
themselves with blank cartridges in the intervals of fencing, though the
noise was on the miniature scale of their pistols, we overwhelmed the
unfortunate Agent with letters until a stop was put to it. When our
Territorials, in their first ardour, chose our catacombs for their
evening bugle-practice, we rose as one against them. Beggars, unless
they ring boldly at our front doors and pretend to be something else,
must give up hope when they enter the Quarter. For if the philosopher
thinks angels and men are in no danger from charity, we do not, and
least of all the lady opposite, to whom alms-giving in our street is as
intolerable as donkeys on the green were to Betsy Trotwood. One of my
friends has never dared to come to see me, except by stealth, since the
day she pounced upon him to ask him what he meant by such an exhibition
of immorality, when all he had done was to drop a penny into the hand of
a small boy at his cab-door, and all he had meant was a kindly fellow
feeling, having once been a small boy himself.
We defend the beauty of the Quarter with equal zeal. We do what we can
to preserve the superannuated look which to us is a large part of its
charm, and we cry out against every new house that threatens discord in
our ancient harmony. Excitement never raged so high among us as when the
opposite river banks were desecrated by the advertiser, and from shores
hitherto but a shadow in the shadowy night, there flamed forth a horrid
tout for Tea. We had endured much from a sign of Whiskey further down
the river,--Whiskey and Tea are Britain's bulwarks,--but this was worse,
for it flared and glared right into our faces, and the vile letters
which were red and green one second and yellow the next ran in a long
line from top to bottom of the high shot-tower. In this crude light, our
breweries ceased to be palaces in the night, our _campanili_ again
became chimneys. Gone was our Fairyland, gone our River of Dreams. The
falling twilight gave a hideous jog to our memory, and would not let us
forget that we lived in a nation of shopkeepers. The Socialist, part of
whose stock-in-trade is perversity, liked it, or said he did,--and I
really believe he did,--but the other tenants were outraged, and an
indignation meeting was called. Four attended, together with the
Solicitor and the Agent of the estate, and the Publisher, who took the
chair. It was of no use. We learned that our joy in the miracle of night
might be destroyed forever, but if we could prove no physical harm,
legal redress would be denied to us, and our defiance of the Vandal must
be in vain. And so there the disgraceful advertisement remains, flaring
and glaring defiance at us across the river. When the Socialist gets
tired of it, he goes off to his country place in his forty-horse-power
motor-car, but we, in our weariness, can escape only to bed.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
U. S. A.