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SUNDAY in London: For the first time since our arrival in the city we saw it under what passes in that latitude and language for sunshine. For ten days we had dwelt beneath a curtain of gray crape resting upon the chimney-tops, leaving the pavements dry to dustiness. “Gray crape” is poetical—rather—and sounds better than the truth, which is, that the drapery, without fold or shading, over-canopying us, was precisely in color like very dirty, unbleached muslin, a tint made fashionable within a year or so, under the name of “Queen Isabella’s linen” (“le linge de la Reine Isabeau”). The fixed cloud depressed and oppressed us singularly. It was a black screen set above the eyes, which we were all the while tempted to push up in order to see more clearly and farther—a heavy hand upon brain and chest. For the opaqueness, the clinging rimes of the “London fog,” we were prepared. Of the mysterious withholding for days and weeks of clouds threatening every minute to fall, we had never heard. We had bought umbrellas at Sangster’s, as does every sensible tourist immediately after securing rooms at a hotel, and never stirred abroad without them; but the pristine plaits had not been disturbed. Struggle as we might with the notion, we could not rid ourselves of the odd impression that the whole nation had gone into mourning. Pleasure-seeking, on the part of sojourners who respected conventionalities, savored of indecorum. We were more at our ease in the crypt of St. Paul’s, and among the dead of Westminster Abbey, than anywhere else, and felt the conclave of murderers, the blood-flecked faces of the severed heads, the genuine lunette and knife of Samson’s guillotine in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, to be “quite the thing in the circumstances.”

The evil, nameless spell was broken by the clangor of the Sabbath bells. “The gray pavilion rose” and did not fall—for twenty-four hours. Strolling through St. James’s Park in the hour preceding sunsetting, we pointed out to one another the pale blue, dappled with white, of the zenith, the reddening mists of the horizon. The ground was strewed with autumnal leaves, russet and brown. The subdued monotony of the two shades of decay did not move us to adverse criticism. The crimsons, golds, and purples that were robing woods we knew of over the water, would be incongruous in this sober-hued land. In the matter of light and color, he who tarries in England in autumn, winter, and early spring, soon learns to be thankful for small favors. We were grateful and satisfied. We were in a mood to be in love with England—“our old home;” still walked her soil as in a blessed dream, haunted only by sharp dreads of awakening to the knowledge that the realization of the hopes, and longings, and imaginings of many years was made of such stuff as had been our cloud-pictures. We were in process of an experience we were ashamed to speak of until we learned how common it was with other voyagers, whose planning and pining had resembled ours in kind and degree. None of us was willing to say how much time was given to a comical weighing of the identity question, somewhat after the fashion of poor Nelly on the roadside in the moonlight:—If this were England, who then were we? If these pilgrims were ourselves—veritable and unaltered—could it be true that we were here? If I do not express well what was as vague as tormenting, it is not because the system of spiritual and mental acclimation was not a reality.

The Palace of St. James, a range of brick and dinginess, stretched before us as we returned to the starting-point of the walk around the park, taking in the Bird-cage Walk, where Charles II. built his aviaries and lounged, Nelly Gwynne, or the Duchess of Portsmouth, at his side, a basket of puppies hung over his lace collar and ruffled cravat. It is not a palatial pile—even to eyes undried from the juice of Puck’s “little western flower.”

“It would still be a very decent abode for the horses of royalty—hardly for their grooms,” said Caput, critically. “And it is worth looking at when one remembers how long bloody Mary lay there, hideous, forsaken, half dead, the cancerous memories of Calais and Philip’s desertion consuming her vitals. There lived and died the gallant boy who was the eldest son of James I. If he had succeeded to the throne his brother Charles would have worn his head more comfortably and longer upon his shoulders. That is, unless, as in the case of Henry VIII., the manhood of the Prince of Wales had belied the promise of early youth.”

“It was in St. James’s Palace that Charles spent his last night,” I interrupted. It takes a long time for the novice to become accustomed to the strange thrill that vibrates through soul and nerves when such reminiscences overtake him, converting the place whereon he stands into holy ground. I was a novice, and rushed on impetuously. “The rooms in which he slept and made his toilet for the scaffold were in the old Manor-house, a wing of the palace since torn down. Why can’t they let things alone? But the park is here, and—” glancing dubiously along the avenues—“it is just possible—altogether possible—that some of these oldest trees may be the same that stood here then. On that morning, when—you remember?—the ground being covered lightly with snow, the king walked with a quick step across the park to Whitehall, calling to the guard, ‘Step on apace, my good fellows!’ ”

Measuring with careful eye an air line between the palace and a building with a cupola, on the St. James Street side of the park, we turned our steps along this. The dying leaves rustled under our feet, settling sighingly into the path behind us. The “light snow” had muffled the ring of the “quick step” more like the impatient tread of a bridegroom than that of a doomed man shortening the already brief space betwixt him and fate. Within the shadow of Whitehall, we paused.

“The scaffold was built just without the window of the banqueting-hall,” we reminded each other. “As late as the reign of William and Mary, the king’s blood was visible upon the window-sill. Jacobites made great capital of the insensibility of his granddaughter, who held her drawing-rooms in that very apartment. The crowd must have been densest about here, and spread far into the park. But how can we know just where the scaffold stood? It was low, for the people leaped upon it after the execution and dipped handkerchiefs in the blood, to be laid away as precious relics. Those windows are rather high!” glancing helplessly upward. “And which is the banqueting-hall?”

“Baldeker’s London” was then in press for the rescue of the next season’s traveller from like pits of perplexity. Not having it, and the “hand-books” we had provided ourselves with proving dumb guides in the emergency, the simplest and most natural road out of ignorance was to ask a question or two of some intelligent native-born Londoner.

In this wise, then, we first made the acquaintance of the Average Briton—a being who figured almost as often in our subsequent wanderings as did the travelling American. I do not undertake to say which was the more ridiculous or vexatious of the two, according as our purpose at the time of meeting them chanced to be diversion or information.

The Average Briton of this Sabbath-day was smug and rotund; in complexion, rubicund; complacent of visage, and a little rolling in gait, being duck-legged. A child trotted by him upon a pair of limbs cut dutifully after the paternal pattern, swinging upon the paternal hand. Upon the other side of the central figure, arrayed in matronly black silk and a velvet hat with a white plume, walked a lady of whom Hawthorne has left us a portrait:

“She has an awful ponderosity of frame, not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Without anything positively salient, or actually offensive, or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a seventy-four gun ship in time of peace.” I had ample time to remember and to verify each line of the picture during the parley with her husband that succeeded our encounter. A citizen of London-town was he. We were so far right in our premises. One who had attended “divine service” in the morning; partaken of roast mutton and a pint of half-and-half at an early dinner; who would presently go home from this stretch of the legs, with good appetite and conscience to a “mouthful of somethink ’ot with his tea,” and come up to time with unflagging powers to bread, cheese, cold meat, pickles, and ale, at a nine o’clock supper. Our old home teems with such. Heaven send them length of days and more wit!

Caput stepped into the path of the substantial pair; lifted his hat in recognition of the lady’s presence and apology for the interruption.

“Excuse me, sir—”

I groaned inwardly. Had I not drilled him in the omission of the luckless monosyllable ever since we saw the Highlands of Navesink melt into the horizon? How many times had I iterated and reiterated the adage?—“In England one says ‘sir’ to prince, master, or servant. It is a confession of inferiority, or an insult.” Nature and (American) grace were too strong for me.

“Excuse me, sir! But can you tell me just where the scaffold was erected on which Charles the First was executed?”

The Average Briton stared bovinely. Be sure he did not touch his hat to me, nor echo the “sir,” nor yet betray how flatteringly it fell upon his unaccustomed ear. Being short of stature, he stared at an angle of forty-five degrees to gain his interlocutor’s face, unlocked his shaven jaws and uttered in a rumbling stomach-base the Shibboleth of his tribe and nation:

“I really carnt say!”

Caput fell back in good order—i.e., raising his hat again to the Complete British Matron, whose face had not changed by so much as the twitch of an eyelid while the colloquy was in progress. She paid no attention whatever to the homage offered to the sex through “the muchness of her personality,” nor were the creases in her lord’s double chin deepened by any inclination of his head.

“The fellow is an underbred dolt!” said Caput, looking after them as they sailed along the walk.

“In that case it is a pity you called him ‘sir,’ and said ‘erected’ and ‘executed,’ ” remarked I, with excruciating mildness. “Here comes another! Ask him where King Charles was beheaded.”

No. 2 was smugger and smoother than No. 1. He had silvery hair and mutton-leg whiskers, and a cable watch-chain trained over a satin waistcoat, adjuncts which imparted a look of yet intenser respectability. There was a moral and social flavor of bank-directorships and alder-manic expectations about him, almost warranting the “sir” which slipped again from the incorrigible tongue.

We had the same answer to a word and intonation. The formula must be taught to them over their crib-rails as our babies are drilled to lisp—“Now I lay me.” Grown reckless and slightly wicked, we accosted ten others in quick succession in every variety of phraseology, of which the subject was susceptible, but always to the same effect. Where stood the scaffold of Charles the First, Charles Stuart, Charles the Martyr, Charles, father of the Merry Monarch, the grandparent of Mary of Orange and Good Queen Anne? Could any man of British mould designate to us the terminus of that quick step over the snowy park on the morning of the 30th of January, 1649, the next stage to that “which, though turbulent and troublesome, would be a very short one, yet would carry him a great way—even from earth to Heaven?”

Eight intelligent Londoners said, “I really carnt say!” more or less drawlingly. Two answered bluntly, “Dawnt know!” over their shoulders, without staying or breaking their saunter. Finally, we espied a youth sitting under a tree—one of those from which the melting snow might have dropped upon the prisoner’s head—why not the thrifty oak he had pointed out to Bishop Juxon in nearing Whitehall, as “the tree planted by my brother Henry?” The youth was neatly dressed, comely of countenance, and he held an open book, his eyes riveted upon the open page.

“That looks promising!” ejaculated Caput. There was genuine respect in his address:

“I beg your pardon for interrupting you, but can you inform me, etc., etc.?”

The student raised his head, and looked at us with lacklustre or abstracted eyes.

“Hey?”

Caput repeated the query distinctly and with emphasis.

“Chawles the First?”

“Yes!” less patiently. “The king whose head was cut off by order of Cromwell’s parliament, under the windows of Whitehall, in 1649?”

“Never heard of him!” rejoined the countryman of Hume, Macaulay, and Froude, resuming his studies.

Caput recoiled as from an electric eel. “I wouldn’t have believed it, had any one else heard and repeated it to me!” gasped he, when out of ear-shot. “Do you suppose there is a hod-carrier in Boston who does not know the history of Faneuil Hall?”

“Hundreds! Hod-carriers are usually of foreign birth.”

“Or a school-boy in America who never heard of Arnold’s treason and André’s fate? Or, for that matter, who cannot, when twelve years old, tell the whole story of King Charles’s death, even to the ‘Remember!’ as he laid his head upon the block?”

I had a new difficulty to present.

“While you have been catechizing the enlightened British public, I have been thinking—and I am afraid we are sentimentalizing in the wrong place. I have harrowing doubts as to this being the real Whitehall. The palace was burned in the time of William and Mary—or a portion of it—and but partially rebuilt by Inigo Jones. There is altogether too much of this to be the genuine article. And it is startlingly modern!”

It was a spacious building, and did not look as if it had a story. The exterior was stuccoed and smoke-blackened, but the London air would have dyed it to such complexion in ten years. A belvidere or cupola finished it above. Beneath this, on the ground-floor, separating the wings, was an archway leading into St. James Street. The citizens whom we had questioned had, with the exception of the student, emerged from or disappeared in this passage from park to thoroughfare. We saw now a sentinel, in red coat and helmet, turn in his beat up and down under the arch.

“Is this Old Whitehall?” we asked.

He shook his head without halting.

“Where is it?”

He pointed to a building on the opposite side of the street. It was two stories—lofty ones—high above the basement. Twenty-one windows shone in the handsome front. We traversed the arched passage, planted ourselves upon the sidewalk and gazed, bewildered, at the one-and-twenty windows. Through which of them had passed the kingly form we seemed to have seen for ourselves, so familiar were the oval face and pointed beard, the great eyes darkened all his life long with prophecy of doom? Through which had been borne the outraged corpse, the bloody drippings staining the sill? Upon what spot of the pavement trodden by the throng of Sabbath idlers had fallen the purple rain from a monarch’s heart? For sweet pity’s sake, had none marked the place by so much as a cross in the flagging? All else around us bore the stamp of a later age. Were the apparently venerable walls pointed out by the sentinel the banqueting-hall where the granddaughter held her court, or was this Inigo Jones’s (the Inevitable) restoration?

“One might imagine regicide so common a crime in England as not to be considered worthy of special note!” we grumbled, a strong sense of injury upon our foiled souls.

Just then down the street strode a policeman, and, at sight of our puzzled faces, hesitated with an inquiring look. I cheerfully offer my testimony here to the civility, intelligence, and general benevolence of the London police. We met them always when we needed their services, and as invariably found them ready and able to do all we required of them, sometimes insisting upon going a block out of their way to show us our route. Perfunctory politeness? It may have been, but it was so much better than none at all, or surly familiarity! The man to whom we now addressed ourselves was tall and brawny, with features that lighted pleasantly in the hearing of our tale of defeat.

“My father used to tell me,” he said, respectful still, but dropping into the easy conversational strain an exceptionally obliging New York “Bobby” might use in like circumstances, “that the king was led out through that window,” indicating, not one of the triple row in the banqueting-room, but a smaller in a lower and older wing, “and executed in front of the main hall. Some say the banqueting-chamber was not burned with the rest of the palace. Others that it was. My father was inclined to believe that this is the original building. I have heard him tell the tale over and over until you might have thought he had been there himself. The Park ran clear up to Old Whitehall then, you see—where this street is now. The crowd covered all this ground where we are standing, the soldiers being nearest the scaffold. That stood, as nearly as I can make out, about there!” tapping the sidewalk with his stick. “A few feet to the right or the left don’t make much difference, you know, sir. It does seem queer, and a little sad, there’s not so much as a stone let into the wall, or a bit of an inscription. But those were rough times, you know.”

“We are very much obliged to you!” Caput said heartily, holding out his hand, the palm significantly inverted.

The man shook his head. “Not at all, sir! Against the rules of the force! I have done nothing worth talking about. If my father were living, now! But people nowadays care less and less for old stories.”

He touched his cap in moving away.

“The truest gentleman we have met this afternoon!” pronounced Caput. “Now, we will go back into the park, out of this bustle, and think it all over!”

This had become already a pet phrase and a pet practice with us. The amateur dramatization, sometimes partially spoken, for the most part silent, was our way of appropriating and assimilating as our very own what we saw and learned. It was a family trick, understood among ourselves. Quiet, freedom from platitudinal queries and comment, and comparative solitude, were the favorable conditions for fullest enjoyment of it.

The student was so absorbed in his book—I hope it was history!—as not to see us when we passed. The sunlight fell aslant upon the dark-red walls of the old palace, lying low, long, and gloomy, across the end of the walk. A stiff, dismal place—yet Elizabeth, in all her glory, had been moderately contented with it. Within a state bed-chamber, yet to be seen, the equivocal circumstances—or the coincidences interpreted as equivocal by the faction hostile to the crown—attending the birth of the son of James II. and Mary of Modena laid the first stone of the mass of distrust that in the end crushed the hopes of “The Pretender.” The “first gentleman of Europe” opened his baby eyes in this vulgar world under the roof of the house his father had already begun to consider unfit for a king’s dwelling, and to meditate taxation of his American colonies for funds with which to build a greater. Queen Victoria was married in the Chapel of St. James, adjoining the palace. Upon the mantel of the venerable Presence-chamber are the initials of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, intertwisted in a loving tangle. They should have been fashioned in wax instead of the sterner substance that had hardly left the carver’s hand for the place of honor in the royal drawing-room before the vane of Henry’s affections veered from Anne to Jane. It is said that he congratulated himself and the new queen upon the involutions of the cipher that might be read almost as plainly “H. J.” as “H. A.” So, there it stands—the sad satire upon wedded love that mocked the eyes of discreet Jane, the one consort who died a natural death while in possession of his very temporary devotion—and the two Katherines who succeeded her.

By contrast with sombre St. James’s, Buckingham Palace is a meretricious mushroom, scarcely deserving a passing glance. The air was bland for early November, and we sat upon a bench under a tree that let slow, faded leaves down upon our heads while we “thought it all over,” until the gathering glooms in the deep archway, flanked by sentry-boxes, shaped themselves into a procession of the “born and died” in the low-browed chambers. To recite their names would be to give an abstract of the history of the mightiest realm of the earth for four centuries.

And, set apart by supreme sorrow from his fellows, ever foremost in our dream-pictures, walked he, who “made trim,” by his own command, “for his second marriage-day,” hastened through the snowy avenues of the park to find a pillow for the Lord’s anointed upon the headsman’s block before the windows of the banqueting-room of Whitehall.