LONDON
When the train drew up at Charing Cross platform, we hastened to collect
our belongings for there was nobody to help us down with our luggage,
and we had to find our way alone to Charing Cross Hotel loaded with our
hand-bags. We were accosted on our way by a little hunch-backed man
who pushed up to us on the crowded platform, a real ant’s nest, and
offered in very good Russian his services as guide, proposing to show
us the principal sights of London. He must know foreigners by heart to
have guessed our nationality at first sight. We turned deaf ears to
his importunities, fearing that miserable Æsop to be a pickpocket, but
he continued to trot steadily behind us and repeated: “Can I be of any
assistance.”
“Thank you,” we replied, “None is needed,” and we entered the hotel. The
porter handed over the number of our room to us which proved to be No.
575, then we found ourselves in the lift en route for the fifth floor.
As soon as we had repaired somehow, the ravages of sea and train, we
went out to saunter through London. When we emerged from the gates of
the hotel we again met Mr. Punch, our humpbacked pursuer, and this time
we yielded to his assertions that without his aid we should be lost in
the immense Metropolis, which he had at his finger ends, and arranged
a meeting for the next day at the “Café Gatti” for ten o’clock in the
morning. It appears that our guide is a Pole by birth, who had to leave
Russia for political reasons after the rising in Poland, and has been
settled in London for the last thirty years. This exile must be very
trying in his old age. An intense compassion sprang up in my heart for
the lonely old Pole, dismissed abroad to end his days, a friendless
stranger in a foreign land.
Next morning our guide awaited us at our rendezvous at the appointed
hour. We explored London thoroughly, crossing it from beginning to end
with the underground railway and other conveyances. It was mid-summer,
the season for London; in the streets it is all haste and crowding,
thousands and thousands of people all hurrying to some place or other.
Especially the crossing of the London Bridge, ploughed in all directions
by omnibuses, cabs and private carriages, all tearing this way and that,
made my head swim. We both drove and walked a good deal. The streets are
very dangerous to cross; our old guide went before us, bent in two, one
hand behind his back holding a stick. He was not very reassuring and said
that in London, according to statistics, about a dozen persons were run
over in the streets by carriages every day. In the City, the business
part of the town, the heavy market waggons drawn by great powerful
cart-horses especially attracted my attention.
We did a great deal of sight-seeing that day. We began with the
Kensington Museum where we saw, amongst the many treasures which the
museum contains, the first engine constructed by Stephenson, named by
him “The Rocket.” On leaving the museum we were privileged to see one
of the most interesting sights of London, the Houses of Parliament, on
the roof of which a lamp, the symbol of watchfulness and vigilance, is
burning continually. On our way from there to Madame Tussaud’s wax-figure
show, we passed the noseless statue of Queen Anne. This damage was done
by a hooligan who, profiting by the fog, climbed up the statue with the
intention of mutilating it, but he had only time to cut off the nose when
the fog cleared away suddenly and the miscreant was laid hold of.
In the main hall of Madame Tussaud’s Museum an orchestra was playing.
Amongst the many wax-figures we saw groups of Royalties in the robes
and jewels of other times. We were in the company of all the remarkable
old Kings and Queens of England and France. We stopped before William
the Conqueror, asking Matilda of Flanders to sit down, and Richard Cœur
de Lion in domestic argument with sweet Berengaria, whom Madame Tussaud
describes in the catalogue as a “Fair flower of Navarre.” Feeling thirsty
we entered a bar-room, where we took a sherbet. The waitresses who served
there were negligently dressed, with their fringes kept in curling-pins.
Their reign only begins at night, when they put on their best attire and
try to make themselves irresistible to their customers.
Still indefatigable, we went to visit Westminster Abbey, and saw the
hall in the Temple where Shakespeare played before Queen Elizabeth.
After that we had a stand up sixpenny lunch in a small and rather shabby
establishment, which consisted of one room only, where a white-aproned
cook fried mutton-chops served to us on a marble table on which
table-cloth and serviettes were conspicuous by their absence.
After lunch we went again strolling about and left ourselves just time
for a turn in Hyde Park before dinner. I begged for a four-wheeler
instead of taking a hansom to drive there, dreading that sort of
conveyance.
We were desperately hungry by this time and certainly we earned our
dinner that day, which we took at “Monico’s,” a famous restaurant not
only for the quality of the menu, but also for that of the guests. We
ended our evening in a music-hall, and came back to the hotel after
midnight to enjoy a well earned rest.
The following morning we ran down by train to the Crystal Palace where a
great festival was given by the Temperance Society. This palace is used
now for popular meetings, concerts, theatres, flower-shows, bazaars,
etc. We entered a hall of enormous proportions where we found a monster
musical gathering of some five thousand singers. A room was shown to
us especially assigned for strayed children who had lost themselves in
the crowd. In our presence a policeman brought there a small boy who
was shouting desperately, “I want mother!” There was great animation in
the extensive grounds all round. A dinner _gratis_ was offered to the
visitors, who belonged for the most part to the middle classes. They ate
their meal under the trees, and the grass was all strewn with egg-shells
and scraps of paper. As drink only beer was allowed. Two military
schools, with their bands at the head, defiled before us.
The pleasure-train which brought us back to London was taken by assault.
We ran from end to end of the long train in search of seats nowhere to be
found, until at last we were literally hurled into a crowded compartment
in which I squeezed myself between two fat ladies, taking up as little
room as I could. Though we were returning from a temperance festival,
there was a tipsy woman drunk with beer in the next car, who was leaning
out of the window shouting bacchanal songs in a voice thick with drink.
We left London on the following morning. Our old Pole exhorted us to
prolong our stay for another day, but we had no more time, and he saw us
off at Victoria station. The mail train that was taking us back to France
conveyed us swiftly to Newhaven from where we crossed by the ordinary
steamer to Dieppe.
The train stopped close to the landing-place. The sea looked horrible
from the pier, the wind was blowing strongly and black clouds hung over
the sea. The prospect of crossing the channel in such weather was not
enticing, and we were inclined to turn back to London, but it would be a
shame to be so chicken-hearted, and braving sea-sickness we decided to go
on.
We had hardly left the harbour when the steamer began to bounce and to
pick its way from one wave to another, giving us the impression of a
swing. I proved to be a miserable sailor and went below at once and put
myself into the hands of the stewardess, who quickly placed a basin under
my very nose. I lay prostrate on a sofa in the ladies’ saloon; my head
was very bad and everything went round. What miserable creatures all my
cabin companions were! woefully sick all of them. Sergy, much less liable
to sea-sickness, remained on deck all the time. He came to see how I was
and said I had better come up on deck, but I was too deadly ill even to
answer him.
It took us six hours to get to Dieppe. We looked ghostly when we landed
on the pier, where a large crowd had assembled to see the passengers
fresh from a rough channel passage. I was so happy to be on dry land. I
would rather die than endure another half hour of sickness. We saw on the
pier Mme. Kethoudoff, one of our Moscow friends, a French lady married
to an Armenian. That couple was compelled to strictly fulfil the French
proverb, _La parole est d’argent et le silence est d’or_, (speech is
silver and silence is gold) as Mr. Kethoudoff does not speak a word of
French, and his spouse completely ignores the Armenian language. Mme.
Kethoudoff had settled at Dieppe for good. She received us with open arms
when we stepped on shore, and carried us away to her own house, situated
on the “Quai des Écluses.”
I had not yet recovered from our rough passage and felt all the time
as if the ground tottered under me. I tried not to think about the
treacherous sea but couldn’t, for the ocean was there, just in front of
our windows, in all its vastness.
Mme. Kethoudoff had at dinner that day the _Vicaire du Pollet_, a rosy
and plump curate. This gossip-loving priest was a great favourite among
his lady parishioners, to whom he was very fond of confiding little bits
of scandal.
We took our after-dinner coffee on the balcony and saw the swing bridge
giving passage to a Spanish vessel which was leaving the harbour. At
nine o’clock in the evening a retreat was sounded from the neighbouring
barracks. At the first beat of the drum the soldiers hastened up to their
quarters from all parts of the town.
In spite of Mme. Kethoudoff’s hospitality, we moved that same night to
the Hôtel des Étrangers, where we shall feel ourselves more at home and
independent.
I lay in bed late next morning. After breakfast we went for a walk on
the beach; the weather was rainy and the sea uniformly grey, nothing but
furious waves around us. The monotony of this sea-shore unnerved me. We
shall probably not make a long stay here. Neither is the bathing very
agreeable at Dieppe; it only takes place at the hours of low water, and
the bottom of the sea is so rough and stony that the bathers are obliged
to put on sandals with very thick soles.
The rain having stopped in the afternoon, we drove to “Puits,” a small
place consisting of lovely villas. Our driver, who was very talkative,
gave us the pedigree of all of them. The prettiest villa belongs to
Alexandre Dumas Fils, who is residing here at the present moment.
The next day was the eve of the National Festival of the French Republic.
There was a “Retraite aux Flambeaux” (a torch retreat) in the evening.
The soldiers began to beat the tattoo and marched through the crowded
streets holding lighted torches in their hands. They were preceded by
a military band and a body of fire-men. The whole town had a holiday
air about it. The carriages being stopped that day, the middle of the
streets was occupied by groups of women wearing their best clothes, who
promenaded to and fro, coquetting with their young men arrayed in blue
blouses.
Very early next morning the maid came to knock at our door begging us not
to shut our windows as the cannon was going to be fired. It appears that
the proprietor of the hotel was afraid our windows would fly to pieces,
although the cannon had been placed at a great distance and there could
be no danger whatever that such a thing should happen. Guns must surely
be very rarely fired at Dieppe to procure such a panic.
The greater part of the inhabitants of Dieppe are anti-republicans, and
the Mayor of the Town had to go himself to the “Vicaire du Pollet” to beg
him to hoist the Republican flag over his house.
At nine o’clock there was a review of all the troops quartered at Dieppe,
consisting mainly of a battery of infantry, on the large square before
the hotel. I threw on my morning-wrapper, and in slippers, my hair
hanging loose, I made my way to the next room which was free at that
moment, and the windows of which looked out into the square. I was busy
critically observing the military evolutions when suddenly there was a
sound of footsteps, the door opened behind me and an elegant couple was
ushered into the room by the manager, who was going to let it to them.
The pair surveyed me quizzically whilst I fled hastily, ashamed to be
caught thus.
After lunch we went to see the games and all sorts of public amusements
on the square: rocking-horses, targets, foot-runs and what not! A slight
railing divided the fashionable world from the world that works, only the
local aristocracy, ultra-provincial I must say, was admitted within the
enclosure. The prizes for the most part consisted of different foods.
The crowd gathered around the chief attraction, a climbing post with
a gigantic leg of mutton at the top of it. The native lads could not
succeed in reaching it; taking toss after toss they slipped from the pole
to the ecstatic joy of the onlookers. At last a young fellow had nearly
attained the tempting prize, but he could not keep up on the pole and
fell to the ground weakened by the strain of his position, without his
leg of mutton. We stopped before a stall with brass medals bearing the
inscription _Vive la France!_ When I asked if there were any medals with
_Vive la République_ the woman who sold them answered in a voice full of
indignation that she did not keep such horrors.
For some days the bad weather kept us indoors, it came on to rain as if
it never meant to stop. Warmly wrapped up in a shawl I passed many dull
hours lolling rather disconsolately in an easy chair, listening to the
monotonous song of the wind in the chimney—a lively way to pass the time!
We were growing very weary of Dieppe; I am absolutely sick of the place,
and the best thing we can do is to pack up and go. As there was nothing
to keep us here we decided, one wet, gloomy afternoon, to fling Dieppe to
the winds and start for Paris, thence to travel right out to Switzerland.