Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-10-11
THE TOPICAL TALKER.
Some Ideas About London's Booksellers
Row and the Strand Suggested by


Some Ideas About Loudon's Booksellers
Row and the Strand Suggested by a
Cablegram.
THE DISPATCH contained a cablegram yes
terday which outlined the radical changes to
be made in London streets, and notably in the
Strand, by order of the new-fangled County
Councils. These changes seem to afford the
Associated Press correspondent in London
prodigious satisfaction, for he says: "The old
fogyism which has stood in the way of progress
in this direction for centuries has now given
way to an enlightened spirit Of Improvement,
ana 1t Is likely that the vigor and enterprise
manifested in many directions by the County
Councils. will, in few years, make of the
| great highways of London something more
than crooked, narrow and ugly COW paths"
The young man who wants London made over
TO suit his modern taste naturally can see no
| good reason for the preservation of Holywell
street, or any other part of that older London
which to SO many Americans as well as to hun
dreds of thousands of Londoners is the great
treasure and charm of England's metropolis.
This Holywell street is known better by its
other name, Booksellers Row. 1 suppose
nearly every American who has visited London
has walked through that narrow lane leading
off the Strand from the rear of st. Mary-Le-
Strand to the Strand again in front of an
other old church, st. Clement Danes
1t is narrow and dingy, 1 admit, but
Holywell street. with its bookstores on either
side, is very paradise to him who loves the
fruit of the printing press. 1t is not the home
of the gorgeously bound book. of the fashion
able novel in three volumes, of the Editions de
Latre for most of the black old shops contain
nothing but secondhand books. The books lie
in baskets and boxes, piled upon counters. and
strewn over barrows, neatly packed in shelves,
or thrown together anyhow on the floor Many
an hour have spent in Holywell streeH At
first as schoolboy under the paternal eye,
searching for stories of adventure and travel,
reading scraps of books was not allowed to
read at home, and imbibing miscellaneous facts
and fancies long before I thought of turning
them to any use.
It always seems to me that Holywell lane was
more charming in those early days; that its
shelves and stalls held greater treasures than
are to be found there now. Perhaps books had
a fresher taste then; the flavor of romance and
history was new, and what potency has nov
city. Anyhow, when IL months ago ] revisited
Holywell street. after the lapse of nearly de-
cade, the stores did not look so much like en-
chanted palaces as I fancied they ought to-
But guess the street had not altered very
much-though am sure there were more new
Dooks-modern authors, spick and span, in the
latest caparison of the bookbInder, and not so
many old friends in well-worn covers, dog-eared
and trifie dirty, but still the old friends
whose faces used to cheer US so amazingly
when the skies of our own schoolboy days
frowned, as they did sometimes.
So
WELL, well. they are going to wipe Holy
well street out of existence, and the book
stores will have to find places one by one else
where. With the street it may be expected that
the churches, which are really serious impedi-
ments to traffic in the Strand, st. Clement
Danes more particularly. will be removed.
Neither St. Mary-Le-Strand nor st. Clement
Danes can claim immunity on the score Of
great age or beauty. They are, if remember
rightly, both the work of Sir Christopher
Wren, the architect of st. Paul's Cathedral, or
of men of his era, and they are conspicuously
ugly. The widening of the Strand all along
from Charing Cross to Temple Bar, or where
the city griffin poses IN place of the trans
lated archway, will be huge work. Nobody
will regret the destruction of most of the build
ings on the Strand, for they are almost without
exception mean and inadequate structuresand
SO great a thoroughfare demands finer stores
and business blocks.
BUT such plan of reformation is fraught
with immense significance. 1t means that
London is to be subjected to policy of radical
reform that the lack of private enterprise is to
be supplied by the city government, and that
under the latter's direction the countenance of
London is to be transformed completely.
Streets running straight are to be cut through
the heart of the city, as for instance, from the
Strand to Holborn, and it really looks as if
some of the Englshmen who have been tour
ing through these United States SO much of
late had been impressed by the rectangular
plan of streets in cities and had applied the
hint to the recreation of the tangled, twisted |
and perplexing streets Of London. In few |
years Americans visiting London may not be |
struck with tire singular insignifcance of the |
buildings there, as they are like to be now.