THE CHINA MAIL,
Regent St.
I CALL IT THE STREET
OF 10,000 TEMPTATIONS!
Regent Street greeted recently with a gay show of pennanla and Bowen to mark the start of Regent Street shopping.
than that. For the fortniglit. But It does much more decorations draw the world's eyes once again to one of the world's most elegani sireela of shops,
By JOHN CLARKE
TH
HE "First Gentleman of Europe," the Prince Regent, conceived it. John Nash, who saw himself as "a thick, squat, dwarf figure," designed it. It was planned to lead from a palace that no longer exists to a house that was never built,
And when it was completely renovated in 1924, it a display of sheer was called "a monstrosity in stone, ignorance, vulgar and ridiculous," But George V was "very pleased" with it, and Regent Street remained to become the shopping centre of the world.
The first Hegent Street was born in the quarries of the Isle of Portland, where Nash obtained his stone. In 1810 the the hands alum area fell into of, the Crown,
The Prince Regent, who want- Napoleon, asked ed to ouido Nash to build a highway from Carlton House, that "Royal Etell," to a house he was going to have built in Regeol's Park, Severi hundred slum dwellings were pulled down, and Nash went to work,
Dickens and Thackeray often wondered down it, and Marie Lloyd chased the bend waiter of the new Cufe Royal round the Grill Room with a hat-pin. She loved the new street,
THE SPIRIT
קנה
Austin Reud's there AL nine floora devuted entirely to men-but they reckon a third of
purchases the influenced by women.
there
በሮ
The 3,000 ready-to-wear suits are available, and 09 men out of 100 can be fitted out straight bway A whole floor is devoted t shirts, and a stock of 20,000 18 To go with them you carried. can take your choice from 9,000 es priced from 0s. 3d, to 03s. You can buy a collar-stud, or a costing vicuna spurts Jacket
£100.
A girl on an 8s. 6d-bikar, bought from a junk man, painted und tomed Fuddle- mauve, jumper, might not seein at once to be a typicul shopper to con- Lult about Regent Sreet,
SWAN
Keitti
Malteng.
SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 1958.
How right he was to do so. the individual that the men and For Wiese two who were, so girls who work in its shops young, were the big buyers of should be given a chance to take But the girl who weaved to tomorrow, and where their hearts part in the window-lisplay com- The 1914-13 war saw its death, the pavement through the lay now in the world of shopping, petition They can pit their twenty judgment against the experts "This is
to our limousines that commissionaires they would lie in ten, disgrace
and win a prize. civilisation," wrote an embitter were becitoming seemed to caleb thirty years' time.
It is in attention to such small ed journalist as the deamullshers moved in.
The breaking-up of Nash's Quadran, whose pillars were
the whole spirit that infected I think it is typical of Regent these shopping under the canopy Street's warm, friendly care for detail that Regent Street scores.
uf colour.
Her name was Anneke Willish,
cold for Ergen guineas cach, her home was in Windsor, and. caused tremendous public feel- she was studying drama in
But the hansom cabs had London. been displaced by the double- friend,
ing.
With her she had u also
bicyde, EXL decker bus, and more room was Sarah Miles, from Ingatestone, needed,
Essex.
These spending
By 1920, and after
two had cycled from 15 millon, there was nothing their school lo Regent Street, Jeft of Nash's great work, and, in chorus, cried: "It's our Instead, the royal thoroughfare main street, we do all our shop- had been transformed into a ping here," wide boulevard that today is the
moccs for the world's shoppers, Now, the two were after a
string of wooden beads
been noneyed dowagers.
for
THE H-BOMB WATCHERS
A
GO UNDERGROUND
BAND of volunteers-bank clerks, farmers, factory workers, shop assistants-will go underground to plot nuclear fall-out over Britain in an M-Bomb war.
A network of below-ground lested at Woomera and Christ- observation posts is being built mas Island. for the men of the Royal Ob-
HOW'S THIS FOR VARIETY?
al- CUST-
THEODORE -KING
OF SOHO
He was a 'special agent'. was offered the Crown of Corsica. pledged his kingdom to pay his debts... languished in a London gaol
by PETER FORSTER
two
THE Church of St Anne's, Soho, was destroyed in the blitz, and only the tower still stands. At its foot, on the side facing Wardour Street and the ruined Queen's Theatre, there are memorial plaques. One is to William Hazlitt, "Painter, Critic, Essayist." The other, surmounted by a crumbling crown, reads thus:
"Near Lily place interred THEODORE, KING OF CORSICA who died th this parish Dectinker 11. Fise immediately after leaving the King's Betch Prison by Beneat of the Act of Intered
in consequence of which he
HTS KINGDOM OF CONBİÇ'A for the awe of his creditors.“
It is no hoax. Theodore was King of Corsica; was committed for debt in England, and did o in Soho.
known
He followed-or possibly set- the habit of retired royalty and made his home in England, For SCBBON he was lionised by society, and the public paid a shilling a head to see the room he had occupied on his previous visit to London.
But his debla grew, and finally the implacable Genoese en-
he gineered his arrest; thrown into the squalor of the King's Bench Debtors' Prison.
to
see
was
Not for almost a century had a king been imprisoned in Lon- don, and the great world flock- Led to Southwark
the sight; they might hear his tale of wuc, or even catch him at
as his mind investiture for
misfortune, under softaned Theodoro took to bestowing knighthoods and orders upon his visitors.
LATE IN LIFE
come to him True, royally rather late in his life. During most of it he was
Theodore, Baron von Neuhoff though in his time he used many Incognitos, us a priest, a notary, an odd-job man, a milord and
his favourite roles- one of commercial traveller called "Smith." For Theodore was all international ngent.
REOPENED
An
As such his fortunes varied. He know most of the courts and
Two years later his case was Kings of Europe; also many of reopened, Horace Walpole wrote the prisons and public hospitals.
u horridly tasteless tire im- He experienced considerable ploring a subscription for the wealth and crushing poverty. fallen monarch and suggesting His work was almost always dangerous, and once he realised. how near the had come to aud-
den death only when he took at his wig and an assassin's ballet fell from t
Theodore was born in the late sixteen-eighties in Germany, of solid Westphalian stock. Family infuence obtained for him the post of page at Louls XIV's court at Versailles.
TASTE FOR LUXURY The grandiose court of the Rol Soleil gave him a taste for luxury and a grounding In the decided chicanery that course of his life. For a while he went to war with the French cavalry, then entered the service of Baron Goertz, Chief Minister to the ascetic warrior king, Charles XII of Sweden.
benent performance of "King Lear."
Garrick, generous as ever, did give a benet, but as this raised only £50 Theodore thought ho had been swindled and threat- ened proceedings.
Eventually Theodore declared himself insolvent. Brought he fore the court and told to state his assets and possessions, he made his famous reply: "I have nothing but my kingdom of Corsien
Cordea was duly entered as a surely though it is not recordcti whether, any of his creditors ever attempted to claim on it---- and Theodore was released last.
at
for He then vanished
some he lurred years, until in 1750
up, destitute and almost Insane, at a fallor's house in Little to Chapel Street, Soho. There he
After Charles XII's death he transferred his allegiance Alberoni, the current master of died. Spain, arriving there in a couch crammed with valuables
DEGRADATION
in complete His story ends But Alberoni was overthrown before he arrived, and Theodore degradation. A mock Jying-in- arranged In lize was soon reduced to penury la state was Madrid, Worse, he felt seriously tailor's back room, an old faded 41. Every great adventurer, scarlet coat thrown over Theo- however, has at least one piece dore's body, an empty scabbard nume scrawled of miraculous good luck, and by his side, his This happened to Theodore when on the wall above his head. The a veiled Indy stole Into his sick- price of admission is unknown, room one afternoon and left a but the attendance was sald to
be remarkable.
to Solio. London for
If London were an Eastern Anneke. It's the best street" city. Regem Street might have London for wooden beads," she a longer, more picturesque name, suid.
Two hundred posts are The Street of Ten Thousand
A commissionaire bestowed server Corps, wartime eyes and
ready built or are under Templations would sult it well. For you can buy anything there, upon the girls' bicycles the same cars of Fighter Command.
And into them is going adstruction and 500 should be in from kite-string to gold plate; watching eye as he did upon the;
equipment use by the end of next year. recording And he greeted vanced and the scale on which they sing cars,
Eventually all 1,500 above- under- do things is fairly told by one them os gravely as it they had
ground posts will have store's story.
ground cellars attached.
Fifteen feet below ground and with three-fL thick concrete walls around them, the youn teers can live on hard rations for several days, clothing firms by the At November One, & post 300ft. There are hundreds, and neat differentials ap-up on the edge of Salisbury Plain prar-like the swim suit muker next door near Farnham, Surrey, the
equipment was shown for the first time recently. to a manufacturer of bathing costumes,
It includes IN ground zero
WENT OVER indicator-
crude, pln-bole
There he ingratiated himself The Grave, great teacher, to
icuci brings camera for recording a nucleor bomb burst's position and with the French by informing Heroes and beggars,'' galley. height, a bomb power indicator them of Spanish accrels; for measuring pressure of bins, and survey meier 10 give bolow-ground readings of gam- ma radiation.
18
Regent Street occupies over columns-164 inches of small print -in the Post Office London Directory.
It has 13 banks, two night clubs, tourist offices of, among others. There are film, variety, theatrical,
Bermuda, Blackpool and
two pearl-
and turf commission agents, an office stringers, and a potted shrimps Arm. of the Uganda Electricity Board, and one The Society for the Promotion of of the German Sleeping and Dining Car Christian Knowledge has a book shop Co. In Regent Street, the Wells Church Fund Raising Organisation had its offices there, and the Seventh Day Adventists have a cinema.
Every working day 58 postmen de- liver 37,000 letters to offices and
shops.
HOW TO WIN YANKS & INFLUENCE THEM
66
I took the precaution of having an
Great Grandfather
Wyatt Butler
American
parent
51
•ME MACMILLANį
Great Grandpa
Chief, Macleod
new
Big problem of the Royal Observer Corps is recruitment. (Express Service).
Cummings
Great ・grandma
**After this, Ika ought to let us off paying back the American loan.”
purse of gold on his table...
Later he learned that she was So Theodore came n Maid-in-Waiting to the Queen ever the refuge in of Spain, and had fallen in love foreign eccentries; and he with him; Theodore
therefore somewhere in the little church- an uncurlous married her. But he soon found yard where ow
crowd Alts in all weathers; the Spain dull, and his wife even duller. And when he learned epive, the soaks, the desiluto, that she was expecting a baby the bored, and even, simply, the he decomped to Paris with her tired. Horace Walpole has the jewellery.
last word in the opttaph on Theodore's plaque:
then
slaves and kings,
went over to the Austrians, arriving with important French, But ruzODORE this moral learn'd
ere dead,
Als stato documents. This coup put Theodore in the top class of Fate poured its lessons on
living head, European spies, and he travelled Restow'd a kingdom, and deny'd
In 1729
extensively and luxuriously in the employ of Zitzendorff, the Austrian Chancellor. he went to live in Rome.
1. was here that Corsica en- tered his life. The islanders were in revolt against their overlords, the Genoese, Theodore was able to arrange somu Aus- trian support for the Corsicans, and a number of exiled rebels saw in this persuasive, powerful- seeming stranger for Theodore was nothing I not eloquent-a not-
•possible savlour for their
cause; they very-successful begged him to lend a liberating expedition. More, as Corsica had no royal family they offered him the crown, which he cheer- fully accepted.
So Theodore severed his Aus- irian connection and went off to enlist Turkist aid. Surviving capture by Moorish sea-pirates he reached the Bosphorus.
UNTIMELY DEATH
a
At first all went well. Hun garian rebels were enrolled in support and Theodore very bearly managed to stir up
against gederal European war the Holy Roman Empire in order to secure his little island kingdom. But the untimely death of Rakoczi, the Hungarion patriot leader, brought the in- tendent ellinice to nothing.
** Thama-Llvern wore other delays,, and eventually Theodore, now ambhow in Tunis, borrowed n ship from the son of ibe British Consul and not mail for Corsion.
him bread,
27fathoms down
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