LONDON SHOW
By MICHAEL MACDONAGH MY old friend's form of eccentricity was uncommonly .purpose- ful. It may even have a lesson for Londoners in war-time. He was an Irish Jew of the name of Moses, with a marked Dublin accent, but this combination, singular though it may appear to be to the 'point of improbability, did not account for his odd mode of life. We had become acquainted as members of an Irish society in London, and I used to be puzzled by my frequent sights of him in the most unlikely places, quite off the beaten traffic of the man in the street, as I went about London on my engagements as a newspaper reporter, until I got to know that he was making London his open Playhouse.
He had ' had a position in a firm of Parliamentary agents ; engrossed in seeing to the passage through Parliament of "Private Bills" relating to large commercial undertakings of a kind requiring Parliamentary sanction ; and on that account retirement was all the harder, for it meant the lonely idle life of an old bachelor without kith or kin. He was peculiar in dress and manner, and was the same as long as I knew him. He was always to be seen in shape- less soft hat, long overcoat of brown Irish tweed, which, being without belt or button, flapped about his heels, coloured woollen muffler the ends of which fell to his middle, and carrying under his left arm a book in a bundle of newspapers. I should have thought that his general appearande, suggestive of the idle spectator, would have been a bar to his access to some of the, places where I saw him—the House of Lords, for instance. But no. Perhaps the way was opened to him by his unassuming manners and the guileless intent of his shy eyes, mitigating even whatever of aggressiveness might have been suspected in his Dublin accent.
The night I saw Moses in the Strangers' Gallery of the House
of Lords he was peacefully asleep, tired, no doubt, after a long day of sightseeing and lulled by the debate. I have seen him at Guildhall in the public gallery with Gog and Magog, looking down. at the quaint historic ceremony of the Lord Mayor's election. My most unexpected sight of him was at High Mass at the Italian Church in Hatton Garden for the victims of an earthquake in Italy. After the Mass the congregation passed, praying, round the tem- porary bier before the High Altar, and, kneeling, raised the tassels of its purple, velvet pall to their lips. Moses, incongruously pro- minent in his long "ulster" among the black-coated Italians, made the round of the bier, kneeling and kissing the pall likewise.
During the years I had such fleeting glimpses of Moses in strange places, he must have been the spectator of many other scenes and incidents of the London show which did. not come my way as a journalist. What was his purpose in this apparently inveterate habit of sightseeing? One day at the rooms of our Society I had a talk with him, when he explained that it was his method of filling with experiences days that would otherwise have been drawn out empty and leaden. "And I do it all," said he, "free, gratis and for nothing! "
He described his procedure. Every morning he consulted
"Today's Arrangements" in The Times, setting out the varied current events of London's day. For Moses it was the daily bill of London's open Playhouse. Anything "special" in the list would be his first choice, such as a State appearance of the King and Queen, the Lord Mayor's Show, or the rarer spectacle of the public funeral of a Field Marshal or Admiral. He also made it a point not to miss a thanksgiving or requiem service at the Abbey, St. Paul's and Westminster Cathedral, for, apart from the religious ceremonial, he had the satisfaction, as in the secular events, of participating in the emotions of crowds. A society wedding that had some preliminary publicity brought him formerly to Hanoter Square, and when that church ceased to be fashionable, in later years, to St. Margaret's, Westminster. He attended tiopular free lectures on art, literature and science by experts. He listened to the discussion of political questions at the Marble Arch, Hyde Park, as well as in the House of Commons from the Strangers' Gallery. Occasionally, he visited Bow Street Police Court for a criminal
se and the Law Courts in the, Strand for an important civil action. The bidding at auctions was for Moses another irresistible diversion. For pictures he went to Christie's and for books to Sotheby's.
Auctions of furniture on the premises afforded the treat of peeps into private houses and even into West End mansions. Here, however, he was sometimes baulked, for to get in involved buying a catalogue for sixpence or a shilling, which would be a breach of his rule to patronise only free entertainments. He rarely missed the funeral of a member of our Society, and would stay behind after the burial to walk about the cemetery, looking at the memorials and reading the inscriptions.
The permanent London shows, such as the museums and picture galleries, were kept by Moses literally for "the rainy day." If the morning foretold wet and cold, Moses would go direct to the National Gallery or the British Museum, or to one of the depart- ment stores in Oxford Street, and remain there in the warm enjoyment of their respective rich variety of contents until the hout for his customary light lunch in a tea-shop. In summer the process was reversed. Moses devoted the early sunny hours to mixing with the fashionable throngs in high-class shopping centres—such as Piccadilly, Bond Street and Regent Street—looking at those works of art, the window dressings ; and in the heat of the noon resorting to Hyde Park, where maybe he reduced his experiences to a green thought in a green shade. At any rate, his object, always and everywhere, was the immersing of his isolation in London's all- embracing companionship.
He complained to me of but one disappointment. This was the failure of his attempt to get admission to St. James's Palace at the meeting there of the Privy Council to proclaim the Accession to the throne of George V, the morning after the death of King Edward. There did not seem to be on his part the faintest inkling of the preposterousness (a good word this is such a connexion) of his action. Nor did he seem to have the least appreciation of his greatest success when he told me of it: his unauthorised, and indeed unlawful, presence in the new House of Commons at its assembling after the General Election of 1919—the first after the World War. He passed in as a matter of course (so he thought), unchallenged -among the crowd of men and not yet identified M.P.s,.and witnessed the election of the Speaker in the still unsworn and uncunstituted House.
The time came when he was no longer to be observed on the customary scene. He met the fate to which the likes of him (poor souls, belonging entirely to themselves) are particularly foredoomed
—disappearance, sudden, and unnoticed. A few of the many to whom he had become known by appearance may have paid him the
passing tribute—arising from the random stream of thoughts and recollections ever scurrying through one's mind—of wondering what could have happened to the queer, simple old fellow in the long coat, muffler and soft hat. And then no more. I have heard that towards the end he indicated a preference for burial in London's vastest and most crowded necropolis—Kensal Green. An instance of the ruling passion strong in death.
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