LONDON'S YEAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 51, 2 March 1937, Page 5

LONDON'S YEAR

A WRITER LOOKS BACK

EVENTFUL TWELVE MONTHS

THE MINOR FOLLIES

*? The muse of history will have to :d , r _ work overtime on the year that has :d j ended, and London was the scene of in the greater happenings, says a writer le in the "Manchester , Guardian." Ti „ death and funeral in January of George 10 V, whose Jubilee in the previous year ig had revealed him as perhaps the most d- popular monarch with all classes this 's realm had known; the accession of J£ Edward VIII in a surge of popular it. sympathetic acclaim and high expectation, and in December the events that w led to his abdication and the accession s, of George VI and his Consort, seem 1, like a century's happenings. Now it •f- is like a clear sky after a period of h thunder and lightning. In a footnote =- history will record the unprecedented c facts of King Edward's broadcast —how 11 there were no calls on the telephones ir of the country during the speech, how 1- the Pope in his sick chamber listened is to it, and how there were; strikes in the kV United.States by workmen who struck [t work to listen. The use of the cinema •t houses as places where people went to c hear a broadcast is another footnote. i.. The new King and ..Queen spent the first few days of their reign in> their house in Piccadilly, the first English c monarchs who had lived in a house - looking out on a street. ■ c AN EMPEROR ARRIVES. The visit of a foreign potentate or j other high visitor of State used to be g a feature of the London season. Under dictatorships these friendly events, „■ where the people of this country wel- " corned the rulers of other countries, are dying out. . Visits from Signor Mussolini or Herr Hitler or Mr. Stalin are among the unlikely historical hap- , penings. One emperor, indeed, did 1 come to these shores, and his welcome was not that which we have given in 'i the past to kings of an heroic mould whose thrones had fallen to an op- '■ pressor.. Haile Selassie came here s after he had done all that a man could 7 do to hold his land against an invader. ' He has now settled in England, accepting his place as a king in exile with '" the dignity that has accompanied all his affairs. Mr. Mackenzie King, the * Canadian Premier, paid a short visit, '< the results of which are only now be- " coming apparent in the better trade re- * lations of the two countries, which had 1 suffered so much When Mr. Bennett ' was Canadian Premier. Important r guests were here from Australia and t South Africa and New Zealand, and - there has been an undertalk of Imperial - defence on a more understanding basis. J The visit of the Canadian "Veterans of - the war at the time of the unveiling - of Mr. Allward's great Canadian mem- - orial on Vimy Ridge provided . many - lively London events, including the big garden party at Buckingham Pal- - ace when the rain came on and'trans- - formed it into the most extraordinary - indoor party that Buckingham Palace ; had ever seen. fc THE QUEEN MARY. 1 The first trip of the Cunard-White 1 Star giant,ship Queen Mary had many I London repercussions, and vast crowds \ went down by train and steamer to see her start from Southampton on (as her f engine-room tablet recorded), "Westward—Voyage. No. 1." The scandal of ' the year was the disclosure of Budget " secrets, on which a judicial tribunal 1 sat, and its finding resulted in the resig--5 :ation of Mr. J. H. Thomas from the ' Cabinet and political life. The arrival of refugees from Spain gave us one oi the first reminders of the reality of the i errible happenings there, with which i London in 1937 is likely to have more i serious contacts. i There were many little changes in 5 London and in London ways in 1936. 5 Milk bars have come to stay. Even 1 Leicester Square, the centre of Lon--3 don's gayer and .. more excessive Bohemia, has now a large milk bar; y and- the Strand, which,- in Vesta 2 Tilley's own words, was "the land of '. the midnight son," has another. The » roistering oyster bar has given place \ to the milk bar. Small wonder that 5 the old Alhambrs has given up its , ghost and is now only a gap in, the Squads, while the Empire, down whose stairs Cabinet Ministers in their salad- ', day youth had been hurled, has given I place (o an innocent cinema theatre. The cocktail party is waning, but the sherry party is making its way into the most decorous organisations' social gatherings. Nevertheless, the "bottle party" has arrived in the West End, and the police have yet devised no way of quenching it. Its organisers have discovered an elaborate system by ./hich by ordering drink beforehand they can have the drink given to them- in prohibited hours in unlicensed premises in which they somehow are hosts. "KNOCK, KNOCK!" In the theatre we are turning a little sentimental, for the new young people, ■ when they go to see a play where their elders are guying the sentimentalities of the nineties, say "But what pretty tunes!" When the Queen Victoria plays and films under the new rule reach the stage and the screen this year it will not be at all the Lytton Strachey atmosphere that will greet them. The "Knock, knock" jest penetrated into nearly every home. Another form of facetiousness known as the "new alphabet" has had only n short life, but it was funny enough in its way if the puns were sufficiently outrageous, as "A for 'osses," "B for mutton" or "B for brook," "T for two," "L for leather," "R for mo," "M for sandwiches," "X for breakfast," "I for Brown," and so on. . . The obituary of notable buildings that have passed out of London in 1936 is a particularly lamentable ■ one. Only a few stumps are left of Rennie's Waterloo Bridge that was one of the glories of Europe, and it is not much consolation that in the last few months many crocodile tears from those responsible for its destruction have flowed over its site. Adam's Adelphi has gone, all but its fringes—which happily include the Society of Art's hall and a few historic houses—and with it that romantic catacomb world of its dark arches. In the Adelphi and its arches the worlds of Fielding and Dickens were united and lingered. A MONUMENTAL LOSS. The Adelphi Hotel, where Gibbon stayed on his return from Rome, where the last King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands died very respectably, and where the Fat Boy brightened the Pickwickians' last dinner, passed primly away its lace curtains neatly drawn at the windows even after the glass had gonu. Its little porter's hutch was there to the last night, with some of its old room keys with brass labels hanging on their pegs and a ghostly notice above requesting visitors to leave their room keys at the office when they left. ' Some of these room keys and labels set out for the United States ir! the pockets of Americans who had once used them.

Another monumental loss Is, of course, the Crystal Palace, which finished a career long associated with fireworks by giving London its biggest bonfire since 1666. It did not reach its centenary, but in its latter years it attained new glory as the modernists

headed by -. Mendelssohn hailed it as England's greatest modernist work born out of its time. London is faced with the question what to do with the great open space on the Sydenham Heights which was always intended for its instruction and delight. Church House, in the Dean's Yard, Westminster, a century-old building of some architectural pretensions and many ecclesiastical memories, has gone, and there are other changes in Dean's Yard. A big hole was torn in the side of Salisbury Square and Fleet Street, soon to be filled by the new headquarters of the Press Association. Some seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century houses have vanished, including the- Barley Mow . Tavern, the only surviving "mug house," so called from the mugs with : portraits of George I used for toasting . the Hanoverian succession. A Jacobite , mob raided the place, and five of them ! were hanged for that in Fleet Street. That most picturesque riverside . tavern the Turk's Head, at Wapping, ; has gone, although one of the notable little sights of the river. ] THE METROPOLE MOUSE. ' Space only permits mention of the ' transformation of the old Metropole Hotel in Northumberland Avenue-into Government offices. It was a hotel of some state and character much frequented by wealthy Middle West Americans. At Cleveland this year a local magnate told me how. he had stayed there when a boy and how there was a hotel mouse that was quite a pet. It came out into the dining-room to be fed, and it, or one of its descendants, was known to many Clevelanders as "the Hotel Metropole mouse." The Metropole had many old residents who had stayed in the hotel almost from its founding. Craven Street has lost many of its old houses, including the one where Benjamin Franklin is. said to have stayed. Chelsea Bridge has folllowed its brother suspension bridge Lambeth Bridge and will be replaced by an ordinary wide arch bridge. It was a graceful structure with comical little many-windowed iron^ lodges, like something out of a cruet in which generations of bridge-keepers had brought up families. But the real loss to the picturesqueness of London is the departure of ■ those antique-looking Dutch eel-boats moored off Billingsgate. The Dutch had the right to moorings there for two eel-ships since Queen Elizabeth's day so long as the moorings were occupied, and had jealously guarded it. Now' the trade is so small that they , have given it up, and the last of the two broad, bluff-bowed old sailing barges, like vessels in a Van de Velde painting, sailed down the river a fortnight, ago and said farewell to London with a dip of her flag.

A verdict of "Death from burning in an accidental fire" was returned at the inquest held on the body of James Wilson. 46, engineer,-- of Dumbarton, who was burned to death in' his cabin in the motor-vessel Acrity at King's Lynn. A theory that a cigarette caused Uie fire was accepted by the Coroner.