_London_, 5_th_ _June_.
AT length, dearest Gedike, I am again settled, as I have now got my trunk
and all my things from the ship, which arrived only yesterday. Not
wishing to have it taken to the Custom House, which occasions a great
deal of trouble, I was obliged to give a douceur to the officers, and
those who came on board the ship to search it. Having pacified, as I
thought, one of them with a couple of shillings, another came forward and
protested against the delivery of the trunk upon trust till I had given
him as much. To him succeeded a third, so that it cost me six shillings,
which I willingly paid, because it would have cost me still more at the
Custom House.
By the side of the Thames were several porters, one of whom took my huge
heavy trunk on his shoulders with astonishing ease, and carried it till I
met a hackney coach. This I hired for two shillings, immediately put the
trunk into it, accompanying it myself without paying anything extra for
my own seat. This is a great advantage in the English hackney coaches,
that you are allowed to take with you whatever you please, for you thus
save at least one half of what you must pay to a porter, and besides go
with it yourself, and are better accommodated. The observations and the
expressions of the common people here have often struck me as peculiar.
They are generally laconic, but always much in earnest and significant.
When I came home, my landlady kindly recommended it to the coachman not
to ask more than was just, as I was a foreigner; to which he answered,
“Nay, if he were not a foreigner I should not overcharge him.”
My letters of recommendation to a merchant here, which I could not bring
with me on account of my hasty departure from Hamburgh, are also arrived.
These have saved me a great deal of trouble in the changing of my money.
I can now take my German money back to Germany, and when I return thither
myself, refund to the correspondent of the merchant here the sum which he
here pays me in English money. I should otherwise have been obliged to
sell my Prussian Fredericks-d’or for what they weighed; for some few
Dutch dollars which I was obliged to part with before I got this credit
they only gave me eight shillings.
A foreigner has here nothing to fear from being pressed as a sailor,
unless, indeed, he should be found at any suspicious place. A singular
invention for this purpose of pressing is a ship, which is placed on land
not far from the Tower, on Tower Hill, furnished with masts and all the
appurtenances of a ship. The persons attending this ship promise simple
country people, who happen to be standing and staring at it, to show it
to them for a trifle, and as soon as they are in, they are secured as in
a trap, and according to circumstances made sailors of or let go again.
The footway, paved with large stones on both sides of the street, appears
to a foreigner exceedingly convenient and pleasant, as one may there walk
in perfect safety, in no more danger from the prodigious crowd of carts
and coaches, than if one was in one’s own room, for no wheel dares come a
finger’s breadth upon the curb stone. However, politeness requires you
to let a lady, or any one to whom you wish to show respect, pass, not, as
we do, always to the right, but on the side next the houses or the wall,
whether that happens to be on the right or on the left, being deemed the
safest and most convenient. You seldom see a person of any understanding
or common sense walk in the middle of the streets in London, excepting
when they cross over, which at Charing Cross and other places, where
several streets meet, is sometimes really dangerous.
It has a strange appearance—especially in the Strand, where there is a
constant succession of shop after shop, and where, not unfrequently,
people of different trades inhabit the same house—to see their doors or
the tops of their windows, or boards expressly for the purpose, all
written over from top to bottom with large painted letters. Every
person, of every trade or occupation, who owns ever so small a portion of
a house, makes a parade with a sign at his door; and there is hardly a
cobbler whose name and profession may not be read in large golden
characters by every one that passes. It is here not at all uncommon to
see on doors in one continued succession, “Children educated here,”
“Shoes mended here,” “Foreign spirituous liquors sold here,” and
“Funerals furnished here;” of all these inscriptions. I am sorry to
observe that “Dealer in foreign spirituous liquors” is by far the most
frequent. And indeed it is allowed by the English themselves, that the
propensity of the common people to the drinking of brandy or gin is
carried to a great excess; and I own it struck me as a peculiar
phraseology, when, to tell you that a person is intoxicated or drunk, you
hear them say, as they generally do, that he is in liquor. In the late
riots, which even yet are hardly quite subsided, and which are still the
general topic of conversation, more people have been found dead near
empty brandy-casks in the streets, than were killed by the musket-balls
of regiments that were called in. As much as I have seen of London
within these two days, there are on the whole I think not very many fine
streets and very fine houses, but I met everywhere a far greater number
and handsomer people than one commonly meets in Berlin. It gives me much
real pleasure when I walk from Charing Cross up the Strand, past St.
Paul’s to the Royal Exchange, to meet in the thickest crowd persons from
the highest to the lowest ranks, almost all well-looking people, and
cleanly and neatly dressed. I rarely see even a fellow with a
wheel-barrow who has not a shirt on, and that, too, such a one as shows
it has been washed; nor even a beggar without both a shirt and shoes and
stockings. The English are certainly distinguished for cleanliness.
It has a very uncommon appearance in this tumult of people, where every
one, with hasty and eager step, seems to be pursuing either his business
or his pleasure, and everywhere making his way through the crowd, to
observe, as you often may, people pushing one against another, only
perhaps to see a funeral pass. The English coffins are made very
economically, according to the exact form of the body; they are flat, and
broad at top; tapering gradually from the middle, and drawing to a point
at the feet, not very unlike the case of a violin.
A few dirty-looking men, who bear the coffin, endeavour to make their way
through the crowd as well as they can; and some mourners follow. The
people seem to pay as little attention to such a procession, as if a
hay-cart were driving past. The funerals of people of distinction, and
of the great, are, however, differently regarded.
These funerals always appear to me the more indecent in a populous city,
from the total indifference of the beholders, and the perfect unconcern
with which they are beheld. The body of a fellow-creature is carried to
his long home as though it had been utterly unconnected with the rest of
mankind. And yet, in a small town or village, everyone knows everyone;
and no one can be so insignificant as not to be missed when he is taken
away.
That same influenza which I left at Berlin, I have had the hard fortune
again to find here; and many people die of it. It is as yet very cold
for the time of the year, and I am obliged every day to have a fire. I
must own that the heat or warmth given by sea-coal, burnt in the chimney,
appears to me softer and milder than that given by our stoves. The sight
of the fire has also a cheerful and pleasing effect. Only you must take
care not to look at it steadily, and for a continuance, for this is
probably the reason that there are so many young old men in England, who
walk and ride in the public streets with their spectacles on; thus
anticipating, in the bloom of youth, those conveniences and comforts
which were intended for old age.
I now constantly dine in my own lodgings; and I cannot but flatter myself
that my meals are regulated with frugality. My usual dish at supper is
some pickled salmon, which you eat in the liquor in which it is pickled,
along with some oil and vinegar; and he must be prejudiced or fastidious
who does not relish it as singularly well tasted and grateful food.
I would always advise those who wish to drink coffee in England, to
mention beforehand how many cups are to be made with half an ounce; or
else the people will probably bring them a prodigious quantity of brown
water; which (notwithstanding all my admonitions) I have not yet been
able wholly to avoid. The fine wheaten bread which I find here, besides
excellent butter and Cheshire-cheese, makes up for my scanty dinners.
For an English dinner, to such lodgers as I am, generally consists of a
piece of half-boiled, or half-roasted meat; and a few cabbage leaves
boiled in plain water; on which they pour a sauce made of flour and
butter. This, I assure you, is the usual method of dressing vegetables
in England.
The slices of bread and butter, which they give you with your tea, are as
thin as poppy leaves. But there is another kind of bread and butter
usually eaten with tea, which is toasted by the fire, and is incomparably
good. You take one slice after the other and hold it to the fire on a
fork till the butter is melted, so that it penetrates a number of slices
at once: this is called toast.
The custom of sleeping without a feather-bed for a covering particularly
pleased me. You here lie between two sheets: underneath the bottom sheet
is a fine blanket, which, without oppressing you, keeps you sufficiently
warm. My shoes are not cleaned in the house, but by a person in the
neighbourhood, whose trade it is; who fetches them every morning, and
brings them back cleaned; for which she receives weekly so much. When
the maid is displeased with me, I hear her sometimes at the door call me
“the German”; otherwise in the family I go by the name of “the
Gentleman.”
I have almost entirely laid aside riding in a coach, although it does not
cost near so much as it does at Berlin; as I can go and return any
distance not exceeding an English mile for a shilling, for which I should
there at least pay a florin. But, moderate as English fares are, still
you save a great deal, if you walk or go on foot, and know only how to
ask your way. From my lodging to the Royal Exchange is about as far as
from one end of Berlin to the other, and from the Tower and St.
Catharine’s, where the ships arrive in the Thames, as far again; and I
have already walked this distance twice, when I went to look after my
trunk before I got it out of the ship. As it was quite dark when I came
back the first evening, I was astonished at the admirable manner in which
the streets are lighted up; compared to which our streets in Berlin make
a most miserable show. The lamps are lighted whilst it is still
daylight, and are so near each other, that even on the most ordinary and
common nights, the city has the appearance of a festive illumination, for
which some German prince, who came to London for the first time, once,
they say, actually took it, and seriously believed it to have been
particularly ordered on account of his arrival.