An American's London

AN AMERICAN'S LONDON LOUISE CLOSSER HALE •ADAYFOR^TOIL-^wNHOUP^ •FORi^PORTc^ BUT FOR;A FRIEND -LIFE IS TOO-3HORT l\ ^M^-^' AN AMERICAN'S LONDON By LOUISE CLOSSER HALE Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/americanslondonOOhale AN AMERICAN'S LONDON BY LOUISE CLOSSER HALE ILLUSTRATED HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON - MCMXX M^^ An American's London Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published September, 1920 u-v ILLUSTRATIONS On Combing January Seas Frontispiece "This Maisonette Has the Charm of Being in Chelsea" Facing p. 88 "Spring, Your Lordship, Spring!" " 210 Country Inns and Joy-rides—History Without Any Strain on the Intellect " 238 Country Places That Could Be Reached by Tltbe " 280 ' The River, Which, of Course, Means the Thames . ' 318 Going Straight onto Mauveish Moors *' 324 "If It Should Rain!" \ . " 328 AN AMERICAN'S LONDON AN AMERICAN'S LONDON Chapter I New York. I love him!" BUT This is no way to begin a travel book ; a traveling to England and a staying there in the cold of their adored spring. Yet it is this cry which is driving me away from all the comforts of a country to one that is supposed to be suffering from the lack of them. It is not my loving him that sends me off on combing Januaiy seas; frankly, if I were in love with "him," whatever him he may be, I should not go away at all. I might pretend that I would, and advise others to do so, but when the time came I should hang around his club door, hoping for one more look at him. Oh, I know us! Still—in the words of the English, whose shores I am about to visit—I am "fed up" with Cora's com- plaint. A girl with a name as sophisticated as hers ought to be able to take care of herself, and not get so deeply into the mire of love that she has to drop in every morning after my breakfast, and sometimes before breakfast • (and axioms come hard before coffee), to ask me for a thought to hold on to that she might get through the day. I always give her a thought. I tell her, for in- stance, that a man who would ogle a strange : — AN AMERICAN'S LONDON woman over his fiancee's shoulder in a restaurant would cause her worse misery after she married him; that discovering him in these tricks now is a pure gift from—I said Venus, for Cora thinks she is a pagan, although a member of the Baptist Church. "How fortunate that you are able to read him aright before it is too late," I console. "Unghuh!" sniffs Cora. "Now you know his base self, and when you find that a man is base his fascination must sooner or later become a poor, mean thing." "That's right," gulps the advised. "Then go through the day," I said, "with a singing of thanksgiving in your heart that soon you will be out of bondage to him." It is always at the end of such thoughts for the day which I offer Cora that she pipes up with "But I love him!" On this especial morning in January I was about to turn on her and shout out that I was sick of love hers and everybody else's—that a woman of forty standing with reluctant feet which pointed toward fifty had found out ways to keep her interested other than listening for the door-bell, telephone, letter- carrier, and all such modern means which pleasantly torture us in the absence of the loved but distrusted one. This speech, if fiercely delivered, would probably break our friendship and I could then go happily out into the highways and byways of life, where, of course, I would find no evidence of hymeneal pursuits. It is as well, perhaps, that the telephone-bell rang before I had an opportunity of cutting the Gordian knot following upon Cora's, "But I love him." She is not entirely a fool, and she might have asked why — AN AMERICAN'S LONDON I waited until I was my present age to hand out this sort of stuff—she is a slangy girl—why I had not preached this in my youth instead of taking up at fifteen with a very young man whom I so adored that I walked home from parties with my knees bent that he could the more comfortably keep his arm in a horizontal position around my waist. This would have been embarrassing, for I would have had no adequate reply beyond untruthfully regretting that wisdom had not come to me earlier in life—at which Cora would have sniffed. However, Clotho, Atropos, Lachesis, or whichever of the Three Fates had my case in charge, rang the telephone-bell, and as we were in my room Cora did not plunge for the receiver. The message was the answer to my prayer for surcease from love—snappy over the wire—one, two, three, four, five words: ''Want to go to London?" vibrated at me. I could then and there have put down the receiver and said to Cora, ''I am offered a job by a theatrical manager to go to London to play," and if she had asked why it mightn't have been a publisher sending me across to do a book I would have replied that a publisher, or his representative, took infinite leisure over such arrangements. He enjoys (appears to enjoy) the preliminaries, and probably charges them to the firm. After an exchange of courtesies he would have suggested that if I had any time for tea, or if not tea, for lunch at the Brevoort, it would be very pleasant, as he hadn't seen me for a long time. If the firm was very business-like he might end up with some such definite offer as, "Are you fond of trans- atlantic travel in January?" AN AMERICAN'S LONDON My reply over the telephone was not that of the Complete Actress, who would inunediately have responded, "Yes," and then regretted that she had not shown more indifference with a view to raising her salary. My life had become tinged with a writer's reserve, or at least with a reserve of one who tries to write and who, so far as the printed word measures a writer, has succeeded beyond her own wildest ex- pectations. I never see a book of mine without wondering how ever I could have managed it! Still, playing in London would mean an escape from the Coras of life, and I admitted that I should like to talk it over. And at this there was no intimation of food to be offered me at any time. I was just to come over to the office immediately and ''walk right through." They mean business when you ''walk right through." Business for me, but not for those anxious ones gathered in the waiting-room through whom you walk—over whom you walk—your entrance into the inner office meaning the exit of all those of your type who stand without the gate. "Many are called, but few are chosen," cried one of my shabby contemporaries. She nodded cheerfully, but I knew the bitterness of her cup. I have tasted of it myself. The sight of those men and women—waiting—waiting—never ceases to appal me. For years I was one of those w^ho gather in the outer offices, and when I am an older woman I may be one of those again. "Learn a trade!" I want to cry to those waiting women. "Sew, tat, cook, write bad stories, but de- velop some other means of making money, however slight. Don't go through life feeling that your AN AMERICAN'S LONDON bread and butter depends solely upon the favor of the theatrical office-boy." But they will not learn a trade, and they furbish up their finery and each morning make the weary round of managerial offices. We of the theater know the tragedy of Broadway. I wonder the visitor to New York can find a charm in that wide, sparkling street. Must they not hear the footfalls of those many thousands on the treadmill—does not the weight of heavy hearts unconsciously make sight- seeing a burden? It doesn't seem so. The buses for the strangers trundle their freight, the barker calls through the megaphone, "This is the Rialto where the actresses walk up and down." The visitors laugh—and stare at us in search of work. When I had ''walked right through" I was in another office—not yet the "holy of hohes," but one full of those who had also been invited to share my privilege or who, with more courage than the other waiting ones, had pushed their way in and were keeping their eye on the closed door where un- doubtedly sat some splendid god. Typists were rattling madly on their machines, the office-boy (with two sets of manners, one for the outer and one for the inner rooms) ran about accomplishing nothing; vari- ous attaches of different theaters tore around in the squirrel-cage, and the whole effect of "big business" served to reduce the timid artist to an insignificant creature which the manager could do entirely without. Indeed, if the sensitive player does not stop to analyze this senseless confusion, he begins to feel that not only can they do without him, but without aU artists—that plays can be freely acted by the managers, the stenographers, and the bill-posters, and 5 — AN AMERICAN'S LONDON unless they cut thcii' salaries immediately this new order of things will be put through.

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