The Emily Emmins Papers

IX

All in a Garden Fair

To be in London is to be in Society. Each invitation accepted brings two more, with an ultimate result like that of the old-fashioned “chain letter.”

Having thoughtlessly begun a social career, I suddenly found my London carpeted with crimson velvet. And by insidious processes, and by reason of the advance of summer, the velvet carpet magically transformed itself into country-house lawns, the only difference being that the green velvet carpet was of a richer pile.

I had determined to accept no country-house invitations. The somewhat ample length and breadth of London itself was all the England I desired, and this I absorbed as fast as I could; my only difficulty being that I could not live nimbly enough.

But, like the historic gentleman who “loved but was lured away,” I was invited to a Saturday afternoon garden party in the country, and, under pressure of argument by some cherished friends, I consented to go.

The Garden Party, unlike Sheridan, was seventy miles away; but I learned that it would be a typical English Garden Party of the three-volume sort, and though it necessitated a week-end stay, and concomitant luggage bothers, I stoically prepared to see it through.

I was to meet my cherished friends, who were none other than the Wag O’ The World and his Wife, at Victoria Station.

This, of itself, was a worth-while experience, for meeting friends at a London station is always exciting. To begin with, they are never there. You rush madly about from one ridiculous, inadequate ticket wicket to another, – from one absurd, inadequate waiting-room to another, – and then you think that after all they must have said Charing Cross.

Then you forget them, and become absorbed in watching the comic opera crowd of week-enders, in their neat travelling-suits of beflounced muslin, frilly lace scarfs, and stout boots.

Wandering about in the luggage-room, I suddenly chanced upon my friends calmly sitting on their own boxes, and looking as if they had been evicted for not paying their rent.

And such a multiplicity of luggage as they had! I had contented myself with one box of goodly proportions, but my cherished friends had no less than twelve pieces of the varying patterns of enamelled blackness and pig-skinned brownness which only England knows.

“Why sit ye here idle?” I demanded.

“We await the psychical moment,” responded the Wag O’ The World; “you see they won’t stick our luggage sooner than ten minutes before train time, and they’re not allowed to stick it later than five minutes before train time. The game is to catch a porter between those times.”

The game seemed not only difficult, but impossible, for the porters were not only elusive but for the most part invisible. Preoccupied-looking men strolled about with a handful of labels and a paste-pot, but could not be induced to decorate our luggage therewith.

“The principle is all wrong!” I declared. “It is absurd for one to be such a slave to one’s luggage. Somebody ought to invent a trunk with legs and intelligence, that would run after us, – instead of our running after it!”

“Even that would not be necessary,” responded the Wag O’ The World, in his mild way; “if somebody would only invent a porter with legs and intelligence, it would fulfil all requirements.”

Now this is the strange part.

Though there were more than a thousand people waiting to have their luggage stuck (i. e., labelled), and though there were but few of the invisible porters, yet everybody was properly stuck, and started when the train did!

The next entertainment was the securing of an entire compartment for our party of three. This is always accomplished in England, but by many devious and often original devices.

“I’ve thought of a good plan, which I’ve never tried yet,” observed the Wag O’ The World, “to get a compartment to one’s self. That is, to invent some collapsible rubber people, – like balloon pigs, you know, – that may be carried in the pocket, and blown up when necessary. Three or four of these, when blown up and placed in the various seats would fool any guard. And if one were shaped like a baby, with a crying arrangement that would work mechanically, the others would not be needed.”

This plan was ingenious, but, like everything else in England, unnecessary. It is one of the most striking characteristics of the English that nothing is absolutely necessary to their well-being or happiness. If anything is omitted or mislaid, it is not missed but promptly forgotten, and no harm done.

After an hour or two of pleasant travel through the hop-poled scenery of Southeastern England, we reached a place with one of those absurd names which always suggest Edward Lear’s immortal lyrics, where we must needs change cars.

My Cherished Friends strolled along the length of the platform to the luggage van, and judiciously selected such boxes as they cared to claim; though I am sure they did not get all of their own, and acquired a few belonging to other passengers. I easily picked out my own American trunk, and, surrounded by our spoil, we stood on the platform while the train wandered on.

After a long, but by no means tedious, wait there appeared on the other side of the platform a toy railroad train, so amateurish that it looked like one drawn by a child on a slate.

We were put into a box-stall, and locked in. The ridiculous little contraption bobbled along its track, and finally stopped in the middle of a beautiful landscape, and we jumped out to become part of it.

The barouche of our hostess awaited us, with still life in the shape of liveried attendants. A huge wagon awaited the luggage, which had mysteriously dumped itself out of the train, and we were whisked away to the Garden Party.

Partly to be polite, and partly because I couldn’t help it, I remarked on the marvellous beauty of the country.

The Wag O’ The World enthusiastically agreed with me. “But, Emily,” he said, “if you could only see this same country in the spring! These lanes are walled on either side with the pink bloom of the may, – and the wild flowers.”

Tears stood in the blue eyes of the Wag, at the mere thought of spring in Kent, and I realized at last why English poets have sometimes written poems about Spring.

We passed through the village, one of those tiny hamlets which acquire merit only by age and local tradition. The Happy Villagers stared at us with just the correct degree of bucolic curiosity, and we rolled on through the lodge gates, and along the winding, beautiful avenue to the house. In every direction stretched wide lawns of perfect grass, that probably acquired its uppish look when William the Conqueror trod it.

We were met by no humanity of our own stamp, but were shown to our room by benevolent-minded factotums, and gently advised to prepare for the Garden Party.

With the exception of entertainments of a public nature, I have never seen so beautiful and elaborate an affair. The guests, to the number of two hundred, came from all the country round; some in equipages dripping with ancestral glory, and some in motor-cars reeking with modern wealth.

The women’s costumes were of themselves a study. The English woman’s dress often inclines to the bizarre; and at a garden fête she lets herself loose in radiant absurdities, which she wears with the absolute self-satisfaction born of the knowledge that in the matter of feminine adornment England is the land of the free and home of the brave.

The Garden Party proceeded with the regularity of clock-work. The invitations read from four till six, and promptly at four the whole two hundred guests arrived. This occasioned no confusion, and the hostess greeted them with a neatness and despatch equalling that of our own Presidential receptions.

The guests then conversed in amiable groups on the lawn, while a band of musicians in scarlet and gold uniforms played popular airs.

All were then marshalled into a huge marquee, of dimensions exceeding our largest circus tent. Here, a Lucullian feast was served at small tables, and the country gentry, in their vague, involuntary way, amply satisfied their healthy English appetites.

After the feast, the assemblage was rounded up into a compact audience, to witness the performance of a troupe of Pierrots. The antics of these Mountebanks, with accompanying songs and dances, were appreciatively applauded, and then, as it was six o’clock, the assemblage dissolved and vanished, almost with the rapidity of a bursting bubble.

To my easily flustered American mentality, it all seemed like a feat of magic; and I looked in amazement at my hostess who, after the departure of the last guest, was as composed and serene as if she had entertained but a single guest. And like the insubstantial pageant faded, it left not a rack behind. More magic dissolved the tent, the band-stand, the Pierrots’ platform, and all other incriminating evidence, and then, with true English forgetfulness, the Garden Party was a thing of the past, and dinner was toward.

The house-party numbered forty, and, after exchanging the filmy finery of the garden garb for the more gorgeous regalia demanded by candle-light, the guests repaired to the stately dining-hall. Of course, repaired is the only verb of locomotion befitting the occasion.

Sunday passed like a beautiful daydream. The English have a great respect for the Sabbath day, and, perhaps as a reward for this, the weather on Sunday is usually perfect. It is not incumbent on guests to go to church, but it is considered rather nice of them to do so; especially if, as happened in this instance, the old church is on the estate where one is visiting. Nor is it any hardship to sit in an old carved high-backed pew, that has belonged to the family for ages.

Sabbath amusements are of a mild nature, one of the favorites being photography. English people have original ideas of posing, and any one who can invent a new mode of grouping his subjects is looked upon as a hero.

Aside from Lord Nelson’s declaration, if there is one thing that England expects, it is Tea; and tea she gets every day. But of all the various modes of conducting the function, the out-of-door Tea at a country house is probably the most delightful.

The appointments are the perfection of wicker, china, and silver, but it is the local color and surrounding that count most.

I cease to wonder that the English are only vaguely interested in their viands, for who could definitely consider the flavor of tea when in full view was a rising terrace leading to a magnificent old mansion of the correct and approved period of architecture, and covered with ivy that may have been planted by an Historical Character? or, looking in another direction, one could perceive a formal garden, with fountain and sun-dial; another turn of the head brought into view a unique rose orchard, unmatched even in England; while toward the only point of the compass left, rolled hills and dales that made many an English landscape painter famous.

Add to this the inconsequent and always delightful small-talk of English society, spiced here and there by their dreadful expletive, “My word!” and enlivened by the English humor, which is, to those who care for it, the most truly humorous thing on earth, – and I, for one, am quite ready to concede that these conditions combine to make Afternoon Tea a Spangle of Existence.

X

“I Went and Ranged about to Many Churches”

Miss Anna was certainly a godsend. It was due to her comprehension of the “human warious,” and her experienced knowledge of London, that I was enabled to revisit places I had never seen before.

When she calmly asked me to spend a day sightseeing in the “City,” I gasped. But when she reminded me that I ought to look once more on some of the old landmarks of London, I was flattered into a gracious acceptance.

One soft, purry August morning we started out. I was supposed to be absolutely under her direction, but when she remarked casually that we would take a ’bus, I rebelled.

“I have never been in or on the horrid things,” I protested, “and I never intend to!”

But she only said, “We’ll stand on the corner of Oxford Street, and wait for a City Atlas,” and somehow I immediately felt quite accustomed to City Atlases, – and intuitively knew it would be a blue one, – but it wasn’t.

Imitating Miss Anna’s air of habitual custom, I swung myself aboard of the moving monster, and laboriously climbed the curving companion-way at the back.

Once in our seats, it was not so bad; though very like riding the whirlwind, without being allowed to direct the storm.

Miss Anna drew my attention to points of interest as we passed them. In her tactful way she humored my idiosyncrasy. She never said, “On your right is the ‘Salutation and Cat,’ where Coleridge and Southey and Lamb used to congregate of a winter evening.” She said, instead, “Haven’t you always thought ‘Salutation and Cat’ the very dearest tavern in all London?”

Nor when we came to the half-timbered houses of Holborn did she say, “Here lived Lamb’s godfather, who was known to and visited by Sheridan.”

She said: “Don’t you like Hawthorne’s way of putting these things? You remember how he tells us that on his first visit to London he went astray in Holborn, through an arched entrance, in a court opening inward, with a great many Sunflowers in full bloom.”

All this pleased me, as did also Bumpus’s great book-shop, which is, I think, in this neighborhood.

Another delightful pastime was observing the signs over the shop doors. As the English are adept in the making of phrases, so are they especially happy in adjusting their callings to their names.

Lest I be considered frivolous, I shall mention only two; but surely there could not be more appropriate names for dentists than two whose sign-boards proudly announced Shipley Slipper, and, across the street from him, Mr. Strong-i’th’arm.

We went on, absorbed in our view of kaleidoscopic London, until Miss Anna decreed that we go down to the ground again. There was no elevator as in the Flatiron Building, so we tumbled down the back stairs, and were thrown off.

The sequence of the places we visited I do not remember, but they seemed to be mostly churches and taverns.

St. Paul’s was taken casually, as indeed it should be, being, like a corporation, without a soul.

Exteriorly, and from a goodly distance, St. Paul’s is perfection. From the river, or from Parliament Hill, it is sympathetic and responsive. But inside it is a mere vastness of mosaic and gilding, peopled with shiny marbles of heroic size. There is an impressive grandeur of art, but no message for the spirit. It is magnificent, but it is not church.

Miss Anna and I walked properly about the edifice, fortunately agreeing in our attitude toward it.

From here, I think, she led me across something, and through something and around something else, and then we were in St. Bartholomew’s church. Being the oldest church in London, St. Bartholomew’s is historically important, but it is interesting and delightful as well. The very air inside has been shut in there ever since the twelfth century, yet one breathes it normally, and enjoys the sudden backward transition. Had I the time, I could easily find an inclination to walk every day round its ancient triforium.

As we left the church, the Charter-house put itself in our way. Though other British subjects were educated at this school, it remains sacred to the memory of Thackeray. From here he wrote to his mother, “There are but three hundred and seventy boys in this school, and I wish there were only three hundred and sixty-nine.” But visitors to the Charter-house are glad that the three hundred and seventieth boy remained there, and stamped the whole place with his gentle memory. The atmosphere of the Charter-house is wonderfully calm; it does not connote boys, but seems tranquilly imbued with the later wisdom of the great men who spent their youthful days within its walls.

The stranger in London has a decided advantage over the resident, in that he can choose his heroes.

A friend of mine who lives in Chelsea proudly assured me that he could throw a stone from his garden into Carlyle’s! The point of his remark seemed to be not his superior marksmanship, but the proximity to the garden of a great man. Now, were I of the stone-throwing sex, there is many a dead hero at whose garden I should aim before I turned toward Carlyle’s. But of course this was because my friend lived in Chelsea. Therefore the non-resident, not being confined to a locality, can throw imaginary stones into any one’s garden.

A desultory discussion of this subject caused Miss Anna to propose that our next stone be aimed at the garden of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

So to the Cheshire Cheese we went.

The imposing personality of Dr. Johnson, and the antiquity of the famous tavern, led me to anticipate great things; and I was sorely disappointed (as probably most visitors are) at the plainly spread table, the fearfully hard seats, and the trying umbrella-rack filled with sawdust.

Of course we occupied the historic corner, where, according to the brass tablet, Dr. Johnson loved to linger; but two young American women whose tastes are not of the sanded floor and mulled ale variety cannot at a midday meal, whoop up much of the atmosphere that probably surrounded the smoke-wreathed midnights of Johnsonian revelry.

Not that we didn’t enjoy it, for we were of a mind to enjoy everything that day; but the appreciation was entirely objective. Methodically we climbed the stairs and viewed all the rooms of the old, old house, and on the top floor were duly shown by the guide the old arm-chair in which Dr. Johnson used to sit. A stout twine was tied across from arm to arm, that pilgrims might not further wear out the old cushion. When I, as an enormous jest, asked the guide to cut the string, that I might sit in the historic chair, he cheerfully did so, and I considered the fee well spent that allowed me to linger for a moment on the very dusty cushions of Dr. Johnson’s own chair.

I afterward learned that the string business was a fraud, and was renewed and cut again for each curious visitor. I accept with equanimity this clever ruse, but I’m still wondering how they renew the dust.

While we were doing Early Restaurants Miss Anna said, “We must take in Crosby Place.”

This pleased me hugely, for I remembered how Gloucester, in Richard the Third was everlastingly repairing to Crosby Place, and I desired to know what was the attraction.

I found it interesting, but, lacking Gloucester, I shall not repair there often. To be sure, it is a magnificent house, Gothic, Perpendicular, and all that; the hangings and appointments are, probably, much as they used to be, but after all, I do not care greatly for eating among Emotions.

Whereupon Miss Anna cheerfully proposed that we visit the Tower.

“No,” said I, with decision; and then, my mind still on Richard the Third, I quoted: “I do not like the Tower, of any place.”

I’m not sure I should have been able so bravely to disclaim an interest in the Tower, had it not been that the night before I had heard a wise and prominent Londoner state the fact that he had never visited it.

“No Londoner has ever been to the Tower,” he declared. “We used to say that we intended to go some time or other, but now we don’t even say that.”

I was greatly relieved to learn this, for I’m positive that the Tower is hideous and uninteresting. As an alternative, I asked that we might visit the railway stations.

Aside from the romance that is indigenous to all railway stations, there are peculiar characteristics of the great London termini that are of absorbing interest. And so strong are the claims each puts forth for pre-eminence, it is indeed difficult to award a palm.

Euston has its columns, Charing Cross its Tribute to Queen Eleanor, St. Pancras a spacious roominess, and Victoria a wofully-crowded and limited space. Each station has its own sort of people, and, though indubitably they must mingle upon occasion, yet the type of crowd at each station is invariably the same.

And yet, after all, my heart goes back with fondest memories to Euston. Not the crowd, not even the atmosphere, but a mysterious influence which emanates from those wonderful columns. Not only the sight of them as you approach from London, but the queer, almost uncanny way in which they permeate the whole place. They follow you through the station and into the train, and not for many miles can you get out from under the presence of those perfect shapes.

Coming into London, Cannon Street is a good station to choose, if your route permit, but going out, Euston or Charing Cross should, if possible, be selected.

Before, after, or during, our station visits, we touched on a few more churches.

The Temple Church proved a delight because of the bronze Knights peacefully resting there. Miss Anna told me they were called Crusaders because they chose to lie with their legs crossed. This was probably true, for the position was maintained by all of them. Oliver Goldsmith is buried here, but I had no particular desire to throw a stone into his graveyard, and so we went on. Owing to a change of mood, we no longer rode on the ’buses, but took a hansom from one place to another. This was not as extravagant as it might seem, for, notwithstanding assertions to the contrary, one cannot ride enough in London cabs to make the bill of any considerable amount, at least as compared to a New York cab bill. And Shakespeare averred that “nothing is small or great but by comparison.”