A HAPPY NIGHT
SURBITON AND BATTERSEA
When I received the invitation to the whist-drive at Surbiton my first thought was, "Not likely!" I had visions of a boring evening: I knew Surbiton. I knew its elegances and petty refinements. I knew its pathetic apings of Curzon Street and Grosvenor Square. I knew its extremely dull smartness of speech and behaviour. I foresaw that I should enjoy myself as much as I did at the Y.M.C.A. concert where everybody sang refined songs and stopped the star from going on because he was about to sing the "Hymn to Venus," which was regarded as "a little amorous." The self-conscious waywardness, the deliberate Bohemianism of Surbiton, I said to myself, is not for me. I shall either overplay it or underplay it. Certainly I shall give offence if I am my normal self. For the Bohemianism of Surbiton, I continued, has very strict rules which nobody in Bohemia ever heard of, and you cannot be a Surbiton Bohemian until you have mastered those rules and learned how gracefully to transgress them. If I throw bread pellets at the girls, they will call me unmannerly. If I don't they will call me stiff. You may have noticed that those pseudo-intellectuals who like to think themselves Bohemian are always terrified when they are brought up against anything that really is unconventional. On the other hand, your true Bohemian is disgusted if anybody describes him by that word; if there is one word that he detests more than Belgravia, it is Bohemia. No, I shall certainly not go.
Surbiton ... Surbiton. I repeated the name aloud, tasting its flavour. It has always had to me something brackish, something that fills my mind with grey pain and makes me yearn for my old toys. It is curious how the places and streets of London assume a character from one's own moods. All the big roads have a very sharp character of their own. If all other indications were lacking, one might know at once whether the place were Edgware Road or Old Ford Road, simply by the sounds and by the sweep of it. Pull down every house and shop, and still Oxford Street could never pass itself off as Barking Road. But they have, too, a message for you. I still believe that a black dog is waiting to maul me in Stepney Causeway. I still dance with delight down Holborn. Peckham Road still speaks to me of love. And Maida Vale always means music for me, music all the way. I had my first fright in Stepney Causeway. I first walked down Holborn when I had had a streak of luck. I first knew Peckham Road when first I loved. And I first made acquaintance with Maida Vale and its daintily naughty flats at the idiotic age of seventeen, when I was writing verses for composers at five shillings a time. They all lived in Maida Vale, and I spent many evenings in the music-rooms of those worn-out or budding composers and singers who, with the Jews, have made this district their own; so that Maida Vale smells always to me of violets and apple-blossom: it speaks April and May. The deep blue of its night skies is spangled with dancing stars. The very sweep and sway of the road to Kilburn and Cricklewood is an ecstasy, and the windows of the many mansions seem to shine from heaven, so aloof are they.
Surbiton, I repeated. I shall certainly not go. I know it too well. Surbiton is one of those comfortable, solid places, and I loathe comfortable places. I always go to Hastings and avoid St. Leonards. I always go to Margate and fly from Eastbourne. I always go to Southend and give Knocke-sur-Mer a miss. I like Clacton. I detest Cromer. I love Camden Town. I hate Surbiton. Surbiton is very much like Hampstead, except that, while Hampstead is horrible for 362 days of the year, there are three days in the year when it is inhabitable. On Bank Holidays the simple-minded minor poet like myself can live in it. I was there one August Bank Holiday, and, flushed and fatigued with the full-blooded frolic, I had turned aside to "cool dahn" in Heath Street, when I ran against some highly respectable and intelligent friends.
"What!" they said. "You here to-day? Ah! observing, I suppose? Getting copy? Or perhaps as a literary man you come here for Keats ... Coleridge ... and all that?"
"No," I answered. "I come here for boatswings. I come here to throw sticks at coconuts. I come here to buy ticklers to tickle the girls with. I come here for halfpenny skips. I come here for donkey rides. I do not come for Keats. I do not care a damn for Coleridge. I do not come to gloat about Turner or Constable or anybody else who lived at Hampstead a hundred years ago. I come here to enjoy myself—for roundabouts, cockles and whelks, steam-organs—which, after all, are the same thing as Keats or Coleridge. They're Life."
Wherefore I felt determined that I could not and would not go to a whist-drive at Surbiton, when I could get the real thing in Upper Street, Islington.