THE FIRST OF ENGLAND.—THE STREETS.—A RAILWAY STATION.—THE DOCKS AT
NIGHT.—PROSTITUTES.—TEMPERANCE.—THE STILL LIFE OF LIVERPOOL.
—A MARKET.
At the head of the gang-plank stood a policeman, easily recognised and
familiar, thanks to Punch, who politely helped us to land, thus giving
us immediate occasion to thank the government for its hospitality, and
its regard for our safety and convenience. It was a real pleasure to
stamp upon the neat, firm, solid mason-work of the dock, and we could
not but be mindful of the shabby log-wharves we had stumbled over as
we left New York. We were immediately beset by porters, not rudely,
but with serious, anxious deference and care to keep a way open before
us. I was assisting a lady, and carried her bag; a man followed me
pertinaciously. “I tell you I have no baggage,” said I. “But, sir, this
bag?” “Oh, I can carry that.” “Excuse me, sir; you must not, indeed;
_gentlemen_ never does so in _this country_.” After handing the lady
into a hackney-coach, we walked on. The landing-place was spacious, not
encumbered with small buildings or piles of freight, and though there
was a little rain falling, there was a smooth, clean stone pavement,
free from mud, to walk upon. There was a slight smell of bituminous
smoke in the air, not disagreeable, but, to me, highly pleasant. I
snuffed it as if passing a field of new-mown hay—snuffed and pondered,
and at last was brought to my mind the happy fireside of the friend,
in the indistinct memory of which this peculiar odour of English coal
had been gratefully associated.
[Sidenote: _LIVERPOOL.—RAILWAY STATION._]
Coming on shore with no luggage or any particular business to engage
our attention, we plunged adventurously into the confused tide of
life with which the busy streets were thronged, careless whither it
floated us. Emerging from the crowd of porters, hackmen, policemen, and
ragged Irish men and women on the dock, we entered the first street
that opened before us. On the corner stood a church—not un-American
in its appearance—and we passed without stopping to the next corner,
where we paused to look at the dray-horses, immensely heavy and in
elegant condition, fat and glossy, and docile and animated in their
expression. They were harnessed, generally, in couples, one before
another, to great, strong, low-hung carts, heavy enough alone to be
a load for one of our cartmen’s light horses. Catching the bustling
spirit of the crowd, we walked on at a quick pace, looking at the
faces of the men we met more than any thing else, until we came to a
wall of hewn drab stone, some fifteen feet high, with a handsomely
cut balustrade at the top. There was a large gateway in it, from
which a policeman was driving away some children. People were going
in and out, and we followed in to see what it was. Up stairs, we
found ourselves on a broad terrace, with a handsome building, in
Tuscan style, fronting upon it. Another policeman here informed us
that it was a railway station. The door was opened as we approached
it by a man in a simple uniform, who asked us where we were going.
We answered that we merely wished to look at the building. “Walk in,
gentlemen; you will best take the right-hand platform, and return by
the other.” A train was backing in; a man in the same uniform stood
in the rear car, and moved his hand round as if turning an imaginary
driving-wheel, the engine at the other end being governed by his
motions:—forward—slower—slower—faster—slower—stop—back. The train
stopped, the doors were unlocked by men in a more brilliant uniform,
and there was a great rush of passengers to secure good seats. Women
with bundles and band-boxes were shoved this way and that, as they
struggled to hoist themselves into the doors; their parcels were
knocked out of their hands, porters picked them up and threw them in,
reckless where. So bewildered and flustered did they all seem to be,
that we could not refrain from trying to assist them. There was nothing
in the plan or fittings of the building that needs remark, and we soon
returned to the terrace, where we remained some time observing the
peculiarities of the houses and the people passing in the vicinity.
Going into the street again we wandered on till it was quite dark,
with no other object but to get a general impression of the character
of the town. We looked into a few houses where we saw a sign of “Clean
and well-aired beds,” and found that we should have no difficulty in
getting comfortable lodgings at a very moderate price. From nine until
twelve we were waiting at the dock for the ship to haul in, or trying
in vain to get a boat to go on board of her. There were many vessels
laying near the great gates, all standing by, when they should be
opened at high-water, to be hauled in.
[Sidenote: _PROSTITUTES.—SAILORS._]
The broad promenade outside the dock walls was occupied by the
police, stevedores, watermen, boarding-house keepers, and a crowd of
women, waiting to help in the ships or to receive their crews when
the tide should have risen enough to admit them. I was surprised at
the quietness and decency of these “sailors’ wives,” as they called
themselves; they were plainly and generally neatly dressed, and talked
quietly and in kind tones to each other, and I heard no loud profanity
or ribaldry at all. Whether this was owing to the presence of the
police I cannot say, but I am sure it would be impossible to find,
in America, vice, shame, and misery so entirely unassociated with
drunkenness or excitement and riot. They were not as young as girls of
the same sort in the streets of New York, and in the strong gas-light
their faces seemed expressive of a quite different character; generally
they were pensive and sad, but not ill-natured or stupid. It occurred
to me that their degradation must have been reached in a different way,
and had not brought with it that outcasting from all good which they
would suffer with us. As they stood, companioned together with each
other, but friendless, some with not even hats to protect them from the
rain, others, with their gowns drawn up over their head, and others,
two together, under a scanty shawl, it would have been difficult, I
thought, for a woman, who is always found most unforgiving of her
sister’s sin, not to have been softened towards those abandoned thus
to seek support of life that night. We could not but think the kind
words with which the sailors recognised and greeted them, as the ships
hauled near, were as much dictated by pity and sympathy as by any worse
impulses. They said, “If nobody else cares for you, we do.” If nobody
else is waiting to welcome us, we know that you will be glad that
we are coming to the land once more, so, cheer up, and we will help
each other again to enjoy a short space of jollity, excitement, and
forgetfulness.
There is a benevolent enterprise on foot here for shipping these
victims of frailty by wholesale to Australia. A strange way, it seems,
to think of peopling a new Anglo-Saxon world; but who is prouder of
his ancestry than your Virginian, whose colony, it is thought, was
originally furnished in much the same way with mothers? The fact that
the project is favoured by intelligent, practical, religious men,
is gratifying, and the remarks they are reported as making in public
meetings on the subject, indicate a hopeful appreciation of the effect
of circumstances upon character.
Tired of waiting for the ship, and a good deal fatigued with our tramps
on the pavements, about half-past twelve we went back into the town,
and by the very obliging assistance of the policemen found lodgings in
a “Temperance Hotel,” still open at that late hour. We were a little
surprised to find a number of men in the coffee-room drinking beer
and smoking. The subject of their conversation was some project of an
association of working-men to combine their savings, and make more
profitable investment of them than could be made of the small amounts
of each separately. There were late newspapers on the table, and we sat
up some time longer to read them, but they were still at it, puffing
and drinking, and earnestly discussing how they could best use their
money, when we went up to bed. We had good beds in pleasant rooms for
which we paid twenty-five cents each.
The next morning we got our trunks from the ship, the custom-house
officers searching them before they left the dockyard. Books, letters,
and daguerreotypes were examined minutely, but the officers were very
civil and accommodating; so also were the cartmen that took them to the
inn for us. The expense of getting our luggage through the searching
office, and carting it a mile, was only twenty-five cents for each
trunk, and “tuppence for beer.”
We went to a small lodging-house that we had examined last night,
and found neat and comfortable, and kept by an agreeable woman. We
have a large front room, comfortably furnished, and down stairs is a
quiet parlor and dining-room. We breakfast in the house, and dine and
sup at eating shops. The whole cost of living so we make but about
seventy-five cents each a day. As good entertainment would cost more
than that in New York. We have made a few purchases of clothing, and
find every thing we want cheaper than in New York.
* * * * *
_Liverpool, Tuesday, 28th May._
[Sidenote: _COST OF LIVING.—BUILDING MATERIALS._]
The common building material here is a light, greyish-red brick. Stone
of different colours is used in about the same proportion that it is
in New York. The warehouses are generally higher than the same class
of buildings there, but the dwelling-houses lower, seldom over three
stories. The old houses, in narrow streets, are generally small, and
often picturesque from the carvings of time upon them, or from the
incongruous additions and improvements that have been made to them
at intervals. At the railway station we noticed such differences in
the windows of a two-story house near us, as these. There were two
below; one of these, being a shop front, was entirely modern, with
large panes of glass in light wooden sashes. The other was of small
panes, set in heavy wood-work, such as you see in our oldest houses.
One of the upper windows had small square panes set in lead; those of
the other were _lozenge_-shaped, and in neither were they more than
three inches wide. The frames were much wider than they were high, and
they opened sideways. In the newer part of the city, the fashionable
quarter, there are a good many brick-walled houses faced with _stucco_.
Others are of Bath stone, and these are not unfrequently _painted_ over
of the original colour of the stone. Bath stone, which is the most
common material of mason work, is a fine-grained freestone, very easy
to the chisel. It is furnished much cheaper than our brown stone, so
much so that there would be a chance of exporting it to America with
profit. There is a finer sort of it, called by the masons Caen stone,
which is brought from Normandy. The colour of both is at first buff,
but rapidly changes to a dark brown. There are some buildings of red
sandstone, of a little lighter colour than that now so much used in New
York. In buildings mainly of brick, stone is used more considerably
than with us; and there are none of those equivocating, sanded-wood
parapets, porticos, steps, &c.; all is the _real grit_. The bricks are
mottled, half red and half greyish yellow; the effect, at a little
distance, being as I said a yellow or greyish red, much pleasanter than
the bright red colour of our Eastern brick. Every thing out of doors
here soon gets _toned down_, as the artists say, by the smoke. Perhaps
it is partly on this account that pure white paint is never used; but
the prevailing taste is evidently for darker colours than with us. The
common hues of the furniture and fitting up of shops, for instance, is
nearly as dark as old mahogany. This gives even the dram-shops such a
rich, substantial look, that we can hardly recognise them as of the
same species as our tawdry “saloons,” that are so painted, gilded,
and bedizened to catch flies with their flare. There are no “oyster
cellars,” but oysters “raw and in the shell,” are exposed in stands
about the street, like those of our “hot corn,” and apple women. Liquor
shops, always with the ominous sign of “_Vaults_,” are very frequent,
and often splendid. The tea and coffee shops are among the richest in
the streets. The bakers’ fronts are also generally showy, and there
are a great many of them. It seems to be the general custom, for poor
families at least, to make their own bread, and send it in to them to
be baked. The first night we were ashore, we got some bread and butter,
and American cheese, at a baker’s, and saw in ten minutes a dozen
loaves called for. They had sheet-iron checks, with numbers on them,
which were given up on the presentation of a corresponding check, and,
for a loaf of ten or twelve pounds, a penny for baking—in the same way
that passengers’ baggage is checked on our railroads.
[Sidenote: _LIVERPOOL.—STREETS._]
Wood is used in the interior of houses more than I had imagined it
would be. Its cost is high. I inquired the price of what looked like
a common “Albany board,” such as I buy in New York for sixteen cents;
it was of the value of about thirty five cents. The kitchens, as far
as we have observed, are on the street floor, level with the living
apartments. Coarse pottery and wicker-work utensils are more common
than with us. Few of the houses in the town have trees about them.
Occasionally an old mansion is set a little back, and has a little
shrubby foliage in front of it—most commonly of elms dwarfed to the
size and natural shape of a green-gage plum-tree. There are, though, in
the better part of the town, some most charming public grounds. I have
never seen any thing in America to compare with them. I will speak of
them more particularly at another time.
The surface of the ground on which the town is built is irregular,
and the streets crooked and running at every angle with each other.
Generally they are short, and if long, at every few blocks the names
are changed. The names are often singular; many, far apart, have the
same with different prefixes, as Great and Little, North and South,
&c. We are in “Great Cross Hall street;” after a slight turn it is
called “Tythe Barn street,” and further on Chapel street. _Tythe Barn_,
I understand, is derived from the name of the building in which the
tithes were deposited when they were taken in kind—a tenth of the hay,
wheat, poultry, &c. There is a steep ascent near us called “Shaw’s
Brow;” it is fitted with smooth stone tracks for cart-wheels, with
narrow stones between them set _on end_ for the horses’ feet, double
teams here generally going _tandem_. The best streets are paved, as in
New York, only one quarter the distance across them, the intermediate
space being macadamized. This makes a very pleasant road. There is
generally a wide sidewalk, which is flagged as in our cities; but in
the commercial streets it is oftener paved like the carriage-way, and
in the narrowest there is none at all. The streets are very clean, and
all the side-walks, gutters, and untravelled spaces appear to be swept
every day.
[Sidenote: _MARKETS.—ECONOMIES.—HOURS._]
I have been through two markets. One of them is an immensely large
building, covering about two acres, right in the centre of the town;
it is clean, light, and well ventilated. What a wonder it is that the
people of New York will put up with such miserable, filthy, crowded
hovels as their markets are! In this building there are over five
hundred stalls and tables. It has its own superintendant of weights
and measures, and a thorough and constant police. There are twelve men
whose employment is to keep it clean. The garbage is passed readily
through traps into vaults below, from which it is removed at night. The
rules for those who use it, are excellent to secure healthy condition
of food, neatness, order, and fair play, and they are strictly
enforced. To my mind, this structure, and the arrangements connected
with it, is an honour to Liverpool, not second to her docks. And she
has three other large public markets, besides small ones for particular
purposes. The meat stalls are frequently owned by women, and, except a
better supply of birds and rabbits, did not offer any thing different
from those of our butchers. A part of the market seemed to be occupied
by country women for the sale of miscellaneous wares.
The fish market was in another building, which was entirely occupied
by women, nice and neat, though skinning eels and cleaning fish. The
milk market also seemed to be altogether in the hands of women. Milk
is not peddled about as in New York, but sold from cellar-shops. If
one wants a cup of tea, our landlady runs across the street for a
penny-worth of it. “From hand to mouth” so, seems to be common with
many things. The material for our breakfast is mostly bought after we
have ordered it. As we did not mention what we would have till after
the shops were closed last night, we had to wait till nine o’clock for
it this morning. Business hours begin later than in America. I think
the market is not open till eight, which they speak of as “very early.”
In this respect we have found no difficulty in accommodating ourselves
to English customs.