VII
THE CHIMNEY-POTS OF LONDON
I will not cease from mental fight
Or let the sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
BLAKE.
VII
THE CHIMNEY-POTS OF LONDON
There is some very fine architecture in London, and buildings which reveal some of the finest workmanship in the world, for the London craftsmen are famous.
But all this is crowned with the craziest collection of chimney-pots.
Sometimes the brickwork of the chimneys is built from one angle to another above the roof; like a zigzag, and then surmounted on the same building with chimney-pots of different designs and heights, pointing, too, in different directions, and again capped with many weird contrivances to make them draw. They are certainly out of drawing, as any artist will confess.
There are machines that whirl in the wind and by their mad circling withdraw the smoke, and there are cowls that move with the wind, swinging in such a direction that the wind cannot blow down the chimney. There are hoods, and tin monstrosities that rear their ugliness over palaces, and there are chimneys that have been built up so much higher than the original ending, that in their fresh start to the sky they spoil the sky view as well as the contour of the building. There are beautiful chimneys, which begin well, but have to be assisted to do their work by horrible tin extensions soaring into the air.
These hideous makeshifts disfigure the dwellings of the rich and the poor alike with a deadly equality of utility unrelieved by any beauty. To see it all stretching out beneath you from the Monument fills you with disappointment at the wretched discord. I believe there are experts in chimneys in London, men who doctor them. If one could be found with an artistic soul, who could make them beautiful, he would deserve well of his country.
But it would never do to take all these ugly things down, for uniformity and even beauty may cost too much. A house full of smoke would, added to the London fog, be intolerable. 'Handsome is as handsome does.'
The housewife says 'Ours is a beautiful chimney. It draws so well.' When you sit by the bright fire on a winter's night, you do not think of the ugly chimney aloft except as a plain-featured but dear friend.
But, for all that, these chimney-pots of London are a sad commentary on our human nature. Our architecture and building goes wrong just where it comes into contact with rough nature, with its treacherous tempest and veering winds. The architect plans a beautiful Gothic mansion and everything goes right. It is a dream, a vision of harmony, until he comes to the chimneys—then brief and tragic experience demands a distorted chimney or a tin contrivance, and the plan is spoiled.
So we build our lives up to a point. It is to be a Gothic career for the noble son. What Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Oxford, or Cambridge can do for him is done. The Church, the Army—Society (with a big 'S') lend a hand, and he is turned out true to sample—the right accent, the right dress, the right manner. But, alas! when he comes into contact with the intricate promptings of nature and the subtle temptings of the world, some strain, inherited from the days of the Conqueror, makes him wobble. He marries the wrong woman, or doesn't marry her at all, misses the bus, or catches the wrong one. His career is altogether different from plan and specification, and yet he may be quite a good sort!
Here is another case. We set out to build a really artistic life. She, the favoured creature, is nurtured amid culture and reared in the atmosphere of poetry. Listening to smart conversation in epigram and lightning-sketch style, she goes out into the world without a practical notion; and because these things 'require money,' drifts into a business-like marriage with an unpoetic person, who makes glue or blue. Settles down—a Queen Anne villa with Mary Ann chimneys.
These are mild cases. How few of us live up to our fond parents' hopes and prayers! How many of us end far otherwise than our education, advantages, and associations seemed to promise. We have power of choice, we are not made uniform, and we do wobble a lot when we are turned loose among the currents and storms of life.
We overseas Britons are apt to expect too much of dear old London.
At first we are foolish enough to think that this mighty capital of our far-flung Empire should be an epitome of all our British virtues. Coming to the fountainhead, we expect the water to be pure. We soon learn that it is not a fountainhead of anything. It is a great bay of human life and action into which a thousand rivers, of different quality and force, empty themselves.
London is a magnified expression of the life of the whole Empire. The currents which we on the frontiers of the Empire set going all come pulsing towards this mighty mother of cities; but with the boundless generosity of a mother of nations, mature but still vigorous, she receives this inflowing life and sends it back again in responsive floods to the end of the earth.
The jaundiced critic treads this mighty city with the blinded eyes of ignorance, and seeing faults and sins, identifies her as 'Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots'; but to those who look for goodness, London suggests the city of which it is written: 'And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it; and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.'
Let us not hide the truth from ourselves. These chimney-pots of London, for all their ugliness, mean a lot of kindly comfort. They draw well, they are comfortable to live with.
You may find the worst in London, but you will always find the best also.
There is a warm sympathy for sorrow, a motherly helpfulness in need, a maternal solicitude for the welfare of the humblest, which stretches down from the throne, and is reflected in the kindness of the poor towards each other. No good movement will ever lack support here, and no stauncher friend to freedom is planted four-square upon this earth than the City of London, which so gallantly fought for its own freedom and so jealously guards it still.
If all these classic characters planned by fond parents had materialized right up to the very chimney-pots, they would probably have been less companionable and kindly. Purity of style does not always mean domestic harmony. Go into these houses with the distorted chimneys, and you will often find them 'all beautiful within,' carrying an atmosphere of peace and well-being which is refreshing to the soul. Think, too, of how many of them have been turned into hospitals for our wounded soldiers, and of others which dispense a hospitality to the men from overseas which helps them to forget or at least to bear their exile.
It is unreasonable to expect the discourse and decisions of the great mother of Parliaments to match the classic purity of the building in which it meets. Its members are men, swayed by many winds of interest and influence, and if they wobble a bit it is only natural. We youngsters would settle the Irish Question and the problem of the Drink Traffic monopoly very quickly! We would fix up the Suffrage for them and bring everything up-to-date very soon! We would indeed—until we get the over-sea mail and are reminded of our own lesser problems unsolved and see our own wobbling. If we have nicer chimneys it is because our climate is more kindly; and if life seems easier with us it is because we are so young. We did not have so much hoary feudalism to dig up; neither, however, have we such golden traditions and such a storied history. Our life is free, but is it so full?
Let us be very charitable to the homely chimney-pots of London. We have poured out our treasure and blood for the Empire in this great war gladly, but this one city has sent over a million of her sons to fight and given readily scores of millions of her wealth without a murmur, and is still giving out, giving out, without stint. It is the most heroic, adventurous city in the world, where men use big maps, think in millions, and build nationhood not for to-day only but for the centuries to come.
To speak of lesser things, where is there a more orderly, a more good-tempered crowd than the crowd of London? Paris has its gay beauty, Edinburgh its classic lines; but here they have dug parks out of the quarries of bricks and mortar. The trees, squares, little green patches, breathing-spaces, unexpected quiet nooks—all these are a surprise to us because they have cost so much, and they represent a city of ideals which embrace the past as well as the future.
Later on, when we are older and wiser, you will call us to your council-chambers. And we shall bring something with us of the freedom of the large spaces, some vaulting ambitions from new countries where life is a young man's adventure, some clearness of vision brought from the solitary places.
We shall bring Home some of the sweeping perspective of a land of magnificent distances. Freighted, too, we shall be with that love for England which only those can feel who have left her shores behind to strike the long trail of Empire. But we can never bring back such gifts to the mother county as she first dowered us with when she sent us out to the great new lands with a love for freedom which she nourished through the centuries with her own blood.
Ah, London of the crazy chimney-pots! what we like about you specially is your marvellous courage. London afraid, shrinking, timorous! Only madmen would think it! How you wrestled with your mighty problems!--problems of transport (you plant mighty railway systems in your heart, and dig ways underground for your people), and problems of administration greater than those of many nations!
But your courage is still challenged. You will not fail us, Great Mother of Cities! We look to you for a lead. You are going to root out your slum public-houses. You are going to do more for the housing of your people. And in the larger sphere of the politics of the world you are still going to hold aloft the banner of freedom and righteousness. Send out your life-blood of brave endeavour, and we shall feel every heart-beat and respond to it, away under the Southern Cross, and wherever the Union Jack flies or English is spoken.