An American Girl in London

XXIII

I HAD heard so much from English sources of the precocity and forwardness of very young people in America, that I was quite prepared to find a commendably opposite state of things in England, and I must say that, generally speaking, I was not disappointed. The extent to which young ladies and gentlemen under twenty-two can sit up straight and refrain from conversation here, impressed me as much as anything I have seen in society. I have not observed any of this shyness in married ladies or older gentlemen; and that struck me oddly, too, for in America it is only with advancing years that we become conscious of our manners.

I have no doubt that, if the Eights had been in America – where they would probably be called the Octoplets – and Mr. Sanders Horton had been a Harvard Sophomore, and Lord Symonds's father had made his fortune out of a patent shoe-lace-tag, and we had all been enjoying ourselves over there, we might have noticed a difference both in the appearance and the behaviour of these young gentlemen. They would certainly have been older for their years, and more elaborately dressed. Their complexions would probably not have been so fresh, nor their shoulders so broad, and the pencilling on Mr. Horton's upper lip, and the delicate, fair marking on Lord Symonds's, would assuredly have deepened into a moustache. Their manners would not have been so negatively good as they were in Oxford, where they struck me as expressing an ideal, above all things, to avoid doing those things which they ought not to do. Their politeness would have been more effusive, and not the least bit nervous; though I hope neither Mr. Horton nor Lord Symonds will mind my implying that in Oxford they were nervous. People can't possibly help the way they have been brought up, and to me our host's nervousness was interesting, like his English accent, and the scout and the quad. Personally, I liked the feeling of superinducing bashfulness in two nice boys like those – it was novel and amusing – though I have no doubt they were much more afraid of Lady Torquilin than of me. I never saw a boy, however, from twelve to twenty-three – which strikes me as the span of boyhood in England – that was not Lady Torquilin's attached slave after twenty minutes' conversation with her. She did not humour them, or flatter them, or talk to them upon their particular subjects; she was simply what they called 'jolly' to them, and their appreciation was always prompt and lively. Lady Torquilin got on splendidly with both Mr. Sanders Horton and Lord Symonds. The only reason why Mr. Horton's lunch was not an unqualifiedly brilliant success was that, whenever she talked to one of our hosts, the other one was left for me to talk to, which was usually distressing for both of us.

It was an extremely nice lunch, served with anxious deference by the respectable-looking little man who had come upstairs, and nervously commanded by Mr. Horton at one end with the cold joint, and Lord Symonds at the other with the fowl. It began, I remember, with bouillon. Lady Torquilin partook of bouillon, so did I; but the respectable scout did not even offer it to the young gentlemen. I caught a rapid, inquiring glance from Lady Torquilin. Could it be that there was not bouillon enough? The thought checked any utterance upon the subject, and we finished our soup with careful indifference, while Lord Symonds covered the awkwardness of the situation by explaining to me demonstratively the nature of a Bump. I did not understand Bumps then, nor did I succeed during the course of the afternoon in picking up enough information to write intelligently about them. But this was because Lord Symonds had no bouillon. Under the circumstances, it was impossible for me to put my mind to it.

Presently Mr. Horton asked us if he might give us some salmon – not collectively, but individually and properly, Lady Torquillin first; and we said he might. He did not help Lord Symonds, and relapsed himself, as it were, into an empty plate. It was Lady Torquilin's business to inquire if the young gentlemen were not well, or if salmon did not agree with them, and not mine; but while I privately agitated this matter, I unobservantly helped myself to mayonnaise. 'I – I beg your pardon,' said Mr. Sanders Horton, in a pink agony; 'that's cream!' So it was, waiting in a beautiful old-fashioned silver pitcher the advent of those idylls that come after. It was a critical moment. Only one thing occurred to me to say, for which I hope I may be forgiven.

'Yes,' I returned, 'we like it with fish in America. At which Mr. Horton looked interested and relieved. And I ate as much of the mixture as I could with a smile, though the salmon had undergone a vinegar treatment which made this difficult. 'It is in Boston, is it not,' remarked Lord Symonds politely, 'that the people live almost entirely upon beans?' And the conversation flowed quite generally until the advent of the fowl. It was a large, well-conditioned chicken, and when the young gentlemen, apparently by mutual consent, refrained from partaking of it, the situation had reached a degree of unreasonableness which was more than Lady Torquilin could endure.

'Do you intend to eat?'

'Oh, we'd like to, but we can't,' they replied, earnestly and simultaneously.

'We're still in training, you know,' Lord Symonds went on. 'Fellows have got to train pretty much on stodge.' And at this juncture Mr. Horton solemnly cut two slices of the cold beef, and sent them to his friend, helping himself to the same quantity with mathematical exactness. Then, with plain bread, and gravity which might almost be called severe, they attacked it.

Lady Torquilin and I looked at each other reproachfully. This privation struck us as needless and extreme, and it had the uncomfortable moral effect of turning our own repast into a Bacchanalian revel. We frowned, we protested, we besought. We suggested with insidious temptation that this was the last day of the races, and that nobody would know. We commended each particular dish in turn, in terms we thought most appetising. It was very wrong, and it had the sting which drives wrong-doing most forcibly home to the conscience, of being entirely futile, besides engendering the severe glances of the respectable scout. The young gentlemen were as adamant, if adamant could blush. They would not be moved, and at every fresh appeal they concentrated their attention upon their cold beef in a manner which I thought most noble, if a trifle ferocious. At last they began to look a little stern and disapproving, and we stopped, conscious of having trenched disrespectfully upon an ideal of conduct. But over the final delicacy of Mr. Horton's lunch, the first of the season, Lady Torquilin regarded them wistfully. 'Not even gooseberry tart?' said she. And I will not say that there was no regret in the courageous rejoinder:

'Not even gooseberry tart.'

I am not pretending to write about the things that ought to have impressed me most, but the things that did impress me most, and these were, at Mr. Sanders Horton's luncheon, the splendid old silver college goblets into which our host poured us lavish bumpers of claret-cup, the moral support of the respectable scout, and the character and dignity an ideal of duty may possess, even in connection with cold beef. I came into severe contact with an idiom, too, which I shall always associate with that occasion. Lord Symonds did not belong to Pembroke College, and I asked him, after we had exchanged quite a good deal of polite conversation, which one he did belong to.

'How lovely these old colleges are,' I remarked, 'and so nice and impressive and time-stained. Which one do you attend, Lord Symonds?'

'Maudlin,' said Lord Symonds, apparently taking no notice of my question, and objecting to the preceding sentiment.

'Do you think so?' I said. I was not offended. I had made up my mind some time before never to be offended in England until I understood things. 'I'm very sorry, but they do strike an American that way, you know.'

Lord Symonds did not seem to grasp my meaning. 'It is jolly old,' said he. 'Not so old as some of 'em. New, for instance. But I thought you asked my college. Maudlin, just this side of Maudlin bridge, you know.'

'Oh!' I said. 'And will you be kind enough to spell your college, Lord Symonds? I am but a simple American, over here partly for the purpose of improving my mind.'

'Certainly. "M-a-g-d-a-l-e-n,"' returned Lord Symonds, very good-naturedly. 'Now that you speak of it, it is rather a rum way of spelling it. Something like "Cholmondeley." Now, how would you spell "Cholmondeley?"'

I was glad to have his attention diverted from my mistake, but the reputation of 'Cholmondeley' is world-wide, and I spelled it triumphantly. I should like to confront an American spelling-match with 'Magdalen,' though, and about eleven other valuable orthographical specimens that I am taking care of.

In due course we all started for the river, finding our way through quads even greyer and greener and quieter than Exeter, and finally turning into a pretty, wide, tree-bordered highway, much too well trodden to be a popular Lovers' Walk, but dustily pleasant and shaded withal. We were almost an hour too early for the races, as Mr. Horton and Lord Symonds wished to take us on the river before they were obliged to join their respective crews, and met hardly anybody except occasional strolling, loose-garmented undergraduates with very various ribbons on their round straw hats, which they took off with a kind of spasmodic gravity when they happened to know our friends. The tree-bordered walk ended more or less abruptly at a small stream, bordered on its hither side by a series of curious constructions reminding one of all sorts of things, from a Greek warship to a Methodist church in Dakota, and wonderfully painted. These, Mr. Horton explained, were the College barges, from which the race was viewed, and he led the way to the Exeter barge. There is a stairway to these barges, leading to the top, and Mr. Horton showed us up, to wait until he and Lord Symonds got out the punt.

The word 'punting' was familiar to me, signifying an aquatic pursuit popular in England, but I had never even seen a punt, and was very curious about it. I cannot say, however, that the English punt, when our friends brought it round, struck me as a beautiful object. Doubtless it had points of excellence, even of grace, as compared with other punts – I do not wish to disparage it – but I suffered from the lack of a standard to admire it by. It seemed to me an uninteresting vessel, and I did not like the way it was cut off at the ends. The mode of propulsion, too, by which Mr. Horton and Lord Symonds got us around the river – poking a stick into the mud at the bottom and leaning on it – did not impress me as being dignified enough for anybody in Society. Lord Symonds asked me, as we sat in one end enjoying the sun – you get to like it in England, even on the back of your neck – what I thought of punting. I told him I thought it was immoderately safe. It was the most polite thing I could think of at the spur of the moment. I do not believe punting would ever become popular in America. We are a light-minded people; we like an element of joyous risk; we are not adapted to punt.

The people were beginning to come down upon the barges when we returned from this excursion, and it was thought best that we should take our places. The stream was growing very full, not only of laborious punts containing three brightly-dressed ladies and one perspiring young man, but of all kinds of craft, some luxuriously overshadowed with flounced awnings, under which young gentlemen with cigarette-attachments reposed, protecting themselves further with Japanese paper umbrellas. The odd part of this was that both they and their umbrellas seemed to be taken by themselves and everybody else quite au sérieux. This, again, would be different in America.

Mr. Horton left us with Lord Symonds, who had not to row, he explained to us, until later in the day; and presently we saw our host below, with the rest of his bare-legged, muscular crew, getting gingerly into the long, narrow outrigger lying alongside. They arranged themselves with great care and precision, and then held their oars, looking earnestly at a little man who sat up very straight in the stern – the cox. He was my first cox, for I had never seen a boat-race before, excepting between champions, who do not row with coxes, and I was delighted to find how accurately he had been described in the articles we read about English boating – his size, his erect-ness and alertness, and autocratic dignity. At a word from the cox every man turned his head half-way round and back again; then he said, in the sternest accents I had ever heard, 'Are – you – ready?' and in an instant they were off.

'Where are they going?' Lady Torquilin asked.

'Oh, for a preliminary spin,' said Lord Symonds, 'and then for the starting-point.'

'And when do the barges start?' I inquired, without having given the matter any kind of consideration.

'The barges!' said Lord Symonds, mystified. 'Do you mean these? They don't start; they stay here.'

'But can we see the race from here?' I asked.

'Beautifully! They come past.'

'Do I understand, Lord Symonds, that the Oxford boat-race takes place out there?'

'Certainly,' said he. 'Why not?'

'Oh, no particular reason,' I returned – 'if there is room.'

'Rather!' the young gentleman explained. 'This is the noble river Isis, Miss Wick.'

'It may not be so big as the Mississippi, but it's worthy of your respectful consideration, young lady,' put in Lady Torquilin. Thus admonished, I endeavoured to give the noble river Isis my respectful consideration, but the barges occupied so much space in it that I was still unable to understand how a boat-race of any importance could come between us and the opposite bank without seriously inconveniencing somebody.

It did, however, and such was the skill displayed by the coxes in charge that nobody was hurt. It came off amid demonstrations of the most extraordinary nature, tin whistles predominating, on the opposite bank, where I saw a genuine bishop capering along with the crowd, waving his hat on his stick. It came off straight and tense and arrowy, cheered to the last stroke.

'So near it!' said Lord Symonds, after shouting 'Well rowed, Pembroke!' until he could shout no longer.

'Near what?' I asked.

'A bump,' said he, sadly; 'but it was jolly well rowed!' and for the moment I felt that no earthly achievement could compare with the making of bumps.

Such excitement I never saw, among the Dons on the barges – my first Dons, too, but they differed very much; I could not generalise about them – among their wives, who seemed unaggressive, youngish ladies, as a rule, in rather subdued gowns; among the gay people down from 'Town,' among the college men, incorrigibly uproarious; among that considerable body of society that adds so little to the brilliance of such an occasion but contributes so largely to its noise. And after it was over a number of exuberant young men on the other side plunged into the noble river Isis and crossed it with a few well-placed strides, and possibly two strokes. None of them were drowned.

After that we had a joyous half-hour in the apartments, at Exeter, of Mr. Bertie Corke, whose brown eyes had Peter's very twinkle in them, and who became established in our affections at once upon that account. Mr. Corke was one of the Exeter Eight, and he looked reproachfully at us when we inadvertently stated that we had lingered to congratulate Pembroke.

'Pembroke got a bump, you know, yesterday,' I remarked, proud of the technicality.

'Yes,' returned Mr. Bertie Corke, ruefully, 'bumped us.'

This was an unfortunate beginning, but it did not mar our subsequent relations with Miss Peter Corke's brother, which were of the pleasantest description. He told us on the way down once more to the noble river Isis the names of all those delightful elderly stone images that had themselves put over the college doors centuries ago, when they were built, and he got almost as many interiors into half an hour as his sister could. He explained to us, too, how, by the rules of the University, he was not allowed to play marbles on the college steps, or to wear clothes of other than an 'obfusc hue,' which was exactly the kind of thing that Peter would tell you – and expect you to remember. He informed us, too, that according to the pure usage of Oxonian English he was a 'Fresher,' the man we had just passed being an unattached student, a 'tosher,' probably walking for what in the vulgar tongue might be called exercise, but here was 'ekker.' In many ways he was like Peter, and he objected just as much to my abuse of the English climate.

The second race was very like the first, with more enthusiasm. I have a little folding card with 'The Eights, May 22 to 28, 1890,' and the names of the colleges in the order of starting, printed in blue letters on the inside. The 'order of finish' from 'B. N. C.' to 'St. Edm. Hall' is in Mr. Bertie Corke's handwriting. I'm not a sentimentalist, but I liked the Eights, and I mean to keep this souvenir.

XXIV

THE records of my experiences in London would be very incomplete without another chapter devoted to those Miss Peter Corke arranged for me. Indeed, I would need the license of many chapters to explain at any length how generously Miss Corke fulfilled to me the offices of guide, philosopher, and friend; how she rounded out my days with counsel, and was in all of them a personal blessing.

Dispensing information was a habit which Peter Corke incorrigibly established – one of the things she could not help. I believe an important reason why she liked me was because I gave her such unlimited opportunities for indulging it, and she said I simulated gratitude fairly well. For my own part, I always liked it, whether it was at the expense of my accent or my idioms, my manners or my morals, my social theories or my general education, and encouraged her in it. I was pleased with the idea that she found me interesting enough to make it worth while, for one thing, and then it helped my understanding of the lady herself better than anything else would have done. And many voyages and large expense might go into the balance against an acquaintance with Peter Corke.

Miss Corke was more ardently attached to the Past than anybody I have ever known or heard of that did not live in it. Her interest did not demand any great degree of antiquity, though it increased in direct ratio with the centuries; the mere fact that a thing was over and done with, laid on the shelf, or getting mossy and forgotten, was enough to secure her respectful consideration. She liked old folios and prints – it was her pastime to poke in the dust of ages; I've seen her placidly enjoying a graveyard – with no recent interments – for half an hour at a time. She had a fine scorn of the Present in all its forms and phases. If I heard her speak with appreciation of anybody with whose reputation I was unacquainted, I generally found it safe to ask, intelligently, 'When did he die?' She always knew exactly, and who attended the funeral, and what became of the children, and whether the widow got an annuity from the Government or not, being usually of the opinion that the widow should have had the annuity.

Of course, it was Miss Corke who took me down into Fleet Street to see where Dr. Johnson used to live. I did not hear the name of Dr. Johnson from another soul in London during the whole of my visit. My friend bore down through the Strand, and past that mediæval griffin where Temple Bar was, that claws the air in protection of your placid Prince in a frock-coat underneath – stopping here an instant for anathema – and on into the crook of Fleet Street, under St. Paul's, with all the pure delight of an enthusiastic cicerone in her face. I think Peter loved the Strand and Fleet Street almost as well as Dr. Johnson did, and she always wore direct descendants of the seven-league boots. This was sometimes a little trying for mine, which had no pedigree, though, in other respects – ; but I must not be led into the statement that shoemaking is not scientifically apprehended in this country. I have never yet been able to get anybody to believe it.

'This,' said Miss Corke, as we emerged from a dark little alley occupied by two unmuzzled small boys and a dog into a dingy rectangle, where the London light came down upon unblinking rows of windows in walls of all colours that get the worse for wear – 'this is Gough Court. Dr. Johnson lived here until the death of his wife. You remember that he had a wife, and she died?'

'I have not the least doubt of it,' I replied.

'I've no patience with you!' cried Miss Corke, fervently. 'Well, when she died he was that disconsolate, in spite of his dictionaries, that he couldn't bear it here any longer, and moved away.'

'I don't think that was remarkable,' I said, looking round; to which Miss Corke replied that it was a fine place in those days, and Johnson paid so many pounds, shillings, and pence rent for it every Lady Day. 'I am waiting,' she said, with ironical resignation, 'for you to ask me which house.'

'Oh!' said I. 'Which house?'

'That yellowish one, at the end, idjit!' said Peter, with exasperation. 'Now, if you please, we'll go!'

I took one long and thoughtful look at the yellowish house at the end, and tried to imagine the compilation of lexicons inside its walls about the year 1748, and turned away feeling that I had done all within my personal ability for the memory of Dr. Johnson. Miss Corke, however, was not of that opinion. 'He moved to Johnson's Court somewhat later,' she said, 'which you must be careful to remember was not named from him. We'll just go there now.'

'Is it far?' I asked; 'because there must be other celebrities – '

'Far!' repeated Miss Corke, with a withering accent; 'not ten minutes' walk! Do the trams run everywhere in America? There may be other celebrities – London is a good place for them – but there's only one Samuel Johnson.'

We went through various crooked ways to Johnson's Court, Miss Corke explaining and reviling at every step. 'We hear' she remarked with fine scorn, 'of intelligent Americans who come over here and apply themselves diligently to learn London! And I've never met a citizen of you yet,' she went on, ignoring my threatening parasol, 'that was not quite satisfied at seeing one of Johnson's houses – houses he lived in! You are a nation of tasters, Miss Mamie Wick of Chicago!' At which I declared myself, for the honour of the Stars and Stripes, willing to swallow any quantity of Dr. Johnson, and we turned into a little paved parallelogram seven times more desolate than the first. Its prevailing idea was soot, relieved by scraps of blackened ivy that twisted along some of the window-sills. I once noticed very clever ivy decorations in iron upon a London balcony, and always afterwards found some difficulty in deciding between that and the natural vine, unless the wind blew. And I would not like to commit myself about the ivy that grew in Johnson s Court. 'Dear me!' said I; 'so he lived here, too! 'I do not transcribe this remark because it struck me as particularly clever, but because it seems to me to be the kind of thing anybody might have said without exciting indignation. But Peter immediately began to fulminate again. 'Yes,' she said, 'he lived here too, miss, at No. 7, as you don't appear to care to know. A little intelligent curiosity.' she continued, apparently appealing to the Samuel Johnson chimneys, 'would be gratifying!'

We walked around these precincts several times, while Miss Corke told me interesting stories that reminded me of Collier's 'English Literature' at school, and asked me if by any chance I had ever heard of Boswell. I loved to find myself knowing something occasionally, just to annoy Peter, and when I said certainly, he was the man to whom Dr. Johnson owed his reputation, it had quite the usual effect.

'We shall now go to Bolt Court,' said my friend, 'where Samuel spent the last of his days, surrounded by a lot of old ladies that I don't see how he ever put up with, and from which he was carried to Westminster Abbey in 1784. Hadn't you better put that down?'

Now Peter Corke would never have permitted me to call Dr. Johnson 'Samuel.'

I looked round Johnson's Court with lingering affection, and hung back. 'There is something about this place,' I said, 'some occult attraction, that makes me hate to leave it. I believe, Peter, that the Past, under your influence, is beginning to affect me properly. I dislike the thought of remaining for any length of time out of reach, as it were, of the memory of Dr. Johnson.'

Peter looked at me suspiciously. 'He lived at Bolt Court as well,' she said.

'Nowhere between here and there?' I asked. 'No friend's house, for instance, where he often spent the night? Where did that lady live who used to give him nineteen cups of tea at a sitting? Couldn't we pause and refresh ourselves by looking at her portals on the way?'

'Transatlantic impertinence,' cried Miss Corke, leading the way out, 'is more than I can bear!'

'But,' I said, still hanging back, 'about how far – ?'

When my dear friend gave vent to the little squeal with which she received this, I knew that her feelings were worked up to a point where it was dangerous to tamper with them, so I submitted to Bolt Court, walking with humility all the way. When we finally arrived I could see no intrinsic difference between this court and the others, except that rather more – recently – current literature had blown up from an adjacent news-stall. For a person who changed his residence so often, Dr. Johnson's domestic tastes must have undergone singularly little alteration.

'He went from here to Westminster Abbey, I think you said,' I remarked, respectfully, to Peter.

'In 1784,' said Peter, who is a stickler for dates.

'And has not moved since!' I added, with some anxiety, just to aggravate Peter, who was duly aggravated.

'Well,' I responded, 'we saw Westminster Abbey, you remember. And I took particular notice of the monument to Dr. Johnson. We needn't go there.'

'It's in St. Paul's!' said Peter, in a manner which wounded me, for if there is an unpleasant thing it is to be disbelieved.

'And which house did Dr. Johnson live in here?' I inquired.

'Come,' said Peter, solemnly, 'and I'll show you.'

'It has been lost to posterity,' she continued, with depression – 'burnt in 1819. But we have the site – there!'

'Oh!' I replied. 'We have the site. That is – that is something, I suppose. But I don't find it very stimulating to the imagination.'

'You haven't any!' remarked Miss Corke, with vehemence; and I have no doubt she had reason to think so. As a matter of fact, however, the name of Samuel Johnson is not a household word in Chicago. We don't govern our letter-writing by his Dictionary, and as to the 'Tatler' and the 'Rambler,' it is impossible for people living in the United States to read up the back numbers of even their own magazines. It is true that we have no excuse for not knowing 'Rasselas,' but I've noticed that at home hardly any of the English classics have much chance against Rider Haggard, and now that Rudyard Kipling has arisen it will be worse still for elderly respectable authors like Dr. Johnson. So that while I was deeply interested to know that the great lexicographer had hallowed such a considerable part of London with his residence, I must confess, to be candid, that I would have been satisfied with fewer of his architectural remains. I could have done, for instance, without the site, though I dare say, as Peter says, they were all good for me.

Before I reached Lady Torquilin's flat again that day, Peter showed me the particular window in Wine Office Court where dear little Goldsmith sat deploring the bailiff and the landlady when Dr. Johnson took the 'Vicar' away and sold it for sixty pounds – that delightful old fairy godfather whom everybody knows so much better than as the author of 'Rasselas.' And the 'Cheshire Cheese,' on the other side of the way, that quaintest of low-windowed taverns, where the two sat with their friends over the famous pudding that is still served on the same day of the week. Here I longed in especial to go inside and inquire about the pudding, and when we might come down and have some; but Peter said it was not proper for ladies, and hurried me on. As if any impropriety could linger about a place a hundred and fifty years old!

The Temple also we saw that day, and Goldsmith's quiet, solitary grave in the shadow of the old Knights' Church, more interesting and lovable there, somehow, than it would be in the crowd at Westminster. Miss Peter Corke was entirely delightful in the Temple, whether she talked of Goldsmith's games and dancing over Blackstone's sedate head in Brick Court, or of Elizabeth sitting on the wide platform at the end of the Middle Temple Hall at the first performance of' 'Twelfth Night,' where, somewhere beneath those dusky oak rafters, Shakespeare made another critic. Peter never talked scandal in the present tense, on principle, but a more interesting gossip than she was of a century back I never had a cup of tea with, which we got not so very far from the Cock Tavern in Fleet Street; and I had never known before that Mr. Pepys was a flirt.