“To Mr. Robinson,
“in
America.”
Or,—
“To Miss Henrietta Hobson,
“Just by the Church,
“in London.”
However rich (some may think), these are not by any means rare; and such small mistakes, I dare say, will happen in other countries besides England, wherever there are simple-minded people who put their trust in Providence and the royal Post-office. In Germany, where every man, woman, and child is registered by the police, the postman may, as a last resource, apply to that omniscient institution; but in England, where the chief commissioner of the police is so abandoned as to be actually ignorant of the whereabouts of honest and decent citizens, the Post-office is deprived even of this last resource. The case would be pitiable in the extreme, but for the comfortable reflection that in England the police do not interfere with the post. The convenience, on the one hand, is by far greater than the inconvenience on the other.
CHAP. VIII.
Sunlight—Moonlight—Gaslight.
THE SUN AND THE LONDONERS.—MYSTERIES OF THE FOG.—HARVEST MOONS.—GAS.—HOW THE CLIMATE WORKS.—FLANNELS.—ENGLISH DINNERS AND FRENCH THEATRICALS.—CURRENT PHRASES.
FASHIONABLE novelists, no matter whether their productions end with marriage or suicide, devote their first chapters to geographical and ethnographical accounts of the country or province in which they lay their plots. Scientific travellers devote the first pages of their heavy and immortal works to the respective telluria and astronomic peculiarities of the country they propose to describe. To my sincere regret, I have not, in my unsystematic wanderings through London, been able to follow so laudable an example; for it requires a long residence and a good deal of careful observation to understand the whims of the London celestial bodies—their goings and comings—and their influence on vegetable and animal life—on the strata of the atmosphere and of mankind.
Since Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, and Lola Montes into a Countess of Landsfeld, there has not, as far as I know, been any female being so much abused as the London sun;[D] but the reasons of such abuse are diametrically opposed. The two first named ladies were found fault with because they saw too much of the world, while the London sun is justly charged with a want of curiosity. It turns its back upon the wealthiest city in Christendom; and, in the presence of the most splendid capital of Europe, it insists on remaining veiled in steam, fog, and smoke.
[D] The sun—die Sonne—is feminine in German.
The London sun, like unto German liberty, exists in the minds of the people, who have faith in either, and believe that either might be bright, dazzling, and glorious, were it not for the intervention of a dark, ugly fog, between the upper and nether regions. It happens, just now, that we have not seen the sun for the last three weeks. But for the aid of astronomy, which tells us that the sun is still in its old place, we might be tempted to believe that it had gone out of town for the long vacation; or that it had been adjourned by some continental constitutional government; or that it was being kept in a German capital, waiting for the birthday of the reigning prince, when it must come out in a blaze; for this, I understand, has been the sun’s duty from time immemorial. A three weeks’ absence of the sun would make a great stir in any other town. The Catholics would trace its cause to the infidelity of the age; the Protestants would demonstrate that the sun had been scared away by certain late acts of Papal aggression; and the Jews would lament and ask: “How is it possible the sun can shine when the Bank raises its rate of discount?” But the Londoners care as little for a month of chiaro-oscuro as the Laplanders do. They are used to it.