West End

“ I saw and felt London at last: I got into the Strand; I went up Cornhill; I mixed with the life passing along; I dared the perils of crossings. To do this, and to do it utterly alone, gave me, perhaps an irrational, but a real pleasure. Since those days, I have seen the West-end, the parks, the fine squares; but I love the city far better. The city seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar, are such serious things, sights, and sounds. The city is getting its living—the West-end but enjoying its pleasure. ”

“ It is not the houses that people live in, or the theatres that they go to, or the churches to which they belong, or the street and number—the East End look or the West End look the great city carves on the faces of these men I see in the street—that determines what the men are like.
Their daily work lies deeper in them than their faces. One finds one's self as one flashes by being told things in their walk, in the way they hold their hands and swing their feet. ”

“ Nearly all the people who live in the East End are poor, and they live in long rows of mean houses in dirty streets, where the air is close and everything is grimy. There are parts of the East End, of course, where things are better than this, with clean streets and nice houses, but still, there is nothing to attract a visitor like the splendid buildings and the beautiful parks to be seen at the West End of town. ”

“ The dear soft people of the golden theatres and wonder-mansions of the West End do not see these creatures, do not dream that they exist. But they are here, alive, very much alive in their jungle. And woe the day when England is fighting in her last trench, and her able-bodied men are on the firing line! For on that day they will crawl out of their dens and lairs, and the people of the West End will see them, as the dear soft aristocrats of Feudal France saw them and asked one another, “Whence come they?” “Are they men?” ”

“ George.
"And see the most to amuse us," said Rollo.
"I think," said Mr. George, "on the whole, that the West End will be the best for us. There are a few great things in the city to be seen; but the every-day walks, and little excursions, and street sights are altogether more interesting at the West End. So we had better take our lodgings there, and go to the city when we wish to by the omnibuses that go down the Strand." ”

“ If the West End takes its pleasure by driving in the Park, the East, on the other hand, finds its relaxation on the tops of 'buses and trams, in walking about the flaring, gas-jetted street, in looking into shop windows, or in driving about in all the pride of a private, special coster's cart. If the rich do not know how the poor live, the poor, on the other hand, have but a hazy idea of how the rich live. If you asked the average slum-dweller how the rich spend their day, they would most likely say, "in drinking champagne and driving in motor cars." ”

“ Prince-Streeters were the natural enemies of all the surrounding streets. Yet, when the West-Enders came over in battle array, yelling, throwing stones, and driving in the timid lads caught out of bounds, all the North-Enders rose, forgot their local feuds, and went forth in awful array to chastise the wretches that lived at the West End. ”

“ London, indeed, West End London, is quite unaware that among its stateliest houses, in the very middle of its thoroughfares, there are modern caves in which the troglodytes still dwell which are sinister and dark as anything can be in modern life. ”

“ The population at that hour surges mainly westward and sees the dust of the day’s long racket turned into a dull golden haze. There is something that has doubtless often, at this particular moment, touched the fancy even of the bored and the blasés in such an emanation of hospitality, of waiting dinners, of the festal idea, of the whole spectacle of the West End preparing herself for an evening six parties deep. ”

“ Yet how inseparable from London is the thought of flowers! Can we picture the West End on a summer’s day without them? The dust-laid, freshly sprinkled squares and streets, where behind half-drawn blinds there is the fragrance of many blossoms; the bright harness of horses jangling as they champ the bit, a knot of flowers at every bridle; flower-sellers with baskets at all convenient corners, and along the roadway carts of Palms and growing plants bending and waving in the wind; every man one meets has got his button-hole, and every maiden wears her posy ”

“ It is delightful to realize the fact that while the West End of London is flaunting its splendors and the East End in struggling with its miseries, these great middle-class communities are living as comfortable, unpretending lives as if they were in one of our thriving townships in the huckleberry-districts. ”

“ I am most reminded of Bladesover and Eastry by all those regions round about the West End parks; for example, estate parks, each more or less in relation to a palace or group of great houses. The roads and back ways of Mayfair and all about St. James’s again, albeit perhaps of a later growth in point of time, were of the very spirit and architectural texture of the Bladesover passages and yards; they had the same smells, the space, the large cleanest and always going to and fro where one met unmistakable Olympians and even more unmistakable valets, butlers, footmen in mufti. ”

“ Gradually, as a new and entirely different generation came to the front, the aristocratic traditions which had dominated West End life were discarded, and another kind of club-man began to make his influence felt.
Members of energetic temperament found the atmosphere of idle lassitude which hung about some West End clubs so stifling that a number of them, filled with a desire for exercise, formed what they called a “walking society.” ”

“ On Sunday night, about half-past ten, the squares and the street thoroughfares of the West End of London are not thronged. The exodus of the crowds from the East End which takes place earlier every evening, so that the poor may catch a single holiday glimpse of those more fortunate, is by that time over and done with. ”

“ Factory chimneys smoke right over against Westminster with an air of carelessly not having permission, and the whole effect of industrial London and of all London east of Temple Bar and of the huge dingy immensity of London port, is to me of something disproportionately large, something morbidly expanded, without plan or intention, dark and sinister toward the clean clear social assurance of the West End. ”

“ Few streets in the West End have escaped being modernised, and façades of every period and style may now be seen side by side with such old Georgian mansions as still remain. On the whole, however, Berkeley Square has survived pretty well, and still retains a good deal of its old appearance.
The streets leading out of it, though in many cases some of the houses have been altered, also keep that air of quiet repose which makes this part of London so pleasant to live in. ”

“ At the West End, lounging about the streets, with a well-made back to one’s coat, and front to one’s shirt, is usually thought of as not much in the way of business; but, doubtless, to lounge at the East End about the streets, with one Lie pinned to the front of you, and another to the back of you, will pay, in time, only with proper preliminary expenditure of capital. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the hold which the City has obtained over West End life is largely responsible for the election of many a member to clubs where, thirty or forty years ago, his admission would have been quite out of the question.
In old days everyone in the West End, more or less, knew everyone else; for society was then a very limited circle compared with what it is to-day, when people come and go with such startling rapidity 159that it grows increasingly difficult to discover who and what a candidate may be. ”

“ Of course there is no such thing as arousing all London into a fit of enthusiasm, because millions of people are not moved at the same moment by anything less than a revolution. But the West End, just then, wanted an excitement, and found it in the coming of Olympia. ”

“ And if your eyes are not blinded, the West is no less terrible than the East. If you want to be sure of this, bring a hungry, ragged child from that Eastern land and set it outside a West End restaurant; let it press its dirty little face against the plate glass and gaze at the well-to-do people gorging and guzzling round the bright tables inside. The diners may be smart, the ragged child may be picturesque—but bring the two together, and consider the conjunction. ”

“ The best modern street in the West End, I think, is Mount Street, which, notwithstanding the diversity of style exhibited in the façades of the houses, is a really fine street, and one, moreover, not entirely unpicturesque. Most of the old streets in the West End are too narrow for the lofty houses now so frequently being erected. ”

“ As for the London of pleasure, the West End, it would have been quite impossible to conceive a man of the faintest social pretensions being seen abroad in anything else. And now, I go up and down Piccadilly, Bond Street, the Row at the height of the London season, and see—a few silk hats and morning coats, it is true—but the majority of well-dressed men in "lounge" suits and grey soft hats and black and grey bowlers. ”

“ Whoever has had unhappy occasion to look for lodgings at this period, and to explore the mysteries of the little black houses in the West End which have a neatly-printed card suspended in the door-light, will admit that from the obligation to rough it our more luxurious kinsmen are not altogether exempt. We rough it, certainly, more than they do, but we rough it in the country, where Nature herself is rough, and they rough it in the heart of the largest and most splendid of cities. ”

“ Often has been described the aspect of the overwhelming tide of busy men, all hurrying and crowding and pushing past at a brisk speed; the carriages, waggons, carts, incessantly moving in a crowded procession; the hum and roar in the ears. The vast size, solidity, and imposing stateliness of the buildings astonish us. But more pleasing is the picturesque irregularity, and windings and curves of the bye-streets or alleys, changed by the tall and massive structures which line them into Genoa-like streets, lacking only the grilles and the gloom. Here is the contrast to the West End ”

“ Here and there at what is termed the West End is a neat brick mansion with garden attached, where nature asserts herself in dahlias and china-asters; but the houses are mostly frame houses that have taken a prevailing dingy tint from the breath of the tall chimneys which dominate the village. ”

“ East of it there is an abrupt transition to the district commonly known as the “East End,” as distinguished from the wealthy “West End,” a district of mean streets, roughly coincident with the boroughs of Stepney and Poplar, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, and primarily (though by no means exclusively) associated with the problems attaching to the life of the poor. On the Thames below London Bridge, London appears in the aspect of one of the world’s great ports, with extensive docks and crowded shipping. ”

“ How many thousand of provincials, seeing London, have been drawn to those odourous byways that thrust themselves so briskly through the staid pleasure-land of the West End—Greek Street, Frith Street, Dean Street, Old Compton Street: a series of interjections breaking a dull paragraph—where they might catch the true Latin temper and bear away to the smoking-rooms of country Conservative clubs fulsome tales that have made Soho already a legend. ”

“ The splendid shops must strike a stranger with amazement, although far inferior to many which have lately been built at “the West End:” at every two or three strides we take along the frontage, we pass houses for which two or three hundred a year rent is paid; half-a-dozen houses produce yearly nearly double the income of numbers of the foreign nobles, and many an old lady and gentleman live retired in the quiet suburbs on the rent derived from a single house which stands in this costly thoroughfare. Nearly every floor is a separate department of commerce. ”

“ Some of the poor ones live in the West End, too, but roughly we may put it so, just to get some idea of the place.
Through this great London there rolls a great river, and there is scarcely any need to say what the name of that river is, for every child knows about the Thames. The great river cuts London into two parts, and on the south side of it there are many poor streets with poor people living in them, and close to the river is a palace, where the Archbishop of Canterbury lives. ”

“ East London birds are early birds, and to catch them at their bath you must be literally up with the lark. Towards six o'clock is the most fashionable hour for our metropolitan Pactolus; and, as it is some miles distant from what can, by any stretch of courtesy, be called the West End, and as there are no workmen's trains on a Sunday morning, a long walk or cab drive is inevitable for all who would witness the disporting of our amphibious Orientals. ”

“ IT was a warm morning towards the end of June, and London, that is to say the West End, was fast becoming an arid wilderness. But although almost everybody who was anybody had long left town, there was one place which enjoyed a popularity unaffected by the flight of fashion or the seasons. ”

“ It is well known in the commercial world that the periodical or occasional failure of certain classes of West End houses involve no disgrace, and leaves no such consequences as are inevitable in simple-minded country places. ”

“ There is therefore no sensible diminution in the population on Saturdays and Sundays; the streets are never deserted as in the City. The manufacturers and employers of East End labor live in the country or at the West End, but for the most part in the suburbs beyond the river Lea, on the outskirts of Epping Forest, where there are very many stately houses, standing in their gardens and grounds, occupied by a wealthy class whose factories and offices are somewhere about East London. ”