A peaceful calm envelops every street, And like an old-world idyll life drifts by; Where else such courtly couples shall you meet A-comin' thro' the Rye? CLAPHAM Unto my yoke my stalwarts meekly bend: Daily, between the hours of 8 and 9, To dare worse horrors than the Pit I send Sons of the Chatham line! EALING "Last, loveliest, exquisite," I give to those Civilian warriors from India rest; What suburb boasts the dignified repose That clings to Ealing, W.? Later on the garden suburb is a frequent theme of genial comment and satire based on first-hand observation, for the late Mr. F. H. Townsend was a resident in Golder's Green, and his ingenious pencil found ample scope in the amenities and humours of the new _Rus in Urbe_. Another "garden" that had provoked _Punch_ to less favourable comment in earlier years--Covent Garden--was still a source of dissatisfaction as late as 1904. When John Hollingshead died in the autumn of that year, _Punch_, in his obituary notice of the manager of the Gaiety Theatre, revealed the fact that "his was the dauntless hand that, under _Mr. Punch's_ banner, attacked 'Mud Salad Market' many years ago." If the present condition of Covent Garden market is not exactly ideal, at any rate it does not justify the censures passed on it seventeen years ago as still blocking traffic with congested muck. [Illustration: A LADY WITH A PAST LONDON (in her new Museum at Kensington Palace): "Bless my soul, what a life I've led!"] In 1912 the London Museum was opened at Kensington Palace, and _Punch_, in a commemorative cartoon, showed London as an old lady examining the cases of the Roman, Saxon and Norman periods. "Bless my soul," she says, "what a life I've led!" And _Punch_ was often more interested in the life she had led than in that she was leading or was about to lead. Her future, as outlined by Sir Aston Webb in January, 1914, seemed to him a charming but somewhat visionary prospect:-- Meanwhile this London is my place; Sad though her dirt, as I admit is, I love the dear unconscious grace That shines beneath her sooty face Better than all your well-groomed cities. PART II SOCIAL LIFE IN TRANSITION CROWN AND COURT