ENGLAND
The spring of 1877 saw the great adventure of our European journey
begun. My mother and I sailed from Boston on the Cunard steamer
_Parthia_, Captain Donald MacKaye commanding. As we steamed down the
harbor, I looked back at the window where I had so often watched the
passing ships; my turn had come at last! I too was “going to Europe”! We
made friends with our captain, a bluff, hearty Scot, who gave us tea in
his cabin, showed us portraits of “the wife and bairns”, and taught me
to take the sun. There were advantages in those days of long crossings
and small steamers, unknown on board “ocean greyhounds.” The supremacy
of the Cunarders was unquestioned, the deadening touch of German
efficiency was not yet upon ocean travel. The British officers “took it
easily”, found time to make the passengers feel at home. Beside the
fleeting steamer friendships, I was aware of another companionship: in
the glory of sunny days, the mystery of moonlight nights, the chill of
icebergs off the Banks, the shade of Columbus bore me company. In other
transatlantic journeyings there have come moments when the great Admiral
seemed near, but never again as on that first journey.
“How could you do it?” I cried out to him, when the ship rolled
horribly.
The answer was always the same, whether beaten out by the screw or
whispered by the wind:
“Because I was not afraid!”
On the Liverpool dock a tiny donkey in a costermonger’s cart and a burly
policeman walked right out of _Punch_ to meet us! I knew the whole
series by heart, and to-day can imagine no better preparation for a
visit to England.
We spent a few days in Liverpool, made a stop in Chester, and then
pushed on to London, where we found rooms in Bedford Place. Our lodgings
were gay with chintz hangings and window boxes of scarlet geraniums. A
sprite of a maid in white cap and apron served us; a friendly ogress,
the lodging-house keeper, supplied breakfast--bacon and eggs, marmalade,
tea and toast--for eighteen pence. There was a lacquered box, with a
canister for tea and a bowl for sugar, whose key the ogress formally
handed my mother.
London in May, when the white thorn is in bloom and even the smoky city
squares are lovely with the spring, when life is at the flood and every
hour holds more delights than the keenest pleasure-seeker can grasp, was
then the social center of the world. The year 1877 was the fortieth of
Queen Victoria’s reign: to celebrate the anniversary she was proclaimed
Empress of India, an honor people said she owed to Disraeli, who had
lately accepted the title of Earl of Beaconsfield. The Queen was not in
London, the Prince and Princess of Wales representing her at all the
great functions.
We were soon deep in social engagements. My mother’s old friends and the
new ones made on my account were very hospitable; our days passed in a
bewildering round of dinners, dances, garden parties, races of boats, of
horses; matches of cricket, of football; “shows” of pictures, flowers,
vegetables, dogs!
Henry James was often my mother’s escort; I rather avoided talking with
him, fancying that he was “studying” me for copy; later in life we
became fast friends.
Charles Stewart Parnell was one of our earliest visitors. My mother
being out when he first called, I received the visit. He seemed at a
loss to begin the conversation, and sat looking at me with a puzzled
expression. It finally came out that he was under the impression he was
talking with Mrs. Howe. He was tall, slender, distinguished, with blue
eyes and sandy hair. He was full of nervous “drive”, with something
chivalric in his make-up which should have saved him from the political
persecution that shortened his life. He took us to the House of Commons
to hear Mr. Gladstone. I remember well the great Commoner’s eloquence,
the sort of insistent magnetism he exerted over his hearers. His
followers were loyal as schoolboys to their leader. Lord Rosebery, at
that time Gladstone’s secretary, always spoke of him as of some superior
being. Sir Stafford Northcote had something to say to the Commons that
day about the strength of the Russian fleet and its close proximity to
New York and San Francisco.
At this time the Russian bogey was much in evidence, the Eastern
question was the burning issue, and Disraeli’s coquetting with Turkey
much criticized. Most of our friends were Gladstonians, though we knew
some of the leading Tories who supported Disraeli. These two famous
statesmen were more in evidence in the political arena than any others.
Mr. Biggar was pointed out as “the biggest Parliamentary bore on record”
and Sir Charles Dilke as having set all England by the ears by his
advocacy of cremation and his attitude on the Deceased Wife’s Sister
bill. I remember there was some talk about the Suez Canal and
discussion of what constituted contraband of war. The ladies’ gallery
where we sat was hot, crowded, uncomfortable, and screened like the
musharabeah window of an Egyptian harem. I disliked it so much that I
never went there again.
People who live in London must inevitably find the circle where they
belong, and remain more or less fixed therein. The charm of that first
London season was that we were made welcome in a dozen different circles
and counted among our friends extreme conservatives and arrant radicals.
After all these years the people I remember best are the literary men
and the artists. My first meeting with Robert Browning was at the home
of Mrs. Lehmann. The son of the house, Rudolph Lehmann, the writer and
athlete, was an interesting boy with a mop of dark curls and large,
expressive eyes.
“As Mr. Browning often dines with us,” the hostess said, “I always show
him the list of guests and let him choose who shall sit beside him:
to-night you are to have the honor.”
I felt it a very great honor indeed, and awaited his coming with beating
heart.
In conventional evening dress Browning, then about sixty-five years old,
looked less the traditional poet than his portraits. He was spruce, with
waxed mustache and a man-of-the-world air, not at all like the pictures
of Byron or Shelley, our own Walt Whitman, or the silvery Longfellow.
When we were seated at table he adjusted his monocle and glanced at the
_menu_.
“I know this cook’s best dishes,” he said, “I will advise you in
choosing the _plats_.”
It was unreasonable, but I was shocked! To come trembling into the
presence of the adored poet and find him only a man and an epicure was a
cruel disillusionment. What did I expect? _Quien sabe?_
Soon after I had an opportunity to visit Tennyson in the Isle of Wight.
I promptly refused the invitation. I had heard of the Laureate’s being
rude to some Americans and would not risk another disappointment in
poets.
Edmund Gosse proved a stanch friend to us as he has to many other
Americans made welcome at his Sunday afternoons. He was a man of charm
and simplicity: my memories of him are in harmony with his enchanting
autobiography, “Father and Son.” Mrs. Gosse was both aesthetic and good
looking. We met at her house her two sisters, Mrs. Alma-Tadema and
another whose name I have forgotten. These three charmers were the
daughters of Mr. Epps, and were known by the adjectives in his famous
cocoa advertisement, “Grateful, Comforting, Delicious.” All were pretty
women. Mrs. Tadema, the handsomest, was I think “Delicious.” She painted
extremely well, and her husband was proud of her pictures. I once heard
him say:
“Take notice that I wish to have it put on my tombstone, ‘Here lies the
husband of Mrs. Alma-Tadema’!”
The Alma-Tadema house had certain classical features,--an atrium like
those at Pompeii with marble columns and seats, a fountain playing in a
marble basin filled with rose leaves; the floors were strewn with
panther and tiger skins. Tadema often painted this interior in his
pictures of Roman and Greek life, which were much admired and brought
enormous sums.
Edmund Yates of the _London World_ was one of the prominent men about
town. His witticisms at the expense of his rival, Labouchère, editor of
_London Truth_, were much quoted. The two editors chaffed each other in
a weekly paragraph. People looked in _Truth_ for Labouchère’s screed
beginning, “My dear Edmund”, and in the _World_ for a corresponding
paragraph opening with, “My dear Labbie”! The jesting was good-humoured,
neither hitting below the belt.
Mr. Yates was kind to us, first for Uncle Sam’s sake, then for our own.
He was unwearied in arranging entertainments where we might meet the
literary lights of the day. A dinner at the Star and Garter, at
Richmond, where for the first time I tasted whitebait, is a clear
memory. We drove down from London on a coach and four through beautiful
Richmond Park, whose noble oaks are among the finest I have ever seen.
We had a private dining room opening on the terrace, with the famous
view over the Thames. Mallock, author of the “New Republic”, one of the
books of the year, was the most brilliant of the witty party, and the
lovely Violet Fane kept pace with him. William Black, who was among the
guests, was very silent that night, but looked interesting.
“I wish to propose the health of the United States!” said the host,
bowing to my mother. The company rose to drink the toast.
“Yates ought to like your country,” said Louis Jennings, my neighbor at
table; “he earned the thirty thousand pounds with which he bought the
_World_, on a lecture tour in the States!”
Mr. Yates had made some success as a novelist, but his real talent was
journalistic. As long as he lived the _World_ was sent to us, and my
mother never failed to read it, sometimes crying out as she laid the
paper down, “It makes me homesick for London!”
Among the friends of other days was Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes),
whom my mother had known on her first visit to England in 1844. He then
ranked as one of the notable minor poets, though I do not often hear his
poetry spoken of to-day. I have a volume of his, published in 1838. It
has a certain old-fashioned charm and brings back the marked personality
of the old gentleman whom we met frequently at dinners and even balls,
though he was past eighty years old.
Mr. George Howard, the late Lord Carlisle, was tireless in helping us
see the best ancient and modern art. He was at that time devoting
himself to painting, exhibiting with the rebels of the Grosvenor
Gallery. He was a man of exquisite refinement and great reserve, ill
fitted, it appeared, to take part in political life. He had married
Rosamond, daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley, who inherited the family
gift for politics and was already prominent as a reformer, though still
very young, with a nursery full of children. I date my lifelong passion
for sight-seeing from those hours spent with Mr. Howard at the British
Museum, the National Gallery, and other picture galleries and studios.
He introduced us to his friend Burne-Jones, who asked me to sit for him.
I remember those mornings at Burne-Jones’s house very clearly. The walls
of the passage leading to the studio were hung with the cartoons of the
artist’s beautiful decoration, “The Briar Rose.” Burne-Jones was one of
the most sensitive and interesting artists I have known. He complimented
me on being a good sitter,--“You can hold the pose as well as many
professional models.” He did not show me the canvas for which I sat, but
told me later that my portrait appeared in a group of nymphs in the
decoration he was then working upon. One day William Morris came in
during the sitting and said a few words to his friend. Morris, in his
plain, rough blue linen shirt and picturesque homespun clothes, looked
the poet and the artist he was. Most of the men and women of this
artistic group were very individual in dress. Mrs. Burne-Jones and her
daughter looked like the ladies in Walter Crane’s lovely illustrations.
It was from them that I first learned of the charming Liberty fabrics to
which I have remained faithful all these years.
This I believe was the first year of the Grosvenor Gallery, whose
exhibitions represented a revolt of some of the leading artists against
the formal traditions of the Royal Academy. There was a battle royal as
to the relative merits of the two exhibitions and the rights and wrongs
of the quarrel. The leading lights of the Grosvenor Gallery were
Burne-Jones, George Watts, and Whistler. Like most such defections the
movement proved useful; all the bitter words written and spoken had the
happy effect of giving a fresh impulse to British art.
Sir Frederick Leighton was then president of the Royal Academy. On the
night of the opening reception at Burlington House, all London flocked
to the Academy. The guests were received by Sir Frederick, standing at
the head of the main stairway. He was a commanding figure in his silk
robes of office, his orders, and decorations. We had for our escorts the
Greek Minister, M. Gennadius, and a young artist named John Elliott. The
servant who announced the guests mixed the cards and read the
Ambassador’s name as the artist advanced. He was received with great
cordiality, while the Ambassador got the curtest imaginable nod.
The pictures most noticed that year were by Millais, Leighton, Poynter,
Frith, Leslie, Alma-Tadema, and George Boughton, the American, whose
pictures had a great vogue. Millais was then the most popular of the
London painters, judging by the price his pictures brought. The
Pre-Raphaelite group were rather bitter about him. He had been with them
in their revolt against the conventional school, but after a few years
had deserted them and gone back to the Philistines. I heard much
discussion of all these currents in the art world, for we were often at
the houses of Alma-Tadema, Burne-Jones, and other artists, where the
vital topic of conversation was art with a big A. It gave me a peculiar
satisfaction to remind one of my new artist friends that London owed its
Royal Academy largely to an American painter, Benjamin West, who induced
the King to grant the charter to the Association of which he was
president twenty-eight years.
The styles in dress that year were rather extravagant. In the morning
the leaders of fashion wore plain, close-fitting silk jerseys, which
gave great offense to the prudish, mannish ulsters and derby hats. For
afternoon and evening wear trains were _de rigueur_. At the balls these
absurdly long trains made dancing very difficult. I found the average
English woman neither so handsome nor so elegant as the average
American. When it came to the exceptional ones, it was quite the other
way. I have never seen any women who compare, either in beauty or
bearing, to the _fine fleur_ of English girlhood.
Our London life was kaleidoscopic, brilliant, shifting, little bits of
fashion, art, sport, philanthropy, politics all jostling each other and
making a brilliant whole. I remember one grand banquet where General
Grant, then on his triumphal progress around the world, was the guest of
honor, and was seated at table between Mrs. Langtry and myself. At this
time the Jersey Lily was the reigning toast. She was very young, hardly
more than twenty, and was without question the most beautiful woman I
have ever seen. There was something disarming about her smile, which
began in the eyes (like calm blue lakes) and ended in the parting of the
perfect lips, the dimpling of the cheek. Watts’ portrait of her in a
close little bonnet is very like, but does not quite convey the
impression of dazzling loveliness she produced. Among the other reigning
beauties were Lady Dudley, a little cold in type compared to the Lily,
but looking like “the daughter of a hundred earls”, and Mrs. Cornwallis
West, diminutive and charming as a Dresden china figure.
The cult for beauty was unlike anything I have ever known before or
since. The aesthetic movement was at its height, and the “short-haired
women and long-haired men”, familiar figures at all the great routs and
public _fêtes_, waited to see the entrance of one of the “beauties”, as
people wait to see Royalty pass. The photographs of the professional
beauties were on sale in the shops with those of the royal family,
leading statesmen, and popular actors.
We owed our glimpses of the world of sport largely to Lord Dunraven,
owner of the famous yacht _Thistle_, who was attentive to us for Uncle
Sam’s sake. He drove us down to the Derby, where we were his guests in
the royal inclosure, and had a close view of the Prince and Princess of
Wales. The Prince, later Edward VII, was not far from forty, and looked
rather like Holbein’s portrait of Henry the Eighth. The Princess was
much beloved, though the people of the court and the diplomats found her
hard to talk with on account of her deafness. She was elegant in dress,
and for good looks held her own with the professional beauties. Like the
Queen, she was devoted to her family, but during the season could not
have had much time for her children. Every waking hour of her day seemed
filled with official engagements. She was forever opening hospitals,
presiding at _fêtes_, charity bazaars, and graduating exercises.
We went to Ascot with Lord Dunraven, and I remember dimly some yachting
excursion with him. This was ten years before the race between the
_Thistle_ and the _Mayflower_ for the _America’s_ cup. There was some
dispute about this race, and many people felt that Dunraven had not been
well treated by our American judges. Feeling ran high in yachting
circles and I overheard one sporting character say to another:
“Dunraven they call him,--Done racin’, I call him!”
Lady Dunraven was very unlike her husband in tastes and interests. I
remember her as one of the most perfectly bred women I ever met, gentle,
domestic, and devoted to her children.
I think it was through Lord Rosebery that we made the acquaintance of
Constance, daughter of Sir Anthony de Rothschild. She was the finest
type of the English Hebrew, a woman of great power and character. She
was a devoted follower of Frances Power Cobbe, whom I met at her house.
I spent ten days at Aston Clinton, the Rothschild country seat in
Buckinghamshire. At this time Cyril Flower was paying court to Miss
Rothschild, and I was aware of the struggle that shook my friend’s
nature to its depths. The whole Jewish community had been outraged by
the recent marriage of her sister to a Christian gentleman named Yorke
and the union of her cousin, Hannah Rothschild, with Lord Rosebery. Both
these ladies had been cursed in the synagogue with the dreadful Jewish
curse reserved for women who marry outside the faith. My friend was too
clear a thinker to fear the curse of Israel, but she dreaded the feeling
that she had betrayed her dear Jews, should she marry a Christian. Cyril
Flower was a superb, gold-bearded Viking of a man whose wooing was
impetuous and ardent. Meeting them on their wedding journey, I asked the
bridegroom if the curse had been pronounced. He told me no; his bride
(who had written an admirable history of the Israelites) was so deeply
beloved by her people that her defection had been passed over in
silence. Mr. Flower entered political life to represent the Rothschild
interests: he later became Lord Battersea.
M. Alphonse, the Rothschilds’ famous French chef, was quite a character.
Poor Sir Anthony was much out of health and obliged to live on rice and
gruel, but he sat at the head of his table at dinner and, like Mr.
Browning, helped me to choose the cook’s best _plats_. I remember his
pointing out a particularly fat truffle as a dish was handed me:
“Take that one, and tell me if it is not good.”
He watched me intently as I ate the truffle, then with a sigh went back
to his boiled rice.
Lady Rothschild was a lovely woman with delicate pink cheeks and silver
hair. Her hand was the only one I have ever touched that was as soft as
my mother’s. Finding me much interested in the household arrangements of
the establishment, she herself took me through the perfectly appointed
lower regions of Aston Clinton. Here I saw M. Alphonse in white linen
suit and cap. At the end of the long kitchen was an open fire before
which stood a mighty rack with a series of slowly revolving spits. On
the upper one were a row of quail, on the next pheasants, then ducks,
chickens, turkeys, legs of mutton, and on the lowest spit huge roasts of
beef, all slowly going round and round while M. Alphonse basted them
with his long ladle.
On parting, Lady Rothschild gave me a small volume. It proved to be a
series of short religious lessons she had prepared. I read it carefully
and found nothing that any Christian Sunday-school teacher would not
have used in her class.
I was struck by the part the leading statesmen took in London’s social
life. At home men of great affairs have little time for society: in
London the cabinet minister or prominent statesman who does not dine out
constantly is the exception. They consider it part of the relaxation all
intellectual workers must find in one direction or another. A skillful
London hostess tries to secure some leading political light for her
dinners and takes as much care in her choice of the company as a good
_chef_ in mixing a salad. I felt the same care in the make-up of the
house parties, where the right people always seemed to be brought
together. In my own Boston at this time there prevailed a primitive
custom of social segregation of persons of the same age. Boys and girls
consorted together, the middle-aged, the elderly, the old. In London I
found no trace of this tiresome restriction; in social life as in the
family life the different generations were allowed to mix. This was much
to my liking. I care less for people of my own age than for any others,
because I have less to learn from them. We have all been rolled like
pebbles on the beach by the same world currents and taken more or less
the same shape.
We found time for the opera and the theater. Richard Mansfield often
sent us seats for the play, and sometimes went with us. He had already
made his first hit in “Prince Karl.” Albani was the favorite prima donna
and Ellen Terry the most popular actress. Irving’s productions of
Shakespeare were among the notable dramatic events of the season. His
acting both as Hamlet and Benedick left me cold. It seemed to me he was
not great enough to play Shakespeare either in tragedy or comedy. When
it came to melodrama and farce, I have never seen a better actor. His
acting of the “Lyons Mail” was admirable, and his impersonation of
Alfred Jingle in a curtain raiser a matchless performance. We heard
Patti several times in concert; she was not singing in opera that
season. On one occasion at Albert Hall we heard the people’s idol, Sims
Reeves, sing, “Farewell, my trim-built Wherry.” He was a very old man,
and his voice a shadow of what it had been when my mother heard him in
his prime. She called my attention to the rapturous applause that
greeted him, saying:
“The faithfulness of English audiences to their old favorites is
proverbial; it is part of the tenacity of their natures. An English
friend is a friend for life.”
She went on to contrast the devotion of the English to their old
favorites with the fickleness of the French, and told of the Parisian
public that had so adored Rachel neglecting her for Ristori, the Italian
tragedienne.
Of all the theatrical performances, I enjoyed most “The Sorcerer”, the
first of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Gilbert was already a
household word with us through our devotion to his “Bab Ballads.” His
play, “Pygmalion and Galatea”, had already made a hit, but it was
through his partnership with Arthur Sullivan that he won his great
popularity. Those were the palmy days of light opera. Offenbach was
still sung all over the world, and the vogue for the Gilbert and
Sullivan operas in all the English-speaking countries was something
phenomenal. These melodious operettas, bubbling over with clean,
wholesome English fun, deserved all the popularity they enjoyed. To this
day I never miss an opportunity of hearing the revivals that from time
to time take place. The latest of these, a performance of “Pinafore”
given at Newport, by the American sailors during the Great War, gave me
hardly less pleasure than the original production I witnessed on my
second visit to London in 1878.
Considering how much of fun there was during my first London season, I
remember with some surprise how often we went to church. I heard some
admirable sermons from Dean Vaughan at the church of the Temple, and
have a confused memory of having stayed and dined with the Templars in a
great hall, upon mighty roasts of beef under vast pewter covers,
gooseberry fool, and enormous strawberries. We often went to service at
Westminster Abbey to hear Dean Stanley preach. The beauty of his English
was like the architecture of a Doric temple. He had a fine intellectual
head and a face of great power and sweetness. We were at his house more
than once: we met there Mr. Seeley, the author of “Ecce Homo”, a book
published anonymously a few years before, which had made a deep
impression. We also heard Moncure Conway and Stopford Brooke. Conway,
who was an American, was then preaching for the South Place Religious
Society. He was an old friend, and I remembered him well at Green Peace.
Though he and my mother did not agree on matters theological, they were
good friends, and we went several times to his house in Hammersmith. He
was a large, striking-looking man, with a great head and an assertive
personality: very aggressive both in and out of the pulpit, but
warm-hearted and stimulating. He did not like to be classed with
Christians, though he had started as a Methodist minister and later
joined the Unitarians. His congregation were plain people, many of them
working men of socialistic tendencies.
Stopford Brooke was at this time the most popular of the liberal Church
of England preachers. To hear him it was necessary to go very early to
secure a seat. The service was low church in character, and had a vested
choir of girl choristers. Stopford Brooke’s English was more vigorous
and not quite so silvery as Dean Stanley’s; his doctrine was warm,
human, Christian. These three men, Dean Stanley, Stopford Brooke, and
Moncure Conway, represented the three degrees of liberal religious
thought in England. The Dean lived and died a dignitary of the
established church. Of Stopford Brooke Unitarians said what they said
about Phillips Brooks, “He belongs with us.” Shortly after Brooke
himself realized where he belonged, left the Church of England and
became a Unitarian.
We heard a service at the Greek Church, where the dark _papa_, in his
gorgeous white satin robes embroidered with gold, reminded me of my
brother-in-law, Anagnos. One Saturday morning we went to the Hebrew
Synagogue, places being reserved for us in the women’s gallery. The men
put on a sort of shawl as they entered the pews and kept their hats on
through the service. Their opening prayer ran somewhat in this fashion:
“I thank thee, Oh, God, that thou hast not made me a woman!”
We met that remarkable old man, Sir Moses Montefiori, at the
Rothschilds’. He talked a great deal with my mother of his plan for
repatriating the Hebrews in Jerusalem. I was rather afraid of him and of
Sir Anthony, who was, I think, his brother-in-law. While they were
extremely courteous in their manner, I was aware of a certain mental
attitude that I resented; it was so subtle that to-day I despair of
analyzing it, but it seemed to me that as they spoke to me they were
repeating silently that contemptuous prayer of the Synagogue.
One of the pleasantest houses where we were made to feel at home was
that of the Lyulph Stanleys in Harley Street. Mr. Stanley had lately
married Maisie, the beautiful daughter of Sir Lothian Bell, the great
ironmaster. They had been at our house in America on their wedding
journey, and Mr. Stanley at an earlier visit had foregathered with my
mother, who had a great esteem and affection for him. The Stanleys, one
of the great Liberal families, have always been considered exceptionally
original and clever. Our friend Lyulph had already begun his lifelong
fight for higher education, and was the leading member of the London
School Board, on which he served for more than twenty laborious years.
His sister, Lady Amberley, had very advanced views for those days: his
elder brother had settled in Constantinople and taken so thoroughly to
the ways of that place that it was said he had embraced the religion of
Islam. A third brother, Algernon, soon after this became a priest of the
Roman Church. He was handsome, with the typical Stanley beauty,--golden
hair and beard, delicate rose and white skin, brilliant blue eyes. I
admired Algernon’s appearance very much, and one day was startled at
meeting him shorn of his golden beard and locks, wearing the dress of a
Catholic priest.
“How did your mother feel about your conversion?” my mother asked him.
“I really don’t know,” was the answer. “With one child an atheist and
another a Mohammedan, she ought to be pleased to have at least one
Christian in her family!”
Rosamond Stanley (Lady Carlisle) was the sister of Lyulph and Algernon
Stanley. The last time I was in England our friend Lyulph had succeeded
to the title of Lord Stanley, but I remember him best in those early
days when we were all young.
Another house of which I have grateful memories was that of Sir Arthur
Mills, my mother’s lifelong friend, the hero of her comic poem, “The
Millsiad”, written when they crossed the ocean together long before I
was born. Sir Arthur was, at the time I knew him, a strong conservative
and felt, I believe, little sympathy with my mother’s work for suffrage
and other reforms. This made no difference in their friendship, which
descended to the next generation; his son, Major Dudley Mills, of the
Engineer Corps, was my mother’s devoted friend and correspondent to the
end of her life.
I am glad that I knew London in the days of the hansom, before that
perfect vehicle gave place to the taxi. We were often taken to drive in
the Park by our smart friends in their fine carriages, but for me there
was nothing like the fun of driving about London in a hansom cab. Next
to the London hansom I loved best the box seat of a coach tooling along
over the fine hard roads to Hampton Court, Brighton, or Richmond, where
the coach drew up at the historic pastry cook’s to let the passengers
buy those perfect cheese cakes, the “maids of honor.”
Hardly less dear than hansom or coach was the top of the omnibus that
took us down to Barings’ in Threadneedle Street to draw our money or to
go sight-seeing in the city.
“Benk, benk, benk!” cried the guard, swinging on the back of the ’bus;
“’Igh Holborn, ’Igh Holborn, Shepperd’s Bursh, Elephant and Castle!” An
artist friend took us one Saturday night to see Edgeware Road. The long
street was crammed with people buying their Sunday dinners. At the doors
of the butchers’ shops stood men in white aprons with long glittering
knives, chanting a peculiar monotonous cry:
“Buy, buy, buy! Beef, pork, mutton, will you buy, will you buy?”
On either side the way was lined with costermongers, whose barrows were
lighted by flaring lamps. They, too, shouted their wares,--shrimps,
periwinkles, oysters, fruit, vegetables, toys of all descriptions,
cooking ware and clothing, for on Saturday night Edgeware Road was
transformed into a nocturnal fair, where the poor of London bargained,
haggled, and gossiped. It was an amazing spectacle, and a strange
pendant for another picture that still remains with me,--Hyde Park,
after church on a Sunday morning, with its beauties and “swells.”
Eight o’clock in the evening is the hour I remember best of these
memorable London days. Then I would be driving through Hyde Park in a
hansom beside my mother. The long twilight still held, and through the
lilac haze the lamps glowed and shone as we passed an endless stream of
vehicles coming from the opposite direction, filled with people going
out to dine like ourselves. There were a few of the old-time coaches
with two powdered, silk-stockinged footmen standing on the footboard
behind, a vast number of smart broughams, but the majority like
ourselves drove in hansom cabs. We caught glimpses of ladies of dazzling
beauty, gentlemen immaculate in evening dress and opera hats: sometimes
we recognized a friend in a swiftly passing hansom, or some celebrity.
The possibilities suggested, the romances guessed, the scandals and dark
secrets imagined, as hansom after hansom flashed by and eye met eye, set
the heart beating, the imagination dancing. Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair!
will the world ever again see anything like that London I remember?