No mental image of London from a distance.—"He knows his London."—What he knows.—The born Londoner.—The provincial immigrant.—His preconceptions.—His aloneness.—His induction.—He becomes the Londoner.—London, an abstraction.—Its forgetfulness.—Its tolerance.—Its assimilative powers.—London, a permanent World's Fair.—Mental images of former Londoners.—London illimitable.—Trafalgar Square.—A horse down.—The Saturday-night market.—Class views.—What the Londoner sees from afar.—The foreigner's view of London.—The Londoner confronted with this view.—Its effect on him.—His ignorance of London.—London, a background.—What we remember of London.—London manifesting itself on the clouds.
Where the country ends.—The three Londons.—The psychological.—The Administrative County.—Natural London.—The ring of blackened tree trunks.—Elms.—The new carriages.—Entering on a motor car.—Its effects on the mind.—Distances to be thought of in new terms.—Entering on an electric tram.—The possibility of looking round.—A manifestation of the modern spirit.—The electric tram at night.—Its romantic appearance.—Entering London on a bicycle.—Its tiresomeness.—The just-outside-London 'bus.—Entering London on foot.—In a gipsy caravan.—The most intolerant method of entry.—The defect of rapid transit.—The Londoner abroad no longer sought after.—London the product of roads.—The Thames.—Roads historically considered.—The watermen.—The pampered jades of Belgia.—Climbing skywards versus spreading out.—Strata of past Londons.—Workmen's dwellings.—Georgian houses.—"Parades."—The speculative builder.—The pathos of his products.—A fairy-like effect near the Obelisk.—Entering London on a market wagon.—The dawn sounds of London.—Entering London by barge.—No longer a common method.—Entering London by railway.—The goods depôt.—The approach of the millennium.—The London landscape from a train window.—Its pathos.—Uncompleted histories.—A builder of the Pyramid of Cheops.
The oldest road.—Gravesend.—Its significance for sailors.—Thames barges.—The two kinds of work.—Their union.—Tilbury dock.—The chief officer.—The invisible rope.—The two ends of London.—The secret of London.—The millionaire.—The ferryman.—The Italians.—The streets paved with gold.—The modern appeal.—Former adventurers.—The immense crowd.—Buonaparte.—Other Napoleons—The spirit of modern work.—X.—P.—Hobbies.—Methods of individual work.—Routine work.—The necessity for asserting an individuality.—Women workers.—The matchbox maker.—Her ideals.—The very poor.—The caput mortuum.—The obverse and reverse of the medal.—The periodical press—The cabinet-maker.—The personal element.—Municipal Trading.—The bank clerk.—Stanley.—The cement works.—New processes.—The battle field.
The omnibus yard.—In search of work.—"London's the place."—Why London holds us.—The beleaguered fortress.—The leisured classes.—Social life. London freedom. Schopenhauer on English Society.—Towards barbarism.—The town of work.—The islands of the blest. The exhaustion of leisure in London.—The real good time.—The third State.—The chaffinch fancier.—Other "fanciers"—The pheasant raiser.—The Rye fisherman.—London's humour.—Its diffusion.—The power of generalisation.—Effect on the countryman of the Daily Press.—Effect on the Londoner.—Emerson on London conversations.—The disappearance of the raconteur.—Londoner's disinclination to listen to unlicensed preachers.—The London Sabbath.—The Sunday papers.—The two Hamlets.—"The parades."—London in the making.—Londoners in decay.
The cloisters of our Valhalla.—The unknown author.—The waste of individualities.—The pleasantest size for a graveyard.—The cemetery.—Athens versus Kensington High Street.—The Londoner.—The impossibility of finding him.—The death of the Spirit of Place.—The individualist and his neighbours.—At Père-la-Chaise.—The discussion in the cloisters.—The school boys.—The disappearance of the great figure.—Spring clouds.—The forgotten hills.—The stern reformer.—Building improvements.—"History" ends with the young Pretender.—The beginning of "movements"—The Ideal city of the reformer.—The end of furniture.—Utopia.—The alternative.—The end of London.—The elements.—The charity school.—The garden plots.—The Monastic reformers.—"That neurasthenia joke."—The sick farm labourer.—A race that will survive.—London from a distance.—The cloud.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1939, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 84 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
