TOP HATS AND TEAPOTS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 21 June 1929, Page 7

TOP HATS AND TEAPOTS.

■ STORIES OP OLD LONDON. A- delightful article in- the Nation •describes London 110 yours ago as J. 8.5.8. remembers it, the London ot ’Hop hats and silver teapots, ot kings xpnd courtesans, of -cockades and cobblestones. In the course of it ho says:— It was a grim London, the London L knew as a da spite a!! that happened to myself, of which I could write affectionately. I was early mi■chained from the leash, allowed a shilling for my pocket money on a Saturday afternoon, and would spend sixpence of it on a bus fare to Trafalgar square and hack. There was in those da vs an A.B.C. tea shop immediately overlooking the square —and for threepence, being the price' of a cup of tea and a piece of lunch cake, one could obtain a window seat for an indefinite lime to watch the traffic and the walkers on the pavements. This was a never-ending happiness —and if the journey backwards gave one an opportunity of sitting in the front seat ot the bus by the driver, flying, perhaps, Lord Rothschild's colours, then might, •one get, .as I did many times, that rich, leisurely commentary on buildings and people as wc passed them, which, was the basis of the truest •scholarship in London life. The flicker of the whip, the most -cheerful pointer that any lecturer ever had, would fly out towards some clubhouse ifl Piccadilly: “Naval and Military 5 ’ —they call that the “In and ■'Out” because of the signs on the gate —during the tear someone wonted to know how many guns they’d got In Ladysmith, so they telegraphed back, “In’ and Out.’’ The old Boers coufd not get that, but our officers twigged all right—it meant 94-r-thal’s the number of the house —9.1, Piccadilly. ’There’s Lord Rothschild's. God bless 'im; he gives us a brace of pheasants every year. That’s Ap u ley House:, what a grateful country gave to the old Book of Wellington, and just to show how grateful they really was they came one day and. smashed his windows for him. That’s all the toffs going into the Park for their bit of carriage exorcise—that’s what keeps them healthy, that and eating ’earty. Won, my lasses, ’ore we 'as a ■ slight interval for refreshments.’’ Then the conductor from behind would shout •H Knightsbridgc, Albert ’All, Kensington ’lgh street, Addison road, and ’Ammcrsmith. ”

Why, then, grim? It is very difficult to say. Our suburb, though bordering on a royal borough and itself very genteel, was surrounded by •squalor?' It was undoubtedly a London -in which poverty was an accepted fact, as one may see it accepted and •tolerated in some Latin countries today, Poor, misshapen half idiots begged openly in the streets; '‘cadgers/’ as they were called, wore. at nearly every street corner ready to run errands foi; a few pence. Old gentlemen in seedy grev frock coats were observed to be making their twice-daily journeys to be gin palace at the corner—characters, no doubt, but not amiable characters to the young. One -cannot help feeling that the colourless patterned London of to-day, though -still stonv-hoarted enough, must be a kindlier and a better place. It remains, however, always an astonishment that those of ns 1 who consider ourselves still young can remember a London so different and so remote.