All dwellers in and about London are, alas, too well acquainted with
that never-to-be-enough-hated change which we have to undergo once, at
least, in every spring. As each succeeding winter wears away, the same
thing happens to us.
For some time we do not trust the fair lengthening days, and cannot
believe that the dirty pair of sparrows who live opposite our window
are really making love and going to build, notwithstanding all their
twittering. But morning after morning rises fresh and gentle; there is
no longer any vice in the air; we drop our overcoats; we rejoice in the
green shoots which the privet-hedge is making in the square garden, and
hail the returning tender-pointed leaves of the plane-trees as friends;
we go out of our way to walk through Covent Garden Market to see the
ever-brightening show of flowers from the happy country.
This state of things goes on sometimes for a few days only, sometimes
for weeks, till we make sure that we are safe for this spring at any
rate. Don’t we wish we may get it! Sooner or later, but sure—sure as
Christmas bills, or the income-tax, or anything, if there be anything
surer than these—comes the morning when we are suddenly conscious as
soon as we rise that there is something the matter. We do not feel
comfortable in our clothes; nothing tastes quite as it should at
breakfast; though the day looks bright enough, there is a fierce dusty
taint about it as we look out through windows, which no instinct now
prompts us to throw open, as it has done every day for the last month.
But it is only when we open our doors and issue into the street, that
the hateful reality comes right home to us. All moisture, and softness,
and pleasantness has gone clean out of the air since last night; we
seem to inhale yards of horsehair instead of satin; our skins dry up;
our eyes, and hair, and whiskers, and clothes are soon filled with
loathsome dust, and our nostrils with the reek of the great city. We
glance at the weathercock on the nearest steeple, and see that it
points N.E. And so long as the change lasts, we carry about with us
a feeling of anger and impatience as though we personally were being
ill-treated. We could have borne with it well enough in November;
it would have been natural, and all in the day’s work in March; but
now, when Rotten-row is beginning to be crowded, when long lines of
pleasure-vans are leaving town on Monday mornings for Hampton Court or
the poor remains of dear Epping Forrest, when the exhibitions are open
or about to open, when the religious public is up, or on its way up,
for May meetings, when the Thames is already sending up faint warnings
of what we may expect as soon as his dirty old life’s blood shall have
been thoroughly warmed up, and the Ship, and Trafalgar, and Star and
Garter are in full swing at the antagonist poles of the cockney system,
we do feel that this blight which has come over us and everything is
an insult, and that while it lasts, as there is nobody who can be made
particularly responsible for it, we are justified in going about in
general disgust, and ready to quarrel with anybody we may meet on the
smallest pretext.
This sort of east-windy state is perhaps the best physical analogy for
certain mental ones through which most of us pass. The real crisis
over, we drift into the skirts of the storm, and lay rolling under
bare poles, comparatively safe, but without any power as yet to get the
ship well in hand, and make her obey her helm. The storm may break over
us again at any minute, and find us almost as helpless as ever.