University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
LONDON.

A Londoner, if met abroad, answers very vaguely
any questions you may be rash enough to put to him
about “the city.” Talk to him of “town,” and he
would rather miss seeing St. Peter's, than appear ignorant
of any person, thing, custom, or fashion, concerning
whom or which you might have a curiosity.
It is understood all over the world that the “city” of
London is that crowded, smoky, jostling, omnibus and
cab-haunted portion of the metropolis of England
which lies east of Temple Bar. A kind of debatable
country, consisting of the Strand, Covent Garden, and
Tottenham Court road, then intervenes, and west of
these lies what is called “the town.” A transit from
one to the other by an inhabitant of either is a matter
of some forethought and provision. If milord, in
Carlton Terrace, for example, finds it necessary to
visit his banker in Lombard street, he orders—not the
blood bay and the cane tilbury which he is wont to
drive in the morning—but the crop roadster in the
cab, with the night harness, and Poppet his tiger in
plain hat and gaiters. If the banker in Lombard
street, on the contrary, emerges from the twilight of
his counting-house to make a morning call on the
wife of some foreign correspondent, lodging at the
Clarendon, he steps into a Piccadilly omnibus, not in
the salt-and-pepper creations of his Cheapside tailor,
but (for he has an account with Stultz also for the
west-end business) in a claret-colored frock of the last
fashion at Crockford's, a fresh hat from New Bond
street, and (if he is young) a pair of cherished boots
from the Rue St. Honoré. He sits very clear of his
neighbors on the way, and, getting out at the crossing
at Farrance's, the pastry cook, steps in and indulges
in a soup, and then walks slowly past the clubs to his
rendezvous, at a pace that would ruin his credit irrevocably
if practised a mile to the eastward. The difference
between the two migrations is, simply, that
though the nobleman affects the plainness of the city,
he would not for the world be taken for a citizen;
while the junior partner of the house of Firkins and
Co. would feel unpleasantly surprised if he were not
supposed to be a member of the clubs, lounging to a
late breakfast.

There is a “town” manner, too, and a “city” manner,
practised with great nicety by all who frequent
both extremities of London. Nothing could be in
more violent contrast, for example, than the manner
of your banker when you dine with him at his country-house,
and the same person when you meet him
on the narrow sidewalk in Throgmorton street. If you
had seen him first in his suburban retreat, you would
wonder how the deuce such a cordial, joyous, spare-nothing
sort of good fellow could ever reduce himself
to the cautious proportions of Change alley. If you
met him first in Change alley, on the contrary, you
would wonder, with quite as much embarrassment,
how such a cold, two-fingered, pucker-browed slave
of mammon could ever, by any license of interpretation
be called a gentleman. And when you have
seen him in both places, and know him well, if he is
a favorable specimen of his class, you will be astonished
still more to see how completely he will sustain
both characters—giving you the cold shoulder, in a
way that half insults you, at twelve in the morning,
and putting his home, horses, cellar, and servants,
completely at your disposal at four in the afternoon.
Two souls inhabit the banker's body, and each is apparently
sole tenant in turn. As the Hampstead early
coach turns the corner by St. Giles's, on its way to
the bank, the spirit of gain enters into the bosom of
the junior Firkins, ejecting, till the coach passes the
same spot at three in the afternoon, the more gentlemanly
inhabitants. Between those hours, look to
Firkins for no larger sentiment than may be written
upon the blank lines of a note of hand, and expect no
courtesy that would occupy the head or hands of the
junior partner longer than one second by St. Paul's.
With the broad beam of sunshine that inundates the
returning omnibus emerging from Holborn into Tottenham
Court road, the angel of port wine and green
fields passes his finger across Firkins's brow, and
presto! the man is changed. The sight of a long
and narrow strip of paper, sticking from his neighbor's
pocket, depreciates that person in his estimation, he
criticises the livery and riding of the groom trotting
past, says some very true things of the architecture of
the new cottage on the roadside, and is landed at the
end of his own shrubbery, as pleasant and joyous-looking
a fellow as you would meet on that side of
London. You have ridden out to dine with him, and
as he meets you on the lawn, there is still an hour to
dinner, and a blood horse spatters round from the stables,
which you are welcome to drive to the devil if
you like, accompanied either by Mrs. Firkins or himself;
or, if you like it better, there are Mrs. Firkins's
two ponies, and the chaise holds two and the tiger.
Ten to one Mrs. Firkins is a pretty woman, and has

her whims, and when you are fairly on the road, she
proposes to leave the soup and champagne at home
to equalize their extremes of temperature, drive to
Whitehall Stairs, take boat and dine, extempore, at
Richmond. And Firkins, to whom it will be at least
twenty pounds out of pocket, claps his hands and
says—“By Jove, it's bright thought! touch up the
near pony, Mrs. Firkins.” And away you go, Firkins
amusing himself the whole way from Hampstead to
Richmond, imagining the consternation of his cook
and butler when nobody comes to dine.

There is an aristocracy in the city, of course, and
Firkins will do business with twenty persons in a day
whom he could never introduce to Mrs. Firkins. The
situation of that lady with respect to her society is
(she will tell you in confidence) rather embarrassing.
There are many very worthy persons, she will say,
who represent large sums of money or great interests
in trade, whom it is necessary to ask to the Lodge,
but who are far from being ornamental to her new
blue satin boudoir. She has often proposed to Firkins
to have them labelled in tens and thousands according
to their fortunes; that if, by any unpleasant
accident, Lord Augustus should meet them there, he
might respect them like = in algebra, for what they
stand for. But as it is, she is really never safe in calculating
on a societé choisie to dine or sup. When
Hook or Smith is just beginning to melt out, or Lady
Priscilla is in the middle of a charade, in walks Mr.
Snooks, of the foreign house of Snooks, Son, and
Co.—“unexpectedly arrived from Lisbon, and run
down without ceremony to call on his respectable correspondent.”

“Isn't it tiresome?”

“Very, my dear madam! But then you have the
happiness of knowing that you promote very essentially
your husband's interests, and when he has made
a plum —”

“Yes, very true; and then, to be sure, Firkins has
had to build papa a villa, and buy my brother Wilfred
a commission, and settle an annuity on my aunt, and
fit out my youngest brother Bob to India; and when I
think of what he does for my family, why I don't mind
making now and then a sacrifice; but, after all, it's a
great evil not to be able to cultivate one's own class
of society.”

And so murmurs Mrs. Firkins, who is the prettiest
and sweetest creature in the world, and really loves
the husband she married for his fortune; but as the
prosperity of Haman was nothing while Mordecai sat
at the gate, it is nothing to Mrs. Firkins that her father
lives in luxury, that her brothers are portioned
off, and that she herself can have blue boudoirs and
pony-chaises ad libitum, while Snooks, Son, and Co.,
may at any moment break in upon the charade of
Lady Priscilla!

There is a class of business people in London,
mostly bachelors, who have wisely declared themselves
independent of the West End, and live in a style of
their own in the dark courts and alleys about the Exchange,
but with a luxury not exceeded even in the
silken recesses of May Fair. You will sometimes
meet at the opera a young man of decided style, unexceptionable
in his toilet, and quiet and gentlemanlike
in his address, who contents himself with the side
alley of the pit, and looks at the bright circles of beauty
and fashion about him with an indifference it is difficult
to explain. Make his acquaintance by chance,
and he takes you home to supper in a plain chariot on
the best springs Long Acre can turn out; and while
you are speculating where, in the name of the prince
of darkness, these narrow streets will bring you to,
you are introduced through a small door into saloons,
perfect in taste and luxury, where, ten to one, you sup
with the prima donna, or la première danseuse, but
certainly with the most polished persons of your own
sex, not one of whom, though you may have passed a
life in London, you ever met in society before. There
are, I doubt not, in that vast metropolis, hundreds of
small circles of society, composed thus of persons
refined by travel and luxury, whose very existence is
unsuspected by the fine gentleman at the West End,
but who, in the science of living agreeably, are almost
as well entitled to rank among the cognoscenti as Lord
Sefton or the “member for Finsbury.”