Crusoe's borough is not skimmed milk that masquerades as cream. Indeed, it has never masqueraded as anything; it would be alarmed at the thought of so unseemly an adventure.
Newington, I daresay, is wise to keep to itself. Although it has lost many of its older buildings, it remains reasonably unspoiled. True, here are acres of Tweedledum-house with no individuality. True, you can imagine wet days, when visitors to Newington, flying in despair from the lesser roads, would seek comfort in the brisk, noisy Highstreet, where nam plates speak on one side for Newington and across the way for Hackney, ana tramcars lurch towards Stamford Hill.
Even so, parts of Newington have a simplicity and calm that must always appeal. Churdh-street might have come from an imperturbable town in the farther provinces; if High-street is the Stentor of the borough, this the "gracious silence."
"Walk along it one late afternoon. You will pass the house on the site of which Defoe created "Robinson Crusoe": "I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull.
You may fancy that Defoe himself approaches—a spare, middle-sized man, brown-complexioned, with hooked nose, sharp chin, and eyes of a clear grey He went to a Stoke Newington School, where one of his companions had the odd name of Timothy Cruse. If Defoe ever returns to Church-street, it must be as a friendly shade.
The street has other abiding memories—of Thomas ("Sandford and "Merton") Day and the widly different Edgar Allan Poe, of John Howard and Mrs. Barbauld ("Life! I know not what thou art"), of Isaac "Watts and Benjamin Disraeli. Newington could mobilise an army of famous ghosts.
Passing on, you may be puzzled to see that a white marble angel gazes above a wall. This is at the back of the Abney Park cemetery; Defoe _is not buried there; you must seek Tue first consignment of rice ordered by the S.M.C. from Saigon to alleviate the local rice situation is due to arrive by the s. Kaying shortly.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.