“Oh, but a weary wight was heWhen he reached the foot of the dogwood tree.”
“Oh, but a weary wight was heWhen he reached the foot of the dogwood tree.”
“Oh, but a weary wight was heWhen he reached the foot of the dogwood tree.”
“Oh, but a weary wight was he
When he reached the foot of the dogwood tree.”
Eight miles in a heavy rain, with boots of the consistence of brown paper, and a road of alternate deep mud and broken stone, should entitle one to the green turban. I will make the pilgrimage of a Hadjii from the “farthest inn” with half the endurance.
I found my Liverpool friends over a mutton chop in the snug parlor of our host, and with a strong brew of hot toddy, and many a laugh at the day’s adventures by land and water, we got comfortably to bed “somewhere in the small hours.” And so ended (for me) the great day of the tournament.
After witnessing the disasters of the first day, the demolition of costumes, and the perils by water, of masqueraders and spectators, it was natural to fancy that the tournament was over. So did not seem to think several thousands of newly-arrived persons, pouring from steamer after steamer upon the pier of Ardrossan, and in every variety of costume, from the shepherd’s maud to the courtier’s satin, crowding to the rail-cars from Eglinton. It appeared from the chance remarks of one or two who came to our lodgings to deposite their carpet bags, that it had rained very little in the places from which the steamers had come, and that they had calculated on the second as the great day of the joust. No dissuasion had the least effect upon them, and away they went, bedecked and merry, the sufferers of the day before looking out upon them, from comfortable hotel and lodging, with prophetic pity.
At noon the sky brightened; and as the cars were running by this time with diminished loads, I parted from my agreeable friends, and bade adieu to my garret at Ardrossan. I was bound to Ireland, and my road lay by Eglinton to Irvine and Ayr. Fellow-passengers with me were twenty or thirty men in Glengary bonnets, plaids, &c.; and I came in for my share of the jeers and jokes showered on them by the passengers in the return-cars, as men bound on a fruitless errand. As we neared the castle, the crowds of people with disconsolate faces waiting for conveyances, or standing by the reopened ginger-bread carts in listless idleness, convinced my companions, at last, that there was nothing to be seen, for that day at least, at Eglinton. I left them sitting on the cars, undecided whether to go on or return without losing their places; and seeing a coach marked “Irvine” standing in the road, I jumped in without question or ceremony. It belonged to a private party of gentlemen, who were to visit the castle and tilting-ground on their way to Irvine; and as they very kindly insisted on my remaining after I had apologised for the intrusion, I found myself “booked” for a glimpse of the second day’s attractions.
The avenue to the castle was as crowded as on the day before; but it was curious to remark how the general aspect of the multitude was changed by the substitution of disappointment for expectation. The lagging gait and surly silence, instead of the elastic step and merry joke, seemed to have darkened the scene more than the withdrawal of the sun, and I was glad to wrap myself in my cloak, and remember that I was on the wing. The banner flying at the castle tower was the only sign of motion I could see in its immediate vicinity; the sail-cloth coverings of the pavilion were dark with wet; the fine sward was everywhere disfigured with traces of mud, and the whole scene was dismal and uncomfortable. We kept on to the lists, and found them, as one of my companions expressed it, more like a cattle-pen after a fair than a scene of pleasure—trodden, wet, miry, and deserted. The crowd, content to view them from a distance, were assembled around the large booths on the ascent of the rising ground toward the castle, where a band was playing some merry reels, and the gingerbread and ale venders plied a busy vocation. A look was enough; and we shaped our course for Irvine, sympathizing deeply with the disappointment of the high-spirited and generous Lord of the Tourney. I heard at Irvine, and farther on, that the tilting would be renewed, and the banquet and ball given on the succeeding days; but after the wreck of dresses and peril of health I had witnessed, I was persuaded that the best that could be done would be but a slender patching up of the original glories as well as a halting rally of the original spirits of the tournament. So I kept on my way.
TALKS OVER TRAVEL.LONDON.
There is an inborn and inbred distrust of “foreigners” in England—continental foreigners, I should say—which keeps the current of French and Italian society as distinct amid the sea of London, as the blue Rhone in Lake Leman. The word “foreigner,” in England, conveys exclusively the idea of a dark-complexioned and whiskered individual, in a frogged coat and distressed circumstances; and to introduce a smooth-cheeked, plainly-dressed,quiet-looking person by that name, would strike any circle of ladies and gentlemen as a palpable misnomer. The violent and unhappy contrast between the Parisian’s mode of life in London and in Paris, makes it very certain that few of thosebien n’es et convenablement richeswill live in London for pleasure; and then the flood of politicalémigrés, for the last half-century, has monopolised hair-dressing, &c., &c., to such a degree, that the word Frenchman is synonymous in English ears with barber and dancing-master. If a dark gentleman, wearing either whisker or mustache, chance to offend John Bull in the street, the first opprobrious language he hears—the strongest that occurs to the fellow’s mind—is “Get out, you —— Frenchman!”
All this,malgréthe rage for foreign lions in London society. A well-introduced foreigner gets easily into this, and while he keeps his cabriolet and confines himself to frequentingsoiréesand accepting invitations to dine, he will never suspect that he is not on an equal footing with any “milor” in London. If he wishes to be disenchanted, he has only to change his lodgings from Long’s to Great Russell street, or (bitterer and readier trial) to propose marriage to the honorable Augusta or Lady Fanny.
Everybody who knows the society of Paris knows something of a handsome and very elegant young baron of the Faubourg St. Germain, who, with small fortune, very great taste, and greater credit, contrived to go on very swimmingly as an adorableroueandvaurientill he was hard upon twenty-five. At the first crisis in his affairs, the ladies, who hold all the politics in their laps, got him appointed consul to Algiers, or minister to Venezuela, and with this pretty pretext for selling his horses and dressing-gowns, these cherished articles brought twice their original value and saved hisloyauté, and set him up in fans and monkeys at his place of exile. A year of this was enough for the darling of Paris, and not more than a day before his desolate loves would have ceased to mourn for him, he galloped into his hotel with a new fashion of whiskers, a black female slave, and the most delicious histories of his adventures during the ages he had been exiled. Down to the earth and their previous obscurity dropped the rivals who were just beginning to usurp his glories. A new stud, an indescribable vehicle, a suite of roomsà l’Africaine, and a mystery, preserved at some expense, about his negress, kept all Paris, including his new creditors, in admiring astonishment for a year. Among the crowd of his worshippers, not the last or least fervent, were the fair-haired and glowing beauties who assemble at theleveesof their ambassador in the Rue St. Honore, and upon whomle beau Adolphehad looked as pretty savages, whose frightful toilets and horrid French accent might be tolerated one evening in the week—vu le souper!
Eclipses will arrive as calculated by insignificant astronomers, however, and debts will become due as presumed by vulgar tradesmen.Le beau Adolphebegan to see another crisis, and betook himself to his old advisers, who weredésolésto the last degree; but there was a new government, and the blood of the Faubourg was at a discount. No embassies were to be had for nothing. With a deep sigh, and a gentle tone, to spare his feelings as much as possible, his friend ventures to suggest to him that it will be necessary to sacrifice himself.
“Ahi! mais comment!”
“Marry one of thesebêtes Anglaises, who drink you up with their great blue eyes, and are made of gold!”
Adolph buried his face in his gold-fringed oriental pocket-handkerchief; but when the first agony was passed, his resolution was taken, and he determined to go to England. The first beautiful creature he should see, whose funds were enormous and well-invested, should bear away from all the love, rank, and poverty of France, the perfumed hand he looked upon.
A flourishing letter, written in a small, cramped hand, but with a seal on whose breadth of wax and blazon all the united heraldry of France was interwoven, arrived, through the ambassador’s despatch box, to the address of Miladi ——, Belgrave square, announcing, in full, thatle beau Adolphewas coming to London to marry the richest heiress in good society—and as Paris could not spare him more than a week, he wished those who had daughters to marry, answering the description, to bebien prévenusof his visit and errand. With the letter came a compend of his genealogy, from the man who spoke French in the confusion of Babel tole ditBaron Adolphe.
To London came the valet ofle beaubaron, two days before his master, bringing his slippers and dressing gown to be aired after their sea voyage across the channel. To London followed the irresistible youth, cursing, in the politest French, the necessity which subtracted a week from a life measured with such “diamond sparks” as his own in Paris. He sat himself down in his hotel, sent his man Porphyre with his card to every noble and rich house, whose barbarian tenants he had ever seen in the Champs Elysees, and waited the result. Invitations from fair ladies, who remembered him as the man the French belles were mad about, and from literary ladies, who wanted his whiskers and black eyes to give theirsoiréesthe necessary foreign complexion, flowed in on all sides, and Monsieur Adolphe selected his mostmignoncane and his happiest design in a stocking, and “rendered himself” through the rain like a martyr.
No offers of marriage the first evening!
None the second!!
None the third!!!
Le beau Adolphebegan to think either that English papas did not propose their daughters to people as in France; or, perhaps, that the lady whom he had commissioned to circulate his wishes had not sufficiently advertised him. Shehad, however.
He took advice, and found it would be necessary to take the first step himself. This was disagreeable, and he said to himself, “Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle”; but his youth was passing, and his English fortune was at interest.
He went to Almack’s, and proposed to the first authenticated fortune that accepted his hand for a waltz. The young lady first laughed, and then told her mother, who told her son, who thought it an insult, and called outle beau Adolphe, very much to the astonishment of himself and Porphyre. The thing was explained, and the baron looked about the next day for onepas si bête. Found a young lady with half a million sterling, proposed in a morning call, and was obliged to ring for assistance, his intended having gone into convulsions with laughing at him. The story by this time had got pretty well distributed through the different strata of London society;—and whenle beau Adolphe, convinced that he would not succeed with the noble heiresses of Belgrave square, condescended, in his extremity, to send his heart by his valet to a rich little vulgarian, who “never had a grandfather,” and lived in Harley street, he narrowly escaped being prosecuted for a nuisance, and, Paris being now in possession of the enemy, he buried his sorrows in Belgium. After a short exile his friends procured him a vice-consulate in some port in the North Sea, and there probably at this moment he sorrowfully vegetates.
This is not a storyfounded uponfact, but literally true.—Many of the circumstances came under my own observation; and the whole thus affords a laughable example of the esteem in which what an English fox-hunter would call a “trashy Frenchman” is held in England, as well as of thetravestieproduced by transplanting the usages of one country to another.
Ridiculous as any intimate mixture of English and French ideas and persons seems to be in London, the foreign society of itself in that capital is exceedingly spiritual and agreeable. The various European embassies and theirattachés, with their distinguished travellers, from their several countries, accidentally belonging to each; the French and Italians, married to English noblemen and gentry, and living in London, and the English themselves, who have become cosmopolite by residence in other countries, form a very large society in which mix,on perfectly equal terms, the first singers of the opera, and foreign musicians and artists generally. This last circumstance gives a peculiar charm to thesereunions, though it imparts a pride and haughty bearing to theprima donnaand her fraternity, which is, at least, sometimes very inconvenient to themselves. The remark recalls to my mind a scene I once witnessed in London, which will illustrate the feeling better than an essay upon it.
I was at one of those private concerts given at an enormous expense during the opera season, at which “assisted” Julia Grisi, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini, and Ivanhoff. Grisi came in the carriage of a foreign lady of rank,who had dined with her, and she walked into the room looking like an empress. She was dressed in the plainest white, with her glossy haircut smooth from her brow, and a single white japonica dropped over one of her temples. The lady who brought her chaperoned her during the evening, as if she had been her daughter, and under the excitement of her own table and the kindness of her friends, she sung with a rapture and afreshetof glory (if one may borrow a word from the Mississippi) which set all hearts on fire. She surpassed her most applauded hour on the stage—for it was worth her while. The audience was composed, almost exclusively, of those who are not only cultivated judges, but who sometimes repay delight with a present of diamonds.
Lablache shook the house to its foundations in his turn; Rubini ran through his miraculous compass with the ease, truth, and melody, for which his singing is unsurpassed; Tamburini poured his rich and even fullness on the ear, and Russian Ivanhoff, the one southern singing-bird who has come out of the north, wire-drew his fine and spiritual notes, till they who had been flushed, and tearful, and silent, when the others had sang, drowned his voice in the poorer applause of exclamation and surprise.
The concert was over by twelve, the gold and silver paper bills of the performance were turned into fans, and every one was waiting till supper should be announced—theprima donnastill sitting by her friend, but surrounded by foreignattachés, and in the highest elation at her own success. The doors of an inner suite of rooms were thrown open at last, and Grisi’scordonof admirers prepared to follow her in and wait on her at supper. At this moment, one of the powdered menials of the house stepped up and informed her very respectfullythat supper was prepared in a separate room for the singers!
Medea, in her most tragic hour, never stood so absolutely the picture of hate as did Grisi for a single instant, in the centre of that aristocratic crowd. Her chest swelled and rose, her lips closed over her snowy teeth, and compressed till the blood left them, and, for myself, I looked unconsciously to see where she would strike. I knew, then, that there was more than fancy—there was nature and capability of thereal—in theimaginarypassions she plays so powerfully. A laugh of extreme amusement at the scene from the high-born woman who had accompanied her, suddenly turned her humor, and she stopped in the midst of a muttering of Italian, in which I could distinguish only the terminations, and, with a sort of theatrical quickness of transition, joined heartily in her mirth. It was immediately proposed by this lady, however, that herself and their particular circle should join the insultedprima donnaat the lower table, and they succeeded by this manœuvre in retaining Rubini and the others, who were leaving the house in a most unequivocal Italian fury.
I had been fortunate enough to be included in the invitation, and with one or two foreign diplomatic men, I followed Grisi and her amused friend to a small room on a lower floor, that seemed to be the housekeeper’s parlor. Here supper was set for six (including the man who had played the piano,) and on the side-table stood every variety of wine and fruit, and there was nothing in the supper, at least, to make us regret the table we had left. With a most imperative gesture and rather an amusing attempt at English, Grisi ordered the servants out of the room, and locked the door, and from that moment the conversation commenced and continued in their own musical, passionate, and energetic Italian. My long residence in that country had made me at home in it; every one present spoke it fluently; and I had an opportunity I might never have again, of seeing with what abandonment these children of the sun throw aside rank and distinction (yet without forgetting it,) and join with those who are their superiors in every circumstance of life in the gayeties of a chance hour.
Out of their own country these singers would probably acknowledge no higher rank than that of the kind and gifted lady who was their guest; yet, with the briefest apology at finding the room too cold after the heat of the concert, they put on their cloaks and hats as a safeguard to their lungs (more valuable to them than to others;) and as most of the cloaks were the worse for travel, and the hats were opera-hats with two corners, the grotesque contrast with the diamonds of one lady, and the radiant beauty of the other, may easily be imagined.
Singing should be hungry work, by the knife and fork they played; and between the excavations of truffle pies, and the bumpers of champagne and burgundy, the words were few. Lablache appeared to be an established droll, and every syllable he found time to utter was received with the most unbounded laughter. Kubini could not recover from the slight he conceived put upon him and his profession by the separate table; and he continually reminded Grisi, who by this time had quite recovered her good humor, that, the night before, supping at Devonshire house, the Duke of Wellington had held her gloves on one side, while His Grace, their host attended to her on the other.
“E vero!” said Ivanhoff, with a look of modest admiration at theprima donna.
“E vero, e bravo!” cried Tamburini, with his sepulchral-talking tone, much deeper than his singing.
“Si, si, si, bravo!” echoed all the company; and the haughty and happy actress nodded all round with a radiant smile, and repeated, in her silver tones, “Grazie! cari amici! grazie!”
As the servants had been turned out, the removal of the first course was managed inpic-nicfashion; and when the fruit and fresh bottles of wine were set upon the table by theattachés, and younger gentlemen, the health of the Princess who honored them by her presence was proposed in that language, which, it seems to me, is more capable than all others of expressing affectionate and respectful devotion. All uncovered and stood up, and Grisi, with tears in her eyes, kissed the hand of her benefactress and friend, and drank her health in silence.
It is a polite and common accomplishment in Italy to improvise in verse, and the lady I speak of is well known among her immediate friends for a singular facility in this beautiful art. She reflected a moment or two with the moisture in her eyes, and then commenced, low and soft, a poem, of which it would be difficult, nay impossible, to convey, in English, an idea of its music and beauty. It took us back to Italy, to its heavenly climate, its glorious arts, its beauty and its ruins, and concluded with a line of which I remember the sentiment to have been, “out of Italy every land is exile!”
The glasses were raised as she ceased, and every one repeated after her, “Fuori d’Italia tutto e esilio!”
“Ma!” cried out the fat Lablache, holding up his glass of champagne, and looking through it with one eye, “siamo ben esiliati qua!” and with a word of drollery, the party recovered its gayer tone, and the humor and wit flowed on brilliantly as before.
The house had long been still, and the last carriage belonging to the company above stairs had rolled from the door, when Grisi suddenly remembered a bird that she had lately bought, of which she proceeded to give us a description that probably penetrated to every corner of the silent mansion. It was a mocking bird, that had been kept two years in the opera house, and between rehearsal and performance had learned parts of everything it had overheard. It was the property of the woman who took care of the wardrobes. Grisi had accidentally seen it, and immediately purchased it for two guineas. How much of embellishment there was in her imitations of her treasure I do not know; but certainly the whole power of her wondrous voice, passion, and knowledge of music, seemed drunk up at once in the wild, various, difficult, and rapid mixture of the capricious melody she undertook. First came, without the passage which it usually terminates, the long throat-down, gurgling, water-toned trill, in which Rubini (but for the bird and its mistress, it seemed to me,) would have been inimitable: then, right upon it, as if it were the beginning of a bar, and in the most unbreathing continuity, followed a brilliant passage from the Barber of Seville run into the passionate prayer of Anna Bolena in her madness, and followed by the air of “Suoni la tromba intrepida,” the tremendous duet in the Puritani, between Tamburini and Lablache. Up to the sky and down to the earth again—away with a note of the wildest gladness, and back upon a note of the most touching melancholy—if the bird but half equals the imitation of his mistress, he were worth the jewel in a sultan’s turban.
“Giulia!” “Giulietta!” “Giuliettina!” cried out one and another as she ceased, expressing in their Italian diminutives, the love and delight she had inspired by her incomparable execution.
The stillness of the house in the occasional pauses of conversation reminded the gay party, at last, that it was wearing late. The door was unlocked, and the half-dozen sleepy footmen hanging about the hall were dispatched for the cloaks and carriages; the drowsy porter was roused from his deep leatherndormeuse, and opened the door—and broad upon the street lay the cold gray light of a summer’s morning. I declined an offer to be set down by a friend’s cab, and strolled off to Hyde Park to surprise myself with a sunrise; balancing the silent rebuke in the fresh and healthy countenances of early laborers going to their toil, against the effervescence of a champagne hour which, since such come so rarely, may come, for me, with what untimeliness they please.
THE STREETS OF LONDON.
It has been said that “few men knowhowto take a walk.” In London it requires some experience to knowwhereto take a walk. The taste of the perambulator, the hour of the day, and the season of the year, would each affect materially the decision of the question.
If you are up early—I mean early for London—say ten o’clock—we would start from your hotel in Bond street, and hastening through Regent street and the Quadrant (deserts at that hour) strike into the zig-zag alleys, cutting traversely from Coventry street to Covent Garden. The horses on the cab stand in the Haymarket “are at this hour asleep.” The late supper-eaters at Dubourg’s and theCafé de l’Europewere the last infliction upon their galled wisthers, and while dissipation slumbers they may find an hour to hang their heads upon the bit, and forget gall and spavin in the sunshiny drowse of morning. The cabman, too, nods on his perch outside, careless of the custom of “them as pays only their fare,” and quite sure not to get “a gemman to drive” at that unseasonable hour. The “waterman” (called a “water-man,” as he will tell you, “because he giveshayto the ’orses”) leans against the gas-lamp at the corner, looking with a vacant indifference of habit at the splendid coach with its four blood-bays just starting from the Brighton coach-office in the Crescent. The side-walk of Coventry street, usually radiant with the flaunting dresses of the frail and vicious, is now sober with the dull habiliments of the early stirring and the poor. The town, (for this istown, notcity) beats its more honest pulse. Industry alone is abroad.
Rupert street on the left is the haunt of shabby-genteel poverty. To its low-doored chop-houses steal the more needy loungers of Regent street, and in confined and greasy, but separate and exclusive boxes, they eat their mutton-chop and potato unseen of their gayer acquaintances. Here comes the half-pay officer, whose half-pay is halved or quartered with wife and children, to drink his solitary half-pint of sherry, and, over a niggardly portion of soup and vegetables, recall, as he may in imagination, the gay dinners at mess, and the companions now grown cold—in death or worldliness! Here comes the sharper out of luck, the debtor newly out of prison. And here comes many a “gay fellow about town,” who will dine to-morrow, or may have dined yesterday, at a table of unsparing luxury, but who now turns up Rupert street at seven, cursing the mischance that draws upon his own slender pocket for the dinner of to-day. Here are found the watchful host and the suspicious waiter—the closely-measured wine, and the more closely-measured attention—the silent and shrinking company, the close-drawn curtain, the suppressed call for the bill, the lingering at the table of those who value the retreat and the shelter to recover from the embarrassing recognition and the objectless saunter through the streets. The ruin, the distress, the despair, that wait so closely upon the heels of fashion, pass here with their victims. It is the last step within the bounds of respectability. They still live “at the West end,” while they dine in Rupert street. They may still linger in the Park, or stroll in Bond street, till their better-fledged friends flit to dinner at the clubs, and, within a stone’s throw of the luxurious tables and the gay mirth they so bitterly remember, sit down to an ill-dressed meal, and satisfy the calls of hunger in silence. Ah, the outskirts of the bright places in life are darker for the light that shines so near them! How much sweeter is the coarsest meal shared with the savage in the wilderness, than the comparative comfort of cooked meats and wine in a neighborhood like this!
Come through this narrow lane into Leicester Square. You cross here the first limit of the fashionable quarter. The Sabloniere hotel is in this square; but you may not give it as your address unless you are a foreigner. This is the home of that most miserable fish out of water—a Frenchman in London. A bad French hotel, and two or three execrable French restaurants, make this spot the most habitable to the exiledhabituéof the Palais Royal. Here he gets a mocking imitation of what, in any possible degree, is better than thesacré biftek, or the half-raw mutton-chop and barbarous boiled potato! Here he comes forth, if the sun shine perchance for one hour at noon, and paces up and down on the side-walk, trying to get the better of his bile and his bad breakfast. Here waits for him at three, the shabby, but most expensiveremisecab, hired by the day for as much as would support him a month in Paris. Leicester square is the place for conjurors, bird-fanciers, showmen, and generally for every foreign novelty in the line of nostrums and marvels. If there is a dwarf in London, or a child with two heads, you will see one or all in that building, so radiant with placards, and so thronged with beggars.
Come on through Cranbourne alley. Old clothes, second-hand stays,idemshawls, capes, collars, and ladies’ articles of ornamental ware generally; cheap straw bonnets, old books, gingerbread, and stationery! Look at this once-expensive and finely-worked muslin cape! What fair shoulders did it adorn when these dingy flowers were new—when this fine lace edging bounded some heaving bosom, perhaps, like frost-work on the edge of a snow-drift. It has been the property of some minion of elegance and wealth, vicious or virtuous, and by what hard necessity came it here? Ten to one, could it speak, its history would keep us standing at this shop-window, indifferent alike to the curious glances of these passing damsels, and the gentle eloquence of the Jew on the other side, who pays us the unflattering compliment of suggesting an improvement in our toilet by the purchase of the half-worn habiliments he exposes.
I like Cranbourne alley, because it reminds me of Venice. The half-daylight between the high and overhanging roofs, the just audible hum of voices and occupation from the different shops, the shuffling of hasty feet over the smooth flags, and particularly the absence of horses and wheels, make it (in all but the damp air and the softer speech) a fair resemblance to those close passages in the rear of the canals between St. Mark’s and the Rialto. Then I like studying a pawnbroker’s window, and I like ferreting in the old book-stalls that abound here. It is a good lesson in humility for an author to see what he can be bought for in Cranbourne alley. Some “gentle reader,” who has paid a guinea and a half for you, has resold you for two-and-sixpence. For three shillings you may have the three volumes, “as good as new,” and the shopman, by his civility, pleased to be rid of it on the terms. If you would console yourself, however, buy Milton for one-and-sixpence, and credit your vanity with the eighteen-pence of the remainder.
The labyrinth of alleys between this and Covent Garden are redolent of poverty and pot-houses. In crossing St. Martin’s lane, life appears to have become suddenly a struggle and a calamity. Turbulent and dirty women are everywhere visible through the open windows; the half-naked children at the doors look already care-worn and incapable of a smile; and the men throng the gin-shops, bloated, surly, and repulsive. Hurry through this leprous spot in the vast body of London, and let us emerge in the Strand.
You would think London Strand the main artery of the world. I suppose there is no thoroughfare on the face of the earth where the stream of human life runs with a tide so overwhelming. In any other street in the world you catch the eye of the passer-by. In the Strand, no man sees another except as a solid body, whose contact is to be avoided. You are safe nowhere on the pavement without all the vigilance of your senses. Omnibuses and cabs, drays, carriages, wheelbarrows, and porters, beset the street. Newspaper-hawkers, pickpockets, shop-boys, coal-heavers, and a perpetual and selfish crowd dispute the sidewalk. If you venture to look at a print in a shop-window, you arrest the tide of passengers, who immediately walk over you; and, if you stop to speak with a friend, who by chance has run his nose against yours rather than another man’s, you impede the way, and are made to understand it by the force of jostling. If you would get into an omnibus you are quarrelled for by half-a-dozen who catch your eye at once; and after using all your physical strength and most of your discrimination, you are most probably embarked in the wrong one, and are going at ten miles the hour to Blackwell, when you are bound to Islington. A Londoner passes his life in learning the most adroit mode of threading a crowd, and escaping compulsory journeys in cabs and omnibuses; and dine with any man in that metropolis from twenty-five to sixty years of age, and he will entertain you, from the soup to the Curacoa, with his hair-breadth escapes and difficulties with cads and coach-drivers.
LONDON.
A Londoner, if met abroad, answers very vaguely any questions you may be rash enough to put to him about “the city.” Talk to him of “town,” and he would rather miss seeing St. Peter’s, than appear ignorant of any person, thing, custom, or fashion, concerning whom or which you might have a curiosity. It is understood all over the world that the “city” of London is that crowded, smoky, jostling, omnibus and cab-haunted portion of the metropolis of England which lies east of Temple Bar. A kind of debatable country, consisting of the Strand, Covent Garden, and Tottenham Court road, then intervenes, and west of these lies what is called “the town.” A transit from one to the other by an inhabitant of either, is a matter of some forethought and provision. Ifmilord, in Carlton Terrace, for example, finds it necessary to visit his banker in Lombard street, he orders—not the blood bay and the cane tilbury which he is wont to drive in the morning—but the crop roadster in the cab, with the night harness, and Poppet his tiger in plain hat and gaiters. If the banker in Lombard street, on the contrary, emerges from the twilight of his counting-house to make a morning call on the wife of some foreign correspondent, lodging at the Clarendon, he steps into a Piccadilly omnibus, not in the salt-and-pepper creations of his Cheapside tailor, but (for he has an account with Stultz also for the west-end business) in a claret-colored frock of the last fashion at Crockford’s, a fresh hat from New Bond street, and (if he is young) a pair of cherished boots from the Rue St. Honore. He sits very clear of his neighbors on the way, and, getting out at the crossing at Farrance’s, the pastry cook, steps in and indulges in a soup, and then walks slowly past the clubs to his rendezvous, at a pace that would ruin his credit irrevocably if practised a mile to the eastward. The difference between the two migrations is, simply, that though the nobleman affects the plainness of the city, he would not for the world be taken for a citizen; while the junior partner of the house of Firkins and Co. would feel unpleasantly surprised if he were not supposed to be a member of the Clubs, lounging to a late breakfast.
There is a “town” manner, too, and a “city” manner, practised with great nicety by all who frequent both extremities of London. Nothing could be in more violent contrast, for example, than the manner of your banker when you dine with him at his country house, and the same person when you meet him on the narrow sidewalk in Throgmorton street. If you had seen him first in his suburban retreat, you would wonder how the deuce such a cordial, joyous, spare-nothing sort of good fellow could ever reduce himself to the cautious proportions of Change alley. If you met him first in Change alley, on the contrary, you would wonder, with quite as much embarrassment, how such a cold, two-fingered, pucker-browed slave of Mammon could ever, by any license of interpretation, be called a gentleman. And when you have seen him in both places, and know him well, if he is a favorable specimen of his class, you will be astonished still more to see how completely he will sustain both characters—giving you the cold shoulder, in a way that half insults you, at twelve in the morning, and putting his home, horses, cellar, and servants, completely at your disposal at four in the afternoon. Two souls inhabit the banker’s body, and each is apparently sole tenant in turn. As the Hampstead early coach turns the corner by St. Giles’s, on its way to the bank, the spirit of gain enters into the bosom of the junior Firkins, ejecting, till the coach passes the same spot at three in the afternoon, the more gentlemanly inhabitants. Between those hours, look to Firkins for no larger sentiment than may be written upon the blank lines of a note of hand, and expect no courtesy that would occupy the head or hands of the junior partner longer than one second by St. Paul’s. With the broad beam of sunshine that inundates the returning omnibus emerging from Holborn into Tottenham Court road, the angel of port wine and green fields passes his finger across Firkins’s brow, andpresto!the man is changed. The sight of a long and narrow strip of paper, sticking from his neighbor’s pocket, depreciates that person in his estimation, he criticises the livery and riding of the groom trotting past, says some very true things of the architecture of the new cottage on the roadside, and is landed at the end of his own shrubbery, as pleasant and joyous-looking a fellow as you would meet on that side of London. You have ridden out to dine with him, and as he meets you on the lawn, there is still an hour to dinner, and a blood horse spatters round from the stables, which you are welcome to drive to the devil if you like, accompanied either by Mrs. Firkins or himself; or, if you like it better, there are Mrs. Firkins’s two ponies, and the chaise holds two and the tiger. Ten to one Mrs. Firkins is a pretty woman, and has her whims, and when you are fairly on the road, she proposes to leave the soup and champagne at home to equalize their extremes of temperature, drive to Whitehall Stairs, take boat and dine,extempore, at Richmond. And Firkins, to whom it will be at least twenty pounds out of pocket, claps his hands and says—“By Jove, it’s a bright thought! touch up the near pony, Mrs. Firkins.” And away you go, Firkins amusing himself the whole way from Hampstead to Richmond, imagining the consternation of his cook and butler when nobody comes to dine.
There is an aristocracy in the city, of course, and Firkins will do business with twenty persons in a day whom he could never introduce to Mrs. Firkins. The situation of that lady with respect to her society is (she will tell you in confidence) rather embarrassing. There are very many worthy persons, she will say, who represent large sums of money or great interests in trade, whom it is necessary to ask to the Lodge, but who are far from being ornamental to her new blue-satin boudoir. She has often proposed to Firkins to have them labelled in tens and thousands, according to their fortunes; that if, by any unpleasant accident, Lord Augustus should meet them there, he might respect them like = in algebra, for what they stand for. But as it is, she is really never safe in calculating on asociété choisieto dine or sup. When Hook or Smith is just beginning to melt out, or Lady Priscilla is in the middle of a charade, in walks Mr. Snooks, of the foreign house of Snooks, Son, and Co.—“unexpectedly arrived from Lisbon, and run down without ceremony to call on his respectable correspondent.”
“Isn’t it tiresome?”
“Very, my dear madam! But then you have the happiness of knowing that you promote very essentially your husband’s interests, and when he has made a plum——”
“Yes, very true; and then, to be sure, Firkins has had to build papa a villa, and buy my brother Wilfred a commission, and settle an annuity on my aunt, and fit out my youngest brother Bob to India; and when I think of what he does for my family, why I don’t mind making now and then a sacrifice—but, after all, it’s a great evil not to be able to cultivate one’s own class of society.”
And so murmurs Mrs. Firkins, who is the prettiest and sweetest creature in the world, and really loves the husband she married for his fortune; but as the prosperity of Haman was nothing while Mordecai sat at the gate, it is nothing to Mrs. Firkins that her father lives in luxury, that her brothers are portioned off, and that she herself can have blue boudoirs and pony-chaisesad libitum, while Snooks, Son and Co. may at any moment break in upon the charade of Lady Priscilla!
There is a class of business people in London, mostly bachelors, who have wisely declared themselves independent of the West End, and live in a style of their own in the dark courts and alleys about the Exchange, but with a luxury not exceeded even in the silken recesses of May Fair. You will sometimes meet at the opera a young man of decided style, unexceptionable in his toilet, and quiet and gentlemanlike in his address, who contents himself with the side alley of the pit, and looks at the bright circles of beauty and fashion about him with an indifference it is difficult to explain. Make his acquaintance by chance, and he takes you home to supper in a plain chariot on the best springs Long Acre can turn out; and while you are speculating where, in the name of the Prince of Darkness, these narrow streets will bring you to, you are introduced through a small door into saloons, perfect in taste and luxury, where, ten to one, you sup with theprima donna, orla première danseuse, but certainly with the most polished persons of your own sex, not one of whom, though you may have passed a life in London, you ever met in society before. There are, I doubt not, in that vast metropolis, hundreds of small circles of society, composed thus of persons refined by travel and luxury, whose very existence in unsuspected by the fine gentleman at the West End, but who, in the science of living agreeably, are almost as well entitled to rank among thecognoscentias Lord Sefton or the “Member for Finsbury.”
LONDON.
You return from your ramble in “the city” by two o’clock. A bright day “toward,” and the season in its palmy time. The old veterans are just creeping out upon the portico of the United Service Club, having crammed “The Times” over their late breakfast, and thus prepared their politics against surprise for the day; the broad steps of the Athenæum are as yet unthronged by the shuffling feet of the literati, whose morning is longer and more secluded than that of idler men, but who will be seen in swarms, at four, entering that superb edifice in company with theemployésand politicians who affect their society. Not a cab stands yet at the “Travellers,” whose members, noble or fashionable, are probably at this hour in their dressing-gowns of brocade or shawl of the orient, smoking a hookah over Balzac’s last romance, or pursuing at this (to them) desert time of day some adventure which waited upon their love and leisure. It is early yet for the Park; but the equipages you will see by-and-by “in the ring” are standing now at Howell and James’s, and while the high-bred horses are fretting at the door, and the liveried footmen lean on their gold-headed sticks on the pavement, the fair creature whose slightest nod these trained minions and their fine-limbed animals live to obey, sits upon a three-legged stool within, and in the voice which is a spell upon all hearts, and with eyes to which rank and genius turn like Persians to the sun, discusses with a pert clerk the quality of stockings!
Look at these equipages and their appointments! Mark the exquisite balance of that claret-bodied chariot upon its springs—the fine sway of its sumptuous hammercloth in which the un-smiling coachman sits buried to the middle—the exact fit of the saddles, setting into the curve of the horse’s backs so as not to break, to the most careless eye, the fine lines which exhibit action and grace! See how they stand together—alert, fiery, yet obedient to the weight of a silken thread; and as the coachman sees you studying his turn-out, observe the imperceptible feel of the reins and the just-visible motion of his lips, conveying to the quick ears of his horses the premonitory, and, to us, inaudible sound, to which, without drawing a hair’s breadth upon the traces, they paw their fine hoofs, and expand their nostrils impatiently! Come nearer, and find a speck or a raised hair, if you can, on these glossy coats! Observe the nice fitness of the dead-black harness, the modest crest upon the panel, the delicate picking out of white in the wheels, and, if you will venture upon a freedom in manners, look in through the window of rose-teinted glass, and see the splendid cushions and the costly and splendid adaptation of the interior. The twin-mated footmen fly to the carriage-door, and the pomatumed clerk who has enjoyed atête-à-têtefor which a Prince Royal might sigh, and an Ambassador might negociate in vain, hands in his parcel. The small foot presses on the carpeted step, the airy vehicle yields lightly and recovers from the slight weight of the descending form, the coachman inclines his ear for the half-suppressed order from the footman, and off whirls the admirable structure, compact, true, steady, but magically free and fast—as if horses, footmen, and chariot were but the parts of some complicated centaur—some swift-moving monster upon legs and wheels!
Walk on a little farther to the Quadrant. Here commences the most thronged promenade in London. These crescent colonnades are the haunt of foreigners on the lookout for amusement, and of strangers in the metropolis generally. You will seldom find a town-bred man there, for he prefers haunting his clubs; or, if he is not a member of them, he avoids lounging much in the Quadrant, lest he shouldappearto have no other resort. You will observe a town dandy getting fidgety after his second turn in the Quadrant, while you will meet the same Frenchman there from noon till dusk, bounding his walk by those columns as if they were the bars of a cage. The western side toward Piccadilly is the thoroughfare of the honest passer-by; but under the long portico opposite, you will meet vice in every degree, and perhaps more beauty than on any otherpavéin the world. It is given up to the vicious and their followers by general consent. To frequent it, or to be seen loitering there at all, is to make but one impression on the mind of those who may observe you.
The two sides of Regent street continue to partake of this distinction to the end. Go up on the left, and you meet the sober citizen perambulating with his wife, the lady followed by her footman, the grave and the respectable of all classes. Go up on the other, and in color and mien it is the difference between a grass-walk and a bed of tulips. What proof is here that beauty is dangerous to its possessor! It is said commonly of Regent street, that it shows more beauty in an hour than could be found in all the capitals of the continent. It is the beauty, however, of brilliant health—of complexion and freshness, more than of sentiment or classic correctness. The English features, at least in the middle and lower ranks, are seldom good, though the round cheek, the sparkling lip, the soft blue eyes and hair of dark auburn, common as health and youth, produce the effect of high and almost universal beauty on the eye of the stranger. The rarest thing in these classes is a finely-turned limb, and to the clumsiness of their feet and ankles must be attributed the want of grace usually remarked in their movements.
Regent street has appeared to me the greatest and most oppressive solitude in the world. In a crowd of business men, or in the thronged and mixed gardens of the continent, the pre-occupation of others is less attractive, or at least, more within our reach, if we would share in it. Here, it is wealth beyond competition, exclusiveness and indifference perfectly unapproachable. In the cold and stern mien of the practised Londoner, it is difficult for a stranger not to read distrust, and very difficult for a depressed mind not to feel a marked repulsion. There is no solitude after all like the solitude of cities.
“O dear, dear London” (says the companion of Asmodeus on his return from France,) “dear even in October! Regent street, I salute you! Bond street, my good fellow, how are you? And you, oh, beloved Oxford street, whom the opium-eater called ‘stony-hearted,’ and whom I, eating no opium, and speaking as I find, shall ever consider the most kindly and maternal of all streets—the street of the middle classes—busy without uproar, wealthy without ostentation. Ah, the pretty ankles that trip along thy pavement! Ah! the odd country-cousin bonnets that peer into thy windows, which are lined with cheap yellow shawls, price one pound four shillings marked in the corner! Ah! the brisk young lawyers flocking from their quarters at the back of Holborn! Ah! the quiet old ladies, living in Duchess street, and visiting thee with their eldest daughters in the hope of a bargain! Ah, the bumpkins from Norfolk just disgorged by the Bull and Mouth—the soldiers—the milliners—the Frenchmen—the swindlers—the porters with four-post beds on their backs, who add the excitement of danger to that of amusement! The various shifting, motley group that belong to Oxford street, and Oxford street alone! What thoroughfares equal thee in the variety of human specimens! in the choice of objects for remark, satire, admiration! Besides, the other streets seem chalked out for a sect—narrow-minded and devoted to acoterie. Thou alone art catholic—all-receiving. Regent street belongs to foreigners, segars, and ladies in red silk, whose characters are above scandal. Bond street belongs to dandies and picture dealers. St. James’s street to club loungers and young men in the guards, with mustaches properly blackened by thecireof Mr. Delcroix; but thou, Oxford Street, what class can especially claim thee as its own? Thou mockest at oligarchies; thou knowest nothing of select orders! Thou art liberal as air—a chartered libertine; accepting the homage of all, and retaining the stamp of none. And to call thee ‘stony-hearted!’—certainly thou art so tobeggars—to people who have not thewherewithal. But thou wouldst not be so respectable if thou wert not capable of a certain reserve to paupers. Thou art civil enough, in all conscience, to those who have a shilling in their pocket—those who have not, why do they live at all?”