Saunterings in and about London

by Max Schlesinger

These ceremonies over, the procession returns the way it came, and lands at Blackfriars Bridge. Thenceforward it increases in splendour and magnificence. The fairer portion of humanity join it in their state coaches—the Lady Mayoress, the Aldermen’s and Sheriffs’ wives; and after them come Royal Princes, Ministers of State, the Judges of the land, and the Foreign Ambassadors. The procession over, they all sit down to dinner. What they eat, how they eat it, and how much they eat, is on the following morning duly chronicled in the journals. The number and quality of the courses will at once enable an experienced city-man to come to a pretty correct conclusion as to the Lord Mayor’s virtues or vices. Meats rich and rare count as so many merits; but a couple of low and vulgar dishes would at once turn public opinion in the City against the City’s chosen prince. The Lord Mayor’s reputation emanates from the kitchen and the larder, exactly as a great diplomatist’s renown may frequently be traced to the desk of some private secretary.

The Lady Mayoress shares all the honours which are showered upon her worthy husband; she is a genuine “lady” for a whole twelvemonth, and perhaps for life, if her husband has the good luck to be honoured with a visit from the Queen, on which occasion it is customary for the Lord Mayor to be made a baronet, while a couple of Aldermen, at least, come in for the honours of knighthood. But if the Queen does not visit the City, the Lord Mayor descends at the end of the year to his former position. For three hundred and sixty-five days he is a “Lord,” and his wife is a “Lady”; he goes to Court, and is on terms of good fellowship with royal princes, gartered dukes, and belted earls; and he has the high honour and privilege of feasting the Corporation. His year of office over, he quits the Mansion House, returns to his shop and apron, and is the same quiet and humble citizen he was before.

Of course the shop and apron we have mentioned in jest only. A man who can aspire to the dignity of the mayoralty has long ceased to be a tradesman; he is a merchant prince, a banker, a millionaire. How else could he afford the luxury of that expensive dignity, especially since he cannot but neglect his business whilst he is in office.

The Lord Mayor’s pay from the City amounts to £8000, but his expenses are enormous. Woe to him if he be careful of his money, if his dinners are few and far between, or his horses and carriages less splendid than those of his predecessors! Such enormities expose him to the contempt of the grandees of the City. The Common Councilmen shrug their shoulders, and the Aldermen declare that they were mistaken in him. The outraged feelings of the City pursue him even after his return to private life.

He is in duty bound to spend the eight thousand pounds he receives from the City; it is highly meritorious in him if he spends more. Bright is his place in the annals of the City, if he feasts its sons at the expense of double the amount of his official income!

There is much aristocratic pride and civic haughtiness in this city royalty. It rests on a broad historical basis; and it was strongest with regard to royalty at Whitehall, whenever the latter had to apply to the wealthy city corporations for relief in its financial troubles. But it was also a firm bulwark against the encroachments of the kings of England of former days, supported as they were by venal judges and parliaments; and it deserves the respect of the English as an historical relic. Its merits lie in the past; for at present English liberty needs not the protection of a City king.

The prerogatives of the city of London have, of late years, become the subject of a violent agitation. That agitation was commenced by “The Times,” on the occasion of the great exhibition. “The Times” holds that it is unreasonable that the city—at the present day a mere function of London—should continue to play the part of the sovereign; that the Lord Mayor speaking in the name of London, should invite the Queen; that, conducting himself as representative of the metropolis, he should be feasted by the Prefect of the Seine, and kissed by Mons. Cartier. What right has the City to such honours, now that London has long since engulphed it? Where are the merits of the City? What does the Lord Mayor? What do the Aldermen? Nothing—unless it be that they eat turtle soup, and patés de foie gras? Is obesity a title to honours?

Thus says “The Times,” with great justice, but with very little tenderness. No Englishman who knows anything of the history of his country, will deny that in evil days the City became a champion of liberty against the kings at Whitehall; that the Lord Mayors protected the press, and sheltered the printers from the violence of the government; that on such occasions the City had many a hot contest with the parliaments, and that, to this day, the city members belong to the liberal party. But liberal principles might be adhered to even without the Lord Mayor and his Lucullian dinners. And, as for the City’s former services, it ought to be remembered, that there is a vast difference between living institutions and stone monuments. Old towers and castles, which at one time did good service against a foreign enemy, have, so to say, a vested right to the place in which they stand; it were wrong to pull them down merely because they are now useless. But far different is the case with living institutions that jar with the tendencies of the century. To wait for their gradual decay were a suicidal act in a nation.

A great many of the institutions of the City ought to be consigned to mediæval curiosity shops. They were, certainly, very useful in their day, when they had a purpose and a meaning; but so was the old German “Heerbann;” so were the guilds; and so was superstition. It were mere madness to spare them in consideration of past services. They must fall, sooner or later; and the sculptors and historians of England will take good care that the former merits of the City shall not be lost in oblivion.

Up to the present time, the agitation against the arrogance of the city corporations has been confined to the press; to the “Times” belongs the merit of having commenced that agitation. The Londoners have as yet taken no active part in it; and this is another proof of the conservative tendencies which are incarnate in the great mass of the English nation. There is in this conservatism a narrow-mindedness which is the more striking as, in the affairs of practical life, the Anglo-British race can, least of all, be accused of a want of common sense.