Londoners have no definiteness of any sort. Their most striking trait is, paradoxically, a vague uncertainty, and this is seen in everything connected with London, from the weather to the gauzy, undecided, wavering scarfs which the women universally wear.
Indeed I do not know of anything that so perfectly represents the mentality of an Englishwoman as these same uncertain morsels of drapery.
This state of things is doubtless founded on a logical topographical fact. Baedeker states that the city of London is built on a tract of undulating clay soil, and the foundation of the average Londoner’s mind seems to be of equal instability.
I have learned from the recent newspapers that, owing to these lamentable subsoil conditions, Saint Paul’s Cathedral is even now cracking and crumbling, and parallel cases may sometime be noted among the great minds of the Britons.
I trust this will not be mistakenly thought to mean any disparagement to the British mind, whether great or small. It is, I am sure, a matter of taste; and the English people prefer their waveringness of brain, as the Pisan Tower prefers to lean.
The result of this state of things is, naturally, a lack of a sense of proportion, and an absolute ignorance of values.
And it is this that makes it impossible, or at least improbable, to generalize about the manners and customs of London’s polite society; though indeed anything so uncertain as their society ways can scarcely be called customs.
I received one morning from Mrs. C. a hastily-written note of invitation to dine with her that same evening.