This was true. The fog that had seemed dry so long, was falling. The uneven, round stones were very wet. But why not drive down the street until we found the house we were looking for?
He rubbed his grizzled, sandy hair into a mop of perplexity.
“The way is but strait at the best, as ye may pairceive, leddies, and it wad be unco’ nosty to meet a cab, or, mayhap, a four-wheeler in some pairts.”
We primed him with minute directions and let him depart upon the voyage of discovery, while we leaned back under the projecting hood of the carriage, sheltered by it and the queer, wooden folding-doors above our knees, from the “dreezle,” and speculated why “Paternoster” Row should be near to and in a line with “Amen” and “Ave Maria” corners. What august processional had passed that way, and pausing at given stations to say an “Ave,” a “Paternoster,” a united “Amen,” left behind it names that would be repeated as long and ignorantly as the Cross of “Notre Chère Reine” and “La Route du Roi” are murdered into cockney English? That led to the telling of a dispute Caput had had one day with a cabman, who, by the way, had jumped from his box on the road to Hyde Park corner to say: “No, sir, we’re not at H’Apsley ’Ouse yet, sir! But I fancied it might h’interest the lady to know that the pavement we are a-drivin’ over at this h’identical minute, sir, h’is composed h’entirely of wood!”
“We have hundreds of miles of it in America, and wish you had it all!” retorted Caput, amused, but impatient. “Go on!”
Having seen Apsley and Stafford Houses, we bade the fellow take us to a certain number on Oxford Street. He declared there was no such street in the city, and jumped down from his seat to confirm his assertion out of the mouths of three or four other “cabbies” at a hackstand. A brisk altercation ensued, ended by Caput’s exhibition of an open guide-book and pointing to the name.
“Ho! hit’s Hugsfoot Street you mean!” cried the disgusted cockney.
As I finished the anecdote our Scot returned, crestfallen. He did not say we had sent him on a fool’s errand, but we began to suspect it ourselves when we undertook the quest in person. We were wrapped in waterproofs and did not mind the fine, soaking mist, except as it made the strip of flagging next the shops slippery, as with coal-oil. Paternoster Row retains its bookish character. Every second shop was a publisher’s, printer’s, or stationer’s. Everybody was civil. N. B.—Civility is a part of a salesman’s trade in England. But everybody stared blankly at our questions relative to the Chapter Coffee-house, although the very name fixed it in this locality. One and all said, first or last—“I really carn’t say!” and several observed politely that “it was an uncommon nasty day.” One added, “But h’indeed, at this season, we may look for nasty weather.”
One word about this pet adjective of the noble Briton of both sexes. It is quite another thing from the American word, spelled but not pronounced in the same way, and which, with us, seldom passes the lips of well-bred people. An English lady once told me that a hotel she had patronized was “very clean—neat as wax, in fact, and handsomely furnished, but a very-very nasty house!”
She meant, it presently transpired, that the fare was scant in quantity, and the landlord surly. Whatever is disagreeable, mean, unsatisfactory, from any cause whatsoever, is “nasty.” When they would intensify the expression they say “beastly,” and fold over the leaf upon the list of expletives.