Melancholy in London
Richard West
The other morning I went to work in the British Museum reading room, or National Library as it is now called. As I passed through the gates a young woman handed me a leaflet that said 'While visiting London . . Go to a Pub' with a list of various pubs including • the one bang opposite, the Museum Tavern. The leaflet, published by something called the Pub Information Centre, explained to us visitors that these establishments are just the places to go `to get out of the rain, to meet your friends, to rest your weary legs, to sit in Charles Dickens's chair, to drink before lunch or just to relax and watch the Thames go by'.
Attracted though I undoubtedly was by this written command to go to a pub, it happened that I had just received a command from my wife to do the opposite, and anyway, I am not very fond of this stretch of the Thames. But it did set me thinking about the kind of attractions offered to visitors to our capital. 'To sit in Charles Dickens's chair', for example. Now the Pub
Information Centre says that Dickens and Gladstone dined on whitebait at the Trafal' gar, Greenwich, which sounds more probable than the claim that patrons of the 'London Apprentice' in Isleworth have included Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Charles II. However I think it more probable still that Dickens, at least when he lived in Doughty Street, frequented one of the neighbouring gin palaces like 'The Lamb le Lamb's Conduit Street, or 'The Sun' over the road, both of which flourish today. I live in the next street but have seldom seen anY foreign visitors there. Indeed it is rare to see tourists away from the West End and a few classic sights. I wonder what they would have made ef the City of London Festival, now in its second week of music, drama and dance. Its programme is full, with modish emphasis on multi-racial, anti-sexist events such as Caribbean steel bands, 'energetic harvest dances from the Punjab' and lunch-MO talks on the Women's Movement by IviarY Stott.
Such things are worthy but what do they have to do with the City, in whose historY there has never been an important role played by women, let alone Caribbeans or harvesters from the Punjab? Indeed the attempt to hold a festival onlY emphasises the deadness of what was once the heart of London. The damage done bY German bombers has been completed bY post-war planners and architects whose hideous high-rise flats and office blocks provide a sinister backcloth to those buildings that have been spared. It is impossible now to look at St Paul's without at least part of one's view being spoiled by some concrete monstrosity. As for the smaller churches, many are wonders of architecture, that could delight the tourist in the same way as the churches of Italy. But in the City of London most of the small churches went to were locked, even on Friday afternoon at the height of a festival. They were not only locked but vandalised by the slogan-scrawlers: 'The Pen is mightier than the Sword' on St Mary-in-Bow, `Punk rules OK?' and 'Socialist Worker Rules OK' on St Nicholas Cole Abbey. The atmosphere of the City is over" whelmingly glum and shoddy. The street map next to St Paul's is so finger-marked that one cannot read the name of any street within two hundred yards of the building' One of the few cafes boasts that 'ail c'ur sandwiches are made with bread'.
One's feeling of melancholy
is made only worse by a tour of the Museum of LoncIntl' fascinating though its exhibits are. I had 110 uch idea that Londinium in AD60 was s a thriving town as it looks in the painted reconstruction; nor that its name was changed to Augusta during the fourth ea" tury. The special room on the Great Fire,' complete with a tape of roaring flames, 1," understandably an attraction for schoor children. There could have been more on the Gordon Riots, the anti-Irish
ifestations in 1780, an omen perhaps for today. But there was recompense in some fascinating exhibits of World War II kitsch such as the poster of Billy Brown of London Town, the priggish busybody who reminded one to be civic minded and not for instance to chip off the black-out paint: 'I trust you'll Pardon my correction/ That stuff is there for Your protection'. There was another one about bus queues in which Billy Brown said Face the driver, raise your hand/ You'll find that he will understand', on which somebody scrawled 'Of course he will you stupid cuss/But will he stop the bleeding bus?'
In honour of the fiftieth anniversary of Emily Pankhurst the Museum of London has added a special section on the suffragettes, but, to be fair, they include some of the argument of their opponents including the famous poster of 'A Suffragette's Home', with father coming back from wark to weeping children, and no hot meal. There is also a very good section about the Temperance Movement, whose message then was the reverse of that! had heard from the Pub Information Centre. One of their posters showed a street map of London with every pub painted red to look like a rash of measles. I looked at Lamb's Conduit Street to find that 'The Lamb' and 'The Sun' were there, then noticed that where we live was a pub too. The building was destroyed by a bomb in the war.
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