By MRS. MARY LOW DICKINSON.
[Continued.]
“If you are going to keep a journal at all, begin the minute you take
off your waterproof.” This bit of wisdom descended upon the quartette
from the lips of the special correspondent of the Perkinsville
_Gazette_, one dripping morning when we found her taking notes in
the British Museum. And surely she never said a wiser thing. First
impressions may not be profound or correct, or reach in any way the
heart and meaning of what passes under the eye, but they are the
freshest and often the only impressions worth recording. One sees more
in a first day in a new city than in many subsequent days. The eyes are
open then, if ever, to all little peculiarities and characteristics;
the ears catch every unfamiliar tone; the perceptions are quickened
into a new and vivid interest, dissipated, alas, too soon! We Americans
quickly make ourselves at home. The novelty of to-day is commonplace
to-morrow, and the third day’s description of an event takes only a
word, where the first day’s would have received a page. And there is
no haunting demon of travel quite so fiendish as the journal that must
be written, and that has “got behind.” One never can quite subdue its
clamor, nor does any effort at writing up the half-forgotten record
satisfy its insatiate demand. All the pith and the life are gone out of
the neglected recollections, and we must accept the conclusion that it
is NOT safe to wait after the “water-proof” is laid aside.
That some members of our quartette _did_ wait was, perhaps, a mercy
to their friends, for it would have taken a volume to describe what
they saw and did in London. That they studied their guide-books, and
maps and histories, as true Chautauquans should, goes without saying.
They tramped a great many miles and jostled in cabs and omnibuses a
great many more, and tried the tramways and the underground road, and
the penny boats upon the noiseless highway of the Thames. Somewhere
they had read that the united streets of London made a stretch of over
three thousand miles, and they sometimes felt as if they had traversed
them all. They must visit every portion of the city, for each had its
peculiar interest or charm. How could they fail, for example, to drive
through the aristocratic Belgravia, the district that, within the last
quarter of a century, has become a region of fine streets and spacious
squares and palatial residences, transforming as well as surpassing the
old West End. It seemed worth while to gaze, if only from the windows
of a cab, at the residences of the real aristocracy of Britain, and
better worth while to drive on, through the once beautiful and rural
Chelsea, now swarming with the multitudes of London’s poor. The old
city of Westminster, now swallowed up in London, whose inhabitants
average a dozen inmates to every wretched home, touches Belgravia
on the southeast, lying, as one writer says, “Like a filthy beggar
at the rich man’s gate.” Not all the efforts of public and private
philanthropy, the theories of men like Ruskin, or the practice of women
like Octavia Hill, have been able to stay its ever-swelling tide of
misery and sin. Strange contrast all this to the monotonous regularity
of Tyburnia, whose rows on rows of handsome dwellings constitute the
homes of professional men and wealthy merchants. So-called middle-class
London finds its home in the Regent’s Square district. Thence, eastward
still, and we find ourselves in the Bloomsbury and Bedford Square
region, whose old houses, once occupied by rank and fashion, are mostly
given over to lodgers like ourselves, while resident middle-class
foreigners make their homes largely in the region around Leicester
Square. It takes no end of wandering to familiarize the stranger with
the characteristics of each district, and if one can stay in London
months, it is a better way to begin than to select the special points
of interest.
London is large enough for a world, and has human interests enough,
if there were no other place on the planet, to occupy the time and
wisdom of angels and all good men. Somebody calls it a “province
covered with houses;” Carlyle spoke of it as “the tuberosity of
modern civilization.” The metropolis includes more than the city of
London, more than old Westminster. Its arms have stretched out until
it embraces nearly forty adjacent townships and districts. Some
busy-brained statistician has amused himself by treating the place
as if it were a great living monster, whose gigantic throat swallows
yearly over nine millions of once living creatures, either fish, flesh
or fowl, washed down by fifty millions of gallons of ale and wine.
No wonder that there follows close upon this statement, the grave
announcement that nearly three thousand physicians are constantly
hastening to and fro, and that five hundred undertakers do not suffice
to meet the city’s demands. The wine and liquor merchants number nearly
ten thousand, and we do not wonder, this being so, that the paupers
number nearly one hundred and fifty thousand souls.
And of this great living mass of humanity, vital in every part, the
“city” proper is the pulsing heart. By it we mean the space that
anciently lay within the walls, keeping still with few exceptions its
narrow streets and shadowy lanes; the former being the avenues of
retail trade, while in the latter the wholesale trade is carried on. As
space could not be commanded on the ground, the magnificent buildings
required for business that manipulates the wealth of the world have had
to occupy the air. Business houses stand side by side with the dark low
buildings of the seventeenth century; and he who has time to penetrate
some of the picturesque old mansions now used as counting-rooms, will
be repaid by a sight of much that is architecturally quaint and fine.
No part of London is better worth exploring than this. Our wanderers
never tired of strolling from St. Paul’s, after every brief rest under
the stillness of its mighty dome, into Paternoster-row, and lingering
in the world of books displayed on every hand; and the weaker half of
the party did not care how long they were left in the book stores,
while the more active wandered off into Lombard street, among the
bankers, into the exchanges, or the less imposing though no less
interesting Houndsditch, the haunt of the modern Jew. All day long,
from morn to night, a mighty human tide swells and surges with almost
turbulent haste all through these narrow streets. One lingers and
watches daily as the never-ceasing throng pours on, fascinated as by
the constantly-recurring beat of the breakers upon the sea. But come
down here and stand under the shadow of St. Paul’s some night, or on
some calm Sunday afternoon. The very air that hangs, heavy and still
with the fog-damps, above the great cross there on the old clock tower,
is not stiller than the ground beneath one’s feet. The hundreds of
thousands of people that composed the human throng are gone, as if the
earth had opened and swallowed them. The merchants are in their homes
at the West End, the clerks in their humble homes in the suburbs. Over
twenty thousand buildings are left alone in the care of the police,
most of them houses once occupied as dwellings, and now used for
purposes of trade. There are nearly sixty churches in the district, but
the Sabbath stillness of the streets is not due to the throngs gathered
within the house of God. They, indeed, are almost as empty as the
streets, for the residents who once rendered each parish populous are
no longer here. St. Paul’s, the cathedral church of the See of London,
is the present center of religious attraction, and here our travelers
passed many a quiet hour, to say nothing of the more active seasons
when they walked from tomb to tomb through all its length and breadth;
paid their shilling and descended into the crypt and stood by the tomb
of Wellington; paid another and climbed to the whispering gallery; and
another and another, and went to the tower of the clock; and an extra
sixpence and touched the great bell that strikes the hour. The only
other service required of the bell is to toll at the deaths of members
of the royal family, the bishop of London, the dean of St. Paul’s, and
the mayors of London who may die in office. One and sixpence once more,
and the more adventurous of the quartette climbed up and squeezed into
the ball beneath the cross, while the others lingered at the golden
gallery near the apex of the dome, and gazed down upon the fog, through
which the roofs and towers and spires seemed like a strange shadowy
spectre of a city, struggling for a tangible form. Seen from the river,
or from Blackfriars Bridge, the wonderful dome stands out in all its
beauty of outline; and early one morning they saw from the latter point
the great cross glittering far above the city in the sunlight, which
had not yet scattered the fog on which it seemed to float.
Not much time had our tourists, however, for puzzling their brains or
harrowing their souls over the questions of human destiny, for their
heads were filled with all sorts of associations with men and books,
and they sometimes went wandering to and fro, to find the very houses
where their favorite authors lived, the spots where events of interest
had transpired, the places made immortal by their poets’ pens. They
must have their visit to the Tower, long days in the Museum and the
art galleries, for had they not, each and all, in one form or another,
the genuine Kensington craze? They could not leave out any of the
more common things, like a drive to Richmond Hill or an afternoon at
the “Zoo.” They must go to Stoke Pogis and recite the elegy in the
churchyard where Gray wrote it. They must have their day at Windsor,
with its chance of seeing the queen driving in the park, and the visit
to Sydenham’s Crystal Palace, and the afternoon at Hampton Court.
They must stroll down by Hyde Park corner and see fashionable London
dragging monotonously around the drive, or prancing on horseback
through Rotten Row. They must visit the Parliament houses, and find
many a still hour to linger and dream within the walls of the wonderful
old Westminster Abbey, that is of itself worth crossing an ocean to
see. It is not for Wesley’s _grave_ alone that we go to the City-road
Chapel, or for the grave of Watts that we enter the Bunhill Fields. It
is not the _tombs_ of the poets, statesmen and martyrs that hold our
attention long, but we seek in the living of to-day for the spirit that
animated the great, now dead; and eyes and ears alike are open to see
and hear the indications of growth in the noblest things. It matters
little that we see only the outside of Buckingham and St. James. There
are fairer palaces in London than those of her princes, and to these,
her edifices devoted to the alleviation of human suffering and the
advancement of human progress, we turn with never-tiring interest and
zeal. In this class stand her colleges and hospitals and asylums, her
charitable organizations of every sort. London gives yearly in food
and clothing, and in the relief of disease, over thirteen millions
of dollars, to say nothing of a million more given privately by
individuals. For educational and religious purposes she spends seven
millions more, and yet the city is filled in certain localities with
the most wretched of all citizens, the poor who are too far down to
care to be lifted up.
We passed delightful days in visiting some of the oldest as well as
some of the newest of the institutions of learning or charity. Among
the former the famous old St. Peter’s College, founded as “a publique
schoole for grammar, rethoricke and poetrie,” and the Charter House
School, of which Wesley says, “I owed my health and long life to the
faithfulness with which I obeyed my father’s injunction to run around
the Charter House playing-green three times every morning,” and the
blue-coat school, where the boys dressed in blue coat, yellow petticoat
and stockings, and red leather girdle around the waist, seemed to have
stepped down from the sixteenth century. Blue was originally a color
only worn by dependents, and never by gentlemen, until after its use
in the uniform of the British navy. In striking contrast to these we
found Girton and the Wesleyan Normal College, for the training of
teachers and the teaching of children. In another line of instruction
the Government School of Design, at South Kensington, is doing a most
interesting work. One feature of its service to the people is well
worthy of imitation. Its library is rich in illustrated works, and
these are open for the use, not only of artists, but of every poor
working man or woman, at the price of one penny a volume. From this
school large additions have been made to house decorators, designers
and draughtsmen for the various manufactures and trades. All the
collections of the wonderful museums of Kensington are intended to
subserve the purpose of the school, of which branches have been formed
in various manufacturing districts throughout England.
No philanthropic work in London will be more likely to attract
the attention of Americans, than that done by the Peabody fund in
the construction of the model lodging houses, where three rooms,
comfortable and clean, can be hired for five shillings a week. The
buildings in the various districts where they have already been
erected are five stories in height, well lighted, well ventilated, and
calculated in every way to make desirable homes for the very poor.
Since the gift of Mr. Peabody, the corporation of London has given land
and six hundred thousand dollars for the erection of model dwellings
for the working people. Before them in this benevolent work has been
the Baroness Burdett-Couts, whose heart has seemed to be as large as
her purse. A morning spent in exploring the vicinity of Columbia Square
Market showed us her four large blocks of neat houses surrounding
a court all occupied now by a clean, orderly class of people. The
adjoining market, built to accommodate the neighborhood on the site of
the old “dust heap” was also her work. The place was one of the most
filthy and pestilential haunts of vice and degradation in the city
of London. Its refuse heaps were almost as high as its hovels, and
foulness, moral and physical, made the spot a breeding place of disease
to body and soul. These are only instances of what may be done, of what
must be done, indeed, if cities like those of England and America are
ever to be lifted from the pauperism that destroys soul and body alike.
And the traveler, who makes his journey without securing a knowledge
of what is stirring in other countries to solve the problem of helping
people to help themselves, misses both the truth as to the realities of
human conditions and the inspiration that comes from seeing what has
been already done. The great consideration is time, which is always and
everywhere too short. Our quartette labored faithfully and well, but,
like other travelers, saw once what they wanted to see a dozen times,
heard their favorite music in snatches and their favorite preachers
sometimes once and sometimes not at all. They crowded ten objects of
interest into the time fairly due to one, and left London with the
feeling of a hungry man at a railway station whose bell rings just as
he has taken the first bite of his dinner.
“Who was it, in Mother Goose, that ‘whipped his children and made
them dance out of Ireland into France?’” asks the scribe of the
quartette, lifting her pen with a characteristic motion that betrays an
inclination to put it behind her ear. “’Twasn’t anybody,” answers the
scholar, gruffly, who feels a coming talk in the air and does not like
to be disturbed at his book. “Yes, it was!” persists the scribe, “and
whoever he was, the chief is just like him. Here he is fairly lashing
us about Londontown to drive us over to France.” Behind his newspaper
the chief smiles. “You will be glad I hastened you, when once you are
there out of this wretched fog.”
“But I haven’t had half enough of London.”
“True, and you never would have enough. It’s a place to _live_ in, not
to visit!”
“Then I’d like to live on, straight along.”
“Very good! The rest of us must go around the world.”
“But we have made a mistake! no one could do it in the time we have
set.”
“A common experience, again, sister,” said the chief, who, having the
times and seasons in his hands, and having been indulgent enough to
stay on from day to day, was at last in a somewhat inexorable mood.
And though there was still some coaxing to stay, one bright morning
found us fairly started on our dance “out of England into France.”
The morning of our departure is fine; the air delicious, a fresh breeze
blowing from the west. A good course of packing lasting well into the
night added physical weariness to the rather thin layer of mental
fatigue consequent on keeping a journal, and therefore London seems
less attractive than it did. If it were not for a faint foreboding
sense that the Channel lies just before, we could even begin to be
glad that the metropolis is left behind. The chief does not say, “I
told you so” as he sees our spirits rise, but then the chief is—not a
woman. It is soon over,—the three hours of grace that it takes us to
whirl down to Folkestone, and it’s three hours of pleasure, except the
last few minutes when we catch the mocking toss of the saucy white-caps
on the waves. We rejoiced this morning in the wind that scattered the
London fog, but now we know how felt Lot’s wife in that dire day of
Sodom. Bravely as possible we march to our fate. The wicked scribe
can not forbear asking the chief whose white cheeks contradict his
defiant expression, if he is glad he “made her dance.” We hear people
in various stages of resistance saying “this is not bad; that the
channel is often worse.” “No doubt! no doubt!” but we do not care to
discuss it, and the photographs of the quartette would show them seated
lugubriously, with their backs to the smoke-stack, not coldly unsocial,
but each meditating profoundly on topics that are not to the others of
the slightest concern. They are meditating only, and, meantime that
smoke-stack rides up into the air, and they with it, and it fairly
seems to be intoxicated at its upper end, yet they hold fast to it and
to each other down below; and then it changes its mind and seems to go
down and down, until they feel as if they were in the fast diminishing
turret of a monitor, and that the bottom is dropping out of the depth
of the sea.
And yet they live, and revive, and when the boat touches
Boulogne-sur-Mer, are ready for the French-English table d’hôte served
at the railway restaurant, and the scribe at least is ready for a walk
to the heights above the town, “just to look back to old England, you
know,” and see what Napoleon saw when he gathered his army of nearly
two hundred thousand men along this coast, and filled the harbor with
his ships, and watched and waited his chance to go over and take the
British bull by the horns.
“Think, sister, how the fate of the nations might have been changed, if
only Napoleon had gone”—says the chief thoughtfully.
“Now, brother, if you are going to meditate, or moralize, we shall miss
the train,” answers the scribe.
He looks at her gravely. “I am afraid,” he says under his breath, “that
my next duty will be to train that miss.”
(To be continued.)