London season

“ But it would be impossible to be in London in the autumn or winter, during the months of shooting and hunting, and so, by common consent, the London season—a unique fact—was fixed for the months May, June, and July—a time when air in town is scarce, and suns are sultry, but a time in the country when Nature holds high festival, and all who have eyes to see and ears to hear are equally honoured at her banquet. ”

“ Those rather futile fields and songs of birds and bud-spangled trees are all very well, if you have the narrow mind of the Nature-lover; but how much sweeter are the things of the hands, the darling friendliness of the streets! The maidenly month of April makes little difference to us here. We know, by the calendar and by our physical selves, that it is the season of song and quickening blood. Beyond London, amid the spray of orchard foam, bird and bee may make their carnival; lusty spring may rustle in the hedgerows; golden-tasselled summer may move along the shadow-fretted meadows ”

“ THE LONDON SEASON.
This season is not like most others that we have known. It has afforded a practical answer to the question why we English people have selected the most beautiful time of the year for abandoning our country houses and green retreats, and burying ourselves in the heart of a noisy, dusty, stuffy, burning city. The country is not green, and the town is not hot—not half as hot as it should be for comfort. It is all very well to talk of the romantic aspects of Nature ”

“ For a month of preparation, while the house-fronts in the fashionable streets are escaladed by painters emulous of the perils of the samphire-gatherer's dreadful trade, the air is filled with the clean, turpentiny odor, and the eye is pleased with the soft colors in which the grimy walls remember the hopes of another spring, of another London season. ”

“ THE London season was at its height, but though the pure sunshine was glistening on mountain-top and green meadow, and beginning to tinge the corn-fields with a golden tint in country places, where peace and quietness seemed to reign, and leafy greenery called on every one who loved nature to come and enjoy it in its summer flush of beauty, yet the great city was still filled not only by those who could not leave its crowded streets, but by hundreds who lingered there in the mere pursuit of pleasure, for whom the beauties of nature had no charm. ”

“ During the autumn most of us—overworked men as most Londoners are—seek for recreation or relaxation on the continent, or at watering-places, or in the country; in the period which intervenes between the return to town and the commencement of the true season, each one is merely occupied with his own private affairs, but when the parliamentary season, which is identical in point of time with that which is commonly spoken of as the London season, has fairly set in, London is the clearing-house of the world. ”

“ How often at the end of morning with the fashionable world—afternoon with the more quiet part of the community—and evening with the very respectable indeed—a young cavalier may be seen curbing a horse "impatient of the rein," at the nursery-grounds of the King's Road, till a bouquet of the most fragrant exotics is brought out. It does not ask much imagination to read a history of sighs, smiles, and blushes on every leaf. But I have less to say for the spring than for any other season; it has a name, which is tantamount to everything in this world—all know the pretensions of a London spring . ”

“ Why should not a man like to spend eight or nine weeks in the midst of this Arabian Night’s dream which mortals call the London season? There is something for all ages, and all conditions of men. Whether you are a fat baby, and are rolled about in a perambulator—or a prosy old gentleman, and take your airings upon a steady cob—whether your heart’s desire is for sugarplums, or a good sleepy discussion of the Church Rate Question—you will find the means of gratifying it, better than you would do anywhere else, in London, when the season is at its height. ”

“ London in December bears by no means an inviting and exhilarating aspect; still there are moods and conditions of minds with which at this season it better assimilates than in its more bright and genial periods. No glare, or glitter, or display then distracts our spirits. Over the vast city and its ever-moving myriads, seems to hang one dark, thick, impenetrable veil, beneath whose dingy folds, joy and misery, innocence and crime, indigence and wealth, alike hurry on their way, undistinguishable and indistinct. ”

“ As I sat out with being candid, I must now confess to the only want at the close of the London winter; snow-drops cannot be enjoyed in their full perfection. That we dwellers in town have the most beautiful as well as the greatest delight in flowers, I intend proving during the next season. ”

“ Even the children creep timidly through the streets; the carriages go cautious and hearse-like along; daylight is dim and obscure; the town is not filled, nor the brisk mirth of Christmas commenced; the unsocial shadows flit amidst the mist, like men on the eve of a fatal conspiracy. Each other month in London has its charms for the experienced. Even from August to October, when The Season lies dormant, and Fashion forbids her sons to be seen within hearing of Bow, the true lover of London finds pleasure still at hand, if he search for her duly. ”

“ London, in May, when the streets are filled with gay equipages, whose prancing steeds seem to rejoice in the dignity of their position, taking a part in the great saturnalia of rank and fashion—when the dresses of the ladies are only eclipsed by the brilliancy of the shop-windows which they daily haunt—when the artist and musician bring forth their choicest wares to delight the senses and gratify the perceptions of the great and the little who throng busy London in this fairest season of the year. ”

“ The truth is, I am not disposed to quarrel with London (any more than I am with my “bread and butter,” and for a similar reason) at any season; so that the less I say or think of it now the better. Suffice it, that London in August is a species of nonentity, to all but those amateur architects who “go partnerships” in candle-lit grottos at the corners of courts. But, en revanche, it is to them a month that, like May to the chimney-sweepers, “only comes once a year.” ”

“ I suppose we must; for it is mid-winter in London now, and the fashionable season is at its height. But we must not be expected to look about us there in the best possible humour, after having left the flowers and the sunshine behind us. We will, at all events, contrive to reach London on May-day, that we may not lose the only relic that is left us of the sports which were once as natural to this period as the opening of the leaves or the springing of the grass. I mean the gloomy merriment of Jack in the Green, and the sad hilarity of the chimney-sweepers. ”

“ We have no seasons. We have no means of marking the delicate pomp of the year's procession. We have not even the divisions of day and night, for, as I have said, boats must sail at all hours of the day and night, and their swarthy crews are ever about. In Shadwell we have only more seamen or less seamen. Summer is a spell of stickiness and Winter a time of fog. Season of flower and awakening be blowed! I'll have the same again!
This is a book of adventures in and about London: not a sociological pamphlet ”

“ There is little good, and much bad about that false-birth, the London season before Easter. The real people will not keep open-houses for shadows. Those who constantly inhabit London, maintain the even tenor of their way, and will not suffer themselves to be drawn into demonstrations which can have no substantial results. ”

“ Just, however, at this season, the Malay tongue might be used in London. How many sweet, bright, and lovely faces pass us by! Most women look well in their bonnets; and as for the other sort of flowers, we have them in profusion and perfection—such exquisite violets, such delicate lilies of the valley, such a rainbow world of hyacinths as now fill the rooms with perfume. ”

“ Nowhere is success so sudden, so overwhelming, so blinding as it is in this vast city of London; and nowhere, alas! is that success so soon over, forgotten, eclipsed. The deity of one season is forsaken in the next; the Ruler-of-the-Universe must perforce return to his hovel, and, to say truth, he generally takes the change badly. London has a short memory. ”

“ But if London at all times is better than any other place you could name, what is it not during the season, when every joy is at its climax, and when all your friends and acquaintances from all parts of the country, and from all parts of the continent, and from all parts of the world, come dropping in thick as gnats used to be in summer evenings—when there were summer evenings, and there were gnats. ”

“ The painting-up which the apartments, as they always call themselves, undergo inside and out, in preparation for the season, is a rite to which all London bows during April as far as it can afford it. The lodging-house may restrict itself to picking out in fresh green its front door and window-frames, or perhaps reddening its area railing; but private houses pretending to be smart clothe themselves from eave to basement in coats of creamy white, or other blond tints susceptible of the soonest harm from the natural and artificial climates of London. ”

“ London indeed erupts every evening between the hours of five and six, and throws out showers of tired men, who lie where they fall—or rather where their season ticket drops them—until morning, when they arise and crowd back again to the seething crater. ”

“ This is the hour at which matter of fact London dons her poetical night-dress.
We pass Lambeth Palace and its ruin-like watch-tower. The boat stops at Vauxhall-bridge. We get off, and walk through some of the streets of Lambeth; we pass under a railway-bridge, and stand in front of Vauxhall.
“The season is over! every body is gone out of town,” etc., write the correspondents of provincial and continental newspapers—“every body”—that is to say, every body with the exception of two millions of men, who make rather a considerable noise in the northern, southern, and eastern towns of London. ”

“ Even when they are in the full fling of the London season, it is instructive to notice the enthusiasm and sparkle wherewith they discuss their projected tours a few weeks later among Swiss mountains or up Norwegian fiords. Also it may be observed how of all the entertainments of the year the most popular are the Flower-shows, and the afternoon Garden-parties in certain private 189grounds. Even the wretched, unmanly sport of Hurlingham has become fashionable, chiefly because it has brought men and women out of London for a day into the semblance of a country place. ”

“ Many country towns had a monthly ball throughout the winter, in some of which the same apartment served for dancing and tea-room.”
People in the country were then more dependent on each other for entertainment, there was no looking upon the London season as a necessity, and people could not rush about from one end of England to another for a night or two as they now do. ”

“ October in London is a season with marked and special characteristics. Restaurants are crowded; Bond Street is blocked by shopping ladies; seats at the theatre must be booked ten days in advance.
This October "Season" is the product of many forces. The genuine Londoners, who have been away, for health or sport or travel, in August and [191] September now come back with a rush, and hasten to make up for their long exile by feverish activity in the pursuit of pleasure. But the Londoners by no means have the town to themselves. The Country Cousins are present in great force. ”

“ I don’t care about the London season! It is too matrimonial. People are either hunting for husbands, or hiding from them. ”

“ They come up to London in the winter, not to look for any regular work or employment, but because they know that they can have a nightly shelter, and bread night and morning for nothing, during that season, and can during the day collect bones, rags, &c. ”

“ A MUSICAL NIGHT THE OPERA, THE PROMENADES
For a few months of the year London is the richest of all cities in the matter of music; but it is only for a few months. From the end of August to the end of October we have Sir Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts. From the end of May to mid-July we have the Grand Season at Covent Garden. Interspersed between these, at intervals all too rare, we have individual concerts at the Queen's, Steinway, and Æolian Halls; sometimes an Autumn Season of opera or Russian ballet ”

“ Thus the Queen's Men, in a petition written probably in the autumn of the following year, 1584, requested the Privy Council to dispatch "favorable letters unto the Lord Mayor of London to permit us to exercise within the city," and the Lord Mayor refused, with the significant remark that "if in winter ... the foulness of season do hinder the passage into the fields to play, the remedy is ill conceived to bring them into London." ”

“ If you chanced to meet a man in Piccadilly in September, you might be sure that he would be wearing country clothes and would assure you that he was only "passing through" between Doncaster and Scotland. Nowadays the Season has no particular limits. London is nearly as full in December [71] as it is in May. Dinners and plays and suppers at restaurants are as frequent, and, barring the fogs, as bright, at Christmas as at Midsummer. Even in September Clubland is not deserted; and there are people bold enough to defy the world by returning from their summer exodus as early as October. ”