ON TOWN.
There is not much difference of opinion as to when Town is at its
best. Perhaps a few misanthropists, wrapped up in their little selves
and their narrow thoughts, would shut themselves up during the season,
in order to escape the pain of witnessing us all in our ungodly
career. Shallow butterflies they call us. And what do they know about
our lives? They judge from appearances; and because we wear a cheerful
expression, shutting down our cares and struggles in our inmost
hearts, and not burdening other people with them, we are called
shallow and worldly. No, you good and godly people, what do you know
about us? You are no more capable of judging than the ephemera, which
lives but for a day, and so must consider the world all sunshine, all
light. How can it imagine the night which closes round later on, when
neither it nor any of its ancestors have ever lived to see it?
You ought to be punished for your ignorant mutterings. You complain of
the well-dressed happy throng. You should be turned out in the streets
in August and September, and if the utter destitution does not shortly
turn your brains back in the right direction I am afraid your case is
hopeless.
Does any place come up to London I wonder? Having never been out of
England I cannot give an opinion. Unfortunately I have not the gift,
like some people, of either imagining or describing places I have
never seen--descriptions generally gleaned from other books and
compiled under one authorship as original compositions. Why cannot
they be content with laying their English stories in English scenery:
places they know well and can write about. Some save up their money in
order to go abroad and visit one particular place, so as to bring new
scenes into their new books. But ah, how weary you get of this one
place! It is brought into at least three of their next novels.
Everything, past, present and future seems to happen there. Your one
prayer, as you lay down the book, is to the effect that they may soon
be able to save up a little more and visit another spot.
There is so much going on in May, June, and July, that it is a
difficulty to get through all your engagements and yet see everything
there is to be seen. Then there is the Park. Two or three hours of the
day must at least be spent in the Park. There we all come out to show
ourselves and to look at others. There the equestrians canter up and
down the Row. Such equestrians too! If foreigners take their ideas of
English riding from the Row, they must form a high opinion of our
horsemanship.
There are the loungers flocking around their friends or walking up and
down in the hope of admiration. And they get it too, for who could
help admiring such master-pieces of a tailor's skill? Are these really
the descendants of that Adam whose posterity had all to earn their
bread by the sweat of their brow? These automatons, whose only
business in life seems to be to look after pretty women and
themselves? Men are supposed to be bread winners, but they have a
very easy time of it, I think, though they generally try to make
themselves out so overworked. Go into that great centre of business,
the City, and you find everyone of these busy men out and about,
always apparently in a great hurry, never seeming to arrive at any
destination, running about and hustling each other, occasionally
meeting an acquaintance, which proves a good opportunity for one to
stand the other a "drink." A funny way men have of showing their
affection, have they not? "Ah! how de do, old fellow? Come and have a
drink," is their invariable salutation to an intimate friend. After
all it is better than the mutual kissing on the part of women, which
is the more emphatic the more they dislike one another. Men are less
demonstrative and therefore more sincere in their friendships. Anyhow
there cannot be many at work in their offices, or where could this
idle crowd come from?
In spite of their haste, though, they generally find time to stare at
any woman who crosses their path. Why should not a woman go to the
City? She has as much right there as man, and yet if she is in the
least degree superior to the flower girls (?) who surround the Royal
Exchange, she is looked on as a freak of nature, a positive curiosity,
and is followed by every pair of male eyes within reach!
Mrs. Grundy is inclined to rather overdo her season, I think. There is
so much she might leave undone, so many things that "never would be
missed." Imagine the gratitude that would be displayed to anyone who
would put down and demolish those dreadful crushes, so called "at
homes," where nobody ever is at home; where you have neither space nor
air from the moment you arrive until the glad time comes for
departing. Does anyone enjoy them, I wonder! Does anybody like being
literally baked with heat, which I am sure must exceed even that at
Mexico; where one of the inhabitants of that delightful climate, when
he died and went to perdition, found the contrast so striking that he
was obliged to send home for his greatcoat!
Still, I suppose such entertainments will continue to exist. They are
a good deal cheaper than balls or dinners, and you can "knock off"
ever so many people at the same time.
It is well, at any rate, to consider economy in some matters in these
wofully extravagant days. When the shops are decked out in their
gayest colors to lure us on to destruction, why is it that "just the
very thing you want" is placed so conspicuously in the front of the
window, put cunningly near a mirror too, so that you see it all the
way round, and it appears doubly precious?
How convenient it is, by the way, when they have mirrors in the shop
windows. You can look to see if your hat is straight, or your veil
nicely arranged, without being credited with vanity. You are supposed
to be admiring the bonnets displayed to view, not yourself. Girls make
a great mistake when they take little surreptitious glances at any
mirror they come across. The action is always noticed and condemned;
while if they, instead, went up boldly, ostensibly to smooth their
hair or alter a pin, it would be taken as a matter of course.
It so soon grows into a habit, this always looking about for your
reflection, and one that is very difficult to get out of. Not that the
men are at all behind us in this respect. There are not many of our
little follies that the lords of creation do not take up and
cultivate. You see them at dinner, addressing nearly all their
conversation opposite--where hangs a mirror. At dances they are
admiring and smiling at their reflections the whole evening, finding
far more satisfaction in gazing there than at their partner, even
though she be the loveliest in the land.
But to return to my subject. (I seem to be always wandering away.) You
need never be idle in town. A wet day even makes no difference, when a
place teems with picture galleries, as London does. They are such good
places to meet your friends. You always see someone you know. You
might as well be there as anywhere else. Of course you do not look at
the pictures. You glance at the few you have heard talked about, just
so as to say you have seen them. But you do not go to a picture
gallery to look at _pictures_! "We always go the wrong way round. You
avoid the crowd like that, you know," I have heard people say.
"_Avoid_ the crowd!" It is the crowd they want to see! There is less
chance of missing your friends if you go in the opposite direction!
There is one real advantage though in beginning at the other end. You
don't have the same people following you all the time, nor have to
listen to ignorant remarks. "Who's that? She don't look very happy, to
be sure," I once heard one woman ask of another as they were going
round. "That? why that's Adam and Eve, o' course, and the serpent in
the distance. I never 'eard of anyone else who went about without
their clothes on, though why they put chains on her I can't think: it
says nothing about 'em in the Bible."
I glanced at the picture. It was "Andromeda!" And they talk of the
strides education has been making of late years!