LONDON

I am too good a countryman to feel much at home in cities, and usually

value them only as conveniences, but for London I conceived quite an

affection; perhaps because it is so much like a natural formation

itself, and strikes less loudly, or perhaps sharply, upon the senses

than our great cities do. It is a forest of brick and stone of the most

stupendous dimensions, and one traverses it in the same adventurous

kind of way that he does woods and mountains. The maze and tangle of

streets is something fearful, and any generalization of them a step not

to be hastily taken. My experience heretofore had been that cities

generally were fractions that could be greatly reduced, but London I

found I could not simplify, and every morning for weeks, when I came

out of my hotel, it was a question whether my course lay in this, or in

exactly the opposite direction. It has no unit of structure, but is a

vast aggregation of streets and houses, or in fact of towns and cities,

which have to be mastered in detail. I tried the third or fourth day to

get a bird's-eye view from the top of St. Paul's, but saw through the

rifts in the smoke only a waste,--literally a waste of red tiles and

chimney pots. The confusion and desolation were complete.

But I finally mastered the city, in a measure, by the aid of a shilling

map, which I carried with me wherever I went, and upon which, when I

was lost, I would hunt myself up, thus making in the end a very

suggestive and entertaining map. Indeed, every inch of this piece of

colored paper is alive to me. If I did not make the map itself, I at

least verified it, which is nearly as good, and the verification, on

street corner by day and under lamp or by shop window at night, was

often a matter of so much concern that I doubt if the original surveyor

himself put more heart into certain parts of his work than I did in the

proof of them.

London has less metropolitan splendor than New York, and less of the

full-blown pride of the shopman. Its stores are not nearly so big, and

it has no signboards that contain over one thousand feet of lumber;

neither did I see any names painted on the gable ends of the buildings

that the man in the moon could read without his opera-glass. I went out

one day to look up one of the great, publishing houses, and passed it

and repassed it several times trying to find the sign. Finally, having

made sure of the building, I found the name of the firm cut into the

door jamb.

London seems to have been built and peopled by countrymen, who have

preserved all the rural reminiscences possible. All its great streets

or avenues are called roads, as King's Road, City Road, Edgware Road,

Tottenham Court Road, with innumerable lesser roads. Then there are

lanes and walks, and such rural names among the streets as Long Acre,

Snowhill, Poultry, Bush-lane, Hill-road, Houndsditch, and not one grand

street or imperial avenue.

My visit fell at a most favorable juncture as to weather, there being

but few rainy days and but little fog. I had imagined that they had

barely enough fair weather in London, at any season, to keep alive the

tradition of sunshine and of blue sky, but the October days I spent

there were not so very far behind what we have at home at this season.

London often puts on a nightcap of smoke and fog, which it pulls down

over its ears pretty close at times; and the sun has a habit of lying

abed very late in the morning, which all the people imitate; but I

remember some very pleasant weather there, and some bright moonlight

nights.

I saw but one full-blown characteristic London fog. I was in the

National Gallery one day, trying to make up my mind about Turner, when

this chimney-pot meteor came down. It was like a great yellow dog

taking possession of the world. The light faded from the room, the

pictures ran together in confused masses of shadow on the walls, and in

the street only a dim yellowish twilight prevailed, through which

faintly twinkled the lights in the shop windows. Vehicles came slowly

out of the dirty obscurity on one side and plunged into it on the

other. Waterloo Bridge gave one or two leaps and disappeared, and the

Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square was obliterated for half its length.

Travel was impeded, boats stopped on the river, trains stood still on

the track, and for an hour and a half London lay buried beneath this

sickening eruption. I say eruption, because a London fog is only a

London smoke tempered by a moist atmosphere. It is called "fog" by

courtesy, but lampblack is its chief ingredient. It is not wet like our

fogs, but quite dry, and makes the eyes smart and the nose tingle.

Whenever the sun can be seen through it, his face is red and dirty;

seen through a bona fide fog, his face is clean and white. English

coal--or "coals," as they say here--in burning gives out an enormous

quantity of thick, yellowish smoke, which is at no time absorbed or

dissipated as it would be in our hard, dry atmosphere, and which at

certain times is not absorbed at all, but falls down swollen and

augmented by the prevailing moisture. The atmosphere of the whole

island is more or less impregnated with smoke, even on the fairest

days, and it becomes more and more dense as you approach the great

towns. Yet this compound of smut, fog, and common air is an elixir of

youth; and this is one of the surprises of London, to see amid so much

soot and dinginess such fresh, blooming complexions, and in general

such a fine physical tone and full-bloodedness among the people,--such

as one has come to associate only with the best air and the purest,

wholesomest country influences. What the secret of it may be, I am at a

loss to know, unless it is that the moist atmosphere does not dry up

the blood as our air does, and that the carbon and creosote have some

rare antiseptic and preservative qualities, as doubtless they have,

that are efficacious in the human physiology. It is no doubt true,

also, that the people do not tan in this climate, as in ours, and that

the delicate flesh tints show more on that account.

I speak thus of these things with reference to our standards at home,

because I found that these standards were ever present in my mind, and

that I was unconsciously applying them to whatever I saw and wherever I

went, and often, as I shall have occasion to show, to their discredit.

Climate is a great matter, and no doubt many of the differences between

the English stock at home and its offshoot in our country are traceable

to this source. Our climate is more heady and less stomachic than the

English; sharpens the wit, but dries up the fluids and viscera; favors

an irregular, nervous energy, but exhausts the animal spirits. It is,

perhaps, on this account that I have felt since my return how much

easier it is to be a dyspeptic here than in Great Britain. One's

appetite is keener and more ravenous, and the temptation to bolt one's

food greater. The American is not so hearty an eater as the Englishman,

but the forces of his body are constantly leaving his stomach in the

lurch, and running off into his hands and feet and head. His eyes are

bigger than his belly, but an Englishman's belly is a deal bigger than

his eyes, and the number of plum puddings and the amount of Welsh

rarebit he devours annually would send the best of us to his grave in

half that time. We have not enough constitutional inertia and

stolidity; our climate gives us no rest, but goads us day and night;

and the consequent wear and tear of life is no doubt greater in this

country than in any other on the globe. We are playing the game more

rapidly, and I fear less thoroughly and sincerely, than the mother

country.

The more uniform good health of English women is thought to be a matter

of exercise in the open air, as walking, riding, driving, but the prime

reason is mainly a climatic one, uniform habits of exercise being more

easily kept up in that climate than in this, and being less exhaustive,

one day with another. You can walk there every day in the year without

much discomfort, and the stimulus is about the same. Here it is too hot

in summer and too cold in winter, or else it keys you up too tight one

day and unstrings you the next; all fire and motion in the morning, and

all listlessness and ennui in the afternoon; a spur one hour and a

sedative the next.

A watch will not keep as steady time here as in Britain, and the human

clock-work is more liable to get out of repair for the same reason. Our

women, especially, break down prematurely, and the decay of maternity

in this country is no doubt greater than in any of the oldest civilized

communities. One reason, doubtless, is that our women are the greatest

slaves of fashion in the whole world, and, in following the whims of

that famous courtesan, have the most fickle and destructive climate to

contend with.

English women all have good-sized feet, and Englishmen, too, and wear

large, comfortable shoes. This was a noticeable feature at once:

coarse, loosefitting clothes of both sexes, and large boots and shoes

with low heels. They evidently knew the use of their feet, and had none

of the French, or American, or Chinese fastidiousness about this part

of their anatomy. I notice that, when a family begins to run out, it

turns out its toes, drops off at the heel, shortens its jaw, and dotes

on small feet and hands.

Another promoter of health in England is woolen clothes, which are worn

the year round, the summer driving people into no such extremities as

here. And the good, honest woolen stuffs of one kind and another that

fill the shops attest the need and the taste that prevail. They had a

garment when I was in London called the Ulster overcoat,--a coarse,

shaggy, bungling coat, with a skirt reaching nearly to the feet, very

ugly, tried by the fashion plates, but very comfortable, and quite the

fashion. This very sensible garment has since become well known in

America.

The Americans in London were put out with the tailors, and could rarely

get suited, on account of the loose cutting and the want of "style."

But "style" is the hiatus that threatens to swallow us all one of these

days. About the only monstrosity I saw in the British man's dress was

the stove-pipe hat, which everybody wears. At first I feared it might

be a police regulation, or a requirement of the British Constitution,

for I seemed to be about the only man in the kingdom with a soft hat

on, and I had noticed that before leaving the steamer every man brought

out from its hiding-place one of these polished brain-squeezers. Even

the boys wear them,--youths of nine and ten years with little stovepipe

hats on; and at Eton School I saw black swarms of them: even the boys

in the field were playing football in stove-pipe bats.

What we call beauty in woman is so much a matter of youth and health

that the average of female beauty in London is, I believe, higher than

in this country. English women are comely and good-looking. It is an

extremely fresh and pleasant face that you see everywhere,--softer,

less clearly and sharply cut than the typical female face in this

country,--less spirituelle, less perfect in form, but stronger and

sweeter. There is more blood, and heart, and substance back of it. The

American race of the present generation is doubtless the most shapely,

both in face and figure, that has yet appeared. American children are

far less crude, and lumpy, and awkward-looking than the European

children. One generation in this country suffices vastly to improve the

looks of the offspring of the Irish or German or Norwegian emigrant.

There is surely something in our climate or conditions that speedily

refines and sharpens--and, shall I add, hardens?--the human features.

The face loses something, but it comes into shape; and of such beauty

as is the product of this tendency we can undoubtedly show more,

especially in our women, than the parent stock in Europe; while

American schoolgirls, I believe, have the most bewitching beauty in the

world.

The English plainness of speech is observable even in the signs or

notices along the streets. Instead of "Lodging," "Lodging," as with us,

one sees "Beds," "Beds," which has a very homely sound; and in place of

"gentlemen's" this, that, or the other, about public places, the word

"men's" is used.

I suppose, if it were not for the bond of a written language and

perpetual intercourse, the two nations would not be able to understand

each other in the course of a hundred years, the inflection and

accentuation are so different. I recently heard an English lady say,

referring to the American speech, that she could hardly believe her own

language could be spoken so strangely.