A GLIMPSE OF LONDON
After a few days I went to London for the first time--I do not
count the night of my arrival, for I saw nothing but the railway
terminus--and, I confess, I was not impressed as much as I might have
been. I could not help thinking on this first morning, as we passed
from Paddington, via Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Park Lane, Brook Street,
Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, Piccadilly and other streets to
Regent Street and the neighborhood of the Carlton Hotel, that it was
beautiful, spacious, cleanly, dignified and well ordered, but not
astonishingly imposing. Fortunately it was a bright and comfortable
morning and the air was soft. There was a faint bluish haze over the
city, which I took to be smoke; and certainly it smelled as though it
were smoky. I had a sense of great life but not of crowded life, if I
manage to make myself clear by that. It seemed to me at first blush
as if the city might be so vast that no part was important. At every
turn Barfleur, who was my ever-present monitor, was explaining, “Now
this that we are coming to,” or “This that we are passing,” or “This is
so and so;” and so we sped by interesting things, the city impressing
me in a vague way but meaning very little at the moment. We must have
passed through a long stretch of Piccadilly, for Barfleur pointed out a
line of clubs, naming them--the St. James’s Club, the Savile Club, the
Lyceum Club, and then St. James’s Palace.
I was duly impressed. I was seeing things which, after all, I thought,
did not depend so much upon their exterior beauty or vast presence as
upon the import of their lineage and connections. They were beautiful
in a low, dark way, and certainly they were tinged with an atmosphere
of age and respectability. After all, since life is a figment of the
brain, built-up notions of things are really far more impressive in
many cases than the things themselves. London is a fanfare of great
names; it is a clatter of vast reputations; it is a swirl of memories
and celebrated beauties and orders and distinctions. It is almost
impossible any more to disassociate the real from the fictitious or,
better, spiritual. There is something here which is not of brick
and stone at all, but which is purely a matter of thought. It is
disembodied poetry; noble ideas; delicious memories of great things;
and these, after all, are better than brick and stone. The city is
low--universally not more than five stories high, often not more than
two, but it is beautiful. And it alternates great spaces with narrow
crevices in such a way as to give a splendid variety. You can have
at once a sense of being very crowded and of being very free. I can
understand now Browning’s desire to include “poor old Camberwell” with
Italy in the confines of romance.
The thing that struck me most in so brief a survey--we were surely
not more than twenty minutes in reaching our destination--was that
the buildings were largely a golden yellow in color, quite as if they
had been white and time had stained them. Many other buildings looked
as though they had been black originally and had been daubed white
in spots. The truth is that it was quite the other way about. They
had been snow white and had been sooted by the smoke until they were
now nearly coal black. And only here and there had the wind and rain
whipped bare white places which looked like scars or the drippings of
lime. At first I thought, “How wretched.” Later I thought, “This effect
is charming.”
We are so used to the new and shiny and tall in America, particularly
in our larger cities, that it is very hard at first to estimate a
city of equal or greater rank, which is old and low and, to a certain
extent, smoky. In places there was more beauty, more surety, more
dignity, more space than most of our cities have to offer. The police
had an air of dignity and intelligence such as I have never seen
anywhere in America. The streets were beautifully swept and clean;
and I saw soldiers here and there in fine uniforms, standing outside
palaces and walking in the public ways. That alone was sufficient
to differentiate London from any American city. We rarely see our
soldiers. They are too few. I think what I felt most of all was that I
could not feel anything very definite about so great a city and that
there was no use trying.
We were soon at the bank where I was to have my American order for
money cashed; and then, after a short walk in a narrow street, we
were at the office of Barfleur, where I caught my first glimpse of an
English business house. It was very different from an American house of
the same kind, for it was in an old and dark building of not more than
four stories--and set down in a narrow angle off the Strand and lighted
by small lead-paned windows, which in America would smack strongly of
Revolutionary days. In fact we have scarcely any such buildings left.
Barfleur’s private offices were on the second floor, up a small dingy
staircase, and the room itself was so small that it surprised me by its
coziness. I could not call it dingy. It was quaint rather, Georgian in
its atmosphere, with a small open fire glowing in one corner, a great
rolltop desk entirely out of keeping with the place in another, a
table, a book-case, a number of photographs of celebrities framed, and
the rest books. I think he apologized for, or explained the difference
between, this and the average American business house, but I do not
think explanations are in order. London is London. I should be sorry if
it were exactly like New York, as it may yet become. The smallness and
quaintness appealed to me as a fit atmosphere for a healthy business.
I should say here that this preliminary trip to London from Bridgely
Level, so far as Barfleur was concerned, was intended to accomplish
three things: first, to give me a preliminary glimpse of London;
second, to see that I was measured and examined for certain articles of
clothing in which I was, according to Barfleur, woefully lacking; and
third, to see that I attended the concert of a certain Austrian singer
whose singing he thought I might enjoy. It was most important that I
should go, because he had to go; and since all that I did or could do
was merely grist for my mill, I was delighted to accompany him.
Barfleur in many respects, I wish to repeat here, is one of the most
delightful persons in the world. He is a sort of modern Beau Brummel
with literary, artistic and gormandizing leanings. He loves order and
refinement, of course,--things in their proper ways and places--as he
loves life. I suspect him at times of being somewhat of a martinet in
home and office matters; but I am by no means sure that I am not doing
him a grave injustice. A more even, complaisant, well-mannered and
stoical soul, who manages to get his way in some fashion or other, if
it takes him years to do it, I never met. He surely has the patience
of fate and, I think, the true charity of a great heart. Now before I
could be properly presented in London and elsewhere I needed a long
list of things. So this morning I had much shopping to attend to.
Since the matter of English and American money had been troubling me
from the moment I reached that stage on my voyage where I began to
pay for things out of my own pocket to the ship’s servants, I began
complaining of my difficulties now. I couldn’t figure out the tips to
my own satisfaction and this irritated me. I remember urging Barfleur
to make the whole matter clear to me, which he did later. He gave me a
typewritten statement as to the relative value of the various pieces
and what tips I should pay and how and when at hotels and country
houses, and this I followed religiously. Here it is:
In leaving the hotel to-morrow, give the following tips:
Maid 3/-
Valet 3/-
Gold Braid 1/-
Porter (who looks after telephone) 1/-
Outside Man (Doorman) 1/-
If you reckon at a hotel to give 9d. a day to the maid and the
valet, with a minimum of 1/-, you will be doing handsomely. On
a visit, on the supposition that they have only maids, give the
two maids whom you are likely to come across 2/6 each, when
you come away on Monday. (I am speaking of weekends.) Longer
periods should be figured at 9d. a day. If, on the other hand,
it is a large establishment--butler and footman--you would have
to give the butler 10/- and the footman 5/- for a week-end; for
longer periods more.
I cannot imagine anything more interesting than being introduced
as I was by Barfleur to the social character of London. He was so
intelligent and so very nice about it all. “Now, first,” he said, “we
will get your glasses mended; and then you want a traveling bag; and
then some ties and socks, and so on. I have an appointment with you at
your tailor’s at eleven o’clock, where you are to be measured for your
waistcoats, and at eleven-thirty at your furrier’s, where you are to be
measured for your fur coat,” and so on and so forth. “Well, come along.
We’ll be off.”
I have to smile when I think of it, for I, of all people, am the least
given to this matter of proper dressing and self-presentation, and
Barfleur, within reasonable limits, represents the other extreme.
To him, as I have said, these things are exceedingly important. The
delicate manner in which he indicated and urged me into getting the
things which would be all right, without openly insisting on them,
was most pleasing. “In England, you know,” he would hint, “it isn’t
quite good form to wear a heavy striped tie with a frock coat--never a
straight black; and we never tie them in that fashion--always a simple
knot.” My socks had to be striped for morning wear and my collars
winged, else I was in very bad form indeed. I fell into the habit of
asking, “What now?”
London streets and shops as I first saw them interested me greatly.
I saw at once more uniforms than one would ordinarily see in New
York, and more high hats and, presumably,--I could not tell for the
overcoats--cutaway coats. The uniforms were of mail-men, porters,
messenger-boys and soldiers; and all being different from what I had
been accustomed to, they interested me--the mail-men particularly, with
a service helmet cut square off at the top; and the little messenger
boys, with their tambourine caps cocked joyously over one ear, amused
me; the policeman’s helmet strap under his chin was new and diverting.
In the stores the clerks first attracted my attention, but I may say
the stores and shops themselves, after New York, seemed small and old.
New York is so new; the space given to the more important shops is
so considerable. In London it struck me that the space was not much
and that the woodwork and walls were dingy. One can tell by the feel
of a place whether it is exceptional and profitable, and all of these
were that; but they were dingy. The English clerk, too, had an air of
civility, I had almost said servility, which was different. They looked
to me like individuals born to a condition and a point of view; and I
think they are. In America any clerk may subsequently be anything he
chooses (ability guaranteed), but I’m not so sure that this is true in
England. Anyhow, the American clerk always looks his possibilities--his
problematic future; the English clerk looks as if he were to be one
indefinitely.
We were through with this round by one o’clock, and Barfleur explained
that we would go to a certain very well-known hotel grill.
The hotel, after its fashion--the grill--was a distinct blow. I had
fancied that I was going to see something on the order of the luxurious
new hotel in New York--certainly as resplendent, let us say, as our
hotels of the lower first class. Not so. It could be compared, and I
think fairly so, only to our hotels of the second or third class. There
was the same air of age here that there was about our old but very
excellent hotels in New York. The woodwork was plain, the decorations
simple.
As for the crowd, well, Barfleur stated that it might be smart and it
might not. Certain publishers, rich Jewish merchants, a few actors and
some Americans would probably be here. This grill was affected by the
foreign element. The _maître d’hôtel_ was French, of course--a short,
fat, black-whiskered man who amused me by his urbanity. The waiters
were, I believe, German, as they are largely in London and elsewhere in
England. One might almost imagine Germany intended invading England
via its waiters. The china and plate were simple and inexpensive,
almost poor. A great hotel can afford to be simple. We had what we
would have had at any good French restaurant, and the crowd was rather
commonplace-looking to me. Several American girls came in and they were
good-looking, smart but silly. I cannot say that I was impressed at
all, and my subsequent experiences confirm that feeling. I am inclined
to think that London hasn’t one hotel of the material splendor of the
great new hotels in New York. But let that go for the present.
While we were sipping coffee Barfleur told me of a Mrs. W., a friend
of his whom I was to meet. She was, he said, a lion-hunter. She tried
to make her somewhat interesting personality felt in so large a sea
as London by taking up with promising talent before it was already
a commonplace. I believe it was arranged over the ’phone then that
I should lunch there--at Mrs. W.’s--the following day at one and be
introduced to a certain Lady R., who was known as a patron of the arts,
and a certain Miss H., an interesting English type. I was pleased with
the idea of going. I had never seen an English lady lion-hunter. I had
never met English ladies of the types of Lady R. and Miss H. There
might be others present. I was also informed that Mrs. W. was really
not English but Danish; but she and her husband, who was also Danish
and a wealthy broker, had resided in London so long that they were to
all intents and purposes English, and in addition to being rich they
were in rather interesting standing socially.
After luncheon we went to hear a certain Miss T., an Austrian of about
thirty years of age, sing at some important hall in London--Bechstein
Hall, I believe it was,--and on the way I was told something of her.
It seemed that she was very promising--a great success in Germany
and elsewhere as a concert-singer--and that she might be coming to
America at some time or other. Barfleur had known her in Paris. He
seemed to think I would like her. We went and I heard a very lovely
set of songs--oh, quite delightful, rendered in a warm, sympathetic,
enthusiastic manner, and representing the most characteristic type of
German love sentiment. It is a peculiar sentiment--tender, wistful,
smacking of the sun at evening and lovely water on which the moon is
shining. German sentiment verges on the mushy--is always close to
tears--but anything more expressive of a certain phase of life I do not
know.
Miss T. sang forcefully, joyously, vigorously, and I wished sincerely
to meet her and tell her so; but that was not to be, then.
As we made our way to Paddington Barfleur, brisk and smiling, asked:
“Were you amused?”
“Quite.”
“Well, then this afternoon was not wasted. I shall always be satisfied
if you are amused.”
I smiled, and we rode sleepily back to Bridgely Level to dine and
thence to bed.