THE THAMESAN UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELER IN LONDON
THE THAMES
THE THAMES
BY THEODORE DREISER
Author of “Sister Carrie,” “Jennie Gerhardt,” etc.
WITH PICTURES BY W. J. GLACKENS
AFTER a few days I went to London for the first time,—I do not count the night of my arrival, for I saw nothing but the railway terminus,—and, I confess, I was not greatly impressed. I could not help thinking on this first morning, as we passed from Paddington, via Hyde Park, Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, Piccadilly, and other streets to Regent Street and the neighborhood of the Carlton Hotel, that it was beautiful, spacious, cleanly, dignified, and well ordered, but not astonishingly imposing. Fortunately, it was a bright and comfortable morning, and the air was soft. There was a faint, bluish haze over the city, which I took to be smoke; and certainly it smelled as though it were smoky. I had a sense of great life, but not of crowded life, if I manage to make myself clear by that. It seemed to me at first blush as if the city might be so vast that no part was important. At every turn, X. was my ever-present monitor. We must have passed through a long stretch of Piccadilly, for X. pointed out a line of clubs, naming them the St. James’s Club, the Savile Club, the Lyceum Club, and then St. James’s Palace.
I was duly impressed. I was seeing things which, after all, I thought, did not depend so much upon their exterior beauty or vast presence as upon the distinction of their lineage and connections. They were beautiful in a low, dark way, and certainly they were tinged with an atmosphere of age and respectability. After all, since life is a figment of the brain, such built-up notions of things are in many cases really far more impressive than the things themselves. London is a fanfare of great names; it is a clatter of vast reputations; it is a swirl of memories and celebrated beauties and orders and distinctions. It is almost impossible any more to disassociate the real from the fictitious or, better, the spiritual. There is something here which is not of brick and stone at all, but which is purely a matter of thought. It is disembodied poetry, noble ideas, delicious memories of great things; and these, after all, are better than brick and stone. The city is low, generally not more than five stories high, often not more than two, but it is beautiful. And it alternates great spaces with narrow crevices in such a way as to give a splendid variety. You can have at once a sense of being very crowded and of being very free. I can understand now Browning’s desire to include “poor old Camberwell” with Italy in the confines of romance.
Drawn by W. J. Glackens“X. WAS MY EVER-PRESENT MONITOR”
Drawn by W. J. Glackens
“X. WAS MY EVER-PRESENT MONITOR”
The thing that struck me most was that the buildings were largely a golden yellow in color, quite as if they had been white, and time had stained them. Many other buildings looked as though they had been black originally and had been daubed white in spots. The truth is that it was quite the other way about. They had been snow-white and had been sooted by the smoke until they were now nearly coal-black. Only here and there had the wind and rain whipped bare white places which looked like scars or the drippings of lime. At first I thought, “How wretched!” Later, “This effect is charming.”
We are so used to the new and shiny and tall in America, particularly in our larger cities, that it is very hard at first to estimate a city of equal or greater rank, which is old and low and, to a certain extent, smoky. In places there was more beauty, more surety, more dignity, more space than most of our cities have to offer. The police had an air of dignity and intelligence such as I have never seen anywhere in America, and it was obvious at a glance. The streets were beautifully swept and clean, and I saw soldiers here and there in fine uniforms, standing outside palaces and walking in the public ways. That alone was sufficient to differentiate London from any American city. We rarely see our soldiers. They are too few. I think what I felt most of all was that I could not feel anything very definite about so great a city, and that there was no use trying.
The first thing that took my attention in the stores was the clerks, but I may say the stores and shops themselves, after New York, seemed small and old. New York is new; the space given to the more important shops is considerable. In London it struck me that the space was not much and that the woodwork and walls were dingy. One can tell by the feel of a place whether it is exceptional and profitable, and all of these were that; but they were dingy. The English clerk, too, had an air of civility, I had almost said servility, which was different. They looked to me likepersons born to a condition and a point of view, and I think they are. In America any clerk may subsequently be anything he chooses, ability guaranteed, but I’m not so sure that this is true in England. Anyhow, the American clerk always looks his possibilities, his problematic future; the English clerk looks as though he were to be one indefinitely.
X. and I were through with our first impressive round of sight-seeing by one o’clock, and he explained that we would go to a popular, hotel grill. All my life, certainly all my literary life, I had been hearing of this hotel, its distinction, its air; and now I said to myself, “Here I am, and I shall be able to judge it for myself.” We stopped at a barber’s for a few minutes to be shaved, and, to my astonishment, I saw a barber-shop which anywhere in America would be considered ridiculous. It was not a dirty barber-shop; you could see plainly that it was clean, well-conditioned, and probably enjoyed a profitable patronage: but for smallness, meanness, the age of the woodwork and the chairs, commend me to America of, say, 1865. It was the poorest little threadbare thing I have yet seen in that line. X. spoke of it as “his barber’s.”
The hotel, after its fashion,—the grill,—was another blow. I had fancied that I was going to see something on the order of the new, luxurious hotels in New York; certainly as resplendent, let us say, as our hotels of the lower first class. Not so. It can be compared, and I think fairly so, only to our hotels of the second or third class. There is the same air of age here that there is about our old, but very excellent, hotels in New York. The woodwork is plain, simple (I am speaking of the grill); the coat-room commonplace; the carpets are red and a little worn in spots. Several of the stair-steps squeaked as we went down. “Just like our old and popular hotels,” I said to myself over and over in descending; and the cuisine and the general appearance of the dining-room reminded me of the same type of room in these hotels.
While we were sipping coffee X. told me of a Mrs. W., a friend of his, whom I was to meet. She was, he said, a lion-hunter. She tried to make her somewhat interesting personality felt in so large a sea as London by taking up with promising talent before it was already a commonplace. I believe it was arranged over the telephone then that I should lunch there the following day at one, and be introduced to a certain Lady B., who was known as a patron of the arts, and to a certain Miss N., an interesting English type. I was pleased with the idea of going. I had never seen an English lady lion-hunter. I had never met English ladies of the types of Miss N. and Lady B. There might be others present, I was told. I was also informed that Mrs. W. was really not English, but French, though she and her husband, who was also French and a wealthy merchant, had resided in London so long that they were to all intents and purposes English, and besides they were in rather interesting standing socially.
I recall the next day, Sunday, with as much interest as any date, for on that day I encountered my first London drawing-room. When I reached the house of Mrs. W., which was in one of those lovely squares that constitute a striking feature of the West End, I was ushered up-stairs to the drawing-room, where I found my host, a rather practical, shrewd-looking Frenchman, and his less obviously French wife.
“Oh, Mr. Derrizer,” exclaimed my hostess on sight, as she came forward to greet me, a decidedly engaging woman of something over forty, with bronze hair and ruddy complexion. Her gown of green silk, cut after the latest mode, stamped her in my mind as of a romantic, artistic, eager disposition.
“You must come and tell us at once what you think of the picture we are discussing. It is down-stairs. Lady B. is there, and Miss N. We are trying to see if we can get a better light on it. Mr. X. has told me of you. You are from America. You must tell us how you like London, after you see the Degas.”
I think I liked this lady thoroughly at a glance and felt at home with her, for I know the type. It is the mobile, artistic type, with not much practical judgment in great matters, but bubbling with enthusiasm, temperament, life.
“Certainly; delighted. I know too little of London to talk of it. I shall be interested in your picture.”
Drawn by W. J. Glackens“‘I LIKE IT,’ HE PRONOUNCED. ‘THE NOTE IS SOMBER,BUT IT IS EXCELLENT WORK’”
Drawn by W. J. Glackens
“‘I LIKE IT,’ HE PRONOUNCED. ‘THE NOTE IS SOMBER,BUT IT IS EXCELLENT WORK’”
We had reached the main floor by this time.
“Mr. Derrizer, the Lady B.,” said Mrs. W., as she brought me forward to meet the ladies.
A modern suggestion of the fairJehanne, tall, astonishingly lissome, done, as to clothes, after the best manner of the romanticists, such was the Lady B. A more fascinating type, from the point of view of stagecraft, I never saw. And the languor and lofty elevation of her gestures and eyebrows defy description. She could say, “Oh, I am so weary of all this!” with a slight elevation of her eyebrows a hundred times more definitely and forcefully than if it had been shouted for her in stentorian tones through a megaphone.
She gave me the fingers of an archly poised hand.
“It is a pleasure.”
“And Miss N., Mr. Derrizer.” Again it was Mrs. W. who spoke.
“I am very pleased.”
A pink, slim lily of a woman of twenty-eight or thirty, seemingly very fragile, very Dresden-china-like as to color, a dream of light and Tyrian blue with some white interwoven, very keen as to eye, the perfection of hauteur as to manner, so well-bred that her voice seemed subtly suggestive of it all—that was Miss N.
To say that I was interested in this company is putting it mildly. The three women were distinct, individual, characteristic each in a different way. The Lady B. was all peace and repose, statuesque, weary, dark. Miss N. was like a ray of sunshine, pure morning light, delicate, gay, mobile. Mrs. W. was of thicker texture, redder blood, more human fire. She had a vigor past the comprehension of either, if not their subtlety of intellect, which latter is often much better.
“Ah, yes, Degas. You like Degas, no doubt,” interpolated Mrs. W., recallingus. “A lovely pigture, don’t you think? Such color, such depth, such sympathy of treatment! Oh!”
Mrs. W.’s hands were up in a pretty artistic gesture of delight.
“LADY B. WAS EXTENDING HER HAND IN AN ALMOST PATHETIC FAREWELL”
“LADY B. WAS EXTENDING HER HAND IN AN ALMOST PATHETIC FAREWELL”
“Oh, yes,” continued the Lady B., taking up the rapture, “it is saw human—saw perfect in its harmony! The hair it is divine! And the poor man! He lives alone now in Paris, quite dreary, not seeing any one. Aw, the tragedy of it! The tragedy of it!” Her delicately carved vanity-box of some odd workmanship—blue-and-white enamel, with points of coral in it—was lifted in one hand as expressing her great distress. I confess I was not much moved, and I looked quickly at Miss N. Her eyes, it seemed to me, held a subtle, apprehending twinkle.
“And you?” It was Mrs. W. addressing me.
“It is impressive, I think. I do not know as much of his work as I might, I am sorry to say.”
“Aw, he is marvelous, wonderful! I am transported by the beauty and the depth of it all.” It was Mrs. W. talking, and I could not help rejoicing in the quality of her accent. Nothing is so pleasing to me in a woman of culture and refinement as that additional tang of remoteness which a foreign accent lends. If only all the lovely, cultivated women of the world would speak with a foreign accent in their native tongue I should like it better. It lends a touch of piquancy not otherwise obtainable.
Our luncheon party was complete now, and we would probably have gone immediately into the dining-room except for another picture—by Picasso. Let me repeat here that before X. called my attention to Picasso’s cubical uncertainty in the London exhibition, I had never heard of him. Here in a dark corner of the room was the nude torso of a consumptive girl, her ribs showing, her cheeks colorless and sunken, her nose a wasted point, her eyes as hungry and sharp and lustrous as those of a bird. Her hair was really no hair—strings; and her thin, bony arms and shoulders were pathetic, decidedly morbid in their quality. To add to the morgue-like aspect of the composition, the picture was painted in a pale bluish-green key.
I wish to state here that now, after a little lapse of time, this conception, the thought and execution of it, is growing upon me. I am not sure that this work, which has rather haunted me, is not much more than a protest, the expression and realization of a great temperament; but at the moment it struck me as dreary, gruesome, decadent, and I said as much when asked for my impression.
“Gloomy, morbid,” Mrs. W. fired in her lovely accent, “what have they to do with art?”
“Luncheon is served, Madam.”
The double doors of the dining-room were flung open.
I found myself sitting between Mrs. W. and Miss N.
“Ah was so glad to hear you say you didn’t like it,” Miss N. applauded, her eyes sparkling, her lip moving with a delicate little smile. “You know, I abhor those things. Theyaredecadent, like the rest of France and England. We are going backward instead of forward, I am quite sure. We have not the force we once had. It is all a race after pleasure and living and an interest in subjects of that kind. I am sure it isn’t healthy, normal art. I am sure life is better and brighter than that.”
“I am inclined to think so at times myself,” I replied.
We talked further, and I learned to my surprise that she suspected England to be decadent as a whole, falling behind in brain, brawn, and spirit, and that she thought America was much better.
“Do you know,” she observed, “I really think it would be a very good thing for us if we were conquered by Germany.”
I had found here, I fancied, some one who was really thinking for herself and a very charming young lady into the bargain. She was quick, apprehensive, all for a heartier point of view. I am not sure now that she was not merely being nice to me, and that, anyhow, she is not all wrong, and that the heartier point of view is the courage which can front life unashamed, which sees the divinity of fact and of beauty in the utmost seeming tragedy. Picasso’s grim presentation of decay and degradation is beginning to teach me something—the marvelous perfection of the spirit which is concerned with neither perfection, nor decay, but with life. It haunts me.
The charming luncheon was quickly over, and I think I gathered a very clear impression of the status of my host and hostess from their surroundings. Mr. W. was evidently liberal in his understanding of what constitutes a satisfactory home. It was not exceptional in that it differed greatly from the prevailing standard of luxury. But assuredly it was all in sharp contrast to Picasso’s grim representation of life and Degas’s revolutionary opposition to conventional standards.
Another man now made his appearance—an artist. I shall not forget him soon, for you do not often meet people who have the courage to appear at Sunday afternoons in a shabby, workaday business suit, unpolished shoes, a green neckerchief in lieu of collar and tie, and cuffless sleeves. I admired the quality, the workmanship, of the silver-set scarab which held his green linen neckerchief together, but I was a little puzzled as to whether he was very poor and his presence insisted upon, or comfortably progressive and indifferent to conventional dress. His face and body were quite thin; his hands delicate. He had an apprehensive eye that rarely met one’s direct gaze.
“Do you think art really needs that?” Miss N. asked me. She was referring to the green linen neckerchief.
“I admire the courage. It is at least individual.”
“It is after George Bernard Shaw. It has been done before,” replied Miss N.
“Then it requires almost more courage,” I replied.
Here Mrs. W. moved the sad excerpt from the morgue to the center of the room that he of the green neckerchief might gaze at it.
“I like it,” he pronounced. “The note is somber, but it is excellent work.”
Drawn by W. J. Glackens“HOPED FOR THE DAY WHEN THE ISSUEMIGHT BE TRIED OUT PHYSICALLY”
Drawn by W. J. Glackens
“HOPED FOR THE DAY WHEN THE ISSUEMIGHT BE TRIED OUT PHYSICALLY”
Then he took his departure with interesting abruptness. Almost immediately the Lady B. was extending her hand in an almost pathetic farewell. Her voice was lofty, sad, sustained. I wish I could describe it. There was just a suggestion ofLady Macbethin the sleep-walking scene. As she made her slow, graceful exit, I wanted to applaud loudly.
Mrs. W. turned to me as the nearest source of interest, and I realized with horror that she was going to fling her Picasso at my head again, and with as much haste as was decent I, too, took my leave.
Another evening I went with an American friend to call on two professional critics, one working in the field of literature, the other in art exclusively. I mention these two men and their labors because they were very interesting to me, representing, as they did, two fields of artistic livelihood in London, and both making moderate incomes, not large, but sufficient to live on in a simple way. They were men of mettle, as I discovered, urgent, thinking types of mind, quarreling to a certain extent with life and fate, and doing their best to read this very curious riddle of existence.
These two men lived in charming, though small, quarters not far from fashionable London, on the fringe of ultra-respectability, if not of it. Mr. F. was a conservative man, thirty-two or thirty-three years of age, pale, slender, remote, artistic. Mr. Lewis was in character not unlike Mr. F., I should have said, thoughhe was the older man, artistic, remote, ostensibly cultivated, living and doing all the refined things on principle more than anything else.
It amuses me now when I think of it, for of course neither of these gentlemen cared for me in the least, beyond my momentary vogue or repute in their small world. I must have appeared somewhat boorish and supercilious, but they were exceedingly pleasant. How did I like London? What did I think of the English? How did London contrast with New York? What had I seen?
My head was ringing with what I had already seen. London was going around in a ring for me. Its vast reaches were ever in my mind. I stated as succinctly as I could that I was puzzled in my mind as to what I did think, as I am generally by this phantasmagoria called life, while Mr. Lewis served an opening glass of port, and I toasted my feet before a delicious grate-fire. Already, as I have indicated in a way, I had decided that England was deficient in the vitality which America now possesses, certainly deficient in the raw creative imagination which is producing many new things in America, but far superior in what, for want of a better phrase, I must call social organization as it relates to social and commercial interchange generally. Something has developed in the English social consciousness a sense of responsibility. I really think that the English climate has had a great deal to do with this. It is so uniformly damp and cold and raw that it has produced a sober-minded race. When subsequently I encountered the climates of Paris, Rome, and the Riviera, I realized clearly how impossible it would be to produce the English temperament there. One can see the dark, moody, passionate temperament of the Italian evolving to perfection under his brilliant skies. The wine-like atmosphere of Paris speaks for itself. London is what it is, and the Englishmen likewise, because of the climate in which they have been reared.
I said as much without much protest, but when I ventured that the English might possibly be falling behind in the world’s race, and that other nations, such as the Germans and the Americans, might rapidly be displacing them, I evoked a storm of opposition. The sedate Mr. F. rose to this argument. It began at the dinner-table and was continued in the general living-room later. He sneered at the suggestion that the Germans could possibly conquer or displace England, and hoped for the day when the issue might be tried out physically. Mr. Lewis laughed as he spoke of the long way America had to go before it could achieve any social importance even within itself. It was a thrashing whirlpool of foreign elements. He had recently been to the United States, and in one of the British journals then on the stands was a long estimate by him of America’s weaknesses and potentialities. He poked fun at the careless, insulting manners of the people, their love of show, their love of praise. No Englishman, having tasted the comforts of civilized life in England, could ever live happily in America. There was no such thing as a serving class. He objected to American business methods as he had encountered them, and I could see that he really disliked America. To a certain extent he disliked me for being an American, and possibly resented my literary actuality for obtruding itself upon England. I enjoyed these two men as exceedingly able combatants—men against whose wits I could sharpen my own.
I mention them because, in a measure, they suggested the literary and artistic atmosphere of London. They went about, I was informed, to one London drawing-room and another. Mr. F. was considered an excellent judge of art; Mr. Lewis an important critic. Their mode of living constituted a touch of the better Grub Street of to-day. It was not bad.
“London sings in my ears.” I remember writing this somewhere about the fourth or fifth day of my stay. It was delicious, the sense of novelty and wonder it gave me. I am one of those who have been raised on Dickens and Thackeray and Lamb, but I must confess I found little to corroborate the world of vague impressions I had formed. Novels are a mere expression of temperament, anyhow.
New York and America are both so new, so lustful of change. Here, in these streets, when you walk out of a morning or an evening, you feel a pleasing stability. London is not going to change under your very eyes. You are not going to turn yourback to find, on looking again, a whole sky-line effaced. The city is restful, naïve, in a way tender and sweet, like an old song. London is more fatalistic, and therefore less hopeful than New York.
Drawn by W. J. GlackensPICCADILLY CIRCUS
Drawn by W. J. Glackens
PICCADILLY CIRCUS
The first thing that impressed me was the grayish tinge of smoke that was over everything, a faint haze; and the next that, as a city, street for street and square for square, it was not so strident as New York, not nearly so harsh. The traffic was less noisy, the people were more thoughtful and considerate, the so-called rush, which characterizes New York, was less foolish. There is something rowdyish and ill-mannered about the street life of New York. This is not true of London. It struck me as simple, sedate, thoughtful, and I could only conclude that it sprang from a less-stirring atmosphere of opportunity. I fancy it is harder to get along in London. People do not change from one thing to another so much. The world there is more fixed in a pathetic routine, and people are more aware of their so-called “betters.” I hope not, but I felt it to be true.
I do not believe that it is given to anywriter wholly to suggest a city. The mind is like a voracious fish: it would like to eat up all the experiences and characteristics of a city or a nation, but this, fortunately, is not possible. My own mind was busy pounding at the gates of fact, but during all the while I was there I got only a little way. I remember being struck with the nature of St. James’s Park, which was near my hotel, the great column to the Duke of Marlborough, at the end of the street, the whirl of life in Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, which were both very near. An office I visited in a narrow street interested me, and the storm of cabs which whirled by all the corners of this region. It was described to me as the center of London, and I am quite sure it was, for clubs, theaters, hotels, smart shops, and the like were all here. The heavy trading section was farther east, along the banks of the Thames, and between that and Regent Street, where my little hotel was located, lay the financial section, sprawling about St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Bank of England. One could go out of this great central world easily enough, but it was only, apparently, to get into minor centers. It was all decidedly pleasing, because it was new and strange, and because there was a world of civility prevailing which does not exist in America.
The amazing metropolitan atmosphere in which I found myself satisfied me completely for the time being. Life here was so complex and so extended that during days and days that involved visits—breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, suppers—with one personage and another, political, social, artistic, I was still busy snatching glimpses of the great lake of life that spread on every hand. In so far as I could judge on so short a notice, London seemed to me to represent a mood—a uniform, aware, conservative state of being, neither brilliant nor gay anywhere, though interesting always. About Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Charing Cross, and the Strand I suppose the average Londoner would insist that London is very gay; but I could not see it. Certainly it was not gay as similar sections in New York are gay. It is not in the Londoner himself to be so. He is solid, hard, phlegmatic, a little dreary, like a certain type of rain-bird or Northern loon, content to make the best of a rather dreary situation. On the other hand, I should not say that the city is depressing,—far from it,—though there are many who have told me they found it so. You have to represent a certain state of mind to be a Londoner, or a Britisher, even, a true one, and, on the whole, I think it is a more pleasant attitude than one finds in America, though not so brilliant. Creature comforts run high with this type of mind, and, after that, a certain happy acceptance of the commonplace. Nothing less than that could possibly explain the mile on mile of drab houses, of streets all alike, of doorways all alike, of chimneys all alike. That is what you feel all over England—a drab acceptance of the commonplace; and yet, when all is said and done, it works out into something so charming in its commonplaceness that it is almost irresistible. All the while I was in London I was never tired of looking at these dreary streets and congratulating myself that they composed so well. I do not wonder that Whistler found much to admire at Chelsea or that Turner could paint Thames water-scenes. I could, too, if I were an artist. As it was, I could see Goldsmith and Lamb and Gray and Dickens and much of Shakspere in all that I saw here. It must be the genius of the English people to be homy and simple, and yet charmingly idyllic in their very lack of imagination. It must be so.
One particular afternoon along the Thames it was raining. I saw the river in varying moods all the way from Blackfriars Bridge to Chelsea, and never once was it anything more than black-gray, varying at times from a pale or almost sunlit yellow to a solid leaden-black hue. It looked at times as though something remarkable were about to happen, so weirdly greenish yellow was the sky above the water; and the tall chimneys of Lambeth over the way, appearing and disappearing in the mist, were irresistible. There is a certain kind of barge which plies up and down the Thames with a collapsible mast and sail which looks for all the world like something off the Nile. They harmonize with the smoke and the gray, lowery skies. I was never weary of looking at them in the changing light and mist and rain. Gulls skimmed over the water here very freely all the way from Blackfriars to Battersea, and along the Embankment they sat in scores, solemnly cogitating the state of the weather, perhaps. I was delighted with the picture they made in places, greedy, wide-winged, artistic things.
I had a novel experience with these same gulls one Sunday afternoon, which I may as well relate here. I had been out all morning reconnoitering strange sections of London, and arrived near Blackfriars Bridge about one o’clock. I was attracted by what seemed to me at first glance as thousands of gulls, lovely clouds of them, swirling about the heads of several different men at various points along the wall. It was too beautiful to miss. It reminded me of the gulls about the steamer at Fishguard. I drew near. The first man I saw was feeding them minnows out of a small box he had purchased for a penny, throwing the tiny fish aloft in the air and letting the gulls dive for them. They ate from his hand, circled above and about his head, walked on the wall before him, their jade bills and salmon-pink feet showing delightfully.
I was delighted, and hurried to the second. It was the same. I found the vender of small minnows near by, a man who sold them for this purpose, and purchased a few boxes. Instantly I became the center of another swirling cloud, wheeling and squeaking in hungry anticipation. It was a great sight. Finally I threw out the last minnows, tossing them all high in the air, and seeing not one escape, while I meditated on the speed of these birds, which, while scarcely moving a wing, rise and fall with incredible swiftness. It is a matter of gliding up and down with them. I left, my head full of birds, the Thames forever fixed in mind.
It seems odd to make separate comment on something so thoroughly involved with everything else in a trip of this kind as the streets of London; but they contrasted so strangely with those of other cities I have seen that I am forced to comment on them. For one thing, they are seldom straight for any distance, and they change their names as frequently and as unexpectedly as a thief. Bond Street speedily becomes Old Bond Street or New Bond Street, according to the direction in which you are going, and I never could see why the Strand should turn into Fleet Street as it went along, and then into Ludgate Hill, and then into Cannon Street. Neither could I understand why Whitechapel Road should change to Mile End Road; but that is neither here nor there. The thing that interested me about London streets first was that there were no high buildings, nothing, as a rule, over four or five stories, though now and then you actually find an eight- or nine-story building. There are some near Victoria Street in the vicinity of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster. For another thing, the vast majority of these buildings are comparatively old, not new, like those in New York or Rome or Berlin or Paris or Milan. London is older in its seeming than almost any of these other cities, and yet this may be due to the fact that it is smokier than any of the others. I saw it always in gray weather or through, at best, a sunlit golden haze, when it looked more like burnished brass than anything else. Then it was lovely. The buildings in almost all cases were of a vintage which has passed in America. Outside of some of the old palaces and castles in London,—St. James’s, Buckingham, the Tower, Windsor,—there are no fine buildings. The Houses of Parliament and the cathedrals are excluded, of course.
One evening I went with a friend of mine to visit the House of Parliament, that noble pile of buildings on the banks of the Thames. For days I had been skirting about them, interested in other things. The clock-tower, with its great round clock-face,—twenty-three feet in diameter, some one told me,—had been staring me in the face over a stretch of park space and intervening buildings on such evenings as Parliament was in session, and I frequently debated with myself whether I should trouble to go or not, even if some one invited me. I grow so weary of standard, completed things at times! However, I did go. It came about through the Hon. T. P. O’Connor, M.P., an old admirer of “Sister Carrie,” who, hearing that I was in London, invited me. He had just finished reading “Jennie Gerhardt” the night I met him, and I shall never forget the kindly glow of his face as, on meeting me in the dining-room of the House of Commons, he exclaimed:
“Ah, the biographer of that poor girl! And how charming she was, too! Ah me! Ah me!”
I can hear the soft brogue in his voice yet, and see the gay romance of his Irish eye. Are not the Irish all inborn cavaliers, anyhow?
I had been out in the East End all day, speculating on that shabby mass that have nothing, know nothing, dream nothing; or do they? I could have cried as dark fell, and I returned through long, humble streets alive with a home-hurrying mass of people—clouds of people not knowing whence they came or why. London always struck me as so vast and so pathetic, and now I was to return and go to dine where the laws are made for all England.
I was escorted by another friend, a Mr. M., since dead, who was, when I reached the hotel, quite disturbed lest we be late. I like the man who takes society and social forms seriously, though I would not be that man for all the world. M. was one such. He was, if you please, a stickler for law and order. The Houses of Parliament and the repute of the Hon. T. P. O’Connor meant much to him. I can see O’Connor’s friendly, comprehensive eye understanding it all—understanding in his deep, literary way why it should be so.
As I hurried through Westminster Hall, the great general entrance, once itself the ancient Parliament of England, the scene of the deposition of Edward II, of the condemnation of Charles I, of the trial of Warren Hastings, and the poling of the exhumed head of Cromwell, I was thinking, thinking, thinking. What is a place like this, anyhow, but a fanfare of names? If you know history, the long, strange tangle of steps or actions by which life ambles crab-wise from nothing to nothing, you know that it is little more than this. The present places are the thing, the present forms, salaries, benefices, and that dream of the mind which makes it all into something. As I walked through into the Central Hall, where we had to wait until T. P. was found, I studied the high, groined arches, the Gothic walls, the graven figures of the general anteroom. It was all rich, gilded, dark, lovely. And about me was a room full of men all titillating with a sense of their own importance—commoners, lords possibly, call-boys, ushers, and here and there persons crying of “Division! Division!” while a bell somewhere clanged raucously.
“There’s a vote on,” observed Mr. M. “Perhaps they won’t find him right away. Never mind; he’ll come back.”
He did return finally, with, after his first greetings, a “Well, now we’ll ate, drink, and be merry,” and then we went in.
At table, being an old member of Parliament, he explained many things swiftly and interestingly, how the buildings were arranged, the number of members, the procedure, and the like. He was, he told me, a member from Liverpool, which, by the way, returns some Irish members, which struck me as rather strange for an English city.
“Not at all, not at all. The English like the Irish—at times,” he added softly.
“I have just been out in your East End,” I said, “trying to find out how tragic London is, and I think my mood has made me a little color-blind. It’s rather a dreary world, I should say, and I often wonder whether law-making ever helps these people.”
He smiled that genial, equivocal, sophisticated smile of the Irish that always bespeaks the bland acceptance of things as they are, and tries to make the best of a bad mess.
“Yes, it’s bad,”—and nothing could possibly suggest the aroma of a brogue that went with this,—“but it’s no worse than some of your American cities—Lawrence, Lowell, Fall River.” (Trust the Irish to hand you an intellectual “Your another!”) “Conditions in Pittsburgh are as bad as anywhere, I think; but it’s true the East End is pretty bad. You want to remember that it’s typical London winter weather we’re having, and London smoke makes those gray buildings look rather forlorn, it’s true. But there’s some comfort there, as there is everywhere. My old Irish father was one for thinking that we all have our rewards here or hereafter. Perhaps theirs is to be hereafter.” And he rolled his eyes humorously and sanctimoniously heavenward.
An able man this, full, as I knew, from reading his weekly and his books, of a deep, kindly understanding of life, but one who, despite his knowledge of the tragedies of existence, refused to be cast down.
He was going up the Nile shortly in a house-boat with a party of wealthy friends, and he told me that Lloyd George, the champion of the poor, was just making offfor a winter outing on the Riviera, but that I might, if I would come some morning, have breakfast with him. He was sure that the great commoner would be glad to see me. He wanted me to call at his rooms, his London official offices, as it were, at 5 Morpeth Mansions, and have a pleasant talk with him, which latterly I did. He wanted me to meet a Madame N., a French litterateur of over fifty, then staying at the same country place with him near Maidenhead, and hear her very tragic history. He brought an ache to my heart by recounting this same,—a story to which only a Flaubert or a De Maupassant could do justice. It is much too long and too Gallic to relate here.
While he was in the midst of it, the call of “Division!” sounded once more through the halls, and he ran to take his place with his fellow-parliamentarians on some question of presumably vital importance. I can see him bustling away in his long frock-coat, his napkin in his hand, ready to be counted yea or nay, as the case might be.
Afterward, when he had outlined for me a tour in Ireland which I must sometime take, he took us up into the members’ gallery of the Commons in order to see how wonderful it was, and we sat as solemn as owls, contemplating the rather interesting scene below. I cannot say that I was seriously impressed. The Hall of Commons, I thought, was small and stuffy, not so large as the House of Representatives at Washington, by any means.
In delicious Irish whispers he explained a little concerning the arrangement of the place. The seat of the speaker was at the north end of the chamber on a straight line with the sacred wool sack of the House of Lords in another part of the building, however important that may be. If I would look under the rather shadowy canopy at the north end of this extremely square chamber, I would see him, “smothering under an immense white wig,” he explained. In front of the canopy was a table, the speaker’s table, with presumably the speaker’s official mace lying upon it. To the right of the speaker were the recognized seats of the government party, the ministers occupying the front bench. And then he pointed out to me Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, and Mr. Winston Churchill, all men creating a great stir at the time. They were whispering and smiling in genial concert, while opposite them, on the left hand of the speaker, where the opposition was gathered, some droning M.P. from the North, I understood, a noble lord who chose to sit in the Commons rather than in the House of Lords, was delivering one of those typically intellectual commentaries which the English are fond of delivering. I could not see him from where I sat, but I could see him just the same. I knew that he was standing very straight, in the most suitable clothes for the occasion, his linen immaculate, one hand poised gracefully, ready to emphasize some rather obscure point, while he stated in the best English why this and this must be done. Every now and then, at a suitable point in his argument, some friendly and equally intelligent member would give voice to a soothing “Hyah! hyah!” or “Rathah!” Of the four hundred and seventy-six provided seats, I fancy something like over four hundred were vacant, their occupants being out in the dining-rooms, or off in those adjoining chambers where parliamentarians confer during hours that are not pressing, and where they are sought at the call for a division. I do not presume, however, that they were all in any so safe or sane places. I mock-reproachfully asked Mr. O’Connor why he was not in his seat, and he said in good Irish:
“Me boy, there are thricks in every thrade. I’ll be there whin me vote is wanted.”
We came away finally through long, floreated passages and towering rooms, where I paused to admire the intricate woodwork, the splendid gilding, and the tier upon tier of carven kings and queens in their respective niches. There was for me a flavor of great romance over it all. I could not help thinking that, pointless as it all might be, such joys and glories as we have are thus compounded. Out of the dull blatherings of half-articulate members, the maunderings of dreamers and schemers, come such laws and such policies as best express the moods of the time—of the British or any other empire. I have no great faith in laws, anyhow. They are ill-fitting garments at best, traps and mental catch-poles for the unwary only. But I thought as I came out into the swirling city again,“It is a strange world. These clock-towers and halls will sometime fall into decay. The dome of our own capitol will be rent and broken, and through its ragged interstices will fall the pallor of the moon.” But life does not depend upon parliaments or men. It can get along with windless spaces and such forms and spirits as have not yet been dreamed of in the mind of man.
The Thames from Blackfriars Bridge to the Tower Bridge, along Upper and Lower Thames Street, which is on the right bank of the river going up-stream, was my first excursion, though, in making it, I saw little of the river. It is a street that runs parallel with it, and is intersected every fifty or a hundred feet by narrow lanes which lead down to docks at the water’s-edge. The Thames is a murky little stream above London Bridge, compared with such vast bodies as the Hudson and the Mississippi, but utterly delightful. I saw it on several occasions before and after, once in a driving rain off London Bridge, where twenty thousand vehicles were passing in the hour, it was said; once afterward at night when the boats below were faint, wind-driven lights and the crowd on the bridge black shadows. Once I walked along the Embankment from Blackfriars Bridge to Battersea Bridge and beyond to the giant plant of the General Electric Company, a very charming section of London.
But I was never more impressed than I was this day walking from Cleopatra’s Needle to the Tower. The section lying between Blackfriars Bridge and Tower Bridge is very interesting from a human, to say nothing of a river, point of view; I question whether from some points of view it is not the most interesting in London, though it gives only occasional glimpses of the river. London is curious. It is very modern in spots. It is too much like New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Boston; but here between Blackfriars Bridge and the Tower, along Upper and Lower Thomas Street, I found something that delighted me. It smacked of Dickens, of Charles II, of Old England, and of a great many forgotten, far-off things which I felt, but could not readily call to mind. It was delicious, this narrow, winding street, with high walls,—high because the street was so narrow,—and alive with people bobbing along under umbrellas or walking stodgily in the rain. Lights were burning in all the stores and warehouses, dark recesses running back to the restless tide of the Thames, and they were full of an industrious commercial life.
It was interesting to me to think that I was in the center of so much that was old, but for the exact details I confess I cared little. Here the Thames was especially delightful. It presented such odd vistas. I watched the tumbling tide of water, whipped by gusty wind where moderate-sized tugs and tows were going by in the mist and rain. It was delicious, artistic, far more significant than quiescence and sunlight could have made it. I took note of the houses, the doorways, the quaint, winding passages, but for significance and charm they did not compare with the nebulous, indescribable mass of working boys and girls and men and women which moved before my gaze. The mouths of many of them were weak, their noses snub, their eyes squint, their chins undershot, their ears stub, their chests flat. Most of them had a waxy, meaty look, but for interest they were incomparable. American working crowds may be much more chipper, but not more interesting. I could not weary of looking at them.
I followed the Thames in the rain to the giant plant of the General Electric Company, and thought of Sir Thomas More, and Henry VIII, who married Anne Boleyn at the Old Church near Battersea Bridge, and wondered what they would think of this modern power-house. What a change from Henry VIII and Sir Thomas More to vast, whirling electric dynamos and a London subway system! A little below this, coming once more into a dreary neighborhood of the cheapest houses,—mud-colored brick,—I turned into a street called Lots Road, drab and gray, and, weary of rain and gloom, took a bus to my hotel. What I know of the Thames I have described. It is beautiful.