London, for a “village,” as old Cobbett used to call it, is a pretty
large one; and, viewed from the lowest stand-point—that of the dull
gospel according to Cocker—may well be described as truly wonderful. It
eats a great deal of beef, and drinks a great deal of beer. You are
staggered as you explore its warehouses. I stood in a granary the other
day in which there were some eighty thousand sacks of wheat; and in the
Bank of England I held in my hand, for a minute—all too brief—a million
of pounds. It is difficult to realise what London is, and what it
contains. Figures but little assist the reader.
Perhaps you best realise what the city is as you come up the Thames as
far as London Bridge. Perhaps another way is to stand on that same
bridge and watch the eager hordes that cross of a morning and return at
night, and then, great as that number is, to multiply it a hundredfold.
A dozen miles off gardeners tell you that there are plants that suffer
from London air and London fog. Indeed it is difficult to say where
London begins and where it ends. If you go to Brighton, undoubtedly it
is there in all its glory; when yachting far away in the western islands
of Scotland and the Hebrides, the first signature I found in the
strangers’ book at a favourite hotel was that of Smith, of London. There
he was, as large as life, just as we see him any day in Cheapside. One
bitter cold winter day I revisited, not exactly my childhood’s happy
home, but a neighbouring sea port to which I was once much attached.
“Oh,” said I to myself, as I rushed along in the train, “how glad people
will be to see me; how bright will be the eyes into which I once loved to
look, and how warm the clasp of the hand which once thrilled through all
my being!” Alas! a generation had risen who knew not Joseph. I dined
sadly and alone at the hotel, and after dinner made my way to the pier to
mingle my melancholy with that of the melancholy ocean. The wind was
high; the sand in clouds whirled madly along the deserted streets. At
sea even nothing was to be seen; but at the far end of the pier, with his
back turned to me, gazing over as if he wanted to make out the coast of
Holland—some hundred and fifty miles opposite—was a short man, whom I
knew at once from his apoplectic back—Brown, of Fleet Street—come there
all the way from the congenial steak puddings and whisky toddy of The
Cheshire Cheese for a little fresh air! I felt angry with Brown. I was
ready almost to throw him over into the raging surf beneath, but I knew
that was vain. There were “more to follow.” Nowadays London and London
people are everywhere. What is London? It covers, says one, within a
fifteen-miles’ radius of Charing Cross, so many hundred square miles. It
numbers more than four million inhabitants. It comprises a hundred
thousand foreigners from every quarter of the globe. It contains more
Roman Catholics than there are in all Rome; more Jews than there are in
all Palestine; and, I fear, more rogues than there are even in America.
On a Sunday you will hear Welsh in one church, Dutch in another, the
ancient dialect of St. Chrysostom in another; and on a Saturday you may
plunge into low dancing-houses at the East-End which put to shame
anything of the kind in Hamburg or Antwerp or Rotterdam. In many of the
smoking-rooms bordering on Mark Lane and Cheapside you hear nothing but
German. I know streets and squares inhabited by Dutch and German Jews,
or dark-eyed Italians, or excitable Frenchmen, where