ABOUT TOWN
How beautiful England is! The home-stayers do not know it, nor the
stranger within her gates. One must have been long enough absent from
her in a sharply contrasting environment to have become an outsider, a
cosmopolitan connoisseur, while still not an alien but native to her
soil--at any rate, imbued with her maternal influence--to appreciate her
consummate charm. I think that Australians and Americans, her elder and
younger offspring, who have so many points of view in common, do so more
fully than other peoples of the world, although we "swear by" the lands
where we have our ampler homes and opportunities--perhaps for that very
reason. It is an impression I have gained from the literature of the
States, which has supplied my chief reading for many years. Whether
right or wrong, I shall feel, when I fall into rhapsodies on the
subject--and really I cannot help it--that my American readers will
understand me before them all.
That it is not a case of the rose-coloured spectacles is proved by the
fact that we no sooner set foot in the beloved Old Country than we begin
to sniff at a number of her little ways--little ways that are quite all
right to less impartial critics. We even feel that we could teach our
grandmother something about the sucking of eggs with good warrant for
reversing the orthodox procedure; only that she is our grandmother,
bless her, with the natural attributes of her time of life, and we do
not want her different. Were she "younged up," as a member of my
household describes the old lady who dresses to conceal her age, we
should not love her more, and we might respect her less. Twice as
"smart," she would not be half as beautiful.
The matter stands thus: The Family of the British Empire is like other
families. The children who go out into the world have, and must have, a
wider grip of affairs than the parent who stops at home. They are better
able, as well as willing, to keep up with the times; and, as in other
families, it is the elder-sisterly leadership that the younger sister
follows. Although we Australians have cherished the belief that England,
in all her manifestations, sets the perfect standard for us, I see now
that it is America we have copied, insensibly to ourselves, in the arts
that make for the comfort and convenience and contingent elegance of
everyday life. I did not know where we stood in the scale of domestic
civilisation until I began to frequent the rural districts where I was
born and bred, and found the situation as I had left it, and myself so
grown away from it that I might have come from another planet. It is
not, of course, our merit in any way but our luck that we have, in
addition to our birthright in her, a land of plenty, which ensures easy
circumstances, connoting a high average of culture, to her unburdened
and unjostled people, and no deep-worn groove to shut us in, and shut
out from our vision the movements of the world. It would be gross taste
for a cadet of the family, and one so juvenile, to give itself airs in
the ancestral house; but it does cause some slight annoyance now and
then to be treated as one who does not know the ropes at all. That in
the great journals that came into my hands of a morning in London there
was rarely so much as a mention of Australia, while every little tinpot
dependency of a foreign power had its trifling affairs attended to, was
nothing--our own fault as much as anybody's. But when those who never
look at a London journal, who hardly know even Emperor William by name,
since he does not live in the parish, want to teach you to suck eggs
that have been rotten for years without their knowing it--on the theory
that you have had no eggs where you have been living--you do get a
little tired. And if young Australia feels that way small wonder at
America not liking the grandmotherly tutelage, so long after knowing
herself the leader of the world. Our old darling cannot understand why
one who by every tie of nature should be devoted to her flouts her
authority and turns a cold shoulder to her endearments, but the other
children understand.
Well, America can afford to forgive everything, and she has forgiven
everything, now, while only gratitude is due from us who, remaining in
the bosom of the family, are so faithfully done by and cared for. All I
am trying to say is that experience teaches knowledge, that love which
is not blind is the love best worth having, and that we, with that
knowledge and that love, are more competent to appreciate England than
she to appreciate us. She thinks we do not know what's what, because
people in the dark can think anything; but when we judge her beautiful,
it is with the judgment that compares and discriminates. We know what
we are talking about. It may be taken that she is beautiful, and no
mistake.
We had embarked for Australia in 1870 from Plymouth, having travelled to
that port from London in the night. Coming back in 1908 England met me
with a face I had not seen before. Beachy Head was as new to my eyes as
the rock of Aden; so was Dover Castle and all that sunny coast; so was
the Thames of commerce. In the perfect June weather, and with its
historical suggestions, even that last bit of the way was glorified.
Perhaps the critical faculty had not quite steadied down, but even
between the marshes I was thinking: "How beautiful England is!"
Altogether the interval between nine A.M. and seven P.M. was a
culmination of the voyage worthy of all that had led up to it. By the
way, we dropped anchor at Gravesend in a violent thunderstorm.
We spent one more short night on the ship. In the small hours of the
morning a steward informed us that the first caller had arrived, a near
relation born during our long absence, now a man over thirty, who had
enterprisingly boarded us by the pilot's ladder at the locks. With this
efficient courier, who spared us all landing troubles, we passed from
our sea-home to a quiet hotel in a quiet square near Liverpool Street
Station, whence we were to pass out to the country on the following day;
a house to be affectionately remembered, for its treatment of us. There
we dumped our bags and made our walking toilets, feeling already as
English as could be; then started forth to celebrate the day with
(naturally) a first-rate luncheon to begin with. Thereafter we proposed
to "do" as much of London as we could cover by dinner-time.
We did have a first-rate luncheon, from the point of view of
unfashionable persons newly off the sea. But it was right here that we
began to sniff. No, not to sniff, of course, but to set the critical
faculty in order. At home, we informed our relative, a meal of that
quality would be just about half the price, and such trifles as
vegetables, rolls, butter, tea and coffee, would be thrown in gratis.
The skimpy little curl of butter, that had to be separately paid for, in
place of the heaped balls to which you could freely help yourself, was a
particular one amongst the pinpoint grievances that London restaurants
of the middle class supplied us with. At that first meal on English soil
we remembered the first we had taken in Collins Street after landing in
Melbourne so long ago--our astonishment at its ample excellence and
small cost; and at each subsequent entertainment in London paid for by
ourselves we were tempted to make odious comparisons when there was
nobody to overhear. Australia is a land of plenty to all her people,
high and low, but we forget it until we go away from her. Then we know.
After luncheon my husband went off to his bankers, his tailors (whose
clothes he had worn uninterruptedly for thirty-eight years, with some
modification of measurements from time to time), and otherwise to poke
about by himself in a London that he declared he knew every inch of,
although afterwards he confessed to having been once or twice at fault;
and my nephew-in-law escorted me to my once favourite draper's, where I
had bought the gems of my modest bridal trousseau. Ever since that
long-past day I had sworn by the famous firm as authorities on and
purveyors of the absolutely correct thing in women's wear, and now
thought to render myself immune to English criticism by the surest
method and with no waste of time.
I was out of that shop almost as soon as I was in, and distractedly
flitting through other emporiums of the West End, wishing I had
completed my outfit where I began it. I should have saved money and
suited myself better. In pity for my companion, patiently awaiting my
pleasure on the pavements outside--dropping asleep as he stood, poor
boy, for he had not seen a bed for between thirty and forty hours--I
confined myself to the one indispensable purchase, and that was a
compromise between what I liked and what I could get.
Not that I suggest any rivalry between our best drapery shops and these
best of Oxford and Regent Streets; it would be absurd to compare them.
But I certainly realised as I had never done before how good the former
are. I understood why a friend of mine with whom I once went
clothes-buying in Bourke Street, immediately after her return from a
year in England, plumping down on a chair by a familiar counter, said,
with a luxurious sigh: "What a comfort to get back to our own shops
again!" She did not "know her way about" in London; nor did I. And I
cannot say that, at the six months' end, I had done any better for
myself there than I should have done if I had supplied all my wants at
home. I found no material difference in cost, and as regards the correct
thing we are quite up to date. The new fashions are passed on to us for
the corresponding season, winter or summer, that they belong to in
England; and there is no doubt in my mind that, taking English women in
the bulk and Australian women in the bulk, the latter are the better
dressed by far. It is not what I expected would be the case.
Tea--that essential feature of afternoon shoppings in Melbourne, where a
tea-room is to your hand wherever you may happen to be--was the one
thought in my head when I rejoined my drowsy escort, although it could
not have been more than three o'clock. "Let us find a nice place," said
I, craving easy-chairs as well as tea; and we found one. It had no shop
to it, inviting us by a mere label on an open street door and a glimpse
of inner staircase. Privacy and repose were indicated, and I
unhesitatingly turned in.
It was the very thing. A pretty little drawing-room, all to ourselves,
cushioned basket-chairs, tea and cakes and bread-and-butter and toasted
things, all as good as I was accustomed to, although by no means so
cheap (but expense was no matter on this festive day), and the courteous
attendance that I must confess is not to be counted on in Australia as I
learned to count upon it in England. With us officialdom is so
disproportionately powerful throughout the land (nothing can be in
proportion if the main base of population is inadequate) that the
so-called servants of the public are virtually in the position of
masters, and, knowing it, are inclined to wait upon you condescendingly,
as if conferring a favour, or to be abrupt and off-hand with you, or to
leave you to take your chance. It is quite natural.
So here, in this very nice little room, I revelled in my tea--the first
good cup since Hobart (Adelaide was a disappointment in this respect,
and at Port Said I did not ask for it)--and we rested in our
comfortable chairs for the best part of an hour. Then, my escort being
again wide-awake and active, and myself refreshed and fit for anything,
I suggested a drive through London in any direction on the top of a
motor 'bus.
That was an exciting drive. Unlike my husband, I did not know my London.
Years and years and years ago I had been accustomed to pay an annual
visit to my eldest aunt, who was my godmother, and then I was driven
from what was Shoreditch Station to her house in Notting Hill (which she
grieved was not, as it so nearly was, Kensington), and in a few weeks
driven back again in a straw-carpeted four-wheeled cab, from the closed
windows of which I had my only peeps at the city--a forbidden city to a
well-brought-up young lady of tender years. Between whiles my diversions
were confined to West End picture galleries and museums, a few West End
shoppings, drives in the Park, walks to the neighbouring church. Only to
the latter, and that but occasionally and in exceptional circumstances,
was I ever allowed to go unattended, even after I was engaged to be
married, while she was responsible for me. Darling that she was, I am
not going to laugh at her for being so ridiculous, especially as I have
my doubts as to whether she was ridiculous at all--whether there is not
still something to be said for the clearly defined social status of
children, and the careful chaperonage of growing-up girls, that were
matter of course to us, young and old, in those far-distant days.
My thoughts were full of her as we drove towards our old haunts, when
the absorbing fascination of the narrow, crowded streets and the
marvellous interweaving of the wheeled traffic through them gave place
to the enchantment of the "Park" once more, the charm beyond expression
of English trees and grass, the stately roadways and perspectives of our
old walking and driving quarter, so unexpectedly familiar and
remembered--the only London life I had to remember--after such a gap of
time and change!
The Marble Arch--oh, the Marble Arch! The new gates behind it were
approaching completion; the greatly improved arrangement was pointed out
to me by my courier, how the old blocking of carriages was done away
with--I believe that very day inaugurated the new use. But for me there
was only the old bottle-neck which had annoyed generations of carriage
folk, and which had given my young girlhood one of its first woman
dreams.
It will be understood that the best-beloved and most loving of maiden
aunts became even as Andromeda's dragon at the approach of an
unauthorised young man. The very thought of him in connection with her
god-daughter made her hair rise. Well, I was driving with her one
afternoon, and just within the Marble Arch we were so wedged in a block
of carriages that the occupant of one--truly a most charming fellow--had
to sit facing me at arm's length for quite a minute. With the best will
in the world, and I believe we both tried to help it, it was impossible
after some embarrassing seconds to prevent the twinkle of a smile. In
spite of its ravaging effects upon me (all her fault, for I never saw
him before or since), it was no more than a twinkle, behind a gravity of
demeanour as gentlemanly as could be. But what could evade the
lynx-eyed vigilance of the duenna of old? No sooner were we disentangled
than my aunt, almost as flustered as I was, sternly demanded of me: "Did
you see that?" On my confessing that I did she put up the window of our
jobbed brougham and never afterwards allowed me to have it down while in
the Row or other dangerous places; and I had to rub holes in the film of
breath lining the glass to see anything at all. Small wonder that in my
seclusion I nursed the memory of a momentary adventure with a young man
until it grew to the proportion of a personal romance. In all my
subsequent walks and drives with her I was thinking of him, looking for
him; and as a respectable mother of a family have not forgotten the
spiritual freemasonry (as it was idealised into) of his passing twinkle
of a smile. How handsome he was! And how well we understood each other!
Only once did I escape out of my cage and fly at large in London. It was
with a young widowed cousin, who, as a married woman, was allowed to
take me out. We did not dare to report that we had eaten lunch at a
railway buffet, ridden in omnibuses (a thing no gentlewoman of those
days was supposed to do--she was expected to walk rather), and even
trodden a pavement overlooked by club windows, when we returned to
Notting Hill at nightfall. The widowed cousin, too, was one of three
motherless bairns whom the aunt had brought up from infancy. However,
with all the risks of reaction, it seems to many of us old stagers that
it is good to have borne the yoke in our youth, and that some
modification of the apparatus would be better for our children than none
at all. Of course they do not agree with us, which makes it very likely
that we are wrong.
Old and new met together at our journey's end--the gates of the
Anglo-French Exhibition at Shepherd's Bush. The place had just been
opened to the public, and was the sensation of the hour, even more
interesting to my companion than to me, drowned as I was in associations
of the past. The supposed object of our drive was to locate it, the
beautiful imitation-alabaster city that held promise for both of us,
amply redeemed in due course, of happy days to come. This accomplished,
we returned to our hotel stupefied with fatigue. The two men were able
to enjoy a good dinner and a fairly late sit-up talk. I tumbled
straightway into a comfortable bed, and sighed and sighed, too tired to
eat or speak, but as blissfully satisfied with the state of things as it
was possible to be. A nice little tea-tray came to my bedside presently,
and after it the kind landlady herself to see what else she could do for
me, just like the thoughtful hostess who has been one's friend for
years. I slept little, that first night in England, but there was every
inducement to repose. The little city square was as quiet as the Bush. I
could hear the soft and mellow chime of a distant clock at
intervals--very far away it seemed--and that was the only sound. We had
an open window, as usual, and could not understand how the heart of
London could be so still.
A cheerful and quiet coffee-room welcomed us to an excellent breakfast
next day. We had promised ourselves "real" Yarmouth bloaters (one of a
few long-cherished gastronomical dreams brought over with other
luggage); the maid apologised for giving us broiled mackerel instead,
but that was memorably delicious. I cannot help mentioning it. I may as
well mention also, while I am about it, that the plentiful Australian
table is not to be compared with the English in the matter of fish and
game.
Breakfast over, our courier was set free to roam the White City at
Shepherd's Bush until tea-time, and my husband and I set forth on an
aimless ramble together, merely to see London and amuse ourselves, all
business barred. What a time we had! More drives on motor 'buses; more
English delicacies for our voracious appetites at luncheon (sausages,
which G. had always declared they did not know how to make in
Australia); St Paul's, inside and out; lovely Staples Inn, which I could
hardly tear myself away from; and the commoner lions of the city, such
as the Mansion House and the Bank--all new to me. I felt quite an old
Londoner by four o'clock, when it was time to reunite our party, get a
cup of tea, and start on our journey to Cambridgeshire.
Only a few days later I discovered another London I had not known. I
returned to spend a week with a many-years-old friend, a personage of
distinction, even to her royal kinsfolk, but never other than the
dearest of the dear. Instead of riding motor 'buses I sat behind ducal
liveries. In the way of entertainment privileges were accorded me that
no money could buy. It was the brilliant episode of my trip, and that,
to my regret (as the author), is all I can say about it in this book.
What a pity that considerations of taste and decorum should compel the
autobiographer, as considerations of imperial policy compel the Russian
press censor, to "black out" the very bits that would be most
interesting to read. If one could throw delicate scruples to the winds
and tell the _whole_ story of any human life, or portion of life,
however small, the long reign of the work of fiction would be over.
June was still less than a fortnight old when this happy week
began--with a satisfying drive from Liverpool Street Station to the
heart of Belgravia in a hansom all to myself--just when I preferred no
company. A drive, I must add, as cheap as it was delightful.
Half-a-crown! It was hard to believe the driver serious. I could not
have done the distance in a Melbourne hansom under half-a-sovereign.
According to my prevailing luck the weather was perfect, and every inch
of the way for me was packed with interest. The Thames Embankment was
a-making when I left in 1870; now I saw it and its stately precincts in
their modern character. And, in addition to the features of what was but
background to London life, I saw a great procession of the Protesting
Women, coming upon it in the very nick of time, as if I had planned to
do so. I passed its whole length, seemingly of miles, from end to end,
sometimes at a foot's pace, sometimes blocked for several minutes at a
time, the ordinary traffic having but half the road; and I rejoiced in
my slow progress and was profoundly impressed with the spectacle. Not
having heard about it beforehand I was puzzled to account for the
immense lines of carriages filled with women--many of the carriages very
smart, and a number of the women in academic dress, wearing the hoods of
their degrees--massed in Whitehall and thereabouts; but the significance
of the demonstration was soon made evident--before the army on foot,
with its multitudinous banners came upon the scene, led by the aged and
honoured ladies who had been fighting the same battle half-a-century
ago.
In view of all I have since heard and read of the antics of what the
newspapers call the militant suffragettes, I am glad I had this
opportunity to gauge the strength and seriousness of the movement behind
them, which--unless their actions are grossly misreported--they
pitifully misrepresent. So long as my eye was on it, at any rate, the
march of the countless women was as dignified as anything I ever saw;
nor could a funeral procession have been treated by the bystanders with
more respect. That was the most striking thing about it. The half-width
of the street, congested with the traffic of the whole, blocked to a
standstill every few yards, neither murmured nor jeered--not by a single
voice that I could hear. While here and there a man stood to give dumb
homage, his hat in his hand.
But, oh, what a Mediæval sort of business it all seemed! To be
struggling so long, and with such pain and passion, for mere liberty--in
our England of all places--at this time of day! How strange to one long
outside the groove, the limitation of vision of those within! If it were
permissible to teach our grandmother to suck eggs, we could tell her
that the tremendous controversy is but a mountain labouring of mouse. In
our young country overseas "votes for women" were given to us as
naturally as they give licences to respectable lady innkeepers; after
due discussion in parliament, of course, and some "say" at public
meetings of the party chiefly concerned, but with no vulgar altercation
or unseemly fuss of any kind. And we quietly go forth to the nearest
polling-place on (the very infrequent) election mornings, being
supposed to have glanced at the family newspaper from day to day, and
come back to our domestic avocations (most of us like to get the small
job over as soon as possible after breakfast); and the world goes on
with no sign of damage. Not being necessarily the adversaries of man,
because not unjustly suffering from his rule, and having had no devil of
vindictiveness put into us we do not interfere with him in Parliament or
on the Bench, or attempt to upset his dignity in any way. We have public
work enough managing the hospitals, and such things, where we have the
free hand to save him a world of trouble. Though, if a woman _should_
turn up in a legislative assembly some fine day--and it might be any
day--I really do not think the skies would fall. My belief is that the
men would get used to it in a week and reconciled in a month. Not that I
would be that woman for anything you could give me. The main thing is
that politically we are good friends and not sore-hearted antagonists.
As fairly as our men have dealt by us shall we deal by them. Dear, dear!
To think what a buttress Ireland might have been to England now if she
had been let out of leading-strings three generations ago!
I returned to London at intervals between this sweet June day, when the
rhododendrons in the Park were still abloom and the "Season" at its
culmination, and the early winter evening of my last departure; but
without those passages which must be "blacked out" the tale is but a
tale of prosaic shoppings and the sort of country-cousin sightseeings at
which the superior person lifts the nose of scorn. Even in the latter
regard, I did not see half the things I had meant to see. The Royal
Academy Exhibition was postponed and postponed until too late. The
British Museum, the National Gallery, Westminster Abbey--even these I
missed. The Tower, which I had never seen at all, that I can remember, I
now saw only from the outside--except on the stage at Drury Lane, in the
_Marriages of Mayfair_. The friend and hostess who took me to this play,
as the wife of a Colonel of Grenadiers and intimately acquainted with
the life of the place, answered for the accuracy of detail in the
dramatic representation of it; furthermore, she arranged that I was to
explore the great fortress in her company, and took my promise to accept
no other guide. I was then within a fortnight of leaving England, and,
to my keen regret, the press of last engagements crowded that one out.
Mention of the Tower reminds me of a circumstance that occurred the
night before we made the futile compact, than which circumstance nothing
happening to me in London impressed me more.
An afternoon at His Majesty's to see Beerbohm Tree in _Faust_--the new
Faust, redeemed, not destroyed, through his human errors; the new
Mephistopheles, with the dignity of a god--had provided excitement
enough for one day, and we decided to spend the evening quietly at home.
Tea, a rest with a book, three only at dinner, were the peaceful
preliminaries; then we sank into deep sofa-corners by the drawing-room
fire.
"This," said B., "is the opportunity I have been looking for to show you
something. They have only just come back from the British Museum."
Two large, thick volumes were produced. And when I opened one of
them--the other was a typed rendering of the precious text--I perceived
that I was privileged for the moment above the rest of my countrymen.
For I was the first of the general public to read some most interesting
pages of English history, lost long before the story as we know it was
put together for the use of schools.
For three hundred years or more they had probably been in hiding where
they had recently been found--in the library of one of the seats of the
family to which B. belonged. Consequent upon the death of the owner, her
brother-in-law, there had been rummaging about the house, and a quantity
of valuable documents had been discovered behind oaken wainscots and
elsewhere. A cupboardful, found at a moment when it was not convenient
to remove them, mysteriously disappeared, unread, before they could be
retrieved; the bundle of letters on my knee had been spared to the
family, of which a Lord C., of Charles the Second's reign, had been
friend and kin to the writers. B. and the British Museum had been
attending to their preservation. They had been carefully arranged and
bound, and their condition was so perfect, and the penmanship was so
exquisite, that I was able to read the original, in the old lettering of
the time, as fast as B. could follow me with the modernised typed copy.
We took turn and turn about with this reading and checking, and I
suppose it took us hours--we were too absorbed to think of time--to get
through the whole, if we did get through it.
They were the letters of that Lord William Russell who was beheaded, and
of his wife, the famous Rachel, written during his trial and
imprisonment, to and of each other, to Charles the Second, and the
King's replies; portions of her journals; a long and minutely detailed
account of the whole tragedy, from day to day, almost from hour to hour,
by Bishop Burnet, who attended the prisoner--all in their own
handwritings; and a more touching and elevating tale and a more
distinguished piece of literature I do not remember to have come across.
B. showed me a letter from the lady who had typewritten the copy. She
said in effect that her sense of the privilege conferred on her with the
work was beyond words. By this time, possibly, Lady C. has allowed the
documents, family archives though they be, to be published for the
benefit of the nation. Unless, indeed, the nation has had them this long
time, and I have not known it.
Beheadings, again, remind me of Madame Tussaud's. As a child I had
thought it hard lines never to see the famous waxworks, and I never
did--until this belated return to where they were. I might not then have
done so but for the accident of a Baker Street engagement, which being
discharged with unexpected promptitude left us, G. and I, with an hour
or two on our hands. The great building, new since he had visited it,
stood almost over us, conspicuously proclaiming itself, and with one
accord we turned into it. Another lifelong ambition gratified at last!
"You won't go into the Chamber of Horrors, I suppose?" said G., when I
had viewed Mrs Pankhurst and the rest of the notabilities.
"Oh yes," said I, for I was out to see things. And down I went. It was
not particularly thrilling to one whose childhood was so far behind, but
it was very nasty. A cup of tea in the fresh air of the restaurant was
grateful after it. And I felt a particular craving for a bath.
One thing, however, has contrived to haunt me--the mask of Marie
Antoinette as at the moment after execution, with the blood-oozing
nostrils and the swooning, drowning eyes. For it seemed to me as if that
might be very much how she would have looked.
But it strikes me I am not developing the proposition set at the
beginning of this chapter to be the text of my discourse.