EXPENSIVE LONDON.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1635, 31 December 1912, Page 6

EXPENSIVE LONDON.

VISITORS NEED,; A,LONG, PURSE. Visitors to London; especially those bent on doing the theatres, seeing the sights by "taxi," dining at expensive and generally having a good time, are finding these/luxuries an increasingly costly experience (states the Melbourne "Age's' correspondent). Everybody remarks, on first acquaintance the , contrast .between the misery-of the East'and the extravagance of the West End of London. It is getting worse. .-The larger music-halls are now charging 10s.' Gd. for stalls,.. Even places where the performance is no better than that given at the Opera House in Bourke Street, Melbourne, or at the Tivoli in Castlereagh Street, Sydney,' the fee for a stall is 7s. '6d. To pay such a sum, even for-the, privilege of hearing tho much-boomed Harry Lauder, is scandalous profusion, especially,;when you can go to one of the suburban:halls and get a front seat and a fairly good show for Is. But to dine or lunch or amuse oneself in the West End requires a long purse. A very ordinary lunch for two will cost 30s. when you patronise a select house; the waiter expects 10 per oent. of tho bill as a tip; it costs another 6d. to rescue your hat and coat, and tlie liveried grandee who holds open the door of your cab does not disdain a 6mall reward for his Useless service. Globe-trotters who return to Melbourne, and elicit incredulous smiles by accounts of having spent,; an average of .£lO a day, need not be bracketed with Munnchausen; they have' probably lived .very economically. , A well-to-do Sydney merchant states that a ten months' residenoe of his family in London had cost'hiiri X 10,000.. The tipping is abominable. A theatre programme costs Gd., and the high-toned damsel who condescends to sell Ht expects a share of the change. The attendant who shows you to a seat must be paid for his trouble, and if you use the cloakroom „yoii are in the clutches of, another vampire. That the Londoner should submit to all this imposition is. an illustration of the' snobbish reluctance prevailing to make the slightest question about' cost. To raise' a point about an exorbitant charge would lie considered a dreadful faux pas, almost as bad as smoking a eigar without removing the band, which is the very lowest depth of social iniquity. . If-., theatre managers charged £ 1 each for stalls the Londoner and the people who come to_ London to amuse themselves would pay it without a murmur, it is the same at a race meeting. At courses which are immeasurably inferior to Flemington. and Caulfield it costs £1 to go into the "ring," and yet, in, many cases, the track is 60 arranged that you can see nothing until the horses pass the post. The appointments are of the most primitive character. You do not know the scratchings until the,races are about'to start, and at Doncaster, where the last classic race of . the year is run, the' board announcing tho starters, is worked by a man on a step ladder! Yet at Doncaster on St. Leger day it costs 30s. a head to go on the grandstand. The Melbourne public is better provided for at Richmond or Ascot (adds the "Age" correspondent).