The Lure of Old London

ERD M

Dece

. She says they give her a "nasty, sleepy feelin'". She is, moreover, of the opinion that, in these

ny her. If my good nature had stopped at that point all would have been well, but putting on the brakes halfway down hill is a

trying some of them on with disastrous results. Blouses that looked quite attractive off, assumed a curious appearance of bodginess when on. The little minx who served us could, I suspect, have explained the reason.

colour neither. 'Aven't you got somethink

leeve from behind. "George!" Then a laugh-you know Katherine's laugh. It used to be one of her assets, but

the direction of Mrs. D., who at that moment was entangled in the

but she knows how to behave,

nce towards Mrs. D., who emerged from the entanglements of t

in parenthesis, that the offer was not intended to be taken seriously.) "Talk about skinnin' a rabbit! I dunno who they make these blo

arling," said I, "the one

than she had got out of the blouse, she said, "Hindeed! I 'ope you're well and can get wot you want, mam. Shoppin' ain't ix

ed Katherine with undiminished amiability. "You see,

in't goin' to make a igiot er meself in one er them tom fool blouses. I kn

uch dreary persistency in the tube, 'Ge

nd we'll explore Kensington at the s

nner party. She had already grasped the situation and got Mrs. D. You know Katherine's powers of mimicry. Well, I don't grudge her the fun. She's

my direction. "It's quite a haccident your ladyship finds me 'ere with your brother," the old lady went on. "I little thought when I co

obviously genuine. I had provided her with that most desirable thing in life, a sensation, and it

hat my dinner jacket had gone to the tailor's to be pressed. She said there was no n

ng and I usually went to the pictures on Wednesday evening. There is no telling to what further lengths I might have gone had not Mrs. D. began to display sympto

eapside. "You bin and done it with a vengeance now, sir. I drempt I 'ad a tooth out last night, a

gracious for years-not since the occasion on which she tried to ma

n Bishopsgate. So unexpectedly does it occur, and so unobtrusive are the quaint little shops in their unique situation, that thousands of people must pass the place daily without noticing them, or being aware that behind them is the smallest of the eight churches that escaped the Great Fire.

, with their chill air of having survived the worship of long dead days. Tucked away so cosily and standing its ground so sturdily amidst the pushing, elbowing crowd of n

amp burning dimly against the dull blue altar hangings. The windows of the nave are almost entirely blocked up, and pictures hang on the old grey walls. Through the c

e citizens who lie buried within the church or outside it, in what one might call the church's little "back garden," are content to be forgotten

left 10s. for the building of a porch over the entrance in the year before!" Ten shillings for building a porch! Money must have gone

had been built in 1615, and let at a rent of ￡4. One would like to know the character of the business carried on by the numerous tenants mentioned, but save for one reference to "the eye-man" (which looks as if the p

ated it? I shall never think of St. Ethelburga's without pausing to speculate, with a pleasant little thrill, on the fate of "the curious sculptured figure of stone". To find it would be an adventure after my own heart. One would take up such a quest as a hobby and continue it until it became an obsession. Think of the hunt for antique shops where such a thing would be likely to make a temporary halt. The more obscure the shop, the more heterogeneous its contents, the more likely to contain the treasure. "Imidges,"

k, announcing she had seen all there was to be seen and that, judging from my looks, I must have gone out that morning before I got

t. The church is open from 12 to 2, and I asked Mrs. D. whether she would have lunch before, or after, the visit. She said

. She seemed to connect the word "Undershaft" with coal mines, and I hastened to tell her the story of the Maypole, which used, on May Day, to be set up hung with flowers opposite the

ers, which hangs about their old halls, remembering, too, Hallam's words, "The common banquet and the common purse". Here is the coat of arms of the Merchant Tailors, the Haberdashers, Wool Staplers, and Merchant Adventurers. (I should have liked to have been a "Merchant Adventurer".) T

er husband had had three coaches, with a pair of horses in each, to follow him to the grave, although, on account of his long illness, she owed two months' rent at the time of his death, and had pawned the parlour clock and the fire-irons. Such talk seemed to savour of bad taste, under the circumstances, and I sent an apprehensive glance in Stow's direction, but he was too absorbed with his task to look up. How often must he have sat thus in his lifetime writing those endless pages without which we should know so little of the intimate history of the middle ages! In his love of detail he was, like Pepys, chosen to preserve for future generations living documents

I saw as I turned my head for a parting look. Does the quill move sometimes in the silence and d

d. As we pushed back the door we were greeted with the solemn chant of Wagner's "Pilgrims' Chorus," a strange and beautiful substitute for the roar of the traffic in Co

ark corner. On it is described a story that for pathos and terror stands alone in my experience of such things. At the conclusion of the organ recital I took Mrs. Darl

ffspring of James and Mary Woodmason, in the same awful moment on the 18th January, 1782, were translated by sudden

eir companion during the night of the 18th January, in a scene of distress beyond the powers of language, per

parents 'ad done to be treated like that by the Almighty. 'Tisn't as if you paid yer money and took yer cho

ive in an empty world? Did they even live long

ght of the caretaker it occurred to me that I had another q

ge entered by a flight of steps from the b

up such relics of medi?valism? They are of no use, answers the practical person, so why keep them? and he might add, just for the edification of a few Paul Prys like yours

essing her conviction that such passages had dark histories in connection with "them monks," and after this I

without Mrs. D., and see if I can get r

parrows quarrel in the plane trees at dusk, and the mouldering tombstones stir the imagination to dreams and reflection. A spire or tower rising like a challenge above the roofs of offices and warehouses. Those old churches-one never goes a walk in the city without playing hide and seek with them. They lurk round corners and materialise under one's very nose out of bl

until I too have to go that another man

er your

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