THE SPELL OF LONDON

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 27 January 1923, Page 17

THE SPELL OF LONDON

"London Vignettes." By Sophie Cole. Mills and Boon, London.

One of the most mysterious things about London is 'the spell it seems to exert .'over those who go to live and work there. No matter whether a man comes from the overseas Dominions, the United 'States or Canada, no matter however mu£h he may have yearned, for his horiie town, in the end, if he stays long enough, London nthra-11's him, and he lfi in no mind to be free. Often cold, dark, dismal, muddy, and always noisy, London seems to exercise some sort of magic over- the Strangers within her gates as over the few millions who live there and were born or brought up within sound of Big Ben, to say nothing of Bow Bells —for on a still night Big Ben's boom ] can be heard 12 miles or more away if the wind is in the right direction. The tourist can see London and die—pretty quickly-rsif he tries to accomplish in. a short time all that, the guide book advises him to see and do. There ia nothing so exhausting as sight-seeing in London. It is strange, too. how little of what the tourist sees is known to the average Londoner. There are many who have never been in the National Gallery, many to whom the Tower is Unknown as to . its interior. Miss Cole's book, like her "Lure of Old London," is not a tourist's guide. It will be read by the confirmed Londoner with as much, perhaps even more, interest than the visitor. She takes her reader, as a friend and an intimate friend at that, to Madame .Tuasaudl's, ThevTower, The Temple Church and' Hall; Staple Inn, Leicester Square, and other places all rich in associations and-all more, or less important places in English Hterature. .She visits the David Copperfield Library,'in Johnson, street, off Seymour street, off Buston road, and with the skill of a conjurer, peoples the locality with characters from Dickens's works. For in' the little house where the library now is the master lived! as, a boy. It was a mean dwelling then; but it held' in the boy Charles' Dickens, one whose name was to become immortal in English literature- and wherever the English language is spoken, written, and read, to say nothing of the trans-! lation of -his works in many tongues, from Japanese to Czeeho-Sloyakian. "London Vignettes" is an original manner of treatment of the ■ great subject of London and its speil upon- men and women.