Lure of London.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13638, 4 July 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

Lure of London.

ITS SEDUCTIONS TO A LIFE OF IDLENESS. (By an Idler in the Daily Chronicle.) My account-book is all the evidence I need that May is here, and that the "season" hag begun. Year after year in my modest budget I notice the same phenomenon of increasing expenditure and decreasing receipts. Year after year- I become suddenly conscious of a disinclination to make money and of an ' unusual impulse to spend it. I know then that May has come, and that the old irresistible lure of London has begun to work. This year it will work with' a special potency. The opening of the FrancoBritish Exhibition will make London more than, ever the playground of England'' and of the world.

"I have 'the judeecial timperamint," said Mr Dooley. "I hate wurrk." I have, the, London temperament; I enjoy loafing. Without the possession of this gift and the capacity to use it with an easy conscience a,;' man will find himself, scarcely knowing. how or why, in a perpetual inward conflict with the atmosphere of this languid metropolis. In London and in May. business is business simply.. It is not the whole of life, nor even a considerable fraction of it. Indeed, there .are moods in which one is tempted to dismiss it as a 'mere side issue, an im-„ pertinent and unpalatable interruption of the rear pursuits of life. "HUSTLE," AND EASE. Offered the choice between, the - usual "hustle" and sitting under the trees in Hyde Park on a bright May morning, and watching the' daily promenade and the riders in the Row, it takes an egregious effort to conclude that " h'uistle " 'is the straight and narrow path. Among the seductions to' idleness 1 place London second only '"to Monte Carlo.; , There : al-; ways seems to be something picturesque and delightful going on that one can easily persuade - oneself ought not to be missed. To pick ,up the paper "in the morning, and glance . over "To-day's Ar-. rangements," is to; make work impossible for the next four-and-twenty hours. No city in the .world offers so many temptations to just " fool aboutj" or gives to the pastime; so much the. aird of an educational' tonic. It knocks 10 per cent, off- one's income simply to live; wuhin reach of the inexhausume variety of tlie -London streets. Nowhere can one persuade oneself so' satisfactorily that a day spent in rummaging among old bookstores, or in print shops or old furniture and silver shops, is a day . . .profitably spent. When the slush of winter and spring' is finally gone and the sunshine. beckons, what can be inore exhilarating., than to sally forth on a. voyage of metropolitan exploration? No one . ever' knows London. There is always something left, for the newcomer; to discover on his, own account, .arid a plunge out of the' main thoroughfares into a labyrinth of winding alleys and narrowj silent, ' seedy-looking streets is bound, to ' yield something to the investigator, be it an old. inn with' a wondrous <iellar of port, or soma un-. expected church of historic memories, smothered away in a corner, or. an old curio-shop with all the riches, of Sheraton and Chippendale, behind its unpromising frontage, or a ueorgian, mansion tucked almost out of sight by upstart encroachments, or even, with , luck, some relic' of . Roman i-London, 'i v But of the free attractions of . London in May the Park, comes easily first. It is '-astonishing " how "-the-. <-«oeta£ life'of London centres i-ound s it. Nothing' «lse competes with it as'the playground of the million or so Londoners who live to kill time. Every morning between 10 and ; 12.30, every afternoon 'between 4 and 7, and every Sunday morning in the breathing-space »between church - and lunch you- may see in Hyde Park between Stanhope Gate , arid the French Embassy something, though not very much, of the wealth and beauty Of .London; something, too, though hero'- again not ; very much, 1 of its society. IN THE ROW. For myself, I .'feel a - sensation of renewal - when the first fine morning- brings out two or three hundred riders; in the Row . and two Or three thousand people to promenade up and down, to sit on the, chairs and look on, to meet and' gossip. For the. moment I want nothing more. You take a book, you choose the shade of a tree, you have-the scent of flowers all round you, and this constant stream of riders and promenaders in "the immediate foreground—and all the affairs of the wo'rk-a-day world; become instantly and delightfully remote. It is not, of course, a select gathering in any sense, but :it is still fairly correct to say that , " everybody " goes t-hire. You may, that is, see - a veritable leader of society, a part of the real world,, and within a yard of him or her, somebody who looks like an escaped-inmate, from a Bloomsbury boarding-house—and who probably is. But this great'concourse,' idling up and down or talking and laughing under the tree?,- a brilliant /splash of colour against the sylvan setting, of the Park, does mak? up a : sight- very well worth seeing, and an amusement very, well worth taking L p'art"-in> even for tiie seventy arid seventh time. It carries with it an- : immense suggestion of leisure, easy elegance, and natural enjoyment. I wish I could say as much' for the riding. You will, of course, see in the Row some superb seats,' but the average is not a particularly high one least of all among the Women. ; It is higher, perhaps, than the average of English dancing, but nothing. could well be lower than that. I never go into the Row ■without recalling: the late Empress Austria's .dictum that she did riot know how good or how bad riding could : be until she had hunted in the shires; The English seat.-is not v a graceful, one, and' it' is comparatively rare to see a woman whose habit, form, and general appearance in the saddle entirely The men in the happy-go-lucky, rather awkward style of horsemanship, that Englishmen affect maker a better showing, and occasionally one sees a ■ 'first-class rider. What is really remarkable; about the Row is the-number of riders who reach a fair standard of horsemanship withoutreaching' the top-notch of excellence. The turn-out in New York,. and, j. think, too, in Vienna, is better in quality, ■ but in comparison almost infinitesimal in bulk. VISIONS OF WEALx~.

. The same general criticism may .be passed on the alternoon show. Nothing gives one such an impression of the enormous wealth of London aa the mile-long procession of motors and carriages be-. tween 4 and 7. It gains from the onlookers' point of view by being' restricted to private vehicles. Nothing so grates •on the eye afc the appearance of some hayseed's buggy among the superb carriages ' that- one sees' in Central Park, New York. In Hyde Park, partly by official regulations and partly by the operation of that social instinct -which so bewildered Mr W. D. Howells, anything of this kind is effectually prevented. _ • ' Tha average in consequence. rules high, in vehicles, horseflesh,- and, appointments. ■ You will see finer horses; , perhaps, in Madrid or Vienna, - and ' a more glittering, faultlessly . correct, ' and spick-and-span turnout in Central Park; but nowhere wfll you see so many,, good carriages or

so vast. a gathering of sound horseflesh. Where other capitals have their fiistclass tens, . London has its second-class hundreds; with the result that the spectacle, if l«es. satisfying in one way, is infinitely more impressive in another. v What it lacks in quality—and undoubtedly' it does lack something—it more than mikes up in quantity. In sheer numbera '-ntr city in the world can begin to compete with ' the, thousands upon thousands ~ of carriages that five days in the week make the round of Hyde Park.' • When,'the King or Queen is expected to join 'the procession the eight becomes one really' worthy of' London; and I, for one,, never grudge it the! lazy hours that might h|ye been spent in the base pursuit of cafsji: