accommodations and luxuries surprised me. Would you could see our
breakfast scene! every utensil so beautiful, such order, such curiosity!
the whole furniture of the room so choice, and of such excellent
workmanship, and a fire of earth-coal enlivening every thing. But I must
minutely describe all this hereafter. To paint the family group is out
of my power; words may convey an adequate idea of deformity, and
describe with vivid accuracy what is grotesque in manner or costume; but
for gracefulness and beauty we have only general terms. Thus much,
however, may be said; there is an elegance and a propriety in the
domestic dress of English women, which is quite perfect, and children
here and with us seem almost like beings of different species. Their
dress here bears no resemblance to that of their parents; I could not
but feel the unfitness of our own manners, and acknowledge that our
children in full dress look like colts in harness. J—’s are fine,
healthy, happy-looking children; their mother educates them, and was
telling her husband with delightful pride how they had profited, how
John could spell, and Harriet tell her letters. She has shown me their
books, for in this country they have books for every gradation of the
growing intellect, and authors of the greatest celebrity have not
thought it beneath them to employ their talents in this useful
department. Their very playthings are made subservient to the purposes
of education; they have ivory alphabets with which they arrange words
upon the table, and dissected maps which they combine into a whole so
much faster than I can do, that I shall not be ashamed to play with
them, and acquire the same readiness.
J— has a tolerable library; he has the best Spanish authors; but I must
not keep company here with my old friends. The advice which he has given
me, with respect to my studies, is very judicious. Of our best books, he
says, read none but such as are absolutely necessary to give you a
competent knowledge of the land you are in; you will take back with you
our great authors, and it is best to read them at leisure in your own
country, when you will more thoroughly understand them. Newspapers,
Reviews, and other temporary publications will make you best acquainted
with England in its present state; and we have bulky county histories,
not worth freight across the water, which you should consult for
information concerning what you have seen, and what you mean to see. But
reserve our classics for Spain, and read nothing which you buy.[5]
Footnote 5:
Having taken his advice, I recommend it to future
travellers.—_Author’s note._
The tailor and shoemaker have made their appearance. I fancied my figure
was quite English in my pantaloons of broad-striped fustian, and large
coat buttons of cut steel; but it seems that although they are certainly
of genuine English manufacture, they were manufactured only for foreign
sale. To-morrow my buttons will be covered, and my toes squared, and I
shall be in no danger of being called Frenchman in the streets.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER VII.
_General Description of London.—Walk to the Palace.—Crowd in the
Streets.—Shops.—Cathedral of St Paul.—Palace of the Prince of
Wales.—Oddities in the Shop Windows._
Wednesday, April 28.
My first business was to acquire some knowledge of the place whereof I
am now become an inhabitant. I began to study the plan of London, though
dismayed at the sight of its prodigious extent,—a city a league and a
half from one extremity to the other, and about half as broad, standing
upon level ground. It is impossible ever to become thoroughly acquainted
with such an endless labyrinth of streets; and, as you may well suppose,
they who live at one end know little or nothing of the other. The river
is no assistance to a stranger in finding his way. There is no street
along its banks, and no eminence from whence you can look around and
take your bearings.
London, properly so called, makes but a small part of this immense
capital, though the focus of business is there. Westminster is about the
same size. To the east and the north is a great population included in
neither of these cities, and probably equal to both. On the western side
the royal parks have prevented the growth of houses, and form a gap
between the metropolis and its suburb. All this is on the north side of
the river. Southwark, or the Borough, is on the other shore, and a town
has grown at Lambeth by the Primate’s palace, which has now joined it.
The extent of ground covered with houses on this bank is greater than
the area of Madrid. The population is now ascertained to exceed nine
hundred thousand persons, nearly a twelfth of the inhabitants of the
whole island.
Having studied the way to the palace, I set off. The distance was
considerable: the way, after getting into the main streets, tolerably
straight. There were not many passers in the by-streets; but when I
reached Cheapside the crowd completely astonished me. On each side of
the way were two uninterrupted streams of people, one going east, the
other west. At first I thought some extraordinary occasion must have
collected such a concourse; but I soon perceived it was only the usual
course of business. They moved on in two regular counter currents, and
the rapidity with which they moved was as remarkable as their numbers.
It was easy to perceive that the English calculate the value of time.
Nobody was loitering to look at the beautiful things in the shop
windows; none were stopping to converse, every one was in haste, yet no
one in a hurry; the quickest possible step seemed to be the natural
pace. The carriages were numerous in proportion, and were driven with
answerable velocity.
If possible, I was still more astonished at the opulence and splendour
of the shops: drapers, stationers, confectioners, pastry-cooks,
seal-cutters, silver-smiths, booksellers, print-sellers, hosiers,
fruiterers, china-sellers,—one close to another, without intermission, a
shop to every house, street after street, and mile after mile; the
articles themselves so beautiful, and so beautifully arranged, that if
they who passed by me had had leisure to observe any thing, they might
have known me to be a foreigner by the frequent stands which I made to
admire them. Nothing which I had seen in the country had prepared me for
such a display of splendour.
My way lay by St Paul’s church. The sight of this truly noble building
rather provoked than pleased me. The English, after erecting so grand an
edifice, will not allow it an open space to stand in, and it is
impossible to get a full view of it in any situation. The value of
ground in this capital is too great to be sacrificed to beauty by a
commercial nation: unless, therefore, another conflagration should lay
London in ashes, the Londoners will never fairly see their own
cathedral. The street which leads to the grand front has just a
sufficient bend to destroy the effect which such a termination would
have given it, and to obstruct the view till you come too close to see
it. This is perfectly vexatious! Except St Peter’s, here is beyond
comparison the finest temple in Christendom, and it is even more
ridiculously misplaced than the bridge of Segovia appears, when the
mules have drank up the Manzanares. The houses come so close upon one
side, that carriages are not permitted to pass that way lest the
foot-passengers should be endangered. The site itself is well chosen on
a little rising near the river; and were it fairly opened as it ought to
be, no city could boast so magnificent a monument of modern times.
In a direct line from hence is Temple Bar, a modern, ugly, useless gate,
which divides the two cities of London and Westminster. There were iron
spikes upon the top, on which the heads of traitors were formerly
exposed: J— remembers to have seen some in his childhood. On both sides
of this gate I had a paper thrust into my hand, which proved to be a
quack doctor’s notice of some never-failing pills. Before I reached home
I had a dozen of these. Tradesmen here lose no possible opportunity of
forcing their notices upon the public. Wherever there was a dead wall, a
vacant house, or a temporary scaffolding erected for repairs, the space
was covered with printed bills. Two rival blacking-makers were standing
in one of the streets, each carried a boot, completely varnished with
black, hanging from a pole, and on the other arm a basket with the balls
for sale. On the top of their poles was a sort of standard, with a
printed paper explaining the virtue of the wares;—the one said that his
blacking was the best blacking in the world; the other, that his was so
good you might eat it.
The crowd in Westminster was not so great as in the busier city. From
Charing Cross, as it is still called, though an equestrian statue has
taken place of the cross, a great street opens toward Westminster Abbey,
and the Houses of Parliament. Most of the public buildings are here: it
is to be regretted that the end is not quite open to the abbey, for it
would then be one of the finest streets in Europe. Leaving this for my
return, I went on to the palaces of the Prince of Wales, and of the
King, which stand near each other in a street called Pall Mall. The game
from whence this name is derived is no longer known in England.
The Prince of Wales’s palace is no favourable specimen of English
architecture. Before the house are thirty columns planted in a row, two
and two, supporting nothing but a common entablature, which connects
them. As they serve for neither ornament nor use, a stranger might be
puzzled to know by what accident they came there; but the truth is, that
these people have more money than taste, and are satisfied with any
absurdity if it has but the merit of being new. The same architect was
employed[6] to build a palace, not far distant, for the second prince of
the blood, and in the front towards the street he constructed a large
oven-like room completely obscuring the house to which it was to serve
as an entrance-hall. These two buildings being described to the late
Lord North, who was blind in the latter part of his life, he facetiously
remarked, Then the Duke of York, it should seem, has been sent to the
round-house, and the Prince of Wales is put into the pillory.[7]
Footnote 6:
The author must have been misinformed in this particular, for the Duke
of York’s house at Whitehall, now Lord Melbourne’s, was not built by
his Royal Highness; but altered, with some additions, of which the
room alluded to made a part.—TR.
Footnote 7:
There is an explanation of the jest in the text which the translator
has thought proper to omit, as, however necessary to foreign readers,
it must needs seem impertinent to an English one.—TR.
I had now passed the trading district, and found little to excite
attention in large brick houses without uniformity, and without either
beauty or magnificence. The royal palace itself is an old brick
building, remarkable for nothing, except that the sovereign of Great
Britain should have no better a court; but it seems that the king never
resides there. A passage through the court-yard leads into St James’s
Park, the Prado of London. Its trees are not so fine as might be
expected in a country where water never fails, and the sun never
scorches; here is also a spacious piece of water; but the best ornament
of the park are the two towers of Westminster Abbey. Having now reached
the proposed limits of my walk, I passed through a public building of
some magnitude and little beauty, called the Horse Guards, and again
entered the public streets. Here, where the pavement was broad, and the
passengers not so numerous as to form a crowd, a beggar had taken his
seat, and written his petition upon the stones with chalks of various
colours, the letters formed with great skill, and ornamented with some
taste. I stopped to admire his work, and gave him a trifle as a payment
for the sight, rather than as alms. Immediately opposite the Horse
Guards is the Banqueting House at Whitehall; so fine a building, that if
the later architects had had eyes to see, or understandings to
comprehend its merit, they would never have disgraced the opposite side
of the way with buildings so utterly devoid of beauty. This fragment of
a great design by Inigo Jones is remarkable for many accounts; here is
the window through which Charles I. came out upon the scaffold; here
also, in the back court, the statue of James II. remains undisturbed,
with so few excesses was that great revolution accompanied; and here is
the weathercock which was set up by his command, that he might know
every shifting of the wind when the invasion from Holland was expected,
and the east wind was called Protestant by the people, and the west
Papist.
My way home from Charing Cross was varied, in as much as I took the
other side of the street for the sake of the shop windows, and the
variety was greater than I had expected. It took me through a place
called Exeter Change, which is precisely a _Bazar_, a sort of street
under cover, or large long room, with a row of shops on either hand, and
a thoroughfare between them; the shops being furnished with such
articles as might tempt an idler, or remind a passenger of his
wants,—walking-sticks, implements for shaving, knives, scissars,
watch-chains, purses, &c. At the further end was a man in splendid
costume, who proved to belong to a menagerie above stairs, to which he
invited me to ascend; but I declined this for the present, being without
a companion. A maccaw was swinging on a perch above him, and the outside
of the building hung with enormous pictures of the animals which were
there to be seen.
The oddest things which I saw in the whole walk were a pair of shoes in
one window floating in a vessel of water, to show that they were
water-proof; and a well-dressed leg in another, betokening that legs
were made there to the life. One purchase I ventured to make, that of a
travelling caissette; there were many at the shop-door, with the prices
marked upon them, so that I did not fear imposition. These things are
admirably made and exceedingly convenient. I was shown some which
contained the whole apparatus of a man’s toilet, but this seemed an ill
assortment, as when writing you do not want the shaving materials, and
when shaving as little do you want the writing desk.
In looking over the quack’s notices after my return, I found a fine
specimen of English hyperbole. The doctor says that his pills always
perform, and even exceed whatever he promises, as if they were impatient
of immortal and universal fame.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER VIII.
_Proclamation of Peace.—The English do not understand
Pageantry.—Illumination.—M. Otto’s House.—Illuminations better
managed at Rome._
Friday, April 30.
The definitive treaty has arrived at last; peace was proclaimed
yesterday, with the usual ceremonies, and the customary rejoicings have
taken place. My expectations were raised to the highest pitch. I looked
for a pomp and pageantry far surpassing whatever I had seen in my own
country. Indeed every body expected a superb spectacle. The newspaper
writers had filled their columns with magnificent descriptions of what
was to be, and rooms or single windows in the streets through which the
procession was to pass, were advertised to be let for the sight, and
hired at prices so extravagant, that I should be suspected of
exaggeration were I to say how preposterous.
The theory of the ceremony, for this ceremony, like an English suit at
law, is founded upon a fiction, is, that the Lord Mayor of London, and
the people of London, good people! being wholly ignorant of what has
been going on, the king sends officially to acquaint them that he has
made peace: accordingly the gates at Temple Bar, which divide London and
Westminster, and which stand open day and night, are on this occasion
closed; and Garter king at arms, with all his heraldic peers, rides up
to them and knocks loudly for admittance. The Lord Mayor, mounted on a
charger, is ready on the other side to demand who is there. King Garter
then announces himself and his errand, and requires permission to pass
and proclaim the good news; upon which the gates are thrown open. This,
which is the main part of the ceremony, could be seen only by those
persons who were contiguous to the spot, and we were not among the
number. The apartment in which we were was on the Westminster side, and
we saw only the heraldic part of the procession. The heralds and the
trumpeters were certainly in splendid costume; but they were not above
twenty in number, nor was there any thing to precede or follow them. The
poorest brotherhood in Spain makes a better procession on its festival.
In fact, these functions are not understood in England.
The crowd was prodigious. The windows, the leads, or unrailed balconies
which project over many of the shops, the house tops, were full, and the
streets below thronged. A very remarkable accident took place in our
sight. A man on the top of a church was leaning against one of the stone
urns which ornament the balustrade; it fell, and crushed a person below.
On examination it appeared that the workmen, instead of cramping it with
iron to the stone, or securing it with masonry, had fitted it on a
wooden peg, which having become rotten through, yielded to the slightest
touch. A Turk might relate this story in proof of predestination.
If, however, the ceremony of the morning disappointed me, I was amply
rewarded by the illuminations at night. This token of national joy is
not, as with us, regulated by law; the people, or the mob, as they are
called, take the law into their own hands on these occasions, and when
they choose to have an illumination, the citizens must illuminate to
please them, or be content to have their windows broken; a violence
which is winked at by the police, as it falls only upon persons whose
politics are obnoxious. During many days, preparations had been making
for this festivity, so that it was already known what houses and what
public buildings would exhibit the most splendid appearance. M. Otto’s,
the French ambassador, surpassed all others, and the great object of
desire was to see this. Between eight and nine the lighting-up began,
and about ten we sallied out on our way to Portman Square, where M. Otto
resided.
In the private streets there was nothing to be remarked, except the
singular effect of walking at night in as broad a light as that of
noon-day, every window being filled with candles, arranged either in
straight lines, or in arches, at the fancy of the owner, which nobody
stopped to admire. None indeed were walking in these streets except
persons whose way lay through them; yet had there been a single house
unlighted, a mob would have been collected in five minutes, at the first
outcry. When we drew near Pall Mall, the crowd, both of carriages and of
people, thickened; still there was no inconvenience, and no difficulty
in walking, or in crossing the carriage road. Greater expense had been
bestowed here. The gaming-houses in St James’s street were magnificent,
as they always are on such occasions; in one place you saw the crown and
the G. R. in coloured lamps; in another the word Peace in letters of
light; in another some transparent picture, emblematical of peace and
plenty. Some score years ago, a woman in the country asked a higher
price than she had used to do for a basket of mushrooms, and when she
was asked the reason, said, it was because of the American war. As war
thus advances the price of every thing, peace and plenty are supposed to
be inseparably connected; and well may the poor think them so. There was
a transparency exhibited this night at a pot-house in the city, which
represented a loaf of bread saying to a pot of porter, I am coming down;
to which the porter-pot made answer, So am I.
The nearer we drew the greater was the throng. It was a sight truly
surprising to behold all the inhabitants of this immense city walking
abroad at midnight, and distinctly seen by the light of ten thousand
candles. This was particularly striking in Oxford-street, which is
nearly half a league in length;—as far as the eye could reach either way
the parallel lines of light were seen narrowing towards each other.
Here, however, we could still advance without difficulty, and the
carriages rattled along unobstructed. But in the immediate vicinity of
Portman square it was very different. Never before had I beheld such
multitudes assembled. The middle of the street was completely filled
with coaches, so immoveably locked together, that many persons who
wished to cross passed under the horses’ bellies without fear, and
without danger. The unfortunate persons within had no such means of
escape; they had no possible way of extricating themselves, unless they
could crawl out of the window of one coach into the window of another;
there was no room to open a door. There they were, and there they must
remain, patiently or impatiently; and there, in fact, they did remain
the greater part of the night, till the lights were burnt out, and the
crowd clearing away left them at liberty.
We who were on foot had better fortune, but we laboured hard for it.
There were two ranks of people, one returning from the square, the other
pressing on to it. Exertion was quite needless; man was wedged to man,
he who was behind you pressed you against him who was before; I had
nothing to do but to work out elbow room that I might not be squeezed to
death, and to float on with the tide. But this tide was frequently at a
stop; some obstacle at the further end of the street checked it, and
still the crowd behind was increasing in depth. We tried the first
entrance to the square in vain; it was utterly impossible to get in, and
finding this we crossed into the counter current, and were carried out
by the stream. A second and a third entrance we tried with no better
fortune; at the fourth, the only remaining avenue, we were more
successful. To this, which is at the outskirts of the town, there was
one way inaccessible by carriages, and it was not crowded by walkers,
because the road was bad, there were no lamps, and the way was not
known. By this route, however, we entered the avenue immediately
opposite to M. Otto’s, and raising ourselves by the help of a garden
wall, overlooked the crowd, and thus obtained a full and uninterrupted
sight, of what thousands and tens of thousands were vainly struggling to
see. To describe it, splendid as it was, is impossible; the whole
building presented a front of light. The inscription was Peace and
Amity; it had been Peace and Concord, but a party of sailors in the
morning, whose honest patriotism did not regard trifling differences of
orthography, insisted upon it that they were not _conquered_, and that
no Frenchman should say so; and so the word Amity, which can hardly be
regarded as English, was substituted in its stead.
Having effected our object, meaner sights had no temptation for us, and
we returned. It was three in the morning before we reached home; we
extinguished our lights and were retiring to bed, believing ourselves at
liberty so to do. But it did not please the mob to be of the same
opinion; they insisted that the house should be lit up again, and John
Bull was not to be disobeyed. Except a few such instances of
unreasonableness, it is surprising how peaceably the whole passed off.
The pickpockets have probably made a good harvest; but we saw no
quarrelling, no drunkenness, and, what is more extraordinary, prodigious
as the crowd was, have heard of no accident.
So famous is this illumination of M. Otto, that one of the minor
theatres has given notice to all such persons as were not fortunate
enough to obtain sight of it, that it will be exactly represented upon
the stage for their accommodation, and that the same number of lamps
will be arranged precisely in the same manner, the same person being
employed to suspend them. Hundreds will go to see this, not recollecting
that it is as impossible to do it upon a stage of that size, as it is to
put a quart of water into a pint cup.
Illuminations are better managed at Rome. Imagine the vast dome of St
Peter’s covered with large lamps so arranged as to display its fine
form; those lamps all kindled at the same minute, and the whole dome
emerging, as it were, from total darkness, in one blaze of light. After
this exhibition has lasted an hour, the dome as rapidly assumes the
shape of a huge tiara, a change produced by pots of fire so much more
powerful than the former light as at once to annihilate it. This, and
the fireworks from St Angelo, which, from the grandeur, admit of no
adequate description, as you may well conceive, effectually prevent
those persons who have beheld them from enjoying the twinkling light of
half-penny-candles scattered in the windows of London, or the crowns and
regal cyphers which here and there manifest the zeal, the interest, or
emulation of individuals.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER IX.
_Execution of Governor Wall._