University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
LONDON.

It is near four o'clock, and in Bond street you
might almost walk on the heads of livery-servants—
at every stride stepping over the heads of two ladies
and a dandy exclusive. Thoroughfare it is none, for
the carriages are creeping on, inch by inch, the blood-horses
“marking time,” the coachman watchful for
his panels and whippletrees, and the lady within her
silken chariot, lounging back, with her eyes upon the
passing line, neither impatient nor surprised at the
delay, for she came there on purpose. Between the
swaying bodies of the carriages, hesitating past, she
receives the smiles and recognitions of all her male
acquaintances; while occasionally a female ally (for
allies against the rest of the sex are as necessary in
society to women, as in war to monarchs)—occasionally,
I say, a female ally announced by the crest upon
the blinker of an advancing horse, arrives opposite her
window, and, with only the necessary delay in passing,
they exchange, perhaps, inquiries for health, but, certainly,
programmes, comprehensive though brief, for
the prosecution of each other's loves or hates. Occasionally
a hack cab, seduced into attempting Bond
street by some momentary opening, finds itself closed
in, forty deep, by chariots, butckas, landaus, and family
coaches; and amid the imperturbable and unanswering
whips of the hammercloth, with a passenger
who is losing the coach by the delay, he must wait,
will-he-nill-he, till some “pottering” dowager has
purchased the old lord his winter flannels, or till the
countess of Loiter has said all she has to say to the
guardsman whom she has met accidentally at Pluck-rose,
the perfumer's. The three tall fellows, with
gold sticks, would see the entire plebeian population
of London thrice-sodden in vitriol, before they would
advance miladi's carriage a step, or appear to possess
eyes or ears for the infuriated cabman.

Bond street, at this hour, is a study for such observers,
as, having gone through an apprenticeship of
criticism upon all the other races and grades of men
and gentlemen in the world, are now prepared to study

their species in its highest fashionable phase—that of
“nice persons” at the West End. The Oxford-street
“swell,” and the Regent-street dandy, if seen here,
are out of place. The expressive word “quiet” (with
its present London signification), defines the dress,
manner, bow, and even physiognomy, of every true
denizen of St. James's and Bond street. The great
principle among men of the clubs, in all these particulars,
is to subdue—to deprive their coats, hats, and
manners, of everything sufficiently marked to be caricatured
by the satirical or imitated by the vulgar.
The triumph of style seems to be that the lines which
define it shall be imperceptible to the common eye—
that it shall require the difficult education which creates
it to know its form and limit. Hence an almost
universal error with regard to English gentlemen—
that they are repulsive and cold. With a thousand
times the heart and real politeness of the Frenchman,
they meet you with the simple and unaffected address
which would probably be that of shades in Elysium,
between whom (we may suppose) there is no longer
etiquette or concealment. The only exceptions to
this rule in London, are, first and alone, Count—,
whose extraordinary and original style, marked as it
is, is inimitable by any man of less brilliant talents
and less beauty of person, and the king's guardsmen,
who are dandies by prescriptive right, or, as it were,
professionally. All other men who are members of
Brooks's and the Traveller's, and frequent Bond street
in the flush of the afternoon, are what would be called
in America, plain, unornamental, and, perhaps, ill-dressed
individuals, who would strike you more by the
absence than the possession of all the peculiarities
which we generally suppose marks a “picked man of
countries.” In America, particularly, we are liable to
error on this point, as, of the great number of our
traveliers for improvement, scarce one in a thousand
remains longer in London than to visit the tower and
the Thames tunnel. The nine hundred and ninety-nine
reside principally, and acquire all they get of foreign
manner and style, at Paris—the very most artificial,
corrupt, and affected school for gentlemen in the
polite world.

Prejudice against any one country is an illiberal
feeling, which common reflection should, and which
enlightened travel usually does, entirely remove.
There is a vulgar prejudice against the English in
almost all countries, but more particularly in ours,
which blinds its entertainers to much that is admirable,
and deprives them of the good drawn from the
best models. The troop of scurrilous critics, the class
of English bagmen, and errant vulgarians of all kinds,
and the industriously-blown coals of old hostilities,
are barriers which an educated mind may well overlook,
and barriers beyond which lie, no doubt, the best
examples of true civilization and refinement the world
ever saw. But we are getting into an essay when we
should be turning down Bruton street, on our way to
the park, with all the fashion of Bond street and May
Fair.

May Fair! what a name for the core of dissipated
and exclusive London! A name that brings with it
only the scent of crushed flowers in a green field, of a
pole wreathed with rose, booths crowded with dancing
peasant-girls, and nature in its holyday! This—to
express the costly, the courtlike, the so-called “heartless”
precinct of fashion and art, in their most authentic
and envied perfection. Mais, les extrêmes se touchent,
and, perhaps, there is more nature in May Fair
than in Rose Cottage or Honeysuckle Lodge.

We stroll on through Berkeley square, by Chesterfield
and Curzon streets to the park gate. What an
aristocratic quiet regins here! How plain are the exteriors
of these houses: how unexpressive these doors,
without a name, of the luxury and high-born pride
within! At the open window of the hall sit the butler
and footman, reading the morning paper, while they
wait to dispense the “not at home” to callers not disappointed.
The rooks are noisy in the old trees of
Chesterfield house. The painted window-screens of
the probably still-slumbering Count —, in his bachelor's
den, are closely drawn, and, as we pass Seymour
place, a crowd of gay cabs and diplomatic chariots,
drawn up before the dark-green door at the farther extremity,
announce to you the residence of one whose
morning and evening levées are alike thronged by distinction
and talent—the beautiful Lady —.

This short turn brings us to the park, which is rapidly
filling with vehicles of every fashion and color,
and with pedestrians and horsemen innumerable. No
hackney-coach, street-cab, cart, or pauper, is allowed
to pass the porters at the several gates: the road is
macadamized and watered, and the grass within the
ring is fresh and verdant. The sun here triumphs
partially over the skirt of London smoke, which sways
backward and forward over the chimneys of Park lane,
and, as far as it is possible so near the dingy halo of
the metropolis, the gay occupants of these varied conveyances
“take the air.”

Let us stand by the railing a moment, and see what
comes by. This is the field of display for the coachman,
who sits upon his sumptuous hammercloth,
and takes more pride in his horses than their owner,
and considers them, if not like his own honor and
blood, very like his own property. Watch the delicate
handling of his ribands, the affected nonchalance of
his air, and see how perfectly, how admirably, how
beautifully, move his blood horses, and how steadily
and well follows the compact carriage! Within (it is
a dark-green calêche, and the liveries are drab, with
red edgings) sits the oriental form and bright spiritual
face of a banker's wife, the daughter of a noble race,
who might have been, but was not, sacrificed in “marrying
into the finance,” and who soars up into the sky
of happiness, like the unconscious bird that has escaped
the silent arrow of the savage, as if her destiny
could not but have been thus fulfilled. Who follows?
D'Israeli, alone in his cab; thoughtful, melancholy,
disappointed in his political schemes, and undervaluing
his literary success, and expressing, in his scholar-like
and beautiful profile, as he passes us, both the thirst
at his heart and the satiety at his lips. The livery of
his “tiger” is neglected, and he drives like a man who
has to choose between running and being run against,
and takes that which leaves him the most leisure for reflection.
Poor D'Israeli! With a kind and generous
heart, talents of the most brilliant order, an ambition
which consumes his soul, and a father who expects
everything from his son; lost for the want of a tact
common to understandings fathoms deep below his
own, and likely to drive in Hyde Park forty years
hence, if he die not of the corrosion of disappointment,
no more distinguished than now, and a thousand times
more melancholy.

An open barouche follows, drawn by a pair of dark
bays, the coachman and footman in suits of plain gray,
and no crest on the panels. A lady, of remarkable
small person, sits, with the fairest foot ever seen, just
peeping from under a cashmere, on the forward cushion,
and from under her peculiarly plain and small
bonnet burn, in liquid fire, the most lambent and
spiritual eyes that night and sleep ever hid from the
world. She is a niece of Napoleon, married to an
English nobleman; and beside her sits her father,
who refused the throne of Tuscany, a noble-looking
man, with an expression of calm and tranquil resignation
in his face, unusually plain in his exterior, and
tess alive than most of the gay promenaders to the
bright scene passing about him. He will play in the
charade at his daughter's soiréc in the evening, however,
and forget his exile and his misfortunes; for he
is a fond father and a true philosopher.