But the hansom is the peculiar vehicle. The four-wheeler is a sort of a sober-going cab, the one you would expect the mother of a family or a respectable widow lady to use. The driver sits in front, as a driver should, and the entire concern is closed except as you may desire to have air by letting down eminently respectable windows in the side. But the hansom is quite another thing. The occupant is in a low seat, while his driver sits above him on a perch and the reins go over the occupant’s head. Next to swindling his customer out of a sixpence on his fare, the chief ambition of the driver of a hansom is to run down a foot passenger, and in this ambition his horse shares fully, if he does not exceed him. The horses used in these piratical vehicles are generally broken-down hunters, who, too slow to longer hunt the wily fox, and harnessed in the ignoble hansom, have transferred their hunting instincts to men. When the “jarvey,” as he is called here, fixes his eagle eye upon a citizen whom he proposes to run down, the horse knows it as if by instinct, and they come charging down upon him at a pace something as did the French cuirassiers at Waterloo. And if the intended victim escapes, the driver gnashes his teeth in rage, and the sympathizing horse drops his head and moves on a walk till the sight of another countryman or stranger rouses his ambition. It is said that when a driver succeeds in running down a foot passenger the injured man is the one who is arrested.
The shops of London are of two kinds—the gorgeous modern and the respectable ancient. The modern are of the most gorgeous kind. They are not as in New York, immense show windows with a door between; but there is an immense show window in the middle, with a small passage on the side. When a London tradesman wants a show window he wants it all show. It is very like the piety of some men I know. He doesn’t care how small the opening is to get into the place, for he knows if he attracts a customer by the display of his goods in the window, he, the said customer, will manage somehow to get inside. The point is to corral the customer. Once in, his bones can be picked at leisure.
The modern shops are as gorgeously fitted up inside as out. They have silver plated rails, magnificently decorated counters and show-cases, even more than the New York stores have.
Then there are the eminently respectable shops which despise these gorgeous ones about the same as an old noble, descended from one of the first robbers, looks down upon a Knight of day before yesterday. These are the shops that have over their doors “Established in 1692.” They would no more put in a plate glass window than they would forge a note. They revel in their dustiness, and are proud of their darkness and inconvenience. They wouldn’t sweep out the premises if they could help it, and the very cob-webs are sacred as being so many silent witnesses to the antiquity of the house.
“The house, sir, of Smithers & Co., was established by Samuel Smithers on this very spot in 1692, and business has been done under that name, and by his successors, ever since, except an interval of two months, which was occasioned by a fire—from the outside. The house of Samuel Smithers & Co. could never have originated a fire upon their own premises. The business is conducted with more system. We have never had a protested paper and never asked an accommodation.”
This is what the present head of the house will say to you. He has as much pride in the house as the Queen has in her Queenship, and with infinitely more reason. He would not allow a new pane of glass to be put in, and he wouldn’t change a thing about the premises for the world. He prides himself on the inconveniences of a hundred years ago, and would die sooner than to use a modern notion in the business.
AN OLD HOUSE.
But the Smitherses are good people with whom to do business. Among the other old-fashioned customs they preserve is that of honesty. They keep good goods, no shoddy; they have a fair price, and you might as well undertake to tear down Westminster Abbey with a hair-pin as to induce any variation therefrom. They want your trade—every Englishman wants trade—but they prefer their system to trade. You buy, if you buy of them, on their terms. But you know what you get, and that is worth something.
This affection for the old is general. It is a fact that one eating house, noted for its chops and steaks, and ales and wines, which had been in existence no one knows how many years, and had its regular succession of patrons, who came in at regular hours, and ate and drank the same things, and read the same newspapers till death claimed them, fell, by reason of death, into the hands of young men. These young fellows were somewhat progressive, and they determined to bring the old place abreast with modern ideas. And so they swept out the cob-webs, painted the interior, decorated it in bright colors, put in new tables, swept and cleaned things, and replaced the old floor with modern tiles, and made it one of the most handsome places in London.
The effect was fatal. The old habitues of the place came, looked inside, ran out to see if they had not made a mistake as to the number, and finding they were right as to locality, sighed and turned sadly away. They could not eat in any such place, and they went and found some other antiquated den, whose proprietor was sensible enough not to tear down sacred cob-webs, and put in fresh floors.