My Unknown Chum: "Aguecheek"

STREET LIFE

Thomas Carlyle introduces his philosophical friend, Herr Teufelsdröckh, to his readers, seated in his watch-tower, which overlooks the city in which he dwells; and from which he can look down into that bee-hive of human kind, and see every thing "from the palace esplanade where music plays, while His Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane where in her doorsill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun." He draws an animated picture of that busy panorama which is ever unrolling before Teufelsdröckh's eyes, and moralizes upon the scene in the spirit of a true poet who has struck upon a theme worthy of his lyre. And, most assuredly, Thomas is right. The daisies and buttercups are all very well in their way; but, as raw material for poetry, what are they to the deep-furrowed pavement and the blackened chimney-pots of a city! In spite of all our pantheistic rhapsodies, man is the noblest of natural productions, and the worthiest subject for the highest and holiest of poetic raptures. My old friend, the late Mr. Wordsworth, delighted to anathematize the railway companies, and raved finely about Nature never betraying the heart that loves her; he said that

and confessed that to him

Yet notwithstanding all this, he was constrained to acknowledge when he stood upon Westminster Bridge, and saw the vast, dingy metropolis of Britain wearing like a garment the beauty of the morning, that

When I was a young man, it was my delight to brush with early steps the dew away, and meet the sun upon the upland lawn. There was a romantic feeling about it that I liked, and I did not object to wet feet. But I have long since put away that depraved taste, although the recent application of India rubber to shoeing purposes has obviated the inconvenience of its gratification. Now, I am contented if I can find a level pavement and a clean crossing, and will gladly give up the woods and verdant fields to less prosaic and more youthful people. Your gout is a sad interferer with early poetical prejudices – but in my own case it has shown me that all such things, like most of our youthful notions, are mere fallacies. It has convinced me that the poetical abounds rather in the smoky, narrow streets of cities, than in the green lanes, the breezy hills, and the broad fields of the country. Like the toad, ugly and venomous, that fell disease is not without its jewel. It has reconciled me to life in town, and has shown me all its advantages and beauties.

If it be true that "the proper study of mankind is man," then are the crowded streets of the city more improving and elevating to us (if rightly meditated upon) than the academic groves. If you desire society, – in a city you may find it to your taste, however fastidious you may be. If you are a lover of solitude, where can you be more solitary than in the very whirl of a multitude of people intent upon their own pursuits, and all unknown to you! That honey-tongued doctor, St. Bernard, said that he was never less alone than when alone – a sentiment which, in its reversed form, might be uttered by any denizen of a metropolis. I always loved solitude: the old monastic inscription was always a favourite motto of mine: —

But I have never found any solitude like the streets of a large city. I have walked in the cool, quiet cloister of Santa Maria degli Angeli, built amid the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, and – though my footfall was the only sound save the rustling of the foliage, and the song of the birds, and the bubbling of a fountain which seemed tired with its centuries of service, and which seemed to make the stillness and repose of that spacious quadrangle more profound – I could not feel so perfectly alone there as I have often felt in the thronged Boulevards or the busy Strand. Place a mere worldling in those holy precincts, and he would summon mentally around him the companions of his past pleasures, and his worldliness would be increased by his thus being driven to his only resources for overcoming the ungrateful quiet of the place. Introduce a religious man to those consecrated shades, and his devotion would be quickened; he would soon forget the world which he had not loved and which had not loved him, and his face would soon be as unwrinkled, his eye as serene, as those of the monks who dwell there. But place either of them in the most crowded thoroughfare of the city, and the worldling would be made for a time as meditative as the other. When I was a child, I delighted to watch the busy inhabitants of an ant-hill, pursuing their various enterprises with an intentness almost human; and I should be tempted to continue my observations of them, were it not that the streets of my native city offer me a similar, but a more interesting study. Xerxes, we are told, shed tears when he saw his army drawn up before him, and reflected that not one of all that mighty host would be alive a century after. Who could ride from Paddington to London Bridge, through the current of human life that flows ceaselessly through the streets of that great city, without sharing somewhat in the feelings of that tender-hearted monarch?

What are all the sermons that ever were preached from a pulpit, compared to those which may be found in the stones of a city? When we visit Pompeii and Herculaneum, we are thrilled to notice the ruts made by the wheels of chariots centuries ago. The original pavement of the Appian Way, now for some distance visible, carries us back more than almost any of the other antiquities of Rome, to the time when it was trodden by captive kings, and re-echoed with the triumphal march of returning conquerors. I pity him in whom these things awaken no new train of thought. The works of man have outlived their builders by centuries, and still remain a solemn testimony to the power and the nothingness which originated them. Nineveh, Thebes, Troy, Carthage, Tyre, Athens, Rome, London, Paris, have won the crown in their turn, and have passed or will pass away. The dilapidated sculptures of the former have been taken to adorn the museums of the latter, and crowds have gazed and are gazing on them with curious eyes, unmindful of their great lesson of the transitoriness of the glory of the world. These are, indeed, "sermons in stones"; but, like most other sermons, we look rather at their style of finish, than at the deep meaning with which they are so pregnant.

But I did not take up my pen to write about dead cities; I have somewhat to say about the life that now renders the streets of our own towns so pleasant, and makes us so forgetful of their inevitable fate. I am not going to claim for the street life of our new world the charms which abound in the ancient cities of Europe. We are too much troubled about many things, and too utilitarian to give thought to those lesser graces which delight us abroad, and which we hardly remember until we come home and miss them. Our street architecture, improved though it may have been within a few years, is yet far behind the grace and massive symmetry of European towns. Our builders and real estate owners need to be reminded that it costs no more to build in good taste than in bad; that brick work can be made as architectural as stone; and that architecture is a great public instructor, whose works are constantly open to the public eye, and from which we are learning lessons, good or bad, whether we will or not. I think it is Goethe who calls architecture frozen music. I am glad to see these tall piles rearing their ornamented fronts on every side of us, even though they are intended for purposes of trade; for every one of them is a reproach to the untasteful structures around it, and an example which future builders must copy, if they do not surpass. The quaint beauty which charms us in Rouen, and in the old towns of Belgium, – the high pitched gables leaning over, as if yearning to get across the narrow street, – these all belong to another age, and we may not possess them; but the architecture which, in its simplicity or its magnificence, speaks its adaptedness to our climate and our social wants, is within our reach, and is capable of making our cities equal to any in the world.

I have a great liking for streets. In the freshness of morning, the glare of noonday, and the coolness of evening, they have an equal charm for me. I like that market-carty period of the day, before Labour has taken up his shovel and his hoe, before the sun has tipped the chimneys with gold, and reinspired the dolorous symphony of human toil, just as his earliest beams were wont to draw supernal melodies from old Memnon's statue. There is a holy quiet in that hour, which, could we preserve it in our minds, would keep us clear from many a wrong and meanness, into which the bustle and the heat of passion betray us, and would sanctify our day. In that time, the city seems wrapped in a silent ecstasy of adoration. The incense of its worship curls up from innumerous chimneys, and hangs over it like the fragrant cloud which hovers over the altars where saints have prayed, and religion's most august rites have been celebrated for centuries. In the continental cities, large numbers of people may be seen at that early hour repairing to the churches. They are drawn together by no spasmodic, spiritual stimulation; they do not assemble to hear their fellow-sinners tell with nasal twang how bad they were once, and how good they are now, nor to implore the curse of Heaven upon those who differ from them in their belief or disbelief. They kneel beneath those consecrated arches, joining in a worship in which scarce an audible word is uttered, and drawing from it new strength to tread the thorns of life. In our own cities, too, people – generally of the poorer classes – may be seen wending their way in the early morning to churches and chapels, humbler than the marble and mosaic sanctuaries of Europe, but one with them in that faith and worship which radiates from the majestic Lateran basilica, (omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput,) and encircles the world with its anthems and supplications.

A little later in the morning, and the silence is broken by the clattering carts of the dispensers of that fluid without which custards would be impossible. The washing of doorsteps and sidewalks, too, begins to interfere with your perambulations, and to dim the lustre which No. 97, High Holborn, has imparted to your shoes. Bridget leans upon her wet broom, and talks with Anne, who leaves her water-pail for a little conference, in which the affairs of the two neighbouring families of Smith and Jenkins receive, you may be sure, due attention. Men smoking short and odorous pipes, and carrying small, mysterious-looking tin pails, begin to awaken the echoes with their brogans, and to prove him a slanderer who should say they have no music in their soles. Newspaper carriers, bearing the damp chronicles of the world's latest history bestrapped to their sides, hurry along, dispensing their favours into areas and doorways, seasoning my friend Thompson's breakfast with the reports of the councils of kings, or with the readable inventions of "our own correspondent," and delighting the gentle Mrs. Thompson with a full list of deaths and marriages, or another fatal railway accident. Then the omnibuses begin to rattle and jolt along the streets, carrying such masculine loads that they deserve for the time to be called mail coaches. Later, an odour as of broiled mackerel salutes the sense; school children, with their shining morning faces, begin to obstruct your way, and the penny postman, with his burden of joy and sorrow, hastens along and rings peremptorily at door after door. Then the streets assume by degrees a new character. Toil is engaged in its workshops and in by-places, and staid respectability, in its broadcloth and its glossy beaver, wends its deliberate way to its office or its counting-house, unhindered by aught that can disturb its equanimity, unless, perchance, it meets with a gang of street-sweepers in the full exercise of their dusty avocation.

Who can adequately describe that most inalienable of woman's rights – that favourite employment of the sex – which is generally termed shopping? Who can describe the curiosity which overhauls a wilderness of dress patterns, and the uncomplaining patience of the shopman who endeavours to suit the lady so hard to be suited, – his well-disguised disappointment when she does not purchase, and her husband's exasperation when she does? Not I, most certainly, for I detest shops, have little respect for fashions, lament the necessity of buying clothes, and wish most heartily that we could return to the primeval fig-leaves.

I love the by-streets of a city – the streets whose echoes are never disturbed by the heavy-laden wagons which bespeak the greatness of our manufacturing interests. Formerly the houses in such streets wore an air of sobriety and respectability, and the good housewifery which reigned within was symbolized by the bright polish of the brass door-plate, or bell-pull, or knocker. Now they are grown more pretentious, and the brass has given place to an outward and visible sign of silver. But the streets retain their old characteristics, and are strangers to any sound more inharmonious than the shouts of sportive children, or the tones of a hand-organ. I do not profess to be a musical critic, but I have been gifted by nature with a tolerable idea of time and tune; yet I am not ashamed to say that I do not despise hand-organs. They have given me "Sweet Home" in the cities of Italy, Yankee Doodle in the Faubourg St. Germain; and the best melodies of Europe's composers are daily ground out under my windows. I have no patience with these canting people who talk about productive labour, and who see in the organ-grinder who limps around, looking up expectantly for the remunerating copper, only a vagabond whom it is expedient for the police to counsel to "move on." These peripatetic dispensers of harmony are full as useful members of society as the majority of our legislators, and have a far more practical talent for organization. Douglas Jerrold once said that he never saw an Italian image merchant, with his Graces, and Venuses, and Apollos at sixpence a head, that he did not spiritually touch his hat to him: "It is he who has carried refinement into the poor man's house; it is he who has accustomed the eyes of the multitude to the harmonious forms of beauty." Let me apply these kindly expressions of the dead dramatist and wit to the organ-grinders. They have carried music into lanes and slums, which, without them, would never have known any thing more melodious than a watchman's rattle, and have made the poorest of our people familiar with harmonies that might "create a soul under the ribs of death." Occasionally their music may be instrumental in producing a feeling of impatience, so that I wish that their "Mary Ann" were married off, and that Norma would "hear," and make an end of it; but my better feelings triumph in the end, and I would not interfere with the poor man's and the children's concert to hear a strain from St. Cecilia's viol. Let the grinders be encouraged! May the evil days foretold in ancient prophecy never come among us, when the grinders shall cease because they are few!

It is at evening that the poetic element is found most abundant in the streets of cities. There is to me something of the sublime in the long lines of glittering shop-windows that skirt Regent Street and the Boulevards. Dr. Johnson exhorted the people who attended the sale of his friend Thrale's brewery, to remember that it was not the mere collection of boilers, and tubs, and vats which they saw around them, for which they were about to bargain, but "the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice"; and, in a similar spirit, I see in the shop windows not merely the silks and laces, and the other countless luxuries and wonders which delight the eye of taste and form the source of wealth to multitudes, but a vast exposition of the results of that industry, which, next to religion and obedience to law, is the surest foundation of national greatness, and which shows us, behind the frowning Providence that laid on man the curse of labour, the smiling face of divine beneficence. There, in one great collection, may be seen the fruits of the toil of millions. To produce that gorgeous display, artists have cudgelled their weary brains; operatives have suffered; ship-masters have strained their eyes over their charts and daily observations, and borne patiently with the provoking vagaries of the "lee main brace"; sailors have climbed the icy rigging and furled the tattered topsails with hands cracked and bleeding; for that, long trains of camels freighted with the rich products of the golden East, "from silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon," have toiled with their white-turbaned drivers across the parching desert; thousands of busy hands have plied the swift shuttle in the looms of Brussels, and Tournai, and Lyons; and thousands in deep and almost unfathomable mines have suffered a living death. Manchester and Birmingham have been content to wear their suit of mourning that those windows may be radiant and gay. The tears, and sweat, and blood of myriads have been poured out behind those shining panes transmuted into shapes that fill the beholder with wonder and delight. "In our admiration of the plumage we forget the dying bird." Nevertheless, above the roar and bustle of those whirling thoroughfares, above the endless groan and "infinite fierce chorus" of manhood ground down, and starving in bondage more cruel because it does not bear the name of slavery, I hear the carol of virtuous and well-rewarded labour, and the cheerful song of the white-capped lace-makers of Belgium and the vine-dressers of Italy reminds me that powerful wrong does not have every thing its own way even in this world.

I did intend to have gone farther in my evening walk; but time and space alike forbid it. I wished to leave the loud roaring avenues for those more quiet streets, where every sight and sound speak of domestic comfort, or humble fidelity, or patient effort; where the brilliancy of splendid mansions is but imperfectly veiled by rich and heavy draperies; where high up gleams the lamp of the patient student, happy in his present obscurity because he dreams of coming fame; and where the tan on the pavement and the mitigated light from the windows are eloquent of suffering and the sleepless affection that ministers to its unspoken wants. But I must stop. If, however, I have shown one of my readers, who regrets that he is obliged to dwell in a city, that there is much that is beautiful in paved streets and smoke-stained walls, and that, if we only open our eyes to see them, even though the fresh fields and waving woods may be miles away, the beauties of nature daily fold us in their bosom, – I shall feel that I have not tasked my tired brain and gouty right hand entirely in vain.

HARD UP IN PARIS

Money, whatever those who affect misanthropy or a sublime superiority to all temporal things may say to the contrary, is a very desirable thing. We all enjoy the visit of the great Alexander to the contented inhabitant of the imperishable tub, who was alike independent of the good will and displeasure of that mighty monarch; we sympathize with all the bitter things that Timon says when he is reduced from wealth to beggary; and we are never tired of lamenting, with Virgil, that the human heart should be such an abject prey to this accursed hunger for gold. I am not sure that Horace would not be dearer to us, if he had lived in a "three-pair-back" in some obscure street, and his deathless odes had been inspired by fear of a shrewish landlady or an inexorable sheriff, instead of being an honoured guest at the imperial court, and a recipient of the splendid patronage of a Mæcenas and an Augustus. Poetical justice seems to require a setting of the most cheerless poverty for the full development of the lustre of genius. At least, we think so, at times; – though, under it all, admire as we may the successful struggles of the want-stricken bard, – we do not envy him his penury. We should shrink from his gifts and his fame, if they were offered to us with his sufferings. For underneath our abstract magnanimity lurks the conviction that money is by no means a bad thing, after all. Our enthusiasm is awakened by contemplating the self-forgetful career of Francis of Assisi, who chose Poverty for his bride, and whose name is in benediction among men, even six centuries after he entered into possession of that kingdom which was promised to the poor in spirit; and, if we should chance to see a more modern bearer of that Christian name, who worshipped the wealth which the ancient saint despised; who trampled down honest poverty in his unswerving march towards opulence; who looked unmoved upon the tears of the widow and the orphan; who exercised his sordid apostolate even to the last gasp of his miserable life; and whose name (unblessed by the poor, and unhonoured by canonization) became, in the brief period that it outlived him, a byword and a synonyme of avarice, – we should not fail to visit his memory with a cordial malediction. But, in spite of all our veneration for Francis, the apostle of holy poverty, and of loathing for his namesake, the apostle of unholy wealth, we cannot help wishing that we had a little more of that which the Saint cast away, and the miser took in exchange for his soul.