It is near four o’clock, and in Bond street you might almost walk on the
heads of livery-servants—at every stride stepping over the heads of two
ladies and a dandy exclusive. Thoroughfare it is none, for the carriages
are creeping on, inch by inch, the blood horses “marking time,” the
coachman watchful for his panels and whippletrees, and the lady within
her silken chariot, lounging back, with her eyes upon the passing line,
neither impatient nor surprised at the delay, for she came there on
purpose. Between the swaying bodies of the carriages, _hesitating_ past,
she receives the smiles and recognitions of all her male acquaintances;
while occasionally a female ally (for allies against the rest of the sex
are as necessary in society to women, as in war to
monarchs)—occasionally, I say, a female ally announced by the crest
upon the blinker of an advancing horse, arrives opposite her window,
and, with only the necessary delay in passing, they exchange, perhaps,
inquiries for health, but, certainly, programmes, comprehensive though
brief, for the prosecution of each other’s loves or hates. Occasionally
a hack cab, seduced into attempting Bond street by some momentary
opening, finds itself closed in, forty deep, by chariots, britzas,
landaus, and family coaches; and amid the imperturbable and unanswering
whips of the hammercloth, with a passenger who is losing the coach by
the delay, he must wait, will-he-nill-he, till some “pottering” Dowager
has purchased the old Lord his winter flannels, or till the Countess of
Loiter has said all she has to say to the guardsman whom she has met
accidentally at Pluckrose the perfumer’s. The three tall fellows, with
gold sticks, would see the entire plebeian population of London
thrice-sodden in vitriol, before they would advance miladi’s carriage a
step, or appear to possess eyes or ears for the infuriated cabman.
Bond street, at this hour, is a study for such observers, as, having
gone through an apprenticeship of criticism upon all the other races and
grades of men and gentlemen in the world, are now prepared to study
their species in its highest fashionable phase—that of “nice persons”
at the West End. The Oxford street “swell,” and the Regent street dandy,
if seen here, are out of place. The expressive word “quiet” (with its
present London signification,) defines the dress, manner, bow, and even
physiognomy, of every true denizen of St. James’s and Bond street. The
great principle among men of the Clubs, in all these particulars, is to
_subdue_—to deprive their coats, hats, and manners, of everything
sufficiently marked to be caricatured by the satirical or imitated by
the vulgar. The triumph of _style_ seems to be that the lines which
define it shall be imperceptible to the common eye—that it shall
require the difficult education which creates it to know its form and
limit. Hence an almost universal error with regard to English
gentlemen—that they are repulsive and cold. With a thousand times the
heart and real politeness of the Frenchman, they meet you with the
simple and unaffected address which would probably be that of shades in
Elysium, between whom (we may suppose) there is no longer etiquette or
concealment. The only exceptions to this rule in London, are, first and
alone, Count D’Orsay, whose extraordinary and original style, marked as
it is, is inimitable by any man of less brilliant talents and less
beauty of person, and the king’s guardsmen, who are dandies by
prescriptive right, or, as it were, professionally. All other men who
are members of Brooks’s and the Traveller’s, and frequent Bond street in
the flush of the afternoon, are what would be called in America, plain
unornamental, and, perhaps, ill-dressed individuals, who would strike
you more by the absence than the possession of all the peculiarities
which we generally suppose marks a “picked man of countries.” In
America, particularly, we are liable to error on this point, as, of the
great number of our travellers for improvement, scarce one in a thousand
remains longer in London than to visit the Tower and the Thames tunnel.
The nine hundred and ninety-nine reside principally, and acquire all
they get of foreign manner and style, at Paris—the very most
artificial, corrupt, and affected school for _gentlemen_ in the polite
world.
Prejudice against any one country is an illiberal feeling, which common
reflection should, and which enlightened travel usually does, entirely
remove. There is a vulgar prejudice against the English in almost all
countries, but more particularly in ours, which blinds its entertainers
to much that is admirable, and deprives them of the good drawn from the
best models. The troop of scurrilous critics, the class of English
bagmen, and errant vulgarians of all kinds, and the industriously-blown
coals of old hostilities, are barriers which an educated mind may well
overlook, and barriers beyond which lie, no doubt, the best examples of
true civilization and refinement the world ever saw. But we are getting
into an essay when we should be turning down Bruton street, on our way
to the Park, with all the fashion of Bond street and May Fair.
_May Fair!_ what a name for the core of dissipated and exclusive London!
A name that brings with it only the scent of crushed flowers in a green
field, of a pole wreathed with roses, booths crowded with dancing
peasant-girls, and nature in its holyday! This—to express the costly,
the courtlike, the _so called_ “heartless” precinct of fashion and art,
in their most authentic and envied perfection. _Mais, les extrêmes se
touchent_, and, perhaps, there is more nature in May Fair than in Rose
Cottage or Honeysuckle Lodge.
We stroll on through Berkeley square, by Chesterfield and Curzon streets
to the Park gate. What an aristocratic quiet reigns here! How plain are
the exteriors of these houses:—how unexpressive these doors, without a
name, of the luxury and high-born pride within! At the open window of
the hall sit the butler and footman, reading the morning paper, while
they wait to dispense the “not at home” to callers _not_ disappointed.
The rooks are noisy in the old trees of Chesterfield house. The painted
window-screens of the probably still-slumbering Count D’Orsay, in his
bachelor’s den, are closely drawn, and, as we pass Seymour place, a
crowd of gay cabs and diplomatic chariots, drawn up before the
dark-green door at the farther extremity, announce to you the residence
of one whose morning and evening _levees_ are alike thronged by
distinction and talent—the beautiful Lady Blessington.
This short turn brings us to the Park, which is rapidly filling with
vehicles of every fashion and color, and with pedestrians and horsemen
innumerable. No hackney coach, street-cab, cart, or pauper, is allowed
to pass the porters at the several gates: the road is macadamised and
watered, and the grass within the ring is fresh and verdant. The sun
here triumphs partially over the skirt of London smoke, which sways
backward and forward over the chimneys of Park lane, and, as far as it
is possible so near the dingy halo of the metropolis, the gay occupants
of these varied conveyances “take the air.”
Let us stand by the railing a moment, and see what comes by. This is the
field of display for the coachman, who sits upon his sumptuous
hammercloth, and takes more pride in his horses than their owner, and
considers them, if not like his own honor and blood, very like his own
property. Watch the delicate handling of his ribands, the affected
nonchalance of his air, and see how perfectly, how admirably, how
beautifully, move his blood horses, and how steadily and well follows
the compact carriage! Within (it is a dark-green _calèche_, and the
liveries are drab, with red edgings) sits the oriental form and bright
spiritual face of a banker’s wife, the daughter of a noble race, who
might have been, but was not, sacrificed in “marrying into the finance,”
and who soars up into the sky of happiness, like the unconscious bird
that has escaped the silent arrow of the savage, as if her destiny could
not but have been thus fulfilled. Who follows? D’Israeli, alone in his
cab; thoughtful, melancholy, disappointed in his political schemes, and
undervaluing his literary success, and expressing, in his scholar-like
and beautiful profile, as he passes us, both the thirst at his heart and
the satiety at his lips. The livery of his “tiger” is neglected, and he
drives like a man who has to choose between running and being run
against, and takes that which leaves him the most leisure for
reflection. Poor D’Israeli! With a kind and generous heart, talents of
the most brilliant order, an ambition which consumes his soul, and a
father who expects everything from his son; lost for the want of a tact
common to understandings fathoms deep below his own, and likely to drive
in Hyde Park forty years hence—if he die not of the corrosion of
disappointment—no more distinguished than now, and a thousand times
more melancholy.[3]
An open barouche follows, drawn by a pair of dark bays, the coachman and
footman in suits of plain gray, and no crest on the panels. A lady, of
remarkable small person, sits, with the fairest foot ever seen, just
peeping from under a cashmere, on the forward cushion, and from under
her peculiarly plain and small bonnet burn, in liquid fire, the most
lambent and spiritual eyes that night and sleep ever hid from the world.
She is a niece of Napoleon, married to an English nobleman; and beside
her sits her father, who refused the throne of Tuscany, a noble-looking
man, with an expression of calm and tranquil resignation in his face,
unusually plain in his exterior, and less alive than most of the gay
promenaders to the bright scene passing about him. He will play in the
charade at his daughter’s _soirée_ in the evening, however, and forget
his exile and his misfortunes; for he is a fond father and a true
philosopher.
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[3] This picture of D’Israeli as _he was_, notwithstanding its erroneous
prophecy, may not be uninteresting now.