TOP HATS AND TEAPOTS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6902, 7 May 1929, Page 2

TOP HATS AND TEAPOTS

Stories of Old London A delightful article in the Nation describes London 30 Tears ago as J. 8.5.8. remembers it, the London of ‘ 1 top hats and silver tcaspots, of kings and courtesans, of cockades and cobblestones. In the course of it he says:—

It was a grim London, the London I knew as a child, despite all that happened to myself, of which I could write affectionately. I was early unchained from the leash, allowed a shilling for my po'cket money on a Saturday afternoon, and would spend sixpence of it on a ’bus fare to Trafalgar Square and back. There was in those days 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 time 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 tho front top seat of 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 we passed them which was tho basis of the truest scholarship in London life. The flicker of tho whip, the most cheerful pointer that any lecturer ever had, would fly out towards some clubhouse in Piccadilly: "Naval and Military”—they call the "In and Out” because of the signs on the gate—during the war someone wanted to know howmany guns they’d got in Ladysmith, so they -telegraphed back, "In and Out.” The old Boers couldn’t get that, but our officers twigged all right. It meant 94—that’s the number of the house—9l. Piccadilly. There’s Lord Rothschild’s, God bless ’im: lie gives us a brace of pheasants every year. That’s Apslcy 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 tho toffs going into the Park for their bit of carriage exorcise—that’s what keeps them healthy, that and eating ’earty. Won, my lasses, ’ere we ’as a slight interval for refreshments.” Then the conductor from behind would shout " Kriightsbridge, Albert ’All, Kensington ’lgk street, Addison road, and ’Ammorsmith.” 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 to-day. Poor, misshapen half idiots begged openly in tho streets;, "cadgers,” as they wore called, wero at nearly every street corner ready to run errands for a few pence. Old gentlemen in seedy grey frock coats and equally seedy grey tophats were observed to.be making their twice-daily journeys to the gin palace fit the corner—characters, no doubt, but not ami alio characters to the young. One cannot help feeling that the colourless patterned London of today, though still stony-hearted enough, must be a kindlier and a better place. It remains, however, always an astonishment that those of us who consider ourselves still young can remember a London so different and so remote.