New York and America are both so new, so lustful of change. Here, in these streets, when you walk out of a morning or an evening, you feel a pleasing stability. London is not going to change under your very eyes. You are not going to turn your back to find, on looking again, a whole sky-line effaced. The city is restful, naïve, in a way tender and sweet, like an old song. London is more fatalistic, and therefore less hopeful than New York.
Drawn by W. J. Glackens
PICCADILLY CIRCUS
The first thing that impressed me was the grayish tinge of smoke that was over everything, a faint haze; and the next that, as a city, street for street and square for square, it was not so strident as New York, not nearly so harsh. The traffic was less noisy, the people were more thoughtful and considerate, the so-called rush, which characterizes New York, was less foolish. There is something rowdyish and ill-mannered about the street life of New York. This is not true of London. It struck me as simple, sedate, thoughtful, and I could only conclude that it sprang from a less-stirring atmosphere of opportunity. I fancy it is harder to get along in London. People do not change from one thing to another so much. The world there is more fixed in a pathetic routine, and people are more aware of their so-called “betters.” I hope not, but I felt it to be true.
I do not believe that it is given to any writer wholly to suggest a city. The mind is like a voracious fish: it would like to eat up all the experiences and characteristics of a city or a nation, but this, fortunately, is not possible. My own mind was busy pounding at the gates of fact, but during all the while I was there I got only a little way. I remember being struck with the nature of St. James’s Park, which was near my hotel, the great column to the Duke of Marlborough, at the end of the street, the whirl of life in Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, which were both very near. An office I visited in a narrow street interested me, and the storm of cabs which whirled by all the corners of this region. It was described to me as the center of London, and I am quite sure it was, for clubs, theaters, hotels, smart shops, and the like were all here. The heavy trading section was farther east, along the banks of the Thames, and between that and Regent Street, where my little hotel was located, lay the financial section, sprawling about St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Bank of England. One could go out of this great central world easily enough, but it was only, apparently, to get into minor centers. It was all decidedly pleasing, because it was new and strange, and because there was a world of civility prevailing which does not exist in America.
The amazing metropolitan atmosphere in which I found myself satisfied me completely for the time being. Life here was so complex and so extended that during days and days that involved visits—breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, suppers—with one personage and another, political, social, artistic, I was still busy snatching glimpses of the great lake of life that spread on every hand. In so far as I could judge on so short a notice, London seemed to me to represent a mood—a uniform, aware, conservative state of being, neither brilliant nor gay anywhere, though interesting always. About Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Charing Cross, and the Strand I suppose the average Londoner would insist that London is very gay; but I could not see it. Certainly it was not gay as similar sections in New York are gay. It is not in the Londoner himself to be so. He is solid, hard, phlegmatic, a little dreary, like a certain type of rain-bird or Northern loon, content to make the best of a rather dreary situation. On the other hand, I should not say that the city is depressing,—far from it,—though there are many who have told me they found it so. You have to represent a certain state of mind to be a Londoner, or a Britisher, even, a true one, and, on the whole, I think it is a more pleasant attitude than one finds in America, though not so brilliant. Creature comforts run high with this type of mind, and, after that, a certain happy acceptance of the commonplace. Nothing less than that could possibly explain the mile on mile of drab houses, of streets all alike, of doorways all alike, of chimneys all alike. That is what you feel all over England—a drab acceptance of the commonplace; and yet, when all is said and done, it works out into something so charming in its commonplaceness that it is almost irresistible. All the while I was in London I was never tired of looking at these dreary streets and congratulating myself that they composed so well. I do not wonder that Whistler found much to admire at Chelsea or that Turner could paint Thames water-scenes. I could, too, if I were an artist. As it was, I could see Goldsmith and Lamb and Gray and Dickens and much of Shakspere in all that I saw here. It must be the genius of the English people to be homy and simple, and yet charmingly idyllic in their very lack of imagination. It must be so.
One particular afternoon along the Thames it was raining. I saw the river in varying moods all the way from Blackfriars Bridge to Chelsea, and never once was it anything more than black-gray, varying at times from a pale or almost sunlit yellow to a solid leaden-black hue. It looked at times as though something remarkable were about to happen, so weirdly greenish yellow was the sky above the water; and the tall chimneys of Lambeth over the way, appearing and disappearing in the mist, were irresistible. There is a certain kind of barge which plies up and down the Thames with a collapsible mast and sail which looks for all the world like something off the Nile. They harmonize with the smoke and the gray, lowery skies. I was never weary of looking at them in the changing light and mist and rain. Gulls skimmed over the water here very freely all the way from Blackfriars to Battersea, and along the Embankment they sat in scores, solemnly cogitating the state of the weather, perhaps. I was delighted with the picture they made in places, greedy, wide-winged, artistic things.
I had a novel experience with these same gulls one Sunday afternoon, which I may as well relate here. I had been out all morning reconnoitering strange sections of London, and arrived near Blackfriars Bridge about one o’clock. I was attracted by what seemed to me at first glance as thousands of gulls, lovely clouds of them, swirling about the heads of several different men at various points along the wall. It was too beautiful to miss. It reminded me of the gulls about the steamer at Fishguard. I drew near. The first man I saw was feeding them minnows out of a small box he had purchased for a penny, throwing the tiny fish aloft in the air and letting the gulls dive for them. They ate from his hand, circled above and about his head, walked on the wall before him, their jade bills and salmon-pink feet showing delightfully.
I was delighted, and hurried to the second. It was the same. I found the vender of small minnows near by, a man who sold them for this purpose, and purchased a few boxes. Instantly I became the center of another swirling cloud, wheeling and squeaking in hungry anticipation. It was a great sight. Finally I threw out the last minnows, tossing them all high in the air, and seeing not one escape, while I meditated on the speed of these birds, which, while scarcely moving a wing, rise and fall with incredible swiftness. It is a matter of gliding up and down with them. I left, my head full of birds, the Thames forever fixed in mind.