LAND AND WATER, 
DeccmDCT ii, igi5- 
LONDON TOWN IN WINTER. 
By J. D. Symon. 
LONDON, multitudinous in character as regards 
her districts, yet one and indivisible, has another 
trick of variety with the chanjiinj,' seasons. A 
London spring is something entireh' of London, 
.1 London summer, a London autumn, are unmistakable 
in their individuality, but winter London at its best, and 
especially in the weeks just preceding Christmas, is in 
normal times the most individual of all —a thing of pure 
joy, that even in the present clouded days sturdily refuses 
to miss at least a share of its wonted exhilaration. 
Those who live in London know this stimulus, but 
it is felt most keenly by those who live just a little distance 
out of town, and whose visits are only periodical. To 
such, the added brightness of the shop windows is more 
apparent than it is to those who pass them e\ery day, a.nd 
with the approach of Christmas the crowds in the streets 
wear a new aspect as they go about their Christmas shop- 
ping. It is a pleasant convention of the fireside to make 
more or less a mysterj' of Christmas presents, and so the 
shoppers, old and yoimg, convey an evitable suggestion 
that they have something up their sleeve. More especi- 
ally is this the case with the children, and it leads to many 
corner comedies in the by-places of the great Christmas 
bazaars. The elder children get lost for a little, until they 
finish their secret business ; the very, very young, with 
charming simplicity, ask the about-to-be-benefited to look 
the other way until the great and mysterious bargain be 
accomplished. 
The Mecca of Childhood. 
But, although fancy has carried us into the land of 
the Chinese lantern, the twanging musical-box and the 
strident gramophone, that land which is the Mecca of the 
invading crowd of shopping children, it was rather of the 
outward appearance of winter London that we had inten- 
ded to speak here. So the day be clear, with sunshine 
and just a little touch of frost, hour melts into hour, 
ejfch yielding its impression of enchantment. Life 
seems to have been stung to a brisker pace, and everyone 
is as it were, en fete. The bus drive is now a bracing, 
almost an arctic experience, and it is in these pre-Christ- 
mas days that one learns to be truly thankful for com- 
fortable wraps. Not only is there the inward and per- 
sonal recognition of this boon, but we have the outward 
and visible appreciation of it in watching the dress of the 
passers-by. The season has brought womankind a more 
sombre plumage ; warm reds and browns, and the all to 
be desired luxury of costly furs comfort the very eye. 
The nipping and the eager air, on days when it is not too 
searching, plays (with the right material) cosmetic won- 
ders that all the art of Bond Street cannot compass. There 
may, it is true, be disasters also in this kind, but on such 
days as we have in mind the majority of the passing faces 
Si^em to have no quarrel with the weather, or for that 
mi^^ter with the scheme of things. 
In another respect, too, this wintry London of ours 
is a thing apart. We feel at this season as if we were in 
another city, a city that comes to visit us only at Christ- 
mas time. This is due, not to the conventional and 
arbitrary changes in the dress of the multitude, the 
dressing of the shop windows, but to an effect of light. In 
the gicat cast and west running thoroughfares, such as 
Oxford Street, the level sun of winter glances for only a 
brief moment at the foot- way, and the wayfarers enjoy 
rather the suggestion of sunshine than sunshine itself. 
But this atmospiioric denial brings compensation with its 
effects of distance and of light and shade. The upper 
parts of the houses on the northern side keep the sun 
for severol hours, and fiing out facades and gables in a 
high-piled fairyland of gold. This aerial city seems 
detached from the shadowed foundations, but even these 
arc now ethereal, and the long vista of the street melts 
at last into a mist of blue. Winter lends to the most 
matter of fact thoroughfare a touch of mystery absent at 
other seasons. The architecture seems less obvious and 
more fantastic, the level light brjugs new groupings into 
prominence, and stray shafts of sunlight darting from 
narrow southward-tendmg ways are own brothers to the 
dust-filled sunbeams that strike across the aisle of some 
dim cathedral, and yield like these many a revealmg 
surprise of chiaroscuro. But this transformation 
scene, to adopt the appropriate language of the panto- 
mime, fades all too quickly, leaving the street by contrast 
a little dull and cheerless, and the crowds make haste 
indoors to besiege the places where they sell tea. 
Christmas Shopping Teas. 
The Christmas shopping-tea in town is for the children 
the cHmax of the day's enjoyment, only just a little 
dimmed by the thought that it is the prelude to the home- 
ward journey. That home going, with its languors, 
recalls a picture in an ancient Christmas Number, whicb 
gathered into a beautiful synthesis the whole attitude o: 
childhood towards Yuletidc expeditions. It represented 
one of the old-fashioned dimly ht first-class carriages of 
the District Railway, occupied by a heavy-headed crew 
of parcel-laden youngsters in various attitudes of sleep, 
or utter drowsiness. Paterfamilias alone was awake— 
a most reprehensible state, it appeared, from the verses 
beneath the picture. These were supposed to be delivered 
by the collective voice of the other members of the party, 
and they come back now by some trick of memory over 
a chasm of more years than one cares to count. How 
ancient that Christmas was may be judged from references 
to the Lowther Arcade, which is not even a name to the 
present generation. It had figured largely in the day's 
exertions of those children of a former day. They con- 
trast their own strenuousness with the inaction of " that 
idle man," their father : — 
When we were choosing, choose, choose, choosing, 
H3 only yawned at intervals behind his porte-tnonnaic, 
.\nd now that we are losing, lose, lose, losing, 
Ourselves in dreams he's wids awake ; he only had to pay. 
In former peaceful years as twilight came down on 
a city preparing to be merry, the glow that had just faded 
from tower and pinnacle gave place to a new fairyland of 
lamps. Have we quite forgotten what that was like — 
how Piccadilly swam in a many-coloured glow, how the 
flashlights came and went with their teasing but not to be 
escaped legend, written again and again in letters of fire ? 
Just before the end of all things, our illuminations reached 
such ^ pitch of commercial phantasy. that London would 
soon have run a good second to New York in the cunning 
of these devices. Our sensations on the night when full 
lighting is restored will be something that baffles all 
attempts at forecast. Even a very moderate lighting will 
seem a wild illumination ; the illuminations of ^•ictory will 
have to be tempered gently to the eyes of a people that 
long sat in darkness. 
Earlier Hours. 
It is this darkness that has imposed the chief modifi- 
cation of war upon a shopping and pre-Christmas London. 
The in\ading host of children keeps us cheerful amid many 
depressions, and the general air of town is srill stimulating. 
But the Christmas Eve feeling that came with the lighting 
of the lamps is denied to us this year, for shopping is 
earlier and the young army must be drawn off while yet 
there is a faint glow in the west, and the dangers ol 
chaos and old night amid the traffic are still a little distant. 
But although they go home eariier, the children are still 
the most welcome, indeed the essential adjunct of these 
wintry days in town. It is their happy privilege to be 
able to observe Christmastidc after the traditional manner, 
and with traditional accompaniments. At other times the 
elders found these preparations for Christmas almost an 
end in themselves, so joyous were the duties, so pleasing the 
accomplishment, but this year it is the children chiefly 
who justify any following of the old routine. But not 
the children alone, for there are those in hardship and 
danger to whom remembrances must be sent from the still 
luxurious and still outwardly smiling world that moves, 
warm and well wrapped, about the ways of v.intry 
London town. 
18 
