LONDON IN THE SEASON.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2579, 13 August 1909, Page 3

LONDON IN THE SEASON.

A WONDERFUL WORLD

(13v Sydney Brooks, in tlie Yorkshire “Post.”) When the Royal procession started down that incomparable pathway from Windsor Castle to Ascot racecourse, the London season reached its height. Gently, imperceptibly, but relentlessly it will'begin from now onwards to decline. This is its supreme moment of vigor and variety, and one need not be a Londoner, one need not even be an Englishman, to feel and know that it is unequalled anywhere. Except the years of the Jubilee, the Diamond Jubilee, and the Coronation, this has been, and will continue to be, the fullest and most brilliant season London has seen for a generation. Think for a moment of all that this means. London is not only the biggest capital in the world, but the most comprehensive. None other absorbs so much of the life around it. The four-mile radius is so flagrant a monopolist, with an unearned social increment that increases so prodigiously in value, that I wonder Mr Lloyd-George .does not tax it. It drains England of pretty nearly everything that England has to offer. Practically all the "creative and ail the critical power of tJie country is heaped together under one’s very eyes m this sole city. Take any department of English activity or achievement you please, except that of trade, and it will go hard with you if you do not, during the season, find one of its acknowledged leaders sauntering down Piccadilly. London in the second week of June is -all but synonymous with England. . But it is more even than* that. Pans no longer pretends to the social supremacy of Europe. It lost it when the Second Empire fell, and when Republicanism arrived to destroy the salyn and to sectionalise that brilliant * society whicli was once the admiration and the despair of Europe. London, without an effort, and almost unconsciously, has captured the prize. In gorgeousness, diversity, and cosmopolitan 'tone,. London to-day outrivals the Paris of the Third Napoleon. It dominates the social world* of Europe, as New York dominates the social world of America. " What is there, indeed, that London is not J.t is the capital of ‘the kingdom, the home of Royalty, and the scene of the thousand and one festivities, ceremonies and fetes that go- with a Court: In Queen Victoria’s time the Court as a social agency was necessarily in abeyance. ICing Edward has revived it in all its power and splendour. There never was a time when Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle and Marlborough House more obviously led English society, or when the influence and example of Royalty added so much to the variety, stateliness, and magnificence of the social round. And besides this, London is the seat of the legislature, the capital of the Empire, and the world’s centre for opera, for concerts, for pictures, for nearly every form of art. Add to this that during the season every place of amusement is going full blast. The pleasure is almost deafening, so much so that I am told the theatres, or most of them, are hard put to it just now to make themselves heard. Add, again, that_ everything is grist to the London social mill —not alone dinners, balls, receptions, bridge, and the usual indoor routine — but "coaching, horse-racing, week-ends in the country, motoring and motor shows, days on the river, polo and balloon ascents at Ranelngh and Hurlingham, even cricket for an hour or so, when Oxford meets Cambridge and Eton faces Harrow.

Add, finally, that of all the people on earth,. we are the greatest hands at entertaining. Go into the Ritz, the Savoy, Rrilice’s, the Carlton or. Claridge’s’any. evening at dinner or supper time, and you wall see a sight which, for sheer brilliancy, is unapproached in the ivhole world. A Londoner need not liave a very big circle of acquaintance to find himself one or two deep every evening from the middle of May to the end of July; and a woman who is fairly in the swim will work through a dinner and three or four at homes night after night, week after week, with- a precision that is quite startling. All this on the top of luncheons, garden parties, teas, and the bazaars and other semi-public functions that claim the time and presence and activity of all prominent Englishwomen, makes up a whirligig that almost brings on -vertigo even. to. think. of. It is a strenuous life if ever there were one. In fact, there is so much to do, and so little time to do it in, that afternoon calls have dropped from the traditional, fifteen minutes to an actual five, and threaten before long to be-squeezed out altogether. The London of the near future will pay its calls by cards. Arid the pace never slackens. Hardly were we over the annual excitement of the Derby than the Imperial Press Conference descended upon us, and took society by storm. Before the editors from the dver-sea Dominions left for the provinces the Horse Show opened at Olympia, to make us wonder how wo ever managed to get along without so delightful a function. Hardly has the Horse Show closed before Ascot opens. And Ascot is no sooner started than Lieutenant Sliackleton arrives, and everyone sets to work to doyise different ways of spoiling him; And before

Lieutenant Shackleton is quite forgotten, we shall all be trooping to Ranelagh and Hurlingliam to see the national polo matches,'and to Wnnbledon for the tennis tournament, to Portsmouth for the naval manoeuvres, to Henley for the regatta, to Cowes for the yachting, and so on and so on, until August hoists the signal for departure, and we scurry off to Scotland and the Continent-Tor “a rest.” But the overwhelming richness and variety -of London life are not the only, are not even the best, points in its favor. London answers to all moods, to all desires, and to all natures. No one ever compasses the whole of it, yet nobody need ever feel isolated. It amalgamates all elements and takes an ear of corn from every harvest. It is more cliquey, perhaps, than it was twenty years ago, but it is still the truth to say that in London society the career is fully open to talent and to all kinds of talent, and that the resultant is a marvellous, an incomparable blend. And better than all this is the easygoingness, the tolerant, equable spirit, the large “atmosphere” of our Metropolis. No city gives one so much the feeling of being at the centre of things, right at the heart of all that is happening. Other capitals are little worlds to themselves; but London is the whole world squeezed into a few square miles. There is nothing that even begins to approach the smoothness and mellowness of its social tone, the way it never “enthuses” or gets excited or asks questions, the way it takes everything for granted, its repose and tolerance, its cool and settled outlook, its tranquil immobility. London lias all the vices and all the charms. She is as wicked and as cold-blooded as she is resplendent and fascinating. For myself, I like this superb callousness that lies at her heart—if she has a heart—her disdain for little things, her indifference to the- non-essentials of social intercourse, her specious forgiving humors, her freedom from fussiness and conventions. Say, what you like against London she, and she alone, has the art of life.

And she is free and generous with her attractions, so free, indeed, that to work, to do business, while the season is in being, seems like a form of asceticism. Take, for instance, that great playground of the million or so Londoners who live to kill time—the Park. Every morning before breakfast and between 11 and 1, every afternoon between 4 and 7, and every Sunday morning in the breathing-space between church and lunch, you may see in Hyde Park, between Stanhope Gate and, the French Embassy, something, though not very much, of the wealth and beauty of London; something, too, though here again not very much, of its society. Personally, I confess to a sensation of renewal when the first fine morning in June brings out 300 or 400 riders in The Row and 2,000 or 3,000 people t-o promenade up and down, to sit on the chairs and look on, to meet and gossip. For the moment I want nothing more. You take a book, you choose the shade of a tree, you have the scent of flowers all round you, and this constant stream of riders and promenaders in the immediate foreground—and all the affairs of the work-a-day world become instantly and delightfully remote.

It is not, of course, a select gathering in any sense, hut it is still fairly collect to say that “everybody” goes there. You may, that is, see a veritable leader of society, a part of the real, world, and within a yard of him or her somebody who looks like an escaped inmate from a Bloomsbury hoardinghouse, and who probably is. But this great concourse, idling up and down or talking and laughing under the, trees, a brilliant splash of color against the sylvan setting of the Park, does make up a sight very well worth seeing, and an amusement very well worth taking part in, even; for the seventy and seventh time. It carries with it an immense suggestion of leisure, easy elegance and enjoyment. If London in he season bad nothing else to offer but the Park, it would still be worth while.