what does the cockney's mind first register when, far from home, he visualizes the london that he loves with the casual devotion of his type? to the serious tourist london is the shrine of england's history; to the ordinary artist, who sees life in line and colour, it is a city of noble or delicate "bits"; to the provincial it is a playground; to the business man a market; but to the cockney it is one big club, odourous of the goodly fellowship that blossoms from contact with human-kind.

"far from the madding crowd" may express the longings of the modern simeon stylites, but your cockney is no simeon. he doesn't pray to be put upon an island where the crowds are few. the thicker the crowd, the more elbows that delve into his ribs, the hotter the steam of human-kind, the happier he is. far from the madding crowd be blowed! man's place, he holds, is among his fellows; and he sniffs with contempt at this [pg 124]widespread desire to escape from other people. to him it is a sign of an unhealthy mind, if not pure blasphemy.

so, when he thinks of london, he does not think of a city of palaces, or serene architectural triumphs; of a huckster's mart or a playground. at the word "london" he sees people: the crowds in the strand, in walworth road, lavender hill, whitechapel road, camden town high street.

your moods may be various, and london will respond. you may work, you may idly dream away the hours, or you may actively enjoy yourself in play; but if you wish that supreme enjoyment—the enjoyment of other people—then london affords opportunities in larger measure than any city that i know.

i discovered the magic and allure of crowds when i was fourteen years old and worked as office-boy in those filthy alleys marked in the postal directory as "e.c." streets and crowds became my refreshment and entertainment then, and my palate is not yet blunted to their savour. i do not want the flowery mead or the tree-covered lane or the insect-ridden glade—at least, not for long; and i hate that dreadful hollow behind the[pg 125] little wood. give me six o'clock in the evening and a walk from the city to oxford circus, through the soft spring or the darkling autumn, with festive feet whispering all around you, and your heart filled with that grey-green romance which is london.

once out of newgate street and across holborn viaduct i was happy, for i was, so to speak, in a foreign country; so wholly different were the people of holborn from the people of cheapside. the crowds of the city had always to me, a mean, craven air about them. they walked homeward with lagging steps and worn faces. they seemed always preoccupied with paltry problems. they carried the stamp of their environment: a dusty market-place, in which things made by more adept hands and brains are passed from wholesale place to wholesale place with sorry bargaining on the odd halfpenny.

but west and west central were a pleasuance of the finer essences, and involuntarily body and soul assumed there a transient felicity of gait. one walked and thought suavely. there were noble shops, brilliant theatres, dainty restaurants, highways whose sole business was pleasure, rent with gay lights and oh! so many delightful people. at[pg 126] restaurant and theatre doors one might pause pensively and touch finger-tips, as it were, with rose-leaf grace and beauty and fine comradeship; a refreshing exercise after encounters with the sordid and the uncouth in gracechurch street. then, when the hoofs clattered and the motors hooted and the whistles blew, and streets were drenched with festal light and festal folk, i was, i felt, abroad. figure to yourself that you are walking through the streets of teheran, or stamboul, or moscow, surrounded by strange bazaars and people who seem to have stepped from some book of magic so far removed are they from your daily interests. so did i feel as i walked down piccadilly. it was suffocating to think that there were so many streets to explore, so many types to meet and to know. i wanted then to make heaps and heaps of friends—not, i must confess, for friendship—but just for the sake of meeting people who did interesting and gracious things, and for the sake of knowing that i had a host of friends. the plashing of the fountains in trafalgar square, the lights of the alhambra and empire seen through the green trees of leicester square, the procession of 'buses along holborn and oxford streets, the alluring teashops of piccadilly and the[pg 127] scornful opulence of the hotels—these things sank into me and became part of me.

my way to the city lay through leicester square, and the morning crowd in that quarter bears for me still the same charm. on a bright spring day it might be paris. there is a sense of space and sparkle about it. the little milliners' girls, in piquant frocks, evoke memories of louise, and the crowding curls on their cheeks waft a perfume of youth-time lyrics, chiming softly against the more strident and repulsively military garb of the girl porters and doorkeepers. the cleaners, bustling about the steps of the music-halls, throw adumbrations of entertainment on the morning streets. people are leisurely busy in an agreeable way—not the huckstering e.c. way.

in piccadilly circus there is the same sense of light and song among the crowds emerging from the tube. the shops are decked in all the colours of the maytime, and not one little workgirl but pauses to throw a mute appeal to the posturing silks and laces and pray that the lily-wristed, wanton damsel of fortune will turn a hand in her direction.

but in the city, as i have said, there is little of this delight to be found, either at morning, noon[pg 128] or night. the typical crowd of this district may be seen at london bridge, where, from eight to half-past ten in the morning and from half-past five to half-past seven in the evening, the dispirited toilers swarm to or from work. indeed, it is not a crowd: it is a cortège, marching to the obsequies of hope and fear. it is a funeral march of marionettes. here are no gay colours; no smiles; no persiflage. all is sombre. even the typists and the little workgirls make no effort towards bright raiment; all is dingy and soiled, not with the clean dirt that hangs about the barges and wharves on the river, but with the mustiness of old ledgers and letter-files. listless in the morning and taciturn in the evening are these people; and to watch them for an hour from the windows of the bridge house hotel is to suffer an attack of spiritual dyspepsia. for, among them, are men who have crossed that bridge twice daily for thirty years, walking always on the same side, always at the same pace, and arriving at the other end at precisely the same minute. there are men who began that daily journey with bright boyish faces, clean collars, and their first bowler hats, brave with the importance of working in the city. their hearts were fired with dreams and [pg 129]ambition. they had heard tales of office-boys who, by industry, had been taken eventually into partnership. they received their first rise. later, they achieved the romantic riches of thirty shillings a week. they made the acquaintance of a girl in their suburban high street. they married. and now, at forty-five, all ambition gone, they are working in the same murky corner of the same office, and maintaining wife and child on three pounds a week. their trousers are frayed and bag at the knees. their coats are without nap or grace. two collars a week suffice. gone are the shining dreams. they have "settled down," without being conscious of the fact, and will make that miserable journey, with other sombre and silent phantoms, until the end. verily, the london bridge crowd of respectables is the most tragic of all london crowds, and the bridge itself a via dolorosa.

i do not know why work in the city should produce a more deadening effect on the souls of the workers than work in other quarters, but the fact that it does is recognized by all students of labour conditions. i have worked in all quarters, and have noticed a curious change of outlook when i moved from the city to fleet street, or[pg 130] from fleet street to piccadilly. you shall notice it, too, in the faces of the lunch-time crowds. east of st. paul's, the note is apathy. coming westward, just to fleet street, you perceive a change. here boys and girls, men and women, seem to take an interest in things; one understands that they like their work. they do not regard it as a mere routine, to be dragged through somehow until the clock releases them.

a similar study in crowd psychology awaits you at the tube stations in the early hours of the evening, when the rush is on. with elbows wedged into your ribs, and strange hot breaths pouring down your neck, you need all the serenity you have stored against such contingencies; and the attitude of the other people about you can mitigate your distress or enhance it. the city and south london crowd is not the kind of crowd that can bear its own troubles cheerfully, or help others to bear theirs. i would never wish to go on a day's holiday with any of its people. their composite frame of mind is one of weak anger, expressive of "why isn't something done? what's the use of going on like this?"

more comely is the st. james's park or westminster crowd. from five to half-past six these[pg 131] stations receive a steady stream of sweet and merry little girls from the mushroom government departments that have spawned all about this quarter. it is girls, girls, girls, all the way, with the feeble and the aged of the male species toiling behind.

on the bakerloo you find a crowd that is—well, "rorty" is the only word. the people here are mostly southbound for the elephant and castle; and you know the elephant and castle and its warm, impetuous life. there are bold youths who have not fallen, like their fathers, to the cajolery of a collar-and-cuff job in the city, but have taken up the work that offers the best pecuniary reward. grimy youths they are, but full of vitality, and they pour down the staircase in a niagara of humanity.

an excellent centre for observing the varying moods of the evening crowd is villiers street, that gentle slope from which you may reach charing cross station, the hampstead tube, the district railway, or the embankment trams. it is a finely mixed company, for, as any londoner will tell you, the residents of the hundred suburbs differ from one another in manner, accent and appearance, even as the natives of different [pg 132]continents. those who are using the hampstead tube are sharply marked from those who are taking the embankment car to clapham junction; while those who are journeying on the south-eastern to croydon have probably never heard of upton park, whither the district will carry others. there are well-dressed people and ill-dressed people; some who are going home to soup, fish, a soufflé and coffee, with wine and liqueurs; and some who are going home to "tea," at about eight o'clock—bread-and-margarine and bloater paste, with a pint of tea, or, occasionally, a bit of tripe and onions. there are people in a mad hurry, and others who move in aloof idleness. and above them all stand the stalwart colonials, waiting until 6.30, when the bars shall open, airily inspecting the troops of girls and comparing notes.

"say now, jes' watch here. here comes a real fanny."

"ah, gwan. i ain' got no time for fannies. i finished wid 'em. gimme beer, every time."

i have often wanted to make a song of villiers street, but i have never been able to catch just the essence of its atmosphere. i am sure, though, that the modern orchestra offers opportunities for[pg 133] one of our new composers to embrace it in an overture. no effort has been made, so far as i know, to interpret in music the noisy soul of the london crowds. elgar's "cockaigne" overture and percy grainger's "handel in the strand" were both retrospective in spirit, and the real thing yet remains to be done. it has been done on the continent by suppé ("morning, noon and night in vienna"), by sibelius in his "finlandia," by massenet in his "southern town," and by dvorák in "carneval roman." i await with eagerness a "morning, noon and night at charing cross," scored by a born cockney.