“_In that city, sire, even the manner of breathing was different._”
--PIZARRO.
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WAS in London, the vastest collection of people and of houses this world
has ever seen; the ganglion, the museum, the axle of the English race;
the cradle of much of their genius and most of their fogs; the home
of Dr. Johnson, the bishops of Canterbury, the immortal Falstaff, the
effigied Fawkes; also the headquarters of all the profitable virtues,
all the principles of business. With an abandon and receptivity which
I am pleased to think the Creator has reserved as a consolation for the
non-English, I had hardly been half an hour in the city before I had
become infected with something of its spirit.
“Goddam! What ho!” I said to myself, in the English idiom. “For months,
for years, forever, perhaps, I am to live among this incomprehensible
people. Well, I shall strive to learn something, and, by Great Scotland!
to enjoy something.” So I turned up my trousers and sallied out of my
hotel.
Ah, this was life, indeed, I had come into; not more so than Paris,
but differently so. Stolidly, good-naturedly, and rapidly the citizens
struggle along through the crowds on the pavement. They seem like
helpless straws revolving in a whirlpool. Yet does one of them wish to
cross the street? Instantly a constable raises a finger, the traffic of
London is stopped, and Mr. Benjamin Bull, youngest and least important
son of John, passes uninjured to the farther side.
“What is this street?” I ask one of these officers, as he stands in the
midst of a crossing, signalling which cab or dray shall pass him.
“Strand,” says he, stopping five omnibuses to give me this information.
“Where does it lead me?”
“Which way do you wish to proceed?” he inquires, politely, still
detaining the omnibuses.
“East,” I reply, at a venture.
“First to the right, second to the left, third to the right again, and
take the blue bus as far as the Elephant and Angel,” he answers, without
any hesitation.
“A thousand thanks,” I gasp. “I think, on the whole, I should be safer
to go westward.”
He waves his hand, the omnibuses (which by this time have accumulated to
the number of fourteen) proceed upon their journey, and I, had I the
key to the cipher, should doubtless be in possession of valuable
information. Such is one instance of the way in which the Londoner's
substitute for Providence does its business.
I shall not attempt to give at this point an exhaustive description
of London. The mandates of fortune sent me at different times to enjoy
amusing and embarrassing experiences in various quarters of the city,
and these I shall touch upon in their places. It is sufficient to
observe at present that London is a name for many cities.
A great town, like a great man, is made up of various characters strung
together. Just as the soldier becomes at night the lover and next
morning the philosopher, so a city is on the east a factory, on the
west a palace, on the north a lodging-house. So it is with Paris, with
Berlin, with all. But London is so large, so devoid of system in its
creation and in its improvements, so variously populated, that it
probably exceeds any in its variety.
No emperor or council of city fathers mapped the streets or regulated
the houses. What edifice each man wanted that he built, guided only
by the length of his purse and the depth of his barbarism; while the
streets on which this arose is either the same roadway as once served
the Romans, or else the speculative builder's idea of best advancing the
interests of his property. Then some day comes a great company who wish
to occupy a hundred metres of frontage and direct attention to their
business. So many houses are pulled down and replaced by an erection
twice the height of anything else, and designed, as far as possible, to
imitate the cries and costume of a bookmaker. And all this time there
are surviving, in nooks and corners, picturesque and venerable buildings
of a by-gone age, and also, of late, are arising on all sides worthy and
dignified new piles.
So that the history of each house and each street, the mental condition
of their architects and the financial condition of their occupants,
are written upon them plainly with a smoky finger. For you see all
this through an atmosphere whose millions of molecules of carbon and of
aqueous vapor darken the bricks and the stones, and hang like a veil of
fine gauze before them. London is huge, but the eternal mistiness makes
it seem huger still, for however high a building you climb, you can see
nothing but houses and yet more houses, melting at what looks a vast
distance into the blue-and-yellow haze. Really, there may be green woods
and the fair slopes of a country-side within a few miles, but since you
cannot see them your heart sinks, and you believe that such good things
must be many leagues below the brick horizon. More than once upon a
Sunday morning, when the air was clear, I have been startled to see
from the Strand itself a glimpse of the Surrey hills quite near and very
beautiful, and I have said, “Thank God for this!”
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It was in the morning that I arrived in London, and my first day I spent
in losing my way through the labyrinth of streets, which are set never
at a right angle to one another, and are of such different lengths that
I could scarcely persuade myself it had not all been specially arranged
to mislead me.
About one o'clock I entered a restaurant and ordered a genuine English
steak--the porter-house, it was called. In quality, I admit this segment
of an ox was admirable; but as for its quantity--my faith! I ate it till
half-past two and scarcely had made an impression then. Half stupefied
with this orgy, and the British beer I had taken to assist me in the
protracted effort, I returned to my hotel, and there began the journal
on which these memoirs are founded. As showing my sensations at the
time, they are now of curious interest to me. I shall give the extract I
wrote then:
“_Amusing, absorbing, entertaining as a Chinese puzzle where all the
pieces are alive; all these things is the city of London. Why, then, has
it already begun to pall upon me? Ah, it is the loneliness of a crowd!
In Paris I can walk by the hour and never see a face I know, and yet not
feel this sense of desolation. Friends need not be before the eye, but
they must be at hand when you wish to call them. For myself, I call them
pretty frequently, yet often can remain for a time content to merely
know that they are somewhere not too far away. But here--I may turn
north, south, east, or west, and walk as far as I like in any direction,
and not one should I find!_
“_Shall I ever make a friend among this old, phlegmatic, business-like
people? Some day perhaps, an acquaintance may be struck with some such
reticent and frigid monster as my fair-haired companion of the
journey. Would such a one console or cheer or share a single sentiment?
Impossible! Mon Dieu! I shall leave this town in three days; I swear it.
And where then? The devil knows!_”
At this point the writing of these notes was unexpectedly interrupted,
only to be resumed, as it chanced, after some adventurous days.
A waiter entered, bearing a letter for me. I sprang up and seized
it eagerly. It was addressed to Mr. Nelson Bunyan, Esq., and marked
“Immediate and confidential.” These words were written in English and
execrably misspelled.
It could come from but one source, for who else knew my _nom de plume_,
who else would write “Immediate and confidential,” and, I grieve to say
it, who else would take their precautions in such a way as instantly to
raise suspicions? Had the secretary of the “Une, Deux, Trois” no
English dictionary, that he need make the very waiter stare at this very
extraordinary address? I did my best to pass it off lightly.
“From a lady,” I said to the man. “One not very well educated, perhaps;
but is education all we seek in women?”
“No, sir,” said he, replying to my glance with insufferable familiarity,
“not all by no means.”
Alas that the fugitive cannot afford to take offence!
I opened the letter, and, as I expected, it was headed by the letters U.
D. T:
“_Go at once to the house of Mr. Frederick Hankey, No. 114 or 115 George
Road, Streatham. Knock thrice on the third window, and when he comes say
distinctly 'For the King.' He will give directions for your safety._”
This missive was only signed F. II, but, of course, I knew the
writer--our most indefatigable, our most enthusiastic, the secretary
himself.
Well, here was something to be done; a friend, perhaps, to be made; a
spice of interest suddenly thrown into this city of strangers. After my
fashion, my spirits rose as quickly as they had fallen. I whistled an
air, and began to think this somewhat dreary hotel not a bad place,
after all. I should only wait till darkness fell and then set out to
interview Mr. Frederick Hankey.
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