“Alone in London.”

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 5, 29 July 1908, Page 51

“Alone in London.”

COLONIALS COMPLAIN OF LACK OF HOSPITALITY. (From Our London Correspondent.) Some Colonial visitors are writing to the papers here complaining of London’s lack of hospitality towards the man from overseas. An Australian who has come home after thirteen years’ absence from London declares that he finds himself one of the loneliest men in the King’s dominions; and a Canadian promptly writes to sympathise with the man from the Antipode?. It is not that London is unfriendly or in any way antagonistic She is just indifferent — completely indifferent. I shall never forget my first impression of these crowded! thoroughfares when I got out at Fenchurch Street station, and took a walk westwards on the day of my arrival. For the first ten minutes or so I thought that everyone I met must lie singling me out as a “ new chum.” And then it dawned on me that no one was taking the slightest notice of me. What is one stranger, what are a hundred strangers, in a street where thousands of people are streaming by every hour of the day? Watch the Londoners carefully, and you will notice that in the streets they never look at the passers-by. There are so many passers-by that a man soon gives up expecting to see any one he knows in the throng. I have known two acquaintances sit side by side on the top of a ’bus

and never discover each other's presence for the greater part of a penny ride. That is by no means an unusual occurrence in London streets. Men get so used' to seeing nothing but unfamiliar faces that you can walk right under a friend's nose and the chances are he won’t see you. He is not expecting to see anyone that he knows, and his thoughts are probably miles away.

All this is typical of London, and it is reflected in London’s hospitality, or lack of hospitality. The place is so vast that in sheer self-defence the Londoner gets into his shell, as it were, and puts a little circle round himself and his affairs. He will live for years and years in the same place, and never know the name of his next door neighbour, and never want to know. Yet if you took the same man out of London, and! planted him in a smaller town, you would find him perfectly sociable, and on the best of terms with his neighbours. The trouble in London is that he has so many neighbours that the process of finding out who they are and what they are like becomes too formidable. For tho sake of his own peace of mind, the Londoner “ keeps himself to himself,” as he would term it, and displays his social qualities only to the people he knows. This is of course a regrettable feature of London life, but some allowance should be made for the Londoner. He is to a largo extent the victim of circumstances.

Tlie average Londoner has not tho same facilities for entertaining a visitor from overseas as you have in New Zealand. For one thing, lie probably has to work longer hours, and! almost certainly

he has a liardex.struggle to make a decent living than has the dweller.in a Colonial town. Neither Las .he picnic grounds and beautiful harbours within easy reach of his home. 1 i-.ese things mean money air! time—two very scarce commodities with the average Londoner. But taking hun all round, 1 think you will find that he is not really inhospitable. He likes to meet the man from overseas, and to talk about the Empire of which, it must be confessed, his own notions are usually so hazy. It is perfectly true that a colonial visitor can feel horribly lonely in London, but if you get to know the Londoner—it takes a little time, I admit—you find that he is much the same as Britons all the world over—a goodi fellow, sociable and hospitable.