Even the aristocratic quarters are "absolutely and terribly depressing and tedious"; and as for decorative beauty, this is all she can find of it in London:—
An ugly cucumber frame like Battersea Park Hall, gaudily coloured; a waggon drawn by poor, suffering horses, and laden with shrieking children, going to Epping Forest; open-air preachers ranting hideously of hell and the devil; gin-palaces, music-halls, and the flaring gas-jets on barrows full of rotting fruit, are all that London provides in the way of enjoyment or decoration for its multitudes!
Instead of which, I am free to maintain that no town of my acquaintance has such diversity of entertainment.
Paris has the bulge in the trifling, foolish matter of theatrical plays and players. But London has more and finer playhouses; as good opportunities of hearing great music; and infinitely larger and better-appointed music-halls.
London has now the finest libraries, museums, and picture-galleries; and as for out-door entertainment, no town possesses such remarkable variety as is offered at the Imperial Institute, the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, Olympia, and Earl's Court. Thereby hangs a tale.
It must be that the provincial friends who visit me are not as other men. I hear of people receiving guests from the country and taking them out for nice walks to the National Gallery, South Kensington Museum, the Tower, and other places of cultured dissipation provided by the generous rate-payer to discourage and kill off the cheap-tripper; but I have no such luck.
To my ardent, blushing commendation of national eleemosynary entertainments, the rude provincials who assail my hospitality reply with a rude provincial wink.
Frequent failure has, I fear, stripped my plausibility of its pristine bloom. Time was when I could boldly recommend Covent Garden Market at four o'clock in the morning as a first-rate attraction to the provincial pilgrim of pleasure, but your stammering tongue and quailing eye are plaguy mockers of your useful villainy.
Mrs. Dangle herself begins to look doubtfully when, on our periodical little pleasure trips, I repeat the customary: "Tower! eh? It will be such a treat!"
Ah me! Confidence was a beautiful thing. The world grows too cynical. Earl's Court is the thin end of the wedge by which the hydra-headed serpent of unbelief is bred to fly roughshod over the thin ice of irresolute dissimulation, to nip the mask of pretence in the bud, and with its cold, uncharitable eye to suck the very life-blood of that confidence which is the corner-stone and sheet-anchor of friendly trust 'twixt man and man.