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Show London from a BusTop M K: $ v V a. j V h A Steam Driven Motor Truck on a London Street. Prepared by National GeoKraphlc Society, Washington. D. C.) WNU Service. w ONDON'S latest bridge-inspired I song hit might be. "Waterloo I ,v Bridge Is Falling Down." The "falling," however, Is not accidental, acci-dental, it is an engineering job. The bridge will be replaced by a new span. Many travelers now are seeing London Lon-don from a bus top, where they enjoy watching perky messenger boys with their tin-can hats cocked on three hairs, the huge policemen, the sandwich sand-wich men, and the clattering crowds of men and women on the streets. In a private car the least snobbish feels himself aloof and superior. On a personally conducted tour one is only the pea tossed in the dishpan of a careless conductor's rhetoric. In a taxicab even the very reckless cannot can-not refrain from watching the meter. But from a bus top one looks down, part and parcel of all he sees, understanding under-standing and being thrilled by a thousand thou-sand activities. It is true that one sees the centuries cen-turies without order or sequence; but that is as it should be in London, where today, tomorrow, and 1.S00 years elbow each other companion-ably. companion-ably. Perhaps one leans over the rail to see a lordling sprawled at the wheel of a great car, all color and silver, on that Watling street which was one of the four thoroughfares by the aid of which the Romans held Britain ; or to watch those who are to fly to Paris, j stepping Into the car that is to carry . . - them to the flying field at Croydon. Next, the bus passes a porter's lodge in which a duchess lives at the gates of the great house she can no longer afford to occupy. Or the brass triangle near the Marble arch, which marks the site of Tyburn tree, a common com-mon gallows away back in 1196. Or that street of pallid houses built by a French architect that Napoleon's officers of-ficers might have fitting quarters when he had conquered England. Or the horse guards, where massive sentinels sen-tinels in scarlet and buckskin and silver sil-ver bestride horses of black silk. One marvels at the horses more than at the men. However do they train them to stand so still? Reminders of the Past. Yonder is Lansdowne passage, leading lead-ing from Piccadilly into Curzon street. The street Is the citadel of the highest high-est fashion, lined with gloomy houses. A steel bar is still set across the passage, that no highwayman may gallop gal-lop his horse through it to safety in the fields, as one formed the reprehensible repre-hensible habit of doing a hundred .years ago. Nearby is the Shepherd's market, which is in its essentials what a shop-N shop-N ping district was in London in Dick Turpin's time, and a little public house -whose customers are almost wholly the Jeames Yellowplushes of today. A wealth of gossip about their masters might be gathered there by one admitted ad-mitted to their Intimacy. Off Whitehall one may see the window win-dow through which a king walked on his way to the block. Over the rail of Hyde park one may glimpse the little lit-tle gravestones of the dogs' cemetery; then hurriedly glance at the new Devonshire Devon-shire house, wherein apartments may be leased for 999 years at an incredible number of pounds the year. Trafalgar square is the natural center of London for the adventurer. It is true that Charing Cross, a long stone's throw down the Strand, is accepted ac-cepted as the geographical center, if - there can be a geographical center of & map, which Is messed about as is that of London by the oxbow-bend of the River Thames. At any rate, the 699 square miles of the greater city include all parishes any part of which may be within 12 miles of the cross, or of which tue whole may be within 15 miles. Going From Nelson's Column. But Nelson's column, in Trafalgar square Is the North pole to the visitor's visi-tor's compass. If he were able to mount to Nelson's eminence, as steeplejacks stee-plejacks sometimes do, and there revolve re-volve upon his heel, he would discover that each quarter turn would reveal a new aspect. Down Whitehall Is the ancient City of Westminster, with the houses of parliament and the abbey. The Strand opens to Fleet street and the offices of the great newspapers. Over Covent garden, a bit more to the left, one might sight the Bank of England and the heart of the old Roman Ro-man city. Another turn left and the markets, the Charterhouse, the British museum. Left once more and the theater district; dis-trict; Sobo, where are the foreign restaurants res-taurants beloved of novelists, and the fashionable shopping districts. Just a bit more and clubland and Mayfair and a glance at Buckingham palace. Then Hyde park and the Admiralty, and the circle Is complete. All reached best by busses. Trafalgar square is a place of perilous peril-ous delights. Eight streets debouch upon it, each filled with roaring traffic coming from unexpected angles, and made more perilous to an American by the English Insistence upon the left-hand turn. One leaps from safety island to safety safe-ty island across these streets, as if they were stepping stones in a torrent omnibuses, steam lorries, donkey carts, limousines, the small, barn-swallowlike barn-swallowlike cars which taxation has thrust upon English motordom, brewers' brew-ers' vans drawn by elephantine horses, screaming motorcycles with the latest editions. Once Trafalgar square was the king's mews, where various monarchs stabled (heir horses. Honest artisans shaped weapons for English gamecocks in Cockspur street. Fronting on the square is the national, gallery, crammed with treasures of art. Of all the 1,500-odd churches in London, the visitor is apt to carry away the most vivid memory of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The gray and white and black pillars of its majestic portico gain added value, of course, when seen across the open square. In a little house which once stood here, Ben Johnson wrote "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," which some people hold to be one of the finest ballads in the English language, though deprecating the sentiment. Heine and Ben Franklin and Charles Dickens have roomed close by. The Mall and Buckingham Palace. From Trafalgar, too, the visitor can peer through the fine Admiralty arch down the Mall, at the farther end of which stands Buckingham palace. Eventually he will discover this to be a large and almost violently ugly stone-fronted building behind a tall wrought-iron fence, and that time is wasted on it except during those stirring stir-ring moments when the soldier guard is changed. He may recall that It was down the Mall that Charles I walked to the headman's block, and that it was named after the French game of paille maille that Charles II played upon it. Across the square Is the statue of Charles I, perhaps the finest equestrian equestri-an figure In London. One bridges centuries cen-turies of English history by a glance at it. Queen - Eleanor's cross first I stood upon this site, the twelfth or was it the thirteenth? cross erected by the sorrowing King Edward I to mark the places where her casket was set down for the night on the long route from Lincoln to her tomb in Westminster. That was in the Thirteenth Thir-teenth century. Much is to be seen hereabouts in the compass of a short walk before definitely embarking on a cruise through London's streets. A turn to the left leads to Maiden lane, where Voltaire and Turner once lived. One may pause at Rule's oyster house for a snack, not because of hunger, but because this has been the resort of English actors since 1750. Fielding and Pope and Goldsmith used to frequent fre-quent it when It was "The Bedford Head" and the home of the Reunion club. A vast white-painted door, set with brass like the quarter-deck of a yacht, a populous bar behind which two lively maids are busy, a great fire under a marble mantelpiece. Lively Covent Garden. Just around the corner is Covent garden, once the convent garden of the abbey of Westminster. It has been the great market for fruits and vegetables ever since 1634. A lively, sad, industrious place. In which the coster's donkeys furnish the comic relief. re-lief. Under the great piazza, which was a century ago London's most fashionable fash-ionable walk, old women sit all summer sum-mer long shelling peas. Something of a comedown from the patches and ruffles, ruf-fles, and the small swords and the snuff. It Is to be feared the Covent garden opera has somewhat declined. At all events, when one visits the fine old house two Jazz bands may be heard offering Interminable tom-tomming for a horde of dancers. Here Is Bow street and its police station, where the scarlet waistcoats of the "Bow street runners" gave the world Its idea of a uniformed police force or so Bow street says. On the Russell street corner is Will's coffee house, where Dryden sat In Judgment on plays, and which is Just as it used to be, above the street level. Charles Lamb lodged at No. 20 Russell street and the National Sporting club, most aristocratic of boxing clubs, Is at 43 King street. At No. 4 York street De Quincey wrote his "Confessions." Half the charm of London is in its history. I |