I walked down the south aisle admiring the gold shafts of light striking through the dusk of the church, noting the number of young women who go there to sit quietly and read sacred and profane literature, and remarking how one appreciative beam of light had caught a splendid head of Burne-Jones's hair, making it blaze in the comparative darkness like fire in a lovely thorn bush. I met all kinds of people wandering on tiptoe with that vague, lost air people assume in churches; and then I came to a little office near the south transept in which I paid sixpence for a ticket—the best sixpennyworth, as I afterwards found, in all London.
"I thought," I said to the verger, "that I'd better go up there before it comes down here."
"That won't be for a long time, sir," he said with a reassuring smile, a sentiment I passed on at step two hundred and forty-one to a charming old lady, who asked if I thought it was "quite wise" to go right to the top!
What a climb it is! If ever I go foolishly walking or climbing in Switzerland again I will get into training on this spiral staircase. Once up and once down every day and no mountaineer's muscles would be firmer, no walker's wind less treacherous. It is a fine, free, and uncrowded gymnasium!
Half-way up is a museum and a library, where I, puffing slightly, prodded about among old stones, the ruins of Old St. Paul's. I know no greater thrill than sightseeing. Then up, up, up and round and round again till I came to a little door at which a quiet, churchy man said it was the Whispering Gallery and told me to walk right round it.
In the Whispering Gallery I was not so impressed by the man in occupation as I was by the astonishing bird's-eye view of tiny people walking far below on a little chess-board of a pavement. Then suddenly I heard a whisper. I looked across to the other side of the gallery. The guide was whispering against the wall. His message came to me like a spirit voice from the Beyond, rather terrifying and sepulchral: "The diameter of the dome is a hundred and eight feet," said the Voice, and then it plunged into an account of Sir Christopher Wren. I walked away, congratulated the Voice, which seemed gratified, and said, "How dissatisfied and hard of hearing some people are!"
High up below the dome of St. Paul's you have thrills. As you walk out on a large stone platform London lies below in a huddle of buildings and smoking chimneys. You pick out landmarks. How narrow even the widest streets look. To the east over the big black bulk of Cannon Street is the faint outline of Tower Bridge in the mist. Only the broad Thames has size. Men are midgets, an omnibus is blotted out from time to time by the flight of three pigeons; your eye rakes offices, exploring all floors at a glance, floors packed with typists. You feel like a beemaster looking into a hive; and all the time a rumble reaches you, the restless voice of the city.
* * *
Almost as wonderful as the smoky map of London spread below is the feeling that you, so leisurely examining St. Paul's while the rest of London is rushing about trying to pay the rent, are having a holiday in a foreign city.
You feel a superiority over all those poor harassed people. You perceive a new angle to London life. You join the idle drifting population of sightseers and you feel rather sorry you did not bring your camera with you, just to help out the illusion that you are in a Florentine mood.