LONDON

I)

'

ARTHUR SYMONS

CO R N EL L
U N I V ER S I TY L I B R A R Y

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE E NDOWMENT FU ND

HENRY \Y/ILLIAMS SAGE

GIVE N

IN

1891

BY

Cornei! University Library

DA 688.598 1909

I\ \ \ 1111[liil\ 111[11l Il \ll[ill\ 1\1lii\ \lii

3 1924 028 075 244

The originai of this book is in

the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in
the Uniteci States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028075244

L O N D O N
A BOOK OF ASPECTS

LONDON
A BOOK OF ASPECTS
BY

ARTH U R SYMONS

LON DON : PR IVATELY PRINTE D

FOR

EDM UND D. BROOKS AND HIS FRIENDS

M I N NEAPOLIS
1909
! -:

. }.......

E7!tered at Stationers' Hall

CH ISWICK PRESS : CHARLE; \VHI'l TINGHAM AND CO,

TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LA NE, LONDON.

LES ides sont dans l 'air, elles vous sourien t au coin d'une rue, elles
s'lancent sous u ne roue de cabriolet avec u n jet de boue.
BALZAC.

LO N DO N : A BOO K OF

AS PECTS
I

H ER E is in the aspect of London a certain

magnificence : the magnificence of weigh t,
solidity, energy, i m pert urbabil ity, and an u n
conquered continuance. It is alive from border
to border, not an i nch of i t is not alive. It exists,
goes on, and has been going on for so m any
cent u ries. Here and t here a stone or the line
of a causeway fixes a d ate. If you look beyond
it you look into fog. I t sums u p and i ncl u
des England. Materially England is contai ned
in it, and the soul of Englan d has always in
habi ted it as a body. We have not had a great
man who
has never lived in London.
And London makes no display ; it is there,
as i t has come, as fire and plagues have left it ;
bu t it has never had either a Haussman n or a
Nero. It has none of the straight lines of Paris
nor the tall lines of Vien na nor the emphatic
B

Germa n monotony . I t has not the natu ral aids

of Constanti nople, with seas and conti n ents
about i t, nor of Rome, wi th its seven hills, and
i ts traces of all tbe bistory of tbe world. It was
set in fertile soil wbicb bas still left i t the
ma rvellous green grass of its parks, and on a
river wbich bas brougb t beauty along its whole
course. Great arch i tects bave left a few u n
spoilt treasu res : West minster Abbey, tbe Ban
queti ng Hall at Wbi teball, an old chu rch bere
and tbere. But for tbe most pa rt tbe appeal
of London is made by no bea u ty or effect in
tbi ngs tbemselves, bu t by tbe sense which i t
gives us of inevitable growth and im pregnable
strength, and by the atmosphere which makes
and un makes tbis vast and solid city every
morn ing and every eveni ng wi th a nat ural
magie pecul iar to i t.
Englisb ai r, worki ng upon London smoke,
creates tbe real London. The real London is
not a city of u niform brigbt ness, like Pa ris, nor
of savage gloom, like Prague ; it is a pict u re
continually changing, a continu a} sequence of
pictu res, and tbere is no k nowi ng what mean
street corner may not sudden ly take on a glory
not its ow n. The English m ist is always at
work l i ke a subtle pai n ter, and London is a
vast canvas prepared for tbe mist to wor k on.
I

The especial beau ty of London is the Thames,

and the Thames is so wonderful because the
mist is always changi ng its shapes and colou rs,
always maki ng its lights mysterious, and build
ing palaces of cloud out of mere Parliamen t
Houses with thei r jags and turrets. When
the m ist collaborates with night and rai n,
the masterpiece is created.
Most travellers come into London across
the river, sometimes crossing it twice. The
entrance, as you leave the country behi nd you,
is ominous. If you come by n ight, and it is
never wise to enter any city except by night,
you are slowly swallowed u p by a blan k of
bl ackness, pierced by holes and windows of
dingy light ; foul and misty eyes of light in
the sky ; narrow gulfs, in which l ights bli nk ;
blocks and spikes of black against grey ; masts,
as it were, risi ng out of a sea of m ist ; then a
whole street suddenly laid bare in bright light ;
shoulders of dark bui ldings ; and then black
shiny rails, and then the river, a vast smudge,
dismal and tragic; and, as one crosses i t
again, between the vast network of the bridge's
bars, the i m possible fairy peep-show of the
Emba n k ment.
All this one sees in passi ng, in hardly more
than a series of flashes; but if you would see
3

London steadily from the poi nt where its as

pect is finest, go on a n ight when there has
been rain to the footpath which crosses Hun
gerford Bridge by the side of the railway-t
rack. The river seems to bave suddenly
become a
lake ' u nder the black arches of Waterloo
Bridg
mul- e there are reflections of golden fi re,
tiplyi ng arch beyond arch, in a lovely tangle.
The Surrey side is dark, with tall vague bu ild
ings rising out of the m ud on which a little
water crawls: is it the water that moves or the
shadows? A few empty barges or steamers lie
in solid patches on the water near the ban k ;
and a stationary sky-sign , h ideous where it de
faces the n ight, tu rns in the wate r to waveri ng
bars of rosy orange. The bu ildings on the
Em ban kmen t rise up, walls of soft greyness
with squares of lighted wi ndows, wh ich make
patterns across them. They trem ble in the mist,
thei r shapes flicker ; it seems as if a breat h
would blow out their lights and Ieave them
bod iless h usks in the wind. From one of the
tallest chim neys a red dish smoke floats and
twists l ike a flag. Below, the Em ban kment
cu rves towards Cleopatra's Need le : you see
the cu rve of the wall, as the Iamps light it,
leaving the obelisk in shadow, and falli ng
fain tly on the grey m ud in the river. Just that
4

corner has a mysterious air, as if secluded, in

the heart of a pageant ; I know not what makes
it quite so t ragic and melancholy. The aspect
of the night, the aspect of London, pricked out
in poi nts of fire against an envelopi ng dark
ness, is as beautiful as any sunset or any
moun tai n ; I do not know any more beautiful
aspect. And bere, as always in London, i t is
the at mosphere that makes the picture, an at
mosphere like Turner, reveali ng every form
th rough the ecstasy of its colour.
It is not only on the river that London can
make absolute beau ty out of the material which
lies so casually about i n its streets. A London
sunset, seen th rough vistas of narrow streets,
has a colour of smoky rose which can be seen
in no other city, and it weaves strange splen
dours, of ten enough, on its edges and gulfs of
sky, not less marvellous than Venice can lift
over the Giudecca, or Siena see stretched be
yond its walls. At such a poi nt as the Marble
Arch you may see conflagrations of jewels, a
sky of bu rning lavender, tossed abroad like a
crumpled cloak, with broad bands of dull pur
ple and smoky pi nk, slashed with brigh t gold
and decked wi th grey streamers ; you see i t
th rough a veil of movi ng mist, which darkens
downwards to a solid block, coloured like lead,
5

where the l ighted road tu rns, meeti ng

the sky.
And there are a few open spaces, which at
all ti mes and u nder all lights are satisfyi ng to
the eyes. Hyde Park Corner, for no reason
in particular, gives one the first sensation of
pleasu re as one comes into London from Vic
toria Station. The glimpse of the two parks,
with thei r big gates, the eager flow of traffic,
not too tangled or laborious just there, the
begi nning of Piccad illy, the lack of stiffness
i n anythi ng : i s it these that hel p to make
up the i mpression ? Piccadilly Circus is
always like a queer hive, and is at least never
dead or formai. But it is Trafalgar Square
which is the conscious heart or cen tre of
London.
If the Thames is the soul of London, and i f
the parks are its eyes, surely Trafalgar Square
may well be reckoned its heart. There is no
hour of day or n ight when it i s not ad mi rable,
but for my part I prefer the eveni ng, just as it
grows d usk, after a day of heavy rai n. H ow
often have I wal ked u p and down, for mere
pleasu re, for a pleasu re which qu ickened i nto
actual excitemen t, on that broad, curved plat
form from which you can tu rn to look up at
the National Gallery, like a frontispiece, and
from which you can look down over the dark
6

stone pavement, black and shining with rain ,

on which the curved fountai ns stand with their
i n ky water, while two gas-lam ps cast a feeble
light on the gran ite base of the Nelson mon u
men t and on the vast sulky lions at the corners.
The pedestal goes up straight into the sky,
dimin ish ing the roofs, which curve downwards
to the white clock-face, alone visible on the
clock-tower at West mi nster. Whitehall flows
like a river, on which vague shapes of traffic
float and are submerged. The mist and the
twiligh t hide the one harmonious buildi ng in
London , the Banqueti ng Hall. You realize
that it is there, and that beyond it are the
Abbey and the river, with the few <lem ure
squares and narrow frugal streets still left
stand i ng in Westmi nster.
It is only af ter t rying to prefer the parks
and pu bl ic gardens of most of the other capi
tals of Europe that I have come to conv ince
myself t hat London can more than hold its
own against them all. We have no site com
parable with the site of the Pincio i n Rome,
none of the opalescent water which encircles
the gardens at Venice, no Sierras to see from
our Prado, not even a Berli n forest in the midst
of the city ; and I for one have never loved a
Lon don park as I have loved the Luxem bou rg
7

Gardens; but, if we will be frank wi th our

selves, and put sentimen t or the prejudice of
foreign travel out of our heads, we shall have
to admit that in the nat u ral properties of the
park, in grass, trees, and the magie of atmo
sphere, London is not to be excelled.
And, above all, in fresh ness. After the Lon
don parks all others seem dusty and dingy. It is
the Engl ish rain , and not the care of our park
keepers, that brings this gloss out of the grass
and gives our publ ic gardens their air of country
freedom. Near the Rou nd Pond you might be
anywhere except in the m idd le of a city of
smoke and noise, and i t is only by an
u n usually high roof or chim ney, somewhere
against the sky, far off, that you can real ize
where you are. The Serpent i ne will never be
vulgarized, t hough cockneys paddle on it in
boats ; the water in
St. James's Park will always be kept wild and
strange by the sea-gulls ; and the toy-boats only
give an in fantile charm to the steel-bl ue water
of the Rou nd Pond. You can go astray in long
avenues of t rees, where, in autumn, there are
always ch ild ren playi ng among the leaves,
buildi ng tom bs and castles wit h them. In
summer you can sit for a whole afternoon,
u ndist u rbed, on a chair on that green slope
which goes down to the artificial end of th e
8

Serpentine, where the stone para pets are, over

the water from the peacocks. It is only the
parks that make sum mer in London almost
bearable.
Ihave never been able to love Regent's
Park, though Ik now it bet ter than the others,
and though it has Iovely water-bi rds abou t its
islands, and though it is on the way to the
Zoological Gardens. Its flowers are the best
i n Lon don, for colou r, form, and tendi ng. You
hear the wild beasts, bu t no city noises. Those
sounds of roari ng, crying, and the voices of im
prisoned bi rds are sometim es d istressi ng, an d
are perhaps one of the reasons why one can
n ever be qui te happy or aloof from things in
Regen t's Park. The water there is meagre,
and the boats too closely visible ; the child ren
are poorer and seem more preoccu pied than the
children in the western parks. And there i s
the perplexi ng in ner circle, which is as d ifficult
to get in or out of as its lamen table namesake
u ndergrou nd. Coming where it does, the park
is a breat hi ng-place, an i m mense relief ; bu t it
is the streets arou nd, and especially the Mary
lebone Road, that give i t its value.
There remai ns what is more than a park,
but in its way worth them ali : Ham pstead
Heath. There are to be t rai ns to bri ng
poor
9

people from the other end of London, philan

th ropic trai ns, bu t t he heath will be spoilt,
and it is almost the Iast thi ng Ieft to spoil in
London. Up to now, all the Satu rday after
noons, the Sundays, the Ban k Holidays, have
hardly touched it. There are hid i ng-places,
even on these evil days, and if one fails there
is always another. And if one has the good
fortu ne to l ive near i t, and can come out in the
m idd le of the night upon Judges' Walk, when
the moonlight fills the hollow like a deep bowl,
and silence is Iike that peace which passet h
u nderstan d ing, everythi ng else i n London will
seem t rivial, a mere ind ividua} th ing, compared
with i t.
On the heat h you are l ifted over London ,
bu t you are in London. It is that double sense,
t hat near ness and remoteness combi ned, the
sight of St. Paul's from above the level of the
dome, the houses about the pond in the Vale
of Heal th, from which one gets so u n paralleled
a sensat ion. But the heath is to be loved for
its own sake, for its peace, amplit ud e, high
brigh t air and refresh men t ; for its mystery,
wild ness, formality ; for its grassy pools and
h i llocks t hat flow and return like waves of the
sea ; for its green grass and the white roads
chequeri ng it ; for its bracken, its m ist
and
IO

bloom of trees. Every k noll and curve of it

d raws the feet to feel thei r soft shapes ; one
cannot wal k, but m ust run and leap on Hamp
stead Heath.

II

II

;\ S you come back into London from the

out of air into smoke, rattling
level with the chi m ney-pots, and looki ng
down
into narrow gulfs swarming with men and
machi nes, you are as if seized in a gigan tic
grip. First comes a splen did but dishearten
ing sense of force, forcing you to admi re i t,
then a d esperate sen se of hel plessness. Lon
don seems a vast ant-hea p, and you are one
more ant d ropped on the heap. You are
stun ned, and then you come to you rself, and
you r thought revolts against the materiai
weight wh ich is crushi ng you. What a h uge
futility it all seems, thi s hu man ant-heap,
this crawling and hu rryi ng and sweati ng and
bui lding and beari n g bu rd ens, and never rest
ing all day long and never bri ngi ng any labou r
to an end. After the fields and the sky Lon
don seems t riviai, a thi ng artificially made, in
which people work at senseless toi ls, for idle
and imagi n ary ends. Labou r i n the fields i s
regular, sane, i nevi table as the labou r of the

1\.. cou nt ry,

12

earth wit h its roots. You are in your place in

t he world, between the grass and the clouds,
really alive and living as natural a life as the
beasts. In London men work as if in dark
ness, scarcely seeing their own hands as they
work, and not k nowi ng the meani ng of their
labou r. They wither and dwindle, forgetting
or not knowi ng that it was ever a pleasan t
thing merely to be alive and in the air. They
are all doing th ings for other people, maki ng
useless " improvemen ts, " always perfecti ng
the achievemen t of materia} results wit h newly
made tools. They are maki ng th ings cheaper,
more i m mediate in effect, of the latest m odern
make. It is all a hu rry, a levelli ng downward,
an automobilization of the m ind.
And thei r pleasures are as thei r labours.
In the cou n try you have but to wal k or
look out of you r win dow and you are in the
midst of beau tiful and living thi ngs : a tree, a
dim ly jewelled frog, a bi rd in flight. Every
nat u ral pleasu re is abou t you : you may
walk, or ride, or skate, or swim, or merely sit
still and be at rest. But in Lon don you m u st
invent plea su res and then toil af ter t hem.
The pleasures of Lon don are more exhausti
ng than its toils. No stone-breaker on the
roads works so hard or martyrs hi s flesh so
cruelly as the actress
13

or the woman of fash ion . No one i n Lon don

does what he wants to do, or goes where he
wan ts to go. It is a sufferi ng to go to any
theat re, any concert. There are even people
who go to lect u res. And all this contin uai
self-sacrifice is done for "amusement." It is
aston ishi ng.
London was once habi table, in spite of it
self. The mach ines have k illed i t. The old,
habi table Lon don exists no longer. Charles
Lamb could n ot live i n th is mechanical city,
out of which everyth ing old and human has
been driven by wheels and ham mers and the
flu ids of noise and speed. When will his
affectionate ph rase, " the sweet secu rity of
streets," ever be used again of London ? No
one will take a wal k down Fleet Street any
more, no one will shed tears of joy in the
"motley Strand," no one will be leisu rable
any more, or tu rn over old books at a stall, or
tal k wi th friends at the street corner. Noise
and evi] smells have filled the streets l ike
tu n nels in d aylight ; i t is a pai n to wal k in
the midst of all these hu rryi ng and clatteri ng
machi n es ; the mu l titude of h u mani ty, that
"bath " i nto which Baudelai re loved to pl unge,
is scarcely discern ible, it is secondary to the
machi nes ; i t is on ly in a mach ine t hat
you

14

can escape the machi nes. London that was

vast and smoky and loud , now stin ks and
reverberates ; to live in it is to live in the
hollow of a clangi ng bell, to breat he its air is
to breat he the foulness of modern progress.
London as it i s now i s the wreck and moral
of civilization. We are more civilized every
day, every day vve can go more quickly and
more u ncomfor tably wherever we wan t to go,
we can have whatever we want brough t to us
more quick ly and more expensively. We l ive
by touch ing bu ttons and ri nging bells, a new
purely practical magie sets us i n comm u n ica
tion with the ends of the earth. We can have
abom inable mockeries of the arts of music and
of speech whizzi ng i n our ears out of metal
mou ths. vVe bave outdone the wildest pro
phetic bu ffooneries of Villiers de l ' Isle Adam,
whose "celestial bill-sticki ng " may be seen
nightly defacing the majesty of the ri ver ; here
any gramophones can give us the equ ivalen t
of h is " chemical analysis of the last breath."
The plausi ble and i nsidious telephone aids us
and in trudes upon us, taking away our liberty
from us, and leaving every English man 's house
h is castle no longer, but a k ind of whisperi ng
gallery, open to the hu m of every voice. There
is hard ly a street left in London where one can
15

tal k with open wi ndows by day and sleep wit h

open wi ndows by n ight. vVe are t u n
nelled u nder u n til ou r houses rock, \Ve are
shot t h rough holes i n the earth i f we want to
cross Lon don ; even the last l iberty of
H ampstead H eath i s about to be taken from us
by rai lway. Lon don has civilized itself in to
the l i keness of a steam rou ndabout at a fair ;
it goes clatter ing and tu rn i ng, to the sound
of a ju bi lan t hu rdy-gu rdy ; rou nd and rou
nd, always on the same track, bu t ahvays faster
; and the ch ildren astri de its wooden horses
th in k they are get ti ng to the world 's end.
I t is the machi nes, more than anyth ing
else, that have clone i t. Men an d women, as
they passed each other i n the street or on the
road, saw and took cogn izance of each other, h
u man bei ng of hu man bei ng. The creatu res
that we see now i n the machi n es are hardly to
be called human bei ngs, so are t hey
di sfgured out of ali recogn i tion, i n order
t hat they may go fast enough n ot to see anyth
ing th emselves. Does anyone any longer wal k
? If I wal k I meet n o one wal king, an d I
cannot won der at i t, for what I meet is an
u proar, an d a wh i zz, and a leap past me, and
a bl ind ing cloud of dust, and a mach ine on
whi ch scarecrows perch is d isappeari ng at the
end of the road. The verbs
16

to loll, to l ou nge, to dawdle, to loiter, the verbs

precious to Wal t Wh itman, precious to every
lover of men and of himself, are losi ng t heir
currency ; they wi ll be marked " o " for obso
lete i n the d i ctionaries of the future. All that
poet ry which Walt Whit man fou nd in thi ngs
merely beca use they were alive wi ll fade out
of existence like the Red Indian. It wi ll live
on for som e t ime yet i n the cou nt ry where the
rai lway has not yet smeared its poisonous t rail
over the soil ; bu t i n London there will soon
be no need of men, t here wi ll be nothi ng bu t
machi nes.
There was a ti me when it was enough
merely to be alive, and to be i n London.
Every morn ing prom ised an advent u re ;
somet h ing or someone might be wai ti ng at t
he corner of the next street ; it was d ifficul t
to stay indoors because t here were so many
people in the streets. I still thi n k, after
seei ng most of the capitals of Eu rope, t hat
t here is no capitai in Eu rope where so many
beau tiful women are to be seen as in London.
Warsaw comes near, for rarity ; not for nu
mber. The streets and the omn ibuses were
always alive with beau ty or with som eth ing
strange. In London any th ing may happen.
"Advent u res to the ad ven turous !" says
somebody in "Contarini
17

Flem i ng." Bu t who can look as high as the

u neasy faces on a motor-om n ibus, who can
look un der the hoods an d goggles in a
motor car? The roads are too noisy now for
any charm of expression to be seen on the
pave men ts. The women are shouting to each
other, strai ni ng thei r ears to hear. They wan t
to get thei r shoppi ng clone an d to get i n to a
motor car or a motor-om n i bus.
Cou ld anot her Charles Lamb create a new
London ?

18

II I

OW m uch of Lam b's London is left

? " London
itself
a pantomi me and
a masquerade " is left, and " a mind that
loves to find itself at home in crowds " is never
with out those streets and pavemen ts to turn
by its alchemy i n to pu re gold.
'' Is any n
ight-wal k compara ble," as he asks, and need
not bave wai ted for an answer, " to a wal k
from St. Pau l's to Chari ng Cross, for
ligh ti ng and pav ing, crowds going and
coming wit hou t respite, the rattle of coaches
and the cheerful ness of shops ? " " St. Pau
l's Chu rchyard ! " he cries, " the Strand !
Exeter Cha nge! Chari ng Cross, wi th the
man upon the black horse ! These are thy
gods, O London ! " One has to tu rn to the
notes on the letters to find out that Exeter
Change was "a great build ing, wit h bookstalls
and miscellaneous stalls on the grou nd floor
and a menagerie above." How delicious that
sounds! Bu t then "it was demolished in
1829."
Temple Bar has gone, and the griffi n, which
19

would have seemed to Lamb as permanen t as

London Stone. Staple In n woul d have been
less of an anomaly to h im in " noble H olborn
" than it i s to us, as i t stands, with an aged
hel plessness, not far off from the u seful hor
rors of Hol born Viad uct, a " modern improve
ment " which has swept away the old tim bered
houses that used to make an island in the
middle of the street. Like all old London ,
t hat is not hidden away in a corner, (as St.
John's Gateway is, on its hill at the back of
Smithfield, and St. Bart holomew's Chu rch,
which hi nders nobody's passi ng, and the
Charterhouse, which has so far held its own)
they have had to make way for the traffic, that
t raffic wh ich is steadily push i ng down the
good thi ngs that are old and shoulderi ng up
the bad new th ings that will be tem porary.
We have still, and for histor ic and royal
reasons will always have, West m inster Abbey
: the Beau tiful Tem ple, as Lamb called it,
when he was religiously occupied in " sham
ing the sel lers out of the Temple." A church
that is not in the way of a new street, or does
not intrude over the edge of a new widen
ing, is, for the most part, safe. But we, who
l ive now, have seen Christ's Hospi tal, that
comely home and fosterer of genius, pulled
down, stone by stone,
20

i ts beau tiful memory obliterated, because

boys, they say, wa n t cou n try air. That was
one of the breat h ing-places, the old quiet
things, that hel ped to make the city habi table.
Newgate has been pulled down, and wi t h
Newgate goes some of the strengt h and per
manence of Lon don. There was a horri ble
beau ty in those im pregnable grey stone
walls, by the side of the city pavemen t. The
traffic has fallen upon them like a sea, and
they have melted away before it.
Lamb saw London changi ng, and to the
end he said " London streets and faces cheer
me i nexpressi bly, though of the latter not one
known one were remai ni ng." Bu t to his sister
it seemed t hat he " found i t melancholy, " " the
very streets," he says, " altering every day."
Covent Garden, where he lived, has lasted ;
the house he lived in still stands look ing in to
Bow Street. And the Tempie, t hat lu cky cor
ner of the City which is outside ci ty ju risdic
tion, has been l ittle spoiled by t ime, or the
worse im provemen ts of restorers. But I ask
myself what Lamb would have said if he had
lived to see t ram-lines slimi ng the ban k of the
river, and the trees amputated to preserve the
hats of living creatu res, in what way bet ter or
more wort hy of attention than those trees?
21

When I see Lon don best i s when I h ave

been abroad for a long t ime. Then, as I sit
on the top of an omnibus, com i ng in from the
Marble Arch, that long lin e of Oxford Street
seems a surprisi ng and delightfu l thi ng, fu ll
of pictu resque i rregulari t ies, and Piccadi lly
Circus seems i ncredibly alive and central, and
the Strand is glutted with a t raffic typically
English. I am able to remember how I used
to turn out of the Temple and wal k slowly
towards Charing Cross, elbowi ng my way
m ed itatively, m aking up sonnets in my head
while I m issed no attract ive face on the pave
m ent or on the top of an om ni bus, pleasan tly
conscious of the shops yet u nd istracted by
them , h appy beca use I was in the midst of
people, and happier still beca use they were all
u nknown to m e. For years that was my feel
ing about Londo n, and now I am always grate
ful to a foreign absence wh ich can pu t me back,
if on ly for a day, into that comfor table frame
of mi nd. Baudelai re's ph rase, " a bat h of m ul
t i tude," seemed to have been made for me, and
I suppose for five years or so, all the first part
of the tim e when I was livi ng in the Tem ple,
I never stayed i n doors for the whole of a singl e
even ing. There were ti mes when I wen t out
as regularly as clockwork every night on the
22

stroke of eleven. No sensation in London i s

so familiar to me as that empti ness of the
Stran d just before the people come out of the
theat res, but an empt iness not final and abso1u te l ike that at ten o'clock ; an em pt iness,
rat her, i n wh ich there are the first stirri ngs of
movemen t. The cabs shift slightly on the
ran ks ; the cab-men take the nose-bags off the
horses' heads, and climb up on their perches.
There is an expectancy all along the road :
Italian wai ters with tigh t greasy hai r and
white aprons stand less l istlessly at the tavern
doors; they half tu rn , ready to back into the
doonvay before a customer.
As you wal k along, the stir i ncreases, cabs
crawl out of side streets and file slowly towards
the t heatres ; the foot men cluster abou t the
theat re-doors ; here and there someone comes
out h u rriedly and wal ks down the street. And
then, all of a sudden, as if at some u nheard
signal, the wi de doorways are blocked wi th
slowly struggli ng crowds, you see tall black
hats of men and the many colou red hair of
women, jam med toget her, and slightly sway
ing to and fro, as i f rocked from u nder. Black
figu res break th rough the crowd, and detach
th emselves agai nst the wheels of the hansoms,
a flying and d isclosi ng cloak swishes against
23

the shafts and is engu lfed in th e dark hollow

; h orses start, stagger, ham mer feverish ly
wit h t hei r hoofs and are off ; the whole road
way i s black wi th cabs and carriages, and the
omn i buses seem suddenly dim in ished. The
pave men t is blocked, th e crowd of the
doorway now sways only less hel plessly u pon
th e pave men t ; you see the women 's
d istracted and i rri tated eyes, thei r hand s
cl u tch ing at cloaks
t hat wi ll not come
toget h er, th e absu rd and
anomalous glit ter of d iamonds and bare necks
in the streets.
West ward the crowd is more scattered, has
more space to disperse. The Circus is li ke a
wh i rlpool , streams pou r steadily ou tward from
th e cent re, where th e fou n tai n stands for a
symbol. The l igh ts glitter outside theat res
and m usic-halls and restau ran ts ; Iights corus
cate, flash from the wa lls, dart from the veh
icles; a dark tangle of roofs and horses knots
itself toget h er and swiftly separates at every
momen t; ali the pavements are aswarm wi
th people h u rryi ng.
In half an hou r ali th is outflow will have
subsi ded, and then one d istingu ishes the
slow and melancholy wal k of women and
men, as i f on some ki nd of pen i tent ial du ty,
rou nd an d rou nd the Circus and along
Piccad i lly as far
24

as the Du ke of Well i ngton's house and along

Regen t Street almost to the Circus. Few wal k
on the left side of Piccadilly or the right of
Regen t Street, though you hear foreign tongues
a-chatter under the arcade. But th e steady
procession coils backward and forward, th ick
ening and slackeni ng as it rou nds the Circus,
where i n nocent people wai t u ncomfortably
for omnibuses, stand ing close to the edge of
the pavement. Men stand watchfully at all the
corners, with t hei r backs to the road ; you hear
pi pi ng voices, shrill laughter ; you observe
that all the women's eyes are tu rned sideways,
never straight in front of t hem ; and that they
seem often to hesi tate, as if they were not sure
of the way, though they have wal ked in that
procession night after nigh t, and know every
stone of the pavement and every mould ing on
the brass rims of the shop-wi ndows. The same
faces ret u rn, lessen, the people come out of the
restaurants and the crowd thickens for ten
mi nutes, then again lessens ; and fewer and
fewer trudge drearily along the almost deserted
pavement. The staring lights are blotted sud
denly from the walls ; the streets seem to grow
chill, u nin habited, u n friend ly ; the few han
soms roam up an d down restlessly, seeking a
last fare. And still a few dingy figures creep
25

along by the in ner edge of the pavemen t, stop

pi ng by the closed doors of the shops, some
times speaki ng d ully to one another ; then
trudgi ng heavily along, and d isappeari ng
slowly th rough 't he side streets eastward.
The pa rt of London I have always known
best i s the part that lies between the Tem pie
and Piccadi lly, and some of it no longer exists.
\V hen the Strand was widened, Holywell
Street, one of the ol dest and quaintest streets
i n Lon don, was pulled down, Wych Street
wen t too, and Clare Market, and m any d i ngy
and twisti ng lanes which could well be spared.
But I deepl y regret Holywell Street, and when
I tell strangers abou t it, it seems to me tha t
they can never k now London now. I suppose
many people wi ll soon forget that nar row lane
wit h its overhangi ng wooden fronts, l ike the
houses at Covent ry ; or they wi ll remem ber i t
only for its surrepti tious shop-wi ndows, the
glass always dusty, th rough wh ich one dimly
saw Engl ish translations of Zola among
chemists' parapher nal ia. The street had a bad
repu tat ion , and by n igh t doors opened an d
shut u nexpectedly up dark passages. Perhaps
that vague du biousness added a little to its
charm, bu t by day the char m was a posi tive
one : the book-sh ops ! Perhaps I liked th e
26

quays at Paris even better : i t was Pa ri s, and

there was the river, and Not re Da me, and it
was the left ba n k. But nowhere else, i n no
other city, was there a corner so made for
book-fanciers. Those dingy shops with their
stalls open to the street, nearly all on the right,
the respectable side as you wal ked west, how
seldom did I keep my resol u tion to wal k past
th em with u naverted eyes, how rarely did I
resist their tem ptat ions. Half the books I
possess were bought second han d in Holywell
Street, and wh at bargai ns I have made out of
the fou rpen ny books ! On the h ottest days,
there was shade there, and excuse for lou ngi ng.
It was a parad ise for the book-lover.
I t never occu rred to me that any street so
old cou ld seem wort h pulli ng down ; bu t the
i m provemen ts carne, and that and the less in
teresti ng streets near, where the Globe Theatre
was (I thought i t no loss) had of course to
go ; an d Dane's In n went, which was never a
genuine " inn ," but had some of the pleasan t
genui ne d reari ness ; and Clare Mar ket was
obliterateci , and I believe Dru ry Lane is get
ting furbished up and losi ng its old savour of
squalor ; and Al dwych is there, wi th its beau ti
ful nam e, but itself so big and obvious that
I con fess, with my recollections of what
27

was there before, I can never find my way

in it.
Striking west ward, my cou rse generally led
me th rough Leicester Squa re. The foreign
qua rter of London radiates from Leicester
Square, or wi nds inward to that poi nt as to
a cent re. Its foreign aspect, the fact that i t
was the pa rk of Soho, i n terested me. In
Leicester Square, an d in ali the tiny streets
r u n n ing into i t, you are never i n the really
nor mal London : i t is an escape, a sort of
shamefaced and sordid and yet i rresist ibl e re
mi nder of Paris and Italy. The l ittle resta u r
ants all rou nd brought me local colou r before
I had seen Italy ; I still see with pleasu re the
straw covered bot tles and the strings of mac
caron i i n the u nd usted wi ndows. The foreign
people you see are not desi rable people : what
does that mat ter if you look on them as on so
many pu ppets on a stri ng, and t hei r shapes
and colou rs come as a relief to you after the
u nifor m pu ppets of English make?
I have always been apt to look on the world
as a pu ppet-show, and ali the men and wome n
merely players, whose wi res we do not see
worki ng. There is a passage i n one of Keats'
letters which expresses just what I have always
felt : " M ay t here not," he says, " be
superior
28

bei ngs, amused with any graceful, though in

stinctive attitu de my m ind may fall into, as I
am entertai ned wi th the alertness of the stoat
or the anxiety of a deer ? " Is there not, in our
aspect towards one another, somethi ng i nevi t
ably automatic? Do we see, in the larger part
of those fellow-creat u res whom our eyes rest
on m ore t han a smile, a gestu re, a passi ng or
a comi ng forward ? Are they more real to us
than the actors on a stage, the quiveri ng phan
toms of a cinematograph ? With thei r own
private existence we have nothi ng to do : do
they n ot , so far as we are concer ned, exist i
n part at least to be a spectacle to us, to
convey to us a sense of l ife, change, bea uty,
variety, necessi ty? The spectacle of human life
is not only for the gods' eyes, bu t for ours ; it
is ours in so far as we can apprehend it, and
our plea sure and satisfact ion here are largely
depend ent on the skill with which we have
trained ourselves to that i nsti nctive, deligh ted
appre hension. To a few here and t here we can
come closer, we can make them, by some
illusion of the affections; seem more real to
us. But as for all the rest, let us be con tent to
adm ire, to won der, to see the use and beau ty
and curi osity of them, and i n trude no fu rther
into their destin ies.
29

It was for their very obvious qual ities of

i llusion that I li ked to watch the people in
the foreign qu arter. They were l ike prisoners
t here, th riving perhaps bu t d i scon ten ted ;
none of t hem light-hearted, as they wou ld
have been i n their own cou ntry ; gru dgingly
at home. And t here was m uch pi teous false
show among them, soiled sordid osten tation, a
little of what we see i n the older songs of
Yvette Gu i lbert.
London was for a long time my supreme sen
sation , and to roam i n the streets, especially
after the lamps were lighted, my chief pleasu re.
I had no moti ve in i t, merely the desire to get
out of doors, and to be among people, lights,
to get out of myself. Myself has always been
so absorbi ng to me that i t was perhaps nat u ral
that, along wi th t hat habi tu al companionshi p,
there should be at times the desire for escape.
When I was living alone i n the Temple, that
desire carne over me almost every nigh t, and
made work, or though t wi thou t wor k, i m pos
sible. Later i n the n ight I was often able to
work wi th perfect quiet, but not u nless I h ad
been out i n the streets first. The plu nge
th rough the Mi d dle Temple gateway was li ke
the swim mer's plu nge into rough water : I got

just th at " cool shock " as I went outside i nto

the brighter lights and the movement. I often
30

had no idea where I was going, I often wen t

nowhere. I wal ked, and there were people
about me.
I lived in Fou n tain Cou rt for ten years, and
I thought t hen, and thin k still, that it is the
most beau tifu l place in London. Dutch people
have told me that the Temple is like a little
Dutch town , and that as they enter from Fleet
Street in to Middle Temple Lane they can fancy
themselves at the Hague. Du tch men are happy
if they have much that can remi nd them of
M iddle Temple Lane. There is a momen t
when you are in Fleet Street ; you have forced
your way through the long Strand, along those
narrow pavemen ts, in a contin ua! coming and
going of hurried people, with the con tin ua!
ru mble of wheels in the road, the swaying
heigh ts of omnibuses beside you, distracti ng
you r eyes, the dust, clatter, confusion, heat, be
wildermen t of that thoroughfare ; and suddenly
you go u n der a low doorway, where large
wooden doors and a smaller side-door stand
open, and you are suddenly in quiet. The roar
has dropped, as the roar of the sea drops if
you go in at your door and shut it behi nd
you. At night, when one had to knock, and
so waited, and was ad mitted with a nice for
mali ty, i t was sometimes almost startling. I
31

have never felt any qu iet in solitary places so

m uch as the qu iet of that con trast : Fleet Street
and the Tempie.
No wheels could come nearer to me i n
Fou ntai n Cou rt than M idd le Tem pie Lane,
but I l iked to hear sometimes at n ight a fain t
clattering, only just audible, wh ich I k new was
the soun d of a cab on the Emban k men t. The
Coun ty Council, stead ily ru ining London with
the persistence of an organ ic disease, is busy
turning the Emban kment i nto a gangway for
electric trams; but when I knew it it was a
quiet, almost secluded place, where people
sauntered and leaned over to look into the
water, and where, at nigh t, the policemen
would wal k with considerately averted head
past the slu mberi ng heaps of tired rags on the
seats.
The gates on the Emban kment shu t early
bu t I of ten carne home by the river and I
cou ld hardly tear myself away from looking
over that grey harsh parapet. The Neva remi
nds m e a little of the Thames, t hough it
rushes more wildly, and at n ight is more
like a sea, with swift ligh ts crossing i t. Bu t
I do not know the river of any great capitai
w hich has the fascination of our river.
Whistler has createci the Thames, for most
people ; bu t the Thames
32

existed before Whistler, and will exist after the

Cou nty Cou nci l. I remember heari ng Claude
Mon et say, at the ti me when he carne over to
the Savoy Hotel, year by year, to paint Water
loo Bridge from its wi ndows, t hat he could not
u nderstand why any English pai nter ever left
Lon don. I felt almost as if the river belonged
to the Temple : its presence there, certai nly,
was part of its mysterious anomaly, a fragmen t
of old London, walled and guarded in t hat
corner of land between Fleet Street and the
Thames.
I t was the name, pa rtly, that had d rawn me
to Fou ntain Cou rt, and the odd coincidence
that I had fou nd myself, not long before, in
what was once Blake's Fou n tain Court, and
t hen Southam pton Bu ildings, n ow only a date
on a wall. I had the top flat in what is really
the back of one of th e old houses in Essex
Street, taken in to the Temple ; it had a stone
balcony from which I looked down on a wide
open court, with a stone fou ntain in the middle,
broad rows of stone steps leading u pward and
downward, with a splendid effect of decorat ion ;
in one corner of the cou rt was M iddle Temple
Hall, where a play of Shakespeare' s was acted
wh ile Shakespeare was alive ; all around were
the backs of old buildi ngs, and t here were old
33

trees, u n der which there was a bench in

sum mer, and t here was the gl impse of garden
s go ing down to the Emba nkmen t. By day i
t was as legai and busy as any other part of the
Tempie, but the mental busi ness of the law is
not inel egantly expressed in those wigged and
gow ned figu res who are gen eraIIy to be seen
crossi ng between the Law Cou rts and thei r
cham bers i n the Tem pie. Ifel t, when Isaw
t hem, that Iwas the i ntruder, the modern note,
and t hat they were i n t hei r piace, and keepi
ng u p a t radi t ion. But at n ight Ihad the
piace to mysel f.
The n ights in Fou n tai n Cou rt were a con
ti n uai del ight to me. Ilived t hen chiefly by
night, and when Icarne i n late Iused often to
sit on the bench u n der the trees, where no
one else ever sat at those hou rs. Isat there,
Iook ing at the silent water in the basi n of the
fou n tai n , and at the l eaves overhead, and at
the sky th rough the l eaves; and that solitude
was only broken by the careful policeman on
guard, who woul d gen erally stroII up to be
quite certai n that i t was the usual loi terer,
who had a righ t to sit there. Someti mes he
tal ked with me, and occasionaIIy abou t
books ; and once he made a surprisi ng and
profou nd criticism, for on my askin g him if
he had read Ten nyson
34

he said no, bu t was he not rather a lady-like

wri ter ?
When Verlai ne stayed with me he wrote
a poem about Fountai n Cou rt, which began
truth fully :
La Cour de la Fontaine est, dans le Tempie,
Un coin exquis de ce coin dlicat
Du Lond res vieu x.

Dickens of cou rse has written about the fou n

tain, but th ere is only one man who cou ld ever
have given its due to th at corner of the Tem ple,
and he had other, less lovely corners to love.
I say over everyth i ng Charles Lamb wrote
about the Temple, and fancy it was meant for
Fou ntain Court.
More than once, wh i le I was l ivi ng i n the
Tem ple, I was visited by a strange friend of
m ine, an amateu r tram p, wi th whom I used
to wander abou t London every night i n the
East End, and abou t the Docks, and in all the
more squalid parts of the city. My friend was
bor n a wan derer, and I do not k now what
remai ns for hi m i n the world when he
has t ram ped over its whole su rface. I have
k nown hi m for many years, and we have
explored many cities toget her, and crossed
more than one sea, and t ravelled along the
high roads of
35

more than one cou n try. H is t ram pi ng wi th

me was not very seriou s, bu t when he is alon e
he goes as a t ramp among t ra mps, tak ing no
money wi th h im, beggi ng h isway with
beggars. A l it tl e, pale, th i n you ng man, qu
ietly restless, with determi ned eyes and t ight
lips, a face pre pa red for all d i sgu ises, yet with
a strangely persona} life looking out at you,
ambiguou sly enough, from u nderneat h, he is
never quite at h ome u nder a roof or in the
company of ord in ary people, where he seems
always like one caught and detained u nwilli
ngly. An Ameri can , who has stud ied in a
German Un iversity, brought u p, during all h
is early l ife, in Berlin, he has always had a
fixed distaste for the in terests of t hose abou t
hi m, and an i nstinctive passion for whatever
exists outside the border l in e which shu ts us
in u pon respectabi lity. There is a good deal of
affectat ion in the l iter ary revol t against
respectabili ty, toget her with a child 's desire to
shock its elders, an d snatch a lu rid repu tation
from t hose whom it professes to despise. My
friend has never had any of t his affectation ;
I ife is not a masq uerade to h im, and his
disguises are the most seriou s part of h is life.
The sim ple fact is, that re spectabi lity, the n
ormai existence of nor ma}
people, does not i n terest him ; he could n ot
36

even
tell
you
why,
wit hou
t
search i ngconsciously for reasons ; he was
born with the soul of a vagabon d, into a
family of gentle, exqu isitely refi ned people :
h e was born so, that is all. Hu man curiosi
ty, cu riosit y which in most of us is subord
inate to some more defi nite pu r pose, exists
in hi m for its own sake ; it is his inn er l ife,
he has no other ; his form of self
development, h is form of cu l tu re. It seems to
me that this man, who has seen so much of
hu man ity, who has seen h u mani ty so closely,
where it has least temptation to be anyth ing
bu t itself, has really ach ieved cultu re almost
perfect of its ki nd, though the kind be of his
own invention. He is not an artist, who can
create ; he is not a t hinker or a dreamer or a
man of action ; he is a studen t of men and
women, and of the ou tcasts among men and
women, just those persons who are least ac
cessible, least cared for, least u n derstood, and
therefore, to one like my frien d, most all u ri ng.
He is not con scious of i t, bu t I th ink there
is a great pi ty at the heart of this devou ri ng
curiosi ty. It i s his love of the outcast which
makes hi m l ike to live with outcasts, not as
a visitor in their midst, but as one of them
selves.
For here is the d ifference bet ween t his man
37

and the other adven tu rers who have gone

abroad among tram ps and cri mi nals, and other
misu nderstood or u n fortu nate people. Some
have been philan t h ropists and have gone with
Bibl es in thei r han ds ; others have been jou
rnal i sts, and have gone with note-books i n
t hei r hands ; all have gone as visi tors, as
passi ng visi tors, pl u ngi ng into "the bat h of
m ulti t ude, " as one migh t go holiday-maki ng
to t he sea-side and pl u nge into the sea. But
th i s man, wher ever he has gone, has gone
with a compl ete abando n men t to h i s surrou
nd ings ; no t ram p has ever k nown t hat ' '
Cigarette " was not really
a tramp ; he has begged, worked, ridden out
side t rai ns, slept i n wor k houses and gaols,
not shirked one of the hardsh ips of h i s way ;
and all the t ime he has been l ivi ng h is own
l i fe (whatever that enigm a may be!) more
perfectly, I am sure, than when h e is d i n ing
every day at h is m other's or hi s sister's table.
The desi re of travelli ng on many roads, and
the desi re of seei ng ma ny foreign faces, are
almost always foun d u ni ted i n that
half u nconscious i nsti nct wh ich m akes a man
a vagabond. But I have never m et anyone i n
whom t he actual love of the road is so strong
as i t is in my friend. I n Am eri ca, where t h e
t ra mps ri de over and u nder the t rai ns, i
n
38

order that they may get on the other side of

a t housa nd miles wi thout spend ing a lifet
ime about it, he, too, has gone by rail, not
as a passenger. And I remem ber a few years
ago, when we had given one another
rendezvous at St. Petersbu rg, that I fou nd,
when I got t here, that he was alread y halfway across Siberia, on the n ew railway wh
ich they were in the act of mak ing. Also I
have been wit h h im to Hambu rg and Le
H avre and An twerp
by sea : once on an Atla n tic li ner, loaded
with foreign Jews, among whom he spent
most of
h is ti me in the steerage. Bu t for the most
part he wal ks. Wherever he wal ks he ma kes
friends ; when we used to wal k abou t London
together he would stop to tal k with every
dru n ken old woman in Dru ry Lane, and get
into the confidence of every sailor whom we
carne u pon i n the pot-houses abou t the docks.
He is not fastidious, and will turn h is hand,
as the ph rase is, to anyth ing. And he goes
th rough every sort of privation, endu res d i r t,
accustoms h imself to the society of every
variety of h is fellow-creatu res wi thou t a mu
r mur or regret.
After all, comfort is a conven tion, and plea
sure an individua} th ing, to every individ ual.
" To travel is to die con ti n ually," wrote a
39

hal f-crazy poet who spent most of the years

of a short fan tast ic I ife i n London. \i\T ell,
that is a l ine wh ich Ihave often found
mysel f repeat ing as I shivered in rai
lway-station s on the other side of Europe,
or lay in a pl u nging berth as the foam
chased the snow flakes off the deck. One
finds, no dou bt, a particu lar pleasure in
looking back on past discomforts, and Iam
convi nced that a good deal of the att raction
of travelli ng comes from an u nconscious th
rowi ng forward of the mi nd to the ti me
when the u ncomfortable presen t shall have
become a stirring memory of the past.
But
Iam speaking now for those i n whom a
certain lu xu riousness of tem peramen t finds
itsel f in sharp conflict with the desire of
movement.
To my friend, I think, this
is ha rdly a conceivable state of mi nd.
He
is a Stoic, as the true adven tu rer should be.
Rest, even as a change, does not appeal to
hi m. He thinks acutely, bu t only about
facts, abou t the facts before h im ; and so he
does not need to create an at mosphere abou t
hi msel f which change m ight d istu rb.
He is fond of his family, h is
friends ; bu t he can do wi thou t them, like
a man with a mission. He has no missi on,
only a great th irst ; and th is thi rst for the
hu mani ty of every nation and for the 40

roads of every country drives hi m onward as

resistlessly as the d ru n kard's thirst for dri nk,
or the ideal ist's thirst for an ideal.
An d it seems to me that few men have
realized, as this man has realized, that " not
the fruit of experience, but experience itself,
is the end." He has chosen his life for him
self, and he has lived it, regardless of any
thing else in the world. He has desired
strange, almost inaccessi ble things, and he
has attained whatever he has desired. While
other men have lamen ted their fate, wished
their lives different, n ursed vague ambitions,
and dreamed fruitless dreams, he has quietly
given up com fort and conven tionality, not
caring for them, and he has gone his own
way without even stopping to th ink whether
the way were difficult or desirable. Not long
since, wal king with a frien d in the streets of
New York, he said sudden ly : " Do you know,
I wonder what it is like to chase a man ? I
know what it is l ike to be chased, but to
chase a man would be a new sensation." The
other man laughed, and though t no more abou t
it. A week later my friend carne to hi m with
an officiai docu men t : he had been appoin ted
a private detective. He was set on the track
of a famous criminal (whom, as it happened,
G

he had known as a t ram p) ; he made h is plan s

worked them out successfu lly, and the crim
inal was caught. To have clone it was enough :
he had had the sensati on ; he has clone no
more work as a detective. Is t here not, in th is
curiosi ty i n act ion, t his game mastered and
then cast aside, a won derfu l prom pt ness,
sure ness, a moral quali ty which is i tself
success in life ?
To desire so m uch, an d what i s so hu man,
to make one's life out of the very fact of living
i t as one chooses ; to create a u niq ue personal
satisfact ion out of disconten t and cu riosity ;
to be so m uch oneself in learn ing so m uch
from other people : is n ot t his, in its way, an
i deal, and has not my friend achieved it ? What
I like in hi m so m uch is t hat he is a vagabond
wi t hout an object. He has written one book,
bu t wri ti ng has come to hi m as an acciden t ;
and, in writing, bis danger is to be too literal
for art, and not quite l iteral enough for science.
He i s too completel y absorbed in people and
th ings to be able ever to get aloof from them ;
and to wri te well of what one has clone and
seen one must be able to get aloof from one
self and from others. If ever a man loved
wanderi ng for its own sake it was George
Borrow ; bu t George Borrow had a seriou s
1

42

and whimsical brai n always at work, twisti ng

the things that he saw into shapes that pleased
him m ore than the shapes of the th ings in
t hemselves. My friend is in terested in what
he calls sociology, bu t the in terest is almost
as acciden tal as his interest in l iteratu re or in
ph ilanth ropy. He has the soul and feet of
the vagabon d, the passion of the roads. He
is restless u nder any roof bu t the roof of
stars. He cares passionately for men and
women, not beca use they are beau t iful or
good or clever, or because he can do them
good, or becau se they can be serviceable to
him, bu t becau se they are men and wom en.
And he cares for men and women w here they
are most vividl y themselves, where they have
least need for disguise ; for poor people, an d
people on the roads, idle people, crimi nals
sometimes, the people who are so much them
selves that they are no longer a part of society.
He wanders over the whole earth, bu t he does
n ot care for the beau ty or strangeness of what
he sees, on ly for the people. Writing to me
lately from Samarcand, he said : " I have seen
the tomb of the prophet Dan iel ; I have seen
the tom b of Tamerlane." Bu t Tamerlane was
not hi ng to h im , the prophet Daniel was no
th ing to hi m. He men tioned t hem on ly
be43

cause they wou ld i n terest me. He was tryi ng

to puzzle out an d piece together the
psychology of the Persia n beggar whom he
had left at the corner of the way.

44

IV

H EN my French friends come to Lon

don they say to me : where is you r
Mon t mart re, where is you r Qua rtier Lati n ?
We have no Montmar tre (not even Chelsea is
that), no Quartier Lat in, because there is no
insti nct in the Engl ish man to be com panion
able i n pu blic. Occasions are lacki ng, it is
t rue, for the caf is responsi ble for a good part
of the artistic Bohemian ism of Paris, and we
have no cafs. I prophesy in these pages t hat
some d ay someone, probably an American
who has come by way of Paris, will set back
the plate-glass wi ndows i n many angles, which
I cou ld indicate to h im, of the Strand, Picca
dilly, and other streets, and will turn the whole
wall into wi ndows, and leave a space in front
for a terrasse, in the Paris man ner, and we
shall bave cafs l ike the cafs in Paris, and the
j restidigitateur who has done th is will soon
have made a gigantic fortu ne. But meanwh ile
let u s recogn ise that there is in London no
compan ionship in pu blic (in the open air or
45

visi ble th rough wi nd ows) and t hat not h ing

in
Cafs Royaux and Monicos and the like
can have the sort of mean ing for you ng men i
n London that the cafs have long had , and
still have, i n Paris. Attem pts have been
made, and I have shared i n them, and for thei r
t ime they had thei r en tertai n men t ; bu t I
have not seen one that flouri shed.
I remem ber the desperate experi men ts of
some to wh om Paris, from a fash ion , had be
come almost a necessi ty ; and how Dowson
took to cabmen 's shelters as a sort of supper
clu b. Differen t taverns were at d ifferen t ti mes
hau n ted by you ng wri ters ; some of them carne
for the dri n k and some for the society ; and
one bol d attempt was made to get toget her a
cnacle i n qu ite the French man ner i n
the u pper room of a famous old i nn. In Lon
don we cannot read our poems to one another,
as they do in Pari s ; we cannot even tal k abou
t our own works, fran k ly, with a natu ral pr
ide, a good-h u mou red equal ity. They can do
that i n Dubli n, and in an u pper room i n Dubl
in I find i t qu ite natu ral. Bu t i n Lon don
even those of us who are least Anglo-Saxon
can not do i t. I s i t more, I won der, a loss to us
or a gain ?
This lack of easy meeti ng and tal ki ng i s
46

certai nly one of the reasons why there have

been in England many great wri ters bu t few
schools. In Paris a you ng man of twenty starts
a " school " as he starts a " revue "; and these
hasty people are i n France often found among
the people who last. In modern England
we have gained, more than we think perhaps,
from t he accidents of neighbourhood that set
Wordsworth and Coleridge wal ki ng and tal k
ing together. As it was England, and one of
them was Wordswort h, they met in Cumber
land ; in Lon don we have had nothi ng like
the ti me of Victor H ugo, when Baudelai re and
Gautier and Grard de N erval and men of ob
scure and vagabond gen ius m ade Paris vi tal,
a part of t hemselves, a form of creative litera
tu re. Th at is what London has i n itself the
genius, the men and the materiai, to be ; bu t
of the men of our time only Henley and J ohn
Davidson have loved it or struck m usic out
of it.
If we had only had a Wal t Wh itman for
London ! Whitman is one of the voices of the
earth, and i t is on ly in Whitman that the
pavi ng-stones really speak, with a voice as
authentic as the voice of the hills. He knew
n o distinction between what is called the work
of natu re and what is the work of men. He
47

left out not hi ng, an d ,,-hat still pu zzles us i

s
the bl ind, lovi ng, embraci ng way in wh ich he
bri nb crs crude names and th in g-s into his vision
,
the n ame of a t rad e, a street, a terri tory, no
matter what syllables i t m ight carry along with
i t. He created a vi tal poet ry of cities ; i t was
only a par t of what he d i d ; bu t sin ce Wh i
t man t here i s n o gai nsayi ng i t any longer.
\Vhen I carn e to London , I knew not hi ng of
the great th i ngs t hat Wh itman had done, or
that i t was possi ble to do them in such a way ;
but I had my own feeli ng for London, my
own poi nt of view t here, and I fou nd myself
gradually t ryi ng to pai n t, or to set to music,
to pai n t i n m usic, perhaps, t hose sensations
wh ich London awakened i n m e. I was only
t ryi ng to ren der what I saw before me, what
I felt, and to make my art out of l ivi ng ma
teria!. " Books made out of books pass away "
was a sentence I never forgot, and my appli
cation of i t was direct and immed iate.
I have always been curious of sensations,
and above all of t hose which seemed to lead
one i nto " artificial paradises " not wi thi n
everybod y's reach. It took me some ti me to
find out t hat every " artificial parad ise " is
withi n one's own soul , somewhere among
one's own dreams, and that hasch isch i s
a
L

48

poor subst i tute for the imagi nat ion. The

m ystery of all the i n toxican ts fascinated me,
and drink, which had no personal appeal to
me, which indeed brought me no pleasu res,
fou nd me endlessly observant of its powers,
effects, an d variat ions.
Many of my frien ds dran k, and I was forced
to become acquain ted wit h the differen t form s
wh ich l iquor could take, so that I could almost
label them i n thei r classes. Thus one, whom
I wi ll call A., drank copiously, continually, all
dri n ks, for pleasu re : he could carry so m uch
so stead ily that he sometimes passed his limit
without k nowi ng i t : not that he mi nded pass
ing the limi t, bu t he l iked to be conscious
of i t. B. d rank to become u nconscious, he
passed his lim i t rapidly, and became first
apologet ic, then quarrelsome. His friend C., a
man abs t ract in body and mi nd, who
mu ttered
in
Greek when he was least
conscious of himself, and sat with i m pertu rbable
gravity, drin ki ng like an ascet ic, u n til b is
head fell withou t wa rn ing on the table,
seemed to compete with
B. in how to finish soon est with a life which
he had no desi re to get rid of. I do not t hin k
be ever got any pleasu re out of drin k i ng : he
wou ld sit up over nigh t with absi n the and
cigarettes in order to be awake to atten d early
49

mass ; bu t though hi s wi ll was strong enough

for that, the habi t was stronger than hi s w i ll,
and he seem ed l ike one con dem n ed to t hat
form of suicide wi t hou t desire or choice in the
mat ter. D. dran k for pleasu re, bu t h e was
scrupu lous i n what he dran k, and wou ld take
ment h e verte for i ts colou r, absi nt he
because i t lu lled hi m 1vit h vague dreams, eth
er because i t could be taken on strawberries. I
remem ber h is telli ng me exactly what i t feels l
i ke to have deliriu m trem ens, and he told i t m i
n utely, self pi tyi ngly, bu t with a relish ; not 1vi
thou t a mela ncholy art isti c pride in the
sensations, th eir stra ngeness, and the fact t hat h
e should have been the vict im.
There were others ; there was even one who
cu red h im self i n some m i raculous way, and
coul d see h is friends drink cham pagne at h is
expense, wh i le he d ran k soda-water. All these
I wondered at and fan cied t hat I un derstood.
I adm it t hat I was the more i n terested in
these m en beca use t hey were living in the
way I call artificial. I never t hough t anyon e
the bet ter for bei ng a spendth rift of any pa rt
of h i s energies, bu t I certainly often found
him more in te resti ng than those who were not
spendth rifts.
I also fou nd a pecu liar i n terest i n another
50

part of what is artificial, properly artificial,

i n London. A city is no part of natu re, and
one m ay choose among th e many ways in
which someth ing pecu liar to walls an d roofs
and artificia l lighting, is carried on. All com
merce and all ind ust ries have thei r share in
taki ng us further from natu re and further from
our needs, as they create abou t us u n natu ral
cond itions which are really what develop in
us these new, extravagan t, really need less
needs. And the whole n ight-worl d of the
stage is, i n its way, a part of the very soul
of cities. That l ighted gulf, before which the
footligh ts are the flami ng stars between world
and world, shows th e city the passions and
that beauty wh ich the soul of man in cities is
occu pied in weedi ng out of its own fru itf u l
and pre pared soil.
That is, the theat res are there to do so, they
ha.ve no reason for existence if they do not do
so; bu t for the most pa rt they do not do so.
The English theatre with its u n real real ism
and its u ni magi nati ve pretences towards poet
ry left me u ntouched and u ncon vi nced. I
fou nd the beau ty, the poet ry, that I wan
ted only in two theat res that were n ot l ooked
u pon as theat res, the Al ham bra and the
Empire. The ballet seemed to m e the
subtlest of the visi ble
51

arts, and danci ng a more significant speech

than words. I could almost h ave said seri
ously, as Verlai ne once said in jest, comi ng
away from the Alhambra : " J'ai me Shake
speare, mais . . . j'ai me mieux le ballet ! "
Why is i t that one can see a ballet fifty ti mes,
always with the same sense of pleasu re, while
the most absorbi ng play becomes a little tedi
ous after the third time of seeing? For one
t hi ng, beca use the d ifference between seeing a
play and seeing a ballet i s just the difference
between read ing a book and looki ng at a pic
tu re. One retu rns to a pictu re as one retu rns
to nat ure, for a delight which, bei ng pu rely
of the senses, never ti res, never distresses,
never varies. To read a book even for the
first time, req u ires a certain effort. The book
m ust indeed be exceptional that can be read
three or fou r times, and , no book was ever
written that could be read th ree or fou r times
in succession. A ballet is sim ply a pi ctu re in
movemen t. It is a pictu re where the im i tation
of natu re i s given by natu re itself ; where the
figu res of the composi tion are real, and yet,
by a very paradox of travesty, have a delight
fu l, deliberate air of un reality. It is a picture
where the colou rs change, re-com bi ne, before
one's eyes ; where the outlines melt in to one
52

another, emerge, and are again lost, in the

kaleidoscopic movement of the dan ce. Here
we n eed tease ourselves with no phi losoph ies,
need endeavou r to read none of the riddles of
existence ; may i ndeed give tha n ks to be spared
for one hou r the i mbeci l ity of h u man speech.
After the ted iu m of th e theat re, where we are
called on to in terest ourselves i n the im proba
ble fortu nes of u ni n teresti ng people, how
welcome i s the relief of a spectacle which
prof esses to be n o more than merely beau tiful
; which gives
us, i n accom pl ished danci ng, the most beau ti
ful hu man sight ; wh ich provi des, in short,
the one escape i nto fai ry-l and which is permi
tted by that tyran ny of the real which is the
worst tyran ny of moder n l ife.
The most magical glim pse I ever caught of
a ballet was from the road in front, from t h e
other side of the road, one n ight when two
doors were suddenly thrown open as I was
passi ng. In the mom ent's i nterval before th e
d oors closed again, I saw, in that odd, u n
expected way, over the heads of the aud ience,
far off i n a sort of bl ue m ist, the whole
stage, its br illiant crowd d rawn up i n the last
pose, just as the curtai n was begi n n ing to go
down. It stamped itself in my brai n, an
impression caught just
at the perfect
momen t, by some
53

rare felicity of chance. Bu t that is not an

i m pression that can be repeated. For the most
pa rt I like to see my i 11usions clearly, recog
n izi ng them as i llusions, and so heigh ten ing
thei r charm. I l i ked to see a ballet from t h e
wi ngs, a spectator, bu t in the m idst of the
magie. To see a ballet from the wi ngs is to
lose all sense of proport ion, all knowledge of
the piece as a whol e, bu t, in ret u rn, it is
fruit ful in happy acciden ts, i n mo men ta ry
poi n ts of view, i n ch ance felici t ies of light
and shade an d movement. It i s al most to be
i n the per formance onesel f, and yet passive,
with the leisu re to look abou t one. You see
the reverse of the pictu re : the girl s at the
back lou ngi ng agai nst the set scenes, tu rni ng
to talk with someone at the side ; you see how
lazi ly some of them are movi ng, and how
mecha ni cal and i rregu lar are the mot ions that
flow into rhythm when seen from the front. N
ow one is in the centre of a joki ng crowd , hu
rryi ng from the dressi ng-rooms to the stage ;
now the same crowd ret u rns, chargi ng at full
speed between the scenery, everyone tryi ng to
reach the d ressi ng-room stairs first. And there
is t h e consta n t t ravell ing of scenery, from wh
ich one
has a series of escapes, as it bears down u n
expectedly in som e new direction. The ballet
54

half seen i n the centre of the stage, seen in

sections, has, in the glimpses that can be
caught of it, a con tradictory appeara nce of
mere natu re and of absolu te u nreal ity. And
beyond the footl ights, on the other side of the
orchest ra, one can see t he boxes near the stalls,
the men stan ding by the bar, an angle cut
sharply off from the stalls, with the light full
on the faces, the i nten t eyes, the grey smoke
curli ng up from the cigarettes : a Degas, in
short.
An d there is a charm, which I can not think
wholl y i magi nary or factitious, in that form
of ill usion wh ich is kn own as make-u p. To a
plai n face, i t is true, make-u p only i
n tensifies plai n ness ; for make-u p does but
give colou r and piqu ancy to what is al read y
in a face, i t adds nothi ng new. But to a face
already charmi ng, how becomi ng all this is,
what a new kind of exci ti ng savour i t gives
to that real charm ! I t has, to the remnan t
of Pu ritan conscience or consciousness that is
the heri tage of us all, a certai n sense of
dangerous wicked ness, the delight of
forbidden fruit. The very phrase, pai n ted
women, has come to have an association of
sin, and to have pu t pai nt on ber cheeks,
though for the in nocen t n ecessities of her
profession , gives to a woman a kin d of
55

sym bolic corru pt ion. At once she seems to

typify the sorceries, and entangleme n t s of wh
at is most del i berately enticing in her sex :
" Femina d ulce malu m, pariter favus atque venen u m-"

with all t hat is most subtle, least l ike nat u re,

i n her power to charm. Maq ui llage, to be
attract ive, m ust of cou rse be u n necessa ry.
As a di sguise for age or misfor tu ne, it
has no i n terest. Bu t, of a ll places, on the
stage, and , of all people, on the cheeks of you
ng people ; t here, it seems to me that make-u
p is in tensely fasci nat ing, and its recogn i
tion is of the essence of my delight in a stage
perfor m ance. I do not for a momen t wa n t
really to believe i n what I see before me ; to
believe t hat t hose wigs are hai r, t hat greasepai nt a bl ush ; any more tha n I wan t reall y
to believe that the actor who has just
crossed the stage i n h is everyday clothes has
t u r ned i nto an actual King when he pu ts
on clot hes that look like a King's clothes. I
k now t hat a deligh tfu l i m posit ion is
bei ng pract ised u pon me ; that I am to see
fairy-la nd for a wh ile ; and to me all that
glitters shall be gold .
The ballet in pa rticular, but also th e whole
surprisi ng life of the m usic halls, took hold of
me with the charm of what was least real
56

among the pom pous and distressi ng u n real ities

of a great city. And some form I suppose of
that inst inct which has createci the glad iatoria!
shows and the bull-figh t made me fascinated
by the faultless and fatal art of the acrobat,
who sets his l i fe in the wager, and wins the
wager by sheer skill, a t ri u m ph of fine
shades. That love of fine shades took me
angrily past the spoken vulgari ties of most
music-hall sing ing (how m uch more priceless
do t hey make the silence of danci ng !) to that
one great art of fine shades, made up out of
speech just lifted into song, wh ich has been
revealed to us by Yvette Guilbert.
I remem ber when I first heard her in Paris,
and tried, vain ly at the ti me, to get the English
managers to bri ng her over to London. She
sang " Sain te Galette," and as I listen ed to
the song I felt a cold shiver ru n down my
back, that shiver which no dra matic art except
that of Sarah Bernhard t had ever given me.
I t was not th is that I was expecting to find
in the th in woman wit h the long black gloves.
I had heard that hr songs were i m moral, and
that her man ner was full of u nderhand in
ten tion. What I fou nd was a moral so
poignant, so h uman, that I could scarcely
endure the pi ty of it, it made me feel that I
was wicked,

57

not that she was ; I , to have looked at these

dread fu lly serious th ings lightly. Later on ,
i n London, I heard her sing " La Soulard e,"
that song in which, as Goncou r t notes in his
jou rnal, " la d i scuse de chanson net tes se
revle com me u ne grand e, u ne trs grand e
act rice tragiq ue, vous metta nt au cceu r u ne
con strict ion angoisseuse." It is abou t an old
drunken woman, whom the children follow
and laugh at i n the street s. Yvette im itates
her old waggl ing head , her tot teri ng wal k,
her broken voice, her little sudden furies,
her m iserable resignat ion ; she suggests all
this, almost wi t hout movi ng, by the subtlest
pan tom ime, the subtlest i n ftect ions of voice
and face, and she t hri lls you with the
grotesque pat hos of the whole situat ion, with
the i ntense hu mani ty of i t. I i magi ne
such a situation
rendered by an Engl ish music-hall singer !
Imagi ne the v ulgari ty, the inhu man ity, of the
sort of beery caricat u re that we should get, i n
place of th is absolu tely classic stu dy in th
e darker and more sord id side of l i fe. The
art of Yvet te Gu i l bert is always classic ; i t
has rest rai n t, form , d ign i ty, in its wi ldest
l icence. Its secret i s its expressi veness, and
t h e secret of that expressi veness lies perhaps
largely i n its attent ion to detai l. Others are
conten t with 58

maki ng an effect, say twice, i n the cou rse of

a song. Yvette Guilbert insists on getting the
full meani ng out of every line, bu t quietly,
wit hou t emphasis, as if in passi ng; and, with
ber, to grasp a meani ng i s to gain an effect.
There was the one great artist of that world
wh ich, before I could apprehen d it, had to be
reflected back to me as in some bewilderi ng
mi rror. It was out of mere curiosity that I
had fou nd my way i nto that world, into that
mi rror, bu t, once there, the th ing became
materiai for me. I t ried to do in verse some
thing of what Degas had clone in pai nting. I
was conscious of transgressi ng no law of art
in taki ng that scarcely touched materiai for
new uses. Here, at least, was a dcor which
appealed to me, and which seemed to me full
of strangeness, beauty, and significance. I
still th i n k that there is a poet ry in this
world of illusion , not less genui ne of its k ind
than that more easily apprehend ed poet ry of
a world, so little more real, that poets have
mostly tu r ned to. It i s part of the poet ry of
cities, and it wai ts for us in London.

59

CITY is characterized by its ligh ts, and

it is to its lights, acti ng on its conti n ua!
mist, that London owes much of the mystery
of its beauty. On a wi n ter afternoon every
street in London becomes mysterious. You
see even the shops th rough a veil, people are
no longer disti nguish able as persons, bu t
are a n imble flock of shadows. Lights travel
and dance th rough alleys that seem to end in
dark ness. Every row of gas lamps turns to a
trai l of fire ; fiery stars shoot and flicker in
the night. N ight becomes palpable, and not
only an absence of the ligh t of day.
The most beautiful lighti ng of a city is the
lighti ng of one street i n Rome by low-swu
ng globes of gas t hat hang like oranges down
the Via Nazionale, midway between the
houses. In London we ligh t casually,
capriciously, everyone at his own will, and so
there are blind i ng shafts at one step and a pi
t of dark ness at the next, and i t is an
advent u re to follow the lights in any
direction, the lights
60

are all significant and mean some place of

entertai n men t or the ambi tion of some
shop keeper. They draw one by the mere
cu riosi ty to find out why they are there,
what has set them signalli ng. And, as you
wal k beyond or aside from the shops, all
these private illu mi nations are blotted out,
and th e dim, suffici ng street-gas of the
lam p-posts takes thei r place. The canals, in
London, have a m ysteriou s qual i ty, made up
of sordid and beautiful ele men ts, now a
black t raiC horri ble, crawli ng secretly ;
now a sudden open ing, as at Maida Vale,
between dull hou ses, u pon the sky. At
twiligh t i n winter the canal smokes and flares,
a long li ne of water with its double row of
lamps, d ivid ing the lan d. From where Brown
ing lived for so ma ny years there is an aspect
wh ich m ight well have rem i nded h im of
Venice. The canal parts, and goes two ways,
broaden ing to alm ost a lagoon, where trees
d roop over the water from a kin d of island ,
with rocky houses perched on it. You see
the cu rve of a bridge, formed by the
shadow into a pu re circle, and ligh ted by
the reflection of a gas lam p in the water
beyond ; and the d im road apposi te followi
ng the line of the canal, might be a calle ;

only the long h ull of a barge lying there is not

Venetian in shape, and, decidedly,
61

the at mosphere is not Venetia n . Verlai ne, not

k nowi ng, I th in k, that Brown ing lived
there, made a poem abou t the canal, which
he dated " Padd i ngton." It i s one of his two
" Streets," and it begi ns : " O la r ivire dans
la rue," and goes on to i n voke " l'eau ja u ne
cam me u ne morte," wit h not h ing to reflect
bu t the fog. The barges crawl past with
i nexpressi ble slow ness ; coming out slowly
after the borse and the rope from u nder the
bridge, with a woman leaning motionless
agai nst the hel m, and d rift ing on as if they
were n ot movi ng at all.
On the river the lights are always at wor k
bu ild ing fairy-palaces ; wherever there are trees
they wi nk like stars through drifti ng cloud ,
and the trees become odd ly al ive, with a more
restless life t han thei r life by day. I have
seen a plai n chu rchyard with its straight grave
stones tu rn on a wi n ter afternoon into a sea
of whi te rocks, with vague rosy shore l ights
beyond. But it is the fog which lends itself
to the supreme Lon don decorat ion, collabor
ating wi th gasligh t th rough cou n tless trans
formations, from the wh ite shroud to the yellow
blan ket, un ti l every gas-la m p is out, and
you can not see a torch a yard beyond your
feet.
There i s not hi ng in the worl d quite l ike a
London fog, though the u ndergrou nd railway
6z

stations in the days of steam migh t bave pre

pared us for it and Da nte has descri bed i t in
the " I nferno " when he speaks of the ban ks
of a pi t in hell, " crusted over with a mould
from the vapou r below, wh ich cakes u pon
them, and battles with eye and nose."
Foreigners praise it as the one thing in wh ich
London is u n ique. They come to London to
experience it. It is as if one tried the
experience of drown ing or suffocati ng. I t is a
penal ty worse than any Chinese penal ty. It
stifies the mind as well as chok ing the bod y.
It comes on slowly and stealthily, picki ng its
way, choosi ng its direc tion, leaving
con tem pt uous gaps in its cou rse ; then it
settles down like a blan ket of solid smoke,
which you can feel bu t not put from
you. The streets turn pu trescen t, the gas
lamps hang l ike rotti ng frui t, you are in a
dark t un nel, i n which the lights are going
out, and beside you , u nseen, there is a roa r
and ru mble, i nterru pted wi th sharp cries, a
stopping of wheels and a begi nning of the
roar and ru m ble over again. You wal k like
a bli n d man , fumbling with his staff at the
edge of the pavemen t. Familiar turnings,
which you fancied you could follow blindfold,
deceive you , and you are helpless if you go
two ya rds out of you r cou rse. The grime
63

bl ackens you r face, you r eyes smart, you r

throat i s as if choked with d ust. You breat he
black foul n ess and it enters i nto you an d
con tami nates you.
And yet, how strange, i n expl icable, mys
teriously impressi ve is t his masque of shadows
I
It
is
the
one wholly
complete
tra nsformation of the visi ble world, the one
dark ness which
i s really visi ble, the one creation of at least
the beau ty of horror which has been made by
dirt, smoke, and cities.
Yet the eternai smoke of London lies i n
wai t for us, n ot only in the pest ilence of
chi m neys, bu t ri sing violen tly out of the
earth, i n a rhetoric of its own. There are i n
Lon don certai n gaps or holes i n the earth, wh
ich are like ven t-holes, an d out of these
open i ngs its i n ner fermen t comes for a
mo men t to the surface. One of them is at
Chal k Farm Station. There is a gau n t
cavernous doorway lead ing u ndergrou nd, and
th is doorway faces three roads from the edge
of a bri dge. Th e bridge crosses an abyss of
steam, which ri ses out of depths l ike the
depths of a boi l ing pot, only i t i s a
wi tches' pot of noi se and fire ; and pi llars
and pyrami ds of smoke rise conti n u ally out
of i t, and there are hoarse cries, screams, a
clashi ng and rat tl i ng, the sound
64

as of a move men t which struggles and can not

escape, li ke the coiling of serpents twist ing
toget her in a pi t. Thei r breath rises i n clouds,
and drifts vol u mi nously over the gap of the
abyss ; catchi ng at times a ghastly colou r from
the lampligh t. Sometimes one of the snakes
seems to rise and sway out of the tangle, a
colu mn of yellow black ness. Multi tudes of
red and yellow eyes speckle the vague and
smoky darkness, out of which rise domes and
roof s and chim neys ; and a few astonished
trees lean over the mou th of the pi t, sucking
u p draugh ts of smoke for air.

VI

S there any ity i n wh ich life a?d the

co? d itions of life can be more abject
than m
Lon don, any ci ty i n which the poor are more
n atu rally u n happy, and less able to shake off
or come th rough t hei r poverty into any natu ral
rel ief ? Those sord i d splendou rs of smoke an d
dirt wh ich may be so fine as aspects, mean
something which we can only express by the
Engl ish word squalor ; they mean the dishu
man i sing of in n u merable people who have
no less righ t than ou rselves to exist natu
rally. I wi ll take one road , which I k now
well, and wh ich everyone who lives i n Lond
on m ust know somewhat, for it is a mai n
artery, Edg
\va re Roacl, as a parable of what I mean. No
where in Lon don is there more materia} for a
com pa rative study i n l ivi ng.
Edgware Road begi ns proud ly i n th e West
En d of London, sweepi ng off in an emphat ic
cu rve from the rai l i ngs of Hyde Park, be
yond the VI arble A rch ; i t grows mea ner
before Chapel Street, and from Chapel Street
to th e
66

flower-shan ty by the canal, where Maida Vale

goes down h ill, it seems to concent rate into it
self all the sord idness of London. Walki ng out
ward from Chapel Street, on the right-hand side
of the road, you pl u nge i nstantly into a dense,
parch i ng, and envelopi ng smell, made u p of
stale fish, rott ing vegetables, and the m ust of
old clothes. The pavemen t is never clean ; bi ts
of torn paper, fragmen ts of cabbage leaves,
the ri nd of fruit, the stalks of flowers, the litter
swept away from the front of shops and linger
i ng on its way to the gutter, drift to and fro
u nder one's feet, moist with rai n or greased with
mud. As one steps out of the way of a slimy
greyness on the grou nd, one brushes agai nst
a coat on which the dirt has caked or a skirt
which i t streak s dampl y. Women in shawls,
wi th untidy hai r, tu rn down into the road
from all the side streets, and go i n and out
of the shops. They carry baskets, bags, and
parcels wrapped in n ewspapers ; grease oozes
through the paper, smearing it with pri n ter's
ink as it melts. They push peram bulators in
front of them, in which children wi th smeared
faces pi tch and roll ; they carry ba bies un der
thei r shawls. Men wi th u nshaven faces, hold
ing short clay pi pes between their teet h, wal k
shambli ngly at thei r side ; the men 's clothes
67

are discolou red with t im e and weat her, and

hang loosely abou t t hem, as if they h ad been
bough t ready-made ; they have dirty scarves
knotted rou n d t hei r n ecks, and they go along
withou t speaki ng. Men with th read-bare frock
coats, i ll-fit t ing and carefu lly brushed , pass
nervously, with wh ite faces and thi n fingers.
Heavy men with whi ps in their hands, t hi n,
clean-shaven men in short coats and ridi ng
gaiters, lou nge i n front of the horse-dealer's
across the road, or ou tsi de dusty shops with
bu n dles of hay and sacks of bran i n thei r
door ways.
Here an d there a gaudy sheet slu ng across
a wi ndow annou nces a fat woman on show, or
a collection of waxworks with the latest mu r
der ; ftags and streamers, daubed with ragged
letteri ng, hang out from t he u pper wi ndows.
At i ntervals, along the pavemen t, there are
girls offeri ng big bu nches of wh ite and
yellow flowers ; up the side streets there are
barrows of plants and ferns and flowers in pots
; and the very odour of t he flowers tu rns
sickly, as the i nfect ion of the air sucks i t up
and mi ngles i t with the breat h and sweat of
the people and the ancien t reek of clothes that
have grown old u pon u mvashed bodies.
Sometimes a pavement artist bri ngs h i s
68

pict u res with him on a square canvas, and

t ies a str ing in front of t hem, proppi ng them
agai nst the wall, and sits on the ground at one
end, wit h h i s cap i n h is ha n d. At regular
in tervals a Punch and Jud y comes to one of
the side streets, just in from t he road , a
little
mela n choly wh ite dog with a red ru ff about
its neck ba rks feebly as the pu ppets flap t hei r
noses in its face. On Sundays the Salva t ion
Arm y holds meeti ngs, with flags flying and
loud brass inst ru men ts playi ng ; the red caps
and black sun-bon nets can be seen in the
hollow m idst of th e crowd. Not far off, men
dressed in surplices stan d besi de a harmoni u m,
with prayer-books in thei r hands ; a feyv people
I isten to t hem h alf-hear tedly. There are gener
ally one or two Ital i an women , with brigh t
grcen birds i n their cages, h u dd led in t h e
corner of doorways and arches, wai ti ng to tell
fortu nes. A bli nd begga r in a tall hat stands
at the edge of the cu rbstone ; he has a t ray of
matches and boot-laces to sell ; he holds a
stick i n h is han d , with wh ich he paws ner
vously at an inch of pavemen t ; h is heel seeks
th e gutter, and feels i ts way up and down from
gutter to pavement.
Somewhere along the road there is generally
a lit tle crowd ; a horse has fallen, or a woman
69

has lost a pen ny i n the mud , or a policeman

, n ote-book i n han d, i s talki ng to a cabd ri ver
who has u pset a bicycle. Two \Vomen are
qua rrelli ng ; they tear at the handle of a per
ambu lator in which two babies sit and smile
cheerfully. Two men grappl e with each other
i n the middle of the road, almost un der th e
horses of the omn ibus ; the dri ver stops his
horses, so as n ot to run t hem down. A coarse,
red-faced woman of fifty drags an old woman
by the arm ; she is almost too old to wal k, and
she totters and spreads out her arms helplessl y
as the other pul l s at her ; her head turns on
her shoulder, looki ng out bli n dly, the mout h
fall ing open in a convu lsive grimace, the whol e
face eaten away with some obscu re sufferi ng
wh ich she i s almost past feel i ng. A ba rrel
organ plays viol ently ; some you ths stare at
the pictu re of the fat, half-naked lady on the
fron t of the instrumen t ; one or two children
hold out thei r skirts in bot h han ds and begi n
to dance to the tu ne.
On Saturday nigh t the Road i s lin ed with
stalls ; na pht ha flames burn over every stall,
flari ng away from the wi nd, and l ighting u p
the faces that lean towards them from the
crowd on the pavemen t. There are stal ls wit h
plan ts, chea p jewel ry, paper books, scarves
70

and braces, sweets, bananas, ice-cream bar

rows, weighi ng-mach i nes ; long rows of rab
bits bang by their t russed h ind legs, and a
boy skins t hem rapidly with a pen-k n ife for
the buyers ; raw lumps of meat redden and
whiten as the light dri fts over and away from
them ; the salesmen cry t hei r wares. The
shops blaze with light, displayi ng their cheap
clothes and cheap forn itu re and clusters of
cheap boots. Some of the women are doing
their Saturday n igh t's shopping, but for th e
most part i t is a holiday nigh t, and the people
swarm in the streets, some in thei r work ing
clothes, some i n the finery wh ich they will
put on to-m orrow for their Sunday afternoon
wal k in the Park ; i n t hei r faces, thei r move
men ts, there is that un enjoyi ng h i larity wh
ich the end of the week's wor k, the n ight, th e
week's \vages, the sort of street fair at wh ich
one can buy things to eat and to put on, bri ng
out in people who seem to Iive for the most
part with preoccu pied indifference.
As I \val k to and fro in Edgware Road, I
cannot hel p sometimes wonderi ng why these
people exist, why they take the t rou ble to go
on existi ng. Watch their faces, and you will
see in them a listlessness, a hard u nconcern ,
a failure to be i n terested, wh ich speaks equall y
71

in the rovi ng eyes of the man who stands

smoki ng at the curbstone \Yi th bis han ds in
h is pockets, and in the puckered cheeks of th e
woman doing her shopping, and in the noisy
laugh of the yout h leaning against the wall,
and in the gray, n arrow face of the ch ild whose
thi n legs are too ti red to dance when the
barrel-organ plays jigs. Whenever anythi ng
happen s in the streets there is a crowd at
once, and th is crowd is made up of people
who have no pleasu res and no in terests of
their own to attend to, and to whom any
variety is welcome in the tedi u m of thei r
l ives. In ali t hese faces you will see no beau ty,
and you will see no beauty in the clothes th ey
wear, or in their atti t udes in res t or move
men t, or in th eir voices when they speak.
They are h u man bei ngs to whom natu re has
given no grace or charm, whom life has made
vulgar, and for whom circu mstances have left
no escape from themselves. In the climate of
England, in the atmosphere of London, on
these pavemen ts of Edgware Road, t here is
no way of getting any sim ple happi ness out
of nat u ral th ings, and they have lost the cap
acity for accepti ng natu ral pleasu res graci
ously, if such carne to them. Crawl i ng be
tween heaven and earth thus miserably, t hey
72

have never k nown what makes existence a

practicable art or a tolerable spectacle, and
they have in fi n i tely less sense of the mere
abs tract hu man sign ificance of life than the
fac chino who lies, a long bl u e streak in the
sun, on the Zattere at Venice, or the girl who
carries water from t he well i n an earthen
pi tcher, balanci ng i t on her head, i n any
Spanish street. Or, i nstead of t u rn ing to h u
man bei ngs, in some more favorable par t of
the world , go to the Zool ogica! Garden s and
l ook at the beasts there.
The condi tions
of existence are, per haps, sligh tly worse for
the beasts; t hei r cages are narrow, more
securely barred ; hu man curi osity is brough
t to bear upon th em with a more pu blic
offence. Bu t observe, u nder all these cond
itions, the d igni ty of the beasts, thei r d
isd ain, t hei r ind ifference ! When the
flutteri ng beri bboned, chatteri ng hu m an herd
troops past them , poi n ting at them with shrill
laughter, u neasy, pre-occu pied, one eye on th e
beasts and the other on the neigh bou r's face
or frock, they sit t here stolidly in thei r cages,
not condescen ding to notice thei r unru ly
critics. When t hey move, they move wit h
the grace of n atu ral t hi n gs, made rhyt hm
ical with beau ty and strong for ravage and
swift for fligh t. They pace to and fro,
ru bbi ng
73

themsel ves against the bars , restlessly ; bu t

t hey seem all on fire with a life tbat ti ngles
to tbe roots of tbei r claws and to tbe t ips of
tbei r tai ls, d ilat ing tbei r nost ri ls and qu iver
ing in li t t le sbudders down t bei r smootb
flan ks. Tbey bave found an enemy craftier
t ban tbey, tbey bave been conquered and
carried away captive, and tbey are full of
smoulderi ng rage. But with the loss of liberty
tbey have lost notbi ng of t hemselves ; tbe soul
of tbeir flesb i s u ncontami nated by bu mi lia
t ion. Tbey pass a mour nful existence nobl y,
eacb after bis k ind , in loneli ness or in u
nwill i ng com panionsbi p ; their eyes look past
us withou t seeing us ; we bave no power over
tbei r concen t rat ion withi n tbe muscles of
tbei r vivid limbs or within the coi ls of their
subtle bodies.
H u mani ty, at tbe best, has m uch to be
asbamed of, pbysically, beside tbe supreme
pbysical perfection of the pa nt her or the snake.
All of us look poor enough creat ures as we
come away from thei r cages. But t h i n k now
of these men and women whom we have seen
swarmi ng in Edgware Road , of thei r vulgari ty,
tbei r abject ness of att itude toward life, thei r
ugl i ness, d i rt, insolence, thei r loud laugh ter.
All the animal s except man have too m uch
74

dignity to laugh ; only man fou n d out the way

to escape the direct force of t hi ngs by attach
ing a crit ica} sense, or a sense of rel ief, to a
sound wh ich i s n eit her a cackle nor a whi n
ny, bu t wh ich has somethi ng of those two
in articulate voices of nat u re. As I passed
through the Satu rday n ight crowd lately,
bet ween two opposing currents of evil smells,
I overheard a man who was lu rch ing along
the pavement say in contem pt uous commen t :
" Twelve o'clock ! we m ay be all dead by
twelve o'clock ! " He seemed to sum up the
philosophy of that crowd, its listlessness, its
hard u nconcern, its fai lu re to be interested.
Nothing mat ters, he seemed to say for them ;
let us drag out our t ime u n ti l the t i me is
over, and the sooner it is over the bet ter.
Life in great cit ies dishu man izes hu man ity ;
it envelops the rich i n m ult i tudes of cloggi ng,
costly trifies, and cakes the poor abou t wit h
ignoble dirt and the cares of u nfr u itfu l labou r.
Go into the cou n t ry, where progress and
machi n es and other gifts of the twentiet h
centu ry have not w holly taken away
the
peasant's han d from the spade and plough,
or to any fishi ng vi ll age on the coast, and
you will see t hat poverty, even in Englan d,
can find some n atu ral delights in natural
75

things. You wi ll find, often en ough , that very

Engl ish quality of vu lgari ty in th e peasant
who l ives i nl and ; only the sea seems to
cleanse vulgari ty out of the E ngl ish peasan t,
and to brace h im i nto a reall y sim ple and refi
ned digni ty. And, after all, though the labou
rer who tu rns the soil i s i n u nceasi ng
contact with natu re, he has not that sting of
danger to waken him an d cult ivate his
senses which i s never absent for long from
the life of the
fisherman. People who cast thei r nets i n to
the sea, on the hazard of that more u n certain
ha rvest, have a gravity, a fin ished self-rel iance,
a k ind of ph ilosophy of thei r own. Their eyes
an d han ds are trai ned to fi neness and strengt h ,
they learn to k now the win ds and clouds, and
th ey measure thei r wits against them, risk ing
thei r lives on the surety of thei r calcu lations.
The constant neigh bou rhood of death gives
li fe a keener savou r, they have no certain ty of
ever open i ng again the door which they close
behi nd them as they go out to laun ch their
boats un der the stars. Tossing between a
naked sea and a naked sky all n ight long,
they have leisu re for many dreams, and
though ts come in to thei r heads wh ich never
trou ble the people who live in streets. They
have all the visible horizon for their own.
76

And the sea washes clean. In the steep

Corn ish vi llage that I k now best, I see, when
ever I go ou t, bright flowers in fron t of wh ite
cottages, a cow's head l aid qu ietly over a stone
hedge, looki ng down on the road, the brmvn
ha rvest in the fiel ds that stretch away beyond
the t rees to the edge of the cliff, and then,
fu rt her on towards the sky, the bl ue glitter of
the sea, shin ing un der sun l ight, with great
hills and palaces of whi te cloud s, risi ng u p
from t he water as from a solid fou ndat ion .
The sea is always at the road 's end, and t here
is always a wi nd from the sea, comi ng si ng
i n g up th e long street from the harbou r, and
shouti ng across the fields and whistl ing in
the lanes. Life itself seems to come freshly
into one's blood, as if life were not only a
going on with one's habi ts an d occu pations,
bu t itself mea nt someth ing, actually exi sted.
Everyone I meet on the road speaks to me
as I pass ; thei r faces and t hei r voices are
cheerful ; they have no cu riosi ty, bu t t hey
are read y to welcome a stranger as if he were
someone they knew al read y. Time seem s to
pass easily, in each d ay's space between sea
and sky ; the day has no ted ium for t hem ;
and t hey need go n o further than to the
harbou r or the farm for enough i n terest to
77

fill out all the hou rs of the day. They h ave

room to live, air to breat he; beau ty is nat u ral
to every t hi ng about t hem. The dates i n their
chu rchyard s tell you how long t hey have the
patience to go on l ivi ng.

78

Cl!ISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WH ITTIN GHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE,
LON IJON.