CHAPTER X
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?