Around the clock in Europe

by Charles Fish Howell

But the appeal of the “halls,” which began when the curtains of the Alhambra and the Pavilion went up at seven-thirty, grows almost imperative as the hour wears around toward eight. The rank of waiting cabs up the middle of Haymarket is thinned to the merest trickle. “Heavy swells” of clubdom and the West End are strolling in groups across the wide, statue-dotted expanse of Trafalgar Square, stopping to scratch matches on the lions of Nelson’s Column or General Gordon’s granite base. The artists are forsaking the studios of Chelsea, the real bohemians—not the pretenders of the Savage Club and the Vagabond dinners—the cheap restaurants and the performing monkeys of Soho, the students their quiet quarters in Bloomsbury and the forty miles of book-shelves of the British Museum, the musicians their Baker Street lodgings up Madame Tussaud’s way, the literary people their charming Kensington, and even the gay Italians are deserting the organ-grinding on Saffron Hill and the disorder of St. Giles—and all are rapidly moving on Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, and the Strand. There they will view the elaborate ballets according to their means; from the “pit” for a shilling, or from a grand circle “stall” for seven shillings sixpence, with another sixpence to the girl usher for a programme loaded with advertisements. It is the hour when Pierce Egan would have summoned “Tom and Jerry” to be in at the inaugural of the night life of the great city, and Colonel Newcome would have marched Clive out of the “Cave of Harmony” to hear less offensive entertainers at the “halls.” It is the time Stevenson’s “New Arabian Nights” has invested with the richest potentiality for adventure, and when, in consequence, any polite tobacconist is likely suddenly to disclose himself as a reigning sovereign in disguise. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, you may be sure, are never in their Baker Street lodgings at such a time as this. In the preliminary uproar about the bars of the favorite cafés and in the flashing of electric signs, glare of lights, and rush of hansoms and motors, one may discern the beginnings of “a night of it” for many whom the early sun will surprise with bleared eyes and battered top-hats about the coffee-booths of Covent Garden. And, indeed, unless you have access to a club, night-foraging is a highly difficult undertaking in London. Every restaurant closes down at half an hour after midnight; and thereafter, unless you come across a chance “luncheon-bar” that defies the authorities, or a friendly cabman introduces you to a “shelter,” you may have to content yourself with a hard-boiled egg at a coffee-stall. Many a sturdy Briton trudging along behind his linkman could have found better accommodation two hundred years ago when the watch went by with stave and lantern and cried out that it was two o’clock and a fine morning.

With Big Ben in Parliament Watch Tower throwing his full thirteen tons into an effort to advise as many Londoners as possible that it is eight o’clock at last, and with a band concert in progress in the Villiers Street Garden of the Embankment, as agreeable a lounging-place as one could desire is the beautiful expanse of Waterloo Bridge. Not only is the prospect fair and inspiring, but the great bridge itself is worthy of it. Said Gautier, “It is surely the finest in the world”; said Canova, “It is worthy of the Romans.” Pallid and broad and long, and so level that its double lines of fine lights scarcely rise to the slightest of arcs, it rests with rare grace on its nine sweeping arches and spans the Thames just where the great bend is made to the east. One looks along it northward and sees the lamps of Wellington Street fade into the blurring dazzle of the Strand and Longacre, and southward to find the converging lights of Waterloo Road sending a bright arrow straight to the heart of Southwark. The greensward of the flowered and statued Embankment sweeps across and back on either side of its northern end, and palace hotels, Somerset House and the huge glass roof of Charing Cross Station bulk large at hand. Eastward the Ionic columns of Blackfriars Bridge and the strutting iron arches of Southwark Bridge stalk boldly across the serene river, and southwestward the broad arch of Westminster Bridge offers Parliament cheer to glum Lambeth. It would be the most natural mistake in the world to suppose the trim buildings of St. Thomas Hospital, on the Surrey bank, a favored row of handsome detached summer villas, with owners of strong political influence to be able to build on the fine long curve of the Albert Embankment, having no less a vis-à-vis than the terraces and glorious Gothic pile of Parliament buildings on their thousand feet of “noblest water front in the world.”

Only the mind’s eye may look farther on to Chelsea and take note of the tall plane-trees of Cheyne Walk, and re-people the red brick terraces and homely old houses with Sir Thomas More entertaining Erasmus and Holbein, with Addison and Steele in revelry at Don Saltero’s coffee-house, with Byron at home in the amazing disorder of Leigh Hunt’s cottage, with Tennyson smoking long pipes with Carlyle, with Turner and Whistler bending over their palettes, and with Rossetti, Swinburne, and Meredith courting the Muses under a common roof and in a common brotherhood.

LONDON, ST. PAUL’S FROM UNDER WATERLOO BRIDGE

To the observer on Waterloo Bridge the deep roar of the city comes out dulled and subdued. Bells chime softly and the whistles of the river-craft sound, from time to time, with sudden and startling shrillness. Long shafts of light shake out from either bank and spots of color from signal lamps dot the nearer rim. All outside is a bright dazzle, with patches of deep shadow and heavy ripples from the brown-sailed lighters and pert steamers that move across the shining reaches. The gloomy Southwark shore is blurred and uncertain in light mists, and the roof masses of the frowning city lift the ghostly fingers of Wren’s slender spires and cower beneath the indistinct and cloudlike silhouette of the dome of St. Paul’s. The prospect is that of a vast, confused expanse of indistinguishable, shadowy blending of buildings and foliage whose remoter verges merge into a soft violet blur, and over all of it rages a wild snowstorm of tiny pin-point lights. Under the arches of the bridge old Father Thames moves serenely seaward, the most ancient and yet ever the youngest member of the community. From his continual renewal of life one could believe that in some long-forgotten time he had won this reward when he, too, had achieved the Holy Grail among the stout knights up Camelot way “in the dayes of Vther pendragon when he was kynge of all Englond and so regned.” With true British reserve he whispers to a stranger no word of such secrets as once he confided at this bridge to Dickens, of the savagery and cruelty of this London that has driven so many of its desperate children to peace within his sheltering arms,—

“Mad with life’s history,

Glad to death’s mystery

Swift to be hurled—

Anywhere, anywhere,