Then Hampstead rings off in a rage and nothing is done about it.
Mr. Rudyard Kipling must surely have known of this regrettable estrangement or he would never have sung—
"North is North and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Except in the Tube at Leicester Square or the corner of Oxford Street."
Anyhow you will find that people living in Hampstead tend more and more to regard themselves as dwellers in the mountains, and take defiantly to wearing plaid shawls and big hobnail brogues, and carry alpenstocks in the Underground with them. They acquire, moreover, the keen steady gaze of those who live in constant communion with the silent hills, so different from the Oriental fatalism in the eyes of the Kensingtonite, which comes from the eternal contemplation of the posters of Chu Chin Chow.
It is possible, however, to visit Hampstead, if you are sufficiently venturous, by bus, tube, tram or train. If you are very rich the best way is to take a taxi-cab as far as Chalk Farm, where London's milk supply is manufactured. You cannot go further than Chalk Farm by taxi-cab, because the driver will explain that he is afraid of turning giddy, having no head for heights. You have then the choice of two courses, either to purchase the cab outright and drive it yourself, or to finish your journey by the funicular railway.
Let us suppose that you have done the latter and emerged on the final peak which surmounts the Hampstead range. On your way upwards you will have been charmed by the number of picturesque houses which seem to have been thrown at the side of the hill and to have stuck there, and also by the luxuriant groves of cocoanut palms and orange and banana trees which the L.C.C. has thoughtfully planted to provide sustenance for London on its Whitsuntide Bank Holiday. It is indeed a pleasant thought that so many hard-working people are able on this day to snatch a little leisure in the good old English fashion on the swings and roundabouts and forsake the weary routine of watching American films. These great crowds picnic also on the greensward, bringing their food in paper wrappers, so that a student of such matters can easily gauge the proportionate circulation of our principal morning dailies by taking a walk round Hampstead Heath early on Whit-Tuesday morning.
When you have reached the last summit you will find yourself confronted by a frowning Gothic pile known as Jack Straw's Castle, and a large flagstaff on which the flag is only flown when the castellan is in residence. There is also a pond where the inhabitants of Hampstead, both old and young, swim their dogs after sticks and float a great variety of boats. On fine mornings there is such a confusion of boats and sticks and barking dogs that, if you are lucky, you can come up with an Irish terrier and an ash plant and go down rather proudly with a Newfoundland and the latest model of Shamrock XIV.
Looking downwards from the top you will discern on the open slopes and twinkling amongst the vegetation a vast multitude of white poles. On Saturday afternoons, I believe, there are more poles on Hampstead Heath than in the whole of Kieff. Each pole is attached to a boy scout, and it has been calculated that, if all the boy scouts in Hampstead were to set their poles end to end in a perfectly straight line from the flagstaff, pointing in a south-easterly direction, they would be properly told off by their scout-masters for behaving in such an idiotic manner.
Next perhaps in interest to the boy scouts, both because of their quaint mediæval costume and the long lances which they carry in their hands, are the rangers of Hampstead Heath. Feudal retainers of the L.C.C., they sally ever and anon from their lairs with lances couched to spear up the pieces of paper which the people of London have left behind; and this paper-sticking is really the best sport to be enjoyed now on Hampstead Heath, unless one counts fishing for dace in the ponds, which I take to be the most contemplative recreation, except coal-mining, in the British Isles.