although london possesses a thousand central points suitable for a street rendezvous, londoners seem to have decided by tacit agreement to use only five of these for their outdoor appointments. they are: charing cross post office, leicester square tube, piccadilly tube, under the clock at victoria, and oxford circus tube; and i have never known my friends telephone me for a meeting and fix a rendezvous outside this list. indeed, i can now, by long experience, place the habits and character of casual acquaintances who wish to meet me, from their choice among these places.
thus, a charing cross post office appointment means a pleasure appointment. here, at one o'clock on saturday afternoon, wait the bright girls and golden boys, their faces, like living lamps, shining through the cloud of pedestrians as a signal for that one for whom they wait. and, though you be late in keeping the appointment, you may be certain that the waiting party will be[pg 141] in placid mood. there is so much to distract and delight you on this small corner. there are the bustle of the strand and the stopping buses; the busy sweep of trafalgar square, so spacious that its swift stream of traffic suggests leisure; the hot smell of savouries rising from the kitchens of morley's hotel; and the cynical amusement to be drawn from a study of the meetings and encounters of other waiting folk. hundreds of appointments have i kept at charing cross post office. i have met soldier-friends there, after an absence of three years. i have met cousins and sisters and aunts, and damsels who stood not in any of these relations. and i have met the only one there, many, many times; often happily; often in trepidation; and sometimes in lyrical ecstasy, as when a quarrel and a long parting have received the benison of reconciliation. now, i can never pass the post office without a tremor, for its swart, squat exterior is, for me, bowered with delicious thrills.
never keep an appointment under the clock at victoria. a meeting here is fatal to the sweetness of the intercourse that is to follow. always he or she who arrives first will be peevish or irate by the time the second party turns up; for [pg 142]victoria station, with its lowering roof, affects you with a frightful sense of being shut in and smothered. turn how you will, sharply or gently, and you cannon with some petulant human, and, retiring apologetically from him, you impale your kidney region on some fool's walking-stick or umbrella. that fool asks you to look where you're going, and then he gets his from a truck-load of luggage. you laugh—bitterly. after three minutes of waiting in that violet-tinted beehive, you loathe your fellow-man; you loathe the entire animal kingdom. you "come over in one of them prickly 'eats." your nerves flap about you like bits of bunting, and the new spring suit that set in such fine lines seems fit only for scaring birds. then your friend arrives, and god help him if he's late!
i have watched these victoria appointments many times while waiting for my train. the first party to the contract arrives, glances at the clock, and strolls to the bookstall, cheerfully swinging stick or umbrella. he strolls back to the clock, glances, compares it with his watch. hums a bar or two. coughs. a flicker of dismay shades his face. then a handicapped runner for the 6.15 crashes violently against him in avoiding a [pg 143]platoon of soldiers, and knocks his hat over his eyes and his stick ten yards away. when the great big world ceases turning and he finds a voice, the offender has gone. the next glance he shoots at the clock is choleric. a slight prod from an old lady who wishes to find the main booking-office produces a spout of fury; and the comedy ends with a gestic departure, in the course of which he gets a little of his own back on other of his species. his final glance at the clock is charged with the pure essence of malevolence.
how much more gracious is an appointment in the great resounding hall of euston, though this is mainly a travellers' rendezvous and is seldom used for general appointments. here, cloistered from the rush and roar of the station proper, yet always with a cheerful sense of loud neighbourhood, the cathedral mood is induced. you become benign, gothic. there are pleasant straw seats. there are writing-tables with real ink. there are noble photographs of english beauty-spots, and—oh, heaps of dinky little models of railway trains and irish channel steamers which light up when you drop pennies in the slots. vast, serene and episcopal is this rendezvous—it always reminds me of the athen?um club; and, however[pg 144] protracted your vigil, it showers upon you something of its quality; so that, though your friend be twenty minutes late, you still receive him affably, and talk in conversational tones of this and of that, instead of roaring the obvious like a baseball fan, as victoria's hall demands. you may even make subtle epigrams at euston, and your friend will take their point. i'd like to hear someone try to convey a fine shade of meaning in victoria.
oxford circus tube i register as the meeting-ground of the suburban flapper and the suburban shopping mamma. its note is little swinging skirts, and artful silk stockings, and shining curls, that dance to the sober music of the matron's rustling satin. the waiting dames carry those dinky little brown-paper bags, stamped with the name of some oxford street draper, at whose contents the idler may amuse himself by guessing—a ribbon, a camisole, a flower-spray for a hat, gloves, or those odd lengths of cloth and linen which women will buy—though lord knows to what esoteric use they put them. hither come, too, those lonely people who, through the medium of "companionship" columns or correspondence circles, have found a congenial soul. why they[pg 145] choose oxford circus i don't know, but they are always to be seen there. you may recognize the type at first glance. they peer and scan closely every arrival, for, though correspondence has introduced them to the other soul, they have not yet seen the body, and they are searching for someone to fit the description that has been supplied; as thus: "i am of medium height and shall be wearing a black hat, trimmed with michaelmas daisies, and a fawn macintosh," or "i am tall, and shall be wearing a grey suit and black soft hat and spectacles, and will carry a copy of the buff review in my hand." one is pleased to speculate on the result of the meeting. is it horrible disillusion, or does the flint find its fellow-flint and produce the true spark? do they thereafter look happily upon oxford circus tube, or pass it with a shudder?
the crowd that hovers about the leicester square tube entrances affords little matter for reflection. it is so obvious. it is so leicester square. it alternately snarls and leers. it never truly smiles; it is so tired of the smiling business. the loud garb of the women tells its own tale. for the rest, there are bejewelled black men, a few australian and belgian soldiers, and a few[pg 146] disgruntled and "shopless" actors. i never accept an appointment at leicester square tube. it puts me off the lunch or dinner or whatever business is the object of the meeting. it is ignoble, squalid, with an air of sickly decency about it.
a few yards further westward, at piccadilly tube, the atmosphere changes. one tastes the ampler ether and diviner air. it does not, like charing cross post office, sing april and may, but rather the mellowness of august and september. good solid people meet here; people "comfortably off," as the phrase goes; people who have lived largely, but have not lost their capacity for deliberate enjoyment. at meal-times they gather thickly; quiet, dainty women; obese majors; government officials; and that nondescript type that wears shabby, well-cut clothes with an air of prosperity and breeding. you may almost name the first words that will be spoken when a couple meet: "well, where shall we go? trocadero, criterion—or soho?" there is little hilarity; people don't "let themselves go" at this rendezvous. they are out for entertainment, but it is mild, well-ordered entertainment. the note of the crowd is, "if a thing is worth doing at all, it's worth doing well," even if the thing is[pg 147] only a hurried lunch or a curfew-rationed theatre.
classifying london's meeting-places by their moral atmospheres, i would mark charing cross post office as juvenile; oxford circus tube as youth; leicester square tube as senility; piccadilly tube as middle-age; the great hall at euston as reverend seniority; and victoria station—well, victoria station should get a total-rejection certificate.
