Saunterings in and about London
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Title: Saunterings in and about London
Author: Max Schlesinger
Translator: Otto von Wenckstern
Release date: August 12, 2014 [eBook #46571]
Most recently updated: November 28, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAUNTERINGS IN AND ABOUT LONDON ***
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.
Unusual spellings (i.e. Mississipi, ancles, chesnuts, dont, wofully,
woful, secresy, rythm, wont, cant, cynism, and contractions: did'nt,
etc.) have been retained. Some typographical errors have been
corrected; a list follows the text. (note of etext transcriber.)]
SAUNTERINGS IN AND ABOUT LONDON.
LONDON:
J. WERTHEIMER AND CO., PRINTERS,
CIRCUS-PLACE, FINSBURY.
[Illustration: DRURY LANE--SATURDAY NIGHT.
p. 269.]
[Illustration: SAUNTERINGS IN AND ABOUT LONDON
LONDON: NATHANIEL COOKE, MILFORD HOUSE, STRAND.]
SAUNTERINGS IN AND ABOUT
LONDON.
BY
MAX SCHLESINGER.
THE ENGLISH EDITION
BY
OTTO WENCKSTERN.
LONDON:
NATHANIEL COOKE, MILFORD HOUSE, STRAND.
1853.
PREFACE
TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
Prefaces, generally speaking, are pleadings, in which authors,
anticipating public censure, and well knowing how richly they deserve
it, adduce sundry reasons why their books are not shorter or longer, and
altogether different from the volumes which then and there they bring
into the market.
I need not make any such excuses, for I did not write for an English
public, nor did I ever pretend to popularity in England. The
"SAUNTERINGS" were intended for the profit and amusement of my German
countrymen; and I must say I was not a little pleased and surprised
with the very flattering reception which my book experienced at the
hands of the English critics. Their favourable opinion, which they so
emphatically and--I am selfish enough to go the whole length of the
word--so _ably_ expressed, has probably caused the production of the
book in an English dress. The critics, therefore, must bear the
responsibility, if the general public should happen to condemn these
"Saunterings," as "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable," and shelve
them accordingly.
MAX SCHLESINGER.
_London_, _October, 1853_.
CONTENTS.
THE FIRST PART.
CHAP. I.
IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S FRIENDS.--THE
ENGLISHMAN'S CASTLE......1
CHAP. II.
Street Life.--CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MASSES.--FASHIONABLE QUARTERS.--HOW
MR. FALCON SAID GOOD BYE TO HIS CUSTOMERS.--THE CROSSING IN
HOLBORN.--MOSES AND SON.--ADVERTISING VANS.--THE PUFFING MANIA, ITS
PHASES AND CAUSES......12
CHAP. III.
The Squares.--Lincoln's Inn......25
CHAP. IV.
Up the Thames.--Vauxhall.--THE RIVER SIDE.--VIEWS OF THE RIVER.--THE
TIDES.--THE BRIDGES.--THE TEMPLE AND SOMERSET HOUSE.--ENTRANCE TO
VAUXHALL.--BRITISH DECORATIVE GENIUS.--SOMEBODY RUNS AWAY WITH DR.
KEIF.--MAGIC.--NELSON AND WELLINGTON.--THE CIRCUS.--THE BURNING OF
MOSCOW.--AN EPISODE AT THE TEA TABLE......31
CHAP. V.
The Police.--THE LONDON POLICE.--JOURNEY FROM PARIS TO
LONDON.--THE POLITICS OF THE FORCE.--ITS MODE OF ACTION
ILLUSTRATED.--DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE POLICE IN ENGLAND AND ON THE
CONTINENT.--DETECTIVES.--ROOKERIES.--THE POLICEMAN AS A CITIZEN......45
CHAP. VI.
Newgate and its Neighbourhood.--RIVERS UNDER GROUND.--DIVISION OF
LABOUR.--EXECUTIONS.--THE PEOPLE'S FESTIVALS.--PREDILECTION
FOR CRIMINAL CASES.--STATISTICS OF
NEWGATE.--PATERNOSTER-ROW.--SMITHFIELD.--SELF-GOVERNMENT, ITS BRIGHT AND
DARK SIDES......58
CHAP. VII.
Street Life.--The Post-office.--LONDON AND THE OCEAN.--HOW YOU MAY
ATTACK THE REPUTATION OF EITHER.--THE METROPOLIS "EN NEGLIGÉE."--THE
POST-OFFICE.--THE MODERN LETTER-WRITER.--MONEY ORDERS.--PENNY
STAMPS, THEIR USE AND ABUSE.--JOHN BULL AND THE CHANCELLOR OF
THE EXCHEQUER.--HOW MR. BULL IMPOSES UPON THAT RESPECTABLE
FUNCTIONARY.--WHAT IS A NEWSPAPER.--THE GREAT HALL OF THE POST-OFFICE AT
SIX P.M......67
CHAP. VIII.
Sunlight.--Moonlight.--Gaslight.--THE SUN AND THE
LONDONERS.--MYSTERIES OF THE FOG.--HARVEST MOONS.--GAS.--HOW
THE CLIMATE WORKS.--FLANNELS.--ENGLISH DINNERS AND FRENCH
THEATRICALS.--CURRENT PHRASES......82
CHAP. IX.
The City Capitol.--THE LORD MAYOR'S RETREAT.--THE NINTH OF
NOVEMBER.--CITY PROCESSIONS.--"THE TIMES" AND THE CITY.--THE STOCK
EXCHANGE.--A PIECE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT.--LLOYD'S.--RETURN TO SIR JOHN,
AND SOME OF THE OPINIONS OF THAT WORTHY......89
CHAP. X.
Hyde Park.--PILGRIMAGE TO THE FAR WEST.--OXFORD-STREET.--HYDE-PARK IN
THE SEASON.--ROTTEN ROW.--THE DUKE AND THE QUEEN.--THE FRONT OF THE
CRYSTAL PALACE.--DR. KEIF ENTERS, MAKES A SPEECH ON BRITISH LOYALTY, AND
EXIT.--THE IRON SHUTTERS OF APSLEY HOUSE.--THE BRITISH GENERAL AND THE
RIOTERS......103
CHAP. XI.
The Quarters of Fashion.--THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE.--FASHIONABLE
QUARTERS.--LONDON IN 1752.--ST. JAMES'S PALACE.--PAST AND PRESENT.--PALL
MALL.--THE LAND OF CLUBS.--MRS. GRUNDY ON THE CLUBS.--ST. JAMES'S
PARK.--BUCKINGHAM PALACE.--WATERLOO PLACE.--TRAFALGAR-SQUARE......112
CHAP. XII.
Gentlemen and Foreigners.--ONE OF DR. KEIF'S ADVENTURES.--MANNERS AND
CUSTOMS OF OLD ENGLAND.--A NEW ACQUAINTANCE.--ENGLISH Flegeljahre.--THE
ORDINANCES OF FASHION.--OUR FRIEND'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.--THE GENTLEMAN'S
OCCUPATIONS AND ECCENTRICITIES.--FOREIGNERS.--JOHN BULL ON FOREIGNERS
GENERALLY.--STRIFE AND PEACE......121
THE SECOND PART.
CHAP. I.
Down the Thames.--RIVER SCENE AT LONDON BRIDGE.--COLLIERS FROM
NEWCASTLE.--THE CUSTOM-HOUSE.--THE POOL.--THE DANGERS OF THE THAMES.--AN
ENGLISHMAN AFLOAT.--RE-APPEARANCE OF DR. KEIF AND MR. BAXTER.--BOATING
SCENES.--THE THAMES TUNNEL.--PRIVATE DOCKS.--HOW ENGLISHMEN BUILD SHIPS
FOR FOREIGNERS.--GREENWICH.--OLD SOLDIERS IN ENGLAND AND
GERMANY.--HOTELS AND POT-HOUSES.--GREENWICH PARK......135
CHAP. II.
The Theory of Locomotion.--WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE, ETC.--CLIMATE
VARIETIES OF LONDON.--LOCOMOTION.--ITS MODES AND DIFFICULTIES.--RULES
AND REGULATIONS FOR PEDESTRIANS.--CARRIAGES.--CAB-LAW AND
LAWLESSNESS.--CABMEN AND WATERMEN.--NOTES OF AN OMNIBUS
PASSENGER.--DRIVERS AND CONDUCTORS.--STAGE-COACHES.--METROPOLITAN
RAILWAYS......154
CHAP. III.
The Quarters of Royalty and Government.--WHITEHALL, PAST AND
PRESENT.--DOWNING STREET.--PARIS AND LONDON.--ENGLISH AND FRENCH
STATESMEN.--THE DIFFERENCE.--THE ADMIRERS OF FRANCE.--ENGLISH RESPECT
FOR THE ARISTOCRACY......171
CHAP. IV.
Westminster.--The Parliament.--THE ABBEY.--THE HALL.--AN M.P.'S
LIFE.--THE NEW HOUSES.--THEIR STYLE, CORRIDORS, AND LIBRARIES.--THE
SUFFERINGS OF THE PUBLIC.--THE SPEAKER.--SIR JOHN AND DR. KEIF IN THE
GALLERY.--LADIES AND REPORTERS.--THE TABLE OF THE HOUSE.--THE
SERGEANT-AT-ARMS.--PARLIAMENTARY ETIQUETTE.--THE TWO
HOUSES.--DISRAELI.--PALMERSTON.--SIR JOHN PRAISETH THE LATTER.--COLONEL
SIBTHORP.--LORD JOHN RUSSELL.--PUBLIC SPEAKING IN ENGLAND......181
CHAP. V.
The Periodical Press.--Its Mechanism and Distribution.--THE ENGLISH
PRESS GENERALLY.--THE "TIMES" AND THE OTHER JOURNALS.--THE EVENING
PAPERS.--THE PUBLICATION OF THE MORNING PAPERS.--ANTICIPATION OF
NEWS.--SPECIAL TRAINS.--PUBLICATION OF WEEKLY PAPERS.--THE READING
PUBLIC.--ADVANTAGES OF WEEKLY PAPERS.--THE PROVINCIAL PRESS.--WHY IT
CANNOT FLOURISH.--TRANSMISSION OF NEWSPAPERS.--THE NEWSVENDERS.--A
SCENE IN THE "GLOBE" OFFICE.--YOUNG HOPEFUL, THE NEWSBOY.--MR. SMIRKINS,
THE PARTY-MAN--THE NEWSVENDER'S EXCHANGE......203
CHAP. VI.
The Bank.--APPEARANCE OF THE BANK.--WANT OF RESPECT IN THE PRESENCE OF
PUBLIC FUNCTIONARIES.--THE PUBLIC AT THE BANK.--MYSTERIOUS
COMFORTS.--ENGLISH TASTE.--THE WONDERS OF MACHINERY.--A STRANGE
LIBRARY.--PRINTING THE NOTES.--HIDDEN PALACES.--THE TREASURY.--BAD
SOVEREIGNS--DR. KEIF, AND WHY THE ENGLISH KNOW NOTHING WHATEVER OF THE
AFFAIRS OF GERMANY......217
CHAP. VII.
Four-and-twenty Hours at the Times Office.--CROSSING THE ROAD.--THE
OWNERS OF THE "TIMES."--ITS SOUL; ITS EDITORS.--DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN THE "TIMES," EDITORS AND THE "REDACTEURS" OF GERMAN
NEWSPAPERS.--THE POLITICS OF THE "TIMES."--HOW THEY WRITE THE
"LEADERS."--SECRETS.--LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.--THE MANAGER'S
DEPARTMENT.--WHAT THE EDITORS DO.--THE PARLIAMENTARY CORPS.--THE
REPORTER'S GALLERY AND REFECTORY.--DIVISION, DISCIPLINE, AND OCCUPATION
OF THE REPORTERS.--MR. DOD.--THE SUMMARY-MAN.--THE STAFF.--THE
PENNY-A-LINERS.--SOCIAL POSITION OF ENGLISH JOURNALISM......231
CHAP. VIII.
A Frenchman's Notions.--DR. KEIF AT DINNER WITH A FRENCHMAN.--MONS.
GUERONNAY.--GRAND INTERNATIONAL CONTEST.--AN ARMISTICE.--SIR JOHN
SERMONISES.--THE GLORY OF FRANCE AND THE DOWNFALL OF ENGLAND.--SUNDRY
REMARKS ON THE OPERA AND THE BRITISH FEMALE; ON ENGLISH MUSIC AND FRENCH
POLITICS.--SIR JOHN A TRUE JOHN BULL.--A CONTROVERSY ON THE
STAIRS......250
CHAP. IX.
The Theatrical Quarters.--THE THEATRES.--THE POOR MAN'S SUNDAY.--GROUPS
FOR HOGARTH.--DR. KEIF AND MR. BAXTER AT THE OLYMPIC.--TRAGEDY AND
COMEDY IN ENGLAND.--MR. AND MRS. KEELEY.--MR. WIGAN.--MR. KEAN AND THE
BRIMLEYS.--METHODISM.--A PENNY THEATRE.--THE PANTOMIMES.--THE
BALLET.--THE STAGE IN ENGLAND AND GERMANY.--MATERIALISM.--DRURY-LANE AT
11-45 P.M.--MERRY OLD ENGLAND.--DRURY-LANE AT 1 A.M......265
APPENDIX.
CORRESPONDENCE.
LETTER I.--SIR JOHN TO DR. KEIF.....287
LETTER II.--DR. KEIF TO SIR JOHN.....289
SAUNTERINGS IN AND ABOUT LONDON.
THE FIRST PART.
CHAPTER I.
IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S
FRIENDS.--THE ENGLISHMAN'S CASTLE.
"Are you aware, honorable and honored Sir John," said Dr. Keif, as he
moved his chair nearer to the fire, "are you aware that I am strongly
tempted to hate this country of yours?"
"Indeed!" replied Sir John, with a slight elongation of his
good-humoured face. "Really, Sir, you are quick of feeling. You have
been exactly two hours in London. Wait, compare, and judge. There are
thousands of your countrymen in London, and none of them ever think of
going back to Germany."
"And for good reasons too," muttered the Doctor.
"May I ask," said Sir John, after a short pause, "what can have shocked
you in England within two hours after your arrival?"
"Look at this cigar, sir! It won't burn, has a bad smell, drops its
ashes--and costs four times as much as a decent cigar in my own country.
Can you, in the face of this villanous cigar, muster the courage to talk
to me of your government and your constitution? This cigar, Sir, proves
that your boasted civilisation is sheer barbarity,--that your Cobden is
a humbug, and your free-trade a monstrous sham!"
"Does it indeed prove all that? Very well, Sir German," cried Sir John,
with a futile attempt to imitate the martial and inquisitorial bearing
of an Austrian _gendarme_. "Come, show me your passport! Did any one
here ask for it? Did they send you to the Guildhall for a _carte de
sureté_? Have the police expelled you from London? It's either one thing
or the other. It's either sterling liberty and cabbage-leaf cigars, or
real Havanas and all the miseries of your police. Take your choice,
sir."
"But I cannot take my choice, sir!" cried Dr. Keif. "They have hunted me
as you would hunt a fox, across all their fences of boundary lines to
the shores of the ocean, and into the very maw of that green-eyed
monster, Sea-sickness, which cast me forth vomiting on this barbarous
island, where men smoke lettuce and call it tobacco!" saying which, the
doctor flung his cigar into the grate, and sung, "_Was ist des Deutschen
Vaterland?_"
But the reader will most naturally ask, Who is this comical doctor, and
who is Sir John?
To which I make reply--they are two amiable and honest men who met on
the Continent years ago, and who, after a long separation, met again in
the heart of London, in Guildford-street, Russell-square.
Dr. Keif is an Austrian and a journalist. There is good in all, but none
are all good. Dr. Keif makes no exception to the common rule. He was so
far prejudiced as to write a batch of very neat _Feuilletons_, in which
he asserted that the Croats did not altogether conduct themselves with
grace at the sacking of Vienna, and that the Bohemian Czechs are not the
original race which gave birth to all the nations of the earth. He
denied also that German literature and science have ever been fostered
by the Servians; he alleged that Göthe had done more for the advancement
of science than the twenty-first battalion of the Royal and Imperial
Grenadiers, and he was abandoned enough to avow his opinion that a bad
government is worse than a good one. On account of these very
objectionable prejudices, the Doctor was summoned forthwith to depart
from Leipzig in Saxony, where he lived, and proceed to Vienna, there to
vindicate his doctrines or submit to a paternal chastisement. But the
Doctor objected to the fate of John Huss; perhaps his mind, corrupted
with German literature, was unable to appreciate the charms of a
military career in the ranks of the Austrian army. Dr. Keif left
Leipzig with all possible secresy; nor could he be induced to return,
even by the taunts of the official Vienna Zeitung, which justly accused
him of cowardice, since he preferred an ignominious flight to a contest
with only 600,000 soldiers, twelve fortresses, half a million of police
officers, and the "_peinliche Halsgerichts Ordnung_" of the late Empress
Maria Theresa. Whether Dr. Keif lacks courage or not, and all other
traits of his character will be sufficiently shown in the course of the
Wanderings through London, which we propose to make in his company.
Dr. Keif and the author live in the house of Sir John ----, a full-blown
specimen of the old English gentleman, and one worthy to be studied and
chronicled as a prototype of his countrymen. This house of ours is the
centre of our rambles, the point from which we start and to which we
return with the experiences we gathered in our excursions. And since an
English fireside and an English home are utter strangers to the most
ideal dreams of the German mind, we propose commencing our Wanderings
through London with a voyage of discovery through all the rooms and
garrets of our own house.
At the first step a German makes in one of the London streets, he must
understand that life in England is very different from life in Germany.
Not only are the walls of the houses black and smoky, but the houses do
not stand on a level with the pavement. A London street is in a manner
like a German high-road, which is skirted on either side with a deep
ditch. In the streets of London the houses on either side rise out of
deep side areas. These dry ditches are generally of the depth of from
six to ten feet, and that part of the house, which with us would form
the lower story, is here from ten to twelve feet under-ground. This moat
is uncovered, but it is railed in, and the communication between the
house door and the street is effected by a bridge neatly formed of
masonry.
Every English house has its fence, its iron stockade and its doorway
bridge. To observe the additional fortifications which every Englishman
invents for the greater security of his house is quite amusing. It is
exactly as if Louis Napoleon was expected to effect a landing daily
between luncheon and dinner, while every individual Englishman is
prepared to defend his household gods to the last drop of porter.
You may see iron railings, massive and high, like unto the columns which
crushed the Philistines in their fall; each bar has its spear-head, and
each spear-head is conscientiously kept in good and sharp condition. The
little bridge which leads to the house-door is frequently shut up; a
little door with sharp spikes protruding from it is prepared to hook the
hand of a bold invader. And it is said, that magazines of powder are
placed under the bridge for the purpose of blowing up a too pertinacious
assailant. This latter rumour I give for what it is worth. It is the
assertion of a Frenchman, whom the cleanliness of London drove to
despair, and who, in the malice of his heart, got satirical.
A mature consideration of the London houses shows, that the strength of
the fortification is in exact proportion to the elegance and value of
the house and its contents. The poor are satisfied with a wooden
stockade; the rich are safe behind their iron _chevaux de frise_, and in
front of palaces, club-houses, and other public buildings, the railings
are so high and strong as to engender the belief that the thieves of
England go about their business of housebreaking with scaling-ladders,
pick-axes, guns, and other formidable implements of destruction.
Every Englishman is a bit of a Vauban. Not only does he barricade his
house against two-legged animals of his own species, but his mania for
fortification extends to precautions against wretched dogs and cats. To
prevent these small cattle from making their way through the railings,
the Englishman fills the interstices with patent wire-net work, and the
very roofs are frequently divided by means, of similar contrivances.
Vainly will cats, slaves of the tender passion, make prodigious efforts
to squeeze themselves through those cruel, cruel walls, and vainly do
they, in accents touching, but not harmonious, pour their grief into the
silent ear of night. Vainly, I say, for an Englishman has little
sympathy with "love in a garret"; and as for love on the roof, he scorns
it utterly.
We now approach the street-door, and put the knocker in motion. Do not
fancy that this is an easy process. It is by far easier to learn the
language of Englishmen than to learn the language of the knocker; and
many strangers protest that a knocker is the most difficult of all
musical instruments.
It requires a good ear and a skilful hand to make yourself understood
and to escape remarks and ridicule. Every class of society announces
itself at the gate of the fortress by means of the rythm of the knocker.
The postman gives two loud raps in quick succession; and for the visitor
a gentle but peremptory _tremolo_ is _de rigueur_. The master of the
house gives a _tremolo crescendo_, and the servant who announces his
master, turns the knocker into a battering-ram, and plies it with such
goodwill that the house shakes to its foundations. Tradesmen, on the
other hand, butchers, milkmen, bakers, and green-grocers, are not
allowed to touch the knockers--they ring a bell which communicates with
the kitchen.
All this is very easy in theory but very difficult in practice. Bold,
and otherwise inexperienced, strangers believe that they assert their
dignity, if they move the knocker with conscious energy. Vain delusion!
They are mistaken for footmen. Modest people, on the contrary, are
treated as mendicants. The middle course, in this, as in other respects,
is most difficult.
Two different motives are assigned for this custom. Those who dislike
England on principle, and according to whom the very fogs are an
aristocratic abuse, assert that the various ways of plying the knocker
are most intimately connected with the prejudices of caste. Others again
say, that the arrangement is conducive to comfort, since the inmates of
the house know at once what sort of a visitor is desiring admittance.
As for me, I believe that a great deal may be said on either side; and I
acknowledge the existence of the two motives. But I ought to add, that
in new and elegant mansions the mediæval knocker yields its place to the
modern bell. The same fate is perhaps reserved for the whole of the
remainder of English old-fogyism. There are spots of decay in these much
vaunted islands; and now and then you hear the worm plainly as it gnaws
its way. I wish you the best of appetites, honest weevil!
We cross the threshold of the house.
Sacred silence surrounds us--the silence of peace, of domestic comfort,
doubly agreeable after a few hours' walk with the giddy turmoil of
street life. And with peace there is cleanliness, that passive virtue,
the first the stranger learns to love in the English people, because it
is the first which strikes his eye. That the English are capital
agriculturists, practical merchants, gallant soldiers, and honest
friends, is not written in their faces, any more than the outward aspect
of the Germans betrays their straight-forwardness, fitful melancholy,
and poetic susceptibility. But cleanliness, as an English national
virtue, strikes in modest obstrusiveness the vision even of the most
unobservant stranger.
The small space between the street-door and the stairs, hardly
sufficient in length and breadth to deserve the pompous name of a
"hall," is usually furnished with a couple of mahogany chairs, or, in
wealthier houses, with flower-pots, statuettes, and now and then a sixth
or seventh-rate picture. The floor is covered with oil-cloth, and this
again is covered with a breadth of carpet. A single glance tells us,
that after passing the threshold, we have at once entered the temple of
domestic life.
Here are no moist, ill-paved floors, where horses and carts dispute with
the passenger the right of way; where you stumble about in some dark
corner in search of still darker stairs; where, from the porter's lodge,
half a dozen curious eyes watch your unguided movements, while your
nostrils are invaded with the smell of onions, as is the case in Paris,
and also in Prague and Vienna. Nothing of the kind. The English houses
are like chimneys turned inside out; on the outside all is soot and
dirt, in the inside everything is clean and bright.
From the hall we make our way to the parlour--the refectory of the
house. The parlour is the common sitting-room of the family, the
centre-point of the domestic state. It is here that many eat their
dinners, and some say their prayers; and in this room does the lady of
the house arrange her household affairs and issue her commands. In
winter the parlour fire burns from early morn till late at night, and it
is into the parlour that the visitor is shewn, unless he happens to call
on a reception-day, when the drawing-rooms are thrown open to the
friends of the family.
Large folding-doors, which occupy nearly the whole breadth of the back
wall, separate the front from the back parlour, and when opened, the two
form one large room. The number and the circumstances of the family
devote this back parlour either to the purposes of a library for the
master, the son, or the daughters of the house, or convert it into a
boudoir, office, or breakfast-room. Frequently, it serves no purpose in
particular, and all in turn.
These two rooms occupy the whole depth of the house. All the other
apartments are above, so that there are from two to four rooms in each
story. The chief difference in the domestic apartments in England and
Germany consists in this division: in Germany, the members of a family
occupy a number of apartments on the same floor or "flat"; in England,
they live in a cumulative succession of rooms. In Germany, the
dwelling-houses are divided horizontally--here the division is vertical.
Hence it happens, that houses with four rooms communicating with one
another are very rare in London, with the exception only of the houses
in the very aristocratic quarters. Hence, also, each story has its
peculiar destination in the family geographical dictionary. In the first
floor are the reception-rooms; in the second the bed-rooms, with their
large four-posters and marble-topped wash-stands; in the third story are
the nurseries and servants' rooms; and in the fourth, if a fourth there
be, you find a couple of low garrets, for the occasional accommodation
of some bachelor friend of the family.
The doors and windows of these garrets are not exactly air-tight, the
wind comes rumbling down the chimney, the stairs are narrow and steep,
and the garrets are occasionally invaded by inquisitive cats and a
vagrant rat; but what of that? A bachelor in England is worse off than a
family cat. According to English ideas, the worst room in the house is
too good for a bachelor. They say--"Oh, he'll do very well!" What does a
bachelor care for a three-legged chair, a broken window, a ricketty
table, and a couple or so of sportive currents? It is exactly as if a
man took a special delight in rheumatism, tooth-ache, hard beds, smoking
chimneys, and the society of rats, until he has entered the holy state
of matrimony. The promise of some tender being to "love, honour, and
obey," would seem to change a bachelor's nature, and make him
susceptible of the amenities of domestic comfort. The custom is not
flattering to the fairer half of humanity. It is exactly as if the
comforts of one's sleeping-room were to atone for the sorrows of
matrimony, and as if a bachelor, from the mere fact of being unmarried,
were so happy and contented a being, that no amount of earthly
discomfort could ruffle the blissful tranquillity of his mind!
It was truly comical to see Dr. Keif, when the lady of the house first
introduced him to his "own room."
The politics and the police of Germany had given the poor fellow so much
trouble, that he had never once thought of taking unto himself a wife.
As a natural consequence of this lamentable state of things, his
quarters were assigned him in the loftiest garret of the house. Dismal
forebodings, which he tried to smile away, seized on his philosophical
mind as he mounted stairs after stairs, each set steeper and narrower
than the last. At length, on a mere excuse for a landing there is a
narrow door, and behind that door a mere corner of a garret. The Doctor
had much experience in the topography of the garrets of German college
towns; but the English garret in Guildford Street, Russell Square, put
all his experience to shame.
"I trust you'll be comfortable here," calls the lady after him, with a
malicious smile; for to enter the bachelor's room, would be a gross
violation of the rules and regulations of British decency. And before he
can make up his mind to reply, she has vanished down the steep stairs.
And the Doctor, with his hands meekly folded, stands in the centre of
his "own room." "Oh Bulwer, Dickens, and Thackeray"--such are his
thoughts--and thou, "Oh Punch, who describest the garrets of the British
bachelor! here, where I cease to understand the much-vaunted English
comfort, here do I begin to understand your writings! If I did not
happen to be in London, I should certainly like to be in Spandau. My own
Germany, with thy romantic fortresses and dungeon-keeps, how cruelly
hast thou been calumniated!"
There is a knock at the door. It is Sir John, who has come up for the
express purpose of witnessing the Doctor's admiration of his room. He
knows that the room will be admired, for to his patriotic view, there is
beauty in all and everything that is _English_. His patriotism revels in
old-established abuses, and stands triumphant amidst every species of
nuisance. The question, "How do you like your room?" is uttered exactly
with that degree of conscious pride which animated the King of Prussia
when, looking down from the keep of Stolzenfels Castle, he asked Queen
Victoria, "How do you like the Rhine?" And equally eager, though perhaps
not quite so sincere, was the Doctor's reply: "Oh very much! I am quite
enchanted with it! It is impossible to lose anything in this room, and
the losing things and groping about to find them was the plague of my
life at home in the large German rooms. A most excellent arrangement
this! Everything is handy and within reach. Bookcase, washstand, and
wardrobe--I need not even get up to get what I want--and as for this
table and these chairs, I presume that the occasional overturning of an
inkstand will but serve to heighten the quaint appearance of this
venerable furniture!"
"Of course," said Sir John, "certainly! this is liberty-hall, sir. But
mind you take care of the lamp, and pray do not sit in the draught
between the window and the door."
He does not exactly explain how it is possible to sit anywhere except in
the draught, for the limited space of the garret is entirely taken up
with draughts. Perhaps it is a sore subject, for, with an uneasy shrug
of the shoulders, the worthy Sir John adds:--
"But never mind. Comfortable, isn't it? And what do you say to the view,
eh? Beau-ti-ful! right away over all the roofs to Hampstead!"
He might as well have said to the Peak of Teneriffe; for the view is
obstructed with countless chimney-pots looming in the distant future
through perennial fog. Sir John is struck with this fact, as, measuring
the whole length of the apartment in three strides, he approaches the
window to enjoy the glorious view of Hampstead hills. He shuts the
window, and is evidently disappointed.
"Ah! never mind! very comfortable, air pure and bracing; very much so;
very different from the air in the lower rooms. And--I say, mind this is
the 'escape,'" says Sir John, opening a very small door at the side of
our friend's room. "If--heaven preserve us--there should be a fire in
the house, and if you should not be able to get down stairs, you may get
up here and make your escape over the roofs. That's what you will find
in every English house. Isn't it practical? eh! What do you say to it?"
The Doctor says nothing at all; he calculates his chances of escape
along that narrow ledge of wall, and thinks: "Really things are
beginning to look _awfully_ comfortable. If there should happen to be a
fire while I am in the house, I hope and trust I shall have time to
consider which is worst, to be made a male suttee of, or to tumble down
from the roof like an apoplectic sparrow."
We leave the Doctor between the horns of this dilemma, and descending a
good many more stairs than we ascended, we find our way to the haunts of
those who, in England, live under-ground--to the kitchen.
Here, too, everything is different from what we are accustomed to in
Germany. In the place of the carpets which cover the floors of the upper
rooms, we walk here on strong, solid oilcloths, which, swept and washed,
looks like marble, and gives a more comfortable aspect to an English
kitchen than any German housewife ever succeeded in imparting to the
scene of her culinary exercises. Add to this, bright dish-covers of
gigantic dimensions fixed to the wall, plated dishes, and sundry other
utensils of queer shapes and silvery aspect, interspersed with copper
sauce-pans and pots and china, the windows neatly curtained, with a
couple of flower-pots on the sill, and a branch of evergreens growing on
the wall round them--such is an English kitchen in its modest glory. A
large fire is always kept burning; and its ruddy glow heightens the
homeliness and comfort of the scene. There is no killing of animals in
these peaceful retreats. All the animals which are destined for
consumption, such as fowls, ducks, pigeons, and geese, are sold, killed,
and plucked in the London shops. When they are brought to the kitchen,
they are in such a condition, that nothing prevents their being put to
the fire. And then, in front of that fire, turned by a machine, dangle
large sections of sheep, calves, and oxen, of so respectable a size,
that the very sight of them would suffice to awe a German housewife.
Several doors in the kitchen open into sundry other subterraneous
compartments. There is a back-kitchen, whither the servants of the house
retire for the most important part of their daily labours--the talking
of scandal _apropos_ of the whole neighbourhood. There is also a small
room for the washing-up of plates and dishes, the cleaning of knives and
forks, of clothes and shoes. Other compartments are devoted to stores of
provisions, of coals, and wine and beer. Need I add, that all these are
strictly separate?
All these various rooms and compartments, from the kitchen up to Dr.
Keif's garret, are in modern London houses, lighted up with gas--and
pipes conducting fresh, filtered, and in many instances, hot water,
ascend into all the stories--and there is in all and everything so much
of really domestic and unostentatious comfort, that it would be very
uncomfortable to give a detailed description of every item of a cause
which contributes to the general and agreeable effect. Indeed, such a
description is simply impossible. Just let any one try to explain to an
Englishman the patriarchal physiognomy of a pot-bellied German stove; or
let him try to awake in the Englishman's wife a feeling, remotely akin
to sympathy, for the charming atmosphere of a German "_Kneipe_"; or make
an American understand what the German "_Bund_" is, and what it is good
for. To attempt this were a labour of Sysiphus--toil without a result.
Nothing short of actual experience will enable a man to understand and
value these national mysteries.
CHAP. II.
Street Life
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MASSES.--FASHIONABLE QUARTERS.--HOW MR.
FALCON SAID GOOD BYE TO HIS CUSTOMERS.--THE CROSSING IN
HOLBORN.--MOSES AND SON.--ADVERTISING VANS.--THE PUFFING MANIA, ITS
PHASES AND CAUSES.
From our house, which is our starting point, we have several large and
small streets leading to the south and opening into Holborn, which is
one of the great arteries of this gigantic town. Holborn extends to the
east to the old prison of Newgate, where it joins the chief streets of
the city; in the west it merges into interminable Oxford-street, which
leads in a straight line to Hyde Park, and farther on to Kensington
Gardens and Bayswater.
"If to this large line of streets," says Dr. Keif, "you add the
Friedrichstrasse of Berlin, you get a line of houses which extend from
this day, Monday, into next week, and perhaps a good bit farther. But
any one who attempts to walk to the farther end of Oxford-street--I say
'_who attempts_,' for, since the English prefer a constitutional
monarchy to an absolute prince, they are surely capable of any act of
folly--any one, I say, who performs that insane feat, will find that the
Berlin Friedrichstrasse commences at the very last house of
Oxford-street."
For once Dr. Keif is wrong. Where Oxford-street ends, there you enter
into a charming English landscape--one green and hilly and altogether
captivating. But at the end of the Berlin Friedrichstrasse you enter
nothing but the sandy deserts of the Mark.
Holborn is a business street. It has a business character; there is no
mistaking it. Shops and plate-glass windows side by side on each hand;
costermongers and itinerant vendors all along the pavement; the houses
covered with signboards and inscriptions; busy crowds on either side;
omnibuses rushing to and fro in the centre of the road, and all around
that indescribable bewildering noise of human voices, carriage-wheels,
and horses' hoofs, which pervades the leading streets of crowded cities.
Not all the London streets have this business character. They are
divided into two classes: into streets where the roast-beef of life is
earned, and into streets where the said roast-beef is eaten. No other
town presents so strong a contrast between its various quarters. But a
few hundred yards from the leading thoroughfares, where hunger or
ambition hunt men on, extend for many miles the quiet quarters of
comfortable citizens, of wealthy fundholders, and of landed proprietors,
who come to town for "the season," and who return to their parks and
shooting-grounds as soon as her Majesty has been graciously pleased to
prorogue Parliament, and with Parliament the season.
These fashionable quarters are as quiet as our own provincial towns.
They have no shops; no omnibuses are allowed to pass through them, and
few costermongers or sellers of fruit, onions, oysters, and fish find
their way into these regions, for the cheapness of their wares has no
attractions for the inhabitants of these streets. These streets, too,
are macadamized expressly for the horses and carriages of the
aristocracy; such roads are more comfortable for all parties concerned,
that is to say, for horses, horsemen, and drivers, and the carriages
are, moreover, too light to do much harm to the road. In these streets,
too, there are neither counting-houses nor public-houses to disturb the
neighbourhood by their daily traffic and nightly revelries. Comfort
reigns supreme in the streets and in the interior of the houses. The
roadway is lined with pavements of large white beautiful flag-stones,
which skirt the area railings; it is covered with gravel, and carefully
watered, exactly as the broad paths of our public gardens, to keep down
the dust and deaden the rumbling of the carriages and the step of the
horses. The horses, too, are of a superior kind, and as different from
their poorer brethren, the brewer's, coal-merchant's, and omnibus
horses, as the part of the town in which they eat is different from the
part in which the latter work.
In the vicinity of the Parks, or in the outskirts of the town, or
wheresoever else such quarters have space to extend, you must admire
their unrivalled magnificence. From the velvety luscious green, which
receives a deeper shade from the dense dark foliage of the English
beech-tree, there arise buildings, like palaces, with stone terraces and
verandahs, more splendid, more beautiful, and more frequent than in any
town on the continent.
An Englishman is easily satisfied with the rough comforts of his place
of business. The counting-houses of the greatest bankers; the
establishments of the largest trading houses in the city have a gloomy,
heavy, and poverty-stricken appearance. But far different is the case
with respect to those places where an Englishman proposes to live for
himself and for his family.
A wealthy merchant who passes his days in a narrow city street, in a
dingy office, on a wooden stool, and at a plain desk, would think it
very "ungenteel" if he or his family were to live in a street in which
there are shops. And, although it may appear incredible, still it is
true, that in the better parts of the town there are many streets shut
up with iron gates, which gatekeepers open for the carriages and horses
of the residents or their visitors. These gates exclude anything like
noise and intrusion. Grocers, fishmongers, bakers, butchers, and all
other kitchen-tradesmen occupy, in the fashionable quarters, the nearest
lanes and side streets, and many of them live in close vicinity to the
mews. For no house, not even the largest, has a carriage-gate; and that
we, in Germany, shelter under our roofs our horses, grooms, and all the
odours of the stable, appears to the English as strange and mysterious,
generally speaking, as our mustachios, and our liberalism in matters of
religion.
We have endeavoured to draw the line of demarcation between the
residential parts of the town and the business quarters. This being
done, we return to Holborn.
Dr. Keif does not escape the common lot of every stranger in London
streets. His theories of walking on a crowded pavement are of the most
confused description, and the consequence is that he is being pushed
about in a woful manner; but, at each push, he expresses his immoderate
joy at having, for once, got into a crowded street, where a man must
labour hard if he would lounge and saunter about. All of a sudden he
stops in the middle of the pavement, and, adjusting his shirt-collar (a
recent purchase), he takes off his hat and bows to somebody or something
in the road. A natural consequence of all this is, that the passengers
dig their elbows into the Doctor's ribs, as they hurry along.
"To whom are you bowing with so much heroic devotion?"
"Whom? Why to Mr. Falcon, on the other side of the street."
"So you have found an acquaintance already? That is a rare case. Many a
man walks about for weeks without seeing a face he knows; and you have
scarcely left the house when--"
"But do you really think I know that Mr. Falcon on the other side of the
way?" Saying which the mysterious doctor bows again; and I, taking my
glass, find out that there are a dozen Mr. Falcons, hoisted on high
poles, parading the opposite pavement. Twelve men, out at elbows, move
in solemn procession along the line of road, each carrying a heavy pole
with a large table affixed to it, and on the table there is a legend in
large scarlet letters, "MR. FALCON REMOVED." It appears that Mr. Falcon,
having thought proper to remove from 146 Holborn, begs to inform the
nobility, the gentry, and the public generally, that he carries on his
business at 6 Argyle-street.
The Doctor, crossing his arms on his chest gravely, while the passengers
are pushing him about, says:
"Since Mr. Falcon is kind enough to inform me of his removal, I believe
I ought to take off my hat to his advertisement. But only think of those
poor fellows groaning under Mr. Falcon's gigantic cards. He is an
original, Mr. Falcon is, and I should like to make his acquaintance."
Again the Doctor is wrong in fancying, as he evidently does, that Mr.
Falcon sends his card-bearers, with the news of his removal, through the
whole of London. Why should he? Perhaps he sold cigars, or buttons, or
yarns, in Holborn; and it is there he is known, while no one in other
parts of the town cares a straw for Mr. Falcon's celebrated and
unrivalled cigars, buttons, or yarns. His object is to inform the
inhabitants of his own quarter of his removal, and of his new address.
The twelve men with the poles and boards need not go far. From early
dawn till late at night they parade the site of Mr. Falcon's old shop.
They walk deliberately and slowly, to enable the passengers to read the
inscription at their ease. They walk in Indian file to attract
attention, and because in any other manner they would block up the way.
But they walk continually, silently, without ever stopping for rest.
Thus do they carry their poles, for many days and even weeks, until
every child in the neighbourhood knows exactly where Mr. Falcon is
henceforward to be found, for the moving column of large
scarlet-lettered boards is too striking; and no one can help looking at
them and reading the inscription. And this is a characteristic piece of
what we Germans call British industry.
There is no other town in the world where people advertise with so much
persevering energy--on so grand a scale--at such enormous expense--with
such impertinent puffery--and with such distinguished success.
We have just reached a point in Holborn where, a great many streets
crossing, leave a small, irregular spot, in the middle. In the centre of
this spot, surrounded by a railing, and raised in some masonry, is a
gigantic lamp-post, and the whole forms what one might call an island of
the streets. Every now and then the protection of this island is sought
by groups of women and children who, amidst the noise and the wheels of
so many vehicles that dash along in every direction, shrink from a bold
rush across the whole breadth of the street. As Noah's dove thought
itself lucky in having found an olive branch to alight on amidst the
waters of the deluge, so do tender women breathe more quietly, and look
around with greater composure, after having reached this street-island,
where they are safe from the ever-returning tide of street life.
Leaning against the lamp-post we are at leisure to look around and see
the moving beings, things, and objects, which rush past on every side;
and for the nonce we will devote a special attention to the various
advertising tricks.
The time--Night. One of those clear, fogless, calm summer nights which
are so "few and far between" in this large town. The life-blood in the
street-veins runs all the fuller, faster, and merrier, for the beauty
of the night. Holborn is inundated with gas-light; but the brightest
glare bursts forth exactly opposite to us. Who, in the name of all that
is prudent, can the people be who make such a shocking waste of gas?
They are "Moses and Son," the great tailors and outfitters, who have
lighted up the side-fronts of their branch establishment. All round the
outer walls of the house, which is filled with coats, vests, and
trousers, to the roof, and which exhibits three separate side-fronts
towards three separate streets, there are many thousands of gas-flames,
forming branches, foliage, and arabesques, and sending forth so dazzling
a blaze, that this fiery column of Moses is visible to Jews and Gentiles
at the distance of half a mile, lighting up the haze which not even the
clearest evening can wholly banish from the London sky.
Among the fiery flowers burns the inevitable royal crown, surmounting
the equally unavoidable letters V.R. To the right of these letters we
have Moses and Son blessing the Queen in flaming characters of
hydro-carbon; to the left they bless the people.[A]
[A] "God save the Queen," and "God bless the people," are the legends
of these Mosaic illuminations.
What do they make this illumination for? This is not a royal birthday,
nor is it the anniversary of a great national victory. All things
considered, this ought to be a day of mourning and fasting for Messrs.
Moses and Son, for the Commons of England have this very afternoon
decided that Alderman Salomons shall not take his seat in the House.
Motives of loyalty, politics, or religion, have nothing whatever to do
with the grand illuminations executed by Messrs. Moses and Son. The air
is calm, there is not even a breath of wind; it's a hundred to one that
Oxford Street and Holborn will be thronged with passengers; this is our
time to attract the idlers. Up, boys, and at them! light the lamps! A
heavy expense this, burning all that gas for ever so many hours; but it
pays, somehow. Boldness carries the prize, and faint heart never won
fair customers. And if it were not for that c----d police and the
Insurance Companies, by Jingo! it were the best advertisement to burn
the house and shop at least twice a year. That would puff us up, and
make people stare, and go the round of all the newspapers. Capital
advertisement that, eh!
Being strollers in the streets, we delight in this extempore
illumination. It is our object to see and observe; and Messrs. Moses and
Son convert night into day for our especial accommodation. A whole
legion of lesser planets bask in the region of this great sun. Crowds of
subordinate advertising monsters have been attracted to this part of the
street, and move about in various shapes, to the right and to the left,
walking, rolling on wheels, and riding on horseback.
Behold, rolling down from Oxford Street, three immense wooden
pyramids--their outsides are painted all over with hieroglyphics and
with monumental letters in the English language. These pyramids display
faithful portraits of Isis and Osiris, of cats, storks, and of the apis;
and amidst these old-curiosity-shop gods, any Englishman may read an
inscription, printed in letters not much longer than a yard, from which
it appears that there is now on view a panorama of Egypt--one more
beautiful, interesting, and instructive than was ever exhibited in
London. For this panorama--we are still following the inscription--shows
the flux and reflux of the Nile, with its hippopotamuses and crocodiles,
and a section of the Red Sea, as mentioned in Holy Writ, and part of the
last overland mail, and also the railway from Cairo to Alexandria,
exactly as laid out in Mr. Stephenson's head. And all this for only one
shilling! with a full, lucid, and interesting lecture into the bargain.
The pyramids advance within three yards from where we stand, and, for a
short time, they take their ease in the very midst of all the lights,
courting attention. But the policeman on duty respects not the monuments
of the Pharaohs; he moves his hand, and the drivers of the pyramids,
though hidden in their colossal structures, see and understand the sign:
they move on.
But here is another monstrous shape--a mosque, with its cupola blue and
white, surmounted by the crescent. The driver is a light-haired boy,
with a white turban and a sooty face. There is no mistaking that fellow
for an Arab; and, nevertheless, the turban and the soot make a profound
impression.
"We are being invaded by the East!" says Dr. Keif. "They are going to
give a panoramic explanation of the Oriental question. If I were Lord
Palmerston, I'd put a stop to that sort of thing. It's a high crime and
misdemeanour against diplomacy. Pray call for the police!"
But Dr. Keif is wrong again. On the back of the mosque there is an
advertisement, which is as much a stranger to the Oriental question as
the German diplomates are. That advertisement tells us, that Dr. Doem is
proprietor of a most marvellous Arabian medicine, warranted to cure the
bite of mad dogs and venomous reptiles generally; even so, that a person
so bitten, if he but takes Dr. Doem's medicine, shall feel no more
inconvenience than he would feel from a very savage leader in the
_Morning Herald_. The mosque, the blue crescent, the gaudy colours, and
the juvenile Arab from the banks of the Thames, have merely been got up
to attract attention. There need be no very intimate connexion between
the things puffed and the street symbolics which puff them.
Heterogeneous ideas are as much an aid to puffing as homogeneous ideas.
If ever you should happen to go to Grand Cairo, rely on it, every cupola
of a mosque, peeping out from palm-groves and aloe-hedges, will remind
you of Dr. Doem and his Arabian medicine, as advertised in Holborn in
Europe. Allah is great, and the cunning of English speculators is as
deep as the sea where it is deepest.
Hark! a peal of trumpets! Another advertising machine rushes out of the
gloom of Museum Street. In this instance the Orient is not put in
requisition. The turn-out is thoroughly English.
Two splendid cream-coloured horses, richly harnessed; a dark green
chariot of fantastic make, in shape like a half-opened shell, and
tastefully ornamented with gilding and pictures; on the box a coachman
in red and gold, looking respectable and almost aristocratic, with his
long whip on his knee; and behind him the trumpeters, seated in the
chariot, and proclaiming its advent. In this manner have the people of
London of late months been invited to Vauxhall--to that same Vauxhall,
which, under the Regency, attracted all the wealth, beauty, and fashion
in England--which, to this very day, still attracts hundreds of
thousands; whose good and ill fame has crossed the ocean. Even
Vauxhall--the old and famous--makes no exception to the common lot; it
is compelled to have its posters, its newspaper advertisements, and its
advertising vans.
In no other town would such tricks be necessary conditions of existence;
but here, where everything is grand and bulky--in this town of
miraculous extent, where generations live and die in the East-end
without ever having beheld the wonders of the West-end--among this
population, which is reckoned by millions instead of by hundreds of
thousands--here, where all press and rush on to make money or to spend
it--here, where every one must distinguish himself in some way or other,
or be lost and perish in the crowd--where every hour has its
novelty--here, in London, even the most solid undertakings must assume
the crying colour of charlatanism.
The Panorama of the Nile, the Overland Route, the Colosseum, Madame
Tussaud's Exhibition of Wax-works, and other sights, are indeed
wonder-works of human industry, skill, and invention; and, in every
respect, are they superior to the usual productions of the same kind.
But, for all that, they must send their advertising vans into the
streets; necessity compels them to strike the gong and blow the trumpet;
choice there is none. They must either advertise or perish.
The same may be said of great institutions of a different kind; of fire
and life insurance companies; of railways and steamers; and of
theatres--from Punch's theatre in the Strand, upwards, to the Royal
Italian Opera, which ransacks Europe for musical celebrities, and which,
nevertheless, must condescend to magnify its own glory on gigantic
many-coloured posters, though it has managed, up to the present day, to
do without the vans, trumpets, and sham Nubians.
It is either advertising or being ruined. We have said it before. Many
of our readers will think this a bold and unwarranted assertion. It is
neither the one nor the other; for it is founded on the experience of
many men of business. Of many examples we quote but one.
Mr. Bennett keeps a large shop of clocks and watches in Cheapside. His
watches and clocks are among the best in London; they have an
old-established reputation, and they deserve it. But their reputation is
not owing to their excellency alone; it required many years of
advertising, years of continual and expensive advertising, to inculcate
this great fact on the obtuse, bewildered, and deluded Londoners. Thanks
to Mr. Bennett's perseverance they were at length convinced. And, when a
few years ago, the reputation of the firm had spread throughout the
length and breadth of the land, it struck Mr. Bennett that now was the
time to put a stop to this expensive process of advertising. "In
future," said that gentleman, "I mean to take the full interest from my
capital instead of paying part of it to the printers." And he set at
once about it. In the year in which Mr. Bennett took this bold
resolution, the firm spent a few thousand pounds less than usual in
advertisements. But the consequences made themselves felt; and as month
followed month, they became still more disagreeably perceptible. Mr.
Bennett understood that in London virtue is its own reward, provided it
keeps a trumpeter; and as Mr. Bennett was not an obstinate theorist, he
had again recourse to the printing-press. He advertises to this very
day, and to a greater extent, if possible, than formerly. In proof
whereof we quote his advertisement in the Catalogue of the Great
Exhibition, on which occasion he paid £900 (say nine hundred pounds
sterling), for the insertion of his advertisement on the back of the
wrapper.
Mr. Bennett's business is as prosperous as ever. Of course, his watches
were quite as good during the period he did not advertise; but the
public was about to forget him. Advertising is an indispensable item in
the expenditure of a London trader.
While we were talking of Mr. Bennett's shop in Cheapside, the little
lamp-post Square in Holborn has become more quiet. Two coal-waggons,
each with four elephantine, thick-necked, broad-footed horses have
suddenly emerged from the darkness of one of the side-streets. The
half-circle which these clumsy horses must make in order to obtain a
_locus standi_ in the street of Holborn, causes a general stoppage among
the vehicles, which up to the present have been proceeding in regular
order, at an all but uniform pace. For a few moments we are relieved
from the clanking of chains, the rattling of wheels, and the dull
rumbling of wooden pyramids and vans. Now is the time for the lesser
sprites of the advertising mysteries.
A boy on our right puts printed papers into our hands. On the left, the
same process is attempted by an elderly man of respectable appearance,
who jerks his arm with what he believes to be a graceful indifference,
while everybody else would mistake that same jerk for a convulsive
gesture of despondency. Just before us we have a man with a pole and
board, recommending some choice blacking, and on the opposite pavement
there is a Hindoo dressed in white flannel, with a turban on his head,
and with all the sorrow of a ruined nation in his handsome brown face
and chiselled features. At his side is a little girl dressed in filthy
rags. The Hindoo has a bundle of printed papers in his hand,
Sabbatarian, temperance, and other tracts--inestimable treasures--which
he offers to the public at the very low price of one penny each. That
poor fellow got those tracts from some sacred society as a consideration
for allowing them to convert him to Christianity. But his sad face is a
sorry recommendation of the treasures of comfort he proposes to dispose
of. Better for him to stand in primitive nudity among his native
palm-forests, adoring the miracles of nature in the Sun, and in Brahma,
than to shiver here on the cold, wet pavement, cursing the torments of
want in the image of the sacred Saviour. On the banks of the Ganges that
man prayed to God; here, among strangers, he learns to hate mankind. But
then he was a pagan on the banks of the Ganges; on the banks of the
Thames he has the name of a Christian. Whether or no the Christian is
really more religious than the Pagan was, is a question which seems to
give little trouble to the pious missionaries. The Bible Society has
done its duty.
Our worthy friend, Dr. Keif was, it seems, also struck with the
melancholy aspect of the Hindoo. He made a bold rush across the street,
put some pence into the tiny brown hand of the little girl, and took in
return a tract on "True Devotion," which he did not read, but crushing
it into a paper ball, angrily, threw it into the gutter. He had taken
the tract out of consideration for the poor man's feelings. "It's
begging under the pretence of selling," said the worthy Doctor in a
great rage, "but
[Illustration: THE SAUNTER IN HOLBORN.
p. 22.]
since the delusion is a comfort to him, I would not for the world offer
him money without taking one of his papers!"
It was very naughty in the Doctor to fling that tract away as he did. As
a punishment, we were immediately assailed by a set of imps who mistook
us for easy victims on the altars of speculation.
Men with cocoa-nuts and dates, and women with oranges surrounded us with
their carts. One man recommended his dog-collars of all sizes, which he
had formed in a chain round his neck; another person offered to mark our
linen; a third produced his magic strops; others held out note-books,
cutlery, prints, caricatures, exhibition-medals--all--all--all for one
penny. It seemed as if the world were on sale at a penny a bit. And
amidst all this turmoil, the men with advertising boards walked to and
fro; and the boys distributed advertising bills by the hundred, with
smiles of deep bliss, whenever they met a charitable soul who took them.
The coal-waggons are gone, and the street noise is as loud as ever.
Are we to remain here and pursue our studies of the natural history of
advertising vans? It is not likely we shall see them all, for their
numbers are incalculable. They generate according to abnormal laws. Each
day and each event produces another form. The Advertisement is
omnipresent. It is in the skies and on the ground; it swells as the flag
in the breeze, and it sets its seal on the pavement; it is on the water,
on the steam-boat wharf, and under the water in the Thames tunnel; it
roosts on the highest chimneys; it sparkles in coloured letters on
street lamps; it forms the prologue of all the newspapers, and the
epilogue of all the books; it breaks in upon us with the sound of
trumpets, and it awes us in the silent sorrow of the Hindoo. There is no
escaping from the advertisement, for it travels with you in the
omnibuses, in the railway carriages, and on the paddle-boxes of the
steamers.
The arches of the great bridges over the Thames were at one time free
from advertisements. The masonry was submerged by the periodical returns
of the tide, and the bills would not stick. But at length the
advertisement invaded even these, the last asylums of non-publicity.
Since bills could not be pasted on the walls, the advertisement was
painted on them. At this hour there is not an arch in a London bridge
but has its advertisements painted on it. But for whom? For the
thousands who every day pass under the bridge in steamers. For the
Thames, too, is one of the London streets and by no means the least
important one.
CHAP. III.
The Squares.--Lincoln's Inn.
A man may be familiar with London streets, he may for years have gone
his weary way amidst these endless rows of bare, narrow, irregular
houses, which are black with fog and smoke, without ever suspecting that
gardens sparkling in idyllic beauty are hidden behind those masses of
sooty masonry.
This is one of the chief distinctions between London and Paris and other
continental capitals. Paris has much outside glitter, much startling
show. Its _Boulevards_, its _Place de la Concorde_, _Place Vendôme_,
_Rue de la Paix_, _Rue Rivoli_, and sundry others of its streets and
public places are unrivalled; London cannot vie with them in
architectural prodigies. But the brilliant points of Paris, of which
Frenchmen are in the habit of boasting, attract our attention only to
divert it from the narrow crooked lanes, and the filth of the other
parts of their town. Paris sports a clean shirt-front merely to hide the
uncleanliness of its general nature. The French are adepts in the art of
_draping_. The English, on the contrary, know nothing whatever of that
noble art. The cut of their clothes is inelegant, but the cloth is the
best of its kind; their dwelling-houses have the appearance of old
chimneys, but the inside is replete with comfort and unpretending
wealth; their language is rough, and without melody; but it is
energetic, flexible, and expressive. Their metropolis, too, conceals its
real beauties. It requires some investigation, some instinct and
discernment to discover and enjoy them.
In the broadest part of Holborn, there are on either side certain
suspicious-looking lanes, in which pawnbrokers and cobblers "hang out,"
and where a roaring, though not a very fragrant, trade is driven in
greens, meat, and fish. The lanes on the north side communicate with
Gray's Inn; on the south, they form an intricate labyrinth, which we
enter on our way to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Travellers proceeding from London to Dover pass through a series of
monstrous tunnels, which have been bored through those mountains of
chalk, the bulwarks of the British islands. As they emerge from the
darkness of the last tunnel, they feel happy and grateful for the fresh
sea-breeze which plays around and the vast, boundless view which opens
before them. In a like manner, do we breathe more freely as we emerge
from the last of these narrow, and by no means sweetly-smelling lanes.
A broad square, filled with trees, flowers, and garden-ground, opens
before us. This is one of the many "squares" of which you, O my beloved
countrymen, entertain such crude and indistinct notions!
"Squares" are wide, open spots, surrounded by houses, exactly like our
own "_Plätze_." But, instead of the monuments of saints, whom the
Anglican Church ignores; instead of the pestilence-columns, which
Englishmen object to (though London, like every other respectable old
town, had its plagues in olden times); and instead of our beautiful
market-fountains, the poesy of which is a sealed book to the English
mind, their "_Plätze_" have been converted into Gardens with broad
commodious streets all round the railings. These gardens are not by any
means so small as the Germans generally believe. Indeed, in the larger
squares, they are of considerable extent. The curiosity of the
passers-by is repelled by trees, shrubs, and carefully-trimmed hedges,
and the shady walks and the grassplots in the centre are strictly
private. Of these squares, Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest; it
covers an area of twelve acres. The joint extent of all the London
squares is one thousand two hundred acres. With the exception of
Smithfield and Trafalgar-square, all the London squares have gardens,
and the trees and shrubs which grow in them improve the air of all the
neighbouring streets. Such gardens are found in all quarters of the
town, and in many cases they are hidden among the narrowest alleys and
gloomiest courts, where the wanderer least expects to find them. They
are the most beautiful spots in London, for they present specimens of
nature's paradise, blooming in concealment, and all the more lovely are
they for that very reason.
Let us return to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
We stand on classic soil. Three sides of this large square are
surrounded with buildings, whose open doors shew at once that they are
not mere ordinary dwelling-houses. One of them attracts our special
attention; it is so black and its columns are so many and so high. It is
the Royal College of Surgeons, where the medical students pass their
examination in surgery. This house, too, shelters the famous Anatomical
Museum which John Hunter bequeathed to the College of Surgeons. All the
other buildings are owned by the guild of the lawyers. In the heart of
the city, the houses, from the cellars to the garrets, are let out as
offices and store-rooms. The houses in Lincoln's Inn Fields, too, are
devoted to the special accommodation of lawyers. A walk up and down, and
a look at the door-posts, which are black with the names of advocates,
suffice to convince us of the lamentable condition of English law.
We have said that this is classic soil. Sir Thomas More, Shaftesbury the
statesman, and Lord Mansfield, studied in the precincts of Lincoln's
Inn; and Oliver Cromwell passed two years of his eventful life in the
same locality. The square has its sad reminiscences too. In the centre
of the gardens, where flowers blow and birds sing, there stood at one
time a scaffold; and on that scaffold died one of the noblest patriots
of England, Lord Russell, an ancestor of Finality John, and son to
William, Earl of Bedford.
The crown of England rested in those days on the head of the second
Charles. At his side was his brother, the Duke of York, the evil genius
of Charles and of England. Charles, and James his brother, listened to
the counsels of France and of Rome, for they wanted money, and the Whigs
would only consent to vote the people's money in exchange for some
crumbs of liberty for the people. Thus it came to pass that England's
honour was sold to France, and the "rebellious" Parliament was
dissolved, and the press put down; the liberties of the city were
curtailed; venal men were placed on the bench, and venal witnesses
thronged the courts; the best men of England were put into jail and
arraigned on charges of high treason. Among the best and bravest was
William Russell.
They accused him of having conspired against the king's life, and sent
him to the Tower. Witnesses were bribed to appear against him; they were
men of proverbial villany. Among them was Lord Howard, of whom the king
himself had said he would not hang the worst cur in his kennel on the
evidence of that man. But that man's evidence sufficed to bring the best
man in all England to the block. It is the old story--a tail-wagging cur
is more considered at court than a thinking man. Lord Russell's head
fell in the centre of this very square. Vainly did his wife implore the
king's mercy. Lord Russell's head fell in the immediate vicinity of his
estates; and the Londoners of those days saw him pass through Holborn on
his way to the scaffold. Many wept--many abused him; others jeered at
him. The people of that time had even less respect for its heroes and
martyrs than the present generation. In our days, even the vilest of the
vile are awed into silence when the princes of this earth deliver their
political adversaries to the hangman's rope or the "mercy" of a platoon
of rifles.
But even in these our own days there is a party in England, there are
Englishmen, citizens, writers, and members of Parliament, and most of
them truly honourable men, who, while they declare that the British
Whigs of those times were patriots and martyrs, do not hesitate rashly
to condemn the "rebellious" Parliaments and political parties of the
continent. No Englishman, not the most conservative, would dare to deny
to Lord Russell one single ray of that glorious crown of martyrdom which
the English people and its historians have placed upon his bleeding
head.
"It cannot be denied," they say, "that Lord William Russell conspired
against an illegal Government; but to conspire against such a Government
was his duty; he was justified in so doing."... But if the Russells of
those days were justified in vindicating the people's rights against the
King, how then can you so smoothly and glibly apply the word "rebels" to
the continental Russells of our own days? If armed opposition is
treasonable, was it less treasonable in days gone by? Do the rights of
mankind dwindle away as century follows century? Or has the great nation
of England so small a mind that it cannot distinguish between the merits
of a cause and its success?
The Russells of the last centuries shed their blood for this generation.
England is free, happy, undisturbed, mighty, strong, tranquil and
reasonable; she develops a brighter future from the benefits she at
present enjoys. The English know it; and in this knowledge is the secret
of their pride. The sanguinary conflicts of the continent, which have
hitherto had no results, provoke in Englishmen a smile of mingled pity
and derision. "Those people don't know what they are driving at," say
some; "if they would be happy they ought to imitate England." And others
say, "They want freedom, but they are not practical enough; they do not
turn their revolution to advantage as our ancestors did, and as we would
do in their place." But I say, it is easy to find fault with others, and
a happy man has all the wisdom of Solomon. These English sages do not
consider how much easier it was to their ancestors to bring the contest
with the power of the crown to a successful issue. The English patriots
were not opposed by large standing armies; the contest lay between them
and a single family and its faction, and--this is a point which has
never been sufficiently dwelt upon--they had no reason to fear a foreign
intervention. For England, as the greatest living author[B] says, never
fought as France did for the freedom of the world, but for its own
freedom. Hence the continental powers paid little attention to the
battles of the Puritans, and the contests between Charles and Cromwell.
Clarendon indeed considered their non-intervention a great grievance.
But this non-intervention of Spain or France was the greatest blessing
for royalty in England. If those countries had interfered, the contest
for the principles of constitutionalism might have been prolonged to
this very day, or perhaps royalty would have been killed outright on the
English battle-fields.
[B] Macaulay's Essays, vol. ii.
The history of England--says Macaulay--is a history of progress. Who
would gainsay it? At the commencement of the twelfth century, a small
and semi-barbarous nation, subject to a handful of foreigners, without a
trace of civilisation--large masses enslaved--the Saxons still distinct
from the Normans--superstition and brutality everywhere, and the law of
the strong hand the supreme law of the land--such was England seven
hundred years ago. Then came the bloody civil wars--brain-scorching,
land-spoiling, men-consuming, sectarian wars--contests abroad and
contests at home--a series of vile, hypocritical, dissolute, and
narrow-minded monarchs--and at intervals bright epochs of great times in
history and politics, and day was changed into night and night into day,
until England attained its present position among the nations of the
earth. From one decade to another there may have been periodical
retrogressions, but each century gave clear and irrefragable evidence of
the progress of England.
If, therefore, in the next years, France should happen again to attain
those giddy heights of freedom, which she gained three times already,
and which three times have vanished beneath her feet, then let not
France, as she is wont to do, wax proud in the scanty shade of her newly
planted trees of liberty, and let her not look down contemptuously on
the cold, thickblooded, clumsy tree of liberty in England. At the end of
the century the two nations may compare their charters; it will then be
seen which of them has really and truly had the greatest gains. The
blood of France has manured the mental soil of all the world; England
should be the last to forget what her liberty has gained by the ideal
conquests of France. France, on the other hand, might make the most
useful study in considering the consistent carrying out of great
political maxims on the British soil.
When two nations express their opinions of one another, and reproach
each other with their faults, they are in the habit of paying too little
attention to the circumstances which promote or obstruct the advance of
freedom. In this respect, the peculiarities of the countries and their
geographical position cannot be too highly estimated. Who can tell what
would be the condition of Germany, if our country were secure from
foreign intervention; and if, as is the case with England, the sea
protected it from the violence of its enemies or the insidious advances
of its political friends.
CHAP. IV.
Up the Thames.--Vauxhall.
THE RIVER-SIDE.--VIEWS OF THE RIVER.--THE TIDES.--THE BRIDGES.--THE
TEMPLE AND SOMERSET HOUSE.--ENTRANCE TO VAUXHALL.--BRITISH
DECORATIVE GENIUS.--SOMEBODY RUNS AWAY WITH DR.
KEIF.--MAGIC.--NELSON AND WELLINGTON.--THE CIRCUS.--THE BURNING OF
MOSCOW.--AN EPISODE AT THE TEA TABLE.
If you leave King William-street just at the foot of London-bridge and
turn to the right, you will find your way into a set of narrow and steep
streets, few only of which admit of carriage and horse traffic. The
lower stories of the houses are let out as offices, and the upper as
warehouse floors; the pavement is narrow and the road as bad as broken
stones and long neglect can make it; dirty boys in sailors' jackets play
at leap-frog over the street posts; legions of wheel-barrows encumber
the broader parts of these thoroughfares; packing-cases stand at the
doors of houses, and cranes and levers peep out from the upper stories.
Such are the streets which lead down to the banks of the Thames. It is
altogether a dusty, filthy, "uncannie" quarter. A few steps through a
black, cornery, nondescript structure of sooty brick and mortar, covered
all over with immense shipping advertisements in all colours, and we
stand on the bank of the river. An entirely new scene is opened before
our eyes.
Close to our left the mighty grey arches of London-bridge rise up from
the river. We look under them downwards where the last ocean ships are
crowded together on their moorings, where the distant masts are lost in
the haze, and where ocean-life finds its limits, because the bridges
prevent those large ships from passing up the river. We look in an
opposite direction along the broad expanse of water, with busy little
steamers rushing frantically in every conceivable direction; we look up
to the parapet of London-bridge, where, high as it is, we see the heads
of the passengers, and the crowded roofs of the omnibuses; we look over
to the other bank, where a thousand high chimneys vomit forth their
smoke and we behold Southwark, that amiable appendix to the metropolis,
which at this day has its six hundred thousand inhabitants; and lastly,
we look straight down before our feet where half a dozen steamers,
closely packed together, dance up and down on the waves; where steam
rushes forth noisily from narrow pipes, where hundreds of men, women,
and children, run about in inextricable confusion pushing their way to
the shore, to one of the boats, or from one boat to another; where the
paddles beat the water and the boys start the machinery by shrill
screams, while the mooring barges creak as the ropes are drawn tight. We
look and behold this is the Thames! This is the great, living, fabulous,
watery high-road in the heart of the British metropolis.
They have abused thee sadly, thou grey Thames, for the filth of thy
waters and the fogs which arise from thee. But most unjustly hast thou
been abused. At Lechlade where the four rivulets from the Cotswolds join
into a river, thy waters are as pure and pellucid as the Alpine streams
which spring forth from the glacier. At Lechlade there are no fogs
obscuring thy surface; there the air is pure; there art thou romantic
and idyllic, innocent alike of the temptations of the world and the vice
and filth of the greatest town. For many, many miles further down to Kew
and Richmond thou art beautiful to behold, flowing through the emerald
green of the meadows and the deep luscious green of the bush, a mirror
for the lordly villas and charming cottages which stud thy banks. But
most rapidly dost thou rush forward to thy metamorphosis! Most quickly
dost thou expand into a broad, grey, elderly man of business. He who saw
thee at Richmond will not know thee again at Westminster; and the
travelling stranger who only beheld thee between the bridges of the
metropolis has not the faintest idea of thy beauties at Richmond. The
grey business atmosphere of London has cast its gloom upon thee, as well
as on the stones, the houses, and the human beings that inhabit them.
But, whatever the Thames may lose in romance, it gains in the grandeur
and importance of its appearance. Its breadth increases with every step.
Navigable to the length of 180 English miles, with a tidal rise to the
extent of seventy miles, the Thames takes the largest merchantmen to the
immediate vicinity of London-bridge; and as the tide is going out it
takes them back, without the help of oars, sails, or steam-tugs. Nature
has made the Thames the grandest of all trading rivers; it gave it a
larger share of the ocean tides than it ever bestowed on any other river
in Europe.
At the Land's End the tides from the Atlantic are divided into two
distinct streams. One rushes up the Channel, and round the North
Foreland into the mouth of the Thames; the other beats against the
western coasts of England and Scotland, and, taking a southerly
direction down the eastern coast, this tide too enters the basin of the
Thames. Hence the tides in the Thames are formed of two different
ocean-tides; they are equal by day and by night, and so powerful is the
rush of the tide from the North Foreland to the metropolis, that it
flows at the rate of five miles an hour.
But here is the boat smoking away right at our feet. There is a rush of
persons _from_ the shore, and a rush of persons _to_ the shore. We pay
two-pence, scramble down a variety of steps and stairs, and jump on
board just as they are casting off. There is no whistling or ringing of
a bell, no noise whatever. We are already steaming it up to the far
west.
The bank on our left offers no interesting points on which the eye might
dwell with pleasure. Manufactories, breweries and gas-works dispute
every inch of ground with the ugliest store-houses imaginable. The sight
strikes one as that of a large city in ruins. But on our right we see
St. Paul's rising from an ocean of roofs. The sun, still visible on the
horizon, shines on the roof of the cathedral, and shows the gigantic
cupola in the most charming light. St. Paul's ought to be seen from the
river by those who would fully understand its grandeur.
We pass through the arches of Blackfriars-bridge and proceed in a line
with Fleet-street; before us the stream is spanned by a number of
bridges, so that it seems as if their pillars crossed one another, and
as if the nearest bridge bore the next following on its arched back. So
strange and astonishing is this sight that we are tempted to mistake it
for a _Fata Morgana_ and expect to see it dissolve into thin air.
Seven enormous bridges have been built across the river at very short
intervals, and unite the more animated parts of the Borough and Lambeth
with London proper. Among these bridges is an iron suspension bridge
with a bold double arch; another bridge is composed of iron and stone;
and the rest are simply built of massive stones. It is true that only
three of these seven bridges are freely open to the public, and that the
four others exact a toll. But, for how many years past, have the Germans
talked of a stone bridge across the Rhine at Cologne, and another stone
bridge across the Danube at Vienna! And as yet neither Cologne nor
Vienna have mustered the funds for such undertakings! And in London
there are seven bridges within a river-length of a few miles. A little
higher up, moreover, is Battersea-bridge, and lower down the river there
is the Tunnel, and already have they commenced making a new bridge at
Chelsea. The English have a right to pride themselves on the grandeur of
the British spirit of enterprise. But the German who comes into this
country and beholds its marvels, makes comparisons which sorely vex and
trouble his spirit.
We pass the Temple, the Chinese Junk, Somerset-house, the new Houses of
Parliament, and Westminster Abbey, but we cannot stop to describe them,
for we purpose to reserve them for a special visit on another occasion.
Besides our attention is engaged by the general aspect of the river and
its banks. Darkness has set in. Steamers with red and green eyes of fire
rush past us; little boats cross in all directions under the very bows
of the steamers; fishing-boats with dark brown sails go with the tide in
solemn silence; the lights on the bridges and in the streets are
reflected in the water. This is the hour at which matter of fact London
dons her poetical night-dress.
We pass Lambeth Palace and its ruin-like watch-tower. The boat stops at
Vauxhall-bridge. We get off, and walk through some of the streets of
Lambeth; we pass under a railway-bridge, and stand in front of
Vauxhall.
"The season is over! every body is gone out of town," etc., write the
correspondents of provincial and continental newspapers--"every
body"--that is to say, every body with the exception of two millions of
men, who make rather a considerable noise in the northern, southern, and
eastern towns of London. But of course they are "nobodies"; they are
merely merchants, tradesmen, manufacturers, clerks, agents, public
functionaries, judges, physicians, barristers, teachers, journalists,
publishers, printers, musicians, actors, clergymen, labourers, beggars,
thieves, foreigners, and other members of the "vile rabble." Every body
else left the metropolis immediately after the Parliament was prorogued
by the Queen, and the Royal Italian Opera was prorogued by Signora
Grisi. The West-end is now a city of the dead. The deserted streets and
the shuttered windows proclaim that all who are not exactly "nobodies,"
are shooting in Scotland or gaping on the Rhine; that they suffer from
the blues in Italy, or that the trout suffer from them in Sweden. But
Vauxhall is still open, partly because the weather is so uncommonly mild
for the season; partly because there are a good many foreigners in
London; but chiefly because Vauxhall has come to be vulgar--and very
vulgar too--a haunt of milliners and democrats, "by birth and
education."
Vauxhall was born in the Regency, in one of the wicked nights of
dissolute Prince George. A wealthy speculator was its father; a prince
was its godfather, and all the fashion and beauty of England stood round
its cradle. In those days Vauxhall was very exclusive and expensive. At
present, it is open to all ranks and classes, and half a guinea will
frank a fourth-rate milliner and sweetheart through the whole evening.
A Londoner wants a great deal for his money, or he wants little--take it
which way you please. The programme of Vauxhall is an immense _carte_
for the eye and the ear: music, singing, horsemanship, illuminations,
dancing, rope-dancing, acting, comic songs, hermits, gipsies, and
fireworks, on the most "stunning" scale. It is easier to read the
_Kölner Zeitung_ than the play-bill of Vauxhall.
With respect to the _quantity_ of sights, it is most difficult to
satisfy an English public. They have "a capacious swallow" for sights,
and require them in large masses as they do the meat which graces their
tables. As to quality, that is a minor consideration; and to give the
English public its due, it is the most grateful of all publics.
The entrance to Vauxhall is dismally dark and prison-like. Dr. Keif
objects to the place.
"It's a trap," says he; "the real road to ruin! I am sure the Chevalier
Bunsen and that fellow Buol-Schauenstein lie in ambush in some of those
dark holes; they will pounce upon me, and seize me, and take me back to
Germany, where they have no brown stout, and where I must needs get
famous, or die with ennui. _Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate!_"
Just at that moment a German refugee goes by. He bids us good evening,
and is lost in the darkness.
"Ah!" says the Doctor, "that boy has been sentenced to be shot in the
Grand Duchy of Baden. I believe they shot him in effigy. He's an imp of
fame, and if he dares go in why should'nt I dare it. Let us go in!"
The dismal aspect of the entrance is the result of artistic speculation;
it is a piece of theatrical claptrap. For all of a sudden we emerge from
the darkness of the passage into a dazzling sea of light, which almost
blinds one. All the arbours, avenues, grottos and galleries of the
gardens are covered with lamps; the trees are lighted to the very tops;
each leaf has its coloured lady-bird of a gas-light. Where the deuce did
those people ever get those lamps! And how did they ever get them
lighted! It must be confessed that the manager has done his duty. If you
can show him a single leaf without its lamp, he will surely jump into
the Thames or hang himself on the branch which was thus shamefully
neglected.
Dr. Keif, who is disposed to find fault with everything, and who just
now protested that the entrance to Vauxhall was a trap expressly
constructed for the apprehension of political refugees, asserts that the
illumination is enough to spoil the temper of any one. "Look at those
English madcaps!" says he. "In other parts of the town I walk for hours
before I find a human being smoking a cigar, and offering an opportunity
to light my own weed; and here I stand as the donkey in the midst of
three hundred thousand bundles of hay. Which of these lamps shall I
select for the lighting of my cigar?"
"This way, sir! Look down there where the Queen is burning in gas," says
an Englishman, with a cigar in his mouth, who has overheard the Doctor's
lament. And he added--"Light your weed at the flames of Victoria, and
implore Her Gracious Majesty that she may be pleased to abolish the duty
on tobacco."
From that moment is Dr. Keif lost to the rest of our party. An
Englishman, who, spurning all old-established customs and traditions,
dares to address a stranger, and to address him too on a subject which
has nothing whatever in common with the state of the weather--such an
Englishman is a _rara avis_, and nothing could induce Dr. Keif to forego
his acquaintance. Already has he engaged him in conversation, utterly
oblivious of the friends who came with him, and of all the world
besides. We must try to get on without the Doctor.
The gardens are crowded; dense masses are congregated around a sort of
open temple, which at Vauxhall stands _in lieu_ of a music-room. The
first part of the performance is just over; and a lady, whose voice is
rather the worse for wear, and who defies the cool of the evening with
bare shoulders and arms, is in the act of being _encored_. She is
delighted, and so are the audience. Many years ago this spot witnessed
the performances of Grisi, Rubini, Lablache, and other first-class
musical celebrities.
The crowd promenade these gardens in all directions. In the background
is a gloomy avenue of trees, where loving couples walk, and where the
night-air is tinged with the hue of romance. Even the bubbling of a
fountain may be heard in the distance. We go in search of the sound;
but, alas, we witness nothing save the triumph of the insane activity of
the illuminator. A tiny rivulet forces its way through the grass; it is
not deep enough to drown a herring, yet it is wide enough and babbling
enough to impart an idyllic character to the scene. But how has this
interesting little water-course fared under the hands of the
illuminator? The wretch has studded its banks with rows of long
arrow-headed gas-lights. Not satisfied with lighting up the trees, and
walls, and dining-saloons, he must needs meddle with this lilliputian
piece of water also. That is _English_ taste, which delights in
quantities: no Frenchman would ever have done such a thing!
Following the rivulet, we reach the bank of a gas-lit pond, with a
gigantic Neptune and eight white sea-horses. To the left of the god
opens another gloomy avenue, which leads us straightway to _Fate_, to
the hermit, and the temple of Pythia, who, in the guise of a gipsy,
reclining on straw under a straw-roofed shed, with a stable lanthorn at
her side, is in the habit of reading the most brilliant Future on the
palm of your hand, for the ridiculously low price of sixpence only. This
is specially English; no house without its fortifications--no open-air
amusements without gipsies. The prophetess of Vauxhall is by no means a
person of repulsive appearance. You admire in her a comely brown
daughter of Israel, with black hair and dark eyes; it is very agreeable
to listen to her expounding your fate. She is good-tempered and
agreeable, and has a Californian prophecy for all comers. She predicts
faithful wives, length of days, a grave in a free soil to every one,
even to the German.
The dwelling of the sage hermit is much less primitive, nor are
believers permitted to enter it. They must stand on the threshold, from
whence they may admire a weird and awful scenery--mountains, precipices
and valleys, and the _genius loci_, a large cat with fiery eyes, all
charmingly worked in canvas and pasteboard, with a strict and
satisfactory regard for the laws of perspective. The old man, with his
beard so white and his staff so strong, comes up from the mysterious
depth of a pasteboard ravine; he asks a few questions and disappears
again, and in a few minutes the believer receives his or her Future,
carefully copied out on cream-coloured paper, and in verses, too, with
his or her name as an anagram. Of course these papers are all ready
written and prepared by the dozen, and as one lady of our party had the
name of Hedwig--by no means a common name in England--she had to wait a
good long while before she was favoured with a sight of her fate. This,
of course, strengthened her belief in the hermit and the fidelity of her
husband.
We, the Pilgrims of Vauxhall, leave the hermit's cell. Our eyes have
become accustomed to the twilight, and as we proceed we behold, in the
background, the tower and battlements of a large and fantastically-built
tower. Can this be Westminster Abbey, or is it a mere optical delusion?
Let us see.
Hark! a gun is fired in the shrubbery. The promenaders, who are familiar
with the place, turn round, and all rush in one direction, sweeping us
along with them. Before we can collect ourselves, we have been pushed
forward to a panoramic stage, on which Nelson, in plaster, is in the act
of expiring, while Wellington, in pasteboard, rides over the
battle-field of Waterloo. These two figures are the worst of their kind;
still the public cheer the two national heroes. No house without its
fortifications--no open-air amusements without gipsies--and no play
without the old Admiral and the old General.
Wellington has scarcely triumphed over Napoleon, and silenced the French
batteries, when the cannonade recommences in the shrubbery: one--two
guns! it is the signal for the arena. Unless you purchase a seat in the
boxes or the galleries, you have no chance of seeing the exhibition in
the circus, for the pit, which is gratis, is crowded to suffocation.
Englishmen care more for live horses than they do for pasteboard
chargers, fraught though they be with national reminiscences.
The productions of horsemanship at Vauxhall are exactly on a par with
similar exhibitions on the other side of the Channel. Britons are more
at home on horseback, or on board a ship, than on the strings of the
fiddle, or on the ivory keys of the pianoforte. And thus, then, do the
men and women dance on unsaddled horses, play with balls and knives, and
jump through paper and over boards; half a dozen of old and young clowns
distort their joints; a lady dances on a rope, _à la marionette_; and
Miss A., who was idolised at Berlin, and whom seven officers of the
Horse Guards presented with a bracelet, on which their seven heroic
faces were displayed, condescends to produce her precious bracelet and
her precious person in this third-rate circus; and an American Gusikow
makes music on wood, straw, and leather; and the horses are neighing,
and the whips smacking, and the sand is being thrown up, and the
boarding trembles with the tramp of the horses, and there is no end of
cheering; and Miss A. re-appears and curtsies, with the seven gentlemen
of the Horse Guards on her arm; and another gun is fired, and the
public, leaving the circus, rush madly into the gardens. To the
fireworks! they are the most brilliant exhibition of the evening. The
gardens are bathed in a bluish light, and the many thousand lamps look
all pale and ominous. The gigantic and fantastic city, which before
loomed through the twilight of the distant future, burns now in Bengal
fire. It is Moscow! it is the Kremlin, and they are burning it! Sounds
of music, voices of lamentation, issue from the flames, guns are firing,
rockets shoot up and burst with an awful noise, the walls give way--they
fall, and from the general destruction issues a young girl, with very
thin clothing and very little of it, who makes her escape over a rope at
a dizzy height. The exhibition is more awful than agreeable; but the
public cheer this, as they do any other neck-or-nothing feat. If the
girl were to carry a baby on her perilous way, the cheering would be
still greater.
It is past midnight. The wind is cold, and fresh guests are crowding in
to join the ball, which is kept up to the break of day. But we have not
the least inclination to watch the ungraceful movements of English men
who dance with English women, or of English women who dance with English
men. We hail a cab and hasten home.
At the door we fall in with the Doctor, whom we had lost in the early
part of the evening. He is greatly excited, for he has walked the whole
way from Vauxhall to Guildford-street. In the parlour we find Sir John
and his most faithful wife seated at the round table, with the
tea-things before them, waiting tea for us. As we enter, Sir John puts
down the _Times_, in which he has been gloating over a "damaging letter"
against the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and the lady of the house
welcomes us with a friendly nod and a look of anxious inquiry. That look
means, "Have you caught a cold, you or any of you? Or is it a sore
throat or a cough! Surely you cannot have been out all night without
some slight illness which will justify me in opening my medicine chest?"
And she looks at the things to see if they are all in good order, and
then the tea is poured out with the utmost precision. A cup of tea is
delicious after that long ride from Vauxhall, and there is much comfort
and snugness in an English parlour.
The cup, which "cheers but not inebriates," loosens Dr. Keif's tongue.
"The tea is very refreshing, Madam," is a remark which the Doctor makes
twice every day, in fine and foul weather; and, in making this remark,
he always holds out his empty cup that it may be filled again.
"But, most loyal Sir John," continues the Doctor, refreshed by the tea,
"it's a mighty difficult task to get through an English evening's
pleasure in a single night. To think of all the things I have seen this
evening, and for half-a-crown too. Why one-half of them would suffice to
entertain the inhabitants of a German capital for a period of six
calendar months."
"That is what I always say," interposed Bella, the daughter of the
house, with a look of triumph, "London is the cheapest town in the whole
world."
"So it is," says Dr. Keif, "awfully cheap. I had some cold beef at
Vauxhall, some cheese, and a cruet of wine, and I paid _only_ nine
shillings--on my honor nothing but nine shillings. The bread was not
included. The waiter gave me a piece after I had asked him long enough.
But I had scarcely put it on my plate, and I was lost in its
contemplation, when it was carried off by a sparrow. Now that will give
you an idea how very large it must have been."
"But what could induce you to drink wine or ask for bread at Vauxhall!"
said Bella. "And where have you been all the evening? What did you do
with your friend?"
"O I had a delightful conversation with him, and let me tell you he is a
clever fellow. Still he is not free from English prejudice, though a
great deal of it has been rubbed off on his travels. Of Germany he saw
only the south, having been compelled, as he told me, to return to
England to look after some property which a whimsical old uncle had left
him, under conditions which make residence in this country a matter of
necessity. It's a pity! There is a great deal of good in him, and I have
no doubt he would be a great genius, if he could but pass a couple of
winters at Berlin."
"Indeed! What was his English prejudice?" asked Sir John with great
disgust.
"It is not easy to answer that question. National prejudice is like a
pig-tail--you can't see it in front. Another cup of tea, if you please,
it's only my fourth. And it's scandalous how they teach history in your
schools. This new friend of mine is a well-bred man, but he had never
heard of Blücher. We looked at the Duke of Wellington riding over the
field of Waterloo; and I said: 'Couldn't you find a place for our
Blücher?' 'Blutsher,' said he, 'who is Blutsher?' He knew nothing
whatever of Blücher and the Prussian army; and when I told him, that but
for the Prussians Wellington would have been made minced-meat of at
Waterloo, he actually laughed in my face. Now tell me, most respectable
Sir John, how do they teach history in your schools? The French, I know,
_cook_ history, and make matters pleasant for 'the young idea.'"
Sir John was silent. The article he had read in the _Times_ had made him
magnanimous; and our friend Keif remained uncontradicted.
"I told my companion," continued the Doctor, after a pause, "that the
dancing was a disgraceful exhibition; he said, so it was. He had seen
the dancing abroad. If he had never been out of England, I am sure, he
would have been delighted with the performance of his countrywomen; and,
as most Englishmen do in such a case, he would have shrugged his
shoulders and set me down as a fool for the unfavourable opinion I
pronounced. But he had left part of his prejudice on the other side of
the channel, and he himself pointed out to me how ridiculous those
people looked, and how the couples clung to one another like woolsacks
which cannot stand alone, and how they pushed one another, and marked
the time by kicking one another's toes."
"Don't believe," said he, "that there is better dancing in the saloons
of our aristocracy. We know nothing of the noble art, and for that very
reason do we practise it with so much devotion. Such like unnatural
leanings are common with all nations. They are most zealous in what they
least understand. The Russians build a fleet, the Austrian affect
finances, the Germans make revolutions, the French _will_ have a
Republic, and the English dance."
"But surely, Doctor," said Bella, "neither you nor your new friend can
deny that better dancing is going on in London than in any other town.
This very season we had Taglioni, Rosati, and Feraris, all on the same
stage!"
"The old argument," said the Doctor. "Because you have got money, and
because you can afford to pay for a good ballet, you pretend that the
most graceful dancers are hatched in England. You subsidised the German
armies against Napoleon; and now you believe that your red-coats alone
vanquished the French. Port and sherry are your _English_ wines; and
because you succeed, at an enormous expense, to rear hothouse peaches,
grapes, and apples, you will have it that England produces better fruit
than any other country. But it's all nonsense. It's money and money, and
again money; and with that money you buy up the world, and---- After
all, old England for ever! Then another cup of tea for me?"
"Did you see that gas-lit rivulet at Vauxhall?" asked I, for I like to
hear the Doctor find fault with England. He does it in such a
good-natured, amiable manner, and with a spice of roguishness which is
all the more interesting, since in Germany Dr. Keif is generally
disliked for his Anglomania. "What," asked I, "do you say to the
romantic style of decoration which prevails in England?"
"Of course I saw that rivulet, and had a splendid adventure on its
banks."
Dr. Keif is literally overwhelmed with adventures. He cannot go to the
next street without a remarkable incident of some sort or other.
"I had lost my companion," said Dr. Keif, leaning back in his chair; "I
had lost him in the crowd. I saw a dark avenue in the distance, and I
longed for rest. You know, Sir John, we Germans cannot for any length of
time go on without peace and tranquillity, although the _Times_ will
have it that we are the most restless and disturbance-loving nation in
Europe. Well, under the trees, near the rivulet, I espied a loving
couple--they walk up and down, and stand still--of course they are happy
to be alone and unobserved. But anxious to understand the character of
the English, I resolved to overhear their conversation. I passed them
several times, but they were silent. Right, thought I, affection makes
them mute! Their souls stand entranced on the giddy pinnacle of passion!
But they could not be silent all night, especially since it was so dark
they could not speak with their eyes. I laid myself in ambush; they
approached; my heart beat quick with thrilling anticipation; they were
talking--but can you fancy what they were talking about?--Of Morrison's
pills, and the mode and manner of their effect in bilious complaints! Of
course there was no resisting this; I jumped out of the thicket, leaped
across the rivulet, and came home at once."
We all laughed at the Doctor's adventure, and Sir John, too, laughed.
Dr. Keif had met with half a dozen adventures on his way home. For
instance, he had fallen in with a sailor who told him long stories about
Spain. He (not the sailor) had found a drunken woman in a gutter and
dragged her out; and Bella declared that that woman must have been
Irish. And two vestals had taken hold of his arms, and he had a deal of
trouble before he could induce them to leave him alone. In short, there
was no end of the Doctor's adventures.
CHAP. V.
The Police.
THE LONDON POLICE.--JOURNEY FROM PARIS TO LONDON.--THE POLITICS OF
THE FORCE.--ITS MODE OF ACTION ILLUSTRATED.--DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE
POLICE IN ENGLAND AND ON THE
CONTINENT.--DETECTIVES.--ROOKERIES.--THE POLICEMAN AS A CITIZEN.
In a town such as London is at the present day, where thousands of
honest men follow their daily avocations at the side and mixed up with
thousands of dishonest men, the Government has but one alternative with
respect to the police regulations. It must either resign the idea of
organising a _surveillance_ by means of the police, or that
_surveillance_ must be carried on according to a highly practical
principle.
With the police and other political institutions, it is exactly the same
as with our clothes. They would seem to grow with us; but the fact is,
as we grow in height and breadth we take care that our coats have
greater length and width.
In the same manner, is the police allowed to grow in proportion to the
growth of a town; and none but thieves or fools in politics can object
to the process, provided always that the police is for the protection
and not for the torment of the peaceful citizen.
Scarcely a hundred years ago, no one could dare to walk from Kensington
to the city after nightfall. At Hyde Park corner, not far from the place
where the Crystal Palace stood, there was a bell which was rung at seven
and at nine o'clock; those who had to go to the city assembled at the
call and proceeded in a body, by which means they were comparatively
safe from the attacks of highwaymen.
Small bodies of men were frequently stopped by the robbers; it happened
now and then that the passengers were attacked and sorely molested by a
roistering band of wild young fellows, who were fresh from the
public-house.
But all this romance came to an end when George II. was stopped and
plundered one fine night on his return from hunting. The very next
morning a troop of armed horsemen was established to watch over the
security of the public streets, and though these were not the rudiments
of the London Police (there were already some watchmen and
river-guards), yet we consider them as a fraction of the police-embryo
which has since grown up to such respectable dimensions.
The Guild of the London police (on the continent they are but too
frequently confounded with the older constables) was founded and trained
by Sir Robert Peel; they are consequently a product of our own times;
and that this product is not a luxury, and that it is more useful than
many other creations of our own times is clearly shewn by the great
London journals, which daily acknowledge the institution in their police
reports. But this institution is very little understood in Germany, and
even strangers, who pass a short time in England, are not likely to
understand it.
Let us watch the steps of a German, for instance, on his journey across
the channel. He leaves Cologne with an express train, and reaches Calais
at midnight. Bewildered with sleep, he leaves the carriage; the first
object which strikes his view is a large hand painted on the wall. He
follows the outstretched index of that hand and finds his way, not to
the refreshment rooms whither he wants to go, but to the "Bureau de
Police," where he never thought of going. He is cruelly disappointed;
but he is an honest man, and not even a political refugee, and he has,
therefore, no reason to avoid communication with the French police. They
ask for his passport, and if the traveller can produce some document of
the kind they are content. The passport may, indeed, be a forgery: its
possessor may have stolen it. Napoleon the Great found his way back from
Elba without a passport; and Louis Philippe, also without a passport,
found his way out of France; but no matter! the French require the
production of passports, doubtlessly for some hidden good, for the
_alcun' bene_ of Dante.
On his arrival in Folkestone or Dover, many an honest German has, from
mere force of habit, put his hand in his pocket and produced his
passport ready for inspection. Of course the methodical foreigner was
laughed at for his pains. The Emperor of France and his satellites may
possibly have an interest in knowing all particulars about those who
turn their backs upon them; but constitutional England is not in the
habit of asking her guests whence they come, why they come, and whither
they go. After a short interview with the Custom-house officers--and
these, too, though functionaries, are dressed like all other honest
men--the stranger is free of the country; and if his trade be an honest
one, he is not interfered with; indeed, he is almost _neglected_ by the
public authorities. On his arrival in London, he takes apartments in an
hotel, or in a boarding-house, or he takes furnished lodgings, or a
house, or a street; no matter, the police do not interfere with him; and
to all appearance they pay no attention whatever to his proceedings.
This _apparently_ unguarded liberty is the secret of the real grandeur
of the Preventive Service. But that this is possible, is partly owing to
the good-will of a liberal government, and partly to the peculiarities
of English life and manners. This is a point which we shall, on a future
occasion, treat at greater length.
The circumstance that a stranger may walk to and fro between the Isle of
Wight and the Orkneys without being questioned, protocolled, and
stopped, has caused many a foreigner to doubt the safety of life in
England generally. A certain Berlin professor, I am told, got quite
angry on the subject. "A man," said he, "goes about in England exactly
as if he were disowned by society and removed from within the pale of
it. The very dogs of Berlin are more respected! At least they have their
numbers taken and are entered into the dog-book (_Hundebuch_), at the
police-office, while in England none but thieves can feel comfortable,
since thieves alone are in a manner noticed by the police."
In treating of the functions of the London Police, we ought at once to
say, that the police in England is essentially a force of _safety_,
whose functions are limited to the prevention of crime and the
apprehension of criminals. All its departments of river, street, and
railway police are instituted for the same purpose. There has not
hitherto been a _political_ department in Scotland-yard. The police, as
at present organised, deals only with the vulgar sins of larceny,
robbery, murder, and forgery; it superintends the cleaning of the
streets; it prevents the interruption of the street traffic, and it
takes care of drunkards and of children that have strayed from their
homes. But political opinions, however atrocious, if they have not
ripened into criminal action, are altogether without the sphere of the
English police.
The policemen, as the free citizens of a free country, are perfectly at
liberty to have political opinions of their own; they need not modify or
conceal their sentiments when they take the blue coat and the glazed
hat. They are required to catch thieves as cats do mice. Some of them
are ultra-royalists; others are ultra-radicals. Generally speaking, they
are not by any means conservatives. The majority of them belong to the
poorer and less educated classes; they take their political opinions
from the radical weekly papers. They club together as sailors, cabmen,
and labourers do, and take in their weekly paper, which they read and
discuss all the week through. They quote their paper whenever they talk
politics, and this they do frequently, for your London policeman is as
zealous a dabbler in politics as any ale-house keeper in Suabia.
Adam Smith founds his financial theories on the division of labour. The
division of labour is also the firm basis of the efficiency of the
English police. Since they have not to perform all the functions which
weigh on the shoulders of their helmeted and sabred brethren on the
continent; since they need not devote their attention to political
conversations and movements in the case of individuals or of
communities; since they need not keep watch over and give an account of
the movements and opinions of strangers and natives; and since they have
nothing whatever to do with the secrets of families, the leaders of the
daily papers, nor with the unsealing and sealing of post-office letters,
they are at liberty to devote all their energy and ingenuity to the
efficient discharge of those functions which are properly assigned to
them.
It is not a fable, nor a piece of English braggadocio, when it is said,
that the thieves are more thoroughly hunted down in this immense city of
London, than they are in the smaller German capitals. A foreigner who
studies the police-reports of the great London journals, will find there
ample matter for admiration and reflection. We quote but one example, to
show the manner in which the various parts of the police machine work
together. The anecdote may possibly contain some useful hints for the
guardians of constitutional towns.
A printer sends one of his men to the stationer to take in stock for the
printing-office. It was late on a Saturday afternoon, and the
manufacturer promised to have the paper in readiness early on Monday.
The man to whom the message was entrusted and who brought back the
answer, was, for some reason or other, dismissed in the course of that
very evening.
On the Monday, another messenger was sent for the paper. He came back
without it. The paper had been taken away a few hours before he arrived
at the stationer's. No paper, however, had come to the printing-office.
The greatest embarrassment prevailed. A couple of hours pass, and yet
the paper does not arrive. Suspicion is at length directed to the man
who had been discharged. Inquiries are made at the stationer's, and the
description of the person who came for the paper corresponds with the
appearance of the suspected person. Upon this, the printer proceeds to
the police-station to report the case. What with waiting and sending
about, the better part of the day was gone.
Mr. M--then makes his appearance in the inspector's office, and proceeds
to state his case. But scarcely has he given his name, when the
inspector puts a stop to all further explanations. "You've been robbed,
Mr. M--. We know all about it. The thief is in custody, and the goods
must by this time have been delivered at your office. One ream of No. 2
and two reams of No. 5 are wanting; but we know where to find them. They
shall be sent to you to-morrow. Good bye, sir."
Mr. M--, who, like every Englishman of the same stamp, is in no wise to
be surprised with any thing that may happen between heaven and earth, is
nevertheless inclined to think this a strange case--a very strange one
indeed. He pushes his hat back, strikes his umbrella on the floor, and
turning on his heel, he makes the best of his way home, where he finds
"all right," while all the "devils" are frantic with joy that the paper
has been recovered, and that Toby, who carried matters with such a high
hand, is, after all, nothing but a thief, and sure to be transported.
The state of the case was simply this:--
The man, assisted by a friend, had called for the paper, put it into a
cart, and gone off. The worthy pair sold a small quantity in a place
where they had, on similar occasions, "done a stroke of business;" and,
after this little matter had been settled to their entire satisfaction,
they drove off to a public-house at the distance of about five miles
from the scene of their crime. This public-house was situated in a very
quiet street. The cart and horse were left at the door while the two
associates, snugly ensconced in the parlour, commenced enjoying the
fruits of their robbery.
They had not been there very long before the policeman on duty became
struck with the cart and its freight of paper. He had been on that beat
for many months past, and knew that no printer, bookbinder, or
stationer, lived in the street. The horse and cart were strangers to
him; so were the two men whom he saw in the parlour as he passed the
window. The whole thing had an ugly appearance. He meets with one of the
detectives, and communicates his suspicions to that sagacious
individual. The two fellows, utterly unconscious of the watch set on
their movements, produce more money than they could have earned in the
course of a week. They are taken into custody and brought up before the
magistrate. They cannot account for the possession of the paper, and
make a confession in full. The policeman, however, must have been very
sure of his case when he arrested them; for in doing so he incurred a
heavy responsibility. If his suspicions had turned out to be unfounded,
he would have been mulcted in a heavy fine, and possibly he might have
lost his place.
Now let us change the _venue_, and suppose this affair had happened in
Paris, Vienna, or Berlin. Not only have the police of those capitals
duties of greater importance than the mere catching of a couple of
wretched thieves, but it is also altogether absurd to believe that a
policeman or "_Sicherheitsmann_" should pay any attention to the fact of
a cart and horse being stationed at the door of a pot-house. Such a
thing is utterly impossible. The policemen of Vienna and Berlin change
their beats as soldiers do their posts. Possibly they know the street
and the outsides of the houses; they may also have some slight knowledge
of the most disreputable dens, and of those who habitually frequent
them, and, in some instances, they are _au courant_ of the politics of a
few honest tradesmen or citizens, who are too harmless to make a secret
of such matters.
The London policeman, on the other hand, knows every nook and corner,
every house, man, woman, and child on his beat. He knows their
occupations, habits, and circumstances. This knowledge he derives from
his constantly being employed in the same quarter and the same street,
and to--and surely a mind on duty bent may take great liberties with the
conventional moralities--that platonic and friendly intercourse which he
carries on with the female servants of the establishments which it is
his vocation to protect. An English maid-servant is a pleasant girl to
chat with, when half shrouded by the mystic fog of the evening and with
her smart little cap coquettishly placed on her head, she issues from
the sallyport of the kitchen, and advances stealthily to the row of
palisades which protect the house. And the handsome policeman, too, with
his blue coat and clean white gloves, is held in high regard and esteem
by the cooks and housemaids of England. His position on his beat is
analogous to that of the porter of a very large house; it is a point of
honour with him, that nothing shall escape his observation.
This _police-honour_ constitutes the essential difference between the
English and the continental police. Even the most liberal of
politicians--not a visionary--must admit, that it is impossible for a
large town, and still more impossible for a large state, to exist
without a well-organised protective force. It matters little whether the
force which insures the citizens against theft and robbery, as other
associations insure them against fire and hail-storms, is kept up and
directed by the State, or whether it is maintained by private
associations--as has been proposed. It is enough to refer to the fact,
that philanthropists of the Cobden and Burritt stamp have found reasons
as plenty as blackberries against standing armies of soldiers; but that
they have never yet dared to deny the necessity of a standing army of
policemen.
The police, whenever and wherever it answers its original purpose, is a
most beneficent institution. Its unpopularity in all the states of the
Continent is chargeable, not to the principles of the institution, but
to their perversion. It is the perversion of the protective force into
an instrument of oppression and aggression, which the German hates at
home; but he has no aversion to the police as such. Even the maddest of
the democratic refugees confess to great love and admiration for the
police in England. A man may like his cigar without entertaining a
preposterous passion for nicotine.
The policeman, no matter whether in a uniform or in plain clothes, is a
soldier of peace--a sentinel on a neutral post, and as such he is as
much entitled to respect as the soldier who takes the field against a
foreign invader. This is the case in England. The policeman is always
ready to give his assistance and friendly advice; the citizen is never
brought into an embarrassing and disagreeable contact with the police;
and the natural consequence of this state of things is, that the most
friendly feelings exist between the policeman and the honest part of the
population. Whenever the police have to interfere and want assistance,
the inhabitants are ready to support them, for they know that the police
never act without good reasons.
The detective police, who act in secret, do not stand on such an
intimate footing with the public as the preventive part of the force;
but whenever they are in want of immediate assistance for the arrest of
an offender, the detective has but to proclaim his functions, and no
man, not even the greatest man in the land, would refuse to lend him
assistance. In Germany and in France no one will associate with an agent
of the secret police, a _mouchard_, or by whatever other name those
persons may be called. Every one has an instinctive aversion to coming
in contact with this species of animal, for they are traitorous,
venomous, and blood-thirsty. And that such is the case, is another proof
of the vast superiority of the British institutions over those of the
Continent.
That London has not in the fulness of time come to be a vast den of
thieves and murderers, is mainly owing to the action of the detective
force. Here, where the worst men of the European and American continents
congregate, the functions of a detective are not only laborious but also
dangerous. The semi-romantic ferocity of an Italian bandit is sheer good
nature, if compared to the savage hardness and villany of a London
burglar. The bandit plies his lawless trade in the merry green wood and
mossy dell; he confesses to his priest, and receives absolution for any
peccadilloes in the way of stabbing he may have happened to commit; on
moonlit nights his head rests on the knees of the girl that loves him,
in spite of his cruel trade. He is not altogether lost to the gentler
feelings of humanity, and, in a great measure, he wants the confounding
hardening consciousness of having, by his actions, disgraced himself and
his species. But the London robber, like a venomous reptile, has his
home in dark holes under ground, in hidden back rooms of dirty houses,
and on the gloomy banks of the Thames. He breaks into the houses as a
wolf into a sheepfold, and kills those who resist him, and, in many
instances, even those who offer no resistance. There is no sun or
forest-green for him, no priest gives him absolution, the female that
herds with him is, in most cases, even more ferocious and abandoned than
himself; and if he be father to a child, he casts it at an early age
into the muddy whirlpool of the town, there to beg, to steal, and to
perish.
The streets which skirt the banks of the Thames are most horrible. There
the policeman does not saunter along on his beat with that easy and
comfortable air which distinguishes him in the western parts of the
town. Indeed, in many instances, they walk by twos and twos, with dirks
under their coats, and rattles to call in the aid of their comrades.
Many policemen and detectives, who, hunting on the track of some crime,
have ventured into these dens of infamy have disappeared, and no trace
has been left of them. They fell as victims to the vengeance of some
desperate criminal whom, perhaps, on a former occasion, they had brought
to justice. And it would almost appear to be part of the _haute
politique_ of the London robbers, that some policeman must be killed
from time to time as a warning to his comrades. The guild of assassins,
too, have their theory of terrorism.
Another remarkable fact is, that the London policemen, though their duty
brings them constantly in contact with the very scum of the earth,
contract none of their habits of rudeness, which appear to be an
essential portion of the stock-in-trade of the continental police. One
should say, that the "force" in England is recruited from a most
meritorious class of society, one in which patience, gentleness, and
politeness are hereditary.
Look there! A fine strapping fellow crossing the street with a child in
his arms! The girl is trembling as an aspen-leaf, for she was just on
the point of getting under a wheel. That fine fellow has taken her up;
and now you see he crosses again and fetches the little girl's mother,
who stands bewildered with the danger, and whom he conducts in safety to
the opposite pavement. Who and what is that man? His dress is decent and
citizen-like, and yet peculiar; it differs from the dress of ordinary
men; coat and trowsers of blue cloth; a number and a letter embroidered
on his collar; a striped band and buckle on his arm; a hat with oilskin
top, and white gloves--rather a rarity in the dirty atmosphere of
London. That man is a policeman, a well got up and improved edition of
our own German _Polizeidiener_, those scarecrows with sticks, sabres,
and other military accoutrements, standing at the street-corners of
German capitals, and spoiling the temper of honest men as well as of
thieves.
It is, however, a mistake to believe, as some persons on the continent
actually do, that the London police are altogether unarmed and at the
mercy of every drunkard. Not only have they, in many instances and
quarters, a dirk hidden under their great-coats, but they have also, at
all times, a short club-like staff in their pockets. This staff is
produced on solemn occasions, for instance, on the occasion of public
processions, when every policeman holds his staff in his hand. The
staves have of
[Illustration: THE LOST CHILD.
p. 54.]
late years been manufactured of gutta percha, and made from this
material they are lighter and more durable than wooden staves. In the
name of all that is smashing, what a rich full sound does not such a
gutta percha club produce when in quick succession it comes down on a
human shoulder. That sound is frequently heard by those who, on Saturday
or Monday night, perambulate the poorer or more dissolute quarters of
the town, when all respect for the constable's staff has been drowned in
a deluge of gin. Matters, on such occasions, proceed frequently to the
extremity of a duel. The policeman, like any civilian, fights for his
skin; he gets a drubbing and returns it with interest. But since his
weapon does not give him so manifest an advantage as a sword would, the
public consider the _fracas_ a fair fight. And after all, the combatants
must appear before a magistrate; in the police-court they are on equal
terms, and witnesses are heard on either side. There is no prejudice in
favour of the policeman.
But stop! Look at the crowd in the street. Two policemen are busy with a
poor ragged creature of a woman, whom they carry to a doorway. An
accident perhaps? Nothing of the kind. The woman is drunk, and fell down
in the road. The policemen are taking her to the station, where she may
sleep till she is sober. But it was a strange spectacle to see those two
men in smart blue coats and white gloves rescuing the ragged woman from
the mire of the street.
Let us go on. At Temple Bar there is a Gordian knot of vehicles of every
description. Three drays are jammed into one another. One of the horses
has slipped and fallen. The traffic is stopped for a few minutes; and
this is a matter of importance at Temple Bar. Just look down
Fleet-street--the stoppage extends to Ludgate-hill. But half a dozen
policemen appear as if by enchantment. One of them ranges the vehicles
that proceed to the city in a line on the left side of the road. A
second lends a hand in unravelling the knot of horses. A third takes his
position in the next street, and stops the carriages and cabs which, if
allowed to proceed, would but contribute their quota to the confusion.
Two policemen are busy with the horse which lies kicking in the road.
They unhook chains and unbuckle straps; get the horse on its legs, and
assist the driver in putting him to rights again. They have got dirty
all over; and they must, moreover, submit to hear from Mr. Evans, who
stands on the pavement dignified, with a broad-brimmed Quaker hat, that
they are awkward fellows, and know nothing whatever about the treatment
of horses. In another minute, the whole street-traffic is in full force.
The crowd vanishes as quickly and silently as it came. The two policemen
betake themselves to the next shop, where the apprentice is called upon
to brush their clothes.
The continental policeman is the torment of the stranger. The London
policeman is the stranger's friend. If you are in search of an
acquaintance and only know the street where he lives, apply to the
policeman on duty in that street, and he will show you the house, or at
least assist you in your search. If you lose your way, turn to the first
policeman you meet; he will take charge of you and direct you. If you
would ride in an omnibus without being familiar with the goings and
comings of those four-wheeled planets, speak to a policeman, and he will
keep you by his side until the "bus" you want comes within hailing
distance. If you should happen to have an amicable dispute with a
cabman--and what stranger can escape that infliction?--you may
confidently appeal to the arbitration of a policeman. If, in the course
of your peregrinations, you come to a steam-boat wharf or a
railway-station, or a theatre or some other public institution, and if
you are at a loss how to proceed, pray pour your sorrows into the
sympathetic ear of the policeman. He will direct yourself and baggage;
in a theatre, he will assist you in the purchase of a ticket, or at
least tell you where to apply and how to proceed. The London policeman
is almost always kind and serviceable.
At night, indeed, as some say, he is rather more rough-spoken than in
the day-time; and when you meet and address him in some solitary street,
he is reserved and treats you with something akin to suspicion. Whether
or not this remark applies to the force generally, we will not undertake
to decide. But it is quite natural that they should not be altogether at
their ease in
[Illustration: THE CAB DISPUTE.
p. 56.]
solitary or disreputable quarters, and that their temper gets soured
thereby. A glass of brandy now and then may also contribute to produce
the above effect. But the English climate is damp; the fog makes its
home in the folds of the constable's great-coat; the rain runs from the
oilskin cape which stands the policeman in the stead of an umbrella; the
wind is cold and bleak; and we leave the policeman on his beat with "the
stranger's thanks and the stranger's gratitude."
CHAP. VI.
Newgate and its Neighbourhood.
RIVERS UNDER GROUND.--DIVISION OF LABOUR.--EXECUTIONS.--THE
PEOPLE'S FESTIVALS.--PREDILECTION FOR CRIMINAL CASES.--STATISTICS
OF NEWGATE.--PATERNOSTER-ROW.--SMITHFIELD.--SELF-GOVERNMENT, ITS
BRIGHT AND DARK SIDES.
London has, besides the Thames, a great many smaller rivers, the
majority of which have, for many years past, been appropriated by the
commissioners of sewers and the antiquarians. In the olden days, men
went out of the way of rivers. In our own time, the rivers are compelled
to give way to mankind. They are vaulted and bridged over, and houses
have been built on the vaults, or streets have been constructed over
them; and the grocer in the corner shop yonder has not the least
suspicion of his house standing on a river, and he never thinks of the
lamentable condition of his goods, in case the vault were to give way
under him.
One of these rivers was the Fleet river. After it the street is named
even at the present day. The site of its bed is still marked by a broad
valley street with considerable hills, all built over, on either side.
The hills are so steep that heavy drays and omnibuses cannot come down
without locking.
This operation, though insignificant, furnishes an opportune
illustration of the extent to which the principle of the division of
labour has been carried in London.
Just look at that lumbering omnibus, thundering along at a sharp trot.
It has reached the brink when the horses are stopped for a second; and
at that very moment a fellow makes a rush at the omnibus, bending his
body almost under the wheels, and moving forward with the vehicle, which
still proceeds, he unhooks the drag, and puts it to one of the
hind-wheels. This done, he calls out "All right!" The horses, sagacious
creatures, understand the meaning of that sentence as well as the
driver; they fall again into a sharp trot down the hill. At the bottom
there is another human creature making a neck-or-nothing rush at the
wheels, taking the drag off and hooking it on again. "All right!" The
horses stamp the pavement to the flying-about of sparks, the driver
makes a noise which is half a whistle and half a hiss, and the omnibus
rushes up the opposite bank of the quondam Fleet river.
"Time is money!" is an English proverb, and one whose validity is so
strongly acknowledged, that in many instances money is freely spent in
order to effect a saving of time. Those two men save the omnibuses
exactly one minute in each tour down Holborn Hill, for one minute each
of them would lose if they were to stop to put on the drag. But one
minute's loss to the many thousands who daily pass this way represents a
considerable capital of time. If the two men are remunerated at the rate
of only one halfpenny per omnibus, their incomes will be found to be
larger than the salary of many a public functionary in Germany.
This, then, is another specimen of industry and economy peculiar to
London streets. But, let us say, that it is possible only by means of
the enormous traffic which crowds the streets of London.
We have, meanwhile, walked down the steep descent. We have crossed the
hidden stream, walked up the hill on the other side, and now we stand on
a broad _plateau_, where two large streets cross at right angles. This
conformation produces a considerable amount of space between the
pavements--a sort of irregular open square, and one which from time to
time presents a melancholy spectacle.
One of the street corners is taken up by the old Newgate Prison; and the
open place in front serves for the execution of felons who have been
sentenced to death at the Sessions, and who, in the first instance, had
been committed to Newgate. It is a shocking custom, though it springs
from the humane desire to shorten the agony which the criminal must
suffer on his road from the prison to the scaffold.
"Our popular festivals!" said a lady, who had been emancipated by a
lengthened residence on the Continent. "You wish to know where the
people's merry-makings are held? Go to Newgate on a hanging day, or to
Horsemonger Lane, or to any other open space in front of a prison; there
you will find shouting, and joking, and junketting, from early dawn
until the hangman has made his appearance and performed his office. The
windows are let out, stands are erected, eating and drinking booths
surround the scaffold; there is an enormous consumption of beer and
brandy. They come on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, from a
distance of many miles, to see a spectacle which is a disgrace to
humanity; and foremost are the women--my countrywomen--not only the
females of low degree, but also ladies, 'by birth and education.' It is
a shame; but, nevertheless, it is true. And our newspapers are
afterwards compelled to chronicle the last death-struggles of the
wretched criminal!"
There is no exaggeration in this. A criminal process, robbery and
murder, a case of poisoning--these suffice to keep the families of
England in breathless suspense for weeks at a time. The daily and weekly
papers cannot find space enough for all the details of the inquest, the
proceedings of the police, the trial, and the execution; and woe to the
paper that dared to curtail these interesting reports! it would at once
lose its supporters. Rather let such a paper take no notice of an
insurrection in Germany; but neglect a criminal trial, a scene on the
scaffold--never!
Let us look into that room. The father of the family, his wife, the old
grandmother, with her hands demurely folded, and the daughters and
little children, are all crowded round the table. The father reads the
newspaper; the family listens to him. The tea is getting cold, the fire
is going out, the curtains are still undrawn and the blinds are up; the
very passengers in the street--"O tell it not in Gath!"--can see what is
going on in the parlour; but the listeners pay no attention to all this,
for the paper contains a full report of the trial of Mrs. Manning, or
some other popular she-assassin. Did she do the deed? Is she innocent?
Did she make a confession? And what about her husband? And how was it
done, and when, and where?
It is truly marvellous! These good, gentle people, who would not
willingly hurt or pain any living creature, actually warm to the scenes
of horror reported in that paper. It is altogether incomprehensible, how
and to what extent this passion for the horrible has seized hold of the
hearts of English men and women. They languish after strong emotions;
they yearn for something which will make their flesh creep. A similar
phenomenon may occasionally be observed on the other side of the
Channel; but there it forms the exception, while here it is the rule.
And on the Continent, too, we find this horror-mongering only in the
provinces, where people, wearied with the monotony of their long winter
evenings, hunger and thirst after anything like a public scandal or
spectacle; but we do not find this sort of thing in large towns, where
people have a variety of objects and incidents to attract their
attention. But the English on the Continent make long journeys to be
present at an execution. Their passion accompanies them even across the
Channel. Surely we do not envy their feelings in this respect!
Newgate is a gloomy-looking, ancient building. It is the _beau ideal_ of
prison architecture, with hardly any windows, with here and there an
empty niche, or some dilapidated carvings; all besides is gloomy, stony,
and cold.
Newgate has gone down in the world. In its early years it was devoted to
the reception of persons of high rank; it has since submitted to the
principle of legal equality, and rich and poor, high and low, pass
through its gates to freedom or the scaffold. About three thousand
prisoners are annually confined within its walls. The prison can
accommodate five hundred at a time, and this number is usually found
there immediately before the commencement of the sessions. But the
sessions of the Central Criminal Court once over, Newgate is almost
empty, for some of its inmates have been discharged from custody, while
the majority of them have received their sentence and taken their
departure for sundry houses of detention and correction. The prisoners
in Newgate are at liberty to communicate with one another; they are not
compelled to work.
We pass through Newgate-street and turn to the right into
Paternoster-row, a narrow street, from times immemorial the manufactory
of learning, where the publishing trade is carried on in dingy houses,
and where it runs its anarchical career without the benefit of a
_censor_.
"From times immemorial!" That is a hasty expression. There was a time
when Paternoster-row harboured the grocery trade of the city, while the
upper stories were taken by _Marchandes des Modes_ and visited by all
the beauty and elegance of old London. But gaiety had to give way to
religion, and the _Marchandes des Modes_, taking flight to more modern
streets, were followed by the rosary-girls under Henry VIII. Luther's
translation of the Bible was publicly burnt in this neighbourhood, and
soon after warrants were issued against those who had burnt it. So
varied have been the applications of this narrow dusky lane, in which,
to this day, the traveller may read an inscription on a stone tablet,
announcing that Paternoster-row is the highest point of ancient London.
In our own days this street is to London what Leipzig is to Germany. The
departments of the publishing trade are, however, kept more strictly
separate. The publishers of Bibles, who send forth the Scriptures in
volumes of all sizes, from the smallest to the largest, and who do
business in all the civilised and barbarous languages on the face of the
earth, exclude all vain and secular literature, such as tales, novels,
plays, poems, and works of history. While the publishers of such like
works in their turn, generally fight shy of tourists and travellers
whose works belong to departments of another class of publishing firms.
Juvenile books form a very important department of the publishing trade;
and this department, like the infant schools, is entirely devoted to the
instruction and amusement of the rising generation. So strenuous are the
exertions of those publishers to entice the babes and infants of England
into the treacherous corners of the A, B, C, and of the higher sciences,
that their solicitude in this respect appears almost touching to those
who fancy that all this trouble is taken and all this ingenuity
expended, purely and simply for the interest of philanthropy, and of
good sound education.
We ought not to stop too long in Paternoster-row. Our presence is
required elsewhere. But still we must for the benefit of German mothers
and publishers, state the fact, that of late years the publishers of
Paternoster-row have hit upon the plan of printing the rudiments of all
human science on strong white canvass. English children, in the dawn of
their young existence, are as essentially practical as German children.
They have an instinctive aversion to all printed matter. The A, B, C, is
to them the first fruit from the tree of knowledge, the key to the
mysteries and woes of life. Therefore do the children of England detest
the primers; they soil them, tear them, roll the leaves, in short treat
them with as much scorn and contumely, as though the annihilation of a
single copy would lead to the extinction of the whole species.
The practical spirit of English speculation meets this prejudice on its
own ground. The primers, or A, B, C, books as they are called in
Germany, are printed on canvass, and each leaf is moreover hemmed, for
all the world like a respectable domestic pocket-handkerchief. For
children are sagacious, and but for the hemming the rudiments of science
would, under their hands, be converted into lint. As it is, even the
most obstreperous of little boys is powerless in the presence of such a
canvass book. And, supposing, he be uncommonly obstinate, and that after
great exertion he succeeds in running his finger through one of the
leaves; even then he is foiled, for his mother darns it as she would an
old stocking; and the monster book appears again as clean and immaculate
as a diplomatic note. And the upshot of the affair is that the poor
little boy must go without the usual allowance of Sunday pudding.
London is the greatest market for books in the world. Not only does it
supply England, but also Asia, Africa, Australia, and those island
colonies of the great ocean, in which English daring and English
enterprise have established the Anglo-Saxon race, and with it the
English language. About 15,000 persons are employed in the printing,
binding, and in the sale of books. Their mechanical aids and machinery
have been brought to an astounding height of perfection, and an edition
of a thousand copies in octavo requires but ten or twelve hours for the
binding. But when you consider those bony, broad-shouldered,
firm-looking Englishmen, you understand at once that such men could not
live on literature alone. Paternoster-row, the centre of the
book-trade, carries on its existence in modest retirement amidst a
conglomeration of large and small streets, but to the north there is the
provoking, broad, impertinent extent of old Smithfield, the notorious
cattle-market of London, the greatest cattle-market in the world, the
dirtiest of all the dirty spots which disgrace the fair face of the
capital of England.
This immense open place, or more properly speaking, this immense
conglomeration of a great many small open places, with its broad open
street market, is covered all over with wooden compartments and pens,
such as are usual on the sheep-farms of the continent.
Each of these pens is large enough to accommodate a moderate sized
statue; each of them must, on Mondays and Fridays, accommodate an ox and
a certain number of cattle, pigs, or sheep. If by a miracle all these
wretched animals were converted into marble or bronze, surely after
thousands of years, the nations of the earth would journey to Smithfield
to study the character of this our time in that vast field of monuments.
But since such a poetical transformation has not taken place, the
appearance of that quarter of the town is curious but not agreeable.
Surrounded by dirty streets, lanes, courts, and alleys, the haunts of
poverty and crime, Smithfield is infested not only with fierce and
savage cattle, but also with the still fiercer and more savage tribes of
drivers and butchers. On market-days the passengers are in danger of
being run over, trampled down, or tossed up by the drivers or "beasts";
at night, rapine and murder prowl in the lanes and alleys in the
vicinity; and the police have more trouble with this part of the town
than with the whole of Brompton, Kensington, and Bayswater. The crowding
of cattle in the centre of the town is an inexhaustible source of
accidents. Men are run down, women are tossed, children are trampled to
death. But these men, women, and children, belong to the lower classes.
Persons of rank or wealth do not generally come to Smithfield early in
the morning, if, indeed, they ever come there at all. The child is
buried on the following Sunday, when its parents are free from work; the
man is taken to the apothecary's shop close by, where the needful is
done to his wound; the woman applies to some female quack for a
plaister, and if she is in good luck she gets another plaister in the
shape of a glass of gin from the owner of the cattle. The press takes
notice of the accidents, people read the paragraph and are shocked; and
the whole affair is forgotten even before the next market day.
For years Smithfield has been denounced by the press and in Parliament.
The Tories came in and went out; so did the Whigs. But neither of the
two great political parties could be induced to set their faces against
the nuisance. The autonomy of the city, moreover, deprecated anything
like government intervention, for Smithfield is a rich source of
revenue; the market dues, the public-house rents, and the traffic
generally, represent a heavy sum. In the last year only, the Lords and
Commons of England have pronounced the doom of Smithfield. The cattle
market is to be abolished. But when? That is the question--for its
protectors are sure to come forward with claims of indemnity, and other
means of temporisation; and the choice of a fitting locality, on the
outskirts of the town, will most likely take some years. For we ought
not to forget that in England everything moves slowly, with the
exception of machinery and steam.
Smithfield and its history are instances of the many dark sides of
self-government. For self-government has its dark sides, commendable
though it be as the basis of free institutions. It is to the
self-government of every community, of every parish, and of every
association, that England is indebted for her justly envied industrial,
political, and commercial, greatness. But self-government is the cause
of many great and useful undertakings proceeding but slowly; and, in
many instances, succumbing to the assaults of hostile and vested
interests. The government, indeed, attempts to combat all nuisances by
mooting and fostering a variety of agitations. In Germany, it wants but
a line from a minister to eradicate small evils, or introduce signal
improvements. In England the same matters must be dealt with in a tender
and cautious manner; it takes a score or so of years of agitation, until
parliament yielding to public opinion, passes its vote for the
improvement, or against the nuisance. Great joy there would be in
London, if Smithfield, as Sodom of old, were consumed with fire; but
the whole of London would have been urged to resistance if the
government had presumed, on its own responsibility, to interfere with
Smithfield. Is this prejudice or political wisdom? On which side is the
greater good--and on which the worse evil? The present happy condition
of England has long since answered that question in favour of
self-government. If ever there was a question on this point, it has long
been settled in the hearts and minds of all continental nations. If they
were to act according to their inclinations, I am positive they would
"go and do so likewise."
CHAP. VII.
Street Life.--The Post-office.
LONDON AND THE OCEAN.--HOW YOU MAY ATTACK THE REPUTATION OF
EITHER.--THE METROPOLIS "EN NEGLIGEE."--THE POST-OFFICE.--THE
MODERN LETTER-WRITER.--MONEY ORDERS.--PENNY STAMPS, THEIR USE AND
ABUSE.--JOHN BULL AND THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER.--HOW MR.
BULL IMPOSES UPON THAT RESPECTABLE FUNCTIONARY.--WHAT IS A
NEWSPAPER?--THE GREAT HALL OF THE POST-OFFICE AT SIX P.M.
"Did you ever see the ocean?" said I, some time ago, to a Vienna friend,
as by accident we met in Cheapside. Not far from the spot where from
Newgate-street the passenger turns off to the Bank, there is a crossing
of some of the most crowded streets. We stood on the pavement waiting
for an opportunity, or a stoppage among the vehicles, to make a rush to
the opposite side. "Well," said I; "Did you ever see the ocean."
"In a way!" replied my countryman, producing a cigar; and in a moment a
match-seller was by his side offering his inflammable wares. "In a
manner," repeated my countryman, as he lit his cigar. "Of course I did
not come by land from St. Stephen's Place, in Old Vienna. I did cross a
piece of salt water as far as I can remember; but that confounded
sea-sickness got hold of my stomach, and made me blind to the marvels of
the ocean. And--between you and me--I can't say I was much taken with
what I could see. I've read a deal about the sea, the wide and open sea,
and all its glories. But it's all humbug, that's what it is; or, if you
would rather, it's poetic fancy. Water, after all, is but water. And, as
for the sharks, you can't see them. There wasn't even such a thing as a
storm. The lakes of Ischl are quite as green as the channel, and,
perhaps, a shade greener. And last year, when I was on the Platten Lake,
on my honour! I could not see to the opposite shore. Water, after all,
is but water; and a few miles, more or less, make no difference that I
can see. Besides, you only see a certain portion. That's _my_ opinion."
O good and honest Viennese! I stopped my countryman, who was just taking
a desperate leap into the road. No doubt he would have reached the
opposite pavement in safety; but I stopped him, for I wanted a pretence
for shaking hands with him. A Berlin man would never have deigned to
declare that the ocean is a humbug, even though he had never gone beyond
the bridges of the Spree or Havel river at Potsdam. Humbug has no
existence for the real Berlin man, who has been reared in the
superlative; and, besides, how can a Berliner, with all his contempt for
authority, ever plead guilty to considering an important phenomenon, one
which has been established ever since the days of the Great Elector,
with less poesy than Henry Heine, and with less interest than Alexander
von Humboldt. A Berliner would certainly have held forth on the
"absolute idea," or the "relative nothing," or the "subjective view of
space"; even though he never felt anything like the meaning of those
hard words, and even if, within his secret heart, he had thought exactly
as the Viennese did before he got sea-sick. There are things which a
Berliner would rather die than say in public.
But my readers are justly entitled to ask what could induce me to
connect Cheapside with the first impressions which a continental mind
receives of the sea. The association of the two ideas is not by any
means so absurd as some very sapient Germans may think. The first
impressions which London makes on the stranger's mind are similar to his
first impressions of the sea. They are not overwhelming. "A town, after
all, is but a town"; that's what my Viennese friend would say. "There
are as fine houses in Vienna and Berlin, and some are more imposing.
Brewer's drays, foot-passengers, cabs, omnibuses, and policemen--we have
them all. A town, after all, is but a town. A few miles, more or less,
make no difference. You can't see it all at once!"
But it so happens that my countryman, thanks to the intervention of some
friends, gets a place as engineer, at Folkestone. Between ourselves, he
is a refugee. But what German, of our days, is not a refugee, or likely
to be one? The Germans are a nation of traitors just now; therefore....
No offence.
Now my friend passes his leisure hours on the beach. He looks at the
dark waters, and the white spray, and the waves which break at his feet.
The waves come and go, and keep coming and going, alternately large and
small, fast and slow. At one point they shoot smoothly over the yellow
sand; at another they break with a thundering motion against the granite
blocks of the jetty, flinging their spray over the stone parapet; and
where my friend sits, the waves wash up shells and curious stones, and
strange sea-weed, and withered leaves of sub-marine plants and shrubs;
and the tides turn, coming in and going out, and the demon of the storm
disports itself in the blackened air. The sea is dark and seething, and
the fishing-boats, with their masts creaking and groaning, hasten up and
down the waves to the gates of the harbour. The water in the very
harbour is moved to and fro in violent convulsions; monster clouds,
fringed with lightish gray, are driven landwards day and night; are
confounded in the gloomy tints of the ocean, which groans and raves, and
engulphs its victims, until its strength is exhausted. And the moon
breaks through the clouds, preaching peace with her pallid demure face;
and the waves are converted by the sentimental saint, and again rush
playfully along the sand of the beach; and again they wash shells, and
curious stones, and strange sea-weed, and withered leaves of sub-marine
plants to the feet of my friend, who, overwhelmed with the spectacle,
sits staring on vacancy.
"But you are quite wet, and really you look very sentimental, my dear
countryman from the banks of the Danube! Water, after all, is but water!
I hope you haven't seen a shark? The lakes of Ischl are just as green as
the sea, and perhaps a shade greener. A few miles more or less--what
does it matter? A good deal of humbug about it, isn't there?"
"You are malicious, Doctor. On my honour, very malicious! One ought to
look at that pool for a year or so to know what it really is."
Pilgrim from the land of passports, when you come to this giant town, in
which traffic built its living dykes in every street then do not, in
the name of all that is candid, be ashamed to appear, for three days at
least, as an unfeeling callous creature. Make no secret of your
thoughts. A few houses more or less cannot make an impression on a truly
reasonable man!
But, friend stranger, stand for an hour or two leaning against the iron
gate of Bow-church, Cheapside, or take up your position on the steps of
the Royal Exchange. Do, as my countryman does in lonely Folkstone; let
the waves of the great city rush past you, now murmuringly, now
thunderingly, now fast, now slow, as crowds press on crowds, and
vehicles on vehicles, as the streams of traffic break against every
street corner and spread through the arterial system of the lanes and
allies; as the knot of men, horses and vehicles get entangled almost at
every point where the large streets join and cross, to move and heave
and spin round, and get disentangled again, and again entangled. After
such a review only can you realise the idea of the greatness of London.
It is said of a stranger, who came to London for the first time and took
his quarters in one of the most crowded city streets, that he remained
standing at the door the whole of the first day of his London existence,
because he waited "until the crowd had gone." A man who would do that
ought to rise and go to bed with the owl. It is this which, after a
prolonged stay in London so moves our admiration, that there is no stop,
no rest, no pause in the street-life throughout the busy day.
In smaller towns, too, there are occasions or times when the streets are
crowded in the extreme. The _trottoirs_ of the Paris Boulevards are
charming places, and on a beautiful evening they are as crowded, and
even more so than the pavements of the London streets. But the crowding
on the Paris _trottoirs_ lasts a few hours only during the usual
promenade time. London street-life is not bound to time; it is not
confined within the narrow limits of a few hours. Indeed there is not a
single hour in the four and twenty, in which any one of the principal
London streets can be said to be deserted. For when the denizens of the
far West retire to rest, at that very hour does the street-life dawn in
the business-quarters of the East.
Early in the morning, before the chimneys of the houses and factories,
of the railway-engines and steamers, have had time to fill the air with
smoke, London presents a peculiar spectacle. It looks clean. The houses
have a pleasing appearance; the morning sun gilds the muddy pool of the
Thames; the arches and pillars of the bridges look lighter and less
awkward than in the daytime, and the public in the street, too, are very
different from the passengers that crowd them at a later hour.
Slowly, and with a hollow, rumbling sound do the sweeping-machines
travel down the street in files of twos and threes to take off every
particle of dust and offal. The market-gardener's carts and waggons come
next; they proceed at a brisk trot to arrive in time for the early
purchasers. After them, the coal-waggons and brewer's drays, which only
at certain hours are permitted to unload in the principal streets of the
city. At the same time, the light, two-wheeled carts of the butchers,
fishmongers, and hotel-keepers, rattle along at a slapping pace; for
their owners--sharp men of business--would be the first in the market to
choose the best and purchase at a low price. Here and there a trap is
opened in the pavement, and dirty men ascend from the regions below;
they are workmen, to whose care is committed the city under-ground,
which they build, repair, and keep in good order. Damaged gas and
water-pipes, too, are being repaired, and the workmen make all possible
haste to replace the paving-stones and leave the road in a passable
condition. For the sun mounts in the sky and their time is up. They
return to their lairs and go to sleep just as the rest of the town
awakens to the labours of the day.
Besides these, there are a great many other classes whose avocations
compel them to take to the street by break of day. At a very early hour
they appear singly or in small knots, with long, white clay pipes in
their mouths; as the day advances, they come in troops, marching to
their work in docks and warehouses. Ill-tempered looking, sleepy-faced
barmen take down the shutters of the gin-shops; cabs, loaded with
portmanteaus and band-boxes, hasten to deposit their occupants at the
various railway-stations; horsemen gallop along, eager for an early
country-ride; from minute to minute there is an increase of life and
activity. At length the shops, the windows and doors of houses are
opened; omnibuses come in from the suburbs and land their living freight
in the heart of the city; the pavements are crowded with busy people,
and the road is literally crowded with vehicles of every description. It
is day and the hour is 10 A.M.
Long before this, hundreds of high chimney-towers have belched forth
their volumes of thick black smoke, and that smoke obscures the horizon
with long streaks of black smut, and mixes and becomes more dense as the
millions of chimneys on the house-tops contribute their quota, until a
dusky atmosphere is formed, which intercepts the rays of the sun. Such
is London by day. That is the enormous city with her deep grey robe of
smoke and fog, which she spins afresh every morning, and silently
unravels during the hours of the night, that she may, as Penelope of
old, keep idlers and courtiers away from her gates.
We are still at the point where Newgate-street opens into Cheapside. It
would almost seem as if the whirlpool of human beings that turn about in
that locality, had made us giddy, for our thoughts took their wayward
flight across the Thames, up to the clouds, and through the gully-holes
into the recesses of the city under-ground. We ought now to proceed on
_terra firma_, and with this laudable resolution, we turn to the left,
and stop in the front of the post-office at St. Martin's-le-Grand.
The existing arrangements of the English post-office, and the
penny-postage, which, in 1840, was introduced by Rowland Hill, have
proved so excellent in their results, that the majority of continental
states have been induced to approximate their institutions to Mr. Hill's
principle. Men of business and post-office clerks are not yet satisfied;
they desire a system of cheap international postage, and it is devoutly
to be hoped that those pious wishes will, in the end, be gratified. But
the majority of the continental governments hesitate before they commit
themselves to an experiment, which, in the most favourable case, only
promises a future increase of revenue, while in every case it is certain
to entail losses on the present. In England, however, the experiment
has been made, and the system works well and pays. And the arrangements
of the post-office have been brought to a degree of perfection unknown
even to the wildest dreams of the boldest political economist of the
last century.
With the general penny postage for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the
Channel Islands--with a regular, rapid, and frequent transmission of the
mails from and to the provinces, there is, moreover, an admirable system
adopted for the distribution of letters throughout the metropolis.
London is divided into two postal districts: one of them embraces the
area within three miles from the Chief Office at St. Martin's-le-Grand;
the second district includes those parts of the town which lie beyond
the three miles' circle.
The postage, of course, is the same for either district; but the
difference lies in the number of deliveries. In the inner circle there
are not less than ten deliveries a day.
The construction of the houses contributes much to the efficiency of the
system. The postman's functions are here much easier than those of his
continental colleagues. He is not required to go up and down stairs, he
gives his double knock; and as the majority of letters are inland
letters, and as such prepaid, no time is lost with paying and giving
change. The frequency of letter-boxes at the house doors tends still
more to simplify the proceeding.
At the time of the great Exhibition, these letter-boxes gave occasion to
many a comical mistake. Many of our continental friends entrusted their
correspondence to the keeping of private boxes, under the erroneous
presumption that every door-slit, with "_Letters_" over it, stood in
some mysterious connexion with the General Post Office. But when once
properly understood, the practical advantages of these private
letter-boxes were so apparent, that they moved all our stranger friends
to the most joyful admiration. The system however is nothing without the
prepayment of letters, without the English style of buildings, and the
English domestic arrangements, according to which each family inhabits
its own house. The South-German system of crowding many families into
one large house, and dividing even flats into separate lodgings, places
insuperable difficulties in the way of any such arrangement, even if
the Germans, generally, could be induced to prepay their letters. And
the Paris fashion of delivering all the letters at the porter's lodge,
is disagreeable, even for those who are not engaged in treasonable
correspondence, and who have no reason or desire to elude the vigilance
of the police.
After all, Rowland Hill's system of _cheap_ postage is one of the best
practical jokes that was ever perpetrated by an Englishman. This famous
cheapness is nothing but a snare for the unwary, for the especial
gratification of the Postmaster-General and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. In no other country is there so much money expended on
postage as in England. A letter is only one penny; and what is a penny?
The infinitesimal fraction of that power which men call capital; that
miraculous Nothing, out of which the world was made, and out of which
some very odd fellows managed to make large fortunes, as it may be well
and truly read in juvenile books of first-class morality. But what
Londoner can condescend to establish his household arrangements on the
decimal system, or on the theory of miracles? Consequently, he writes
short letters to his cousins and nieces across the way, and to all his
near and dear relations in Yorkshire and the Shetland Islands. It is an
incontestable fact, that Englishmen spend more money in postage than the
citizens of any other country.
And how cleverly does the Post Office contrive to facilitate the means
of correspondence! Besides the large branch offices, there are above
five hundred receiving-houses in London, all of them established in
small shops, to induce you to enter; and that you may have no trouble in
finding them, a small board with a hand, and the words "Post Office," is
affixed to the nearest lamp-post, so that you need only look at the
lamp-posts to find the place for the reception of your letters. How
simple, and how practical!
But there is more behind! Many a man thinks it too great a tax upon his
time and patience to put the penny stamp on the envelope; the
Postmaster-General steps in and saves him the trouble. He manufactures
envelopes with the Queen's head printed on them, and he sells them a
penny a piece, so that you have the envelope gratis. They are gummed,
too, and do not want sealing. You have nothing to do but to write your
letter, put it into the envelope, and post it at the receiving-house
over the way or round the corner. These are some of the sly tricks on
which the Post Office thrives, so that, with its expenditure exceeding
one million sterling, it manages to hand over a large sum of surplus
receipts to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Nor ought it to be supposed, that, having attained so high a degree of
perfection, the English postal administration reclines on its laurels.
No! it strains every nerve to effect further improvements; and it has to
deal with a public fully competent to understand its merits, and
disposed to value them. The greatest praise of a public institution is
to be found, not in the eulogies of the press, but in the readiness of
the public to avail themselves of the advantages that institution
offers, and the improvements and facilities it effects. And the English
do this readily and joyfully, whenever their practical common sense
becomes alive to the usefulness of an innovation.
In this respect, and in many others, the English Government is in a more
favourable position than the continental governments. Its dealings are
with a great and generous nation: great ideas find a great public in
England. That is the reason why the continental estimates of men and
affairs appear so small, compared to the one which the English are in
the habit of applying. Particularly with respect to creating facilities
to traffic, the Government may venture on almost any experiment. The
public support every scheme of the kind, and the public support makes it
pay. Take, for instance, the system of money-orders, which was
introduced a few years back. Small sums under £5 are to be sent; and in
spite of the enormous difficulties and expenses which the scheme had to
encounter in its commencement, it is more firmly establishing from day
to day; its popularity is on the increase, and above £8,000,000 was, in
the year 1851, transmitted in this manner.
Let us now see how the Post Office deals with books, pamphlets, and
newspapers. Political papers which publish "news," says the act for that
purpose made and provided--"political journals," according to the
continental mode of expression--pass from province to province free of
postage, with only a small sum for transmission to the Colonies, that is
to say, to the Cape and the Antipodes. The penny stamp, which each copy
of a political journal is required to have, franks it throughout the
whole of Great Britain and Ireland--not once, but several times. A
letter stamp is blackened over at the Post Office, to prevent its being
used again; but the newspaper stamp has nothing to fear from the
postmaster's blacking apparatus. I read my copy of the _Times_ in the
morning, and am at liberty to send it to a friend, say to Greenwich.
That friend sends the same copy to another friend, say at Glasgow,
Edinburgh, or Dublin; and the same copy, after various peregrinations
through country post offices, and out-of-the-way villages, finds its way
back to London to the shop of a dealer in waste paper. No charge is made
by the Post Office for these manifold transmissions; and thus it happens
that friends conspire together to defraud the Post Office, and that
information finds its way from one end of the kingdom to another without
any advantage to the public purse.
I will quote an example of a trick which is still popular with many
English families. Suppose a husband and father has reason to expect an
addition to his family circle. His friends and relations are desirous to
be informed of the event as soon as it shall have come off, but letters,
however short, take time to write; and, after all, its a pity to pay so
many pence for postage, and children, too, are very expensive creatures.
The matter has been arranged beforehand. An old copy of the _Times_ is
sent, if the little stranger turns out a boy; if a girl, the father
sends a copy of the _Herald_. The child is born, and the papers are
posted. Letters of congratulation follow in due time. Her Majesty has
gained another subject, but the Exchequer has lost a few pence. This
method has not much political morality to recommend it; but it weighs
very lightly on an Englishman's conscience, since the proceeding, after
all, is not downright illegal.
"The Chancellor of the Exchequer and I"--says John Bull--"are on the
best terms; he cheats me whenever he can; he makes me pay in every
conceivable manner; he taxes my wine, my tea, the sunlight, my horse, my
land, and my carriage; he is always at it, and he squeezes me as I would
an orange. That's his right, and that's why he is Chancellor of the
Exchequer. How else could he manage to pay the interest on the national
debt, and the army and navy estimates, and all the sundries? _We_, the
nation, are the state, and that's why we ought to pay. But in return,
the right honourable gentleman must give us leave to cheat him whenever,
as it will happen with the sharpest of financiers, his financial laws
want a clause or two, and thus favour the operation. 'Horses above a
certain size are taxed to such and such an extent,' says he. Very well!
say I. But I move heaven and earth to produce horses under that size,
and avoid paying the tax. Carriages with wheels above 21 inches in
diameter are taxed. Very well. I get a small carriage made, one which
suits the size of my pony. Newspaper advertisements pay a duty of
eighteen-pence. Well and good. I advertise the birth of my child by
means of an old copy of the _Times_. That's fair dealing, which none can
find fault with. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and I know what we are
about. We are a couple of sly ones. John Bull after all pays for
everything; but he fights for his money to the best of his abilities. Of
course!"
Thus reasons the Englishman, whom the Germans love to consider as an
adorer of the law.
The difference between the English adoration and the German contempt of
the law, may be found in the fact, that an Englishman takes a delight in
outwitting the law, if it can be done in a loyal and honest manner. The
German believes he is justified in ignoring the law, since it was
imposed upon him without his consent. In other words: the subject of an
absolute government does not think the laws--except the laws of nature
and morality--to be binding, because such laws were imposed by superior
force. The citizen of a free country respects every law, because it
presupposes an agreement to which he has either indirectly or directly
assented. But let us return to the Post-office.
Though the newspaper-stamp franks the journals throughout England, still
it has not been thought advisable to extend the privilege to the postal
district within three miles from St. Martin's-le-Grand. All journals
posted within that circle must have an additional penny stamp. My copy
of the _Times_ goes free to Dublin; but if I address it to a friend in
the next street, it pays the postage. But for this salutary regulation,
all the news-vendors would post their papers, and the Post-office would
want the means of conveyance and delivery for the loads of printed
matter which, in such a case, would find their way into the chief
office.
The advantages of the newspaper stamp are, however, large enough to
induce its being solicited by papers, that are not by law compelled to
take it. _Punch_, for instance, is not considered a political paper. To
find out the reason why, is a task I leave to the principal Secretaries
of State of her Britannic Majesty. The whole of England is agreed on the
point that there is much more sound policy in the old fellow's humped
back than can be found in the heads of the Privy Council; and many an
agitator in search of an ally would prefer Toby to the Iron Duke.[C]
_Punch_, then, consults his own convenience and takes or refuses the
stamp according to circumstances. And as _Punch_ does, so do many other
papers, whom the law considers as unpolitical.
[C] The first part of this work left the press early in 1852, when
the Duke of Wellington was still alive. It has not been thought
convenient to alter this passage, and some others to meet the change
of circumstances.--[ED.]
We turn again to the General Post-office. It is a grand and majestic
structure, with colossal columns in the pure Greek style; and with an
air of classic antiquity, derived from the London atmosphere of fog and
smoke. It is easy to raise antique structures in London, for the rain
and the coals assist the architect. Hence those imposing tints! How
happy would the Berliners be, if Messrs. Fox and Henderson, instead of
constructing waterworks, could undertake to blacken the town, and give
it an antique old-established, instead of its _parvenu_ and stuck-up,
appearance. They are sadly in want of London smoke and of some other
English institutions which I cannot, for the sake of my own safety,
venture to specify.
Those who are not awed by the architectural beauties of the London
Post-office, should enter and take a stroll down those roomy high walls,
where on either side there are numbers of office windows and little
tablets. How small are, in the presence of those tablets, all the ideas
which Continentals form of a large central Post-office. They are so
many sign-posts, and direct you to all the quarters of the world; to the
East and West Indies, to Australia, China, the Canary Islands, the Cape,
Canada, etc. Every part of the globe has its own letter box; and the
stranger who, about six o'clock P. M., enters these halls, or takes up
his post of observation near the great City Branch Office, in
Lombard-street, would almost deem that all the nations of the world were
rushing in through the gates, and as if this were the last day for the
reception and transmission of letters.
Breathless come the bankers' clerks, rushing in just before the closing
hour; they open their parcels, and drop their letters into the various
compartments. There are messengers groaning under the weight of heavy
sacks, which they empty into a vast gulf in the flooring; they come from
the offices of the great journals, and the papers themselves are sorted
by the Post-office clerks. Here and there, among this crowd of business
people, you are struck with the half comfortable, half nervous bearing
of a citizen. Just now an old gentleman, with steel spectacles, hurries
by, casting an anxious look at the clock, lest he be too late. Probably
he wishes to post a paternal epistle to his son, who is on a fishing
excursion in Switzerland, and the letter is important, for in it the son
is adjured not by any means to discontinue wearing a flannel
under-jacket. Or an old lady has to post a letter to her grand-daughter
at school in the country, about the apple-pudding, for which the
grand-daughter sent her the receipt; and what a capital pudding it was,
and that the school must be a first-rate school--to be sure! And lo!
just as the clock strikes, a fair-haired and chaste English woman, with
a thick blue veil, makes her way to one of the compartments and drops a
letter. Thank goodness, she is in time! Heaven knows how sorry the poor
lad would have been if that letter had not reached him in due course.
For an English lover, they say, is often in a hanging mood, especially
in November, when the fogs are densest.
Now the wooden doors are closed; the hall is empty as if by magic, and
the tall columns throw their lengthened shadows on the stone flooring.
This is the most arduous period of the day for the clerks within. All
that heap of letters and newspapers which has accumulated in the course
of the day is to be sorted, stamped, and packed in time for the various
mail-trains. Clerks, servants, sorters, and messengers, hurry to and fro
in the subterraneous passage between the two wings of the building.
Clerks suspended by ropes, mount up to the ceiling and take down the
parcels which, in the course of the day, were deposited on high shelves.
And the large red carts come rattling in receive their load of bags, and
rattle off to the various stations; the rooms are getting empty; the
clerks have got through their work; the gas is put out, and silence and
darkness reign supreme. Here and there only in some little room a clerk
may be seen busy with accounts and long lists of places and figures.
When he retires to rest, the work of the day has already commenced in
the other offices. In this building, business is going on at all hours
of the day and the night. The loss of a minute would be felt by
thousands, at a distance of thousands of miles.
Hence does it happen that at no time is there a want of complaints about
the Post-office clerks and post-masters, while the officials, in their
turn, complain of the carelessness and negligence of the public. The
public's grievances find their way into the Journals, in a "Letter to
the Editor." The sorrows of the Post-office clerks obtain a less amount
of publicity; but they may be observed on the walls of the great hall,
where, daily, there is a list of misdirected letters, which have cost
the post-men a deal of trouble. Directions such as--
"_To Mr. Robinson,
"in
America._"
Or,--
"_To Miss Henrietta Hobson,
"Just by the Church,
"in London._"
However rich (some may think), these are not by any means rare; and such
small mistakes, I dare say, will happen in other countries besides
England, wherever there are simple-minded people who put their trust in
Providence and the royal Post-office. In Germany, where every man,
woman, and child is registered by the police, the postman may, as a last
resource, apply to that omniscient institution; but in England, where
the chief commissioner of the police is so abandoned as to be actually
ignorant of the whereabouts of honest and decent citizens, the
Post-office is deprived even of this last resource. The case would be
pitiable in the extreme, but for the comfortable reflection that in
England the police do not interfere with the post. The convenience, on
the one hand, is by far greater than the inconvenience on the other.
CHAP. VIII.
Sunlight--Moonlight--Gaslight.
THE SUN AND THE LONDONERS.--MYSTERIES OF THE FOG.--HARVEST
MOONS.--GAS.--HOW THE CLIMATE WORKS.--FLANNELS.--ENGLISH DINNERS
AND FRENCH THEATRICALS.--CURRENT PHRASES.
Fashionable novelists, no matter whether their productions end with
marriage or suicide, devote their first chapters to geographical and
ethnographical accounts of the country or province in which they lay
their plots. Scientific travellers devote the first pages of their heavy
and immortal works to the respective telluria and astronomic
peculiarities of the country they propose to describe. To my sincere
regret, I have not, in my unsystematic wanderings through London, been
able to follow so laudable an example; for it requires a long residence
and a good deal of careful observation to understand the whims of the
London celestial bodies--their goings and comings--and their influence
on vegetable and animal life--on the strata of the atmosphere and of
mankind.
Since Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt, and Lola Montes into
a Countess of Landsfeld, there has not, as far as I know, been any
female being so much abused as the London sun;[D] but the reasons of
such abuse are diametrically opposed. The two first named ladies were
found fault with because they saw too much of the world, while the
London sun is justly charged with a want of curiosity. It turns its back
upon the wealthiest city in Christendom; and, in the presence of the
most splendid capital of Europe, it insists on remaining veiled in
steam, fog, and smoke.
[D] The sun--_die Sonne_--is feminine in German.
The London sun, like unto German liberty, exists in the minds of the
people, who have faith in either, and believe that either might be
bright, dazzling, and glorious, were it not for the intervention of a
dark, ugly fog, between the upper and nether regions. It happens, just
now, that we have not seen the sun for the last three weeks. But for the
aid of astronomy, which tells us that the sun is still in its old place,
we might be tempted to believe that it had gone out of town for the long
vacation; or that it had been adjourned by some continental
constitutional government; or that it was being kept in a German
capital, waiting for the birthday of the reigning prince, when it must
come out in a blaze; for this, I understand, has been the sun's duty
from time immemorial. A three weeks' absence of the sun would make a
great stir in any other town. The Catholics would trace its cause to the
infidelity of the age; the Protestants would demonstrate that the sun
had been scared away by certain late acts of Papal aggression; and the
Jews would lament and ask: "How is it possible the sun can shine when
the Bank raises its rate of discount?" But the Londoners care as little
for a month of _chiaro-oscuro_ as the Laplanders do. They are used to
it.
Twice in the course of the last week--for an essayist on astronomical
matters ought to be conscientious--twice did the sun appear for a few
minutes. It was late in the afternoon, and it looked out from the west,
just above Regent's-park, where the largest menagerie in the world may
be seen for one shilling, and, on Mondays, for sixpence. All the
animals, from the hippopotamus down to the beaver, left their huts,
where they were at vespers, and stared at the sun, and wished it good
morning. It was a solemn moment! An impertinent monkey alone shaded his
eyes with his hands, and asked the sun where it came from, and whether
there was not some mistake somewhere? And the sun blushed and hid its
face beneath a big cloud. The monkey laughed and jeered, and the tigers
roared, and the turtle-doves said such conduct was shocking and
altogether ungentlemanly. The owl alone was happy, and said it was; for
it had been almost blind during the last five minutes; "and that," as he
said, "was a thing it had not been used to in London."
But whatever ill-natured remarks we and others may make on the London
sun, they apply only to the winter months. May and September shame us
into silence. In those months, the sun in London is as lovely, genial,
and--I must go the length of a trope--_sunny_ as anywhere in Germany;
with this difference only, that it is not so glowing--not so consistent.
In the country, too, it comes out in full, broad, and traditional glory.
Its favourite spots are in the South of England--Bristol, Bath,
Hastings, and the Isle of Wight. In those favored regions, the mild
breeze of summer blows even late in the year; the hedges and trees stand
resplendent with the freshness of their foliage; the meadows are green,
and lovely to behold; the butterflies hover over the blossoms of the
honeysuckle; the cedar from Lebanon grows there and thrives, and myrtles
and fuchsias, Hortensias and roses, and passion-flowers, surround the
charming villas on the sea-shore. Village churches are covered with ivy
up to the very roof; gigantic fern moves in the sea-breeze; the birds
sing in the branches of the wild laurel tree; cattle and sheep graze on
the downs; and grown-up persons and children bathe in the open sea,
while the German rivers are sending down their first shoals of ice, and
dense fogs welter in the streets of London.
Here is one of the vulgar errors and popular delusions of the Continent.
People confound the climate of London with the climate of England; they
talk of the isles of mist in the West of Europe. A very poetical idea
that, but as untrue as poetical. Many parts of these islands are as
clear and sunny as any of the inland countries of the Continent.
The winter-fogs of London are, indeed, awful. They surpass all
imagining; he who never saw them, can form no idea of what they are. He
who knows how powerfully they affect the minds and tempers of men, can
understand the prevalence of that national disease--the spleen. In a
fog, the air is hardly fit for breathing; it is grey-yellow, of a deep
orange, and even black; at the same time, it is moist, thick, full of
bad smells, and choking. The fog appears, now and then, slowly, like a
melodramatic ghost, and sometimes it sweeps over the town as the simoom
over the desert. At times, it is spread with equal density over the
whole of that ocean of houses on other occasions, it meets with some
invisible obstacle, and rolls itself into intensely dense masses, from
which the passengers come forth in the manner of the student who came
out of the cloud to astonish Dr. Faust. It is hardly necessary to
mention, that the fog is worst in those parts of the town which are near
the Thames.
When the sun has set in London (the curious in this respect, will do
well to consult the Almanack), and when the weather is tolerably clear,
the moon appears to govern the night. The moon is a more regular guest
in London than the sun; and the example of these celestial bodies is
followed by the great journals, the issue of the evening papers being
much more regular than that of the morning papers. The London moon is,
after all, not very different from the moon in Germany. It is quite as
pale and romantic; it is the confidant of lovesick maidens and
adventurous pickpockets.
Traveller from the Continent, enjoy the London moon with method and
reason! If heaven favored you by sending you into the street on a
beautiful, splendid, transparent, moonlit night, in which the shades of
Ossian and Mignon sit by the rivers or under the limetrees, while all
the poetry you smuggled from your native land awakes in your heart:
traveller, if such good fortune is yours, why, then, the best thing you
can do, is to go to the Italian opera, for the moonlit nights of this
country are as treacherous as its politics. They seem all calm and
peaceful; but they are rife with colds and ague. They are most
beautiful, but also most dangerous. Every Englishman will tell you as
much, and advise you to increase your stock of flannel in proportion to
the beauty of the night.
Most regular and reliable is a third medium for the lighting-up of
London--the gas. The sun and moon may be behind their time, but the gas
is always at its post. And in winter, it happens sometimes that it does
service all day long. Its only drawback is, that it cannot be had
gratis, like the light from the sun, moon, and stars; but the same
inconveniences attend the gas on the Continent, and after all, it is
cheaper in England than anywhere else. The Germans are mere tyros in the
consumption of gas. The stairs of every decent London house, have
generally quite as much light as a German shop, and the London shops
are more strongly lighted up than the German theatres. Butchers, and
such-like tradesmen, especially in the smaller streets, burn the gas
from one-inch tubes, that John Bull, in purchasing his piece of mutton
or beef, may see each vein, each sinew, and each lump of fat. The
smaller streets and the markets, are literally inundated with gaslight
especially on Saturday evenings. No city on the Continent offers such a
sight. In the apothecary's shops, the light is placed at the back of
gigantic glass bottles, filled with coloured liquid, so that from a
distance you see it in the most magnificent colour. The arrangement is
convenient for those who are in search of such a shop, and it gives the
long and broad streets of London a strange and picturesque appearance.
We have said so much of the climate, that it is high time to add a few
words about its results. What then are the effects of the London
winters, of the gloomy foggy days, the cold rainy nights, and of the
changeable English weather? The Continent knows those results partly
from hearsay. They manifest themselves in the character, in the ways,
the dress, and the social arrangements of the English.
The British isles rear a strong healthy race of men and women, beyond
any other country in Europe. The lower classes have muscles and sinews
which enable them to rival their cattle in feats of strength. The women
are stately and tall; the children full of rosy health. The middle
classes live better, though on an average less luxuriously than the
corresponding classes on the continent. Their food is strong and
nourishing; it is at once converted into flesh and blood. The British
farmers are specimens of human mammoths, however grievously they may
complain of their distress since the abolition of the duty on corn. The
nobility and gentry pass a considerable part of the year at their
country seats. They hunt, fish, and shoot, to the manifest advantage of
their health. The very children, mounted on shaggy ponies, take long
rides; so do the women, who even now and then follow the hounds. They go
out in yachts on the stormy channel and extend their excursions to the
coasts of Italy and the West Indian islands. But in despite of this mode
of life, which is conducive to health, they pay their tribute to the
moist atmosphere of their island, and they all--men, women, and
children--submit to pass their lives in flannel wrappers.
"We want," says Sir John, "to be independent of the changes of the
weather; and we isolate our bodies by means of suitable articles of
dress. We wear flannel, cottons, india-rubber, and gutta percha; we
drink cognac, port, stout; we eat strong meats with strong spices. We
never pretend that the climate is to suit us; we suit ourselves to the
climate. The Continentals act on a different principle, and say they
like the result. We like the result of our own principle, and that's the
reason why we stick to it."
Flannels in summer and in winter, in Glasgow and in Jamaica; this is one
of the ten commandments which few Englishmen care to transgress. But
their conservative tendencies which cause them to cling to the habits in
which they were reared, lead them into the absurdity of adhering to an
English mode of life even when fate or trade have flung them to the
furthermost corners of the earth. I understand that English
drawing-rooms at Gibraltar are as carefully carpeted as the
drawing-rooms of London and Edinburgh. The British drink their port and
sherry under the torrid zone; their porter and stout follow them to the
foot of the Himalaya. And they do all this, not because they cannot be
comfortable without their old habits; but because they protest and
devoutly believe, that in all the various climates the English mode of
living is most conducive to health.
The proper cultivation of the body is a matter of great importance in
England. A French labourer is happy with the most frugal dinner, if, in
the evening, he can but afford to take a place and laugh or weep at a
vaudeville theatre. The Englishman wants meat, good meat, and plenty of
it. The lower classes care little or nothing for "the feast of the
soul." John Bull laughs at the starvelings, the French frog-eaters. He
has no idea that the French _ouvrier_ is, after all, a more civilised
creature than he is, exactly because to the Frenchman his Sunday dinner
is not, as is the case with the lower classes of the English, the most
important part of the Sunday.
These material tendencies are, of course, fostered by education and
society. Originally they result from the climate. The frugality of the
Paris _ouvrier_ could not, for any length of time, resist the
stomach-inspiriting effect of a fresh sea-breeze.
"A beautiful morning, Sir." "A splendid day, Sir." Such-like phrases are
stereotyped formulas for the proper commencement of an acquaintanceship.
The English are so accustomed to these meteorological remarks, and these
remarks appear so important (because everybody and everything here
depends upon the weather), that they rarely, if ever, neglect making
them.
"Very pleasant weather, Sir;" or, "Very wet to-day," mutters the cabman
as he shuts the door upon you. The same remarks greet you from the lips
of the omnibus-driver as you take your seat at his side, or from those
of the shopwoman, as a preliminary to that awful "Any other article,
Sir?" And the words are always pronounced in that grave, monotonous,
business tone which is peculiar to the English even in treating of the
most important subjects. It may be sunshine or rain, the tone is always
the same. And it has been surmised, that the English residents on the
continent are such egregious bores and bears only because the greater
constancy of the weather deprives them of those magic formulas, without
which they cannot open their minds. How, indeed, is it possible to make
the acquaintance of any one unless there is rain, storm, fog, and
sunshine at least twice in the course of the four and twenty hours?
CHAP. IX.
The City Capitol.
THE LORD MAYOR'S RETREAT.--THE NINTH OF NOVEMBER.--CITY
PROCESSIONS.--"THE TIMES" AND THE CITY.--THE STOCK EXCHANGE.--A
PIECE OF SELF-GOVERNMENT.--LLOYD'S.--RETURN TO SIR JOHN, AND SOME
OF THE OPINIONS OF THAT WORTHY.
Our road to-day lies to the east. Seated on the roof of an omnibus, we
ride down the Strand, through Temple-bar and Fleet-street, and pass St.
Paul's. The road and the pavements are crowded in the extreme; the din
is deafening; but the shrill voices of the costermongers in the
side-streets are heard even above the thunders of the City.
We stop for one moment at the foot of Ludgate-hill, and look back. We
see part of Fleet-street, and as far as our eyes can reach, there is
nothing but a dark, confused, quickly-moving mass of men, horses, and
vehicles; not a yard of the pavement is to be seen--nothing but heads
along the rows of houses, and in the road, too, an ocean of heads, the
property of gentlemen on the roofs of omnibuses, which crowd the City
more than any other part of the town.
These are the streets whose excess of traffic makes the strongest
impression upon the stranger; and this part of London is moreover
specially dear to the historian. We, too, propose to take our time with
it and to walk through it leisurely. But to-day we are bound farther
eastward. We shall leave the omnibus at the further end of Cheapside.
In the heart of the City, less than half a mile from the Thames and
London-bridge, various streets meeting form an irregular open place.
This irregular place is one of the most remarkable spots in London. For
no other place, except that of Westminster, can vie with this in the
importance of its buildings and the crowding of its streets, though
many may surpass it in extent, beauty, and architectural regularity. It
is the Capitoline Forum of British Rome; it holds its temples, the
Mansion-house, the Exchange and the Bank. In the centre, the equestrian
statue of the saviour of the capitol--the Duke of Wellington. All round
are islands of pavements, as in other parts of the town, for the
foot-passengers to retire to from the maelstrom of vehicles.
At our right, just as we come out of Cheapside, is a house supported by
columns and surrounded with strong massive railings. Two flights of
stone steps lead to the upper story; massive stone pillars surrounded by
gas-lamps stand in a row in front of it, but neither the gas nor the
clearest noonday sun suffices to bring out the allegorical carvings
which ornament the roof. This is the Mansion-house; the official
residence of the Lord Mayor, who here holds his court, as if his was one
of the crowned heads.
Here he lives. Here are the halls in which the most luxurious dinners of
modern times are given; here are his offices and courts of justice,
according to the ancient rights and privileges of the City of London.
Every year the Lord Mayor elect enters upon the functions of his office
on the ninth of November. The City crowns its king with mediæval
ceremonies. The shops are shut at an early hour and many do not open at
all; for masters and servants must see the "show." For many hours the
City is closed against all vehicles; flags and streamers are hung out
from the houses; the pavement is covered with gravel; holiday faces
everywhere; amiable street-boys at every corner bearing flags; brass
bands and confusion and endless cheers! Such is the grave, demure, and
busy City on that remarkable day.
While the streets are every moment becoming more crowded and noisy, the
new Lord Mayor takes the customary oaths in the presence of the Court of
Aldermen, and signs a security to the amount of £4000 for the City
plate, which, according to a moderate computation, has a value of at
least £20,000.
This done, he is Lord and King of the City, and sets out upon his
coronation procession, surrounded by his lieges and accompanied by the
ex-Mayor, the Aldermen, Sheriffs, the dignitaries of his guild, the
city heralds, trumpeters, men in brass armour, and other thrones,
principalities, and powers. The road which the Lord Mayor is to take is
not prescribed by law; but according to an old custom, the procession
must pass through that particular ward in which the K
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