§ 63

Once upon a time an ex-Lord Mayor was surprised to hear an expression of disgust at a proposal to convert Westminster Abbey into a railway terminus. “We don’t want that kind of Mayor or ex-Mayor; we regard him as a savage.” Excellent John Bright! Your study of the style of the Bible and Milton made you an orator, but not a wise man when you expressed a hope that Industrialism would so prevail that smoky chimneys should be everywhere as a sign of Wealth! You saw as a sectarian, narrowly and ill! The beauty of our English lake scenery would no longer exist if “The Plain Man” had had his way. The banks of the Thames near to Chiswick, that precious bit of rural Suburban London, was saved from destruction, but only just saved.

The promoters of the scheme held out plausible hopes to “The People,” but were outwitted, thank Heaven, and the King’s Meadows were saved. Had it succeeded Chiswick would have been under a smoke cloud, and we should have said good-bye to the health and beauty of what is still the most charming suburb of our grim, chaotic, dirty Metropolis. How to treat London as a whole, is under consideration. It will probably be broken up into self-governing sections. Much of it will have to be pulled down and rearranged. Open spaces will be increased. Public opinion will not, in these days of its greater enlightenment, be the slave of Jerry-builders or Companies that, for the sake of high interest, erected Pig-styes and called them dwellings. It is proposed to break London up, to equalise the number of the population in every district, and not to permit their extension in the future. One scheme I heard in my dream is to divide Central London from its suburbs by a zone, entirely free of buildings, which shall be one vast productive garden. It is thought to be a practicable scheme, in point of fact, the simplest yet suggested. The total abolition of the Smoke Fiend and the consequent clean and healthy air now enjoyed, and the quantity of sunlight being doubled, experts say there is no reason to doubt the healthy growth of fruit and vegetables in the proposed rural zone. Within Central London only such factories will be permitted which are entirely free from nuisance, disorder, bad smells or smoke of any kind whatever. A plan is being thought out to heat Central London by electricity upon the same system so successfully applied to the New City.