London Lives

In the library, I found a fabulous quote about London by Henry James:

It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.

From the window of the bus at Paddington, I saw a woman in a long dark fur coat, perhaps aged about sixty. She hurried along with a slightly care-worn look. She had no luggage, so I presume she lived locally. She seemed adrift and slightly out of time; a person one sees increasingly rarely almost as if they are disappearing from London. People like this fascinate me and have long been one of the things informing my writing: Who are they? What were they? What are they?

A couple of years ago I saw an exhibition at the Tate in Pimlico called How We Are: Photographing Britain. It affected me enormously, much more than I could have anticipated. The photographs therein not only form an important document of changing social history, but there, staring out at us, are faces and types of people that are disappearing and that we may never know again. I remember one series of photographs about a factory works outing from the 1950s, with lots of women lined up in front of the coach. There were fearsome matriarchs among them who had a look about them that was absolutely of the era and of their time. Not only are they almost certainly no longer alive, but these women as a particular type no longer exist.