avy crown
Through London rain!_

_And ever, when the day is low,
And stealthy clouds the night forethrow,
I quest these ways of dear renown,
And pray, while Hope in tears I drown,
That once again her face may glow,
Through London rain!_

A FRENCH NIGHT

OLD COMPTON STREET

Step aside from the jostle and clamour of Oxford Street into Soho
Square, and you are back in the eighteenth century and as lonely as a
good man in Chicago. Cross the Square, cut through Greek Street or Dean
Street, and you are in--Paris, amid the clang, the gesture, and the
alert nonchalance of metropolitan France.

Soho--magic syllables! For when the respectable Londoner wants to feel
devilish he goes to Soho, where every street is a song. He walks through
Old Compton Street, and, instinctively, he swaggers; he is abroad; he is
a dog. He comes up from Surbiton or Norwood or Golder's Green, and he
dines cheaply at one of the hundred little restaurants, and returns home
with the air and the sensation of one who has travelled, and has peeped
into places that are not ... Quite ... you know.

Soho exists only to feed the drab suburban population of London on the
spree. That artificial atmosphere of Montmartre, those little touches of
a false Bohemia are all cunningly spread from the brains of the
restaurateurs as a net to catch the young bank clerk and the young
Fabian girl. Indeed, one establishment has overplayed the game to the
extent of renaming itself "The Bohemia." The result is that one dare not
go there for fear of dining amid the minor clergy and the Fabians and
the girl-typists. It is a little pitiable to make a tour of the cafes
and watch the Londoner trying to be Bohemian. There has been, of course,
for the last few years, a growing disregard, among all classes, for the
heavier conventionalities; but this determined Bohemianism is a mistake.
The Englishman can no more be trifling and light-hearted in the Gallic
manner than a Polar bear can dance the _maxixe bresilienne_ in the
jungle. If you have ever visited those melancholy places, the night
clubs and cabarets, which had a boom a year or two ago, you will
appreciate the immense effort that devilry demands from him. Those
places were the last word in dullness. I have been at Hampstead
tea-parties which gave you a little more of the joy of living. I have
watched the nuts and the girls, and what have I seen? Boredom. Heavy
eyes, no