It is not solely from my windows that I have got to know the Quarter. Into my Camelot I can not only look, but come down, without webs flying out and mirrors cracking, and better still, I might never stir beyond its limits, and my daily life and domestic arrangements would suffer no inconvenience. The Quarter is as "self-contained" as the flats advertised by our zealous Agent who manages it. Every necessity and many luxuries into the bargain are to be had within its boundaries. It may resemble the Inns of Court in other ways, but it does not, as they do, encourage snobbishness by placing a taboo upon the tradesman. We have our own dairy, our own green-grocer, our own butcher, though out of sympathy with Augustine I do my marketing in Soho. At one corner our tobacconist keeps his shop, at another our tailor. If my drains go wrong I call in the local plumber; when I want a shelf put up or something mended I send for the local carpenter; I could summon the local builder were I inclined to make a present of alterations or additions to the local landlord. I but step across the street if I am in need of a Commissioner of Oaths. I go no further to get my type-writing done. Were my daily paper to fail me, the local gossip of the Quarter would allow me no excuse to complain of dearth of news; the benevolent would exult in the opportunity provided for benevolence by our slums where the flower-girls live; the energetic could walk off their energy in our garden where the County Council's band plays on summer evenings. There is a public for our loungers, and for our friends a hotel,--the house below the hill with the dingy yellow walls that are so shiny-white as I see them by night, kept from time immemorial by Miss Brown, where the lodger still lights himself to bed by a candle and still eats his meals in a Coffee Room, and where Labour Members of Parliament, and South Kensington officials, and people never to be suspected of having discovered the Quarter, are the most frequent guests.
The Quarter has also its own population, so distinct from other Londoners that I am struck by the difference no further away than the other side of the Strand. Our housekeepers are a species apart, so are our milkmen behind their little carts. Our types are a local growth. Nowhere else in London could I meet anybody in the slightest like the pink-eyed, white-haired, dried-up little old man, with a jug in his hand, whom I see daily on his way to or from our public-house; or like the middle-aged dandy who stares me out of countenance as he saunters homeward in the afternoon, a lily or chrysanthemum, according to the season, in one hand and a brown paper bag of buns in the other; or like the splendid old man of military bearing, with well-waxed moustache and well-pointed beard, whose Panama hat in summer and fur-lined cloak in winter have become as much fixtures in the Quarter as our Adam houses or our view of the river, and who spends his days patrolling the Terrace in front of our frivolous club or going into it with members he happens to overtake at the front door,--where his nights are spent no native of the Quarter can say. Nor is any other crowd like our crowd that collects every Sunday evening as St. Martin's bells begin to ring for evening service, that grows larger and larger until streets usually empty are packed solid, and that melts away again before ten. It is made up mostly of youths to whom the cap is as indispensable a symbol of class as the silk hat further west, and young girls who run to elaborate hair and feathers. They have their conventions, which are strictly observed. One is to walk with arms linked; a second, to fill the roadway as well as the pavement, to the despair of taxicabs and cycles endeavouring to toot and ring a passage through; a third, to follow the streets that bound the Quarter on three sides and never to trespass into others. How the custom originated, I leave it to the historian to decide. It may go back to the Britons who painted themselves blue, it may be no older than the Romans. All I know with certainty is that the Sunday evening walk is a ceremony of no less obligation for the Quarter than the Sunday morning parade in the Row is for Mayfair.