MURKY, BUT MARVELLOUS. LONDON

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 95, 8 May 1937, Page 13

MURKY, BUT MARVELLOUS. LONDON

'Who Is Tired Of It Is Tired Of Life," Said Dr. Johnson, When Writing Of This Greatest Of Great Cities

MOW more than ever — for this is Coronation • ** Year — is London the cynosure of the neighbouring eyes of the nations. One capital may boost itself "the greatest in the whole wide world," another the City of Light, still another Eternal, but London — "who is tired of it is tired of Life," says Doctor Johnson. Its streets f ound the genius of Charles • Larnb, wiites Gerald O'Hagen in the Aiistraiasian. The cruel reality of the Embankment roused the woiinded spirit of Prancis Thompson to the cry of distress in the epic poem ' ' The , Hound of Heaven." Shakespeare had h:s apprenticeship in the period in the depths, when as a lad he did odd jobs round the Globe Theatre; Milton, as profound and inspiring a poet as he was unlovable as a man, was at all times a Londoner. Wordsworth, the apostle of the Back to . Nature Movement of the Eomantic School, was responsible for "To me the meanest flower that blows Gives tho'ughts that lie too deep for tearp." Could a good Australian weep over a pvickly pear leaf ? Yes, if an Englishman could becorne emotional over a dying dandelion. Lamb settled the question when he wrote him, * ' Beparate from the pleasure of your com^any, I don't much cafe if I never see a mountam in my life. I have passed all cny days in London, until I have found as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have dono with dead Nature." Australiaiis may be divided into two clas^es — those who have seen London and those who want to. Those who have are the better for it. They will tell you that it is still the. centre of a great Empire, and knows it thought it doesn ?t say so. "One gains more in a few days' travel in or around London, ' ' said one of our returned public m'en,." than one hears in six month«' gossip between Perth and Fremantle. •Those ' readers who have not seen London and want to must have more than a mild interest such as, can be gained from that chronicled in the pages of Baedeker or the 'vapid posturings of Jeeves in a Wodenhouse novell It is toore than a nation in itself; it is a city.of separate worlds. It is commonly divided into -the "West End" — where they don't write books— -and the "East End" where they don't read 'em. . Between the two lies Fleet street — where they do. And th'e city — where they buy, sell, and keep books. • This (the city) is tho locale of the great comrhercial establishments — the Worship- ' ful Livery Cdmpany of Silversmiths — for lnstance.

London, more than any other, is a city of extremes — magnificenee and misery, p'ageantry and poverty. The clash is softened and tho contrast made less sharp by the solidarity of striving after the happy mean of good average (some call it mediocrity) of the English character. In sharp reaction to the opulent gaiety of the West End, and forming a black background of contrast, are those large areas of the workingclass, of bitter struggle between poverty and wretchedness. But our Australian visitor cannot be unpleasantly interested in sordid reality. He is in search of amusement, relaxation. He scnlcs that world of thought, feeling, inspiration, whieh is our eal world. Part of ,him is atavistic, and ho looks for the land of his forebears. In London he will find them all. Its immensity will hold biTn captive. It will not take him to her heart. this most masculine of cities, unlike Edinburgh or Dublin, which are decidedly feminine. He will wonder whether it haS a soul or just a maw of indifferonce. For all its veneration for tradition and worship of convention, the spirit of change has eome over London. The London of Dickens and Thackeray is still there, but they have given way to Joyce, Aldous Huxley, T. S. Eliot. The B.B.C. has sounded the knell of the music hall; standardisation has wiped out the " charactors. " The "bloke" who sold matehes and newspapers in silk hat, spats, and white silk waistcoat; the poet who swept a crossing in Mayfair; the classic singer of the Safe Eoyal, who wouldn 't wear a collar, are no more. The "character" has either got to standardise or starve. Social order changing has meged the classes. Life has become inceasingly hard for the Piecadilly "Johnnie" who once told you blandly that he had been through Eton, Oxford and the Bankruptcy Court, and seemed rather proud of it. The "gigolo," monarch of the dance halls, onw seems to take the place of Beau Bfummell and the "bucks" of the Eegency. For romantic glamour we have to go back to the 18th. century. London then owned a brilliant society of statesmen, men of letters, soldiers and dandies. The old order of aristocracy is going. They did their job well. With clean hands they meted out justice with honour to millions in India. Here, round Berkeley Square, their

f! ghosts still haunt us. Clive, Horace Walpole, Lord Eosebery, Admiral Byng. In pleasing contrast to modern realism we have romance. ILere lived Child, the famous banker, with a lovely, lonely daughter. He frowned upon the intentions of the young scapegrace Lord West- ' moreland. They eloped, were chased, but won the race for the matrimonial stakes to Gretna Green. Not far away is Sheridan. 's ' house., with spyholes still in the door, through which tho brilliant but erratic Irish playwright lived. "A good horse you 'ro ridmg, Master nheid.au," said a creditor's dun to Dick, as he as he proceeded to lay hands on him for debt, one day in Pall Mall. "Yes, Master Catchpole," replied the ready Dick. "would you like to see how he trots?" Any away he trotted briskly, leaving the debt collector agape. In sharp reaction came 19th. century London. It disregarded everything that did not eome within the region of practical common sense. It hated a genius. It was the age of flannelette, hypocrisy, and the Albert Memorial. This London saw the genius of another dramatist flash across the sky of art and intellect. The society he mocked at in the coquetry oi words condemned him. He walked down Bond: street in knee-breeches, biretta, and silk stockings, carrying in his hand a lily, and wearing the green carnation of a blameless life. ' ' There goes that fool, Wilde," remafked a conventional l'rock-coated 19th. century Londoner. "How easy a mali beeomes famousl " retorted Wilde with charming bow and polite smile. "Work is the ciirse of the drinking-classes " said he of the 19tCi. century. "Poverty is the only crime" said Shaw fOr.the 20th. Which is to decide the struggle of Mammon or the Moralist? The visitor may miss in London the fleeting impression he caught on the' journ'ey through- the Mediterranean of the supreme romantic picturesqueness of the Southern European. But he will be interested in the picturesque poverty of the East -End. And he will have; a lasting impression that the Londoner, though practical, is at heart a poet; the fogs can be "the spiritualised medium of departed mud." As he wanders • through -the West End, the Byzantine spires of Westminster, the dome of St. Paul's will remind him of Matthew Arnold's long fight for Conduct, Morality, and Beligion. However the social order may ehange, the men and women - on the streets up West still reflect rather a fine flower of our civilisation.