How they call with different voices, these cities of men--from the
Maxim-gun-like rattle of New York, with its chorus of strenuous
steamers calling from the water, on over the gamut of different
capitals to Tokio, where the city voice is the tinkling of stilted
wooden shoes; not "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," but "Tinkle,
tinkle, little feet," go the small wooden shoes on the wide firmament
of pavement.
Most strident are the American cities; the most sweet-sounding are
those of Japan, except in those few streets raided by tram-cars.
What is the voice of London? Is it not the plod, plod, dumping plod of
the horses' hoofs and the jangling rattle of harness and bells, which
last we hardly hear, so close is the sound to our ears, like things we
cannot see because they are so close to our eyes? As it is a murmurous
and noisy city in comparison with those of Japan, so it is peaceful
and quiet in comparison with Chicago or New York. A friend of mine
from that City of Unrest says that the sound of the London streets has
a soothing, lulling effect on him, and makes him sleepy, like the
sound of falling water.
As I went up to Euston to-day to meet an Oriental visitor, I fell to
speculating how the city might look to him. A very cultured,
intellectual fellow he is, who looks into the backs of the eyes of
things. A Chinaman born, he had been through college in America, and
knew American cities; he had also been studying in Paris, but this was
his first visit to London. A wet, drizzling day was not the most
propitious for his first impressions. Slopping along in a cab through
the muddy streets, as I went under the portico of Euston Station I
was forcefully reminded of one of the big gates of Pekin. There is a
suggestion of the same massiveness; but the massiveness is only
make-face, like the painted cannon on a Chinese city gate. It was an
imposing portico to a shamble of sheds.
The railway terminus is the real gate of the modern city.
Yet what absurdly incongruous things these London city gates are--a
salad jumble of architecture and machinery with a mayonnaise of
train-oil and soot!
As I waited for my friend long trains came rumbling in under a canopy
of smoke that hung about the grim iron rafters of this labyrinth.
Fifteen minutes ago these trains had been spinning along through the
green fields and across the shady lanes of what looked like "Merrie
England," although now shaved down and trimmed to intense
respectability of cultivation. The heavens darkened and the air
thickened as they came close to their journey's end, until they slow
down as if gropingly finding their way into the cavernous gateway of
the great dingy city.
What a strange conglomeration of people was waiting on each platform!
There was a train leaving to catch the steamer for New York, there was
a line of people waiting to take tickets for a close-by station, there
was a line of soldiers waiting to be entrained; an American girl was
standing on an automatic machine, and getting the railway porter to
translate from stones into pounds how much she weighed after her visit
to Europe. A couple of Oriental servants seemed to have lost
themselves in the labyrinthine station, and were wandering round with
Oriental indifference. Porters, with hands and faces and uniforms
toned down to the universal greyness of things, trundled their
hand-lorries to the monotonous calling of "B' your leave, b' your
leave"; and variegated specimens of humanity were looking around after
their luggage as one might imagine disembodied souls looking for
their bodies in the Valley of Jehoshaphat on the Last Day. There were
not a few touches of cosmopolitanism suggestive of that gathering.
My Oriental alighted from the train. As his Japanese servant was quite
capable of looking after his luggage and bringing it to his hotel, his
master was left free to come right on with me and exercise his
industrious curiosity--a curiosity that seemed never to be surprised
at anything he saw, but took everything as a matter of course. He was
a man of the world in his own estimation. Nevertheless, what an
important part of it he had not yet seen! Was it not a great epoch in
his life, this arrival of his in London?
"This is our North Gate."
"Ah, yes, Hou-Men," he said. "A very dark day, is it not?"
We drove away in a cab under that sepulchral prison-like portico; we
had the glass down, it was raining so hard, and even he, whose
Westernisation was principally confined to New York, noticed the
absurdly asphyxiating arrangement of the London cab, which
hermetically seals its frame-bound occupants. The New Yorkers got
their idea of the cab from us, but they have improved upon the window
by having it slanting outwards, so that, while protecting people from
the rain, it admits air. For Londoners there is no alternative between
spatteration and suffocation. In the New York cabs they can have
shelter and fresh air.
It was not an inspiriting entrance through these first streets outside
Euston into London. The pavement of Melton Street was little better
than that of Pekin, and from each side those dreary-looking small
hotels blinked out of their closed windows on the muddy street as if
wondering when a God-forsaken guest would come and occupy them. And
then on through grimy Gower Street, looking like the empty bottom of a
drained canal.
It's not very inspiriting, this entrance into London from this North
Gate of ours.
The people we passed there were not an interesting lot; they seemed
all to belong to the two-storeyed houses. They were two-storeyed
people, apparently keeping themselves moderately busy making a
moderate amount of money, but hampered in the money-making by the mud
and rain. We passed a little square carpeted with fresh grass, but the
trees on the other side were vague in mist, and the square and its
vegetation gave the suggestion of a tank with seaweeds in it. It was a
day for studying men and women by their umbrellas and boots. Boots
tell confessions for the most Low Church Protestants, and the
umbrellas above them generally corroborate the sins of the boots.
My Oriental friend was gazing out gravely.
It was on a warm evening in a tea-garden that he had talked about his
coming visit to London. I recollect his enthusing over the phrase
"Beneath the rule of men supremely great
The pen is mightier than the sword."
A great motto for a great country, he then said it was. He professed
an anxiety to see or meet some of the great English writers, our
_literati_, as he called them. He liked the honesty of Englishmen in
business, and wanted to see them at work. He had helped to show me
something of the life of the East--that part of the life most
difficult to see, the life of the home--and in return I promised to
show him something of the life of the West, how and where people work
and play, and pray--when they do so.
"Show me the house of one of your _literati_ if we pass one," he said.
"Is that one, there?" pointing to a gorgeous public-house, as we
passed a street corner.
I saw the probable toppling of an ideal. We passed a couple of
quick-driving vans with a green placard of an evening paper, and I
explained to him what a reading public we were, and how many editions
of the papers were quickly distributed during the afternoon, how the
appetite for them had grown, like the craving for cheap cigarettes, as
a relief from being obliged to inhale pure literary air. The
newspaper habit and the cigarette habit are about on a par after all.
[Illustration: Hospital Train Leaving Ladysmith For Pietermaritzburg.]
We passed a church with closed doors, and he seemed surprised. I
explained to him that the churches were open on Sunday, on which day
the more numerous temples of Bacchus were closed for a while.
We reached the Strand, where he was greatly interested in a line of
'buses. "Have you no street cars like in New York?" I submitted that
these were kept on chiefly in order to have a supply of artillery
horses in times of war.
"And have you no high buildings either?"
The explanation of ancient lights and the overhead space wasted in
London was too much to go into. His attention was diverted by a
newspaper placard.
"Ah," said he, "another earthquake, is it not?"
"Collapse of Australia" stared from that vermilion placard. It began
to dawn on me that I had undertaken rather a large order in showing
this Oriental London life.
"And you have not shown me any of your _literati_ yet, or any of their
houses."
We were stopped in a block of omnibuses and cabs. A line of
sandwich-men were straggling along between vehicles and the curb. One
of them stopped just by our cab; the rain was trickling down his nose;
he looked as dismal as the weather. I could not resist the temptation
of explaining that these were some of our _literati_ undergoing
punishment for some of the books or plays they had written. In China
the crime is set forth on a board hung on the neck of the criminal,
called the _cangue_. It was only a very mild surprise he showed when I
gave him the names of the line of sandwich-men. "How like the head of
your Shakespeare!" he said of one.
We were received at the hotel door by a brass-bound German in the
undress uniform of a British admiral, who pays the hotel £500 for
receiving tips. The rooms and corridors of the big building did not
look hospitably cheering. There were no fires in the grates, because,
being June, the weather ought to have been warm; and the electric
lights were not turned on, because, being daytime, there ought to have
been light. He liked the smoking-room. "It is more like one of our big
tea-houses," he said. "Men do business here," pointing to a man with a
sheaf of papers talking earnestly to another beside him.
"Yes, that is a company promoter."
"What is a company promoter?"
The nearest definition that occurred was, "A man who sells something
he hasn't got to another who does not want to buy it."
"I think London is a very interesting city," he said.