A London Mosaic
9781465631657
118 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The first thing that impresses me as I begin this short book on London is the large number of subjects of which I will say nothing. There are many reasons for this. One is that a title such as A London Mosaic is as difficult to compose to as Life or Love. (Two novels are still on sale under these somewhat atlasian titles, but as an author does not wish to be unkind in the first paragraphs of a book, they need not be reviewed.) Another reason is that Mr E. V. Lucas, Mrs E. T. Cook, John o’ London, Mr G. R. Sims, have compiled various volumes of passionate Baedeker, and I hesitate to set my feet in their mighty footprints. For so much of this London is unknown to me, and I have learnt little of her, indeed, learned little except to love her. Thus, in this book, you will find no lists of houses where famous people lived. This may seem strange, but it wakes in me no thrill to see a circular plate of debased wedgwood imposed by a maternal L.C.C. upon a wall of innocent stucco coated with eternal dirt. To read that William Hazlitt died here, or lived there, does not add much to the fact that William Hazlitt lived. It may be interesting to know that Hazlitt chose that sort of house, though it is likely that he did not choose it, but accepted it; a house does not define a man of worth, for men of worth are mostly poor, and their houses reflect them not. Many must have hated them. Yet, I happen to know Huxley’s house in St John’s Wood, and Carlyle’s house in Chelsea (there is no getting over that one when friends arrive from America), but it is not exciting knowledge, and I incline to rejoice with Kingsley that it is not the house one lives in matters, but the house opposite. Unfortunately, the house opposite is generally just as bad: the only thing that reconciles one to one’s house is that the people opposite see most of it. I shall not tell you anything of ‘quaint corners,’ or ‘picturesque bits.’ I will not cut up and pickle London. Ever since the days of Dickens (or is it since those of Dr Syntax?) people have ranged our unfortunate town armed with a butterfly-net: swoop! caught Cloth Fair! Another swoop! Staple Inn lies in the butterfly-net. Quick, into the pickle-jar. Now for the cyanide. Here they are, London butterflies, ready for delineation by Mr Hugh Thompson. No, I will pickle you no living strips of London Town, and I promise that not once will I portray a humorous bus-conductor. One reason is that there are no humorous bus-conductors; there are only raucous brutes, working long hours, and maintained in a state of pessimism because these long hours separate them from the public-house. They do not, however, separate them enough.
