TIBBITTS’ LETTER.
“I’ll chance that. I can stand lies of that kind when theyare told in so good a cause. I love my mother, I do. Let’s see, where was I? Oh yes.”
I have just come from one at which the discussion was mostly on the progress of missions in the Far West. (The old lady is Treasurer of a society for the conversion of the Apaches, or some other tribe.) Just now the sailors are heaving a log, which they do to ascertain the speed the ship is making. Mr. Inman, the owner of this ship, is a very wealthy man, and he has everything of the best. He furnishes his vessel with nothing but black walnut logs to heave, while the others use pine or poplar. Captain Leitch is a very humane man, and never uses profane language to his crew. On other ships the men who go aloft are compelled to climb tarred rope ladders, but Captain Leitch has passenger elevators rigged to the masts, such as you saw in the Palmer House in Chicago, in which they sit comfortably and are hoisted up by a steam engine.
I have just come from one at which the discussion was mostly on the progress of missions in the Far West. (The old lady is Treasurer of a society for the conversion of the Apaches, or some other tribe.) Just now the sailors are heaving a log, which they do to ascertain the speed the ship is making. Mr. Inman, the owner of this ship, is a very wealthy man, and he has everything of the best. He furnishes his vessel with nothing but black walnut logs to heave, while the others use pine or poplar. Captain Leitch is a very humane man, and never uses profane language to his crew. On other ships the men who go aloft are compelled to climb tarred rope ladders, but Captain Leitch has passenger elevators rigged to the masts, such as you saw in the Palmer House in Chicago, in which they sit comfortably and are hoisted up by a steam engine.
“Great heavens! You are not surely going to send that?”
“Why not? What is an old lady in silver spectacles on a farm thirty miles from any water more than a well, going to know about a steamer? I must write her something, for she persuaded the old gentleman to let me take the trip. I ain’t ungrateful, I ain’t. I’ll give her one good letter, anyhow. Why, by the way you talk, I should suppose you never had a mother, and if you had that you didn’t know how to treat her. I hate a man who don’t love his mother and isn’t willing to sacrifice himself for her. All I can do for her now is to write to her, and write such letters as will interest her, and the dear old girl is going to get them, if the paper and ink holds out, and they are going to be good ones, too.”
I have got to be a good deal of a sailor, and if it were not for leaving you, which I couldn’t do, I believe I should take one of these ships myself. I know all about starboard and port—port used to be larboard—and I can tell the stern from the bow. On a ship you don’t say, “I will go down stairs,” but you say, “I will go below.” One would think that I had been born on the sea, and was a true child of the ocean.Owing to my strictly temperate habits at home, and my absolute abstemiousness on the ship, I have escaped the horrors of sea sickness. As you taught me, true happiness can only be found in virtue. The wicked young man from New York has been sick half the time, as a young man who keeps a bottle in his room should be.The nice woolen stockings you knit for me have been a great comfort, and all I regret is, I am afraid I have not enough of them to last me till I get home.
I have got to be a good deal of a sailor, and if it were not for leaving you, which I couldn’t do, I believe I should take one of these ships myself. I know all about starboard and port—port used to be larboard—and I can tell the stern from the bow. On a ship you don’t say, “I will go down stairs,” but you say, “I will go below.” One would think that I had been born on the sea, and was a true child of the ocean.
Owing to my strictly temperate habits at home, and my absolute abstemiousness on the ship, I have escaped the horrors of sea sickness. As you taught me, true happiness can only be found in virtue. The wicked young man from New York has been sick half the time, as a young man who keeps a bottle in his room should be.
The nice woolen stockings you knit for me have been a great comfort, and all I regret is, I am afraid I have not enough of them to last me till I get home.
(The young villain had purchased in New York an assortment of the most picturesque hosiery procurable, which hewas wearing with low cut shoes. The woolen stockings he gave to his room-steward.)
The tracts you put in my valise I have read over and over again, and have lent them since to the passengers who prefer serious reading to trashy novels and literature of that kind. What time I have had to spare for other reading, I have devoted to books of travel, so that I may see Europe intelligently.
The tracts you put in my valise I have read over and over again, and have lent them since to the passengers who prefer serious reading to trashy novels and literature of that kind. What time I have had to spare for other reading, I have devoted to books of travel, so that I may see Europe intelligently.
“By the way,” he stopped to say, “are the Argyle rooms in London actually closed, and is the Mabille in Paris as lively as it used to be? Great Cæsar! won’t I make it lively for them!”
In another day we shall land in Liverpool, and then I shall be only five hours from London. I long to reach London, for I do so desire to hear Spurgeon, and attend the Exeter Hall meetings, as you desired me. But as we shall reach London on Tuesday, I shall be compelled to wait till the following Sunday—five long days.Please ma, have pa send me a draft at my address at London, at once. I find the expense of travel is much greater than I supposed, and I fear I shall not have enough.Your affectionate son,Lemuel.
In another day we shall land in Liverpool, and then I shall be only five hours from London. I long to reach London, for I do so desire to hear Spurgeon, and attend the Exeter Hall meetings, as you desired me. But as we shall reach London on Tuesday, I shall be compelled to wait till the following Sunday—five long days.
Please ma, have pa send me a draft at my address at London, at once. I find the expense of travel is much greater than I supposed, and I fear I shall not have enough.
Your affectionate son,Lemuel.
“There,” said Lemuel, as he sealed the letter, “that is what I call a good letter. The old lady will read it over and over to herself, and then she will read it to all the neighbors. It will do her a heap of good. Bye-bye. The boys are waiting for me in the smoking-room.”
And stopping at the bar to take a drink—the liberality of English measure was not too great for him—he was, a minute after, absorbed in the mysteries of poker, and was “raking-in” the money of the others at a lively rate.
And the letter went to the good old mother, and probably did her good. And she, doubtless, worried the old gentleman till he sent the graceless fellow a remittance. Boys can always be sure of their mothers—would that mothers could only be half as sure of their boys.
THE STORM.
The fourth night out we were favored with a most terrific thunder storm. I say favored, now that we are through with it, for it is a good thing to look back upon, but we esteemed it no favor at the time. A fierce storm is bad enough on land—it is a terror on water. On the land you are threatened with danger only from above—on the water you are doubly menaced. There was the marshaling of the clouds that werearranging themselves for an attack upon us, then the terrible darkness, then the first onslaught of the winds, that tossed the strong ship like a cork, then the thunder that seemed like the voice of a merciless Vengeance, and the lightnings that were its fiery fingers; pitchy darkness, except when the lightning illuminated the scene, and the sight it disclosed made darkness preferable, for it showed the great waves rolling one after another, their white crests like the teeth of enormous dragons, strong enough to crush the mass of iron against which their fury was directed. And then the wind howling through the rigging was fearfully like the shrieks of the monsters baffled and robbed of their prey. It seemed as though the entire forces of Nature were arrayed intelligently against our ship, and for the sole purpose of its destruction.
EVERY SIN I HAD COMMITTED CAME BEFORE ME LIKE ACCUSING GHOSTS.
EVERY SIN I HAD COMMITTED CAME BEFORE ME LIKE ACCUSING GHOSTS.
EVERY SIN I HAD COMMITTED CAME BEFORE ME LIKE ACCUSING GHOSTS.
It was far from pleasant, and it is fortunate that such displays last but a little while. In less than a second from its beginning every sin I had ever committed, namely, the stealing of a watermelon in my boyhood, and the voting of a splitticket in my manhood, came vividly before me like accusing ghosts. I did remember also, once, that when a ticket-seller in a railroad station in Troy, who was very insolent and unobliging, made a mistake in my favor to the amount of thirty cents, in my anger I did not rectify it, and I debated as to whether that was a sin or not; but when I thought it over I came to the conclusion that, inasmuch as the recording angel knew how brutal the fellow was, he would blot out the record if he had to drop upon it a tear of oxalic acid.
But the good ship endured it all. The great body of iron, with its soul of steam, and muscles of steel, defied the elements and rode it out safely.
The storm hurried away to pursue and fright other vessels, and the waste of waters was once more in a sort of a light that was not lurid. Though the greatest terror was passed, the long swell which kept the ship either climbing a mountain of water or descending into its depths was anything but pleasant.
A ship at dock looks strong enough to defy all the elements, but out at sea when those elements become angry it is wonderful how frail she seems. It is man against Omnipotence.
I don’t care how many times a man has been to sea, the first sight of land after a voyage is an unmixed delight. I know that, for I have crossed the Great Lakes repeatedly, and when a boy I used to “go home” via the Erie Canal, I always got up early in the morning to look at the land on either shore. A man is not a fish, and no man takes to water naturally. It is a necessity that drives him to it, the same as to labor.
Therefore the decks were crowded on the ninth morning of the voyage when the shores of Ireland were sighted. Not because it was Ireland—nobody thrilled over that—but because it was land, because it was something that did not roll and pitch, and toss and swing, but was substantial and permanent. The Mississippi Ethiopian, when discussing the difference between traveling by rail and water remarked: “Ef de cahs run off de track dah ye is—ef de boat goes to pieces, wha is ye?”
“LAND!”
Ireland was there and land was there and reliable. Ireland—as land—has no machinery to get out of order, no icebergs to run into—no other steamers to collide with. I was delighted to look at her, and I venture to say that the older the sailor,the more reassuring and delightful the sight of land.
The bold cliffs looked friendly, and the long stretches of green on their summits were an absolute delight. The color was the green of grass and trees, that had something akin to humanity in it, not the glittering, changing, treacherous green of the water we had been sailing over and plunging through for eight very long days. And then to think that twenty-four hours more would release us from our friendly prison, and that during that twenty-four hours we should be within a short distance of land, was a delight.
I have at times found fault with the Irish in America, and I don’t rank Ireland as the greatest country under the heavens, but that morning I felt for her a most profound respect. Had Ashantee been the first land we had sighted that morning, I presume I should have forgiven the Ashantees for killing and eating the missionaries. After one has been at sea, even for eight days, land is the principal wish of the heart. One day and night across the Channel, and we made Liverpool. There were promises to meet in London, or Paris, exchanges of cards, the passing the Custom House with our baggage, the purchase of tickets, and we found ourselves in the cars of the Midland Road and scurrying away through Derbyshire to London.
OFF FOR LONDON.
OFF FOR LONDON.
OFF FOR LONDON.
THElargest city of the world! The most monstrous aggregation of men, women, children; the center of financial, military, mental, and moral power! The controlling city of the world! This is London!
There may be in the effete East larger aggregations of what, by courtesy, may be called humanity, for in those countries the limits of cities are not properly defined, nor is the census taken with any accuracy. But these cities exercise no especial influence upon the world; they control nothing outside of their own countries; they reach out to nothing; they are simply hives.
THE ENGLISHMAN.
Even an American, with all his pride in his country and her magnificent cities, feels somewhat dwarfed to find himself in a city eight times as large as Chicago, four times as large asNew York, and his pride in wealth and power, and all that sort of thing, collapses when he realizes the fact that he is where the finances of the world are absolutely controlled; that he is at the very center of the vastest money and military power in the world!
There is nothing greater as yet than London, and whether there ever will be is a question. I hope not. Men, women and children are all very well, but they thrive best where they have room to develop. Four millions of them together on so small a piece of ground dwarfs them. They do better on the prairies.
England is an enormous octopus, whose feelers, armed with very strong and sharp claws, embrace the world, and London, the mouth and stomach of the monster, is sucking its prey steadily and mercilessly. The animal lost one feeler which America cut off in 1776, and her grasp is weakening elsewhere, but she has enough. India contributes its life blood, China contributes, the islands of the sea contribute, and pretty much the whole world gives more or less.
England comes by her characteristics honestly. The human being we call an Englishman, half merchant and half soldier, the soldier element being purely piratical, never could have been developed out of one race. Each race has some peculiar quality which distinguishes it and marks it everywhere. The Scotchman is noted for his hardiness, thrift, and stubbornness; the Dutchman for his steadiness, boldness, and quiet daring; the Irishman for emigrating to New York and getting on the police force in a month, and so on. But the man we call an Englishman is a composite institution.
The old Saxon was a stolid fellow, with flashes of temper. He never could control things, for he was too lazy and sensual; but he had qualities that mixed well with others. You have to have hair in plaster. But when the Dane, who was a born sea pirate, swooped down upon Britain, and the Norman, who was a born land pirate, came also, and mixed with the Saxon, there was a new creation, and that is the Englishman of to-day. He is a born trader and a born soldier, with a wisdom that the rest of the world has not. His fighting power is made subject and subordinate to his trading power.
When England wants anything she does not stop to askany questions as to the right or wrong of the thing—she quietly goes and takes it, that is, if she is stronger than the party she desires to capture. If the other party objects, a few armies are sent out and the country is brought to reason immediately. Your bayonet is a rare persuader.
Can a country afford to fit out costly armaments and maintain vast armies for such purposes? Certainly, if it is done on England’s plan. England, after spending some millions in subjugating a country, simply assesses the cost of the operation with as many millions for interest as she thinks the subjugated party can bear without destroying it, and makes it pay. She never destroys a country entirely, for she has further use for it. She wants the inhabitants, once subjugated, to go on and labor and toil and sweat, for all time to come, to furnish her with raw material, and then to buy it back again in the shape of manufactured goods, which, as she buys cheap and sells dear, makes a very handsome profit, besides furnishing employment to her vast merchant marine in the carrying trade.
And then her merchants manage to interest a certain portion of the natives with her in plundering their neighbors, and so her rule is made tolerably safe and inexpensive. This is about the size of it. She conquers a country, and after reimbursing herself, calls a convention of native Princes and says: “Here, now, we are going to hold this country, anyhow. We are going to have the trade and the revenues, and you see we can do it. You fellows may as well have your whack in it.” (These, of course, are not the exact words used, but I am writing what a New York politician would say. A ring man’s words mean exactly what diplomatic language does, and they are always more to the point.) “Now you help us keep the others down, and you shall keep your own places and shall have yourselves fifty per cent. of what you can grind out of your people, and as we shall stand behind you with our power, that fifty per cent. will be more than you could possibly screw out of them alone and unaided.”
TWO POLICIES.
The native Prince sees the point, for he is as merciless and cruel as an Englishman, and I cannot say more than that, and he assents. Immediately there is a rush of native Princes, all anxious to join in for their plunder, and England apportionsto each his share, according to his importance, and in less than no time she has a native army, officered by English, to keep the people down to the proper level, and to collect taxes and protect traders, and all that sort of thing, and London draws in the money and lives royally.
And, then, if any Prince, or people, or soldiery, or anybody else, fancy they have rights of their own, and question the right of the foreigner to tax them and grind them, they blow a few thousands of them from the mouths of cannon, to teach them the beauty of obedience.
It would take a wiser man than I am to determine by what right, earthly or unearthly, England holds India, but she does all the same, without a blush.
THE INDIAN POLICY.
THE INDIAN POLICY.
THE INDIAN POLICY.
Perhaps it is as well for the Indians. The native Princes were just as rapacious and more senseless than the English. If a native Indian should swallow a diamond, his Prince would rip him open to get it, which made him useless ever after. Johnny Bull, more politic and far seeing, would force an emetic down his throat, so that he might go on and find more diamonds to swallow. He gets the diamond all the same, and saves the subject for future profit.
THE EMETIC POLICY.
THE EMETIC POLICY.
THE EMETIC POLICY.
The strength of England is its fighting capacity, its mercantile capacity, and its wonderful rapacity. Aswas said of a noted criminal in the States, “he wouldn’t steal anything he couldn’t lift, though he did tackle a red-hot cook-stove,” so with England. The eyes of her moneyed power, and it is more than Argus-eyed, are being strained every day for new worlds to sell goods to, knowing perfectly well that when they find a field the Government will furnish muskets to occupy that field. And let no mistake be made. If the field is worth occupying it will be occupied beyond a doubt.
Ireland is an example, Scotland would be, only the Scotch, having a habit of standing together, are ugly customers to deal with, and as they and the English get along tolerably well together, there is no especial trouble between them.
Hence it is that London is so great. London is the center of this vast system of plunder and rapine, and the result of it all comes here. Here is the Court, here is the seat of Government, here is where the great nobles, no matter where their seats may be, are compelled to spend a portion of their time; they are all obliged to have town residences; here they bring their flunkies andretinuesof servants, and they make the great city.
It is not a commercial point, as is Liverpool or New York, nor a manufacturing point, as is Manchester or Philadelphia. It is where the spoils of the present organized legal brigandage are divided, and where the surplus of the organized brigandage of past centuries is expended.
The tradesman of London would not alter the existing condition of things if he could. He believes in that shadowy myth called the Queen, not because he knows anything about her, or cares a straw for her, but simply because when she, which means the Court, is in London, trade is good. That eminent descendant of an eminent robber, Sir Giles Fitz Battleaxe, is here during the season, with all his flunkies and servitors, and the tradesmen have to supply them. As Sir Giles has vast estates in Ireland and Scotland, and the Lord knows where else, which yield him an immense revenue, Sir Giles’s steward can pool his issues with his tradesman and both get rich. Sir Giles doesn’t care, for he is paying all this out of rents of property, the title to which came from a King who stole the ground, and he has enough anyhow.
A FEW STATISTICS.
And then comes the foreign robberies, which he has an interest in, and those make up any waste that may happen at home. Even the cabman, who haggles with you over a shilling, is loyal to the Crown and the Church, for the Crown and the Church bring to London the people who make him his fares.
Rampant republican as I am, opposed to monarchy as I am, I am contributing several pounds per diem to the maintenance of the British throne. I am here to see royalty, and everybody that I come in contact with, from the boy who cleans my boots to the lady who rents me my rooms, sing hosannas to the system that brings me here to be plundered. When I give a shilling to a servant she doesn’t thank me for it, but she goes to her garret and sings, “God Save the Queen.” That amiable shadow gets all the credit for my money.
They shall give thanks to Victoria for me but very little. I will be a republican to the extent of leaving as small an amount of money in England as possible. Could there be a league of Americans formed who would refuse to pay anything, I am not sure but that royalty might be overthrown, and a republic established on its ruins.
And yet I am not certain that that would answer any good purpose. But for these advantages I don’t think anybody would live in London. It was said that if the Pilgrims had landed in the Mississippi Valley, New England would never have been settled, and, therefore, it was providential that the Pilgrims were so directed. But for royalty and the profit that pertains to a Court, I doubt if London could hold population. For if there is a disagreeable—but I reserve this for a special occasion, when, less amiable than I am now, I can do the subject justice.
London has a population, in round numbers, of four millions. Without including outlying suburbs, it covers seventy-eight thousand and eighty acres, or one hundred and twenty-two square miles. The length of the streets and roads is about fifteen hundred miles, and their area nearly twelve square miles. The area of London being one hundred and twenty-two square miles, is equal to a square of about eleven miles to the side. Assuming that it is crossed by straight roads atequal intervals, there would be one hundred and thirty-six such roads, each eleven miles long and one hundred and forty-two yards apart. The sewers have a length of about two thousand miles, and are equal to one hundred and eighty-two sewers eleven miles in length, on an average of one hundred and six yards apart. At the census in 1871 there were within this area four hundred and seventeen thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven inhabited houses, containing an average of seven and eight-tenths persons to a house, exactly corresponding with the proportion in 1861. The density of population was forty-two persons to an acre, twenty-six thousand six hundred and seventy-four to a square mile. The population, estimated to the middle of the year, amounted to three million six hundred and sixty-four thousand one hundred and forty-nine.
These statistics I know to be correct, for I got them from a newspaper. I copy it entire, for the readers of this book do not take the LondonChronicle, as a rule, and it would be too expensive to send each one a copy of it. If any false statements are made it is theChronicle’sfault and not mine.
The climate is, to put it mildly, fiendish. I have been in every possible section of the United States that could be reached by rail, water, or stage, and I was never in a location, excepting California, in which the citizens whereof would not remark: “Oh, yes; this would be a good country to live in if it was not for the changeable climate. The changes are too sudden and severe.” One blessed result of my coming to London is to make me entirely content with the worst climate America has. Tennessee is a paradise to it, so far as climate goes, and when you have said that the subject is closed.
THE CLIMATE.
It rains in London with greater ease than it does in any place in the world. The sun will be shining brightly in the heavens; you look out of your window and say: “I will take a walk this morning without that accursed umbrella,” and you brush your silk hat—everybody who is anybody must wear a silk hat—and you sally forth with your cane. You turn into the Strand, feeling especially cheerful in the sun, when all of a sudden the sky is overcast and you hat is ruined. You call a hansom and go back to your lodgings for your umbrella, andwhen you have encumbered yourself with the clumsy nuisance the sun comes out smiling, and the rain is over, only to resume operations again without the slightest possible reason.
Everybody in London carries an umbrella habitually and all the time. No man ventures out of doors without one, no matter how the sky appears. In America a fair day may be counted upon, but here there is no dependence to be placed upon anything in the form of weather. Last week (June 1) it was as hot as it ought to be the same day in Charleston, South Carolina; to-day (June 7) I came in, went out, and came in wearing an overcoat, and a tolerably heavy one at that. What the weather will be to-morrow, heaven only knows. I have experienced so many and so violent changes that I should not be surprised if it should snow. I may go skating next week upon the Serpentine.
But the Londoners don’t mind it. They are used to it. From the ease with which they carry umbrellas, I am convinced that they are born with them, as George Washington was with the hatchet. A Londoner never lends his umbrella, for everybody has his own, and he never loses it. It is a part of him, as much as is his nose. The umbrella should be in the coat of arms of the royal family, and I do not know but it is.
It is a dull and heavy climate. How it affects a native I cannot tell, but an American has a disposition to sleep perpetually and forever.
In the house I am in is an American, who insisted one morning on going across the square without his umbrella. I mildly remonstrated. “It is safe,” he said, “it isn’t raining now, for it was a minute ago.” He was right, but he came to grief for all that. It rained again in another minute.
London is a miracle of twistedness. If there is a straight street in it—that is, one that runs parallel with any other—I have not found it. The streets of Boston, it is said, were originally cow-paths. If those of London were located on the paths of cows, the cows must have been intoxicated, for there is no system nor any approach to one. They begin without cause and end without reason. There are angles, curves and stoppages, and that is all there is about it. Where a street, to answer the ends of convenience and economy, should go on,you come squarely against a dead wall, and where a street should naturally end, there has been constructed, at vast expense, a continuance, and for no apparent reason. Doubtless there is a reason, but I would give a handsome premium to have it made manifest to me.
Like all old cities, there never was a plan. This ground was never taken up at a dollar and a quarter an acre, as in America, by a set of speculators, and laid out in regular squares, and sold at so much a lot. London never was made—it grew. The original city is a little spot, occupied mostly by banks, but other cities grew around it, and they were joined by all sorts of lanes and roads, which in time became occupied, and so the inextricable jumble occurred.
The city is built entirely of brick and stone, and in the style and convenience of its buildings, is not to be compared to American cities. There is a terrible monotony in its architecture, and a most depressing sameness in color. All London is dingy. Occasionally an enterprising citizen paints his house to distinguish it from his neighbor’s, but he never does it but once. The coal consumed is bituminous, and the smoke it produces is the thickest smoke in the world, and it hangs very close to the earth. The paint becomes discolored in a few months, and the aspiring citizen finds in the smoke a protest against his vanity. His house soon drops into line with his neighbor’s, and is as dingy as before.
VEHICULAR.
The streets of London are crowded to a degree that an American can hardly conceive. Isaiah Rynders said once that it required more intellect to cross Broadway than it did to be a country justice. Had Isaiah stayed a week in London he would have had the conceit taken out of him. The streets of London, all of them, are boiling, seething masses of moving men and animals. Omnibusses, vast cumbrous machines, loaded full inside, and with twenty people on the top, hansoms, cabs, trucks, drays, donkey carts, pony carts, carriages, form a never-beginning and never-ending procession, making a roar like the waters of Niagara. He who attempts to cross a street has to make it a regular business. It cannot be done leisurely or in a dignified way. You narrowly escape being run down by a hansom, only to find yourself in danger of being impaledby the pole of an omnibus, and escaping that, a donkey cart is charging full at you, and if you escape a carriage, and a dozen dog carts, you finally find yourself on the sidewalk plump in the stomach of somebody, who accepts your apology with a growl.
A LONDON STREET SCENE.
A LONDON STREET SCENE.
A LONDON STREET SCENE.
I shall never get over my admiration for the London driver.How he can guide one horse, or still more wonderful, two, through this vehicular labyrinth, is a mystery that I cannot comprehend. I would as soon think of taking command of the British army, and a great deal sooner, for if I didn’t stomach fighting, I could run. But they do it, and they seldom have accidents.
And while I am on the subject of driving, I may as well get through with it. The horses used in London embrace a vast variety. The draught horses are all of the Norman variety, about as large as small elephants, and magnificent in their strength. They are massive, and the loads they draw are wonderful. The trucks are enormous in size and strength, with great, broad wheels, and merchandise is piled upon them mountain high. Two of these horses, nineteen hands high, and built proportionately, with great, clumsy legs, will take an enormous load along the streets, making no fuss, and seemingly without worry.
But when one notices the condition of the streets the wonder at the loads that are drawn ceases. They are as smooth as glass. The stone pavements are evenly laid and absolutely without ruts. The wooden pavement, answering to the Nicholson, which has invariably been a failure in America, is a success here, and for a very simple reason. The contractors are compelled to do their work honestly. There is no shoddy in the pavements of London. They are all as sound as the Bank of England. They don’t lay down some pine boards in the mud, and then stand rotten blocks on end upon them, as we do in America, but there is a solid foundation of broken stone and such matter laid down first, and this is filled with sand, and then the blocks, all good timber, are placed upon that in a proper way, the whole resulting in a road-bed as solid as stone itself, and smooth and noiseless, making a roadway over which any load can be drawn without injury to either beast or vehicle, and one which will be good long after the makers are dust. The vehicles are made so strong as they are, not for fear of the roads, but to hold the enormous weights that the roads make possible.
THE VICIOUS HORSE.
Sometime we of America will get to doing things in a permanent way. It will be, however, after all the present raceof contractors are worth several millions each. I presume in the ancient days there were rings in London. If so I can understand the uses for the beheading blocks exhibited at the Tower.
All the vehicles used in the city are massive and solid. You see none of the flimsy spider-web wheels and light airy bodies in carriages that we affect in America. The wheels of a cab to carry four people are quite three inches thick, and the bodies are correspondingly clumsy. Like their owners, they are very solid.
But the hansom is the peculiar vehicle. The four-wheeler is a sort of a sober-going cab, the one you would expect the mother of a family or a respectable widow lady to use. The driver sits in front, as a driver should, and the entire concern is closed except as you may desire to have air by letting down eminently respectable windows in the side. But the hansom is quite another thing. The occupant is in a low seat, while his driver sits above him on a perch and the reins go over the occupant’s head. Next to swindling his customer out of a sixpence on his fare, the chief ambition of the driver of a hansom is to run down a foot passenger, and in this ambition his horse shares fully, if he does not exceed him. The horses used in these piratical vehicles are generally broken-down hunters, who, too slow to longer hunt the wily fox, and harnessed in the ignoble hansom, have transferred their hunting instincts to men. When the “jarvey,” as he is called here, fixes his eagle eye upon a citizen whom he proposes to run down, the horse knows it as if by instinct, and they come charging down upon him at a pace something as did the French cuirassiers at Waterloo. And if the intended victim escapes, the driver gnashes his teeth in rage, and the sympathizing horse drops his head and moves on a walk till the sight of another countryman or stranger rouses his ambition. It is said that when a driver succeeds in running down a foot passenger the injured man is the one who is arrested.
The shops of London are of two kinds—the gorgeous modern and the respectable ancient. The modern are of the most gorgeous kind. They are not as in New York, immense show windows with a door between; but there is an immense showwindow in the middle, with a small passage on the side. When a London tradesman wants a show window he wants it all show. It is very like the piety of some men I know. He doesn’t care how small the opening is to get into the place, for he knows if he attracts a customer by the display of his goods in the window, he, the said customer, will manage somehow to get inside. The point is to corral the customer. Once in, his bones can be picked at leisure.
The modern shops are as gorgeously fitted up inside as out. They have silver plated rails, magnificently decorated counters and show-cases, even more than the New York stores have.
Then there are the eminently respectable shops which despise these gorgeous ones about the same as an old noble, descended from one of the first robbers, looks down upon a Knight of day before yesterday. These are the shops that have over their doors “Established in 1692.” They would no more put in a plate glass window than they would forge a note. They revel in their dustiness, and are proud of their darkness and inconvenience. They wouldn’t sweep out the premises if they could help it, and the very cob-webs are sacred as being so many silent witnesses to the antiquity of the house.
“The house, sir, of Smithers & Co., was established by Samuel Smithers on this very spot in 1692, and business has been done under that name, and by his successors, ever since, except an interval of two months, which was occasioned by a fire—from the outside. The house of Samuel Smithers & Co. could never have originated a fire upon their own premises. The business is conducted with more system. We have never had a protested paper and never asked an accommodation.”
This is what the present head of the house will say to you. He has as much pride in the house as the Queen has in her Queenship, and with infinitely more reason. He would not allow a new pane of glass to be put in, and he wouldn’t change a thing about the premises for the world. He prides himself on the inconveniences of a hundred years ago, and would die sooner than to use a modern notion in the business.
AN OLD HOUSE.
But the Smitherses are good people with whom to do business. Among the other old-fashioned customs they preserve is that of honesty. They keep good goods, no shoddy; theyhave a fair price, and you might as well undertake to tear down Westminster Abbey with a hair-pin as to induce any variation therefrom. They want your trade—every Englishman wants trade—but they prefer their system to trade. You buy, if you buy of them, on their terms. But you know what you get, and that is worth something.
This affection for the old is general. It is a fact that one eating house, noted for its chops and steaks, and ales and wines, which had been in existence no one knows how many years, and had its regular succession of patrons, who came in at regular hours, and ate and drank the same things, and read the same newspapers till death claimed them, fell, by reason of death, into the hands of young men. These young fellows were somewhat progressive, and they determined to bring the old place abreast with modern ideas. And so they swept out the cob-webs, painted the interior, decorated it in bright colors, put in new tables, swept and cleaned things, and replaced the old floor with modern tiles, and made it one of the most handsome places in London.
The effect was fatal. The oldhabituesof the place came, looked inside, ran out to see if they had not made a mistake as to the number, and finding they were right as to locality, sighed and turned sadly away. They could not eat in any such place, and they went and found some other antiquated den, whose proprietor was sensible enough not to tear down sacred cob-webs, and put in fresh floors.
The old patronage was lost forever, and the proprietors were compelled to build up an entirely new business, the cost of which nearly put them into bankruptcy.
All travelers lie. I am going to try to be an exception to this rule, and shall, to the best of my ability, cling to the truth as a shipwrecked mariner does to a spar. I shall try to conquer the tendency to lie that overcome every man who gets a hundred miles away from home. But I presume I shall fail; and so when I get home and say that living is cheaper and better in London than it is anywhere in America, please say to me, “You are lying!” You will do the correct thing.
No doubt when there I shall say to Smith or Thompson, “My boy, what you want to do is to go abroad. You want tosee London. And as for the expense, what is it? Your passage across is only one hundred dollars—ten days—and that is but ten dollars a day. And then you can live so much cheaper in London than you can in New York that it is really cheaper to go abroad than it is to stay at home.”
A LONDON STEAK.
A LONDON STEAK.
A LONDON STEAK.
I presume I shall say this when I get home, for I know the tendency of the traveler to lie. I have traveled all over North America, and I confess, with shame mantling my cheek, that I have at times added some feet to the height of mountains and to the width of rivers, and to the number of Indians, and once I did invent an exploit which never happened, and I have narrated incidents which never occurred. It is such a temptation to be a hero when you know you can never be successfully disputed.
While I am yet young in foreign travel, and capable of an approximation to truth, I wish to say that London is not only not a cheap place to live, but an exceedingly dear one.
THE MATTER OF COST.
“Just think of it,” said a travel-wise New Yorker, in NewYork, to me, “just think of a steak for a shilling! Here you pay twice that!”
So we do, but when you pay fifty cents for a steak in New York, you get a steak, and you get with it bread and butterad libitum—you get pickles, and sauces, and potatoes, and all that sort of thing. Your fifty cent steak, with the accompaniments it carries, makes you a meal, and a good one.
In London your steak is twenty-five cents, but it is only a sample. After eating it you want some steak. Then you pay six cents for potatoes, two cents for what they call a bread—you always have more and there is a charge for each individual slice—you pay two cents for each tiny pat of butter, you are compelled to struggle for a napkin, and if you ask for ice to cool the infernal insipid water, you pay two cents for that, and you get just enough to aggravate you. And, then, when you are through, the smirking mass of stupidity and inefficiency they call a waiter wants and expects a sixpence, which is twelve and one-half cents more.
Where is your cheapness now? If you have a square, appetite-satisfying, strength-giving meal, it has cost you twice as much as it would in New York, with the difference that in New York it would be decently cooked, decently served, and done with a sort of breadth that makes it a luxury to eat, while here it is so hampered about with extras and charges for minute things—things which in America are free to everybody—that eating is reduced to a mere commercial basis and has no comfort in it.
The hotels are simply infamous in their charges. You agree to pay so much per day for your rooms, and it looks tolerably cheap, but you discover your mistake at the close of the first week, when you come to settle your bill. Though you have never touched your bell and have never seen the face of a servant, you are charged so much a day for “attendance,” you are charged for light, for fires. If you have ordered a bit of anything, no matter how infinitesimal, it is there, and these charges make up a bill larger than your room rent.
There is no use in remonstrating, nor in threatening to leave. You know, and the landlord knows a great deal better, that no matter where you go it will be the same, and so submittingto the inevitable, you draw a draft for more money, and settle down to be cheated in peace.
The lodging houses are quite as bad, only of course in a smaller way. Your accommodations are less, and the swindle less, but the proportion is very carefully observed.
Clothing is somewhat cheaper than in America, but nevertheless let me warn the intending comer against buying it here. You may buy cloths, if you choose, and pay duty on them and take them home, but never let a London tailor or dressmaker profane your person, be you man or woman. The Creator never made either for a London tailor to mar. He has too much respect for His handiwork. I have been here now two weeks, and have yet to see a native Englishman or a tailor-spoiled American who was well-dressed. The English tailor has no more idea of style than a pig has of the revised Testament. You can tell an American a square off by the cut of his coat, and an American woman by the very hang of her dress. The English tailor looks at you wisely, and takes a measurement or two, and puts his shears into the cloth. The result is a sort of a square abortion, loose where it should be close, close where it should be wide, long where it should be short and short where it should be long, and the poor victim takes it and is miserable till time releases him from it.
The majority of English women are dowdies, and by the way they have immense feet and hands. They are excellent wives, mothers and sisters, but their extremities are something frightful. They do have delightful complexions though, and are as bright and good as they can be.
A PITTSBURGH REMINISCENCE.
Speaking of the feet of English women reminds me of Captain McFadden, of Pittsburgh. The dear old Captain—he is dead and gone now these many a year—in addition to being one of the best river men that Pittsburgh could boast of, was also,—think of it,—a poultry fancier. When the fancy for Shanghais broke out the Captain joined in it, as he did in everything in the fowl way, and he paid cheerfully twenty-five dollars for a half-dozen eggs of the famous breed, which he immediately put under a hen that was in a setting mood. But Captain McFadden had a son who was without reverence either for his father or poultry. Young Jim McFadden wentand bought a half-dozen duck’s eggs and removed the Shanghais and put the duck’s eggs under the hen, the said hen not knowing or caring whether she was hatching the common duck or the royal Shanghai. In time its labors were accomplished and Captain McFadden was viewing the resultant ducklings, with Jim laughing in his sleeve as he looked on.