It has been said that “few men know _how_ to take a walk.” In London it
requires some experience to know _where_ to take a walk. The taste of
the perambulator, the hour of the day, and the season of the year, would
each affect materially the decision of the question.
If you are up early—I mean early for London—say ten o’clock—we would
start from your hotel in Bond street, and hastening through Regent
street and the Quadrant (deserts at that hour) strike into the zig-zag
alleys, cutting traversely from Coventry street to Covent Garden. The
horses on the cab stand in the Haymarket “are at this hour asleep.” The
late supper-eaters at Dubourg’s and the _Café de l’Europe_ were the last
infliction upon their galled wisthers, and while dissipation slumbers
they may find an hour to hang their heads upon the bit, and forget gall
and spavin in the sunshiny drowse of morning. The cabman, too, nods on
his perch outside, careless of the custom of “them as pays only their
fare,” and quite sure not to get “a gemman to drive” at that
unseasonable hour. The “waterman” (called a “_water_-man,” as he will
tell you, “because he gives _hay_ to the ’orses”) leans against the
gas-lamp at the corner, looking with a vacant indifference of habit at
the splendid coach with its four blood-bays just starting from the
Brighton coach-office in the Crescent. The side-walk of Coventry street,
usually radiant with the flaunting dresses of the frail and vicious, is
now sober with the dull habiliments of the early stirring and the poor.
The town, (for this is _town_, not _city_) beats its more honest pulse.
Industry alone is abroad.
Rupert street on the left is the haunt of shabby-genteel poverty. To its
low-doored chop-houses steal the more needy loungers of Regent street,
and in confined and greasy, but separate and exclusive boxes, they eat
their mutton-chop and potato unseen of their gayer acquaintances. Here
comes the half-pay officer, whose half-pay is halved or quartered with
wife and children, to drink his solitary half-pint of sherry, and, over
a niggardly portion of soup and vegetables, recall, as he may in
imagination, the gay dinners at mess, and the companions now grown
cold—in death or worldliness! Here comes the sharper out of luck, the
debtor newly out of prison. And here comes many a “gay fellow about
town,” who will dine to-morrow, or may have dined yesterday, at a table
of unsparing luxury, but who now turns up Rupert street at seven,
cursing the mischance that draws upon his own slender pocket for the
dinner of to-day. Here are found the watchful host and the suspicious
waiter—the closely-measured wine, and the more closely-measured
attention—the silent and shrinking company, the close-drawn curtain,
the suppressed call for the bill, the lingering at the table of those
who value the retreat and the shelter to recover from the embarrassing
recognition and the objectless saunter through the streets. The ruin,
the distress, the despair, that wait so closely upon the heels of
fashion, pass here with their victims. It is the last step within the
bounds of respectability. They still live “at the West end,” while they
dine in Rupert street. They may still linger in the Park, or stroll in
Bond street, till their better-fledged friends flit to dinner at the
clubs, and, within a stone’s throw of the luxurious tables and the gay
mirth they so bitterly remember, sit down to an ill-dressed meal, and
satisfy the calls of hunger in silence. Ah, the outskirts of the bright
places in life are darker for the light that shines so near them! How
much sweeter is the coarsest meal shared with the savage in the
wilderness, than the comparative comfort of cooked meats and wine in a
neighborhood like this!
Come through this narrow lane into Leicester Square. You cross here the
first limit of the fashionable quarter. The Sabloniere hotel is in this
square; but you may not give it as your address unless you are a
foreigner. This is the home of that most miserable fish out of water—a
Frenchman in London. A bad French hotel, and two or three execrable
French restaurants, make this spot the most habitable to the exiled
_habitué_ of the Palais Royal. Here he gets a mocking imitation of what,
in any possible degree, is better than the _sacré biftek_, or the
half-raw mutton-chop and barbarous boiled potato! Here he comes forth,
if the sun shine perchance for one hour at noon, and paces up and down
on the side-walk, trying to get the better of his bile and his bad
breakfast. Here waits for him at three, the shabby, but most expensive
_remise_ cab, hired by the day for as much as would support him a month
in Paris. Leicester square is the place for conjurors, bird-fanciers,
showmen, and generally for every foreign novelty in the line of nostrums
and marvels. If there is a dwarf in London, or a child with two heads,
you will see one or all in that building, so radiant with placards, and
so thronged with beggars.
Come on through Cranbourne alley. Old clothes, second-hand stays, _idem_
shawls, capes, collars, and ladies’ articles of ornamental ware
generally; cheap straw bonnets, old books, gingerbread, and stationery!
Look at this once-expensive and finely-worked muslin cape! What fair
shoulders did it adorn when these dingy flowers were new—when this fine
lace edging bounded some heaving bosom, perhaps, like frost-work on the
edge of a snow-drift. It has been the property of some minion of
elegance and wealth, vicious or virtuous, and by what hard necessity
came it here? Ten to one, could it speak, its history would keep us
standing at this shop-window, indifferent alike to the curious glances
of these passing damsels, and the gentle eloquence of the Jew on the
other side, who pays us the unflattering compliment of suggesting an
improvement in our toilet by the purchase of the half-worn habiliments
he exposes.
I like Cranbourne alley, because it reminds me of Venice. The
half-daylight between the high and overhanging roofs, the just audible
hum of voices and occupation from the different shops, the shuffling of
hasty feet over the smooth flags, and particularly the absence of horses
and wheels, make it (in all but the damp air and the softer speech) a
fair resemblance to those close passages in the rear of the canals
between St. Mark’s and the Rialto. Then I like studying a pawnbroker’s
window, and I like ferreting in the old book-stalls that abound here. It
is a good lesson in humility for an author to see what he can be bought
for in Cranbourne alley. Some “gentle reader,” who has paid a guinea and
a half for you, has resold you for two-and-sixpence. For three shillings
you may have the three volumes, “as good as new,” and the shopman, by
his civility, pleased to be rid of it on the terms. If you would console
yourself, however, buy Milton for one-and-sixpence, and credit your
vanity with the eighteen-pence of the remainder.
The labyrinth of alleys between this and Covent Garden are redolent of
poverty and pot-houses. In crossing St. Martin’s lane, life appears to
have become suddenly a struggle and a calamity. Turbulent and dirty
women are everywhere visible through the open windows; the half-naked
children at the doors look already care-worn and incapable of a smile;
and the men throng the gin-shops, bloated, surly, and repulsive. Hurry
through this leprous spot in the vast body of London, and let us emerge
in the Strand.
You would think London Strand the main artery of the world. I suppose
there is no thoroughfare on the face of the earth where the stream of
human life runs with a tide so overwhelming. In any other street in the
world you catch the eye of the passer-by. In the Strand, no man sees
another except as a solid body, whose contact is to be avoided. You are
safe nowhere on the pavement without all the vigilance of your senses.
Omnibuses and cabs, drays, carriages, wheelbarrows, and porters, beset
the street. Newspaper-hawkers, pickpockets, shop-boys, coal-heavers, and
a perpetual and selfish crowd dispute the sidewalk. If you venture to
look at a print in a shop-window, you arrest the tide of passengers, who
immediately walk over you; and, if you stop to speak with a friend, who
by chance has run his nose against yours rather than another man’s, you
impede the way, and are made to understand it by the force of jostling.
If you would get into an omnibus you are quarrelled for by half-a-dozen
who catch your eye at once; and after using all your physical strength
and most of your discrimination, you are most probably embarked in the
wrong one, and are going at ten miles the hour to Blackwell, when you
are bound to Islington. A Londoner passes his life in learning the most
adroit mode of threading a crowd, and escaping compulsory journeys in
cabs and omnibuses; and dine with any man in that metropolis from
twenty-five to sixty years of age, and he will entertain you, from the
soup to the Curacoa, with his hair-breadth escapes and difficulties with
cads and coach-drivers.