The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-01-19
MIST. WRAPPED LONDON
HOW THE WORLDS CAPITAL LOOKS
WHEN ENyELoPED IN FOG.
Sunlight an Unusual Phenomenon
Despite DIscomforts the City Has
Its Peculiar Charm.
Letter in New York Mail and Ex-

RANES-
To one born than near Lud-
gate Hill it would be misleading to re-
mark There was a fog yesterday in Lon
don" He might suppose that the day be-
fore yesterday, or the week before that,
had been clear. AS a matter OF fact, there
is always a fog in L~ondon-always in
winter, at any rate. The people are &C
customed to kippered weather and do not
account as a fog a mere haziness that al
lows you to glimpse, however dimly. the
outlines of the dwellings across the street.
The mist and smoke must roll around
him as densely as they billow up around
the evil fairy in a boxing day pantomime
before the genuine cockney will admit TO
himself. Really. it's getting a bit thick"
Place him suddenly upon Broadway, on
one of those bright. keen winter days. when
the air is like a sparkling wine and the
sunlight Of the new world pours down il
gathering flood and he will blink like a
gnome evicted from his underground habi-
tation.
Whatever has been written about dingy
London. every traveller is constrained to
declare that the half has not been, be-
cause it could not be, told. In winter
life in the worlds metropolis, so far as
its outward aspects go, is a perpetual
thanatopsis. There is daylight and there
is darkness, of a sort. But both are
shrouded in gray. uncertain garments
until existence itself takes a ghostly char
acter. You seem to be living in a world of
spirits. Half forgotten memories of that
Plutonian shadowland from which Homer
and Virgil and Dante drew the curtain,
come thrOnging back with curious insis-
tence. as day after day you move about
from you and among obscure figures that
seem themselves to be more vapor than
flesh and blood. You wonder why people
live In such a climate, and neither question
their c~onsciences nor prepare to take the
city on and erect it else where
God let's His sun TO shine. 1t took only
one dark day to bring New England TO its
knees; the inhabitants, as we read, tasted
and repented OF their sins, convinced that
they had merited the displeasure Of heaven.
From their rudy and contented faces,
as a nearer view discloses them, 1t would
not appear that the people Of London were
labOring under a conviction Of divine wrath.
But really they are not we'll treated, so
far at least Is the greater light that rules
the day is concerned. The winter sun I'M
doubtedly does a considerable indirect serv-
ice in diffusing its radiance throughout the
atmosphere and making the haze mildly
transparent. But as a source of illumina-
ton It's direct rays are not comparable
with such moonlight as you get along the
Hudson.
They transmit heat, to be sure, but they
have neither the luminosity nor poetry
of the Gotham moon.
To one, who from a Broadway sky
scraper has seen the ridges of the Orange
mountains rising dozens of miles away
to the west and the outlines of the Tomb
clearly defined on the distant northern
sky line, IL is battling not TO be able to
look across a square OF a few acres in ex-
tent on a clear London day. 1t is baf-
fling, but IL is a common, indeed an un-
variable experience.
SUN LIKE A WAFER.
In The Red Badge of Courage 1 vague
ly recall a passage at the end of a chapter
in which it is said the sun was Pasted like
a wafer" or words TO that effect, against
the western sky. That metaphor, maybe,
degrades the sun. but if you give it a Lon
don setting ii reduces the lamp of day only
to its apparent rank. 1t has q wafer-like
appearance as it rises and as il sets: il is
decorative rather than exciting. At high
noon IL is coldly livid with not enough heat
in II to sour milk. Even a London moon is
in a better repute. One can commonly see
farther by night here than he can by
day.
The moon is in evidence more often than
the SUM-: frequently it happens that after
a day of rain and storm, the clouds pass
off at nightfall and the moon rolls calmly
through a pale-blue sky, wherein the large
stars appear placed somewhat differently In
these high attitudes than in America. Night
is more apt to be agreeable than day is.
and that. perhaps, is why the average
LOndoner is such an Owl-nOt q sorry ram
bling bird of the boulevards, like the
Il dAlEAdAs "a IL hDulc6I4C OWL. lndL loves 10
linger long by his own roof tree in rather
solemn cheer.
The sun would have much to answer for
here, even if 1t shone daily. But il does
not. 1t is more inconstant than the moon
that beamed upon the young Italian lovers.
1t is rarer than Christian charity. 1t is
one OF the most infrequent phenomena Of
a London winter prospect. l am told that
still the nightingale sometimes sings in
London, and that the newspapers assign re-
porters 10 cover any borough where Phi
| lOmela is supposed to be at large The
shining of the sun is unusual enough to
merit the same attention. 1t is doubtful If
the number of days of Uninterrupted win
ter sunshine In London Is as great as the
number Of lunar eclipSes elsewhere.
One marvels that the suns appearance is
not the signal for some religious festival
such as Orientals might observe-that the
people do not issue from their gloomy
houses and fire rockets and lift strange
cense to the heavenly guest than the fumes
OF Cardiff coal.
THE RAIN AND MUD.
To complete this rather impressionistic
picture of the City of the Intellectual Sun
one must add two elements-rain, and it's
concomitant, mud. London is damp, as a
thousand others have said before. 1t is
damp with a peculiarly local dampness. You
feel that those clouds that keep forming
and leaking overhead are not real clouds
with a continental sweep and breadth 10
AA1-AA &ACE ~ AAA& AAAaoSNS VI
steam issuing from some gigantic kettle.
They are the VapOr of the river and the
fumes OF the city-a curry Of fog and
smoke literally peppered with SCOT. II
they are 70 discharge themselves anywhere
IL must be over this devoted town, and they
never miss the chance. The curse of ST.
Swithin is on this rain-soaked land. 1t will
rain, shine, sleet. rain and shine again. day
after day.
But whether II rains or not there is the
mud always in the street, a black fluent
composition which the horses spatter in
your face and which, in the course of a
vigorous walk. your trousers somehow be-
come acquainted with, quite from the knees
down. One soon understands the raison
d'etre OF two English observation-disclosures"
and the valet. Your shoes simply clamor
for attention, and il takes the hardest kind
of brushing TO keep your clothes reasonably
free from mud stains. You will see refined
having their boots blacked in the street-a
naive spectacle that New York has scarce
ly witnessed since the village lasses came
TO town with the national Christian I'm
deavor convention some nine years since.
After all, however. the winter climate OF
London. although a bit sour, is not IN
genial. II has its redeeming qualities, and
meanor OF the people, even when the skies
are least prOpitiOuS. Another grand day.
sir" the maid observes with respectful en-
thusiasm as she enters the room on a cold.
muggy morning, when the East is Tuning
dun" as the poet of the Seasons" hath il.
The people of London pay as little heed to
a rainstOrm as the rather dtngy but tough
and capable little English sparrows do.
They trot along, sometimes without even
raising their umbrellas. nor Will a sudden
downpour drive them from the tops OF the
omnibuses. There is something in the