The
note of the Brixton Road is daughters. Where else in the suburbs
will you meet so many pretty, domesticated - but stay: I will
do homage to the daughters in good time. Indeed, I will do
it all the time. Their praise shall pervade this article as
their smiles pervade and irradiate the Brixton-road. If you
don’t mind I will begin again.
The
Brixton-road starts, southward, from the Church of St. Mark,
Kennington. But for a typical view you must walk along it
until you find yourself opposite the Russell Tavern. Thence
the road curves away southwards, green and sweet, in a perspective
of villas, overhanging trees, white lamp-posts, and glittering
’buses and trams. Plane trees, chestnuts, the graceful ash,
the laburnum, shrubs, laurels, Virginia creeper, and wisteria
now hide and now reveal the windows and porticoes of the houses
the embower. Such shady, dewy, fertile gardens I have not
seen in the like radius. I should not wonder if the nightingale
tries one song here in May. To see a gardener brushing up
the first autumn leaves under a group of stately limes you
could fancy yourself 20 miles from Charing-cross. Only the
long, dull grind of the cable, and the jangle of an approaching
tramcar, dissipates the dream. Alas! where will you find an
old suburban road that is not being slowly overtaken by the
turbid tides that set from the centre? The doctor and the
dentist are boldly followed by the music teacher, the registry
office, the milliner, the property agent, the piano-tuner,
and the lodging-house-keeper. This blister of brass plates
and sign-boards has begun in the Brixton-road, but, happily,
it is still under control. A very beautiful half-mile of road
preserves its carriage drives and park palings, and, save
for the democratising trams, its residential calm. After all
there are few pleasanter things to contemplate - given a certain
mood - than middle-class comfort. The Brixton-road is at once
its symbol and sanctuary. For myself, when I walk along these
white, select pavements - a lonesome uncared for Londoner
- I somehow want to telegraph to my nearest female relations
to come at once. The outdoor life of the Brixton-road reflects
so clearly those domesticities which some of us “have known
long and lost awhile”. I can see indoor Brixton without Professor
Röntgen’s assistance, and I imagine myself for the moment
a partaker of its decorous pleasures. Some people sneer at
them. I do not; neither do I covet them. But if I were other
than I am and could accept the Brixton-road, and be accepted
by it, I should calculate on having an uncommonly good time.
Life looks happy in this great middle-class artery. A character
in a new story by Lucas Cleeve is made to say of happiness:-
“At the start happiness belonged to the upper classes, then
happiness slipped on to the middle classes. The middle classes
are happy now. They enjoy themselves. They are educated enough
for enjoyment, not over-civilised. The upper classes are now
miserable, because they have become epicures, and epicures
are rarely satisfied.” I won’t say I accept this, but the
Brixton-road doesn’t contradict it. I can quite understand
how pleasant it must be to go to church twice regularly on
Sundays, wagging a new pair of gloves along the road and chatting
with other fellows’ sisters; to belong to a tennis club so
select that to belong to it is more important than playing;
and to vary the weekly “Cinderella” with the weekly lollipop
lecture as arranged by “your indefatigable secretary” on why
the Sustentation fund is always falling off; how to pay the
debt on the new stove pipe; when the choir outing shall be
held; - these topics - and the minister’s salary - never weary.
They never weary because the church is the lynch-pin of Brixton
society. If you want to see how Brixton “sets” are composed
you only have to wait till the church bells begin ringing.
Then you will behold the separation of the flocks. Each makes
a brave show. I don’t know which is the largest. I don’t know
which can show English middle-class girlhood at its sweetest
and demurest. How should I? But when on a drear Sunday night
I pass the churches in the Brixton-road, and hear the organs
rolling, and the sweet voices of the daughters in a gale of
song, and see the great lighted windows and the shadows on
them of the people in the gallery, I am apt to compress my
lips and quicken my pace as I realise that I am not of those
cheery companies. But the Brixton-road is not all churches
and garden palings. The objective of the ’buses and trams
which run to it from the Thames bridges and other directions
is the wide, asphalted open space just beyond the railway
bridge, and in front of the Bonanza stores. Here is the famous
“Electric Avenue”, with its pavements sheltered under glazed
projecting roofs, and its prodigal electric lighting. The
shops in it are good, and very various in kind. A bookseller
and newsagent’s seemed to indicate the literary tastes of
the neighbourhood. Here again it is the daughters who are
evidently catered for. All the fashion journals and family
magazines, and all the “happy home” papers in which Marjorie
and Dorothy and Lady Don’t-you-know chatter of dresses and
duty, and are equally ready to suggest a wall-paper or soothe
a remorse, are here, and nowhere do they sell faster or to
more “constant” readers. As for books, I divined the Free
Library before I discovered it. My bookseller is too near
it. But he can sell Miss Marie Corelli’s novels. That plucky
lady has captured Brixton to a daughter. Besides the Electric-avenue,
Brixton boasts a Bon Marché. You pronounce it Bun Marsh. I
know this, because, not seeing the Brixton one at first, I
sidled up to a cultured-looking Brixtonian, and said with
my best Brixton-Parisian accent: “Will you direct me to the
Bong Marshay?” “The Bun Marsh?” he replied; “certainly; that’s
it under the railway bridge.” Altogether, no suburban centre
in London has more of gaiety and movement. Here everything
glitters. Shop signs, gilt lettering, flags, facias, the green
’buses starting and arriving, the trams slowing as they pass,
give brightness and bustle to the scene; while crossing from
shop to shop on household errands, or flashing by on their
bicycles, the daughters of Brixton pass smiling on their way.
It is a pleasant scene. Southward, Brixton-hill climbs to
Streatham through its own greenery. To the left the graceful
cupola of St. Matthew’s rises above the trees, and the Tate
Central Free Library and the new theatre add importance to
the spot. Looking about you it is not difficult to forget
the road by which you have come, and to fancy you have arrived
in the vicinity of some pleasant seaside town.
BRIXTON
abridged: an occasional series of short pieces
published by the Brixton Society number: 2/96 price: 15p ISBN:
1 873052 09 X