When you ride up the Strand on top of an omnibus--and probably in
rain--please remember that someone is envying you with all his heart,
that someone would give six months' pay to sit in your damp seat and
see the lines of traffic converge on Charing Cross.
To the west in Canada, to the south in Africa, to the east in India,
and far over the sea in Australia and New Zealand, are the lonely
men. Where the red border line of Empire ends on the map in an alien
colour are the little outposts in which these men work and dream. At
the end of day they ram down the tobacco in their pipes and think of
home with the characteristic sentimentality of the exile, for
solitude makes a man very like a child. "Lord to be in London now!"
How many times in the twenty-four hours does this cry go up all over
the earth? We who take our London carelessly as a matter of course
can have no conception of its meaning to these wanderers who, feeling
the ache of home-sickness, are too old to cry.
* * *
The Strand!
That means London in shack, bungalow, and camp. It means more: it
symbolizes--home! Not Piccadilly, not Pall Mall, not fashionable
Mayfair or Belgravia, but the curious old Victorian Strand.
What a street it is. It does not belong to London. Piccadilly,
Regent Street, and Oxford Street stole its birthright long ago. It
belongs to the Empire. Look at its shops. They are full of pith
helmets and spine pads, veld shirts and tropical drill, ammunition
belts and puttees. Your smart subaltern going out to join the Indian
cavalry may buy his clothes in Savile Row, but your old colonial, who
has been pegging down the flag somewhere for the best part of his
life, comes back to shop in the Strand, to walk in the Strand, to
exult in the Strand....
* * *
Take the faces. In days when colonials come home you will find
nothing more interesting in London. The exile makes straight for the
Strand; if he does not know it he makes its acquaintance at once,
joyfully, reverently; for he has heard men speak of it as men speak
of their mothers. As he walks along he begins to believe that he has
really come home.
You will see him shouldering his way gingerly through the crowds with
the gentleness of a big man not used to pavements, and he looks up at
the landmarks, a shop where he bought a gun once, a restaurant where
once Mary ... well, never mind, that was over long ago. Or he may be
that strange thing, a tenderfoot in London, a tenderfoot from the
prairies or the veld or the Afghan frontier. He is fulfilling his
destiny: He is walking down the Strand! When he gets back men will
say to him: "Well, and how did you find London?"
And he will start a story consciously and proudly with:
"I was walking down the Strand one morning----"
Ah, he has struck a chord at once. Surely you visualize the smile
that will go round the circle of men deep in their cane chairs. "I
was walking down the Strand!" Can you begin a story in the tropics
in a more arresting way? You set a whole flock of memories
a-flying....
What sentimental journeys the Strand has seen.
You must have been stopped at some time near the Adelphi by a
burnt-up, middle-aged man who asks the way to a bar or a restaurant
unknown to you. When you say you don't know it, a disappointed look
creeps into his eyes, and he apologizes and goes off, very straight
and lonely, in the crowd.
Conrad in quest of his youth? Perhaps. Possibly for years, while he
waited for leave, he was promising himself a visit to this place. No
doubt the stars saw him sitting out alone at night thinking of it,
hearing the thunder of the Strand, seeing its lights, and himself
slipping into his old seat at a corner table where he used to sit
with old X, who was killed in "British East." ...
All the time the Strand was altering, denying such exiles their
beloved landmarks.
* * *
So they drift a little sadly and disconsolately along the Strand,
feeling as you feel when, after a long absence, you visit a place
known to you when you were a child. Nothing is so big as you
thought, nothing so impressive as once it was. That tiny paddock was
once a prairie--that small house a castle.
The Strand to them is somehow different--cheaper, smaller, vaguely
disappointing. Those pale-faced men hurrying along. How strange.
What an altered atmosphere! And where are those lovely little faces
that used to look from beneath Merry Widow hats?
* * *
Then, six months after, in a solitude of stars and palms, with a hot
wind blowing over the plains:
"O Lord, to see the dear old Strand now!"
The big stars shine, the moon swings up above the distant hills, and
the old love comes back into the heart of the lonely man....