Most of London is beautiful at any hour. All of it, even to the most sordid parts, is beautiful at the fall of evening or the first glance of the morning. And there is always intruding into the commonplace of the twentieth century some touch of ancientry, some hint of romance. I can recall once finding a note of beauty in that least likely of all places, London Dock. It was an autumn dawn so grey and chill that the pungent smell of a cargo of pepper from one of the wharves brought a welcome sense of warmth. I was wandering about aimlessly when, in a dirty little basin of muddy water in the Wapping corner of the docks, I suddenly came upon a white swan swimming with placid disregard of its utter incongruousness there. In the grey morning, in that grey water, surrounded by the murk of industrialism at its ugliest, the white swan was as startling as a ghost. When, as I looked upon it, the air was suddenly pierced by the crisp, urgent note of a bugle calling the réveillé, I felt sure for a moment that this was an uneasy dream bringing into the sordid grey of life a thread of white and silver from the days of jousts and pageantry. But no, the swan was real enough; the mystery of the bugle-call was that the docks were under the shadow of the Tower of London, which relieves with its splendidly preserved Norman keep a busy quarter of London from architectural dullness.
But the chief charm of London is, without a doubt, its parks and open places, of which there are some three hundred. Indeed, of the total area of London a full tenth is park land, and the civic authorities are adding to the park area, not lessening it.
Nothing that one could say would exaggerate the beauty of these parks in spring and summer. The grass lawns—delicately smooth, of a glowing green that seems to be suffused with light and starred with little white daisies, suggest a bright firmament, the emerald sky of a fairy tale with daisies to make its Milky Way. The trees are full of their own rustling song and of the clear soprano notes of crowding birds. The flower-beds flaunt a constantly changing bravery of colour. All the plants are bedded out in full bloom. The cost must be enormous, but the Londoner pays it cheerfully, and these city parks provide the people with gayer gardens than have any of the great nobles.
For the gardens are the people's. On the dainty grass the children of the poor sprawl and play contentedly. In the ponds and streamlets, beside which, in the old days, kings sauntered, the youngsters of the slums fish with bent pins or scoop with small nets for small fish. The rangers are the friends of the people, and will help a little kiddie to a patch where daisies may be picked for daisy-chains. The trees are all a-twitter with songsters. In the ponds and streams a gorgeous variety of water-fowl display themselves—giant white pelicans, filled with a smug and hypocritical satisfaction at the mistaken reputation they have won for benevolence; black swans from Australia and white swans of this country; all manner of ducks and geese and teal. Children bring crumbs and feed these birds, and also the pigeons, which in consequence reach a bloated size and can hardly waddle out of the way of the horsemen who canter along the soft tracks laid out for cavaliers in Hyde Park.
SAILING BOATS ON THE SERPENTINE, HYDE PARK, LONDON
The aloofness from the city's turmoil of the London parks is wonderful. Matthew Arnold noted it in Kensington Gardens:—
In this lone, open glade I lie,
Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,
Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!