impudence. They treat you with a familiarity which borders too close on
contempt to be gratifying. They will scarcely get out of your way. They
sit comfortably before their holes, lazily watching you go past with as
much indifference as a country gentleman seated at his own door would
the passing of a travelling tinker. The same may be said of the game
generally with which the park abounds. The flocks of deer will go on
browsing comfortably till you almost tread on their little black noses.
Then there will be a short listless consultation as to whether you are
a person to be tolerated or not. The leader will probably give a
verdict in the negative, and they turn slowly round, all showing their
powder-puffs of tails at once in the most insulting manner, and strut a
few yards off, when they recommence their endless meal, merely regarding
you as something of a bore and a nuisance, but in no serious light
whatever.
Once we started a pheasant; he would not even pay us the compliment of
flying. We ran at him violently; he ran a few yards off, and commenced
pecking at something. We threw a stone at him; he ducked his head a
little,--no more. We waved our hands and cried "Shoo!" in the most
approved manner, demonstrations to which he would not condescend to pay
the slightest attention. We ran towards him again; he ran away from us a
short distance, and then before our very eyes roosted on an old rail
with unmistakable intentions of going to sleep. This was insufferable.
We could almost have knocked him down with our walking stick, and were
sufficiently exasperated to think of trying, when the appearance of a
game-keeper on the horizon suddenly made us look in an opposite
direction, and commence a careful search for botanical specimens.
This tameness, which is shocking to us, is very different from the
trusting innocence of Alexander Selkirk's happy family, who were
"So unaccustomed to man."
It is the insolent security of a privileged class. They know you are
not allowed to shoot them, and the airs they give themselves are
intolerable....
Descending a cool valley densely wooded with magnificent Scotch firs,
we come to a bridge crossing a placid-looking lake of considerable
dimensions. The stranger generally thinks this is Virginia Water; he is
a little disappointed,--thinks it hardly merits the reputation it has
earned for beauty,--but, on the whole, is not dissatisfied. He thinks it
is probably a little better farther on, on one side or the other; he
wonders which he ought to try; he is, however, loath to explore either
till he has ascertained whether there is really anything to be seen or
not (for your speculative sight-seer is a cautious fellow, and has a
great objection to being taken in). Seeing a lodge-gate a little ahead,
he proceeds there to ask whether there is any more of Virginia Water
than what he has just left; not but what that was very delightful,--he
merely wishes to know. The lodge-keeper laughs sardonically, and,
good-naturedly blessing the stranger's eyes, tells him that is none of
Virginia Water; then, with a look of contemptuous pity, seizes him by
the arm, leads him impatiently to a little gate opening on to a thick
wood, thrusts him in, and, bidding him follow his nose, returns to the
lodge, satisfied at having nothing more to do with a person of _that_
scale of intelligence.
Our plan is to follow the lodge-keeper's precept and the stranger's
example. We pass through the little gate, and after a few seconds' walk
through the wood, come unexpectedly on a very novel and delightful
scene, of which we cannot speak in higher terms than to say that it
fully merits the florid eulogium of the original edition of the _Royal
Windsor Guide_, already quoted.
We are standing on the brink of an immense lake, whose extent alone is
sufficient to do away with all ideas of its artificial origin. This is
completely enclosed by densely wooded acclivities, rising almost from
the water's edge, one above the other, in agreeable perspective, so as
to exclude the slightest glimpse of the world beyond. On one side of the
lake a broad pathway of dark-green grass, yielding like a rich Turkey
carpet to the tread, extends from one end of the lake to the other.
Immediately on the left, the shelving woods begin to rise. There is not
a sound to be heard except a gentle murmur of the trees, that never
ceases.
The scene is not very romantic; but there is no earthly reason why it
should be; it is very peaceful and very charming, suggesting all sorts
of pleasant quiet-life recreations. The lake would not have suited
Wordsworth, but it would have been the very thing for Izaak Walton. You
could not get much poetry out of the woods, but you could get capital
picnics in them; and there be those who despise poetry, but where is the
ascetic who would turn up his nose at a picnic?
As we proceed, the view of the lake gets more extensive. The cool breeze
from it, and the soft springy turf scarcely six inches above the level
of the water, make the walk very agreeable. One feature is particularly
worth mentioning; some of the largest and most beautiful specimens of
that most dainty of English trees, the silvery birch, are to be seen
gracefully dipping their light branches into the lake. At length the
pathway takes a turn up into the wood, from which we soon emerge into an
open space, where we come across an object that really startles us,--a
classic temple in ruins!
These ruins are of course not genuine. At a second glance we recognize
the masquerading tendencies of George IV., as developed by Sir Jeffrey
Wyattville. There is, however, no objection to the exercise of such a
whim in what was never intended to serve any other purpose than that of
a gentleman's pleasure-ground. Moreover, the ruin has some claims to be
considered as a work of art of no mean merit. The design is admirable,
and the semblance of decay is wonderfully imitated. The broken columns
seem to have lain there for ages. Huge trees obtrude themselves between
the shattered fragments as if they had grown there since the building
had fallen to ruin. Some portions are completely hidden by masses of ivy
and lichen, apparently the growth of centuries. Altogether the thing is
admirably "got up," and makes us think what a stage-manager Sir Jeffrey
Wyattville would have made for arranging a Christmas spectacle.
We should remark that the materials, consisting of columns of red and
gray granite and porphyry, and several marble statues, are of veritable
antiquity. The greater portion were transferred from the outer court of
the British Museum, the remainder being from the Elgin collection. The
reason of the building being called the Temple of Augustus was probably
because Sir Jeffrey thought that name would do for it quite as well as
any other, in which case we quite agree with him....
The Great Park is rich in varied woodland scenery. There are not only
fine thriving oaks, throwing out their gigantic arms, but sturdy
pollards without end, which seem to have set time and season and decay
at defiance. They are gnarled and knotted, twisted and distorted, yet
at the same time sound and vigorous at heart. The beeches, too, may be
seen of all ages and sizes, picturesque and beautiful in their decay,
but while in full vigor, and dotted with their sparkling leaves, they
are the richest ornament of the wood.... The size of some of the trees
is enormous; one beech-tree, near Sawyer's Lodge, measuring, at six feet
from the ground, thirty-six feet round. It is now protected from injury,
and nature seems to be doing her best towards repairing the damage which
its exposure to the attacks of man and beast has produced. It must once
have been almost hollow, but the vacuum has been nearly filled up. One
might almost fancy that liquid wood, which had afterwards hardened,
had been poured into the tree. There is no bark on this extraneous
substance; but the surface is smooth, hard, and without any appearance
of decay.
THE ASPECT OF LONDON.
HIPPOLYTE TAINE.
[Taine's "English Literature" has in itself added a new work to
the world's best literature of far more value than many of
those with which it deals. In his "Notes on England" he gives
us thoughtful impressions of the country itself, from which we
select his pen-picture of the great city on the Thames. The
picture is not an inspiring one. He could not avoid comparing
in his mind this fog-haunted capital with the brighter aspect
of his native Paris.]
Sunday in London in the rain; the shops are shut, the streets are almost
deserted; the aspect is that of an immense and a well-ordered cemetery.
The few passers-by under their umbrellas in the desert of squares and
streets have the look of uneasy spirits who have risen from their
graves; it is appalling.
I had no conception of such a spectacle, which is said to be frequent in
London. The rain is small, compact, pitiless; looking at it, one can see
no reason why it should not continue to the end of all things. One's
feet churn water; there is water everywhere,--filthy water impregnated
with an odor of soot. A yellow, dense fog fills the air, sweeps down
to the ground; at thirty paces a house, a steamboat appear as spots
upon blotting-paper. After an hour's walk in the Strand especially, and
in the rest of the city, one has the spleen; one meditates suicide.
The lofty lines of fronts are of sombre brick, the exudations being
incrusted with fog and soot. Monotony and silence; yet inscriptions on
metal or marble speak and tell of the absent master, as in a large
manufactory of bone-black closed on account of a death.
A frightful thing is the huge palace in the Strand which is called
Somerset House. Massive and heavy piece of architecture, of which the
hollows are inked, the porticoes blackened with soot, where, in the
cavity of the empty court, is a sham fountain without water, pools of
water on the pavement, long rows of closed windows,--what can they
possibly do in these catacombs?
It seems as if the livid and sooty fog had even befouled the verdure of
the parks. But what most offends the eye are the colonnades, peristyles,
Grecian ornaments, mouldings, and wreaths of the houses all bathed in
soot. Poor antique architecture, what is it doing in such a climate?
The flutings and columns in front of the British Museum are begrimed
as if liquid mud had been poured over them. St. Paul's--a kind of
Pantheon--has two ranges of columns: the lower range is entirely black;
the upper range, recently scraped, is still white, but the white is
offensive: coal-smoke has already plastered it with its leprosy.
These spots are melancholy, being the decay of the stone. And these nude
statues in memory of Greece! Wellington as a fighting hero, naked under
the dripping trees of the park! That hideous Nelson, stuck on his column
with a coil of rope in the form of a pig-tail, like a rat impaled on the
top of a pole! Every form, every classical idea, is contrary to nature
here. A swamp like this is a place of exile for the ark of antiquity.
When the Romans disembarked here they must have thought themselves in
Homer's hell, in the land of the Cimmerians. The vast space which, in
the south, stretches between the earth and the sky, cannot be discovered
by the eye; there is no air; there is nothing but liquid fog; in this
pale smoke objects are but fading phantoms. Nature has the look of a bad
drawing in charcoal, which some one has rubbed with his sleeve.
I have just spent half an hour on Waterloo Bridge. The Houses of
Parliament, blurred and indistinct, appear in the distance but a
wretched pile of scaffolding; nothing is discernible, and, more
particularly, nothing is living, except a few steamboats skimming along
the river, black, smoky, unwearied insects. A Greek watching their
passengers embarking and disembarking would have thought of the Styx. He
would have found that to exist here was not to live; in fact, life here
is different from what it is in his country; the ideal has altered with
the climate. The mind quits the without to retire within itself, and
there creates a world. Here one must have a comfortable and well-ordered
home, clubs, societies, plenty of business, many religious and moral
preoccupations; above all, instead of abandoning one's self to the
influence of exterior impressions, it is necessary to extrude all the
sad promptings of unfriendly Nature, and fill up the great void wherein
melancholy and tedium would take up their abode.
[After this gloomy image of a rainy London, and a description
of the Sunday church services, the writer proceeds in a more
complimentary vein.]
The population numbers three millions and a quarter; that makes twelve
cities like Marseilles, ten cities like Lyons, two cities like Paris,
put together; but words upon paper are no substitutes for the sensation
of the eyes. It is necessary to take a cab several days in succession,
and proceed straight on towards the south, the north, the east, and the
west, during a whole morning, as far as the uncertain limits where
houses grow scanty and the country begins.
Enormous, enormous,--this the word which always recurs. Moreover, all is
rich and well ordered; consequently they must think us neglected and
poor. Paris is mediocre compared with these squares, these crescents,
these circles and rows of monumental buildings of massive stone, with
porticoes, with sculptured fronts, these spacious streets. There are
sixty of them as vast as the Rue de la Paix. Assuredly Napoleon III.
demolished and rebuilt Paris only because he had lived in London. In the
Strand, in Piccadilly, in Regent Street, in the neighborhood of London
Bridge, in twenty places, there is a bustling crowd, a surging traffic,
an amount of obstruction which our busiest and most frequented boulevard
cannot parallel. Everything is on a large scale here: the clubs are
palaces; the hotels are monuments; the river is an arm of the sea; the
cabs go twice as fast; the boatmen and the omnibus conductors condense
a sentence into a word; words and gestures are economized; actions and
time are turned to the utmost possible account; the human being produces
and expends twice as much as among us.
[Illustration: BANK OF ENGLAND]
From London Bridge to Hampton Court are eight miles,--that is, nearly
three leagues of buildings. After the streets and quarters erected
together, as one piece, by wholesale, like a hive after a model, come
the countless pleasure retreats, cottages surrounded with verdure and
trees in all styles,--Gothic, Grecian, Byzantine, Italian, of the
Middle Age, or the Revival, with every mixture and every shade of
style,--generally in lines, or clusters of five, ten, twenty of the
same sort, apparently the handiwork of the same builder, like so many
specimens of the same vase or the same bronze. They deal in houses as we
deal in Parisian articles. What a multitude of well-to-do, comfortable,
and rich existences! One divines accumulated gains, a wealthy and
spending middle class quite different from ours, so pinched, so
straitened. The most humble, in brown brick, are pretty by dint of
tidiness; the windows sparkle like mirrors; there is nearly always a
green and flowery patch; the front is covered with ivy, honeysuckle, and
nasturtiums.
The entire circumference of Hyde Park is covered with houses of this
sort, but finer, and those in the midst of London retain a country look.
Each stands detached in its square of turf and shrubs, has two stories
in the most perfect order and condition, a portico, a bell for the
tradespeople, a bell for the visitors, a basement for the kitchen and
the servants, with a flight of steps for the service; very few mouldings
and ornaments; no outside sun-shutters; large, clear windows which let
in plenty of light; flowers on the sills and at the portico; stables in
a mews apart, in order that their odors and sight might be kept at a
distance; all the external surface covered with white, shining, and
varnished stucco; not a speck of mud or dust; the trees, the turf, the
flowers, the servants, prepared as if for an exhibition of prize
products.
How well one can picture the inhabitant after seeing his shell! In
the first place, it is the Teuton who loves nature, and who needs a
reminder of the country; next, it is the Englishman who wishes to be
by himself on his staircase as in his room, who could not endure the
promiscuous existence of our huge Parisian cages, and who, even in
London, plans his house as a small castle, independent and enclosed.
Besides, he is simple, and does not desire external display; on the
other hand, he is exacting in the matter of condition and comfort, and
separates his life from that of his inferiors. The number of such houses
at the Westend is astonishing. The rent is nearly five hundred pounds;
from five to seven servants are kept; the master expends from twelve to
twenty-four hundred pounds a year. There are ten of these fortunes and
these lives in England to every one in France.
The impression is the same when visiting the parks; the taste, the area
are quite different from what is the case among us. St. James's Park is
a genuine piece of country, and of English country; huge old trees, real
meadows, a large pond peopled with ducks and water-fowl; cows and sheep,
in an enclosed space, fed on the grass, which is always fresh. There are
even sheep in the narrow green border that surrounds Westminster Abbey;
these people love the country in their hearts. It is sufficient to read
their literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Thomson to Wordsworth
and Shelley, to find proofs of this. What a contrast to the Tuileries,
the Champs-Elysees, the Luxembourg! As a rule, the French garden, that
of Louis XIV., is a room or gallery in the open air, wherein to walk and
converse in company; in the English garden, such as they have invented
and propagated, one is better alone; the eyes and the mind converse with
natural things. We have arranged a park on this model in the Bois de
Boulogne; but we have committed the blunder of placing therein a group
of rocks and waterfalls; the artifice is discovered at a glance, and
offends; English eyes would have felt it.
[A description of Regent's Park follows, with some words on the
English love of out-door exercise. Piccadilly and Hyde Park are
next mentioned.]
Hyde Park is the largest of them all, with its small rivulet, its wide
greensward, its sheep, its shady walks, resembling a pleasure park
suddenly transported to the centre of a capital. About two o'clock the
principal alley is a riding-ground; there are ten times more gentlemen
and twenty times more ladies on horseback than in the Bois de Boulogne
on its most frequented days; little girls and boys of eight ride on
ponies by the side of their father; I have seen ample and worthy matrons
trolling along. This is one of the luxuries. Add to it that of having
servants. For instance, a family of three persons which I visited keeps
seven servants and three horses. The mother and daughter gallop in the
park daily; they often pay visits on horseback; they economize in other
things,--in theatre-going, for example; they go but seldom to the
theatre, and when they do it is to a box which has been presented to
them. This vigorous exercise appears indispensable for health; young
girls and ladies come here even when it rains....
From five to seven o'clock is the review of ladies' dresses. Beauty
and ornamentation abound, but taste is wanting. The colors are
outrageously crude and the forms ungraceful; crinolines too distended
and badly distended, in geometrical cones or bunched, green flounces,
embroideries, flowered dresses, quantities of floating gauze, packets
of falling or frizzed hair; crowning this display tiny embroidered and
imperceptible bonnets. The bonnets are too much adorned; the hair, too
shiny, presses closely on the temples; the small mantle or casaque
falls formless to the lower part of the back, the petticoat expands
prodigiously, and all the scaffolding badly joined, badly arranged,
variegated and labored, cries and protests with all its gaudy and
overdone colors. In the sunshine, especially, at Hampton Court the day
before yesterday, among the shopkeepers' wives, the absurdity was at
its height; there were many violet dresses, one being of a wild violet
clasped round the waist with a golden band, which would have made a
painter cry out. I said to a lady, "The toilette is more showy among you
than in France." "But my dresses come from Paris!" I carefully refrained
from replying, "But you selected them."
Excepting only the highest class, they apparel themselves as fancy
dictates. One imagines healthy bodies, well-built, beautiful at times;
but they must be imagined. The physiognomy is often pure, but also often
sheepish. Many are simple babies, new waxen dolls, with glass eyes,
which appear entirely empty of ideas. Other faces have become ruddy, and
turned to raw beefsteak. There is a fund of folly or of brutality in
this inert flesh,--too white, or too red. Some are ugly and grotesque in
the extreme; with heron's feet, stork's necks, always having the large
front of white teeth, the projecting jaws of carnivora. As compensation,
others are beautiful in the extreme. They have angelic faces; their
eyes, of pale periwinkle, are softly deep; their complexion is that of a
flower, or an infant; their smile is divine. One of these days, about
ten o'clock in the morning, near Hyde Park Corner, I was rooted to the
spot motionless with admiration at the sight of two young ladies; the
one was sixteen, the other eighteen years old. They were in rustling
dresses of white tulle amid a cloud of muslin; tall, slender, agile,
their shape as perfect as their face, of incomparable freshness,
resembling those marvellous flowers seen in select exhibitions, the
whiteness of the lily or orchis; in addition to all that, gayety,
innocence, a superabundance of unalloyed sap and infantine expression,
of laughter, and the mien of birds; the earth did not support them.
Many of the horsewomen are charming, so simple and so serious, without a
trace of coquetry; they come here not to be seen, but to take the air;
their manner is frank without pretension; their shake of the hand quite
loyal, almost masculine; no frippery in their attire; the small black
vest, tightened at the waist, moulds a fine shape and healthy form; to
my mind, the first duty of a young lady is to be in good health. They
manage their horses with complete ease and assurance.
Sometimes the father or brother stops and talks business or politics
with a friend; the ladies listen and thus habituate themselves to
serious topics. These fathers and brothers, too, are a pleasant sight;
expressive and resolute faces, which bear, or have borne, the burden of
life; less exhausted than among us, less ready to smile and to execute
the tricks of politeness, but calmer and more staid, and who often
excite in the onlooker a vague impression of respect, of esteem at
least, and often of trust. Perhaps this is because I am instructed as to
their condition; yet it seems to me that mistake is difficult; whether
nobles, members of Parliament, landed proprietors, their manners and
their physiognomies are those of men accustomed to authority, and who
have wielded it.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
[We do not class Hawthorne in usual lists of travellers, yet in
his "Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches," he gives us
some thoughtful and interesting discussions of English scenes
and institutions which are well worth reproducing. We
accordingly select his description of London's great centre of
pilgrimage to the devout antiquarian.]