CHAPTER V

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THE FIRST OF ENGLAND.—THE STREETS.—A RAILWAY STATION.—THE DOCKS AT NIGHT.—PROSTITUTES.—TEMPERANCE.—THE STILL LIFE OF LIVERPOOL. —A MARKET.

At the head of the gang-plank stood a policeman, easily recognised and familiar, thanks to Punch, who politely helped us to land, thus giving us immediate occasion to thank the government for its hospitality, and its regard for our safety and convenience. It was a real pleasure to stamp upon the neat, firm, solid mason-work of the dock, and we could not but be mindful of the shabby log-wharves we had stumbled over as we left New York. We were immediately beset by porters, not rudely, but with serious, anxious deference and care to keep a way open before us. I was assisting a lady, and carried her bag; a man followed me pertinaciously. “I tell you I have no baggage,” said I. “But, sir, this bag?” “Oh, I can carry that.” “Excuse me, sir; you must not, indeed; _gentlemen_ never does so in _this country_.” After handing the lady into a hackney-coach, we walked on. The landing-place was spacious, not encumbered with small buildings or piles of freight, and though there was a little rain falling, there was a smooth, clean stone pavement, free from mud, to walk upon. There was a slight smell of bituminous smoke in the air, not disagreeable, but, to me, highly pleasant. I snuffed it as if passing a field of new-mown hay—snuffed and pondered, and at last was brought to my mind the happy fireside of the friend, in the indistinct memory of which this peculiar odour of English coal had been gratefully associated.

[Sidenote: _LIVERPOOL.—RAILWAY STATION._]

Coming on shore with no luggage or any particular business to engage our attention, we plunged adventurously into the confused tide of life with which the busy streets were thronged, careless whither it floated us. Emerging from the crowd of porters, hackmen, policemen, and ragged Irish men and women on the dock, we entered the first street that opened before us. On the corner stood a church—not un-American in its appearance—and we passed without stopping to the next corner, where we paused to look at the dray-horses, immensely heavy and in elegant condition, fat and glossy, and docile and animated in their expression. They were harnessed, generally, in couples, one before another, to great, strong, low-hung carts, heavy enough alone to be a load for one of our cartmen’s light horses. Catching the bustling spirit of the crowd, we walked on at a quick pace, looking at the faces of the men we met more than any thing else, until we came to a wall of hewn drab stone, some fifteen feet high, with a handsomely cut balustrade at the top. There was a large gateway in it, from which a policeman was driving away some children. People were going in and out, and we followed in to see what it was. Up stairs, we found ourselves on a broad terrace, with a handsome building, in Tuscan style, fronting upon it. Another policeman here informed us that it was a railway station. The door was opened as we approached it by a man in a simple uniform, who asked us where we were going. We answered that we merely wished to look at the building. “Walk in, gentlemen; you will best take the right-hand platform, and return by the other.” A train was backing in; a man in the same uniform stood in the rear car, and moved his hand round as if turning an imaginary driving-wheel, the engine at the other end being governed by his motions:—forward—slower—slower—faster—slower—stop—back. The train stopped, the doors were unlocked by men in a more brilliant uniform, and there was a great rush of passengers to secure good seats. Women with bundles and band-boxes were shoved this way and that, as they struggled to hoist themselves into the doors; their parcels were knocked out of their hands, porters picked them up and threw them in, reckless where. So bewildered and flustered did they all seem to be, that we could not refrain from trying to assist them. There was nothing in the plan or fittings of the building that needs remark, and we soon returned to the terrace, where we remained some time observing the peculiarities of the houses and the people passing in the vicinity.

Going into the street again we wandered on till it was quite dark, with no other object but to get a general impression of the character of the town. We looked into a few houses where we saw a sign of “Clean and well-aired beds,” and found that we should have no difficulty in getting comfortable lodgings at a very moderate price. From nine until twelve we were waiting at the dock for the ship to haul in, or trying in vain to get a boat to go on board of her. There were many vessels laying near the great gates, all standing by, when they should be opened at high-water, to be hauled in.

[Sidenote: _PROSTITUTES.—SAILORS._]

The broad promenade outside the dock walls was occupied by the police, stevedores, watermen, boarding-house keepers, and a crowd of women, waiting to help in the ships or to receive their crews when the tide should have risen enough to admit them. I was surprised at the quietness and decency of these “sailors’ wives,” as they called themselves; they were plainly and generally neatly dressed, and talked quietly and in kind tones to each other, and I heard no loud profanity or ribaldry at all. Whether this was owing to the presence of the police I cannot say, but I am sure it would be impossible to find, in America, vice, shame, and misery so entirely unassociated with drunkenness or excitement and riot. They were not as young as girls of the same sort in the streets of New York, and in the strong gas-light their faces seemed expressive of a quite different character; generally they were pensive and sad, but not ill-natured or stupid. It occurred to me that their degradation must have been reached in a different way, and had not brought with it that outcasting from all good which they would suffer with us. As they stood, companioned together with each other, but friendless, some with not even hats to protect them from the rain, others, with their gowns drawn up over their head, and others, two together, under a scanty shawl, it would have been difficult, I thought, for a woman, who is always found most unforgiving of her sister’s sin, not to have been softened towards those abandoned thus to seek support of life that night. We could not but think the kind words with which the sailors recognised and greeted them, as the ships hauled near, were as much dictated by pity and sympathy as by any worse impulses. They said, “If nobody else cares for you, we do.” If nobody else is waiting to welcome us, we know that you will be glad that we are coming to the land once more, so, cheer up, and we will help each other again to enjoy a short space of jollity, excitement, and forgetfulness.

There is a benevolent enterprise on foot here for shipping these victims of frailty by wholesale to Australia. A strange way, it seems, to think of peopling a new Anglo-Saxon world; but who is prouder of his ancestry than your Virginian, whose colony, it is thought, was originally furnished in much the same way with mothers? The fact that the project is favoured by intelligent, practical, religious men, is gratifying, and the remarks they are reported as making in public meetings on the subject, indicate a hopeful appreciation of the effect of circumstances upon character.

Tired of waiting for the ship, and a good deal fatigued with our tramps on the pavements, about half-past twelve we went back into the town, and by the very obliging assistance of the policemen found lodgings in a “Temperance Hotel,” still open at that late hour. We were a little surprised to find a number of men in the coffee-room drinking beer and smoking. The subject of their conversation was some project of an association of working-men to combine their savings, and make more profitable investment of them than could be made of the small amounts of each separately. There were late newspapers on the table, and we sat up some time longer to read them, but they were still at it, puffing and drinking, and earnestly discussing how they could best use their money, when we went up to bed. We had good beds in pleasant rooms for which we paid twenty-five cents each.

The next morning we got our trunks from the ship, the custom-house officers searching them before they left the dockyard. Books, letters, and daguerreotypes were examined minutely, but the officers were very civil and accommodating; so also were the cartmen that took them to the inn for us. The expense of getting our luggage through the searching office, and carting it a mile, was only twenty-five cents for each trunk, and “tuppence for beer.”

We went to a small lodging-house that we had examined last night, and found neat and comfortable, and kept by an agreeable woman. We have a large front room, comfortably furnished, and down stairs is a quiet parlor and dining-room. We breakfast in the house, and dine and sup at eating shops. The whole cost of living so we make but about seventy-five cents each a day. As good entertainment would cost more than that in New York. We have made a few purchases of clothing, and find every thing we want cheaper than in New York.

* * * * *

_Liverpool, Tuesday, 28th May._

[Sidenote: _COST OF LIVING.—BUILDING MATERIALS._]

The common building material here is a light, greyish-red brick. Stone of different colours is used in about the same proportion that it is in New York. The warehouses are generally higher than the same class of buildings there, but the dwelling-houses lower, seldom over three stories. The old houses, in narrow streets, are generally small, and often picturesque from the carvings of time upon them, or from the incongruous additions and improvements that have been made to them at intervals. At the railway station we noticed such differences in the windows of a two-story house near us, as these. There were two below; one of these, being a shop front, was entirely modern, with large panes of glass in light wooden sashes. The other was of small panes, set in heavy wood-work, such as you see in our oldest houses. One of the upper windows had small square panes set in lead; those of the other were _lozenge_-shaped, and in neither were they more than three inches wide. The frames were much wider than they were high, and they opened sideways. In the newer part of the city, the fashionable quarter, there are a good many brick-walled houses faced with _stucco_. Others are of Bath stone, and these are not unfrequently _painted_ over of the original colour of the stone. Bath stone, which is the most common material of mason work, is a fine-grained freestone, very easy to the chisel. It is furnished much cheaper than our brown stone, so much so that there would be a chance of exporting it to America with profit. There is a finer sort of it, called by the masons Caen stone, which is brought from Normandy. The colour of both is at first buff, but rapidly changes to a dark brown. There are some buildings of red sandstone, of a little lighter colour than that now so much used in New York. In buildings mainly of brick, stone is used more considerably than with us; and there are none of those equivocating, sanded-wood parapets, porticos, steps, &c.; all is the _real grit_. The bricks are mottled, half red and half greyish yellow; the effect, at a little distance, being as I said a yellow or greyish red, much pleasanter than the bright red colour of our Eastern brick. Every thing out of doors here soon gets _toned down_, as the artists say, by the smoke. Perhaps it is partly on this account that pure white paint is never used; but the prevailing taste is evidently for darker colours than with us. The common hues of the furniture and fitting up of shops, for instance, is nearly as dark as old mahogany. This gives even the dram-shops such a rich, substantial look, that we can hardly recognise them as of the same species as our tawdry “saloons,” that are so painted, gilded, and bedizened to catch flies with their flare. There are no “oyster cellars,” but oysters “raw and in the shell,” are exposed in stands about the street, like those of our “hot corn,” and apple women. Liquor shops, always with the ominous sign of “_Vaults_,” are very frequent, and often splendid. The tea and coffee shops are among the richest in the streets. The bakers’ fronts are also generally showy, and there are a great many of them. It seems to be the general custom, for poor families at least, to make their own bread, and send it in to them to be baked. The first night we were ashore, we got some bread and butter, and American cheese, at a baker’s, and saw in ten minutes a dozen loaves called for. They had sheet-iron checks, with numbers on them, which were given up on the presentation of a corresponding check, and, for a loaf of ten or twelve pounds, a penny for baking—in the same way that passengers’ baggage is checked on our railroads.

[Sidenote: _LIVERPOOL.—STREETS._]

Wood is used in the interior of houses more than I had imagined it would be. Its cost is high. I inquired the price of what looked like a common “Albany board,” such as I buy in New York for sixteen cents; it was of the value of about thirty five cents. The kitchens, as far as we have observed, are on the street floor, level with the living apartments. Coarse pottery and wicker-work utensils are more common than with us. Few of the houses in the town have trees about them. Occasionally an old mansion is set a little back, and has a little shrubby foliage in front of it—most commonly of elms dwarfed to the size and natural shape of a green-gage plum-tree. There are, though, in the better part of the town, some most charming public grounds. I have never seen any thing in America to compare with them. I will speak of them more particularly at another time.

The surface of the ground on which the town is built is irregular, and the streets crooked and running at every angle with each other. Generally they are short, and if long, at every few blocks the names are changed. The names are often singular; many, far apart, have the same with different prefixes, as Great and Little, North and South, &c. We are in “Great Cross Hall street;” after a slight turn it is called “Tythe Barn street,” and further on Chapel street. _Tythe Barn_, I understand, is derived from the name of the building in which the tithes were deposited when they were taken in kind—a tenth of the hay, wheat, poultry, &c. There is a steep ascent near us called “Shaw’s Brow;” it is fitted with smooth stone tracks for cart-wheels, with narrow stones between them set _on end_ for the horses’ feet, double teams here generally going _tandem_. The best streets are paved, as in New York, only one quarter the distance across them, the intermediate space being macadamized. This makes a very pleasant road. There is generally a wide sidewalk, which is flagged as in our cities; but in the commercial streets it is oftener paved like the carriage-way, and in the narrowest there is none at all. The streets are very clean, and all the side-walks, gutters, and untravelled spaces appear to be swept every day.

[Sidenote: _MARKETS.—ECONOMIES.—HOURS._]

I have been through two markets. One of them is an immensely large building, covering about two acres, right in the centre of the town; it is clean, light, and well ventilated. What a wonder it is that the people of New York will put up with such miserable, filthy, crowded hovels as their markets are! In this building there are over five hundred stalls and tables. It has its own superintendant of weights and measures, and a thorough and constant police. There are twelve men whose employment is to keep it clean. The garbage is passed readily through traps into vaults below, from which it is removed at night. The rules for those who use it, are excellent to secure healthy condition of food, neatness, order, and fair play, and they are strictly enforced. To my mind, this structure, and the arrangements connected with it, is an honour to Liverpool, not second to her docks. And she has three other large public markets, besides small ones for particular purposes. The meat stalls are frequently owned by women, and, except a better supply of birds and rabbits, did not offer any thing different from those of our butchers. A part of the market seemed to be occupied by country women for the sale of miscellaneous wares.

The fish market was in another building, which was entirely occupied by women, nice and neat, though skinning eels and cleaning fish. The milk market also seemed to be altogether in the hands of women. Milk is not peddled about as in New York, but sold from cellar-shops. If one wants a cup of tea, our landlady runs across the street for a penny-worth of it. “From hand to mouth” so, seems to be common with many things. The material for our breakfast is mostly bought after we have ordered it. As we did not mention what we would have till after the shops were closed last night, we had to wait till nine o’clock for it this morning. Business hours begin later than in America. I think the market is not open till eight, which they speak of as “very early.” In this respect we have found no difficulty in accommodating ourselves to English customs.

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