MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON 0 N those occasions (and of late they have been not infre- quent) when 1 allow my imagination to play around the hydrogen bomb, I am apt to recall a happy sentence in which Monsieur Mauriac emphasised the difference made to our estimate of durability by the introduction of aerial bombardment. Until the day when science taught men how to shatter cities from the skies, it was generally assumed that buildings would outlast the span of human life. Elderly gentlemen, when perplexed by the uncertainties of the future, would gaze upon the Invalides or St. Paul's and reflect that, long after all their own problems had passed into history, these monuments would still glitter or soar above the town. " You mighty domes," they would murmur, " you will still be brooding there majestically long after I am gone." The invention of the internal combustion engine has much increased the rentability of monuments. The look which I would cast at St. Paul's during the battle of Britain had about it all the intensity of a last look. " Will you," I would- murmur, " be there in that familiar place tomorrow ? Or shall I, as I cross from Southwark, see only a broken egg-shell in the sky ? " There were moments, also, when the rocket bombs were streaming like electric hares above the orchards of Kent, when I would feel that London was being obliterated, and that on Monday I should find Pall Mall or Piccadilly reduced to dust. Those fears, during the second war, proved unfounded ; one was still able readily to recognise the alignment of the familiar streets. Yet when I went to Berlin I saw that the whole shape of a city could be changed by explosives, and found that the Tiergarten, with its statues and little trees, had been transformed into a terrain vague. How strange and sad if a similar turmoil had descended upon London, had set the Duke of York's column crashing into the Athenaeum Club, or churned the Green Park into a waste of mud and sticks.
* * * * The new impermanence of buildings has not, I am glad to see, led us to any defeatism in regard to lavish and ambitious con- struction. Every day the upper stories of the Government buildings off Whitehall peep higher and higher above the Horse Guards Parade. The huge shining bubble which Mr. Gerald Barry and his men are creating on the South Bank becomes every after- noon more strange and lovely. The large concert-hall beside it is assuming a firm but Orphic shape. Such ambitious projects suggest, even if they do not confirm, confidence in a rich and powerful future. And now I see that British Railways (Southern Section) have created a new ocean terminal at Southampton. I much regret that I was not numbered among the four hundred guests invited to the opening ceremony. I should have enjoyed lunching that summer day in the ' Queen Elizabeth ' ; I should have enjoyed walking down the telescope gangway and watching Mr. Attlee unveil the plaque. It is always a strange and stimulating experience to have a meal upon a steamer when she lies in dock ; these vast mobile liners assume for an hour or so the immobility of an anchored hotel ; the hydrangeas banked in the saloons cease for a while to shake their petals to the throb of the machine, and the long corridors are empty of the cabin-trunks of transatlantic voyagers. I relish these extreme contrasts between the dynamic and the static ; I am amused when vast constructions are turned to purposes for which they were not intended. It is agreeable to be able to pace decks as if they were pavements, to mingle the urban with the marine, and to watch the sea-gulls whirling around a ship that does not move. Yes, I regret that I was not asked to go to Southampton.
* • * * * It is a fine thing, of course, that British Railways should have at last have decided to render one of the main portals to our island more expressive of the cleanlinesi and efficiency in which, as a people, we rightly take such pride. I have been conscious on previous voyages to and from the United States that whereas the approach to New York is unequalled in dramatic splendour, and whereas the Customs buildings on arrival were neat and well- arranged, our own front door was miffy and ill-kempt. The shining and palatial' warehouses which line the docks at Manhattan offered in the old days a bewildering contrast to the dark and decaying sheds into which the passengers on arrival at Southampton were disembarked. In place of the neat benches, and even sofas, with which one was provided at New York, there was nothing in former days at Southampton Docks on which the traveller could rest his waiting limbs. Fortunate indeed he was if he could find some empty barrow on which to heap his luggage and sit down for a while. All this, I gather, has now been changed. The visitor to England will be able to walk down the telescopic gangway (in itself a marvel of mode& engineering) and will find, on entering the Customs house, not armchairs only, but even ferns. Let us hope that this courageo,us initiative will spread to other ports. Dover is well enough, and even the most bewildered alien is guided slowly onward through corridors of wire-netting from passport and currency control to the great hall in which his luggage is examined with courtesy and often with speed. Yet I have wondered how a great country, proud of its past and confident of its future, can for so many generations have tolerated the conditions which still prevail at Newhaven or Folkestone. Lashed with spray and buffetted by winds, the traveller clings to that narrow platform. scarcely conscious that he has reached dry land. To the -foreign visitor our island story must seem rough indeed.
I have heard it said, and I believe it to be true, that our former indifference to the approaches to our metropolis was due to pride. What need had we, with all our power and virtue, to impress the visitor with the grandeur of our installations ? The foreigner who objected to the wet planks of Folkestone, to the congested barricades of Victoria, had better remain at home. We had no desire for invisible exports if these exports on arrival expected to find luxury or ease. There was a school of thought even which derived pleasure from the murky sobriety of Charing Cross and Cannon Street, finding in them a fitting expression both of our modesty, our love of under-statement, and our indifference to comfort and display. We were not, such people would argue, an urban race, we were an agricultural race. What mattered it if our railway stations were ugly and begrimed, provided only that the hop gardens were tidy and our oaks larger and sturdier than any which foreign countries could display ? It may be true that the great jailway stations of the Continent and the United States—those enormous atriums which make even the Baths of Caracalla seem puny—are emphatic and ostentatious. It may be true also that countries which wish to impress visitors devote inordinate attention to the splendour of the lodge-gates and the front door. But I am not sure that it is very dignified -to huddle foreigners at Folkestone or to expose them to the present turmoil of Victoria or Waterloo. I hope that, when the Festival of Britain arrives, we shall render their initial welcome slightly more festive ; that we shall make some effort at least to suggest_to them that, as a people, we are orderly and clean.
* * * I am sure that British Rallivays (Southern Section) have, with their telescopic gangway and their lounges, made an excellent start. We are no longer rich enough to dress shabbily ; we no longer possess the dollar-earning capacity to ignore the (perhaps epicene) desires and prejudices of those who bring hal-d currencies to our land. If it be the superbia Brkannorum which permits Folkestone or Charing Cross, then it is high time that we ceased being quite so superb. It may be that the Americans are health-fusses, and have elevated outward cleanliness to an eminence of which the Founding Fathers never dreamed. But it is not enough merely to invite Americans to come here ; we must also entice. •
Previous page
