PAPERS FOR THE TIMES

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1615, 11 February 1903, Page 25

PAPERS FOR THE TIMES

[All Bights Reserved. 3

it NEW ZEALANBER 6N LONDON

BftiU&E

(By Arthur H. Adams, author of “Maoniand,” "The Nazarcjne,” etc.) m. A colonial has the idea that London is a grey city, it isn t. It is quite black —a city of soot. We have ad hoard at home of the dirty appearance of London buildings; hut somehow, wun our bright, sunny, wind-washed htrle cities before our eyes, hew Zealanders cannot grasp the fact that London nas not merely a dirty smudge-across hei face —si 10 is simply grimy.

For the first nine days I was in London I never saw the sun, and frequently a friendly fog screened the fu.l ex tor: t of the city’s dirt from my eyes. But (ultimately the sun did shine —thougn itwas not the sun I had left behind in New Zealand —and I felt almost as earned or the naked dirt it revealed. That most beautiful pillar in Trafalgar square looks its best 'n a photograph "or looming up grey and mysterious through the veil of a London fog. (Not a real fog, lor then ”it wouldn’t loom at all, and you would be lucky to make out a street lamp, lit, before you ran into it.) But in the garish daylight it stands revealed naked in all its dirt. It is the colour of the inside of a chimney. Black lions guard its base — whether originally black or not I don’t know—a black shaft rises grimly up, and 'from the summit a negro in an admiral’s hat surve.ys a striking panorama of smoking ciu.rnr.c7rs. I wonder that the L.C.C. or the Admiralty don’t try to wash the poor thing white —or whatever was his original colour. Any enterprising soap manufacturer would do the tiling for nothing!

And I am sure tuaf Nelson would prefer to be white again for a little while. Think how Messrs Chamberlain and Stead must shudder* as the;.’ pass through Trafalgar square and reflect on their own grimy appearance there a hundred years hence ! X fancy that Mr Stead avoids the place and goes round another way. And the black soot lies unabashed upon all the eld buildings in the city, and makes old buildings of new with a haste that is almost indecent. It covers up the Bank, it underlines with a dirty finger the carvings on St. Paul’s, it splotches the Mansion ‘House, and into the severe architectural scheme of Westminster it enters to enhance the grave beauty and refinement of that splendid pile. • And yet in this city of widows’ weeds architects are still building in white stone! Anywhere in the city can be seen buildings in process of erection faced with a staring white. It can be only a few years before the white is streaked with black, yet there seems to be a vague idea in the optimistic builders’ minds that London wi?l omit to draw its smudgy finger ae?’oss this fair new face. I could imagine a very, beautiful London, sombre and dignified—not merely, as at present, sombre and dirty—built in a dark-coloured stone, faced with black marble. Indeed, these new patches of white upon the grimy city stare almost indecently from their sombre environment. They seem as hideously out of place as the gaudy decorations for the Coronation. - Another fact that instantly strikes a New -Zealander is the absurd, squat appearance of the most celebrated, buildings. They are so undignified, so small! The Bank (of England), for instance. What I say about the Bank of England no New Zealander who has not seen the building will perhaps believe. In the colonies the banks and the insurance offices are always among the most important buildings. Every little town points with pride to its banks. So when I say that the most celebrated bank in the world is a onestoried, black building, of ugly and depressing architecture —if, indeed, of any architecture at all, with a humble entrance portal and absolutely no windows along its expressionless face —a mere blank, blind wall of grimy stone— I can scarcely expect my own people to credit me with the truth.

The Bank has a livery Tor its officials that is as inartistic as itself. (This matter of livery is one that is dear to the Englander’s heart. He never misses a chance to prat somebody in livery—all servants of public offices, aii private servants, even the minions of the “halls” '• and the theatres parade themselves in gorgeous liveries.) The Bank’s uncomplaining servants masquerade in garish colours that inevitably suggest the employees of a circus. The Englander, judging from the Albert Memorial, the colours of his omnibuses and the livery of his officials, has no colour sense.

It was my privilege to land a fellowcolonial in the centre of London on the first day of his visit to England. As we emerged from the tube at the Bank Station, and stood a minute, at the top of the sub-way, I said to him:

"Pick cut the dingiest and most undignified building you. can see.” He pointed without hesitation to the Bank. A few minutes later, as we passed a dull little building, faced with big pillars, he gasped, ‘‘That! that the Mansion House!” To him, as to me, the name Mansion House had suggested vague magnificence, palatial grandeur. And it was as unimportant in appearance as one of our undenominational church buildings!

But a glance at the Bank of New Zealand opposite cheered him exceedingly. “it certainly looks bigger and more imposing than the ißank of England,” he said. .

St. Paul’s looks like what it is—a Protestant Cathedral-. There is a Protest amt air cf disdain for ostentation about its imposing proportions. \ou foe] instinctively that St. Paul s has a Nonconformist conscience. Exteriorly it is grand, its fine, gloomy ness, sweeping imperturbably from ; fretted sea of chimney, pots, overwhelms the observer with a sense of grad our. . Seen, as I saw it first, looming up from the mist . from i le> top of Luc!gate Hill—which isn’t a hill, but only a gentle rise—it seemed too huge, too bulky for its cramped location. It should bo taken away and p: t down somewhere in the countr. where people could see it. For it is pitiable fact that this big thing, set in the middle of London, can’t bo seen at all. Vcu get glimpses of it here and there down narrow vistas of crooked streets, von glance up from the top of a ’bus end see its vast proportions crushing .iri’-n <---1 too of you. yon come suddenly upon its dome across a- sea of roofs, but yon cannot ever see the pile in all "noddy p-ropr.rtirv’s. Yon have to take n,o Imon-M of St. Paul’s for granted. T:ho rccr -Hung hnrm’t elbow mom for hr.urn's, and thev sell fashionable attire a-ul have cheap sales and sweeping mM ts still called St, Paul’s f M-.r■» Vfj-.

Vvhen in the fulness of my heart I suggested to a Londoner chat •he L.C.C. or Mr Labouchere should pun down a thousand of these inconvenient houses, and lot London turn, round and have a look at its own Catheters!, he merely smiled. lie, too, probably, thought I was too young.

The really imposing puddings of London are not m London at ah. they exist in the suburbs —ha.ls, museums, churchcs— — South iveusington Museum, to name one of many. This sturdy pile of brick-work, with its hold towers and quiet lines, seems splendidly adapted for its pm nose —and in architecture one asks no more. Then there are scattered over London suburbs the most beautiful c-ld churches, built in a grey stone that is in perfect tone with the grey, overclouded days that London loves. There are some of these quiet, simple churches whose lines are exquisitely graceful. Whether the slender spire and the perfect proportions were the result cf chance or the mastery of some forgotten architect I do not know, Hit to come upon one of these grey things of beauty suddenly in one of the dingy suburbs is a chance to be thankful for. But. if a New Zealander sees only such buildings as Buckingham and St. James’s Palaces, he will carry away disappointment. Buckingham Palace, for instance, is scarcely more imposing, and certainly in worse taste, than the New Zealand Government Printing Offices at Wellington. . The Horse Guards is, perhaps, the greatest sentimental fraud in London. Instead of the massive piles of buildings that the. colonial ignorantly associates with the name, he finds two very tall and very carefully tailored men sitting on two horses in two absurd little sentry boxes, guarding a court-yard surrounded by low and unimpressive buildings. He is disappointed, sorry for the tall and carefully tailored men, sorry for the horses. The Guildhall I believe to be a fine building, but, like St. Paul’s, it hides itself. The Tower at least has the advantage of elbow-room, and its massive walls, its moats and towers, suggest history. The visitor is surprised to find that the Tower is a little city in itself —a perfectly self-contained city. There is one building in London that seems to be supremely hideous. That is the still incomplete Roman Catholic Cathedral at Westminster. It is built of brick in a style that is said to be Byzantian, but though the pile of brickwork is immense, the impression it gives is one of mere chaotic (ugliness. The Church had, it seems to me, a unique chance to rear a building that would challenge comparison with its infinitely older rival, but the result seems mere shapelessness. One feature it has that is striking and effective—that is, the great campanile that rears its head even above the tall ..outlines of the Americanised flats that abound in Westminster.

But the Houses of Parliament, with, their haggard old campanile, a palace of straight lines, severe, dignified, reserved, suddenly brings to the most light-hearted colonial a perception of the might and majesty of the race Avhose name for a thousand years has been synonymous with history. Westminster Abbey and Parliament Hall stand unsullied by the hand of destruction. Not old, as London counts age, they seem to me to sum up the English

character, to embody the English tradition, as no building else. Crime and years have not here destroyed; rather have they given a mellow beauty to this stately pile which watches that manystoried river.

And 1 110 old Thames is such a dirty river. Perhaps the colonial has seen the yellow Tibe», the muddy Arno, and the sullied Seine ; but there is no comp avis on between these rivers and the indescribably polluted Thames. As you stand on the Eml.—nkment and watch the tide, ycu see inky clouds of filth swirl past; it is almost indescribable. But with all its blackness—as no-adon with all its dirt —the Thames is a river of wondrous beauty. The grey days, the clouded and misty air, are, I fancy t responsible for the delicate beauty of its'reaches,-the flat tints that give one the impression of such great distances. The Thames is just Whistlc-r; London is just a series of etchings. The bridges, too, are very graceful. The great Tower Bridge in its heaviness speaks of England ; but there are other and lighter bridges that are full of

grace. London Bridge and Westminster Bridge are —well, they are just London Bridge and Westminster Bridge.

Everything about London takes on the same tinge cf blackness. On the finest day black smuts descend from the cloudless sky and desecrate the loveliness of your nose. The streets, though scavenged incessantly by an army cf boys, and washed carefully every night, remain dirty, very dirty. London is hard on one’s clothes. A trip in the underground means a clean collar, frequently a bath. T fancy the directors must bo all interested in the millinery trade. Even the flowers in the gardens suffer from tho dirt. The honey that the bee manufactures in the suburbs of London is not yellow, hut black. They tell me it is very sweet.