n the living, I know there were gleams of sunlight.
The tragic muddle of that period was so monstrous, that even we who
lived through it are apt in retrospect to see only the gloom and
confusion. It is natural, therefore, that those who did not live through
it should be utterly unable to discern any glimpse of relief in the
picture. And that leads to misconception.

As a fact, I found very much to admire in London when I sallied forth
from the obscure lodging I had chosen in a Bloomsbury back street, on
the morning which brought an end to my stay with the Wheelers at
Weybridge. Also, it was not given to me at that time to recognize as
such one tithe of the madness and badness of the state of affairs. Some
wholly bad features were quite good in my eyes then.

London still clung to its "season," as it was called, though motor-cars
and railway facilities had entirely robbed this of its sharply defined
nineteenth-century limits. Very many people, even among the wealthy,
lived entirely in London, spending their week-ends in this or that
country or seaside resort, and devoting the last months of summer with,
in many cases, the first months of autumn, to holiday-making on the
Continent, or in Scotland, or on the English moors or coasts.

The London season was not over when I reached town, and in the western
residential quarters the sun shone brightly upon many-coloured awnings
and beautiful decorative plants and flowers. The annual rents paid by
people who lived behind these flowers and awnings frequently ran into
thousands of pounds, with ten shillings in each pound additional by way
of rates and taxes. To live at all, in this strata, would cost a man and
his wife perhaps eighty to a hundred pounds a week, without anything
which would have been called extravagance.

Hundreds of people who lived in this way had neighbours within a
hundred yards of their front doors who never had enough to eat. Even
such people as these had to pay preposterous rents for the privilege of
huddling together in a single wretched room. But many of their wealthy
neighbours spent hundreds, and even thousands of pounds a year over
securing comfort and happiness for such domestic animals as horses,
dogs, cats, and the like. Amiable, kindly gentlefolk they were, with
tender hearts and ready sympathies. Most of them were interested in some
form of charity. Many of them specialized, and these would devote much
energy to opposing the work of other charit