Class _JJi/_M^ Book Yl hb CopyiigfitN?. COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. THE LURE OF LONDON BOOKS BY LILIAN WHITING The World Beautiful First, Second, and Third Series After Her Death The Spiritual Significance From Dreamland Sent Kate Field : A Record Study of The Life and Poetry of Mrs. Browning The World Beautiful In Books Boston Days The Life Radiant The Land of Enchantment The Outlook Beautiful From Dream to Vision of Life The Joy That No Man Taketh From You The Florence of Landor Italy, The Magic Land Louise Chandler Moulton, Poet and Friend Paris The Beautiful Life Transfigured The Brownings : Their Life and Art Athens, The Violet-Crowned The Lure of London Reproduced by permission oj the National Portrait Gallery Her Majesty Queen Victoria, in her Coronation Robes from the painting by Sir George Hayler, National Portrait Gallery Frontispiece THE LURE OF LONDON BY LILIAN WHITING AUTHOR OP "the BROWNINGS: THEIR LIFE AND ART," " PARIS THE BEAUTIFUL," "THE FLORENCE OF LANDOR," "the world BEAUTIFUL," ETC. Illustrated from Photographs NON- REFER! ^WVAD-Q3S BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1914 \\J5S Copyright, 1914, By Little, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved Published October, 1914 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. OCT 22 i9l4 'CI.A387161 TO EDGAR JOHN AND MAREN FELLOWES WHOSE WEDDED LIFE INTERPRETS THAT "COMPLETER POETRY" WHICH TRANSFIGURES THE DAILY DUTIES AND DEMANDS ; WHOSE GRACIOUS ENCOURAGEMENT AND BENEFICENT KINDNESS HAVE INVESTED THIS RICORDO DI LONDON WITH CHARM AND ASSOCIA- TION THAT CAN NEVER FADE FROM MEMORY, AND WHOSE "... loveliness of perfect deeds. More strong than all poetic thought " INSPIRES THE EVER-GRATEFUL DEVOTION OF LILIAN WHITING London, May, 1914, " What is so great as friendship, let us carry it with what grandeur of spirit we can. Let us be silent, — so we may hear the whisper of the gods." — Emebson CONTENTS Chapter Page I The Lure of London 1 II Hyde Park Corner and Apsley House 18 III The Royal Institution of Great Britain 49 IV The National Galleries of Art . . 79 V Clubs, Societies, and Movements . . 142 VI Color and Romance of London . . 176 VII English Sports and Amusements . . 211 VIII Factors, Personal Forces, and Cus- toms 229 IX The Living Influence of Victorian Literature 254 X Annie Besant and the Theosophical Society 305 XI The Primate of England in Lambeth Palace 314 XII Archdeacon Wilberforce and West- minster Abbey 331 XIII The Spirit of London Life 348 Index 357 " The old order changeth, yielding place to new. And God fulfils Himself in many ways. Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." Alfred Lord Tennyson LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Her Majesty Queen Victoria in her Coronation Robes ^ Frontispiece Trafalgar Square and the Nelson Monument Facing page 14 Hyde Park Corner and Wellington Statue . . A Corner in Westminster Abbey Waterloo Gallery (sometimes called Wellington Chamber), Apsley House Statue of Charles Darwin Michael Faraday Sir Oliver Lodge Parliament Square Dante Gabriel Rossetti Edward William Lane Sir William Crookes Green Drawing-Room, Windsor Castle . . . St. Clement Danes, with Statue of Gladstone Old Houses of London, showing the Old Curi- osity Shop Drawing-Room, Devonshire House Farnboro House, residence of Eugenie, former Empress of France Sculpture Gallery, Chats worth Blackfriars Bridge, with the Dome of St. Paul's ' ix (C c ' 18 (( ( ' 26 / (< < ' 32 y (< < ' 50 << < ' 62 y « < ' 78 y (< < ' 84 (< ( ' 104 << < ' 108 < y (( < ' 168 X << ( * 176 ,/ t( < ' 184 ^■'' <( ( ' 186 (C ( ' 194 <( ( ' 200 (< < * 206 << « * 220 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Ball Room and Concert Hall, Buckingham Palace Facing Lord Lytton ("Owen Meredith") " Moorish Room, Lord Leighton's Villa, Ken- sington Albert Memorial Chapel, Windsor Castle . . Sir William Huggins Algernon Charles Swinburne Annie Besant Choir of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle The Library, Lambeth Palace Royal Chamber, Houses of Parliament . . . Basil Wilberforce, Archdeacon of Westminster Statesmen's Corner, Westminster Abbey . . The Choir, St. Paul's Cathedral page 244 ' ^ 254 262 • ' 268 ' 272 290 '' 306 ' ^ 314 318 324 ^ 328' 346 354 THE LURE OF LONDON THE LURE OF LONDON " London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deep and loud . . . . " Shelley. London in June, in the height of its brilliant season, is the lure of all the world. The stu- dent of humanity need not exert himself to circumnavigate the planet on which he has taken up a more or less temporary residence; the observer of mankind need not go around the world for his study; all the world, so to speak, is before him in a London season. At receptions, in drawing-rooms whose splendors are drawn from old-world tapestries, from paintings that the doges of Venice may have loved, or that were the "hit" of last year's Salon in Paris; from classic fragments from Greece, ivory carvings and rarest inlaid mosaic from India, — one meets in the groups of women in bewildering costumes and men brave with orders, representatives from every quarter of the globe; Indian princes, and the women of 1 THE LURE OF LONDON their rank, gleaming with jewels whose blazing brilliancy fairly startles the eye; Australian colonists, lured back to the haunting charm of a London season; important Canadian officials, with their wives and a daughter who is to be presented at one of the royal drawing-rooms; the Khedive of Egypt; the Chinese savant in his strange robes; a prince of the Church in the insignia of his scarlet robe and jeweled cross; the hermit, late from his solitary sojourn in the mountains of Arabia; a Minister of the French cabinet; the latest fashionable English painter; the American who owns the earth and who has probably already familiarized himself with the greater part of his possessions; a wandering priest from Syria, — all these, and more, min- gling with the peerage and the aristocracy of England, make up a social spectacle whose bril- liancy and variety is unrivalled in the entire world. No aspects of social splendor in any city on the earth can equal those of London dur- ing her season. From her vast colonial posses- sions — India, Egypt, Australia, Canada — they come trooping back with the loyalty of pride and enthusiasm; the Continent is widely repre- sented, from Russia to Italy, and from France to Hungary; and to the American woman of wealth, social rank, and culture, London is an earthly paradise and it is an open question THE LURE OF LONDON whether she would wiUingly exchange it even for Paradise the Blest. Men whose names are those to conjure with and who embody the forces of their times, and women whose beauty and charm may be as potent as those of Helen of Troy, make up society in London for these few opening weeks of the summer. There is no inanity in London society. The spectacle offers the latest word in fashion, but fashion and beauty and luxury are yet seen as merely the fit set- ting to a social significance which for wit, and grace, and intensity of interest is absolutely unequalled. It is comparatively easy to see the outside of London; he who runs may read, and if he does not run too swiftly, he may read a great deal. But the real London is another matter. " Men and women make the world As head and heart make human life," says Mrs. Browning, and she thus expresses the inner truth of human progress. In London the fate of an empire may hang upon a woman's smile. Society exists for its true purpose, that of intelligent human intercourse, rather than for display and trivial interchange. This fact alone lifts the social world of London to a high plane. The splendor and luxurious beauty of all its fetes and entertainments; its dinners, 3 THE LURE OF LONDON and grand balls, and magnificent evening recep- tions serve as the framework for the real struc- ture of life in its highest expression — conver- sation. It is from the social alembic that the elixir vitse of conversation is distilled. "I talk, not to tell what I think, but to find out what I think," remarked Doctor Holmes, and in these words the delightful Autocrat perfectly expresses the art and the power possible to conversa- tional intercourse. Conversation is direct per- sonal revelation or its reverse! Conversation is experimental; it is an encounter of wits, of commentators upon events and ideas and move- ments. Conversation is the finest of the fine arts and is that supreme art to which all others are tributary. In the diary of Pepys he ex- claims, after an evening in the great world: "But, O Lord! what poor stuff they did talk." His shrewd observation must not infrequently recur to one who has been doomed to an hour of inanities rather than ideas. Society, indeed, should be the best expression of humanity, and London society at its best comes marvellously near the fulfillment of this lofty ideal. When the Marchioness of Lansdowne gave that not- able reception in Lansdowne House, Berkeley Square, in April of this present year of 1914, where the distinguished hostess received a great number of the Unionist peers, nearly all the 4 THE LURE OF LONDON Unionist members of Parliament, and the stand- ing candidates of the Unionist organizations in London, inviting to meet them other strong supporters of the cause and many of her per- sonal friends who had not so identified them- selves with Union ideals, she contributed more real aid, as all London acknowledged, by that one evening's entertainment, than a year's public meetings and other propaganda could have done to the party whose faith she espoused and worked to further. It is a little curious, by the way, that in a country where women have such unusual political influence and so much absolute power as they have in England, some of them should feel it necessary to hurl stones through Bond Street windows and de- molish priceless works of art with a hatchet, by way of establishing the presumption that they are peculiarly well calculated to play a leading part in guiding national destinies. Lady Lansdowne's party was frankly and avowedly political. Lansdowne House was a scene for a painter of the human drama that night. The Marchioness, assisted by the Mar- quis, received her guests in the library. The grand staircase, up which the throng passed to greet the hostess, was lined with masses of rhododendrons in bewildering bloom of rose and pearl and violet colored blossoms, con- 5 THE LURE OF LONDON trasted with the vivid gold of daffodils and stately Madonna lilies; while the library and the salons were decorated with groups of palm and banks of roses. Lady Lansdowne in black, wearing her jeweled orders of the Crown of India and St. John of Jerusalem, the order of Victoria and Albert, and the Coronation medal of King Edward, was a picture to remem- ber. Lord Lansdowne, wearing the star of the Order of the Garter and other insignia; and the corps diplomatique, in their court dress; the chefs de mission, who were then in London, with the naval and military attaches, and the Coun- cillors, all in full regalia, with other guests ar- rayed in the most exquisite creations of the great artists in dress, made up a scene which for brilliancy and fascination of color effects has perhaps never been surpassed. Historic names abounded. The Duke and Duchess of Welling- ton, the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, and the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, the Mar- quis and Marchioness of Londonderry, the Earl and Countess of Lytton, Lord and Lady Bal- four, Adeline, Duchess of Bedford (a sister of Lady Henry Somerset), and a great list of the peerage and the famous men of war, statesman- ship, and affairs, made up a gathering long to be remembered in the social history of London. The present Greek Minister, M. Gennadius, THE LURE OF LONDON is an important figure in London, to such a degree, indeed, that although he has reached the age limit fixed by Greece in her diplomatic service laws, the Greek government, repre- sented by M. Venizelos, the Premier, has yielded to the deep desire of England that one so admirably fitted to deal with state problems at the present critical juncture should not be recalled. It is the important individualities in London that make society a force potent in progress. With all the various movements whose raison d^etre is political influence, or the betterment of conditions, the Court is in active sympathy. King George and Queen Mary are in daily participation with the multitudinous activities of London, and other members of the royal family are much in evidence. The peerage of England leads no idle life. The Marquis of Crewe, with his weight of responsibility as Secretary for India and Leader of the Upper Chamber, seldom refuses a request to partici- pate in meetings that have as their object the advancement of the people. The Institution of Mining and Metallurgy relies upon him as one of its most effective speakers at the annual banquet, and he has a deep and sympathetic interest in alL new inventions. The Earl of Cromer, whose important work on Egypt is an 7 THE LURE OF LONDON authority, is another of the well-known peers who are in constant touch with the forces of the day. Earl Curzon lends inspiration to many a cause. Lord Kitchener is deeply in- terested in the problem of the reclamation of land in Egypt, and the list of the British peer- age is largely synonymous with the list of men and women whose influence and personal par- ticipation in all that makes for progress are among the most valuable assets of England. All this brilliant and ever-changing and ever- renewing panorama helps to constitute the lure of London. Its irresistible attraction is felt in every country in the world. London is the in- tellectual capital, — the metropolis of progress. Yet, so unchanging does she sometimes seem in her stately splendor, as if preserved under amber and held by a spell of incalculable dura- tion, that a newly-arrived visitor would de- clare that over her neither Time nor Change held power. For her records are written in her thoroughfares; they are to be traced in her architectural aspects; they are inwrought with her monumental marbles. By some miraculous process of enchantment, the life of the dead centuries persists in the London of to-day. The Present is, indeed, the *'heir of all the ages" in a manner that asserts itself in that unmal- leable quality of general life which is one of the 8 THE LURE OF LONDON first things to force its recognition on the stranger. Conditions are not plastic, they are fixed; and to them the sojourner must adjust himself. He discovers at once that he cannot go about tilting at windmills. He might as well fly in the face of the law of gravitation as to attempt to oppose or modify one single ex- isting custom, practice, or habitual attitude of London. The stars in their courses do not re- volve with more unalterable orbits. The more swiftly one recognizes and accepts this truth, the better for his peace of mind. Once accepted, with absolute and unquestioning conviction, life flows on very well. Once accepted, too, the conditions are found to be very good, but they admit of no experimental variations. They provide for one certain phases of evolutionary experience. The first stage is resistance; the second submission; and these eventually lead to that of enjoyment. One begins by resisting and only discards that effort because it is worse than ineffectual and useless. Then he unwill- ingly bows his head to the yoke and submits because it is Hobson's choice; and he is as much surprised as any one when, some fine morning, he awakens quite enamored of his predeter- mined orbit. He is quite prepared not only to embrace, but to adore the conditions under which he must pursue his path while in the 9 THE LURE OF LONDON British metropolis. The lure of London then enters into one's life as a determining factor. When once the stranger thus adjusts himself to London and does not demand that London shall adjust itself to him, it becomes one of the most agreeable and harmonious of environ- ments. As everything runs in its own groove, there is the minimum of friction. The street traffic alone is a spectacle worth observation. The solar systems in their courses do not re- volve in more inevitable order. As a conse- quence, motor and other accidents are of rare occurrence. The unending procession flows through the streets with rhythmic regularity. The thoroughfares are peopled with traditions. At every turn a building that is a landmark in history, a memorial marking the site of some famous scene or deed, a church identified with some vital chapter of the nation's life, is seen, and one lingers and loiters, held under the spell of the mighty past. Nor is there any lack of points that are a special vantage ground of beauty. One of the most notable of these is Hyde Park Corner, where Piccadilly and Park Lane meet, and the crescent road, winding along the outskirts of Belgravia, intersects the entrance to Knightsbridge. The classic pillars forming the fagade to Apsley House, which was the 10 THE LURE OF LONDON nation's gift to Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, focus the attention. Almost in front of this splendid mansion (built in 1784, and in which the duke died in 1852) is the colossal equestrian statue of the Duke of Well- ington, which at sunset throws its shadow over the entrance to the house. This corner is one of the most beautiful and easily the most im- pressive in all London. The long vista down Piccadilly is aglow with life. Beyond the open- ing of Park Lane is seen Dudley House, the home of the Earl of Dudley, with its famous collection of pictures. Just beyond is Grosvenor House, with its extensive gardens, and still far- ther down, toward Marble Arch, the entrance to Hyde Park from Oxford Street, is that dream of an Italian palace, Dorchester House, with its magnificent grand staircase leading to open arcades and galleries of alabaster and golden backgrounds like the ancient Venetian palaces immortalized by Paul Veronese. Diagonally across Green Park are the majestic towers of Westminster Abbey and the House of Parlia- ment, with their filmy horizon of haze and shim- mering cloud effects so wonderfully caught by Whistler. In the middle distance is the vast pile of Buckingham Palace, with its fine new fagade, and the Memorial sculpture to Queen Victoria, catching a gleam of sunshine, while 11 THE LURE OF LONDON down Pall Mall flows an endless stream of human activities. Through the marble-arched entrance to Hyde Park the morning riders in Rotten Row are seen cantering, while the seats on either side are thronged with lookers-on. Under the noble trees that line the avenues motor cabs are flying, and the Park is beautiful with its rich bloom of flowers and the winding waters of the Serpentine. London, in the season, is resplendent. No metropolis in the world can vie with its regal splendor and magnificence. Paris is gay and charms one; Florence is enchanting and poetic; Naples bewitches the senses; Rome, stately, impressive, with an order of loveliness all her own, may forever hold one's allegiance; yet for sheer splendor and luxurious magnificence, Lon- don is unrivalled. Gabriele d'Annunzio is one of the enthusiasts over London. During a recent visit he said: "I am profoundly moved by the beauty of England — her perennial beauty — not alone her beauty in summer. I know no city that is so profoundly moving as London. Nowhere else is there such a constant play of light and shade. What could be more pictur- esque, more Turneresque than dawn, as I saw it stealing over London.'* But the beauty of London is of her own order, and it grows upon one with increasing familiarity. London has 12 THE LURE OF LONDON no such Apocalyptic vision as that disclosed from the summit of the Janiculum in Rome, or any such fascination as the view over Florence from Bellosguardo, or that of Naples and the bay from the drive on the Posilipo; it has no such vision of curves and color as is afforded in the Champs Ely sees of Paris; but when one comes to recognize the peculiar atmospheric effects in London, he will seek beauty in the atmosphere rather than in the landscape alone. *^Loci dulcedo nos attinet!'^ The sweetness of the place holds us! Nineteen centuries ago were these words chosen by a General Council as a motto for the coat of arms. William Ern- est Henley is the poet of the London atmos- phere. He has pictured it in every phase, and of the peculiarly transparent haze of pale gold that is one of its most alluring effects, he says; " For earth and sky and air Are golden everywhere. And golden with a gold so suave and fine The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. Trafalgar Square (The fountains volleying golden glaze) Gleams like an angel-market." Dominated by its noble monument to Nelson, with its immense fountains and its circular marble walk, with the pillared fagade of the National Gallery occupying one side, the Strand 13 THE LURE OF LONDON and the multitudinous interests represented, — Trafalgar Square is a name to conjure with. London is one perpetual transformation scene. With a turn of the wind, with the rising of a cloud, sunny air is darkened by fast-falling tor- rents of rain, and electric lights at noonday gleam faintly through thick masses of mist and smoke. Even the huge buildings disappear, to appear in new shapes and in no shape at all; then, suddenly, the storm has passed, the sun- shine is fair, and life resumes its exhilaration. The lure of London, while a composite thing made up of impressive historical association; of reverence for its venerable Abbey and its old churches, few of which are not directly con- nected with some great event of the past; of its unrivalled privileges in notable scientific lec- tures and marvellous demonstrations of new and thrilling inventions; of exhibitions of noble art in numerous world-famous galleries open to all; of the extraordinary significance of its social life, might perhaps be almost expressed in one term — vitalism. For London prefigures itself before the gaze like a self-evolving uni- verse. It is not a city, the critical observer is ready to exclaim; it is a universe in itself. Be- cause of this, one must learn its laws and con- form to them. When the soaring traveler by air-ship shall succeed in alighting on Venus or 14 I a' C/2 THE LURE OF LONDON Jupiter, he will not expect to live altogether by the habits he has acquired and found to answer very well upon the earth; on a new planet he will naturally expect to conform to the laws of that planet. In arriving in London, this same adjustment will be found most serviceable. London represents the perpetual struggle be- tween the higher and the lower idealisms. The followers of the higher are in perpetual and in- evitable conflict with the masses who are satis- fied with the lower. Each one has his own idea of a paradise or an inferno. But the upholders of constructive idealism continue to offer their plea for a nobler order of citizenship. The practical worker has his mystic visions, which lend to him effectiveness and power. His ambitions are both spiritual and temporal. They spring from a broad philosophy, they arise from a deep-rooted faith, they embody the symbolic vision; but they hold for their reali- zation the better housing of the poor; the rec- lamation of the dissolute and the immoral and the ignorant to honest endeavor and moral enlightenment and the illumination of education and thought. The new impulse of mankind to civic betterment is nowhere more in evidence than in London. Moi-ris and Ruskin have be- queathed their inheritance to competent suc- cessors. Bernard Shaw, with his half whimsical 15 THE LURE OF LONDON utterances, is wholly in earnest. Wells, the most idealistic of modern thinkers, has theories whose value will be discussed in later pages of this book. The spirit of the Academy of Plato, of the Lyceum of Aristotle, lives in London to- day. Each new epoch has its own spontaneous outgrowth of thought, its own poetry of feel- ing, its own moving music. But it manifests itself in new and unexpected, perhaps in un- comprehended groupings. For men are moved not by economic considerations, not by the pressure of immediate necessities, nor by the still more potent force of scholastic instruction; but by the force of ideals alone. What are the Acropolis of Athens, the Forum of Rome, the Louvre in Paris, or Westminster Abbey, with its profoundly impressive associations, but ex- pressions of the ideal in man? And the ideal forever haunting humanity is that of life in the spirit- world, "outside the limits of our space and time." Life becomes effective when one feels " The spiritual significance burn through The hieroglyphic of material shows." London, with her working-men's colleges, her vast and enthusiastic army of social workers, her religious influences, focusses this spiritual significance until its force is universally recog- 16 THE LURE OF LONDON nized. Thus is evolved the lure of London, not of one thing, but of many. One visitor will recognize one phase; a different aspect will especially appeal to another; but if the lure of London were placed under that mental spec- trum that reveals each separate strand, it would be found many-sided, many-colored, of varying and complex texture, but vital, magnetic, irresistible. 17 II HYDE PARK CORNER AND APSLEY HOUSE "To know the universe itself as a road — as many roads — all roads for travelling souls." — Walt Whitman. Is the lure of London largely due to the mag- netism generated by mere immensity? Is it to any degree due to that indefinable conta- gion of a crowd? To the masses of humanity that meet and mingle? The endless procession of life has certainly no more remarkable van- tage ground on this planet than that at Hyde Park Corner. Several features combine to pro- duce this result. In Knightsbridge, a little way above this famous corner, the two great thor- oughfares leading from Kensington and the Brompton Road into Piccadilly unite, pouring their traffic past Hyde Park; from Victoria, on the south, through Grosvenor Place, comes an unending stream, and through Park Lane is another steady procession from all the north; at the Marble Arch, the tide of travel from Oxford Street, from Edgware Road, and from Bayswater, all unite. Hyde Park Corner is thus the distributing center of all these numerous 18 3 ai +-> 3 "2 5 o HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE thoroughfares. Coming in from Kensington or Brompton, and desiring to go to Oxford Street, to Portman Square, onward to Hamp- stead or in the reverse directions, the passen- gers of motor-busses change here. In close proximity are two of the tube stations, one in Down Street, and one at the corner itself, and all this immensity of human activity is further augmented by the carriages and pedestrians passing in and out of Hyde Park. The colossal motor-busses fairly form a moving bridge along their courses, so closely do they follow each other; and the equipages of all orders and the throngs of pedestrians, equally diversified, con- tribute to a scene that is without parallel in any metropolis of the world. Hyde Park Corner is the pivotal center of the West End. It is the focus of wealth, fashion, culture, and social distinction. It is in as glaring contrast to the East End of London as if the two were on opposite sides of the planet. The endless procession is not only that of people, but to a great extent that of personalities, of ce- lebrities. The great houses of historic splendor seen around this point might serve as a palimp- sest to the student of English history. Apsley House, with its magnificent traditions, stands next to the residence of Baron Rothschild, and in the near distance, in Park Lane, is Dorches- 19 THE LURE OF LONDON ter House, an exquisite Italian palace set in the heart of London; Grosvenor House is near; Lansdowne House is adjacent in Berkeley Square; near the east end of Piccadilly is Devon- shire House, and still nearer stands the residence of the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts. In close proximity to that spacious mansion is the noted publishing house of John Murray, in Albemarle Street, which is more than a century old, and where each head of the house, in his respective day, has entertained the most noted literary men of the time. Almost within a step lived Faraday, also, when he occupied rooms in the Royal Institution. In Arlington Street, just off Piccadilly, lived Lady Mary Montague and in Berkeley Square were Pope and Horace Walpole. In all this region of Mayfair, and in Belgravia, at the south, are famous ducal houses, — mines of historic associations. In Kensington Road, at Kensington Gore, Lady Blessington lived for several years (1836-1849), creating one of the most brilliant salons of society, and her avowed aim, which she seems to have pursued with conspicuous success, was that of "bringing together people of the same pursuits ", among whom were Walter Savage Landor, Thackeray, Byron, Moore, Dickens, and Barry Cornwall; Disraeli is also included among the long and notable list of the habitues 20 HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE of her house. The grounds then included three acres, where Hlacs bloomed, and it is also re- corded that nightingales sang in this Arcadia. Later this house became the home of William Wilberforce, the great liberator and distin- guished parliamentarian, whose statue stands in Parliament Square, and to whom there is also a monument in Westminster Abbey. Lady Ashburton, whose brilliant receptions have passed into social history, lived beyond the direct radius of Hyde Park Corner, in Bath House, Marylebone, where Carlyle, Barry Corn- wall, Tennyson, Browning, and indeed all the famous men of the day were to be met. Of her Carlyle said: "Lady Ashburton was the greatest lady I ever saw, with the soul of a princess and captainess, had there been any career for her but that of a fashionable one." Lord Lytton, better known to literature as "Owen Mere- dith", occupied at various times several houses in London, but his final and more permanent home was in Grosvenor Square, within easy dis- tance of Hyde Park Corner. Colley Cibber, whose exaltation to the Poet Laureateship was attended with more or less derision, lived in Berkeley Square, not distant from this corner, and the reader will recall Pope's caustic stanza regarding the national honor conferred upon Cibber: 21 THE LURE OF LONDON "In merry old England it once was a rule The King had his poet as well as his fool; But now we 're so frugal, — I 'd like you to know it. That Gibber can serve both for fool and for poet." When it is realized that of the seven million inhabitants of Greater London, a fair proportion of them are frequent passers-by at Hyde Park Corner, it is easy to see how wonderful is this point as a center of life. Yet to suppose for a moment that there is any trace of hilarity in the air is to reveal the depth and height and immen- sities of ignorance and of unfamiliarity with the rule of Britannica. Hyde Park, seen through the iron railings that surround it, is (occasionally) a brilliant and blooming spectacle, but that the atmosphere is, for the most part, as damp and chill as becomes a climate compact of rain and smoke; that the gray tones prevail; and that the unending file of motor-busses arrives and discharges their passengers with the severe so- lemnity of a procession of hearses, goes quite without saying. In Italy such throngs would be vociferous, and the air would be vocal with laughter and snatches of song. To compare Hyde Park, stately and majestic, with the Bois du \Boulogney with dewy glades and flower- gemmed alleys, that surprise the wanderer at every turn; to compare its appointed drives and equestrian paths and accommodations for 22 HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE pedestrians; its admirable and discreet regula- tions to which no one would dream of running counter; to compare these with the spontaneous gaiety and freedom of spirit of the habitues in the Bois, the happy hunting-grounds of Paris, would be like attempting to trace analogies between the two great American cities which are unkindly said to represent the Quick and the Dead. The Parisian gaiety would appear quite indecorous in Hyde Park. The English take their pleasures seriously if not sadly. When they crave exhilarating ex- periences, they cross the Channel. London, in- deed, has more holidays (all of them appalling occasions) than even an Italian city, given over to festas and saints' days, can muster in its calendar; but the only ideal held of a holiday in London is to escape from it. The London holidays are marked by dreary miles of closed shutters, of deserted streets, of general gloom and darkness, with more or less frequent in- terludes of pouring torrents of rain. The ordi- nary London day can be supported with resig- nation, even if not at times with positive en- joyment; but a holiday is so appalling in its nature that only the bravest and most intrepid can contemplate it with fortitude. Every train, every motor-bus, every conceivable means of transportation outside its precincts, is 23 THE LURE. OF LONDON crowded to the utmost. To further aid and abet the escaping multitudes, the railroads lower their fares and offer every possible in- ducement to the general exodus. One can go to Paris and return, for less than the usual fare one way. Those to whose hearts the prospec- tive interval of pleasure strikes peculiar terror, board a steamer train and cross the Channel. Whether there has ever been left an eye- witness of a London holiday is not on record. Even the swiftly recurring week-end is like an impending stroke of doom. Promptly at one o'clock on Saturdays every shutter goes up, save those of the market-men and grocers, to whom this Dies Iroe occurs on Thursdays. On that afternoon, if you fare forth for a lemon, you may go far apace without success. Life in London has many alleviations, and might always be supported with some degree of equa- nimity, were it not for the custom of holidays. At Eastertide many of the places are closed from Holy Thursday until the following Tues- day. That day and Good Friday are of course held sacred; and it is hardly considered worth while to open the shops for a brief Saturday morning, when the afternoon holiday, Sunday, and the bank holiday of Monday are to follow. For five days London is enshrouded in gloom. 24 HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE In Paris, on a holiday, the Champs Elysees are perpetually en fete. The groups of people on the seats under the embowering blossoms of the chestnut trees in spring; the beds of roses and of scarlet geraniums in vivid contrast with the emerald green of the turf; the silvery spray of fountains thrown on the air, and the little tables under the trees where ices and coffee and various refreshments are served, accentuate the enjoyment. The English, although so de- voted to sports and athletics, are not devoted to plein air, devoid of athletic inducements. They seek the open for activities rather than for social intercourse. As for such Arcadian pleasure hours as those in the Elysian Fields of Paris, with ices and music and the radiance of summer sunshine, or the colored fairyland of lights on summer evenings, which are the de- light of Parisians, one would no more look for them in London than for strawberries in a snowdrift. While the Parisians will congregate about tables on the pavement and call it all joy, the Londoners would only congregate about theirs on a private terrace, shielded from the vulgar gaze by impassable walls. The English of wealth and refinement are served by the most perfect of trained servitors, who offer the sumptuous repasts on the most exquisite of china with all stately and cere- 25 THE LURE OF LONDON monial observance, while the less fortunate classes take theirs in repulsive coffee-rooms, or in haunts less possible to mention in polite hearing. The English do not fare forth to Arcady. To them the idyllic aspects of life do not appeal. Climatic influences are an incalcu- lably potenti factor in national life. Darwin declared that "climate and the affections" were enough to make up life; and the effects on a people of living much in the open air, as in Italy and countries where nature smiles upon the land, is one that reacts on the character and is reflected in the habits of the populace. The fact that England has hardly four months out of the year that tempt one out into the open, makes, of itself, a distinction that can never be bridged between the English and the races of Latin Europe. Emerson observed that "Religion, the theatre, and the reading of the books of his country, all feed and increase the natural melancholy " of the Englishman. " They are proud and private," he adds; "and even if disposed to recreation will avoid an open garden." Their domesticity is too fixed to admit of any fraternal nomadism. This in- grained characteristic in the people determines the difference in the aspects of life as seen in the parks and recreation grounds of London and the continent. The camaraderie possible to 26 A Corner in Westminster Abbey HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE people of different temperamental trend is not possible to the English. *' Every spirit builds itself a house," and the outer landscape is, in its last analysis, but the expression of the life of the people. If this be true, Hyde Park is, at all events, the reflection of a magnificent and impressive life. At the fashionable hours, it offers one of the most brilliant and stately panoramas and holds a supremacy unrivaled among municipal parks and pleasure grounds. The views from Hyde Park Corner, though over a perfectly level area, are full of delicate atmospheric changes, and when mists and fogs prevail, these views not infrequently resemble such stuff as dreams are made of. Across the Green Park, diagonally opposite Hyde Park, rise the picturesque towers of Westminster, with Buckingham Palace in the middle distance. The campanile of Westminster (Catholic) Cathe- dral, the lofty tower of Parliament and those of Westminster Abbey, are seen clearly outlined against the sky, or wraithlike, enwrapped in soft gray haze and shadowy fog. Gazing over this beautiful view, one cannot but recall a passage in a letter written by Lady Augusta Bruce to Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, later Dean of Westminster, shortly before their marriage. Lady Augusta was one of the ladies in waiting to the queen, between whom and herself there 27 THE LURE OF LONDON existed a close and warm friendship, and this letter was written from St. James Palace: "... Awakening at an unnaturally early hour I was startled by the picture presenting itself to my gaze. The sky was crimson, and against it, in the clear atmosphere of early morn- ing, the towers of Westminster and the whole group of those beautiful buildings stood out in the most perfect distinctness. It seemed as though not a detail of the architecture were lost, and yet, near and vivid as it was, there was something so mysterious and impressive and solemn in the silent beauty of the scene that it seemed more like a vision of the Holy City than anything earthly or material. I sat and watched it till the glowing light of the glorious dawn had melted into the light of day, and the vision had passed away. "Need I tell you, my beloved, with what thoughts and aspirations and earnest prayers my heart was filled, or how blessed were the moments I thus spent within sight of our home, on which may God our Father grant that a light more beautiful still, a halo more sacred and more holy, may rest for ever and ever. I can- not describe my thankfulness for the impression that has been left upon my mind. That one bright spot amid the surrounding darkness, and the nature of the light, so soft and mellow and diffusive, warming and gladdening and vivi- fying all around. So may your home be, my beloved, and may the peace and joy and affec- tion that reign there cheer and lighten the 28 HYDE PARK CORNER— APSLEY HOUSE hearts that are brought, in whatever degree, within its influence! 'And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to Hghten it, for the glory of God did hghten it, and the Lamb is the Hght thereof.'" In his reply to this letter from his fiancee, Stanley spoke of the comfort her "beautiful vision" had given him, and he said: "Let us hope that your glimpse of the Abbey may be a type of that which is to be." The deanery, in which the Dean of West- minster always lives, is connected with the Ab- bey and is, in fact, entered through the west cloisters; it was this future home, in which they were to be domiciled after their marriage, to which Lady Augusta refers. Buckingham Palace, seen in the middle distance between Hyde Park Corner and the historic group of buildings at Westminster, is now so transformed by its new fagade of white stone as to be impressive and beautiful rather than grim and dull as before. The imposing memorial group of sculpture to Queen Victoria, placed in front of the palace, is discernible from this vantage point, and diagonally oppo- site is the Corinthian Arch, forming the en- trance to the Green Park. Formerly, this arch stood almost in front of Apsley House, but in 29 THE LURE OF LONDON 1828, when the colossal equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington was removed from this place to Aldershot, the arch was changed to its present position. This is the statue to which Thackeray referred as a "hideous equestrian monster." The present memorial to the Duke that replaces it is the work of Boehm, who embellished the base with four figures repre- senting a grenadier, a Highlander, a Welsh fusilier, and an Inniskillen dragoon. This group was erected in 1846 by popular subscrip- tion. Across the street is the huge architec- tural pile of St. George's Hospital, on the site of which, before the building of Belgravia, when the region was considered to be quite in the country, the residence of Lord Lanes- borough stood. All the region now known as Belgravia belonged originally to the Davies family and passed into the possession of the Grosvenors on the marriage of Mary Davies with Lord Grosvenor. When Buckingham Palace became the property of the Crown, George III desired to add to it all the estate of Lord Gros- venor, but the Premier of that epoch would not sanction the expenditure of twenty thousand pounds for that purpose, while now as many millions could hardly purchase it. The king foresaw that land so adjacent to the royal es- tates would become eminently fashionable as 30 HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE a residential region, and his foresight is amply fulfilled; for Belgravia is the most expensive (and one might add the most uninteresting) part of London. In Belgrave Place, however, George Grote, the celebrated historian of Greece, had his home, and many of the great ducal houses are here. The architecture is too mo- notonous to be impressive, although the vast size of the buildings gives to the locality a certain distinction. In Eaton Place is St. Peter's church, celebrated as the scene of great weddings in fashionable life, and also having a well-earned reputation for the fine quality of its music. Apsley House, commanding the entire out- look over Hyde Park, has the twofold interest of historic associations and a treasure-house of relics of international value. The large col- lection of gifts made to the "Iron Duke" grows more valuable with time and invests the house with the attraction of an historic museum. Built in 1785 for Lord Apsley, it was purchased in 1820 by the British nation to present to Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, as a par- tial reward for his distinguished services. The present pillared fagade of stone was added some years later. In Apsley House one large room is given over exclusively to the gifts presented to the Duke and Field-marshal of England. 31 THE LURE OF LONDON This room is practically a museum, and in numerous glass cases are displayed the various costly offerings, among which are silver salvers and candelabra presented by the Spanish and Portuguese courts after the close of the Penin- sular War; a superb shield from the merchants and bankers of London, decorated in relief with scenes from the victories of the duke; a magnificent service of Royal Worcester and another of Sevres, the united gift of the Russian and French courts; many valuable orders, one being of the now extinct order of Saint Esprit; swords and batons set with jewels, and a dinner set presented by Queen Caroline to the Duke of Marlborough and by him given to the Duke of Wellington; the field-glasses used by the duke on the battle-field, and the cloak that he wore at Waterloo. A statue of Napoleon, heroic size, represent- ing him as standing, holding in one hand a globe on which is perched a figure of Victory, and which was presented by the Prince Regent in 1817, stands at the foot of the grand marble staircase. Other sculpture about the house in- clude a bust of Sir Walter Scott by Chantrey; a bronze bust of Bliicher, and a bust of Marshal Soult who, when ambassador in London, was entertained in Apsley House by the duke. The Piccadilly drawing-room has many paint- u 03 HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE ings, — by Teniers, Wilkie, Landseer, and others, and a portrait of Napoleon engaged in studying a map. The famous Waterloo Gallery is the most interesting room in the house, with its six windows looking out into Hyde Park; it contains many valuable paintings, including one of Correggio's, "Christ on the Mount of Olives", a replica of Van Dyck's portrait of Charles I, the original of which is in Windsor Castle, and several gems of Italian art of an early period. It was in this room that the annual banquet, on every eighteenth of June, was held during the lifetime of the duke. The stately beauty of the view over the park im- presses every visitor to the Waterloo Chamber. The lovely drive along the banks of the Ser- pentine, the brilliant masses of color of the great plots of rhododendrons in June, and a suc- cession of flowering shrubs and of flowers all during the season, lend their charm to a view that in summer is a perfect sea of color and bloom. Near the Serpentine are many of the oldest trees of the park, some of these having been planted by Charles II. The waters of the Serpentine cover an area of fifty acres, and the lake is entirely formed from natural ponds and brooks. Rotten Row (whose name is sup- posed to have come from route de roi, as this was the old road from Whitehall to the royal 33 THE LURE OF LONDON hunting-grounds) is lined with chairs, a penny each, and few of these are vacant on a fine morning when the riders are out on the mile and a half length of their road. The fashionable promenade is thronged in the season at the regular hours, and the beauty of the scene at the hours for driving renders it one of the great spectacles of the world. The splendid equi- pages; the throng of charmingly dressed women, both in carriages and on the promenade; the countless beds of flowers in riotous bloom, and the groups of children at play make up a diver- sified panorama. No one really knows the pos- sible loveliness of the drive from Cumberland Gate, Marble Arch, on the Oxford Street side through the park to the corner of Piccadilly, until he has driven under these majestic trees in the late evening, with the stars gleaming through the foliage, and a summer moon turning the leaves to silver. Hyde Park took its name from the old manor of Hyde, which belonged to Westminster Abbey. The grounds were laid out as a park in the time of Henry VIII, and deer and stag were both hunted here in the Elizabethan reign. The Abbey still receives its supply of water from the Serpentine, according to the grant made by Edward the Confessor. A tragic reminiscence clings about the Serpentine, as the water in 34 HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE which Harriet Westbrook, the first wife of Shelley, drowned herself in a mood of jealous passion. In the entrance at Hyde Park Corner a beautiful screen of open ironwork attracts the eye. It was designed in 1828 by Decimous Burton. The statue of Achilles placed near is hardly calculated to enhance the fame of plastic art, and had the Greek hero been confronted with this representation of himself, his feats of flying the plain would be entirely accounted for. Nothing in all the chain of these parks, the Green, Hyde, and Kensington Gardens, is more attractive to the saunterer than the Broad Walk, leading from Kensington Gore to Bays- water; and in the vicinity of Cumberland Gate are the especial happy hunting-grounds of the numberless "demonstrations" that flock to Hyde Park. All manner of orators with infal- lible theories for the transformation of humanity ; all self-called interpreters of the divine decrees, and all the "agitators" whose initial scheme for the reorganization of the universe is to throw all existing laws and traditions into chaotic ruin, find here their earthly paradise. The man who proposes to overthrow the British Empire before sunset is permitted his standing-ground, and his sympathizers in this laudable scheme are allowed to listen, provided they do not dis- turb the peace and the place of those who expect 35 THE LURE OF LONDON to still continue under the rule of Britannica. An American observer has noted the instance of the man who proposes to remove the king from the neighboring palace without loss of time or ceremony, or benefit of clergy, and has de- scribed the humorous, but effective treatment of the London police. If the remover of the king gets in the way of the drivers or prome- naders, the policeman says tp him, according to this observer: "Old 'un, you can do away with all private property and remove the king just as well a little farther on. Step up lively, now, and don't block the traffic." The London policeman is said never to lose his head or his temper; he is the most ingenious and skillful of tacticians, and has at his finger- tips a diplomacy that an embassy might well envy. The silent raising of his hand con- trols a nation's commerce. In all the myriad harangues in Hyde Park for the lofty purposes of protesting against royalty, the peerage, wealth, achievement, success of any sort, this moni- tor of the law interferes only when it becomes necessary to the conduct of order, and within these bounds the speakers have ample oppor- tunity to abolish (in word) the entire British dominion, and the universe of which it is not, it must be confessed, an unimportant part. 36 HYDE PARK CORNER— APSLEY HOUSE The suffragettes vary their pilgrimages to Down- ing Street and ParHament Square and their diversions of destroying priceless works of art in national galleries and burning historic castles, by improvised convocations in Hyde Park; but so long as they refrain from apply- ing their hatchets to the passers-by and from throwing bombs into motor-cars, they are per- mitted to voice their grievances. The political enfranchisement of women as led by the able and scholarly Mrs. Fawcett of England, was a measure that not only com- manded universal respect, even from its oppo- nents, but which had a most encouraging sup- port, both in numbers and in the quality of its adherents. Mrs. Fawcett belongs to the same exalted order of womanhood that is so admirably represented in our own country by notable leaders of the woman suffrage movement. Meetings of all descriptions are frequent in Hyde Park, as are also open-air religious meet- ings for the announcement of almost every order of opinion and argument. These are largely a feature of Sunday afternoons, near the Oxford Street side, where the passer-by may catch fragments of more extraordinary theories regarding the general nature and destiny of human life than had heretofore ever been dreamed of in his philosophy. 37 THE LURE OF LONDON On a Saturday early in the April of 1914, a general meeting was called in the park to dis- cuss the Ulster problems at the crisis precipi- tated by the action of the army, and the couy apprehended (and in a day or two more carried out) by the Premier in assuming the office of the Secretary of War. Tremendous crowds gathered, and a vast number of stands were erected from which eminent speakers, of a class, it must be said, who were never accus- tomed to address the masses in Hyde Park, were announced to give their views; but the order that prevailed in the immense spaces of the grounds, with one of the largest throngs ever assembled there, might have graced a May- fair drawing-room. Sir Edward Carson, Austen Chamberlain, the Marquis of Londonderry, Lord Charles Beres- ford, and Lord Robert Cecil, K. C, M. P., were among the speakers, — an innovation of dis- tinguished leaders appearing in Hyde Park to address the populace that was almost if not entirely without precedent in English history. No one of these could be regarded as lenient in his charges against the British government. Mr. Chamberlain thrilled his hearers by his forcible arraignment, declaring that the con- vocation had been called "to protest against the perpetuation of a great crime", and he 38 HYDE PARK CORNER— APSLEY HOUSE added with indignant sarcasm that "during the past week they had seen a Lord Chancellor keeper of the king's conscience ", and had wit- nessed the spectacle of the Chancellor's "falsi- fying the Parliamentary records" because some members had changed their minds ! This great assemblage in Hyde Park and the stirring speeches delivered from forty separate stands was the first gun, so to speak, in the passionate protest against any attempt to use the army to coerce the men of Ulster out of their full citizenship in the United Kingdom. It was hurled at the crowds that this was an attempt to coerce Ulster to obey an alien au- thority that she detested and had abundant reason to detest. If the men of Ulster were Greeks, Armenians, Turks, or Poles, insisted Mr. Chamberlain, the Liberals would inundate them with sympathy. He declared that he knew no crime in the history of the world to equal this; that it was prompted by cowardice, enforced by cruelty, and entered upon by cal- lousness of feeling totally unprecedented. Felix Cassel, K. C, M. P., the chairman of the platform from which Lord Londonderry spoke, reminded the crowd that more than a century ago the great Lord Castlereagh, an ancestor of the present speaker, contributed materially toward the passage of the Act of 39 THE LURE OF LONDON Union between Great Britain and Ireland, and that Londonderry's defense of this union was most fitting. The Marquis employed his well-known agility with the English tongue in quite the opposite effect to that recommended by Talleyrand, and characterized in no compli- mentary terms the proposals of the government. Lord Beresford left little to the imagination re- garding his own convictions, and charged the government, in no uncertain terms, with hav- ing *' concocted a most infamous and cowardly plot." Lord Cecil, from a neighboring plat- form, was not less vigorous in the language of denunciation. He declared that "Mr. Churchill was prepared to send fire and sword through Ulster," and he inquired that if this did not mean "the slaughter of hundreds and thou- sands of his fellow-subjects," then what did it mean.^ Henry James, whose love for his London is only rivaled by London's adoration of this interpreter of all her moods and tenses, does not include Hyde Park Corner among his personal and private gods. "It is doubtless a signal proof of being a London-lover quand meme that one should undertake an apology for so bungled an attempt at a great public place as Hyde Park Corner," he says. "It is certain that the improvements and embellish- 40 HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE ments recently enacted there have only served to call further attention to the poverty of the elements and to the fact that this poverty is terribly illustrative of general conditions." Mr. James adds: *' The place is the beating heart of the great West End, yet its main features are a shabby, stuccoed hospital, the low park-gates, in their neat but unimposing frame, the drawing-room windows of Apsley House and of the common- place frontages on the little terrace beside it; to which must be added, of course, the only item in the whole prospect that is the least monumental — the arch spanning the private road beside the gardens of Buckingham Palace. There is a fine view of Piccadilly and Knights- bridge, and of the noble mansions, as the house- agents call them, of Grosvenor Place, together with a sense of generous space beyond the vulgar little railing of the Green Park; but, except the impression that there would be room for something better, there is nothing in all this that speaks to the imagination ; almost as much as the grimy desert of Trafalgar Square the prospect conveys the idea of an opportunity wasted." This impression of Hyde Park Corner was that of many years ago, and even Mr. James would now undoubtedly revise it to something more favorable; for within the past decade many details have been much improved. The 41 THE LURE OF LONDON architectural surroundings of this illustrious corner will be improved, if the project to do away with St. George's Hospital and to erect on its site an hotel of the most sumptuous order, is carried out. Hamilton Place and Park Lane unite to confer distinction on Hyde Park Corner. Is the color and romance of London concen- trated in Park Lane? The very name is the synonym of luxury, fashion, and of all the elaborate splendor of life that makes the great world of society. The thoroughfare itself is unique. With the green expanse of Hyde Park and the far-away vista of Kensington Gardens, beyond which the sun sinks in a soft haze, on the one side, and these splendid man- sions on the other, facing the grand old trees and the emerald turf of the vast pleasure ground, the location is incomparable for scenic beauty. Dorchester House easily holds the palm for architectural art, not only in Park Lane, but in all London. This Italian palace is entirely distinct from any of the stately homes of Eng- land. It is isolated in its own grandeur. It is unapproached in the splendor of its appoint- ments. The center of the house is occupied by the grand staircase which, as in the Roman palaces, is the chief feature. The state drawing- room, the green, and the red drawing-rooms, 4S HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE the salon, all open into each other, offering the most entrancing vista. The magnificently carved marble mantels, with ideal figures in the flowing lines of Michelangelo; the mantel of Bardeglia marble with the caryatides in Carrara; the dining-room, with its sky-blue ceiling decorated only with a flight of birds and with the sideboard carrying out the design of the mantel, with its eight immense mirrors, and its decorative scheme completed under the superintendence of Sir Coutts Lindsay, — all these apartments, flooded with light from the open park, have an atmospheric charm that is indescribable. The library contains the superb collections made by Lord Vernon, the celebrated Dante scholar, and beside the books that are priceless, many of them being rare editions, and other treasures of the bibliophile, there is a mass of manuscripts, from the ninth to the sixteenth century, bound in vellum and gold, which are kept in locked cases. In the entrance hall one is greeted by reliefs from Lucca della Robbia. In the salon hangs the portrait of the Marchesa Balbi by Van Dyck, with its glow of tone. Near it is that of Philip IV by Velasquez. There are works by Titian, Tintoretto, Ruysdael, Rembrandt, and to each picture is assigned perfect space and place. The immensity of the rooms offers THE LURE OF LONDON the finest facilities for the disposition of paint- ings and sculpture. At the corner of Park Lane and Hamilton Place, in the house formerly occupied by Lord Elgin (of *' Elgin Marbles" fame), is the present residence of the Duke and Duchess of Cam- bridge, and a little way down Park Lane is the Lady Brassey Museum, containing an interest- ing collection of antiquities, corals, and curios of all kinds, collected by Lady Brassey in her numerous voyages on the Sunbeam. The build- ing is unique with its Indian decorations, the Hindoo carvings being especially fine. The room on the first floor was originally the Durbar Hall of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London some years ago; and it has a marvellous array of Oriental arms, armor, rare carvings, inlaid work, and embroideries, together with an ethnological collection from Borneo, Burmah, the Straits of Malacca, Cyprus, Egypt, South America, and the Balkan regions. There are also some eighty or ninety volumes of photo- graphs taken in all these countries. "Palaces! pictures! parks!" exclaimed Haw- thorne, on visiting London. "They do enrich life, and kings and aristocrats cannot keep these things to themselves; they merely take care of them for others." In no metropolis of the world can there be 44 HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE found a greater number of more beautiful houses, enriched by fine pictures and sculpture and rare books and folios, and graced by a delightful and gracious hospitality, than in London. It is this preeminently agreeable and cultivated society which is the real lure of London, and which is the irresistible attraction for Americans. It is like turning the pages of a literary en- cyclopedia to read the records of London days as noted by eminent visitors from the time of Professor George Ticknor, Motley, Emer- son, and Hawthorne, to the more modern chronicles of Doctor Holmes (in that wonderful "Hundred Days"), of Charles Eliot Norton, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Phillips Brooks, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, and others of a still later day. In the early years of the eighties, James Russell Lowell was the American Minister (before the establishment of our embassy) and Matthew Arnold, Ruskin, Huxley, Lord Leighton, Canon Farrar, Tenny- son, Browning, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Jean Ingelow, Newman Hall, Gladstone, and others of that notable age were all living. What brilliant groups there were into which the favored visitor entered ! There are attractions far less calculated to lend themselves to literary annals which the 45 THE LURE OF LONDON observer of to-day may discern as a lure of London to the American woman. With her bank account in the stately and decorous pre- cincts of Brown and Shipley in Pall Mall, her motor taxi, and her impassioned joy in buy- ing things, which of the fabled seven floors of paradise could vie with London in her regard? Her existence is more gorgeous than royalty; it is a triumphant procession, as it were, among the marble pillars and the lofty palms of the shopping emporiums, that supply pins and pianos, hosiery or house-boats, tape or tapes- try, diamond-heeled slippers and robes that would make the Queen of Sheba pause and re- flect. The wizard, the accomplished magician of all this dream of splendor, further extracts the last dollar of her cherished bank deposit when she is thrilled with the labels, ^^Nou- veaute de Paris!" The cup of feminine felicity is full and running over. In this world the American woman wanders like Alice in Wonder- land. She may ascend to the roof -garden and enjoy the view and an ice; she may converse with her legion of friends through a special telephone within a radius almost anywhere short of the other side of the Atlantic. She may "call up" an agent and purchase a house in May fair, or a "baronial castle", as the people in Jane Austen's novels would respectfully 46 HYDE PARK CORNER — APSLEY HOUSE designate it, if she has the traditional American fortune. All these inestimable privileges are widely open to her as she emerges from her club, or that of her husband. To judge by the London press. Society is a recognized featureof the contemporary activities, and the various entertainments, balls, dinners, musicales, receptions, and garden-parties are an- nounced in the press each morning, and some- times three weeks in advance of their date. Society in its best sense is the highest expres- sion of humanity, and is considered as entitled to deliberate consideration. Nowhere is the human adventure more richly rewarded than in London, and life itself is not so dull an affair that its scenes and actors do not infrequently unroll themselves as if at the touch of a magician. One in quest of the aesthetic grouping alone might go farther and fare worse than in Hyde Park. Under the majes- tic trees on a June afternoon, the changing groups and throngs make moving pictures rival- ing those that draw perpetual crowds at the vaudeville. The aesthetic' and the human adventure mingle and impress their image upon the camera obscura of the soul, in all their myriad reflections of the comedie humaine. Nor can the loiterer in Hyde Park fail to call up spirits from the vasty deep of the mighty 47 THE LURE OF LONDON Past; to be haunted by those immortals who have long since trodden these paths and gone their appointed way, desiring, with Homer, "their own soul's life and their comrades' home- coming.'* 48 m THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN "... knowledge moulds the world anew And scatters far and wide the seeds Of other hopes and other creeds; And all in vain we seek to trace The fortunes of the coming race. Some with fear and some with hope — None can cast its horoscope. And dim shapeless figures loom All around us; . . . Forces that may rise and reign As the old ideals wane." William Edward Habtpole Leckt. The Royal Institution in Albemarle Street is a center of scientific activity invested with the somewhat unusual addition of a social prestige that attracts fashionable as well as learned throngs to such of its deliberations as may be open to a more general audience. At the Friday evening meetings, where only members and invited guests are present, the scene rivals any Mayfair drawing-room in its brilliancy. The groups of eminent men and fashionably gowned women transform the stately, spacious, splendid library in which they are received into a veri- table salon; and Albemarle Street from nine o'clock, for which hour the invitations are issued, 49 THE LURE OF LONDON is a sea of motor-cars discharging their occu- pants at the entrance of the pillared front of the Institution. The laboratories are all thrown open, and women in full dress bending over some scientific mechanism, or watching with unfeigned and with intelligent interest some delicate ex- periment in physics, surrounded by men whose names are an authority throughout the realm of scholarship, make up a brilliant and unique scene. After a social hour the company all adjourn to the lecture room arranged as an amphitheatre, the rather steep incline of seats ascending row after row to the balcony. On these occasions the lecture, delivered by a man of some special claim to distinction, is always on some new and notable discovery, some re- cent development of speculative science of a nature to command attention, or some new aspect of a social, artistic, literary, or scientific problem. Whenever the nature of the subject admits, the Friday evening lecture is illustrated by the stereopticon or by experimental proc- esses. Near the lecturer sits the President of the Royal Institution (now the Duke of North- umberland), and by his side are apt to be one or more of the three honorary members, the Duke of Connaught, Prince Christian of Schles- wig-Holstein, and Albert I, Prince of Monaco; or the Honorary Professor of Natural Philos- 50 Statue of diaries Darwin by lioehm South Kensington Museum THE ROYAL INSTITUTION ophy, the Right Honorable Lord Rayleigh, with a trail of learned titles after his name; the treasurer, Sir James Crichton-Browne, the secretary, Alexander Siemens, with many de- grees, while members of the royal family, or household, and eminent visitors from all parts of the world are frequently seen. The Royal Institution of Great Britain was founded in 1799; for more than a century it has been the scene of activities which have focused the attention of the scientific world. The im- mense growth of all commercial and industrial life, which the expansion and development of science has produced, is largely indebted to the work done here. Vast chemical industries have been based on discoveries made in these laboratories. It is here that Faraday made those numerous and epoch-making discoveries which are the basis of the infinite forms of ap- plied electricity that transformed the modern world. The successive generations of dis- tinguished men who have been the directive power of this Institution are contributors of incalculable value to the civilization of the present day. Domestic comfort and national wealth owe a debt to the researches made here that can hardly be computed. Yet, by an anomaly, the Royal Institution is not itself rich, and has never had a State endowment. 51 THE LURE OF LONDON Its income is derived from membership subscrip- tions, and from bequests and contributions made by persons who appreciate the greatness and importance of its work. The members of this body have not only the reward of their personal participation in important and inter- esting activities, however, but to all who live within access to London, the large and delight- fully furnished rooms of the Institution, with the vast supply of current papers, journals, and magazines, and the charm of sculpture and pictures; the rich resources of the library of over seventy thousand volumes, principally of scien- tific works but containing a proportion of general literature and including many rare works not easily found elsewhere; with every facility for reading, study, and correspondence; the privi- lege of enjoying the social gathering on Friday evenings, — all these offer varied incitements to membership enrollment. The secretary of the Institution, speaking of these many induce- ments to membership says: " Members obtain what clubs do not offer — a social gathering every Friday evening during the session of members and their friends of both sexes. There is a lecture of an hour's duration upon some topic of the day, perhaps some novel research in some branch of science; perhaps the most recent archaeological dis- 52 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION coveries in some old Greek colony; perhaps the newest exploration of some little-known por- tion of the globe; perhaps a new inquiry into the life and works of some eminent author; or per- haps the last word upon the causation of some devasting malady. These lectures are illus- trated by experiments or lantern slides, accord- ing to the nature of the subject. When the lec- ture is over the audience can saunter through the wide libraries, in which there is always to be found an exhibition of the latest products of invention or ingenuity in some department or other, keeping the spectators abreast of what is going on in the world." The library contains also many rare and highly important manuscripts, among which are the Coulter or Dorchester papers; the head- quarters documents of successive British com- manders-in-chief, of the American War of In- dependence, and much of the correspondence of that period. The typical scope and purposes of the lecture courses of the Royal Institution are indicated by the courses given during this present year of 1914, when such a specialist as Professor Sir Joseph John Thomson discusses the advance in physical science; the Right Honorable Lord Rayleigh speaks on fluid motions; Doctor Wil- liam McDougall, Fellow of Corpus Christi, Ox- ford, on the intellectual, moral, and religious life 53 THE LURE OF LONDON of savage man; Professor Sir Thomas Holland on the causes of earth crust folds; Professor Jenkin, of the Oxford Chair of Engineering Science, on theories of caloric; Arthur H. Smith, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities of the British Museum, on early and later Greece and Rome; the great authority on eugenics, Caleb Williams Saleeby, on the progress of this science with its powers and its problems. The phenomena of the electric emissivity of matter is explained by John Allen Harked of the na- tional physical laboratory; Professor Gollancz, Litt. D., of King's College, lectures on Hamlet in legend and drama; and William Bateson, of the Fulleran Chair of Physiology in the Royal Institution, discourses on animals and plants under domestication, while Frederick C order, of the Royal Academy of Music, speaks of cer- tain neglected but important musical compos- ers, among whom he instances Ludwig Spohr, Joachim Raff, and Henry Bishop. Also Pro- fessor Fleming gave an enthralling lecture on the recent improvements in long-distance telephony, with ample illustrations, to one of the most eager and attentive of audiences; Sir Walter Lawrence discoursed on an Indian State; Pro- fessor Arthur Keith, the well-known anthropol- ogist, spoke of the busts and portraits of Shake- speare and of Burns; Professor Norman Collie 54 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION illustrated the production of neon and helium by electric discharge, and Professor Sir James Dewar took for his subject the coming of age of the "vacuum flask.'* The author of the book entitled "The Hapsburg Monarchy", H. Wick- ham Steed, was secured to lecture on the foun- dations of diplomacy, and the Astronomer Royal, Frank Watson Dyer, with half a page of learned titles trailing after his name, gave a fascinating address, illustrated by the stereop- ticon, on the stars around the north pole. From Calcutta came Jadadis Chunder Bose, who holds a chair in Presidency College in that city, to discuss the autographs of plants and their revelations, thus opening a chapter in nature little known and of the most mysterious attraction. Robert Mond, the antiquarian, there spoke on the mortuary chapels of the Theban nobles, and Professor Frederick Keeble gave a lecture on symbiosis of "plant animals," whose curious interest rivaled that of Professor Bose's subject. Monsignor Benson, the latter-day novelist of the Catholic faith, gave a brilliant address, the theme of which was a criticism of critics; and the Very Reverend William Ralph Inge, the present Dean of St. Paul's, gave a series of three deeply interesting lectures on Plotinus as philosopher, religious teacher, and mystic. The 55 THE LURE OF LONDON Director of the Nobel Institute of Physical Chemistry, Doctor Svante Arrhenius, addressed the large audiences that gathered to hear him on the identity of laws in both general and biological chemistry, while the memory of the great Faraday was revived in a vital manner by Professor Silvanus P. Thompson in his discussion of Faraday in connection with the foundations of electrical engineering. Nor was natural history in the classics ignored: from Dundee came Doctor D'Arcy W. Thompson, with his lectures on the natural history of the poets. Homer, Virgil, and Aristophanes, of Aristotle and Pliny; while celestial spectros- copy was presented by Professor Fowler of the Imperial College, with experimental demonstra- tions of the investigations of the spectra of the sun, stars, and comets. Doctor Walter Wahl revealed many of the problems of physical chemistry, explaining phenomena that occur in matter under high and under low temper- atures; the nature and origin of fiords, with their distribution and effects on the movements of the earth, was delightfully pictured by Pro- fessor John W. Gregory of Glasgow. Sigismund Goetze gave an insight into expression in art, giving its origin and tracing its development, and offering a critical view of the importance of right expression in modern conditions; while 56 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION the devotees of ornithology were gratified by a lecture on bird-migration by the specialist in anatomy, Professor Charles J. Patten, of Shef- field. This resume is fairly typical of every year's work at the Royal Institution, new specialists being invited from the world over, as they appear, to deliver their message before this cosmopolitan academy. Modern scientific research is a pursuit in- volving great expense from the necessity of costly apparatus and means to conduct experi- ments. It is said that no other foundation in the world, however fortunate in securing rich endowments, can show results that exceed those obtained at the Royal Institution. The lecture courses range over the fields of nearly all the inductive sciences: Mechanics, Chem- istry, Heat, Light, Electricity, Astronomy, Geol- ogy, Biology, and not infrequently include courses on Literature and the Fine Arts. The reading rooms of the Institution are open every day in the week between nine in the morning and eleven at night, and the library hours are from ten a. m. till ten p. m., which accommodates readers to the utmost extent. To share in the privileges of the Royal Institution is to enter into a university of special training of the most valuable order, and one closely applied to all knowledge, and to the advancement and 57 THE LURE OF LONDON prosperity of all practical life. No visitor to London would dream of not familiarizing him- self, so far as may be, with that wonder of all ages, the British Museum. But comparatively few, outside the scientific cult, know much of the Royal Institution, or realize that its privi- leges may be extended to those who wish to attend the courses of lectures on the payment of a reasonable fee. One of the specified objects of the Institution, and an object held to be as definite as that of diffusing the principles of experimental science, is that of promoting social intercourse among the lovers of science, both men and women. The membership in- cludes women as well as men, and the oppor- tunities for collective as well as for individual study are especially valuable. The site of the Royal Institution is one of historic renown. In the middle of the seven- teenth century three great houses were in proc- ess of erection on the north of Piccadilly: Burlington House, Berkeley House, and the palace of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, who died in exile. The palace was sold to the Duke of Albemarle, whose talent for finance left much to be desired, and the property fell into the hands of a company of bankers and mechanics, who ultimately sold the land now occupied by Albemarle, Dover, and Bond streets. The 5S THE ROYAL INSTITUTION latter has been celebrated by Lord Lytton in the lines: "Bond street enter, — Dear street, of London's charms the center. It is a curious fact that the founder of the Royal Institution, Benjamin Thompson, later Count Rumford, was born in the United States, near Boston, and at the age of seventeen was a clerk in one of the Boston shops, attending evening school to further his education. Becoming somewhat proficient in French, he went abroad, and at the age of twenty-three found himself in Mannheim, where he made some notable scientific experiments in the presence of Pro- fessor Hemmer of the Electoral Academy. In 1788 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Great Britain; he was knighted by George the Third, and when Sir Benjamin Thompson became the Lieutenant-general of the Bavarian armies, the order of the White Eagle was bestowed upon him, and he was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. Count Rumford's interest in science became the pre- dominant one of his life. From London, in July of 1796, he wrote to Honorable John Adams, the president at that time of the American Acad- emy of Arts and Sciences, in Boston, to offer five thousand dollars as a gift, the interest of 59 THE LURE OF LONDON which was to pay for a medal "to the author of the most important discovery or useful improvement on heat or light." During the succeeding two or three years, Count Rumford was occupied with plans for founding an organ- ization for "the speedy and general diffusion of knowledge and improvements, wherever orig- inated and of the application of science to the useful purposes of life." In March, 1779, a meeting was held at the home of Sir Joseph Banks, at which the plan for the Royal Institu- tion was fully organized. The Duke of Devon- shire, Lord Palmerston, Earl Holland, William Wilberforce, and Earl Spencer were among those present, and within the ensuing three months subscriptions of more than twenty thousand pounds had poured in to support the new proj- ect. The land was purchased in Albemarle Street; daily lectures on chemistry and physics were initiated, a chemical laboratory was con- structed, and men were engaged to prepare models and apparatus. Count Rumford wrote to his daughter that the Royal Institution was "not only the fashion but the rage", and that they had found "a nice, able man as a lecturer, — Humphry Davy." The initial lecture of this young man is said to have enchanted the listeners with its power, poetry, and philosophy. The second one drew crowds that overflowed 60 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION the hall, and a larger one had to be engaged at once. It was barely previous to these lectures that Davy had won much attention by dis- covering the ansesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, which was followed by other brilliant discoveries. In 1812 he was knighted: on the day following he married a lady of large for- tune and Sir Humphry's increasing prestige invested the Institution with splendor. "It was no longer a popular school of technical science, but became almost the exclusive prop- erty of the higher classes. Ladies of rank and young noblemen assiduously followed the lec- tures of Davy, while his researches in the labo- ratory produced the most solid results. It was there that he discovered the laws of electro- chemical decomposition, that he established the true nature of chlorine and the philosophy of flame." The Institution still preserves the battery by means of which Davy accomplished the separation of potassium and sodium. It was a great moment in his life when he saw the new element penetrate through the crust of potash and take fire the instant it came in contact with the air. "He could not contain his joy," de- scribes one chronicler, "and danced around the room in ecstatic transport." About this time another remarkable professor was appointed 61 THE LURE OF LONDON to the Chair of Natural Philosophy, the famous Doctor Young, who, at the age of fourteen, was a remarkable linguist, proficient in Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew, as well as in French and Italian, in Latin and Greek. Davy retired in 1813, his chair being filled by William Thomas Brand. Before Sir Humphry Davy's retire- ment from his position, he had been impressed with the ability of a young bookbinder, Michael Faraday, to whom he had given the place of laboratory assistant. In 1825 Faraday was pro- moted to be the director of the laboratory, and two years later he was appointed to a chair, where his research and genius made a new epoch in the history of the Institution. It was left for his successor, Professor Tyndall, to do justice to the genius of Faraday, which he char- acterized as being of the prophetic order. Not far from the year of 1830, Faraday had pro- claimed his conviction of a single origin of all the varieties of force, in these words: "I have long held an opinion that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest, have one common origin; are, indeed, so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, into one another, and possess equivalents of power in their action." This seems to have been the first unerring insight into the great law of cor- 62 I Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery Michael Faraday From a portrait by Thomas Phillips, R.A. National Portrait Gallery i THE ROYAL INSTITUTION relation of forces now so universally accepted. As Doctor Tyndall says: "Faraday was more than a philosopher, and often wrought by an inspiration to be understood by sympathy alone." Faraday's special field was the investi- gation into the relations and the properties of heat, light, magnetism, and electricity. He was offered the presidency of the Institution, but declined the honor, preferring to devote his time to actual work in his chosen field. Doctor Tyndall characterizes Faraday as a "... just and faithful knight of God," nor is this estimate one of undue exaltation. Invitations to lecture before the Institution were in those days, as now, regarded as a special honor. Campbell gave a lecture on poetry; Flaxman gave two on art, and was made an honorary member for life. Southey was invited to appear on this platform, but declined. Doc- tor Whewell gave an address on education. In a later day (1884), Sir Walter Besant lec- tured before the Institution on "The Art of Fiction", considering it justly as one of the Fine Arts. He claimed for it a place with sculpture, painting, music; and presented an able argument for its being regarded as subject to artistic laws of proportion, harmony, and perspective. He claimed for a master in the 63 THE LURE OF LONDON art of fiction the same preeminence that would be accorded the master in any other art. Sir Walter evidently held with Macaulay that writing is rather a question of the fullness of the mind than of the emptiness of the pocket; and that literature can hardly be relegated to a place among the industrial occupations. The Royal Institution has a number of oil portraits, busts, and portrait busts that are of great interest. A picture showing Newton sit- ting in a garden, in a meditative attitude, is one that holds the visitor; a medallion of Tyn- dall by Woolner, modeled in 1876, is considered the best existing portrait of that noble man; the splendid statue at the foot of the grand staircase of Faraday standing, life-size, is an impressive work of art; and there are portraits of Sir William Huggins, of Mrs. Somerville, of Sir Humphry Davy, and other distinguished scientists. The most brilliant feature of the Royal In- stitution for the spring of 1914 was a course of lectures by the celebrated professor who holds the Chair of Natural Philosophy, Sir Joseph John Thomson, on "Recent Discoveries in Physical Science", given on six successive Sat- urdays in March and April. This course was one of preeminent value, and in the research 61 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION made into the cause of gravitation incited much discussion in London and on the continent. A Friday evening lecture by Professor Thom- son discussing researches on Rontgen rays, il- lustrated by a most beautiful series of experi- ments, was given before a brilliant audience of members and their invited guests, the Duke of Northumberland in the presidential chair, while both royalty and nobility were represented in the audience. Sir Joseph Thomson accepted the Chair of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution in 1905, and his genius, his profound, brilliant, and wide learning, and his single-hearted devo- tion to science, of which electricity is his spe- cialty, render him particularly calculated to sustain and extend the great traditions of Far- aday, Tyndall, and Huxley. Professor Huxley's lectures were always thronged by attentive listeners, and a vivid picture of one of these occasions has been preserved by George W. Smalley, one of the most distinguished of in- ternational press correspondents. Mr. Smalley wrote : ^ "I used always to admire the simple and busi- ness-like way in which Huxley made his entry on great occasions. He hated anything like display and would have none of it. At the * "London Letters," New York: Harper and Brothers. 65 THE LURE OF LONDON Royal Institution, more than almost anywhere else, the lecturer, on whom the concentric circles of spectators in their steep amphitheatre look down, focusses the gaze. Huxley never seemed aware that anybody was looking at him. From self-consciousness he was, here as elsewhere, sin- gularly free, as from self-assertion. He walked in through the door on the left as if he were entering his own laboratory. In these days he bore scarcely a mark of age. He was in the full vigor of manhood and looked the man he was. Faultlessly dressed — the rule in the Royal Institution is evening costume — with a firm step and easy bearing he took his place appar- ently without a thought of the people who were cheering him. To him it was an anniversary. He looked and he probably was the master. Surrounded as he was by the celebrities of science and the ornaments of London drawing- rooms, there was none who had quite the same kind of intellectual ascendency that belonged to him. The square forehead, the square jaw, the tense lines of the mouth, the deep flashing dark eyes, the impression of something more than strength he gave you, an impression of sincerity, of solid force, of immovability, yet with the gentleness arising from the serene consciousness of his strength — all these be- longed to Huxley and to him alone. The first glance magnetized his audience. The eyes were those of one accustomed to command, of one having authority, and not fearing on occa- sion to use it. The hair swept carelessly away from the broad forehead and grew rather long 66 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION behind, yet the length did not suggest, as it often does, effeminacy. He was masculine in everything — look, gesture, speech. Sparing of gesture, sparing of emphasis, careless of mere rhetorical and of oratorical art, he had nevertheless the secret of the highest art of all, whether in oratory or whatever else — he had simplicity. The force was in the thought and the diction, and he needed no other. The voice was rather deep, low, but quite audible, at times sonorous, and always full. He used the chest-notes. His manner here, in the presence of this select and rather limited audience — for the theatre of the Royal Institution holds, I think, less than a thousand people — was exactly the same as before a great company whom he addressed as president of the British Association. I remember going late to that meeting ... it was at Liverpool . . . and hav- ing to sit far back, yet hearing every word easily, and there, too, the feeling was the same, that he had mastered his audience, taken possession of them, and held them to the end in an unre- laxing grip, as a great actor at his best does. There was nothing of the actor about him, except that he knew how to stand still, but mas- terful he ever was. ..." Renan, Buckle, and many other noted men of their time have been invited to appear on the platform of the Royal Institution. On one mem- orable evening in the August of 1886, Tennyson, who was then on his way to Norway, dined 67 THE LURE OF LONDON with the Tyndalls at the Royal Institution, — an evening that is cherished as a treasured tradition; for Lord Tennyson, not infelici- tously termed the "poet of science", is espe- cially characterized as one who combined with the feu sacre an ever-deepening interest in the final cause beyond all manifestations, and in the marvellous working out of the laws of nature. The Royal Society in London, which has its magnificent suite of rooms in Burlington House, Piccadilly, dates back to 1665, when it crystal- lized into an organization at a lecture given by Sir Christopher Wren ; but the interest in induc- tive philosophy, the raison d'etre of the Society, is directly traced to the influence and inspira- tion of Lord Bacon. In 1671 the Society was enriched by the power of Isaac Newton who became a Fellow, and whose lectures announc- ing his own views on the nature of light aroused a storm of opposition all over Europe. Newton was then a professor of mathematics at Cam- bridge, and he had already invented the re- flecting telescope. The actual instrument is now among the treasured possessions of the Society, as is the manuscript of the first book of Newton's immortal Philosophia Naturalisy Principia Mathematica, in Sir Isaac's own hand- writing. The history of the Royal Society is an illuminated page in scientific development. 68 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION In 1708, Sir Godfrey Copley, then the president, left a bequest of a hundred pounds, of which the interest was to be used to bestow a gold medal of five pounds in value, and this has remained the highest gift and honor that the Royal Society can bestow. The medal has been conferred on Franklin, Volta, Leibig, Herschel, Leverrier, and others. This Society has the honor of being the first to announce the com- position of water, a discovery attributed to Watt. In 1805, Sir Humphry Davy gave his paper on "Some Chemical Agencies" before the as- sembly and presented theories which made its reading the greatest scientific event of the day. The French Institute recognized its value and crowned Sir Humphry with honor; with char- acteristic enthusiasm and generous recognition, it also presented to him the sum of three thou- sand francs. It was not long after this that Sir Humphry invented the safety lamp, on which the Royal Society bestowed on him the Copley medal, and the colliers of England pre- sented him with a service of plate costing twenty-five hundred pounds. The British Gov- ernment gives the Royal Society its rooms in Burlington House, and the annual thousand pounds voted to be used in the encouragement of original research, while not at the direct dis- posal of the Society, is yet subject to its advice 69 THE LURE OF LONDON and controlling counsel. There are also pro- vided in Burlington House rooms for the So- ciety of Antiquaries, the Linnean Society, the Royal Astronomical, the Geological, and the Chemical societies. The suite occupied by the Royal Society is rich in portraits of distinguished members painted by Sir Peter Lely, Sir Thomas Law- rence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other cele- brated artists. One of the most valued works of Lawrence is a portrait of Copernicus, show- ing a face with an unmistakably ecclesiastical expression, clean-shaven, with a long upper lip and abnormally firm chin. It looks like the man who could write the world-famous trea- tise, "De Oribus Ccelestium Revolution{hus^\ and hold it unpublished till shortly before his death. Among other portraits are those of Edmund Halley (the discoverer of Halley's Comet), John Locke (the author of "Locke on the Understanding"), Hobbes, and John Evelyn. In the salon for meetings, over the president's chair, hangs a fine portrait of Sir Isaac New- ton, whose sun-dial, cut out of the wall of his father's house, is preserved in the library. Beside these organizations, scientific Lon- don includes the Royal Society of Arts, having its rooms in the Adelphi, which dates back to 1754, and devotes itself to literature, to indus- 70 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION trial art, and to pure and applied sciences. Among its treasures are four plates etched by- Albert Diirer, of which impressions are placed in the keeping of the British Museum. Sir Charles Waldstein gave the Cantor course of lectures before this Society in the spring of 1914, and in one of these, the theme of the day being "Fashion in Art and Industry", Lord San- derson in the chair. Sir Charles emphasized the transitory vogue, the ephemeral domina- tion of that factor in life called taste. The adap- tation of each new fashion leads to the discard- ing of a certain proportion of the materials in use before the change, and thus is fed the perpetual avidity of trade. Of the fashions of the hour. Sir Charles spoke at some length, with no complimentary attitude toward their grotesque character, and he suggested that the day when bells and castanets might be added to prevailing eccentricities may be by no means distant. The Society of Civil Engineers jBnds the genius of its membership represented in every region of the globe; the Chemical Society (also having its rooms in Burlington House) has an important membership, a fine library, and reading-rooms; the Educational Council has a department called Science and Art, which sup- ports eminent courses of lectures for working- 71 THE LURE OF LONDON men at a merely nominal price, a sixpence, only, being paid for a course of six. It was before this assembly that Huxley gave two of his great- est lectures: "The Coordination of the Modes of Motion of Living Bodies With Those of the Surrounding World" and "The Phenomena of Life as Motion and Consciousness." This organization has its house in Exhibition Road; and at the lectures the men gather in their working clothes, just as they come from the workshop; but while no one arrives much before the hour named, yet the hall is entirely filled and every seat taken, at the time for the lec- ture to begin. The intelligence with which this audience listens is only equaled by the intensity of interest manifested. Many a distinguished gathering in the more leisurely and richly en- dowed classes of life might well take a lesson from these audiences. At Finsbury Circus is established the London Institution, dating to 1815, which has a good library, both consulting and circulating, and pro- vides lectures twice a week. Few sojourners in London outside the scien- tific cult even know of the existence of one of the most extensive and important museums of practical geology, situated in Piccadilly, the building occupying the entire space through to Jermyn Street, which is open to visitors 72 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION every week-day in the year save in August. In Exhibition Road there is an Indian museum, with a fairly good collection, though a veracious chronicler could hardly invest it with much interest. The great Kensington Museum, in Brompton, a little distance from the beautiful Oratory of the "Immaculate Heart of Mary" (perhaps the most beautiful Roman Catholic church in Europe), is in Cromwell Road. Whether one is particularly enamored of mu- seum collections or not, he should not miss seeing the South Kensington, which, as it is by no means exclusively scientific, will be more fully alluded to in a subsequent chapter devoted to the national museums of London. The British Association for the Advance- ment of Science was organized in 1830, Sir David Brewster being the principal promoter; and its avowed object, "to give a stronger impulse and more systematic direction to scien- tific inquiry", is one that has been sustained and enlarged with the passing of every decade. In these annual deliberations of the great leaders of thought and research. Science and Philosophy clasp hands. The list of the presidents of this Association is almost, in itself, an epitome of the progress of the world, as "... the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns," 73 THE LURE OF LONDON as the "ancient founts of inspiration" pour their libations more directly on the march of progress. Among the notable presidents of the British Association have been Huxley, Lord Kelvin, Tyndall, Lord Salisbury, Sir George Darwin, Sir William Crookes, and Sir Joseph John Thom- son; and the body has been honored this past year by the presidency of Sir Oliver Lodge. During the eighty years and more of this Asso- ciation, there have been few sessions in which some important new discovery or invention, some of which, like Marconi's wireless teleg- raphy, have been epoch-making, has not been brought before its deliberations. Its influence is world-wide. Its membership, personal and cor- responding, represents almost every civilized country in the world. The meetings are held exclusively on British territory, largely in Eng- land, but one has been held in India, one or more in Canada, and occasionally in Scotland or Ireland. The city is appointed two years in advance, London being the only one in which no meeting of the Association is ever held. The long list of presidential addresses has in- cluded a few of more than transient interest, of which the more important have been that of Sir William Crookes, in 1898, notable for its pres- entation of the problem of telepathy; that of Sir Joseph John Thomson a few years later, 74 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION remarkable for its discussion of electrical pos- sibilities, and the address of Sir Oliver Lodge in 1913, which was nothing less than epoch-mak- ing in its affirmation of the scientific evidence for the continuity of life. Lord Kelvin once remarked that science is bound to face fearlessly every problem of life that can be presented. Sir Oliver shares the same conviction. He was a pioneer in wireless telegraphy; he is, as is well known, the leading authority on the ether; he was one of the early and most promi- nent investigators of psychical phenomena, and he is the absolute believer in the ultimate unity of faith and science. Sir Oliver became a life member of the British Association in 1873, when he was but twenty -two years of age. He has always, even in his early youth, been a prominent worker in this body, serving as secretary of the section of mathematics and physics, and being engaged on special committees. At the meeting in Montreal, in 1884, he delivered a lecture on "Dust" that greatly influenced the establishment of the National Physical Laboratory. He regards his attendance at a course of lectures by Doc- tor Tyndall on "Heat" as one of the contribut- ing influences of his life, and he also had the advantage of studying under Professor Huxley, and W. K. Clifford at Oxford. 75 THE LURE OF LONDON Sir William Crookes, in his presidential ad- dress, discussing telepathy, gave an analytical explanation of the mental mechanism that renders telepathy possible that is one of the most valuable contributions to modern science. A striking instance of telepathic communi- cation is narrated by that distinguished author, explorer, and lecturer, Mr. A. Henry Savage- Landor, the grandson of Walter Savage Landor, in the record of his journey ^ of thirteen months through regions hitherto unexplored in South America, crossing Brazil through the trackless wilderness. The explorer and his men were at one time sixteen days without food; Mr. Savage-Landor himself lay nearly dead, and wholly helpless in a hammock, after this ex- perience. During the days of starvation his parents and sister, in Florence (Italy), though knowing nothing of his expedition, "for I al- ways took the greatest care not to let them know," he says, when he was starting out on such a quest; nevertheless they constantly saw him (mentally) lying unconscious in a forest, dying of hunger. "When I reached Rio de Janeiro in April of the following year," says the explorer, "I found there a number of letters which had ^ " Across Unknown South America." Boston, Little, Brown, and Company. 76 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION been written to me by my parents and my sister, during the month of September, in which they told me of these visions repeating themselves daily, especially between the dates of Sept. 8-24. These letters were written long before anybody knew that I had ever suffered from starvation in the forest. And these visions reproduced the conditions with wonderful faith- fulness," adds the explorer, "the telepathic connection having in that case been established vividly at a distance of several thousand miles." That the universal acceptance of telepathy will constitute an important enlargement of human knowledge, as well as an addition to recognized human powers, Sir Oliver believes; but he does not regard it as absolutely revo- lutionary in psychology or science. "It appears to me very probable," says Sir Oliver, "that telepathy or thought transference is a form of direct communication between mind and mind, apart from the usual physical or material con- comitants. If so, it is a vitally important discov- ery, and should be confirmed by each one for himself through careful experiment and obser- vation, whenever opportunity occurs; so that gradually it may be recognized as an assured fact, not only by the few who have as yet taken the trouble to study it, but by all." Professor Schafer, who immediately preceded 77 THE LURE OF LONDON Sir Oliver Lodge as president of the British Association, made his address, at the meeting in Dundee in 1912, on "Life", and discussed the momentous question as to the possibihty of formulating its origin, or of artificially pro- ducing it. Thus it is seen that the tendency of this distinguished group of savants is constantly toward the problems of the deepest spiritual import. The Association for 1914 meets in Australia, and Professor Bateson, the celebrated biologist, who is the president-elect to succeed Sir Oliver, will make the mysteries involved in heredity as revealed and formulated by bio- logical science, the keynote of his address. As a deliberative body on the most important problems of human existence, the British Asso- ciation for the Advancement of Science stands unrivaled, and its contributions to the higher development of humanity are incalculably great and of immeasurable value. 78 Sir Oliver Lodge IV THE NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART *'If a man could feel. Not one day, in the artist's ecstacy. But every day, feast, fast, or working day. The spiritual significance burn through The hieroglyphic of material shows. Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings. Art's a service, mark. . . ." Elizabeth Baerett BROWNtNO. The beginning of June sees everybody in London who is enabled to get there — by fair means, if they can, by foul means, if they must. The method is held to be quite subordi- nate to the results. The peerage and the nobil- ity, who have been occupying their castles and palaces in the country, or who have been passing the winter months in India, Egypt, Algiers, or Italy, return and open their great houses. Mayfair and Belgravia take on new aspects; the theatres, the opera, concerts, and the galleries are thronged ; Rotten Row becomes an animated scene; Hyde Park is filled with fashionable equipages; excursions are made to Richmond and other outlying resorts; dinners, balls, and musicales crowd the days and nights; 79 THE LURE OF LONDON the initiate "get in" a dozen social engage- ments of one kind and another during a day, and fashionable drawing-rooms offer brilliant scenes. Those who do not number a town house among their possessions take one for the sea- son; he who cannot compass a palace in Park Lane, or around Berkeley Square, engages a house as near this region as his bank account permits, and, failing a house, then an apart- ment; and those who come as observers rather than as the observed bestow themselves in modest lodgings, or in hotels, rather than not be in London at this witching time. "Now is the high tide of the year," and the London of smoke and gloom and dark- ness and pouring rains, with an atmosphere that suggests that of ice-fields, is suddenly trans- formed by some unguessed miracle into a city where sunshine is not unknown, and where soft shadows and dream-like haze mingle with the summer sunshine to produce the most fasci- nating color effects, whose fantastic blendings render them as unique as they are beautiful. Bond Street is filled with the visitors to its galleries, where thrifty dealers in art charge a small admittance fee, even while welcoming the throngs as possible buyers. The Dore Gallery is always a point of interest, and its pictorial at- 80 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART tractions are usually supplemented by some one famous work of art, whose theme or hand- ling is calculated to appeal to popular curiosity. The Bond Street shops, like those of Regent Street, are dear to the feminine heart, and the aspects of London, in their variety and im- mensity, might well be added to the traditional wonders of the world. The display of window- boxes gay with flowers in the fashionable resi- dential regions add color and charm to the Tnise en scene. This is the time to visit the great galleries of art, while the summer days are long and the light is favorable. Of these, first of all come the National Gallery of Trafalgar Square and the National Portrait Gallery in the rear; the Tate Gallery; the Wallace Collection; the new museum in Stafford House; the Victoria and Albert Museum; the Kensington Palace Mu- seum; the Soane, and the Corporation Art Gal- lery, the latter being of lesser importance. The National Gallery occupies a site of signal advantage on Trafalgar Square, commanding from its pillared portico a view of the colossal column supporting the statue of Nelson — a statue held to be one of the most atrocious in all sculpture, but as it can only be seen from the vantage ground of an aeroplane, or through 81 THE LURE OF LONDON a telescope, its ugliness matters little to the passer-by. Nor is one disposed to take a more cheerful view of the fountains, which, if sub- jected to so severe a test as a comparison with the noble fountains of the Place de la Concorde, fail to emerge with much dignity; but the lions, by Landseer, which guard the base of the Nelson monument, are generally ap- proved by the critical eye. When Sir Robert Peel declared that the view from the National Gallery was "the finest view in Europe", he seems to have laid himself quite liable to a gen- eral impeachment. Had Sir Robert ever gazed over Athens and the Athenian plain from the Acropolis.'^ or over Rome from the Janiculum? or had he ever visited Egypt, India, or the Alps.^* Had he ever surveyed Florence from Bellos- guardo, or even London from Hampstead at that magic spot where gleams through a softly- shadowed air the golden cross on the dome of St. Paul's? The local records do not answer these questions, and one has no choice but to con- sider that a recognition of beauty in panoramic view was not among the virtues and graces of Sir Robert. Yet, that there is an impressive suggestiveness in this vista must be conceded. In the background rise the towers of Westmin- ster Abbey and of the Houses of Parliament, majestic and invested with dignity. The pic- 82 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART torial Whitehall, and the beautiful arch leading into Pall Mall and St. James's Park, which is comparatively recent, could not have regaled the eyes of this Parliamentary hero. If he sinned against artistic canons, his Nemesis fol- lowed him closely, for his own statue, in West- minster Abbey, represents him as addressing the House clad in a Roman toga. St. Martin's church, however, rising from the broad flight of steps that leads to its Grecian portico, crowned by its high tower, a church dating to 1721 and considered as the master- piece of Gibbs, does much to support Sir Robert Peel's judgment. It requires some imagination to picture the present St. Martin's Lane, one of the most crowded thoroughfares, as "a shady lane with a hedge on either side"; yet it is still a place of surprises, as when one turns into some crowded narrow alley and sud- denly finds himself in a garden, sequestered amid high walls. But all London is rich in the unexpected. Its denizens who are most familiar with the monstrous, overgrown, and bewilderingly tortuous city, frequently find themselves virtually lost in pursuing some unfamiliar but apparently direct route to a given destination. Not even Paris, laid out on the star system of converging streets, can more mislead the unwary than can London. The 83 THE LURE OF LONDON more one traverses London, the less would he ever claim to know it. The extension of knowl- edge only serves to reveal his unsuspected depths of ignorance. Standing at a given point on Trafalgar Square, it seems to the stranger the merest detail to cross to another given point on some street easily within the range of his vision; but on arriving, apparently, at this destined goal, he will discover that the build- ing he was in quest of has miraculously changed its locality, and that his destination was in quite another direction. This confusion and the numerous optical delusions are a part of that curious character of the square in which every- thing is apt to appear where it is not. But it is just this confusion of detail that is dear to the heart of the Londoner. Would he have the crooked paths made straight? Perish the thought. That would not be London. Its very fascination is based on its baffling character. This is an essential ingredient in the "lure" of the vast metropolis. That it is like nothing else on the planet is the pride and joy of its townsmen. It has been said that human nature is like ivy that cannot cling to glass; it must plant its feet in imperfections. So with London. Its irregularity of detail, its incredible improb- abilities, its mathematical impossibilities, its unbelievable tricks of towers and cupolas and 84 cr p.. NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART buildings descried at one time in a certain di- rection and at another quite invisible, its kalei- doscopic aspects that are determined by at- mospheric conditions, by fogs, haze, winds, clouds, are all factors in that magnetic fasci- nation which weaves its spell of impassioned devotion for the Londoner. He may endure for a time the enchantments of foreign travel; but sooner rather than later, the lure of London again controls and constrains him, and he can resist it as little as a needle resists the magnet. London, he declares, gives him everything he wants ; everything he can ask or desire. Where- fore, then, should he go migrating to far-famed lands that can offer him only partial grants of terrestrial enjoyment.'^ From the heights of the Posilipo, with its vision of a sunlit sea, and the bluest of skies bending over the danc- ing waters of the Naples bay; from the Pyra- mids, the Athenian plain, or the picturesque Norwegian panorama, his heart turns longingly to Trafalgar Square, with its monstrosities of plastic art, and its enormities of architectural effects. Of late some effort has been initiated for a transformation of this place. Never was a movement more unpopular. While the Nelson monument has the unenviable distinction of being one of the most hideous things in all Europe, the proposal to tear it down meets the 85 THE LURE OF LONDON consternation that might well prevail in Cairo if it were proposed to remove the Pyramids. It has been proposed to abolish the station of Charing Cross and to rebuild the National Gallery in a manner to render it an object of architectural beauty, rather than the reverse, — suggestions that are regarded as the voice of the tempter if not of the enemy, and which are to be righteously resisted. The Londoner may concede that all the premises are true, but he insists that the conclusion is false. He argues that it is this very lack of beauty which makes the vital characteristic of Trafalgar Square. It is this, indeed, which creates its atmosphere. It is the genius loci. As to the Nelson monu- ment, its very atrocities are to be prized and cherished, as embodying the artistic ideals of the time when it was erected. Has the past no claim? Are we to regard no art as of importance save that of the Futurist? Are not traditions venerable, and to be preserved? What is the mere beauty of the hour beside the interest that invests the historic past? There are many considerations, urges the devout Londoner, that may well take precedence of mere beauty. The Acropolis is a ruin, he will urge, but would you replace its classic columns by a modern hotel built on the Holy Hill? Would you re- move the Olympian, and build on the site an 86 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART apartment house? The abashed sojourner in London might suggest that the ugliness of Tra- falgar Square is not commensurate with the claim for classic ruins, and indeed, if he had the temerity, might even venture to assert that the sooner it was reduced to ruins, the better. But the temporary resident in the British Empire learns to be wary, and not break his head (or his heart) against the established con- victions of those who dwell therein. As has been said, London is not a city, but a universe. It has its own laws, and the first wisdom of the visitor is to learn to live and move and have his being in entire harmony with them. The National Gallery dates back only to 1824, when it was opened in the residence of Mr. John Julius Angerstein, at Number 100 Pall Mall; and it was not until 1838 that the present structure was completed. Its nu- cleus was a small but very choice collection of pictures left by Mr. Angerstein, which the government purchased at his death. It sub- sequently received many bequests, and nearly three million dollars have been expended in purchases since that time. While the collection is not as large as that of the Louvre and of some of the other galleries, it is unusually well selected, and it offers more adequate representa- tion of the great schools of painting than any 87 THE LURE OF LONDON other of the great national galleries, with a single deficiency of a lack in the eighteenth- century art of France. Its classification is un- usually excellent, and its arrangement could hardly be surpassed. Within the past few years the UflBzi in Flor- ence has been entirely rehung, to its great ad- vantage; and under Pope Pius X the Vatican galleries of paintings have been rearranged, to the great benefit of visitors; but even these, extensive in themselves, are comparatively small in comparison with the National Gallery, which includes nearly three thousand works of art, pictures, sculptures, and drawings. The representative character of the selection and its admirable arrangement combine to give the British National Gallery precedence over any other in the world as a place to study art. The different schools are kept together, and the splendid and finely representative col- lection of the Italian school, sub-divided into the Florentine, Tuscan, Sienese, Bolognese, Ferrarese, Umbrian, Venetian, Paduan, and Lombard, offers within this small space oppor- tunities for study that could only be obtained in Italy by wide travel and research. In the vestibule will be noted a group of extremely interesting Grseco-Roman portraits that are believed to date back to the second 88 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART century. These were discovered in the Fayiim in Egypt, in mummy cases taken from an an- cient cemetery during excavations made by Mr. FHnders Petrie. They were evidently portraits of the persons whose bodies were preserved in the cases, and are as vivid and realistic to-day as are the modern portraits of Sargent. The glowing beauty of a number of Italian altar-pieces, of the fourteenth century, include Botticelli's own "Nativity" and "Vir- gin and Child." Of the latter, Mr. Beresford Chancellor says, in reference to the sadness of the eyes, that it was undoubtedly painted after the artist had come under the influence of Sa- vonorola. "It is the last word on the hopes which the teaching of the martyr awakened in the hearts of his fellow men," says Mr. Chan- cellor; "it is full of symbolism, and its painter's mind had thought deeply since the days when he produced his 'Prima vera' and his * Birth of Venus.' " There is a Greek inscription above the picture that reads, in translation: "This picture I, Alexander, painted at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy, in the half-time after the time of the fulfillment of the eleventh of St. John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing of the devil for three years and a half. Afterwards he shall be chained, and we shall see him trodden down as in this picture." 89 THE LURE OF LONDON A Fra Angelico, "Christ Surrounded by Angels", rivets the attention of the lover of art; figures of which Vasari says: "They are so beautiful they appear to truly be of beings of Paradise." The faces of the angels recall to one the words of Ruskin on this painter of divine loveliness : "The life of Angelico was almost entirely spent in the endeavor to imagine the beings belonging to another world. By purity of life, habitual elevation of thought, and natural sweetness of disposition, he was enabled to express the sacred affections upon the human countenance as no one ever did before or since. In order to effect clearer distinction between heavenly beings and those of this world, he represents the former as clothed in draperies of the purest color, crowned with glories of burnished gold, and entirely shadowless." The National Gallery has but one example of Leonardo da Vinci, but that one is the incomparable "Virgin of the Rocks." Cor- reggio's "Mercury and Cupid" is one of which Mr. Chancellor says that "the artist's power of painting flesh that really seems to cover the pulsations of life " is wonderful. Mrs. Jameson, writing of Correggio, in special allu- sion to this picture, says: "Those who dwell with rapture on it will perceive that in the 90 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART painting of the limbs they can look through the shadows into the substance; . . . the shad- ows seem mutable, accidental, and aerial, as if between the eye and the color, and not in- corporated with them; in this lies the inimitable excellence of this master." The group of Raphaels includes the tran- scendent work, the "Ansidei Madonna", pur- chased from the eighth Duke of Marlborough at a cost of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The first Duke of Marlborough ob- tained the work directly from the Ansidei family in Perugia for whom Raphael originally painted it. The Dutch, the French, and the Spanish schools are as adequately represented as is the Italian. The great examples of English art, from Sir Joshua Reynolds, Romney, Benja- min West, Sir David Wilkie, Hogarth, Turner, Gilbert Stuart, William Blake, John Constable, David Cox, Gainsborough, Copley, Fielding, Sir John Gilbert, Sir Peter Lely, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Edwin Landseer, Frith, Flax- man, — to the latter-day masters. Sir John Millais, Lord Leigh ton. Sir Lawrence Alma- Tadema, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Watts, Sir Hubert Herkomer, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, are well represented; although the contem- porary painters are far more largely to be found 91 THE LURE OF LONDON in the' Tate and in the Victoria and Albert, and they offer to the visitor not only a magnificent collection of the masterpieces of British art, but many works whose claim is that of personal and historic, rather than of exclusively artistic, in- terest. Here will be found Romney's portrait of Lady Hamilton (Emma Lyon), the heroine of many a romantic tale and the love of Nelson; Turner's "Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence'*; Sir David Wilkie's "The Preaching of John Knox", and other dramatic transcriptions from life. The Turner room is the one to which the visitor is perhaps most often allured because of its beauty of color and poetic vision. The most brilliant and richly imaginative of British paint- ers, Turner found in Italy his deepest inspi- ration. "If Mr. Ruskin is right in attributing to Turner the intention of teaching in * Apollo and the Sibyl ' the vanity of life, and in ' Calig- ula's Palace' the vanity of labor, it would follow naturally that in the 'Childe Harold' he meant to emphasize the vanity of pleasure. There is usually an inner meaning in Turner's pictures. Sympathy with human life is never absent, and in most there is a touch of sadness, a recognition of the passing away of man and all his works. This may be the meaning sug- gested by the ruins, which form an important 92 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART feature in each of these three pictures. . . . But, for the moment, we forget all else in the happiness inspired by the loveliness of the scene. The whole picture ['Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'] sparkles like a jewel. The rosy- tints on the ruins, the blue waters, the pearly middle distance, the gleams of light on the nearer buildings and on the far-off town, and the wide expanse of country leading the eye to the hills on the horizon, are all brought out with subtle skill, and blend in one harmonious whole." One of the most fascinating of these pictures of Turner is that of *'Lake Avernus, the Fates, and the Golden Bough." Mr. Ham- erton has so translated this picture into words when he thus describes it, that his description is almost a component part of the work itself: "The painter has so treated his subject,'* says Mr. Hamerton of Turner, "that the pale blue waters of Avernus, sleeping so calmly in their deep basin, scarcely recall to us as we see them in the picture, that dark river Acheron from which they were believed to rise. The only motive of the painter appears to have been beauty; the beauty of a fair Italian land- scape, idealized to the utmost by the power of his genius. The pictures of this class are, I believe, the most perfect and complete expres- sion ever given by Turner to his sense of charm and loveliness in landscape, as distinguished from 93 THE LURE OF LONDON his sterner delight in the subhme. No one who has not tried to paint, and tried seriously and long, can estimate the delicacy of tone and color in these pictures, the exquisiteness of the tran- sitions in the lightest passages, and the sustained refinement which could carry the artist safely over twenty or thirty square feet of canvas, when the slightest failure would have shown as an intolerable blot upon his work." To enter the Turner room in the National Gallery is to leave all the turmoil and clamor of earth for a realm of celestial beauty and en- chantment. The perfection of technical skill that characterized Turner is lost sight of in that marvellous creative power which seems to have instantaneously brought these wonderful scenes into existence. Entering the Turner room, one is transported to Italian sunshine and Italian air. Look at that charming "Bay of Baiae", with "Apollo and the Sibyl", and you come instantly under all the magic and witchery of the Naples shore. The dramatic imagination, the sense of mystery investing the figure of the Sibyl, the perspective of the distance, the refinement of the drawing, and above all the sense of the atmosphere of a magic land, — all these he has portrayed as if drawing aside a curtain to reveal an actual scene. Turner is the great interpreter of all that is poetic in nature and legend. He is 94 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART the painter of the air. But he is also the painter of the sea. In "The Shipwreck", "The Prince of Orange Landing at Torbay", and "The Sun at Venice going to Sea"; "The Fighting Temeraire", representing the second ship in Nelson's line at Trafalgar being towed to her final berth to be destroyed, "the most pa- thetic picture ever painted", says Ruskin; in the strange, tragic "Burial of Wilkie", showing the body of the painter being committed to the sea, from the decks of the Orient, on which he died, — the scene laid off Gibraltar, with that peculiar vividness in the sky that is seen at times in the region between Madeira and Algiers ; how remarkably, in all these and other paint- ings, does he prove himself the interpreter of the sea as well as of the atmosphere. In an- other mood is his "Crossing the Brook", a quiet, idyllic English scene, and "Rain, Steam, and Speed", a picture showing a train of the Great Western Railway crossing a viaduct, with the fire in the engine gleaming, while beyond are clouds of rain that fill the air, — a dim vista of open country. In this Turner has painted motion as well as air. One of his great classic pictures is the "Dido Building Carthage", which reveals a scene lying under glowing sun- shine, with architectural masses in a stage of completion on either side, and Queen Dido 95 THE LURE OF LONDON surrounded by her people, while in the back- ground rises the monument to Sichaeus, her murdered husband. This picture is signed "J. M. W. Turner, 1815." It is one of those bequeathed to the nation by the artist himself. He died in Chelsea (London) in 1851, at the age of seventy-six. Genius is its own ancestor, and eludes all explanation or analysis. This transcendently great artist was born in Co vent Garden, of humble parentage and into all the limitations of poverty. The mother was of a highly excit- able temperament, finally ending in insanity; but the future painter was not lacking in mental poise, or caliber. He gave early evidence of a strong attraction to literature, and he was especially devoted to Milton. At the age of twenty-two he was an exhibitor in the Royal Academy, and he was elected an Academician five years later. His first work shown in the Academy exhibition, "Morning among Conis- ton Fells," was inscribed with these lines from Milton; "Ye mists and exhalations, that now rise From hill, or steaming lake, dusky or grey Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold; In honor to the world's great Author, rise." Sir Joshua Reynolds is liberally represented in the gallery by twenty -two of his works. 96 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART Born in 1723, he lived until 1792, and to his genius as an artist he added a combination of gifts that enabled him to exercise a dominant influence on the art of his day. Of the Royal Academy (organized in 1768) he was the first president; and being enabled to go to Italy at the age of twenty-six, he came under the strong attraction of the Venetian school. For two years he was able to study in Rome. Titian became his idol, and it is said he once scraped one of the great master's paintings in an effort to discover the secret of his coloring. Ruskin feels that no artist ever had "a more intense and innate gift of insight into human nature than Sir Joshua." "Considered as a painter of the human form and mind," continued Ruskin, "I think him the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Van Dyck had nobler sub- jects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua into the minor varieties of human heart and temper; and when you consider that in a northern climate, with gray, white and black as the principal colors about him, he yet became a colorist who can be crushed by none, even of the Venetians, and that, with Dutch painting and Dresden china for the prevailing types of art in the salons of his day, he threw himself at the feet of the great masters of Italy, and arose to share their throne, — I know not that in the whole history of art you can 97 THE LURE OF LONDON produce another instance of so strong, so unaided so unerring an instinct for all that was true, pure, and noble." When in 1752 Reynolds returned to London from his sojourn abroad, and settled in St. Martin's Lane, his prestige was almost imme- diately established, and his supremacy warmly recognized. He idealized the sitter to just the degree required to render a portrait captivat- ing, but still natural; he entered upon each one with the determination to make it the best work of his life up to that point; and it is said that he taught himself to paint a portrait in four hours. While his price in the beginning was five guin- eas, it rose to fifty. In his later life he averaged six thousand pounds a year as the results of his work. Sir Joshua initiated the pleasant custom of the Academy dinners, and at the an- nual meetings when the prizes were bestowed he gave discourses which were highly regarded. His special counsel to young students was to study the old masters. Unusually accomplished and endowed with a winning courtesy of man- ner that was one of his most valuable gifts, he won troops of friends. Among these Doctor Johnson stands prominently, and Goldsmith was also of his nearer circle. His range of friendships had a bearing on his art, determin- ing the rank of many sitters. Thus the splen- 98 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART did work called "The Graces Decorating a Statue of Hymen" is really a portraiture of the three daughters of Sir William Montgom- ery, to whose beauty Sir Joshua lent immor- tality. The portraits of Sir Thomas Lawrence include one of John Julius Angerstein, that no one would miss because of the connection of its subject with the founding of the gallery, and the en- during friendship that existed between the sitter and the artist. An unusual scene is brilliantly depicted in Constable's "The Cornfield", with a characteristic English lane in the foreground. Another picture of Constable's before which one lingers in delight is "The Glebe", one of the most typical of English scenes. Among the works of the French school is Philippe de Champaigne's portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, to which Sir Henry Irving is said to have resorted as his study in making up for the Cardinal on the stage. Gainsborough's por- trait of Mrs. Siddons, painted when she was twenty-nine years of age, and Sir Joshua's por- trait of her as "The Tragic Muse", are always appreciated by every lover of art. Consta- ble's "View on Hampstead Heath" lingers in memory as a delightful picture of that delight- ful part of London. The Spanish school as here represented offers 99 THE LURE OF LONDON the celebrated "Venus and Cupid" of Velas- quez, with several others of his works; the gal- lery being indeed rich in the paintings of this brilliant artist. From Murillo there are five paintings, including the "Holy Family" and a small study of the "Nativity of the Virgin " (of which the complete picture is in the Louvre); and there are also examples of Ribera and Zur- baran. From the French school the pictures are not of especial interest, although there are several by Claude Lorraine of exceptional beauty, and Greuze, Nicholas Poussin, and some paint- ers from the Barbizon school are represented. The National Portrait Gallery is almost an epitome of the history and the literary and scientific fame of England. The present ac- complished director, Charles John Holmes, M. A. (formerly Slade Professor of Fine Arts in Oxford), succeeded Mr. Lionel Cust in 1909, and to his critical knowledge and enthusi- asm for the vigor and the constant advance- ment of this intensely interesting collection, its increasing service to the nation is largely due. The present building was opened to the public in 1896. The arrangement is such as to facil- itate the value of the gallery. The portraits from the Tudor age to the end of the eighteenth century are on the highest floor. On the land- ings are the royal portraits from George I to 100 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART Edward VII. On the first floor are the por- traits of the statesmen of the nineteenth cen- tury, and in the east wing are placed those of the more important men of letters, science, and art, with soldiers and explorers of the century just closed. The miniatures and drawings are on the ground floor, and the sculptures in a gal- lery opening from the entrance hall. Among the portraits of international interest is one of Cardinal Newman, painted in 1889, when he was in his eighty-ninth year; a three-fourths length, the delicate, spiritual face, and the wonderful, penetrating glance of the eye being depicted to the life. The author of the Apolo- gia pro vita sua; the associate leader, with Pusey and Hurrell Froude, of the Oxford move- ment: the founder of the Oratory at Birming- ham and the beautiful church in Brompton, that has introduced into England the Institute of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, the poet, the writer, the mystic, — the entire personality of the great Cardinal seems before one in this portrait. There is also a cast of the fine bust of His Eminence, modeled in 1866, by Thomas Woolner, R. A. Two portraits of Sir Isaac Newton attract the visitor: one is the portrait painted of him in his youth by Sir Godfrey Kneller, and the other, in later life, painted by John Vander- 101 THE LURE OF LONDON bank. A marble bust of the great scientist copied from Roubillac by Edward Hodges Baily, a member of the Royal Academy, is most interesting, and is said to reproduce the countenance as the body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey, before its final committal. The portrait of Cecil Rhodes, by George Frederick Watts, though unfortunately not completed, is one of the most interesting in the collection, suggesting the energy and genius of the man who was a most efficient and deter- mining factor in the latter-day development of imperial Britain. It has been said of this por- trait that it was by "one of the most ideal- istic of English artists, of the most idealistic of English conquerors." The noble collection of great men painted by Mr. Watts is one of the most valuable features of the entire National Gallery. Tennyson once begged Mr. Watts to express his ideal of what a true portrait artist should be, to which he replied that he could not but think *'that in the future, and in stronger hands than mine. Art may yet speak, as great as poetry itself, with the solemn and majestic ring in which the Hebrew prophets spoke to the Jews of old, demanding noble aspirations." The present Lord Tennyson as- scribes to this reply the following lines which his 102 NATIONAL GALLERIES OF ART father, the poet, wrote in the "Idylls," as an interpretation of the artist's words: "As when a painter, poring on a face. Divinely, through all hindrance, finds the man Behind it, and so paints him that his face, The shape and colour of a mind and life. Lives for his children, ever at its best." The portrait of John Stuart Mill (another of the Watts group) is the portrayal of the very ideal of the philosopher, essayist, and political economist. Still another of the celebrated Watts portraits is that of the saintly divine, James Martineau, philosopher and mystic, and one of the great leaders of modern religious thought. A portrait of Walter Savage Landor, painted by William Fisher, is always a special object of literary quest, and this picture is soon to have a companion piece in the portrait of the incom- parable poet and the author of the "Imagi- nary Conversations", which was painted in his eighty-eighth year (one year before his death), and which has been presented by its owner to the National Portrait Gallery. This is by Charles Caryll Coleman, who painted it as a young artist in Italy, and as the last portrait of Landor, representing him in his magnificent old age, it has an enduring interest. The aged poet was posed with his back to a window, 103 THE LURE OF LONDON that the light might fall on his head, investing him with a sort of glory. A chalk drawing of Edward Bouverie Pusey, done by George Richmond, gives a graphic pic- ture of this celebrated divine and religious leader. James Anthony Froude, in a drawing in col- ored chalk; Thomas Gainsborough, painted by himself; a splendid portrait of Charles Robert Darwin, by Collier, a replica of the one painted for the Linnean Society, and a medallion portrait of Sir Humphry Davy are of great interest, as are three portraits of the great woman novelist who was known to the world as George Eliot. The portrait of the greatest of women poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (drawn in chalk, by Field Talfourd in Rome, 1859); and three portraits of Robert Browning — one by Field Talfourd in chalk, the companion piece to that of Mrs. Browning, one painted in 1884 by Rudolph Lehmann, and the incomparable por- trait by Watts, painted in 1875 — are among the special fascinations of the collection. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's pencil drawing of Ford Madox Brown ; George Richmond's crayon portrait of Charlotte Bronte (in 1850) are al- ways noted, and in the spring of 1914 the gallery acquired the long-lost portrait of the three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte 104 Iliprutldcvd hy piriiu.-