GREEN PASTURES OR PICCADILLY?
To the Editor.
Sir,—I see that you have opened your columns to a discussion of the relative advantages of life in London and the Suburbs. I don't think that really the two can be compared. If you want perfect quietude can you get it better than in a place where, between nine and six, not a single male human being is visible, all of them being in town? Some people may call this dull; but I like it. Then everything is so cheap in the Suburbs! I only pay £100 a year for a nice house in a street, with a small bath-room, and a garden quite as large as a full-sized billiard-table. People tell me I could get the same thing in London, but of course a suburban street must be nicer than a London one. We are just outside the Metropolitan main drainage system, and our death-rate is rather heavy, but then our rates are light. My butcher only charges me one-and-twopence a pound for best joints, and though this is a little dearer than London, the meat is probably more wholesome from being in such good air as we enjoy. In wintertime the journey to town, half-an-hour by train, has a most bracing effect on those capable of bearing severe cold. For the rest, the incapables are a real blessing to those who sell mustard-plasters and extra-sized pocket-handkerchiefs. Our society is so select and refined that I verily believe Belgravia can show nothing like it! Yours obediently,
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.
Sir,—The Suburbs are certainly delightful, if you have a good train service; but this you seldom get. I do not complain of our Company taking three-quarters of an hour to perform the distance of eight and a half miles to the City, as this seems a good, average suburban rate, but I do think the "fast" train (which performs the distance in that time) might start a little later than 8.30 A.M. Going in to business at 10.30 by an "ordinary" train, which stops at sixteen stations, and takes an hour and a half, becomes after a time rather monotonous. It involves a painful "Rush in Urbe" to get through business in time to catch the 4.30 "express" back, a train which (theoretically) stops nowhere.
COUNTRY CUSSIN'.
Sir,—No more London for me! I've tried it, and know what it's like. I have found a delightful cottage, twenty miles from town, and mean to live in it always. Do we ever have one of your nasty yellow fogs here? Never! Nothing more than a thick white mist, which rises from the fields and envelopes the house every night. It is true that several of our family complain of rheumatism, and when I had rheumatic fever myself a month ago, I found it a little inconvenient being six miles from a doctor and a chemist's shop. But then my house is so picturesque, with an Early English wooden porch (which can be kept from falling to pieces quite easily by hammering a few nails in now and then, and re-painting once a week), and no end of gables, which only let the water into the bedrooms in case of a very heavy shower. Then think of the delights of a garden, and a field (for which I pay £20 a year, and repair the hedges), and chickens! I don't think I have spent more than £50 above what I should have done in London, owing to the necessity of fitting up chicken-runs and buying a conservatory for my wife, who is passionately fond of flowers. Unfortunately my chickens are now moulting, and decline to lay again before next March; so I bring back fresh eggs from town, and, as my conservatory is not yet full, flowers from Covent Garden; and I can assure you that, until you try it, you cannot tell the amount of pleasure and exercise which walking a couple of miles (the distance of my cottage from the station), laden with groceries and other eatables, can be made to afford. Yours chirpily,