Impressions of a War Correspondent

by George Lynch

"I think London is a very interesting city," he said.

XVIII

TIRED

It was the fag end of the week in the Dingy City. A heavy weight of dusty grey cloud lay oppressively inert, vaguely resting on the house and tree tops, and underneath the cloud the air seemed stagnantly confined; in its lowest strata people had been breathing it all day—all the week, in fact—in and out of their lungs, so that it was no wonder it felt tired and second-hand and used up.

The air-thirst of their lungs had impelled those who were energetic to go away to where fresh air was to be breathed; but the very tired, and those who lacked the energy for initial impetus, remained. The shops had been closed, and the sunlight beat upon the shuttered eyelids of their windows on the Phryne side of Piccadilly. By that hour on Saturday afternoon Regent Street and Piccadilly were wearing almost a Sunday appearance; Ranelagh and Hurlingham and the new club at Roehampton were crowded with smart people, and for hours past trains from Paddington and Waterloo had been carrying thousands of Panama-hatted, white-trousered men and summer-clad women riverwards. Though the shops were closed, some belated workers, in ones or twos or threes, continued to dribble out from their doors.

Going westward, along Piccadilly, a slight, dark-haired young girl stepped out from one. She was dressed in a thin white blouse that showed the outline of her arms and shoulders; she did not join the crowd of others who were scaling the 'buses on the opposite side of the street, but turned to walk along the pavement parkwards. One fell to speculating as to why she walked. There was no spring or elasticity in her step as if she were doing so for the enjoyment of the exercise. Her feet, in boots with heels slightly rounded on the outside, seemed to drag on that hot pavement. Possibly the 'bus fare was an item of consideration, even though she looked as if she had spent all the morning on her feet in the shop. With thick, dark hair and good eyes, it would have taken very little aid in the way of dress to make her appear quite good-looking. As it was, men turned to look at her as she passed, and one even came across the street, followed, and leered at her as he came abreast; she held on the even tenor of her way, taking no notice of them. On, past the clubs, through the street vocal with the clanking stamp of the horses' hoofs—horses with shining flanks, who cocked their ears, and tossed their foam-dripping mouths as they passed the water-trough.

Wooden stands here and there still disfigured some of the house fronts, and here and there a red pole, looking like a sugar-stick that a child had been sucking, stood as a memento of one of the most hideous schemes of tawdry decoration that a civilised city has ever shown.

At Hyde Park corner she turned in towards the trees, following the stream-crowd direction of other pedestrians. She stopped near the railings, watching the procession of carriages going by. A girl, so like herself that they might almost have been sisters, passed in a high C-springed carriage. Looking from one to the other, the great difference made by little things was apparent. An application of powder-puff to the moist face of the girl at the railings would have worked improvement; her cotton gloves hung down flaccidly from the bare hand which held up her skirt; perhaps some such thought as that of the unfair distribution of C-spring carriages in this world crossed her mind, as she turned away and languidly continued her journey westward under the trees.

The seats were full of a heterogeneous collection of people, all more or less under the drowsy influence of that stagnant air. Here and there men were to be seen asleep in the chairs. Heads in tall hats nodded, debarred the luxury enjoyed by those tramps who lay at full length under the trees on the grass behind. Between those luxuriating on the grass, men lying in their shirt-sleeves, with heads a-resting in the laps of tired-faced women, whose children played or cried noisily around, and those who passed in the procession of carriages, was the intervening line of people from which all sorts of specimens could be taken of the great mediocracy of England—those who could no more afford a carriage than they could afford to lie on the grass. The men's heads were branded with tall hats, remnants and summer sales were suggested in the costumes of many of the women; an occasional glimpse of shoes or hosiery explained why the graceful holding up of the skirts should be unstudied or unknown on this side of the Channel. And their gloves were of the same character as the hose.

Curious specimens were to be found amongst that crowd. A man passed whom I recollect seeing there as long as I can recollect going to the park. Go round the world and back, and here one was certain to find him. I know his income—it is just three hundred a year; except that his whiskers had got a little whiter, he looked just the same as usual. The frock-coat he wore I have a sort of suspicion was the same as I saw on him two years ago. I could swear to the umbrella—at least the handle, because possibly it had been recovered. The frock-coat would obviously not see another season—not that it was showing any tinge of green about the shoulders, far from it. But perhaps it was a feeling of doubtfulness about the coat, which prompted a startling departure in his costume. He had gone in for a pair of those yellow, chamois-coloured gloves which have made their appearance this season. He sauntered along leisurely, watching the people and the carriages with apparently the same degree of interest as he had done for the past ten years. I have heard that long ago he had a good tenor voice, and he used to speak authoritatively of great singers, when they really were great singers, not such as now.... I've never seen him talking to anybody in the park, and I've never seen him smoke; yet his lips are seldom at rest. They have now got a motion something between that of a nervous American with a cigar and a cow chewing the cud. This is the result of the movableness of his artificial teeth. Perhaps an extra visit to his dentist was an item of expenditure not to be lightly incurred.