A London Mosaic

by Walter Lionel George

But the train goes on, and unexpectedly, we find age after youth, Croydon, Sydenham, Edmonton, places where again the walls are high, the oaks thick, where are deep lawns, heavy stucco fronts, little crowded streets with spreading market places. We breathe the air of genteel sleep. Genteel, perhaps, but restless sleep, for these are old villages made into islands.

They seem vaguely annoyed among the trams; they blink at the sky-signs and the objurgations of Bovril. But it is too late; round each little group run fifty streets, each one comprising a hundred houses or so, all complete, with Nottingham lace curtain and Virginia creeper. The old house may call itself ‘The Lodge,’ but ‘Chatsworth’ and ‘Greville Towers’ are round the corner. Indeed, we forget them as we go on, for now, as the train roars over railway bridges, through cuttings, we look down on the endless congestion of suburban roofs, each one separated from its neighbour by what the builder regrettably calls a ‘worm.’

And yet it is not London. For London has yet to burst upon our eyes, in the shape of strident Clapham Road, or Brixton Road, true London of the black, greasy pavement and the orange peel of which Private Ortheris babbled in his delirium. We have still to come to the giant warehouses and their ambitious grayness, to the flat mass of gray, yellow, and black, broken only by the washing that hangs to dry, and the narrow gardens where droops the nasturtium. At last here is working London, little, nestling, hard, grimy London, gritty, troglodyte London, London of crowded shop and public-house, of tramway and clotted traffic, and yelping children. That is London of many heads and, to me, all smiling.

It is only later, when at last we reach the river that is gray as a cygnet, and see London rising in a hundred solemn spires, that we come to understand London, to feel the use of that white, central pomp; as well of that opulence as of the smiling cleanliness of the outer ring, of the blackness of the inner ring. For all that is part of London’s world, and it is well that she should, within herself, comprise all ugliness and all beauty. For this makes her worth exploring.

The secret of a city’s exploration does not lie in the dutiful following of itineraries, but rather in a lover-like submission to its moods. One should eat in various places, not only within the stereotyped square mile which, in London, in Paris, or in Petrograd, is loudly labelled as the foreigner’s restaurant. One must seek culinary adventure far afield, at Harrow, and at Tulse Hill, in Piccadilly and Norton Folgate; and let me assure you that there exists a subtle difference between the cooking at the Cheapside A.B.C. and its fellow in the Brixton Road.

Also one should readily cede to the fancy that is bred by a beautiful place name. It is true that, as a rule, the most attractive names lead to the least attractive places, but on the way one touches singularity often, and beauty sometimes. My Baedeker has always been Kelly’s Directory; that is one of the books I should like to find in my restricted library if I were wrecked on a desert island. For, sitting under my bread-fruit tree, warm in my garment of yakskin, and smoking an earthen pipe of dried I don’t know what leaf, Kelly’s Directory would bring up dreams, dreams such as these: Seven Sisters’ Road, Satchwell Rents, Beer Lane, and Whetstone Park. All those dreams have come true, and thus a little of my fervour has been abated by their materialisation; by the discovery of Seven Sisters’ Road as gray, refuse-strewn, rich in Victorian goodness and in modern slum; of Satchwell Rents as a dusty affluent into Bethnal Green Road, shuttered, and locked, and suspicious. Whetstone Park, of course, is not at Whetstone, but just off New Oxford Street, and there is no park there. But still, those names, like Orme Square, that secludes itself from the Bayswater Road behind its column and its defiant eagle, like Cumberland Market, Hanoverian, naked, whose many iron posts await cattle that never come, contain the seed of romance because they induce quest. And so I will not be discouraged yet, but soon must discover what stones have wrought Jedburgh Street and Parsifal Road.

CUMBERLAND
HAY-MARKET

Yet those streets, and roads, and squares that have their place in Kelly are, after all, only the outer shell which the true lover must break through. If he is a true lover, he will soon understand that London lies behind the streets. He will realise that between two streets there is often more than two rows of houses and of gardens or yards. He will have discovered that in the core of those blocks of masonry lives an inner London. Into that core there is but one way, which I will call the slits. We all know slits, little spaces between houses, that lead inwards, you know not whither. You pass them every day, perhaps, and never turn aside, yet through those slits is the way in. There is one, for instance, near Notting Hill Gate. They call it Bulmer Place, though it is only six feet broad and is buried under an archway. Enter; ten yards lead you to an old cottage settlement, where no house exceeds two floors, where each has its garden, its creeper and its cat, where washing floats undisturbed, and, on fine afternoons, public beanoes take place. This is an old London village, caught between the warehouses and shops, yet maintained by the magic law of ancient lights.

There is another slit, less well known, quite near Kensington Square. To the ordinary eye, Kensington Square is entirely civilised, and none live there unless they have both money and good taste. In the far south-west corner stands a convent, that stares forth blankly upon this world. But walk south-east and turn to the right, and go on until, past low, white cottages grown with sterile vine, you meet a brick wall. On the way, small houses, well locked, that are quiet and green, will have seen you pass without approval. If adventure is not for you, you will turn back on seeing the brick wall; if, however, it is, you will go on, and, on your right, find a slit so small that you may not open your umbrella in it. This they call South End; if you persevere you shall come to rustic cottages of plaster, and at last discover, single-floored against the side of a great block of flats, the cottage and garden where rot two old green, painted figure-heads. There live Prunella, Mityl, Selysette, and their tribe. But go carefully to South End, for the road is fugitive, and I cannot always find it myself. I think I find it only on the days when I am not too impure in heart.