SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
J. W. M. THOMPSON
Coming back to London after a brief parole I find the city almost wholly occupied by tourists from overseas. Tourism, at least, is one major industry which appears to prosper in our hands, whether we deserve it or not. There can never have been a summer when so many eager seekers from afar have hunted down the delights of Ox- ford Street or of Leicester Square. Ameri- cans, of course, abound, making London a city like Wyndham Lewis's Paris of long ago, 'where western Venuses twang its responsive streets and bush to soft growl before its statues'. Yet one western Venus (from California) has complained to me that she has scarcely heard a word of English spoken here, so teeming are the migrants from the continent. I take her point, having just found myself obliged to mediate be- tween an Italian and a Pakistani bus con- ductor; each seemed to have only a few words of English, and those unfortunately not the same words; and `Goodge Street' is a linguistic assault course in itself, to un- familiar tongues.
On balance, this great summer influx is refreshing to the permanent inmate. It is not unpleasing to be asked, repeatedly, to clarify the confusing geography for anxious strangers who listen to one's directions as though therein lay their last hope of ever again setting foot in dear old Peoria, Ill. And the waves of respectful attention which wash over such national glories as Westminster Abbey perhaps re- vive our own jaded talent for appreciation. But alas, modern cities are not built for pleasure; the lot of the urban tourist seems often to resemble that of the soldier in war —long periods of tedium brightened by brief interludes of excitement. One hopes the excitements are adequate compensation for the other.
All fall down
It is rather odd that visitors should be swarming just as London is engaged upon a fresh attack upon so many aspects of the city which tourists most relish. The Nash houses by Charing Cross are threatened, Carlton Mews is to disappear, much of Bloomsbury is doomed; almost daily some fresh essay in destruction is reported. Walk- ing through Woburn Square I saw that already one memorable Georgian terrace had been flattened, with, nearby, a sad scene of semi-demolition. I had to explain to one cultivated visitor from abroad that this had been achieved, not by the soulless forces of rapacious commerce, but by that well known repository of enlightenment, the Uni- versity of London. The response was polite but, I thought, pardonably incredulous. What the response would have been if I had gone on to add that Carlton Mews is being demolished to provide new offices for the British Council, our supposed national guardians of culture, I can only guess.
I carried away from that scene of ruined Bloomsbury a picture of one detail: an up- stairs room in a house only partly demo- lished, a room elegantly wallpapered and complete except for the missing wall which had formerly hidden it from the street. It suggested a stage -setting for a drawing room comedy, obedient to the theatrical convention of the missing' fourth wall. I remember that one often saw such insecure, exposed rooms where bombs had fallen. Indeed, more than all this week's reminis• cences on the war's thirtieth anniversary, that ripped-open room has brought back to me the half-forgotten sense of what wartime London was like.
Treat in store
I prefer to holiday in unfrequented places. To my chagrin, the Atlantic promontory I visited is due to endure the Concorde test programme next year. I seek solace in the thought that the Scillies appear to be in for it, too. Among the victims, too, I may say, the prospect is viewed without enthusi- asm. No one yet knows how unpleasant the booms will be, or how destructive; but I do know that this infliction upon remote places will fortify the anti-Whitehall senti- ments already flourishing there. Besides. oughtn't the tests to take place over Bristol —not merely because it's Mr Wedgwood Benn's constituency, but also so that the men who have made the Concorde should experience it from the receiving end, so to speak?
Sterne matters
Another place I have been visiting is Shandy Hall, Laurence $terne's house in the Yorkshire village of Coxwold. The story of the recovery of this ancient house from approaching ruin, and its restoration into a unique memorial to a unique genius, is thoroughly satisfying. Or almost so, for the work is not yet finished. Shandy Hall sur- vived into the 1960's by some miracle, al- most precisely as Sterne left it two centuries ago (except for the ferocious attentions of death watch beetle and dry rot). Then a trust was formed to turn it into a Sterne museum, with a noble collection of his manuscripts, first editions and portraits promised when the restoration is com- plete.
It is, I think, the earliest and least changed survival of a great writer's home anywhere; and what makes it especially pleasing is its extraordinary appropriate- ness. It is as original and unexpected a house as Tristram Shandy is a novel—full of winding corridors, oddly shaped rooms, curious nooks and unpredictable angles: a small architectural fantasy to match its owner's masterpiece. In American hands such a wonderful survival would long ago have been richly endowed. Shandy Hall, however, depends upon a group of amateur fund raisers who have already pieced to- gether £17,500, in small sums and a few munificent gifts (one of these from Henry Moore). But another £7,500 is urgently needed if the work is to go on without an aposcopesis which, however much Sterne would have relished it stylistically, would add dishearteningly to the cost.
It's a pity that, at the end of that passage in A Sentimental Journey-1 always think it better to take a few sous out in my hand, and I would counsel every gentle traveller to do so likewise; he need not be so exact in setting down his motives for giving them —they will be registered elsewhere'— Sterne was unable to add, 'and should be sent to the Laurence Sterne Trust, Midland Bank, Parliament Street, York'; an omis- sion I now gladly repair.
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