THE SOUL OF LONDON
logically considered, is London; so, in their own ways, are Brighton, Hastings, Southend-on-Sea, parts of the Riviera, and half of the Essex flats.
Highbury, I should say, is London, because the greater part of its inhabitants get their "supplies" from The Stores, and go for their intellectual stimulants to a place in Oxford Street. Thus the stores and the circulating library make London extend to Jubbulpore and to the married officers' bungalows on the Irawaddy. I heard the other day from an administrator of those parts. He was living in ruined temples, but his clothes, his boots, his whips, his tinned meats, his sauces, his mustard and his wines came from the one institution; he was astonishingly "well up" in the books of the year, better certainly than most London reviewers, because of the other. He had, too, a phonograph, which supplied him with piano music from St. James's Hall and the latest songs of the empire. These ruined temples where he camped for the night became little pieces of London; and we have lately had a Viceroy of India lamenting that Tottenham Court Road has stretched into the zenanas of the native states.
Yet in many places within the Administrative County the tendency is all towards "localising," or towards remaining separate centres. In Hampstead, for instance, the older residents buy most things of the local tradesmen, and newer families imitate them for sentimental or for social reasons. In poorer neighbourhoods this is much more the case. Old places of entertainment, like the Horns Assembly Rooms, flourish, and large
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