Upon the deck of the steamer bound from New York to London direct, as
we, my wife and I newly married, were taking a last look at the
receding American shore, there appeared a gentleman who seemed by the
cut of his jib startlingly French. We had under our escort a French
governess returning to Paris. In a twinkle she and this gentleman had
struck up an acquaintance, and much to my displeasure she introduced
him to me as “Monsieur Mahoney.” I was somewhat mollified when later we
were made acquainted with Madame Mahoney.
I was not at all preconceived in his favor, nor did Monsieur Mahoney,
upon nearer approach, conciliate my simple taste. In person, manners
and apparel he was quite beyond me. Mrs. Mahoney, however, as we soon
called her, was a dear, whole-souled, traveled, unaffected New England
woman. But Monsieur! Lord! There was no holding him at arm’s length. He
brooked not resistance. I was wearing a full beard. He said it would
never do, carried me perforce below, and cut it as I have worn it ever
since. The day before we were to dock he took me aside and said:
“Mee young friend”—he had a brogue which thirty years in Algiers, where
he had been consul, and a dozen in Paris as a gentleman of leisure, had
not wholly spoiled—“Mee young friend, I observe that you are shy of
strangers, but my wife and I have taken a shine to you and the
‘Princess’,” as he called Mrs. Watterson, “and if you will allow us, we
can be of some sarvis to you when we get to town.”
Certainly there was no help for it. I was too ill of the long crossing
to oppose him. At Blackwall we took the High Level for Fenchurch
Street, at Fenchurch Street a cab for the West End—Mr. Mahoney bossing
the job—and finally, in most comfortable and inexpensive lodgings, we
were settled in Jermyn Street. The Mahoneys were visiting Lady Elmore,
widow of a famous surgeon and mother of the President of the Royal
Academy. Thus we were introduced to quite a distinguished artistic set.
It was great. It was glorious. At last we were in London—the dream of
my literary ambitions. I have since lived much in this wondrous city
and in many parts of it between Hyde Park Corner, the heart of May
Fair, to the east end of Bloomsbury under the very sound of Bow Bells.
All the way as it were from Tyburn Tree that was, and the Marble Arch
that is, to Charing Cross and the Hay Market. This were not to mention
casual sojourns along Piccadilly and the Strand.
In childhood I was obsessed by the immensity, the atmosphere and the
mystery of London. Its nomenclature embedded itself in my fancy;
Hounsditch and Shoreditch, Billingsgate and Blackfriars; Bishopgate,
within, and Bishopgate, without; Threadneedle Street and
Wapping-Old-Stairs; the Inns of Court where Jarndyce struggled with
Jarndyce, and the taverns where the Mark Tapleys, the Captain Costigans
and the Dolly Vardens consorted.
Alike in winter fog and summer haze, I grew to know and love it, and
those that may be called its dramatis personae, especially its
tatterdemalions, the long procession led by Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin
and Jonathan Wild the Great. Inevitably I sought their haunts—and they
were not all gone in those days; the Bull-and-Gate in Holborn, whither
Mr. Tom Jones repaired on his arrival in town, and the White Hart
Tavern, where Mr. Pickwick fell in with Mr. Sam Weller; the regions
about Leicester Fields and Russell Square sacred to the memory of
Captain Booth and the lovely Amelia and Becky Sharp; where Garrick
drank tea with Dr. Johnson and Henry Esmond tippled with Sir Richard
Steele. There was yet a Pump Court, and many places along Oxford Street
where Mantalini and De Quincy loitered: and Covent Garden and Drury
Lane. Evans’ Coffee House, or shall I say the Cave of Harmony, and The
Cock and the Cheshire Cheese were near at hand for refreshment in the
agreeable society of Daniel Defoe and Joseph Addison, with Oliver
Goldsmith and Dick Swiveller and Colonel Newcome to clink ghostly
glasses amid the punch fumes and tobacco smoke. In short I knew London
when it was still Old London—the knowledge of Temple Bar and
Cheapside—before the vandal horde of progress and the pickaxe of the
builder had got in their nefarious work.