_Country notions of London.--A night-journey to the Metropolis, and
Colin's arrival there._
The good people of the Great City possess but a slight idea of the light
in which they and the modern Babylon are regarded by the remote and
rustic natives of the provinces. Colin partook largely of the general
sentiment respecting that wonderful place, and its, in many respects,
scarcely less marvellous people. To him, in common with every other
child of village or hamlet, however remote, the name of London had been
familiar almost from the cradle. He knew not the time when he knew it
first; and the idea presented by it was that of some great,
undefined, and unknown place, which had no equal in the world, nor
resemblance--(save in that it was composed of buildings and endless
streets)--to anything he had ever seen. It was a vast spectre, without
shape, and measureless, looming in the misty atmosphere of a doubtful
mind, like the ideal pictures of cities and the wonderful palaces of
gnomes and genii, after reading some marvellous Arabian tale. Then,
with the rustic inhabitants of every remote place, anything uncommon or
superior is always presumed to have come from London, and to say that
it came thence, is at once to confer upon it a higher ideal value. Many
a worthless trinket brought by some wandering pedlar is purchased, and
afterwards miraculously preserved from juvenile spoliation amidst the
wreck of all other toys, merely because it came from London. The very
appearance in a village of an individual of more than usual gentility,
startling the bumpkins with a “sight” on some fine summer's morning, is
of itself taken as presumptive evidence that he very probably came from
London. Any innovation or improvement in dress or manners is promptly
and naturally supposed to have had its origin in London. London is the
place, in short, where everything is great,--where everything of
the best is made,--where all the first people of the world do
congregate,--where it is very needful to look sharp about you lest
your very eyes get picked out without your knowing it until they are
gone,--where the most cunning thieves are always at your elbow,--where
everything worth seeing is to be seen, and worth hearing to be
heard,--where anybody may chance to succeed, though he could succeed
nowhere else,--and where, finally, for some one or other or all of these
causes, every man, woman, girl, and boy express a wish to go to before
they die.
Thus is London generally regarded by the rural people of the provinces;
and thus was it in degree that Colin thought, as he paced about the
quiet streets of York. What to do when he should get there he did not
know; but go somewhere he must. There was still room left for many more
in London than himself. Accordingly he walked into a coach-office, and,
after making some inquiries, took his place by a coach which, though it
travelled an indirect route, had the advantage of being about to start
in half an hour. That interval he employed in writing another letter
home, expressive of the intention he had just formed, and stating that
he should write again as soon as he arrived in London.
The public vehicle being now nearly ready, Colin climbed awkwardly up
and took his seat; and, after all the important preparations incident
to such an occasion had been duly made, an expert ostler ingeniously
twitched off the horses' coverings as they were starting, and within
a short time Colin was whirled away on this his first day of foreign
travel.
Never having been on a public stage before, Colin felt delighted. The
pleasant and rapid motion, and the continual change of scenery, almost
made him wonder why those people who could afford it did not ride on the
top of a public coach every day of their lives. Village, town, and then
long spaces of cultivated fields, alternately came on the horizon,
and were left behind; foot-passengers by the road-side appeared to him
almost at a standstill, and the speed of such irritable curs as barked
and ran after the horses, little greater than that of a mole. Towards
evening, however, these things lost much of their attraction, and he
began to grow weary. With weariness came despondency, and he almost felt
as though he was lost.
The sun went down somewhere in the direction of the home he had left
last night. What were his mother and Fanny doing now? What doubt
were they not in, and what misery enduring through his (to them)
unaccountable absence! It was evident enough, too, that Palethorpe knew
him,--and that his design had been found out. What evil reports would
they not spread concerning him, to the dismay and shame of Fanny and his
mother! Mr. Lupton, also, might hear them, and perhaps refuse to take
any notice of his letters; though he himself, were he there, could
explain all this to everybody's satisfaction. Tears both of sorrow
and vexation swam in his eyes, and he wished it was but possible the
coachman could drive him back again. Night came on, and at a great town
(Leicester, I believe) two flaring lamps were put up, which cast upon
the ground a sharp light on either side, as though they flew with a pair
of fiery wings. Passers-by, tree-trunks, and mile-stones shot out of the
darkness before, and into that behind, almost before they could be
seen; while occasionally might be observed other bright rayless lights,
glancing through the hedges, or staring boldly down the road before
them, like the eyes of a monstrous dragon. Then came the rattle of
another coach, a shout of recognition between the coachmen, a tip
upwards of the whip, and all was dark again. The passengers were silent,
and Colin grew doubly melancholy. The coachman now and then looked round
at his fares, as much as to say he very much doubted whether he was
driving a hearse or not; yet all sat as quiet as corpses. He asked
“the box” if he were cold? The box said “No,” and then turned up his
coat-collar, and pretended to go to sleep. The coachman sung himself a
song, and beat his whip-hand upon his left shoulder to keep the blood
stirring. The guard shouted to him, and he shouted back again--“The bag
of corn was to be left at So-and-so, and old Joe was to see and send
that harness back in the morning.”
Colin took no interest in all this, so he shut his eyes, and, after
awhile, fell asleep. The horn blowing for a change of horses awoke him
again. Again he went to sleep, and the same pleasing tune was played in
his vexed ears, and on the same occasion, repeatedly during the night.
When morning broke, he was chilled almost to death: his feet felt as
though undergoing amputation: he could never have believed it was so
cold in summer at any part of the twenty-four hours as he now found it.
The night had been fine and dry, and daylight began with only a few thin
clouds. He longed for a ray of the sun, and watched his increasing light
with desire unfelt before. As he rose, however, the mists gathered,
thicker and thicker as it grew lighter. Then they swept like a storm
over the hills in front, and filled the valleys with a damp fog as thick
as any in November. At two or three hours after sunrise, all was clear
again; and he basked delightfully in the burning heat. They now began to
pass droves of sheep, and herds of cattle, hundreds together, and often
recurring, yet all bent the same way as themselves: they were going to
London to be devoured. None seemed to come back again. They ascended a
steep hill; and to the right Colin saw the longest-bodied church, with
the shortest tower he had ever seen in his life: it was St. Alban's.
Here a man of business, escaped from the metropolis the night before,
and now fresh from sleep and breakfast, and with a “shining morning
face,” gave the coachman a familiar nod and word, and jumped up, to
return to his ledger. The stable-boys looked at Colin, and regarding him
as a “green 'un,” winked at each other, and smiled. The coachman took no
notice of him, as being considerably beneath his observation. But Colin,
without troubling himself concerning other people's thoughts of him,
looked at the long signs about posting at so much per mile, and at those
which advertised Messrs. Mangel Wurzel and Co's Entire, and wondered
what in the world they meant. Another hour or two passed, and the road
seemed to our hero to be alive with all kinds of vehicles describable
and nondescript. Dog-horses drawing lumbering old coaches, and dog-carts
filled with country-baked bread, intermingled with spring vehicles,
carrying soda-water, and carriers' carts laden with crockery, were
jumbled together in all the glorious confusion and dust of a dry summer
morning. Occasionally some butcher's boy, without his hat, would drive
from amongst them, as though his very life depended on his speed,
and shoot a-head, until, in character with all of his fraternity, he
outstripped everybody, and, after the fashion of the good deities of the
Heathen mythology, vanished in a cloud of his own raising.
The coach approached a high archway in the road. Through it Colin saw
what he took to be a mass of horizontal cloud; and, peering above it in
solitary grandeur, like one lone rock above a wilderness of ocean, the
dome of a great cathedral. To the left, on descending the hill, stood
what he took to be a palace; and still farther on, in Holloway
and Islington, so many things of a totally new character presented
themselves to him, that he scarcely believed himself in the same world
as he was yesterday. The turnpikes, and the Angel Inn, the coaches and
cabs, the rabble and noise, the screaming of hawkers, the causeways
lined with apple-women and flower-girls, the running and scrambling of
men carrying bundles of newspapers, as they bawled to the passengers of
outward-bound stages, “_Times, sir!--Chronicle!--Morning Post!_” the
swearing of coachmen, the thrashing of drovers, the barking of dogs,
and the running of frightened sheep and over-goaded cattle, formed
altogether such a Babel as made him for the time utterly forget himself.
“City, young man, or get down here?” demanded the coachman..
“Where are we?” asked Colin.
“Islington. Where are you going to?”
“London,” replied Colin.
“I say, Jim,” remarked the coachman to his friend the guard, “that 's a
neatish cove now, isn't he, to come here?”
“Wot do I care, d----his eyes! Pick up that basket, and go on, without
you mean to stop here all day!”
Whereupon the driver folded up his waybill, and elbowed his passage
through a crowd of miserable, perishing, be-coated and be-capped
night-travellers, who blocked up the causeway with trunks, carpet-bags,
and hat-boxes. Their pallid visages and heavy eyes, indeed, conveyed
to the spectator no indifferent idea of so many unfortunate ghosts just
landed on the far side of the Styx.
“So you are for London, young 'un, are you?” asked the coachman, when
again on his seat.
“Yes, sir,” replied Colin, “and I suppose we are not far from it, now?”
“Jim!” shouted the coachman, as he leaned half round to catch a glimpse
of the guard, “this chap wants to know how far he is from London, if you
can tell him!” And this humorous remark he rounded off with a weasing
chuckle, that appeared to have its origin in a region far below the
thick superstratum of coat and shawl with which the coachman himself
was covered. He then deliberately eyed Colin from head to foot several
times, with a look of great self-satisfaction, and again inquired,--“Wot
did your mother send you from home for?”
“Nobody sent me,” said Colin; “I came of my own accord.”
“Wot, you 're going i' sarvis, then? or, have you come up to get made
Lord Mayor?” Our hero had felt sufficiently his own loneliness before;
but this last observation made him feel it doubly. He coloured deeply.
“Come, I didn't mean that,” said the driver,--“it was only a joke to
raise your spirits. I don't want to spile your feelin's, young man.”
“I assure you, sir,” replied Colin, with emotion, “I have no place to
go to, and I do not know a single soul in London. When I get off this
coach, I shall not know where to turn, nor what to do!”
“Then wot did you come for?” inquired the coachman.
“To get a place,” said Colin.
“And you don't know where to put up?”
“No.”
“Humph! Well, m'happen I can tell you. How much money have you got?”
Colin satisfied the inquirer on this particular; and in return received
the coachman's promise to direct him to a respectable house, at which
he might put up until he had done one of two things, either obtained a
situation or “got himself cleaned out.”