Nasby in Exile
by David Ross Locke · English · Gutenberg #46451 · 1,127,316 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Nasby in Exile
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Nasby in Exile
Author: David Ross Locke
Release date: July 30, 2014 [eBook #46451]
Most recently updated: November 28, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46451
Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NASBY IN EXILE ***
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
[Every attempt has been made to replicate the original as printed.
No attempt has been made to correct or normalize the spelling
of non-English words. Archaic spelllings (i.e. divers, ecstacy,
graneries, asthetic, etc.) have been retained. (note of etext
transcriber.)]
[Illustration: MONT ST. MICHAEL.]
NASBY IN EXILE:
OR,
SIX MONTHS OF TRAVEL
IN
England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany,
Switzerland and Belgium,
WITH MANY THINGS NOT OF TRAVEL.
BY
DAVID R. LOCKE,
(Petroleum V. Nasby.)
PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED.
TOLEDO AND BOSTON:
LOCKE PUBLISHING COMPANY.
1882.
COPYRIGHT,
1882,
BY DAVID R. LOCKE.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
BLADE PRINTING AND PAPER CO.,
_Printers and Binders_,
TOLEDO, O.
PREFACE.
On the afternoon of May 14, 1881, the good ship "City of Richmond,"
steamed out of New York harbor with a varied assortment of passengers on
board, all intent upon seeing Europe. Among these was the writer of the
pages that follow.
Six of the passengers having contracted a sort of liking for each other,
made a tour of six months together, that is, together most of the time.
This book is the record of their experiences, as they appeared
originally in the columns of the TOLEDO BLADE.
It is not issued in compliance with any demand for it. I have no
recollection that any one of the one hundred thousand regular
subscribers to the TOLEDO BLADE ever asked that the letters that
appeared from week to week in its columns should be gathered into book
form. The volume is a purely mercantile speculation, which may or may
not be successful. The publishers held that the matter was of sufficient
value to go between covers, and believing that they were good judges of
such things, I edited the letters, and here they are.
The ground we went over has been gone over by other writers a thousand
times. We went where other tourists have gone, and what we saw others
have seen. The only difference between this book and the thousands of
others that have been printed describing the same scenes, is purely the
difference in the eyes of the writers who saw them. I saw the countries
I visited with a pair of American eyes, and judged of men and things
from a purely American stand-point.
I have not attempted to describe scenery, and buildings, and things of
that nature, at all. That has been done by men and women more capable of
such work than I am. Every library in America is full of books of that
nature. But I was interested in the men and women of the countries I
passed through, I was interested in their ways of living, their
industries and their customs and habits, and I tried faithfully to put
upon paper what I saw, as well as the observations and comments of the
party that traveled and observed with me.
I have a hope that the readers of these pages will lay the book down in
quite as good condition, mentally and physically, as when they took it
up, and that some information as to European life will result from its
perusal. As I make no promises at the beginning I shall have no
apologies to make at the ending.
It is only justice to say that much of the descriptive matter is the
work of Mr. ROBINSON LOCKE, who was with me every minute of the time,
and the intelligent reader will be perfectly safe in ascribing the best
of its pages to his pen.
I can only hope that this work, as a book, will meet with the same
measure of favor that the material did as newspaper sketches.
D. R. L.
_Toledo, Ohio, June 29, 1882._
ILLUSTRATIONS.
No. PAGE
1. FRONTISPIECE.
2. The Departure 18
3. "Shuffle Board" 22
4. The Betting Young Man from Chicago 24
5. "Dear, Sea-sickness is only a Feminine Weakness," 27
6. Lemuel Tibbitts, from Oshkosh, Writes a Letter 29
7. Every Sin I Had Committed Came Before Me 33
8. Off for London 35
9. Public Buildings, London 36
10. The Indian Policy 39
11. The Emetic Policy 39
12. A London Street Scene 45
13. A London Steak 50
14. "And is the Them Shanghais?" 53
15. Sol. Carpenter and the Race 60
16. Leaving for the Derby 62
17. By the Roadside 64
18. English Negro Minstrelsy 66
19. The Roadside Repast 67
20. The Betting Ring 73
21. "D----n the Swindling Scoundrel" 74
22. Egyptian Room, British Museum 76
23. A Bold Briton Trying the American Custom 79
24. A London Gin Drinking Woman 80
25. The Poor Man is Sick 81
26. "That Nigger is Mine" 82
27. St. Thomas Hospital 92
28. Interior of a Variety Hall 95
29. The Magic Purse 98
30. The Man who was Music Proof 100
31. Madame Tussaud 102
32. Wax Figures of Americans 103
33. "Digging Corpses is all Wrong" 105
34. Improved Process of Burke and Hare 106
35. Isle of Wight 107
36. The London Lawyer 110
37. The Old English Way of Procuring a Loan 118
38. "Beware of Fraudulent Imitations" 120
39. The Old Temple Bar 122
40. The Sidewalk Shoe Store 125
41. "Sheap Clodink" 127
42. "Dake Dot Ring" 133
43. A Lane in Camberwell 135
44. The Tower of London 136
45. The Jewel Tower 140
46. Sir Magnus' Men 142
47. Horse Armory 144
48. St. John's Chapel 145
49. St. Thomas' Tower 146
50. General View of the Tower 147
51. The Bloody Tower 148
52. Drowning of Clarence in a Butt of Wine 149
53. The Byward Tower from the East 150
54. The Beauchamp Tower 151
55. The Overworked Headsman 152
56. The Persuasive Rack 153
57. The Byward Tower from the West 154
58. The Middle Tower 155
59. The Beef Eater 156
60. The Flint Tower 157
61. The Traitor's Gate 158
62. What Shall We Do with Sir Thomas? 159
63. The Easiest Way 160
64. The Suits Come Home 163
65. The Candle Episode 168
66. The Little Bill 169
67. Getting Ready to Leave a Hotel 169
68. The Last Straw 170
69. The Cabman Tipped 170
70. The Universal Demand 171
71. The Lord Mayor's Show 173
72. A Second Hand Debauch 175
73. The Anniversary Ceremonies 178
74. In the Harbor 179
75. Isle of Wight 182
76. The Unfinished Entries in the Diary 184
77. Westminster Abbey 186
78. Exterior of the Abbey 187
79. Entrance to the Abbey 188
80. The Poet's Corner 191
81. Henry VII.'s Chapel 193
82. Chapel of Edward 197
83. Effigy Room 200
84. The Abbey in Queen Anne's Time 201
85. "If She Ever Miscalculates She's Gone," 204
86. The Death of the Trainer 206
87. The Gorgeous Funeral Procession 207
88. Monument to the Trainer 208
89. The Side Show Zulu 210
90. The Lost Finger 212
91. On the Thames 218
92. Sandwiches at New Haven 222
93. Off Dieppe--Four A. M. 224
94. "Have You Tobacco or Spirits?" 225
95. Fisher Folk--Dieppe 227
96. Fisher Women--Dieppe 228
97. Fisher Boy and Child 229
98. The Boys of Rouen 232
99. Rouen 233
100. The Professor Stood Before it 234
101. Cathedral of Notre Dame 235
102. House of Joan d'Arc 235
103. Harbor of Rouen 236
104. St. Ouen--Rouen 238
105. The Showman in Paris 240
106. Bloss' Great Moral Spectacle 241
107. Tower of St. Pierre 242
108. Old Houses--Rouen 242
109. The Professor's Spectacles 245
110. Old Paris 246
111. Liberty, Fraternity, Equality 247
112. New Paris 248
113. The Louvre 250
114. A Boulevard Cafe 252
115. A Costume by Worth 253
116. A Magazine on the Boulevard 254
117. Mr. Thompson's Art Purchases 256
118. The American Party Outside a Cafe 259
119. The Avenue de L'Opera 261
120. Cafe Concerts 262
121. The Faro Bankeress 266
122. French Soldiers 267
123. Parisian Bread Carriers 269
124. Queer--to Frenchmen 271
125. The Porte St. Martin 272
126. A Very Polite Frenchman 275
127. "Merci, Monsieur!" 277
128. Paris Underground 279
129. Interior of the Paris Bourse 280
130. The Arc du Carrousel 282
131. "How Long Must I Endure This?" 285
132. Tail Piece 286
133. The Mother of the Gamin as She Was 288
134. The Mother of the Gamin in the Sere and Yellow Leaf 289
135. The Aged Stump Gatherer 290
136. A Talk with a Gamin 294
137. The Mabille at Night 305
138. A Mabille Divinity 306
139. Professionals in a Quadrille 309
140. A Male Dancer 310
141. The Grisette 311
142. Meeting of Tibbitts and the Professor 314
143. The Cafe Swell 316
144. Tail Piece 318
145. Beauvais Cathedral 319
146. Struggle for the Kingship 322
147. Of the Commune 326
148. Tibbitts and Faro Bankeress 330
149. Tail Piece 331
150. Palais Royal 333
151. Vision of the Commune 335
152. Mother and Bonne 337
153. The Youthful Bonne 338
154. The Aged Bonne 338
155. "Who Put that Ribbon in your Cap?" 345
156. Corrective Used by Mr. Tibbitts 348
157. The Coco Seller 349
158. In Any of the Parks 358
159. The No-Legged Beggar Woman 360
160. How the French Sport Kills Game 362
161. Fishing in the Seine 363
162. Inside a Paris Omnibus 364
163. The Showman Shown the Door 365
164. The Tell Catastrophe 368
165. Zoological Room 369
166. Cork Harbor 370
167. Queenstown 371
168. Irish Woman and Daughter 375
169. A County Cork Cabin 377
170. Interior of Better Class Cabin 378
171. Royal Irish Constabulary 379
172. Interior of Cabin 380
173. A Quiver Full 381
174. Street in an Irish Village 384
175. Blarney Castle 385
176. Free Speech in Ireland 387
177. In a Bog Village 389
178. "Drop the Child!" 391
179. Nature's Looking Glass 393
180. Irishman of the Stage and Novel 394
181. The Evicted Irishman 395
182. To Market and Back 396
183. The Real Irish Girl 397
184. A Small but Well-to-do Farmer 398
185. Sketches in Galway 402
186. Affixing Notice of Eviction 406
187. Eviction 407
188. The Eviction we Saw 408
189. Evicted 409
190. Farming in County Mayo 410
191. My Lord's Agent 413
192. Kind of a Girl My Lord Wants 414
193. The Woman who Paid the Poor Rate 416
194. Conemara Women 418
195. At Work in the Bog 420
196. Duke Leinster's Tenants 422
197. Tenant Farmer 424
198. In a Discontented District 426
199. Protecting a Gentleman Farmer 427
200. Filling the Ditch 429
201. Ready for Emigration 431
202. Old but Tolerably Cheerful 433
203. After a Wholesale Eviction 435
204. The "Faymale Painther" 436
205. Old and Not Cheerful 438
206. The Proper End of Royalty 441
207. Meath Lads at Crossakeel 443
208. A Mayo Farmer 445
209. Mayo Peasantry 447
210. Inhabitants of a Bog Village 449
211. Dublin 452
212. They Glared Ferociously 456
213. Bog Village 459
214. Interior French Car 462
215. They were Lively Children 464
216. Geneva 466
217. "Your Hotel is a Swindle, Sir" 474
218. Group of Swiss Girls 480
219. The Sweat of Other Men's Brows 481
220. The Alpine Guide 485
221. A Non-Professional Lady Tourist 487
222. Young Man with Inopportune Remarks 493
223. "Would You Oblige Me?" 495
224. "See Me Unmask this Jew" 497
225. Swiss Timber Village 501
226. The Slender Bridge 503
227. A Bit of Climbing 504
228. Where the Maiden Leaped From 511
229. The Chamois 513
230. Taking the Cattle to the Mountains 513
231. Outside the Chalet 515
232. Inside the Chalet 516
233. An Alpine Homestead 519
234. "I Should Wake Them Cheerily" 520
235. On the Road to Chamonix 525
236. The Presumed Chamois Hunter 530
237. The Fate of Two Englishmen 532
238. A Frequent Accident 533
239. The Mer De Glace 534
240. A Slip Toward the Edge 535
241. Crevasses 536
242. The Moraine 537
243. The Dilemma 538
244. Rocks Polished by Old Glaciers 539
245. The Path to the Village 548
246. Mt. Blanc and Valley of Chamonix 550
247. The Conscientious Barber 555
248. The Jungfrau 557
249. Wood Carving 559
250. Home of the Carver 560
251. Female Costumes 562
252. Our Party at the Giessbach 565
253. Peasants of East Switzerland 567
254. Near Brienz 568
255. Lion of Lucerne 570
256. End of Pontius Pilate 573
257. Lucerne Rigi-Rail 575
258. Ditto from Kanzell 576
259. Old Way of Ascending Rigi 578
260. Night Ascent of Rigi 579
261. Railway up the Rigi 581
262. Rigi Railway 582
263. Railway up the Mountain 583
264. Tell's Chapel 584
265. Tibbitts in Concert Hall 589
266. Entrance Strasburg Cathedral 593
267. Pig Market, Strasburg 596
268. The Great Hall 606
269. Tibbitts Making Plain the Point 608
270. Front of the Kursale 612
271. The Swimming Bath 614
272. The Donkey Enjoyed It 616
273. The Lichtenthal 617
274. Promenade in Baden-Baden 618
275. Charcoal Burners, Black Forest 619
276. Heidelberg Castle 623
277. Heidelberg Tun 626
278. Tibbitts and the Students 629
279. Rhine Steamer 630
280. Mannheim 631
281. Tibbitts in the Cloak Room 633
282. Mayence 639
283. Erchenheim Tower 640
284. Roemer 640
285. Luther's Home 640
284. Street on the Roemerberg 642
285. The Jews' Street 644
286. "Der Hind Leg of a Helty Mule" 649
287. Cologne Cathedral 651
288. Death of Bishop Hatto 655
289. Legend of the Cathedral 668
CONTENTS.
.....PAGE
CHAPTER I.
The Departure--How the Passengers Amused
Themselves--Sea-sickness--Tibbitts, of Oshkosh--The Storm.....17-35
CHAPTER II.
London--The Englishman--A Few Statistics--The Climate--A Red-coated
Romance.....18-57
CHAPTER III.
The Derby Races--Departure for the Derby--Sights and Scenes--Shows and
Beggars--Betting.....58-76
CHAPTER IV.
What the Londoners Quench their Thirst with--The Kind of
Liquor--Tobacco--Early Closing.....77-90
CHAPTER V.
How London is Amused--The London Theaters--An English Idea of a Good
Time--Punch and Judy.....91-100
CHAPTER VI.
Madame Tussaud--American Worthies.....101-107
CHAPTER VII.
The London Lawyer--The Solicitor's Bill.....108-112
CHAPTER VIII.
English Capital--London Quacks--The London Advertiser.....113-122
CHAPTER IX.
Petticoat Lane--The Home of Second-Hand--The Clothing
Dealer--Diamonds--The Confiding Israelite.....123-134
CHAPTER X.
The Tower--The Royal Jewels--The Horse Armory--Interesting Relics--The
Beef-Eaters.....137-160
CHAPTER XI.
Two English Nuisances--A Badly Dressed People--An English Hotel--The
English Landlord.....161-172
CHAPTER XII.
Portsmouth--Nelson's Ship--In the Harbor--Tibbitts' Diary.....174-185
CHAPTER XIII.
Westminster Abbey--Seeing the Abbey--Warren
Hastings--Epitaphs--Religious Service--A Little History.....187-202
CHAPTER XIV.
The American Showman--The Trainer's Widow--Foggerty the Zulu.....203-212
CHAPTER XV.
Richmond--The Star and Garter--Down the River.....213-219
CHAPTER XVI.
From London to Paris--The Custom House--Normandy--The Cathedral--On the
Way to Paris.....221-242
CHAPTER XVII.
A Scattering View of Paris--Drinking in Paris--Wine and Whisky--The
National Fête.....243-267
CHAPTER XVIII.
Something About Parisians--French Cleanliness--The Polite French--The
Disgust of Tibbitts.....268-286
CHAPTER XIX.
Parisian Gamin--Interview with a Gamin--A Contented Being.....287-299
CHAPTER XX.
How Paris Amuses Itself--The Grand Opera--The Wicked Mabille--Gardens
other than the Mabille--Tibbitts and the Professor.....300-318
CHAPTER XXI.
The Louvre--Art in the Louvre--The Commune.....320-331
CHAPTER XXII.
The Palais-Royal--A Tale of the Commune--The Wisdom of Therese--The Two
Lovers.....332-345
CHAPTER XXIII.
French Drinking--The Water of Paris--The Mild Swash.....346-351
CHAPTER XXIV.
Parisian Living--The Market Woman--Parisian Washing--Female
Shop-keepers--The Career of Sam.....352-369
CHAPTER XXV.
Ireland--Cork--The Jaunting Car--Another Cabin.....370-383
CHAPTER XXVI.
Bantry--How My Lord Bantry Lives--The Real and the Ideal--Several
Delusions--The Conversion of an Irish Lady.....384-401
CHAPTER XXVII.
An Irish Mass Meeting--An Eviction--Boycotting--One Landlord who was
Killed--How he was killed--Patsey's Dead.....403-518
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Some Little History--The Question of Lease--A Foiled Landlord--Bantry
Village--The Boatman and Nancy.....419-438
CHAPTER XXIX.
England, Ireland, Scotland--Land Troubles in England--The Royal
Family--The Palace and the Workhouse--Women's Work.....439-460
CHAPTER XXX.
Paris to Geneva--A Night on the Rail--Geneva--Affecting Anecdote--Piracy
on Lake Erie--The Irate Guest--Too Much Music.....461-477
CHAPTER XXXI.
Switzerland--The Rhone--A Geneva Bakery--Swiss Roads--Female
Climbers--Ascent of Mont Blanc--A Useful Man at Last.....478-491
CHAPTER XXXII.
Chillon--Tibbitts and the Jew--On the Lake.....492-501
CHAPTER XXXIII.
From Geneva over the Alps--Mountain Climbing--Legend of the
Gorge--Martigny--A Swiss Cottage--Alpine Ascents.....502-517
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Over the Alps--Tibbitts' Idea--Dangers of Ascending Mt.
Blanc.....518-529
CHAPTER XXXV.
Going up the Mountain--The Mer de Glace--The Gorge--Something About
Glaciers.....530-545
CHAPTER XXXVI.
In Switzerland--Tibbitts' Letter--Berne and Bears--Barbers.....546-555
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Lake Thun and Beyond--Interlaken--Wood Carving--Geissbach.....556-568
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Lucerne and the Rigi--Up the Rigi--A Mountain Railway--The Rigi
Kulm--Tell's Chapel.....569-587
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Zurich and Strasburg--Beer and Music--The Cathedral--The Wonderful
Clock.....588-604
CHAPTER XL.
Baden-Baden--A Few Legends--Up the Mountain--To old Schloss.....605-621
CHAPTER XLI.
Heidelberg--The Great Cask--The Students.....622-630
CHAPTER XLII.
Mannheim--Opera--A Treatise on Treating.....631-639
CHAPTER XLIII.
Frankfort-on-the-Maine--Red Tape--Jews' Street--Lovely
Gardens.....640-651
CHAPTER XLIV.
Down the Rhine--Bingen--Mouse Tower--Tibbitts' Romance.....652-663
CHAPTER XLV.
Cologne--The Cathedral--Eleven Thousand Virgins--Home.....664-672
TO
Charles A. B. Shepard,
_The "Poetical Bookseller,"_
_This book is dedicated (without permission)
as a
Tribute to a most Reliable Friend,
a Thorough Business Man, and
One whose steady devotion to everything right and proper,
and whose
hatred for everything mean and disreputable,
was never questioned by any one
who knew him._
NASBY IN EXILE.
CHAPTER I.
THE DEPARTURE, VOYAGE, AND LANDING.
"Cast Off!" There was a bustle, a movement of fifty men, a rush of
people to the gangways; hurried good-bys were said; another rush,
assisted by the fifty men, the enormous gangways were lifted, there was
a throb of steam, a mighty jar of machinery, a tremor along the line of
the vast body of wood and iron, and the good ship "City of Richmond" was
out at sea.
[Illustration: THE DEPARTURE.]
I am not going to inflict upon the reader a description of the harbor of
New York, or anything of the kind. The whole world knows that it is the
finest in the world, and every American would believe it so, whether it
is so or not. Suffice it to say that the ship got out of the harbor
safely, and before nightfall was upon the broad Atlantic, out of the way
of telegraph and mail facilities, and one hundred and fifty-six saloon
passengers--men, women, and children--found themselves beyond the reach
of daily papers, though they had everything else that pertains to
civilization and luxury.
A voyage at sea is not what it was when first I sailed from--but no, I
have never been abroad before, and have not, therefore, the privilege of
lying about travel. That will come in time, and doubtless I shall use it
as others do. But I was going to say that sailing is not what it was, as
I understand it to have been. The ship of to-day is nothing more or less
than a floating hotel, with some few of the conveniences omitted, and a
great many conveniences that hotels on shore have not. You have your
luxurious barber-shop, you have a gorgeous bar, you have hot and cold
water in your room, and a table as good as the best in New York. You
eat, drink, and sleep just as well, if not better, than on shore.
The sailor is no more what he used to be than the ship is. I have seen
any number of sailors, and know all about them. The tight young fellow
in blue jacket and shiny tarpaulin, and equally shiny belt, and white
trousers, the latter enormously wide at the bottom, which trousers he
was always hitching up with a very peculiar movement of the body,
standing first upon one leg and then upon the other; the sailor who
could fight three pirates at once and kill them all, finishing the last
one by disabling his starboard eye with a chew of tobacco thrown with
terrible precision; who, if an English sailor, was always a match for
three Frenchmen, if an American a match for three Englishmen, and no
matter of what nationality, was always ready to d--n the eyes of the man
he did not like, and protect prepossessing females and oppressed
children even at the risk of being hung at the yard-arm by a
court-martial--this kind of a sailor is gone, and I fear forever. I know
I have given a proper description of him, for I have seen hundreds of
them--at the theater.
[Sidenote: WHO WERE ON BOARD.]
In his stead is an unpoetic being, clad in all sorts of unpoetic
clothing, and no two of them alike. There is a faint effort at
uniformity in their caps, which have sometimes the name of their ship on
them, but even that not always. In fair weather he is in appearance very
like a hod carrier, and in foul weather a New York drayman. He doesn't
d--n anybody's eyes, and he doesn't sing out "Belay there," or "Avast,
you lubber," or indulge in any other nautical expressions. He uses just
about the language that people on shore do, and is as dull and
uninteresting a person as one would wish not to meet.
The traditional jack tar, of whom the Dibden of the last century sang,
only remains in "Pinafore" opera, and can only be seen when the nautical
pieces of the thirty years ago are revived. If such sailors ever
existed, off the stage, they are as extinct a race as the icthyosaurus.
Steam has knocked the poetry out of navigation, as it has out of
everything else--that is, that kind of poetry. It will doubtless have a
poetry of its own, when its gets older, but it is too new yet.
There is no holystoning the decks. On the contrary the decks are washed
with hose, and scrubbed afterward by a patent appliance, which has
nothing of the old time about it. The lifting is done by steam, and in
fact every blessed thing about the ship is done by machinery. There is
neither a ship nor a sailor any more. There are floating hotels, and
help. The last remaining show for a ship is the masts and sails they all
have, and they seem to be more for ornament than use.
The company on board was, on the whole, monotonous. Ocean travel is
either monotonous or dangerous. Its principal advantage over land travel
is, the track is not dusty.
We had on our passenger list precisely the usual people, and none
others. There were three Jews of different types: the strong, robust,
eagle-nosed and eagle-eyed German Jew, resident of New York, going
abroad on business; the keen French Jew, returning from a successful
foray on New York jewelers, and the Southern Jew, who, having made a
fortune in cotton, attached no value to anything else.
I like the Jews, and ten days with them did not lessen my liking. They
know something for certain; they do things, and they do well what they
do.
There was a Chicago operator in mining stocks, going abroad to place
the "Great Mastodon" in London. There was the smooth-chinned,
side-whiskered minister, or "priest," as he delighted in calling
himself, of the Church of England, going home, and a fiery Welsh Baptist
who had been laboring in the States for many years.
On Sunday evening the Chicago man and a Texan engaged the English
minister in a discussion on the evidences of Christianity. It was a
furious controversy, and an amusing one. The Welsh Baptist was a more
zealous Christian than the Church of England man, and he did by far the
best part of the argument; but the priest, by look at least, resented
his interference. Being a Baptist, he was entirely irregular, and did
not hold up his end of the argument regularly. The priest regarded the
evangelist as a regular soldier might a guerilla serving the same side.
The discussion embraced every point that religionists affirm and
infidels deny, commencing with the creation and coming down to the
present day, with long excursions into the future.
A terrible disaster was the result. The next morning the priest met the
infidel on deck, and extended his hand humbly:
"My dear sir," said he, "I have been thinking over the matter we
discussed last night. I am convinced that you are right, and that--"
"What!" exclaimed the infidel. "My dear sir, I was looking for you. Your
forcible and convincing statements satisfy me that there is truth in the
Christian religion, and--"
Neither said more. The priest had converted the infidel to Christianity,
and the infidel had converted the priest to infidelity. So far as the
result upon the religion of the world was concerned, it was a stand-off.
The days were devoted to all sorts of occupations. There were young men
spooning young women, and young women who made a business of flirtation,
or what was akin to it. One young lady who could be seen at any time in
the day, in a most bewitching attitude, reclining on a steamer chair,
picturesque in all sorts of wraps, held a brief conversation with her
mother, who had hooked a widower the second day out. The mother was
skillful at looking young, and compelled her child, therefore, to be
juvenile and shy of young men.
[Sidenote: HOW THE PASSENGERS AMUSED THEMSELVES.]
"Helen, you were flirting with that Chicago young man, this morning!"
"Flirting! Mamma! It's too mean! You won't let me flirt. I havn't
enjoyed myself a minute since we sailed. I wish you would let me alone
to do as I please."
The poor child envied her mother, and with good reason, for within ten
minutes she was under the wing, or arm, of the widower, looking not a
minute over thirty-five.
There were old maids who found themselves objects of attention for the
first time for years; there were widows who grew sentimental looking at
the changing waters, especially at night when the moon and stars were
out; there were married men whose wives were many leagues away,
determined to have a good time once more, flirting with all sorts and
conditions of women, and there were all sorts and conditions of women
flirting hungrily with all sorts and conditions of men. There were
speculators driving bargains with each other just the same as on
land--in brief, the ship was a little world by itself, and just about
the same as any other world.
In the smoking room the great and muscular American game of draw poker
was played incessantly, from early in the morning, till late in the
night.
A portion of the passengers, including the English dominie, played a
game called "shuffle-board." Squares were marked upon the deck, which
were numbered from one to seven. Then some distance from the squares a
line was drawn, and what you had to do was to take an implement shaped
like a crutch, and shove discs of wood at the squares. We all played it,
sooner or later, for on ship-board one will get, in time, to playing pin
alone in his room. The beauty about shuffle-board is, one player is as
good as another, if not better, for there isn't the slightest skill to
be displayed in it. Indeed, the best playing is always done at first,
when the player shoots entirely at random. There is a chance that he
will strike a square, then; but when one gets to calculating distances,
and looking knowingly, and attempting some particular square, the
chances are even that the disc goes overboard.
However, it is a good and useful game. The young ladies look well
handling the clumsy cues, and the attitudes they are compelled to take
are graceful. Then as the vessel lurches they fall naturally in your
arms. By the way, it is a curious fact and one worthy of record, that I
did not see a young lady fall into the arms of another young lady during
the entire voyage.
We had on board, as a matter of course, the betting young man from
Chicago. No steamer ever sailed that did not have this young fellow
aboard, and there is enough of them to last the Atlantic for a great
many years. He knew everything that everybody thinks they know, but do
not, and his delight was to propound a query, and then when you had
answered it, to very coolly and exasperatingly remark:--
"Bet yer bottle of wine you're wrong."
The matter would be so simple and one of so common repute that
immediately you accepted the wager only to find that in some minute
particular, you _were_ wrong, and that the knowing youth had won.
For instance:--
"Thompson, do you know how many States there are in the Union?"
[Illustration: "SHUFFLE BOARD."]
Now any citizen of the United States who votes, and is eligible to the
Presidency, ought to know how many States there are in his beloved
country without thinking, but how many are there who can say, off-hand?
And so poor Thompson answered:--
"What a question! Of course I know."
"Bet ye bottle ye don't!"
"Done. There are--"
[Sidenote: THE YOUNG MAN FROM CHICAGO.]
And then Thompson would find himself figuring the very important problem
as to whether Colorado had been admitted, and Nevada, and Oregon, and he
would decide that one had and the other hadn't, and finally state the
number, with great certainty that it was wrong.
The Chicago man's crowning bet occurred the last day out. The smoking
room was tolerably full, as were the occupants, and everybody was bored,
as everybody is on the last day. The Chicago man had been silent for an
hour, when suddenly he broke out:
"Gentlemen--"
"Oh, no more bets," was the exclamation of the entire party. "Give us a
rest."
"I don't want to bet, but I can show you something curious."
"Well?"
"I say it and mean it. I can drink a glass of water without it's going
down my throat."
"And get it into your stomach?"
"Certainly."
There was a silence of considerably more than a minute. Every man in the
room had been victimized by this gatherer up of inconsidered trifles,
and there was a general disposition to get the better of him in some way
if possible. Here was the opportunity. How could a man get a glass of
water into his stomach without its going down his throat? Impossible!
And so the usual bottle of wine was wagered, and the Chicago man
proceeded to accomplish the supposed impossible feat. It was very easily
done. All he did was to stand upon his head on the seat that runs around
the room and swallow a glass of water. It went to his stomach, but it
did not go _down_ his throat. It went _up_ his throat. And so his last
triumph was greater than all his previous ones, for every man in the
room had been eager to accept his wager. From that time out had he
offered to wager that he would swallow his own head he would have got no
takers.
It is astonishing how short remembrance is, and how the knowledge of one
decade is swallowed up in the increasing volume of the next. Every one
of the catches employed by this young man to keep himself in wine and
cigars were well known ten years ago, but totally unknown now except by
the few who use them. The water going up the throat instead of down was
published years ago in a small volume called "Hocus Pocus," and it sold
by the million, but nobody knows of it to-day. I once asked a sharper
who had lived thirty years by the practice of one simple trick, how it
happened that the whole world did not know his little game?
[Illustration: THE BETTING YOUNG MAN FROM CHICAGO.]
"There are new crops of fools coming on every year," was his answer. He
was right. The stock will never run out.
[Sidenote: SEA-SICKNESS.]
There were one hundred and fifty-six saloon passengers on board, but
with the exception of those mentioned, a distressing monotony prevailed
among them. Never was so good a set of people ever gathered together.
They were fearfully good--too good by half.
True goodness is all very well in the abstract, but there is nothing
picturesque about it. It is slightly tame. Your brigand, with short
green jacket and yellow breeches, with blue or green garters, and a tall
hat with a feather in it, is a much more striking being than a Quaker
woman. The wicked is always the startling, and, therefore, taking to the
eye.
On our ship the people were all good. There wasn't a pickpocket, a card
sharper, or anything of the sort to vary the monotony of life. It was a
dead level of goodness, a sort of quiet mill-pond of morality, that to
the lover of excitement was distressing in the extreme. The card parties
were conducted decorously, and the religious services in the grand
saloon were attended by nearly every passenger, and what is more they
all seemed to enjoy it. Possibly it was because religious services were
a novelty to the most of them.
The second day out was a very rough one. The wind freshened--I think
that is the proper phrase--and a tremendously heavy sea was on. The
"City of Richmond" is a very staunch ship, and behaves herself
commendably in bad weather, but there is no ship that can resist the
power of the enormous waves of the North Atlantic. Consequently she
tossed like a cork, and, consequently, there was an amount of suffering
for two days that was amusing to everybody but the sufferers.
Sea-sickness is probably the most distressing of all the maladies that
do not kill. The sickness from first to last is a taste of death. The
resultant vomiting is of a nature totally different from any other
variety of vomiting known. The victim does not vomit--he throws up.
There is a wild legend that one man in a severe fit of sea-sickness
threw up his boots, but it is not credible. It is entirely safe to say,
however, that one throws up everything but original sin, and he gives
that a tolerable trial.
It was amusing to see those who had done the voyage before, and who had
been through sea-sickness, smile upon those who were in the throes of
agony. The look of superiority they took on, as much as to say, "when
you have been through it as I have, you won't have it any more." And
then to see these same fellows turn deadly pale, and leave their seats,
and rush to their rooms and disappear from mortal view a day or so, was
refreshing to those who were having their first experience.
The beauty of sea-sickness is that you may have it every voyage, which
is fortunate, as having a tendency to restrain pride and keep down
assumption of superiority; for when one has to suffer, one loves to see
everybody else suffer.
One man aboard did not think it possible that he could be sick, and he
was rather indignant that his wife should be. She, poor thing, was in
the agonies of death, and he insisted, as he held her head, that she
ought not to be sick, that her giving way to it was a weakness purely
feminine, and he went on wondering why a woman could not--
He quit talking very quickly. The strong man who was not a woman, turned
pale, the regular paleness that denotes the coming of the malady, and
dropping the head he had been holding so patronizingly with no more
compunction than as though it had been his pet dog's, rushed to the side
of the vessel, and there paid his tribute to Neptune. The suffering
wife, sick as she was, could not resist the temptation to wreak a trifle
of feminine vengeance upon him. "Dear," said she, between the heaves
that were rending her in several twains, "Sea-sickness is only a
feminine weakness. Oh--ugh--ugh--how I wish I were a strong man!"
There is one good thing about sea-sickness, and only one: the sufferer
cannot possibly have any other disease at the same time. One may have
bronchitis and dyspepsia at once, but sea-sickness monopolizes the whole
body. It is so all-pervading; it is such a giant of illness that there
is room for nothing else when it takes possession of a human body.
During General Butler's occupancy of New Orleans a fiery Rebel Frenchman
was inveighing against him in set terms.
"But you must admit," said a loyal Northerner, "that during General
Butler's administration your city was free from yellow fever."
[Sidenote: THE SHARP-NOSED MAN.]
"Ze yellow fevair and General Butlair in one season? Have ze great God
no maircy, zen?"
A kind Providence couldn't possibly saddle sea-sickness with any other
ailment.
[Illustration: "DEAR--, SEA-SICKNESS IS ONLY--A FEMININE WEAKNESS."]
Was there ever a ship or a rail car, or any other place where danger is
possible, that there was not present the man with a sharp nose, slightly
red at the tip, whose chief delight seems to be to point out the
possibilities of all sorts of disaster, and to do it in the most
friendly way? I remember once going down the Hoosac Tunnel before it was
finished. I went down, not because I wanted to, (indeed I would have
given a farm, if I had had one, to have avoided it,) but it was the
thing to do there, and must be done. So with about the feeling that
accompanied John Rogers to the stake, I stepped, with others, upon the
platform, and down we went. It was a most terrible descent. A hole in
the ground eighteen hundred feet deep, and a platform, suspended by a
single rope! In my eyes that rope was not larger or stronger than
pack-thread.
"Is this safe?" I asked of the sharp-nosed man.
"Wa'all, yes, I s'pose so. It does break sometimes--did last month and
killed eight men. I guess we are all right, though the rope's tollable
old and yest'dy they histed out a very heavy ingine and biler, which may
hev strained it. Long ways to fall--if she does break!"
Cheerful suggestion for people who were fifteen hundred feet from the
bottom and couldn't possibly get off.
Another time on the Shore Line between Boston and New York, there was an
old lady who had never been upon a railroad train before, and who was
exceedingly nervous. Behind her sat the sharp-nosed man of that train,
who answered all her questions.
"Ya'as, railroad travelin' is dangerous. Y'see they git keerless. Only a
year ago, they left a draw opened, and a train run into it, and mor'n a
hundred passengers wuz drownded."
"Merciful heavens!" ejaculated the old lady, in an agony of horror. "We
don't go over that bridge."
"Yes we do, and we're putty nigh to it now. And the men are jest ez
keerless now ez they wuz then. They git keerless. I never travel over
this road ef I kin help it."
Then he went on and told her of every accident that he could remember,
especially those that had occurred upon that road.
And the old lady, with her blood frozen by the horrible recitals, sat
during the entire trip with her hands grasping tightly the arms of her
seat, expecting momentarily to be hurled from the track and torn limb
from limb, or to be plunged into the wild waters of the Sound.
[Sidenote: TIBBITTS, OF OSHKOSH.]
We had the sharp-nosed man with us. His delight was to take timid
girls, or nervous women, and explain if the slightest thing should get
wrong with the machinery how we should be at the mercy of the waves. For
instance, if we should lose our propeller what would happen? Or if any
one of the boilers should explode, filling the ship with hot steam,
scalding the passengers, or if the main shaft should break, in such a
sea as we were then having, or if we should run upon an iceberg, or
collide with some floating hulk?
"They say all these ships are built with water-tight compartments. Sho!
Stave in one part of the ship and it must go down. What happened to the
'City of Boston?' Never heard of. 'City of Paris?' Lost half her
passengers. But we must take our chances if we will travel."
And this to a lot of people who had never been at sea before, with an
ugly wind blowing and a tremendous sea on. Imagine the frame of mind he
left his auditors in, and he made it his business, day after day, to
regale the very timid ones with harrowing histories of shipwrecks and
disasters at sea till their blood would run cold.
Some night this old raven will be lost overboard, but there will be
others just like him to take his place. Nature duplicates her
monstrosities as well as her good things.
[Illustration: LEMUEL TIBBITTS, FROM NEAR OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN, WRITING A
LETTER TO HIS MOTHER.]
Among the passengers was a young man from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, named
Tibbitts. He was an excellent young man, of his kind, and he very soon
acquired the reputation, which he deserved, of being the very best poker
player on the ship. He was uneasy till a game was organized in the
morning, and he growled ferociously when the lights were turned down at
twelve at night. He was impatient with slow players, because, as he
said, all the time they wasted was so much loss to him. He could drink
more Scotch whisky than any one on the ship, and he was the pet of the
entire crew, for his hand was always in his pocket. He ruined the rest
of the passengers by his reckless liberality. His father was a rich
Wisconsin farmer, and this was his first experience in travel.
What time he could spare from poker and his meals, was devoted to
writing a letter to his mother, for whom the scape-grace did seem to
have a great deal of respect and a very considerable amount of love. His
letter was finished the day before we made Queenstown, so that he could
mail it from there. He read it to me. The sentences in parenthesis were
his comments:--
ON BOARD THE CITY OF RICHMOND, }
NEAR QUEENSTOWN, May 23, 1881. }
DEAR MOTHER:--While there is everything to interest one from the
interior in a sea voyage, I confess that I have not enjoyed the
passage at all. I have no heart for it for my mind is perpetually
on you and my home in the far West. (_You see it will please the
old lady to know I am thinking of her all the time. Didn't I scoop
in that jack pot nicely last evening? Hadn't a thing in my hand,
and Filkins actually opened it with three deuces._) The ship is one
of the strongest and best on the ocean, and is commanded and manned
by the best sailors on the sea. The passengers are all good,
serious people, with perhaps one exception. There is one young man
from New York of dissolute habits, who has a bottle of whisky in
his room, and who actually tried to tempt me to play cards with
him. But he is known and avoided by the entire company.
We have regular services in the grand saloon, every morning, and
occasional meetings for vocal exercises and conversation at other
hours. I have just come from one, at which--
"You are not going to send this infernal aggregation of lies to your
mother, are you?" I asked.
"Why not? She don't know any better, and it will make her feel good. I
have my opinion of a man who won't give his old mother a pleasure when
he can just as well as not. I will, you bet?"
"But such atrocious lies!"
[Sidenote: TIBBITTS' LETTER.]
"I'll chance that. I can stand lies of that kind when they are told in
so good a cause. I love my mother, I do. Let's see, where was I? Oh
yes."
I have just come from one at which the discussion was mostly on the
progress of missions in the Far West. (_The old lady is Treasurer
of a society for the conversion of the Apaches, or some other
tribe._) Just now the sailors are heaving a log, which they do to
ascertain the speed the ship is making. Mr. Inman, the owner of
this ship, is a very wealthy man, and he has everything of the
best. He furnishes his vessel with nothing but black walnut logs to
heave, while the others use pine or poplar. Captain Leitch is a
very humane man, and never uses profane language to his crew. On
other ships the men who go aloft are compelled to climb tarred rope
ladders, but Captain Leitch has passenger elevators rigged to the
masts, such as you saw in the Palmer House in Chicago, in which
they sit comfortably and are hoisted up by a steam engine.
"Great heavens! You are not surely going to send that?"
"Why not? What is an old lady in silver spectacles on a farm thirty
miles from any water more than a well, going to know about a steamer? I
must write her something, for she persuaded the old gentleman to let me
take the trip. I ain't ungrateful, I ain't. I'll give her one good
letter, anyhow. Why, by the way you talk, I should suppose you never had
a mother, and if you had that you didn't know how to treat her. I hate a
man who don't love his mother and isn't willing to sacrifice himself for
her. All I can do for her now is to write to her, and write such letters
as will interest her, and the dear old girl is going to get them, if the
paper and ink holds out, and they are going to be good ones, too."
I have got to be a good deal of a sailor, and if it were not for
leaving you, which I couldn't do, I believe I should take one of
these ships myself. I know all about starboard and port--port used
to be larboard--and I can tell the stern from the bow. On a ship
you don't say, "I will go down stairs," but you say, "I will go
below." One would think that I had been born on the sea, and was a
true child of the ocean.
Owing to my strictly temperate habits at home, and my absolute
abstemiousness on the ship, I have escaped the horrors of sea
sickness. As you taught me, true happiness can only be found in
virtue. The wicked young man from New York has been sick half the
time, as a young man who keeps a bottle in his room should be.
The nice woolen stockings you knit for me have been a great
comfort, and all I regret is, I am afraid I have not enough of them
to last me till I get home.
(The young villain had purchased in New York an assortment of the most
picturesque hosiery procurable, which he was wearing with low cut
shoes. The woolen stockings he gave to his room-steward.)
The tracts you put in my valise I have read over and over again,
and have lent them since to the passengers who prefer serious
reading to trashy novels and literature of that kind. What time I
have had to spare for other reading, I have devoted to books of
travel, so that I may see Europe intelligently.
"By the way," he stopped to say, "are the Argyle rooms in London
actually closed, and is the Mabille in Paris as lively as it used to be?
Great Cæsar! won't I make it lively for them!"
In another day we shall land in Liverpool, and then I shall be only
five hours from London. I long to reach London, for I do so desire
to hear Spurgeon, and attend the Exeter Hall meetings, as you
desired me. But as we shall reach London on Tuesday, I shall be
compelled to wait till the following Sunday--five long days.
Please ma, have pa send me a draft at my address at London, at
once. I find the expense of travel is much greater than I supposed,
and I fear I shall not have enough.
Your affectionate son,
LEMUEL.
"There," said Lemuel, as he sealed the letter, "that is what I call a
good letter. The old lady will read it over and over to herself, and
then she will read it to all the neighbors. It will do her a heap of
good. Bye-bye. The boys are waiting for me in the smoking-room."
And stopping at the bar to take a drink--the liberality of English
measure was not too great for him--he was, a minute after, absorbed in
the mysteries of poker, and was "raking-in" the money of the others at a
lively rate.
And the letter went to the good old mother, and probably did her good.
And she, doubtless, worried the old gentleman till he sent the graceless
fellow a remittance. Boys can always be sure of their mothers--would
that mothers could only be half as sure of their boys.
[Sidenote: THE STORM.]
The fourth night out we were favored with a most terrific thunder storm.
I say favored, now that we are through with it, for it is a good thing
to look back upon, but we esteemed it no favor at the time. A fierce
storm is bad enough on land--it is a terror on water. On the land you
are threatened with danger only from above--on the water you are doubly
menaced. There was the marshaling of the clouds that were arranging
themselves for an attack upon us, then the terrible darkness, then the
first onslaught of the winds, that tossed the strong ship like a cork,
then the thunder that seemed like the voice of a merciless Vengeance,
and the lightnings that were its fiery fingers; pitchy darkness, except
when the lightning illuminated the scene, and the sight it disclosed
made darkness preferable, for it showed the great waves rolling one
after another, their white crests like the teeth of enormous dragons,
strong enough to crush the mass of iron against which their fury was
directed. And then the wind howling through the rigging was fearfully
like the shrieks of the monsters baffled and robbed of their prey. It
seemed as though the entire forces of Nature were arrayed intelligently
against our ship, and for the sole purpose of its destruction.
[Illustration: EVERY SIN I HAD COMMITTED CAME BEFORE ME LIKE ACCUSING
GHOSTS.]
It was far from pleasant, and it is fortunate that such displays last
but a little while. In less than a second from its beginning every sin I
had ever committed, namely, the stealing of a watermelon in my boyhood,
and the voting of a split ticket in my manhood, came vividly before me
like accusing ghosts. I did remember also, once, that when a
ticket-seller in a railroad station in Troy, who was very insolent and
unobliging, made a mistake in my favor to the amount of thirty cents, in
my anger I did not rectify it, and I debated as to whether that was a
sin or not; but when I thought it over I came to the conclusion that,
inasmuch as the recording angel knew how brutal the fellow was, he would
blot out the record if he had to drop upon it a tear of oxalic acid.
But the good ship endured it all. The great body of iron, with its soul
of steam, and muscles of steel, defied the elements and rode it out
safely.
The storm hurried away to pursue and fright other vessels, and the waste
of waters was once more in a sort of a light that was not lurid. Though
the greatest terror was passed, the long swell which kept the ship
either climbing a mountain of water or descending into its depths was
anything but pleasant.
A ship at dock looks strong enough to defy all the elements, but out at
sea when those elements become angry it is wonderful how frail she
seems. It is man against Omnipotence.
I don't care how many times a man has been to sea, the first sight of
land after a voyage is an unmixed delight. I know that, for I have
crossed the Great Lakes repeatedly, and when a boy I used to "go home"
via the Erie Canal, I always got up early in the morning to look at the
land on either shore. A man is not a fish, and no man takes to water
naturally. It is a necessity that drives him to it, the same as to
labor.
Therefore the decks were crowded on the ninth morning of the voyage when
the shores of Ireland were sighted. Not because it was Ireland--nobody
thrilled over that--but because it was land, because it was something
that did not roll and pitch, and toss and swing, but was substantial and
permanent. The Mississippi Ethiopian, when discussing the difference
between traveling by rail and water remarked: "Ef de cahs run off de
track dah ye is--ef de boat goes to pieces, wha is ye?"
[Sidenote: "LAND!"]
Ireland was there and land was there and reliable. Ireland--as land--has
no machinery to get out of order, no icebergs to run into--no other
steamers to collide with. I was delighted to look at her, and I venture
to say that the older the sailor, the more reassuring and delightful
the sight of land.
The bold cliffs looked friendly, and the long stretches of green on
their summits were an absolute delight. The color was the green of grass
and trees, that had something akin to humanity in it, not the
glittering, changing, treacherous green of the water we had been sailing
over and plunging through for eight very long days. And then to think
that twenty-four hours more would release us from our friendly prison,
and that during that twenty-four hours we should be within a short
distance of land, was a delight.
I have at times found fault with the Irish in America, and I don't rank
Ireland as the greatest country under the heavens, but that morning I
felt for her a most profound respect. Had Ashantee been the first land
we had sighted that morning, I presume I should have forgiven the
Ashantees for killing and eating the missionaries. After one has been at
sea, even for eight days, land is the principal wish of the heart. One
day and night across the Channel, and we made Liverpool. There were
promises to meet in London, or Paris, exchanges of cards, the passing
the Custom House with our baggage, the purchase of tickets, and we found
ourselves in the cars of the Midland Road and scurrying away through
Derbyshire to London.
[Illustration: OFF FOR LONDON.]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
LONDON, AND THINGS PERTAINING.
The largest city of the world! The most monstrous aggregation of men,
women, children; the center of financial, military, mental, and moral
power! The controlling city of the world! This is London!
There may be in the effete East larger aggregations of what, by
courtesy, may be called humanity, for in those countries the limits of
cities are not properly defined, nor is the census taken with any
accuracy. But these cities exercise no especial influence upon the
world; they control nothing outside of their own countries; they reach
out to nothing; they are simply hives.
[Sidenote: THE ENGLISHMAN.]
Even an American, with all his pride in his country and her magnificent
cities, feels somewhat dwarfed to find himself in a city eight times as
large as Chicago, four times as large as New York, and his pride in
wealth and power, and all that sort of thing, collapses when he realizes
the fact that he is where the finances of the world are absolutely
controlled; that he is at the very center of the vastest money and
military power in the world!
There is nothing greater as yet than London, and whether there ever will
be is a question. I hope not. Men, women and children are all very well,
but they thrive best where they have room to develop. Four millions of
them together on so small a piece of ground dwarfs them. They do better
on the prairies.
England is an enormous octopus, whose feelers, armed with very strong
and sharp claws, embrace the world, and London, the mouth and stomach of
the monster, is sucking its prey steadily and mercilessly. The animal
lost one feeler which America cut off in 1776, and her grasp is
weakening elsewhere, but she has enough. India contributes its life
blood, China contributes, the islands of the sea contribute, and pretty
much the whole world gives more or less.
England comes by her characteristics honestly. The human being we call
an Englishman, half merchant and half soldier, the soldier element being
purely piratical, never could have been developed out of one race. Each
race has some peculiar quality which distinguishes it and marks it
everywhere. The Scotchman is noted for his hardiness, thrift, and
stubbornness; the Dutchman for his steadiness, boldness, and quiet
daring; the Irishman for emigrating to New York and getting on the
police force in a month, and so on. But the man we call an Englishman is
a composite institution.
The old Saxon was a stolid fellow, with flashes of temper. He never
could control things, for he was too lazy and sensual; but he had
qualities that mixed well with others. You have to have hair in plaster.
But when the Dane, who was a born sea pirate, swooped down upon Britain,
and the Norman, who was a born land pirate, came also, and mixed with
the Saxon, there was a new creation, and that is the Englishman of
to-day. He is a born trader and a born soldier, with a wisdom that the
rest of the world has not. His fighting power is made subject and
subordinate to his trading power.
When England wants anything she does not stop to ask any questions as
to the right or wrong of the thing--she quietly goes and takes it, that
is, if she is stronger than the party she desires to capture. If the
other party objects, a few armies are sent out and the country is
brought to reason immediately. Your bayonet is a rare persuader.
Can a country afford to fit out costly armaments and maintain vast
armies for such purposes? Certainly, if it is done on England's plan.
England, after spending some millions in subjugating a country, simply
assesses the cost of the operation with as many millions for interest as
she thinks the subjugated party can bear without destroying it, and
makes it pay. She never destroys a country entirely, for she has further
use for it. She wants the inhabitants, once subjugated, to go on and
labor and toil and sweat, for all time to come, to furnish her with raw
material, and then to buy it back again in the shape of manufactured
goods, which, as she buys cheap and sells dear, makes a very handsome
profit, besides furnishing employment to her vast merchant marine in the
carrying trade.
And then her merchants manage to interest a certain portion of the
natives with her in plundering their neighbors, and so her rule is made
tolerably safe and inexpensive. This is about the size of it. She
conquers a country, and after reimbursing herself, calls a convention of
native Princes and says: "Here, now, we are going to hold this country,
anyhow. We are going to have the trade and the revenues, and you see we
can do it. You fellows may as well have your whack in it." (These, of
course, are not the exact words used, but I am writing what a New York
politician would say. A ring man's words mean exactly what diplomatic
language does, and they are always more to the point.) "Now you help us
keep the others down, and you shall keep your own places and shall have
yourselves fifty per cent. of what you can grind out of your people, and
as we shall stand behind you with our power, that fifty per cent. will
be more than you could possibly screw out of them alone and unaided."
[Sidenote: TWO POLICIES.]
The native Prince sees the point, for he is as merciless and cruel as an
Englishman, and I cannot say more than that, and he assents. Immediately
there is a rush of native Princes, all anxious to join in for their
plunder, and England apportions to each his share, according to his
importance, and in less than no time she has a native army, officered by
English, to keep the people down to the proper level, and to collect
taxes and protect traders, and all that sort of thing, and London draws
in the money and lives royally.
And, then, if any Prince, or people, or soldiery, or anybody else, fancy
they have rights of their own, and question the right of the foreigner
to tax them and grind them, they blow a few thousands of them from the
mouths of cannon, to teach them the beauty of obedience.
It would take a wiser man than I am to determine by what right, earthly
or unearthly, England holds India, but she does all the same, without a
blush.
[Illustration: THE INDIAN POLICY.]
Perhaps it is as well for the Indians. The native Princes were just as
rapacious and more senseless than the English. If a native Indian should
swallow a diamond, his Prince would rip him open to get it, which made
him useless ever after. Johnny Bull, more politic and far seeing, would
force an emetic down his throat, so that he might go on and find more
diamonds to swallow. He gets the diamond all the same, and saves the
subject for future profit.
[Illustration: THE EMETIC POLICY.]
The strength of England is its fighting capacity, its mercantile
capacity, and its wonderful rapacity. As was said of a noted criminal
in the States, "he wouldn't steal anything he couldn't lift, though he
did tackle a red-hot cook-stove," so with England. The eyes of her
moneyed power, and it is more than Argus-eyed, are being strained every
day for new worlds to sell goods to, knowing perfectly well that when
they find a field the Government will furnish muskets to occupy that
field. And let no mistake be made. If the field is worth occupying it
will be occupied beyond a doubt.
Ireland is an example, Scotland would be, only the Scotch, having a
habit of standing together, are ugly customers to deal with, and as they
and the English get along tolerably well together, there is no especial
trouble between them.
Hence it is that London is so great. London is the center of this vast
system of plunder and rapine, and the result of it all comes here. Here
is the Court, here is the seat of Government, here is where the great
nobles, no matter where their seats may be, are compelled to spend a
portion of their time; they are all obliged to have town residences;
here they bring their flunkies and _retinues_ of servants, and they make
the great city.
It is not a commercial point, as is Liverpool or New York, nor a
manufacturing point, as is Manchester or Philadelphia. It is where the
spoils of the present organized legal brigandage are divided, and where
the surplus of the organized brigandage of past centuries is expended.
The tradesman of London would not alter the existing condition of things
if he could. He believes in that shadowy myth called the Queen, not
because he knows anything about her, or cares a straw for her, but
simply because when she, which means the Court, is in London, trade is
good. That eminent descendant of an eminent robber, Sir Giles Fitz
Battleaxe, is here during the season, with all his flunkies and
servitors, and the tradesmen have to supply them. As Sir Giles has vast
estates in Ireland and Scotland, and the Lord knows where else, which
yield him an immense revenue, Sir Giles's steward can pool his issues
with his tradesman and both get rich. Sir Giles doesn't care, for he is
paying all this out of rents of property, the title to which came from a
King who stole the ground, and he has enough anyhow.
[Sidenote: A FEW STATISTICS.]
And then comes the foreign robberies, which he has an interest in, and
those make up any waste that may happen at home. Even the cabman, who
haggles with you over a shilling, is loyal to the Crown and the Church,
for the Crown and the Church bring to London the people who make him his
fares.
Rampant republican as I am, opposed to monarchy as I am, I am
contributing several pounds per diem to the maintenance of the British
throne. I am here to see royalty, and everybody that I come in contact
with, from the boy who cleans my boots to the lady who rents me my
rooms, sing hosannas to the system that brings me here to be plundered.
When I give a shilling to a servant she doesn't thank me for it, but she
goes to her garret and sings, "God Save the Queen." That amiable shadow
gets all the credit for my money.
They shall give thanks to Victoria for me but very little. I will be a
republican to the extent of leaving as small an amount of money in
England as possible. Could there be a league of Americans formed who
would refuse to pay anything, I am not sure but that royalty might be
overthrown, and a republic established on its ruins.
And yet I am not certain that that would answer any good purpose. But
for these advantages I don't think anybody would live in London. It was
said that if the Pilgrims had landed in the Mississippi Valley, New
England would never have been settled, and, therefore, it was
providential that the Pilgrims were so directed. But for royalty and the
profit that pertains to a Court, I doubt if London could hold
population. For if there is a disagreeable--but I reserve this for a
special occasion, when, less amiable than I am now, I can do the subject
justice.
London has a population, in round numbers, of four millions. Without
including outlying suburbs, it covers seventy-eight thousand and eighty
acres, or one hundred and twenty-two square miles. The length of the
streets and roads is about fifteen hundred miles, and their area nearly
twelve square miles. The area of London being one hundred and twenty-two
square miles, is equal to a square of about eleven miles to the side.
Assuming that it is crossed by straight roads at equal intervals, there
would be one hundred and thirty-six such roads, each eleven miles long
and one hundred and forty-two yards apart. The sewers have a length of
about two thousand miles, and are equal to one hundred and eighty-two
sewers eleven miles in length, on an average of one hundred and six
yards apart. At the census in 1871 there were within this area four
hundred and seventeen thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven inhabited
houses, containing an average of seven and eight-tenths persons to a
house, exactly corresponding with the proportion in 1861. The density of
population was forty-two persons to an acre, twenty-six thousand six
hundred and seventy-four to a square mile. The population, estimated to
the middle of the year, amounted to three million six hundred and
sixty-four thousand one hundred and forty-nine.
These statistics I know to be correct, for I got them from a newspaper.
I copy it entire, for the readers of this book do not take the London
_Chronicle_, as a rule, and it would be too expensive to send each one a
copy of it. If any false statements are made it is the _Chronicle's_
fault and not mine.
The climate is, to put it mildly, fiendish. I have been in every
possible section of the United States that could be reached by rail,
water, or stage, and I was never in a location, excepting California, in
which the citizens whereof would not remark: "Oh, yes; this would be a
good country to live in if it was not for the changeable climate. The
changes are too sudden and severe." One blessed result of my coming to
London is to make me entirely content with the worst climate America
has. Tennessee is a paradise to it, so far as climate goes, and when you
have said that the subject is closed.
[Sidenote: THE CLIMATE.]
It rains in London with greater ease than it does in any place in the
world. The sun will be shining brightly in the heavens; you look out of
your window and say: "I will take a walk this morning without that
accursed umbrella," and you brush your silk hat--everybody who is
anybody must wear a silk hat--and you sally forth with your cane. You
turn into the Strand, feeling especially cheerful in the sun, when all
of a sudden the sky is overcast and you hat is ruined. You call a hansom
and go back to your lodgings for your umbrella, and when you have
encumbered yourself with the clumsy nuisance the sun comes out smiling,
and the rain is over, only to resume operations again without the
slightest possible reason.
Everybody in London carries an umbrella habitually and all the time. No
man ventures out of doors without one, no matter how the sky appears. In
America a fair day may be counted upon, but here there is no dependence
to be placed upon anything in the form of weather. Last week (June 1) it
was as hot as it ought to be the same day in Charleston, South Carolina;
to-day (June 7) I came in, went out, and came in wearing an overcoat,
and a tolerably heavy one at that. What the weather will be to-morrow,
heaven only knows. I have experienced so many and so violent changes
that I should not be surprised if it should snow. I may go skating next
week upon the Serpentine.
But the Londoners don't mind it. They are used to it. From the ease with
which they carry umbrellas, I am convinced that they are born with them,
as George Washington was with the hatchet. A Londoner never lends his
umbrella, for everybody has his own, and he never loses it. It is a part
of him, as much as is his nose. The umbrella should be in the coat of
arms of the royal family, and I do not know but it is.
It is a dull and heavy climate. How it affects a native I cannot tell,
but an American has a disposition to sleep perpetually and forever.
In the house I am in is an American, who insisted one morning on going
across the square without his umbrella. I mildly remonstrated. "It is
safe," he said, "it isn't raining now, for it was a minute ago." He was
right, but he came to grief for all that. It rained again in another
minute.
London is a miracle of twistedness. If there is a straight street in
it--that is, one that runs parallel with any other--I have not found it.
The streets of Boston, it is said, were originally cow-paths. If those
of London were located on the paths of cows, the cows must have been
intoxicated, for there is no system nor any approach to one. They begin
without cause and end without reason. There are angles, curves and
stoppages, and that is all there is about it. Where a street, to answer
the ends of convenience and economy, should go on, you come squarely
against a dead wall, and where a street should naturally end, there has
been constructed, at vast expense, a continuance, and for no apparent
reason. Doubtless there is a reason, but I would give a handsome premium
to have it made manifest to me.
Like all old cities, there never was a plan. This ground was never taken
up at a dollar and a quarter an acre, as in America, by a set of
speculators, and laid out in regular squares, and sold at so much a lot.
London never was made--it grew. The original city is a little spot,
occupied mostly by banks, but other cities grew around it, and they were
joined by all sorts of lanes and roads, which in time became occupied,
and so the inextricable jumble occurred.
The city is built entirely of brick and stone, and in the style and
convenience of its buildings, is not to be compared to American cities.
There is a terrible monotony in its architecture, and a most depressing
sameness in color. All London is dingy. Occasionally an enterprising
citizen paints his house to distinguish it from his neighbor's, but he
never does it but once. The coal consumed is bituminous, and the smoke
it produces is the thickest smoke in the world, and it hangs very close
to the earth. The paint becomes discolored in a few months, and the
aspiring citizen finds in the smoke a protest against his vanity. His
house soon drops into line with his neighbor's, and is as dingy as
before.
[Sidenote: VEHICULAR.]
The streets of London are crowded to a degree that an American can
hardly conceive. Isaiah Rynders said once that it required more
intellect to cross Broadway than it did to be a country justice. Had
Isaiah stayed a week in London he would have had the conceit taken out
of him. The streets of London, all of them, are boiling, seething masses
of moving men and animals. Omnibusses, vast cumbrous machines, loaded
full inside, and with twenty people on the top, hansoms, cabs, trucks,
drays, donkey carts, pony carts, carriages, form a never-beginning and
never-ending procession, making a roar like the waters of Niagara. He
who attempts to cross a street has to make it a regular business. It
cannot be done leisurely or in a dignified way. You narrowly escape
being run down by a hansom, only to find yourself in danger of being
impaled by the pole of an omnibus, and escaping that, a donkey cart is
charging full at you, and if you escape a carriage, and a dozen dog
carts, you finally find yourself on the sidewalk plump in the stomach of
somebody, who accepts your apology with a growl.
[Illustration: A LONDON STREET SCENE.]
I shall never get over my admiration for the London driver. How he can
guide one horse, or still more wonderful, two, through this vehicular
labyrinth, is a mystery that I cannot comprehend. I would as soon think
of taking command of the British army, and a great deal sooner, for if I
didn't stomach fighting, I could run. But they do it, and they seldom
have accidents.
And while I am on the subject of driving, I may as well get through with
it. The horses used in London embrace a vast variety. The draught horses
are all of the Norman variety, about as large as small elephants, and
magnificent in their strength. They are massive, and the loads they draw
are wonderful. The trucks are enormous in size and strength, with great,
broad wheels, and merchandise is piled upon them mountain high. Two of
these horses, nineteen hands high, and built proportionately, with
great, clumsy legs, will take an enormous load along the streets, making
no fuss, and seemingly without worry.
But when one notices the condition of the streets the wonder at the
loads that are drawn ceases. They are as smooth as glass. The stone
pavements are evenly laid and absolutely without ruts. The wooden
pavement, answering to the Nicholson, which has invariably been a
failure in America, is a success here, and for a very simple reason. The
contractors are compelled to do their work honestly. There is no shoddy
in the pavements of London. They are all as sound as the Bank of
England. They don't lay down some pine boards in the mud, and then stand
rotten blocks on end upon them, as we do in America, but there is a
solid foundation of broken stone and such matter laid down first, and
this is filled with sand, and then the blocks, all good timber, are
placed upon that in a proper way, the whole resulting in a road-bed as
solid as stone itself, and smooth and noiseless, making a roadway over
which any load can be drawn without injury to either beast or vehicle,
and one which will be good long after the makers are dust. The vehicles
are made so strong as they are, not for fear of the roads, but to hold
the enormous weights that the roads make possible.
[Sidenote: THE VICIOUS HORSE.]
Sometime we of America will get to doing things in a permanent way. It
will be, however, after all the present race of contractors are worth
several millions each. I presume in the ancient days there were rings in
London. If so I can understand the uses for the beheading blocks
exhibited at the Tower.
All the vehicles used in the city are massive and solid. You see none of
the flimsy spider-web wheels and light airy bodies in carriages that we
affect in America. The wheels of a cab to carry four people are quite
three inches thick, and the bodies are correspondingly clumsy. Like
their owners, they are very solid.
But the hansom is the peculiar vehicle. The four-wheeler is a sort of a
sober-going cab, the one you would expect the mother of a family or a
respectable widow lady to use. The driver sits in front, as a driver
should, and the entire concern is closed except as you may desire to
have air by letting down eminently respectable windows in the side. But
the hansom is quite another thing. The occupant is in a low seat, while
his driver sits above him on a perch and the reins go over the
occupant's head. Next to swindling his customer out of a sixpence on his
fare, the chief ambition of the driver of a hansom is to run down a foot
passenger, and in this ambition his horse shares fully, if he does not
exceed him. The horses used in these piratical vehicles are generally
broken-down hunters, who, too slow to longer hunt the wily fox, and
harnessed in the ignoble hansom, have transferred their hunting
instincts to men. When the "jarvey," as he is called here, fixes his
eagle eye upon a citizen whom he proposes to run down, the horse knows
it as if by instinct, and they come charging down upon him at a pace
something as did the French cuirassiers at Waterloo. And if the intended
victim escapes, the driver gnashes his teeth in rage, and the
sympathizing horse drops his head and moves on a walk till the sight of
another countryman or stranger rouses his ambition. It is said that when
a driver succeeds in running down a foot passenger the injured man is
the one who is arrested.
The shops of London are of two kinds--the gorgeous modern and the
respectable ancient. The modern are of the most gorgeous kind. They are
not as in New York, immense show windows with a door between; but there
is an immense show window in the middle, with a small passage on the
side. When a London tradesman wants a show window he wants it all show.
It is very like the piety of some men I know. He doesn't care how small
the opening is to get into the place, for he knows if he attracts a
customer by the display of his goods in the window, he, the said
customer, will manage somehow to get inside. The point is to corral the
customer. Once in, his bones can be picked at leisure.
The modern shops are as gorgeously fitted up inside as out. They have
silver plated rails, magnificently decorated counters and show-cases,
even more than the New York stores have.
Then there are the eminently respectable shops which despise these
gorgeous ones about the same as an old noble, descended from one of the
first robbers, looks down upon a Knight of day before yesterday. These
are the shops that have over their doors "Established in 1692." They
would no more put in a plate glass window than they would forge a note.
They revel in their dustiness, and are proud of their darkness and
inconvenience. They wouldn't sweep out the premises if they could help
it, and the very cob-webs are sacred as being so many silent witnesses
to the antiquity of the house.
"The house, sir, of Smithers & Co., was established by Samuel Smithers
on this very spot in 1692, and business has been done under that name,
and by his successors, ever since, except an interval of two months,
which was occasioned by a fire--from the outside. The house of Samuel
Smithers & Co. could never have originated a fire upon their own
premises. The business is conducted with more system. We have never had
a protested paper and never asked an accommodation."
This is what the present head of the house will say to you. He has as
much pride in the house as the Queen has in her Queenship, and with
infinitely more reason. He would not allow a new pane of glass to be put
in, and he wouldn't change a thing about the premises for the world. He
prides himself on the inconveniences of a hundred years ago, and would
die sooner than to use a modern notion in the business.
[Sidenote: AN OLD HOUSE.]
But the Smitherses are good people with whom to do business. Among the
other old-fashioned customs they preserve is that of honesty. They keep
good goods, no shoddy; they have a fair price, and you might as well
undertake to tear down Westminster Abbey with a hair-pin as to induce
any variation therefrom. They want your trade--every Englishman wants
trade--but they prefer their system to trade. You buy, if you buy of
them, on their terms. But you know what you get, and that is worth
something.
This affection for the old is general. It is a fact that one eating
house, noted for its chops and steaks, and ales and wines, which had
been in existence no one knows how many years, and had its regular
succession of patrons, who came in at regular hours, and ate and drank
the same things, and read the same newspapers till death claimed them,
fell, by reason of death, into the hands of young men. These young
fellows were somewhat progressive, and they determined to bring the old
place abreast with modern ideas. And so they swept out the cob-webs,
painted the interior, decorated it in bright colors, put in new tables,
swept and cleaned things, and replaced the old floor with modern tiles,
and made it one of the most handsome places in London.
The effect was fatal. The old _habitues_ of the place came, looked
inside, ran out to see if they had not made a mistake as to the number,
and finding they were right as to locality, sighed and turned sadly
away. They could not eat in any such place, and they went and found some
other antiquated den, whose proprietor was sensible enough not to tear
down sacred cob-webs, and put in fresh floors.
The old patronage was lost forever, and the proprietors were compelled
to build up an entirely new business, the cost of which nearly put them
into bankruptcy.
All travelers lie. I am going to try to be an exception to this rule,
and shall, to the best of my ability, cling to the truth as a
shipwrecked mariner does to a spar. I shall try to conquer the tendency
to lie that overcome every man who gets a hundred miles away from home.
But I presume I shall fail; and so when I get home and say that living
is cheaper and better in London than it is anywhere in America, please
say to me, "You are lying!" You will do the correct thing.
No doubt when there I shall say to Smith or Thompson, "My boy, what you
want to do is to go abroad. You want to see London. And as for the
expense, what is it? Your passage across is only one hundred
dollars--ten days--and that is but ten dollars a day. And then you can
live so much cheaper in London than you can in New York that it is
really cheaper to go abroad than it is to stay at home."
[Illustration: A LONDON STEAK.]
I presume I shall say this when I get home, for I know the tendency of
the traveler to lie. I have traveled all over North America, and I
confess, with shame mantling my cheek, that I have at times added some
feet to the height of mountains and to the width of rivers, and to the
number of Indians, and once I did invent an exploit which never
happened, and I have narrated incidents which never occurred. It is such
a temptation to be a hero when you know you can never be successfully
disputed.
While I am yet young in foreign travel, and capable of an approximation
to truth, I wish to say that London is not only not a cheap place to
live, but an exceedingly dear one.
[Sidenote: THE MATTER OF COST.]
"Just think of it," said a travel-wise New Yorker, in New York, to me,
"just think of a steak for a shilling! Here you pay twice that!"
So we do, but when you pay fifty cents for a steak in New York, you get
a steak, and you get with it bread and butter _ad libitum_--you get
pickles, and sauces, and potatoes, and all that sort of thing. Your
fifty cent steak, with the accompaniments it carries, makes you a meal,
and a good one.
In London your steak is twenty-five cents, but it is only a sample.
After eating it you want some steak. Then you pay six cents for
potatoes, two cents for what they call a bread--you always have more and
there is a charge for each individual slice--you pay two cents for each
tiny pat of butter, you are compelled to struggle for a napkin, and if
you ask for ice to cool the infernal insipid water, you pay two cents
for that, and you get just enough to aggravate you. And, then, when you
are through, the smirking mass of stupidity and inefficiency they call a
waiter wants and expects a sixpence, which is twelve and one-half cents
more.
Where is your cheapness now? If you have a square, appetite-satisfying,
strength-giving meal, it has cost you twice as much as it would in New
York, with the difference that in New York it would be decently cooked,
decently served, and done with a sort of breadth that makes it a luxury
to eat, while here it is so hampered about with extras and charges for
minute things--things which in America are free to everybody--that
eating is reduced to a mere commercial basis and has no comfort in it.
The hotels are simply infamous in their charges. You agree to pay so
much per day for your rooms, and it looks tolerably cheap, but you
discover your mistake at the close of the first week, when you come to
settle your bill. Though you have never touched your bell and have never
seen the face of a servant, you are charged so much a day for
"attendance," you are charged for light, for fires. If you have ordered
a bit of anything, no matter how infinitesimal, it is there, and these
charges make up a bill larger than your room rent.
There is no use in remonstrating, nor in threatening to leave. You know,
and the landlord knows a great deal better, that no matter where you go
it will be the same, and so submitting to the inevitable, you draw a
draft for more money, and settle down to be cheated in peace.
The lodging houses are quite as bad, only of course in a smaller way.
Your accommodations are less, and the swindle less, but the proportion
is very carefully observed.
Clothing is somewhat cheaper than in America, but nevertheless let me
warn the intending comer against buying it here. You may buy cloths, if
you choose, and pay duty on them and take them home, but never let a
London tailor or dressmaker profane your person, be you man or woman.
The Creator never made either for a London tailor to mar. He has too
much respect for His handiwork. I have been here now two weeks, and have
yet to see a native Englishman or a tailor-spoiled American who was
well-dressed. The English tailor has no more idea of style than a pig
has of the revised Testament. You can tell an American a square off by
the cut of his coat, and an American woman by the very hang of her
dress. The English tailor looks at you wisely, and takes a measurement
or two, and puts his shears into the cloth. The result is a sort of a
square abortion, loose where it should be close, close where it should
be wide, long where it should be short and short where it should be
long, and the poor victim takes it and is miserable till time releases
him from it.
The majority of English women are dowdies, and by the way they have
immense feet and hands. They are excellent wives, mothers and sisters,
but their extremities are something frightful. They do have delightful
complexions though, and are as bright and good as they can be.
[Sidenote: A PITTSBURGH REMINISCENCE.]
Speaking of the feet of English women reminds me of Captain McFadden, of
Pittsburgh. The dear old Captain--he is dead and gone now these many a
year--in addition to being one of the best river men that Pittsburgh
could boast of, was also,--think of it,--a poultry fancier. When the
fancy for Shanghais broke out the Captain joined in it, as he did in
everything in the fowl way, and he paid cheerfully twenty-five dollars
for a half-dozen eggs of the famous breed, which he immediately put
under a hen that was in a setting mood. But Captain McFadden had a son
who was without reverence either for his father or poultry. Young Jim
McFadden went and bought a half-dozen duck's eggs and removed the
Shanghais and put the duck's eggs under the hen, the said hen not
knowing or caring whether she was hatching the common duck or the royal
Shanghai. In time its labors were accomplished and Captain McFadden was
viewing the resultant ducklings, with Jim laughing in his sleeve as he
looked on.
[Illustration: "JIM, MY BOY, AND IS THEM THE SHANGHAIS? LUK AT THEIR
FUTS! HEVENS, JIM."]
"Jim, me boy, and is them the Shanghais? Luk at their futs! Hevens, Jim,
luk at their futs. All h--l wouldn't up-trup em."
I can't imagine anything that would "up-trup" an English woman. But as
small feet and hands are not essential to salvation I forgive them this.
They can't help it. I presume they would if they could, but they are so
kindly, so hospitable, so bright and pleasing generally, that I shut my
eyes gladly to their feet, and their bad taste in dress, and accept it
all without a word.
Still I wish they could pare down their feet. Then an English woman
would be the simple perfection of nature's most perfect work. I can't
help thinking, however, that when your hostess's shoe is--but never
mind. Their kindliness and their cheery laughs and their never failing
good humor are admirable substitutes for small feet. Feet are not the
whole of life.
You see soldiers about London. They are as common as mosquitos in New
Jersey, and to me just about as offensive. They are everywhere. Go where
you will, you see a tall fellow in a blue or scarlet, or some other
colored uniform, with an absurd little cap on his head, to which is
attached a leather strap which comes down to his lower lip, to keep the
absurd little cap in place. He has sometimes a sword hanging to him, and
sometimes not, but he is a soldier all the same. England has need of a
great many soldiers. In London they are used as a sort of show, as
walking advertisements of the power and strength of the Government, and
to make the picture of royalty complete.
As soldiers don't cost much here, it is a luxury royalty can afford a
great deal of. The ordinary soldier gets twenty-five cents a day, and
his rations, and after twenty-one years service, if rum and beer and
bullets--the two first are the most dangerous--have not finished him, he
becomes a pensioner, which means he puts on a red coat and eats three
times a day in a sort of hospital, all the rest of his life.
[Sidenote: A RED-COATED ROMANCE.]
The army is recruited largely from Ireland and the poorer districts of
England and Scotland. It is about the last thing an Englishman or
Irishman does, but various causes keep the ranks full without
conscription. Women are the best recruiting officers the Queen has. It
is the regular thing for a young fellow who has been jilted to go and
enlist. He thinks he will make the girl feel badly. But it doesn't. She
rather prides herself upon the number of young fellows she has given the
army, and when the time comes to marry and settle down, she goes and
marries, and laughs at them all.
Poverty is another very active and efficient recruiting sergeant. A
young fellow comes down to "Lunnon" to seek his fortune, equipped with a
few pounds and his mother's blessing. He finds London quite different
from what he expected. He discovers it to be a very hard and cruel
place, with more mouths than bread, and more hands than work. He lives
as closely as he can, but, as meagerly as he lives, his pounds melt into
shillings and his shillings into pence. And finally, when his last penny
is gone, and hunger is upon him, he takes the Queen's shilling, and the
next thing his mother hears of him, he is fighting the Boers in South
Africa. And once a soldier, always a soldier. The life unfits a man for
any other, and when he has once worn a uniform, he never wears anything
else.
As I said, women are the best recruiting sergeants. I got into a
conversation with one very handsome young fellow who had been in the
service only a year, who told me his little story. He is the son of a
small farmer in Scotland somewhere, with an unpronounceable name, where
it doesn't matter. He had been in love with a pretty daughter of a widow
near by from the time he was a boy, and the girl professed to be, and
doubtless was, in love with him, but as she grew up she made the
discovery that she was very handsome (what woman does not?), and she
found that that beauty attracted others beside poor Jamie. Other swains
in the neighborhood laid siege to her, and she, exulting in her power
over the young fellows, and being unquestionably the belle of the
neighborhood, made it very uncomfortable for her real lover, to whom she
was betrothed.
Sore were the conflicts between them. The girl delighted in annoying
him, for she was as wilful and cruel as she was beautiful. She would
dance with the others, and she would flirt with them to the point of
driving the poor man mad, and then, just at the nick of time, she had a
trick of coming back to him, and for a time being as sweet as possible,
and so for several years she kept him alternating between the seventh
heaven of happiness, and the lowest depths of a hell upon earth.
There was one fellow in the neighborhood as much smitten with her as
Jamie, who was determined to marry her, whether or no. He was a
well-to-do young man, who had a farm of his own, and being quite as
good-looking and more enterprising than Jamie, was a most dangerous
rival to the hapless youth. Jennie had dismissed all the others, but
with the perversity that seems to be an infallible accompaniment to
beauty, she persisted in receiving the attention of this man.
Finally it came to a head. Jamie insisted that she should not see him
any more, and he insisted upon it with an earnestness that affected the
girl, and she made a solemn promise that she never would see him again.
It so happened that the very next day after this promise was asked and
given, Jamie was to leave for Glasgow on business, and he started early
the next morning. He hadn't got to the railroad station before his mind
misgave him. Something worried him. He had slept all the night
comfortably on her promise, but something told him that she did not
intend to keep it, and that something preyed upon him to the degree that
instead of proceeding on his journey he turned about and walked back.
She knew that he was going to be gone a week, and the other man knew it
also. If she intended to play him false, this was her opportunity, and
he would know for certain, and set his mind at ease.
Poor devil! It would have been better had he proceeded on his journey.
For if he had known anything he would have known that if a woman wanted
to deceive him, watching her would amount to nothing. The devil is very
lavish of opportunities, that being all that he has to do, and simple
human nature is certain to avail itself of them; but Jamie was not a
philosopher, or a very bright man. He was a simple Scotch lad,
frightfully in love with a wilful and perverse beauty.
[Sidenote: HOW IT ENDED.]
But he did go back, and he concealed himself near her cottage, where he
could watch unobserved, hoping, in a desperate sort of way, that he had
made a fool of himself, but rather certain that he had not.
And sure enough, along toward evening his rival made his appearance
sauntering down the road, and sure enough he had no sooner appeared in
the road than Jennie, as if by accident, appeared, and the two talked
across the little gate in front, very earnestly, she in a mixed sort of
way.
And Jamie, full of rage at what he believed to be a betrayal, and
desperate on general principles, sallied out and attacked his man, and
after a fearful struggle left him almost dead on the ground, and despite
Jennie's tearful assertions that she had seen him only to tell him that
he must not follow her any more, as she would henceforth and forever
have nothing whatever to do with him, Jamie, who didn't believe a word
of it, announced his intention of enlisting, and started off toward the
station again.
Jennie followed him, for it appears the girl's story was true, and she,
coquette as she was, did love him, but she arrived too late. He had
taken the fatal plunge, and was in the Queen's uniform.
"And Jennie?" I asked.
Jennie was in London in service. She would not stay at home after he
left, and she came to town where she could see him at times, and things
were so arranged between them that when his term should expire they were
to marry and go back and settle down upon the old place and be happy for
evermore.
If his regiment should be ordered upon foreign duty, she would manage
somehow to accompany him. Anyhow, she was entirely cured of flirting,
rightly concluding that one true man is enough for one woman, and he was
equally soundly cured of jealousy, though it must be admitted that he
had sufficient cause therefor.
And so ends a red-coated romance.
CHAPTER III.
THE DERBY RACES, WITH SOME OTHER THINGS.
Horse-racing in America is not considered the most exciting, or, for
that matter, the most reputable business in the world. A horsey man,
except in New York, is not looked upon with much favor, being, as a
rule, and I suppose justly, regarded as a modified and somewhat toned
down black-leg.
I never ventured money upon but one race. I shall never forget it, for
it was my first and last experience.
It was many years ago, ere time had whitened my locks, and had set the
seal of age in my face in the form of wrinkles. It is needless to say I
was as immature mentally as physically, or what is to follow would not
have occurred.
There was a horseman in the county in Ohio in which I was living named
Carpenter--Sol. Carpenter. Every horseman's given name is abbreviated,
the same as a negro minstrel's. Carpenter was the possessor of many
horses which he used in racing, but he had one, "Nero," which commanded
the confidence of all the sporting men for miles around. In a mile race
he had never been beaten, and there were wild rumors, which obtained
credence, that he had won a four-mile race in Kentucky (which at that
time was the starting point for all the running horses), and that Sol.
was holding him back for some great master-stroke of turf business.
Presently there appeared in Greenfield--Sol. lived in Plymouth--a horse
named "Calico," which the owner intimated could _lay out_ "Nero,"
without any particular trouble or worry. Carpenter laughed the man to
scorn--his name was Pete Scobey--and promptly challenged him for a mile
dash, two best in three.
[Sidenote: AN AMERICAN HORSE CONTEST.]
Scobey accepted the challenge and the date was fixed. There was the
wildest possible excitement in Plymouth. Greenfield did not share in it,
as there were no horsemen there, the village consisting of one
Presbyterian Church, a dry goods store, and a blacksmith shop. But
Plymouth absolutely boiled. Carpenter poured oil upon the fire by
confidentially assuring everybody that "Nero" could get away with
"Calico" without the slightest trouble; that he knew "Calico" like a
book, and knew exactly what he could do, and if the people of Plymouth
were wise, they would impoverish Greenfield, or rather the Norwalk
parties, who were to back "Calico."
His advice was taken. Every man in Plymouth who could raise a dollar
went to that race at Greenfield and staked his money on "Nero," on
Carpenter's assurance as well as their own confidence. There was nobody
doing much betting on "Calico," except Mr. Scobey and one or two others,
and they held off at first, which gave Plymouth more confidence. So
eager were we to despoil the adverse faction that we gave great odds,
all of which Mr. Scobey and his confreres took, finally, with a calm
confidence that should have taught us better. But it didn't. I remember
that I wagered every dollar I had with me, and some more that Mr.
Carpenter kindly lent me, taking my note, and in addition to this a
sixteen-dollar silver watch.
The first heat was won by "Nero," easily, and Mr. Carpenter winked to
Plymouth to make another assault upon the purses of Greenfield. We did
it. We gave even greater odds than before, which Mr. Scobey required, as
he admitted that his chances were very slim.
"But," he remarked, "I will bet one to ten on anything."
To our surprise the second heat was won by "Calico," by just about a
head. Then Mr. Scobey offered to take even bets, and he would have got a
great many but for the fact that Plymouth had staked her entire wealth
already.
The next and decisive heat was run. It was closely contested. Each horse
seemingly did his best, and the jockeys seemed to ride properly. Alas
for Plymouth! "Calico" won, as he did the second heat, by just a head.
The indignation of Mr. Carpenter knew no bounds. He grasped his jockey
by the neck and pulled him from the horse, and accused him of giving
away the race, and he stormed about the track very like a madman.
"Pete," he said finally, "Nero kin beat that cart horse of yours ez easy
ez winkin. I'll run yoo two weeks from to-day at Plymouth for two
hundred dollars a side, and I'll hev a rider that won't sell out to
yoo."
[Illustration: SOL CARPENTER AND THE GREENFIELD RACE.]
"Jest ez you please, Mr. Carpenter. It's easy enough to charge up a poor
horse to the account of a rider. Here's the boodle."
[Sidenote: DEPARTURE FOR THE DERBY]
And so another race was arranged, and Mr. Carpenter went among us and
assured that his own son should ride the next time, and there would be
no trouble about it.
We consulted all the next week, and Mr. Scobey was approached on the
subject. Mr. Scobey assured us that he knew "Nero," and knew his own
horse. "Nero" was good for a long race, but for a dash of a mile
"Calico" could get away with him every time. We shared Mr. Scobey's
opinion, and to Mr. Carpenter's disgust, Plymouth wagered all the money
it could raise upon "Calico." It requires but few words to state the
result. "Calico" won the first heat easily, and "Nero" won the other two
just as easily, and Plymouth was again bankrupt.
And then one of the riders who was disappointed in his share of the
plunder, came to the front and made known what, if we had not been an
entire menagerie of asses, we might have known in advance, that Mr.
Carpenter and Mr. Scobey were in partnership, and that "Calico" was a
horse hired from Cleveland for the occasion, and that it was a very
ingenious scheme put up by Mr. Carpenter to victimize his neighbors, and
that out of the speculation the two had made a very nice lot of money.
I don't pretend to say that this has anything to do with the Derby, but
it illustrates the morals of the turf so well that I could not help
putting it upon paper. Racing is about the same thing everywhere, except
upon Epsom Downs. These races are conducted fairly, for they are under
the patronage of men to whom the honor of owning a winning horse is more
than any amount of money that can possibly be won. The English noblemen
want this honor, and they spend fabulous amounts of money to attain it.
I won't say that the Duke of Wellington would have exchanged Waterloo
for the Derby, but I do say that if after Waterloo he could have had a
horse capable of taking the prize, he would have died better satisfied
with himself.
Thirty Americans were in the party that, on the morning of the first of
June, left the American Exchange at Charing Cross for Epsom Downs. It
was a very jolly party, and none of the accompaniments were forgotten.
An Englishman does nothing without a great plenty of eating and
drinking, and so the inside of one of the immense omnibusses--"breaks"
they call them--was filled with great hampers of lunch, and wine, and
things of that nature.
As early as it was all the avenues leading to the Downs were literally
packed with conveyances, to say nothing of the railroad trains which
passed in quick succession, and such a motley procession! There were
lords and ladies, merchants and clerks, prostitutes and gamblers,
workingmen and beggars, sewing-girls and bar-maids,--in fact every sort
and condition of people, who had for one day thrown care to the winds
and were on pleasure bent.
[Illustration: LEAVING FOR THE DERBY.]
[Sidenote: SIGHTS AND SCENES.]
The roads swarmed with vehicles, and there was as much of a surprise in
the variety as in the number. There was My Lord in his dog cart, or, if
a family man, in his gorgeous carriage, which does not differ materially
from the American open barouche, save in the accommodations for the
everlasting flunkies behind, without which no English establishment is
complete. Then came the swarm of hansoms--which is a two-wheeled
vehicle, with a calash top to it, carrying the driver on a high perch
behind--the army of omnibusses, the tops covered with chaffing people,
and the inside full of more sober ones, and add to these every variety
of vehicle to which an animal can be attached, that would carry a human
being, and you have some faint idea of the appearance of the roads
leading to Epsom Downs on the 1st of June, A.D. 1881.
It was rather amusing than otherwise to note two kinds of vehicles and
the people they hauled. They have in London a little pony, not much
larger than a good-sized Newfoundland dog, extensively used by
costermongers and that class of tradesmen to deliver goods. A half of
these in London were at the Derby, hitched to a two-wheeled cart of
twice their size, and seven heavy men and women would be packed therein,
and this little mite bowled them along at a good pace, without being
worried. There were literally thousands of them upon the roads, the pony
pulling his heavy load, and seeming to enjoy the sport as much as those
he was hauling. He was having a holiday, and his holiday was much like a
human one, very hard work.
The donkey is another English institution. He is not as large as the
pony, but what enormous loads he will pull, and what a slight amount of
food he requires. He will breakfast on a tin tomato can, and relish a
circus poster for dinner. He is a patient little brute, and bears his
loads as meekly as the English laborer does his, and in just about the
same way.
As we leave the city the crowd of vehicles and pedestrians becomes
denser and denser. At the point where all the streets out of the city
meet the throng becomes more than immense, it is terrific. The drivers
of the vehicles, skillful as they are, have difficulty in guiding their
teams, whether it be the pretentious four-in-hand, or the humble
donkey-cart, through the mass, though they did it, and without an
accident.
And now the fun begins; that is, the English fun. Troops of fantastics,
with false faces, spring up, the Lord knows from where, or for what
purpose, unless it be to blow piercing horns
[Illustration: BY THE ROAD-SIDE.]
and beat toy drums for their own amusement. On one side just over a
hedge, an admiring party are witnessing a boxing match between two
yokels, who are giving and taking real blows in dead earnest, while just
beyond is a Punch and Judy show, which always has been popular in
England, and will be to the end of time. All along the dusty road are
men over come with liquor, sleeping the sleep that only the drunkard
knows, with faces upturned to the hot sun. They are perfectly safe, and
will not be disturbed. Every Englishman of the lower class knows all
about it, and as for robbery, all that he has on him couldn't be pawned
for a penny. Next to the boxing match was a street preacher of some
denomination, armed with his testament and hymn-book, "holding forth" to
a throng constantly coming and going. I didn't hear this one, for we
were too much on pleasure bent to stop for a sermon, be it ever so good
or our need for it ever so great. But I did hear one on the grounds, and
a curious sermon it was. There was no Miss Nancying about that preacher.
He did not attempt to win his hearers by depicting the delights of a
heaven for piety on this earth, not any. He knew his hearers too well.
The lower grade Englishman might try to be good to escape a hell, but no
one ever conceived a heaven that would win him. His idea of a heaven is
a pot-house, with plenty of beer, and bread and cheese, and nothing to
do. And so the preacher sang the hymn:--
"My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
Damnation and the dead,"
In which his audience joined, some devoutly and some jeeringly.
[Sidenote: THE ROAD-SIDE EVANGELIST.]
And he pictured hell in such lurid colors as to frighten the most
hardened. He had no fancy for a hell, such as American clergymen talk
about, which consists merely in being deprived of the company of angels
and all that sort of thing, but he had a substantial, real hell, with
actual fire and brimstone and real devils with red hot pitch-forks,
toasting and gridling sinners, and rivers of fire, and perpetual
torments of this cheerful kind, forever and forever. That was the kind
of a hell he had.
It had its effect. One man who stood listening, with his wife, said to
her as they turned away:
"Weel, Jenny, 'ell is a hawful thing, I don't knaw but what I'll turn
around and do better, hafter to-morrow."
And the wife assenting to this proposition they went to the nearest beer
place and buried their countenances and their consciences, or their
fright rather, in pots of beer that would swamp the most seasoned
American, and a few moments after were dancing like mad in a booth
constructed for the purpose.
Except there be a special dispensation this party will never repent, and
if there be such a hell as the preacher described they will find it.
Their to-morrow for becoming good, like everybody else's, will never
come. The negro who, when asked why, in view of the punishment that must
follow his sinful life, he would continue in his evil courses,
replied:--
"Boss, de great comfort and 'scurity I has, is in a deff-bed 'pentance."
"But suppose you die too suddenly to repent?"
"Boss, I alluz keeps myseff ready for 'pentance."
The road down is lined with public houses, little quaint inns in which
nobody sleeps, but which are devoted exclusively to the selling of beer
and spirits. At each of these half the vehicles stopped, and the scenes
about them were curious, if not altogether enjoyable. The only business
done inside was the drawing and drinking of beer, and outside--heaven
help an American--negro minstrelsy. Imagine three cockneys burnt corked,
and dressed in trowsers striped in imitation of the American flag, with
long blue striped coats and red vests, one playing the banjo, another
the concertina, and the third doing the silver sand clog, with that
peculiar soul-depressing, spirit-quenching expression that all clog
dancers wear habitually.
[Illustration: ENGLISH NEGRO MINSTRELSY.]
[Sidenote: THE ROADSIDE REPAST.]
A clog dance on a stage in a hall is sufficiently depressing to send a
middle-aged man home to make his will, but imagine it done by an
Englishman on a board outside an inn, on a hot day, so hot that the
perspiration streaming down his face washed the burnt cork out in
streaks, and then when this doleful performance was finally
accomplished, think of a negro melody sung in the genuine cockney
dialect, and accepted as a correct representation of the American
African. By the way, in a first-class music hall I heard an English
minstrel use the word "nothink," and misplace his h's as fluently as the
most accomplished shopman. But the un-enlightened Englishman who had
never heard the rich, mellow tones of the genuine African didn't know
any better, and so it was as well. People who love minstrelsy deserve
nothing better.
By this time it was noon, and the sun was blazing hot. But the sun
doesn't mean as much on English roads as it does on American. England is
some centuries old, and the roads are bordered on either side with
immense trees, the hedges afford a grateful shade, and he who cannot
find a delightful seat upon the soft grass is very hard to please.
Exactly at noon the thousands of humble folk, the pony and donkey-cart
people, stopped and unharnessed their diminutive power, and permitted it
to crop the grass, while they unloaded those wonderful hampers, and
spread them upon the grass and ate and drank. There was the boiled ham,
the great masses of very bad bread made from the cheapest and worst
American flour, the pot of mustard, and the inevitable bottle of beer.
They sat under the delicious shade, men, women and children, and ate and
drank and chaffed, and seemed to be enjoying themselves.
[Illustration: THE ROADSIDE REPAST.]
I think they all did enjoy themselves, except the women. The children
got more to eat than they did other days, so they were satisfied; the
men, great hulking fellows, gorged themselves, and were pleased because
they were full of beer, but the poor women had the children to care for,
and that ought to have been enough to have destroyed all the pleasure
there was in it to them. For be it understood, no English laborer's wife
ever leaves her children at home on holiday occasions. There are two
reasons for this. One is there is nobody to leave them with, and the
other is there is a vague idea that it is a part of a child's education
to know all about beer and public houses from its very beginning.
Therefore, almost every woman on that road to the Derby, had from one to
four children with her, the youngest very frequently being at the very
tender age of a month. The husbands always permit the mother to assume
the entire charge of the youngsters, and the wives accept the situation
uncomplainingly. They carry the "brats," as the fathers delicately style
their offspring, and the small woman with a healthy baby in her arms,
keeping three others in tow, under a hot sun, must have an amusing time
of it. But they seem to like it, and I don't know as it is any of my
business. Only I am rejoiced that the venerable Miss Susan B. Anthony
don't know how the lower-grade Englishman treats his wife. Could she see
what I have seen she would start upon another lecturing tour, as ancient
as she is.
[Sidenote: ON THE FIELD.]
One peculiarity strikes an American--everything has its price, which is
rigorously exacted. Everything is fenced up and the slightest
accommodation has to be paid for. Do you want a glass of water? It is
given you, and you drink and set the glass down. Immediately the man or
woman who handed it to you remarks quietly, but with a tone that admits
of no question: "Penny, sir!" You pay it, for it is the custom of the
country. It isn't for the water, but for the handing it to you. At every
gate stands a man who asks for his penny as he opens it, and he gets it.
It got to that point with me, that when I felt a breeze striking my face
and I got a breath of fresh air, I instinctively turned around to see to
whom I should give the inevitable penny. Air is the only thing that is
not charged for, and if there were any way of fencing that in and
selling it, it would be done immediately. I remonstrated mildly at
paying for a very simple service, for which in no country I was ever in
would a fee be demanded, but I was silenced instantly.
"It helps me make a day's wages, sir, and it won't break you, sir," was
the very prompt answer.
I never dared to object again, but whenever I asked a question I offered
the penny, and I did not find any one too proud to take it.
Finally we reached the Downs. Epsom Downs is an immense field, the
property of the Earl of Derby, whose seat, "The Oaks," is about two
miles distant. The "Derby" is only one of many races, but out of
compliment to the Earl, it is counted the chief event of the racing
season. The importance given to it may be inferred from the fact that it
is really a national holiday, that business is almost entirely
suspended, and that Parliament adjourns to attend it.
I am not going to write a description of the race, for one very good
reason. I didn't see it. I could do it, but I am too honest, and beside
I have no idea that it would interest anybody. One race is just the same
as another. The horses all start, and run the course, and come in. One
horse wins, and a dozen lose; as in the American game of keno, one man
exclaims "Keno!" and forty-nine utter a profane word. A quarter-race in
Kentucky is precisely the same as the Derby, except that one is
witnessed by a hundred men in jeans, and the other by some hundreds of
thousands in all sorts of clothing. At all events I was too busy
studying the people to pay any attention to the horses. Possibly I made
a mistake, the horse may be the nobler animal of the two. I should like
to get the opinion of the horse on that point.
The sight of the field was indescribable. There were people by the
hundred thousand. The railroads brought down one hundred and twenty-five
thousand, and nobody goes to the "Darby" by train if he can help it.
Many prefer to walk the sixteen miles to going by rail. These either
haven't the money to pay their fares, or shrink from giving money to
railroads so long as there is beer to be had. The grand stand, an
immense three-story structure, was black with people, and as far as the
eye could reach there was nothing but people. And, as it is in America,
the people were there for everything except to see the races, which is
proper. For if there be anything under heaven that is exasperating it
is a horse race, unless it be a regatta. Except as an excuse for
something else, I never could see why people went to either. To sit or
stand for an hoar under a hot sun, while a lot of jockeys are
undertaking to swindle each other, simply to see a field of horses run
or trot for a minute or two, or a parcel of boats start and come to the
finish, always did seem to me to be the very acme of absurdity. But when
you have thirty jolly fellows with you, who make good talk, a wild
profusion of lunch, and oceans of wine, it is quite another thing, that
is if you like lunch, wine, and talk.
The principal race this year, and the one on which the interest
centered, was between "Peregrine," the English favorite, and "Iroquois,"
the American horse. There were others in the field, but these two
absorbed the entire attention of the throng. It was a national matter,
and a vast amount of money was lost and won on the event. As is known,
"Iroquois" won the race by a very small majority, and the American eagle
screamed with delight, and the British lion hung its head. The English
felt more humiliated than they did when they lost the Colonies, and
Archer, the English jockey who rode "Iroquois" to victory, was
considered a very unpatriotic man. The English found one consolation:
"Well, you know, the blarsted Yankee 'oss couldn't 'ave won the 'eat if
a Hinglish jockey hadn't ridden 'im." This was the remark that I heard
everywhere.
[Sidenote: SHOWS AND BEGGARS.]
The enthusiasm of the Americans knew no bounds. The glorious victory was
made the reason for a fresh assault upon the lunch and wine, and a
number of American parties had provided themselves with American flags,
which they immediately pulled from their hiding places and flung to the
breeze. And then as the emblem of freedom displayed itself upon English
soil, it became immediately necessary to drink to the flag, which was
done with that promptness which has ever distinguished the genuine
American. Parties of Americans would arm themselves with champagne
bottles, and pass to the carriages displaying the flag, and insist upon
the occupants partaking with them in honor of the victory and the flag,
and when one would get the address of the other, they would find the one
was from Kalamazoo and the other from Oshkosh, and the coincidence was
so striking that they would drink again. By that time a New Yorker
would appear, and "Why, you are from New York! Open another bottle!" and
so on.
It was a glorious day, but for all that anybody saw of the race, it
struck me that it would have done just as well to have taken the lunch
and the wine to any other field outside of London, and become
patriotically intoxicated.
The country people and the laborers of London enjoyed the races about as
the Americans did. For their amusement there were shows and games on the
ground by the hundred. There were penny theaters; there were shooting
galleries, and the cocoanut game. A dozen or more pegs are driven into
the ground, and on each is placed a cocoanut. The man who hungers after
cocoanuts and amusement pays a penny, for which he has the privilege of
throwing a wooden ball at the row of pegs. If he hits a peg the nut
drops off and he is entitled to it, with the resultant colic. There were
hundreds and hundreds of tents, inside of which were cheap shows,
precisely such as we see at State fairs and outside of circuses. As I
gazed upon the enormous pictures of fat women, and bearded women, and
Circassian beauties with enormous masses of hair, and the wonderful
snakes, and the groups of genuine Zulu chiefs, and heard the inspiring
tones of the hand organ, accompanied with the bass drum, and heard the
man at the door imploring the people not to lose the great chance of
their lives, and saw the young fellow with his girl, torn by the
perplexing conundrum as to which was the better investment, the show or
more beer, I fancied for a moment that I was at home. But I was not. I
was three thousand miles from home, but I was seeing exactly what I
should have seen had I been there. Human nature is about the same
everywhere. Certainly, there is no difference in the side-showmen or the
people from whom he earns his living.
Beggars and gipsies, so-called (there was no doubt about the genuineness
of the beggars), were as thick as leaves in Vallambrosa. Stout men who
could have wrestled with the primeval forests were begging for
half-pence; women, with bloated faces, on every inch of which was
written "gin" in unmistakable characters, carrying wretched babies,
beset you at every turn; and hideous hags, with unmistakable Irish
brogue, thronged about the carriages with: "My pretty gentlemon, will
ye cross the palm ov the poor gipsy, and let her till yer forchoon? Och,
and I kin till ye the shtyle ov the shwate lady ye'll marry, and the
number ov childher ye'll hev, an bring ye gud luck."
The absurdity of addressing me as a "pretty gintlemon," and of proposing
to tell me the sweet lady I'd marry! I, a married man this quarter of a
century and the father of a family! That old lady got nothing from me.
But the good-natured fellows in the carriage did throw her pennies,
which she took with the regular "God bless yez," and I have no doubt
that in the course of the day she picked up a very pretty sum, enough at
all events to keep her full of gin during the night.
The gipsies proper were on the ground in force, and a curious folk they
are. The women were telling fortunes, and a vast number of customers
they secured from the shop and servant girls on the ground, to all of
whom she promised speedy marriages, no husband being under the degree of
a Duke, and all of them very handsome and very rich men. The girls paid
their pennies and sixpences with great alacrity, and went home to dream
of their good luck, as they had a score of times before. The investment
was doubtless a good one. They were satisfied with themselves for a
while, at least, and when happiness can be had for a penny, why should
any one be miserable?
The men were hiring donkeys, saddled and bridled, for the boys and girls
to ride. To ride a donkey a certain fixed distance costs a penny, and
among English children it is famous fun. And as the gipsy owner lives
out of doors and steals all his food and the subsistence of his animals,
and the animals themselves, it was great fun for him. Albeit, as he
steals everything he uses and always proposes to, and never intends to
reform and start a bank, I don't see what he wants of pennies. Were they
philosophical they wouldn't let donkeys, but would lie down in the shade
till hunger compelled them to steal something to eat, and enjoy
themselves all the time.
[Sidenote: BETTING.]
As I said the races on this course are fairly conducted, and the best
horse, or the best jockey, actually wins. But there is as much rascality
here as on an American course, and I can't say more than that. Under the
grand stand is the "betting ring," in which the book-makers stand. These
are flashy gentlemen, with tall hats of painful newness, and diamonds
of unearthly size and luster, which gives one a comforting assurance of
solvency. These men take bets at the market rates. Thus, the betting
that morning was three to one on "Peregrine." Now in America the betting
ring is under the control of the association owning the track; but it is
not so here, as any number of Americans discovered. They had faith in
"Iroquois," and "laid" their money on him freely. One gentleman of my
acquaintance deposited ninety pounds sterling with a book-maker, and was
consequently entitled to two hundred and seventy pounds sterling, as his
horse won. In great glee he hied himself to the ring, after the race, to
collect his winnings. He hied himself back to the carriage sadly. Had
"Peregrine" won the race the book-maker would, unquestionably, have been
there and received the gentleman smilingly; but as "Iroquois" won, he
folded his tent, like the Arab, and as silently stole away. None of them
were to be found. Smarting under the sense of wrong, the American told
his story to the party on the way home, and he was pitied or laughed at,
according to the temper of his listener, quite a number laughing at more
than pitying him. One gentleman laughed at him fearfully, but before we
had got half way home, he broke out with "D--n the swindling scoundrel."
[Illustration: THE BETTING RING.]
"To what swindling scoundrel do you refer?"
"That blank, blank, swindling devil of a book-maker!"
"Oh! oh! you were taken in, were you?" joyously exclaimed victim No. 1.
"Of course, I was, thirty pounds sterling!"
"And you were laughing at me."
And then one after another confessed to have been bitten the same way,
and upon getting all the confessions in, it was discovered that one
carriage had deposited to the credit of a set of London sharks three
hundred pounds sterling, or fifteen hundred dollars.
I lost nothing, for I do not bet upon horses now, for reasons stated at
the beginning of this epistle, which shows that perfect safety is only
found in complete virtue.
[Illustration: "D--N THE SWINDLING SCOUNDREL."]
[Sidenote: ON THE WAY HOME.]
One peculiarity of the event was the absence of fighting. During the
entire day I did not see a fight or anything that approached it. Gather
three hundred thousand people together in one field in America, and fill
them with our whisky, or even beer, and there would be processions of
broken heads, and funerals in plenty the next day. There is no question
as to the Englishman's fighting qualities, but he does not fight on his
holidays. There were "d--n his eyes," in plenty, and any quantity of
talk, but no actual combats, except the boxing matches, and they were
all in good humor. Why? I can't tell. Possibly it is because the beer
they drink tends to peace, and possibly it is because they find vent for
their combativeness in whipping their wives at home. But they don't
fight on race courses.
The mass commenced melting away at about four o'clock in the afternoon,
and the grounds were entirely deserted, except by the showmen and those
who have money to make during the entire racing season. They live in
their tents.
The scene on the road back was slightly different from the morning. The
people on the way out started to get drunk, and a vast majority
succeeded. The road was lined with prostrate forms of men and women. The
English women of the lower order drink as much as their husbands and
brothers. You see them in the public houses standing at the bars with
their husbands or lovers, pouring down huge measures of beer, and it is
a toss which can drink the most, or which enjoys it the most keenly. It
is certain that the woman gets drunk with more facility than the man,
she being the weaker, if not the smaller vessel. And understand, these
women are not disreputable; they are hard working wives and daughters of
respectable laboring people, mechanics and the like. It is their notion
of a day's pleasure.
Possibly they are not to be blamed. The life of a London workingman or
woman is not a pleasant one; their pay is very small, and beer is very
cheap, and for the time they are happy.
But the next morning! Dickens and all other English writers, have given
most charming descriptions of the delights of a night's drinking, but
why, oh why, have none of them ever described the repentance of the next
morning? That would have done the world some good.
And so we rode on through masses of people, two-thirds of them at that
stage of intoxication where the idea of enjoyment is noise and
horse-play, shouting, cheering, singing, yelling, waving handkerchiefs,
and all without the faintest idea of the object of either, till we
struck the lights of the city. Then the masses separated, and we finally
reached our homes, tired, half-pleased and half-disgusted. The Derby was
over.
No American, unless he be a sporting man, ever goes to the Derby twice.
It is necessary to go once to see it, but once is quite enough. It is a
sight to see three hundred thousand people in one mass, but it is not a
pleasant thing to realize the fact that two-thirds or more of the
number are under the influence of liquor, and that they did it
deliberately, and went there with no other idea. It rather lessens one's
confidence in the future of the race, and leads one to the increasing of
his donations to the home missionary societies. But it has always been
so in England, and probably always will be. And then if the English
workingman didn't get drunk at the Derby he doubtless would find some
other place for it, and as he gets a day's pure air and sunshine, it is
perhaps, as well. If any good can be drawn from it, let us hunt it
persistently.
[Illustration: Egyptian Room, British Museum.]
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT THE LONDONERS QUENCH THEIR THIRST WITH.
Speaking within bounds, I should say that one-half of England is engaged
in manufacturing beer for the other half. Possibly it takes two-thirds
of the entire population to make beer enough for the other third, but I
think an equal division would be about the thing. The British public is
very drouthy.
One is astounded at the amount of drinking that is done here. Go where
you will, turn whichever way you choose, the inevitable "public," or the
"pub" as they say between drinks, stares you in the face. And on the
streets almost every other vehicle you see is a vast, massive, clumsy
truck, loaded either with full kegs for the publics, or taking away
empty ones.
The British public house is not the same thing as the American. Except
in a few instances you see none of the glass and mahogany palaces of New
York, you see none of the flashy bars with plate glass, silver rails,
elegant glass-ware, and the gorgeous bar-tender with diamonds as large
as hickory nuts.
The London public house is a dingy affair, the dingier the better, with
barrels piled upon barrels, and cob-webs as plenty as liquor. There is a
wild superstition prevalent that age has something to do with the
quality of liquor, and therefore, every place devoted to the sale or
handling of the stuff, assumes as much of a Methuselean appearance as
possible. You are to have a party of friends at your lodgings, we will
say. You must have at least two kinds of liquor to entertain them
withal, for no Englishman does anything without moistening his clay, and
his clay is of a variety that absorbs a great deal of moisture. You pay
for it and the man sends home the bottles.
Now an American liquor dealer would carefully wipe the bottles, and they
would be delivered at your house as clean and tidy as a laundried shirt,
but not so here. They are sent with dust on them, and with cobwebs on
them, and to brush off the dust would be sacrilege. That dust is a sort
of patent--a testimonial to its age, and consequently a guarantee of its
excellence.
I mortally offended one liquor dealer by asking him to show me his
machine for dusting bottles, and also would he kindly explain to me his
process for cob-webbing them, and was it expensive to keep spiders? The
man actually resented it--was angry about it. Singular how sensitive the
Islanders can be about trifles like that! To keep spiders for the
manufacture of cobwebs would be more enterprising than to buy cobwebs,
and no American would dust bottles by hand, when a very simple machine
could be devised for the purpose.
The British landlord don't set the bottle before his customer as his
brother does in free and enlightened America. Now at home,--as I have
been told by those who frequent bar-rooms--the barkeeper sets before his
customer a bottle of the liquor he prefers, and the drouthy man helps
himself to such quantity as he deems sufficient for the purpose desired.
If he is fixing himself for a common riot, he takes a certain quantity;
if for a murder, more or less, according to how aggravated the crime is
to be. A man would take more to fit himself to kill his wife than he
would for his mother-in-law, and the wife-killing draught is at the same
price as the mother-in-law annihilator.
But over here the bar-maid measures your liquor. You may have three
penn'orth, four penn'orth or six penn'orth. It is measured out to you
and handed to you, and you swallow it and go away.
I remonstrated with one proprietor as to the absurdity of the custom,
and the meanness of it.
[Sidenote: THE REASON WHY]
"I will show you the reason for it," he said, quietly. Just then a bold
Briton came in and the landlord directed the maid behind the bar to set
down a bottle. The astonished customer was invited to help himself,
after the American custom. He _was_ an astonished Briton, but he managed
to express his gratification at the innovation. Seizing the bottle he
poured out an ordinary dinner tumbler full, and, looking grieved because
the glass was no larger, drank it off without a wink.
[Illustration: A BOLD BRITON TRYING THE AMERICAN CUSTOM.]
I could easily see why the British landlord measures the liquor to the
British public. Two such customers on the American plan would bankrupt a
very opulent proprietor.
The quality of liquor used by the better classes is perhaps a trifle
better than that consumed in America, at least so I have been informed
by those who use liquors. A vast quantity of brandy is imported from
France, and it is so cheap there that it doubtless approximates to
purity. The whiskies drank are entirely Scotch and Irish, the English
making none whatever. Wines are consumed in great quantities, and there
is no question as to the purity of the cheaper grades, which is to say
they are undoubtedly the pure juice of the grape. The duty on wines is
so small that there is no inducement, as in America, for the manufacture
of bogus varieties.
But the liquors consumed in London by the lower classes are probably the
most execrable and vile that the ingenuity of the haters of mankind ever
invented. The brandy they drink is liquid lightning--chain
lightning--which goes crashing through the system, breaking down and
destroying every pulsation towards anything good. The gin--well, their
gin is the very acme, the absolute summit, of vileness. There is a
quarrel in every gill of it, a wife-beating in every pint, and a murder
in every quart. A smell of a glass of it nearly drove me to criminal
recklessness.
[Illustration: A LONDON GIN DRINKING WOMAN.]
And yet they all drink it, and especially the women. The most disgusting
sight the world can produce is a London gin drinking woman standing at a
bar, waiting feverishly for her "drain," with unkempt hair, a small but
intensely dirty shawl, with stockingless feet, and shoes down at the
heel, with eyes rheumy and watery, that twinkle with gin light out from
the obscurity of gin-swelled flesh, with a face on which the scorching
fingers of a depraved appetite have set red lines, as ineffaceable as
though they had been placed there by red-hot iron, every one of which is
the unavailing protest of a long-outraged stomach.
[Sidenote: THE GENERAL BOOZE.]
There she stands, a blotch upon the face of nature and a satire upon
womanhood. It is difficult to realize that this bloated mass was once a
fair young girl, and had a mother who loved her, and it is equally
difficult to comprehend how any power, even that of Nature, could ever
make use of it. But the elements are kindly to man. When they have done
their work, sweet flowers may grow out of this putridity.
In America this sort of being exists, but it is herded somewhere out of
sight. It does not stand at the bars in the best streets to offend the
eyes of decent people. But it is everywhere here. It is in the Strand
and on Piccadilly and Regent street.
The average Englishman of the lower, and even the middle classes, dearly
loves to booze. Drunkenness is not the result either of conviviality or
desperation as it is in other countries. It is the one thing longed for
and set deliberately about.
[Illustration: THE POOR MAN IS SICK.]
Rare John Leech, illustrated it in his picture in _Punch_, years ago. A
man was lying very drunk at the foot of a lamp-post. A benevolent old
lady of the Exeter Hall school seeing him, called a cabman. "The poor
man is sick," quoth the kindly dame, "why don't you help him?" "Sick, is
he," replied cabby, "sick! don't I vish I 'ad just 'arf of vot ails
him?" The cabby spoke the honest sentiment of his heart. The Londoner of
his class loves it for the effect it has upon him, and as he
accomplishes his design with English gin, he carries with him a breath
that suggests the tomb of a not very ancient king, a breath which has a
density, a center, as one might say.
[Illustration: "THAT NIGGER IS MINE, AND WORTH FIFTEEN HUNDRED
DOLLARS."]
[Sidenote: THE KIND OF LIQUOR.]
At twelve o'clock, Saturday night, he would fight a rattlesnake and give
the snake the first bite. Were a venomous snake to bite such an
Englishman the man would never know it, for alcohol is a sure cure for
reptilian poison, but the poor snake would wriggle faintly away to some
secluded spot and die sadly. This is why, I presume, I have seen no
rattlesnakes in London; they cannot safely prosecute the business for
which they were created. They are similarly worried, I believe, in West
Virginia.
To drink this vile stuff successfully one would want his stomach
glass-lined and backed up with fire-brick. I never would attempt it
except as the man did in Kentucky. He walked into a bar, and distrusting
the quality of the whisky, called up a negro and gave him a glass before
drinking his own. The landlord, divining his purpose, knocked the glass
out of the negro's hand. "No you don't!" said the Boniface, "that nigger
is mine, and worth fifteen hundred dollars. Get an Irishman to try it
on."
And while I am about it I may say that alcoholization is not confined to
the lower order by any means. Almost every body drinks something beside
water. The tradesman who can afford it has claret at his table, and
during the day his "drains" of brandy are very frequent. The gentry and
nobility drink more costly wines and better brandy, but liquor is
everywhere. Nothing is done without the accompanying drink; it is
universal and in all places. The climate prevents the injury that would
visit the same man in America, but it hurts. If the English could only
live as temperately as the Americans they would be the greatest race of
people on earth.
The exclusiveness of the English is manifest in their vices as in their
virtues. Every bar is divided in the front by partitions, one for each
class. Over the one designated as "the private bar," you get precisely
the same liquors as at the others, but you pay more for it, because
laborers and the like are not admitted. One compartment exacts four
pence, the next three pence, and the last and lowest two pence. But all
are served out of the same wood.
But very few men are employed behind English bars, women filling those
places. The London bar-maid is an institution to be studied. To begin
with she must be pretty, for being pretty is a part of her
qualifications. As her feet cannot be seen, owing to her standing behind
the bar, she _is_ generally pretty. Then they are required to dress
well, and all in one establishment dress their hair alike. In one place
the maids part their hair on one side, in another on the other, and in a
third in the middle. They are alike in each shop.
They are required to make themselves pleasant to customers, for each one
is expected to influence an amount of trade to the house. They are
exceedingly free and easy damsels, without being positively indelicate,
and there isn't a cabman in the city who is so much a master of chaff as
they are. They will wink and leer at you in the most free way possible,
they will talk to the very verge of indelicacy if they think it will
please you, and if they form another judgment of your tastes they will
be as sedate as priests. These bar-maids were all born a great while
ago, and have improved all their time.
They are not only expected to be pretty, but they must have the power of
extracting drinks for themselves from the young or old fellows who
delight to chaff with them. If the young fellow who is enjoying the
delight of her conversation is not sufficiently prompt, the warning eye
of the landlord or landlady intimates that she has wasted enough time
upon him, and she simply asks him, when he has ordered a drink for
himself, if he won't treat her, and he always does. Per consequence by
eleven at night the gentle maids are in a condition highly satisfactory
to the house, for their drunkenness represents so much money in his
till. He who serves the British public with drink would utilize the very
soul of an employe to make money, man or woman.
As a rule the wife of the landlord of a popular drinking place takes
personal charge of the bar, and she is a thousand times more cruel and
grasping than her husband. When a woman does unsex herself, she can give
a man points in wickedness that he never dreamed of. These wives are as
eager to have liquor paid for for themselves as bar-maids, and the sharp
eye they keep upon the girls to see that they swallow enough to make the
business profitable is something wonderful.
They are invariably dressed very richly, with elaborate coiffures, and
sparkling with diamonds. As the British young man prefers blonde hair to
any other, the landladies are mostly of that persuasion. If they were
born brunettes there are arts by which they can be changed, and besides
wigs are very cheap in this country.
[Sidenote: THE EDIBLES ON THE BARS.]
The British woman drinks as much as the British man, and possibly more.
I am not speaking of the low, degraded woman, but of the
respectability. It is nothing singular to see women, respectable women,
sitting in bars with their husbands and lovers, and the amount of stout
and "brandy cold," they make away with is something wonderful.
I was through the wonderful park at Richmond the other day. It was a
holiday, and all London was out of the city in the parks. All the little
roadside inns were filled with the populace, women and children being
largely in the majority; and there was never a woman, no matter if she
had a child at the breast, who did not have a monster pot of pewter
filled either with porter or ale. And they gave it to their little
children as freely as an American mother would milk.
The drinking house in London is, as a rule, especially for drinking.
There are no free lunches, no nibbling bits, free on any bar. Nothing
but liquids are sold. An American speculator conceived the brilliant
idea of starting a bar with the addition of the American free lunch,
with which to attract trade. It did attract altogether too much. In
twenty minutes the lunch, which should have lasted all day, was gone,
and the British public was indignant that it was not renewed. They
pronounced the proprietor a swindle, and the speculation was a
disastrous failure.
At some of the bars an attempt is made to take the curse off the liquor
traffic by making some pretence of selling eatables. But the British
public knows this is a sham, and resents it by never buying any
comestibles at the counter. The British public scorns eating in such a
place, and insists upon drinks. Indeed, the British public won't eat at
all as long as it can drink.
What they generally have in these places under glass covers, are
curiously indigestible meat pies, sandwiches, cheese, cakes and buns.
Sometimes at railway stations a hungry Briton buys and partakes of these
things, but not often, and never without his glass of something to wash
it down. This is the time I forgive him for drinking. It is necessary.
The sandwich is made either of ham or beef, and may be said to be the
universal cold refreshment. It is about four inches long by two wide,
and is a miracle of thinness. It is the thinnest thing on earth. I have
often purchased them, not to eat, but to admire this quality. How bread
and meat can be cut so thin, especially bread, is one of the mysteries
that never will be solved till I penetrate a public kitchen and see the
operation. It is an art I suppose, and the professor of it gets, I
presume, a very high salary. He ought to. The bread is stringy enough
and the meat tough enough to be cut as thin as might be desired, but the
puzzle is how any one can acquire the skill to cut it, that way. But
they do it. The English sandwich is more an object of interest to me
than the obelisk, and is just about as digestible. I would as soon
undertake to eat the one as the other.
The meat pie is made of hashed beef, the fat being put in liberally,
enclosed in a wrapper of dough, and all baked together, in some sort of
way. I could procure and write out the process, but being a true
American and loving the American people I will not. It is utterly
indigestible. I ate one at eleven P.M. one night, and woke up in the
morning feeling as though I had swallowed the plaster bust of the infant
Samuel at prayer that stood on my mantel. The pie is a trifle worse than
the sandwich. The cheese cake may be dismissed with the simple remark
that it is a trifle worse than the meat pie. The bun is a stand-off as
to the others. Altogether they make a frightful stomachic quartet. But
the British public, who know nothing of our hash and other luxuries, are
content with them, and I don't know as I shall undertake to reform them
in this particular. I pity them, but there are so many things to reform
here that I shall not attempt any movement in that direction. Life is
very short.
[Sidenote: TOBACCO.]
The Englishman takes his liquor straight, or neat, as they call it.
Mixed drinks are entirely unknown. The sherry cobbler, the mint julep,
the fragrant cock-tail, are never heard of in regular English bars, but
the drouthy man who drinks, and they all do, takes either brandy or
Scotch or Irish whisky, raw from a barrel, and swallows his portion and
walks away satisfied. One woman in a famous drinking place was taught by
an American to make cock-tails, and the fame of the mixture drew all the
Americans to this particular place. The proprietor was sore displeased
at this trade, and raised the price two pence above what was regular,
to keep it away. It took too much of the girl's time to compound the
mixture.
Drinking does not have the effect upon an Englishman that it does upon
an American. The Englishman is a more stolid and phlegmatic man anyhow,
and the climate is less exciting. There is not the exhilaration in the
atmosphere that there is in America, and the moist humidity that you
exist in is very favorable to the consumption of alcoholic drinks. I had
got so before I had been here a week, that I think I could have endured
a glass of brandy and water. I did not do it, but I say I could have
done it.
The prices of liquors average quite as high as in America, and tobacco
and everything made of it, is much higher and the quality is vile. A
decent cigar, or one counted decent here, costs twenty-five cents, it
being of the grade that in New York sells for ten cents.
No tobacco is chewed except by sailors, and the Englishman, very
properly, considers it a disgusting habit, only to be practiced by very
low people. In consequence of the high price of tobacco, pipes and
cigarettes are very generally used. The Englishman of the better class
smokes his pipe upon the street, the same as an American does his cigar.
He prefers a pipe to a cigar, possibly because it is better, and
possibly because it is cheaper. Your Englishman loves dearly to get the
value of his money, and he generally does it.
The lover of drink in America, especially our German fellow citizens,
are emphatic in their denunciation of the liquor laws of the United
States. They ought to live in England a little while to appreciate the
privileges they have at home. Hartford, Connecticut, is, I believe, a
paradise to those who live there. One old lady who was born and had
always lived in Hartford, came to die--an impertinence of Nature, as all
Hartford people firmly believe. People should die in other places, but
not in Hartford. But this old lady had come to death, and her minister
was consoling her.
"I trust, Mrs. Thompson," he said, professionally, "that you are
prepared to die?"
"I am," was her answer; "I owe no pew rent."
"And are you content with the change?"
"Well, on the whole, yes. Heaven is no doubt a very nice place, but I
shall greatly miss my Hartford privileges."
There is no especial moral to this story, except that if our German
population were compelled to endure English law they would greatly miss
their American privileges. While you can get all the drink you want
during the day, you must either have it at home or go without it after
twelve o'clock at night.
In London no liquor can be procured after twelve o'clock at night. Every
bar, big or little, is closed, and this law is not evaded, for the risk
is too great. A man's license would be taken from him immediately, and
without remedy.
Persons are not licensed to sell liquor in England--it is the premises
that are licensed. The Board having it in charge license one public
house in a district, basing it upon the supposed necessity, and these
premises hold this license till deprived of it by violation of law. If
you desire to sell liquor you cannot go and rent a room and open your
bar; you are compelled to buy the lease of a place which carries the
license with it. Consequently a licensed place is a valuable piece of
property. One at the corner of St. Martin's street and Orange, a dingy
building in a dingy neighborhood, was bought by an American to be used
as an American bar, and he paid twenty-five thousand dollars bonus for
the lease. The annual rental of the place is fifteen hundred dollars,
and the lease for which he paid the bonus has forty-five years to run.
For any other business the bonus would have been next to nothing in that
neighborhood.
[Sidenote: EARLY CLOSING.]
Sunday is an especially drouthy day in London. All the bars are closed
till one o'clock P.M., and are then open but an hour. Then they are
closed till six, and are permitted to keep open from that hour till
eleven. And let it be remembered that law in England is law. You cannot
laugh at it as you do in America. There is no evasion of this law
attempted. The publics are required to be closed and they are closed.
There are no side-doors, as in New York--there is no selling on the
sly--they are closed. The only exception is at the railroad stations.
The refreshment bars there are permitted to be kept open as long as
trains arrive or depart, for the British Government recognizes the
necessity of an Englishman having his grog till the prescribed hour for
his getting into his bed. The thirsty soul who pants for beer after
twelve goes to Charing Cross station, and buys a ticket to the first
station out, which is "tuppence ha'penny," or five cents. Then he walks
into the bar, and being a "traveler," can buy, drink and pay for all the
stimulants he desires, till the last train has arrived or departed for
the night. His ticket he puts into his pocket, to be used when he
desires.
The night trade in liquor is something enormous. A landlord in the
Haymarket, whose lease is about expiring, is now paying one thousand
dollars a year rent, and the proprietors have notified him that his
renewal will cost him just five times that sum. He told me that he
should not renew, but that he would gladly if he were allowed to keep
open till half-past twelve, a half hour after the regular time. That
half hour each day would more than make the difference in rent.
A walk along Piccadilly after twelve explains this difference. The
street, from end to end, is crowded with prostitutes, and drunken rakes
who think they are having a good time, but they are not. They walk up
and down, chaffing with these poor unfortunates. They take them into the
publics, and pay for their drinks, all of which the landlord not only
approves of but encourages. And the English prostitute can drink as
heartily and just as long as any man alive. She has just as drouthy a
system, and it takes just as much to fill it. And there they sit, and
chaff, and booze, till the clock strikes twelve and the place is closed.
The landlord turns off the gas and puts up his shutters, cursing the law
that compels him to close just as his harvest begins.
As there are literally tens of thousands of these women walking the
street, and as ninety per cent of them are drunk at ten, with a carrying
capacity of continuing to drink every minute as long as anybody will pay
for it, and as there is an equal number of men prowling the streets
whose highest idea of amusement is to pay for it, the importance of an
extra half hour after midnight may be appreciated.
But it is of no use. Law is law in England, and whether the citizen
likes it or not, he is compelled to obey it in letter and spirit. Were a
public house to be open a minute after the hour, a policeman would walk
in and close it for him, and the next day the nearest magistrate would
revoke his license, and he could never get one again. No proprietor
would rent him a place, for the license is too valuable to be risked by
a violator of law.
There are a few bars in London that make a specialty of American drinks,
which are very curious. The names they palm off as American are very
funny to an American, because they are never heard of over there. None
of my readers ever go into bars, except for curiosity, but just imagine
this list of drinks:
"Copper-cooler," "Pick-me-up," "Our Swizzle," "Maiden's Blush,"
"Bosom-caresser," "Corpse-reviver," "Flash-of-Lightning," and so on.
And these names are actually believed by Englishmen to be genuinely
American, and in common use in the States.
Ice is about the scarcest thing in England, and cannot be had at the
majority of bars. At some of the very best it will be furnished, if very
forcibly asked for, but then in too small quantities to be satisfactory
to an American, who is accustomed to taking his drinks ice cold. The
frozen reminiscence of Winter is rather expensive here, and, besides
that, the Englishman very rightly considers it unhealthy. The water is
drank in its natural temperature, and it is really wonderful how soon
one becomes accustomed to it.
The prices of strong beverages run about the same as in the United
States. Brandy is three pence, six cents of our Bird of Freedom money,
and when the amount is considered, your three pence buys about the same
as twelve and one-half cents in New York. Malt liquors are about the
same. The glass is a trifle smaller, and the regular price at the small
publics is two pence, an equivalent, quantity considered, of five cents.
The quality of malt liquors is a long way below the American article,
and America, singular as it may seem, drinks better English ale than the
Englishman does. The ale made here for home consumption is vile stuff,
while that made for export is infinitely better. The Englishman eats
what he cannot sell.
To get at these facts concerning drinking has cost me an inconceivable
amount of wear and tear of feeling, which sacrifice I trust my readers
will appreciate.
CHAPTER V.
HOW LONDON IS AMUSED.
To pass from rum to amusement is a very easy and natural transition, for
unfortunately the people who drink are, as a rule, those who need and
will have amusement. Having done with liquor forever, I am glad to get
to a subject not quite so disagreeable.
London supports forty theaters proper; that is, forty theaters devoted
entirely to dramatic or operatic representations, and several hundred
places of amusement of all kinds, which may be classed as variety shows.
The regular theaters are a long way beyond those in America. I dislike
to acknowledge this, but candor and fairness compels it. I cannot tell a
lie, even for national pride. My hatchet is bright--it has never been
used much. The London theaters will not compare with those of any of the
large American cities in point of size, or convenience of access. They
are generally situated in out of the way places, and the halls and
entrances are as shabby as anything can be, but when you are once in
nothing can be more delightful. There is a softness in the appointments,
a perfection in the furnishing, a good taste generally that America has
not. We are splendid, but it must be confessed, rather garish and loud.
The character of the performances excels the style of the theaters.
Their pieces are put upon the stage with an attention to detail, and
with a strength of cast which we at home never see, even in the best.
[Sidenote: THE LONDON THEATERS.]
I witnessed a piece at the St. James, the time of which was the First
Charles. In a drawing-room scene musical instruments
[Illustration: ST. THOMAS HOSPITAL AND HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.]
were necessary. In America it would have been nothing singular had a
Chickering piano been used, and a parlor set in reps. Imagine the
delight of seeing a drawing-room furnished with furniture of the period,
with an old harpsichord, such as the ladies of the time used, with the
ancient zittern, and the gorgeous harp, with the chairs and couches
precisely as they were in the country house of the time. The costumes
were not mere guess work--they were designed and constructed by a
professional costumer, who made studies from pictures, and put upon the
stage men and women of King Charles' day. This was a delight, in and of
itself, that paid one for his time and expenditure, even if he cared
nothing for the play.
And then the acting. If there is any one thing in the way of amusements
that is utterly and fiendishly detestable, it is the acting of the usual
child. The mother or father who trains the ten year old phenomenon to
play children's parts, takes it as far away from childhood as he can
possibly, and the child does not play a child at all. He does, or tries
to do, _Hamlet_, in children's clothes. But nothing of the sort is
permitted in London. The child plays the child, and does it as it should
be done. It was a comfort to see two children on the floor in one scene,
playing at the game of "See-saw, Margery Daw," and doing it exactly as
children would do in real life, instead of mouthing the lines like an
old-style actor in "Macbeth."
And all the way down there was the same perfection in the acting as in
the setting of the piece. There was not one star and twenty "sticks," as
is the rule over the water, but the servant who merely said, "My lord,
the carriage waits," did that bit just as well as the hero or heroine of
the piece.
The Englishman is a very thorough sort of a man, and wants what he has
done well, according to his notion of what well is.
The places of amusement, other than the regular theaters, are of as
great variety as they are vast in number. The prevailing attraction is,
of course, the regular variety theater, which does not differ materially
from its brother in America. It is singular that the stock attraction at
the variety theater is the negro minstrel act. Minstrelsy originated in
America forty years ago, but it has as firm a hold upon England as it
has upon America, and a trifle firmer. No programme is complete without
it, and no part of the performances are so heartily enjoyed.
But their minstrelsy would drive an American negro crazy. It is
sufficient for a London audience to have a performer black his face and
hands, and put on a long-tailed coat, and striped trowsers, and sing
negro songs. The rich, mellow accent of the American African, the
rollicking humor, the funny grotesqueness, all that is wanting. At any
music hall you shall hear the songs popular in America sung by a cockney
with all the cockney peculiarities of speech, even to the misplacing of
the h's.
The leg business is even more common and more indecent than in America,
and variety performance is more highly flavored generally. Magic and
athletic performances are greatly in favor, albeit fine vocalism and
instrumental performance of a very high character must be interspersed.
These variety performances are attended by all classes. The respectable
mechanic and his family, the professional man and his family, the thief,
pickpocket, and prostitute, are all mingled in one common mass, the only
division being the prices in different parts of the house. And here, as
everywhere, drinking goes on incessantly and forever. Waiters move about
through the audience, taking orders for beverages, and men and women
drink and guzzle, and men smoke during the entire performance. No matter
what else stops, the flow of beer never does. It is very like Time in
this particular, constantly moving.
The life of a variety actor is a very busy one after eight at night. If
he has any popularity at all he has engagements at three and even four
theaters. He sings one song and responds to three _encores_, then
throwing himself into a cab he is driven to another and to another, the
time of his appearance at each being fixed to a minute.
[Sidenote: AN ENGLISH IDEA OF A GOOD TIME.]
Singular as it may seem, the wretches who sing the most idiotic songs,
of the "champagne Charley" kind, compositions so utterly and entirely
stupid that one wonders that any audience would endure them for a
minute, are the most popular. They sing them in extravagant evening
costumes, in the most doleful and melancholy way, and call themselves
"comiques." One of them, probably the nearest approach to an idiot of
any man on the English stage, makes from two hundred to three hundred
dollars a week, and is in demand all the time.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A VARIETY HALL.]
But they have a good time at these theaters. To hear a woman sing a
slang song dressed--or rather undressed--is not calculated to inflict
much wear and tear upon the mind, and as all the performances are of the
alleged humorous order there is abundant room for chaff and talk of like
cheerful nature, which is further aided and promoted by the consumption
of beer. The parties seem to enjoy it, and I presume they do.
The low Londoner has very brutal tastes. His greatest delight is a prize
fight; a dog fight comes next in his estimation; a rat pit is
satisfactory in default of anything more bloody; a cock-fight will
answer as an appetizer; and a horse race is pleasing, though that shades
up into something too near respectability for him.
A dog fight in London is a sight that is worth seeing just once, if
studies of _in_human nature are what you want. The arena is always
behind a "sporting public," on whose tables in the parlor you shall
always find the flash and sporting papers of the metropolis, and the
walls of which are decorated with engravings of prize fights, portraits
of famous dogs, and highly colored lithographs of noted horse
encounters.
Gathered around the arena will be a hundred or more of "the fancy," who
were to me anything but fancy. They are the broad-jawed, soap-locked,
sturdy brutes, of the Bill Sykes type, beer-bloated and gin-inflamed,
who subsist by practices which, if not absolutely criminal, come as
close to it as possible.
The dogs are of the English bull variety, those plucky, tenacious brutes
who will die rather than yield, or even make any manifestation of pain.
At the signal the brute dogs are let loose upon each other, the human
dogs about expressing the keenest possible delight at any especial and
exceedingly bloody performance. The highest pleasure is attained, and
the wildest enthusiasm is evoked, when one dog gets the shoulder or jaw
of the other in his iron jaws, and holds it there, while the other
literally eats him up. Then wagers are laid as to which will hold out
the longest, and every movement is watched with the keenest solicitude,
and when the bloody drama ends in the death of one or both, and the
wagers are settled, the conversation flows naturally into a dog channel,
and the victories and defeats of past years are discussed, much as
soldiers discuss their achievements.
[Sidenote: PUNCH AND JUDY.]
Dogs of this breed, of approved courage and strength, are of great
value, and large sums of money are hazarded upon their performances. The
aristocratic dog fanciers can have a private match made for them at any
time for from one to five pounds.
Of course there are any quantity of aquariums and menageries, and
institutions of a supposed usefully scientific nature, which are largely
attended, but the variety theater, or music hall, as it is called, is
the stock amusement of the Londoner. He can drink to better advantage in
them than anywhere else, and that, after all, is the principal business
of his life.
The street amusements are beyond any possibility of enumeration or
description. You will not walk a dozen blocks without seeing the very
absurd and very brutal Punch and Judy, which has delighted England for
centuries, and seems to be immortal. One would naturally suppose that
when a boy had laughed at two wooden figures manipulated by a man inside
of a box, knocking each other on the head, with squeaks and idiotic
dialogue, every day up to his twenty-first year, would naturally pass it
by ever afterward, but it is not so. I have seen venerable men, who were
doubtless bank presidents or clergymen, or something of the eminently
respectable kind, stop in front of a Punch and Judy show, and laugh as
heartily at the ancient performance as they did when they were boys in
roundabouts. And they would stand out the performance, and at its
conclusion give the performer their two pence, and go away as if they
had been amused.
There never has been any change in Punch and Judy from the time it was
brought to England from Italy. The fun is now, as then, in Punch
knocking Judy on the head with his stick, and the shrieks of Judy with
an expression on her face of enjoyment. That is all there is of it, and
all there ever has been. And singular as it may seem, it is the first
amusement of an English boy, and it delights him till he dies. He
enjoyed it at eight, and just the same at eighty. No doubt he has a
vague idea that he will find a Punch and Judy show in heaven when he
reaches it.
But Punch and Judy shows are not all the amusements of the great city.
Garden hose not being common, owing to the fewness of gardens and the
limited use of water, the hand organ flourishes in all its native
ferocity, the grinders being, as over the water, Italian noblemen with
their wives. And they are just as dirty and grimy here as there. The
mixed brass and string banditti perambulate the streets making the day
and early night hideous, and in the side streets where the policeman is
infrequent the street juggler plies his vocation.
[Illustration: THE MAGIC PURSE.]
[Sidenote: MUSICAL NUISANCES.]
One, for instance, has a common purse with four shillings. He places the
four shillings in the purse, the country yokel sees them placed therein,
and he chinks the purse. So far as the countrymen's eyes and ears go
there can be no doubt as to the fact of the four shillings being in the
purse. Then the fakir offers to sell the purse to the countryman for
sixpence, which, were the shillings actually inside, would certainly be
a bargain. The countryman pays the sixpence, and straightway opens the
purse, but he does not find the sixpence therein. It is as empty as his
head. He finds that he has paid sixpence for a purse dear at a penny,
and he retires amid the jeers of the populace.
As the clever juggler only finds a few victims each day, and as from
each he makes only ten cents, I don't see how he expects to ever retire
from business and live upon his hard earned capital. The skill,
knowledge of human nature, and hard work necessary to the successful
prosecution of this little swindle would make him rich, with half the
wear and tear. But such men would rather work a day to swindle somebody
out of sixpence than to earn a dollar by honest work in a quarter of the
time. That is why I shall never go into the business of juggling with
four shillings and a penny purse. It is disreputable, and then it
doesn't pay.
Couples of negro minstrels are a common sight on the streets, one armed
with a banjo, and another with a concertina, that he plays with an
atrocious disregard of time and tune, which under a despotism would
consign him to a block. They roam from house to house and play, as they
call it. The helpless family, worried to the very verge of madness,
throw them sixpence, and they move on. They stand and play till they get
their sixpence. The race is not as it was in Jem Bagg's day. He played
the clarionet. "Ven the man tosses me a sixpence," was his remark, and
says 'Now, my good man, move hon,' I gently says to him, says I, 'I
never moves hon for a sixpence. I knows the vally of peace and quietness
too much for that, and then, hif 'e doesn't throw me another sixpence, I
tips him my corkscrew hovertoor, and that halways fetches 'im.'"
In this degenerate day either the street musicians have forgotten their
"corkscrew overtoors," or they are satisfied with less money. A sixpence
moves them on now certainly, but woe be to you if you are short the
sixpence.
Next door to me lives a deaf man who is a bachelor. It is his delight to
have the musicians come to this house. He sits in the doorway, and they
play and play, and he assumes an ecstatic expression, and they wonder
why he doesn't order them to "move on," but he doesn't. It amuses him,
and they play, till, lost in amazement at his powerful endurance, they
put up their instruments sadly and move on of their own accord. I get
very little amusement out of him now. The majority of the fiends have
found him out.
[Illustration: THE MAN WHO WAS MUSIC PROOF.]
CHAPTER VI.
MADAME TUSSAUD.
One of the stock sights in London which every foreigner as well as every
man, woman and child from the country who goes to London, does with
great regularity, is Madame Tussaud's Museum. It is known the world over
and is as regular a thing to see as the Tower.
A great many years ago, some time since the flood, a Swiss woman named
Tussaud, who had studied art in Paris, took the brilliant notion into
her wise head that money was better than fame, and instead of spoiling
marble she commenced doing some very good things in wax. She brought her
figures to London and opened a museum, which she added to and enlarged
as men and women became of sufficient interest to attract attention,
until she got pretty much everybody of whom the world ever heard.
She died many years ago, but the collection was continued by her family,
three generations of which have waxed rich and gone to join those whom
they put so well in wax in life.
This wonderful museum, which actually deserves all the attention it
gets, is filled with really excellent figures of the entire line of
English Kings, dressed in the costumes of the period in which they
lived, including arms, although court dresses generally adorn them. As
the Tussaud family were, and are, artists, these figures are not the
limp, misshapen, grinning effigies usually exhibited, but are in size,
stature, color and general grouping, perfect.
I cannot say that the effigies of King Edward and Richard, and those
other ancient marauders, are correct, for I never saw them in life.
They died many years ago. But all you have to do is what Dicken's
Marchioness did with the orange peel wine: "Make believe very hard," and
they will do. The faces were modeled from portraits, and their dresses
were made from actual costumes preserved in the curious repositories of
which London is full. The visitor gets some notion of what the subjects
were like, and that ought to be and is satisfactory.
[Illustration: MADAME TUSSAUD.]
[Sidenote: AMERICAN WORTHIES.]
You see, standing or sitting, marvelous likenesses of all the great
soldiers and statesmen of England, but heavens! how our poor Americans
have been abused! Washington is about as like our Washington as he is
like an Ohio River coal-boat captain. Ex-President Grant has good cause
for action for libel, for such a face as they have put upon him could
not have been on a third corporal of the poorest company in the very
worst North Carolina regiment, and President Hayes and Garfield have
been similarly treated. That of Franklin is a tolerable likeness of the
maker of infernal maxims, but there was a malicious design evident on
the part of the artists to dwarf the Americans, as I fancy there was to
enlarge and exaggerate the Englishmen.
The groups are something wonderful. The Lying-in-State of the Czar, a
recent addition, is a miracle of naturalness and awful beauty, as is the
death of Pope Pius; and they are so natural that one cannot help feeling
that he is in the presence of actual death, and not a counterfeit
presentment.
[Illustration: WAX FIGURES OF AMERICANS.]
The Museum contains, among other curiosities that are of interest, the
identical coach used by Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo, with a vast
number of other relics of the great Corsican. From the number of
Napoleonic relics I fancy that the Madame was at heart a French woman,
though she was making her money from the English.
Great halls are filled with correct statuary in wax of the world's
great, or notorious men, all of which have to be "done," as a matter of
course.
But the great point, and one which no visitor ever fails to visit is the
"Chamber of Horrors." You pay a sixpence extra--there is always sixpence
extra in England--and you are introduced to the most cheerful assemblage
of monsters that the world has ever produced.
If there ever was a murder committed of an especially atrocious
description, one done under peculiarly horrifying and terrible
circumstances, here is a wax figure of the murderer, and, if possible,
of the victim.
There is the original guillotine which made the acquaintance of so many
necks during the various French revolutions. There is the identical
scaffold which was devised by a man condemned to be hung, and on which
he suffered, with forty-eight others afterward, before it was retired,
and there are ropes and delightful articles of that nature with which
criminals have suffered, and in such numbers that we come to the
conclusion that the principal business of the English and French is to
kill somebody and get hung for it.
The two criminals in which I took the liveliest interest were Messrs.
Burke and Hare, of Edinburgh, Scotland. These gentlemen had a contract
with the medical university of Edinburgh, to furnish the students with
corpses for dissection, which they did by resurrecting them from various
church-yards.
Mr. Burke, who was evidently the leader in the enterprise, remarked one
night to Mr. Hare,--that is, I presume he did:
"Why go out this dark and rainy night and dig in the damp earth for
corpses? Digging corpses is all wrong. If the friends of the deceased
should ever discover that a corpse had been abstracted it would occasion
the most profound feeling. We should have more respect for the survivors
than to raise their dead, and then, in the interest of science, we
should give the students fresher bodies for dissection. I am inflexibly
opposed to digging any more."
[Sidenote: THE CONSULTATION.]
"But how shall we get the corpses?" asked the obtuse Mr. Hare.
"It is far easier," replied Mr. Burke, "to knock a man on the head than
it is to dig him up, and, in addition to the other reasons I have
mentioned, a sand-bag or a club is cheaper than a spade."
[Illustration: "DIGGING CORPSES IS ALL WRONG."]
And Mr. Hare coinciding with Mr. Burke, they went out that night and
killed a man, and they kept going out and killing men till thirty had
disappeared. The authorities finally got upon their track, when Mr. Hare
turned States' evidence and hung Mr. Burke, and he went peacefully into
some other business.
[Illustration: THE IMPROVED PROCESS OF MESSRS. BURKE AND HARE.]
It is needless to add that a careful study of the faces of the two men
would not lead one to purposely encounter them in a dark alley after
twelve at night. Nothing earthly could be so villainous.
A little incident that occurred the day I explored the Museum
illustrates the perfection of the modeling and draping the figures.
There were in the party a gentleman and lady from Pennsylvania, the
former being a devotee of the alleged science of phrenology, and rather
fond of discussing the subject.
[Sidenote: THE SCIENCE OF PHRENOLOGY.]
A female figure was standing on the floor, which attracted his
attention. This was in the Chamber of Horrors.
"I want to call your attention," he said to his wife, "to this
illustration of the truth of phrenology. Could there be modeled a more
vicious face? Notice the development back of the ears, showing the head
to be all animal, and the pinched forehead and the general
insignificance of the front head as compared with the development of the
back portion. There is murder in every line of that face. Let me see who
it is."
"Thank you," exclaimed the figure as it moved away. It was a very
estimable American lady whom the phrenologist had mistaken for a wax
figure.
[Illustration: OSBORN HOUSE, ISLE OF WIGHT.]
CHAPTER VII.
THE LONDON LAWYER.
London is probably the most expensive place to do business in the world.
Its business men are conservative, so conservative that they would not
for the world part their hair in any way differing from their fathers,
nor would they adopt a modern convenience unless it were absolutely
necessary to the maintenance of English supremacy, and they would sigh
as they parted with an old nuisance for a modern delight. Their
professions have all got into ruts from which you can no more move them
than you can the Pyramids, and their practices are so established that
they may and do do as they please, without regard to the notions of any
body.
An American resident in London bargained for a house, and the lease had
to be transferred. Now in any country where a common school exists
almost anybody can assign a lease, but not so here. A solicitor had to
be employed, and afterward a contract long enough to cover a sheet of
legal paper had to be drawn up. It was a very plain matter--forty words
would have been sufficient. But a solicitor must be employed
nevertheless. How much do you suppose it cost Mr. Foote to have this
trifle of work done? As a matter of instruction to the American people
and for the benefit of American lawyers, who are too modest in their
charges, and I am now convinced that the majority of them are, I make a
partial copy of the solicitor's bill, as it is a more interesting
document than anything that I can write. Here it is:
[Sidenote: THE SOLICITOR'S BILL.]
W. M. FOOTE, ESQ.,
_To_ BLANK, BLANK, SOLICITOR.
_Re_ STAR OF THE WEST.
PRIOR TO YOURSELF.
Clerk attending at Messrs. Ingram's (Vendor's Solicitors), for £. s. p.
draft proposed contract 6 8
Procuring and considering and found same objectionable 6 8
Instructions for contract 6 8
Drawing same, folios twenty 1 11 1
Engrossing in two parts 1 3
Writing Messrs. Ingram with one part 3 6
Writing Mr. Challer for schedule of fixtures to answer to contract 3 6
Same as to appointment for Monday 3 6
Drawing telegram and attending to forward and paid 7 8
Attending you, and then at Messrs. Ingram, engaged a considerable
time going through deed and documents, etc., and settling
contracts and signing 3 0
Writing your hereon, fully 6 8
Instructions for registration on title 6 8
Drawing same 12 0
Engrossing 4 0
Attending to deliver 6 8
Replying to your letter 3 6
Attending appointing conference 6 8
Engrossing papers, leases and covenants 1 10 0
Attending Dr. Thomson therewith 6 8
Fee to him and clerk 1 3 6
Paid conference fee 1 6 0
Attending conference and cab hire 13 4
Perusing his opinion 1 0 0
Writing you with copy Dr. Thomson's opinion 6 8
Making copy of schedule and fixtures 5 6
Waiting upon Messrs. Ingram with same 3 6
Perusing abstract 2 10 6
Writing with appointment to examine deeds with abstract 3 6
Attending examining deeds with abstract, self and clerk 2 2 0
Attending searching liquidation proceedings of Arthur Coleman
and paid 14 4
As this remarkable document extends over four and a half pages of
foolscap paper I will not give it all. However, there are some other
charges worthy of going upon record. For instance this item:
A replying to your letter 3 6
And this:
Attending you long conference, and you left cheque for purchase
money 13 4 0
Writing you fully 3 6
Attending appointing conference 3 6
The entire bill footed up forty-two pounds, fourteen shillings and ten
pence, which, reduced to bird of freedom money amounts to about two
hundred and twenty-five dollars.
And all this for transferring a lease from one party to another, about
which operation there couldn't be the slightest trouble, except as the
two attorneys made it.
Doubtless the Messrs. Ingram and Dr. Thomson, whatever he had to do with
it, put in a similar bill against their clients, so both sides had a
very good thing of it.
But this was not all there was of it. It was necessary that Mr. Foote
should have a little article of agreement with Mr. Welch, his manager,
not that there was any especial need for it, but as a mere matter of
form, as we say when we want a sure thing on somebody. The same attorney
was employed to do this, in fact he suggested it and did it before this
bill was presented.
[Illustration: THE LONDON LAWYER.]
[Sidenote: MR. FOOTE'S EXPERIENCE.]
The bill for this service is precisely like the other. There are items
for "attendance," for "preparing telegrams," for "waiting, self and
clerk," for "instructions," and so on, the amount charged for preparing
an article of agreement being eight pounds sterling.
The attorney's fees for the whole of this trifling piece of business
footed up exactly seventy-two pounds sterling, or three hundred and
sixty dollars.
"What do these items mean?" I asked Mr. Foote.
"Well, the items for attendance mean that I went to his office and told
him in three minutes' time what I wanted, and he made minutes with a
pencil."
"The clerk?"
"Oh, they never go anywhere without a clerk. His business is to carry a
green bag with nothing in it, and look like an umpire. All the writing
of letters, for which he relentlessly charged three shillings and
sixpence each, was totally unnecessary, as they related to matters of
which I fully informed him at the beginning. But he was the most
industrious letter writer I ever saw. And I would answer his letters
like an idiot, and he charged for replying to mine, and then he would
write again and charge for that, and so on. And when he couldn't
decently write another letter, he would telegraph me and charge for
that, and--well, if I had taken two leases I shouldn't have been through
till this time."
"Did you pay it?"
"Pay it? Of course I did. To have resisted would have been ruin. He
would have sued me, and I should have had to have employed another
attorney, and the case would have gone into the courts, after about a
thousand instructions, conferences, letters, and telegrams, and clerks,
and all that, from him--the same as this--and it would have dragged
along, with more clerks, and letters, and telegrams, till the crack o'
doom. Instead of bills of four pages I should have had bills of forty,
and then there would have been money to be paid on account, and bail,
and the Lord only knows what. A law suit in London means ruin to
everybody but the lawyers and officers of the court. And in the end I
should have been compelled to pay it, for the courts take care of the
attorneys. And, after all, he only made the regular charges that every
London lawyer does. Indeed, as he omitted twice to charge three and six
pence for bidding me good morning, I don't know but that he is rather
liberal than otherwise. I think," said Mr. Foote, reflectively, "that
three times he shook my hand, and I find no charge for that. On the
whole, he is a tolerable fair lawyer to do business with."
"Tell me all about him."
"He is one of say twenty thousand lawyers in London who get a case like
this, occasionally. He occupies "chambers," as they call their offices,
and keeps a clerk, as they all have to, to ever expect any business, as
a lawyer without a clerk would have no standing. The clerk spends most
of his time eating ham sandwiches, having nothing else to do, except
when his employer gets a man like myself on a string, on which occasion
he follows him about carrying a bag which is supposed to contain papers
of great moment. My lease was all that was in that bag for a month or
more. He lives well all the time, for no matter how poor he may be, or
how little business he has, he must live well for the sake of
appearance. Finally he does get the management of a good estate, and is
fixed for life. An Englishman reposes confidence in his solicitor, and
would no more think of disputing a charge made by him than he would of
heading a rebellion. They are doubtless a very nice lot, but the less
you have to do with them the better. A little of them go a long way.
Dispute his bill, not I. I don't want to make England a permanent
residence, for I hope to get back to America some time, and a law suit
would keep me here all my life, provided I had money enough to pay fees
and costs. They'll hold on you as long as you've a penny."
That Mr. Foote did not exaggerate, I know. Had I supposed he had been
exaggerating I should not have written thi
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/46451