POPPA'S interests in London necessitated his having lawyers
there--Messrs. Pink, Pink & Co., of Cheapside. If you know New York, you
will understand me when I say that I had always thought Cheapside a kind
of Bowery, probably full of second-hand clothing shops and ice-cream
parlours--the last place I should think of looking for a respectable
firm of solicitors in, especially after cherishing the idea all my life
that London lawyers were to be found only in Chancery Lane. But that
was Messrs. Pink & Pink's address, and the mistake was one of the large
number you have been kind enough to correct for me.
It was a matter of some regret to poppa that Messrs. Pink & Pink were
bachelors, and could not very well be expected to exert themselves for
me personally on that account; two Mrs. Pinks, he thought, might have
done a little to make it pleasant for me in London, and would, probably,
have put themselves out more or less to do it. But there was no Mrs.
Pink, so I was indebted to these gentlemen for money only, which they
sent me whenever I wrote to them for it, by arrangement with poppa. I
was surprised, therefore, to receive one morning an extremely polite
note from Messrs. Pink & Pink, begging me to name an afternoon when
it would be convenient for me to call at their office, in order that
Messrs. Pink & Pink might have the honour of discussing with me a matter
of private business important to myself. I thought it delightfully
exciting, and wrote at once that I would come next day. I speculated
considerably in the meantime as to what the important private matter
could possibly be--since, beyond my address, Messrs. Pink & Pink knew
nothing whatever of my circumstances in London--but did not tell Lady
Torquilin, for fear she would think she ought to come with me, and
nothing spoils an important private matter like a third person.
'1st Floor, Messrs. Dickson & Dawes, Architects; 2nd Floor, Norwegian
Life Insurance Co.; 3rd floor, Messrs. Pink & Pink, Solicitors,' read
the framed directory inside the door in black letters on a yellow
ground. I looked round in vain for an elevator-boy, though the narrow,
dark, little, twisting stairway was so worn that I might have known that
the proprietors were opposed to this innovation. I went from floor
to floor rejoicing. At last I had found a really antique interior in
London; there was not a cobweb lacking in testimony. It was the very
first I had come across in my own private investigations, and I had
expected them all to be like this.
Four or five clerks were writing at high desks in the room behind the
frosted-glass door with 'Pink & Pink' on it. There was a great deal
of the past in this room also, and in its associations--impossible to
realise in America--which I found gratifying. The clerks were nearly all
elderly, for one thing--grey-headed men. Since then I've met curates
of about the same date. The curates astonished me even more than the
clerks. A curate is such a perennially young person with us. You would
find about as many aged schoolboys as elderly curates in America. I
suppose our climate is more favourable to rapid development than yours,
and they become full-fledged clergymen or lawyers after a reasonable
apprenticeship. If not, they must come within the operation of some
evolutionary law by which they disappear. America is a place where there
is very little room for anachronisms.
Beside the elderly clerks, the room had an air of old leather, and three
large windows with yellow blinds pinned up--in these days of automatic
rollers. Through the windows I noticed the cheerful chimneys and spires
of London, E.C., rising out of that lovely atmospheric tone of yellow
which is so becoming to them; and down below--if I could only have
got near enough I am certain I should have seen a small dismantled
graveyard, with mossy tombstones of different sizes a long way out of
the perpendicular. I have become accustomed to finding graveyards in
close connection with business enterprise in London, and they appeal
to me. It is very nice of you to let them stay just where they were put
originally, when you are so crowded.
Original At home there isn't a dead person in existence, so to speak, that would have a chance in a locality like Cheapside.
And they must suggest to you all sorts of useful and valuable things
about the futility of ambition and the deceitfulness of riches down
there under your very noses, as it were, whenever you pause to look at
them. I can quite understand your respect for them, even in connection
with what E.C. frontage prices must be, and I hope, though I can't be
sure, that there was one attached to the offices in Cheapside of Messrs.
Pink & Pink.
The clerks all looked up with an air of inquiry when I went in, and I
selected the only one who did not immediately duck to his work again for
my interrogation. It was an awkward interrogation to make, and I made
it awkwardly. 'Are the Mr. Pinks in?' I asked; for I did not know in the
least how many of them wanted to see me.
'I believe so, miss,' said the elderly clerk, politely, laying down his
pen. 'Would it be Mr. A. Pink, or Mr. W. W. Pink?'