THE BUILDER OCTOBER 1916

TRAVEL SKETCHES
BY JOSEPH FORT NEWTON
LONDON TOWN

YES, it is London. Had I been set down here from anywhere, or from nowhere, I
should have known that it was old London town. Here all things turn to the
left, as they do in the Inferno of Dante--there is no mistaking the place. And
speaking of the Inferno, the English way of handling baggage gives one a clear
idea of what that place must be like.

How quiet London is. Compared with the din of New York and the hideous
nightmare of the Chicago loop it is as quiet as a country village. There are
no sky-scrapers to be seen, but the scene spread out like a panorama from the
top of Primrose Hill is not to be forgotten! Yes, it is London, the greatest
city in the world, and not another like it. But which London is it? Well, that
depends upon what London you are looking for.

There are many Londons, my dear reader. There is the London of the Tower and
the Abbey, of Soho and the Strand, of Buckingham and Downing Street, to say
nothing of Piccadilly. There is the London of the story-book; of Whittington
and his Cat and Goody Two-Shoes and the Canterbury Shades; of Shakespeare and
Marlowe and Chatterton; of Nell Gwynne and Dick Steele and poor old Noll--aye,
the London of all that is bizarre in history or strange in romance.

They are all here, with much else in this gigantic medley of past and present,
of misery and magnificence. Sometimes for me it is hard to know which holds
closest, the London of Fiction or the London of History, or that London which
is a mingling of both--the London of Literature. Anyway, as I see it,
Goldsmith carouses with Tom Jones, and Harry Fielding discusses philosophy
with the Vicar of Wakefield; Nicholas Nickleby makes bold to introduce himself
to Mr. W. H. Thackeray and to ask his favor in behalf of a poor artist, the
son of a hair-dresser in Maiden Lane; and Boz, as he passes through Fleet
Street, is tripped by an Artful Dodger and falls into the arms of St. Charles
Lamb.

No doubt my London is in large part a dream, not to say a fool's paradise, but
it is most enchanting. Slowly it works its ancient spell, and he who does not
love it is fit for strategems and spoils--not fit for anything, I had almost
said. There is no denying, I am in love with London, and can drink as much tea
as any Englishman who ever coveted his neighbors goods. Here is the center of
the world, so far as I am concerned, the great old city of the motherland of
all my fathers--everywhere the hauntings of history, a scene to stir the soul
of one who loves England equally for its fiction and its fact.

Yesterday I visited the Abbey and attended the afternoon service--an hour I
can never live long enough to forget. How can I express my feeling as I stood
for the first time in that grey old pile thinking of the mighty dead who sleep
there--thinking how those pillars have stood through all the nights and days,
through storm and calm, peace and war, for ages. Truly, "time, the white god,
makes all things holy, and what is old becomes religion." I sat facing the
Poet's Corner, where Tennyson and Browning sleep side by side, as they should
in the eternal fitness of things, and the efflgy of Shakespeare has the bust
of Burns nearby. If one cannot pray in Westminster Abbey, where men have
prayed for centuries, and where the echo of voices long hushed still cling to
its arches, he cannot pray at all--unless it be on the wide and eloquent sea !

Today I went to St. Paul's and heard the Archbishop of Canterbury preach, and
after the service wandered for two hours in the recesses of the cathedral.
Descending into the crypt one looks upon the tomb of Nelson, the mighty lord
of the sea, and the sleeping place of Wellington, the great commander of the
English race. Lord Roberts rests a few feet away. Here sleep the great
artists--as the poets are honored in the Abbey--among them Wren who built St.
Paul's, a famous Mason. Who can measure the influence of such a building,
enshrining as it does so many historic memories, the dust of great men, and
the tradition of ages of patriotism and prayer? It stands for order in the stl
eets, for order in the land, for order in the secret places of the soul !

From St. Paul's it is not a far walk across London Bridge to Southwark
Cathedral--hardly less interesting and far less known. In this parish stood
the Globe theatre, in which Shakespeare made himself and England famous, and
there is a recumbent figure of the poet in alabaster--the gift of Americans.
His younger brother lies buried there in company with Massinger and Fletcher.
Indeed, it had been a place of literary renown long before Shakespeare, in the
days of Gower, who rests there, and Chaucer, whose Canterbury pilgrims set out
from the Tabard Inn, once close at hand. Also, in this parish was born John
Harvard, founder of our great university, and there is a chapel in his honor
in the cathedral. And so my story might go on endlessly.

Old London is the keeper of a great history, but the London of today is
athrill and athrob with the stir of history in the making. How impressive to
step out of some grey old church--like that of St. Bartholomew, or the Temple
where poor Noll found rest at last--into the teeming, tragic London of today;
from the peace of the past into the tense air of the greatest war in all the
annals of time. If the London of old is hallowing, London of today is
thrilling--sometimes terrifying. There is a sense of a vast tragedy only a few
miles away, and here one is behind the scenes, so to speak-- soldiers and
sailors everywhere; armies of nurses, Red Cross emblems, ambulances,
hospitals, and so forth.

How striking the contrast as one steps out of the quiet of the past where "the
eternal ages watch and wait." Indeed, just now England is a world of women
nurses, messengers, porters, tram and bus conductors, very conscious and
important in uniform and badge and brass buttons. Manifestly the English woman
is finding herself and she likes it. Bright-eyed, capable, and cheerful, she
is doing things she never dreamed of doing before. Even women doing their
ancient work as house-wives feel a new distinction, I dare say, and dust their
rooms for the good of the country. They have learned their worth to the nation
in a new way. Will they be willing to go back to the old ways after war? Can
they do it? What will be the result? Will not England be permanently
different?

Such questions have followed me ever since I landed. At Hyde park entrance the
other day I saw one of the shrieking sisterhood which I thought were extinct--
I wish they were. Maybe I shall live long enough to forget that sight, but I
doubt it. Hideous is a mild word. Fact is, my profession will not allow me to
say what I really feel. Those poor, half-crazed creatures have set their cause
back fifty years in England, and injured it everywhere. Had I been shaky on
the subject of suffrage, that harangue, and still more the wild-eyed
fanaticism of the ranter, would have sent me away with a vast disgust. Heaven
help a cause that has such advocates.

But she and the like of her are forgotten when one sees the heroic spirit of
the multitudes of women who work and endure, counting their sorrow as only one
item in a measureless common woe. And they are so brave and gay withal.
Indeed, London is unnaturally gay and many are puzzled by it, knowing not what
it means. Almost every reporter who has interviewed me--and they have been
legion--has brought up the subject. Yet it ought to be very easy to
understand. A man who had been in the trenches told me that there men learn to
live a moment at a time--they may not be alive more than a moment. And the
reaction, he said, an explosion of "insane gaiety," to use his words. Pent up
feelings must find vent, and it is no wonder that the theatres are crowded
every night--and the more rollicking the play the greater the jam.

Frankly, I was not prepared for the feeling against America which exists in
England today, and I am amazed at it. It is widespread, and is sometimes so
intense as to verge on anti-Americanism. My English friends assure me that it
is not so in a way that really matters, but I know better--and Americans
living here confirm my impression. Perhaps it is not so with those who are
discerning, but with the man-in-street it is different. He feels, however
wrongly, that America betrayed humanity in behalf of dollars. It is not so
much that the president kept us out of the war, but the appalling way in which
he did it, that hurts.

Further, the American government is a continuing entity to English people.
They do not divide it into presidential terms or personalities, and the
feeling against America will continue whatever the future may be in our
politics. Therefore it behooves us to do all within our power--on both sides
of the sea--to see that such a feeling does not gather force and grow; for,
surely, the last and worst calamity that could befall humanity would be an
estrangement between the Empire and the Republic having one language, one
tradition, and one common ideal of civilization. But I am off my subject and
had better go back to London.

The newspapers here interest me very much. They are small now, to be sure--
except Old Thunderer, the Times--owing to the price of paper and the lack of
labor. They are poorly printed, as compared with our papers--certainly the
religious papers are abominably printed. But they are better written by far.
They serve the news up after their fashion in more compact form, but in a much
more lucid style, and some of the war correspondents--Phillips Gibbs more than
any other, methinks--are very remarkable. Also, the editorial page has more
influence than with us, though it has suffered decline, I am told, on this
side. Men of letters write more frequently for the daily press than with us.
Certainly the press, both in London and in the provinces, has been very kind
to me in every way.

I am bound to say that religious conditions in England are most distressing
and confounding. The churches are empty, for the most part, and have little
influence--the state church emptier than the rest, if possible. Perhaps I
should have said church conditions instead--for some of my thoughtful friends
tell me that there is more religion outside of the church than inside. Carlyle
thought it was so in his day. Anyway, I have attended three religious
conferences since I came, representing three branches of the church, and the
tone of bewilderment and discouragement was common to all. They know not what
to do, and the ministers are all the time trying to explain the war and "to
justify the ways of God to man"--with not much success, I must admit. It makes
me think of a student in the University of Michigan, after three visiting
ministers had each discussed the question of the existence of God. He said
that up until that time he had never had any doubts, but that now he was a
little uncertain. I am much in his case, as to the explanations I have heard
so far.

There is a vast unbridged--and seemingly unbridgeable--gulf between the church
and what is called the working classes; and it widens every day. What the end
will be is hard to know. If the war did not save dear old England from
something like revolution, it at least postponed it. Perhaps the shaking the
war has given the churches will wake them up, before it is too late. For
surely the people are as religious as ever they were, but the churches no
longer express their religion. There are exceptions, of course, to all these
statements--thank heaven--but I am speaking of the general condition.

And the City Temple is an exception to anything on earth. It is wonderful--all
that I expected and more. It has been full from top to bottom at every servicc
a sea of faces below and clouds of faces in the galleries. What a sight ! What
an opportunity ! What a crushing responsibility! If anybody ever tells me that
an English audience is unresponsive, I shall be ready to fight him. It is not
so. I never had such a response, much less such a welcome, in any strange
place in all my life. And if anything had been lacking at the Temple, it would
have been made up by the Masons at their brilliant banquet and reception in my
honor. That, too, was a scene never to be forgotten till all things fade in
the dark. Of this more anon.

