My Old Lady, London

I

I ONCE heard a charming woman say at dinner, ‘I don’t think I ever had quite as much fresh asparagus as I wanted.’ In like manner, I don’t think I shall ever get as much of London as is necessary for my complete happiness; I love it early in the morning — before it rouses itself, when the streets are deserted; I love it when throngs of people — the best-natured and politest people in all the world — crowd its thoroughfares; and I love it, I think, best of all, at sunset, when London, in some of its aspects, can be very beautiful. If I were a Londoner, I should never leave it, except perhaps for a day or two now and then, so that I could enjoy coming back to it.

The terrible world-upheaval through which we have just passed is responsible for my not having been in London for six years, and I greatly feared that those years might have left some unhappy imprint upon the Old Lady. Indeed, she may have lost a tooth or a wisp of hair; but aristocratic old ladies know how to conceal the ravages of time and circumstance, and as I looked around the railway station while my belongings were being stowed away in the ‘left luggage’ room, I saw only the usual crowd quietly going about its business.

Then, as I stepped into my taxi and said, ‘Simpson’s in the Strand,’ and was being whirled over Waterloo Bridge, I said to myself, ‘Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed except that the fare, which was once eightpence, is now a shilling.’

I said it again, with not quite the same certainty, when, after eating my piece of roast beef and a little mess of greens and a wonderful potato, I called the head waiter and complained that the meat was tough and stringy. ‘ It is so,’ said that functionary, and continued: ‘you see, sir, during the war we exhausted’ (with careful emphasis upon the h) ‘our own English beef, and we are now forced to depend upon — ’I looked him straight in the eye; he was going to say America, but changed his mind and said, ‘the Argentine.’

‘Very neatly done,’ I said, ordering an extra half-pint of bitter and putting a sixpence in his hand; ‘to-morrow I’ll have fish. I’m very sure that nothing can have happened to the turbot.’

It was only a little after one, when, leaving Simpson’s I lit a cigar and turned westward in quest of lodgings. As the Savoy was near at hand, I thought no harm would be done by asking the price of a large double-bedded room overlooking the river, with a bath, and was told that the price would be live guineas a day, but that no such accommodation was at that moment available. ‘I’m glad of it,’ I said, feeling that a temptation had been removed; for I have always wanted a room that looked out on the river; and, continuing westward, I inquired at one hotel after another until, just as I was beginning to feel, not alarmed, but a trifle uneasy, I secured, not just what I wanted, but a room and a bath which would serve — at the Piccadilly.

I had been kept waiting quite a little time in the lobby, and as I looked about me there seemed to be a good many foreigners in evidence, a number of Spaniards and, I suspected, Germans. A fine manly young fellow, with only one arm (how many such I was to see), who manipulated the lift and to whom I confided my suspicions, replied, ‘Yes, sir, I believe they is, sir; but what are you going to do? They calls themselves Swiss!'

But in my anxiety to get to London, I have forgotten to say a word about the Imperator, on which I crossed, or of the needless expense and delay to which one is subjected in New York, for no reason that I can see, but that some of what Mr. Bryan called ‘deserving Democrats’ may be fed at the public trough.

After being photographed, and getting your passport and having it viséd by the consul of the country to which you are first going, and after assuring the officials of the Treasury Department that the final installment of your income tax will be paid, when due, by your bank, — though where the money is to come from, you don’t in the least know, — you finally start for New York, in order that you may be there one day before the steamer sails, so that you may again present your passport at the Custom House for final inspection. I know no man wise enough to tell me what good purpose is served by this last annoyance. With trunks and suitcases, New York is an expensive place in which to spend a night, and one is not in the humor for it; one has started for Europe and reached — New York.

But fearful that some hitch may occur, you wire on for rooms and get them, and ‘the day previous to sailing, ’ as the regulation demands, you present yourself and your wife, each armed with a passport, at the Custom House. Standing in a long line in a corridor, you eventually approach a desk at which sits a man consuming a big black cigar. Spreading out your passport before him he looks at it as if he were examining one for the first time; finally, with a blue pencil, he puts a mark on it and says, ‘Take it to that gentleman over there,’ pointing across the room. You do so; and another man examines it, surprised, it may be, to see that it so closely resembles one that he has just marked with a red pencil. He is just about to make another hieroglyph on the passport when he observes that the background of your photograph is dark, whereas the regulations call for light. He suspends the operation; is it possible that you will be detained at the last moment? No! with the remark, ’Get a light one next time,’ he makes a little mark in red and scornfully directs you to another desk. Here sits another man — these are all able-bodied and presumably well-paid politicians — with a large rubber stamp; it descends, and you are free to go on board your ship — to-morrow.

The Imperator made, I think, only one trip in the service of the company that built her; during the war she remained tied up to her pier in Hoboken; and when she was finally put into passenger service, she was taken over, pending final allocation, by the Cunard Line. She is a wonderful ship — with the exception of the Leviathan, the largest boat afloat; magnificent and convenient in every detail, and as steady as a church. The doctor who examines my heart occasionally, looking for trouble, would have had a busy time on her. I fancy I can see him, drawing his stethoscope from his pocket and suspending it in his ears, poking round, listening in vain for the pulsation of her engines; fearful, no doubt, that he was going to lose his patient, he would have prescribed certain drops in water at regular intervals, and, finally, he would have sent her in a very large bill.

I am quite sure that I owe my comparatively good health to having been very abstemious in the matter of exercise. But it was my habit to take a constitutional each day before breakfast; this duty done, I was able to read and smoke thereafter with a clear conscience. Four and a half times around the promenade deck was a mile, the steward told me; and I can quite believe it.

Coming back to earth, or rather sea, after this flight into the empyrean, I am bound to admit that the Germans knew how to build and run ships. And the beautiful part of the Imperator was that, though you saw a German sign occasionally, not a German word was heard, How completely, for the time being at any rate, the German nation has been erased from the sea! I sometimes doubt the taste of the English singing ‘Rule, Britannia’; it is so very true — now.

II

As we entered Southampton Water after a pleasant and quite uneventful voyage, we saw almost the only sign of the war we were destined to see. A long line, miles long, of what we should call torpedo-boat destroyers, anchored in midstream, still wearing their camouflage coloring, slowly rusting themselves away.

We landed on a clear, warm September afternoon, and, Southampton possessing no charm whatever, we at once took train for Winchester, which we reached in time to attend service in the austere old cathedral. The service was impressive, and the singing better than in most cathedrals, for the choir is largely recruited from the great school founded centuries ago by William of Wykeham. After the service, we stood silently for a moment by the tomb of Jane Austen; nor did we forget to lift reverently the carpet that protects the tablet let into the tombstone of Izaak Walton. After tea, that pleasant function, we drove out to the Hospital of St. Cross, beautiful and always dear to me, being, as it is, the scene of Trollope’s lovely story, The Warden.

Seated at home in my library, in imagination I love to roam about this England, this ‘precious stone set in the silver sea,’ which, however, now that the air has been conquered, no longer serves it defensively as a moat; but as soon as I find myself there, the lure of London becomes irresistible, and almost before I know it I am at some village railway station demanding my ‘two single thirds’ to Waterloo or Victoria, or wherever it may be.

So it was in this case. I did, however, take advantage of the delightful weather to make a motor pilgrimage to Selborne, some fifteen miles across country from Winchester. A tiny copy of White’s Natural History of Selborne came into my possession some forty years ago, by purchase, at a cost of fifteen cents, at Leary’s famous bookshop in Philadelphia; and while I now display, somewhat ostentatiously perhaps, Horace Walpole’s own copy of the first edition, I keep my little volume for reading and had it with me on the steamer.

The Wakes, the house in which Gilbert White was born and in which he died, is still standing on what is by courtesy called the main street of the little village, which is, in its way, I suppose, as famous as any settlement of its size anywhere. The church of which he was rector, and in which he preached, when he was not wandering about observing with unexampled fidelity the flora and fauna of his native parish, stands near the upper end of a tiny public square called the Plestor, or play-place, which dates only from yesterday, that is to say, from 1271! Originally an immense oak tree stood in the centre; but it was uprooted in a great storm some two centuries ago, and a sycamore now stands in its place. Encircling it is a bench upon which the rude forefathers of the hamlet may sit and watch the children at play, and on which we should have sat but that we were more interested in the great yew which stands in the near-by churchyard. It is one of the most famous trees in England, — a thousand years old, they say, — and looking old for its age; but it is so symmetrical in its proportions that its immense size is not fully realized until one slowly paces round it and discovers that its trunk is almost thirty feet in circumference.

The church, which has luckily escaped the restorations so many parish churches have been compelled to undergo, is in no wise remarkable. Many Whites are buried therein; but our particular White, the one who made Selborne notable among the villages of England, lies outside in the churchyard, near the north wall of the chancel, the grave being marked by a half-sunken headstone on which one reads with difficulty two simple letters, ‘ G. W.,’ and a date, ‘26th June, 1793’; but a tablet within the church records at greater length his virtues and distinctions.

III

There is nothing more exhausting than the elegance of a big hotel; and to move from a fashionable caravansary in Philadelphia to another in London or Paris is to subject one’s self to the inconvenience of travel, without enjoying any of its compensations. One wants to enjoy the difference of foreign countries rather than their somewhat artificial resemblances. At the end of a busy day, when one is tired, one wants peace, quiet, and simplicity — at least, this one does; and so, when our attention was called to a small apartment in Albemarle Street, from the balcony of which I could throw a stone into the windows of Quaritch’s bookshop, in the event that such an act would afford any solution to the problem of securing the books I wanted, I closed the bargain instantly and was soon by way of being a householder on a very small scale.

We had been told that ‘service’ in England was a thing of the past, that it has disappeared with the war; but this was only one of the many discouraging statements which were to be entirely refuted in the experience. No one could have been better cared for than we, by a valet and maid who brushed our clothes and brought us our breakfast; and shortly after ten each morning we started out upon our wanderings in whatever direction we would, alert for any adventure that the streets of London might afford. This is an inexpensive and harmless occupation, interesting in the event and delightful in retrospect. Is it Liszt who conjures us to store up recollections for consumption in old age? Well, I am doing so.

I know not which I enjoy most, beating the pavements of the well-known streets, which afford at every turn scenes that recall some well-known historic or literary incident, or journeying into some unexplored region, which opens up districts of hitherto unsuspected interest. Years ago, when slumming first became fashionable, one never used to overlook Pettycoat Lane in far-off Whitechapel: of late years it has been cleaned up and made respectable and uninteresting. But how many people are there who know that there is a very pretty slum right in the heart of things, only a short distance back of Liberty’s famous shop in Regent Street? If interested in seeing how the other half lives, look it up when you are next in London, and you will be astonished at the way in which the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness unfolds itself in a maze of little streets and courts all jumbled together. London has always been a city in which extremes meet; where wealth impinges upon poverty. Nowhere can greater contrasts be obtained than in that terra incognita which lies just to the south of Soho. The world lives, if not in the open, at least in the streets; and food, fruit, fish, and furbelows are exposed for sale on barrows and trest les in what appears to be unspeakable confusion.

I had discovered this curious slum years before my friend Lucas, that sympathetic wanderer in London, called attention to it in his delightful volume, Adventures and Enthusiasms.

But there is to my mind an even choicer little backwater, just off Fleet Street — Nevill’s Court, which I first visited many years ago, during a memorable midnight ramble in company with David Wallerstein, a Philadelphia lawyer and an old friend, who, by reason of his wide reading, retentive memory, and power of observation, seemed able to better my knowledge of London even in a district where I had thought myself peculiarly at home.

Nevill’s Court runs east from Fetter Lane. One enters it by an archway, which may easily be passed unnoticed; and to one’s great surprise one comes suddenly upon a row of old mansions, one of which was pointed out to me as once having been the town residence of the Earl of Warwick. ‘ It was a grand house in its day, sir,’said a young woman in an interesting condition, who was taking the air late one afternoon when I first saw it; ‘but it’s let out as lodgings now. Keir Hardie, M.P., lodges there when he’s in London; he says he likes it here, it’s so quiet.’

‘And how long have you lived here?’ I inquired.

‘Oh, sir, I’ve always lived about ’ere in this court, or close to; I like living in courts, it’s so quiet; it’s most like living in the country.’

All the houses look out upon ample, if now sadly neglected, gardens, through the centre of which flower-bordered paths lead to the front doors. Push open one of the several gates, one is certain to be unlocked, — or peer through the cracks of an old oaken fence which still affords some measure of the privacy dear to the heart of every Englishman, and you will see a bit of vanishing London which certainly can last but a short time longer. The roar of the city is quite unheard; one has simply passed out of the twentieth century into the seventeenth.

Oxford Street is to me one of the least interesting streets in London. Itis a great modern thoroughfare, always crowded with people going cast in the morning, and west in the evening when their day’s work is done. I was walking along this street late one afternoon, when my eye caught, a sign, ‘Hanway Street,’ which instantly brought to mind the publishing business conducted in it more than a century ago by my lamented friend, William Godwin. I hoped to learn that it was named after the discoverer of the umbrella, but it is not. Hanway Street is a mean, narrowpassage running north out of Oxford Street, as if intent upon going straightway to Hampstead; but it almost immediately begins to wobble and, finally changing its mind, turns east, and stops at the Horse-Shoe Tavern in the Tottenham Court Road.

My hour of refreshment having come, I stopped there, too, and over a mug of ale I thought of Godwin, and as a result of my meditations, decided to follow up the Godwin trail. And so, the inner man refreshed, I continued east through Holborn until I came to Snowhill, to which street Godwin subsequently removed his business and his interesting family. Turning off to the left, and doubling somewhat on my tracks, I descended Snowhill, and found myself facing a substantial modern building, which challenged attention by reason of the rather unusual decoration of its façade. It needed but a glance to see that this building had been erected on the site of the Saracen’s Head Inn, immortalized by Charles Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby. Let into the wall were two large panels, one being a school-scene bearing the legend ‘Dotheboys Hall’; the other, a ‘Mail Coach leaving Saracen’s Head.’ Over the arched doorway was a fine bust of Dickens, while to the left was a fulllength figure of the immortal Mr. Squeers, and on the right a similar figure of Nicholas Nickleby.

In the pleasure of my discovery I almost forgot all about Godwin, whose shop was once near-by; proving again, what needs no proof, that many characters in fiction are just as sure of immortality as persons who once moved among us in the flesh. Then I remembered that John Bunyan had lived and died in this street, when Snowhill was described as being very narrow, very steep, and very dangerous. This led me to decide that I would make a pilgrimage to Bunyan’s tomb in Bunhill Fields, which I had not visited for many years.

And so, a few days later, I found myself wandering about in that most depressing graveyard, in which thousands of men and women, famous in their time, found sepulture — in some cases merely temporary, for the records show that, after the passing of fifteen years or so, their graves were violated to make room for later generations, all traces of earlier interments having been erased. Poor Blake and his wife are among those whose graves can no longer be identified.

On the day of my visit it was much too damp to sit on the ground and tell sad stories of anything; but I had no difficulty in coming upon the tomb of Defoe, or that of Bunyan, a large altarlike affair, with his recumbent figure upon it. An old man whom I met loitering about called my attention to the fact that the nose had recently been broken off, and told me that it had been shot off by some soldier who had been quartered during the war in the near-by barracks of the Honorable Artillery Company. It appears that some miscreant had, to beguile the time, amused himself by taking pot shots at the statuary, and that much damage had been done before he was discovered. I think I shall accuse the Canadians of this act of vandalism. It is always well to be specific in making charges of this kind; moreover, it will grieve my talented friend, Tait McKenzie, the sculptor, who comes to us from Scotland by way of Toronto, and who thinks it a more grievous crime to mutilate a statue than to damage a man.

It will have been seen from the foregoing that I am the gentlest of explorers. Give me the choice of roaming the streets of London in search of a scarce first edition of, say, The Beggar’s Opera, — so delightfully performed month after month at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, but which lasted scarcely a week in New York, — and a chance to explore some out-of-the-way country with an unpronounceable name, and my mind is made up in a moment. I have found the race with the sheriff sufficiently stimulating, and, on a holiday, give me the simple, or at least the contemplative, life.

Just before leaving home, I had lunched with my friend Fullerton Waldo; his face positively beamed with happiness and his eye sparkled. Why? Because he was going to Russia to see for himself what the Bolsheviki were doing.

’You will see plenty of misery, you may be sure,’ I replied. ’Why look at it? Why not let the Russians stew in their own juice? Ultimately they will come home, those that are left, wagging their tales behind them.’

But no, he wanted to see for himself. So we parted, each of us going his own way, and both happy.

But I did see one thing unusual enough to have interested even so sophisticated a traveler as Waldo, and that was the crowd which, on Armistice Day, that is to say, the eleventh of November, 1920, at exactly eleven o’clock in the morning, stood absolutely silent for two whole minutes. London is a busy city; there is a ceaseless ebb and flow of traffic, — not in a few centres and here and there, as with us, but everywhere, — and when this normal crowd is augmented by thousands from the country, intent upon seeing the dedication of the Cenotaph in the centre of Whitehall and the burial of the unknown warrior in the Abbey, it is a crowd of millions. And this huge crowd, at the first stroke of eleven, stood stock-still; not a thing moved, except, perhaps, here and there a horse turned its head, or a bird, wondering what had caused the great silence, fluttered down from Nelson’s monument in Trafalgar Square. And so it was, we read, all over Britain, all over Australia and Africa, and a part of Asia and America: the great Empire, Ireland alone excepted, stood with bowed head in memory of the dead. Not a wheel turned anywhere, not a telegram or telephone message came over the wires.

These English know how to stage big effects, as befits their Empire; with them history is ever and always in the making. And when at last the bunting fluttered down from the Cenotaph, and when the bones of the Unknown, with the King representing the nation as chief mourner, were deposited in the Abbey, there formed a procession which several days afterward, when I sought to join it, was still almost a mile long!

IV

London can boast of countless little museums, or memorials, to this or that great man; and it is soon to have another : Wentworth Place, in Hampstead, with which the name of Keats is so closely connected. When this is opened to the public, — I have visited it privately, — it is to be hoped that it will take on something of the kindly atmosphere of the Johnson House in Gough Square, rather than that of the cold museum dedicated to that old dyspeptic philosopher, Thomas Carlyle, in Chelsea. I remember well when he died. He was said to have been the Dr. Johnson of his time. Heaven keep us! Carlyle! who never had a good or kindly word to say of any man or thing; whose world, ‘mostly fools,’ bowed down before him and accepted his ravings as criticism; whose Prussian philosophy, ‘the strong thing is the right thing,’ was exploded in the great war. I have lived to see his fame grow dimmer day by day, while Johnson’s grows brighter as his wit, wisdom, and, above all, his humanity, become better known and understood.

To Gough Square, then, I hastened, once I was comfortably installed in my little flat, to see if any of the suggestions I had made at a dinner given by Cecil Harmsworth, in the winter of 1914, to the Johnson Club, to which I was invited, had been carried out. The door was opened to my knock by an old lady who invited me in as if I were an expected guest. She explained that it was hoped that ultimately one room would be dedicated to the memory of Boswell and others of the Johnsonian circle, — Goldsmith, Garrick, Mrs. Thrale, Fanny Burney, and the rest, — and that the whole house would be pervaded by the immortal memory of Dr. Johnson, the kindest as well as the greatest of men; but that, owing to the war, not as much had been accomplished as had been hoped.

‘And so,’ I replied, ‘my suggestions, have not been entirely forgotten. I had feared — ’

‘Why,’ continued the old lady, ‘can you be Mr. Newton of Philadelphia?’

I could have hugged her; for, gentle reader, this is much nearer fame than I ever hoped for. What a morning it was! Mrs. Dyble called for her daughter, and I was presented, and again found to be not unknown;and believe me, these two women were so absolutely steeped in Johnson as to shame my small learning and make me wish for the support of real honest-to-God Johnsonians, such as Tinker or Osgood, or my friend R. B. Adam, of Buffalo, who has the greatest Johnson collection in the world, and who, when next he goes to London, has a treat in store which will cause him to forget, at least momentarily, his charming wife and his young son; charming wives and young sons being not uncommon, whereas Gough Square is unique.

Any man of fine heart and substantial means could have bought the Gough Square house, but it required a singularly wise and modest man to fit it up so simply, so in keeping with the Johnsonian tradition; to say, ‘We don’t want a cold, dry-as-dust museum; we want the house to be as nearly as possible what it was when the great Doctor lived in it and compiled the dictionary in its attic room.’ So it is, that 17 Gough Square, Fleet Street, is one of the places which it is a delight to visit. A fine Johnsonian library has been lent, and may ultimately be given, to the house; paintings, portraits, rare prints, and autograph letters abound; and in these interesting surroundings, friends, literary societies, and clubs may meet for the asking, and teas and dinners may be sent in from the nearby Cheshire Cheese. And all this might have been done, and yet the house might have lacked one of its greatest charms, namely, the kindly presence and hospitality of two women, the discovery of whom, by Mr. Harmsworth, was a piece of the rarest good fortune. Mrs. Dyble is a soldier’s wife, her husband being a color sergeant in one of the crack regiments; and the story goes that, during the air-raids, when the Germans were dropping bombs on all and sundry, the old lady went, not into the ‘tubes’ for shelter, but, to meet the bombs half-way, into the attic; there, taking down a copy of Boswell, she read quite composedly through the night; for, as she said, she would not be worthy of her soldier husband if she were not prepared to face death at home as he was doing in France. But how long, I ask myself, will her daughter, Mrs. Rowell, a pretty widow, be content to live upon the memory of Dr. Johnson?

I was especially pleased to convey to the Johnson House a superb photograph of a portrait of Dr. Johnson by Reynolds, which had recently been acquired by Mr. John H. McFadden of Philadelphia. I was sitting in my club one afternoon, when Mr. McFadden came up and asked me how I would like to see a picture of Dr. Johnson which he had just received from the Agnews in London. Of course, I was delighted, and a few minutes later I was in the small but exquisite gallery of eighteenth-century portraits which Mr. McFadden has collected. Familiar as I am supposed to be with Johnson portraits, I had never seen the one which was shown me. It was obviously Dr. Johnson; and as soon as I returned home and had an opportunity of consulting my notes, I saw that it was the portrait painted for Dr. Taylor of Ashbourne. So far as I have been able to learn, it has never been engraved or even photographed; and I told its owner that he owed it to himself and all Johnsonians to have it photographed in the best possible manner, and to send a copy to the Johnson House at Lichfield, and also to Cecil Harmsworth. This Mr. McFadden readily consented to do; and so, on my arrival in London, I had the pleasant duty of presenting the pictures. The portrait is of a very old man; the head is bent forward, the face is kindly, and about the mouth is the tremulousness of age. I take it, indeed, to be a speaking likeness, and it pleases me to fancy that the kindly Doctor has just made the remark quoted by Boswell;

‘ As I grow older, I am prepared to call a man a good man on easier terms than heretofore.’

During the war, when Germany was dropping bombs on London and England was protesting that no real military purpose was served thereby and that the priceless treasures in the museums that had always been open to the public were being endangered, Germany characteristically replied that England should not keep her bric-à-brac in a fortress. Whether London is a fortress or not, I do not know; doubtless the Tower once was, and doubtless a certain amount of bric-à-brac is stored therein; but the Tower is a fatiguing place, and I fancy I have visited it for the last time; whereas I shall never cease to delight in the London Museum, filled as it is with everything that illustrates the history, the social and business life of a people who by no accident or chance have played a leading part in the history of the world.

This wonderful collection is housed in what was for years regarded as the most sumptuous private residence in London. It is situated in Stable Yard, very near St. James’s Palace, and not so far from Buckingham Palace as to prevent the late Queen Victoria from dropping in occasionally for a cup of tea with her friend, the Duchess of Sutherland, who for many years made it her residence. The story goes, that Her Majesty was accustomed to remark that she had left her house to visit her friend in her palace. Be this as it may, it is a magnificent structure, admirably fitted for its present purpose; and I was fortunate enough to be one of its first visitors when it was thrown open to the public in the spring of 1914. The arrangement of the exhibits leaves nothing to be desired; and if one does not find the garments of the present reigning family very stimulating, one can always retire to the basement and while away an hour or so among the panoramas of Tudor London, or fancy himself for a brief time a prisoner in Newgate,

But the streets of a great city are more interesting than any museum, and it was my custom generally to stroll through St. James’s Park, gradually working my way toward Westminster, thence taking a bus to whatever part of London my somewhat desultory plans led me. One morning I had just climbed the steps which lead to Downing Street, when a heavy shower forced me to stand for a few moments under an archway, almost opposite number 10, which, as all the world knows, is the very unimposing residence of the Prime Minister. Standing under the same archway was an admirable specimen of the London policeman, — tall, erect, polite, intelligent, imperturbable, —and it occurred to me that the exchange of a ‘British-made’ cigar for the man’s views on the war would be no more than a fair exchange. And right here let me say that, all the time I was in England, I did not hear one word of complaint or one word of exultation. There was no doubt in Bobby’s mind who won the war, ‘but mind you, your fellows was most welcome, when they came’; and I thought I detected just a trifle of sarcasm in his last words. ‘We don’t like the Germans, but we don’t wear ourselves out ’ating ’em,’he said, in reply to my question.

Just here our conversation was interrupted by an old lady, who came up to inquire at what hour Mrs. Lloyd George was going out. ‘I’m not in her confidence, ma’am,’replied my friend; and continuing, he suggested that he had gone to bed hungry many a night but had n’t minded in the least, because he knew that British ships were taking the American army to France. ‘I’ve a tendency to get ’eavy, hanyway,’he continued. His views on the League of Nations were what one usually heard. He ‘had no confidence a man’s neighbors would do more for a man than a man would do for himself’; that ‘Wilson was a bit ’eady; and the American people ’ad let ’im down something terrible.’

Another morning, walking past the Horse Guards, I noticed on approaching the Mall an enormous German cannon mounted on its heavy carriage, the wheels of which must have had at least five-inch tires. This engine of death, having shot its last bolt, was an object of the greatest interest to the children who constantly played about it. As I passed it, one little chap, probably not over four years of age, was kicking it forcibly with his little foot, his act being regarded approvingly the while by the Bobby who was looking on; but when finally he began to climb up on the wheel, from which he could have got a nasty fall, the policeman took the little lad in his arms, lifted him carefully to the ground, and bade him ‘be hoff,’with the remark, ‘You’ll be tearing that toy to pieces before you are a month older; then we won’t ’ave nothing to remind us of the war.’

‘I should n’t think you were likely to forget it,’I remarked, looking at his decorations and handing him a cigar.

‘Well, sir,’he replied, thanking me and putting the cigar in his helmet, ‘it’s curious how one thing drives another out of your mind. I was in it for three years, and yet, except when I look at that gun, I can’t rightly say I give it much thought.’

V

I had an experience one day, which I shall always remember, it was so unexpected and far-reaching. I was sitting in the back room of Sawyer’s bookshop in Oxford Street, talking of London, and rather especially of Mr. W. W. Jacobs’s district thereof, in which I had recently made several interesting ‘short cruises,’ in company with his night watchman (he who had a bad shilling festooned from his watch-chain, it will be remembered), when I felt rather than saw that, while I was talking, a man had entered and seemed to be waiting, and rather impatiently, to get into the conversation. Now just how it came about, I don’t exactly know; but soon I found myself suggesting that Londoners know relatively little of their great city and that it was only the enlightened stranger who really knew his way about.

‘And this to me,’ said the stranger in a harsh, strident voice, of such unusual timbre that its owner could have made a whisper heard in a rolling-mill. ‘Think of it,’he continued, turning to Sawyer, ‘that I should live to be bearded in my den — by a — by a — ’

He paused, not at a loss for a word so much as turning over in his mind whether that word should be kindly or the reverse. This gave me an opportunity to look at the man who had entered, unasked, into the conversation in very much the same way that I had entered into his London. He was seemingly about sixty years of age, short rather than tall, with piercing eyes under bushy eyebrows, but chiefly remarkable for his penetrating voice, which he used as an organ, modulating it or giving it immense power. One felt instinctively that he was no patrician, but rather a ‘city man’ accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed promptly, and having a degree of confidence in himself—say, rather, assurance — which one associates with Chicago rather than with London.

Now I am conceited enough to think that, with the ordinary mortal, I can hold my own in conversation when London is the subject; so almost before I knew it, I was trying to make myself heard by one who had evidently decided to take the lead in the conversation. The result was that two men were talking for victory at the same time, greatly to the amusement of Sawyer.

Finally my stranger-friend said, ‘Have you many books on London?’

To which I replied, relieved that the subject had taken a bookish turn, ‘Yes, about three hundred, ’ which number is, say, a hundred and fifty more than I actually possess.

‘I have over six thousand,’ said my friend; ‘I have every book of importance on London that ever has been written.’

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘and you have the advantage in discovering first how many books I had. If I had been as keen as mustard, as you are, I would have asked the question, and you would have said three hundred; then I could have said six thousand.’

‘Listen to him,’ roared my friend; ‘ he even doubts my word. Would you like to see my books?’

‘Have you a copy of Stow? ’ I replied, to try him out.

‘Yes,’ answered my friend; ‘every edition, including a presentation copy of the first edition of 1598, with an inscription to the Lord Mayor.’

Now, presentation copies of the Survay, properly regarded as the first book on London, are very rare; I had never seen one, and I replied that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see his books. When and how could a meeting be arranged ?

‘Shall we say next Thursday afternoon?’

‘Very good, but where?’

‘Now,’ continued my friend, ‘pay attention. Tell your second chauffeur to get out your third Rolls-Royce car — ’

‘Never mind my chauffeurs and my Rolls-Royce cars,’ I interrupted; ‘if you are on the line of a penny bus, tell me how to reach you from Piccadilly Circus.’

‘Good,’ continued my friend; ‘you know the Ritz?’

‘From the outside,’ I replied, ‘perfectly.’

‘Well, go to the Bobby who stands outside the Ritz, and ask him to tell you what bus to take to Clapham Junction; and when you get there, just ask any Bobby to direct you to John Burns’s on the north side of Clapham Common.’

John Burns! Had I heard aright? Was it possible that I was actually talking to John Burns, the great labor leader, who had once marched a small army of ‘Dockers’ from the East End of London to Westminster, and who had finally become an all-powerful Member of Parliament, and Privy Councillor, and President of the Board of Trade and of the Local Government Board; John Burns, without whose approval not a statue, not a pillar-box or a fireplug had been located for the past twenty years, and who had, when the war broke out, resigned all his offices of honor and emolument because he could not conscientiously go along with the government! As I recovered from my astonishment, John Burns, with a fine sense of dramatic values, had disappeared. I looked at his name and address written in his own hand in my little engagement-book. ‘Well,’ said I to myself, ‘ that looks like a perfectly good invitation; John Burns will be expecting me about half-past four, and I am not going to disappoint him.’

A few days later, at the hour appointed, we descended from a taxi and found our friend awaiting us at his front gate. Across the roadway stretched Clapham Common, itself not without historic interest; but it was a cold, raw day in late October, and the inside of a city home is always more interesting than the outside. As I removed my coat, I saw at a glance that I had not been deceived in the number of his books. There were books everywhere, about fifteen thousand of them. All over the house were open shelves from floor to ceiling, with here and there a rare old cabinet packed with books, which told the life-story of their owner. Books are for reading, for reference, and for display. John Burns had not stinted himself in any direction. Throwing open the door of a good-sized room in which a fire (thank God!) was burning brightly, Burns said briefly, ‘London, art and architecture in this room; in the room beyond, political economy, housing and social problems. Rare books and first editions in the drawingroom. Now come upstairs: here is biography and history.’ Then, throwing open the door of a small room, he said, ‘This is my workshop; here are thousands and thousands of pamphlets, carefully indexed.’ On landing at the head of the stair, he said, ‘Newton, I’ve taken a fancy to you, and I’m going to let you handle — carefully, mind you — the greatest collection of Sir Thomas More in the world; over six hundred items, twice as many as there are in the British Museum. Here they are, manuscripts, letters, first editions.’ And then, dropping the arrogance of the collector who had made his point, he took up a little copy of Utopia, which he had bought as a boy for sixpence, and said, ‘This book has made me what I am; for me it is the greatest book in the world; it is the first book I ever bought, it is the corner-stone of my library, the foundation on which I have built my life. Now let us have tea!’

During this pleasant function I plied my host with question after question; and he, knowing that he was not being interviewed, was frankness itself in his replies. His judgment of the great men of England with whom he had worked for a lifetime was shrewd, penetrating, and dispassionate; and, above all, kindly; their conduct of the war, his reason for not going along with the nation (he and Lord Morley were the two conspicuous men in England who, upon the outbreak of the war, retired into private life) was forceful if, to me, unconvincing; and I quoted Blake’s axiom, that a man who was unwilling to fight, for the truth might be forced to fight for a lie, without in the least disturbing his equanimity. My remark about Blake served to send the conversation in another direction, and we were soon discussing Blake’s wife, whose maiden name he knew, and his unknown grave in Bunhill Fields, as if the cause and effect of the great war were questions that could be dismissed. Seeing a large signed photograph of Lord Morley on the wall, and a copy of his Life of Gladstone and his own Recollections on the shelves, I voiced my opinion that his friend was the author of five of the dullest volumes ever written, an opinion I would be glad to debate with all comers.

In reply to my question as to how he had accomplished so much reading, leading as he has done for so many years the life of a busy public man, he answered, ‘ I read quickly, have a good memory,’ (there is no false modesty about John Burns) ‘and I never play golf.’

‘Well, I am like you in one respect.’

‘What’s that?’ he asked; and then, with a laugh, ‘You don’t play golf, I suppose.’

What I thought was my time to score came when he began to speak French, which I never understand unless it is spoken with a strong English accent. This gave me a chance to ask him whether he had not, like Chaucer’s nun, studied at Stratford Atte Bowe, as evidently ‘the French of Paris was to him “unknowe.”’ He laughed heartily, and instantly continued the quotation. But anyone who attempts to heckle John Burns has his work cut out for him; a man who has harangued mobs in the East End of London and elsewhere, and held his own against all comers in the House of Commons, and who has received honorary degrees for solid accomplishment from half a dozen universities, is not likely to feel the pinpricks of an admirer. And when the time came for us (for my wife was with me) to part, as it did all too soon, it was with the understanding that we were to meet again, to do some walking and book-hunting together; and anyone who has John Burns for a guide in London, as I have had, is not likely soon to forget the joys of the experience.

Holidays at last come to an end.

We came home and, greetings exchanged, our first impressions were those of annoyance. As a nation, we have no manners; one might have supposed that we, rather than the English, had had our nervous systems exposed to the shock of battle; that we, rather than they, had been subject to air-raids and to the deprivations of war; that we had become a debtor rather than a creditor nation. We found rudeness and surliness everywhere. The man in the street had a ‘grouch,’ despite the fact that he was getting more pay for less work than any other man in the world; and that the President had told him that he had an inalienable right to strike. For the first time in my life I felt that ‘labor would have to liquidate’ — to use a phrase to which, in the past, I have greatly objected. No question was civilly answered. The porter who carried our bags took a substantial tip with a sneer, and passed on. It may be that America is ‘ the land of the free and the home of the brave’; but we found the streets of our cities dangerous, noisy, hideous, and filthy. It is not pleasant to say these things, but they are true.