[C]The first part of this work left the press early in 1852, when the Duke of Wellington was still alive. It has not been thought convenient to alter this passage, and some others to meet the change of circumstances.—[Ed.]
[C]The first part of this work left the press early in 1852, when the Duke of Wellington was still alive. It has not been thought convenient to alter this passage, and some others to meet the change of circumstances.—[Ed.]
We turn again to the General Post-office. It is a grand and majestic structure, with colossal columns in the pure Greek style; and with an air of classic antiquity, derived from the London atmosphere of fog and smoke. It is easy to raise antique structures in London, for the rain and the coals assist the architect. Hence those imposing tints! How happy would the Berliners be, if Messrs. Fox and Henderson, instead of constructing waterworks, could undertake to blacken the town, and give it an antique old-established, instead of itsparvenuand stuck-up, appearance. They are sadly in want of London smoke and of some other English institutions which I cannot, for the sake of my own safety, venture to specify.
Those who are not awed by the architectural beauties of the London Post-office, should enter and take a stroll down those roomy high walls, where on either side there are numbers of office windows and little tablets. How small are, in the presence of those tablets, all the ideas which Continentals form of a largecentral Post-office. They are so many sign-posts, and direct you to all the quarters of the world; to the East and West Indies, to Australia, China, the Canary Islands, the Cape, Canada, etc. Every part of the globe has its own letter box; and the stranger who, about six o’clockP. M., enters these halls, or takes up his post of observation near the great City Branch Office, in Lombard-street, would almost deem that all the nations of the world were rushing in through the gates, and as if this were the last day for the reception and transmission of letters.
Breathless come the bankers’ clerks, rushing in just before the closing hour; they open their parcels, and drop their letters into the various compartments. There are messengers groaning under the weight of heavy sacks, which they empty into a vast gulf in the flooring; they come from the offices of the great journals, and the papers themselves are sorted by the Post-office clerks. Here and there, among this crowd of business people, you are struck with the half comfortable, half nervous bearing of a citizen. Just now an old gentleman, with steel spectacles, hurries by, casting an anxious look at the clock, lest he be too late. Probably he wishes to post a paternal epistle to his son, who is on a fishing excursion in Switzerland, and the letter is important, for in it the son is adjured not by any means to discontinue wearing a flannel under-jacket. Or an old lady has to post a letter to her grand-daughter at school in the country, about the apple-pudding, for which the grand-daughter sent her the receipt; and what a capital pudding it was, and that the school must be a first-rate school—to be sure! And lo! just as the clock strikes, a fair-haired and chaste English woman, with a thick blue veil, makes her way to one of the compartments and drops a letter. Thank goodness, she is in time! Heaven knows how sorry the poor lad would have been if that letter had not reached him in due course. For an English lover, they say, is often in a hanging mood, especially in November, when the fogs are densest.
Now the wooden doors are closed; the hall is empty as if by magic, and the tall columns throw their lengthened shadows on the stone flooring.
This is the most arduous period of the day for the clerkswithin. All that heap of letters and newspapers which has accumulated in the course of the day is to be sorted, stamped, and packed in time for the various mail-trains. Clerks, servants, sorters, and messengers, hurry to and fro in the subterraneous passage between the two wings of the building. Clerks suspended by ropes, mount up to the ceiling and take down the parcels which, in the course of the day, were deposited on high shelves. And the large red carts come rattling in receive their load of bags, and rattle off to the various stations; the rooms are getting empty; the clerks have got through their work; the gas is put out, and silence and darkness reign supreme. Here and there only in some little room a clerk may be seen busy with accounts and long lists of places and figures. When he retires to rest, the work of the day has already commenced in the other offices. In this building, business is going on at all hours of the day and the night. The loss of a minute would be felt by thousands, at a distance of thousands of miles.
Hence does it happen that at no time is there a want of complaints about the Post-office clerks and post-masters, while the officials, in their turn, complain of the carelessness and negligence of the public. The public’s grievances find their way into the Journals, in a “Letter to the Editor.” The sorrows of the Post-office clerks obtain a less amount of publicity; but they may be observed on the walls of the great hall, where, daily, there is a list of misdirected letters, which have cost the post-men a deal of trouble. Directions such as—
“To Mr. Robinson,“inAmerica.”
Or,—
“To Miss Henrietta Hobson,“Just by the Church,“in London.”
However rich (some may think), these are not by any means rare; and such small mistakes, I dare say, will happen in other countries besides England, wherever there are simple-mindedpeople who put their trust in Providence and the royal Post-office. In Germany, where every man, woman, and child is registered by the police, the postman may, as a last resource, apply to that omniscient institution; but in England, where the chief commissioner of the police is so abandoned as to be actually ignorant of the whereabouts of honest and decent citizens, the Post-office is deprived even of this last resource. The case would be pitiable in the extreme, but for the comfortable reflection that in England the police do not interfere with the post. The convenience, on the one hand, is by far greater than the inconvenience on the other.
THE SUN AND THE LONDONERS.—MYSTERIES OF THE FOG.—HARVEST MOONS.—GAS.—HOW THE CLIMATE WORKS.—FLANNELS.—ENGLISH DINNERS AND FRENCH THEATRICALS.—CURRENT PHRASES.
THE SUN AND THE LONDONERS.—MYSTERIES OF THE FOG.—HARVEST MOONS.—GAS.—HOW THE CLIMATE WORKS.—FLANNELS.—ENGLISH DINNERS AND FRENCH THEATRICALS.—CURRENT PHRASES.
FASHIONABLEnovelists, no matter whether their productions end with marriage or suicide, devote their first chapters to geographical and ethnographical accounts of the country or province in which they lay their plots. Scientific travellers devote the first pages of their heavy and immortal works to the respective telluria and astronomic peculiarities of the country they propose to describe. To my sincere regret, I have not, in my unsystematic wanderings through London, been able to follow so laudable an example; for it requires a long residence and a good deal of careful observation to understand the whims of the London celestial bodies—their goings and comings—and their influence on vegetable and animal life—on the strata of the atmosphere and of mankind.
Since Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, and Lola Montes into a Countess of Landsfeld, there has not, as far as I know, been any female being so much abused as the London sun;[D]but the reasons of such abuse are diametrically opposed. The two first named ladies were found fault with because they saw too much of the world, while the London sun is justly charged with a want of curiosity. It turns its back upon the wealthiest city in Christendom; and, in the presence of the most splendid capital of Europe, it insists on remaining veiled in steam, fog, and smoke.
[D]The sun—die Sonne—is feminine in German.
[D]The sun—die Sonne—is feminine in German.
The London sun, like unto German liberty, exists in the mindsof the people, who have faith in either, and believe that either might be bright, dazzling, and glorious, were it not for the intervention of a dark, ugly fog, between the upper and nether regions. It happens, just now, that we have not seen the sun for the last three weeks. But for the aid of astronomy, which tells us that the sun is still in its old place, we might be tempted to believe that it had gone out of town for the long vacation; or that it had been adjourned by some continental constitutional government; or that it was being kept in a German capital, waiting for the birthday of the reigning prince, when it must come out in a blaze; for this, I understand, has been the sun’s duty from time immemorial. A three weeks’ absence of the sun would make a great stir in any other town. The Catholics would trace its cause to the infidelity of the age; the Protestants would demonstrate that the sun had been scared away by certain late acts of Papal aggression; and the Jews would lament and ask: “How is it possible the sun can shine when the Bank raises its rate of discount?” But the Londoners care as little for a month ofchiaro-oscuroas the Laplanders do. They are used to it.
Twice in the course of the last week—for an essayist on astronomical matters ought to be conscientious—twice did the sun appear for a few minutes. It was late in the afternoon, and it looked out from the west, just above Regent’s-park, where the largest menagerie in the world may be seen for one shilling, and, on Mondays, for sixpence. All the animals, from the hippopotamus down to the beaver, left their huts, where they were at vespers, and stared at the sun, and wished it good morning. It was a solemn moment! An impertinent monkey alone shaded his eyes with his hands, and asked the sun where it came from, and whether there was not some mistake somewhere? And the sun blushed and hid its face beneath a big cloud. The monkey laughed and jeered, and the tigers roared, and the turtle-doves said such conduct was shocking and altogether ungentlemanly. The owl alone was happy, and said it was; for it had been almost blind during the last five minutes; “and that,” as he said, “was a thing it had not been used to in London.”
But whatever ill-natured remarks we and others may makeon the London sun, they apply only to the winter months. May and September shame us into silence. In those months, the sun in London is as lovely, genial, and—I must go the length of a trope—sunnyas anywhere in Germany; with this difference only, that it is not so glowing—not so consistent. In the country, too, it comes out in full, broad, and traditional glory. Its favourite spots are in the South of England—Bristol, Bath, Hastings, and the Isle of Wight. In those favored regions, the mild breeze of summer blows even late in the year; the hedges and trees stand resplendent with the freshness of their foliage; the meadows are green, and lovely to behold; the butterflies hover over the blossoms of the honeysuckle; the cedar from Lebanon grows there and thrives, and myrtles and fuchsias, Hortensias and roses, and passion-flowers, surround the charming villas on the sea-shore. Village churches are covered with ivy up to the very roof; gigantic fern moves in the sea-breeze; the birds sing in the branches of the wild laurel tree; cattle and sheep graze on the downs; and grown-up persons and children bathe in the open sea, while the German rivers are sending down their first shoals of ice, and dense fogs welter in the streets of London.
Here is one of the vulgar errors and popular delusions of the Continent. People confound the climate of London with the climate of England; they talk of the isles of mist in the West of Europe. A very poetical idea that, but as untrue as poetical. Many parts of these islands are as clear and sunny as any of the inland countries of the Continent.
The winter-fogs of London are, indeed, awful. They surpass all imagining; he who never saw them, can form no idea of what they are. He who knows how powerfully they affect the minds and tempers of men, can understand the prevalence of that national disease—the spleen. In a fog, the air is hardly fit for breathing; it is grey-yellow, of a deep orange, and even black; at the same time, it is moist, thick, full of bad smells, and choking. The fog appears, now and then, slowly, like a melodramatic ghost, and sometimes it sweeps over the town as the simoom over the desert. At times, it is spread with equal density over the whole of that ocean of houses on otheroccasions, it meets with some invisible obstacle, and rolls itself into intensely dense masses, from which the passengers come forth in the manner of the student who came out of the cloud to astonish Dr. Faust. It is hardly necessary to mention, that the fog is worst in those parts of the town which are near the Thames.
When the sun has set in London (the curious in this respect, will do well to consult the Almanack), and when the weather is tolerably clear, the moon appears to govern the night. The moon is a more regular guest in London than the sun; and the example of these celestial bodies is followed by the great journals, the issue of the evening papers being much more regular than that of the morning papers. The London moon is, after all, not very different from the moon in Germany. It is quite as pale and romantic; it is the confidant of lovesick maidens and adventurous pickpockets.
Traveller from the Continent, enjoy the London moon with method and reason! If heaven favored you by sending you into the street on a beautiful, splendid, transparent, moonlit night, in which the shades of Ossian and Mignon sit by the rivers or under the limetrees, while all the poetry you smuggled from your native land awakes in your heart: traveller, if such good fortune is yours, why, then, the best thing you can do, is to go to the Italian opera, for the moonlit nights of this country are as treacherous as its politics. They seem all calm and peaceful; but they are rife with colds and ague. They are most beautiful, but also most dangerous. Every Englishman will tell you as much, and advise you to increase your stock of flannel in proportion to the beauty of the night.
Most regular and reliable is a third medium for the lighting-up of London—the gas. The sun and moon may be behind their time, but the gas is always at its post. And in winter, it happens sometimes that it does service all day long. Its only drawback is, that it cannot be had gratis, like the light from the sun, moon, and stars; but the same inconveniences attend the gas on the Continent, and after all, it is cheaper in England than anywhere else. The Germans are mere tyros in the consumption of gas. The stairs of every decent London house, have generallyquite as much light as a German shop, and the London shops are more strongly lighted up than the German theatres. Butchers, and such-like tradesmen, especially in the smaller streets, burn the gas from one-inch tubes, that John Bull, in purchasing his piece of mutton or beef, may see each vein, each sinew, and each lump of fat. The smaller streets and the markets, are literally inundated with gaslight especially on Saturday evenings. No city on the Continent offers such a sight. In the apothecary’s shops, the light is placed at the back of gigantic glass bottles, filled with coloured liquid, so that from a distance you see it in the most magnificent colour. The arrangement is convenient for those who are in search of such a shop, and it gives the long and broad streets of London a strange and picturesque appearance.
We have said so much of the climate, that it is high time to add a few words about its results. What then are the effects of the London winters, of the gloomy foggy days, the cold rainy nights, and of the changeable English weather? The Continent knows those results partly from hearsay. They manifest themselves in the character, in the ways, the dress, and the social arrangements of the English.
The British isles rear a strong healthy race of men and women, beyond any other country in Europe. The lower classes have muscles and sinews which enable them to rival their cattle in feats of strength. The women are stately and tall; the children full of rosy health. The middle classes live better, though on an average less luxuriously than the corresponding classes on the continent. Their food is strong and nourishing; it is at once converted into flesh and blood. The British farmers are specimens of human mammoths, however grievously they may complain of their distress since the abolition of the duty on corn. The nobility and gentry pass a considerable part of the year at their country seats. They hunt, fish, and shoot, to the manifest advantage of their health. The very children, mounted on shaggy ponies, take long rides; so do the women, who even now and then follow the hounds. They go out in yachts on the stormy channel and extend their excursions to the coasts of Italy and the West Indian islands. But in despite of this mode of life, which isconducive to health, they pay their tribute to the moist atmosphere of their island, and they all—men, women, and children—submit to pass their lives in flannel wrappers.
“We want,” says Sir John, “to be independent of the changes of the weather; and we isolate our bodies by means of suitable articles of dress. We wear flannel, cottons, india-rubber, and gutta percha; we drink cognac, port, stout; we eat strong meats with strong spices. We never pretend that the climate is to suit us; we suit ourselves to the climate. The Continentals act on a different principle, and say they like the result. We like the result of our own principle, and that’s the reason why we stick to it.”
Flannels in summer and in winter, in Glasgow and in Jamaica; this is one of the ten commandments which few Englishmen care to transgress. But their conservative tendencies which cause them to cling to the habits in which they were reared, lead them into the absurdity of adhering to an English mode of life even when fate or trade have flung them to the furthermost corners of the earth. I understand that English drawing-rooms at Gibraltar are as carefully carpeted as the drawing-rooms of London and Edinburgh. The British drink their port and sherry under the torrid zone; their porter and stout follow them to the foot of the Himalaya. And they do all this, not because they cannot be comfortable without their old habits; but because they protest and devoutly believe, that in all the various climates the English mode of living is most conducive to health.
The proper cultivation of the body is a matter of great importance in England. A French labourer is happy with the most frugal dinner, if, in the evening, he can but afford to take a place and laugh or weep at a vaudeville theatre. The Englishman wants meat, good meat, and plenty of it. The lower classes care little or nothing for “the feast of the soul.” John Bull laughs at the starvelings, the French frog-eaters. He has no idea that the Frenchouvrieris, after all, a more civilised creature than he is, exactly because to the Frenchman his Sunday dinner is not, as is the case with the lower classes of the English, the most important part of the Sunday.
These material tendencies are, of course, fostered by educationand society. Originally they result from the climate. The frugality of the Parisouvriercould not, for any length of time, resist the stomach-inspiriting effect of a fresh sea-breeze.
“A beautiful morning, Sir.” “A splendid day, Sir.” Such-like phrases are stereotyped formulas for the proper commencement of an acquaintanceship. The English are so accustomed to these meteorological remarks, and these remarks appear so important (because everybody and everything here depends upon the weather), that they rarely, if ever, neglect making them.
“Very pleasant weather, Sir;” or, “Very wet to-day,” mutters the cabman as he shuts the door upon you. The same remarks greet you from the lips of the omnibus-driver as you take your seat at his side, or from those of the shopwoman, as a preliminary to that awful “Any other article, Sir?” And the words are always pronounced in that grave, monotonous, business tone which is peculiar to the English even in treating of the most important subjects. It may be sunshine or rain, the tone is always the same. And it has been surmised, that the English residents on the continent are such egregious bores and bears only because the greater constancy of the weather deprives them of those magic formulas, without which they cannot open their minds. How, indeed, is it possible to make the acquaintance of any one unless there is rain, storm, fog, and sunshine at least twice in the course of the four and twenty hours?
THE LORD MAYOR’S RETREAT.—THE NINTH OF NOVEMBER.—CITY PROCESSIONS.—“THE TIMES” AND THE CITY.—THE STOCK EXCHANGE.—A PIECE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT.—LLOYD’S.—RETURN TO SIR JOHN, AND SOME OF THE OPINIONS OF THAT WORTHY.
THE LORD MAYOR’S RETREAT.—THE NINTH OF NOVEMBER.—CITY PROCESSIONS.—“THE TIMES” AND THE CITY.—THE STOCK EXCHANGE.—A PIECE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT.—LLOYD’S.—RETURN TO SIR JOHN, AND SOME OF THE OPINIONS OF THAT WORTHY.
OURroad to-day lies to the east. Seated on the roof of an omnibus, we ride down the Strand, through Temple-bar and Fleet-street, and pass St. Paul’s. The road and the pavements are crowded in the extreme; the din is deafening; but the shrill voices of the costermongers in the side-streets are heard even above the thunders of the City.
We stop for one moment at the foot of Ludgate-hill, and look back. We see part of Fleet-street, and as far as our eyes can reach, there is nothing but a dark, confused, quickly-moving mass of men, horses, and vehicles; not a yard of the pavement is to be seen—nothing but heads along the rows of houses, and in the road, too, an ocean of heads, the property of gentlemen on the roofs of omnibuses, which crowd the City more than any other part of the town.
These are the streets whose excess of traffic makes the strongest impression upon the stranger; and this part of London is moreover specially dear to the historian. We, too, propose to take our time with it and to walk through it leisurely. But to-day we are bound farther eastward. We shall leave the omnibus at the further end of Cheapside.
In the heart of the City, less than half a mile from the Thames and London-bridge, various streets meeting form an irregular open place. This irregular place is one of the most remarkable spots in London. For no other place, except that of Westminster, can vie with this in the importance of its buildingsand the crowding of its streets, though many may surpass it in extent, beauty, and architectural regularity. It is the Capitoline Forum of British Rome; it holds its temples, the Mansion-house, the Exchange and the Bank. In the centre, the equestrian statue of the saviour of the capitol—the Duke of Wellington. All round are islands of pavements, as in other parts of the town, for the foot-passengers to retire to from the maelstrom of vehicles.
At our right, just as we come out of Cheapside, is a house supported by columns and surrounded with strong massive railings. Two flights of stone steps lead to the upper story; massive stone pillars surrounded by gas-lamps stand in a row in front of it, but neither the gas nor the clearest noonday sun suffices to bring out the allegorical carvings which ornament the roof. This is the Mansion-house; the official residence of the Lord Mayor, who here holds his court, as if his was one of the crowned heads.
Here he lives. Here are the halls in which the most luxurious dinners of modern times are given; here are his offices and courts of justice, according to the ancient rights and privileges of the City of London.
Every year the Lord Mayor elect enters upon the functions of his office on the ninth of November. The City crowns its king with mediæval ceremonies. The shops are shut at an early hour and many do not open at all; for masters and servants must see the “show.” For many hours the City is closed against all vehicles; flags and streamers are hung out from the houses; the pavement is covered with gravel; holiday faces everywhere; amiable street-boys at every corner bearing flags; brass bands and confusion and endless cheers! Such is the grave, demure, and busy City on that remarkable day.
While the streets are every moment becoming more crowded and noisy, the new Lord Mayor takes the customary oaths in the presence of the Court of Aldermen, and signs a security to the amount of £4000 for the City plate, which, according to a moderate computation, has a value of at least £20,000.
This done, he is Lord and King of the City, and sets out upon his coronation procession, surrounded by his lieges and accompanied by the ex-Mayor, the Aldermen, Sheriffs, the dignitaries ofhis guild, the city heralds, trumpeters, men in brass armour, and other thrones, principalities, and powers. The road which the Lord Mayor is to take is not prescribed by law; but according to an old custom, the procession must pass through that particular ward in which the King of the City acted as Alderman. The ward participates in the triumph of the day; and the cheers in that particular locality are, if possible, louder than any where else.
The procession turns next to the banks of the Thames. The Lord Mayor, according to time-honored custom, must take a trip in a gondola from one of the City bridges to Westminster. Fair weather or foul, take the water he must; and the broad river presents a spectacle on such occasions as is never seen in any town of Europe, since the Venetian Doges and their nuptials with the Adriatic have become matter for history.
Splendid gondolas richly gilt, glass-covered, and bedecked with a variety of flags and streamers, bear the Lord Mayor and his suite. Previous to starting, a supply of water is taken on board—thus hath custom willed it. The Lord Mayor’s gondola is either rowed by his own bargemen, or it is taken in tow by a steam-tug. And round the gondolas there are boats innumerable with brass bands; and the bridges and the river banks are covered with spectators, and the river is more full of life, gladness, and colour, than on any other day of the year.
The trip to Westminster is short; it is, however, long enough for the company to take a copiousdejeuner à la fourchettein the saloon of the City barge. This breakfast is a kind of introduction to the grand world-famed dinner, with which the Lord Mayor inaugurates his advent to power. The dinner is the most important part of the business, as, indeed, the giving and eating of dinners forms one of the chief functions of the City corporations. So, at least, saysPunch, and so says theTimes.
The Lord Mayor and his suite land at Westminster Bridge. In Westminster he repairs to the Court of Exchequer, where he is introduced to the Judges. He takes another oath; and to clinch that oath, and show that he means to be worthy of his office and of the City of London, he commissions the Recorder to invite the Judges to dinner. This invitation is delivered inquite as solemn a tone as the oath, and the oath is taken in the same business-like manner in which the invitation is given. A foreigner would be at a loss to know which of the two is the most solemn and important.
These ceremonies over, the procession returns the way it came, and lands at Blackfriars Bridge. Thenceforward it increases in splendour and magnificence. The fairer portion of humanity join it in their state coaches—the Lady Mayoress, the Aldermen’s and Sheriffs’ wives; and after them come Royal Princes, Ministers of State, the Judges of the land, and the Foreign Ambassadors. The procession over, they all sit down to dinner. What they eat, how they eat it, and how much they eat, is on the following morning duly chronicled in the journals. The number and quality of the courses will at once enable an experienced city-man to come to a pretty correct conclusion as to the Lord Mayor’s virtues or vices. Meats rich and rare count as so many merits; but a couple of low and vulgar dishes would at once turn public opinion in the City against the City’s chosen prince. The Lord Mayor’s reputation emanates from the kitchen and the larder, exactly as a great diplomatist’s renown may frequently be traced to the desk of some private secretary.
The Lady Mayoress shares all the honours which are showered upon her worthy husband; she is a genuine “lady” for a whole twelvemonth, and perhaps for life, if her husband has the good luck to be honoured with a visit from the Queen, on which occasion it is customary for the Lord Mayor to be made a baronet, while a couple of Aldermen, at least, come in for the honours of knighthood. But if the Queen does not visit the City, the Lord Mayor descends at the end of the year to his former position. For three hundred and sixty-five days he is a “Lord,” and his wife is a “Lady”; he goes to Court, and is on terms of good fellowship with royal princes, gartered dukes, and belted earls; and he has the high honour and privilege of feasting the Corporation. His year of office over, he quits the Mansion House, returns to his shop and apron, and is the same quiet and humble citizen he was before.
Of course the shop and apron we have mentioned in jest only. A man who can aspire to the dignity of the mayoraltyhas long ceased to be a tradesman; he is a merchant prince, a banker, amillionaire. How else could he afford the luxury of that expensive dignity, especially since he cannot but neglect his business whilst he is in office.
The Lord Mayor’s pay from the City amounts to £8000, but his expenses are enormous. Woe to him if he be careful of his money, if his dinners are few and far between, or his horses and carriages less splendid than those of his predecessors! Such enormities expose him to the contempt of the grandees of the City. The Common Councilmen shrug their shoulders, and the Aldermen declare that they were mistaken in him. The outraged feelings of the City pursue him even after his return to private life.
He is in duty bound to spend the eight thousand pounds he receives from the City; it is highly meritorious in him if he spends more. Bright is his place in the annals of the City, if he feasts its sons at the expense of double the amount of his official income!
There is much aristocratic pride and civic haughtiness in this city royalty. It rests on a broad historical basis; and it was strongest with regard to royalty at Whitehall, whenever the latter had to apply to the wealthy city corporations for relief in its financial troubles. But it was also a firm bulwark against the encroachments of the kings of England of former days, supported as they were by venal judges and parliaments; and it deserves the respect of the English as an historical relic. Its merits lie in the past; for at present English liberty needs not the protection of a City king.
The prerogatives of the city of London have, of late years, become the subject of a violent agitation. That agitation was commenced by “The Times,” on the occasion of the great exhibition. “The Times” holds that it is unreasonable that the city—at the present day a mere function of London—should continue to play the part of the sovereign; that the Lord Mayor speaking in the name of London, should invite the Queen; that, conducting himself as representative of the metropolis, he should be feasted by the Prefect of theSeine, and kissed by Mons. Cartier. What right has the City to such honours, now that London haslong since engulphed it? Where are the merits of the City? What does the Lord Mayor? What do the Aldermen? Nothing—unless it be that they eat turtle soup, andpatés de foie gras? Is obesity a title to honours?
Thus says “The Times,” with great justice, but with very little tenderness. No Englishman who knows anything of the history of his country, will deny that in evil days the City became a champion of liberty against the kings at Whitehall; that the Lord Mayors protected the press, and sheltered the printers from the violence of the government; that on such occasions the City had many a hot contest with the parliaments, and that, to this day, the city members belong to the liberal party. But liberal principles might be adhered to even without the Lord Mayor and his Lucullian dinners. And, as for the City’s former services, it ought to be remembered, that there is a vast difference between living institutions and stone monuments. Old towers and castles, which at one time did good service against a foreign enemy, have, so to say, a vested right to the place in which they stand; it were wrong to pull them down merely because they are now useless. But far different is the case with living institutions that jar with the tendencies of the century. To wait for their gradual decay were a suicidal act in a nation.
A great many of the institutions of the City ought to be consigned to mediæval curiosity shops. They were, certainly, very useful in their day, when they had a purpose and a meaning; but so was the old German “Heerbann;” so were the guilds; and so was superstition. It were mere madness to spare them in consideration of past services. They must fall, sooner or later; and the sculptors and historians of England will take good care that the former merits of the City shall not be lost in oblivion.
Up to the present time, the agitation against the arrogance of the city corporations has been confined to the press; to the “Times” belongs the merit of having commenced that agitation. The Londoners have as yet taken no active part in it; and this is another proof of the conservative tendencies which are incarnate in the great mass of the English nation. There is in this conservatism a narrow-mindedness which is the more striking as, inthe affairs of practical life, the Anglo-British race can, least of all, be accused of a want of common sense.
In despite of this innate conservatism, the masses are gradually awaking to political consciousness. Formerly it was considered a matter of course, that wealthy persons only were elected to serve in Parliament; or that rich traders only would aspire to the mayoralty, or the dignity of an alderman. Reforms are impending. What will come of them depends partly on the leaders of the movement; on the degree of resistance which the government of the day may oppose to them; and, partly, though the English are loth to admit it, on the course of events on the continent of Europe.
Perhaps we shall resume the question on another occasion. Just now we are in the capitoline market of the city. We leave the Mansion-house, and turn to the other temples which grace the spot.
Opposite to the Mansion-house, is the Royal Exchange; a vast detached building of an imposing aspect. The English are not, generally, famous for their style of architecture; the antique columns, though great favourites, puzzle them sorely. They put them exactly where they are not wanted; and, in many of their public buildings the columns, instead of supporting the structure, are themselves supported by some architectural contrivance. The modern buildings suffer, moreover, from a striking uniformity; they have all the same columned fronts, which we see at the Mansion-house, the Exchange, and several of the theatres. It is always the same pattern, exactly as if those buildings had come out of some Birmingham factory.
This monotony in the style of public buildings would be altogether unbearable, but for the climate. The smoky and foggy atmosphere of London indemnifies us for the want of original ideas in the architects. It gives the London buildings a venerable, antique colouring. The Exchange, for instance, has the appearance of having weathered the storms of a hundred winters, while, in fact, it is quite a new building. Still, it is quite as black and sooty as Westminster Abbey, or Somerset House; and yet it is not even nine years old. The old Exchange was burnt down in 1838; it required six years to completethe new building, which was opened in October, 1844, with much solemnity.
Up to the reign of Elizabeth, the London merchants had no Exchange building; they transacted business in the open air, in Lombard Street, in St. Paul’s Church-yard, and sometimes eveninSt. Paul’s; for this cathedral was, at the time we speak of, the great centre of business, fashion, and prostitution. Sir Thomas Gresham, who had frequently acted as the Queen’s agent on the Continent, offered to construct an Exchange building, provided the city would grant him the ground to build it on. His proposal was accepted; a piece of ground was bought for £3,737 6d., and the first stone was laid on the 7th June, 1565. At the end of the following year, the building was completed; and to judge from the sketches which still remain, it was designed in imitation of the Antwerp Exchange.
The virgin Queen expressed her high satisfaction with the undertaking most royally, by dining with Sir Thomas Gresham, and bestowing on the building the title of “Royal Exchange.” When Sir Thomas, at a later period, was compelled to depart this world, he bequeathed his Exchange to the City, and founded the Gresham College, of which, at the present day, nothing remains but the Gresham Lectures, which are generally, and justly, classed among the city jobs, whose name is Legion.
Gresham’s Exchange, with its profuse display of grasshoppers—the founder’s crest—fell a sacrifice to the great fire in 1666. So attached had the city merchants become to their new temple of Plutus, that they restored it in preference even to their churches; and, two years after the great fire the New Exchange was completed and solemnly opened by Charles II. Gresham’s bust, which had been saved out of the conflagration, was placed in a niche of honor, and a cast brass grasshopper, the last of its numerous family, was raised to the top of the steeple, on which bad eminence it had to stand all weathers, until, relieved by another conflagration in 1838, it has been allowed to find a retreat on the eastern front of the present Exchange building.
Times have altered since the days of Old Gresham, the site of whose Exchange cost less than £4,000, while the present building comes to £150,000, exclusive of the cost of theground. In his time, grave and sober citizens had mustachios and imperials; and wild young fellows, bent upon mischief and dissipation, repaired to the taverns of the city. In our days everybody is smooth shaved, and there is a chapel in every corner. Formerly the merchants relied on their own understanding and the honesty of their high-born debtors; at present they have no confidence either in the former or the latter: and out of the fulness of their godly despair, they have engraved in front of their Exchange building the motto of the city—Domine dirige nos—Direct us, O Lord, and reveal unto us the time and the hour at which consols and shares should be bought and sold!
The Exchange, as we have said, is a splendid building; but professional architects will shrug their shoulders when they look at it in the detail. Why all those corners on the eastern side, and why those small narrow shops? It is wrong to condemn anybody or anything on mereprimâ facieevidence. The architect who designed the Exchange had similar though greater difficulties to contend with, than Paxton in the construction of the Exhibition Building in Hyde Park. Paxton’s great antagonist was Colonel Sibthorp, an honourable and gallant member of the House of Commons, who would not consent to sacrifice the trees which adorned the site of the building. “Make what fuss you like about your modern ideas of industry,” said the chivalric Don Quixote, “but you shall not touch the trees; they are worth all your industry, and all your foreign nicknacks, and free-trade and nonsense, and, indeed, anything that ever came from Manchester.” And what said Paxton? Why, he said, “Let the old trees stand, we will roof them over!” and he built his glass house one hundred feet higher in the middle, and thus made the transept. And there was room for everything and everybody—men and merchandize, stray children and lost petticoats, bad coffee, clever pickpockets from England, France, and Germany—and, sometimes, for the rain, too, when the weather was very bad, and we here sought shelter. But Colonel Sibthorp never crossed the threshold. Mr. Tite, the architect who made the plans for the New Exchange, had to contend with a legion of small conservative Sibthorpes, with a large number of shopkeepers who held places in the Old Exchange, and whoinsisted on having their shops in the new one. They could not be dispossessed; and in some manner or other it was necessary to sacrifice the beauty of the building to the claims of the vested interests. A great many people cannot understand why there is no covered hall for the accommodation of the merchants on Change, and why they must carry on their business either in the open court or in the arcade which surrounds it. The London climate is certainly not made for open-air amusements or occupations; and an Englishman, though with a threefold encasement of flannel, stands in great awe of draughts and rheumatism.
Nevertheless, the English merchant is condemned, in the fogs of winter and the rains of autumn, to brave the climate in an open yard, and to stake his health and his fortune on the chances of the season and the turn of the market. The reason is, that Englishmen are as much afraid of close rooms as of rheumatism and colds; and the Gresham Committee, which superintended the construction of the New Exchange, decided in favor of unlimited ventilation. Certain branches of business, which in many respects are much more extensive than the speculations in stocks and shares, have for a long time past been carried on in certain saloons. In the Exchange building itself there is a broad staircase, with crowds of busy people ascending and descending, and there is a door with large gold letters, “Lloyd’s Coffee House.” Let us ascend that staircase, and see what sort of a coffee-house this is. We pass through a large hall, from which doors open to several rooms; at each door stands a porter in scarlet livery. In the hall itself are several marble statues and a large marble tablet, which the merchants of London erected to theTimes, out of gratitude for the successful labours of that journal in unmasking a gigantic scheme of imposition and fraud, which threatened ruin to the whole trade of London. In the centre of the hall there is a large black board, on which are written the names and destinations of all the ships carrying mails which will sail from English ports on that and the following day. In the corner to the right there is a door with the inscription, “Captains’ Room.” No one is allowed to enter this room but the commanders of merchant vessels, or those who have business to transact with them. Next to it is the “CommercialRoom,” the meeting place of all the foreign merchants who come to London. We prefer entering a saloon on the other side of the hall, the doors of which are continually opening and shutting; it is crowded with the underwriters, that is to say, with capitalists, who do business in the assurance of vessels and their freights. The telegraphic messages of vessels arrived, sailed, stranded, or lost, are first brought into this room. Whoever enters by this door walks, in the first instance, to a large folio volume which lies on a desk of its own. It is Lloyd’s Journal, containing short entries of the latest events in English ports and the sea ports in every other part of the world. It tells the underwriters whether the vessels which they have insured have sailed, whether they have been spoken with, or have reached the port of their destination. Are they over-due?—run a-ground?—wrecked?—lost?
In this room there are always millions at stake. So firmly established is the reputation of this institution, that there is hardly ever a barque sailing from the ports of the Baltic, or the French, Spanish, or Indian seas which is not insured at Lloyd’s. Its branch establishments are in all the commercial ports of the world; but its head-office is in Cornhill, and in the rooms of the Exchange. Before we again descend the stairs, let us for one moment enter the reading-room. Perfect silence; tables, chairs, desks; readers here and there; men of all countries and of all nations; all round the walls, high desks with files of newspapers, whose shape and colour indicate that they have not been printed in Europe; they are, indeed, papers from the other side of the ocean—China, Barbary, Brazilian, Australian, Cape, and Honolulu papers—a collection unrivalled in extent, though less orderly than the collections of the Trieste Lloyd’s and the Hamburg Börsen-halle. It is here that the stranger from the German continent first receives an adequate idea of the enormous extent of commercial journalism. How far different is this reading-room from anything we see at home? How extensive must be the communications of a nation to which such journals are a necessity! How small does German commerce look in comparison with this! When we were at school, we were told that commerce was a means of communication between the variousparts of the world; that merchants are the messengers of progressive civilisation; and that to be a good merchant a man ought to be well read in geography, history, politics, and a great many other sciences. And then we saw our neighbour, the grocer and tallow-chandler, weighing and making up sugar in paper parcels all the year round. He knew nothing whatever of geography, history, or politics; but for all that, he was a wealthy man and a great person in the town, and everybody said he was the pattern of a good merchant. We could not understand this. At a later period, when we lived in a German metropolis, we saw other great merchants, bankers, and manufacturers. They did not make up paper parcels as the grocer and tallow-chandler did; they were dressed with a certain elegance; they read newspapers, and were fond of discussing the events of the day. But many of them had not the least idea of the politics which they discussed, and on which they founded their speculations; they had forgotten whatever they had learnt of geography, commercial topography, and history; and nevertheless they passed as capital men of business and accomplished merchants. Our romantic ideas of the requirements, the influences, and the radiations of the commerce of the world received again a rude shock; but now, suddenly, as accident leads us into Lloyd’s reading-room, the old impressions come back again. Thus, after all, the lessons of our school-days were not untrue! These, then, are the messengers of commerce which promote the exchange of civilisation between the continents and islands of the world. Neither sciences nor religions are powerful enough to found those organs. They owe their existence solely to commerce: possibly they may be means to an end; but it is also an undoubted fact that they exert a vast influence on the peaceful progress of civilisation.
Of the 50,000,000 lbs. of tea which are sold in the east of London, a handful has found its way to the West, to Guildford-street. It lies in the bottom of the venerable silver family tea-pot; and this tea-pot stands on the table of the parlour, to which the reader has been introduced on former occasions. The mistress of the house is passing in review her two lines of cups and saucers, headed by the milk-jug and sugar-basin.Mrs. Bella readsPunch, and smiles, not at the jokes, but because she is happy that English liberty admits of such jokes. The two younger daughters of the house occupy one chair between them, where they read “David Copperfield,” and two very small grandchildren of Sir John perform a polka in the further corner of the room. Sir John himself, as usual, is reading theTimes, and just now he wags his head very impressively, because he has been reading Gladstone’s letter about the affairs of Naples. Sir John, though perfectly convinced of Dr. Keif’s honesty and good faith, has never at any time given full credit to his statements when that gentleman presumed to hint that the administration of criminal justice in Italy is not altogether so unexceptionable as that at the Old Bailey. But now, since Mr. Gladstone corroborates Dr. Keif’s statement in that respect—Mr. Gladstone, who is a native of England, a very respectable man, and a conservative to his nethermost coating of flannel—now indeed Sir John is of opinion that the Neapolitans have, after all, good cause for complaint.
We have returned from our excursion into the city, and reenter the comfortable parlour, shake hands all round, and sit down by the tea-table. Sir John has smuggled theTimesunder his chair, lest the Doctor should at once have a weapon to attack him with. He asks where we have been; and when we tell him, he leans his head back, purses up his mouth, shuts his eyes, and says “Well?” This “Well” of Sir John’s, accompanied by that peculiar movement of the head, means, if translated into common language, “Well, what do you say to London? Mere nothing, isn’t it?—A business in Mincing-lane, a mere trifle?—merely a piece of Leipsic or Frankfort—never mind—patience—you’ll see what London is. You’ll open your eyes by and bye! Only think what enormous sums are turned over at Lloyd’s every year!”
Sir John is altogether victorious to-day. We cannot meet him on this ground. In vain does Dr. Keif attempt to demonstrate that there is no reason why Germany should not become as wealthy and mighty as England, if she had only a little more union, a little less government, an idea or so more of a fleet, fewer custom-houses, a little more money and less soldiery.Sir John admits every one of Dr. Keif’s propositions; but his 30,000,000 lbs. of coffee, and his 50,000,000 lbs. of tea, and his 20,000,000 lbs. of tobacco, are great facts, and stubborn facts, against which nothing can be said. Germany may be better off a couple of hundred years hence. Of course it may, there is no reason why it should not; but it is very badly off now, and that is a fact, too. And Sir John launches forth into a long and elaborate lecture on insurance companies, premiums, percentages, capital, bonuses, and dividends, intermixed with certain allusions to the impractical and improvident habits of the Germans, and the uselessness generally of all the German professors. The last word, pronounced with a certain emphasis, rouses Dr. Keif from the sleep into which Sir John’s statistical and economical expositions had lulled him.
“Long life to all our German professors!” said Dr. Keif, rubbing his eyes. “50,000,000 lbs. of tea in Mincing-lane, and not a drop in my cup. Where’s the greatness of England, Sir John?—Good night.”