ROLLING WITHOUT HIS HOMIES

And here’s another thing about London, literature, eating and walking.  It comes from V.S. Naipaul’s novel Half A Life, published in 2001, but set in London in the 1950s: 

      "(Willie Somerset Chandran) went very late that evening to Piccadilly Circus.  He walked around the streets, hardly daring to look at the aggressive, dangerous-looking streetwalkers.  He walked until he was tired.  At about midnight he went into a bright café.  It was full of prostitutes, hard, foolish-looking, not attractive, most of them drinking tea and smoking, some of them eating soft white cheese rolls.”

I’m not sure what Naipaul is objecting to most here.  Is it the mere presence of prostitutes? Or is it the fact that the prostitutes were aggressive, dangerous-looking, hard, foolish-looking, and not attractive?  If they were benign, safe-looking, soft, wise and attractive would that be OK then?  Or is it – and I expect it actually is – the fact that they’re eating soft white cheese rolls? 

         And if we’re really going to get pedantic about it – and obviously I am – was it the roll that was soft and white, or the cheese that was soft and white?  Or both?

         

  Anyway, above is a picture of Naipaul and his wife Pat having a picnic by the pool at the Ashoka hotel, New Delhi, in 1962.  Not a soft white cheese roll in sight.

DINNERLESS IN PICCADILLY

Henry James, writing in 1888, on the difficulties of eating out in London:

A day or two later, in the afternoon, I found myself staring at my fire, in a lodging of which I had taken possession on foreseeing that I should spend some weeks in London … The uproar of Piccadilly hummed away at the end of the street, and the rattle of a heartless hansom passed close to my ears. A sudden horror of the whole place came over me, like a tiger-pounce of homesickness which had been watching its moment. London was hideous, vicious, cruel, and, above all, overwhelming; whether or no she was "careful of the type," she was as indifferent as Nature herself to the single life. In the course of an hour I should have to go out to my dinner, which was not supplied on the premises, and that effort assumed the form of a desperate and dangerous quest. It appeared to me that I would rather remain dinnerless, would rather even starve, than sally forth into the infernal town, where the natural fate of an obscure stranger would be to be trampled to death in Piccadilly and his carcass thrown into the Thames.”