My Unknown Chum: "Aguecheek"

LONDON

Dull must he be of soul who could make the journey from Liverpool to the metropolis in the month of June, and not be lifted above himself by the surpassing loveliness of dear mother Nature. Even if he were chained to a ledger and cash book – if he never had a thought or wish beyond the broker's board, and his entire reading were the prices current – he must forget them all, and feel for the time what a miserable sham his life is – or he does not deserve the gift of sight. It is Thackeray, I think, who speaks somewhere of the "charming friendly English landscape that seems to shake hands with you as you pass along" – and any body who has seen it in June will say that this is hardly a figurative expression. I used to think that it was my enthusiastic love for the land of the great Alfred which made it seem so beautiful to me when I was younger; but I find that it wears too well to be a mere fancy of my own brain. People may complain of the humid climate of England, and curse the umbrella which must accompany them whenever they walk out; but when the sun does shine, it shines upon a scene of beautiful fertility unequalled elsewhere in the world, and which the moist climate produces and preserves. And then, too, it seems doubly grateful to the eyes of one just come from sea. The bright freshness of the whole landscape, the varied tints of green, the trim hedges, the luxuriant foliage which springs from the very trunks of the trees, and the high state of cultivation which makes the whole country look as if it had been swept and dusted that morning, – all these things strike an American, for he cannot help contrasting them with the parched fields of his own land in summer, surrounded by their rough fences and hastily piled-up stone walls. The solidity of the houses and cottages, which look as if they were built, not for an age, but for all time, makes him think of the country houses of America, which seem to have grown up in a night, like our friend Aladdin's, and whose frailty is so apparent that you cannot sneeze in one of them without apprehending a serious calamity. Then the embankments of the railways present not only a pleasant sight to the eye of the traveller, but a pretty little hay crop to the corporation; and at every station, and bridge, and crossing, wherever there is a switch to be tended, you see the neat cottages of the keepers, and the gardens thereof – the railway companies having learned that the expenditure of a few hundred pounds in this way saves an expenditure of many thousands in surgeons' bills and damages, and is far more satisfactory to all concerned.

What a charming sight is a cow – what a look of contentment she has – ambitious of nothing beyond the field of daily duty, and never looking happier than when she comes at night to yield a plenteousness of that fluid without which custards were an impossibility! Wordsworth says that "heaven lies about us in our infancy" – surely he must mean that portion of the heavens called by astronomers the Milky Way. It is pleasant to see a cow by the side of a railway – provided she is fenced from danger – to see her lift her head slowly as the train goes whizzing by, and gaze with those mild, tranquil eyes upon the noisy, smoke-puffing monster, – just as the saintly hermits of olden times might have looked from their serene heights of contemplation upon the dusty, bustling world. The taste of the English farmers for fine cattle is attested by a glance at any of their pastures. On every side you see the representatives of Alderney's bovine aristocracy; and scores of cattle crop the juicy grass, rivalling in their snowy whiteness any that ever reclined upon Clitumno's "mild declivity of hill," or admired their graceful horns in its clear waters. Until I saw them, I never comprehended what farmers meant when they spoke of "neat cattle."

What an eloquent preacher is an old church-tower! Moss-crowned and ivy-robed, it lifts its head, unshaken by the tempests of centuries, as it did in the days when King John granted the Great Charter or the holy Edward ruled the realm, and tells of the ages when England was one in faith, and not a poor-house existed throughout the land. Like a faithful sentinel, it stands guard over the humbler edifices around it, and warns their inhabitants alike of their dangers and their duties by the music of its bells. Erect in silent dignity, it receives the first beams of the morning, and when twilight has begun to shroud every thing in its neighbourhood, the flash of sunset lingers on its gray summit. It looks down with sublime indifference upon the changing scene below, as if it would reproach the actors there with their forgetfulness of the transitoriness of human pursuits, and remind them, by its unchangeableness, of the eternal years.

At last we draw near London. A gentleman, whose age I would not attempt to guess, – for he was very carefully made up, and boasted a deportment which would have excited the envy of Mr. Turveydrop, senior, – so far forgot his dignity as to lean forward and inform me that the place we were passing was "'Arrow on the 'Ill," which made me forget for the moment both his appearance and his uncalled-for "exasperation of the haitches." Not long after, I found myself issuing from the magnificent terminus of the North Western Railway, in Euston Square, in a cab marked V. R. 10,276. The cab and omnibus drivers of London are a distinct race of beings. Who can write their natural history? Who is competent to such a task? The researches of a Pritchard, a Pickering, a Smyth, would seem to cover the whole subject of the history of the human species from the anthropophagi and bosjesmen to the drinkers of train oil in the polar regions; but the cabmen are not included. They would require a master mind. The subject would demand the patient investigation of a Humboldt, the eloquence of a Macaulay, and the humour of a Dickens – and even then would fall short, I fear, of giving an adequate idea of them. Your London cab driver has no idea of distance; as, for instance, I ask one the simple question, —

"How far is it to the Angel in Islington?"

"Wot, sir?"

I repeat my interrogatory.

"Oh, the Hangel, sir! Four shillings."

"No, no. I mean what distance."

"Well, say three, then, sir."

"But I mean – what distance? How many miles?"

"O, come, sir, jump in – don't be 'ard on a fellow – I 'aven't 'ad a fare to-day. Call it 'arf a crown, sir."

Leigh Hunt says somewhere that if there were such a thing as metamorphosis, Dr. Johnson would desire to be transformed into an omnibus, that he might go rolling along the streets whose very pavements were the objects of his ardent affection. And he was about right. What better place is there in this world to study human nature than an omnibus? All classes meet there; in the same coach you may see them all – from the poor workwoman to the genteelly dressed lady, who looks as if she disapproved of such conveyances, but must ride nevertheless – from the young sprig, who is constantly anxious lest some profane foot should dim the polish of his boots, to the urbane old gentleman, who regrets his corpulence, and would take less room if he could. And then the top of the omnibus, which usually carries four or more passengers, what a place is that to see the tide of life which flows unceasingly through the streets of London! I know of nothing which can furnish more food for thought than a ride on an omnibus from Brompton to the Bank on a fine day. It is a pageant, in which all the wealth, pomp, power, and prosperity of this world pass before you; and for a moral to the whirling scene, you must go to the nearest churchyard.

London is ever the same. The omnibuses follow each other as rapidly as ever up and down the Strand, the white-gloved, respectable-looking policemen walk about as deliberately, and the tail of the lion over the gate of Northumberland House sticks out as straight as ever. The only great change visible here is in the newspapers. The tone of society is so different from what it was formerly, in all that concerns France, that the editors must experience considerable trouble in accustoming themselves to the new state of things. Once, France and Louis Napoleon furnished Punch with his chief materials for satire and amusement, and if any of the larger and more dignified journals wished to let off a little ill humour, or to say any thing particularly bitter, they only had to dip their pens in Gaul; but times are changed, and now nothing can be said too strong in favour of "our chivalric allies, the French." The memory of St. Helena seems to have given place to what they call here the entente cordiale, which those who are acquainted with the French language assure me means an agreement by which one party contracts to "play second fiddle" to another, through fear that if he does not he will not be permitted to play at all.

To the man who thoroughly appreciates the Essays of Elia, and Boswell's Life of Johnson, London can never grow tiresome. He can never turn a corner without finding "something new, something to please, and something to instruct." Its very pavements are classical. And there is nothing to abate, nor detract from, such a man's enthusiasm. The traveller who visits the Roman Forum, or the Palace of the Cæsars, experiences a sad check when he finds his progress impeded by unpoetical obstacles. But in London, all is harmonious; he sees on every side, not only that which tells of present life and prosperity, but the perennial glories of England's former days. Would he study history, he goes to the Tower, "rich with the spoils of time"; or to Whitehall, where mad fanaticism consummated its treasonable work with the murder of a sovereign; or to the towering minster, to gaze upon the chair in which the monarchs of a thousand years have sat; or to view the monuments, and read the epitaphs, of that host of

Is he a lover of English literature? Here are scenes eloquent of that goodly company of wits and worthies, whose glowing pages have been the delight of his youth and the consolation of his riper years; here are the streets in which they walked, the taverns in which they feasted, the churches where they prayed, the tombs where they repose.

And London wears well. To revisit it when age has sobered down the enthusiasm of youth, is not like seeing a theatre by daylight; but you think almost that you have under-estimated your privileges. How well I remember the night when I first arrived in the metropolis! It was after ten o'clock, and I was much fatigued; but before I booked myself in my hotel, or looked at my room, I rushed out into the Strand, "with breathless speed, like a soul in chase." I pushed along, now turning to look at Temple Bar, now pausing to take breath as I went up Ludgate Hill. I saw St. Paul's and its dome before me, and I was satisfied. No, I was not satisfied; for when I returned up Fleet Street, I looked out dear old Bolt Court, and entered its Johnsonian precincts with an awe and veneration which a devout Mussulman, taking the early train for Mecca, would gladly imitate. And then I posted down Inner Temple Lane, and looked at the house in which Charles Lamb and his companions held their "Wednesday nights"; and, going still farther, I saw the river – I stood on the bank of the Thames, and I was satisfied. I looked, and all the associations of English history and literature which are connected with it filled my mind – but just as I was getting into a fine frenzy about it, a watchman hove in sight, and the old clock chimed out eleven. So I started on, and soon reached my hotel. I was accosted on my way thither by a young and gayly dressed lady, whom I did not remember ever to have seen before, but who expressed her satisfaction at meeting me, in the most cordial terms. I told her that I thought that it must be a mistake, and she responded with a laugh which very much shocked an elderly gentleman who was passing, who looked as if he might have been got up for the part of the uncle of the unhappy G. Barnwell. I have since learned that such mistakes and personal misapprehensions very frequently occur in London in the evening.

Speaking of Temple Bar, it gratifies me to see that this venerable gateway still stands, "unshaken, unseduced, unterrified," by any of the recent attempts to effect its removal. The old battered and splashed doors are perhaps more unsightly than before; but the statues look down with the same benignity upon the crowd of cabs and omnibuses, and the never-ending tide of humanity which flows beneath them, as they did upon the Rake's Progress, so many years ago. The sacrilegious commissioners of streets long to get at it with their crows and picks, but the shade of Dr. Johnson watches over the barrier of his earthly home. It is not an ornamental affair, to be sure, and it would be difficult for Mr. Choate, even, to defend it against the charge of being an obstruction; but its associations with the literature and history of the last two or three centuries ought to entitle its dingy arches to a certain degree of reverence, even in our progressive and irreverent age. The world would be a loser by the demolition of this ancient landmark, and London, if it should lose this, though it might still be the metropolis of the British empire, would cease to be the London of Johnson and Goldsmith, of Addison and Pope, of Swift and Hogarth.

Perhaps some may think, from what I have said in the commencement of this letter, that my enthusiasm has blinded me to those great moral and social evils which are apparent in English civilization; but it is not so. I love England rather for what she has been than for what she is; I love the England of Alfred and St. Edward; and when I contrast the present state with what it might have been under a succession of such rulers, I cannot but grieve. Truly the court of St. James under Victoria is not what it was under Charles II., nor even under Mr. Thackeray's favourite hero, "the great George IV.," – but are not St. James and St. Giles farther apart than ever before? Is not Lazarus looked upon as a nuisance, which legislation ought, for decency's sake, to put out of the way? What does England do for the poor? Nothing; absolutely nothing, if you except a system of workhouses, compared with which prisons are delightful residences, and which seems to have been intended more for the punishment of poverty than as a work of charity. No; on the contrary, she discountenances works of charity; when a few earnest men among the clergy of her divided church make an effort in that direction, there is an outcry, and they must be put down; and their bishops, whose annual incomes are larger than the whole treasury of Alfred, admonish them to beware how they thus imitate the superstitions of the middle ages. No; your Englishman of the present day has something better to do than to look after the beggar at his doorstep; he is too respectable a man for that; he pays his "poor rates," and the police must order the thing of shreds and patches to "move on"; his progress must not be impeded, for his presence is required at a meeting of the friends of Poland, or of Italy, or of a society for the abolition of American slavery, and he has no time to waste on such common, every-day matters as the improvement of the miserable wretches who work his coal mines, or of those quarters of the town where vice parades its deformity with exulting pride, and the air is heavy with pestilence. There is proportionably more beggary in London at this hour than in any continental city. And such beggary! Not the comfortable, jolly-looking beggars you may see in Rome or Naples, who know that charity is enjoined upon the people as a religious duty, but the thin, pallid, high-cheeked supplicants, whose look is a petition which tells a more effective story than words can frame of destitution and starvation.

But there is another phase of this part of London life, sadder by far than that of mere poverty. It is an evil which no attempt is made to prevent, and so great an evil that its very mention is forbidden by the spirit of this age of "superficial morality and skin-deep propriety." I pity the man who can walk through Regent Street or the Strand in the evening, unsaddened by what he shall see on every side. How ridiculous do our boasts of this Christian nineteenth century seem there! Here is this mighty Anglo-Saxon race, which can build steam engines, and telegraphs, and clipper ships, which tunnels mountains, and exerts an almost incredible mastery over the forces of nature, – and yet, when Magdalene looks up to it for a merciful hand to lift her from degradation and sin, she finds it either deaf or powerless. There is a work yet to be done in London which would stagger a philanthropist, if he were gifted with thrice the heroism, and patience, and self-forgetfulness of a St. Vincent of Paul.

I cannot resist the inclination to give in this connection a passage from the personal experience of a friend in London, which, had I read it in any book or newspaper, I should have hesitated to believe. One evening, as he was passing along Pall Mall, he was addressed by a young woman, who, when she saw that he was going to pass on and take no notice of her, ran before him, and said in a tone of the most pathetic earnestness, —

"Well, if you'll not go with me, for God's sake, sir, give me a trifle to buy bread!"

Thus appealed to, and somewhat shaken by the voice and manner, he stopped under a gaslight, and looked at the speaker. Vice had not impressed its distinctive seal so strongly upon her as upon most of the unfortunate creatures one meets in London's streets; indeed, there was a shade of melancholy on her face which harmonized well with her voice and manner. So my friend resolved to have a few words more with her, and buttoning up his coat, to protect his watch and purse, he told her that he feared she wanted money to buy gin rather than bread. She assured him that it was not so, but that she wished to buy food for her little child, a girl of two or three years. Then he asked how she could lead such a life, if she had a child growing up, upon whom her example would have such an influence; and she said that she would gladly take up with an honest occupation, if she could find one, – indeed, she did try to earn enough for the daily wants of herself and child with her needle, but it was impossible, – and her only choice was between starvation and the street. At that time she said that she was learning the trade of a dressmaker, and she hoped that before long she should be able to keep herself above absolute necessity. Encouraged by a kind word from my friend, she went on in a simple, womanly manner, and told him of her whole career. It was the old story of plighted troth, betrayed affection, and flight from her village home, to escape the shame and reproach she would there be visited with. She arrived in London without money, without friends, without employment, – without any thing save that natural womanly self-respect which had received such a severe blow: – necessity stared her in the face, and she sank before it. My friend was impressed by the recital of her misfortunes, and thinking that she must be sincere, he took a sovereign from his purse and gave it to her. She looked from the gift to the giver, and thanked him again and again. He continued his walk, but had not gone more than three or four rods, when she came running after him, and reiterated her expressions of thankfulness with a trembling voice. He then walked on, and crossed over to the front of the Church of St. Martin, (that glorious soldier who with his sword divided his cloak with the beggar,) when she came after him yet again, and seizing hold of his hand, she looked up at him with streaming eyes, and said, holding the sovereign in her hand, —

"God bless you, sir, again and again for your kindness to me! Pray pardon me, sir, for troubling you so much – but – but – perhaps you meant to give me a shilling, sir, – perhaps you don't know that you gave me a sovereign."

How many models of propriety and respectability in every rank of life, – how many persons who have the technical language of religion constantly on their lips, – how many of those who, nurtured amid the influences of a good home, have never really known what temptation is, – how many such persons are there who might learn a startling lesson from this fallen woman, whom they seem to consider themselves religiously bound to despise and neglect! I have a great dread of these severely virtuous people, who are so superior to all human frailty that they cannot afford a kind word to those who have not the good fortune to be impeccable. But we all of us, I fear, need to be reminded of Burns's lines —

If we thought of this, keeping our own weaknesses in view, which of us would not shrink from judging uncharitably, or casting the first stone at an erring fellow-creature? Which of us would dare to condemn the poor girl who preserved so much of the spirit of honesty in her degradation, and to commend the negative virtues which make up so many of what the world calls good lives?