Some weeks passed in seeing the most important public buildings in
London, revelling in the treasures of her museums and collections, and
in making excursions to places in the neighbourhood and to Oxford. I
was absorbed by St. Paul's, saw it from end to end, and from top to
bottom, stood in the crypt, where Sir Christopher Wren lies
buried,--_Si monumentum requiris, circumspice_--mentally compared
Wellington's burial-place here with that of Napoleon on the other side
of the Channel, then went up to the top of the building and looked out
to every side over London, which I was already so well acquainted with
that I could find my way everywhere alone, take the right omnibuses,
and the right trains by the underground, without once asking my way. I
spent blissful hours in the National Gallery. This choice collection of
paintings, especially the Italian ones, afforded me the intense,
overwhelming delight which poetry, the masterpieces of which I knew
already, could no longer offer me. At the Crystal Palace I was
fascinated by the tree-ferns, as tall as fruit-trees with us, and by
the reproductions of the show buildings of the different countries, an
Egyptian temple, a house from Pompeii, the Lions' den from the
Alhambra. Here, as everywhere, I sought out the Zoological Gardens,
where I lingered longest near the hippopotami, who were as curious to
watch when swimming as when they were on dry land. Their clumsiness was
almost captivating. They reminded me of some of my enemies at home.
Oxford, with the moss-grown, ivy-covered walls, with all the poetry of
conservatism, fascinated me by its dignity and its country freshness;
there the flower of the English nature was expressed in buildings and
trees. The antiquated and non-popular instruction, however, repelled
me. And the old classics were almost unrecognisable in English guise,
for instance, the anglicised _veni, vidi, vici_, which was quoted by a
student.
The contrast between the English and the French mind was presented to
me in all its force when I compared Windsor Castle with Versailles. The
former was an old Northern Hall, in which the last act of
Oehlenschläger's _Palnatoke_ would have been well staged.
I saw all that I could: the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Hall and
Abbey, the Tower and the theatres, the Picture Gallery at Dulwich with
Rembrandt's _Girl at the Window_, the one at Hampton Court, with the
portrait of Loyola ascribed to Titian, sailed down the river to
Greenwich and lingered in the lovely Gardens at Kew, which gave me a
luxuriant impression of English scenery. I also saw the Queen's model
farm. Every animal was as splendid a specimen as if it had been
intended for an agricultural show, the dairy walls were tiled all over.
The bailiff regretted that Prince Albert, who had himself made the
drawings for a special kind of milk containers, had not lived to see
them made. It was not without its comic aspect to hear him inform you
sadly, concerning an old bullock, that the Queen herself had given it
the name of _Prince Albert_.
For me, accustomed to the gay and grotesque life deployed in an evening
at the dancing-place of the Parisian students in the _Closerie des
lilas_, it was instructive to compare this with a low English
dancing-house, the Holborn Casino, which was merely sad, stiff, and
repulsive.
Poverty in London was very much more conspicuous than in Paris; it
spread itself out in side streets in the vicinity of the main arteries
in its most pitiable form. Great troops, regular mobs of poor men,
women and children in rags, dispersed like ghosts at dawn, fled away
hurriedly and vanished, as soon as a policeman approached and made sign
to them to pass on. There was nothing corresponding to it to be seen in
Paris. Crime, too, bore a very different aspect here. In Paris, it was
decked out and audacious, but retained a certain dignity; here, in the
evening, in thickly frequented streets, whole swarms of ugly,
wretchedly dressed, half or wholly drunken women could be seen reeling
about, falling, and often lying in the street.
Both the tendency of the English to isolate themselves and their social
instincts were quite different from those of the French. I was
permitted to see the comfortably furnished Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall,
membership of which was so much desired that people of high standing
would have their names on the list for years beforehand, and these
clubs corresponded to the cafés in Paris, which were open to every
passer-by. I noticed that in the restaurants the tables were often
hidden behind high screens, that the different parties who were dining
might not be able to see one another.