A LADY WITH A PAST
London (in her new Museum at Kensington Palace): "Bless my soul, what a life I've led!"
In 1912 the London Museum was opened at Kensington Palace, and Punch, in a commemorative cartoon, showed London as an old lady examining the cases of the Roman, Saxon and Norman periods. "Bless my soul," she says, "what a life I've led!" And Punch was often more interested in the life she had led than in that she was leading or was about to lead. Her future, as outlined by Sir Aston Webb in January, 1914, seemed to him a charming but somewhat visionary prospect:—
Meanwhile this London is my place;
Sad though her dirt, as I admit is,
I love the dear unconscious grace
That shines beneath her sooty face
Better than all your well-groomed cities.