LONDON IDENTIFIED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19061, 4 July 1925, Page 1 (Supplement)

LONDON IDENTIFIED.

jbFAMIUAR TERRITORY.

IS\BEL MAUD PEACOCKE.

I made my first sally into London with a sense of adventure, but with 110 special feeling of strangeness, for one can scarcely feel a stranger in that hoary old town, whoso antiquity, wonder and charm have been the themo of story and verse, picture and song for countless generations, and we of these overseas Dominions have learned her legends as wo learned Ljusehold words in infancy. So that day I set forth alone on a voyage of identification. Mr. Gladstone recommended: " See London from tho top of a bus," and, intent 011 following his advice, I went into London. "From the top of a bus"—but which bus? Merciful powers!— the whole of London crawls with buses, great humming red and yellow monsters, coming and going as quickly and ceaselessly as bees come and go about a hive, and apparently as hard to distinguish on a from another. The cyo scans the never-ending stream anxiously; tho brain reels; ono is lost, an atom, astray in an angry swarm of monster hornets, red and yellow, shaking with horrid threes, bearing down relentlessly upon tho bewildered traveller, who, so far, has experienced nothing moro congested than tho race, traffic at Ellerslio, which now, in the light of comparison, seems no worse than the village traffic 011 a market day. Add to tho buses a skirmishing line of taxis, apparently without end, motors, lorries, motor-cycles, every kind of vehicle, motor-driven, horse-driven . . . Listen to the gruff "yawp" of tho bus horns, the angry snarl of a baffled Rolls Royce, the throaty warning of a myriad taxis and private cars, and errand boys' bicycles . . . Painful and instant death seems inevitable.

"Don't panic!" admonishes commonsense, and one perceives that in this apparent, chaos is order and design, that the vast rolling stock of London is under control; is let or hindered by the uplifted hand of the man in blue, that even the haughtiest limousine, the most reckless of taxis, itho most impudent of bicycle boys or dangerously-indifferent of motorcyclists daro not flout or lgnoie. From the Top o! a Bus. So blithely, having been made free of London and found hor friendly, I mounted to the top of my bus. Oh, that first rido through London. One can never quite recapture tho thrill of it 0:1 any subsequent journey. It is all so new and yet 50 old, as the bus hums along briskly or slows down to a throbbing inactivity in the press of traffic. And there one sits, looking down upon the roofs of countless taxis and cars and cycles, carts and waggons, held up in the press of them, seeing ahead and behind and beside one ' countless other bus-tops, so tightly packed together that the drivers while away tho time by exchanging recriminations or badinage according to their moods.

But. these narrow streets, with the looming cliff-like buildings either side, the crowded thoroughfares and the hurrying throngs of foot-passengers, are not strange to me . . . I have sureliy seen these before . . . and . . . Oh, I know this, and this, and this again as the bus lumbers on through familiar territory No Guide-book Needed. Who could mistake that venerable, glorious pile, blackened by age and London's grime, yet beautiful with the grand austerity of its twin towers, its long sweep of grey stone, and its leaded windows, dimly magnificent ? The great Abbey—Westminster. And beyond rises another familiar pile, "The House by the Thames," majestic, yet full of graco and charm with its towers, spires and pinnacles, with "Big Ben" dominating all and telling the hours with sonorous music over the flowing of the grey old Thames. And hero is Whitehall. Who wouldn't recognise the Horse Guards, smart in white and black and scarlet, with snowy shakoes, immobile in their niches, sitting their superb horses as immobile as they ? One needs no guide-book to name this open space of springing fountains and circling pigeons, its four corners guarded by horsemen in stone or bronze, and over all a towering column with the erect little figure with cocked hat and sword a-top, and tho four great leonine beasts crouching at its base. "Trafalgar Square." Involuntarily the name springs to tho lips.

Again—familiar, beautiful, unmistakable, gracing the sky-lino with its deli-cately-pillared spires, its magnificent dome and steadfast uplifted cross, one knows Wren's masterpiece in stone —St. Paul's. St. Paul's, with tho cloud.s of pigeons wheeling about it, and its green and peaceful God's Acre lying in the shadow of its mighty walls. The New Becomes the Old. And tho Towor. There is no mistaking that mighty fortress with its towers and battlements, its frowning walls and grim old gateways, its air of gloomy grandeur and majestic tragedy, looking down—looking down, as it has done for countless ages, upon tho silver-grey Thames. . . . Of course, one knows the Marble Arch, that favourite rendezvous of fictionwriters, and the Albert Memorial, the rather pathetically-gorgeous monument, tawdrily-magnificent, raised to mark the grief of a Queen for a beloved Consort, and regarded now as a somewhat painful outrage on art.. And here, on tho Embankment, one knows this soaring column of ancient Egypt, with tho winged women at its base, and its vast obelisk inscribed with hieroglyph and symbol, which were old when the Thames ran a muddy ditch between flat shores of slime and matted woods.

The Old Lady of Thread:needlo Street, uuimposing in exterior, with its flat roof and long, blackened, windowless walls, yet housing the wealth of nations in its jealously-guarded vaults. One recognises tho Bank of England, and close by looks instinctively for the Royal Exchange, and finds its familiar steps and handsome columns with a sense of familiarity. So to the visitor to London the new becomes tho old at a glance, or rather tho old is so familiar from picture and tradition that ono hails, its material embodiment with the joy of rediscovering an old-time friend, and London's vast friendly face is not the face oil a stranger.