Chapter 2

He treats you to his opinion of you in choice Billingsgate.

“But, sadly enough,” went on the Englishman, “it is a question that it is useless for me to answer you at present. An American must be in London for four years before he can believe the true solution of the cab-fee problem. The correct procedure is to give the cabby nothing beyond his legal fare. If you give him tuppence, he looks at you reproachfully; if you give him fourpence, he scowls at you fearfully; if you give him sixpence, he treats you to his verbal opinion of you in choice Billingsgate. Whereas, if you give him no gratuity, he assumes that you have lived here for four years, and lifts his hat to you with the greatest respect.”

“Why can’t I follow your rule at once?” I demanded.

“I do not know,” returned Mr. Travers. “Nobody knows; but the fact remains that you cannot. You think you believe the theory now, because you hear me set it forth with an air of authority; but it will take you at least four years to attain a true working knowledge of it. Moreover, you will ask every Englishman you meet regarding cab-fees, and so conflicting will be their advices that you will change your tactics with every hansom you ride in.”

“Then,” said I, with an air of independence, “I shall keep out of hansom-cabs, until I am fully determined what course to pursue in this regard.”

“But you can’t, my dear lady,” continued my instructor. “To be in London is to be in a hansom. They are inevitable.”

“Why not omnibuses?” I asked, eager for general information. “I have long wanted to ride in or on a London ’bus.”

Mr. Travers’s eyes twinkled.

“You have an American joke,” he said, “which cautions people against going into the water before they learn how to swim. I will give you an infallible rule for ’buses: never get on a London ’bus until you have learned to get on and off of them while they are in motion.”

“What waggery,” observed Mrs. Travers.

“What waggery!” observed Mrs. Travers, in a calm, unamused tone, and I suddenly realized that I was in the midst of an English sense of humor.

The dinner progressed methodically through a series of specified courses, and when we had reached the vegetable marrow I had ceased to regard the green distance outside and gave my full attention to my lucky find of the Real Thing in English people.

Mr. Travers’s advice was always excellent and practical, though usually hidden in a jest of somewhat heavypersiflage.

We discussed the English tendency to elide letters or syllables from their proper names, falling back on the time-worn example of the American who complained that Englishmen spell a name B-e-a-u-c-h-a-m-p and pronounce itChumley.

“But it’s better for an American,” said Mr. Travers, “to pronounce a name as it is spelled than to elide at his own sweet will. I met a Chicagoan last summer, who said he intended to run out to Win’c’s’le.”

“Whatdidhe mean?” I asked, in my ignorance.

“Windsor Castle,” replied Mr. Travers, gravely.

The mention of Chicago made me remember my companion in the parlor car, and I spoke of her as one type of the American tourist.

“I saw her,” said Mrs. Travers, with that inimitable air of separateness that belongs to the true Londoner; “she is not interesting. Merely a smart party who wears a hat.”

As this so competently described the lady from Chicago, I began to suspect, what I later came thoroughly to realize, that the English are wonderfully adept in the making of picturesque phrases.

“Merely a smart party who wears a hat.”

During our animated conversation, Miss Travers had said almost nothing.

I had read of the mental blankness of the British Young Person, and was not altogether surprised at this.

But the girl was a delight to look at. By no means of the pink-cheeked, red-lipped variety immortalized in English novels, she was of a delicate build, with a face of transparent whiteness. Her soft light brown hair was carelessly arranged, and her violet eyes would have been pathetic but for a flashing, merry twinkle when she occasionally raised their heavy, creamy lids.

Remembering Mrs. Travers’s aptness in coining phrases of description, I tried to put Rosalind Travers into a few words, but was obliged to borrow from the Master-Coiner, and I called her “The Person of Moonshine.”

By the time I was having my first interview with real Cheddar cheese, the Traverses were inviting me to visit them, and I was gladly accepting their delightfully hospitable and unmistakably sincere invitation.

Scrupulously careful to bid good-bye to my Chicago friend before we reached London, alone I stepped from the train at Euston Station with a feeling of infinite anticipation.

Owing probably to an over-excited imagination, the mere physical atmosphere of the city impressed me as something quite different from any city I had ever seen. I felt as if I had at last come into my own, and had far more the attitude of a returning wanderer than a visiting stranger.

The hansom-cabs did not appear any different from the New York vehicles of the same name, but I climbed into one without that vague wonder as to whether it wouldn’t be cheaper to buy the outfit than to pay my fare.

My destination was a club in Piccadilly—a woman’s club, which I had joined for the sole purpose of using its house as an abiding-place.

The cab-driver was cordial, even solicitous about my comfort, but finally myself and my hand-luggage were carefully stowed away, the glass was put down, and we started.

It was after dark, and it was raining, two conditions which might appall an unescorted woman in a strange city. The rain was of that ridiculous English sort, where the drops do not fall, but play around in the air, now and then whisking into the faces of passers-by, but never spoiling their clothes. It was enough, though, to wet the asphalt, and when we swung into Piccadilly, and the flashing lights from everywhere dived down into the street, and rippled themselves across the wet blackness of the pavement, I suddenly realized that I was driving over one of the most beautiful things in the world.

I looked out through my hansom-glass darkly, at London. Unknown, mysterious, silent, but enticing with its twinkling eyes, it was like a masked beauty at a ball. Yet, beneath that mocking, elusive witchery, I was conscious of an implied promise, that my London would yet unmask, and I should know and love her face to face.

I suppose that the earliest thing that happens anywhere is the London dawn. In all my life, my waking hours had never reached three o’clockA.M., from either direction, and when, on the first morning after my arrival in London, I was awakened at that hour by a gently intrusive daybreak, I felt as if I had received a personal and intentional affront.

I rose, and stalked to the window, with an air of haughty reproach, intending to close the shutters tightly until a more seemly hour.

As there are only six window-shutters in the whole city of London, it is not surprising that none of these was attached to my window; but it really didn’t matter, for after reaching the window that morning I never thought of a shutter again until I returned to America.

My window, which was a large French affair in three parts, looked out upon Piccadilly. It opened on a small stone-railed balcony, and as I looked out three pigeons looked in. They were of the fat and pompous kind and they strutted along the railing, with a frankly sociable air, cocking their heads pertly in an endeavor to draw my attention to the glistening iridescence of their neck-feathers.

I liked the pigeons, and I told them so, but even better I liked the sight across the street.

Green Park at dawn is as solemnly impressive as the interior of Westminster Abbey. The trees sway and quiver, giving an occasional glimpse of the Clock Tower of Parliament House. From the throats of myriad birds comes a sound as of one blended twitter, and a strange, unreal radiance pervades the whole scene. With the rapidly increasing daylight definiteness ensues, and railings, benches, roadway, and other details of the Park add strength to the picture.

Having seen three o’clock in Green Park, I promptly forgot my errand with the shutters, and, hastily donning conventional morning costume, I prepared to watch four o’clock, and five, and six appear from the same direction.

They were occupying the only earthly home they possessed.

As outlines became clearer I noticed a park bench directly opposite my window, on which sat four old women. All were garbed in black, and all were sleeping soundly. I was then unaware of the large proportion of the elderly feminine in London’s seamy side of population, and so casual was the aspect of the quartet that it did not occur to me they were occupying the only earthly home they possessed.

They seemed to me more like duplicate Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshines, who had paused for a time in Green Park instead of in mid-ocean.

But after I had seen the same women there at three o’clock on a dozen consecutive mornings I began to realize that they were part of the landscape.

Nor was I unduly sorry for them. They sat on that bench with the same air of voluntary appropriation that marked the birds in the trees, or the pigeons on the railing. And as the days went on I became accustomed to seeing them there, and ceased to feel any inclination to go out and try to persuade them to enter an old ladies’ home.

At about seven o’clock the omnibuses began to ply. I had never known before what was indicated by the verbto ply. But I saw at once that it is the only word that properly expresses the peculiar gait of an omnibus, which is a cross between a rolling lurch and a lumbering wobble. Fascination is a mild term for the effect these things had on me.

One omnibus might not so enthrall me. I don’t know; I have never seen one omnibus alone. But the procession of them along Piccadilly is the one thing on earth of which I cannot conceive myself becoming tired.

Their color, form, motion, and sound all partake of the primeval, and their continuity of effect is eternal.

My Baedeker tells me that the first omnibuses plying in London were “much heavier and clumsier than those now in use.” But of course this is a mistake, for they couldn’t have been.

I have heard that tucked away among the gay-colored advertisements that are patchworked all over these moving Mammoth Caves are small and neatly-lettered signs designating destinations. I do not know this. I have never been able to find them. But it doesn’t matter. To get to Hampstead Heath, you take a Bovril; to go to the City, take Carter’s Ink; and to get anywhere in a hurry, jump on a Horlick’s Malted Milk. There is also a graceful serpentine legend lettered down the back of each ’bus, but as this usually says “Liverpool Street,” I think it can’t mean much.

Personally, I never patronize one of the things. They are too uncanny for me, and their ways are more devious than those of our Seventeenth Street horse-cars.

Besides, I always feared that, if I got in or on one, I couldn’t see the rest of them as a whole. And it is the unbroken continuity that, after the coloring, is their greatest charm. I have spent many hours watching the Piccadilly procession of them, “like a wounded snake drag its slow length along,” and look forward to many hours more of the same delight. But the dawn, the daybreak, and the early morning slipped away, and all too soon my first day in London had begun.

My mail brought me difficulties of all sorts. There were invitations from people, whom well-meaning mutual friends had advised of my arrival. There were offers from friends or would-be friends to escort me about on shopping or sight-seeing tours. There were cards for functions of more or less formality, and there were circulars from tradesmen and professional people.

With a Gordian-knot-cutting impulse, I tossed the whole collection into my desk, and started out alone for a morning walk.

Tossed the whole collection into my desk.

Nor shall I ever forget that walk. Not only because it was a “first impression,” but because it was the most beautiful piece of pedestrianism that ever fell to my lot.

My clubhouse home was almost at the corner of Hamilton Place, and as I stepped from its portal out into Piccadilly I seemed to breathe the quintessence of London, past, present, and to come.

Meteorologically speaking, the atmosphere was perfect. The reputation for fogginess, that London has somehow acquired, is a base libel. Its air is marked by a dazzling clearness of haze that, more than anything else, “life’s leaden metal into gold transmutes.”

Thus exhilarated at the start, I began my stroll down Piccadilly, and at every step I added to my glowing sense of satisfied well-being. I turned north into Berkeley Street, and thus started on my first sight-seeing tour. And was it not well that I was by myself?

For the most kind and well-meaning cicerone would probably have said,

“Do you not want to see the house where Carlyle died?”

And how embarrassed would I have been to be obliged to make reply:

“No, not especially. But I do want to see where Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square.”

Nor would my guide have been able to point out that perhaps mythical residence. But I had no trouble in finding it. Unerring instinct guided me along Berkeley Square, till I reached what I felt sure was the very house, and since I was satisfied, what mattered it to any one else?

This being accomplished, I next proceeded in a desultory and inconsequent fashion to explore Mayfair.

Aided, like John Gay, by the goddess Trivia, I knew I could

securely strayWhere winding alleys lead the doubtful way;The silent court and opening square explore,And long perplexing lanes untrod before.

securely stray

Where winding alleys lead the doubtful way;

The silent court and opening square explore,

And long perplexing lanes untrod before.

And as I trod, I suddenly found myself in Curzon Street. This was a pleasant sensation, for did I not well know the name of Curzon Street from all the English novels I had ever read? Moreover, I knew that in one of its houses Lord Beaconsfield died, and in another the Duke of Marlborough lived. The detail of knowing which house was which possessed no interest for me.

I rambled on, marvelling at the suddenness with which streets met each other, and their calm disregard of all method or symmetry, till I began to feel like “the crooked man who walked a crooked mile.”

Attracted by the name of Half-Moon Street, I left Curzon Street for it. Shelley once lived in this street, and I selected three houses any one of which might have been his home. I went back, I traversed some delightful mewses (whatisthe plural of mews?), crossed Berkeley Square, and then, somehow or other, I found myself in Bond Street, and my mood changed. At first the shops seemed unattractive and I felt disappointment edging itself into my soul.

But like an ugly woman, possessed of charm, the crammed-full windows began to fascinate me, and I forgot the inadequate sidewalks and unpretentious façades in the absorbing displays of wares.

Bond Street shop-windows are hypnotic. Fifth Avenue windows stolidly hold their exhibits up to one’s view, without a trace of invitation, but Bond Street windows compel one to enter, by a sort of uncanny influence impossible to resist.

Though I expected to shop in London, there was only one article that I was really anxious to buy. This was a jade cube. For many years I had longed for a jade cube, and American experts had contented themselves with stating there was no such thing in existence. Time after time, I had begged friends who were going to the ends of the earth to bring me back a jade cube from one of the ends, but none had accomplished my errand.

I determined therefore to use every effort to secure a jade cube for myself, and forthwith began my quest.

A mineralogist on Bond Street showed more interest at once than any of my personal friends had ever evinced. Though he declared there was no such thing in existence, he further remarked his entire willingness to cut one for me from the best quality of Chinese jade.

He was quite as interested.

He was quite as interested as I was myself, and, though it seemed inartistic to end so quickly what I had expected to be a long and difficult quest, I left the order.

The cube turned out a perfect success, and will always be one of my dearest and best-loved possessions. It has the same charm of perfection that characterizes a Japanese rock-crystal ball, and the added interest of being unique. There was, too, a charm in the interest shown in the cube by the old mineralogist, and also by his wife.

The day I went after the completed polished cube, the elderly madame came into the shop from a back room, to congratulate me on the attainment of my desire.

Incidentally, the good people endeavored (and successfully) to persuade me to buy further of their wares.

They had a bewildering assortment of semi-precious stones, curious minerals, and wrought metals and strange bits of handiwork from foreign countries. Beads, of course, in profusion, and fascinatingly ugly little idols. As all these things have great charm for me, and as I am always easily persuaded to buy, I bought largely, to the great satisfaction of the elderly shopkeepers. But, as I had learned a little of their tricks and their manners I offered them, a bit shamefacedly, a lower price in each instance than they asked. To my relief, they took this proceeding quite as a matter of course, and cheerfully accepted the smaller sum without demur.

But to return to that first morning, after my interview with the mild-mannered mineralogist I strolled along Old Bond Street back to Piccadilly.

The Tennyson’s Brook of omnibuses was still going on, and I stood on the corner to watch them again. From this point of view the effect is quite different from that seen from an upstairs window.

You cease to generalize about the procession, and regard the individual ’bus with a new awe.

The ocean may be wider,—the Flatiron Building may be taller,—but there’s nothing in all the world so big as a London omnibus.

An English telephone is a contradiction in terms. If it is in England, it isn’t a telephone. It is a thing that looks something like a broken ox-yoke, that is manipulated something like a trombone, and is about as effectual as the Keeley Motor.

A course of lessons is necessary to learn to use one, but the lessons are wasted, as the instrument is invariably out of order, and moreover, nobody has one, anyhow.

But one morning, before I had discovered all this, I was summoned to the telephone booth of the Pantheon Club, and blithely grasped the cumbersome affair, with its receiver on one end and its transmitter on the other. I ignorantly held it wrong end to, but that made no difference, as it wouldn’t work either way.

“Grawsp it stiffer, madame,” advised the anxious Buttons who engineered it. At length I discovered that this meant to press firmly on a fret, as if playing a flute, but by this time the party addressing me had been disconnected from the other end, and all attempts to regain communication were futile.

“Grawsp it stiffer, M’am.”

The boy took the instrument, and I have never seen a finer display of human ingenuity and patience than he showed for the next half-hour trying to hear that chord again. Then he gave it up, and, laying the horrid thing gently in its cradle, he nonchalantly informed me that if the party awrsked for me again, he’d send me naotice, and then demanded tuppence.

This I willingly paid, as I was always glad to get rid of those copper heavy-weights; and, too, it seemed a remarkably small price even for a telephone call,—until I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t made the call,—nor had I received it.

The call was repeated later, and after another distracting session of incoherent shouting, and painfully-cramped finger muscles, I learned that I was invited to an informal dinner that evening at Mrs. Marchbanks’s at seven-thirty.

I had not intended to plunge into the social whirl so soon, and had declined all the many invitations which had come to me by mail.

But somehow the telephone invitation took me unawares, and, too, I was so pleased to succeed in getting the message at all that it seemed ungracious and ungrateful to refuse. So, I took a fresh grip on the fretted monster, and, aiming my voice carefully at the far-away transmitter, I shouted an acceptance. I hoped it reached the goal, but as there was nothing but awful silence afterward, I had to take it on faith, and I went away to look over my dinner gowns.

The invitation had been classed as “informal,” but I knew the elasticity of that term, and so, though I did not select my very best raiment, I chose a prettydécolletéfrock, that had “New York” legibly written on its every fold and pucker.

So late is the dusk of the London spring that I easily made my toilette by daylight, and was all ready at seven o’clock.

Carefully studying my Baedeker maps and plans to make sure of the distance, I stepped into my hansom just in time to reach my destination at a minute or two before half past seven, assuming that New York customs prevailed in England.

The door was opened to me by an amazed-looking maid, who seemed so uncertain what to do with me that I almost grew embarrassed myself.

Finally, she asked me to follow her up-stairs, and then ushered me into a room where my hostess, in the hands of her maid, was in the earliest stages of her toilette.

“You dear thing,” she said, “how sweet of you to come. Yes, Louise, thataigretteis right. Here is the key of my jewel case.”

“I fear I have mistaken the hour,” I said; “the telephone was a bit difficult,—but I understood half past seven.”

“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Marchbanks, studying the back of her head in a hand-mirror, “but in London seven-thirty means eight, you know.”

This was definite information, and I promptly stored it away for future use. Also, it was reliable information, for it proved true, and at eight the guests began to arrive.

Dinner was served at quarter to nine, and all was well.

Incidentally I had learned my lesson.

The half-hour in the drawing-room before dinner was an interesting “first impression” of that indescribable combination of warmth and frost known as a London Hostess.

Further experience taught me that Mrs. Marchbanks was a typical one.

The London hostess’s invariable mode of procedure is a sudden, inordinate gush of welcome, followed immediately by an icy stare. By the time you have politely responded to the welcome, your hostess has forgotten your existence. Nay, more, she seems almost to have forgotten her own. She is vague, self-absorbed, and quite oblivious of your existence. I have heard of a lady with a gracious presence. The London hostess is best described bya gracious absence.

But having adapted yourself to this condition, your hostess is likely to whirl about and dart a remark or a question at you.

On the evening under discussion, my hostess suddenly broke off her own greeting to another guest, to say to me, “Of course you’ll be wanting to buy some new clothes at once.”

This statement was accompanied by a deliberate survey, frombertheto hem, of my palpably American-made gown, and as the incident pleased my sense of humor, I felt no resentment, and amiably acquiesced in her decision.

Then, funnily enough, the conversation turned upon good-breeding.

“A well-bred Englishwoman,” my hostess dictatorially observed, “never talks of herself. She tactfully makes the person to whom she is talking the subject of conversation.”

“But,” said I, “if the person to whom she is talking is also well-bred, he must reject that subject, and tactfully talk about the first speaker. This must bring about a deadlock.” She looked at me, or rather through me, in a pitying, uncomprehending way, and went on:

“The well-bred Englishwoman never makes an allusion or an implication that could cause even the slightest trace of discomfiture or annoyance to the person addressed.”

This, of itself, seemed true enough, but again she turned swiftly toward me, and abruptly inquired, “Doesn’t the servility of the English servants embarrass you?”

This time, too, my sense of humor saved me from embarrassment, but I began to think serious-minded persons should not brave the slings and arrows of a well-bred Englishwoman.

Geniality and ingenuousness are alike unknown to the English hostess. It is a very rare thing to meet acharmingEnglishwoman. Good traits they have in plenty and many sterling qualities which Americans often lack, but magnetism and responsiveness are as a rule not among these qualities.

And I do not yet know whether it is through ignorance or withmalice prepensethat an English hostess greets you effusively, and then drops you with an air of finality that gives a “lost your last friend” feeling more than anything else in all the world.

This state of things is of course more pronouncedly noticeable at teas than at dinners. At an afternoon reception, the hostility of the hostess is beyond all words. Moreover, at English afternoon teas there are two rules. One is you may not speak to a fellow-guest without an introduction. The other is that no introduction is necessary between guests of the house. One of these rules is always inflexibly enforced at every tea; but the casual guest never knows which one, and so complications ensue.

English hostesses always seem to me very much like that peculiar kind of flowered chintz with which they cover their furniture—the kind that looks like oilcloth, and is very cold and shiny, very beautiful, very slippery, and decidedly uncomfortable.

But in inverse proportion to the conversational unsatisfactoriness of the English women are the entertaining powers of the English men. They are voluntarily delightful. They make an effort (if necessary) to be pleasantly talkative and amusing.

And, notwithstanding the traditional slurs on British humor, the English society man is deliciously humorous, and often as brilliantly witty as our own Americans.

At the dinner I have mentioned above, I was seated next to a somewhat insignificant-looking young man of true English spick-and-spanness, and with a delightful drawl, almost like the one written as dialect in international novels.

Perhaps in consideration of my probable American attitude toward British humor, he good-naturedly amused me with jokes directed against his national peculiarities.

He described graphically an Englishman who was blindly groping about in his brain for a good story which he had heard and stored away there. “Ah, yes,” said the supposed would-be jester; “the man was ill; and he said his physician advised that he should every morning take a cup of coffee and take a walk around the place.”

He amused me with jokes directed against his national peculiarities.

“He had missed the point, do you see,” explained my amusing neighbor, “and the joke should have been ‘take a cup of coffee, and take a walk on the grounds,’ do you see?”

So pleased was the young man with the whole story, that I laughed in sympathy, and he went on to say:

“But you Americans make just the same mistakes about our jokes. Now only last weekPunchhad a ripping line asking why the Americans were making such a fuss about Bishop Potter, and said any one would think he was a meat-potter. Now one of your New York daily papers borrowed the thing, and made it read, ‘What’s the matter with Bishop Potter? Any one would think he was a meat packer.’ ’Pon my honor, Miss Emmins, I know that for a fact!”

“Then I think,” I replied, “that we ought never again to throw stones at the British sense of humor.”

In the pause that followed, a bulky English lord across the table was heard denouncing the course taken by a certain political party. So energetic were his gestures, and so forceful his speech, that he had grown very red and belligerent-looking, and fairly hammered the table in his indignation.

Denouncing the course taken by a certain political party.

The young man next to me looked at him, as an indulgent father might look at a naughty child. “Isn’t he the saucy puss?” said my neighbor, turning to me with such a roguish smile that his remark seemed the funniest thing I had ever heard.

I frankly told my attractive dinner partner that the men of London society were far more entertaining than the women. He did not seem surprised at this, but seemed to look upon it as an accepted condition.

I glanced across the table at a young Englishwoman. She was an “Honorable,” and possessed of a jointed surname. She was attired with great wealth and unbecomingness, and, to sum her up in a general way, she looked as if she didnotwrite poetry.

She was an “Honorable” and possessed of a jointed surname.

“Yes,” she was saying, “cabs are cheap with us, but if you ride a lot in a day, they count up.” This is a stock remark with London women and I was not surprised to hear it again.

I glanced at my young man. He too had heard, and he quickly caught my mental attitude.

“Yes,” he said, “Englishwomen and girls are very fit; they’re good form, accomplished, and all that. But, though they know a lot, somehow, er,—their minds don’t jell.”

As this exactly expressed my own opinion, I was delighted at his clever phrasing of it.

But if the Englishman is charming as a dinner guest, he is even more so when he is host, as he often is at afternoon tea. And though I attended many teas presided over by London men, all others fade into insignificance beside the one given me at thePunchoffice.

I was the only guest, the host was the genial and miraculously clever Editor ofPunch.

The tea was of the ordinary London deliciousness, the cakes and thin bread-and-butter were, as always, over there, the best in the world; but it was served to us on the historicPunchtable, the great table where every Friday night, since the beginning of that publication, its editorial staff has dined.

And as each diner at some time cut his monogram into the table, the semi-polished surface shows priceless memorials of the great British authors, artists, and illustrators.

I was informed by my kind host that I might sit at any place I chose. I hesitated between Thackeray’s and Mark Lemon’s, but finally by a sudden impulse I dropped into a chair in front of the monogram of George du Maurier.

The Editor ofPunchsmiled a little, but he only said, “You Americans are a humorous people.”

My own subjective London was achieving itself. I have always remembered pleasantly, how,

Without a bit of trouble,Arabella blew a bubble,

Without a bit of trouble,

Arabella blew a bubble,

and, with emulative ease, I blew a beautiful, impalpable, iridescent sphere and called it London.

To be sure, a single interrogation point from an earnest Tourist would have burst my bubble, for my whole London hadn’t a Tower or a British Museum in it.

Nor was this an oversight. Calling to my aid a moral courage that was practically a moral hardihood, I had deliberately concluded I would do no sightseeing. Not that I objected to seeing a sight, now and then, but the sight would have to put itself in my way, and the conditions would have to be such that I should prefer to go through the sight rather than around it.

Indeed, it was largely the wordsightseeingthat I took exception to. Such a very defective verb! Who would voluntarily put herself in a position to say, “I sightsaw the National Gallery yesterday,” or “I have sightseen the whole City,” and then have no proper parts of speech to say it with?

Moreover, I was not willing to go about my London carrying a Baedeker. In truth, my soul was possessed of conflicting emotions toward that little red book. As a directory it was invaluable. Never did I get an invitation to a place of mysterious sound, such as Kensington Gore, or Bird-in-Bush Road, but I ran to my Baedeker and quickly found therein the location, description, and directions for reaching the same. I soon mastered the pink and gray maps, with their clever contrivance of corresponding numbers, and with my Baedeker back of me I could have found the most obscure and bewildering address that even a Londoner is capable of devising.

But the pages devoted to “Sights which Should on No Account be Omitted,” and the kindly advice on “Disposition of Time for the Hurried Visitor,” I avoided with all the strength of my unsightseeing soul.

The ingenious efforts of tourists to disguise their Baedekers.

I was often amused at the ingenious efforts of tourists to disguise their Baedekers. One tailor-made American girl had hers neatly covered with bright blue paper, quite oblivious of the fact that the marbled edges and fluttering red and black tapes are unmistakable. Another, a pedagogic Bostonian, had hers wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. Another had a leather case which exactly fitted the volume. And I thought that as the nude in art is far less suggestive than the semi-draped figure, so the uncovered red book was really less noticeable than these futile attempts at disguise.

Having, then, definitely decided that I should eventually return to America without having set foot in the Tower, the Bank or the Charter-house, I drew a long breath of content, and gave myself up to the delight of just living in the atmosphere of my own London.

And yet, I wanted to go to the Tower, the Bank, and the Charter-house. I wanted to go to Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul’s and the National Gallery. But I did not want to go for the first time. I wanted to revisit these places, and how could I do that when I had never yet visited them?

First impressions of Piccadilly or Hyde Park are all very well, but first impressions are incongruous in connection with Westminster Abbey. What has crude admiration to do with experienced sublimity? How absurd to let the gaze of surprise rest upon age-accustomed glory! What presumption to look at solemn ancient grandeur as at a novelty! I wished that I had been to Westminster Abbey many, many times, and that I could drift in again some lovely summer afternoon to revive old memories and renew old emotions.

But as this might not be, then would I keep away from it entirely, and study it from books as I had always done.

One day a departing caller carelessly left behind her a pamphlet entitledThe Deanery Guide to Westminster Abbey. With a natural curiosity I picked it up and opened it.

That bore an advertisement of Rowland’s Macassar Oil!

But I got no farther than the first fly-leaf, for that bore an advertisement ofRowland’s Macassar Oil! I promptly forgot the existence of Westminster Abbey in the delight of finding that my London contained such a desirable commodity. Not that I wished to purchase the lotion, but I was absorbingly interested to learn that there really was such a thing. I had never heard of it before except in connection with the Aged, aged man, a-sitting on a gate, who manufactured Rowland’s Macassar Oil from mountain rills which he chanced to set ablaze. The remembrance of that dear old white-haired man, placidly going his ways, and content with the tuppence ha’-penny that rewarded his toil, filled my soul to the exclusion of all else, and he made a welcome addition to the census of my own London. It was pleasant, too, to reflect on the sound logic of the English people when they coined the word “anti-macassar.” How much more restrictedly definite than our word “tidy”!

Well, then next it came about that I went for a walk.

And, as was bound to happen sooner or later, I was strolling unthinkingly along, when I found myself with the Houses of Parliament on my right hand and Westminster Abbey on my left. I was fairly caught, and surrendered at discretion. The only question was which way to turn. As I had no choice in the matter, I should logically have gone, like John Buridan’s Ass, straight ahead, and so missed both; but the Abbey, with an almost imperceptible nod of invitation, compelled me to turn that way, and involuntarily, though not at all unwillingly, I entered.

Whereupon I made the startling discovery that I was in the Poets’ Corner! Now, I had definitely planned that if ever Ididvisit the Abbey, I would enter by the North Transept, and gradually accustom myself to the atmosphere of the place. I would go away after a short inspection, and return several times to revisit it, before I even approached the Poets’ Corner. And to find myself thus unexpectedly and somewhat informally introduced to an inscription attesting the rarity of Ben Jonson, took me unawares, and my eyes rested coldly on the words, and then passed on, still uninterestedly, to Spencer, Milton, and Gray.

I took a few tentative steps, which brought me to the bust of our own Longfellow.

Uncertain whether to advance or retreat I took a few tentative steps, which brought me to the bust of our own Longfellow. The dignified and old-school New Englander is here represented as a plump-faced and jovial gentleman with very curly hair. The marble is excessively white and new-looking, and altogether the monument suggests the Longfellow who wrote “There was a little girl, who had a little curl,” rather than the author ofEvangeline. But if not of poetic effect, the bust is satisfactory as a fine type of American manhood, so I smiled back at it, and passed on.

Then, by chance, I turned into the South Transept.

It was about five o’clock on a midsummer afternoon, the hour, as I have often since proved, when the spell of the Poets’ Corner is most potent—the hour when a prismatic shaft of sunlight strikes exactly on the marble forehead of Burns, and flickering sun-rays light up the face of Southey. There, above the mortal remains of Henry Irving, I stood, and as I looked up, I knew that at last Westminster Abbey and I were at one.

For I saw Shakespeare.

It was not the emotional atmosphere of the place, for that had not as yet affected me. It was not historic association, for I knew Shakespeare’s bones did not rest there. It was not the inherent, artistic worth of the sculptured figure, for I knew that it has never been looked upon as a masterpiece, and that Walpole, or somebody, called it “preposterous.” But it was Shakespeare, and from his eyes there shone all the wonder, the beauty, and the immortality of his genius.

I am told the whole monument is wrong in composition and in execution, but that is merely

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