A New Zealander on London Bridge.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue 47, 23 August 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

A New Zealander on London Bridge.

SOME DEPRESSIONS OP A COLONIAL VISITOR.

Mr. Arthur H. Adams, who left New Zealand a few months ago to exploit fields journalism, playwriting, and poetry' in London, was not long in getting his nnme before the public. Under the hending "A New Zealunder on London Bridge," he gives the readers of the Daily Mail of 4th July, a column of readable "Depressions of a Colonial Visitor." These depressions or impressions, aro not nattering to the great metropolis, but they will be read with interest by all colonials, and especially those who have never visited the Mother Country. Mr. Adams's article is given below : — The first impressions of* a colonial in London are usually depressions, and mine were no exception to the rule. Every New Zealander has built up a London out of his own imaginings, and it is for all practical purposes a very satisfactory and useful London — so long as the New Zealander does not travel to the other side of the globe to compare the real with the preconceived. If he does, he gets a surprise. It is like reading a novel without illustrations, and then coming suddenly upon an illustrated "edition of the novel and finding the artist has taken quite a different conception* of the scenes to those the reader had himself mentally constructed: For London to the colonial, is as real and familiar a thing as any of his own little cities.

English literature and English history have built it up for him, sheet by sheet and building by building, and while newspapers and books arc published (and music-hall songs sung) Chai ing-cross and St. Paul's, Whitechapel and Westminster, Fleet-street and Hampstead Heath, Piccadilly and the Old Kent-road, are as close and as well-known to us of the other hemisphere as our own tussock-plains and velvet purple bush. A visitor to the colonies goes thither with an open mmd — he may have heard that all colonials are cannibals and live in huts, but these details are necessarily vague, but a New Zealander arrives in London with a whole imaginary metropolis in his brain, and finds some difficulty in sorting out the real from the ideal. ' Hence there is usually disappointment — to be followed at no long period by a placid acceptance of the fact that the real London, while not so gaudy as the mentally painted one, is not suoh a bod sort of metropolis after all. Here, then, are the first depressions of a lone New Zealander on London Bridge.

WHAT LONDON LOOKS LDSE.

I made the acquaintance of Londpn in a pouring rain. I had arrived from Calais in a plucky little ferry steamer, whjch thrashed through a blizzard that swept the Chnnnel and picked up Dover out of the" diiviug rain apparently by instinct.

Of two facts only I was conscious as I stepped ashore — first, that the rain was trickling down inside my nock ; and second, that I was for the first time in England. An hour later r I wo* on my way through the metropolis. Through the pitiless rain all I could sco from the train window was that we were passing over a gentle undulating plain, in which were' little paddocks of tho most staring green, and hedges that seemed to nave been trimmed oy experienced barbers. Among the trees were ugly little boxes of houses, built without verandahs or outbuildings, as if even in the country there was no room. These country houses seemed to stand crouched up, as if. each was getting m far from its neighbour as was possible without seeming rude. There was a wellbred air of "kindly keep your distance" about every one of these boxed-up cramped little houses.

Then suddenly an interminable gaunt wall of houses loomed across the plain. In a moment we weie upou this fortification of buildings — miles aud miles of grey barrack-like terraces, nil of the same height, all with chimney-pots of the same uninteresting pattern. A passenger told me it was London.

It gave me the impression of an' advance regiment of the great metropolis that had just milted on the plain. Tomorrow it would advance again, and the great grey battalions of terraces would be slowly thrust further and farther out. London was marching on the country.

A CITY OF SOOT.

Colonials always imagine London a grey city. It isn't. It is quite blacknot merely gloomy and grimy— a depressing city of Boot, In photographs Nelson's monument is beautiful ; in reality it and tho lions are the unexhilarating colour of the inside of a chimney. Seen through the usual grey fog, the column gives nn impression of vague majesty, but if the sunlight venture* out Nelson stands revealed in all his naked grime. On a sunny day the column suggests nothing to me but Pear's soap. In fact, I bsgin to find a reason for the London fogs ; they come up and stay in tho cily us long as they can out of pure kindliness of heart, choking with a blanket of grey this city of widow's weeds.

And some of tho buildings — just the very buildings a colonial hns come to see — are squat and disappointing. It is no uso telling a New Zealander beforehand thnt Uifi Bonk of England is only one story high, and is all blank windows and ugliness on the outside. With his remembrance of his own towns, where the bank aud the insurance offices are always the finest buildings, he will not believe that tho most famous bank in the world is only one story high, and of depressing architecture.

The Hoise Guards, too, is another disappointment for the coloniul. He has heard of the gorgeous guardians of the place, and unconsciously transfers to the buildings themselves some of the splendour of the guards. And he sees two very tall soldiers sitting on horseback in absurd little sentry-boxes in front of a little squat c surrounded by cbmmonplace buildings.

St. Puul's, however, makes up in its wonderful proportions for all the disappointment of the Bank. It is, indeed, very beautiful— -if only London could stand off a little and see it. It seems to me that wherever you try to got a comprehensive view of St. Paul's there are houses in the way. In fact, the visitor has to take the grandeur of St. Paul's for granted. If I surest to a Londoner that the L.C.C. should level v few thousand houses round the Cathedral and let us have v look at it, he laughs. I ADOPT MAOAULAY'fi SUGGESTION

I went on to London Bridge in order to see St. Paul's, according to Macaulay's suggestion, but I found that it was impossible to see fit. ruul's, except from one point near tho extreme end of the bridge, and the bit? dome scarcely mukes itself noticenble behind the ugly arched roof of a railway station.

Ono of the most benutif'il things in London is WeMminter and its tower. The grime of centuries has there fallen into the general architectural schema ; its severo Gothic lines give it a dignity and n sobriety that seem eminently suited to such a depressing city, nnd its severe proportions hint somewhat of the solidity and teservc of the British race.

And the city is so unwieldly nnd so slow. A colonial in a London street usually wants to get somewhere, but a London crowd never hurries, and it stubbornly refuses to keep to the right. And it lets no one else hvry. I have often wondered what mike? the Londoner suddenly stop in the middle of the pave*

ment and gase fixedly at a group of workmen picking up or putting down the Wood blocks of the pavement. It is such a common sight that one would have thought the novelty of it might have palled upon a oitieen of the metropolis of the world. But no; if a labourer places a ladder against a wall, at least five respectable and apparently sane old gentlemen Will patiently stop and watch. A PEOPLE THAT PUTS UP WITH THINGS. One point that. strikes the colonial is the capacity of the London crowd to put up with things. If a colonial city had as much ruin and only two hours of sunlight out of the twenty-four, it would at once set about making its streets as comfortable and as dry as possible under these conditions, by the erection of a series of verandahs. London streets could be very easily almost completely roofed in, and the City itself would by such an arrangement be quite a pleasant place even in winter, and the two hours of sunlight per diem might easily be provided for by making the verandahs of glass. But the London shopman, on the approach of rain, carefully rolls up the only covering he ho* that would preserve bis customers from the weather, and incidentally attract them to study the wares in his. windows. And Londoners put up ■Jrith it, and deliberately climb on the TO" of an omnibus in a drizzle — even when the omnibus is empty inside. The fact is, the Londoner takes his climate for granted, and often forgets to growl. The discipline is a splendid one. I was in a London theatre where the audience waited nearly an hour for a piece to begin. A New Zealand audience by that time would have demanded their money back and left ; buty the London audience did not even get humorous. They just put up with it. Perhaps that is the quality that has made the British race the power it is.