The visitors to London vary, like the omnibus scents, with the varying year. In the spring and early summer, it is the fashionable world that mainly haunts its streets; in the later summer, the French, Italians, Germans—especially Germans—flock with everlasting red Baedekers (indeed, in the London streets in August, you but rarely hear your own language spoken); in autumn, it is chiefly Americans who abound, provided with all "Europe" in the compass of one guide-book; in January the country cousins, and thrifty housewives generally, come up for the day, armed with lists of alarming length, to swell the crowds at the winter sales.
One of the things that strikes the foreigner, new to England and England's ways, most in London, is the regulation of the street traffic. The innumerable vehicles that throng the highways of London, every moment threatening, or seeming to threaten, a "block"; the continuous rumble of many wheels,—omnibuses, cabs, drays, vans, bicycles, motors,—all these, an apparently limitless force, are stopped, as if by magic, by "the man in blue" simply holding up an arm. All power, for the moment, is vested in him; he is here the one authority against which there is no appeal. Under the protection of the policeman's aegis, the most timid foot-passenger may pass in perfect security; the flood will be stayed while his arm, like that of Moses of old, is raised. And there is no such thing as disobedience. Be the bicyclist never so bold, be the hansom-driver never so smart, woe betide him if he disobey the mandate! Under the policeman's faithful pilotage, the big crossings are safe; danger only lurks in the smaller ones, where his presence is not felt. The "man in blue" is, generally, a charming and urbane personage; if, in the exercise of his calling, he sometimes chance to develop a certain curtness, it is, perhaps, that he has in his time been overmuch badgered.... His urbanity, as a rule, is marvellous; and in great contrast to that of his continental brethren. In Germany, the officer of the law shakes his list in people's faces; in France, he gesticulates wildly; in Italy, he is timid and ineffectual; in England, he merely raises his arm, and behold! like the gods on Olympus, he is obeyed.
Londoners are a curiously callous race, and are, as has been shown, remarkably little interested in their neighbours. The fact is, their life is much too busy for such interest. In the country, your neighbours know everything you do, your business, your position, your income even. In London, all that your neighbours know of you is that you come and that you go; and, once gone, your place knows you no more. Miss Amy Levy, who, more than any other poet, has expressed the feeling of London streets, puts the idea well, in these most pathetic lines:
"They trod the streets and squares where now I tread,
With weary hearts, a little while ago;
When, thin and grey, the melancholy snow
Clung to the leafless branches overhead;
Or when the smoke-veiled sky grew stormy-red
In autumn; with a re-arisen woe
Wrestled, what time the passionate spring winds blow;
And paced scorched stones in summer;—they are dead.
"The sorrow of their souls to them did seem
As real as mine to me, as permanent.
To-day, it is the shadow of a dream,
The half-forgotten breath of breezes spent.
So shall another soothe his woe supreme—
No more he comes, who this way came and went."
(A London Plane-Tree.)
The Londoner dies—the great bell of St. Pancras may toll out his sixty years, or the deep tones of Westminster call to his memorial service; yet none the less a dance is given at the house next door, and the immediate neighbours know not of the death until they see the hearse and the long row of funereal trappings. Truly was it said, that in a crowd is ever the greatest solitude! The mighty pulse of London, that
"Of your coming and departure heeds,
As the Seven Seas may heed a pebble cast,"
beats on just the same though you are gone. The vast machine grinds out its daily life, the propellers work, the wheels of Juggernaut hum, while, like a poor moth, you spin your little hour in the sun, and then go under. This terrible desolation of London has resulted, and still results, in many a tragedy, bitter as that of young Chatterton, the boy poet, found dead in a Brooke Street garret:
... "the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride...."