how will a great city of utopia strike us?

to answer that question well one must needs be artist and engineer, and i am neither. moreover, one must employ words and phrases that do not exist, for this world still does not dream of the things that may be done with thought and steel, when the engineer is sufficiently educated to be an artist, and the artistic intelligence has been quickened to the accomplishment of an engineer. how can one write of these things for a generation which rather admires that inconvenient and gawky muddle of ironwork and flemish architecture, the london tower bridge. when before this, temerarious anticipators have written of the mighty buildings that might someday be, the illustrator has blended with the poor ineffectual splutter of the author’s words, his powerful suggestion that it amounted simply to something bulbous, florid and fluent in the vein of the onion, and l’art nouveau. but here, it may be, the illustrator will not intervene.

art has scarcely begun in the world.

there have been a few forerunners and that is all. leonardo, michael angelo; how they would have exulted in the liberties of steel! there are no more pathetic documents in the archives of art than leonardo’s memoranda. in these, one sees him again and again reaching out as it were, with empty desirous hands, towards the unborn possibilities of the engineer. and durer, too, was a modern, with the same turn towards creative invention. in our times these men would have wanted to make viaducts, to bridge wild and inaccessible places, to cut and straddle great railways athwart the mountain masses of the world. you can see, time after time, in durer’s work, as you can see in the imaginary architectural landscape of the pompeian walls, the dream of structures, lighter and bolder than stone or brick can yield. . . . these utopian town buildings will be the realisation of such dreams.

here will be one of the great meeting places of mankind. here — i speak of utopian london — will be the traditional centre of one of the great races in the commonalty of the world state — and here will be its social and intellectual exchange. there will be a mighty university here, with thousands of professors and tens of thousands of advanced students, and here great journals of thought and speculation, mature and splendid books of philosophy and science, and a glorious fabric of literature will be woven and shaped, and with a teeming leisureliness, put forth. here will be stupendous libraries, and a mighty organisation of museums. about these centres will cluster a great swarm of people, and close at hand will be another centre, for i who am an englishman must needs stipulate that westminster shall still be a seat of world empire, one of several seats, if you will — where the ruling council of the world assembles. then the arts will cluster round this city, as gold gathers about wisdom, and here englishmen will weave into wonderful prose and beautiful rhythms and subtly atmospheric forms, the intricate, austere and courageous imagination of our race.

one will come into this place as one comes into a noble mansion. they will have flung great arches and domes of glass above the wider spaces of the town, the slender beauty of the perfect metal-work far overhead will be softened to a fairy-like unsubstantiality by the mild london air. it will be the london air we know, clear of filth and all impurity, the same air that gives our october days their unspeakable clarity and makes every london twilight mysteriously beautiful. we shall go along avenues of architecture that will be emancipated from the last memories of the squat temple boxes of the greek, the buxom curvatures of rome; the goth in us will have taken to steel and countless new materials as kindly as once he took to stone. the gay and swiftly moving platforms of the public ways will go past on either hand, carrying sporadic groups of people, and very speedily we shall find ourselves in a sort of central space, rich with palms and flowering bushes and statuary. we shall look along an avenue of trees, down a wide gorge between the cliffs of crowded hotels, the hotels that are still glowing with internal lights, to where the shining morning river streams dawnlit out to sea.

great multitudes of people will pass softly to and fro in this central space, beautiful girls and youths going to the university classes that are held in the stately palaces about us, grave and capable men and women going to their businesses, children meandering along to their schools, holiday makers, lovers, setting out upon a hundred quests; and here we shall ask for the two we more particularly seek. a graceful little telephone kiosk will put us within reach of them, and with a queer sense of unreality i shall find myself talking to my utopian twin. he has heard of me, he wants to see me and he gives me clear directions how to come to him.

i wonder if my own voice sounds like that.

“yes,” i say, “then i will come as soon as we have been to our hotel.”

we indulge in no eloquence upon this remarkable occasion. yet i feel an unusual emotional stir. i tremble greatly, and the telephonic mouthpiece rattles as i replace it.

and thence the botanist and i walk on to the apartments that have been set aside for us, and into which the poor little rolls of the property that has accumulated about us in utopia, our earthly raiment, and a change of linen and the like, have already been delivered. as we go i find i have little to say to my companion, until presently i am struck by a transitory wonder that he should have so little to say to me.

“i can still hardly realise,” i say, “that i am going to see myself — as i might have been.”

“no,” he says, and relapses at once into his own preoccupation.

for a moment my wonder as to what he should be thinking about brings me near to a double self-forgetfulness.

i realise we are at the entrance of our hotel before i can formulate any further remark.

“this is the place,” i say.