LONDON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13925, 5 December 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

LONDON.

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS,

No. 11.

BY MRS. LEO MYEBB.

One cannot be long in London without being impressed by the weather. There are so many varieties. Americans say that London has no alimate; that it lias only assorted samples of weather. In a week the thermometer danced up and down between 88 and 38 degrees I Yet there were chestnut and hawthorn trees, lilac and laburnum bushes in full bloom and perfume in the parks; and flower vendors sold gladsome primroses, daffodils, lilies, pansier, and violets in the chilly streets. It was spring by the calendar Dame Nature proved how she could henpeck the weather clerk! But, bless you, we hardly notice the weather. There is so much to engage and absorb one, bo much brightness about, that the weather is a submerged - detail. Blue skies and unbroken sunshine are rare. London is so gigantic that its greatness obscures the sun. A pall of smoke, an atmospheric haze drapes the sky and falls in a grey ballglow over walls and towers, spires and pinnacles. This dull metallic tint lends to London a beauty all its own. Those great architectural —St. Paul's, Westminster, Houses of Parliament, National Gallery, Buckingham Palace, the Tower, the Temple, the Monument— wrought in monochrome; their very griminess and age-worn dullness add dignity and inipressivcness, looking most beautiful on these opaque misty days, grey silhoutted -against and merging into greyer skies. From Nelson's monument, down Whitehall and Parliament-street, there is a superb vista; the perspective mellowing into mingled mists of steel-blue and bronzecopper, touching cloisters and domes, walls and columns. . . Standing on Westminster, Wordsworth wrote of the view from the bridge : " Earth has not anything to show more fair." , The squareness, the solidity of these many venerable" and noble structures is the expression of the English race; the sign and symbol of its doggedness, persistency, * permanency. **",'!-». and square* at base, rounding and uplifting as it rises in its ideals, the architecture of this amazing metropolis is the voicelessly eloquent expression of its destiny. We await another Buskin to write, immortally, of the "Stones of London. * And an infinitely lesser scribe, such as I, will descend to the shops. They are *s multiple as the chimney pots. But how beautiful! how demoralising, how devitalising! Modern woman should be thankful that no modern Moses has supplemented an 11th Commandment, " Thou shalt not shoo," else were her occupation cone. Yet shopping in London is not an occupation, it is a dissipation. A dissipation morally, vitally, and financially! A temptation "impossible to resist, a temptation contrary to the little Eden episode that woman does not wish to share with man. Show me the woman who would choose to take her husband shopping with her? And you know why. Because women shop and men buy! , Because women shop and men our. Between the two lies the biological'difference of sex— difference between the finical feminine and the broad masculine. And heaven decree that it may always bo 80. For in just these differences may women hope to retain what is evasive and engaging, what is fascinating and feminine, these dear distracting differences that preserve the Eve within us and the bloom on the lure of sex. . ... . Therefore let us shop in the dearly beloved womanish way. the way that wears out nerves and skirt edges, that stamps fatigue lines on our faces and makes us howl tor "tea," in darting from one alluring shoo to another. . . . All that is best and handsomest comes to London. It is the mart of the world. Verily, the label which the French give the British en bloc, "that they are a nation of shopkeepers" (humble apologies for this timeworn quotation), is glaringly appropriate. , . . The thoroughfares are bterally Hned with shops, offering a bewilderment of beautiful things; so many, so various, so seemingly endless that the sight of them goes to "one's -head, especially the hats ! Think of it, my colonial sisters, fresh displays daily of the most becoming, beckoning headgear. One shop, alone, shows 3500 model hats fresh every day I (just like eggs and butter!). . . . You can buy both—hats and eggs—in the same shop. . . . You can buy anything under the sun; anything from a baby's cap to a ton of coal; from a bunch of roses to a motorcar; from a brown tea-pot to a diamond pendant; from lettuce to lingerie. It is endless entertainment to see, if not to buy, in these vast wonderful emporia. Every district has its , huge stores, their organisation representing a marvellous commercial system. They feed every modern appetite; cater to every comfort, attract every luxury, meet every desire. Women come and go in droves and battalions ; on foot, in motors, in carriages. In Oxford Circus there is a whole New Zealand city full of shoppers! The streets are so thronged with ever hurrying masses of people that one marvels they don't jostle each other off the island. It is an "astounding confusion of people and profusion of merchandise. Then, after exhausting energy and funds, you drop from a lift into a pretty luncheon room and . regale the inner woman. . .'■'* It is amusing to see what women eat when lunching in town, cans the masculine accompaniment. . . . There, a pretty woman takes a glass of milk and a bath bun (she is so charmingly gowned that you are sure she is economising on food in order to be extravagant in frocks), ■, . . Another, more buxom but less beautiful, treats herself to spinach and meringues. . ;■'. . There, a merry party of fat ladies are sipping champagne and gourmandising gleefully. Across from them, two sweet-faced girls divide a portion of plaice (English fish is delicious and of great variety) and jot down in notebooks just the amount each will expend. . . . One thing is noticeable here in contrast to New Zealand everywhere, even at the very- smartest tearooms like Buszard's, the' waiter in making out his bill (you put a tip on the end of his bill, always) asks how many cakes youi have consumed, thus adding pain to the already " bud quarter of an: hour" when a damp chill, such as envelops guests when dinner is formally announced, sinks on the conversation. In New Zealand we do not count the cakes nor the cost. But the business of eating is made so attractive hero that it is small wonder so much time and money are spent in indulging the pleasures of the palate. . . . It is only in recent years, since the American invasion of London society, that public restaurants are patronised for dinner and supper parties, which in previous years would have been given in no less elegant, but in far more staid and solemn style at home. Eating has become an art, an aesthetic entertainment, enlivened by excellent music, enriched by sumptuous surroundings, finest of frescoes and art furnishings; the diners-out. • such handsome masculine and feminine cements whose decorative effect add in delightful degree to the beauty and fascination of it all. So that one eats to sec, more than one sees to eat, at this entrancing festival of food and frocks! it*. And the feeding of these hordes of humans! ... If in one answer, a reply could be given to the question: "What is the most striking feature of this mighty metropolis?" It is the feeding and the freighting, the carrying and catering for the six millions of population. Unlimited tons of food products for six million mouths; the work and the wonder of it! . . . Picture it! The digging, planting, and harvesting; the growing, gathering and grinding; packing, manufacturing, and transporting; the preparing, cooking, and serving. . . . A hugo human ant-hill where each little human ant, impelled* by irresistible life-force, is labouring, scurrying, carrying hither and thither. , And the freighting of the people, the conveying of the population to and from, ' 7 '

round and about London is as remarkable as the feeding of them." The underground railways have been electrified, and with "the "—familiarly called the "tuppenny tube" (because it usually costs Id or 3d to travel in)—supply quick, cheap, and convenient methods of getting about, minimising tho great distances for which London is notorious. "

Underneath the surface streets of London lie labyrinths of tunnels and tracks, stairways, stations, and news stands ;"i a nether world given up to locomotion and bustling, eager people. Down you dive from the street, through electric-lit, tile-covered passages to the lifts whose iron gates unfold; you are swallowed up, caged and conveyed below, where you drop out of the "lift" and walk along subterranean streets till you reach the platform of the desired station. All Sorts of signboards and misguiding fingerposts appear to your complete confusion, but if you follow tho city men in frock coats and shining tiles you are sure to "get there." ,r The tube" is cleverly named; for in truth it is like a gigantic gas-pipe, plastered, tiled, and illuminated, and like unto nothing so much as a prodigious alimentary canal, the throbbing intestines of the teem-' ing town. ... It represents a masterpiece of mechanical and engineering expertnoss, the triumph of this electrical age in which wo live and move and are propelled by. ■*. . . •Lying in depths vary. ing from 80ft to 250 ft below the surface, costing on an average £580,000 a mile to construct, it is laid in the most substantial English railway style, calculated to deal with heavy traffic and to bo used by posterity. .*. . Millions ride daily to and fro, and it is interesting to note that when travelling in the tube passengers either read or sleep. They are too tired to talk and compete conversationally with the din of tho cars. . . . The talent for each function

—reading or sleepingis evenly divided, though closed eyes among the women are more numerous than newspapers. '>• . . , Fresh air is pumped into the tube, which is admirably clean and sanitary. It is the only thorough faro in London where tho übiquitous umbrella is superfluous.