"Any letters for me?"
"You 'av your letter in your 'and, sir."
"No; I mean any letters from home—from America—to my address?"
"The other side sir" (pointing across the area).
I repaired to the "other side," gave my address, and had the satisfaction of receiving several epistles from loved ones at home, which the clerk checked off his memoranda as delivered, and I sallied out my first day in London, to turn to the left and right, and find Lombard Street. Three pence and a ticket porter enabled me to do this speedily, and thus ended our first experience at Baring Brothers & Co.'s.
There may, perhaps, be nothing to complain of in all this as a business transaction, but that it was regularly performed; but after one has experienced the courtesies of bankers on the continent, he begins to ask himself the question, if the Barings ought not, taking into consideration the amount of money they have made and are making out of their American business and the American people, to show a little less parsimony and more liberality and courtesy to them, and provide some convenience and accommodation for that class of customers, and make some effort to put the raw tourist, whose one or two thousand pounds they have condescended to receive, at his ease when he visits their establishment.
All this may have been changed since I was in London (1867); but the style of transactions like this I have described was then a general topic of conversation among Americans, and seemed to have been similar in each one's experience. In Paris how different was the reception! Upon presenting your letter, a member of the American banking-house, a junior partner, probably, steps forward, greets you cordially, makes pleasant inquiries with regard to your passage over, invites you to register your name and address, ushers you into a large room where the leading American journals are on file, and there are conveniences for letter writing, conversation, &c. He invites you to make this your headquarters; can he do anything for you? you want some money—the cashier of the house cashes your draft at once, and you are not sent out into the street to hunt up an unknown banking-house. He can answer you almost any question about Paris or its sights, and procure you cards of permission to such places of note as it is necessary to send to government officials for, tell you where to board or lodge, and execute any commission for you.
The newly-arrived American feels "at home" with such a greeting as this at once, and if his letter draws on Baring's agent in Paris, is prone to withdraw funds, and redeposit with his new-found friends. Of course the houses of this character, that tourists do business with in Paris, were peculiar to that city, and may be classed as banking and commission houses, and the "commission" part of the business has come into existence within a few years, and was of some importance during the year of the Exposition. That part of the business would not be desirable to a great London banking-house, nor is there the field for it, as in Paris; but there is room for an improvement in conveniences, accommodation, cordiality, courtesy, &c., towards American customers, especially tourists, who naturally, on first arrival, turn to their banker for information respecting usages, customs, &c., and for other intelligence which might be afforded with comparatively little trouble.
But to the sights of London. The streets themselves, as I have said, are among the sights to be seen in this great metropolis of the civilized world. There is Pall Mall, or "Pell Mell," as the Londoners call it, with its splendid clubhouses, the "Travellers," "Reform," "Army and Navy," "Athenæum," "Guards," "Oxford," and numerous others I cannot now recall; Regent Street, to which I have referred, with its splendid stores; Oxford Street, a street of miles in length, and containing stores of equal splendor with its more aristocratic rival; Holborn, which is a continuation of Oxford, and carries you down to "the city;" Fleet Street and the Strand, with their newspaper offices, and bustle, and turmoil, houses, churches, great buildings, and small shops. Not far from here are Charing Cross Hotel and the railroad station, a splendid modern building; or you may go over into Whitehall, pass by the Horse Guards' Barracks,—in front of which two mounted troopers sit as sentinels,—and push on, till rising to view stands that one building so fraught with historic interest as to be worth a journey across the ocean to see—the last resting-place of kings, queens, princes, poets, warriors, artists, sculptors, and divines, the great Pantheon of England's glory—Westminster Abbey.
Its time-browned old walls have looked down upon the regal coronation, the earthly glory, of the monarch, and received within their cold embrace his powerless ashes, and bear upon their enduring sides man's last vanity—his epitaph.