It Begins The Moment You Set Foot Ashor
It begins the moment you set foot ashore, the moment you step off the boat's gangway. The heart suddenly, yet vaguely, sinks. It is no lurch of fear. Quite the contrary. It is as if the life- urge failed, and the heart dimly sank. You trail past the
5 benevolent policeman and the inoffensive passport officials, through the fussy and somehow foolish customs - we don't really think it matters if somebody smuggles in two pairs of false-silk stockings - and we get into the poky but inoffensive train, with poky but utterly inoffensive people, and we have a cup of
10 inoffensive tea from a nice inoffensive boy, and we run through small, poky but nice and inoffensive country, till we are landed in the big but unexciting station of Victoria, when an inoffensive porter puts us into an inoffensive taxi and we are driven through the crowded yet strangely dull streets of London to the cosy yet
15 strangely poky and dull place where we are going to stay. And the first half-hour in London, after some years abroad, is really a plunge of misery. The strange, the grey and uncanny, almost deathly sense of dullness is overwhelming. Of course, you get over it after a while, and admit that you exaggerated. You get
20 into the rhythm of London again, and you tell yourself that it is not dull. And yet you are haunted, all the time, sleeping or waking, with the uncanny feeling: It is dull! It is all dull! This life here is one vast complex of dullness! I am dull! I am being dulled! My spirit is being dulled! My life is dulling down to
25 London dullness.
This is the nightmare that haunts you the first few weeks of London. No doubt if you stay longer you get over it, and find London as thrilling as Paris or Rome or New York. But the climate is against me. I cannot stay long enough. With pinched
30 and wondering gaze, the morning of departure, I look out of the
5 benevolent policeman and the inoffensive passport officials, through the fussy and somehow foolish customs - we don't really think it matters if somebody smuggles in two pairs of false-silk stockings - and we get into the poky but inoffensive train, with poky but utterly inoffensive people, and we have a cup of
10 inoffensive tea from a nice inoffensive boy, and we run through small, poky but nice and inoffensive country, till we are landed in the big but unexciting station of Victoria, when an inoffensive porter puts us into an inoffensive taxi and we are driven through the crowded yet strangely dull streets of London to the cosy yet
15 strangely poky and dull place where we are going to stay. And the first half-hour in London, after some years abroad, is really a plunge of misery. The strange, the grey and uncanny, almost deathly sense of dullness is overwhelming. Of course, you get over it after a while, and admit that you exaggerated. You get
20 into the rhythm of London again, and you tell yourself that it is not dull. And yet you are haunted, all the time, sleeping or waking, with the uncanny feeling: It is dull! It is all dull! This life here is one vast complex of dullness! I am dull! I am being dulled! My spirit is being dulled! My life is dulling down to
25 London dullness.
This is the nightmare that haunts you the first few weeks of London. No doubt if you stay longer you get over it, and find London as thrilling as Paris or Rome or New York. But the climate is against me. I cannot stay long enough. With pinched
30 and wondering gaze, the morning of departure, I look out of the