London Impressions: Etchings and Pictures in Photogravure

London Impressions: Etchings and Pictures in Photogravure

This seems to be a thing that all exclaim against, and but few see. The phrase is never varieda sure sign of lack of experience. One cries, Oh, the London Sunday! and another, It must be too dreadful for foreigners! and before the topic disappears something yet vaguer has been said, in a flickering manner, as to the Boulevards. But in fact London Sunday is little understood even by those who know its aspect, and the greater number do not know even so much. Obviously, it is one thing in the summer of livelong sunshine, and another thing in winter. When the tops of the steeples fly a blue and white sky as far as the eye may seea broad flag for the streets, and a narrow, wavering pennon for the alleys; when the reluctant faces of grey houses are compelled by the fires of the day to bandy reflections with the grey houses opposite; when the sun himself is lodged in every window, so that the town multiplies his very face, and sets up suns to the west in the morning and to the east in the eveningsuns in rows, and suns that run fluctuating along the windows of a long, unequal street; when the plane-tree is fresh and the leaf of the elm already dry, the London Sunday, from beginning to end, is passed by the London people out of doors. For this reason it is difficult to understand it; you cannot tell whither these streams of people are bound. They all have the gait of making for some end; they do not stroll, and there is doubtless some excursion afoot. The number of young men, in proportion to the numbers of older men, of women, girls, and children, is curious, especially in the further east. They go in great straggling gangs, and though they do nothingnot even much talkingthey give a false air of lawlessness to the streaming street. They are the ugliest of all the populace, their clothing, besides, being the most dull and indescribable, and their bearing indefinitely defiant. The men of other kinds and ages, and the women, who needs must[Pg 2] balance such a horde of men of twenty, seem to spend less of their Sunday on the road, and you may see them, accordingly, in great numbers in the open spacesthe vague lands on the other side of Clapton, for instance. Very few people of any kind seem to be within their houses in the free afternoon. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 32842
Author: Meynell, Alice
Release Date: Jun 16, 2010
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Hyde, William Henry, 1858-1925