National Geographic : 1915 Sep
LONDON BY FLORENCE CRAIG ALBRECHT Illustrationsfrom photographs by Emil Poole Albrecht HERE are so many Londons in one London, where begin with them? The London of Roman and Saxon, of Norman and Plantagenet; the London of Chaucer and Shakespeare, of Lamb and Dickens and Thackeray; the London of clubs and hotels; the Lon don of factories and sweat-shops; the London that administers the affairs of empire, and the London that dances and plays cricket. There is the summer Lon don of the tourist; there is social London revelling in May; there is the November London of smoke and fog, busy and in hospitable; there is today a darkened Lon don, somewhat apprehensive, but grimly determined, a London different from any we have known. They are each London, and all London-the greatest city in the world. THE WORLD'S GREAT CITY Older capital cities than London there are a few in Europe, greater there are none. Putting aside all unproven tradi tion, its history begins with the coming of the Roman legions. Rome, seven cen turies old, was in her pagan prime, but Paris, then Lutetia, was an island hamlet in the Seine; Vienna was a small Roman camp; Berlin did not come into existence for many a century thereafter; Madrid first appears a thousand years later; Brussels was founded in the sixth cen tury, Amsterdam about the 13th of our era. These count not at all in London's age. And while we are busy with figures let us give a few more and have done. The city of London, the commercial heart of the metropolis on the site of British hamlet and Roman town, meas ures about a mile square. In the day time its inhabitants number more than 300,000; at night not a twelfth that num ber sleep there-land is too valuable for residence. During one day a million and a half of people pass through its gates. Beyond it and across the river spreads another London, of five million people, over 130 square miles (approximately 14 x o1miles), and beyond that "Greater London," the district covered by the Metropolitan and city police, with 700 square miles and more than seven million inhabitants. SIDELIGHTS ON ITS SIZE Her streets, straightened and laid end to end, would reach from New York to San Francisco. Of her 650,000 build ings, 500 are hotels and inns. One hun dred thousand Americans pass through them in peaceful summers and 15,000 resided there before the war. It is a common saying that "there are more Scotsmen in London than in Aberdeen, more Irish than in Dublin, more Jews than in Palestine, and more Roman Cath olics than in Rome." That surprises us less than it does Europeans; it might also be true of New York. London's foreign population concerns us very little, nor does the East End now surprise. The East End, beyond the "city" and the Tower, is a manufacturing district, tenanted largely by Jewish tailors. There are other industries, but the race pre dominates. The West End is the home of fashion and of power. Its residents are not true Londoners, although they would resent the assertion; they are so journers for a more or less brief time. Between these ends lies real London all the year, every day, native London with all its wealth of long and tremen dous history, of literary and legal repute, of commercial prestige, of architectural fame. The district across the river con cerns the American visitor only in a few definite interests; all of London for him lies in a mile - wide band along the Thames, from the Tower to Westminster; but so rich is it that when he would sum marize his impressions, he finds neither beginning nor end.