1936 On the Continent

must here be given a wide interpretation, since the chief treasures of the Tate Gallery are the works of the great English masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
    If your time is not too short you should pay at least a hasty visit to the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The many hundreds of pictures in the Gallery are naturally not uniform as regard artistic merit. Portraits by immortal artists hang side by side with the work of long-forgotten painters who were at one time in the fashion. However, artistic enjoyment may, perhaps, not be the principal object of a visit to the Gallery, which would also be justified by the fact that the multitude of faces looking down from the walls represent the spirit of England’s past, for the men and women immortalised here have shaped English history.
    If you are keen on museums you will easily discover many more, in addition to the above. There is Dickens’ House (48, Doughty Street, W.C.1) for those who are interested in relics of Charles Dickens; the home of Dr. Johnson, compiler of the famous English dictionary, in Gough Square, Fleet Street, for those who wish to pay homage to his memory; while lovers of Keats may care to visit the Keats Museum in Hampstead; and there are many other similar museums.
The Real London
    However, having seen all this, or only a portion of it, and having, in addition, “done” such important London sights as the two Royal Palaces, Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Palace, you may leave London with the proud knowledge of having done very well indeed—yet you will have learnt nothing whatever about London.
    It would almost amount to blasphemy to dismiss London’s museums with a cynical remark. That is not our intention; but we do emphasise that London’s museums are not London. In spite of their inexhaustible riches the museums are only a small fraction of the multitude of factors that constitute the character of London, that peculiar individual character which sometimes strikes one as old, remote, lost in the past, and sometimes as full of life andfreshness and fascinating youth. London is not the sort of city that receives the stranger with a friendly embrace and makes an effort to conquer him. On the contrary it is a city that everyone must learn to conquer for himself. The stranger must work his way to the spirit of London. London has nothing in common with the idyllic towns of the south or east, nor does it possess the well-ordered harmony of the towns of the north; it is not a city with which the stranger would fall in love at first sight. Its climate alone is sufficient to oppress some newcomers.
    Although London fogs are not so bad as they are painted, and foggy days for some insufficiently explained reason are becoming increasingly rare, the damp air, charged with the smoke of factory chimneys and the moisture rising from the sea, nevertheless produced a depressing effect on the foreign visitor during the first few days of his stay. Many foreigners complain that on arrival in London they feel so tired that they would best like to go to bed and sleep; but as soon as the visitor becomes somewhat acclimatised the unexpected happens, and he begins to like the much-maligned climate of London.
Love of London
    Londoners whom fate has led to sunny climes, to countries where the sky is always blue, long to go back to their grey city. London’s climate breeds a capacity to overcome obstacles, and an irrepressible optimism. A really wet, rainy day will not deter any true Londoner from moving about in the street as usual, or even from going for a week-end ramble. Besides, the Londoner is always hopeful. The weather changes continually, and a rainy morning may be followed by a sudden burst of glorious sunshine which, in turn, may give way a few minutes or a few hours later to thunder-clouds. In London the weather changes not daily, but hourly.
    The true Londoner has so adapted himself to the climate of his city that a raincoat is sufficient to see him through all the four seasons, and he hardly ever feels the need of a heavy overcoat. It is probably due to the unreliability of the weather that, apart from negligible exceptions, there is such a regrettable lack of open-air cafés and restaurants in London, though the Englishman’s love of seclusion may bea contributory factor. To Londoners the street is an avenue of communication, and not a place of amusement. They spend the greater part of their lives between four