CHAPTER XVI

LONDON IN THE NINETIES

“Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!”

The absurd words, the maddening air, greeted us when we marched on London, four strong, in that dazzling season of 1892. My husband, my mother, my niece, Alice Richards, and myself made up the swaggering contingent,--“four precious souls and all agog to dash through thick and thin.”

The Columbian epoch glitters resplendently when I look back along the line of years that stretch behind me, a motley company dressed in cloth-of-gold, sackcloth, and brown holland. Something of the glow of new life that came to the world four hundred years earlier was reflected in the time.

Fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus crossed the ocean blue!

The old intoxication seized upon my mother and me the moment we stepped out of Saint Pancras Station and into the moldy-smelling four-wheeler. Alice, fresh from boarding school, was not less deeply stirred perhaps, but showed it less, according to the manner of her generation. A fellow traveler on the train had said to us:

“I call this the American season! You Americans are furnishing more of the year’s sensations than ever.”

At Earl’s Court our old acquaintance, Buffalo Bill, with his bronco busters and cowboys was making a great hit. A friend offered me a seat in the weather-beaten Deadwood Coach during the pursuit by Arapahoe Indians.

“Places are not easy to get,” he assured me. “You will be in the best of company,--peeresses, professional beauties, members of Parliament.”

A lady wishing to take us to the play advised, “‘Cleopatra’, with your pretty compatriot, Mrs. James Brown Potter, and Kyrle Bellew.” This was New Orleans over again!

At the Royal Academy everybody talked of John Sargent’s seven magnificent portraits;

“Have you seen Sargent’s Wertheimer? Best thing in the show--perfectly rippin’.”

It certainly was. More to my liking was a portrait of a different Hebrew type, a young chemist in his laboratory,--subtle, delicate, all spirit, in strong contrast to that other, which was of the flesh “fleshly.” At the exhibition of the Society of Portrait Painters we saw an excellent portrait of Paderewski by the Princess Louise of Lorne, which was deservedly much noticed.

In the House of Commons Mr. Gladstone was still the leading figure: he was supported by Lord Rosebery--who now looked almost grown up--and Sir Vernon Harcourt. Sir Randolph Churchill was much in evidence and Mr. Arthur Balfour was already a recognized leader.

Thoughtful people were feeling the menace of Germany’s growing aggression and of the constantly increasing host of Germans holding positions of trust in the business world.

“From the Bank of England down, German clerks are employed everywhere,” a friend complained. “They work for less money than our own people and they know our resources, our strength, and our weakness better than we do ourselves!”

The comic papers were full of cartoons of the Emperor William, now as Jack-in-the-Box-Universal, popping up unexpectedly in the affairs of the army, the navy, art, science, society, education, and religion: again under the caption “Cuts, or we never speak as we pass by”, turning his back upon Bismarck. A few prophetic voices were lifted by men of imperial mold who saw with the wide world vision, like Rudyard Kipling and Lord Roberts. Kipling, with his “flanneled fools”, had angered the England he attacked, and though “Little Bobs” was listened to indulgently for the great love borne him, he was not heeded. London, as a whole, was taking the comfortable Little Englander point of view. If she did not stone her prophets, neither did she heed them. At a military tournament we heard Lord Roberts sound his note of warning for “preparedness.” His was a small martial figure, with close-cropped white hair and moustache and eagle eyes. There was a sort of desperate earnestness in voice and gesture that I well recall and now, in the light of the World War he foresaw, understand.

“An English friend is a friend for life,” was a saying of my mother’s. As if in proof her old friends gathered around her and her days were filled with pleasant engagements. J. R. Seeley, the historian, now Sir John, invited us to Cambridge. He writes, “You must, however, give up the expectation of hearing me.” She regretted this, as she had much enjoyed hearing him speak on earlier visits. A note from Eva McLaren mentions an appointment to meet Mrs. Fawcett, and one from Mrs. Ormiston Chant gives a picture of the political activity of the time, in which we took some part.

49 Gower St., July 2, 1894.

Dear Mrs. Howe;

It is delightful to know you are in London but alas, I am in the thick of the fight over the Gen. Election, and only at home in the afternoon for the next ten days. Is it possible you will come and hear Stopford Brooke to-morrow and return with us to lunch? You shall have quiet and repose all alone after it and then bless us with your presence at afternoon tea. I shall keep a sharp look out for you at chapel, which building is but a short way from here.

What a tremendous political fight we are having. I am everywhere at express speed--four huge meetings at Darlington last Monday and so on every day somewhere, and to-night I have two meetings in different parts of London. To-morrow is a breathing space, and on Monday I have two more meetings in London and am off for three Cornish constituencies on Tuesday.

This is merely to explain why I am prevented from doing what I should so love to do, to welcome you. I hope I shall see you, it will be such a pleasure. Is there anyone you want to be introduced to, I wonder?

My love to you and please tell me how long you are going to stay here.

Yours very sincerely, L. Ormiston Chant.

I find many notes from Lady Aberdeen, Lady Somerset, and her sister, the Duchess of Bedford, and communications from the Central National Society for Women’s Suffrage. Mr. Gladstone had lately published a most unsympathetic pamphlet on “Female Suffrage”, for which he was soundly rated by our suffrage friends. In spite of this nearly all the people we played with were on his side in the great fight of the General Election. Our old friend Cyril Flower was running for parliament to represent the Rothschild interests. He was a supporter of Mr. Gladstone’s and a staunch Liberal. We went down with him and his wife (Constance de Rothschild) to Battersea and heard him address his future constituents. The whole affair was more like the election in Pickwick than like anything I had ever seen. The speeches were highly spiced with personalities, the orators were chaffed by the crowd, till everybody was in a good humor, and of course, the band played “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.” The contest seemed gayer, lighter, less sordid than such things at home. I wonder if the fact that the contested office carried no salary had anything to do with this? There is much to be said in favor of unpaid representatives!

Among the happy hours were those spent at Cromwell Road with Henry and Aline Harland. They kept open house for literary folk and musicians. Harland, who in America had written his first books under the name of Sidney Luska, had now taken root in England and seemed more British than American. He was one of the best talkers I have ever heard; the conversation at his table never lagged. His wife was a singer with a heavenly voice. Among the familiars of this house were Theodore Marzials, the composer, and Henry James. Marzials had a winning personality, a little eccentric--his boots were usually unbuttoned--a little timid. He sang many of his compositions for us, and, on being urged, his most popular if not his best song, “Twickenham Ferry.” Harland’s attitude towards James was that of an admiring disciple. It was pleasant to see them together, the elder Henry responding affectionately to the devotion of the younger. James had begun to soften already and the eyes had lost something of the keenness that recalled those penetrating glances of his father, when as a naughty child I sat upon his knee and exchanged personal remarks with him.

At that time James was living at Number 34 De Vere Gardens. He was beginning to weary of London life and casting about as to how he might escape its exactions. We had many pleasant excursions together; he was a famous sight-seer and knew his London well. I always felt in him a certain defenselessness in the matter of guarding his own time. He was forever being called upon to write introductions to other people’s books and to listen to other writers’ manuscripts. He was over generous in these things and I often felt a righteous indignation against the swarm of less important authors, Mrs. Humphry Ward among them, who somehow managed to steal his only possession, his time, and impose upon his good nature.

We went much to the theater. While the English stage at this time could not be seriously compared to the French or Italian, it was far better than the American, and there were some good companies in London. Charles Wyndham, Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, Beerbohm Tree, John Hare, and Forbes-Robertson were all acting. At the Lyceum Ellen Terry and Henry Irving, both at the height of their powers, were playing Shakespeare. We saw magnificent productions of the “Merchant of Venice”, “Henry the Eighth”, and “Hamlet.” Witty Mary Abbott told us of a cockney comedian’s criticism of Sir Henry.

“Look at ‘Enery Hirving! Look at ’is ’Amlet! Asthmatic, I grant you, but werry wulgar. Give ’im a song and dance and where is ’e?”

Not long after seeing Ellen Terry’s entrancing acting of Beatrice, J. and I met her former husband, the great artist George F. Watts. My diary gives an account of our visit, but does not mention that I was haunted throughout by Miss Terry’s voice and face. I could not imagine her at home in Watts’ quiet, well-ordered house. They seemed as far apart as the poles, and yet she once reigned here supreme. There’s a legend that during their brief married life Watts often gave large stag dinners where his child wife was not expected to appear. This was little to her liking. One evening, when a grave company of distinguished men were seated at the board, the lovely madcap appeared suddenly from under the table, where she had been hiding, dressed as Cupid in silk tights and wings, sprang upon the table, and ran its length before the astonished guests. “_Se non è vero, è ben trovato._”

July 8, 1892. To lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Watts, Little Holland House, Melbourne Road, Kensington. Found them waiting for us in the drawing-room. She was a Miss Gordon Cumming. Watts is a man of perhaps seventy-six, slender, small, deaf in one ear. Keen blue eyes, fine teeth, the rest of him a delicate and dignified wreck. He was oddly dressed in a little claret-colored skullcap, a brown coat, very old, canvas shoes, unlaced, and linen ruffles at his wrists instead of cuffs. His presence was a benediction. The gentleness, the otherworldliness, the purity and spirituality of the great little man brought tears to my eyes. He made me think of Mr. Emerson, and a little of Papa, at the end. We lunched in a room filled with pictures and portraits and afterwards went into the gallery, thrown open to the public Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The “Life and Love”, a picture I always liked, grows on one.

“I think of giving this to America,” Watts said, “it may have a lesson for your country. Life is a poor thing at best, toiling up a steep, rough path, and unless helped by Love, not worth having. Love does not lift the burden from Life, nor give it very much support, but touches it gently, tenderly, and makes the stony path endurable.”

I admired a portrait of Mrs. Langtry.

“I call it the Dean’s Daughter,” he said. “She came in one day in a simple little bonnet and dress. There was a feather in the bonnet that I asked her to take out. Then I painted her just as she was.”

The portrait is a perfect, womanly thing. Not the professional beauty, the actress, or the pleasure-loving woman the world knows, just the sweet loveliness of the Dean’s Daughter.

“There is something very good about her,” he said.

Remembering her smile, which kept the childlike quality and the brightness of sunshine, I understood.

A portrait of Lord Tennyson is among his latest work. During one of the sittings, Tennyson said to Watts:

“If John Keats had lived he would have been the greatest of the English poets.”

Watts’ very latest portrait of Walter Crane is in his most vigorous manner. It is painted in soft tones, face, coat, hair, background, all a mellow range of browns. The expression is characteristic, a really superb portrait. It reminded me of the day when Crane lunched with us in Beacon Street, and I tried to dissuade him from going to speak at an anarchistic sort of a meeting at Boston Music Hall.

“As I do not sell my pictures,” Watts said, “I feel that I have the right to carry out an idea in many ways.”

This _a propos_ of a subject he has treated several times, the “Angel of Death.”

“Too much gloom and terror is associated with death,” he said. “It is sad to lose our dear ones, but beyond that death is not to be feared.” He pointed to a picture he calls “The Messenger.”

“I wish that picture to be understood by all people, not merely by Christians. The picture should tell its story to the Jew or the Mohammedan equally well.”

The Messenger is a queenly figure, slow and stately, advancing towards a dying woman on a couch. “The Court of Death”, an enormous canvas just sketched in, is fine in composition and thought. Death, the same majestic figure, sits enthroned; below her is an altar. In the foreground a cripple brings his crutch to lay upon the shrine, a king casts his crown upon it. A soldier, a superb figure of a man standing with his back towards the spectator, throws down his sword. A girl sits at Death’s feet; the drapery of the seated figure flows into a winding sheet about her. In the lap of Death lies a young child, suggesting the new birth into the other life. Behind on either side stands a tall angel guarding the door that opens into the mystery beyond.

“Too many young men and women are taking up art as a career to-day,” Watts declared. “Any boy who has a little facility with brush or pencil is praised and petted into believing he is an artist. An artist must dress well and must appear as a gentleman should. If he has a wife and children, he must have a comfortable house for them. Many of them would starve to death were it not for the immense number of illustrations needed to-day for books.”

In answer to a question of J.’s about his methods of work, Watts said:

“I never paint my ideal pictures direct from the model--I cannot think it right to paint either an angel or an ideal figure from life. Make as many studies from the model as you like, but paint the ideal from the ideal.”

He took us into his modeling studio, whence a small tramway runs out into the garden. On the tram is a platform bearing an equestrian statue he has been working on for years. We had seen at the New Gallery a picture by Philip Burne-Jones of Watts in his white blouse at work on this colossal group. The horse is full of mettle, the rider equally spirited.

“I call this ‘Physical Energy’ in contradistinction to intellectual or spiritual energy,” Watts said. “The youth has just accomplished the feat of subduing and reining in this fiery steed. He lifts his hand to shade his eyes and looks out into the distance for the next struggle, the next conquest to be made.”

He is making the group out of hard plaster which he chips away with a chisel, as the wet clay gives him rheumatism! J. says it is the most difficult medium possible to work in.

“If it is ever finished and cast,” Watts began, then paused,--

“_If!_” I said. “It _must_ be.”

“It is a very costly matter to put such a thing into bronze,” he answered. “I do not know if I can ever afford to do it. I do not paint my pictures to sell, but to serve another end. I give them to the nation. For a long time I was in doubt whether I had a right to do this because money is a great power for good, and I can make a great deal of money with my portraits, but on the whole I felt that my example and my best work would be of more value to my country. We need very little money. We go nowhere. Mrs. Watts spends next to nothing on her dress and we only need to live as we do, very quietly and comfortably.”

The colossal horse and its rider of whose future Watts was so doubtful have found a place worthy of themselves and their creator. The group now forms part of the magnificent memorial to Cecil Rhodes in South Africa. It stands at the foot of the great flight of steps with a background of purple mountains and Africa stretching endlessly below it.

We had much pleasure in again meeting Sir Henry Stanley, the African explorer. He had been at our house in Boston the year before with his handsome wife, his mother-in-law Mrs. Tennant, and their relative, Hamilton Aïdé. Stanley was a masterful looking man who on most occasions was inclined to be silent. Once, however, he talked graphically with us about his experiences in Africa. He spoke with modesty of his own personal exploits, but in spite of this he gave the impression that he deserved the name given him by the African chieftainess and written on a photograph I still possess,--Bula Matari, breaker of stone!

Two years before General Booth had paraphrased Stanley’s famous book “In Darkest Africa” with a volume called “In Darkest England.” The book laid strong hold on my imagination. During our first days in London I was too busy renewing old friendships, revisiting beloved haunts, to think about “Darkest England.” One hot night, as we were driving home from a ball, our way took us along the Thames Embankment, where under the shadow of the Egyptian obelisk, Cleopatra’s Needle, I saw certain silent figures sleeping on the ground, crouching on the benches. There was, then, another London I did not know, and these forlorn men and women were among its people! I could not sleep for thinking of them, and the next day began my exploration of “Darkest England.” My diary during the rest of this London visit is almost entirely devoted to this subject.

London, July 10, 1892. Found that the boys in the Salvation Army convict Shelter had no schooling, but prayer meetings seven evenings a week. Found very few books. The weak point in the work seems the lack of intellectual development. The libraries in the Shelters consist of one or two religious books, nothing more.

“How do the discharged prisoners get to this place?” I asked my guide.

“Every morning, when the prisoners are released, officers of the Salvation Army are waiting for them at the prison gate. They do not wear the uniform, for that would repel the men; at the sight of it they would slink away. The officer accosts the man and asks him what he means to do. The answer is always:

“‘I dunno.’

“‘Come along with me,’ says the officer, ‘I will take you to a place where you can earn a good meal and a “doss” in a clean bed.’

“‘What place is that?’

“‘Do you think any one but the Salvation Army would come _here_ for you?’”

The better class of criminals, first offenders, and down-and-outers generally yield and come with the officers to the Shelter. Hardened criminals, old offenders who do not wish to reform, return to their old haunts and companions. Among the men I talked with at the Shelter was the son of a well-known baronet. His friends had finally cast him off and he had gone from bad to worse. The face was weak and flabby, the bearing slouchy, but he did not look vicious. Among all the faces I saw only one that looked criminal. That belonged to a fellow who was sweeping the room. My guide said of him:

“That man has been wonderfully converted and has been saved in a truly beautiful manner.”

I would not trust him farther than I could see him. Work is found for the men as soon as possible; while they remain at the Shelters nothing is given them; they must earn fourpence to pay for their dinner, twopence for breakfast and supper, fourpence for a bed. Any extra money they may earn is invested for them. Decent clothes are provided, if necessary, and their fare is paid to the place where they are sent to work. The employer either prepays it or keeps the money out of the wages and returns it to the Army. The Bridge was the first and the least cheerful of the places we visited. Sergeant Winch, my guide, always spoke of the men as “dear fellows.”

“This dear man was a housebreaker. All these dear fellows are jailbirds. One dear boy, Curry by name, who is now thoroughly converted, was the worst pickpocket in Whitechapel.” ...

Winch told me his own “experience.” His daughter went out to service in the country and wrote him letters about the “blessed Sundays” she passed, but did not say where she passed them. Then the second daughter went down to the same place and began to write the same sort of letters. About this time he chanced to go to a meeting of the Salvation Army and on coming home said to his wife: “I had rather see my daughter in her coffin than belonging to the Salvation Army.” In spite of what I said, by and by the wife began to look into the work, and she fair fell in love with it. Well, where the women folk go, the men must follow, and it’s three years since I was led to join the Army, and it’s the blessed times I have had. Last Sunday I walked six miles to hold an outdoor meeting, then an indoor meeting, then another outdoor meeting. I led the march. After that six miles’ tramp on foot at the end of a hard week’s work.

The part Winch enjoys the most is the meetings, especially those held out of doors.

“Some of the things we do,” he said, “I can see myself must look ridiculous, like the beating the drum and sich, but if souls are saved, what does it matter?” What, indeed?

We next visited the Elevator, so called because it is planned to elevate the men. On our way we went through a poor Jewish quarter where the children, a crowd of superb, red-haired, brown-haired, black-eyed babies, filled the narrow sidewalks....

It was polling day, the streets were filled with carriages bearing the names of the candidates. The walls everywhere were placarded with the names of the Liberal and Unionist candidates. I asked Sergeant Winch who he had voted for.

“I yielded to a great temptation to-day and voted for the Grand Old Man for the first time in my life.”

In the Hanbury Street Elevator unskilled laborers are set to work chopping wood. The wood is brought in long flat boards. Several men are stationed with a mechanical saw worked by a steam engine that cuts the boards in short lengths. These are given to the men, who sit in little wooden pens, each with a block before him and a hatchet. He takes the small pieces and chops them into tiny ones for kindling. I had always supposed that splitting wood must be desperately hard work till I saw how easily it is done in the Army. Another group sorts the wood into bundles and ties up the bundles with stout twine. Winch was welcomed by all the men. He had lately been in command of this Elevator and had invented the little pens for the wood choppers, to prevent quarreling among them over the amount each man had split. An account of the work is kept, and they are paid in leaden counters stamped two, three, or fourpence. With these counters they buy their food and lodging. The Elevators are only workshops; at night the men march to the Light House where they sleep. We visited the kitchen; neat and nice. The dinner was canned Australian mutton, which looked very good, boiled potatoes, beans and such delicious looking jam puddings! I wish I could have one made so well. When they have fresh roast beef they do not have pudding. Each man has a pint of tea, and all this for fourpence,--as good a dinner as anybody needs. The cook showed me his pantry, made me smell the tea, coffee, and cocoa, and taste the bread which was excellent. For breakfast they can have either tea or coffee with four great hunches of bread and marmalade, or a thick slice of cold meat,--all this for twopence. As a rule they prefer the jam to the meat....

Upstairs we saw the brush factory. They were making hair brushes. The men here were much more cheerful than at the Bridge. In looking from face to face one saw them all clean and intent. The cheeriness of the atmosphere surpassed any workshop I have ever seen. The brushes were some of them beautifully made, others rather roughly put together....

Winch spoke of the dreadful wickedness of the boys, but that they grow out of it so quickly when placed in the right atmosphere, proving that the natural direction of human growth is towards higher things.

The foreman had several blacksmiths and wheelwrights working under him. He showed me two carts they had built and some trucks for the Salvage Brigade, with an excellent arrangement for carrying bottles. In the same Elevator they make the mattresses for all their establishments and in another department men were at work picking rags. One department was devoted to the care of the engines in all the stations. At the Elevator where the bunks are made they also make good simple furniture, all the benches used at the halls and other plain things. I saw here some fine chairs carved by hand, the work of an ivory carver. They could not furnish the man with ivory, so they gave him oak. The difficulty of selling his work has not yet been met. The manufacturers are jealous and will not allow such high-class goods to be put on the market.

Woman’s Shelter, Hanbury Street, Whitechapel. Here women may sleep and have tea and breakfast. For meals twopence each, for a night’s lodging the same. No questions asked. They must be indoors before eleven o’clock. The women are very reserved and reticent. They are from the lowest part of the community. Many old women in pitiful rags and tatters. Some have to be called at one o’clock in the morning to go to the markets, where they earn a few pence by picking over fruit. The shelters are kept 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit. The mere warmth is often enough to keep life in bodies weakened by hunger and cold. The long room is filled with bunks, or rather boxes. At one of the shelters men were at work making these sleeping boxes, carefully painted and enameled, the superintendent told me, as a protection against vermin. Inside each bunk are a leather-covered mattress and pillow, but no bedding.

A smaller room leading from the large one is reserved for women with children. I visited the _crêche_ where, by paying a small fee, mothers can leave their children for the day. I saw one of the Slum Posts. The two Lassies in charge were gentlewomen, the daughters of a well-known Church of England clergyman. Their post is in the worst quarter of London.

“No one ever annoys us; we go in parts of the town where no one else could go safely. No one would hurt a Salvation Army Lassie,” they said.

At one of the shelters the women may wash their clothes Tuesday and Friday evenings. Tubs and hot water are provided gratis; the women must bring their own soap.

My interest in the Salvation Army began one hot Sunday afternoon some time in the eighties, at the home of my sister, Laura Richards, in Gardiner, Maine. Looking out in the street, I saw a man beating a drum and a girl with a blue bonnet shaking a tamborine.

“What on earth are those lunatics about?” some one asked. We followed them down to the main street and listened to their simple service of song and prayer. Though this proceeding seemed incongruous in that quiet Maine town, it interested me. The Salvation Army met with that bitterest of all opposition, ridicule. But the more I studied the methods of the Army in London, the more convinced I became that it represented one of the greatest moral forces of my time. At a period when business men were beginning to talk about “by-products” and manufacturers to realize that the by-product was sometimes as important as all the rest of the plant, General Booth was developing the by-product of mankind and turning the wastrels of the race into profitable citizens. On my return to America I was so angered at hearing his methods pooh-poohed that I wrote a lecture describing what I had seen of the Army’s work. Under the management of Major Pond I gave this lecture, “With Booth in Darkest England”, far and wide. I am glad to think that my voice may have had some small influence in bringing about a better understanding of the Salvation Army in our country.