The Lure of Old London

ERD M

Septe

ninepence. Her name is Darling, which necessitates the painstaking use of the "Mrs." for fear of a misunderstanding. She is a widow, and a person of kindly sympathies but limited intelligence outside the domain of domestic affairs. She is Cockney to the finger tips, yet Lond

as what, in contemporary papers, was described as "an extensive basin of water," she said, "A penny plain and tuppence coloured". Mrs. D. is very averse to anything of the nature of "side" in conversation, and so I did not go on to quote the article which spoke of a "commodious house and a good disposure of walks". I thought, though, it w

had thought much of royalty; all the same, it

where is the many-paned window of the "Serendipity" shop, with its old coloured prints and the original editions of seve

e's no approaching by degrees. One steps through one of those low arches in Curzon Street into this quaint little island of loiterers in the twinkling of an eye. A world of cobbled-paved streets, culs de sac, devious by-wa

mmer, and I should go provided with a packet of sandwiches and a flask of whisky. Imagine the thrill on a moonlight night, when the figures on the tombs in the long aisles would be like creatures on a stage frozen into stone at some moment of dramatic intensity. Pointing, beckoning, warning, pray

something of those suspected secret places which are not shown to visitors. He might even let me see them for myself. He would know the Abbey as it is impossible for the ordinary public to know it. The ordinary public no more knows the Abbey than does a person, who stands on the kerb to watch the King pass on his way to some State function, know the man inside the King. The Abbey should be seen when the voices of glib guides, and the shuffling f

ould certainly get an attack of rheumatism, but I explained that sensations invar

the vast interior, and I suggested that we should explore t

g with the élite in art and literature lies in the fact that he died at the age of 152, and lived in the reigns of ten sovereigns, an achievement great enough, it was considered, to earn him the right to such distinguished bur

heel, his body

ick set, natura

hrow-back to our

to reassure her I mentioned that if he outlived old ties he also made new ones, marr

he end which never came. When, at the age of 120, he found himself still alive, and still hale and hearty, he would begin to think it was about time to accept things as they were and start life all over again. That

uide without a humiliating sense of being one of a hungry mob of chickens round the man with the bag of grain. It is much more

enough, it is often empty, and always quiet. One's thoughts of Elizabeth mingle curiously with those of her hated half-sister, "Blood

an his name and the dates of his birth and death recorded in small letters on the pavement of the chapel in the south aisle. Pep

s Montague, first Earl of Halifax. Reference to the fact is qua

gone; take th

eace next thy

of the chapel of Henry VII. One would think, too, that she had a restless neighbour in "Bloody Queen Mary". The words of the Latin inscript

nd somehow, in the cold grey light of this dim corner of the Abbey, it is not the Elizabeth described by Green, the historian, as that "brilliant, fanciful, unscrupulous child of earth, and the Renaissance," of whom we think, but the dy

in picking up crumbs of information to have leisure to lift his eyes to the sculptured figures which stand aloft in the blue haze of encroaching twilight. Neither does he catch the secret flame of some obscure window which suddenly shines out like a sinking sun through the forest of pillars and arches, nor notice the jealous lit

oor leading to the Islip Chamber, because for the mode

ed a button, and behold a flight of steps leading

us, his bold black eyes meeting Mrs. Darling'

tature and o

son of Kish th

than I could see 'im," was Mrs. Dar

who died at the age of nineteen, lies on a bier in the centre of the room. The effigy lay in state at his mother's house, and one reads that she invited all her friends to see it, stating that "she could carry them in conveniently by a back door". Plain Queen Anne and "La Belle Stuart," the Duchess of Ric

erest. One can approach unmolested and share the privilege of the cat who may look at a king. One may try to pierce the secrets hidden or betrayed by those waxen masks. There is Queen Elizabeth, for instance (to my mind the most arresting figure in the collection); the face is taken

EEN ELIZABETH AND

ys as a queen, rather than as a woman, one regards her. Yet she had her feminine vanities. I have always been impressed by the acco

for the moment, I was alone with those waxen men and women who stared at me across the ages. There is something oddly intimate about a wax figure, and I was making strides in the acquaintance of Queen Elizabeth and Nelson when the verger returned with the intimation that sight-se

dercroft. And so we turned into Dean's Yard, and from thence to the cloisters, pausing now and again to read the inscriptions on the tombstones over which we w

s "nothink more than a bloomin' churchyard". I had to remind her that it is we who, in that place, are the ghosts, and the ghost

me. You got a white mark on yer coat leaning up against the wall, an

n architecture, having a clean-swept empty appearance. On the floor are some glass cases containing the oldest of the effigies, the actual figures which were carried at the funerals. Here is Katherine of Valois. I never hear her name without remembering a passage in Pepys' Diary, where he says: "To Westminster Abbey and t

as she gazed at the "ragged regiment". "Wot a show up! Why, this one

ermission to roam the Abbey and its precincts night and day, open every door I came to, go down every cellar, explore every passage, mount every stairway, I should wan

that next time she came to the Abbey she m

to meet me 'ere," she said, "for if I must

quite fourteen when she gave birth to him, and whose usurious disposition led him to think first of marrying his own daughter-in-law, then a lady who was insane. The information that on his death-bed he had

o more peaceful spot in all London. The little fountain in the enclosure bubbles all day long to the silence, the huge plane tree above it spreads wide arms to the old arcade, a

l. Mrs. D.'s face assumed the expression with which I associated "dryness," and I proposed instead an adjournment to one of the neighbouring

a strange idea occurred. Suppose I was one of them? It was possible, if the theory of a former existence holds water. I might be a Charles II, a Henry VII, a Nelson! On second thoughts, though, I am more inclined

Mrs. Darling's voice brought me back to t

hat?" I

er goin'. That telegraph boy didn't 'arf size

t of you," I hast

indow of an A.B.C. shop. "Look!" sh

of my not keeping my ears open-the telegraph boy had re

when Mrs. D.'s perverted sense of humour needs keeping in check,

s the way of things in an existence where the necessity to blow yo

me, dear

dev

OR