. A wanderer in London. — the fog that chokes and blinds, and the fog thatshrouds. The fog that enters into every corner of thehouse and coats all the metal work with a dark slime, andsets us coughing and rubbing our eyes — for that there isnothing to say. It brings with it too much dirt, too muchunhealthiness, for any kind of welcome to be possible. Hell is a city very much like London I quoted to myselfin the last of such fogs, as I groped by the railings of thePark in the Bayswater Road. The traffic, which I couldnot see, was rumbling past, and every now and then a man,close by but invisibl
. A wanderer in London. — the fog that chokes and blinds, and the fog thatshrouds. The fog that enters into every corner of thehouse and coats all the metal work with a dark slime, andsets us coughing and rubbing our eyes — for that there isnothing to say. It brings with it too much dirt, too muchunhealthiness, for any kind of welcome to be possible. Hell is a city very much like London I quoted to myselfin the last of such fogs, as I groped by the railings of thePark in the Bayswater Road. The traffic, which I couldnot see, was rumbling past, and every now and then a man,close by but invisible, would call out a word of warning, orsomeone would ask in startled tones where he was. Thehellishness of it consisted in being of life and yet not in it— a stranger in a muffled land. It is bad enough forordinary wayfarers in such a fog as that; but one has onlyto imagine what it is to be in charge of a horse and cart,to see how much worse ones lot might be. But the other fog — the fog that veils but does not. o O o O S 55 -^ 5 D a >< n au H o ?5 s H UH WHISTLERS DISCOVERY 25 obliterate, the fog that softens but does not soil, the fogwhose beautifying properties Whistler may be said to havediscovered — that can be a delight and a joy. Seen throughtliis gentle mist London becomes a city of romance. Allthat is ugly and hard in her architecture, all that is dingyand repellent in her colour, disappears. Poor buildings,wrote Whistler, who Avatchcd their transformation so oftenfrom his Chelsea home, lose themselves in the dim sky,and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the ware-houses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangsin the heavens. I have said that it was Dickens who discovered theLondon of eccentricity, London as the abode of the oddand the quaint, and Stevenson who discovered Londonas a home of romance. It was Whistler who discoveredLondon as a city of fugitive, mysterious beauty. Fordecades the London fog had been a theme for vituperationand
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