Everyman's England by Victor Canning Page B

it before it came to rest and – if the conductor were not about – get a seat, while we were still struggling in a silly way to get aboard and effectively blocking the way for those unhappy people who wanted to disembark and let us take their places. Intelligence is not the predominant quality of those London bus crowds, though individually, no doubt, they are all quite sane and rational. In this scramble umbrellas were often effective weapons; parcels, no matter what they contained, unless it was fish, were no help. Fish in a paper parcel had a magical effect. I once saw a man walk, like an immortal, through a milling crowd about a Twenty-four by the virtue of a pair of haddocks, whose tails flapped menacingly from the end of a parcel. Later I saw him sitting in a coveted seat at the front of the bus, quite alone.
    That was my favourite seat, and if some day you want to spend threepence happily on that route, try to get the front seat on the top deck. It is the next best thing to actually driving the bus. You forget the people behind you and become one with the spirit of the route you travel and the crimson monster that carries you. Argosies, caravels and stately liners, dirty tramps and wallowing coasters have all had their praises told in poetry and literature. Someday someone will write of London’s buses and people will wonder why it has not been done before. Kipling would have done it well. The modern motor car is probably content with obituaries for its poetry, but the omnibus – an ugly name for a lovely thing – should have genius to proclaim its joys.
    Recently, having the time to spare, I waited for the Twenty-four with the intention of making the journey again. It was long since I had gone up Tottenham Court Road, northwards to Hampstead Heath, and I was eager to discover whether my sense of whereabouts had died from lack of exercise.
    It was late in the afternoon and the streets shone wetly from a recent storm, the air was full of rich, unnameable smells. People packed around me at the stop. With some selfishness, and a great deal of pushing, I got my coveted seat, which was important enough to me to excuse my conduct.
    The bus started along the road which once led out to the Tottenham Court Manor House, which later became the Adam and Eve Inn, a happier fate than that which has overtaken some manor houses. Today the road has lost its rural character and as Harley Street is famous for doctors, Wardour Street for films, Great Portland Street for motor cars and Charing Cross Road for bookshops, Tottenham Court Road is the home of the furniture shops.
    I knew when we were passing Heal’s and Maple’s, but my paper did not drop for me to eye their splendours. It dropped as we breasted a much smaller shop than either of these, a shop I can never pass without a loving glance.
    It is small, wedged between two large buildings, and presents a dark, cool mouth to the hurry of the road. From its shadows comes the gleam of furniture that shines with age and in its long cavern I have often spent many hours pulling out the drawers of bureaus that once held the love-letters of ladies who wore patches and powder and bit the end of their quills over their spelling; rubbing the dust from the lacquer of occasional tables with a wet finger; fumbling with those nests of boxes that travellers brought back from the East to decorate the drawing-rooms of Berkeley Square. That little shop attracts me more than any of the opulent stores whose windows show to all the glories which adorn the homes of the rich.
    Once I had bought a chair there. The dealer had sold it reluctantly, for it had been with him for a long time and he had come to love it. A few furniture dealers are like that. They hate to part with their treasures and they are capable of belittling, and even lying about the piece on which you have set your heart. They are to be preferred to those who would prevent your examining a piece by their torrent