London: a Book of Aspects
by Arthur Symons
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Excerpt from London: A Book of AspectsEnglish air, working upon London smoke, creates the real London. The real London is not a city of uniform brightness, like Paris, nor of savage gloom, like Prague; it is a picture continually changing, a continual sequence of pictures, and there is no knowing what mean street corner may not suddenly take on a glory not its own. The English mist is always at work like a subtle painter, and London is a vast canvas prepared for the mist to work on.The show more especial beauty of London is the Thames, and the Thames is so wonderful because the mist is always changing its shapes and colours, always making its lights mysterious, and build ing palaces of cloud out of mere Parliament Houses with their jags and turrets. When the mist collaborates with night and rain, the masterpiece is created.Most travellers come into London across the river, sometimes crossing it twice. The entrance, as you leave the country behind you, is ominous. If you come by night, and it is never wise to enter any city except by night, you are slowly swallowed up by a blank of blackness, pierced by holes and windows of dingy light; foul and misty eyes of light in the sky; narrow gulfs, in which lights blink; blocks and spikes of black against grey; masts, as it were, rising out of a sea of mist; then a whole street suddenly laid bare in bright light; shoulders of dark buildings; and then black shiny rails, and then the river, a vast smudge, dismal and tragic; and, as one crosses it again, between the vast network of the bridge's bars, the impossible fairy peep-show of the Embankment.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. show lessTags
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Arthur William Symons was born on February 28, 1965 in Wales. He was a British poet, magzine editor and critic. In 1884 - 1886 he edited four of Bernard Quaritch's Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles, and in 1888 -1889 seven plays of the "Henry Irving" Shakespeare. His major editorial feat was his work with the short-lived Savoy. His first volume of show more verse, Days and Nights (1889), consisted of dramatic monologues. His later verse is influenced by a close study of modern French writers, of Charles Baudelaire, and especially of Paul Verlaine. He reflects French tendencies both in the subject-matter and style of his poems.. Symons contributed poems and essays to The Yellow Book, including an important piece which was later expanded into The Symbolist Movement in Literature, which would have a major influence on William Butler Yeats and T. S. Eliot. From late 1895 through 1896 he edited, along with Aubrey Beardsley, The Savoy, a literary magazine. Noteworthy contributors included Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Joseph Conrad. Symons was also a member of the Rhymer's Club founded by Yeats in 1890. In 1892, The Minister's Call, Symons's first play, was produced by the Independent Theatre Society - A Private Club. Arthur Symons passed away in January 1945. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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