LONDON SEEN THROUGH FOREIGN SPECTACLES.
In the year 1765 a Frenchman, who did not give his name, visited London, and afterwards published in Paris an account of his visit.
'I reached London,' he says, 'towards the close of the day ... and at last, quite by chance, I found myself settled in an apartment in the house of the Cruisinier Royal in Leicester Fields. This neighbourhood is filled with small houses, which are mostly let to foreigners.' On the following day he walked down Holborn and the Strand to St. Paul's, then crossed London Bridge, and returned to his hotel by walking through Southwark and Lambeth to Westminster, 'a district full of mean houses and meaner taverns.' The localities named have not greatly altered their character since then. In another place our traveller says: 'Even from the bridges it is impossible to get a view of the river, as the parapets are ten feet high.... The reason given for all this is the inclination which the English, and the Londoners especially, have for suicide. It is true that above and below the town the banks are unprotected, and offer an excellent opportunity to those who really wish to drown themselves; but the distance is great, and, besides, those who wish to leave the world in this manner prefer doing so before the eyes of the public. The parapets, however, of the new bridge [Blackfriars] which is being built will be but of an ordinary height.' Suicidal tendencies must indeed have greatly declined, since the most recently erected bridges, the new Westminster and Blackfriars, have particularly low parapets.
Of the streets our author says: 'They are paved in such a manner that it is barely possible to ride or walk on them in safety, and they are always extremely dirty.... The finest streets ... would be impassable were it not that on each side ... footways are made from four to five feet wide, and for communication from one to the other across the street there are smaller footways elevated above the general surface of the roadway, and formed of large stones selected for the purpose.... In the finest part of the Strand, near St. Clement's Church, I noticed, during the whole of my stay in London, that the middle of the street was constantly covered with liquid stinking mud, three or four inches deep.... The walkers are bespattered from head to foot.... The natives, however, brave all these disagreeables, wrapped up in long blue coats, like dressing-gowns, wearing brown stockings and perukes, rough, red and frizzled.'
Well, we cannot find much fault with this description, unflattering as it is, for in the last century London certainly was one of the most hideous towns to live in, and its inhabitants the most uncouth, repulsive set of 'guys'! Concerning Oxford Street our author makes a false prognostic: 'The shops of Oxford Street will disappear as the houses are sought after for private dwellings by the rich. Soon will the great city extend itself to Marylebone, which is not more than a quarter of a league distant. At present it is a village, principally of taverns, inhabited by French refugees.'
Our traveller sees but four houses in London which will bear comparison with the great hotels in Paris. To the inconvenience of mud, he says, must be added that of smoke, which, mingled with a perpetual fog, covers London as a pall. We, to our sorrow, know this to be true even now.
But we have improved in one respect: our old watchmen or 'Charleys' have disappeared before the modern police. Concerning these watchmen our author says: 'There are no troops or guard or watch of any kind, except during the night by some old men, chosen from the dregs of the people. Their only arms are a stick and a lantern. They walk about the streets crying the hour every time the clock strikes ... and it appears to be a point of etiquette among hare-brained youngsters to maul them on leaving their parties.'
Our Frenchman formed a correct estimate of the London watchman of his day—nay, it held good to the final extinction of the 'Charleys.' In December, 1826, a watchman was charged before the Lord Mayor with insubordination. On being asked who had appointed him watchman, the prisoner replied that he was in great distress and a burden to the parish, who therefore gave him the appointment to get rid of him. The Lord Mayor: 'I thought so; and what can be expected from such a system of choosing watchmen? I know that most of the men who are thus burdens on the parish are the vilest of wretches, and such men are appointed to guard the lives and property of others! I also know that in most cases robberies are perpetrated by the connivance of watchmen.'
But in some cases our author is really too good-naturedly credulous. Says he: 'The people of London, though proud and hasty, are good at heart, and humane, even in the lowest class. If any stoppage occurs in the streets, they are always ready to lend their assistance to remove the difficulty, instead of raising a quarrel, which might end in murder, as is often the case in Paris.' This is really too innocent! And our French visitor must have been very fortunate indeed never to have got into a London crowd of roughs or of pickpockets, who create stoppages in the streets for the only purpose of pursuing their trade, and who seldom hesitate to commit violence if they cannot rob without it. Our author's belief, indeed, in London honesty is boundless. 'In order that the pot-boys,' he says, 'may have but little trouble in collecting them [the pewter pots in which publicans send out the beer], they are placed in the open passages, and sometimes on the doorsteps of the houses. I saw them thus exposed ... and felt quite assured against all the cunning of thieves.' But more astounding is the statement that there are no poor in London! 'A consequence,' says our visitor, 'of its rich and numerous charitable establishments and the immense sums raised by the poor-rates, which impost is one which the little householders pay most cheerfully, as they consider it a fund from which, in the event of their death, their wives and children will be supported.' Fancy a little householder paying his poor-rate cheerfully! And what a mean opinion must our author have had of the spirit of the householder who calmly contemplated his family, after his death, going to the parish!
The Frenchman returns once more to our usual melancholy, 'which,' he says, 'is no doubt owing to the fogs' and to our fat meat and strong beer. 'Beef is the Englishman's ordinary diet, relished in proportion to the quantity of fat, and this, mixed in their stomachs with the beer they drink, must produce a chyle, whose viscous heaviness conveys only bilious and melancholic vapours to the brain.'