"While at his feet the human ocean lay,
And wave on wave rolled into space away."
A human stream indeed, of all sorts and conditions—old men and maidens, young men and children, rich and poor, English and foreigners, sightseers and citizens, dapper clerks and toil-stained citizens and red-coated soldiers—all interested, and all at ease, and all at home at what Bishop Lightfoot called "the centre of the world's concourse"—under the cross-crowned Dome of St. Paul's.
XIX
A SUBURBAN SUNDAY
"It seems to the writer of this history that the inhabitants of London are scarcely sufficiently sensible of the beauty of its environs.... With the exception of Constantinople, there is no city in the world that can for a moment enter into competition with it. For himself, though in his time something of a rambler, he is not ashamed in this respect to confess to a legitimate Cockney taste; and for his part he does not know where life can flow on more pleasantly than in sight of Kensington Gardens, viewing the silver Thames winding by the bowers of Rosebank, or inhaling from its terraces the refined air of graceful Richmond. In exactly ten minutes it is in the power of every man to free himself from all the tumult of the world and find himself in a sublime sylvan solitude superior to the Cedars of Lebanon and inferior only in extent to the chestnut forests of Anatolia."
The judicious critic will have little difficulty in assigning this vivid passage to the too-graphic pen of Lord Beaconsfield; but he will also recognize the fact that a description written in 1837 needs some modification when applied to 1906. The central solitude of London—Kensington Gardens—is still very much as it was. Just now, its dark foliage and dusky glades suggest all the romantic associations of Gustave Doré's forests, with a tall trooper of the Life Guards and a bashful nursery-maid, for a Red Cross Knight and an Enchanted Princess. If we go further afield and climb the uplands of Highgate and Hampstead, we look down upon a boundless and beautiful city dimly visible through a golden haze. But the difference between the environs of London now and the same environs when Lord Beaconsfield described them is that they are now united to the centre by an unbroken network of gaslit streets. The enormous increase in the population of London, which every year brings with it, fills up the gaps and spaces, and the metropolis is now a solid whole, with its circumference extending further and further every day into what a year ago was country. In other words, the suburbs are getting further off, and what are suburbs to-day will be town to-morrow; but still there are suburbs, and a Sunday spent in them is an interesting experience.
Yesterday the well-known stuffiness of St. Ursula's, combined with the kind hospitality of some suburban friends, drove me to spend my Sunday about ten miles from Stucco Square. It is a characteristic of people who live in suburbs to believe that their lot is cast in a primæval solitude, and that, though the Dome of St. Paul's is plainly visible from their back gardens, the traveller who ventures to approach them needs explicit and intricate directions about routes and trains and changes and stations. The station for my friend's place was called by a name intensely suggestive of rurality—not exactly "Rosebank," but Rosebank will serve. Readers of Archbishop Temple's Life will remember that a clergyman, excusing himself for living a long way from his church, urged that it was only three miles as the crow flies, thereby drawing down on himself the implacable reply, "But you ain't a crow." In the same way I found that, though Rosebank is only ten miles from Stucco Square "as the crow flies," a human being seeking to approach it must first make a considerable journey to a central terminus, must then embark in a train which a tortoise might outstrip, must change twice, and must burrow through a sulphurous tunnel; and must even then run a considerable risk of being carried through Rosebank Station, which all self-respecting trains seem to ignore.
Faced by these difficulties, I again took counsel with Lord Beaconsfield. "''Tis the gondola of London,' exclaimed Lothair, as he leapt into a hansom, which he had previously observed to be well-horsed." My Gondolier was ready with his terms—a very liberal payment, several hours' rest, his dinner and tea, and something extra for putting up his horse. Granted these preliminaries, he would "do the job on 'is 'ead." It would "be a little 'oliday to 'im." I in vain suggested that the opportunity of attending Divine Service twice at Rosebank Church might be regarded as part payment of his charge; he replied, with startling emphasis, that he didn't go into the country to go to church—not if he knew it; that, if I wanted him, I must take him on the terms proposed; and, further, that I mustn't mind starting early, for he wanted to get his horse down cool.