An American Girl in London

XI

I HAD not the least expectation of being fortunate enough to see your Parliament open, having always heard that all the peeresses wanted to go on that occasion, and knowing how little sitting accommodation you had for anybody. Americans find nothing more impressive in England than the difficulty of getting a look at your system of government – our own is so very accessible to everyone who chooses to study it, and to come and sit in the general gallery of the House of Congress or the Senate without making a disturbance. The thing an American tells first, and with most pride, when he comes home after visiting England, is that he has attended a sitting of Parliament and seen Mr. Gladstone; if he has heard your veteran politician speak, he is prouder still. So I had cherished the hope of somehow getting into the House while Parliament was in session, and seeing all the people we read so much about at home in connection with the Irish Question – it was the thing, I believe, I had set my heart upon doing most; but tickets for the opening of Parliament from Mr. Mafferton, with a note informing Lady Torquilin that his cousin had promised to look after us on the occasion, represented more than my highest aspiration.

Lady Torquilin was pleased, too, though I don't think she intended to express her pleasure when she said, with an air of philosophical acceptance of whatever Fate might send, 'Providence only knows, my dear, how the old man will behave! He may be as agreeable as possible – as merry as a grig – and he may be in a temper like the – '; and Lady Torquilin compressed her lips and nodded her head in a way that told me how her remark would finish if she were not a member of the Church of England, rather low, and a benefactor to deep-sea fishermen and Dr. Barnardo, with a strong objection to tobacco in any form. 'We must avoid subjects that are likely to provoke him: local self-government for Ireland has given him apoplexy twice; I've heard of his getting awful tantrums about this last Licensing Bill; and marriage with a deceased wife's sister, I know, is a thing to avoid!'

Then it dawned upon me that this was Mr. Mafferton's cousin, who was a lord, and I had a very great private satisfaction that I should see what he was like.

'I remember,' I said. 'This is the cousin that you said was an old – '

'Brute!' Lady Torquilin finished for me, seeing that I didn't quite like to. 'So he is, when he's in a rage! I wouldn't be Lady Mafferton, poor dear, for something! An ordinary "K" and an ordinary temper for me!' I asked Lady Torquilin what she meant by 'an ordinary K'; and in the next half-hour I got a lesson on the various distinctions of the English aristocracy that interested me extremely. Lady Torquilin's 'K,' I may say, while I am talking about it, was the 'C.M.G.' kind, and not the 'K' sometimes conferred late in life upon illustrious butchers. Lady Torquilin didn't seem to think much of this kind of 'K,' but I was glad to hear of it. It must be a great encouragement to honesty and industry in the humbler walks of life, or, as you would say, among the masses; and though, I suppose, it wouldn't exactly accord with our theory of government, I am sorry we have nothing even remotely like it in America.

It was a nice day, a lovely day, an extraordinary day, the February day Lady Torquilin and I compromised upon a hansom and drove to the Parliament buildings. A person has such a vivid, distinct recollection of nice days in London! The drive knocked another of my preconceived ideas to pieces – the idea that Westminster was some distance off, and would have to be reached by train – not quite so far, perhaps, as Washington is from New York, for that would just as likely as not put it in the sea, but a considerable distance. I suppose you will think that inexcusable; but it is very difficult to be enough interested in foreign capitals to verify vague impressions about them, and Westminster is a large-sounding name, that suggests at least a mayor and a town council of its own. It was odd to find it about twenty minutes from anywhere in Loudon, and not to know exactly when you had arrived until the cab rolled under the shadow of the Abbey, and stopped in the crowd that waited to cheer the great politicians. Lady Torquilin immediately asked one of the policemen which way to go – I don't know anybody who appreciates what you might call the encyclopaedic value of the London police more that Lady Torquilin – and he waved us on. 'Straight ahead, madame, and turn in at the 'orseback statyou,' he said, genially, the distance being not more than two hundred yards from where we stood, and the turning-in point visible On the way, notwithstanding, Lady Torquilin asked two other policemen. My friend loves the peace of mind that follows absolute certainty. Presently we were following the rustling elegance of two or three tall ladies, whom I at once pronounced to be peeresses, through the broad, quiet, red corridor that leads to the House of Lords.

We were among the very first, and had our choice of the long, narrow seats that run along the wall in a terrace on each side of the Chamber. Fortunately, Lady Torquilin had attended other openings of Parliament, and knew that we must sit on the left; otherwise we might just as likely as not have taken our places on the other side, where there were only two or three old gentlemen with sticks and silk hats – which, I reflected afterwards, would have been awful. But, as it happened, we sat down very decorously in our proper places, and I tried to realise, as we looked at the crowded galleries and the long, narrow, solemn crimson room with the throne-chair at one end, that I was in the British House of Lords. Our Senate, just before the opening of Congress, is so very different. Most of the senators are grey-haired, and many of them are bald, but they all walk about quite nimbly, and talk before the proceedings begin with a certain vivacity; and there are pages running round with notes and documents, and a great many excited groups in the lobbies, and a general air of crisp business and alacrity everywhere. The only thing I could feel in the House of Lords that morning was a concentrated atmospheric essence of Importance. I was thinking of a thing Senator Ingalls said to me two years ago, which was what you would call 'comic,' when the idea struck me that it was almost time for Parliament to open, and not a single peer had arrived. So I asked Lady Torquilin when the lords might be expected to come in. Up to this time we had been discussing the millinery by which we were surrounded.

'I daresay there won't be many to-day,' said Lady Torquilin. 'Certainly very few so far!'

'Are there any here?' I asked her.

'Oh, yes – just opposite, don't you see, child! That wellset-up man with the nice, wholesome face, the third from the end in the second row from the bottom – that's Lord Rosebery; and next him is the great beer-man – I forget his title; and here is Lord Mafferton now – don't look – coming into the first row from the bottom, and leaning over to shake hands with Lord Rosebery.'

'Tell me when I can look,' I said, 'because I want to awfully. But, Lady Torquilin, are those peers? They look very respectable and nice, I'm sure, but I did expect more in the way of clothes. Where are their flowing mantles, and their chains and swords and things?'

'Only when the Queen opens Parliament in person,' said Lady Torquilin. 'Then there is a turn-out! Now you can look at Lord Mafferton – the rude old man! Fancy his having the impudence to sit there with his hat on!'

I looked at Lord Mafferton, who certainly had not removed his hat – the large, round, shiny silk hat worn by every gentleman in England, and every commercial traveller in America. Under the hat he was very pink and fat, with rather a snubby nose, and little twinkling blue eyes, and a suggestion of white whisker about the place where his chin and his cheek disappeared into his neck. He wore lavender-kid gloves, and was inclined to corpulency. I should not have trusted this description of a peer of your realm if it had come from any other American pen than my own – I should have set it down as a gross exaggeration, due to envy, from the fact that we can neither produce peers in our own country nor keep them there for any length of time; but I was obliged to believe my own eyes, and that is the way they reported Lord Mafferton from the other side of your Upper House. There were other gentlemen in the rows opposite – gentlemen all in black, and gentlemen in light waistcoats, bearded and clean-shaven, most of them elderly, but a few surprisingly middle-aged – for your natural expectation is to see a peer venerable – but I must say there was not one that I would have picked out to be a peer, for any particular reason, in the street. And it seemed to me that, since they are constitutional, as it were, there ought to be some way of knowing them. I reasoned again, however, that perhaps my lack of discrimination was due to my not being accustomed to seeing peers – that possibly the delicate distinctions and values that make up a peer would be perfectly evident to a person born, so to speak, under the shadow of the aristocracy. And in the meantime the proceedings began by everybody standing up. I don't know whether I actually expected a procession and a band, but when I discovered that we were all standing while four or five gentlemen in red gowns walked to the other end of the room and took chairs, my emotions were those of blank surprise. Presently I felt Lady Torquilin give an emphatic tug to my skirt. 'Sit down, child!' she said. 'Everybody else has! Do you want to make a speech?' – and I sat down quickly. Then I observed that a gentleman in black, also in fancy dress, was reading something indistinctly to the four or five red-gowned gentlemen, who looked very solemn and stately, but said nothing. It was so difficult for a stranger to understand, that I did not quite catch what was said to another gentleman in black with buckled shoes, but it must have been to the purport of 'Go and fetch it!' for he suddenly began to walk out backwards, stopping at every few steps to bow with great deference to them of the red gowns, which must have been very trying, for nobody returned the bows, and he never could tell who might have come in behind him. 'I suppose he has gone out for a minute to get something,' I said to Lady Torquilin; and then she told me what, of course, I ought to have known if I had refreshed myself with a little English history before starting – that he was the Usher of the Black Rod, and had been sent to bring the members of the other Parliament. And presently there was a great sound of footsteps in the corridors outside, and your House of Commons came hurrying to the 'bar,' I believe it is called, of your House of Lords. It was wonderfully interesting to look at, to a stranger, that crowd of members of your Lower House as it came, without ceremony, to the slender brass rod and stopped there, because it could come no farther – pressing against it, laying hands upon it, craning over it, and yet held back by the visible and invisible force of it. Compared with the well-fed and well-groomed old gentlemen who sat comfortably inside, these outsiders looked lean and unkempt; but there were so many of them, and they seemed so much more in earnest than the old gentlemen on the benches, that the power of the brass rod seemed to me extraordinary. I should not have been an American if I had not wondered at it, and whether the peers in mufti would not some day be obliged to make a habit of dressing up in their mantles and insignia on these occasions to impress the Commoners properly with a sense of difference and a reason for their staying outside.

Then, as soon as they were all ready to pay attention, the Vice-Chancellor read the Queen's letter, in which Her Majesty, so far as I could understand, regretted her inability to be present, told them all a good deal about what she had been doing since she wrote last, and closed by sending her kind regards and best wishes – a very pleasant letter, I thought, and well-written. Then we all stood up again while the gentlemen in red, the Lord Chancellor, and the others walked out; after which everybody dispersed, and I found myself shaking hands with Lord Mafferton in a pudgy, hearty way, as he and Lady Torquilin and I departed together.

'So this is our little Yankee!' said Lord Mafferton, with his fat round chin stretched out sideways, and his hands behind his back. Now I am quite five-feet eight, and I do not like being called names, but I found a difficulty in telling Lord Mafferton that I was not their little Yankee; so I smiled, and said nothing. 'Well, well! Come over the "duckpond" – isn't that what you call the Atlantic Ocean? – to see how fast old England is going to pieces, eh?'

'Oh!' said Lady Torquilin, 'I think Miss Wick is delighted with England, Lord Mafferton.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I am. Delighted with it! Why should anybody think it is going to pieces?'

'Oh, it's a popular fancy in some quarters,' said Lord

Mafferton. Being a lord, I don't suppose he winked at Lady Torquilin, but he did something very like it.

'I should call it a popular fallacy,' I declared; at which Lord Mafferton laughed, and said, 'It was all very well, it was all very well,' exactly like any old grandpapa. 'Miss Wick would like a look over the place, I suppose,' he said to Lady Torquilin. 'You think it would be safe, eh? No explosives concealed about her – she doesn't think of blowing us up?' And this very jocular old peer led the way through a labyrinth of chambers and corridors of which I can't possibly remember the locality or the purpose, because he went so fast.

'No doubt you've heard of Cromwell,' he said beside one door. I should have liked to know why he asked me, if there was no doubt of it; but I suppose a lord is not necessarily a logician. 'This is the room in which he signed the death-warrant of Charles the First.'

'Dear me,' I said. 'The one that he's holding a copy of on his lap at Madame Tussaud's?'

'I dare say! I dare say!' said Lord Maflerton. 'But not so fast, my dear young lady, not so fast! You mustn't go in, you know. That's not allowable!' and he whisked us away to the Library. 'Of course, Miss Wick understands,' he said to Lady Torquilin, 'that every word spoken here above a whisper means three days in a dungeon on bread and water!' By this time my ideas of peers had become so confused that I was entirely engaged in trying to straighten them out, and had very little to say of any sort; but Lord Mafferton chatted continually as we walked through the splendid rooms, only interrupting himself now and then to remind me of the dungeon and the penalty of talking. It was very difficult getting a first impression of the English House of Parliament and an English peer at the same time – they continually interrupted each other. It was in the Royal Banqueting Hall, for instance, where I was doing my best to meditate upon scenes of the past, that Lord Mafferton stated to Lady Torquilin his objection to the inside of an omnibus, and this in itself was distracting. It would never occur to anybody in America to think of a peer and an omnibus together. The vestibule of the House of Commons was full of gentlemen walking about and talking; but there was a great deliberateness about the way it was done – no excitement, and every man in his silently-expressive silk hat. They all seemed interested in each other in an observing way, too, and whether to bow or not to bow; and when Lord Mafferton recognised any of them, he was usually recognised back with great cordiality. You don't see so much of that when Congress opens. The members in the lobby are usually a great deal too much wrapped up in business to take much notice of each other. I observed, too, that the British Government does not provide cuspidores for its legislators, which struck me as reflecting very favourably upon the legislative sense of propriety here, especially as there seemed to be no obvious demand for such a thing.

'Bless you, my dear young lady, you mustn't go in there!' exclaimed Lord Mafferton at the door of the House, as I stepped in to take a perfectly inoffensive look at it. 'Out with you quick, or they'll have you off to the Tower before you can say George Washington!'

'But why?' I asked, quite breathless with my sudden exit.

'Young people should never ask "why?"' said Lord Mafferton, serio-comically. 'Thank your American stars that Salisbury or any of those fellows were not about!'

This peer evidently thought I was very, very young – about twelve; but I have noticed since that not only peers, but all agreeable old gentlemen in England, have a habit of dating you back in this way. It is a kindly, well-meant attitude, but it leaves you without very much to say.

I thought feminine privileges in your House of Commons very limited indeed then, but considerably more so when I attended a sitting with Lady Torquilin a week later, and disarranged my features for life trying to look through the diamonds of the iron grating with which Parliament tries to screen itself from the criticism of its lady relations.

Lord Mafferton came up that day with us, and explained that the grating was to prevent the ladies from throwing themselves at the heads of the unmarried members – a singular precaution. The only other reason I could hear why it should not be taken down was that nobody had done it since it was put up – a remarkably British reason, and calculated, as most things seem to be in this country, to last.

And I saw your Prince that afternoon. He came into the Peers' Gallery in a light overcoat, and sat down with two or three friends to watch his people governing their country below. He seemed thoroughly interested, and at times, when Mr. O'Brien or Mr. O'Connor said something that looked toward the dismemberment of his empire, amused. And it was an instructive sight to see your future king pleased and edified, and unencumbered by any disagreeable responsibilities, looking on.

XII

ITOLD Lady Torquilin that the expression struck me as profane.

'How ridiculous you are, child! It's a good old English word. Nobody will understand you if you talk about your "rubbers" in this country. "Goloshes," certainly. G-o-l-o-s-h-e-s, "goloshes." Now, go directly and put them on, and don't be impertinent about the English language in England, whatever you may be out of it!'

I went away murmuring, '"G-o-l-o-s-h-e-s, goloshes"! What a perfectly awful – literally unutterable word! No, I love Lady Torquilin, and I like her England, but I'll never, never, never say "goloshes"! I'd almost rather swear!' And as I slipped on the light, thin, flexible articles manufactured, I believe, in Rochester, N.Y., and privately compared them with the remarkable objects worn by the British nation for the purpose of keeping its feet dry, the difference in the descriptive terms gave me a certain satisfaction.

Lady Torquilin and I were going shopping. I had been longing to shop in London ever since I arrived, but, as Lady Torquilin remarked, my trunks seemed to make it almost unreasonable. So up to this time I had been obliged to content myself with looking at the things in the windows, until Lady Torquilin said she really couldn't spend so much time in front of shop-windows – we had better go inside. Besides, she argued, of course there was this to be said – if you bought a good thing, there it was – always a good thing! I And it isn't as if you were obliged to pinch, my dear. I would be the last one to counsel extravagance,' said Lady Torquilin. 'Therefore we'll go to the cheapest place first' – and we got an omnibus. It seemed full of people who were all going to the cheapest place, and had already come, some of them a long way, to go to it, judging by their fares. They were not poor people, nor respectably-darned people, nor shabby-genteel people. Some of them looked like people with incomes that would have enabled them to avoid the cheapest place, and some gave you the idea that, if it were not for the cheapest place, they would not look so well. But they had an invariable expression of content with the cheapest place, or appreciation of it, that made me quite certain they would all get out when we stopped there; and they did.

We went in with a throng that divided and hurried hither and thither through long 'departments,' upstairs and down, past counters heaped with cheapnesses, and under billowing clouds and streaming banners of various colours, marked 1s. 1d. and 11d. in very black letters on a very white ground. The whole place spoke of its cheapness, invited you to approach and have your every want supplied at the lowest possible scale of profit – for cash. Even the clerks – as we say in America, incorrectly, I believe – the people behind the counter suggested the sweet reasonableness of the tariff; not that I mean anything invidious, but they seemed to be drawn from an unpretending, inexpensive class of humanity. The tickets claimed your attention everywhere, and held it, the prices on them were so remarkably low; and it was to me at first a matter of regret that they were all attached to articles I could not want under any circumstances. For, the moment I went in. I succumbed to the cheapest place; I desired to avail myself of it to any extent – to get the benefit of those fascinating figures personally and immediately. I followed Lady Torquilin with eagerness, exclaiming: but nothing would induce her to stop anywhere; she went straight for the trifles she wanted, and I perforce after her. 'There are some things, my dear,' she said, when we reached the right counter, 'that one must come here for, but beyond those few odds and ends – well, I leave you to judge for yourself.'

This was calculated to dash a person's enthusiasm, and mine was dashed at once. There is nothing, in shopping, like a friend's firm and outspoken opinion, to change your views. I began to think unfavourably of the cheapest place immediately, and during the twenty-five minutes of valuable time which Lady Torquilin spent, in addition to some small silver, upon a box of pink paper trimmings for pudding-dishes, I had arrived at a state of objection to the cheapest place, which intensified as we climbed more stairs, shared more air with the British Public of the cheapest place, and were jostled at more counters. 'For,' Lady Torquilin said, 'now that we are here, though I loathe coming, except that it's something you ought to do, we really might as well see what there is!' – and she found that there were quite a number of little things at about a shilling and a ha'penny that she absolutely needed, and would have to pay 'just double for, my dear, anywhere else.' By that time my objection became active, and embraced the cheapest place and everything connected with it, quite unreasonably. For there was no doubt about the genuineness of the values offered all over its counters, or about the fact that the clerks were doing the best they could to sell seven separate shillings'-worth at the same moment to different individuals, or of the respectability of the seven people who were spending the seven shillings. It would have been a relief, indeed, to have detected something fraudulent among the bargains, or some very great adventuress among the customers. It was the deadly monotony of goodishness and cheapishness in everything and everybody that oppressed you. There were no heights of excellence and no contrasting depths – all one level of quality wherever you looked – so that the things they sold at the cheapest place – sold with mechanical respect, and as fast as they could tie them up – seemed to lack all individuality, and to have no reason for being, except to become parcels. There was none of the exultation of bargain-getting; the bargains were on a regular system of fixed laws – the poetic delight of an unexpected 'reduction' was wholly absent. The cheapest place resolved itself into a vast, well-organised Opportunity, and inside you saw the British Public and the Opportunity together.

'Ere is your chainge, madam,' said the hollow-eyed young woman who had been waiting upon Lady Torquilin in the matter of a letter-weight and a Japanese umbrella. 'Thank you,' said Lady Torquilin. 'I'm afraid you get very tired, don't you, before the day is over?' my friend asked the young woman, with as sweet a smile as she could have given anybody. The young woman smiled back again, and said, 'Very, madame'; but that was all, for three other people wanted her. I put this in because it is one of the little things she often says that show the niceness of Lady Torquilin.

'Now, what do you think of the cheapest place?' asked Lady Torquilin as we walked together in the Edgware Road. I told her as I have told you. 'H'mph!' said she. 'It's not a shop I like myself, but that's what I call being too picksome! You get what you want, and if you don't want it you leave it, and why should you care! Now, by way of variety, we'll go to the dearest place;' and the omnibus we got into rattled off in the direction of Bond Street. It struck me then, and often since, how oddly different London is from an American city to go shopping in. At home the large, important stores are pretty much together, in the business part of the city, and anybody can tell from the mere buildings what to expect in the way of style and price. In London you can't tell at all, and the well-known shops are scattered over square miles of streets, by twos and threes, in little individual towns, each with its own congregation of smaller shops, and its own butchers and bakers and newsstands, and post-office and squares and 'places,' and blind alleys and strolling cats and hand organs; and to get from one to another of the little towns it is necessary to make a journey in an omnibus. Of course, I know there are a few places preeminent in reputation and 'form' and price – above all in price – which gather in a few well-known streets; but life in all these little centres which make up London would be quite complete without them. They seem to exist for the benefit of that extravagant element here that has nothing to do with the small respectable houses and the little domestic squares, but hovers over the city during the time of year when the sun shines and the fogs are not, living during that time in notable localities, under the special inspection of the 'Morning Post.' The people who really live in London – the people of the little centres – can quite well ignore these places; they have their special shop in Uxbridge Road or St. Paul's Churchyard, and if they tire of their own particular local cut, they can make morning trips from Uxbridge Road to the High Street, Kensington, or from either to Westboume Grove. To Americans this is very novel and amusing, and we get a great deal of extra pleasure out of shopping in London in sampling, so to speak, the different submunicipalities.

While I was thinking these things, Lady Torquilin poked me with her parasol from the other end of the omnibus. 'Tell him to stop!' she said, and I did; at least, the gentleman in the corner made the request for me. That gentleman in the corner is a feature of your omnibus system, I think. His arm, or his stick, or his umbrella, is always at the service of any lady who wants the bell rung. It seems to be a duty that goes with the corner seat, cheerfully accepted by every man that sits there.

We had arrived in Bond Street, at the dearest place. From what Lady Torquilin told me, I gathered that Bond Street was a regular haunt for dearest places; but it would be impossible for any stranger to suppose so from walking through it – it is so narrow and crooked and irregular, and the shops are so comparatively insignificant after the grand sweep of Regent Street and the wide variety of the circuses. For one, I should have thought circuses would be the best possible places for business in London, not only because the address is so easily remembered, but because once you get into them they are so extremely difficult to get out of. However, a stranger never can tell.

Inside, the dearest place was a stronger contrast to the cheapest place than I could describe by any antithesis. There was an exclusive emptiness about it that seemed to suggest a certain temerity in coming in, and explained, considered commercially, why the rare visitors should have such an expensive time of it. One or two tailor-made ladies discussed something in low tones with an assistant, and beside these there was nobody but a couple of serious-minded shopwalkers, some very elegant young ladies-in-waiting, and the dummies that called your attention to the fashions they were exhibiting. The dummies were headless, but probably by the variety of their clothes they struck you as being really the only personalities in the shop. We looked at some of them before advancing far into the august precincts of the dearest place, and Lady Torquilin had a sweeping opinion of them. 'Hideous! I call them,' she said; but she said it in rather a hushed tone, quite different from the one she would have used in the cheapest place, and I am sure the shopwalker did not overhear. 'Bulgarian atrocities! How in the world people imagine such things! And as to setting to work to make them – '

I can't say I agreed with Lady Torquilin, for there was a distinct idea in all the dresses, and a person always respects an idea, whether it is pretty or not; but neither can I profess an admiration for the fashions of the dearest place. They were rather hard and unsympathetic; they seemed to sacrifice everything to be in some degree striking; their motto seemed to be, 'Let us achieve a difference' – presumably from the fashions of places that were only dear in the comparative degree. While we were looking at them, one of the pale young women strolled languidly up and remarked, with an absent expression, that one of them was 'considered a smart little gown, moddam!' 'Smart enough, I daresay,' said Lady Torquilin, with a slightly invidious emphasis on the adjective; whereat the young woman said nothing, but looked volumes of repressed astonishment at the ignorance implied. Lady Torquilin went on to describe the kind of dress I thought of buying.