It was in the orchards as I rode
on that old horse-omnibus that used to run between Ealing and Brentford.
And next day I left the hotel and went out to where we used to live, on
the Northern Heights, Gentility's last ditch before they succumbed to
the onward rush of the street car and the realty agent! Spring was
whispering there too, creepers were growing over new villas, new streets
were scored across our old cricket and tennis ground by the church, an
old tavern had been rebuilt in the very latest Mile-End-Road style. Our
old house had a motor garage built on one side of it, a green-roofed
shack. Many of our neighbours had For Sale boards over their gates. Some
had gone. A couple of brick pillars with stone pineapples on top of them
had been put up at the entrance to a farm on the other side of the
railway and a board said it was the site of Ashbolton Park, a high class
residential estate. Some residents, I observed, were making a stand. One
old lady, who had lived all her life on the Great North Road, and who
was resolved to die there, had built a brick wall right round her little
estate, a brick wall with a high, narrow iron gate in the middle,
through which you could see the sullen Georgian house crouching at the
back, like a surly old bear. Must have been a joyous household. I looked
for my old sweetheart's home. It was there, but strangers lived in it. A
servant I spoke to on her way to the post told me they had been moved to
Chislehurst some time. The last ditch! In a way I felt it, this
crumbling and withering of the old order, the order of which my parents
had vainly tried to become companions. For it was typical of England. I
felt it most when I walked out on the Great North Road through Barnet
and saw the huge notice-boards up over the walls of princely domains,
telling me how this desirable property and that magnificent country seat
was to be sold at auction at Tokenhouse Yard on such and such a date. It
was hitting the seats of the mighty, you might say, this insidious
growth and crumble and decay. Nothing could stand against it. The
strong, stark virtues, the high courage and honour and fine courtesy,
the patronage of arts and letters and religion which was the spirit of
that old order, were all gone, and now the very shell and imitation of
it was going, and we must prepare for the new people and their new ways.
A new world. Only the road, the Great North Roman Road, seemed never to
alter. A few inches mo