However, as I shall soon relate, the opposition of the 'buses did not prove to be as terrible in the end as I had feared. The heaviest blows came from a higher source. The "people," in England, as elsewhere, seem very powerful at first, in the beginnings of all enterprises. To oppose them would seem to be inviting destruction. But in the end it is found that the real power is lodged elsewhere, and whenever this real power wants a thing done, the "people" do not exist. The fiction that they do exist disappears at once in the clear atmosphere of "exigency."
The first of these real powers that I had to attack was the Metropolitan Board of Aldermen. I appeared before the board with a carefully prepared model of the tramways I proposed. It was a sort of public hearing, and I was very closely questioned about the plans of operating the road, the effect its presence in the narrow streets would have in interfering with traffic, the danger of accidents, and so on. There was present a noble lord who, I saw, was fighting desperately against the project. He eyed me closely and made sharp interrogations. When he wished to be particularly effective, as is the manner of Englishmen of his class, he would drop his monocle, then readjust it carefully, with many writhings and twistings of his eyebrows, and, when the single glass was properly adjusted, half close the other eye and concentrate the full blaze of the monocle upon his victim. If the victim survives this, so much the worse for him, for he will then be subjected to a long drawl and to "hems" and "haws" that would shatter the composure of a Philadelphia lawyer.
We soon took up the problem of laying the tramway up Ludgate Hill, where the street is exceedingly narrow. His lordship fixed me with his glittering monocle. I saw from which direction the firing would come. After readjusting his monocle, so as to get the range better, he said:
"May I—ah—ask a question, Mr.—ah—Train?" When an Englishman wants to be sarcastic, and ironical, and cutting, he finds the means readiest to his mind in a pretended forgetting of your name.
"That is what I am here for, my lord," I replied, as graciously as possible.
"You know, of course, how very narrow is Ludgate Hill. Suppose that when I go down to the Mansion House in my carriage, one of my horses should slip on your d—d rail, and break his leg—would you pay for the horse?"
This produced a sensation, for the English love a lord even more than we plain Americans do. As soon as the stir had ceased, I replied, in a voice that carried to the ends of the hall:
"My lord, if you could convince me that your d—d old horse would not have fallen if the rail had not been there, I certainly should pay for it." This retort caught the audience so happily that the tide swept around my way, to the discomfiture of the noble lord. The hearing resulted in my obtaining permission to lay a tramway from the Marble Arch at Oxford Street and from Hyde Park to Bayswater, a distance of one or two miles.
I soon built other lines, also: one from Victoria Station to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and another from Westminster Bridge to Kennington Gate on the way to Clapham. These were constructed on my patent of a half-inch flange.
The omnibuses, defeated in this part of the fighting, resorted to peculiar but effective tactics. As soon as I laid a portion of my tracks—which was done upon the same terms under which I had put down the line in Birkenhead—the 'bus drivers tried in every possible way to wreck their vehicles on the rails. They would drive across again and again and take the rails in the most reckless way, in order to catch and twist their wheels. They were very often successful, and there were many accidents of this sort. The excitement increased greatly with every foot of track laid down. But the people, as in Birkenhead, were tremendously in favor of the tramway. It was such a convenience to them that they sided with me in the fight. The 'bus drivers and companies and the aristocracy were against me—the one because my trams interfered with their business, the other because they owned their private conveyances, and did not like to drive across the rails. I dressed conductors and drivers in the uniform of volunteers, to which many soldiers objected. In the meanwhile the cars were crowded with passengers at all hours, there being throughout the day a rush such as is seen in New York only in what we call the "rush hours."