_Tancred Rescues a Lady in Distress_
THAT is most striking in London is its vastness. It is the illimitable
feeling that gives it a special character. London is not grand. It
possesses only one of the qualifications of a grand city, size; but it
wants the equally important one, beauty. It is the union of these two
qualities that produced the grand cities, the Romes, the Babylons,
the hundred portals of the Pharaohs; multitudes and magnificence; the
millions influenced by art. Grand cities are unknown since the beautiful
has ceased to be the principle of invention. Paris, of modern capitals,
has aspired to this character; but if Paris be a beautiful city, it
certainly is not a grand one; its population is too limited, and, from
the nature of their dwellings, they cover a comparatively small space.
Constantinople is picturesque; nature has furnished a sublime site, but
it has little architectural splendour, and you reach the environs with a
fatal facility. London overpowers us with its vastness.
Place a Forum or an Acropolis in its centre, and the effect of the
metropolitan mass, which now has neither head nor heart, instead of
being stupefying, would be ennobling. Nothing more completely represents
a nation than a public building. A member of Parliament only represents,
at the most, the united constituencies: but the Palace of the Sovereign,
a National Gallery, or a Museum baptised with the name of the country,
these are monuments to which all should be able to look up with pride,
and which should exercise an elevating influence upon the spirit of the
humblest. What is their influence in London? Let us not criticise what
all condemn. But how remedy the evil? What is wanted in architecture,
as in so many things, is a man. Shall we find a refuge in a Committee of
Taste? Escape from the mediocrity of one to the mediocrity of many? We
only multiply our feebleness, and aggravate our deficiencies. But one
suggestion might be made. No profession in England has done its duty
until it has furnished its victim. The pure administration of justice
dates from the deposition of Macclesfield. Even our boasted navy never
achieved a great victory until we shot an admiral. Suppose an architect
were hanged? Terror has its inspiration as well as competition.
Though London is vast, it is very monotonous. All those new districts
that have sprung up within the last half-century, the creatures of our
commercial and colonial wealth, it is impossible to conceive anything
more tame, more insipid, more uniform. Pancras is like Mary-le-bone,
Mary-le-bone is like Paddington; all the streets resemble each other,
you must read the names of the squares before you venture to knock at
a door. This amount of building capital ought to have produced a great
city. What an opportunity for architecture suddenly summoned to furnish
habitations for a population equal to that of the city of Bruxelles,
and a population, too, of great wealth. Mary-le-bone alone ought to have
produced a revolution in our domestic architecture. It did nothing. It
was built by Act of Parliament. Parliament prescribed even a façade. It
is Parliament to whom we are indebted for your Gloucester Places, and
Baker Streets, and Harley Streets, and Wimpole Streets, and all those
flat, dull, spiritless streets, resembling each other like a large
family of plain children, with Portland Place and Portman Square for
their respectable parents. The influence of our Parliamentary Government
upon the fine arts is a subject worth pursuing. The power that produced
Baker Street as a model for street architecture in its celebrated
Building Act, is the power that prevented Whitehall from being
completed, and which sold to foreigners all the pictures which the King
of England had collected to civilise his people.
In our own days we have witnessed the rapid creation of a new
metropolitan quarter, built solely for the aristocracy by an aristocrat.
The Belgrave district is as monotonous as Mary-le-bone; and is so
contrived as to be at the same time insipid and tawdry.
Where London becomes more interesting is Charing Cross. Looking to
Northumberland House, and turning your back upon Trafalgar Square, the
Strand is perhaps the finest street in Europe, blending the architecture
of many periods; and its river ways are a peculiar feature and rich with
associations. Fleet Street, with its Temple, is not unworthy of being
contiguous to the Strand. The fire of London has deprived us of the
delight of a real old quarter of the city; but some bits remain, and
everywhere there is a stirring multitude, and a great crush and crash of
carts and wains. The Inns of Court, and the quarters in the vicinity of
the port, Thames Street, Tower Hill, Billingsgate, Wapping, Rotherhithe,
are the best parts of London; they are full of character: the buildings
bear a nearer relation to what the people are doing than in the more
polished quarters.
The old merchants of the times of the first Georges were a fine race.
They knew their position, and built up to it. While the territorial
aristocracy, pulling down their family hotels, were raising vulgar
streets and squares upon their site, and occupying themselves one of
the new tenements, the old merchants filled the straggling lanes, which
connected the Royal Exchange with the port of London, with mansions
which, if not exactly equal to the palaces of stately Venice, might at
least vie with many of the hotels of old Paris. Some of these,
though the great majority have been broken up into chambers and
counting-houses, still remain intact.
In a long, dark, narrow, crooked street, which is still called a lane,
and which runs from the south side of the street of the Lombards towards
the river, there is one of these old houses of a century past, and
which, both in its original design and present condition, is a noble
specimen of its order. A pair of massy iron gates, of elaborate
workmanship, separate the street from its spacious and airy court-yard,
which is formed on either side by a wing of the mansion, itself a
building of deep red brick, with a pediment, and pilasters, and copings
of stone. A flight of steps leads to the lofty and central doorway; in
the middle of the court there is a garden plot, inclosing a fountain,
and a fine plane tree.
The stillness, doubly effective after the tumult just quitted, the
lulling voice of the water, the soothing aspect of the quivering
foliage, the noble building, and the cool and capacious quadrangle, the
aspect even of those who enter, and frequently enter, the precinct, and
who are generally young men, gliding in and out, earnest and full
of thought, all contribute to give to this locality something of the
classic repose of a college, instead of a place agitated with the
most urgent interests of the current hour; a place that deals with the
fortunes of kings and empires, and regulates the most important affairs
of nations, for it is the counting-house in the greatest of modern
cities of the most celebrated of modern financiers.
It was the visit of Tancred to the City, on the Wednesday morning after
he had met Lord Eskdale, that occasions me to touch on some of the
characteristics of our capital. It was the first time that Tancred had
ever been in the City proper, and it greatly interested him. His visit
was prompted by receiving, early on Wednesday morning, the following
letter:
‘Dear Tancred: I saw Sidonia yesterday, and spoke to him of what you
want. He is much occupied just now, as his uncle, who attended to
affairs here, is dead, and, until he can import another uncle or cousin,
he must steer the ship, as times are critical. But he bade me say you
might call upon him in the City to-day, at two o’clock. He lives in
Sequin Court, near the Bank. You will have no difficulty in finding
it. I recommend you to go, as he is the sort of man who will really
understand what you mean, which neither your father nor myself do
exactly; and, besides, he is a person to know.
‘I enclose a line which you will send in, that there may be no mistake.
I should tell you, as you are very fresh, that he is of the Hebrew race;
so don’t go on too much about the Holy Sepulchre.
‘Yours faithfully,
‘ESKDALE.
‘Spring Gardens, Wednesday morning.’
It is just where the street is most crowded, where it narrows, and
losing the name of Cheapside, takes that of the Poultry, that the last
of a series of stoppages occurred; a stoppage which, at the end of ten
minutes, lost its inert character of mere obstruction, and
developed into the livelier qualities of the row. There were oaths,
contradictions, menaces: ‘No, you sha’n’t; Yes, I will; No, I didn’t;
Yes, you did; No, you haven’t; Yes, I have;’ the lashing of a whip, the
interference of a policeman, a crash, a scream. Tan-cred looked out of
the window of his brougham. He saw a chariot in distress, a chariot such
as would have become an Ondine by the waters of the Serpentine, and the
very last sort of equipage that you could expect to see smashed in the
Poultry. It was really breaking a butterfly upon a wheel to crush its
delicate springs, and crack its dark brown panels, soil its dainty
hammer-cloth, and endanger the lives of its young coachman in a flaxen
wig, and its two tall footmen in short coats, worthy of Cinderella.
The scream, too, came from a fair owner, who was surrounded by clamorous
carmen and city marshals, and who, in an unknown land, was afraid she
might be put in a city compter, because the people in the city had
destroyed her beautiful chariot. Tan-cred let himself out of his
brougham, and not without difficulty contrived, through the narrow and
crowded passage formed by the two lines, to reach the chariot, which was
coming the contrary way to him. Some ruthless officials were persuading
a beautiful woman to leave her carriage, the wheel of which was broken.
‘But where am I to go?’ she exclaimed. ‘Icannot walk. I will not leave
my carriage until you bring me some conveyance. You ought to punish
these people, who have quite ruined my chariot.’
‘They say it was your coachman’s fault; we have nothing to do with that;
besides, you know who they are. Their employers’ name is on the cart,
Brown, Bugsby, and Co., Limehouse. You can have your redress against
Brown, Bugsby, and Co., Lime-house, if your coachman is not in fault;
but you cannot stop up the way, and you had better get out, and let the
carriage be removed to the Steel-yard.’
‘What am I to do?’ exclaimed the lady with a tearful eye and agitated
face.
‘I have a carriage at hand,’ said Tancred, who at this moment reached
her, ‘and it is quite at your service.’
The lady cast her beautiful eyes, with an expression of astonishment she
could not conceal, at the distinguished youth who thus suddenly appeared
in the midst of insolent carmen, brutal policemen, and all the cynical
amateurs of a mob. Public opinion in the Poultry was against her; her
coachman’s wig had excited derision; the footmen had given themselves
airs; there was a strong feeling against the shortcoats. As for the
lady, though at first awed by her beauty and magnificence, they rebelled
against the authority of her manner. Besides, she was not alone. There
was a gentleman with her, who wore moustaches, and had taken a part in
the proceedings at first, by addressing the carmen in French. This was
too much, and the mob declared he was Don Carlos.
‘You are too good,’ said the lady, with a sweet expression.
[Illustration: page152]
Tancred opened the door of the chariot, the policemen pulled down the
steps, the servants were told to do the best they could with the wrecked
equipage; in a second the lady and her companion were in Tancred’s
brougham, who, desiring his servants to obey all their orders,
disappeared, for the stoppage at this moment began to move, and there
was no time for bandying compliments.
He had gained the pavement, and had made his way as far as the Mansion
House, when, finding a group of public buildings, he thought it prudent
to inquire which was the Bank.
‘That is the Bank,’ said a good-natured man, in a bustle, but taken by
Tancred’s unusual appearance. ‘What do you want? I am going there.’
‘I do not want exactly the Bank,’ replied Tancred, ‘but a place
somewhere near it. Do you happen to know, sir, a place called Sequin
Court?’
‘I should think I did,’ said the man, smiling. ‘So you are going to
Sidonia’s?’