LETTER II.
Having some delay in giving my little Imogen her first English dinner, we saved our passage by half a minute, and were off from Liverpool at 4 precisely. The distance to London is, I believe, 220 miles, and we did it in five hours—an acceleration of speed which is lately introduced upon the English railways. There are slower trains on the same route, and the price, by these, is less. There are also three or four different kinds of cars to each train, and at different prices. I chanced to light upon the first class, and paid £5 for two places—my nurse and child counting as one. I understand, since, that many gentlemen and ladies of the most respectable rank take the second-class cars—(as few Americans would, I am sorry to say, though there would be two degrees still below them.)
This travelling at forty odd miles the hour give one’s eyes hardly time to know a tree from a cow, but here and there I got a distant view in crossing a valley, and recognized the lovely rural beauty of England, the first impression of which lasts one, like an enchanted memory, through life. Notwithstanding the great speed, the cars ran so evenly on their admirable rails, that there was no jar to prevent one’s sleeping or being comfortable, and I awoke from a very pleasant dream to find myself in London.
As I was dressing to dine out on the following day, I stopped tying my cravat to send for a physician, and here, if you please, we will make a jump over twelve days, and come to a bright morning when I was let out for a walk in Regent-street.
It is extraordinary how little the English change! Regent-street, after four or five years, is exactly what Regent-street was. The men have the same tight cravats, coats too small, overbrushed whiskers, and look of being excessively wash’d. The carriages and horses exactly the same. The cheap shops have the same placard of “selling off” in their broad windows. The blind beggars tell the same story, and are led by the same dogs; but what is stranger than all this sameness, is that the ladies look the same! The fashions have perhaps changed—in the milliners’ shops! But the Englishing that is done to French bonnets after they are bought, or the English way in which they are worn, overpowers the novelty, and gives the fair occupants of the splendid carriages of London the very same look they had ten years ago.
Still there are some slight differences observable in the street, and among others, I observe that the economical private carriage called a “Brougham” is very common. These are low cabs, holding two or four persons, with a driver, and perhaps a footman in livery on the outside seat, and one horse seems to do the work as well as two. This fashion would be well, introduced into New York—that is to say, if our city is ever to be well enough paved to make a drive any thing but a dire necessity. The paving of London is really most admirable. Vast city as it is, the streets are smooth as a floor all over it, and to ride is indeed a luxury. The break-neck, hat-jamming and dislocating jolts of Broadway must seem to English judgment an inexcusable stain on our public spirit. And, apropos of paving—the wooden pavement seems to be entirely out of favor. Regent-street is laid in wooden blocks, and in wet weather (and it rains here some part of every day,) it is so slippery that an omnibus which has been stopped in going up the street is with difficulty started again. The horses almost always come to their knees, though the ascent is very slight, and the falls of cart and carriage-horses are occurring continually. Nothing seems to “do” like the McAdam pavement, and wherever you find it in London, you find it in as perfect order as the floor of a bowling-alley. I see that all heavy vehicles are compelled to have very broad wheels, and they rather improve the road than spoil it. A law to the same effect should be passed in New York, if it ever has a pavement worth preserving.
Observing Lady Blessington’s faultless equipage standing at the door of the Cosmorama, I went in and saw her Ladyship for a moment. She said she was suffering from recent illness, but I thought her looking far better than when I was last in England. Her two beautiful nieces were with her, and Lord ——; and the celebrated Vidocq (for this was what they had come to see,) was showing them the disguises he had worn in his wonderful detections of criminals, the weapons he had taken from them, and all the curiosities of his career—himself the greatest. I looked at the Prince of Policemen with no little interest of course, after reading his singular memoirs. He is a fat man, very like the outline of Louis Phillippe’s figure, and his head, enormously developed in the perceptive organs, goes up so small to the top, as to resemble the pear with which the King of the French is commonly caricatured. Vidocq’s bow to me when I came in was the model of elegant and respectful suavity, but I could not repress a feeling of repugnance to him, nevertheless.
I made a couple of calls before I went home. The chief topic of conversation at both houses was the charms and eccentricities of an American belle who had lately married into a noble family. She seems to have enchanted the exclusives by treating them with the most un-deferential freedom. A few evenings since, she chanced to be surrounded by a half-dozen high bred admirers, and conversation going rather heavily, she proposed a cock-fight. Dividing the party into two sides, she tied the legs of the young men together, and set them to a game of fisticuffs—ending in a very fair representation of an action between belligerent roosters! One of her expressions was narrated with great glee. She chanced to have occasion to sneeze when sitting at dinner between two venerable noblemen. “La!” she exclaimed, “I hope I didn’t splash either of you!” I have mentioned only the drolleries of what I heard. Several instances of her readiness and wit were given, and as those who mentioned them were of the class she is shining in, their admiring tone gave a fair reflection of how she is looked upon—as the most celebrated belle and notability of high life for the present season.