London Days: A Book of Reminiscences

by Arthur Warren

That charm is not to be described. How can it be described, any more than the charm of a charming woman? You are conscious of it, you know that there is nothing like it, you are sorry for those who must live elsewhere and cannot come under its spell; they have missed that much out of life. You experience a certain largeness of heart, and would like to give everybody a June in London, but reluctantly acknowledge that every one must take the will for the deed.

But if you attempt to analyse London it will baffle your effort. It is at once so splendid and so mean, so spacious and so meagre, so beautiful and so ugly, so noisy and so quiet, so restless and restful, that the farther you go the more puzzled you become, unless having begun by questioning it you end by accepting. Take it in its own way and you will see that it is in itself a problem that cannot be solved by a study of weeks or months; it is a study for a lifetime, for many lifetimes. For instance: architecturally it is too often saddening and mean.

Some one will fly into a rage when he reads the preceding sentence. He will ask resentfully if I think Westminster Abbey, the Parliament Buildings, St. Paul's Cathedral sad, or mean, or shabby. Of course I do not. Their nobility and beauty almost redeem the hundreds of square miles of common-place and melancholy builders' work that encumbers London. Yet how the mean shops press upon St. Paul's and shut it in! Could anything be uglier than the National Gallery? Could any important thoroughfare be more conducive to depression of spirits than Victoria Street? It's not the old London that is architecturally ugly and mean; it is the modern London, and usually the more modern the greater the affliction to the eye. Somebody said, I think it was Schelling, "Architecture is frozen music." Would not anybody say that the Methodist mountain in Westminster is frozen pudding?

London in the late seventies was architecturally less saddening than now, because less that was pretentious and defiant of good taste had been undertaken. Its public buildings of later date are the worst in Europe, excepting those that have arisen in Germany. Squat, heavy, out of proportion, lacking in dignity, in beauty, they seem to have been erected for the purpose of proving that in architecture the modern Briton will neither imitate nor aspire. "The finest site in Europe" is almost the meanest sight. The marvel is that a capital and a country having so many fine models of earlier date do not repeat them, improve upon them, or attempt even a finer taste. The opportunities have been unrivalled, but about the achievements the less said the better. Acres of slums have been swept away to be superseded by miles of masonry which serve mainly to prevent an acquaintance with good taste. What public "improvement" could be shabbier than Shaftsbury Avenue, meaner than newer Whitehall, or more commonplace than Kingsway and Aldwych? What department of a Government could have blocked a vista so remorselessly as the Admiralty has done, or have betrayed a contempt for beauty more disheartening than the County Council has shown in its latest horror at Westminster Bridge?

The majestic beauties of London seem to have developed by accident rather than by design. The view down Waterloo Place to the Abbey and the Victoria Tower and the view eastward from the Serpentine Bridge in Hyde Park have certainly done so. The view down the river from Waterloo Bridge, or Westminster, was never planned; it grew slowly, being first blessed by every natural advantage that a patient Providence could bestow. In its buildings of a private character, its domestic architecture, London still has much to seek; monotony has been the rule, but the style has not deteriorated. In some respects and localities it has much improved; there is evidence that imagination has been allowed to exercise itself, that all house owners do not, in these times, think alike, and are not content with dwellings which, outwardly at least, seem, class by class, to have been run from one mould. Individuality begins to express itself as if, at last, some Londoners were beginning to lose their fear of becoming conspicuous. An advance in taste has run concurrently with the decline of the top hat and frock coat.

But the interiors of English buildings of all kinds, public as well as private, churches as well as theatres, offices no less than railway stations, clubs, homes, hotels, all are draughty, as lacking in warmth as they were when I first knew them. The exceptions are so few that they are advertised. Central heating is still regarded as a fad, constant hot water is a novelty; there is a superstitious regard for cold air as pure air, and a fear of warm air as impure. But the worst cold is that of dampness, and many houses are never dry. Mildew is common in their closets, chill in the bedrooms, and their halls are rheumatic. Rheumatism, and its allies lumbago, influenza, pneumonia, and consumption are the customary ills. When the Briton is cold indoors he goes out for a walk and warms his blood. The theory is that artificial warmth is unhealthful; the truth is that it is an expense to which the Briton objects, and that he has not learned how to warm his house. The tough survive. The delicate, the aged, the invalid, or the sedentary take their chances, and while they live do so with an unbelievable lack of comfort. Consequently the English complain of cold when the American would think the temperature moderate; but the American uses heat to keep his house dry as well as warm. He often overdoes it; he often goes as far in one direction as the Briton in the other. But an English house warmed in the American way, not necessarily to the usual American degree, is always appreciated by the Briton, although he may be far from understanding the reason of his content. London had a charm in the late seventies that it lost when the Twentieth Century was still young,—the charm of leisure. The internal-combustion engine drove leisure from the land. The old two-horse 'bus was a leisurely thing. Even the four-horse express 'busses that plied between the Swan at Clapham to Gracechurch Street, and similar urban and suburban centres, were leisurely enough, compared with the electric trains and motor 'busses that now rush the city man to and fro. They were not comfortable, those horse-drawn caravans with their knifeboard roofs and perilous scaling ladders, that is, they were not comfortable excepting on the box seats to which every man's ambition soared. There, sheltered by great leathery aprons, the lucky passenger braved the weather, beheld the passing world, and exchanged small talk with the driver who condescended affably to discourse, with his "regulars", the news of the day. The smart hansom disappeared long ago. Smart as it was it was leisurely compared with the flashing taxi and motor which have superseded "London's gondola", as Disraeli called it. And, Heaven knows, the sulphurous underground was leisurely beyond words.

Everybody rushes now. London has no more time to spare than New York has. It seems a dream that, when I first entered an English train, the custom was for the railway guards to call, "Take your time, take your time!" But that was their call forty years ago.

Gradually the street cries have lessened in variety, in character, and in interest. The simple trades that announced their wares by a snatch of something that passed for song have disappeared one by one. Even the muffin man is vocal no longer, and his bell is silent. Whatever may have caused the other merchants of the curb to vanish, the war and short rations removed the muffin man. He was almost the last, perhaps actually the last of the creatures who gave to London streets an old-world sound or savour.