DEAR DEAD LONDON

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 538, 14 October 1949, Page 14

DEAR DEAD LONDON

101 JUBILEE ROAD, a Book of London Yestérdays, by Frederick Willis; Phoenix House. English price, 15/-. O know and love London is a liberal education, and one not to be fully compassed even in a lifetime. "London, Ontario!" said the Cockney recruit in Canada, scornfully, when they took if he meant that city. "London the ’ole bloomin’ world!" Hence the endless stream of books about London. This one, written from a new angle, gives the real tang of London before the deluge. It is not a traveller's: London or a sociologist’s London, but a London described by a man from the lower-middle class which contributes so vastly to the population, but is apt to be overshadowed by high politics, high finance, and high society. No. 101 Jubilee Road,. one of a row of small terraced houses exactly alike, is taken as a typical home of this class. Frederick Willis, the author, has been printer’s boy, hatmaker, journalist and broadcaster. His roots are in this artisan London, but his tree has branched widely. Mr. Willis’s thesis is that the 20th Century began, not in 1900 but in 1914, and it is about these fourteen years that he writes. Here is the daily life of London in an age that now seems so re-mote--and so secure. It is the life of tich and poor seen by a keen observer ~-how they worked and frolicked; what they ate and read; young bloods disporting themselves on boat race night amid the surprising tolegance of the public; costermongers having their fun by scores of thousands at the Crystal Palace on Easter Monday; handsom cabs and horse buses; the reign of Marie Corelli and Hall Caine and musical comedy; strict Sunday dressing, with stiff starched shirts for men; skirts to the ground and big picture hats; halfpenny papers and penny weeklies ("Between the section of society which had a penny to burn and that which had only a halfpenny was a very distinct barrier"); babies delivered by "shilling doctors"; street entertainment of great variety and pirated music’ sold for twopence; the nice ‘etiquette of "walking out"; roast beef, two veg., and currant pudding, all for sevenpence; all the fun of the world at Earl’s Court, shared by Royalty and proletariat; processions of bedraggled and begging unemployed, end men crowding to get a job at a pound a week. Despite this under-layer of misery, it was a buoyant confident society, certain that it was on progress road. Mr. Willis’s vivid reconstruction, assisted by many admirably chosen photographs, will bring a lump to the thfoats of the middle-aged. And despite the social improvement in many directions since 1914,. the astonishment of younger

people as they view this world of their parents and grandparents may be touch-

ed with envy.

A.

M.