TOP-HATS AND TEA-POTS.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 293, 20 June 1929, Page 3

TOP-HATS AND TEA-POTS.

STORIES OF OLD LONDON. A delightful article in the Nation descr bes London 80 years ago as J. 8.5.8. remembers it, the London of “top hats and silver teapots, of kings and courtesans, of cockades and cobble stones. In the course of it he says:—

It was a grim London, the London I knew as a child, despite all that happened to myself, of which I could write affectionately. I was early unchained from a leash, allowing a shilling for my pocket money on a Saturday afternoon, and would spend sixpence on a bus fare to Trafalgar Square and back. There was in those days an A.B.C. tea shop immediately overlooking the Square—and for threepence, being the price of a cup of tea and a piece of lunch cake, one obtain a window seat for an indefinite time to watch the traffic and the walkers on the pavements. This was a never ending happiness—and if the journey backwards gave one an opportunity of sitting in the front seat of the bus by the driver, flying, perhaps, Lord Rothschild’s colours, then might one get, as I did many times, that rich, leisurely commentary on buildings and people as we passed them which was the basis of the truest scholarship in London life.

T The flicker of the whip, the most I cheerful pointer that any lecturer ever had, would fly out towards some club house in Piccadilly: “Naval and Military”—they call the “In and Out” because of the signs on the gate—during the war someone wanted to know how many guns they’d got in Ladysmith, so they telegraphed back “In and Out.” The old Boers couldn’t get that, but our officers twigged all right. It meant 94—that’s the number of the house—94. Piccadilly. There’s Lord Rothschild’s, God bless ’im; he gives us a brace of pheasants every [ year. That’s Apsley House, what a grateful country gave to the old Dook of Wellington, and just to show how grateful they really was they came one day and smashed his I windows for him. That’s all the toffs going into the Park for their | bit of carriage exercise—that’s what ] keeps them healthy, that and eating ] ’earty. Woa, my lasses, ’ere we ’as | a slight interval for refreshments.”

Then the conductor from behind would shout “Knightsbridge, Albert ’All Kensington ’lgh street, Addison road, and ’Ammersmith.” Why, then grin? It is very d:fficult to say. Our suburb, though bordering on a royal borough and itself very genteel, was surrounded by squalor. It was undoubtedly a London in which poverty was an accepted fact, as one may see it accepted and tolerated in some Latin countries today. Poor, mis-shaped half idiots begged openly in the streets; “cadgers,” as they were called, were at nearly every street corner ready to run errands for a few ponce. Old gentlemen in seedy grey frock coats and equally seedy grey tophats were observed to be making their twicedaily journeys to the gin palace at the corner—characters, no doubt, but not amiable characters to the young. One cannot help feeling that the colourless patterned London of to-day, though still stony-hearted enough, must be a kindlier and a better place. It remains, however, always an astonishment that those of us who consider ourselves still can remember a London so different and so remote.