One morning lately I saw in my newspaper an announcement that enraged
me. It was made in the driest, most casual way, as though nobody would
care a rap; and this did but whet the wrath I had in knowing that Adam
Street, Adelphi, was to be undone. The Tivoli Music Hall, about to be
demolished and built anew, was to have a frontage of thirty feet, if
you please, in Adam Street. Why? Because the London County Council,
with its fixed idea that the happiness of mankind depends on the
widening of the Strand, had decreed that the Tivoli's new frontage
thereon should be thirty feet further back, and had granted as
consolation to the Tivoli the right to spread itself around the corner
and wreck the work of the Brothers Adam. Could not this outrage be
averted? There sprang from my lips that fiery formula which has sprung
from the lips of so many choleric old gentlemen in the course of the
past hundred years and more: `I shall write to The Times.'
If Adam Street were a thing apart I should have been stricken enough,
heaven knows, at thought of its beauty going, its dear tradition being
lost. But not as an unrelated masterpiece was Adam Street built by the
Brothers whose name it bears. An integral part it is in their noble
design of the Adelphi. It is the very key to the Adelphi, the well-
ordained initiation for us into that small, matchless quarter of
London, where peace and dignity do still reign--peace the more
beatific, and dignity the finer, by instant contrast with the chaos of
hideous sounds and sights hard by. What man so gross that, passing out
of the Strand into Adam Street, down the mild slope to the river, he
has not cursed the age he was born into--or blessed it because the
Adelphi cannot in earlier days have had for any one this fullness of
peculiar magic? Adam Street is not so beautiful as the serene Terrace
it goes down to, nor so curiously grand as crook-backed John Street.
But the Brothers did not mean it to be so. They meant it just as an
harmonious `lead' to those inner glories of their scheme. Ruin that
approach, and how much else do you ruin of a thing which--done
perfectly by masters, and done by them here as nowhere else could they
have done it--ought to be guarded by us very jealously! How to raise
on this irregular and `barbarous' ground a quarter that should be
`polite', congruous in tone with the smooth river beyond it--this was
the irresistible problem the Brothers set themselves and slowly,
coolly, perfectly solved. So long as the Adelphi remains to us, a
microcosm of the eighteenth century is ours. If there is any meaning
in the word sacrilege--
That, I remember, was the beginning of one of the sentences I composed
while I paced my room, thinking out my letter to The Times. I rejected
that sentence. I rejected scores of others. They were all too
vehement. Though my facility for indignation is not (I hope) less than
that of my fellows, I never had written to The Times. And now, though
I flattered myself I knew how the thing ought to be done, I was unsure
that I could do it. Was I beginning too late? Restraint was the prime
effect to be aimed at. If you are intemperate, you don't convince. I
wanted to convince the readers of The Times that the violation of the
Adelphi was a thing to be prevented at all costs. Soberness of
statement, a simple, direct, civic style, with only an underthrob of
personal emotion, were what I must at all costs achieve. Not too much
of mere aesthetics, either, nor of mere sentiment for the past. No
more than a brief eulogy of `those admirably proportioned streets so
familiar to all students of eighteenth century architecture,' and
perhaps a passing reference to `the shades of Dr. Johnson, Garrick,
Hannah More, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Topham Beauclerk, and how many
others!' The sooner my protest were put in terms of commerce, the
better for my cause. The more clearly I were to point out that such
antiquities as the Adelphi are as a magnet to the moneyed tourists of
America and Europe, the likelier would my readers be to shudder at `a
proposal which, if carried into effect, will bring discredit on all
concerned and will in some measure justify Napoleon's hitherto-
unjustified taunt that we are a nation of shopkeepers.--I am, Sir,
your obedient servant'--good! I sat down to a table and wrote out that
conclusion, and then I worked backwards, keeping well in view the idea
of ` restraint.' But that quality which is little sister to restraint,
and is yet far more repulsive to the public mind than vehemence,
emerged to misguide my pen. Irony, in fact, played the deuce. I found
myself writing that a nation which, in its ardour for beauty and its
reverence for great historic associations, has lately disbursed after
only a few months' hesitation œ250,000 to save the Crystal Palace,
where the bank holidays of millions of toilers have been spoilt by the
utter gloom and nullity of the place--a nullity and gloom that will,
however and of course, be dispelled so soon as the place is devoted to
permanent exhibitions of New Zealand pippins, Rhodesian tobacco,
Australian mutton, Canadian snow-shoes, and other glories of Empire--
might surely not be asked in vain to'--but I deleted that sentence,
and tried another in another vein. My desire to be straightforward did
but topple me into excess of statement. My sorrow for the Adelphi came
out as sentimentality, my anger against the authorities as vulgar
abuse. Only the urgency of my cause upheld me. I would get my letter
done somehow and post it. But there flitted through my mind that
horrid doubt which has flitted through the minds of so many choleric
old gentlemen in the course of the past hundred years and more: `Will
The Times put my letter in?'
If The Times wouldn't, what then? At least my conscience would be
clear: I should have done what I could to save my beloved quarter. But
the process of doing it was hard and tedious, and I was glad of the
little respite presented by the thought that I must, before stating my
case thoroughly, revisit Adam Street itself, to gauge precisely the
extent of the mischief threatened there. On my way to the Strand I met
an old friend, one of my links with whom is his love of the Adams'
work. He had not read the news, and I am sorry to say that I, in my
selfish agitation, did not break it to him gently. Rallying, he
accompanied me on my sombre quest.
I had forgotten there was a hosier's shop next to the Tivoli, at the
corner of the right-hand side of Adam Street. We turned past it, and
were both of us rather surprised that there were other shops down that
side. They ought never to have been allowed there; but there they
were; and of course, I felt, it was the old fa‡ades above them that
really counted. We gazed meanwhile at the fa‡ades on the left-hand
side, feasting our eyes on the proportions of the pilasters, the
windows; the old seemly elegance of it all; the greatness of the
manner with the sweet smallness of the scale it wrought on.
`Well,' I said, turning abruptly away, `to business! Thirty feet--how
much, about, is that? My friend moved to the exact corner of the
Strand, and then, steadily, methodically, with his eyes to the
pavement, walked thirty toe-to-heal paces down Adam Street.
`This,' he said, `is where the corner of the Tivoli would come'--not
`will come,' observe; I thanked him for that. He passed on, measuring
out the thirty additional feet. There was in his demeanour something
so finely official that I felt I should at least have the Government
on my side.
Thus it was with no sense of taking a farewell look, but rather to
survey a thing half-saved already, that I crossed over to the other
side of the road, and then, lifting my eyes, and looking to and fro,
beheld--what?
I blankly indicated the thing to my friend. How long had it been
there, that horrible, long, high frontage of grey stone? It must
surely have been there before either of us was born. It seemed to be a
very perfect specimen of 1860--1870 architecture--perfect in its
pretentious and hateful smugness.
And neither of us had ever known it was there.
Neither of us, therefore, could afford to laugh at the other; nor did
either of us laugh at himself; we just went blankly away, and parted.
I daresay my friend found presently, as I did, balm in the knowledge
that the Tivoli's frontage wouldn't, because it couldn't, be so bad as
that which we had just, for the first time, seen.
For me there was another, a yet stronger, balm. And I went as though I trod on air, my heart singing within me. For I had not, after all, to resume my task of writing that letter to The Times.
-THE END-
A Letter That Was Not Written (1914), an essay by Max Beerbohm
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