III. - Impressions of London
BEFORE setting down my impressions of the great English metropolis;
a phrase which I have thought out as a designation for London; I
think it proper to offer an initial apology. I find that I receive
impressions with great difficulty and have nothing of that easy
facility in picking them up which is shown by British writers on
Ameriea. I remember Hugh Walpole telling me that he could hardly
walk down Broadway without getting at least three dollars' worth
and on Fifth Avenue five dollars' worth; and I recollect that St.
John Ervine came up to my house in Montreal, drank a cup of tea,
borrowed some tobacco, and got away with sixty dollars' worth of
impressions of Canadian life and character.
For this kind of thing I have only a despairing admiration. I can get
an impression if I am given time and can think about it beforehand.
But it requires thought. This fact was all the more distressing to me
in as much as one of the leading editors of America had made me a
proposal, as honourable to him as it was Iucrative to me, that
immediately on my arrival in London;--or just before it,--I should
send him a thousand words on the genius of the English, and five
hundred words on the spirit of London, and two hundred words of
personal chat with Lord Northcliffe. This contract I was unable to
fulfil except the personal chat with Lord Northcliffe, which proved
an easy matter as he happened to be away in Australia.
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