Thomas Carlyle introduces his philosophical friend, Herr Teufelsdroeckh,
to his readers, seated in his watch-tower, which overlooks the city in
which he dwells; and from which he can look down into that bee-hive of
human kind, and see every thing "from the palace esplanade where music
plays, while His Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to
the low lane where in her doorsill the aged widow, knitting for a thin
livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun." He draws an animated
picture of that busy panorama which is ever unrolling before
Teufelsdroeckh's eyes, and moralizes upon the scene in the spirit of a
true poet who has struck upon a theme worthy of his lyre. And, most
assuredly, Thomas is right. The daisies and buttercups are all very well
in their way; but, as raw material for poetry, what are they to the
deep-furrowed pavement and the blackened chimney-pots of a city! In
spite of all our pantheistic rhapsodies, man is the noblest of natural
productions, and the worthiest subject for the highest and holiest of
poetic raptures. My old friend, the late Mr. Wordsworth, delighted to
anathematize the railway companies, and raved finely about Nature never
betraying the heart that loves her; he said that
"----the sounding cataract
Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to him
An appetite;--"
and confessed that to him
"----the meanest flower that blows could give
Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears."
Yet notwithstanding all this, he was constrained to acknowledge when he
stood upon Westminster Bridge, and saw the vast, dingy metropolis of
Britain wearing like a garment the beauty of the morning, that
"Earth has not anything to show more fair,--
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty."
When I was a young man, it was my delight to brush with early steps the
dew away, and meet the sun upon the upland lawn. There was a romantic
feeling about it that I liked, and I did not object to wet feet. But I
have long since put away that depraved taste, although the recent
application of India rubber to shoeing purposes has obviated the
inconvenience of its gratification. Now, I am contented if I can find a
level pavement and a clean crossing, and will gladly give up the woods
and verdant fields to less prosaic and more youthful people. Your gout
is a sad interferer with early poetical prejudices--but in my own case
it has shown me that all such things, like most of our youthful notions,
are mere fallacies. It has convinced me that the poetical abounds rather
in the smoky, narrow streets of cities, than in the green lanes, the
breezy hills, and the broad fields of the country. Like the toad, ugly
and venomous, that fell disease is not without its jewel. It has
reconciled me to life in town, and has shown me all its advantages and
beauties.
If it be true that "the proper study of mankind is man," then are the
crowded streets of the city more improving and elevating to us (if
rightly meditated upon) than the academic groves. If you desire
society,--in a city you may find it to your taste, however fastidious
you may be. If you are a lover of solitude, where can you be more
solitary than in the very whirl of a multitude of people intent upon
their own pursuits, and all unknown to you! That honey-tongued doctor,
St. Bernard, said that he was never less alone than when alone--a
sentiment which, in its reversed form, might be uttered by any denizen
of a metropolis. I always loved solitude: the old monastic inscription
was always a favourite motto of mine:--
"O beata solitudo!
O sola beatitudo!"
But I have never found any solitude like the streets of a large city. I
have walked in the cool, quiet cloister of _Santa Maria degli Angeli_,
built amid the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, and--though my footfall
was the only sound save the rustling of the foliage, and the song of the
birds, and the bubbling of a fountain which seemed tired with its
centuries of service, and which seemed to make the stillness and repose
of that spacious quadrangle more profound--I could not feel so perfectly
alone there as I have often felt in the thronged Boulevards or the busy
Strand. Place a mere worldling in those holy precincts, and he would
summon mentally around him the companions of his past pleasures, and his
worldliness would be increased by his thus being driven to his only
resources for overcoming the ungrateful quiet of the place. Introduce a
religious man to those consecrated shades, and his devotion would be
quickened; he would soon forget the world which he had not loved and
which had not loved him, and his face would soon be as unwrinkled, his
eye as serene, as those of the monks who dwell there. But place either
of them in the most crowded thoroughfare of the city, and the worldling
would be made for a time as meditative as the other. When I was a child,
I delighted to watch the busy inhabitants of an ant-hill, pursuing their
various enterprises with an intentness almost human; and I should be
tempted to continue my observations of them, were it not that the
streets of my native city offer me a similar, but a more interesting
study. Xerxes, we are told, shed tears when he saw his army drawn up
before him, and reflected that not one of all that mighty host would be
alive a century after. Who could ride from Paddington to London Bridge,
through the current of human life that flows ceaselessly through the
streets of that great city, without sharing somewhat in the feelings of
that tender-hearted monarch?
What are all the sermons that ever were preached from a pulpit, compared
to those which may be found in the stones of a city? When we visit
Pompeii and Herculaneum, we are thrilled to notice the ruts made by the
wheels of chariots centuries ago. The original pavement of the Appian
Way, now for some distance visible, carries us back more than almost any
of the other antiquities of Rome, to the time when it was trodden by
captive kings, and re-echoed with the triumphal march of returning
conquerors. I pity him in whom these things awaken no new train of
thought. The works of man have outlived their builders by centuries, and
still remain a solemn testimony to the power and the nothingness which
originated them. Nineveh, Thebes, Troy, Carthage, Tyre, Athens, Rome,
London, Paris, have won the crown in their turn, and have passed or will
pass away. The dilapidated sculptures of the former have been taken to
adorn the museums of the latter, and crowds have gazed and are gazing on
them with curious eyes, unmindful of their great lesson of the
transitoriness of the glory of the world. These are, indeed, "sermons in
stones"; but, like most other sermons, we look rather at their style of
finish, than at the deep meaning with which they are so pregnant.
But I did not take up my pen to write about dead cities; I have somewhat
to say about the life that now renders the streets of our own towns so
pleasant, and makes us so forgetful of their inevitable fate. I am not
going to claim for the street life of our new world the charms which
abound in the ancient cities of Europe. We are too much troubled about
many things, and too utilitarian to give thought to those lesser graces
which delight us abroad, and which we hardly remember until we come home
and miss them. Our street architecture, improved though it may have been
within a few years, is yet far behind the grace and massive symmetry of
European towns. Our builders and real estate owners need to be reminded
that it costs no more to build in good taste than in bad; that brick
work can be made as architectural as stone; and that architecture is a
great public instructor, whose works are constantly open to the public
eye, and from which we are learning lessons, good or bad, whether we
will or not. I think it is Goethe who calls architecture frozen music. I
am glad to see these tall piles rearing their ornamented fronts on every
side of us, even though they are intended for purposes of trade; for
every one of them is a reproach to the untasteful structures around it,
and an example which future builders must copy, if they do not surpass.
The quaint beauty which charms us in Rouen, and in the old towns of
Belgium,--the high pitched gables leaning over, as if yearning to get
across the narrow street,--these all belong to another age, and we may
not possess them; but the architecture which, in its simplicity or its
magnificence, speaks its adaptedness to our climate and our social
wants, is within our reach, and is capable of making our cities equal to
any in the world.
I have a great liking for streets. In the freshness of morning, the
glare of noonday, and the coolness of evening, they have an equal charm
for me. I like that market-carty period of the day, before Labour has
taken up his shovel and his hoe, before the sun has tipped the chimneys
with gold, and reinspired the dolorous symphony of human toil, just as
his earliest beams were wont to draw supernal melodies from old Memnon's
statue. There is a holy quiet in that hour, which, could we preserve it
in our minds, would keep us clear from many a wrong and meanness, into
which the bustle and the heat of passion betray us, and would sanctify
our day. In that time, the city seems wrapped in a silent ecstasy of
adoration. The incense of its worship curls up from innumerous chimneys,
and hangs over it like the fragrant cloud which hovers over the altars
where saints have prayed, and religion's most august rites have been
celebrated for centuries. In the continental cities, large numbers of
people may be seen at that early hour repairing to the churches. They
are drawn together by no spasmodic, spiritual stimulation; they do not
assemble to hear their fellow-sinners tell with nasal twang how bad they
were once, and how good they are now, nor to implore the curse of Heaven
upon those who differ from them in their belief or disbelief. They kneel
beneath those consecrated arches, joining in a worship in which scarce
an audible word is uttered, and drawing from it new strength to tread
the thorns of life. In our own cities, too, people--generally of the
poorer classes--may be seen wending their way in the early morning to
churches and chapels, humbler than the marble and mosaic sanctuaries of
Europe, but one with them in that faith and worship which radiates from
the majestic Lateran basilica, (_omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater
et caput_,) and encircles the world with its anthems and supplications.
A little later in the morning, and the silence is broken by the
clattering carts of the dispensers of that fluid without which custards
would be impossible. The washing of doorsteps and sidewalks, too, begins
to interfere with your perambulations, and to dim the lustre which No.
97, High Holborn, has imparted to your shoes. Bridget leans upon her wet
broom, and talks with Anne, who leaves her water-pail for a little
conference, in which the affairs of the two neighbouring families of
Smith and Jenkins receive, you may be sure, due attention. Men smoking
short and odorous pipes, and carrying small, mysterious-looking tin
pails, begin to awaken the echoes with their brogans, and to prove him a
slanderer who should say they have no music in their soles. Newspaper
carriers, bearing the damp chronicles of the world's latest history
bestrapped to their sides, hurry along, dispensing their favours into
areas and doorways, seasoning my friend Thompson's breakfast with the
reports of the councils of kings, or with the readable inventions of
"our own correspondent," and delighting the gentle Mrs. Thompson with a
full list of deaths and marriages, or another fatal railway accident.
Then the omnibuses begin to rattle and jolt along the streets, carrying
such masculine loads that they deserve for the time to be called mail
coaches. Later, an odour as of broiled mackerel salutes the sense;
school children, with their shining morning faces, begin to obstruct
your way, and the penny postman, with his burden of joy and sorrow,
hastens along and rings peremptorily at door after door. Then the
streets assume by degrees a new character. Toil is engaged in its
workshops and in by-places, and staid respectability, in its broadcloth
and its glossy beaver, wends its deliberate way to its office or its
counting-house, unhindered by aught that can disturb its equanimity,
unless, perchance, it meets with a gang of street-sweepers in the full
exercise of their dusty avocation.
Who can adequately describe that most inalienable of woman's
rights--that favourite employment of the sex--which is generally termed
_shopping_? Who can describe the curiosity which overhauls a wilderness
of dress patterns, and the uncomplaining patience of the shopman who
endeavours to suit the lady so hard to be suited,--his well-disguised
disappointment when she does not purchase, and her husband's
exasperation when she does? Not I, most certainly, for I detest shops,
have little respect for fashions, lament the necessity of buying
clothes, and wish most heartily that we could return to the primeval
fig-leaves.
I love the by-streets of a city--the streets whose echoes are never
disturbed by the heavy-laden wagons which bespeak the greatness of our
manufacturing interests. Formerly the houses in such streets wore an air
of sobriety and respectability, and the good housewifery which reigned
within was symbolized by the bright polish of the brass door-plate, or
bell-pull, or knocker. Now they are grown more pretentious, and the
brass has given place to an outward and visible sign of silver. But the
streets retain their old characteristics, and are strangers to any sound
more inharmonious than the shouts of sportive children, or the tones of
a hand-organ. I do not profess to be a musical critic, but I have been
gifted by nature with a tolerable idea of time and tune; yet I am not
ashamed to say that I do not despise hand-organs. They have given me
"Sweet Home" in the cities of Italy, Yankee Doodle in the Faubourg St.
Germain; and the best melodies of Europe's composers are daily ground
out under my windows. I have no patience with these canting people who
talk about productive labour, and who see in the organ-grinder who limps
around, looking up expectantly for the remunerating copper, only a
vagabond whom it is expedient for the police to counsel to "move on."
These peripatetic dispensers of harmony are full as useful members of
society as the majority of our legislators, and have a far more
practical talent for organization. Douglas Jerrold once said that he
never saw an Italian image merchant, with his Graces, and Venuses, and
Apollos at sixpence a head, that he did not spiritually touch his hat to
him: "It is he who has carried refinement into the poor man's house; it
is he who has accustomed the eyes of the multitude to the harmonious
forms of beauty." Let me apply these kindly expressions of the dead
dramatist and wit to the organ-grinders. They have carried music into
lanes and slums, which, without them, would never have known any thing
more melodious than a watchman's rattle, and have made the poorest of
our people familiar with harmonies that might "create a soul under the
ribs of death." Occasionally their music may be instrumental in
producing a feeling of impatience, so that I wish that their "Mary Ann"
were married off, and that Norma would "hear," and make an end of it;
but my better feelings triumph in the end, and I would not interfere
with the poor man's and the children's concert to hear a strain from St.
Cecilia's viol. Let the grinders be encouraged! May the evil days
foretold in ancient prophecy never come among us, when the grinders
shall cease because they are few!
It is at evening that the poetic element is found most abundant in the
streets of cities. There is to me something of the sublime in the long
lines of glittering shop-windows that skirt Regent Street and the
Boulevards. Dr. Johnson exhorted the people who attended the sale of his
friend Thrale's brewery, to remember that it was not the mere collection
of boilers, and tubs, and vats which they saw around them, for which
they were about to bargain, but "the potentiality of growing rich beyond
the dreams of avarice"; and, in a similar spirit, I see in the shop
windows not merely the silks and laces, and the other countless luxuries
and wonders which delight the eye of taste and form the source of wealth
to multitudes, but a vast exposition of the results of that industry,
which, next to religion and obedience to law, is the surest foundation
of national greatness, and which shows us, behind the frowning
Providence that laid on man the curse of labour, the smiling face of
divine beneficence. There, in one great collection, may be seen the
fruits of the toil of millions. To produce that gorgeous display,
artists have cudgelled their weary brains; operatives have suffered;
ship-masters have strained their eyes over their charts and daily
observations, and borne patiently with the provoking vagaries of the
"lee main brace"; sailors have climbed the icy rigging and furled the
tattered topsails with hands cracked and bleeding; for that, long trains
of camels freighted with the rich products of the golden East, "from
silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon," have toiled with their
white-turbaned drivers across the parching desert; thousands of busy
hands have plied the swift shuttle in the looms of Brussels, and
Tournai, and Lyons; and thousands in deep and almost unfathomable mines
have suffered a living death. Manchester and Birmingham have been
content to wear their suit of mourning that those windows may be radiant
and gay. The tears, and sweat, and blood of myriads have been poured out
behind those shining panes transmuted into shapes that fill the beholder
with wonder and delight. "In our admiration of the plumage we forget the
dying bird." Nevertheless, above the roar and bustle of those whirling
thoroughfares, above the endless groan and "infinite fierce chorus" of
manhood ground down, and starving in bondage more cruel because it does
not bear the name of slavery, I hear the carol of virtuous and
well-rewarded labour, and the cheerful song of the white-capped
lace-makers of Belgium and the vine-dressers of Italy reminds me that
powerful wrong does not have every thing its own way even in this world.
I did intend to have gone farther in my evening walk; but time and space
alike forbid it. I wished to leave the loud roaring avenues for those
more quiet streets, where every sight and sound speak of domestic
comfort, or humble fidelity, or patient effort; where the brilliancy of
splendid mansions is but imperfectly veiled by rich and heavy draperies;
where high up gleams the lamp of the patient student, happy in his
present obscurity because he dreams of coming fame; and where the tan on
the pavement and the mitigated light from the windows are eloquent of
suffering and the sleepless affection that ministers to its unspoken
wants. But I must stop. If, however, I have shown one of my readers, who
regrets that he is obliged to dwell in a city, that there is much that
is beautiful in paved streets and smoke-stained walls, and that, if we
only open our eyes to see them, even though the fresh fields and waving
woods may be miles away, the beauties of nature daily fold us in their
bosom,--I shall feel that I have not tasked my tired brain and gouty
right hand entirely in vain.