Identifier: wandererinlondon00luca (find matches)
Title: A wanderer in London
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall), 1868-1938
Subjects: Art -- England London London (England) -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : The Macmillan company London, Methuen & co.

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uct in an infinitesimal span of years underconditions such as these — with poverty and dirt and fogthrust on us from our birth — not our own poverty anddirt, but so powerful as to resist all efforts ? One has the same gloomy atheistic oppression as onecomes into London on the South-Eastern, and in fact onevery line where the carriage window is above these squalidLondon roofs and chimneys. One gets it again on thetop of the Monument or St. Pauls or the tower of thenew Roman Cathohc cathedral at Westminster, lookingdown at the ceaseless activities of what surely must beinsects — so busy about trifles or nothing at all, so near theground, so near annihilation. In a lighter mood I have sometimes as I looked out ofthe window of a railway carriage in the country allowedmyself to dwell on the thought that there is not a squareinch of this green England through which we are passingbut possesses title-deeds reposing in some lawyers safe.The same thought if indulged in one of these London
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AVTKH Till (MUNKMi s \AN in:i: (.i;i:sT lUrrKK JIV VAN DYtK IN THK NATIONAL i; A I.I.KIt Y SOUTH-EASTERN STANZAS 193 trains, cannot but land one in a feeling for the law which,beginning with something like respect, must culminate inreverence. Everjihing belongs to someone — that is thetruism which finally emerges. In the country, where thereare unfenced heaths and hills and commons, one can forgetit; but never in a city, where for every open space a codeof regulations must be drawn up and displayed, and whereevery house in a small terrace may have a different owner.A further reflection is that although the lawyers may notinherit the earth (indeed they are expressly excluded bythe beatitude), they will at any rate be indispensable at thenegotiations. To come into London between the roofs of Bermondseyon the South-Eastern, as I do very often, has, however, itscompensations: for in the distance the shipping is alwaysto be seen to carry ones thoughts afar. It was on oneoccasion, when th

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