Читать книгу The Adventures of M. D'Haricot - J. Storer Clouston - Страница 6

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“In that city, sire, even the manner of breathing was different.”

—PIZARRO.

WAS in London, the vastest collection of people and of houses this world has ever seen; the ganglion, the museum, the axle of the English race; the cradle of much of their genius and most of their fogs; the home of Dr. Johnson, the bishops of Canterbury, the immortal Falstaff, the effigied Fawkes; also the headquarters of all the profitable virtues, all the principles of business. With an abandon and receptivity which I am pleased to think the Creator has reserved as a consolation for the non-English, I had hardly been half an hour in the city before I had become infected with something of its spirit.

“Goddam! What ho!” I said to myself, in the English idiom. “For months, for years, forever, perhaps, I am to live among this incomprehensible people. Well, I shall strive to learn something, and, by Great Scotland! to enjoy something.” So I turned up my trousers and sallied out of my hotel.

Ah, this was life, indeed, I had come into; not more so than Paris, but differently so. Stolidly, good-naturedly, and rapidly the citizens struggle along through the crowds on the pavement. They seem like helpless straws revolving in a whirlpool. Yet does one of them wish to cross the street? Instantly a constable raises a finger, the traffic of London is stopped, and Mr. Benjamin Bull, youngest and least important son of John, passes uninjured to the farther side.

“What is this street?” I ask one of these officers, as he stands in the midst of a crossing, signalling which cab or dray shall pass him.

“Strand,” says he, stopping five omnibuses to give me this information.

“Where does it lead me?”

“Which way do you wish to proceed?” he inquires, politely, still detaining the omnibuses.

“East,” I reply, at a venture.

“First to the right, second to the left, third to the right again, and take the blue bus as far as the Elephant and Angel,” he answers, without any hesitation.

“A thousand thanks,” I gasp. “I think, on the whole, I should be safer to go westward.”

He waves his hand, the omnibuses (which by this time have accumulated to the number of fourteen) proceed upon their journey, and I, had I the key to the cipher, should doubtless be in possession of valuable information. Such is one instance of the way in which the Londoner's substitute for Providence does its business.

I shall not attempt to give at this point an exhaustive description of London. The mandates of fortune sent me at different times to enjoy amusing and embarrassing experiences in various quarters of the city, and these I shall touch upon in their places. It is sufficient to observe at present that London is a name for many cities.

A great town, like a great man, is made up of various characters strung together. Just as the soldier becomes at night the lover and next morning the philosopher, so a city is on the east a factory, on the west a palace, on the north a lodging-house. So it is with Paris, with Berlin, with all. But London is so large, so devoid of system in its creation and in its improvements, so variously populated, that it probably exceeds any in its variety.

No emperor or council of city fathers mapped the streets or regulated the houses. What edifice each man wanted that he built, guided only by the length of his purse and the depth of his barbarism; while the streets on which this arose is either the same roadway as once served the Romans, or else the speculative builder's idea of best advancing the interests of his property. Then some day comes a great company who wish to occupy a hundred metres of frontage and direct attention to their business. So many houses are pulled down and replaced by an erection twice the height of anything else, and designed, as far as possible, to imitate the cries and costume of a bookmaker. And all this time there are surviving, in nooks and corners, picturesque and venerable buildings of a by-gone age, and also, of late, are arising on all sides worthy and dignified new piles.

So that the history of each house and each street, the mental condition of their architects and the financial condition of their occupants, are written upon them plainly with a smoky finger. For you see all this through an atmosphere whose millions of molecules of carbon and of aqueous vapor darken the bricks and the stones, and hang like a veil of fine gauze before them. London is huge, but the eternal mistiness makes it seem huger still, for however high a building you climb, you can see nothing but houses and yet more houses, melting at what looks a vast distance into the blue-and-yellow haze. Really, there may be green woods and the fair slopes of a country-side within a few miles, but since you cannot see them your heart sinks, and you believe that such good things must be many leagues below the brick horizon. More than once upon a Sunday morning, when the air was clear, I have been startled to see from the Strand itself a glimpse of the Surrey hills quite near and very beautiful, and I have said, “Thank God for this!”