London is now so utterly dead as to elegance and fashion, that one hardly meets an equipage; and nothing remains of the ‘beau monde’ but a few ambassadors. The huge city is, at the same time, full of fog and dirt, and the macadamized streets are like well-worn roads; the old pavement has been torn up, and replaced by small pieces of granite, the interstices between which are filled with gravel; this renders the riding more easy, and diminishes the noise; but, on the other hand, changes the town into a sort of quagmire. Were it not for the admirable ‘trottoirs,’ people must go on stilts, as they do in the Landes near Bourdeaux. Englishwomen of the lower classes do indeed wear an iron machine of the kind on their large feet.
London is, however, extremely improved in the direction of Regent Street, Portland Place, and the Regent’s Park. Now, for the first time, it has the air of a seat of Government (Residenz), and not of an immeasurable metropolis of ‘shopkeepers,’ to use Napoleon’s expression. Although poor Mr. Nash (an architect who has great influence over the King, and is the chief originator of these improvements) has fared so ill at the hands of connoisseurs,—and it cannot be denied that his buildings are a jumble of every sort of style, the result of which is rather ‘baroque’ than original,—yet the country is, in my opinion, much indebted to him for conceiving and executing such gigantic designs for the improvement of the metropolis. The greater part too is still ‘in petto,’ but will doubtless soon be called into existence by English opulence and the universal rage for building. It’s true, one must not look too nicely into the details. The church, for instance, which serves as ‘point de vue’ to Regent Street, ends in a ridiculous spire, while every part seems at variance with every other. It is a strange architectural monster. There is an admirable caricature, in which Mr. Nash, a very small shrivelled man, is represented booted and spurred, riding spitted on the point of the spire. Below is the inscription “National (sounded nashional) taste.”
Many such monstrosities might be mentioned. Among others, on a balcony which adorns the largest mansion in the Regent’s Park, there are four figures squeezed flat against the wall, whose purpose or import is extremely mysterious. They are clad in a sort of dressing-gown, whence we gather that they are at least designed for human figures. Perhaps they are emblems of an hospital; for these apparent palaces, like that at Potsdam, have unity and grandeur in their façade alone. They are often, in fact, only a conglomeration of small houses dedicated to the purposes of trade, manufacture, or what not.
Faultless, on the other hand, is the landscape-gardening part of the park, which also originates with Mr. Nash, especially in the disposition of the water. Art has here completely solved the difficult problem of concealing her operations under an appearance of unrestrained nature. You imagine you see a broad river flowing on through luxuriant banks, and going off in the distance in several arms; while in fact you are looking upon a small piece of standing, though clear, water, created by art and labour. So beautiful a landscape as this, with hills in the distance, and surrounded by an enclosure of magnificent houses a league in circuit, is certainly a design worthy of one of the capitals of the world; and when the young trees are grown into majestic giants, will scarcely find a rival. In the execution of Mr. Nash’s plan many old streets have been pulled down, and during the last ten years more than sixty thousand new houses built in this part of the town. It is, in my opinion, a peculiar beauty of the new streets, that, though broad, they do not run in straight lines, but make occasional curves which break their uniformity.
If ever London has quays, and St. Paul’s Church is laid open, according to the ingenious project of Colonel Trench, she will excel all other cities in magnificence, as much as she now does in magnitude.
Among the new bridges, Waterloo Bridge holds the first rank. The proprietors are said to have lost 300,000l. feet in length, and enclosed between solid balustrades of granite, it affords an agreeable and almost solitary walk, and commands the finest river view, in so far as the fog will permit it to be seen,—in which palaces, bridges, churches, and vessels, are proudly blended.
The contrivance for checking the toll-receivers was new to me. The iron turnstile through which you pass, and which is in the usual form of a cross, is so contrived that it describes each time only a quarter of the circle, just as much as is necessary to let one person through; and at the moment when it stops, a mark falls in an enclosed case under the bridge. There is a similar contrivance for carriages; and the proprietors have only to count the marks in an evening, to know accurately how many foot and horse-passengers cross the bridge daily. The former pay a penny, the latter three-pence, by which it was expected that three hundred pounds a day would be taken, instead of which the receipts seldom exceed fifty.
October 7th.
What would delight you here is the extreme cleanliness of the houses, the great convenience of the furniture, and the good manners and civility of all serving people. It is true that one pays for all that appertains to luxury (for the strictly necessary is not much dearer than with us), six times as high; but then one has six times as much comfort. In the inns everything is far better and more abundant than on the Continent. The bed, for instance, which consists of several mattrasses laid one upon another, is large enough to contain two or three persons; and when the curtains which hang from the square tester supported on substantial mahogany columns, are drawn around you, you find yourself as it were in a little cabinet,—a room, which would be a very comfortable dwelling for a Frenchman. On your washing-table you find—not one miserable water-bottle, with a single earthen or silver jug and basin, and a long strip of a towel, such as are given you in all hotels and many private houses in France and Germany; but positive tubs of handsome porcelain, in which you may plunge half your body; half-a-dozen wide towels; a multitude of fine glass bottles and glasses, great and small; a large standing looking-glass, foot-baths, &c., not to mention other anonymous conveniences of the toilet, all of equal elegance.
Everything presents itself before you in so attractive a guise, that as soon as you wake you are allured by all the charms of the bath. If you want anything, the sound of your bell brings either a neatly dressed maid-servant, with a respectful curtesy, or a smart well-dressed waiter, who receives your orders in the garb and with the air of an adroit valet; instead of an uncombed lad, in a short jacket and green apron, who asks you, with a mixture of stupidity and insolence, “Was schaffen’s Ihr Gnoden?” (What is it, your Honour?), or “Haben Sie hier jeklingelt?” (Was it you, here, that rung?), and then runs out again without understanding properly what is wanted. Good carpets cover the floors of all the chambers; and in the brightly polished steel grate burns a cheerful fire, instead of the dirty logs, or the smoky and ill-smelling stoves to be found in so many of our inns.