Now and then
H.V. MORTON'S collection of essays The Heart of London was published in 1925. His London is compared with that of today: As we crawled through the fog I watched his taut concentration, admired his judg- ment as he executed a circling movement round a candidate for suicide, as he jammed on the brakes within a yard of a halted motor-car. . and as he shot ahead past a less speedy driver.
Such is the speed of today's traffic through central London that you would struggle to use a bus as an aid to your suicide. But the drivers (no longer all 'bulky figures' — H.V. Morton wrote before sexual equality in the job mar- ket) still steer their living cargoes to safety.
He may not possess the social charm of the old horse-omnibus driver. . . He is a more solemn character. Bus drivers still lag behind their black cab counterparts in verbosity. London travellers, though, are often glad of that.
What of those passengers? Inside the well-lit and almost pleasant omnibus a young man, wearing his Sunday hat, and a young girl, completely Sundayfied, sat holding hands as they pretended to read a newspaper. They saw no more than each other's eyes, and what more could they possible have seen? Sunday best may now be the latest Nikes rather than a trilby, but the pride in them is just as great. And on any London bus you'll still see lovers blind to everything except each other.
Modem buses no longer require their driver to gauge the right moment to accelerate after the descent of an agile passenger. And while in 1925 the passen- gers did not notice him, today they have to; often he doubles as the conductor to whom they must pay their fare. But old- fashioned two-men buses still survive, and Mayor Ken has talked of increasing their number. So more and more will we witness Morton's sight: All the time the Man at the Wheel exhibited a broad and stocky back to the human comedy he was carrying. Mark Mason
Previous page
