To the Londoner this place holds more of interest than any other
museum, not excepting the unfortunately entombed Guildhall Museum.
The whole history of London, dug up out of London clay and peat, is
here for inspection. The finest collection of Roman pottery, found
among the roofs of London, is on view. There is a pot which dates
from perhaps A.D. 200, on which a Londoner of seventeen hundred years
ago has written: "Londini ad fanum Isidis" ("London, next door to the
Temple of Isis"). Think of it! In Tudor Street seventeen hundred
years ago men worshipped the Egyptian goddess Isis, the goddess with
the moon on her head, the sister-wife of Osiris, who travelled from
the Nile to the Tiber, where she joined the impartial Pantheon of
Rome! There is the skeleton of a Roman galley found in the bed of
the Thames: a great ship in which men came to build the first London.
There is the skeleton of one of the first Londoners, lying stretched
under glass as he was found, with a bronze pin under his chin and a
bronze dagger at his breast bone.
Down below in the basement is a Chamber of Horrors few people know.
Here are the great iron gates of Newgate Prison. Here in a
frightening gloom are two prison cells. A wax figure, who looks as
if the execution morning has dawned, writhes on his hard bed, his
hands chained to the walls. Here are the manacles that held Jack
Sheppard.
In another room are a series of lifelike models of old London which
every Londoner should see and admire. Old London Bridge, with its
rows of traitors' heads set on staves, is lifelike; old St. Paul's
during the Fire of London is wonderful. A mechanical contrivance
gives the illusion that smoke is rolling up from the blazing church
over the startled city, the windows of houses show blood-red lights,
and, as you stand looking at the model, your imagination is stirred
so that you can hear the cries and the shouting, see the confused
rushes as citizens tried to save their treasures when liquid lead was
falling in a hissing stream on the red-hot pavements round St. Paul's.
* * *
One wonders what Lancaster House will be like in fifty years' time if
it keeps pace with London! Already a hansom cab is parked in the
garden! Some day a motor-omnibus and perhaps a tramcar will arrive.
There are crowded days ahead!
Among the Fur Men
Women must, I am glad to say, have fur coats. It has been so since
we men set out after the ermine with clubs instead of cheque books,
and splendidly have they always repaid us with a glimpse of eyes over
soft fur and chins buried in the cosy rightness of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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