The Children's Book of London. G. E. Mitton
the bridge is quite empty then the man in the tower touches some machinery, and slowly the great bridge, which is like a road, remember, rises up into the air in two pieces, just as you might lift your hands while the elbows rested on your knees without moving, and the beautiful ship passes underneath, and the bridge goes back again quite gently into its place. This bridge has been called the Gate of London, and it is a very good name, for it looks like a giant gate over the river. Close to it is the Tower, of which you must often have read in your history books—the grim Tower where so many people who were not wicked at all were imprisoned, and where some of them were beheaded because, in the time when they lived, there were no laws such as there are now safeguarding people's lives. The Tower will have a chapter to itself later on.
This is all I am going to tell you at present about the City and the East End, because it is quite impossible to tell everything. In the West End, too, there are many interesting things, and the most interesting of them must have chapters to themselves; for instance, the palaces belonging to the King, and the hospitals which are entirely for children. But there are other things which belong to the whole of London, and must be mentioned here. There is, for instance, the Embankment—rather a long word, but not a difficult one. It means the wall which was built for miles along beside the river to make a road and to prevent the river flooding right up to the houses. In old days, when people had their houses on the water's edge, when there came a high tide or a strong wind, the water washed up over them, and did a great deal of damage; so it was decided to build a strong wall beside the river, which the water, even in the highest tide, could not leap over. It was a wonderful piece of work. It is difficult to think of the number of cartloads of solid earth and stone that had to be put down into the water to make a firm foundation, and when that was done the wall had to be built on the top. But though the river had been banked up it could still make itself disagreeable. In 1928, driven by strong winds and high tides, after much rain, it flowed up over the Embankment in some places and broke through in others. It flooded many houses, and some people were drowned. The river also helps to cause fog; it seems as though it had gone to the smoke demon to find out what they could do to be spiteful, and they had agreed they could not do anything each by himself, but that together they could be very nasty. So every now and then the damp air which rises from the river, and the heavy smoke which comes out of the hundreds of chimneys, join together and make a thick black veil, and hang over London and come down into the streets so that people can't see where they are going, and when they breathe their noses and mouths are filled with nasty, dirty smuts. You who are London children know Mr. Fog-fiend very well. When you wake on a morning in November and find the room still dark, and are told it is time to get up when it looks like the middle of the night, then you know the fog has come; and he visits rich and poor alike. There is no keeping him in the East End.
With all her money and her cleverness London has never found out anything good enough to tempt Mr. Fog-fiend to go right away. No, he comes often, and stays, perhaps, for weeks together, and the eyes of children smart and their throats feel thick, and they find it so dull to do lessons by artificial light; and when the time comes for the daily walk they cannot go out, because they might get run over, not being able to see. And everything is very quiet, for the omnibuses and taxi-cabs have to go at a walking pace for fear they might run into something. And it is no wonder sometimes that children get cross and tired when they cannot see the sun, which may be shining brightly in the country all day long. Mr. Fog-fiend has many dresses; sometimes he puts on a white one instead of a black one, and that is not so bad, because it is quite light, but just as if soft white shawls were hung in front of your eyes so that you couldn't see. But it is even more dangerous to try to cross the road in a white fog than in a black one. It is like living inside a big white cloud. Then there is a yellow dress, which is the ugliest of all. It is like yellow smoke, and it gets into people's throats and makes them cough, and it steals into all the rooms so that even the lamp across the room looks quite dim; and the air is full of it, and you taste it in all your food. But it is lucky that there are not always fogs in London, or no one could live; they only come in the last months of the year or the very early ones, and in the summer London children do not see fogs any more than country children do, though perhaps the sun does not shine always quite so brightly in London as it does in the country.
Close to the river are the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, both very wonderful. I have not told you about Westminster yet, because I was afraid of confusing you with too many things at once, but you ought to know now. You can tell for yourselves which side of London it is on from the name—that is, if you are not very stupid. Yes, Westminster is on the west side of the City, but what is rather odd is that once Westminster and London were two separate places with long green fields and hedges lying between them, but the houses grew and grew until they met. Westminster is very proud, and though now she is mixed up with London, she says, 'I will be a city, too.' And so she is a city within London, but there is no difference that you could tell between the two; the houses run on just the same, and no one could find out, merely by looking, where Westminster begins.
Well, this is enough for one chapter, and in the next we will see some more things about this wonderful town of London, which can swallow a whole city like Westminster and allow her still to be a city, and yet not feel any indigestion!
CHAPTER III
THE KING'S PALACES
In the last chapter I said something about the King's palace. One of the first things that foreigners ask when they come to London is, 'Where does the King live?' and when they see his London house they are quite disappointed, because Buckingham Palace is not at all beautiful. It stands at one end of a park called St. James's Park, and it is a huge house, with straight rows of plain windows. In front there is a bare yard, with high railings round it, and beside the gate there are sentries on guard. The palace is large, but very ugly, and anyone seeing only the outside might wonder why the King of England, who is so rich, lived in such a dull house while he was in London. But Buckingham Palace is very magnificent inside, and if you saw it on a day when the ladies go to Court to be presented to the King and Queen, you would no longer think it dull. In the time of Queen Victoria, the ladies who wished to be presented, which means to be introduced to the Queen, had to go there in the daytime, and as they were obliged to wear evening dress and to have waving white feathers in their hair, and sometimes had to wait hours and hours before their turn came to kiss the Queen's hand, it cannot have been much pleasure to them, and they must have felt often very cross, especially when it was cold. But since the reign of King Edward VII., the Drawing-rooms, as they are called, when ladies are presented to their Sovereign, are in the evening, and Queen Mary has had garden parties where young girls are 'presented' too, in afternoon dress. It is not very interesting reading about descriptions of furniture, so I will only say that the great staircase in the palace is of white marble, and in the throne-room there is crimson satin and much gilt, and the walls of the rooms are hung with magnificent pictures, and everything is just like the palace that one reads about in fairy tales, to which the Prince took home the Princess when he had won her.
QUEEN VICTORIA MEMORIAL AND BUCKINGHAM PALACE.
Before Buckingham Palace was built, the house which stood here belonged to a man called the Earl of Arlington, and in his time no one in England knew anything about tea. Beer was generally drunk at every meal—beer for breakfast, beer for dinner, beer for supper! But this Earl bought a pound of tea in Holland for sixty shillings, which was a great deal to give, for a pound of tea now costs about two shillings. And he brought it home to his house and made the tea there, so that it seems very likely that the first cup of tea ever drunk in England was made where Buckingham Palace now stands, and I expect there are very few people who know that.
At the side of Buckingham Palace