Chats on Violoncellos
9781465652584
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Is there any city in the world that can—metaphorically speaking—hold up its head beside this place of mystery—London in a fog? Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St Petersburg, New York—what can they do in the production of a bilious-green, murky-yellow species of hyperphysical abomination? Nothing! Yet we English are not in the least proud of our prerogative. Perhaps elation is impossible among such depressing surroundings, or, perhaps the true British spirit of being satisfied with everything that is British, because it isBritish, predominates too utterly to admit of any other emotion. No! genius ignores the subject, and fills in the weary hours of darkness with sighs, and gasps, and chokes, like ordinary mortals. What an outlook greets us this dull November day! Misty bricks and mortar emerge and disappear like swiftly buried cities. Hazy, indefinite, dubious figures loom upon us out of the darkness, like ancestral ghosts; dull thuds, faint cries, strange stampings and gratings are transmitted to our ears with telephonic minuteness; and all the while our throats are aching, our eyes are streaming, our noses are smarting, the motor bus is useless, and—we don’t know where we are. Perhaps in all the gamut of human sensibility there can be no more creepy sensation than that of being lost in familiar surroundings. The ruler of Hades himself, or Jupiter with his thunderbolts, could not invent a more refined torture than that consummated in the paradox: “Here I am!—Where am I?” Yet, how ordinary has this impression become to the dweller in London. “Here, boy! can you tell me where I am? I thought I was near the South Kensington Station, but—I begin to be horribly puzzled. That great thing opposite looks just like the Parthenon!” “Parth yer on!” exclaims a little urchin, apparently emerging from nowhere, and brandishing a torch as big as himself—“Parth, did yer say? Yer on the parth roight enough! Want a loight, loidy?” he adds, reserving further information until he is sure of a customer. “Yes, yes, to be sure! Don’t leave me whatever you do! Where am I?” distractedly. “What is that place opposite? I saw it a moment ago, but—it’s gone again!” A pause—similar to that which precedes each new slide at a magic-lantern show—follows this speech, then out of the darkness comes the excited exclamation: “There! there it is! Now, what is it?”
