s superb; but perhaps most superb when the day is done,
and her lights, the amazing whites and yellows and golds, blossom on
every hand in their tangled garden and her lovers cluster thicker and
thicker to worship at her shrine and spend a night in town.

* * * * *

Nights in town! If you are a good Cockney that phrase will sting your
blood and set your heart racing back to--well, to those nights in town,
gay or sad, glorious or desperate, but ever sweet to linger upon. There
is no night in all the world so rich in delicate delights as the London
night. You cannot have a bad night in London unless you are a bad
Cockney--or a tourist; for the difference between the London night and
the continental night is just the difference between making a cult of
pleasure and a passion of it. The Paris night, the Berlin night, the
Viennese night--how dreary and clangy and obvious! But the London night
is spontaneous, always expressive of your mood. Your gaieties, your
little escapades are never ready-made here. You must go out for them and
stumble upon them, wondrously, in dark places, being sure that whatever
you may want London will give you. She asks nothing; she gives
everything. You need bring nothing but love. Only to very few of us is
she the stony-hearted stepmother. We, who are all her lovers, active or
passive, know that she loves each one of us. The passive lover loves her
as he loves his mother, not knowing his love, not knowing if she be
beautiful, not caring, but knowing that she is there, has always been
there, to listen, to help, to solace. But the others who love her
consciously, love her as mistress or wife. For them she is more perfect
than perfection, adorable in every mood, season, or attire. They love
her in velvet, they love her in silk; she is marvellous in broadcloth,
shoddy, or corduroy. But, like a woman, her deepest beauty she holds for
the soft hours when the brute day is ended and all mankind sighs for
rest and warmth. Then she is her very self. Beauty she has by day, but
it is the cold, incomplete beauty of a woman before she has given
herself. With the lyric evening she surrenders all the wealth and wonder
of her person to her lover: beauty in full flower.

As a born Londoner, I cannot remember a time when London was not part of
me and I part of London. Things that happen to London happen to me.
Changes in London are changes in me, and changes in my affairs and
circumst