Gleanings in Europe

by James Fenimore Cooper

London met us, in its straggling suburbs, several miles down the river. I cannot give you any just idea of our carte de route, but it led us through a succession of streets lined by houses of dingy yellow bricks, until we suddenly burst out upon Waterloo Bridge. Crossing this huge pile, we whirled into the Strand, and were set down at the hotel of Mrs. Wright, Adam street, Adelphi. Forty years since we should have been in the very focus of the fashionable world, so far as hotels were concerned, whereas we were now at its Ultima Thule. The Strand, as its name signifies, runs parallel to the river, and at no great distance from its banks, leaving room, however, for a great number of short streets between it and the water. Nearly all these streets, most of which are in fact “places,” having no outlets at one end, are filled with furnished lodging-houses, and, in some of the best of them, I believe it is still permitted to a gentleman to reside. When, however, I mentioned to a friend that we were staying in Adam street, he exclaimed that we ought, on no account, to have gone east of Charing Cross. These were distinctions that gave us very little concern, and we were soon refreshing ourselves with some of worthy Mrs. Wright’s excellent tea.

One of the merits of England is the perfect order in which every thing is kept, and the perfect method with which every thing is done. One sees no cracked cups, no tea-pots with broken noses, no knives thin as wafers, no forks with one prong longer than the other, no coach wanting a glass, no substitute for a buckle, no crooked poker or tongs loose in the joint, no knife that wont cut, no sugar cracked in lumps too big to be used, no hat unbrushed, no floor with a hole in it, no noisy servants, no bell that wont ring, no window that wont open, no door that wont shut, no broken pane, nor any thing out of repair that might have been mended. I now speak of the eyes of him who can pay. In France, half of these incongruities are to be met with amid silken curtains and broad mirrors, though France is rapidly improving in this respect; but, at home, we build on a huge scale, equip with cost, and take refuge in expedients as things go to decay. We are not as bad as the Irish are said to be, in this respect, but he who insists on having things precisely as they ought to be, is usually esteemed a most unreasonable rogue, more especially in the interior. We satisfy ourselves by acknowledging a standard of merit in comforts, but little dream of acting up to it. We want servants, and mechanical labour is too costly. The low price at which comforts are retailed here, has greatly surprised me. I feel persuaded that most of the common articles of English manufacture come to the consumer in America, at about thrice their original cost.

The second night we were in London, a party of street musicians came under the window and began to play. They had tried several tunes without success, for I was stretched on a sofa reading, but the rogues contrived, after all, to abstract half a crown from my pocket, by suddenly striking up Yankee Doodle! It is something, at all events, to have taught John Bull that we take pride in that tune. You can scarcely imagine the effect it produced on my nerves to hear it in the streets of London, though you and I have heard it “rolling off for grog” so often with perfect indifference. I have since been told by a music-master, that the air is German. He touched it for me, though with a time and cadence that completely changed its character. The English took the tune of an old song beginning with “Miss Nancy Locket lost her pocket,” and adapted their words of derision to it; but there is strictly no such thing as an English school of music. Most of their songs, I believe, have the motives of German airs. The prevalent motive of all English music, however, is gold.

I cannot tell you how many furnished apartments and lodging-houses London contains, but the number is incredible. They can be had at all prices, and with nearly every degree of comfort and elegance. The rush of people to town is so great, during the season, that there are periods when it is not easy to have a choice, notwithstanding, though we were sufficiently early to make a selection. In one thing I was disappointed. The English unquestionably are a neat people, in all that relates to their houses, and yet the furnished lodgings of London are not generally as tidy as those of Paris. The general use of coal may be a reason, but after passing a whole day in examining rooms, we scarcely met with any that appeared sufficiently neat. The next morning I tried a new quarter, where we did a little better, though the effects of the coal-dust met us everywhere.

We finally took a small house in St. James’s Place, a narrow inlet that communicates with the street of the same name, and which is quite near the palace and the parks. We had a tiny drawing-room, quite plainly furnished, a dining-room, and three bed-rooms, with the use of the offices, &c., for a guinea a-day. The people of the house cooked for us, went to market, and attended to the rooms, while our own man and maid did the personal service. I paid a shilling extra for each fire, and as we kept three, it came to another guinea weekly. This, you will remember, was during the season, as it is called; at another time the same house might have been had, quite possibly, for half the money.

Many people take these furnished houses by the year, and more still, by the quarter. I was surprised to find those in our neighbourhood gradually filling with people of condition, many of the coaches that daily stood before their doors having coronets. Perhaps more than half of the peers of the three kingdoms lodge in this way when in town, and I believe a smaller proportion still actually own the houses in which they reside. Even in those cases in which the head of a great family has a townhouse of his own, the heir and younger children, if married, seldom reside in it, the English customs, in this respect, being just the reverse of those of France.

There is a great convenience in having it in one’s power to occupy a house that is in all respects private, ready furnished, and to come and go at will. Were the usage introduced into our own towns, hundreds of families would be induced to pass their winters in them, that now remain in the country from aversion to the medley and confusion of a hotel, or a boarding-house, as well as their expense. We have a double advantage for the establishment of such houses, in New York at least, in the fact that we have two seasons, yearly, the winter and the summer. Our own people would occupy them during the former portion of the year, and the southern travellers in the warm weather. The introduction of such houses would, I think, have a beneficial influence on our deportment, which is so fast tending towards mediocrity, under the present gregarious habits of the people. When there is universal suffrage at a dinner-table, or in the drawing-room, numbers will prevail, as well as in the ballot-boxes, and the majority in no country is particularly polite and well bred. The great taverns that are springing up all over America, are not only evils in the way of comfort and decency, but they are actually helping to injure the tone of manners. They are social Leviathans.

LETTER III.
TO RICHARD COOPER, ESQ. COOPERSTOWN, N. Y.

A London season lasts during the regular session of parliament, unless politics contrive to weary dissipation. Of course this rule is not absolute, as the two houses are sometimes unexpectedly convened; but the ordinary business of the country usually begins after the Christmas holidays, and, allowing for a recess at Easter, continues until June, or July. This division of time seems unnatural to us, but all national usages of the sort, can commonly be traced to sufficient causes. The shooting and hunting seasons occupy the autumn and early winter months; the Christmas festivities follow; then the country in England, apart from its sports, is less dreary in winter than in most other parts of the world, the verdure being perhaps finer than in the warm months, and London, which is to the last degree unpleasant as a residence from November to March, is most agreeable from April to June. The government is exclusively in the hands of the higher classes, or, so nearly so as to render their convenience and pleasure the essential point, and these inhabit a quarter of the town, in which one misses the beauties of the country far less than in most capitals. The west end is so interspersed with parks and gardens and the enclosures of squares, that, aided by high culture and sheltered positions, vegetation not only comes forward earlier in Westminster than in the adjacent fields, but it is more grateful to the eye and feelings. The men are much on horseback of a morning, and the women take their drives in the parks, quite as agreeably as if they were at their own country residences.