A PEREGRINATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22830, 14 March 1936, Page 4

A PEREGRINATION

RECORDS OF AN ENGLISH JOURNEY X TALKING OF PAGEANTS Though the guide books expend thousands of pages upon her varied charms, London remains a coy wench, and elusive. If you go searching for her, you may be unrequited; if you decide to await her without impatience, she may relent, showing you some unexpected, exciting aspect of her nature when you are least expectant. But her story is not to be wrung from her by a direct approach; it conies in a hundred fragmentary episodes, each unrelated, perhaps insignificant in itself, but summing up to a narrative of epic importance in a world from which romance is being slowly excluded. It is a task of great difficulty, if not an impossibility, to discover London by assault. The imaginative projection required consistently to wrest from the London of big modern buildings, of the crashing, tearing traffic in the streets, that Old London which has some thought in the mind of every literate man, is considerable. Only a very well-directed imagination and a most diligent mind may make the whole discovery. _ For most of us, historical London remains a city of links, of shreds and patches, and a vision that is quite incidentally retrieved.

" When they were excavating here not many years ago," a friend remarks as one hurries along a City street to keep a morning coffee appointment, "the workman found the kitchen of a Roman dwelling under the road. There were some of the cooking utensils still kicking around." Or: "Come and have a drink —what about the Cheshire Cheese?" says a-Fleet street acquaintance. He is entirely uninhibited by vague, uneasy feelings that a sanctity msst still shed its aroma around the tavern where Johnson may have dined and rumbled. One is through the dark alleyway and into the bar before one has time for even the briefest obeisance to shadowy ghosts. There are other Fleet street men inside. Greetings and ale become currency, with talk of Abyssinia. Later, one takes a bus home with pleasant" thought of the ale and conversation and companions but, alas, none concerning the previous bibbers in that resort. They are dead anyway, and a man will remain dead a long time himself. No need to anticipate communication with those who have preceded him to a last outpost whence no despatches are sent back. More important than Dr Johnson is the thought that there was a very handsome, gracious barmaid in the Cheshire Cheese. Then there is the pageantry of London, which comes, on reflection, in curious ways. There are some who can be roused to ecstasy by the rather tawdry joustings and parades in fancy dress which have appropriated the name today. The simple Londoner is much attracted by the "historical pageants" that shuffle and scuffle about the moat of the Tower, unheeding of the fact that Hollywood can make the reconstruction much more thrilling. And he will entirely overlook the brief, unstudied acts of pageantry which are around him daily. STREET SCENES A glimpse of dignified procession which is evocative has as its setting a broad thoroughfare by the Green Park. With the acquired patience of the acclimatised colonial visitor one is waiting on the kerb for the traffic lights to change. Idly one notes th, passing clutter of vehicles. The limousines, buses, tradesmen's vans and three-wheel delivery cycles slide by unceasing. Then, in the midst of the traffic, a strange element is seen. It is the burnished helmet of an officer of the Life Guards, giving back the brightness of spring sunshine. Soon his gleaming breastplate and his long shining boots are visible, and his equally polished mount. Not horse nor rider appears remotely conscious of the, surging traffic. Their progress is as unhurried, their bearing as easily correct, as if they were on a sheltered parade ground. The vehicles, with great noise, protest an equal disregard for the presence, in their hectic mechanical midst, of these incongruous travellers sharing the street with them. Soon the rider is lost to view again, as he proceeds sedately down the street. One is wondering if a Life Guard may do that sort of conspicuous thing for a wager, when the reason for his appearance becomes clear. Out in the traffic moves a score of burnished Guardsmen, riding leisurely in the far wake of their commander. Workaday London offers them not a glance, and they are entirely unobservant of their vulgar fellow-pas-sengers. It is almost possible to believe that one has not seen them. That such a gallant, brilliaut company could have any association with the car-infested, petroleum-tainted atmosphere is unthinkable. Or it would be, were this not London. But in London this is the casual incongruity of every day. For the colonial visitor, alone among the busy crowds, there is a sense of unreality as the glistening cavalcade is lost in the torrent of vehicles. And at that, even the dreamer must observe that his Majesty's plumed guardsmen observe the traffic signals as punctiliously as the battered car of the least of his Majesty's subjects. . Another morning it is a tiny cart, drawn by a diminutive donkey, and manned by a putty-complexioned dirty individual in a greasy cap, that gives a crowded street a sudden errant flash of individuality, making it a London street and none other in the world. In' London only could the "march of progress" give the right-of-way to gilded horsen.en and a coster's cart. One other day, in Cheapsidc, while the city bustles about its business, a pro-