A Traveler at Forty by Theodore Dreiser - HTML preview

CHAPTER VII
A GLIMPSE OF LONDON

AFTER a few days I went to London for the first time—I do not count the night of my arrival, for I saw nothing but the railway terminus—and, I confess, I was not impressed as much as I might have been. I could not help thinking on this first morning, as we passed from Paddington, via Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Park Lane, Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, Berkeley Square, Piccadilly and other streets to Regent Street and the neighborhood of the Carlton Hotel, that it was beautiful, spacious, cleanly, dignified and well ordered, but not astonishingly imposing. Fortunately it was a bright and comfortable morning and the air was soft. There was a faint bluish haze over the city, which I took to be smoke; and certainly it smelled as though it were smoky. I had a sense of great life but not of crowded life, if I manage to make myself clear by that. It seemed to me at first blush as if the city might be so vast that no part was important. At every turn Barfleur, who was my ever-present monitor, was explaining, “Now this that we are coming to,” or “This that we are passing,” or “This is so and so;” and so we sped by interesting things, the city impressing me in a vague way but meaning very little at the moment. We must have passed through a long stretch of Piccadilly, for Barfleur pointed out a line of clubs, naming them—the St. James’s Club, the Savile Club, the Lyceum Club, and then St. James’s Palace.

I was duly impressed. I was seeing things which, after all, I thought, did not depend so much upon their exterior beauty or vast presence as upon the import of their lineage and connections. They were beautiful in a low, dark way, and certainly they were tinged with an atmosphere of age and respectability. After all, since life is a figment of the brain, built-up notions of things are really far more impressive in many cases than the things themselves. London is a fanfare of great names; it is a clatter of vast reputations; it is a swirl of memories and celebrated beauties and orders and distinctions. It is almost impossible any more to disassociate the real from the fictitious or, better, spiritual. There is something here which is not of brick and stone at all, but which is purely a matter of thought. It is disembodied poetry; noble ideas; delicious memories of great things; and these, after all, are better than brick and stone. The city is low—universally not more than five stories high, often not more than two, but it is beautiful. And it alternates great spaces with narrow crevices in such a way as to give a splendid variety. You can have at once a sense of being very crowded and of being very free. I can understand now Browning’s desire to include “poor old Camberwell” with Italy in the confines of romance.

The thing that struck me most in so brief a survey—we were surely not more than twenty minutes in reaching our destination—was that the buildings were largely a golden yellow in color, quite as if they had been white and time had stained them. Many other buildings looked as though they had been black originally and had been daubed white in spots. The truth is that it was quite the other way about. They had been snow white and had been sooted by the smoke until they were now nearly coal black. And only here and there had the wind and rain whipped bare white places which looked like scars or the drippings of lime. At first I thought, “How wretched.” Later I thought, “This effect is charming.”

We are so used to the new and shiny and tall in America, particularly in our larger cities, that it is very hard at first to estimate a city of equal or greater rank, which is old and low and, to a certain extent, smoky. In places there was more beauty, more surety, more dignity, more space than most of our cities have to offer. The police had an air of dignity and intelligence such as I have never seen anywhere in America. The streets were beautifully swept and clean; and I saw soldiers here and there in fine uniforms, standing outside palaces and walking in the public ways. That alone was sufficient to differentiate London from any American city. We rarely see our soldiers. They are too few. I think what I felt most of all was that I could not feel anything very definite about so great a city and that there was no use trying.

We were soon at the bank where I was to have my American order for money cashed; and then, after a short walk in a narrow street, we were at the office of Barfleur, where I caught my first glimpse of an English business house. It was very different from an American house of the same kind, for it was in an old and dark building of not more than four stories—and set down in a narrow angle off the Strand and lighted by small lead-paned windows, which in America would smack strongly of Revolutionary days. In fact we have scarcely any such buildings left. Barfleur’s private offices were on the second floor, up a small dingy staircase, and the room itself was so small that it surprised me by its coziness. I could not call it dingy. It was quaint rather, Georgian in its atmosphere, with a small open fire glowing in one corner, a great rolltop desk entirely out of keeping with the place in another, a table, a book-case, a number of photographs of celebrities framed, and the rest books. I think he apologized for, or explained the difference between, this and the average American business house, but I do not think explanations are in order. London is London. I should be sorry if it were exactly like New York, as it may yet become. The smallness and quaintness appealed to me as a fit atmosphere for a healthy business.

I should say here that this preliminary trip to London from Bridgely Level, so far as Barfleur was concerned, was intended to accomplish three things: first, to give me a preliminary glimpse of London; second, to see that I was measured and examined for certain articles of clothing in which I was, according to Barfleur, woefully lacking; and third, to see that I attended the concert of a certain Austrian singer whose singing he thought I might enjoy. It was most important that I should go, because he had to go; and since all that I did or could do was merely grist for my mill, I was delighted to accompany him.

Barfleur in many respects, I wish to repeat here, is one of the most delightful persons in the world. He is a sort of modern Beau Brummel with literary, artistic and gormandizing leanings. He loves order and refinement, of course,—things in their proper ways and places—as he loves life. I suspect him at times of being somewhat of a martinet in home and office matters; but I am by no means sure that I am not doing him a grave injustice. A more even, complaisant, well-mannered and stoical soul, who manages to get his way in some fashion or other, if it takes him years to do it, I never met. He surely has the patience of fate and, I think, the true charity of a great heart. Now before I could be properly presented in London and elsewhere I needed a long list of things. So this morning I had much shopping to attend to.

Since the matter of English and American money had been troubling me from the moment I reached that stage on my voyage where I began to pay for things out of my own pocket to the ship’s servants, I began complaining of my difficulties now. I couldn’t figure out the tips to my own satisfaction and this irritated me. I remember urging Barfleur to make the whole matter clear to me, which he did later. He gave me a typewritten statement as to the relative value of the various pieces and what tips I should pay and how and when at hotels and country houses, and this I followed religiously. Here it is:

If you reckon at a hotel to give 9d. a day to the maid and the valet, with a minimum of 1/-, you will be doing handsomely. On a visit, on the supposition that they have only maids, give the two maids whom you are likely to come across 2/6 each, when you come away on Monday. (I am speaking of weekends.) Longer periods should be figured at 9d. a day. If, on the other hand, it is a large establishment—butler and footman—you would have to give the butler 10/- and the footman 5/- for a week-end; for longer periods more.

I cannot imagine anything more interesting than being introduced as I was by Barfleur to the social character of London. He was so intelligent and so very nice about it all. “Now, first,” he said, “we will get your glasses mended; and then you want a traveling bag; and then some ties and socks, and so on. I have an appointment with you at your tailor’s at eleven o’clock, where you are to be measured for your waistcoats, and at eleven-thirty at your furrier’s, where you are to be measured for your fur coat,” and so on and so forth. “Well, come along. We’ll be off.”

I have to smile when I think of it, for I, of all people, am the least given to this matter of proper dressing and self-presentation, and Barfleur, within reasonable limits, represents the other extreme. To him, as I have said, these things are exceedingly important. The delicate manner in which he indicated and urged me into getting the things which would be all right, without openly insisting on them, was most pleasing. “In England, you know,” he would hint, “it isn’t quite good form to wear a heavy striped tie with a frock coat—never a straight black; and we never tie them in that fashion—always a simple knot.” My socks had to be striped for morning wear and my collars winged, else I was in very bad form indeed. I fell into the habit of asking, “What now?”

London streets and shops as I first saw them interested me greatly. I saw at once more uniforms than one would ordinarily see in New York, and more high hats and, presumably,—I could not tell for the overcoats—cutaway coats. The uniforms were of mail-men, porters, messenger-boys and soldiers; and all being different from what I had been accustomed to, they interested me—the mail-men particularly, with a service helmet cut square off at the top; and the little messenger boys, with their tambourine caps cocked joyously over one ear, amused me; the policeman’s helmet strap under his chin was new and diverting.

In the stores the clerks first attracted my attention, but I may say the stores and shops themselves, after New York, seemed small and old. New York is so new; the space given to the more important shops is so considerable. In London it struck me that the space was not much and that the woodwork and walls were dingy. One can tell by the feel of a place whether it is exceptional and profitable, and all of these were that; but they were dingy. The English clerk, too, had an air of civility, I had almost said servility, which was different. They looked to me like individuals born to a condition and a point of view; and I think they are. In America any clerk may subsequently be anything he chooses (ability guaranteed), but I’m not so sure that this is true in England. Anyhow, the American clerk always looks his possibilities—his problematic future; the English clerk looks as if he were to be one indefinitely.

We were through with this round by one o’clock, and Barfleur explained that we would go to a certain very well-known hotel grill.

The hotel, after its fashion—the grill—was a distinct blow. I had fancied that I was going to see something on the order of the luxurious new hotel in New York—certainly as resplendent, let us say, as our hotels of the lower first class. Not so. It could be compared, and I think fairly so, only to our hotels of the second or third class. There was the same air of age here that there was about our old but very excellent hotels in New York. The woodwork was plain, the decorations simple.

As for the crowd, well, Barfleur stated that it might be smart and it might not. Certain publishers, rich Jewish merchants, a few actors and some Americans would probably be here. This grill was affected by the foreign element. The maître d’hôtel was French, of course—a short, fat, black-whiskered man who amused me by his urbanity. The waiters were, I believe, German, as they are largely in London and elsewhere in England. One might almost imagine Germany intended invading England via its waiters. The china and plate were simple and inexpensive, almost poor. A great hotel can afford to be simple. We had what we would have had at any good French restaurant, and the crowd was rather commonplace-looking to me. Several American girls came in and they were good-looking, smart but silly. I cannot say that I was impressed at all, and my subsequent experiences confirm that feeling. I am inclined to think that London hasn’t one hotel of the material splendor of the great new hotels in New York. But let that go for the present.

While we were sipping coffee Barfleur told me of a Mrs. W., a friend of his whom I was to meet. She was, he said, a lion-hunter. She tried to make her somewhat interesting personality felt in so large a sea as London by taking up with promising talent before it was already a commonplace. I believe it was arranged over the ’phone then that I should lunch there—at Mrs. W.’s—the following day at one and be introduced to a certain Lady R., who was known as a patron of the arts, and a certain Miss H., an interesting English type. I was pleased with the idea of going. I had never seen an English lady lion-hunter. I had never met English ladies of the types of Lady R. and Miss H. There might be others present. I was also informed that Mrs. W. was really not English but Danish; but she and her husband, who was also Danish and a wealthy broker, had resided in London so long that they were to all intents and purposes English, and in addition to being rich they were in rather interesting standing socially.

After luncheon we went to hear a certain Miss T., an Austrian of about thirty years of age, sing at some important hall in London—Bechstein Hall, I believe it was,—and on the way I was told something of her. It seemed that she was very promising—a great success in Germany and elsewhere as a concert-singer—and that she might be coming to America at some time or other. Barfleur had known her in Paris. He seemed to think I would like her. We went and I heard a very lovely set of songs—oh, quite delightful, rendered in a warm, sympathetic, enthusiastic manner, and representing the most characteristic type of German love sentiment. It is a peculiar sentiment—tender, wistful, smacking of the sun at evening and lovely water on which the moon is shining. German sentiment verges on the mushy—is always close to tears—but anything more expressive of a certain phase of life I do not know.

Miss T. sang forcefully, joyously, vigorously, and I wished sincerely to meet her and tell her so; but that was not to be, then.

As we made our way to Paddington Barfleur, brisk and smiling, asked:

“Were you amused?”

“Quite.”

“Well, then this afternoon was not wasted. I shall always be satisfied if you are amused.”

I smiled, and we rode sleepily back to Bridgely Level to dine and thence to bed.