Londoners Through New Zealanders’ Eyes.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 21, 25 May 1907, Page 39

Londoners Through New Zealanders’ Eyes.

Mrs Edith Sdarle Grossmann contributes to the “Nineteenth Century” for April a -“Colonial Study of London Civilization,” in the course of which she indulges in criticism almost universally severe. “Amongst all the units of various races and classes,” she says, “there is—and here comes in the civilization and the art of living together somehow—a modus vivendi or working agreement. The first clause of that agreement is external conformity to English laws, written and unwrtten. Provided that decorum is preserved almost anything is allowed to pass with impunity, the object being always to prevent a scene or disturbance. Sometimes, indeed, for the sake of a half-humorous sensation, there is a mild attack made on concealed vices, but no one really takes the matter seriously. The typical Londoner censures very severely trifling faults of manner or dress, but takes elaborate pains to ignore vices, perhaps because these are much more troublesome things to deal with. The tolerance, or, more bluntly speaking, the laxity of the West is extraordinary, and any primitiveminded stranger who shows a hearty and healthy dislike of sin and of sinners is regarded as a disagreeable and cantankerous disturber of the peace. Though crimes of violence are proportionately rare, fraud and dissolute living seem to flourish without restraint or punishment. . . . Whether, as some British patriots assert, it is the fault of the alien population, or whether we are suffering a reaction from the strictness of the Victorian era, must Ire left to conjecture; but certainly, from some cause or other, there is a good deal of the Restoration spirit abroad in London to-day. Puritanism is a term to jeer at. Such words as righteousness, purity, goodness, virtue are considered cant terms; women and womanhood are a butt for the wits of the Press, and earnestness is held a conclusive proof of lack of humour.”

Mrs Grossmann alludes to the much higher degree of perfection to which the civilising of speech and manner is carried in London than in the colonies, but adds: “There s a superficial kindliness and bonhomie prevalent in London streets, analogous to the conventional courtesies of society and equally destitute of real warmth or depth of feeling. Within doors and out of doors there is urbanity, but not much humanity, and the instinct of fellowship that even the roughest men feel elsewhere is almost driven out by the desire of everyone to exploit his neighbour to the utmost. But in appearance, at least, the national selfcontrol has succeeded in making London

the supreme type of civie society in modern times.” Later .on comes the passage: “The average Londoner excels in practical sense, and he has a l->rge stock of useful information about t lie .multifarious concerns of his cay. U- theatre*, its parks, streets, shops, its h-wildering railway system, its euninl i-vviii-. ami the domestic affairs ot its ttut and nobility. But his inter,-;, are entirely concrete. He despise- things abstract and things spiritual, and he calls anyone who talk about them a prig and a bore. He does not understand ideas, but thinks they ought to be facts

The keynote to the character of a Twentieth Century Londoner is an unbounded Imperial pride. He never forgets himself; never gives himself away: he imputes to himself the loftiest motives and highest authority; when any accident proves him in the wrong he has an amazing talent for saving his faee and assuming to himself the merits ot the very person or measure he has been fighting. He never, admits a doubt that in respect of being a Londoner he is immeasurably superior to any and every stranger, and on any and every point. . . This attitude of his is useful in helping on the assimilation of fresh elements, for the stranger gets tired of paying continual tribute and claims citizenship, which is readily granted.” Mrs Grossmann says further on that there is only one religion in London whose worshippers are all devoutly sincere, and that is the cult of success. “Under the feet of the dominant and successful there is a mass of degraded, cramped, stunted humanity, incapable of rising, content with its abject condition, denied the birthright of savages, bound in industrial slavery, and fixed in an unacknowledged and hypocritical class-subjection. The conservative law that suppresses the mass, the conservative instinct that keeps them in their plaee, are nothing but the inherited law and the primal instincts of the brute and the barbarian.”