AUTUMNAL SQUARES.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1896, 3 November 1913, Page 10

AUTUMNAL SQUARES.

DUKE & PEDLAR; THE CKARM OF BLOOMSBURY, [Specially written for tho "Dominion."] [BY S. V. BIiACEER.] Lendon, September 19. Some of those peoplo who aro fond of broad generalisations say that London is at its best. in tiio autumn. They may be but 1, having realised in many wanderings that London is not a placo but a world of. places, will only say that the misty season is particularly kind to Cloomsbury. When spring dauced into the squares, earlier and moro suddenly than she appeared in the countryside, also made these long ranks of brown houses painfully dull by contrast with iiei theatrically bright green leaves. Summer cid tut visit Bloomsbury to beckon the uneasy sojourner to tho downs, tho yellow sands, or the country lanes. But autumn, early autumn, when tho plane trees have but begun to shed their leaves, and tho mists, liot yet deepening into fogs, do but beautify the sunshine, and tile air moves gently, and an evening firo in the grate is a furtive and occasional joy, and the cold tub has not 'yet become a heroism—it is at this season that Bloomsbury becomes gracious and homelike. An Autumnal Region*

Autumn suits Bloamsbur.y because Bloomsbury is itself autumnal, it is a place of vanished grandeur, in wmcli tho atmosphero is reaoleut, uotof decay, but of lueJlownuss.' What- wero cnco the town residences of "county families," and the homes of prosperous city merchants, are now private hotels and apartment houses. Journalists, literary people, readers at the British Museum, foreigners, colonial ami other tourists, and visitors from the country, niako up the shifting population. All the languages of Jiurope are heard in tho dining-rooms, and the red covers of Baedeker grow almost as familiar as tho morning paper. A typical street of these residential hotels that used to bo big private houses is wide and level, straignt and not very The vista at either end ib close J with a mass of large and thickly-grown trees, filling: one of thoso generously designed squares which wera the last word of eighteenth and nineteenth century town-planning. It was just at the turn of those, two eentuncb that l'Vancis, fiith'Buko of Bedford, pulled down lii£ mansion, and laid out these streets and squares that still bear tlio names of his family, his titles, his relatives, and his country estates —Russell, Bedford, Woburn', Tavistock, Torriugtois, Kcppel, am! bo forth.. This particular street looks to-day pretty much as it looked a few- years after it had been carved out of the grounds of the old ducal mansion. Tho fourstory houses of brown brick, flat-fronted and uniforni, »i!-h no visiblo root 01 gable, as though they had all been unrolled like a ribbon from some gigantic siraol, are darkened with the smoko of a century, while their lower stories, window-frames, and doors are freshly and miscellaneously painted, and" aro garnished with such lamps and biass or copper plates as are supposed to bo most attractive to persons in search of "board and residence."

When George the Third was King. But such details tside, this Jomi deep box, an it wore, uilh. brown house' fronts for its wa! i;, and jjreen trees for its ends, has ehaiigeu but l ! ttlo sinees Georgo 111 wis King. Tiio very flagstones are perhtps tho samo, and certainly tbo raiJin;;/* of tho ample areas aro unchanged, save that tho sharpness of all tiioir spikes and flutings has been muffled with innumerable coats of paint, and the gentle pressure of time has compromised their rectilineal and perpendicular severity. Some ot tho ample areas liavtt si tent-like root of Virginian crecpsi', already beginning to flaunt its .'autumnal crimson. In rno s vint. bears bunches of real grapes. Flowers are. still gay in window-boxes, and on some of tho narrow/ iron-railed balconies. The street retains its j.ristine solidity, but, whereas it must at first have- been wickedly ugly, it has gained from autumn mists, from soeial change, and above all from time, a graco that is its very own. 11l all townplanning, ■whether executed under the Third Georgo or tho Fifth, time is tho indispensable collaborator. Tho softening and humanising of the crude plans of the .Duke is hardly com•pleto when destruction begins. ■ Two huge hotels, of tho kind called palatial, with domes, towers, and spires, terra cotta and imitation stone, have made eruption upon the symmetry of Russell Square; and streets from which, even in Victorian days, red-waist-coated retainers of the House of Russell warned off all but the most respectable traffic, a,re now loud with tho traffic of tho buses, taxis, and drays that ply between tho city and the great railway stations that "cluster on Bloomsburv's northern edge.

Tha Pedlar. / Poverty, too, has intruded. Some ol the streets of old dignilied houses have fallen into tenement occupation, where families live grimily in rooms where fashion once held sway. The low-built mews, in wjiich horses, coachmen, and stable-boys used to live behind the tall houses ui' then masters, have, in some eases, bocome littlo better than slums. Bat the poor can be seen without searching for them. Street traders, in numbers that surprise tho colonial visitor, have their regular stands. Newspaper vondors and flower-sellers hitch their contents-bins, bags, and travs every morning to the same railings. Old people selling matches or bootlaces, disabled workers offering maps and picture post-cards, stand day after day on the same kerbs. Certain stones of tWpavemeiit that surrounds tho garden and lawns of Russell Square glow afresh each day with the creations of the pavement artist. Some time in the not-distant future, perhaps, these merchants and artists of tho street will bo removed by fussy inspectors to unhomelike "honies," but at present they gather their harvest of coppers unmolested. ■ . • Tho other day T sat on a bench m a public square, and drifted into conversation with a pedlar of cheap jewellery. Ho was an old man, whose slmmkon figure afforded corroboration of his story of maladies and accidents/ Tie had been an engineer's litter until he "got past it." He knew as a connoisseur the inside of three workhouses, but now. with bis old-age pension of five shillings a week, and his bit of peel* tHiii", lie was ajble to got all he wanted to keep his old wife and himself. His one wrievanco was that too many ablebodied voung men were peddling in the streets." As he talked, ho re-nrrangert some cheap brooches lie had just bought to soli again. A ppper-lwg drifted with the brown leaves along the natlu He picked it ur>, smoothed it. folded it, and put it in his pocket. At length, having charged and lit his extremely ancient briar, he took ur> his tiny shop, bade me a rhwful "Rood morninu." nncl limped away. Passing one of the little receiitaclcs for rubbish,-he drowned i'llo it. squeezed up into a tight ball, the pink paper from whiefi ho bail linwranped the latest addition to his stock-in-trade. "The Leviathan of Royal Creatures." From the clustered plane-trees of Russell Square, the largest square in Loudon, the bronze statue of Francis, fifth Duke of Bedford, looks down the long vista of flat-fronted brown houses that cow tho ground whoro ho was mint to dw«U ill tka aot-iao-lliodost

mansion of his ancestors. The plough, the heads of oxen., tho recumbent, lamb, tlio cornucopia, indicate that tho sculptor would have us remember Duko Francis for his pioneering of experimental agriculture. But ho has a more splendid, though less complimentary monument in that "Letter to a Nobio Lord, 1 ' in which Burke so eloquently resented tho Duke's attack upon his pension. The royal grants to tho House of Russell wero described by Burko as "so enormous as not only to outrage economy, but to stagger credibility," and tho Duke himself ns "tho Leviathan of loyal creatures —but still a creature." Yet that was before tho Duko had begun to draw those princely _ revenues which still flow in ever-increasing volume into the cofferß of his descend* ants from tho ground that was once the park and garden of his town mansion. It is all so like England—nay, let mo be cautious, and say, so like Bloomsbury—a statue for the landlord, and tho freedom of the streets for tho infirm but cheerful pedlar.