Queen's Road

“ Even in the midst of houses, the path suggests school-children with their luncheon-baskets, or workmen seeking eagerly the noonday interval or the twilight rest. A footpath cannot be quite spoiled, so long as it remains such; you can make a road a mere avenue for fast horses or showy women, but this humbler track keeps its simplicity, and if a queen comes walking through it, she comes but as a village maid. ”

“ When the Queen of Great Britain starts for Windsor or Balmoral, or on any other railway journey, a time is chosen that will cause the least inconvenience to traffic; for the invariable rule is that no other trains may run over the road the Queen is using. All the switches are locked. Preceded and followed by galloping troopers of the Household Guard, the Queen's carriage is driven to the railway station at a furious pace. No one—I mean no ordinary person—knows the hour at which she will start or the streets through which she will go. ”

“ Queen’s road, Queen street, Hammersmith. HAVELOCK VILLAS.
1 Groser William George
3 Lloyd Henry
1 Kemp W. The Chancellor
2 Tranter James, fruiterer
Harvey T. builder
3 Lorey Thomas, dairy
4 Flory H. grocer
Queensberry place, Cromwell road, South Kensington.
1 Lampston Henry
9 Shadwell Lawrence
Queensborough terrace, Kensington gardens, Bayswater. ”

“ The roads are almost impassable. The carriages of the nobility and gentry infinitely worse than the stage-coaches in England; and the inns want all the accommodations they are intended for.
You may easily imagine that the sight of a new queen, from the position of the kingdom to the capital, brought upon my passage great crowds of people from the adjacent towns and villages, yet I believe you may see more on a fair day from Charing Cross to the Royal Exchange than I have met upon the road from Altona to Copenhagen. ”

“ New streets have been made, some of the principal of which are Queen Victoria Street, Southwark Street, Northumberland Avenue, Commercial Road, and the new thoroughfare from Oxford Street to Bethnal Green; many other leading thoroughfares, which had become inadequate for the increased traffic of the present day, have been widened and improved, greatly to the convenience and comfort of the public ”

“ Have you ever, as a child, looking, large-eyed and a little frightened it may be, out upon the bigness of London, wondered where the houses ended and Gods own country began, or asked where the last house of the last street looked out upon the meadows, and the final flag-stone led on to the footpath of the King's Highway? ”

“ And now from the window of a four-wheeled cab the Queen of Babylon beheld the wonders of London. Buckingham Palace she thought uninteresting; Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament little better. But she liked the Tower, and the River, and the ships filled her with wonder and delight.
'But how badly you keep your slaves. How wretched and poor and neglected they seem,' she said, as the cab rattled along the Mile End Road.
'They aren't slaves; they're working-people,' said Jane.
'Of course they're working. That's what slaves are. Don't you tell me. ”

“ A wide street, the terminus of a tramway, a mile-long row of cottages, a would-be Gothic church; here you have it. Before you, by degrees, York unfolds itself, past the military barracks and nondescript, but always disappointing, streets, until, emerging from Fishergate, the ancient city, free from suburban excrescences, opens out, with the grim castle in front, and the Ouse and Skeldergate Bridge to the left. The so-called “London Road” lies away beyond the Ouse, its name referring to the Doncaster, Ferrybridge, Sherburn, and Tadcaster route taken by some of the old-time coaches. ”

“ THE FOUR ROADS PART I: TOM 1 FOUR roads in Sussex mark out a patch of country that from the wooded, sea-viewing hills behind Dallington slips down over fields and ponds and spinneys to the marshes of Hailsham and Horse Eye. The North Road, slatting the heights with its pale, hard streak, runs from far Rye to further Lewes, a road of adventures and distances, passing Woods Corner and Three Cups Corner, Punnetts Town and Cade Street, till it joins the London Road at Cross-in-Hand. ”

“ The throbbing car rushed on, through the outer suburbs, on past the last clusters of decorous, red-tiled villas, on through the area of market gardens, where the town first meets, and mingles with the country, on the north side of London, and so out, at last, on to the Great North Road, unchecked, and unchallenged.
The broad high road stretched ahead, empty and deserted, in the brilliant noon sunshine, as far as eye could see.
The car leapt at the road like a live thing—
At last, the familiar, white-painted signpost, the Paradise-Hades post, flashed into view on the left of the road. ”

“ When the only public approaches to Parliament were King Street and Union Street, these were so wretchedly paved, that when the King went in state to the House, the ruts had to be filled up with bundles of fagots to allow the royal coach a safe transit. While the art of street-paving was thus so imperfect, that of road-making was equally defective, so that the country visitor to the metropolis, and its dangers of coach-driving, had generally a sufficient preparative for the worst during his journey to town. ”

“ An ideally smooth, hard, high road, with no more of uphill and down than a coach could travel over at a canter going up, and at a rattling trot, with the skid on, going downhill, it was a road that every sporting Londoner knew by heart, and many a London man and woman who cared nothing for sport.... The ancient glories of the road live for the author, and when he walks along the highway from London to Brighton, he seems to tread on holy ground. ”

“ In that mode of approach we missed some features of the sublimity belonging to any of the common approaches upon a main road; we missed the whirl and the uproar, the tumult and the agitation, which continually thicken and thicken throughout the last dozen miles before you reach the suburbs. Already at three stages' distance, (say 40 miles from London,) upon some of the greatest roads, the dim presentment of some vast capital reaches you obscurely and like a misgiving. ”

“ You have got in modern times that further curious reaction due to growing excellence of communications—that is, due to the growth of the Road—the pulse of the great modern city. Crowds of human beings pour out of Victoria or Liverpool Street into London and pour back from London in the evening. The station of St. Lazare in Paris is, in Europe, the most striking visual evidence of this strange modern development, great floods of human beings cascading into the city at the opening day and ebbing back at its close. ”

“ For miles the old road is now grass-grown and forms a most delightful walk, with magnificent views from the Thames Valley to the South Downs. The days of the coaches have, alas! passed, and the new road, with its tangle of telegraph wires, is beloved by every motorist and motor-cyclist who spins westward in Surrey.
Hugh waited anxiously in the little lounge which overlooks the courtyard. He went into the garden, and afterwards stood in impatience beneath the archway from which the street is approached. Later, he strolled along the road over which he knew Dorise must come. ”

“ The vast improvements which are everywhere conspicuous throughout the length of the King’s Road, as regards that portion of it which is within the boundaries of Chelsea, are far more numerous than in any other road in the metropolis. At the eastern and western extremities of the parish, there are Railway Stations, then there are the steamboats, besides these there are the omnibuses traversing the road every quarter of an hour. What a contrast does the King’s Road now present when compared with what it was at the commencement of this century! ”

“ No business traffic is permitted on its wide and well-sprinkled roadway, the morning and afternoon procession of carriages taking its wealthy residents to and from business at times recalls the Queen’s Drive in the London season. ”

“ The Oriental Hotel, the banks, the shipping offices, the business houses, and all the legations save only the [221] American, are clustered on or near the river in a low-lying and unattractive quarter of the town. But follow the long, dingy, squalid highway known as the New Road, a thoroughfare lined with third-rate Chinese shops and thronged with rickshaws, carriages, bicycles, motors, street-cars, and Asiatics of every religion and complexion, and you will come at length into a portion of the city as different from the mercantile district as Riverside Drive is from the Bowery. ”

“ The newest street in London town, The Kingsway, the Kingsway! The newest street in London town, Who’ll pace it up and pace it down? The brave, the strong, who strive and try, And think and work, who fight and die To make their England’s royal way The King’s Way, the King’s Way!
The noblest street in London town, The Kingsway, the Kingsway! The noblest street in London town, The stir of life beats up and down; In serried ranks the sabres shine, And Art and Craft and Thought divine, All crowd and fill the great highway, The Kingsway, the Kingsway! ”

“ No part of England is more thickly strewn with attractionsPg 191 for the American tourist and in no other section do conditions for motor travel average better.
From London to York, the capital city of the shire, runs the Great North Road, undoubtedly the finest highway in all Britain. It is laid out on a liberal scale, magnificently surfaced and bordered much of the way by wide and beautifully kept lawns and at times skirted with majestic trees. ”

“ The wet street gleamed silver in the moonlight, and was all but deserted. The [Pg 30] traffic had thinned down to an occasional hansom or private carriage, and there were few foot-passengers abroad. I did not meet a soul along the whole of Whitehall except the policemen, their wet mackintoshes glistening in the moonlight.
But, as I reached the corner of Parliament Square, I saw, just across the road, a man and woman walking rapidly in the direction of Westminster Bridge. ”

“ The King's Road stands like a noisy Cheap Jack outside the sanctities of Chelsea. Behind its chatter are the quietest streets in the world, streets that are silent because they prefer rest to noise and not at all because they have nothing to say. The King's Road has been hired by Chelsea to keep foreigners away, and the faint smile that the streets wear is a smile of relief because that noisy road so admirably achieves its purpose. In this mellow evening light the little houses glow, through the river mists, across the cobbles. ”

“ And the high-road, a hundred years ago, was not that grass-grown desert of the present time. It was alive with constant travel and traffic: the country towns and inns swarmed with life and gaiety. The ponderous waggon, with its bells and plodding team; the light post-coach that achieved the journey from the "White Hart," Salisbury, to the "Swan with Two Necks," London, in two days; the strings of pack-horses that had not yet left the road; my lord's gilt post-chaise and six, with the outriders galloping on ahead; the country squire's great coach and heavy Flanders mares ”

“ Harper sadly says, ‘the Brighton of to-day is no place for the travel-worn;’ but, with his book in hand, the pedestrian, the horseman, the coachman, or the cyclist, may find the road that leads to it from town one of the most interesting and entertaining stretches of highway to be found anywhere.”—Daily Chronicle. ”

“ Thus I have commonly avoided the Great White Road—the broad, smooth turnpike—rock-bottomed and rolled by a State—without so much as a loitering curve to whet one's curiosity, nor a thank-you-ma'am to laugh over, nor a sinful hill to test your endurance—not so much as a dreamy valley! It pursues its hard, unshaded, practical way directly from some particular place to some other particular place and from time to time a motor-car shoots in at one end of it and out at the other, leaving its dust to settle upon quiet travellers like me. ”

“ In 1353 the high road running from Temple Bar, then the western limit of London, to Westminster was 'so full of holes and bogs' that the traffic was dangerous for men and carriages; and a little later all the roads near London were so bad, that carriers 'are oftentimes In peril of losing what they bring.' What must remote country roads have been like when these important highways were in this state? If members of Parliament, rich men riding good horses, could not get to London, how did the clumsy wagons and carts of the day fare? ”

“ The driver, a North countryman of sturdy temper, insisted upon knowing an exact address, but upon receiving a reply which savoured too much of carelessness about The Future Life, he whipped up his horse and drove northward as he was bid, taking, as is the invariable custom of hackney coachmen, the largest and the widest artery of the place, a street known for some centuries as the London Road, [Pg 134] called during the eighties and nineties The Boulevard, but since the feat of arms of General Baden-Powell, characteristically and finally christened Mafeking Avenue. ”

“ We follow the direction given, and suddenly we are there—not at Rosebank, but quite out of even Greater London. The street ends abruptly. Trams and trains and gas and shops are left behind, and all at once we are in the country. The road is lined with hedgerows, dusty indeed, but still alive. Elms of respectable dimensions look down upon big fields, with here and there an oak, and cows resting under it. ”